I think I’ve lost my appetite for new landscapes. (Saying this makes me feel unrecognisable, even to myself). I only wish to revisit the ones I already know, and often.
I’ve been to the cliffs at the end of Cuckmere Haven many times. Seven Sisters; seven rising hills and sinking valleys. I know how the sun hits hard on my cheeks and the bridge of my nose, even when it’s overcast. I know how the estuary swells and recedes as it flows up toward the little puzzle box villages of Litlington and Lullington. I know that if you take the route that bends west behind the Coastguard Cottages and scramble down the stairs to Hope Gap, you have to check the tides or risk wading thigh-deep along the breakwater to reach the return path.
I live here on the south coast because of a mysterious recurrent daydream. In it, there were quintessential rolling hills and patchwork farmers’ fields, brick country homes and a steeple, woods in coloured-pencil blues and, most fascinating of all, an onion-domed pier reaching out to sea. For a long time, I couldn’t place where these images came from — it wasn’t until I revisited The Snowman, a children’s Christmas story, that I found their roots. There in the illustrations was my fantasy city, nestled between pastel chalk cliffs and hills tumbling in all directions. The author lived close by and knew the landscape well. I’d hung onto his vision of it for so long without knowing why.
It’s here on the south coast that I learned all sorts of countryside words. Coombe and barrows and heathland. Fingerpost, stile, kissing gate. Words that sound pleasant in a poem.
Today, instead of heading for the cliffs, I peel away from Cuckmere River and bear northeast. Up and up on a tentative path that’s desperate for a daily walker to clear its nettles. Hundreds of years ago, there was a church and parish on the crest of this blustery hill. There’s nothing left of it today, but in 1913, a boy found indentations in the ground that hinted at an old building. Villagers and scientists excavated the area and unearthed the foundations of a medieval chapel, then marked it with a headstone. I’ve come up here with a group of writers with this ancient village in mind. We’re scattered on the top of the hill, each of us in a hollow we’ve made for ourselves. Without talking about it, we’ve all chosen to face the same direction, toward the sea. Woven into the long grass is a vine with pink and white striped flowers, very much like the milky Campinos I ate as a child. I think briefly about ticks and fret about my bare legs. We must look very amusing to passing hikers, who can only see our tufty heads and rounded shoulders — some kind of curious downland gnomes.
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We’ve been told to bring someone with us in our minds, someone who isn’t here. We’ve also been told to describe the horizon. Every time I look at the horizon, it’s already changed. It’s thundering and the clouds are shifting fast. At first it’s sharp and white, salty, chalky — something mineral I might crave if I was pregnant. A moment later it’s periwinkle, but in colour only, since the word itself is too soft and sweet to capture the coming storm.
It’s been a week since Sergio died in a freak accident, asleep in his parked car as it tumbled into the sea. Since then, I can’t look at young men — they shrink in front of me into childhood. I feel overwhelmed by a need to scoop them up and away, to carry them, to cradle them. My hands appear like giants’ hands, my heart a giant’s heart, trying to gather all the little boys in to safety. A teenager’s tall, hard body shuffled ahead of me at the train station and I held myself back from stroking his arm as he passed. Yesterday, I couldn’t focus while my colleague (himself already a father) spoke on my computer screen. He looked tired; I wanted to hold him and let him rest, sheltered in my arms. This sudden mothering impulse is unexpected. It surprises me daily with new agonising visions — I came up here to write something about belonging, about rooting myself here in foreign soil, but all I can see is a little boy galloping down the hill into view from my imagined threshold. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s 1913 and my son is coming home to tell me about the tracks he found and what they might mean. The image reminds me of a dream I had when I was very young — the first dream I ever had about a child of my own. I was out on the cliffs near my hometown, some 2500 miles away, where I’d learned to fly a kite. Running freely ahead of me was a little boy with floppy dark hair and tanned skin and a sing-song voice. I knew he was my child. I was happy — he was laughing, he was joyful. But the dream also contained fear: for the cliff edge, the nettles in the grass, and the distance between us.
The periwinkle horizon turns to slate grey — finally, an appropriately threatening hue. From our vantage point, I can see the weather system moving across the sea, meeting the cliffs. It might miss us. Bright gulls stand out against the sky, riding the thermals and hungry for the fish being churned up by the currents we can’t see. It’s right about now that this year’s chicks are learning to fly.
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Suddenly it’s upon us — a thick, plodding rain that gets us properly soaking but doesn’t quite break the tension. Leaving the disappeared village behind, I think, ‘I wanted a little more’. My friend Mai and I walk down to the beach to swim and catch the view of the cliffs from the sea. The sun returns and dips in and out of the clouds; the water is pleasantly cool and still. We swim for a long time, not speaking.
She’s fifty metres away when I turn back and make for the shore. She swims out so far and for so long that I wonder if I should call the coastguard. I’m a strong swimmer, but I don’t trust myself to swim out to reach her. I don’t think she has any fear at all. Squinting, I can just make out her toes parallel to her head, and I know she’s floating, she’s at peace. I’m not sure when my fear started creeping up on me. Lately, I’ve been afraid of even the smallest waves. Apparently, some pregnant women fear the ocean even before they know they’re pregnant. Maybe there’s something else gestating in me, but I’m not sure. Mai returns refreshed and we walk back along the tourist path we both know well.
I make plans to return the following weekend to explore the woods to the north, and to see bends in the river that I’ve not yet seen. I want to really know it. I want to see how the landscape transforms in every light and season, and still feel assured by its constancy.
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I found a photo from the church’s excavation in 1913. The light is harsh; it’s midday. On the far left, an unnamed man stands with his back against the wind, pointing at something in the ground with a long stick. There’s a pipe in his mouth.
My research also tells me that the boy who found the settlement was called Maurice. He was fifteen when he made his discovery — a little older than I’d imagined. He was killed only three years later, in battle along the Somme. I can’t help it, the visions persist. Here I am with my bare hands, digging his body out of an unmarked grave.