Waves

Because the doctor said she could do with a change of scenery, he rented a little blue fisherman’s house for them in Cornwall. Because it was out of season they got a good deal but because she’d left behind her friends and family and everything she held dear including the streets she’d walked down so briefly with her pram, she cried for days, and because she was crying so loudly that the house became unbearable, he took to walking along the seafront. Because he didn’t want to stand out too much—she’d told him once how locals had hounded D H Lawrence and his wife because Frieda wore red stockings—he began to copy the fishermen he saw, walking with his hands looped behind his back, his eyes out to sea. Because it’s difficult to walk without looking where you are going, and because it was sometimes misty and the winds so raw that he wore a scarf half way up his face, he fell in the sea more than once. Luckily, because there were so many fishermen around he was quickly rescued, but because no one could understand why a grown man couldn’t keep out of the water, the rumours began that he was a drunk, or wanted to commit suicide, or perhaps he was just fed up with a crying wife. Because wouldn’t you be? Because no one else would now talk to them, and because he couldn’t now stop looking out to the sea, they began to spend evenings together in their little cliff top garden, her crying and him looking. Because there’s only so much time you can bear like this, one night, she turned to him and asked what he was staring at. Because he was a bit of a bore, to be honest, she expected a lecture on the density of stars or how climate change was affecting oceans and ice levels in the Arctic, or even how although grief takes people different ways, maybe it was time for her to listen to everyone and make an effort to move on, and because of this, when he simply said, ‘the horizon,’ she was touched. Because of this, she followed his gaze too, thought at first that the haze was her tears but then saw it was fog, and realised that this was how he was seeing the world, and that actually she might be seeing clearer than him, and because neither wanted to talk any more they just spent the night looking out, breaking their silence occasionally by calling out new words for it: ‘murk’, ‘vapour,’ ‘drizzle,’ ‘murk’, and because she had done English Literature at university, while he’d studied Engineering, she carried on longer than him, ‘brume,’ ‘haar’ and ‘gloaming’. Because she had forgotten the joy of playing, it took her some time to realise she’d stopped crying, and because he was a sore loser, it took him even longer, but because by then, they had both got so cold in the garden, they stayed close in bed that night. And because it was a better day the next morning, they made a sudden decision to go back to London that day. Because he was a creature of habit, he decided for one last walk, his hands looped behind his back. Because the horizon was clear, there was nothing to interest him there so he looked around instead, saw the men nodding at him, realised the fishing was actually more of a tourist attraction and because it wasn’t holiday season anymore everyone was bored, and that actually, the sight of a man falling in the sea must have been funny. Because of this, he stopped still and shocked himself with something he realised was a laugh. And because it had been so long, for him and for her, the sound of it carried like a seagull all the way to that blue house on the cliff edge, and because, without all the crying, she had done the packing already, she came out to see what was happening. And because the gloaming, the haar, the brume, the murk had gone, she saw him, saw him waving up at her, and because her heart skipped a little bit and she'd thought it was dead, she waved back.