For Whatever We Lose

The moment I stepped unsteadily onto Chesil beach, something in the stench of storm-strewn debris, the damp salt-flaked wind and the chorus of churning waves anchored itself in me.

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The world there is stone and sea. For miles, rocks weathered over millions of years rise with the waves. On the horizon, a fishing boats make their lonely way to port, fingers of sun pierce the blanketing cloud and reached into the glassy sea below. Beyond the water, the world might end. A drop off. Standing on the shingle and looking out towards the open ocean, the sense that we are just a freckle on times’ complexion is immediate. It would have been easy to believe in something almighty, on any other day.

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October. University brought dry lectures and wet days in the field. Two friends stood at the bottom of Chesil’s rocky bank, setting up the theodolite, a device that measures the changing level of earth against the horizon. The morning was spent sizing up pebbles along the 18-mile beach. Skin red-sore from the driving autumn rain, we observed as the rocks grew from west to east. The product of long-shore drift, a local myth tells of sailors brought ashore in stormy seas, able to tell which part of the coast they had landed upon by the size of the pebbles. Near Portland they are fist-sized, at West Bay, like gravel. Growing up on the coast, you pick up whispers of sailors’ wisdom. If you find yourself shipwrecked upon the shore, drag your tired body towards the samphire. No waves can touch you there. That afternoon, our task was to measure the sliding scale of the shingle bank on which we stood, and observe the way the sea changes the earth it lands upon.

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We had known it would be a difficult day before it had begun. As the minibus rattled its way along the winding coast path, a battery of rain pelted its metal hull, the four of us inside already huddled amongst the university equipment for warmth. On sunny days, when the water is still and the Isle of Wight visible on the horizon, mobile phones tune into French satellites and car radios switch from familiar English RP to French. Here, on the edge of the south coast, signal comes and goes the same as the tide. Taking my phone out of my pocket, I watched the signal dwindle. Three bars, two bars, one bar, none.

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Sliding down the metres of stone, the boys tried comically to steady the instrument in the shifting terrain as pebbles filled their boots. Stood sentinel at the top of the bank I waited, clipboard in hand, pen clutched between frozen, un-gloved fingers. A way off, our lecturer hunched some over sea kale, examining it with his corduroy collar turned up against the wind.

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As the boys screamed metre readings to me above the wind and crashing waves, the phone in my pocket vibrated. I scratched the last reading against the paper, and the theodolite was moved to its next station.

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Sophie: Please call me back

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Sophie: It’s urgent

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Three missed calls, each a minute apart. As I read the last message, I looked to the signal. Nothing. A blast of water aggravated the weed tucked amongst the shingle. Salt and sulphur. The boys seemed far away now. My coast clapped in the wind. The boys mouthed above the roar of the ocean. The phone rang again and, in the rush to answer, my mittens fell onto the pebbles. They disappeared into the encroaching sea fret.

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“What’s wrong?” Sophie was crying. Aggressive, stuttered rasps. Looking around, I saw the boys waving my mittens, ready to note down the readings and move on. The sea churned the shingle shore and thundered into the earth.

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“Jack’s dead.”