The memories rise above the
surface of all others, overwhelmingly clear. She stands on the small pebble
beach off the woods by the Blackwater River straddling the border between
county Cork and county Waterford, bright in her old, waxy yellow raincoat, staring
out across the dark swathe of water at the opposite bank heavy with foliage.
Near the water, a small shack has become consumed with shrubbery, rendered
inaccessible.
Admittedly,
as I traipse down the wide promenade receiving a forceful flow of sea gusts, my
memory of that visit to Youghal years ago isn’t impeccable. I remember that to
get to that little beach we had to walk along the motorway verge, which made me
well and broil with anxiety. I remember a small rocky bay in Youghal itself,
and the great green beach head jutting into the sea on the opposite side of the
estuary. But I can’t remember visiting South-East Ireland with a girl in a
bright yellow raincoat, and, until this day, feel that the view from the small
pebble riverbank was uninterrupted by such a dandelion figure; I had stood at
the edge and watched the swarthy weeds swirl in the dark water. I had skimmed
stones across its flat surface.
Two years
ago? Three years ago? I feel that it had been September, and in a year where I
had embarked on some sudden bout of small adventures abroad, after a decade
grounded. I found myself quietly walking down the streets of Oslo, Reykjavik,
Copenhagen, Warsaw, Edinburgh… It was for the cities in the night-time,
preferably freezing cold too. At least that’s what I remember most from these
cities; beautiful lights in a cold night sky that felt light, and silent.
I dig my
hands into my pockets in futile protection against the winds that bring in
winter. I find that they are littered with holes. Barely anyone is out on the
coast, but it doesn’t feel empty. What does feel empty? Concrete car parks.
Corridors in Dental clinics. Shopping malls after close. I tread from ‘empty spaces’ to ‘humanless
spaces.’ I can see fields of spider webs lying low on the grass, rippling in an
autumn ray of sunlight. I can see a deer browsing in the boundary of a wood,
raising its head in alarm at a twig crunching. I remember the dense bramble on
the other side of the Blackwater river, devouring that small shack, aswarm with
kittiwakes and crabs and the occasional heron, when I see her, luminescent in
that raincoat amidst the November grey in early evening, on the coast, in the
real, filled out and fleshed in front of me. The yellow of her coat obliterates
the greenery that gently rolled in my imagination; it reasserts herself falsely
into my benign tidings over my trip to Youghal. My throat readies to pulse out
questions; who are you, have we met, have we stood on a small pebble beach on
the Blackwater river straddling county Cork and county Wateford in the Republic
of Ireland and gazed at the heavy shrubbery on the opposite bank, when her hand
quickly rises to my face, placing a single finger on my lips in hush.
Slowly, she
cranes her neck to look over the coast. I’m trying to remember her but there is
sadly nothing to remember, just a blaring image in my brain of an event somehow
spliced with imagination. I look at her face, which stares sternly over the
water swashing onto the beach. I feel a drop, then a downpour gushes upon us,
and her finger is withdrawn from my lips as she relents her serious face into a
smile. The rain dribbles down the outside of her waxy yellow raincoat.
