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Clifftop

Richard Coombes

    As I came up the zigzag cliff path my shoes made an uneven clop-clump sound on the tarmac. Round I came, twenty halting paces, twist around the hairpin, twenty halting paces, twist again. I began to feel the wind blowing steady and cold across the clifftop. 7.30 on a February morning. Pain all down my left leg. Spray borrowed from the surf 150 feet below first sitting on and then soaking into my hair. My glasses frosted by a thousand tiny droplets, evenly-spaced. I wiped the drops into thick smears, then gave up and took the glasses off. It always worries me when I can see better without them. I’ve been unsafe without glasses for fifty years.
    There was a green wooden seat at the highest point of the path. My short anorak hitched up as I lowered myself down, and the warm, loose embrace of my trousers and pants turned cold and clinging.
    The air was beginning to take up the first grey light, though there was no sign of the sun. The tide was high, and the sea jammed itself angrily against the cliff. The seat was very near the edge. A dozen years ago it would have been respectably far back. The cliff was falling into the sea.
    A voice beside me said, ‘Long way down.’
    I hadn’t heard the woman arrive. I turned and saw the profile of her coat, its long fur-edged hood covering her whole face. It was a man’s coat, but a woman’s voice. I looked at the blank hood for a while.
    ‘I suppose so.’
    She was sitting upright, not leaning against the back of the seat. Her gloved hands were folded in her lap. The blind cone of her hood pointed out over the sea. Even in the poor light, the spray on her coat glistened.
    ‘Wrapped up warm. Huh. Now that is a laugh. That is one hell of a bloody laugh.’
    I shifted awkwardly. I was not in the mood. Still, I didn’t want to ignore her completely. I waited for her to elaborate. I waited until the moment to say, ‘Oh?’ had passed.
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘This is his his coat. Left him lying in bed.’
    I eased my bad leg. I ought to be going. It was a long limp home.
    ‘Well.’
    ‘Look at me,’ she said. Her head turned sharply.
    Oh heavens. What was she up to? I wanted to get up and scuttle away. Not with this wretched knee. Limp, limp, limp. Barely out of plaster. Robert had insisted I pay close attention to his backswing.
    I had.
    Still. He might have smashed my face.
    I looked.
    I found that from her voice I had been expecting a sharp face, pinched and angled. But she was round and soft, even good-looking, with a few early lines. Dark brown eyes, their colour deepened by the hood of her coat, looked straight at me, hopeful, wistful, vulnerable.
    Above her left eye rose a violent bruise, new, not yet turning yellow. I stared at it the way I used to stare at people in wheelchairs when I was little. An accident? Or ... him lying in bed?
    I realised suddenly that she had been speaking. I had no idea what she had said.
    She reached out and put a hand on my arm. She held me, tight, insistent, and the look in her eyes took up the need in her grip.
    ‘Um,’ I said, looking at her hand.
    ‘You ashamed?’ she asked. ‘You ashamed of a woman you don’t know touching your arm? You’ve got a wife at home.’ She questioned me with a note of pleading in her voice, but finished tiredly with a shrug.
    ‘Um,’ I said again. There was no one waiting in my little upstairs flat for one.
    ‘You don’t have to worry,’ she said. ‘I won’t bother you.’ Her hand stayed where it was for a few seconds, then slid away, down towards my wrist and off my coat sleeve just before she touched my clenched fist.
    I had to go. She was going to nag me. For money. Drink. Food. Stealing my time, my space, my silence.
    Touching me as well. God, I’m an old man. Those young dark eyes.
    Damn Robert and his backswing. If I got up and hobbled off, she’d follow me. I wouldn’t be able to shake her off.
    I imagined a variety of first lines.
    ‘I’m afraid I must.’
    ‘Really.’
    ‘Well.’
    ‘I.’
    I needed breakfast. My daily scan of the Radio Times.
    A bruised woman in a man’s coat touching my arm. My empty day beckoned: breakfast, breakfast television, Radio Times, leave the washing up, coffee, daytime television. A stroll by the sea. No. Not a stroll by the sea.
    I was sitting tensely on the seat. My back and stomach ached.
    I could feel her, even though she was sitting quite still beside me, staring across the sea to where the Isle of Wight hid behind the early morning February murk.
    That intrusive voice. Those piercing eyes. Her hand on my arm. What was she going to do next?
    ‘I really must,’ I began.
    That was a mistake. I was tipping her off. I should have made my move without announcing it.
    I struggled up, turning away from her as I did so. I didn’t want to see her. To meet her gaze would be to look willing, to offer an invitation.
    Clop-clump. I’d put my glasses back on but they needed wiping again. The path was a grey and white mist wallowing in front of me.
    My ears were straining for her step. My back was tingling, right on my spine, and down at my kidneys. Hell. Did I think she was going to shoot me?
    It’s virtually impossible, I thought, to shoot the average hand gun straight at more than a few yards.
    I had spent a couple of minutes going about thirty limping paces when it hit me. Not in the back. In the head. A thought, not remotely profound, but the first for goodness knows how long concerning anyone other than myself. A pang of self-rebuke.
    She had not said another word after promising not to bother me. Nor moved a muscle. This soft, bruised woman for whom I had no time, even though I had nothing to do.
    I turned round and made my way slowly back.
    The seat came back into view. She was gone. The cliff path lay straight and empty beyond the seat. I peered the other way, down towards the sea. No.
    I stood uncertainly. A bizarre thought struck me. Stupid. But I did it anyway. I touched the seat where she had been sitting.
    It was cold.
    Of course it was cold. It was still before eight on a February morning. I looked along the path once more, then shrugged. Home. The wind was making my skull ache behind my left ear. Cold wind always does that. I had done what I could by going back.
    Twenty minutes later I was in my own street, cold, hungry, my leg one single exposed raw nerve which someone was rubbing with sandpaper.
    What did he look like—the one lying in bed? Perhaps she had battered him to death. That sharp, shrewish voice. She had one bruise and he was dead.
    An ambulance siren wailed along the cliff road a couple of blocks away. I shuffled up the front path to my door.

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