The Pilgrim

A pilgrimage. That’s what it’s become.

This place is baked into my existence, I realise. Layers of memories stacked like the Jurassic coast which looms up my back.

I wonder if this time I’ll find a fossil, I think—before I realise that maybe I am the fossil. And then I wonder if someone will find me here one day. Pick me up and brush sand from me with the rolled sleeve of their woollen jumper against a spirited wind. Admire me. Slide me in their pocket and rinse me off in the sink when they arrive home blustered and sated by the sea. Place me proudly on their sideboard for one week, maybe two, maybe longer.

I draw my legs up tighter to my chest on the rock, staring out to wild waves. They crash against the shore, slate-hued clouds threatening rain. But it’s beautiful like this. Sun is a waste in such a place.

The first visit is not a memory of mine, but my mother’s, passed down like a worn Barbour. My parents rented a white cottage with three floors. In the old days, it was a coffin-makers, and it was so cold we all needed to sleep in the living room. I remember swinging between my parents hands as I grew, the bitter chill of coastal air burning my cheeks and red wellies sinking into October mud. Each time, we stayed in a different cottage, the three of us. It was tradition. And each time, as I got older, I brought more of my baggage to leave alongside the used towels.

I cast knotted ropes that choked my young heart and mind into the ravenous ocean. This place has seen every incarnation of me, I realise. Every era. And it remembers. It absorbs the sand and clay and shale that casts from me in these surroundings like snakeskin. It deposits the imprint of me to the landscape, tilting and hardening and eroding as I come and go.

I stole red wine from the corner shop on the main street once. And I shiver thinking about it, watching fresh foam sink into the shoreline. I remember agonising over ways to sneak from the bolthole so carefully chosen by a misguided man who thought he loved me. Wondering how I could satisfy my shame away from his fearful eyes. But these cliffs saw, and they remember.

I’ve been back five times since then. But never like that. Never again. Once, I left a twenty on the counter for the shop owner when he was busy in the back. A small amend which no one knows but me. But still, that layer lies steadfast in the rock, empty bottles and bile baked into the sediment. Maybe the erosion of time will wear it away. Maybe.

The rain is coming. Seaweed always smells stronger when it’s about to rain. I smile, remembering the way another boyfriend nervously fidgeted while my father unlocked our cottage door. The wood was a pale blue with that one. He proposed a few weeks later, unrelated of course. But my parents knew. This was his initiation to the sanctum of our spiritual home. We sat on these rocks, in the shade of my history, eating fresh doughnuts and talking about our future as though we knew what that looked like. I smile, feeling the first drops of rain begin to tap against my forehead.

He said, back then, if we had children, would we bring them here? I said yes, of course. And he laughed. He said he wondered if I wanted to keep this place all to myself. And I wondered if maybe I’m still that child, swinging between her parents hands while seagulls craw. I wondered maybe if he was right.

Will I still visit this place when my parents are dead? Perhaps. But I would see their ghosts on every corner. Hear my mother’s voice in my ear telling me the same trivia she scatters like seed for the birds. About Grace Darling and smugglers and spirits that haunt the alleyways. And now, I’ve started repeating them myself. I think she would like being one of them. One of the ghosts, revealing herself to tipsy patrons wandering between ivy-clad cottages though darkness while they curse the coastal winds. Becoming part of the lore. Absorbing. And I think I would like that for her too.

Will I take off my shoes and walk the shore once they are gone? Hopping from rock to rock and squealing at the pinch of barnacles and the wet pop of seaweed beneath the soles of my feet? Will I feel the loving curl of my father’s ghostly hand slipping into mine, his rough fingertips silently urging me to be careful? Maybe. I hope so.

A wave crashes against the harbour, and a child squeals. Her father picks her up, spinning her around. Careful, I think. It’s slippery. But maybe he knows that. Maybe a section of this headland belongs to him, too.

I love this place. At least, I think I do. I keep coming back, feeling its growing absence like a hangover that can’t be shaken. The sting of salted air and quiet passageways which open to slivers of starlight. It’s freedom. Because I leave some part of myself here, and I start anew.

‘Shall we go?’ my husband says. He squeezes my hand, punctuated by an ominous roll of the ocean. Our dog scampers over the sand, tangling herself in the seaweed and we laugh. A pilgrimage, I think, as we walk slowly towards the harbour. Clumped sand clings beneath the laces of my boots, and there’s no point in shaking it off. Our glistening footprints make a winding path, and I stop to draw our initials in a heart. He kisses my cheek, pulling me gently on. His hands are cold as death.

The tide is coming in, and soon all trace of us will be gone. Maybe.