In the end there was a view of the sea.

That is how a story begins: a cryptic remark, followed by a minor detail. A child made a handprint in the dust. A child, Sarah, was in an empty attic room; empty, but not silent now, for her sisters were hurrying up the stairs. (We presume they were bare, wooden boards.) It was an old, or older, house built when industry and empire made in England a prosperous middle class who liked to summer by the sea.

A view of the sea evokes images of distant shores, and the voyages of exploration, discovery and conquest. A view of the sea is romantic in the time-honoured record of painters, composers and poets. And, of course, children who are known for their curiosity and determination. When nothing was visible below they hurried upward. Somewhere in the house there had to be a window with a view, not of gardens and houses, but of the thing they had come to find. The possibilities of life were limitless. The Atlantic, washing the shores of several continents, invited the eye to look out for worlds beyond the end of the world. The girl with the dusty hand was searching hard for the sight of distant shores. Eventually she thought there was something… Then the others came, excitedly. But at once she resolved to look again when it was quiet.

“We have come here to live,” the middle child said. “We have come here to live,” the eldest girl said. “Forever,” said Sarah. This was not a holiday. The prospect, so longed for from the attic window, was real, and it would last for as long as anyone could imagine. That was a long time. Actually, it was longer than time. It was always. They were never going back. Life could be disappointing, but from this moment there was a new life seen in plain sight from the house where they lived.

At first they thought the house next door was empty.

Mrs. Seymour the clairvoyant spent many hours in seclusion behind curtained windows. By day there was respectable, old-fashioned white lace. At night the purple velvet drapes closed in her world as she read the cards for her clients. Strangers came to the house, usually in the evening. All were quite old, though rarely as old as Mrs. Seymour herself. Most visitors came alone. All were soberly dressed. They would walk at a measured pace, and with such grave faces they seemed to bear within their hearts some sad truth they were hiding from the world.

The girls knew for certain Mrs. Seymour was a witch. It was possible her visitors were spirits returning from the dead. Certainly they had about them a look which was not of the living world.

Most visitors came alone. All were soberly dressed. They would walk at a measured pace, and with such grave faces they seemed to bear within their hearts some sad truth they were hiding from the world.

When the girls first saw Mrs. Seymour’s house they understood at once that it was different. Even on a sunlit day in early summer the house had a dread in the impenetrable windows and the dark paint of its wood. The stone was no darker than any house in the street, but they seemed darker. The stone surely would be cold to touch. No one dared walk through the garden to the house itself to feel how cold and strange the stones were. Once you opened the garden gate, and stepped inside, the gate would close behind you. The garden hedges were high. There was no knowing what secrets they hid. But one thing was sure: an intruder would disappear. The thought was terrible, unimaginable, and darkly thrilling. Picturing the secret world of a witch was a stimulating topic.

The girls hoped that one day the curtains might part, that fresh wind would blow through the house and so reveal all the unknown things that were happening in the darkness and silence. These things were unimaginable, of course, and were likely to prove terrifying. From a distance the speculation was endlessly fascinating.

“Mrs. Seymour is quite old,” their mother explained. “She isn’t a witch, just a little strange. But you must never say anything to her.” They did not dare. On the rare occasions they saw Mrs. Seymour the girls always looked away if she turned in their direction. They did not go near. They made loud excuses to cross the street, and so avoid her, were she walking towards them at any time. It did not occur to the girls that a clairvoyant who knew secrets might know what they were thinking. It did not occur to the girls that their behaviour was obvious to anyone. Nor did they suppose strange old ladies to be perceptive.

It took a while for things in the house to accustom themselves, for the furniture to settle into the rooms, the walls to feel at ease with fresh, bright colour, and the floors to accept the tread of unfamiliar and demanding feet. Long before — in ancient history — it had been home to another family whose children had grown and gone. An elderly couple had lingered until they went. The house had been empty for a year, a year of absence, but not of silence. The house was never quite silent. And if there were still moments there was, though faintly, the sound of the sea.

The wind whished through the trees of the wood with a sound like surf on the shore. It was a curious effect that forbade investigation.

The sea was a sound permeating everywhere, even well inland. The wind whished through the trees of the wood with a sound like surf on the shore. It was a curious effect that forbade investigation. The girls would never dare go into that wood, not even on sunlit days when the world was calm. It was the sort of place a witch might go. Had they not seen Mrs. Seymour walk in that direction? Surely they had seen her. They knew where she was going, but they dared not think why.

They were too young to use the word “primeval,” but they would have understood its meaning. The wood on the high cliff was filled with dense vegetation that looked age-old, for this was one of the last wild places. At one time there was only vast forest and marsh. What was not sea was wilderness. That was how world had been. At one time there was no farmland, though the soil was arable. There were no houses, though there were people who spoke and thought and imagined. They fought, sometimes taming, wild creatures. They feared dragons, and they dreamed of mermaids. Their lives were like our fears and wishes. Perhaps they dreamed of a peaceful, prosperous future?

Mrs. Seymour could see the future. That was one of her powers that people ought not to have. One afternoon a man and a woman visited her. Usually her visitors were solitary and sad. This couple were anxious, rather than grieving. Not all hope had failed them. And they were not so very old. They were the parents of a missing girl. They were familiar from their public pleas for their daughter’s safe return. The appeal was to no one in particular. It was like a drowning sailor’s hand reaching to the sky.

When a body was washed up on the beach the father was invited to make an identification. A girl in her mid-teens, who had not been in the water more than a few days, lay on the trolley. She was dead, but not yet at peace. She looked strangely impersonal and anonymous. She was anyone’s daughter. But, after careful scrutiny, the father was sure it was not his. He had expected immediate recognition. Surely a man knows his own child? He had anticipated relief or pain at first glance. What he found was confusion and mystery. A part of him wanted the conclusion of saying yes. That was sure to disturb him later, for he was discovering many unfamiliar feelings where there had been certainties and the comfort they offered.

Under the harsh light of the County Hospital everything looked unearthly. The father needed somewhere more ambient to collect his thoughts. On the drive homeward he stopped the car at an inn. There was a cheer and warmth from the windows. Customers looked at ease. They were enjoying a carefree evening a troubled man could not share.

He saw the lights of cars as they reached the summit of a distant hill. The other way was the sea at the point where the Channel became the Atlantic. He could not bear to think of what might be down there, what soon might be found. Further on he drove past the wood that marked the bounds of the town. He saw a figure he thought may have been familiar. But when he stopped to look there he saw it was the fallen branch of a tree. That was all, and yet there was more. A father knows his daughter.

In the morning Rebecca was found. She was unharmed, but with the withered look of one who had been without food and shelter for some days. They had been long days for both the fugitive and her pursuers. When she was caught at last she was relieved. She no longer cared about admonishment and retribution. Rebecca wanted to go home. “Anything could have happened to you,” they told her sternly. But that was all they said. At the sight of their daughter forgiveness was everything. “We’ll say no more about it.”

“I hear the sound of water,” Mrs. Seymour had told the anxious parents. Doubtful all the while, they lost trust in Mrs. Seymour’s powers when Rebecca was found on land. The old fool talked nonsense. But she was not the only fool.

No one, not even Mrs. Seymour, had any idea who the drowned girl was. Sarah and her sisters wondered if she might be a mermaid? Somehow she had been caught up in human affairs, and thereby drowned. Why else had she not been identified and claimed? Everyone belongs somewhere. Mermaids belong in the sea.

It was Jane, the eldest girl, who thought that Mr. Parfitt in his yacht was looking for mermaids. He had the lonely look of a man in search of love. He loved his boat, of course. But he needed more. He liked to talk to customers at his bakery. He was very friendly, scrupulously polite, and truly kind. His smile revealed much, including a shadow of some misfortune. Whenever the girls went to the bakery they speculated on Mr. Parfitt’s success in his search on sailing days. When he was especially cheerful they suspected things had gone well.

He had the lonely look of a man in search of love…. He was very friendly, scrupulously polite and truly kind. His smile revealed much, including a shadow of some misfortune.

Whether a man could marry a mermaid was doubtful. The girls considered who might know the answer. At the lifeboat station they asked Roger, who told them a man who fell in love with a mermaid had to make a choice to live in the sea. It was a hard choice very few men would make, in his experience. But there was always someone.

The girls knew who that someone was. It was their first great secret of this new life.

At low tide the boats, sailing yachts, and fishing smacks rested on the sandbanks between the shallow pools. A long strand with trees acted as a sea wall at the edge of the harbour. You could walk there at low tide. When the sea returned it made an island of the strand, and there sand banks were flooded. Then the boats were able to sail. Mr. Parfitt loosened his boat from its moorings. The water was calm and clear, a delicate blue, lighter than usual. It was a warm day, though the breezes out at sea were much cooler than they were on land.

Mr. Parfitt had such a contented look in his manner that he seemed someone who well might have chosen to live in the sea were he required to do so. Slipping out of harbour, Mr. Parfitt waved to the girls from his well-cared-for craft. They returned his wave, thinking that he might not be seen again.

On a perfect day Mr. Parfitt disappeared.

Mr. Parfitt’s remedy for everything was bread. When Rebecca returned home he recommended a warm baguette. He would note the bread that his customers preferred, for these choices were his way of reading a customer’s character.

Mrs. Seymour, for example, liked a small wholemeal cob. One was delivered every Friday morning. Mr. Parfittt would give the crusty surface a squeeze to ensure it had the perfect feel. He could judge such things by a lifetime’s relationship with bread. Mrs. Seymour’s cob had to be firm but not heavy. There was to be a delicacy appropriate to a lady so charming, so understanding and so wise.

Those evenings with the cards remained in the foreground of Mr. Parfitt’s memory. In despair he had turned to her. And she, with admirable discretion, had offered him the reassurance and the hope he could not find elsewhere. Others could give consolation, but Mrs. Seymour spoke of things she alone could see. She had shown him a door he might open any time he wished.

He had sent her gifts, although none were ever acknowledged: a silk scarf, a pearl necklace, and many flowers. Mrs. Seymour’s weekly order of a wholemeal cob did not stop, but Mr. Parfitt never saw her again.

Others could give consolation, but Mrs. Seymour spoke of things she alone could see. She had shown him a door he might open any time he wished.

The girls noticed a sadness in the old man’s eyes at times. They supposed he had been cast under the witch’s spell. Only love could free him from its curse. That girl, Rebecca, had been lucky to escape. Somehow she had found a way out of the woods before it was too late. Mr. Parfitt, however, was under a deeper spell.

“Take care in calm water,” Mrs. Seymour had warned. Mr. Parfitt thought he understood her metaphor. There are always in situations when everything seems to be going well. That girl, for example, the teenager who disappeared: he’d seen her in the woods with a boy on more than one occasion. He guessed where she was when she disappeared. But he said nothing to anyone. In the event of her naked body being found the elderly single man who knew too much would be questioned. Who would believe him? Mrs. Seymour, surely. And who would believe her?

The old witch, who indeed would believe her? Mr. Parfitt had heard children talking of her, whispering in his bakery. Those girls, the new family. Nice girls, so trim in their cotton summer dresses. He’d heard their giggles. He always pretended not to hear. He tried to pay no attention, for they were young and playful. They weren’t serious, were they, about the wise woman whom he loved? They thought the sea was perpetually calm.

From the attic window Sarah, alone, watched Mrs. Seymour walk, not to the bakery, nor to the woods, but toward the harbour. The sirens had sounded for the lifeboat crew to assemble.

To the surprise of almost everyone Mr. Parfitt had found love. He had made so late in life a discovery; and it was one for which he died. Or so it was believed. The evidence was his will: Mr. Parfitt had bequeathed everything to Mrs. Seymour. Since there were no dependants, and only a few distant relations, the will was unlikely to be contested. Mrs. Seymour was now, with her combination of assets, a woman of some wealth.

This was wholly unforeseen. The cards had said nothing. They had let her down for the first time in all the years. Mrs. Seymour felt that her powers had ebbed. She no longer had use of them. They no longer had use of her.

The yacht was found was adrift some distance from any shore. It was Rebecca who located the body of Mr. Parfitt. She suggested they look where the girl had been found not long before. And she was right. So the murmur went round that Rebecca had inherited the gift.

Her pictures often showed a visionary quality. She did not see things in the customary way. Her reality was within.

Certainly after her ordeal in the wood she was changed — from moody and rebellious to quiet and confident. She became quite studious. Her manner was more conventional, although creative enough to guard against dullness. Rebecca was developing her style. Her walks by the shore were noted by all. Friends of old were friends no more. She preferred to commune with the Atlantic out there.

Sometimes Rebecca sketched or photographed. After a while there was an exhibition in a local gallery, one of the many that small coastal places attract. Rebecca, it was thought, had talent. Her pictures often showed a visionary quality. She did not see things in the customary way. Her reality was within. Isolated among her peers now, she was befriended by kindly, older people who were encouraging her to develop what she could see.

“I paint pictures,” Sarah said. “And, actually, some of them are very good.” But no one heard her in the attic room with its view to a wavering horizon. Sarah alone saw the men take the old-fashioned furniture out of Mrs. Seymour’s house. Some things went into enormous waste skip, including, Sarah noted approvingly, the wine-dark velvet curtains.

Rebecca’s parents had been seen looking over the house. There was much to be done to style it to their taste. What attracted them was the seascape. In their current house there was only woodland, “the disenchanted forest,” as Rebecca’s father privately had named it. And there was space in the attic for Rebecca to paint. A larger window would give more light, and a better view. In the end it was the sea that made the difference.

At first the girls did not understand how it was that Mr. Parfitt emerged from the sea if he had fallen in love with a mermaid. It was Sarah who suggested that a witch’s curse had put an end to the tryst between man and mermaid. As for Rebecca, the suggestion was her time in the wood had been a time of magical transformation. She had cast a good spell over the wicked witch.

“Shall we see the mermaids for ourselves?” the girls asked Roger. He told them it was possible. “You see them, if at all, when you’re not expecting it. Go out there looking and you’ll see nothing.”

That did not square with Mr. Parfitt’s own success. But, of course, he found love when he least expected it. The really good things in life, the exciting and different and thrilling things, were unforeseen.

It was difficult to comprehend things that were not in view. No matter how hard you looked, how carefully you scrutinised the horizon, there was no sight of the America that was said to be out there, that indeed was there, but imperceptibly so. There was another continent, a new world that you might come upon by chance. Surely there were undiscovered islands out there? It was too vast to be surveyed entirely.

But, of course, he found love when he least expected it. The really good things in life, the exciting and different and thrilling things, were unforeseen.

This allowed great space for the imagination to move freely across uncharted waters. In Rebecca’s art there were creatures not yet known to the land-bound. Sarah, of course, was inspired by these images. Then there were stories of drowned cities. Let us suppose that in mid-ocean a cathedral spire appears. Let us suppose that in the mists something is glimpsed. Or that in a great storm ancient treasures are brought forth, washed upon the beach among the seaweed and driftwood. There were only the vaguest bounds to the possibilities in the depths of that otherness.

Rebecca was often seen on the foreshore, breathing creative stimuli from the air. She took care not be seen swimming naked in a cove a little way down the coast. There, and in that way, she found the sense of being that some may have called freedom. But for her it was not the loosening of restraint that appealed nearly as much as the developing strength of heart.

It was not her fate to be taken by the water, for her promise to be lost. The spell that Rebecca was under was not a cruel one. The child who drew a face in the sand became the woman whose canvasses were oceans and continents of aquamarine and indigo and gold.

Rebecca was drawn to sunsets, of course, but also to the early light when the world is not yet peopled. If possible she would slip out of the house at dawn to walk in the public gardens beneath the high cliff. There was rarely a person about. A solitary dog-walker, perhaps. There was no reason to be afraid.

But it was caution to the children when they found a shell on the beach, a large, exquisitely fashioned conch. Sarah held it reverently, held it to her ear, then almost to her lips before the others said she was not to. Sarah began to cry when the shell was taken from her hand. She could not have understood the power that lied in such innocent-seeming things. “It wasn’t clean.” The others said “You might have caught some disease.” That was not the case really, but it, and hugs, appeased her on the walk back to the harbour.

Then it was that Sarah asked her question. And she looked out to sea for an answer. In the end there was sight of something. “Keep looking, and it may come again.”