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Sport 14: Autumn 1995

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Tonight, the stars have grouped themselves in lustrous combinations. It is possible, by their light, to see the misty peaks that rise, mournful, above the sleeping ocean. The storm is over; the ship is at peace. It drifts silently upon the ocean’s dark face.

On deck, Amanda is typing. Her rapturous fingers flit and soar across the keys. They resemble the quick underside of gulls’ wings or the pale, starlit bellies offish, as they swoop down to spear a word, or hover to consider the felicity of a phrase.

‘The lesbian cavalry,’ writes Amanda, ‘could always be trusted to effect a rescue in the nick of time.’

‘We sailed all night towards the coral dawn.’

There are love scenes too, filled with inarticulate noises and wordless sounds.

Whispered cries and soft moans. The stuff of romance.

‘Oh, Amanda! Amanda!’

‘Lucinda! Lucinda!

And so she types, on and on, unaware in her rapture that at some unknown part of the night the typewriter ribbon has run out and the dark print trailed into obscurity.

Unaware that the pages emerging from the carriage of the Smith-Corona are as smooth and blank as the ocean; as empty and featureless as shells whose surfaces have been scoured to an exemplary pallor by the unceasing motion of the waves …