On the Strandline

We are beachcombers.  We two cast our gaze wide over the strandline, plundering shingle and shale for treasure hidden in plain sight.  The gradations of blue on the shells of bicuspids, the frosted smoothness of oncewerebottles glass, a couple of oh-so-precious cowrie shells and a piece of driftwood which, when held at certain angles, reveals the shape of a mermaid.  We carry our trawl, happy and satisfied with what the tide had left behind.  The sea’s gifts for those willing to take the time to walk the shore in quiet, patient contemplation.

We make our way back up to our blanket, a red tartan travel rug held down by a few waveworn pebbles to ensure the wind didn’t claim it for its own. We spread our small treasures out onto the red tartan, scattering the grains of sand that were clinging to shell, glass, driftwood, pebble, as well as our hands.  Our hands… palms speckled with tiny particles of shells and stones, ruddy red from the sharp wind that blew in across the coast, and each left hand wearing a matching gold band on the fourth finger.  We slump down on either side of our precious collection and the easy silence which spanned whole ages, continues as we stare out to sea, the hypnotic sight of the breakers throwing themselves on the shore invading our consciousness and penetrating our soul.

Until…

“57 years.”

“What?”

“57 years.  That’s how many years we’ve been married.”

“Oh, yes.  So it is.”

“Doesn’t feel like it, does it?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Well, not to me, anyway.”

“How’s it supposed to feel?”

“Don’t know… Not like this.  It’s that elasticity of time, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah.  It’s like when you look back at our years together it’s like no time at all has passed, and yet certain moments during the living of those years seemed to stretch on and on. Some of those moments I thought would never end.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know. Like waiting for Mary’s test results.  The last few months that she spent with us seemed to pass so terribly quickly.  Almost as if someone were winding the clock forward. But sitting with her, in that doctor’s office, waiting for him to return with the tests that would tell us how much the time she had left, each moment seemed like an eternity. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“We sat and we held her hands, but even then we could feel that she was about to fly away.  About to spread her wings and take for the heavens. It was hope that made the hands of time slow down.  Hope that there would be more years to spend together, more years for her to live her life, find her love, her other half.”

“But in the end, there wasn’t.”

“No, there wasn’t… Remember when she was little and she got her first watch? I think your mother got it for her? It was the red one with Mickey Mouse on the face? After she got that she insisted on telling us the time every few minutes.  Drove us mad. Oh, to have those minutes back again.  I would value them this time.  I would hold each moment close.  I would live in the present.  This time would be different.”

“Would it, though?”

“No, probably not. The present’s the one place we can’t live, isn’t it?  Didn’t someone tell us that once?  I seem to remember we were in a coffeeshop. Maybe when we were living in that pokey apartment in Paris. Yes, it probably was Paris.  We had so many strange conversations in Paris, didn’t we?  So many unusual friends… Wonder what ever happened to them all.  What kind of lives they led.  I wonder if they ever found happiness. We were happy, weren’t we?  For the most part, I mean.  Obviously when Mary left us that was a terribly sad time… but we had our high points too, didn’t we?”

“Yes, I suppose we did.”

“Our wedding day.”

“Yes.  Our wedding day.”

“That was a happy time, wasn’t it? Walking out of the church arm in arm, our shoes crunching in the gravel and our friends throwing rice: showers of grain that fell on our skin, catching in our hair and in our clothes.  That night as we lay in our marriage bed, the sheets were covered in those small grains of rice, pressing into our flesh to leave small red marks all over our skin.  Remember? Remember how we traced the patterns the rice had left behind? That long lazy weekend before we had to start living our idea of normal married life.”

“Did we, though?”

“What?”

“Have to start living our idea of a normal married life?”

“Oh yes.  Of course we did.  But even then, our idea of normal didn’t really match the expectations of others.  Think we shocked a few people, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we probably did.”

“That’s no bad thing though, is it?  Sometimes people need to be shocked.  You need to push the limits of acceptability, before society will loosen its grip on what is and what is not allowed.”

“I did love you, you know.”

“What?”

“I did love you.  Ever so much.  I know I didn’t tell you enough, but I did.  It was only when you got sick that I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I told you.”

“Well, you never really were much of a talker.”

“Oh, I know, but really that’s no excuse.  I should have told you all the time.  I shouldn’t have let a day go by when I didn’t remind you that you were everything to me. Everything.”

“Yes, but really my memory wasn’t so bad as all that.  Once in a while was all I needed.  I knew you loved me.”

“Did you?  Did you really, though?”

“Yes, of course I did.”

“Good, because that plays on my mind a lot, you know?  Whether you knew.  When I woke up that morning and your cold, still body lay beside me, I just kept thinking that I should have told you one last time.”

“And now you have.”

“Yes.  Now I have.”

I look over at the other side of the blanket and see nothing where, what seemed like only moments before, my wife had sat.  Only the sand-scattered tartan of the weighted down blanket and the collection of small treasures.  I feel a tear slip from my left eye and I swipe it away with the back of my hand, as the full weight of remembrance bears down upon me.

I lost Alice to cancer 5 years ago now.  The same kind as we lost Mary to, funnily enough.  Except it’s not funny at all.  Seeing it eat away at the ones you love is the most lonely, most useless that you will ever feel throughout your long years.  Some days, like today, her voice is still so fresh and clear in my mind, that she is with me again, just like we were before.  She always was such a chatterbox, and we always were such a close couple.  People often said we were like one.  And we were.  In many ways, we still are as, on my own, I feel like half myself is missing.  The good half.  The vital half.  The better half, even…

The lone figure, bent over with age, struggles to rise from the tatty tartan travel rug before moving off down to the water’s edge.  There he stands.  Hands in his pockets and a faraway look reflected in the bluegreen of his eyes.  He stands on the strandline, the place where flotsam and jetsom are cast up by the waves and then left high and dry as the tide moves away.  The place of disjointed memories, disconnected selves and detached realities.  The place where things are left behind.

This is the first time I have ever posted a short story.  On occasion I’ve posted small snippets of creative writing, but never a whole piece such as this.  I’ve been experimenting a lot with creative writing almost in an effort to free my wings a little from the constrictions of academic prose.  This story is one of those experiments, as I challenged myself to tell a story mostly through the use of dialogue.  Whether I’ve been successful or not, I’ll leave it to you to decide.  All I ask is that you be gentle – I’m sharing a part of myself here that I’ve not had the courage to do before.

This post is a contribution to Joanna Young’s Mission Im[Possible] Group Writing Project.  It was Joanna’s idea that everyone ’share something that you’d previously considered out of bounds.  Impossible maybe.  And bring it into the realms of what’s possible.’  That’s what I’ve tried to do with sharing this story.