sight.
“I murdered my wife,” he says, stunning me with his honesty.
I stay where I am; shocked out of my self-absorption. The silence stretches as I try to discern if he speaks the truth or is seeking only to frighten me. I am intrigued, and too curious to be afraid.
“Really?” I say at length, taking a tentative step closer. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence I take another step and, when he holds out the flask, this time I take it from him. “Why did you do that?”
He watches me warily as I sit down on the rock beside him, smell again the sea wind and the whisky, the hint of fish. Without wiping the lid, I put his flask to my mouth and take a swig, the burning taste of it trickling through my body, burning me up and warming my blood.
Eight
I continue to walk alone. Sometimes I feel, if I could just go far enough, I would find myself again, bump into the person I used to be coming from the opposite direction along the footpath. Slowly, I am waking, forgetting to be miserable, letting my grief slip like a shawl that is no longer required.
Day by day I begin to notice more wonderful things, the play of light on the water, a family of dolphins off shore, a treasure of tiny shells washed up and left high and dry at low tide. I tuck each experience away in the sketchbook of my mind, telling myself that, one day I will bring the memories out, shake out the dust and give them colour and light – one day, when I can laugh again I will share it with someone.
Often now, I go for hours without thinking of James or worrying what my future will hold. I find myself absorbed in small things, the structure of a sea shell, the way the sand trickles through my fingers, marvelling that there should be so much of it, amazed that it is constantly forming, constantly shifting, constantly increasing.
Infinity.
One day the whole world will be nothing more than a pile of sand and, with nothing to bind the planet together, it could just all blow away in a sudden gale to drift about the universe, taking the whole of humanity with it. Not even a memory of our species left, for there would be none to remember.
Nobody left to mourn.
Such is life; such is love.
Suddenly I become acutely aware of the rock I am leaning on. It has been here since the world began and, now, it is my resting place. How many other people have halted here, looked across the sand, eaten a picnic on its rough, scarred surface? I take out my sketchbook and begin to transcribe the pattern of the rock onto the page. In my head I am planning a great abstract, powerful multi-tonal strands of stratified rock as a metaphor for human DNA.
This rock and I, we both have a story.
My hair blows across my face, strings of nuisance, getting into my eyes, catching in my mouth, tangling with my tongue. My marks on the page are insubstantial, just like a promise. My pencil keeps moving, building a picture, increasing the shadows, deepening the lines, perfecting the image. Just as my time here will be short, the day will come when this rock is also no longer here. Slowly it will turn into sand, like our dreams, James’ plans, our love.
And, as for my drawing, in all likelihood there will be nobody to ever see it. Even if I return to my attic and transfer it to a giant canvas, paint it with rich browns and greys, a touch of purple, the people who view it won’t understand it. It will really never be anything but marks on a page. The scrapings of my mind.
If I hang it in a gallery, give out free tickets and bring a thousand people to look upon and venerate my representation of this rock – that still won’t make it permanent. Everything, my paintings, my sketches, even the earth itself, are just fleeting things.
Like love.
Like James.
Like me.
We are all transient. Temporary.
Only death is permanent.
Near the bottom of the page, where the rock meets the sand, I begin to sketch in the cluster of bladderwrack and mussel shells,