Waves crash against shingle, expending the last of their energy in an explosion of spray, the foam reflecting the light of the moon above in a shimmer of silver. Pebbles tumble and roll as the spent water recedes, the noise of them adding to the roar of the ocean, the shushing of the waves as they hit land, fall back, hit land, fall back...
Wind rushes through the Marram grass atop the dunes, its force dissipated amongst the tall, dry reeds, shaking and bending, giving voice to them – that voice a cacophonous whisper that fills the air.
Be with me... The voice says, Forever...
*
He awakes with a start to the sound of rain hammering against the windows, an insistent rhythm beating against the glass. Pale lunar illumination filters into the room, casting weak shadows against the wall. Snakes of water writhe slowly downwards, their image magnified and projected so that the wall itself seems to shimmer and contort.
...with me...
He hears the words even above the hammering of the rain, the howling of the wind, the sea crashing against the shoreline below the house.
He smells her then, the scent of her, filling the room with its floral bouquet and feels the tears prickling his eyes once more. More tears, when he thought that he must surely have cried himself dry by now...
“We’re creatures of water,” she’d said, “it’s our very essence...”
That essence spills from his eyes, leaves tracks down his face which mirror those on the window, on the wall. “Sarah...” he manages to say, the word catching in his throat, his voice faltering between first and second syllable.
A noise from outside the bedroom, a creak of floorboard then footsteps moving away. Alone as he is in this ramshackle house, the sounds are not a source of fear to him, rather it is with excitement, anticipation that he clambers from his bed, crossing the bare floorboards quickly to the door of the bedroom.
On the landing he feels the coldness of the water on his feet, hears the splashing his hurried steps make. Pausing, he fumbles for the light switch, flicks it on. The dull glow of the bulb, slowly warming to full illumination, casts warm light over the flooded floor. Water pools around his feet, covers the dark mahogany floorboards, trickles over the landing edge to fall (like tears) to the hallway below.
*
You stand, together, on the headland, gazing out to sea. A leaden sky is reflected in the grey water, the surface in constant motion, slowly undulating like the breathing of some massive beast. Drizzle hangs in the air, clings to your face, wets it, the wetness of it cooling immediately in the breeze which is a permanent feature of this exposed outcrop of rock.
“It’s beautiful,” she says, turning to face you, looking deeply into your soul with those pale, blue eyes, the weight of emotion held in that gaze emphasising the words. “We have to buy it.” She turns, breaking the connection, spins round to once again regard the expanse of water that surrounds you, “whatever it takes...”
And you don’t answer, because there is no need. You take a step forward, take her hand in yours, squeeze it gently. She’d known what your answer would be the moment she’d looked into your eyes, known for sure what you would say.
A gust of wind rushes past you, strong enough to knock both of you off balance. Your grip tightens momentarily around her hand but her response is to laugh, a sound both joyful and full of anticipation of your life together in this remote place.
“I want to stay here forever” she shouts, “forever and ever!” And you laugh along with her, sharing her dreams, her joy.
*
He stands alone, on the headland, gazing out to sea. Waves crash on the jagged shore far below, the ever-present wind rustles through the dry stalks of Marram grass, the sound like that of a thousand angry Rattlesnakes.
The house stands behind him, empty (oh, so empty) and brooding, looming over him in a way that now seems oppressive – a far cry from the days when he (they) regarded its appearance as dramatic, romantic.
He’d returned to bed following a fruitless search of the house last night and the smell of her was gone. Sleep had not come easily but eventually he had succumbed, tossing and turning, waking frequently but only to the relentless hammering of the rain against the window. The landing had been bone dry this morning when finally he’d dragged himself from his bed, no indication that water had been anywhere near it during the night.
“Where are you?” He asks, but his words are lost in the wind, in the whispering of the grass, the crashing of the waves.
*
“Where were you?” you ask, failing to hide the panic in your voice, “I’ve been frantic...”
She smiles, a slight tilt of her head betraying her amusement, her eyes sparkling in collusion. “Oh you’re so sweet to worry like that,” she leans forward to playfully peck you on the lips, “I was down on the shore. There’s a storm coming in over the sea, I just wanted to watch it, it’s so dramatic!”
You sigh, feel your panic slowly replaced by annoyance. “Why didn’t you say something, tell me where you were going? You shouldn’t go off wandering on your own, not after...”
She interrupts your words by leaning into you once more, pressing her lips against yours. Her arms wrap around you, hold you tight (forever...) and you respond in kind, hug her even more tightly to you, never wanting to let go.
“I’m safe down there,” she says, breaking the connection between you to whisper the words, “it’s such a special place...” and then she’s kissing you again, pressing hard with her lips, making you respond, your hold on each other loosening, becoming a caress...
This time, when you break away from each other once more, you look at her face, see the serenity in her features, eyes closed, a smile playing across her lips. And then a coldness sweeps through you, the protective barrier of the lie that Everything Will Be Okay has built around you crumbling as you see her open her eyes, or rather (terrifyingly) her eye, the left lid staying in place, refusing to move. You see the incomprehension in her right eye, watch as it turns to fear, reflecting that of your own as you reach for her again...
*
The surface of the water in the pan starts to shimmer and undulate as it reaches boiling point, swirling currents beneath its surface dislodging the small bubbles lining the base of the pot. In seconds what was once smooth and still has become a swirling mass of exploding bubbles. He up-ends the bag of pasta, empties its contents into the boiling water and turns down the gas.
As if on cue the telephone rings, its shrill tone echoing through the empty house. He stirs the pasta sauce, bubbles popping on its surface like lava, and makes his way to the insistent ringing.
“Yeah, hello...”
“Dave! Hi, it’s Mark!”
“Hi Mark, what can I do for you?”
“What you got on Friday night?”
Immediately he feels the tightening in his stomach, the burn of acid as his now reflex response to any suggestion of interaction with the outside world kicks in.
“Only we’re going out, a few of us, getting a Chinese and we were wondering if you wanted to come along..?”
He hears the pessimism in his friend’s voice, knows that he is expecting him to decline the invitation. He simultaneously hates Mark for bothering him and loves him for caring enough to persist with his invitations.
“Well, I, err...”
“Come on Dave,” (perhaps a hint of irritation now, and who could blame him), “it’s no big deal. Just a few drinks some food...”
And, for a moment, he is almost swayed - if only through a sense of guilt – to just say yes when he remembers.
“Friday? That’s the twelfth yeah?”
“Errr... yes, that’s the twelfth. Is that significant? It’s Friday the thirteenth you have to watch out for you know!”
“No, no” he feels the relief flooding his body, washing through it, “it’s just that it’s the Spring Tide that night.”
The pause as Mark tries to comprehend the meaning of what he has just heard seems to stretch for an eternity. Eventually he chuckles, the sound tinny, rasping down the telephone line.
“And that’s relevant because..?”
Because she’s now truly a creature of water, because the ebb and flow of the ocean has become her heartbeat, because the crashing of waves against the shore is her passion, the tumbling of pebbles on the beach in the wake of the retreating waves her whispered entreaties...
Because water is her power, her strength and...
“Dave! Dave, you still there?”
He gives no answer, could never explain away his words to his friend. This is my truth, he thinks, not yours...
“Dave! What the...”
He hangs up, brings the conversation to an abrupt end. Replacing the phone in its cradle he walks, as if in a daze, to the kitchen. The phone starts ringing again. He pays it no heed, instead continues walking towards the kitchen where he sees the white froth of bubbles slowly spill out over the top of the pan to drip onto the hob beneath, water turning to steam with a hiss, the clouds dispersing to tendrils which hover for scant seconds before disappearing completely as if they truly were ghosts of water.
*
“We don’t really see each other anymore” she says.
“What do you mean?” you ask, “We see each other all the time.”
“No, I don’t mean that. We’re either apart from each other or, when we’re together, we’re like one person, we know each other so well. Oh, I don’t know, I’m not explaining this too well. We don’t observe each other any more, I think we look at other people, strangers, more intently than we do each other...”
“But that’s a good thing,” you interrupt, “it’s great that we’re so comfortable with each other...”
“Yes, yes it is, but wouldn’t it be something special to recapture that initial thrill, the first time you see someone you’re attracted to, look at the way they hold themselves, the way they move, they way they interact with the world.”
“It’s an interesting concept,” you say, “so, what’re we going to do about it?”
And so you arrange to go to the same cafe, arrive separately and sit at different tables. You are both aware that the other is there but act as if alone, all the time casting glances at the other, observing from afar, truly seeing each other.
Once or twice your eyes meet, the two of you caught in simultaneous surveillance, each time the contact ends immediately by a look away, a sudden profound interest in the food on the table in front of you. You are the first to leave, unable to cope with the erotic charge coursing through your body. The temptation is there to stop at her table on the way out, to take her hand, kiss her, embrace her, to revel in the shock and surprise of the other diners...
But you walk straight past her, out into the street without even a glance.
Your lovemaking that night is the most intense either of you has ever experienced.
As the first grey light of dawn creeps through the window you exchange whispered declarations, voices husky, the words so softly spoken they are almost lost amidst the sound of the sea crashing against land far below you.
“I love you...”
“I love you...”
“Forever...”
*
He sits on the beach, the small stretch of sand between the outcroppings of rocks and the otherwise pebbled shore. Behind him the dunes throw a barrier across the path that winds its way up the cliffs to his house.
He carries his loss like a stone weight deep within him, a physical thing that lies inside him, weighing him down. It is the same sensation as the longing he had felt in the early days but - whereas he could cope with that earlier situation because of the knowledge that the separation, the missing of her would be a temporary thing – he is afforded no such luxury now.
Absent-mindedly, he trails his fingers through the damp sand, leaves parallel grooves in the smooth surface. Water seeps into them from the saturated ground.
The moon appears on the distant horizon, emerging from the bank of clouds that have thus far hidden its rising. The sun is only recently set and the full moon reflects its dying light, a bright orange orb floating above the sea, its reflection split into a multitude of fragments which ripple and morph on the ever-moving surface of the water.
This, the spot where she walked into the sea, out of his life – forever. This, the spot where she scrawled the words in the sand that would be his last memory of her, a memory all that it was now, the words long gone, taken away by the tide just as she herself had been.
I love you, she had written, for ever.
*
You awaken to bright sunshine, shield your eyes against the intensity of the light, made even brighter by the white curtains which slowly sway from side to side in response to the breeze which blows through the open window.
You are alone in bed, Sarah is gone, already risen. Usually a deep sleeper, of late she has found it hard to make it through the night without waking. And with that thought the day becomes that much darker, the unavoidable reality of her situation – of your – situation crowds out every other thought, the pall that will lie over the day already manifest.
You rise, pull on your dressing gown and make your way downstairs.
She lies on the floor beside the blanket box that serves as a coffee table. You run to her, cradle her in your arms, fearing that the worst has happened, that the inevitable has arrived ahead of schedule, that she is gone.
Not gone, not in spirit at least. As you hold her you feel how limp her body is, the only movement the fluttering of her chest as her lungs seek desperately to pull oxygen into her unresponsive body.
And then another movement. Her eyes flicker open, and she stares at you, eyes boring deep into your soul. Awareness fills those pale eyes with fear and you watch as tears well up in them to spill over and run down her cheek.
“I’m sorry...” she says, the words barely audible but strong enough to break your heart so that all you can do is hold her tighter still, to tell her “it’s okay” – hating yourself for the lie – and to kiss away her tears, the taste of them salty, like brine, like the sea.
*
He awakens, finds himself sprawled on the wet sand, shivers as the coldness hits him. Water laps at his feet, his boots already soaked. Cursing, he drags himself to his feet but stops, still kneeling, as he sees the word written in the sand.
Forever.
The word sends a shiver through him, this time unrelated to the cold which has seeped into his bones. Memories flood back, memories of that morning when he’d run down to the beach to find the devastating message in the sand and had realised that the woman he loved had left him, had somehow found the strength to make her way down here, to write the words in the sand and then...
“I can’t live like this,” she’d said on so many occasions, “not that you can call this a life...” And, selfishly, he’d always talked her out of doing anything... drastic, unable to contemplate life without her. Willing to let her suffer to avoid having to do so himself, waiting for the day when he would find her lying still on the floor for the last time. The tears he’d cried that day had not just been for the loss of her, but also for the fear that her last feeling would have been one of guilt, for going against his wishes...
“I’m sorry” he says and gets to his feet, tears prickling at his eyes.
And then he sees the other words in the sand. Not “I love you”, not this time. Above “Forever” the message is different.
“Be with me”.
He chokes back a sob, bites the knuckle of his index finger. “Sarah..?”
Be with me...
He turns, faces the ever-approaching water, looks for the source of the voice.
Be with me...
And, even in the darkness, he sees her, in the water – hands held towards him, beckoning him forward. He takes a step, another and then he’s running, feels the cold water against his legs, his groin, his chest. He reaches out to take her proffered hand...
Forever...