Living next to the sea was like having tragedy for a neighbour

Opera, in a school hall, the voices impossibleand good, sudden throng of them lost in the badacoustics, singers singing to a feelingthey haven’t felt yet. Ten or eleven, somehave swum in all the sea’s moods already and onlyever fancied the idea of it, Love asabstract to them as Truth or Death, somethingthat happens to other people. The organpedalling it, divine croak as if filledwith sand, that church-type enthusiast, teachervisibly sweating, not much good with his fingers—