by John Heap
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sat on the bench Peter could feel something strange in the air, an absence, a sense of waiting. The sea was too far away, creating a vacuum of space and a palpable tension. He felt the sea was stretched to its limit and was ready to snap forward, releasing its waters back up the sands. It was as if the whole earth had inhaled a massive breath but was only holding it with difficulty and soon it would exhale with a terrible ferocity.
The seagull wasn’t there and Maria never arrived.
It took some time for Peter to accept this. He went over the tide times in his head, and whilst he knew she should have been there, he gave her another half an hour, just in case he was wrong. But he knew he wasn’t.
Peter needed to be doing something so he started to walk, south, under the pier then by the empty funfair. If Maria had wanted to avoid him there were plenty of other shelters, but the sands stretch for over fifteen miles and soon the futility of the task overwhelmed him and he stopped.
He decided to retrace his steps and pass by the café where they had had a late breakfast.
She wasn’t at the café. He went back to his flat, she wasn’t there either.
He hung up his fleece, picked up today’s junk mail from the floor and walked to his desk and started to file away papers that had accumulated there. He picked up the portfolio and saw the photographs Maria had been so interested in, it was worth a try.
He left, and started running to the station. He needed to move quickly, but everything was frustrating him, his unfit body, the queue at the ticket office, nobody knew or understood his situation, even the train obstinately remained at the platform for fifteen minutes. It was a slow train, and at each stop the sliding doors would open, pause for a few minutes and then close again, perfectly timed for the convenience of non-existent passengers.
When the train arrives Peter was up and on the platform quickly, a couple of seconds of orientation and he was walking towards the beach. Being off the train and actually doing something helped and he started to breathe again. He arrived at the shore suddenly. In Southport there’s a build-up, an increase in seaside paraphernalia as you get closer, the promenade, the pier head, the lake, the miniature train, and then the funfair, one knows the sea is coming. In Crosby one goes through a tidy suburb, turn a leafy corner and it suddenly opens out to an almost overwhelming space of sand and sky that feels out of place after a mile or so of closeting privet hedges and tidy lawns.
He walked across a small green and down to the seawall, the sand and Gormley’s figures ahead of him. The sea is usually closer here than in Southport but that day it was still little more than a smudge. The distances of the sands were magnified by the human scale of the statues and the people amongst the statues created their own silhouettes, further multiplying their number. Peter walked along the sea wall looking at all these figures however the further out they were the more difficult it was to differentiate between art and reality and to begin with he couldn’t see anyone out there but statues. Slowly though their movement betrayed them and once his eye was in most could be removed from consideration quickly; they were too tall, too male, or too something else, others however took longer to dismiss. About half a mile away he saw someone, standing still, looking out to sea, their arms open to embrace the wind. He started to run, but he wasn’t nearly fit enough and after only a few minutes he had to stop and walk until close enough to shout her name. Then the figure turned and looked at him. It wasn’t Maria.
He wasn’t giving up yet, and in the distance he saw two figures together, both resolutely still, water gathering at their feet, both looking out to that ‘Other Place’. He stared intently, but from this distance it was impossible to say whether the shorter one was Maria or not, and so he started towards them. Too tired to run, especially after the last disappointment, he could only walk, avoiding the wide snakes of sea water making their way up the beach. Progress was painfully slow and the sea was almost to the figures’ knees and still they looked out, and still he was too far away to be sure. But as he got closer, whilst one figure remained still, he could tell the other was occasionally looking down and shifting their feet, and now it was looking a lot more like Maria.
He started to run again, splashing through the water that had by now encircled him. Eventually he got within fifty yards and shouted her name.
‘Maria.’
She looked around.
He moved closer but between them was a fast flowing river of encroaching sea water. Peter tried to cross but within a few yards the cold water was grabbing his legs and he was having immense trouble keeping his feet firmly on the sand. He stopped, the water slapping at his thighs.
‘Maria, don’t do this.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘That doesn’t matter, Listen, today is the worse day, get through it and things will improve. I promise’.
‘Was it the photographs? ’
‘Yes, come on Maria let’s get back’.
‘Are they not magnificent, Gormley understands, he knows there is ‘Another Place’’.
‘No he doesn’t. It’s just a name he made up.’ It was getting difficult to hear each other over the breaking waves.
In front of him Maria was holding onto a statue, but Peter had no such support and as the water rose he was finding it increasingly difficult to remain standing.
‘Peter it was good to meet you, I am sorry we did not have longer’.
On hearing that Peter lost his footing, and fully immersed he swam as hard as he could, attempting to reach Maria whose head was just above the water.
‘Maria!’ he shouted, but his view of her was now intermittent as he moved up and down on the waves, on a crest he could see her, but then had to wait, faced with a three foot wall of dark grey water. The tide was rushing in, this was the biggest tide of the year and Peter couldn’t stop it.
‘Maria!’ he shouted again, and with one last effort he got a little nearer to her, she was now holding Gormley by the head, her legs splayed out in front of her. A few yards further out was a seagull, floating serenely, just watching and waiting.
She looked out to the horizon and with a big breath shouted back to Peter.
‘Peter this is wrong, I am not ready. Help me.’ Maria lost her grip, and she was gone.
Peter started to search for her, but the current was too strong. He was tiring rapidly, his jeans, tight against his legs, were sucking the heat and the life out of him. From the top of a wave he had one last look and then turned towards the shore.
He knew he wasn’t going to make it; his legs were useless, incapable of movement, just a drag. He was coughing, taking in as much water as air with each desperate breath. Stupidly counting; a drowning man goes under three times, he was onto seven. He was cold, so very cold. As his efforts weakened however the less he cared, he felt comforted by the inevitability of it all, the fatality of the situation. He coughed less and less and as a wave of fatigue swept over him, he allowed himself to close his eyes, he could sleep now.
The sea was rocking and caressing him, back and forth, up and down, he was floating in the ultimate cradle, an isotonic resting place, a return home. Peter knew everything was well with the world, the moon pulled the tides and the tides were the lungs of the earth, their endless harmonic motion, the breath of the planet.
Bang.
‘Wake up. My mother is dead.’
Bang.
‘Wake up, there are no such things as mermaids.’
Bang.
With silted eyes Peter saw Maria’s fist once again smashing into his chest.
Bang
‘Alright, I’m awake.’ he shouted silently
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s a warm summer evening and Peter and Maria are sitting on the sea wall, watching as one by one Gormley’s men appear, their nature exposed by the retreating tide.
In the months following those events Maria had found it difficult to describe the intense needs she’d experienced and someh
ow this lack of words had made it more difficult to remember, this lack of memory reducing the solidity of it all, the time becoming more dreamlike than real.
They are both silent. There was no longer any talk of the sea or her mother’s death. Nothing would be achieved by discussing it further, the sea had welcomed Peter and it had rejected her.
There were other important things now. Maria was pregnant, she carried a daughter, growing safe and secure within her own special bubble of brine.
And this is their last visit to the shore, they are moving inland to Wolverhampton. They had discussed this move calmly, and without reference to residual fears, only an unspoken acknowledgement that it was for the best.
They nodded to each other, stood up, and turned their backs on the sea and walked away.
At 8.42 Maria’s child turned to face west.
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