Stolen Time

When there is no past, no future, only now.

The Cove

November 2023

The latch clicks. Not loudly, just enough to tell me the back door is properly closed. Gravel crunches underfoot, but it’s ok, it won’t disturb my husband. Before I left, I checked, double, triple checked, all the windows were closed. The sound of me leaving won't disturb him. With luck, it will be a couple of hours before he wakes and I’ll be back.

I’m stealing time. These precious moments aren’t marked on a clockface, scribbled on a kitchen calendar, or logged in my telephone’s digital diary. Instead they have slipped down the back of the sofa to nestle amongst the lost change and biscuit crumbs. It is a secret time that doesn’t exist, at least, not in any normal way.

The car starts first time. Wipers sweep grey, freezing water left and right. When I pull out onto Wareham Road, empty black tarmac flows ahead of me and I pretend I’m the only person on earth, as I glide past a people-less Co-op and hundreds of houses with curtains drawn shut. 

Away from the sprawl of the town, the landscape widens and Wareham’s brick boxes give way to oaks and beeches. Bent and deformed, the trees arch over the road, forming a tunnel of half-naked branches. Leaves that clung so possessively to twigs all summer now swirl above the road, as if turned into red, yellow and orange birds. Some search for a place to land, others spin upwards, caught in a vortex.

The car emerges from beneath the trees to a bowl-full of stars and moonlight. The tense back and neck muscles that have plagued me all week dissolve into the carseat, trickle through the floor and get left behind with the fallen leaves. My fingers loosen, and I wiggle them as hot air from the heater warms them.

The road straightens, meadows on either side are full to the brim with water the colour of silver draining onto the heathland. This is part of Thomas Hardy’s wild Wessex; mile upon sweeping mile of late-season heather, bracken and gorse in soft greys and auburns. On the horizon, a line of Scots pines punctuates the landscape like a line of exclamation marks, while hawthorns sculpted by south-westerly storms point inland with gnarled fingers. 

My eyes are playing games with me when I spot Tess, Hardy’s heroine, waiting to throw herself under my car. The death of her son, Sorrow, too much to bear. I slow, it’s a sika deer, head high, eyes flashing white in the headlights, and it crosses in front of me. One bound and it's gone, as if it was never there. 

I crave this wild land. It calls to me when I sleep, and creeps like ivy around my mind before I wake. Knowing wild places like this still exist is soothing. They are an elixir for the bad days. A soothing ointment to smear over grazes and dab onto open wounds.

The road squirms on its approach to East Lulworth, running parallel to a rough flint wall it’s the boundary to the ancient Lulworth Estate. Between the trees, I glimpse Lulworth Castle, the soft Purbeck stone of its battlements glowing amber as light levels rise.

A sharp left. At the entrance to Lulworth Camp, two decommissioned tanks stand guard next to an automatic barrier and guard hut, flanked by a high perimeter fence. I’m struck by the way the fence’s razor wire, along with the eyes of CCTV, makes The Camp more fortified and menacing than Lulworth Castle has ever been.

The road plunges into West Lulworth’s narrow high street, like a wench’s cleavage. Past the Castle Inn, and a handful of whitewashed thatched cottages, chimneys are billowing wood smoke. Lulworth Cove reveals itself, then disappears again as I swing into the car park where my two friends are waiting. 

We first started meeting early in the morning at The Cove in July, before the tourist buses, walkers, and school trips arrived. We’d chatter, laugh and flip-flop our way down the lane, away from our cars, only a five-minute walk to the sea. At the height of summer, the sun was well above the cliffs, the rocks where we placed our bags already warm to the touch. Now, in late autumn, the rocks are like ice and we race against the chill of the wind to tug on wetsuits, gloves, and woolly hats before racing each other to the water’s edge. As we plunge in, shrieking turns to laughter.

The anxieties, fears, and loneliness of 3am have now disappeared. I knew they would. It’s why I come. I’m no longer a wife, sister, friend or employee. No longer a carer for my husband. There is no past, no future, just the rise and fall of the waves and the seaweed clinging to my feet. The cliffs embrace me. Salt stings my cracked lips and turns my face pink. I scream, because I can, and the wind whips the sound away, setting me free.