Sea Change

by Jeremy Page

  Guy listened, accepting Fergus’s gentle assertion, and feeling slightly ashamed for what was hidden, what was really unfolding that night. He’d thought of Judy, up in the bedroom already at the top of the house, under the watchtower platform, in her own private world of thoughts.

  ‘Cindy says you’ll have another child,’ Fergus said, ‘and I’ve been telling her to shut the hell up.’

  Guy smiled. ‘Thanks, Fergus.’

  ‘She’s annoying at times like this.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell her off.’

  ‘Oh, you know, I enjoy it. There’s not much else to do out here.’

  Guy had looked deeply into the fire, admiring its timeless beauty. The realization of what would be transpiring a few hours later had suddenly hit, an awful twist of panic in him, filling him with doubt.

  ‘Thanks for everything, Fergus, you’re a great friend.’

  ‘I’m your only friend. Phil’s a jerk.’

  ‘Yep. Phil is a jerk.’

  Was this to be the last conversation he’d ever have, before going to his wife’s bedroom?

  ‘Jude looked tired tonight,’ Fergus said.

  ‘Yes. She is.’

  ‘You have each other, Guy. That’s important. And women are marvellous, you know. They really are life’s best thing. It’s no secret, that.’

  ‘Yes, Ferg. You’re always right. I should grow a beard like you.’

  ‘It would help.’

  ‘That was a great recording you played tonight,’ Guy said. ‘There was something very special about it.’

  ‘I’ve been kicking myself for putting it on. It sounded sad to me, and that’s the last thing you need.’

  Guy drank more of the wine, aware that he was finishing the bottle, that at the end he’d have to go up to the bedroom. The level of the drink was his clock, now, and it was draining. He could drink slower, but finishing the bottle was inevitable. The wine had given him a stealthy optimism that was disconcerting.

  ‘I’m nicely pissed,’ Fergus said. ‘Everything seems all right.’

  And with that Guy snapped out of his emerging feelings of contentedness. No, everything was not all right. Everything was far from bloody all right, and Guy had seized the opportunity, before his resolve could weaken any further, retreating from that glimpse of a possible future, to think about that room at the top of the house, about Judy lying on the bed, waiting for him like an angel of death.

  ‘I’m going to turn in now,’ he’d said to Fergus, forcing himself not to hug his friend, or say anything that might arouse suspicion. At times like this, everyone is watchful, and Guy felt he reeked of his plan. He reeked of death already.

  He had gone into the house and given Cindy a kiss on the cheek, while she was wiping down the work surfaces in the kitchen. She looked at him with her gentle browned-apple eyes, respecting him in every move he made. Grief had given him an amazing authority.

  ‘Has Judy gone up?’ he said, his voice cracking a little.

  She nodded. ‘Tell me if you need anything.’

  He left her quickly. She had instinct, Cindy, he’d always felt it, and the house was becoming something else now, a place of ritual order.

  Judy was waiting for him in the room, not on the bed, as he’d expected, but sitting in a chair by the window. There was a darkness to her eyes, and a glint of something almost venal there too, something that felt untrustworthy and shifting. Understandable, he’d thought, before sighing, and lying down on the bed. Should he take his shoes off? Who knows the rules in this situation?

  ‘Well, this is it,’ she’d said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he sighed, again, thinking of the weariness with which he’d climbed up the narrow staircase, with all its eccentric twists and turns to get up to the bedroom.

  ‘I liked that music Fergus played,’ she’d said, surprisingly, stopping herself short of saying we should get him to do us a copy. It would have been an absurd thing to say, given their plan, but the essence of her liking the record, with its assumption of wanting to listen to it again, had remained in the room, stubbornly.

  She lay on the bed and kissed him, once, on the mouth. He looked into her eyes and again feared what he saw there, some foreshadowing of a madness that he knew could come, or might not.

  They had talked, about the meal, the bonfire, Fergus and Cindy’s friendship. It was a usual routine for them. Guy began to think about Freya, but couldn’t mention it to Judy. He’d felt his daughter’s presence in the room, between them, in a place where they might follow her to. There was so much to think about, so much to set right in his head, but at that moment, it had all felt unnecessary. He was beyond caring. He felt tired and wanted to sleep, and was unsure why Judy was dragging the moment out. It was odd, how unbothered he had felt.

  She had cried, silently, and he had looked about him at the room. It really was special, with windows on three sides and a high dark view over the salt marshes outside. They’d stayed here several times before. In fact, Judy had written some of her song lyrics in here, at the desk in the alcove. It was an inspiring place.

  ‘Guy,’ she had whispered, and he’d known this was the moment the whole night had been leading up to. ‘Guy, I love you.’ She lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I’ve flushed the pills down the toilet.’

  Guy waited, listening to the oystercatchers in the creeks outside, at the wind that was beginning to pick up in the chimney.

  ‘Right,’ he had said.

  Soon, both of them had fallen asleep.

  And two months after that night, they split up.

  He doesn’t know much about what has happened in Judy’s life in the five years since that night. He knows she’s having a relationship with Phil and that they’ve recently moved in together. Their lives, and his diary, have followed a similar route. He also knows she no longer sings. But he’s only been to her new house once, and that was nine days ago. It was the night before he began this journey of his into the North Sea.

  It had been so strange, after all those years passing, for him to be standing on the damp brick path in a little pocket of East Anglian calm between a forsythia and japonica, looking at his former wife, haloed by the light of the living-room behind her.

  She hadn’t registered much surprise when she’d answered the door. But she’d taken a step forward, just the one, as though she was naturally moving towards something she recognized. Then she’d crossed her arms and leaned against the jamb. The threshold of her house seemed to run through the line of her shoulders.

  ‘You’re more predictable than you think,’ was what she’d said, the first thing she’d said to him, in fact, for several years.

  ‘Since when?’ he’d said, willingly falling into their old roles of him playing catch-up with her.

  ‘I’ve always known you’d turn up here one day,’

  ‘Really? It’s more than I’ve known.’

  That had been their opening exchange. Probing their territorial positions, with claims coming from both of them about how much they knew about each other. But Guy hadn’t driven all that way, after all these years, to find out things he already had the answers for.

  ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ Guy had stated, trying to stay calm.

  She’d taken a breath before nodding, shyly, just the once.

  ‘Why couldn’t you tell me? Why did I have to guess?’

  ‘Because I’m a coward, Guy. You know me better than anyone, don’t you?’

  She gazed back with a level, dark expression. She had no apology for him. She couldn’t even give him that.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Five months.’

  ‘I’m glad, for you. For Phil, too. Tell him I’m glad, will you?’

  ‘Do you want to tell him yourself?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  Judy acknowledged that with a smile, having brought it out in Guy, but accepting him, too, it seemed. Perhaps she had been curious to see him like this, unannounced and unprepared
. ‘Life moves on, you know,’ she’d said.

  ‘Yeah. Well, thanks for telling me that.’

  Judy had given him a quick questioning look, sensing the brittle charge of argument that always seemed to spark so naturally between them. ‘Let’s not have a scene,’ she’d said.

  ‘Oh, Judy, I - I just wanted to see you, that’s all.’

  She seemed satisfied by his honesty, or satisfied that he was at least no match for her. ‘I know.’

  ‘To know that you’re all right.’

  ‘I am. I am all right. Are you?’

  He hadn’t been sure how much of his espression was visible to Judy - his part of the brick path had been a shadowy place. In fact, he wasn’t sure how much Judy had ever seen in his expression.

  As always, she had backed away from the essential. ‘How is life on the boat?’ she’d said. ‘I think of you sometimes, on cold days. It can’t be nice.’

  Guy hadn’t replied. He didn’t want to be led into an offhand conversation so easily. Judy’s good at that, at avoiding. He’d remained quiet, hoping it would draw her out. Her house, it wasn’t so dissimilar to the one they used to own. And she’d planted things in the garden that he had once planted, in theirs. It was revealing.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ she’d said.

  ‘Me? No - I’m OK out here, on the path.’

  ‘Sure?’

  He had tried not to stare at her. But she was fascinating. This was Judy, with shorter hair, curls less springy than he remembered, with a slightly thickened shape already, although he didn’t want to look. Still the same sharp angle between shoulder and neck, the same small earlobes that were so soft to touch, the same sunken dip at the base of her throat. But a new necklace there, something he didn’t recognize, and not her taste, either. New clothes also; colours she always chose but now she was dressed for comfort and warmth, not for style.

  His silence seemed to disconcert her. She’d known you can’t truly hide from someone, once you’ve shared all with them, however long ago.

  ‘Guy. Are you going now?’ she’d said.

  Guy didn’t know. A few hours later he would be heading out to sea in the Flood. Everything was packed and ready. ‘I think so,’ he’d replied. What, actually, had he expected from her? For her to acknowledge her mistakes? It wasn’t her way.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you came here. I really am,’ she’d said.

  ‘Me too,’ he’d lied.

  ‘We should be in touch.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he’d lied again, blandly, his voice sounding disembodied to him, from his actual presence there at her doorstep. It’s as if he and Judy were now talking on the phone to each other, with the feeling of distance as a given, between them.

  He realized he’d been stripping the forsythia of its leaves. ‘Sorry about the plant,’ he’d said, lightly.

  ‘Guy. I want to tell you something,’ Judy had said, suddenly cautious. ‘It’s going to be a girl.’

  There’d been the hint of an apology in her voice. A significant moment for them both, and Guy had felt the closeness, suddenly enveloping them, as if there’d been some strangely physical tie, after all these years, which still bound them in a way he’d never quite understood before. The presence of their child, it must be.

  ‘I’ll go now,’ he’d said, simply.

  ‘OK,’ Judy had replied, suddenly sounding a little less sure of herself.

  ‘Judy? Should we have a hug?’

  She’d considered it.

  ‘Yes.’

  He’d held her, the small shape of the wife he once knew, so well, touching the thinness of her bones in her shoulders and the shallow curve of her back and the unmistakable shape of the new life that was growing in her. Her hair was thicker. He remembered how that had happened last time.

  ‘For Freya,’ he’d whispered. She’d hesitated. Then he’d felt her arms reaching round his sides.

  ‘Yes. For Freya,’ she’d whispered back.

  Guy stares into the patterned shades of shingle spread along the shore, remembering how he’d walked back down the path from Judy’s house as the door shut behind him. A chapter closing. He had driven without looking back, away from her house, he knew, for the last time. Ready now, to head into the sea. Having seen her, pregnant, the centre of her own life now, it had made him realize what he had to do. Maybe she’s happy, maybe not yet, but she’s on her way to it. That’s enough for any of us.

  He thinks about the journey that’s arrived at this point. Of all the water that’s passed, the waves he’s seen, the tides that have come and gone, and the nightly reinvention of a life he lost and has wanted to recreate. Unpacking the daily miracle of ordinary life, albeit a remembered or an imaginary one. He thinks about the wake of the Flood, erasing all that time. All you leave behind is a path that can’t be followed.

  And as the beach begins to lighten, incrementally, beginning to stretch in distance away from him, he has an uneasy sense of something being in the gloom, a presence he’s been unaware of.

  Ghosts, he thinks, of the lives he’s led or might have led, and the people who are no longer with him, always in his mind, urging him forward. They’re out there and they’re in him, he carries all these scenes and imaginings and can never be truly alone, even in the most empty of the world’s places. The sun will grow stronger in the next hour, and it might break through this mist, making the shore glow with renewed vigour, whether it’s for him or for no one at all, it will shine and dazzle with its own sense of creation.

  But the feeling of being watched persists, unnervingly, and he stares into the murky half-light and sees, about half a mile away, the thinnest of smudges separating itself from the background of sand and shingle. A second later it is gone, the stones slide their patterns among themselves in the gloom, and then it is there again, stronger, lengthening, the way things do in a wide flat landscape, coming his way. He stands to watch it, this strange whip of the mist, this weird trick of the sea-light, and in a few seconds he realizes it’s an animal. A low thin animal trotting along the shoreline in a direct path towards him. He feels naturally wary, thinks he should scuff his feet in the shingle to announce his presence, but is also transfixed by the jaunty way the animal is jogging towards him, each foot rhythmically picking up and dropping in a precise line, it has a dancer’s lightness, he doesn’t want to scare it. But then he realizes the animal is fully aware of him, and is approaching with a poised determination. As it closes down the distance between the two of them, he sees that it is a wild dog.

  The dog is terribly thin, with long sinewy legs of bone and loose muscle and a tattered, gaunt face. It comes at him straight, without fear, with a cold flash in its eyes, furtively looking side to side, increasing its pace, and he sees the neck hang lower and its wary glance at the banks of stones around them, suspicion in every gesture. Just a few steps away it suddenly stops, dropping to the ground.

  It arrives like that, in a manner of straightforward malice, as if it’s reacting to some act of territorial transgression. Its hind legs rise, bending its spine as it prepares to spring at him. Guy feels a hotness of panic, like a rash across his skin, and he stands completely motionless, entirely without defence. The dog makes a sudden growl, raising its upper lip in a snarl, revealing the yellowed enamel of the wilderness, tapering to bright sharp points in the shadows of the mouth, a thin pool of saliva caught behind the lower edged rim, and a livid tongue, quivering with energy. The dog stops growling, checking either side in sharp quick glances, then continues again, a low wild snarl interrupted with tiny yips and half-whimpers. Its eyes turn fractionally towards him, and a retinal flash of pale green light reflects from both of them.

  Guy sees how desperate the animal is. A shore scavenger. Maybe it hasn’t eaten for days, its sides cave with each quick breath to show a line of ribs, and he knows he is no match for this thing, and as he’s thinking this he realizes he hadn’t even noticed the second dog’s approach, following the line of the first, in its very footsteps per
haps, till at the last minute the second animal has almost magically emerged from the body of the first, the matted pelt dividing diabolically, till the second dog is its own thing too, a few steps back and to the side.

  Both dogs, ignoring each other but following some timeless instinctive strategy, begin to inch forward, their eyes filling with a sparkling murderousness. He knows that they are going to attack, and he will be unable to defend himself.

  Guy faces them, stoically. He imagines the moment the first one will leap - the unnatural sight of its body extending, showing just how thin and empty it is - hitting him with a terrible force of wild hair and eyes, of hardness, too, of pointed pain from the teeth. Going for his arm, perhaps, pulling him down, while the second one arrives a split second later, shaking him with a body-weight of tense sinew, rolling and pawing to try and expose his neck. He assumes it will be over quite suddenly, like a terrible crash, the slamming energy of the animals almost not registering on his body, the pain arriving in a rush of so many other things, with his life obediently giving way without fuss in the manner it will have to.

  But a new sensation begins to rise - an imperfection - an imbalance between himself and the wildness that has come to challenge him. Is it the fragment of a memory perhaps - the thought that something is not quite finished, not quite able to be put down? Look at the things you missed, he thinks, retrieve the things you lost. All is not lost, it’s in there somewhere, you just have to find it.

  He wants to stop them, wants to raise his hand to halt the senseless inevitability of the attack, and as the feeling grows he realizes what it is - that small nub of doubt, that tiniest hint of a current running against the overwhelming force of the flow, it’s his will to survive, to go on regardless, to take all that can be given, because not to take it, to give up, is no way at all. That simple, all along, you must continue.

  He feels his heart finally begin to race with the arrival of fear, that these two wild animals might take something from him he doesn’t want to give, and an echo of another time strikes him too, a remembrance of being in that field again, with the stallion running at him, and the surprising dawning of his own strength, as if the greater the force of the assault, the greater the defence. Life has that pattern, now, a perfect equation: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Guy feels decided and invulnerable and glad that his instinct has come, at last, to survive. He owes it to her. All that you left behind is more than I was before. This has been the answer that has eluded him, the answer he sought, the purpose of all these countless miles of North Sea and storm, and he smiles at the crouching dogs, at the coiled muscles of their back legs, the claws gripping the gritty beach, the look of sheer evil in their ungodly eyes. He takes a step towards the first dog, sees confusion in its eyes and, as if he is pushing some invisible force in front of him, his own protective bubble of certainty, of resolution, he sees the dog move to one side. Its head lowers, its eyes no longer maintain contact. Guy walks closer, convinced that the threat is transferring with each step, his own strength growing as these shore dogs give way, and he sees the second dog adopting the same weakened attitude as the first, both of them, lying down in the sand as he passes.