ON THE CLIFF

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 491, 19 November 1948, Page 18

ON THE CLIFF

| Written for "The Listener’ l

by

K. M.

KNIGHT

KNEW when I had been a day or two with the Sthers I shouldn’t have come. It is quite true that when you are married life is different. For years I had come to this lovely bay camping. I had grown to know and love every curve of the coastline, every rock and tree, every small track from the hilltop to the sea. But this year I had seen none of them. Only Dick, I was lonelier than I had ever been before: Years ago I had been alone, but not lonely. When the others had gone off in twos I had always been by myself, and known a companionship with the earth and sea such as few people ever achieve. This year there was Dick. He never left me alone. If I went out at night to sit for awhile on the cliff

just-to hear the sea winds through the cutty grass, Dick had to come and I heard no sea-winds but only his voice. It rose above the noise of the surf; it came tq me on the wind; it blotted out the song of every little creature who had been my friend. It filled my ears and my head and my heart and no matter where I went I couldn’t get

away from it. Dick-my husband; handsome, young, arrogant. There wasn’t a girl in the ‘party who didn’t envy me. Any one of them would have changed places with me, just as I would have changed with them. It was that made me first realise that if ever I had loved Dick I didn’t, love him any more. I used to wish he’d take Mollie or Betty out on to the cliff at night, and let me get away by myself. hr came as an awful shock when I first knew. I saw Betty’s eyes on him-lingering, coy. She had held her wrist out to him and said, : ; "Take my pulse, Doctor..I think I’m sickening for something." . I,ysaw his cold blue eyes summing her up. I wouldn’t. have liked the scrutiny myself. And I had thought quickly, ‘Don’t look at her like that, Dick. She is an attractive girl. Much better looking than I am." "It’s probably mumps," he said. "Kids get them at Christmas." Just like that. He wasn’t interested in her, or in any of them. Only in me, and I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him any more. Where love had been in my heart there was just émptiness. * a % O-DAY I got away from them all for awhile. They had gone swimming. Dick made a big fuss-wanted to find me sick somewhere. I wished to God he’d grow up and leave off showing up his petty little bit of knowledge. I suppose they’re all like it when they

have just qualified. I said I wasn’t sick, but I was. Not in the body. I was sick in the mind, and sick in the heart-my poor, empty heart. They went down the steep hill to the sea, and I went along the cliff top, across the dangerous bit of track on to the most beautiful: part of the cliff. It went sheer down to the sea. Six hundred feet below the surf was white along the rocks and great rolling, curling waves coming in over the sand. I lay on a flat piece of ground and rested my face‘on the grass. The eternal sea wind blew all around me. I closed my eyes and heard it com-

ing in across a thousand miles of ocean. [t came from the shallow parts that broke in white surf, and from tne deep rolling parts that never broke at all. It came from the loneliest places on earth, but it blew around me and took my loneliness away. It went on up the hill and I knew where it was going. It moved the cabbage trees and the

flax, the smal! ferns and the thin grasses. It took the warm scent of dried grass and sand and driftwood far up into the hills. It found the creek with the little waterfalls where I had paddled as a child. I suppose it was not Dick’s fault. It was the way he was made. He just couldn’t understand that if the earth turned her back upon me I was undone. Some people get something from the earth, and if the contact is broken then they starve as surely as if food were withheld from them. I was one of these. I knew it more surely still when I stroked the hot, dry grass with my open palms. It was shining and silky like stubble. I poked in the grass-roots with a piece of stick. There were funny little spiders running about in the peppery soil. Some were no bigger than a grain of sand. * % HE sun was very hot. I covered my head and neck with my hat, and looked from under the brim down on to the surf. I saw the waves break long before I heard them they were so far below. The sea looked dazzling blue against the long line of surf, and the huge rocks very black and impressive. Out a little from the shore were three islands-Father Pudding, Mother Pudding and Baby Pudding. They were black as good Christmas puddings, and yA now and again the sea poured white sauce over them.’ I made a game about them as I watched them. I gave (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) myself so many points for guessing correctly how many of them would be covered because the waves were not all the same size and sometimes only Baby was covered. Big ones covered all three and then the line of foam came further up the beach and took longer to go back again. It was a fine game and I was pretty clever at it. Then I got tired of lying that way and turned over on my back and looked at the sky. There wasn’t much variety about it. Sky is better with clouds and there had been no clouds for months. After a while I turned back to the sea again. The tide had come further in and now nearly every wave covered all the puddings with sauce. It rather spoilt the game. I got rich too quickly, so I made another game. How far down the cliff would the trickle of soil go when I started it at the top?

I leaned further over. I pulled some roots out and the loose clay rolled and tumbled out of sight. I threw a stick and it caught in the branches of a tree. I threw a stone and it went right down to the rocks below, but I couldn’t hear it land because of the noise of the surf. I was disappointed about that. I pulled out a clump of grass and it made a perfect landslide. I didn’t see where it stopped, so it may have gone right to the bottom. I got to wondering how big a one I would make if I went over, but the thought frightened me a little. I could be for ever freé from pettiness and triviality if I just let myself slide over as the other things were doing. Dick would soon forget. He didn’t really love me. He was too immature to love anyone. I put my cheek on the warm grass, and stretched out my hand. Would it get broken if I went after the things I was throwing over the cliff? Somehow I didn’t want my hands to get broken. I could hear voices coming nearer. Every now and then they came to me above the water noise. When the path wound round the hill and they were on my side of the valley I’d hear them. Then they’d be lost again. But: every time I heard them they were nearer. I had not many more minutes to make up my mind. I wasn’t afraid it would hurt. Nothing could hurt more than the inside of me did now that I knew what kind of person Dick was. But I didn’t want to leave the warm golden grass, the little sea wind, the sound of the flax and the cabbage trees, the scent of the tangled undergrowth and the sea-weed. And maybe it would be dark and cold where I was going. % * * THINK I knew from the beginning I couldn’t do it, but Dick and the others came upon me so suddenly that I felt myself go limp and lifeless. Maybe I looked strange, for Dick didn’t say anything. He took my hand and he looked frightened. He flung himself on the grass beside me. "You should have come with us, Chris, The water was so warm it was like olive oil." I couldn’t speak. "Have you been asleep? Or what have vou been doing?"

I made a big effort. The words had to come through fences and over stiles and under hedges to get themselves assembled. "Lying here," I said. "Lying here and thinking. Watching the sea. Playing a game. Sometimes those Christmas puddings get covered with sauce and sometimes they don’t." He twisted a curl of mine round his fingers. "Chris-what’s the matter?" "Nothing. I’m a bit tired. I’m tired of everything but the sea and the pudding game and making rivers go down the cliff, If you throw a stone you can’t hear it splash. That, I -, is a great shame." He put his hand under my chin. and turned my face towards him. He made me look .at him and I didn’t want to because I always saw how hard his face was.

"Are you getting mumps too?" "Betty isn’t getting mumps. Can’t you | see she’s lonely? Maybe I’m lonely too." "You are crazy, girl. I'll have to get you out of this God-forsaken place." I turned round just in time to see/ Father get a real beauty. He swirled in a sea of foam. "Whooshter," I said. "That covered him right over. But it’s very pale sauce. Probably no brandy in it, and made with skim milk." He pulle¢ me to my feet. He called to the others. "Let’s get going. What say we call it a day and get back to town?" "But I’m not a bit sore under the ears, and I can open my mouth as wide as anything," I said, seeing he knew how I loved the place and hated it accordingly. "Why should we go. back to town? I want to stay here." "Let’s ‘go and have lunch, anyway. Mollie and Betty and the boys led the way, and Dick followed them. I came slowly behind. My legs felt wobbly. When we came to the dangerous part the others all crossed it and Dick stood halfway over and turned and called to me. I saw him with the sky all around him like a bird. His shoulders were very broad and his back straight. "Are you coming?" he asked, know-| ing I was frightened. "Or are you going to stay there and think, and look at the sea?" I put a foot on the rolling gravel, and some slipped beneath me. I felt sick in the tummy and I stepped back. My legs were trembling so I could hardly stand. Dick waited for me, poised on the narrow ledge-a challenge to the earth and the sky, and meant to be an object lesson to me. But he was something else, and I went cold and then hot all over. Blackness ‘filled my ears and my eyes. I knew I would only have to take one step, give him the smallest push, and I would have peace from him always. That would be a better way out-a much better way-than going myself into the darkness. I could say he had fallen over. They all knew how reckless he was. No one would know. If he screamed no one would hear above the noise of the surf breaking. There would be just a trickle of (continued on next page)

SHORT STORY

(continued from previous page) earth like the sticks made and then everything just as it was. I put my foot on the path, but I couldn’t walk on it. I stepped back and leaned against the side of the hill. He came back and picked me up in his arms. He was glad I was afraid. It made him feel fine. He smiled with his lips, but eyes were hard, "Afraid, Chris? Women are dreadful cowards." He carried me lightly into the middle of the path. "I could throw you over here and no one would ever know," he said. "You are such a little creature." I knew we were standing on the narrow ledge and I felt the sweat coming out on my forehead. "Such little cowards," he went on, and then skipped across to the other side and put me down on the grass, I stumbled along the narrow path. It had big. round stones on it and they hurt my feet. I heard the wind rattling the flax bushes. It was not my little friendly wind, but a hard impersonal one, I followed my husband up the hill to the shack and when he got there someone had put a match to the fire and smoke was coming out of the chimney.