Stepping Out

From this train window I see bare winter fields. Horses. Houses. Deserted stations. Tracks and pathways: a green fence disappearing into water logged ground. Industrial murk. A fox emerges out of scrub, glimpsed and gone, what was it carrying?
The man opposite is chesty, sniffing, snuffling, can’t stop coughing. He’s wearing baseball boots. I return to the scene slipping by, blurring, merging with the grime on the window, the clattering train, murmuring voices in the carriage

I remember watching a rabbit crossing the cracked and broken concrete surface of the Spanish City Amusement Park. The rides long since gone, just marks in the memory, scars on the ground. These days a travelling fair stops on the Links, above the beach, for a week, then disappears for another year.

Words, phrases, snatches of remembered conversation, returning again to your wandering, still trying to understand the compulsion.
‘It was free, didn’t need money. Just stepped out the door and away along that road. Enjoyed the movement. Never felt comfortable anywhere, never settled.’’
‘How did you live, eat?’
‘Hand to mouth, sometimes nothing for days, and then when there was work I’d eat, sleep in a bed, cheap rooming houses, that sort of thing.  Good times. What I remember anyway, what with one place merging into another, and now so much lost, forgotten. And now maybe one more stroll while I still have the energy.
‘Where would you go?
‘Don’t know. It’s a big place this world of ours.’
‘Granda?’
‘Just thinking. It’s lovely to let myself wander, walk a thousand miles from this chair to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, isn’t that a funny thought?   Maybe it’s enough to walk on the beach, and out along the coast.  It was different when you were growing up.  Good to be around for your Mam and you.’
‘Did she ever tell you how much that meant?’
‘She did, in her own way. And we had some fun didn’t we? What with all the walking, playing, beach combing, long days wandering along the coast, you seemed to enjoy yourself?’

I did. Sitting in this clattering carriage, staring out of a scratched and dirty window at the disappearing landscape, thinking that you’re nothing more than an echo felt when I least expect it, but with me, in some way always here.

Along the Cliff Path

A crow flying low, nothing but a black smudge against the light. Passing so close he thought that we could reach out and touch it, but we didn’t; told me that I was too busy picking Buttercups, that the crow had long since gone by the time I’d answered him.
I wanted to know why he remembered that day. ‘No particular reason. Maybe it was a quality of the light, perhaps that was it?’ Said it had been a good day, untroubled, and that would have been reason enough.

‘Maddie?’
‘What? Is that the time? Let’s go for a walk, Mickey needs a run.’
‘That’s what I’ve just said, it’s getting late. I was going to take him for a short walk.’
‘Never. Come on, best time of the day. I’ll work on this a little more later.’

From the river mouth you climb to the cliff top, pick up the path to the island. About a mile or so along it dips, descends into a gulley. The path forks here, down to the beach or on to the island. Here, at this point, this is where I feel it, that sense of peace, lifting of burdens, release. And this is what I remember; cold days, rainy days, cool bright autumn days. Me, all unconfined energy, gleefully pogo-ing along the path. Him calling to be careful one minute, standing motionless the next. And then it would be, ‘Granda, Granda,’ and I’d shake his arm and he’d stare at me and I’d be frightened because he’d look right through me, and then he’d say, ‘Sorry Maddie. Lost again, wasn’t I?’ and cuddle me.

‘We’re going to the island, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘Should probably take a torch?’
‘Got one silly, it’s always in the rucksack.’

This is the story he used to tell. One foot in front of the other, and you never know where that might take you, so it’s best to be prepared. He always made sure the rucksacks were packed, something to eat and drink, and an extra layer, ‘Just in case.’ I’d complain, wanted to know why we had to carry one each. ‘Because we both need to eat, don’t we? Or do you want to go hungry?’  He’d tell me not to fret so, that the load would be lightened soon enough, and that anyway I always complained about being hungry on the way home, that perhaps I needed to carry twice as much? I’d usually be first out the caravan door.

‘You ready?’
‘Waiting for you, and so is Mickey.’

Later, when he wasn’t getting around so well he’d talk about the track to the island as being more real than anywhere he’d been, and yet it was always lying there, still waiting to be discovered. Talked about how we seemed to travel with our own inner landscape, with an idea of place, of home imagined as much as known; something that should be shared and handed on. I didn’t take too much notice then, age and awkwardness intervening. I do now.