arm through his – he had his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I peered round and up at his face, questioningly, but he ignored me and was silent the rest of the way home. When we got back to my tiny, two-room flat he wouldn’t take his coat off. He sat slumped in an armchair while I made us both tea in the kitchenette, glancing at him from time to time as I tried to work out what was wrong. When I handed him the mug, he took it without comment and drank it in silence. I sat down in the opposite chair with my own mug and did the same, waiting for him to explain. I was expecting him to stay the night – he usually did – but all at once, he rose from the armchair, took his mug into the kitchenette and emptied the remaining contents into the sink. He rinsed it and turned it upside-down on the drainer. He came over to where I sat, stooped and kissed the top of my head – very tenderly, as you would do a child – then left.
Up until then we had spoken most days, but after that, I didn’t hear from him for a fortnight.
*
My mother hated me going for walks on the cliffs. ‘Cliffs crumble,’ she said, and I whooped at her and said it sounded like a pop singer who sang novelty songs: Cliff Crumble. ‘You may laugh,’ she said, wagging her head, ‘but the people who were in that cottage didn’t think it was so funny, did they?’ She was referring to an event that took place in 1953. A chunk fell off one of the cliffs and half of the cottage that was sitting on the chunk went with it. A photograph appeared in the newspapers afterwards and it still shows up on the cover of local history pamphlets in the library: a black and white shot – often given a sepia wash in the pamphlets – showing a wonky cottage with a wall missing and the sitting room open to the elements: a standard lamp, a sofa, flowered wallpaper. ‘The people who were in that cottage didn’t laugh.’ In actual fact, the owners had had plenty of warning of the danger and were nowhere near at the time but this remark was typical of my mother who saw danger everywhere. One morning, she had looked up from her breakfast cereal to see her husband slumped on the kitchen table, dead from a heart attack at the age of fifty-one. One minute, she had been eating Weetabix – or whatever it was my mother had for breakfast – while I was asleep in my pram and my milk bottles sterilising in a bucket of diluted chemicals – and then the next, she was a widow. Cliffs crumble. Cars crash. Tree branches give way and stair carpets turn maliciously shiny beneath small, hurrying feet. It was amazing she let me out of the front door.
Later, when she was ill and I was her carer, she had no choice. Once a week, when the district nurse was there or when a neighbour popped in, I would pull on my old pair of trainers, the ones with the broken laces, and head up to the cliffs.
Cliffs crumble . David and I went up to the cliffs a lot in the early days of our relationship. Our first encounter, against the tree in the park, turned out to be a portent. He liked outdoor sex – he liked it a lot. Outdoors had never been my thing, particularly, but I was so crazed about him I probably would have done it on a bench in the High Street if he’d asked me.
Our clifftop walks answered both our needs. I would stride along and let the cold wind numb my face, and think of the sense of freedom I felt when I went there as an adolescent and marvel that here I was now, a grown-up, feeling freedom in an opposite kind of joy, trapped by my glorious obsession with David, loving my imprisonment. And half an hour or so into our walk, when we were high above the town with open fields on our left and the great grey heft of the English Channel to our right, David would hustle me behind a rock or fence and I would laugh and protest until the moment when I fell silent with the seriousness of it, rendered mute by the intensity of his desire and loving his desire so much my own hardly counted.
Up until then we had spoken most days, but after that, I didn’t hear from him for a fortnight.
*
My mother hated me going for walks on the cliffs. ‘Cliffs crumble,’ she said, and I whooped at her and said it sounded like a pop singer who sang novelty songs: Cliff Crumble. ‘You may laugh,’ she said, wagging her head, ‘but the people who were in that cottage didn’t think it was so funny, did they?’ She was referring to an event that took place in 1953. A chunk fell off one of the cliffs and half of the cottage that was sitting on the chunk went with it. A photograph appeared in the newspapers afterwards and it still shows up on the cover of local history pamphlets in the library: a black and white shot – often given a sepia wash in the pamphlets – showing a wonky cottage with a wall missing and the sitting room open to the elements: a standard lamp, a sofa, flowered wallpaper. ‘The people who were in that cottage didn’t laugh.’ In actual fact, the owners had had plenty of warning of the danger and were nowhere near at the time but this remark was typical of my mother who saw danger everywhere. One morning, she had looked up from her breakfast cereal to see her husband slumped on the kitchen table, dead from a heart attack at the age of fifty-one. One minute, she had been eating Weetabix – or whatever it was my mother had for breakfast – while I was asleep in my pram and my milk bottles sterilising in a bucket of diluted chemicals – and then the next, she was a widow. Cliffs crumble. Cars crash. Tree branches give way and stair carpets turn maliciously shiny beneath small, hurrying feet. It was amazing she let me out of the front door.
Later, when she was ill and I was her carer, she had no choice. Once a week, when the district nurse was there or when a neighbour popped in, I would pull on my old pair of trainers, the ones with the broken laces, and head up to the cliffs.
Cliffs crumble . David and I went up to the cliffs a lot in the early days of our relationship. Our first encounter, against the tree in the park, turned out to be a portent. He liked outdoor sex – he liked it a lot. Outdoors had never been my thing, particularly, but I was so crazed about him I probably would have done it on a bench in the High Street if he’d asked me.
Our clifftop walks answered both our needs. I would stride along and let the cold wind numb my face, and think of the sense of freedom I felt when I went there as an adolescent and marvel that here I was now, a grown-up, feeling freedom in an opposite kind of joy, trapped by my glorious obsession with David, loving my imprisonment. And half an hour or so into our walk, when we were high above the town with open fields on our left and the great grey heft of the English Channel to our right, David would hustle me behind a rock or fence and I would laugh and protest until the moment when I fell silent with the seriousness of it, rendered mute by the intensity of his desire and loving his desire so much my own hardly counted.
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