Chapter One
Adam and Sarah are shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, saying nothing. Heading south. Following the signs through the city, under the river and up again into the last light of day, a dusty sunset that shows up all the smears on the windscreen. They do not know where they are going. Not really. They know a name and a mark on the map but the map-reading bulb is broken, like so much in this car, and the shadows are rising, submerging the shapes on the page. The backs of Sarah’s hands glow red from the burning of the rear lamps around them outside, a slow torchlight procession on the motorway.
The indicator clicks.
They slip left from the line, drifting into the deeper darkness of country roads, following the signs and numbers and the memory of the numbers, which Adam recites as he drives.
‘Twenty one. Two six seven.’
Seven. Sarah, drowsy, lets the numbers come and go. They seem right. She has faith. He wants to drive so let him, all the way down to the coast. She is sleepy, closing her eyes. But seven.
Seven will not be let go.
Seven days, then we know.
Sarah pushes back against the headrest, willing her mind to doze again but she is wide awake suddenly, wired, seeing herself as she will be. Squatting over a toilet in a room as cold as a tomb, holding a small, clear pot between her legs. Feeling a splash warm on her wrist, and the pot warming too as a yeasty scent rises, mingling with the damp and lemon freshness. Fumbling for the thing like a pen in the breast pocket of the tartan pyjamas her father used to wear, the ones she has packed for comfort. For a cuddle. Dipping one end of the pen thing into the pot, holding it there carefully and counting backwards from thirty. ‘Twenty nine. Twenty eight.’
The numbers echo in her head, the swirl of things unsaid. How blue is blue? How dark must the line be? This is the end, the last go, and then? Then it will all be over. A whole life of living and loving, fighting and laughing, drinking coffee and smelling the roses, smelling new bread, holding hands, kicking leaves in the forest, going to the pictures, being held, knowing you are loved, all over, before it has begun. No life. Is that the same as death?
It is for me.
In seven days.
‘Fifteen. Fourteen.’
If there is no line ... no life, no hope … then walk. Keep on walking. The cliff is five hundred feet at its highest, the website said. You do not jump. You just keep walking.
‘Ten. Nine.’
If you have the strength.
Please God.
‘Two. One.’
The car swerves. Sarah grips the door handle.
Give me the strength.
Please. God.
Too fast. This is too fast.
‘Adam!’
The tyres hiss, the car slides. Branches lash the windscreen, wet leaves splatter the glass; a flash of white and the wing mirror explodes. ‘Damn!’ He jerks the wheel one way then the other, wrestling to keep the car straight as he brakes, and it slides and shudders and sways and slows to walking pace. ‘Okay. It’s okay. Sorry.’ He sounds shaken. So he should. Adam flicks on the wipers and through the muddle of mulch and water Sarah can see a dark churchyard, a stone angel. A sign. ‘Welcome. Kill Your Speed Not A Child.’ They creep past a pub all aglow, the Barley something, and a shuttered shop; then Adam yanks the gearstick and accelerates into the blackness, the half-blind headlamps peering at grasping trees and sudden level crossings. Sarah breathes deeply, trying not to be sick, and rolls her shoulders to ease the tension in them. His hand on the gearstick knocks her leg. They slow and speed, slow and speed until the land rises to say they have reached the Downs at last. The wind quickens against the side of the car as it climbs and the door trembles against Sarah’s thigh. Adam changes down a gear, and as the elderly engine growls the note in his throat rises in pitch to meet the song in the speakers I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and he pleased the Lord then the world is only the music and the pool of light beyond the bonnet, white lines streaming through it, the empty eyes of a hare and the glow of orange numbers on the dashboard but you don’t seem to care for music, do you? The closeness of their bodies, elbow to elbow the gravel under the tyres. And Adam.
‘Right.’
Sarah puts a leg out, but the wind closes the door on her calf. She pushes back, steps out and reaches to rub the hurt, but the country depth of the night throws her off balance and for a moment she is floating in space. Lost. Then her feet and her eyes adjust to the rough ground and to the light seeping from windows a short distance away, a pub or a hotel maybe, it is hard to tell. There is something huge behind her, she senses it and turns as the fast clouds part to reveal a spray of stars, beyond the outline of a roof. This must be it. Sarah cannot see the sea but she can hear waves folding in on themselves, the white-water roar and suck of pebbles turning in the crashing, retreating water. She cannot tell the sound of the sea from the sound of the wind as she waits behind Adam in the storm porch of his uncle’s cottage, while he feels with his fingertips in the darkness for the lock on the door and finds the keyhole and turns the key.
‘Where’s the bloody light?’
The bulb is bare and bright. The hallway stinks of damp, the kitchen is worse. Sarah wants to sneeze, she rubs her nose with the back of a hand and goes to open the window, to let the fresh air in and drive out the damp. She wants to let those grand, unfamiliar sounds from the beach play like music and soothe them to sleep; but the window twists out of her hand and swings on its hinges, banging against the outside wall and slamming shut.
‘What’s that?’ Listen, he signals.
Listen.
The wind, and something else.
Metallic, rhythmic. Scraping and tapping. As though someone is hacking at the flint-half stones on the cottage wall with a metal tool. As though someone is trying to scare them, these clueless city people stuck out here on the edge of a cliff in the night in a storm. Sarah hears his breath in his chest. The house moves in the gale, the wood creaking, the stone moaning, the breath and the windows singing. The scraping and tapping. Adam whispering: ‘Turn out the light.’
The dark rushes up and over her face like a hood.
‘Look out the window.’
‘Really?’
‘You’re nearest.’
The sands shift and she sees a whisp of light from the pub silvering the windscreen of the car. Her hand is a shadow on the cool white porcelain of the sink. Another hand – it feels like the hand of a stranger but it is her hand – pushes the grubby old net curtain aside.
‘What is it?’
He leans across without touching her. A flagpole outside, white against the night; its fat, round stem rising between the cottage and a shed on which he can just make out the painted, faded word ‘Coastguard’. A rope flicks against the hollow metal tube, scraping and tapping, with the rhythm of a demented intruder.
‘Oh.’
Silence, for a moment.
Just the house and the breathing.
Then the wind again, and the tapping. And Sarah.
‘For God’s sake.’
© Cole Moreton 2007
No reproduction without permission
The indicator clicks.
They slip left from the line, drifting into the deeper darkness of country roads, following the signs and numbers and the memory of the numbers, which Adam recites as he drives.
‘Twenty one. Two six seven.’
Seven. Sarah, drowsy, lets the numbers come and go. They seem right. She has faith. He wants to drive so let him, all the way down to the coast. She is sleepy, closing her eyes. But seven.
Seven will not be let go.
Seven days, then we know.
Sarah pushes back against the headrest, willing her mind to doze again but she is wide awake suddenly, wired, seeing herself as she will be. Squatting over a toilet in a room as cold as a tomb, holding a small, clear pot between her legs. Feeling a splash warm on her wrist, and the pot warming too as a yeasty scent rises, mingling with the damp and lemon freshness. Fumbling for the thing like a pen in the breast pocket of the tartan pyjamas her father used to wear, the ones she has packed for comfort. For a cuddle. Dipping one end of the pen thing into the pot, holding it there carefully and counting backwards from thirty. ‘Twenty nine. Twenty eight.’
The numbers echo in her head, the swirl of things unsaid. How blue is blue? How dark must the line be? This is the end, the last go, and then? Then it will all be over. A whole life of living and loving, fighting and laughing, drinking coffee and smelling the roses, smelling new bread, holding hands, kicking leaves in the forest, going to the pictures, being held, knowing you are loved, all over, before it has begun. No life. Is that the same as death?
It is for me.
In seven days.
‘Fifteen. Fourteen.’
If there is no line ... no life, no hope … then walk. Keep on walking. The cliff is five hundred feet at its highest, the website said. You do not jump. You just keep walking.
‘Ten. Nine.’
If you have the strength.
Please God.
‘Two. One.’
The car swerves. Sarah grips the door handle.
Give me the strength.
Please. God.
Too fast. This is too fast.
‘Adam!’
The tyres hiss, the car slides. Branches lash the windscreen, wet leaves splatter the glass; a flash of white and the wing mirror explodes. ‘Damn!’ He jerks the wheel one way then the other, wrestling to keep the car straight as he brakes, and it slides and shudders and sways and slows to walking pace. ‘Okay. It’s okay. Sorry.’ He sounds shaken. So he should. Adam flicks on the wipers and through the muddle of mulch and water Sarah can see a dark churchyard, a stone angel. A sign. ‘Welcome. Kill Your Speed Not A Child.’ They creep past a pub all aglow, the Barley something, and a shuttered shop; then Adam yanks the gearstick and accelerates into the blackness, the half-blind headlamps peering at grasping trees and sudden level crossings. Sarah breathes deeply, trying not to be sick, and rolls her shoulders to ease the tension in them. His hand on the gearstick knocks her leg. They slow and speed, slow and speed until the land rises to say they have reached the Downs at last. The wind quickens against the side of the car as it climbs and the door trembles against Sarah’s thigh. Adam changes down a gear, and as the elderly engine growls the note in his throat rises in pitch to meet the song in the speakers I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and he pleased the Lord then the world is only the music and the pool of light beyond the bonnet, white lines streaming through it, the empty eyes of a hare and the glow of orange numbers on the dashboard but you don’t seem to care for music, do you? The closeness of their bodies, elbow to elbow the gravel under the tyres. And Adam.
‘Right.’
Sarah puts a leg out, but the wind closes the door on her calf. She pushes back, steps out and reaches to rub the hurt, but the country depth of the night throws her off balance and for a moment she is floating in space. Lost. Then her feet and her eyes adjust to the rough ground and to the light seeping from windows a short distance away, a pub or a hotel maybe, it is hard to tell. There is something huge behind her, she senses it and turns as the fast clouds part to reveal a spray of stars, beyond the outline of a roof. This must be it. Sarah cannot see the sea but she can hear waves folding in on themselves, the white-water roar and suck of pebbles turning in the crashing, retreating water. She cannot tell the sound of the sea from the sound of the wind as she waits behind Adam in the storm porch of his uncle’s cottage, while he feels with his fingertips in the darkness for the lock on the door and finds the keyhole and turns the key.
‘Where’s the bloody light?’
The bulb is bare and bright. The hallway stinks of damp, the kitchen is worse. Sarah wants to sneeze, she rubs her nose with the back of a hand and goes to open the window, to let the fresh air in and drive out the damp. She wants to let those grand, unfamiliar sounds from the beach play like music and soothe them to sleep; but the window twists out of her hand and swings on its hinges, banging against the outside wall and slamming shut.
‘What’s that?’ Listen, he signals.
Listen.
The wind, and something else.
Metallic, rhythmic. Scraping and tapping. As though someone is hacking at the flint-half stones on the cottage wall with a metal tool. As though someone is trying to scare them, these clueless city people stuck out here on the edge of a cliff in the night in a storm. Sarah hears his breath in his chest. The house moves in the gale, the wood creaking, the stone moaning, the breath and the windows singing. The scraping and tapping. Adam whispering: ‘Turn out the light.’
The dark rushes up and over her face like a hood.
‘Look out the window.’
‘Really?’
‘You’re nearest.’
The sands shift and she sees a whisp of light from the pub silvering the windscreen of the car. Her hand is a shadow on the cool white porcelain of the sink. Another hand – it feels like the hand of a stranger but it is her hand – pushes the grubby old net curtain aside.
‘What is it?’
He leans across without touching her. A flagpole outside, white against the night; its fat, round stem rising between the cottage and a shed on which he can just make out the painted, faded word ‘Coastguard’. A rope flicks against the hollow metal tube, scraping and tapping, with the rhythm of a demented intruder.
‘Oh.’
Silence, for a moment.
Just the house and the breathing.
Then the wind again, and the tapping. And Sarah.
‘For God’s sake.’
© Cole Moreton 2007
No reproduction without permission
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