Linda was perfectly capable of being alone. And it was practically idyllic here. Like something out of a lifestyle magazine. She fiddled with the rented easel, repositioning it around the damp hollows and rises of the cave floor again and again until she found the perfect stance. She attempted to assume an artistic pose, her dry brush hovering apprehensively.
The canvas was wrong. The square of hard blankness, pulled so taut it gave the impression of marble, was counter to the colour, the calm of the sea behind it. As if a neat square of the landscape had been carefully peeled away. All around it, nature rushed to its posts, knew exactly where it was meant to be, had a natural motion without end.
Linda did her best to do what she was told. Relax, find her voice, express something other than panic. She watched the frothy water assault the intricate battlements of rocks and then retreat like a messy communal dance. She watched birds make sweeping arcs above the sea before plummeting as if shot down. But she kept returning to the canvas, to the square of the landscape she had denied. Maybe panic was all that was left, maybe her voice was too thin now, too reedy and awkward to mean anything.
A wave hit the rocks beside her with more force than she felt it had any right to and salty spray rained down. Her foot slid on the slick cave floor and she jerked dangerously forward, grabbing a jagged rock just in time.
Her mind flooded with images. Her limbs artfully arranged across the rocks, her blood washed away by the creeping tide. She looked so still, only her hair and clothes allowed motion, caressed by the gentle water swelling and retreating around her until eventually, it would take her. She would have to watch, unable to move, as her fate slowly solidified, knowing no one was coming to find her. The back of her mind buzzed quietly, like the hum of the office at midnight, her heart pumping out an unnatural rhythm.
With a few deep breaths, she managed to return to herself by focusing instead on disproving herself. There was always someone waiting for her, she had made sure of that. Alan. Krishna. Sara. Derek. The names bounced off the unforgiving cave walls and returned to her with a hollow echo. Asim. Sandra. Sky. She wondered if they were thinking about her, if somehow they knew she was calling out to them. It was 3:15, Alan would be at the office, Krishna would be at football, Sara would be who knows where.
There was no signal out here. This was the point, this was what being alone was. The buzzing increased, now like bees working to a strict deadline, just loud enough to drown out the waves. They swarmed, pulling at the edges of a hastily sewn wound.
The buzzing crowded her mind with disparate images, all jostling like commuters. Parts of people in sombre dress, a slumped shoulder, a tight fist digging into her thigh, the tops of countless anonymous heads bowed in resignation. She was going to miss something. She would get back and they would all be gathered solemnly, united by a tragedy she couldn’t ever understand. And she would never stop imagining what could have happened if she hadn’t been so selfish and weak and gone away. An accident at Alan’s work, a sudden illness that took little Sky, she was going to miss it and they would never say it but they were going to blame her. And then that distance in understanding would branch out like a fungus reaching every part of her life until the misunderstanding surpassed the understanding and they would have to leave her and she wouldn’t need a cove to be alone.
“Are you lost?” a voice called out behind her like a bell. Linda emitted an embarrassingly high-pitched shriek.
A collection of disparate strips of fabric holding together patches of blanched, sharply angled skin stared up at her through overgrown eyebrows.
“No,” was all Linda could manage. “I’m here to paint, for some me time.” Linda blurted out before she could stop herself.
The old woman took this as a cue to hobble over to a nearby rock and sit gingerly down.
“You haven’t painted before,” the old woman stated.
“Not in a long time.”
Linda had been examining the bathroom tiles when she decided to come here. With her eye at ground level, the striations of the tiles almost looked like a landscape, the soaked in dust was nearly a craggy coastline, a stray pube was almost a rolling wave caught in motion. She could remember the serene feeling of painting but could no longer imagine how it worked. Back then she thought little and did much. Now she seemed to have turned herself inside out.
Back then she could stare at the dent in her wall for what felt like hours, imagining all the sketches and paintings she could draw from it. Back then it was a bite from a giant mosquito or a pair of seductive eyes attracting the barman’s attention. If she looked at it now it would only be a nuisance to remove. That was before she made her mind up about herself.
The old woman was right, she wasn’t a painter anymore. It was overly romantic to think she could do this, that she was capable of getting anything from this.
“Well,” she said with forced brightness. “I better be going.”
“Not tonight, the tide is already in. No access to the beach until morning.”
Linda stared blankly at the old woman’s forthright expression, her false smile still frozen in place. The sea tipped the easel back and forth, tapping out the persistent rhythm of hollow applause. Ordering her to the stage with the sound of trained hooves, not congratulating her. She was the Best Woman in Publicity in Britain. It was a statement, not an achievement. The trophy was not a trophy, it was perverse. A twisted female torsoー legless, armless, headless. It was easy to grip and swing. She didn’t set it down for hours after, not until she was picking the slivers of glass from her hand, making a neat collection of transparent red islands on the bathroom floor.
A drop of freezing water hit the bare flesh of her collarbone. The sensation stunned her. She held her breath like she was on a precipice, the odd calm of there being nothing to be done filling her up.
“You need tea,” the old woman said, disappearing deeper into the cave. It was a statement rather than an invitation so she followed like a lost child.
Linda ducked through the opening at the back of the cave exactly her companion’s size and pressed herself into the corner of the economical living space. The smoothly curved surface of the rock embraced the woman’s sparse possessions like treasured pets. A carved wooden spoon on the wall, a pile of faded rugs in the corner, a small pile of seashells. They all looked so right in their places. Something like envy flickered at the base of her stomach. With a calm industry, the woman tended to the fire, collected items from the makeshift cupboard carved into the rock and arranged the two camp chairs in front of the rounded opening that looked out onto the sea. She was surprised she owned more than one of anything.
The old woman handed her a tin mug of black tea without glancing up and placed herself in one of the chairs.
“Thank you, your home is lovely. You must be very resourceful.”
It had grown darker while Linda was distracted by the old woman’s habitat. The hands on her watch as stubbornly still as if they had been painted on.
“Sorry, do you have the time?” Linda tried to minimise the panic in her voice.
The old woman looked baffled for a moment.
“So what is it you do out here?” she tried again.
“I wake up, I fish, I watch the sea. Sometimes it is the same as the day before, sometimes it is not. Either way, it is something to do that day,” she said simply, giving her sloped shoulders a little shrug as if this were obvious.
She stared blankly at her watch for a little longer before sitting. The old woman watched the landscape like she was reading a long-forgotten letter, worn by time but fresh in her memory.
Eyes closed, the cool air pressing against her cheeks like fresh sheets. The cave held her with smooth authority, the waves becoming comfortingly indistinct. She felt all these things and thought nothing.
Linda rose slowly and went to her easel. She considered the stark white of the canvas for a moment before launching it into the sea. The two women watched the canvas bob further and further away until it blended into the landscape it couldn’t hope to capture.