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[1]
We drove, near as we could, along the coast. Here and there the road stole the sea from us; tidal, it soon rejoined the shore after cutting inland for a short time.
A car-full of friends, all loved. Nothing reminds me of love more than coastal erosion.
Isla lost Keiran six months back and, while we all missed him, she had loved him in a way we hadn't. She lost a part of herself when he left, as cliché as that would be to say out-loud, here at least I can write it.
We measured progress by lighthouses. Didn't stop driving until we were satisfied that no one else had stopped within a mile of us.
[2]
Stop me if I've told you this already. When I was eight or nine Isla, Keiran and I went up to the hill. Highest point on the Wirral. We found a nest of baby birds. Each with a mouth open. I can't remember what type of birds they were, it is always hardest to tell when they are young.
Keiran nailed each one to a fence. Isla couldn't stop crying.
Funny how we fall in love with the people who are best at hurting us. I'll ignore the fact that it is because we do, that they can.
Isla never mentions it. Maybe because to remember would be to forgive.
[3]
The rest of the Wirral is pretty flat, but I've always been an up-and-down-type. The best holidays are the ones that remind us a little of home.
When I was younger, my family took us to up Snowdon. For the view, my parents had said, but all I was interested in was thin air. I'd gotten it into my head that, like fabric, the thinner the air the more you'd notice what it's made of. It doesn't work, it didn't even taste different. Just made it harder to concentrate. That might just as well have been the cold.
[4]
Back here. In this car. With these friends. With Isla. With Miller and Clare. Here I can taste the sea.
We pull up to a spot we've always returned to. We're like pacific turtles. In another life we were born here. Might have pushed ourselves up through the sand. Turns out some animals have to buried before they come alive.
But I was born in Arrow Park Hospital. Grew up like a shoot through concrete in a town two miles away. Used to play in the woods behind as a kid, pretend we were Indians; while our parents would walk the dogs and talk about their lives. Back when pointing at someone killed them. When you came back to life when you were bored of staring at clouds.
[5]
Miller and Clare are off in the dunes somewhere. The love in them is a river; speeding up in places but always flowing. Gravity is how well two things know one another. I half expect she'll give birth to pebbles.
I light a cigarette and throw the packet into Isla's lap.
She tells me she's quitting, as she takes one and reaches toward my lighter.
[6]
Keiran held on for years really. The doctor said he had a month, but he'd had cancer for two or three years before it was found, and that counts for something. When his month was up, we knew him only by his smile.
He died in spring, the time when most things are waking up.
If Isla didn't love him before, she did after that. She loved him with everything she had. Loved him for what he might never have been.
[7]
Here we are in the middle of winter and I'm suggesting we brave the waves and swim together.
Isla stares at me; not like I'm crazy, but as if I'm giving her the secret to a magic trick. Then she agrees. It is only now that I realise I was just forming words with my tongue.
Without a word, we strip down to our underwear and run down to where the sea is waiting for us.
[8]
For a young guy I've almost drowned a few times. The first was in South Africa. I was six or seven years old and almost in control of my feet. I can remember tripping and breaking the surface tension of the swimming pool. I can still remember the view from the bottom as I struggled upwards; blue, with the air beyond like faded denim.
It was air that drowned me when I got out. Not a drop of water had been swallowed, yet the shock had me gasping like a caught fish.
My grandmother, who'd see the whole thing and knew I could not swim, said to my mother "Dylan's fine. Anyway, its the quickest way to learn how."
[9]
Some way out we turn around and watch Miller and Clare sit down back on shore where we'd shed our clothes. The water was colder now than I'd ever felt and made the blood flee the coast of our flesh. Our skin was the same grey as the sky.
[10]
We wrapped ourselves in the same blanket. Talked about how driftwood reminded us of bones. How the sea is an open grave. But also how the sea never really takes the coast, but makes a new gift of it. That to take it, would mean that there would be no coast remaining; but there always was and would always be. A new coast cut from the last. It was adolescent philosophy; but we knew it.
"Maybe it is the same with people," I said, "one person taken so you can see another in a new way."
[11]
Sailing is at its most dangerous the closer you are to shore. You can learn where the rocks are, but the sand changes shape. Maps have to be re-drawn.
We used to watch scuttled yachts being pulled free of the sandbanks. Middle-aged adventurers being rescued by the coast guard. We'd laugh, but now I can understand why sailing is a draw for so many. I think we love mysteries and the sea is one of the biggest. Anything that belongs on land can only know land. The sea is another planet. Unless you are part of it, you'll never truly understand it.
Mysteries call up the best parts of us. Questions that act as the moon to our better selves. Stirring up the sea within us; when one tide is lost, another rises in its place. The same way that losing one love, you have to find a new way to love again.
[12]
So much of what we recall are the stories re-told to us.
So many times I have thought I'd caught a loving glance from Isla. So many times a touch lasted long enough for me to question it. I lost faith in my own recollections.
Miller and Clare dropped us off at the start of our walk home. We talked about how Al Gore, the guy who is convinced that sea-levels are going to rise, has just bought a waterfront property.
I was still a mile from my own home, when we reached the house Isla shared with her mother.
Stopping outside we hugged, broke apart and then kissed.
We shared another cigarette and talked some more, this time about everything we'd missed out.
"Don't compare yourself to him," she said, "You're different enough that I can love you."
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