My husband stands with his back to the cliffs. He’s there a long time and I leave him be. We are all in our own minds. I hear the sea on the pebbles, a brisk sound, soft as the waves rolls in, a deeper clatter as it retreats. (I look up the word for this when I get home; susurrate, but no, this isn’t quite right. The noise is guttural, more satisfying). The sea is the colour of badly-made tea; too much water, not enough milk. There’s a faint pale turquoise line midway between shore and horizon, a stripe of aqua.
The cliffs are pure chalk, they rub away in my hand as I run the flat of my palm over the surface. Studded with lines of flint, a phenomenon from when all this was ocean floor, the chalk forms planes that sheer away to leave huge eroded round pebble shapes on the beach.
Although the car park by the café was full, there are few people down this end of the beach. Their numbers petered out as we walked further. Perhaps the awkwardness of the stones, the impending collapse of the cliffs put them off. There are seven or eight of us now, mostly Japanese or Koreans who revere these white cliffs. One man takes photos, a couple laugh and smile at my dog. I bend and rake through the pebbles, photographing those of interest; the hagstones and iron ore-coloured anomalies, a piece of driftwood with a woodknot eye and shard of nose.
And in that moment, straightening from the search, seeing the photographer and my dog responding to a pat, seeing my husband’s blackclad back as he looks out to sea, I feel a sense of communion among those of us who have gathered here. It is a brief moment, the cords that pull us together quickly loosen, but no less powerful for that. I let it settle on me, hope the others feel it too. Then we turn and call the dog, making our way back to the car.
Thank you for transporting me back a few years to when we walked with a friend under the cliffs a collected sea sponge fossils on a very cold winters day 🤍
Beautiful prose. I was back under the chalk myself.