Oyster Cove

You know you read it in a book when you arrive and everything is already alive.
Before you’ve seen it, even.

There was a song that you were supposed to listen to at this very location. Notes weave and click like the mussels that stick to rocks, crunching underfoot. A scramble. You remember something about a gannet, circling some islet, and the peculiar way the sunset spills over the ocean. Salt spray and oozing lemon yellow. There was a picture, perhaps…a picture…

Someone’s marriage began in this cove. You know, the two people met there — total strangers — both on an evening wander. Twilight all around them, the shadows flickering romance. Birds returning to nest. Mournful cries echo on cliffsides. A fragment of time, a chunk of sandstone dissolving in your hand. Friday night. They saw each other at a distance: her red coat, his wind-swept hair and baggy jeans; they both sighed at the presence of another person. But then they met with a smile and started talking about how beautiful the light was at this time, with the rays of orange and the sea darkening to a crystalline green.

Where do you live?

You needed to walk in the opposite direction but he walked with you anyway, all the way to your car. They always do that, like little beetles shining as they follow lines of print. An open book, abandoned in a field. You talked of the loveliness of country walking and how lucky you both were to live near the sea. Well, he said that he lived in the city, but he came to stay with his parents here, occasionally. It was a strange thought: the city. Not real; how could there be such a thing as the metropolis when you are surrounded by the jagged brilliance of cliffs and endless ocean and trees that shivered in the wind? You let the tide swirl around you and it seeped into your shoes, soaking your socks with sun-warmed water. He laughed as you pulled them off and walked on barefoot, your soles nipping at shards of glass and seaweed and stone. You shared stories. You told him you were almost married, once, a long time ago. You were sixteen. He said he wasn’t sure of marriage, but maybe one day. His father was cooking steak that night, he said, and he needed to be back for eight. You looked at your watch and it was almost time.

You climbed up the hill path back to the car park, your cheeks blossoming pink with breath. At the top you turned around to look back at the ocean - so much darker now, the sun just a smoulder of lava, dimming on the horizon. You said you’d drive him home, switching on the radio. He invited you in for dinner and you smiled and said yes. It didn’t rain for sixteen days after that, and then it was six months and you were engaged.

The cove is always so familiar now, though you haven’t been back in years. You just need to listen to the right song and you see the shellfish and the beach trees and the peculiar angle of the cliffs. You could curl up in that dream of land and imagine the echos of your voices, trapped there forever in endless replay. Everything so lovely. So young and lovely. The blues, the reds and yellows — the sparkle of a summer night. A sigh; the way the tide sucks the sea treasures back into its belly. Maybe a painting with a reproduction of twilight. Maybe a forgetting, a final goodbye.