Chasing the Sun with Henry

by Gary Brockwell

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Eddie,’ she began. ‘Things have been bad at home for a long time – I guess taking Phoebe away was his ultimate way of hurting me.’

  ‘Who? Your husband?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I am fine about it now, but seeing you earlier, out there, brought it all back. I’d had her for nearly five years.’

  ‘I see,’ I replied flatly, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Apologies if I was erratic,’ she added, nodding in the direction of the beach.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ I lied.

  ‘Eddie, I was! You are a very sweet man,’ she giggled.

  ‘I don’t know about that, I am just sorry you don’t have your dog.’

  She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and released them.

  ‘Can I ask you a question? But tell me to be quiet if you don’t want to answer.’

  ‘Sure,’ she replied.

  ‘Why would your husband take Phoebe away? She wasn’t his to take.’

  ‘Fair question,’ she began. ‘He did it because he could. Cole, my husband, is a very controlling person. He is very successful in business, used to getting his own way.’

  With the words ‘very successful in business’ I felt inferior to a man I did not know.

  ‘I’ve put up with this for a long time. He believes his success means he can dictate where we go, who we see and when we see them. But I have started to push back. I’ve started to say no to things I do not agree with. He knows deep down I don’t really care about the car I drive, the holidays, or the clothes his money provides – yes, they are nice to have, but taking them away will not affect me. But he also knows that Phoebe is the only thing he has ever bought that really means something to me. That’s why he took her. He threatened he would and he did.’

  I was still licking my wounds of my internal sense of inferiority when I realised Cerys had stopped speaking.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, breaking the silence.

  ‘Bide my time, Eddie,’ she replied.

  ‘That sounds a bit sinister!’

  ‘Hell hath no fury and all that.’

  ‘Now it’s plain scary!’

  ‘You are married, Eddie, aren’t you?’ she asked quickly, ignoring my last comment.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, guilt spilling involuntarily out of my mouth along with the word. Guilt for sitting in this car with this woman, guilt for wanting to be sitting in this car, guilt for wanting this moment to be reality from that very first time walking on the beach with her.

  ‘How long for?’

  I paused before answering, not comfortable with this shift of attention from Cerys.

  ‘Almost twenty years,’ I finally uttered.

  ‘Wow! So you know even better than me, then, how hard it is sometimes. How hard it is to keep feeling alive, to not fall under the spell of repetition, where we kid ourselves we feel safe and are not panicked by the limited time that remains to be us.’

  I merely nodded, understanding exactly what she meant.

  ‘Is that how you feel?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘I think you know the answer.’

  I chuckled to myself at her reply.

  My untouched tea was now cold in the cup as I placed it to my lips for the first time.

  ‘What has made you push back on your husband?’ I blurted out suddenly.

  She replied, ‘Sorry?’ as I tried to understand where this forward question had come from within me.

  ‘You said earlier your husband was controlling, but you are saying no now – why is that?’ I replied with equal forwardness.

  She pushed a button on the driver’s door and the window retracted with a whir, inviting the mist into our sanctuary as she reached across and retrieved my cup. She threw the liquid out of the window in one motion and turned to face me, before leaning forward and placing the two cups on the dashboard.

  She returned her gaze to me, her fingers parting her hair, her right elbow resting on the steering wheel.

  ‘Because I met you,’ she said gently.

  Now it was my turn to say, ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That first time, you seemed so alive!’ she stated as an explanation.

  I looked at her dumbly, not sure of what to say.

  ‘I was tongue-tied!’ I finally admitted.

  She ignored my confession.

  ‘You get up early to be in this beautiful place. You gave a dog a second chance, a home. You’ve reminded me there is something out there, something good. These simple actions are the ones that matter. Not the chasing of things we do not really need. And now today, I find you are a magician, making people question what is real and what is fantasy by your actions. You bring them joy, Eddie, which in my eyes is amazing.’

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I spoke as I saw it.

  ‘I walk Henry this early because, as you know from past experience, he cannot be trusted to behave. I perform magic not because I like it, but because it is all I know how to do. I’ll never have a car like this, or holiday in faraway places, or own a fabulous house like the one I am sure you live in with en suites, a swimming pool and a sauna. That to me would be amazing,’ I replied with honesty.

  I wanted to say more, to convey what I was really thinking, tell her how I was feeling, but at this point, Cerys interrupted me.

  ‘Eddie, these things you list are part of what we chase, but are ultimately unimportant. They come at a price, a heavy price for our lives and relationships.’

  ‘That’s easy to say when you have them, when you don’t have to struggle financially,’ I retorted.

  ‘True, I confess, a lack of financial worries makes aspects of life manageable. But these are aspects we create ourselves. It’s so easy to get sucked into a world where a “friend” has a five-bedroom house, so you buy a six-bedroom one. It’s a world where another has a daughter that rides a pony, so you buy a stable in retaliation. Where you subscribe to a magazine not because you enjoy the features, or agree with their editorial leaning, but because you think it is what must be seen on your coffee table. It’s superficial, Eddie, all of it.’

  ‘I would still like a crack at it! Make my own mind up,’ I responded playfully.

  Cerys smiled, reached for my hands and cupped them. The action seemed so normal, almost like a reflex. Yet that first gentle touch made the skin on the backs of my hands tingle and my groin throb.

  ‘To reply to your other statement, yes, Henry can be naughty, but without him being like this we would never have met. I was only on the beach because I was fed up of being on my own, of rattling around an even bigger house that my husband insisted we needed, with even more materialistic, fluffy padding than the previous one. Fed up of the rows and the “Look at what I have provided for you” speeches from Cole, on the odd occasion he is actually home. Then I meet you: someone who has the important things in life sorted.’ She squeezed my hands in hers. ‘It was fate we met,’ she giggled.

  The sound of friction alerted us both to the direction of the dashboard and we instinctively grabbed for the cup as it fell toward the floor.

  I caught it cleanly as it approached the gearstick, while her little finger closed around the handle. Within that split second our faces came together, and a second later, so too our lips. My senses were bombarded with messages and absorbed information that exploded in waves of pleasure as I experienced and explored a new kiss for the first time in almost twenty years. Like that kiss with Sally yesterday, it started first as probing, almost testing, but soon was stripped back to bare passion, when only that all-consuming moment in time matters. Our tongues darted, our hands ran through each other’s hair, and I was a teenager all over again.

  Chapter 11

  Lost in Translation

  ‘Why the Whispering R
ocks today, Gus? The weather is good, we could go higher,’ I said, tying up my boots.

  ‘No real reason, just fancied it – an easy day after last week,’ came the honest reply.

  We take it in turns to decide the route. Last week I decided on a difficult approach that enables a walker to explore four ridges, all at a similar elevation, that reward you with nothing but mountain views for 360 degrees for the duration of the walk, approximately twelve kilometres from the first ridge to the fourth. But getting to this position is the problem – as I said, the approach is difficult, and that is where the effort lies. It takes two hours on a continuous incline before the first ridge is reached. And last week, this incline was lashed with horizontal rain driven by a furious wind every few hundred metres we climbed. The culprits, shower clouds relentlessly swooping low, deposited their offerings, hungrily sucked up from the vast ocean days before. Even with wet-weather gear on, our progress was miserable. We both knew that had we been on our own, we would have turned back. But with the encouragement of the other funnelling a desire to continue, we worked through it. Until, one hundred metres from the start of the first ridge, the wind died to a whimper and the clouded sky that we knew was set above the sea became illuminated with a brilliant light.

  Gus commented that the weather was going to change for the better, although the cloud cover in my opinion still looked menacing. I asked him why he was so sure.

  He pointed to the smallest of breaks in the cloud, far off toward the horizon, and said, ‘If there is enough blue in the sky to patch a sailor’s trousers, the weather will soon be fine.’

  ‘And where did this sound meteorological theory originate, Gus?’ I asked mordantly.

  ‘From an old Scottish fisherman I encountered when in Mozambique,’ he replied nonchalantly.

  I didn’t want to respond, but I couldn’t resist; my curiosity got the better of me.

  ‘What were you doing in Mozambique, Gus?’ I ventured.

  ‘I was trying to get a passage on a boat to Mauritius to see the Seven Coloured Earths. I had a bet on about them,’ explained Gus, with all the confidence of a rational and obvious explanation, but as was his way, no further information was forthcoming.

  I had no idea what he was talking about, nor, as has become the norm, did I have any reason not to believe him. No reason to question that this encounter had indeed taken place.

  ‘I see.’ I nodded, unconvinced, as the sky darkened once more. I definitely doubted the validity of the old fisherman’s weather forecasting.

  Yet, within twenty minutes, we stored our wet-weather clothes in the dry compartments of our bags, had our sunglasses firmly on our faces and contemplated removing our fleeces, as the sun happily beat down upon us.

  Today’s walk would be very different. We hadn’t walked this side of the mountains, Gus’ choice, for a long time – over a year, in fact. In the winter, when the weather can be wet for weeks on end, the approach through ancient sheepfolds can turn to bogland that needs careful navigation, step by step, sometimes forcing one to move, crablike, over many metres before continuing forward and repeating the process over and over. Combine this with the fact that the subsequent path to be negotiated after the bog follows a channel that is swollen with freezing run-off rushing from the mountains, which leaves part of it almost impassable during those colder months, making it a bleak experience. In the summer, though, it is a very different place. The channel is dry and the walk can consist of taking the path, or alternatively, scrambling over the now-exposed boulders and rocks that had formed the riverbed. It is a reasonably slight elevation, the path route undemanding, the challenge coming from picking a route through the boulders.

  But it is the view that is the reward on arriving at the Whispering Rocks. The rocks are a collection of huge granite boulders, which are suspended and balanced together at impossible angles that seemingly defy the known laws of physics. They form a narrow vista that ends in a sheer drop that reveals a stretch of water known as the Blue Lough, far below. Directly opposite the Whispering Rocks, a waterfall flows over a mountaintop, depositing a constant supply of water into the lough.

  Legend has it that long ago, a giant, in fear of an even fiercer and stronger neighbour, used this desolate place to store his wealth of gold and jewels. The story tells that it took many months, under the cover of darkness, for him to carry huge quantities of the treasure at a time here. With each visit, he tunnelled and buried it deep into the ground. When he had finished his labour, he marked the place of his stash by building up the stones that now form the Whispering Rocks into a large mound.

  Content with his work and satisfied that his wealth could never be stolen, he did not return for two years, in which time his rival was slain (although that is another story in itself). But to his dismay, on the day he returned, when he attempted to dig, he found the ground where his treasure was buried had given way under the sheer weight of the gold and jewels buried there. In searching, he found coins and precious stones strewn down the side of a cavernous pit, exposed in the landslide. With two winters now past, the pit was filled with deep water and he assumed the majority of his treasure had slid into it.

  In his rage he began to dismantle the marking place with his hands and kick at it with his feet, and in doing so, he moved the boulders into impossible angles. Still not content, he proceeded to throw a succession of the rocks from the mound into the lake below.

  His anger was unabated, and he lifted the largest boulder from the mound and with considerable effort hurled it downwards into the water, accompanied with a deafening roar from his throat, which spread for miles around. The impact of this huge lump of granite threw up such a vast volume of water that it headed up and over the mountain opposite, causing a rainbow to materialise. The beauty and suddenness of its appearance calmed the giant into a more serene state.

  Surveying the damage he had caused, he slowly turned and walked away, never to venture to the place ever again.

  This is how folklore explains the erratic suspension of the Whispering Rocks, the creation of the Blue Lough below and how the water displaced by the final boulder the giant launched trickles back to this day into the lough as the waterfall on the opposite side of the valley. And why – most importantly, some say – gold and jewels (well, quartz actually) can still be found on the steep slope beneath the Whispering Rocks.

  In reality, the landscape was formed by intense and violent glacial activity thousands of years ago. Although, Gus and I always want to believe the secretive dealings and vile temper of that giant long ago are the true cause.

  We normally hold our own thoughts during a walk, only communicating when we see something of interest, or need to consult the map. Today the map, though packed, was not really needed; the boulders of the riverbed were our guides. Interest was provided by the mountain hares and the circling buzzards playing a life-and-death version of hide-and-seek with each other. And of course, the sheer beauty of the mountains that surrounded us on our journey toward the Whispering Rocks.

  My mind was occupied, as it had been since Saturday, with the events that had unfolded on that misty beach. The thought that kept coming back, time and again, was that while my first encounter with Cerys had been remembered as nearly perfect, it had now had dimmed into insignificance compared with the recent events. We only kissed. I say only; it was a prolonged, passionate and intense experience that left me giddy and smothered in guilt, yet I was also walking on cloud nine, because it felt so good, so right.

  In between kisses, we cuddled, stroked each other’s hair and talked. Cerys admitted that, like me, she had been there every Saturday since our first encounter – firstly walking with Phoebe, then after she was taken, alone. I confessed how disappointed I was when I trudged back every time to the van with just Henry for company, and then got annoyed with myself for being so irrational, so obsessed, so out of character. She laughed and replied e
xcitedly that she knew exactly what I meant. She told me that on each occasion, not just that day, she had brought two flasks, one tea, one coffee, with her, and always a container of water and a bowl for Henry too. And on arriving back at her car alone, each time she had poured the liquid contents out over the duckboards with a heavy heart. At this we both laughed and concluded that the whole situation was crazy. The kissing commenced again at this point.

  We touched only briefly on the details of our lives. From my perspective, I was concerned that revelations of my life would destroy the mystery, the excitement of the encounter – she would see the man before her. Also, I was reluctant to probe, as the inadequacy I felt at knowing her husband was successful would only be intensified.

  I did mention that I would have loved to have seen the world, but it will always remain just a pipe dream.

  ‘Why?’ she enquired.

  ‘Why? Cost!’ I replied flatly.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be expensive, you know.’

  ‘Really? I am sure you don’t travel like that,’ I commented, glancing around the roof of the Range Rover.

  ‘My husband loves the luxury. The five-star service, the marble, the infinity pools, the being waited on hand and foot. Personally, I’d prefer to be with real people and see the real country.’

  ‘But as I said, you do travel like that,’ I responded.

  ‘Not my choice – it is what he wants,’ she replied curtly.

  We kissed again and then fell silent, holding each other.

  ‘Honestly,’ she finally said over my shoulder, ‘with your passport, a credit card as backup and a bottle of grapefruit seed extract, you can go pretty much anywhere you please in the world.’

  ‘Anywhere?’ I said, lifting my head and searching her eyes.

  ‘Yep, anywhere.’

  ‘I should put that theory to the test. Obviously, I will let you know when I am holed up somewhere in a filthy prison in far-flung corner of the earth with only rats for company!’

  ‘That isn’t going to happen, silly. Besides,’ she continued, ‘I’ll be with you.’