Sunset

Image Courtesy Matthew Snowden

The First Time I Saw The Sea, I Became Someone Else.

‘The Sea’ was on display in the gallery around the corner from my flat. This wasn’t the usual water colour of rinky-dink sailing boats topping foamy white waves; but a sea afire  with one of those sunsets of shock and awe that you get in the Highlands. Bold, confident strokes of molten gold, bruised indigo and hot magenta, chasing out the tranquil turquoise of a departing day; sea and sky separated, like two combatants, by a sullen range of distant foothills.

Arrested initially by the drama, I took a closer look, to be then captured by something I hadn’t first noticed: a little white croft in a corner of the strand with a figure in a homespun shift and grey shawl standing by its gate. Were they watching the sunset or were they watching me, the viewer?

Admiration and curiosity won. Within the hour ‘The Sea’ was mine and hanging on the wall by the bed. It would be the last thing I would see at night and the first thing I’d see on waking.

Then the dreams began.

Now, I was never one for bothering about dreams: neither the pointless interpreting of symbolism,  nor the habit of keeping a pen and notepad nearby. To me, they were always harmless  and sometimes entertaining ephemera.

But these dreams were different, happening every night, from that very first night.

In some I’d find myself within walls as white as a Jesuit’s cell, sitting on an iron bedstead covered with a faded patchwork quilt: dank and salt crusted. Opposite me a dressing table, with a rheumy, liver spotted looking-glass.

In it, my reflection - wearing the drab shift of the woman of the croft, hair loose around my shoulders. And through the window behind me: that sunset.

Other nights, I’d be in a cold, stone-flagged kitchen sitting at a scrubbed wooden table. Before me a blackened range, behind, a lone zinc tap over a chipped Belfast sink.  And through the window behind me: that sunset.

After waking again among a tangle of bedclothes some two weeks in, I sat and with an unblinking gaze, confronted the croft and its inhabitant. Was it my  sleep-raddled imagination or were the figure’s thin lips silently mouthing at me? Was her hand gesturing?

Compelled by this to visit the isle: the sea, the place, the person,  that weekend found me in my car, bumping its way uphill along a deteriorating track. At last, on cresting the rise, the sea appeared, in all its glittering blue-grey splendour, already reflecting the tender pink and lilac of the clouds.  A gentle harbinger of the  sunset.

Below was the croft and, moving towards the gate, the woman in the homespun. And it was by the gate that she stopped, as if held back by an invisible barrier.

She was young – about my age – not some spinster, ancient and weathered, as I’d anticipated. Her fair hair flowed long and loose around her shoulders, her face, bronzed, courtesy of the elements.

She granted me a nod.

‘Come inside.’

I followed into the now familiar kitchen. It smelt of the sea, tinged with a metallic hint of damp. I nervously licked my lips, brackish from the sea salt lightly settled there.

Before me was  the window, through which the sea was now reflecting bolder shades of gold, purple and fuchsia as the sunset built.

The crofter gestured me to sit, sit in the chair, facing the chipped sink with its solitary tap.

‘I know who you are.’ She said.

Was it my imagination, was the room getting chillier - or was it her tone?

 ‘ I visit your room: the dove grey walls, those crisp white sheets, the silky blue rug and outside, that great, green chestnut tree that filters the morning sunlight. ’

‘So she was in my room when I was ….’ It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Our dreams then, did they cross each other like ships in the night?’.

‘No,’  She whispered, ‘It was our souls.’

A silence as her eyes narrowed.

‘And now that you’re here, actually here….’ She paused again and as her hand moved towards me across the table, I felt my hair loosen and spread across my shoulders. Round us a miasma began to swirl, extending fingery tendrils that wound along our clothes, working, plucking -  then melting, to reveal its macabre work.

The crofter, basking comfortably in the aftermath, was dressed in my clothes: my jeans, my belt, my shirt. While now, itchily insinuating itself across my neck, arms and bare thighs was that shift and shawl of drab.

A slow smile: the smile of a predator closing in on its prey.

‘You see, you didn’t just buy a painting – you bought a pact.’ The triumph was unmistakeable.

 ‘A pact to release me……’

And, quickly  scooping up my car keys from the table, she strode through the door, through the gate and into my car.

Stumbling, over the hem of the unfamiliar garment, I tried to follow, only to be repelled at the gate by that invisible force field. There was no escape.

Behind me, my freedom was motoring over the hill - before me  the eternal prospect of sea, sky and earth ablaze with that sunset.

Until the next person might see The Sea for the first time –

- and become someone else.