These Wilder Things: Part II ~ The Anchorage

'Purgatory Cliff' by William Trost Richards, 1876

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After fridges had been rehoused, plates cleaned away, scattered empty boxes removed from the drive, Fridge Men departed, and dogs walked once more — we set off.

We make our way through the flooded country lanes, whilst intermittently chatting about inconsequential things (which is basically everything), before settling into a comfortable silence that's filled with 90s songs which we collectively sing along to.

I start to feel almost normal — until we reach the junction for the motorway. The winding slip road causes my dread to creep in. Trapped, with only one direction available. What if I don't want to go in that direction? Forwards. Round and round and round the road descends, the nausea and dizziness lurking on the fringes of my free-will. I fight the feeling that I'm a child, on the world's tallest Helter Skelter, inside a hessian sack riddled with bullet holes.

You're fine

You're fine

You're fine

Everything is fine

You're fine

I hold in the panic attack with my melancholic limerick — less for fear of setting off the other two, and more because if I say it out loud to another human, I lose the last bit of power I have against it. Total denial — because once they start flapping, I’ll start flapping, and we’ll flap our way straight into Final Destination.

As I seek safety in the slow lane, the windscreen wipers work themselves to exhaustion, and cars overtake us relentlessly, wounding my pride. I realise I have become that person in the slow lane, and I wonder if he is embarrassed for me or, worse, of me.

Just keep driv-ing

Just keep driv-ing

Just keep driv-ing

I oscillate between embarrassment and the conviction that they are all pea-brained morons. Can they not see the danger they're in? They could lose control at any minute. What if they hit someone else? What if they get blown over the edge?

They should slow down.

The roads are wet.

There’s a storm.

They could crash.

We could all crash.

I think this while simultaneously smiling and singing along to Ironic by Alanis Morissette. With the girls. On our girls’ weekend.

It's like ten thousand spoons

When all you need is a knife

It's meeting the man of my dreams...

and then him dying horribly

I don't think the others hear me sing my version. If they do, they don't say.

When we reach a bridge the wind suddenly rocks us tauntingly and I grip the steering wheel tighter. I start to wonder if a real engineer designed the bridge or whether it was some dodgy bloke called Phil who always drops the coffees — and for once I’m grateful for Samantha’s on-board addiction to Coke Zero. I try to think of a joke that begins, How many Coke Zero cans does it take to weigh down a car?  But I can’t find a punchline.

The anxiety coil loosens when we finally reach our junction and replace the chaos of the motorway with the calm rolling hills of the national park. He would have loved riding through here, with the long road snaking through the wilderness. As we come to a crossroads, I catch sight of the sign, and the memory makes me gasp for breath.

How could I not have realised when I booked it?

We have driven through here, before.

We have stayed here, before.

He did love riding here.

Before.

I stare straight ahead at the open road, tears falling uncontrollably down my face, as the song on the stereo fills the car.

But all the promises we make

From the cradle to the grave

When all I want is you…

By the time we reach the village, Samantha has woken up in time for me to delelgate the final navigation duties.

"He's sent me specific instructions for the last part." I pass her my phone. I watch a couple walking on the beach, exposed by low tide, with a waggy tailed spaniel bouncing along around the rock pools nearby. I stare at their hands locked together.

"Mate?"

"Sorry. What?" I turn to Samantha who is looking at me expectantly.

"That way, follow the signs for the car park?"

"The car park?"

"Yeh, over there."

I stare at her.

"Okay."

I navigate us through lanes barely wide enough for a surfboard, until we come out into a public car park.

“Here?” I ask, looking around, unable to see anything that looks like a road.

“Yep.” Samantha points toward the end. “That way.”

I make a mental note to bring this up in Samantha's six-monthly review of being my best friend.

"But there's no road there," I tell her, staring at a huge grass hill that sits between us at the bottom and a line of houses that run along the tip.

"Are you sure?" I ask yet again. "Where's the actual road?"

"There." Samantha points to the grassy hill again.

"Okaaay," I say and think  — It's worse than I thought. We're going to have to let her go. "But let’s get out first. The dog can have a wee, and maybe we can see the house from the bottom of the path.” I point towards the end of the path round to the left of the car park, where the cliff edge is cordoned off with a wooden fence. And where Samantha will see that she's lost her mind.

We get out and I pull my hood up, handing the dog's lead to Samantha. "Can you take her a sec? I need a wee." I run off to a grass patch next to the hedge and enjoy the feeling of sea air washing over my bare backside. As I watch the stream of hot liquid hit the cold earth, I secretly hope that a few curtain twitchers are watching on in disgust.

I find Jessica and Samantha smoking a joint at the end of the path. I join them against the handrail, silently taking the dog’s lead from Samantha. She’s already mid-story — the time she hit her mum in the face with a paddle ball.

“She said, ‘You’re not hitting it hard enough. Just give it a really good whack,’” Samantha tells us, already laughing at the punchline she hasn’t delivered yet. Jessica looks hooked. She should be. It’s a good one.

“So I did what she told me. I whacked the thing. Hard as I could.” She’s laughing now. “Turns out I’ve got pretty good aim. Hit her straight on the nose. Snapped her glasses in two.”

We all start laughing.

“She had blood pouring down her face and I’m going, ‘Mum! Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ And I felt awful. But at the same time I was thinking — you did tell me to do it — and I was trying not to wet myself laughing.”

Jessica is bent double. “What did she say?”

“Once the shock subsided she thought it was the funniest thing ever. We taped her glasses together with a plaster for the rest of the holiday. She didn’t find the optician’s bill quite as funny.”

She laughs at her own joke again and I want to hug her. She once told me another story — about the time they forgot to deliver the placenta when she gave birth. The nurse walked in just as it flew out of her and caught it on a tray.

“Swear to God, mate,” she said.

And I believed her.

The joint burns down to the filter between my fingers. I flick it over the edge of the path and we watch it vanish into the wet grass below.

“Shall we go then?” I say, and we all silently stare at the grass hill behind us.

In any other context it might be the perfect place to perch with triangle sandwiches on a hot summer’s day, overlooking the sandy bay below, whilst talking about inconsequential things.

“And you’re sure there’s a road there?” I ask again, seeing nothing but grass, grass, and then some more grass.

“Yep. It’s at the top of the hill. We just have to go through that road there.” She points to the corner of the car park where we came from, and the entrance to a path that looks like it was built for a horse and cart. For the third time today I consider getting in the car and driving home. Then I realise that he's probably watching all of this unfold and finding it highly amusing.

"Come on then. Let's go off-roading." I defiantly march off with the dog, leading my unenthusiastic pack back to the car, and have already got the engine running by the time they catch up.

"Get in then," I shout through my open window as they approach, "the darker it gets the more chance we have of falling off the edge." Neither of them laugh, which I find odd, because I think it's the funniest thing I've said all day. He would have laughed.

"I'm joking! Come on, get in."

Jessica gets in the back and Samantha rides shotgun, and makes a point of checking that her seatbelt is definitely working, by reconstructing the kind of impact crash you have in a supermarket car park at 5mph, repetitively flinging herself forward in the seat. I stare at her, watching on in amusement.

"What are you doing mate?"

"Just checking it's working." Her brow is furrowed and expression concentrated. I don't tell her that her seatbelt might be the one thing that traps her in the car as it fills with ice-cold sea water.

I turn, checking that Jessica is strapped in, although she already looks defeated. I take one last look at the grassy hill and the road that Samantha insists is lurking behind it. We unnecessarily snake our way across the empty car park, as I buy myself more time, before reaching the corner where our horse and cart are supposed to go. I consider getting out and taking a 'proper' look, maybe conducting some kind of measurement assessment with my hands, but then I realise that's exactly the kind of thing mother or father would do. I slam the car into first, turning to look at them both.

"Here we go then. It's now or never. Hold on!"

And the ascension begins.

Phase one isn't actually that bad - in that, the car surprisingly fits through the footpath (road). Just. We bounce over two unavoidable giant potholes and I swear about my tyres. At the end we take a sharp angular left and I'm amazed that we made it.

I can see that Phase two involves another ascending track, wide enough to be identifiable as a road, but which wedges the car between a tall concerete wall on the right, which I assume is the bottom of someone's raised garden, and bramble bushes on our left. God help us if Samantha has an IBS attack now.

"Here we go then," I say for the second time today. "There's no going back now."

No one says anything.

"It'll be fine," I say. I don't think they believe me. I don't blame them.

The road is a steep climb in first gear, requiring constant hairline turns of the wheel to avoid taking the paintwork off either side of my car, with no idea of what will greet us at the top. As we keep rising in the air, I start laughing like a maniac, and say it isn't that bad really. I glance over at Samantha, and see that she that she's crying. Jessica, from my rearview mirror, has her hands over her eyes and could well be crying too.

I wonder why I'm not crying.

The track (road) eventually opens out onto a platform of level concrete, where there is a row of brightly painted garage doors and cars scattered around like an after-thought. I gratefully put the handbrake on and breathe.

"Well, that was an experience! Everyone okay?" I ask, looking at them both. They look like a pair of seasick elves.

"So which house is it then?" I ask. But I already know that it isn't any of the houses I'm currently admiring. I'm pretending that I haven't noticed a final section of almost vertical death track right in front of us, which looks like someone poured concrete over an unstable ladder and called it a road.

"There," I hear.

"Where?" I say, still looking out of the window at the houses that have nothing to do with us.

"There." I hear that word again.

I'm forced by logic to follow the raised finger that is pointing accusingly at Phase three.

We all keep staring at the place where our lives are about to come to an end. I think about what he would do if he were here. What he would say. I stare at Samantha and she she stares back, before beginning to slowly shake her head.

"No. No...we can't...we..." she begins.

"Hold on." I purposefully put the car into first gear, gripping both hands as tightly as I can on the steering wheel.

And start praying.

Samantha starts crying.

Jessica says she wants to go home.

I'm pretty sure I hear the dog whimper from the boot.

"FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!!!" I shout, as if my voice alone could make us do the impossible, and we start driving up the ladder. I wait for the moment that gravity pulls the car onto it's roof and we slide down to our death on the rocks below.

I only open my eyes when we got to the top and see the sign on the wooden gate that leads up to the house.

The Anchorage.

I think about the ladybird in the glovebox. How he rode the whole way here in the dark, rattling against spare coins and old receipts.

I wonder if he knew we’d make it.