And The Rains...

“The wise man built his house upon the rock.” It was one of his greatest bugbears that over my years of independence I had strayed into staunch atheism, but as I turn the key to the crumbling remains of the home he built, I can’t shake it from my brain. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And the rains came tumbling down.

I place my set of keys down on the kitchen table and call out for mum. She’s usually in her chair in the corner, watching some orange man searching for over-priced antiques to sell on to unsuspecting bidders, but today the chair is empty, blanket strewn over the arm, TV turned off. Isla sheds her boots and coat and disappears off with her colouring. Sometimes I’m glad for her preference towards hands-off parenting. I can feel a breeze from the other room, the cawing of seagulls set against the tapping of a loose cardboard box against a wall.

“Mum, where are you?”

In the sitting room, Isla is splayed out on the floor with her crayons, already deep in concentration.

“The wall fell down.” She says, pointing a purple crayon at a section of plaster that had crumbled off onto the carpet. I sigh.

“Have you seen Grandma yet?” She points to the patio doors and beyond to the old barn at the cliff edge.

As a child I could never understand why my parents had built their home somewhere this remote, so far from any other families. But as an adult there’s something bracing about it. The sheer ferocity of the land and the sea, coming together in both rage and remiss under a soft-grey sky. The salt tinged woods and fallen fencing snaking across the clifftops.

She’s at the edge of the vacant gable end, her hands fumbling at the ineffective red-and-white plastic tape before the drop zone. It had been a well-fought battle, but the front of the barn had finally succumbed to the sea. A short pile of jagged rocks betrays a steep drop down to the shoreline. In a few months time the house will be gone too. It seems to be resigned towards its fate, crumbling beneath our feet.

“What are you doing out here?” My hands clutch at her shoulders, but she doesn’t flinch. It’s an unfamiliar closeness. She’s cold. I pull her closer, and for the first time in months, she lets me. She tucks her head into my neck. We stand there for a moment, staring out.

“It’s a good rock, duck.”

I’m taken aback by her familiarity. She’s never called me that before. The sea continues its inexorable assault.

“Do you understand where we’re going today?” I say to her, loosening the wringing of her hands to place the cup inside.

Mum nods. A bolt of iron-grey hair drops from her shoulders as she sips at the teacup. She looks at me with a guarded suspicion, lips curled into a forced smile.

“Of course I do.” She straightens up, defiant.

“Explain it to me.”

“With the boxes.”

“Some of the boxes. In the car. Where will we go with the boxes?” I can see her mind churning, the embarrassment creeping onto her cheeks.


“Not important is it.”

“To mine. In the car.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“And you’ll live with me. Me and Isla and Ted the dog. In Sussex.”

Mum doesn’t reply.

“It’ll be nice. Like old times. A bit of company, and you can have your own room with your things. Not too far from the beach. And we won’t be so far from everybody.”

In that moment she has never looked so old. She’s absent-mindedly clutching at a tassel on her blanket, blue veins under the translucent skin of her hand, simple gold wedding band hanging loosely off a wrinkled finger. Those were the hands that raised me. That held mine tight as we walked the coastal path to the beach. That slapped me when I misbehaved. That made pasties and pies, biscuits and bread rolls, and laid them out fresh from the oven when I got home from school. I can’t bear to look at them now. So wisened and resistant to my touch.

“I need to go and check on Isla,” I say, partially to avoid having to sit with her any longer, and as I say it, a whole new layer of guilt places itself firmly onto my shoulders. “You’ll be alright here, mum, won’t you?”

I throw a scarf round my neck and make my way back toward the house to find my daughter already in the back garden.

Isla is all the wildest parts of me. She was a late addition to my life, and has remained a shock to the system ever since. Thick brown waves that won’t stay flat, dark eyebrows and a permanently stern expression whatever the mood. She’s found herself a trowel and is digging up plants from the flowerbed by the patio and flinging them into the grasses. In any other situation that would be punishable offence, but I don’t see much point in stopping her.

“When can we go?” She says, digging her trowel into a particularly stubborn root.

“Cal will be here with the van in a bit. Won’t be long. Are you cold?”

“No, I’m bored.” As she retracts her arm, soil skids across the patio.

“We’ll get back by teatime.”

Isla digs the trowel into the soil with agitated force. It hits something solid. She looks at me. Cuts further into the soil. She drops the trowel and clears the earth with her hands, pulling out something metal. She pulls her sleeve over her hands and clears the remaining earth from the top of it. It’s one of those biscuit tins you often disappointingly find is full of sewing equipment. The edges had been taped shut with layers and layers of parcel tape. She offers it to me. I take the trowel from the flowerbed and cut away at the tape, ripping away layer upon layer until I can prize the lid free.

Isla and I sit cross legged on the stone for quite some time, poring over the contents with fascination. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures of dad. Him building the house, them in the garden, us planting vegetables and messing around on the beach. Love letters and trinkets from years gone by.

Dad had been gone for two years now, but over the last few months, the pieces of him that used to be so evident in our house had been gradually disappearing. I thought I’d been absent-mindedly packing them into boxes and that I’d come across them again on the other side. But evidently not. Mum must have been saving them for a special purpose.

This was their house. Built by his own hand. She wanted to leave it all here. Every bit of him.

I send Isla to wash the dirt off her hands but she’s already wiped most of it onto her trousers in an act of pre-defiance. She scampers off to show face and I take a moment to rest. The journey back to Brighton will be a Herculean test of my patience. Mum’s insistence that Isla’s forthright nature can be easily fixed with a shoe to the back of the leg will be the first of many battles I will be required to fight. My daughter aging forwards, my mother aging backwards, two souls from different generations with only me as a bridge.

My eyes flit open as an ominous creak fills the air. I run across the back garden, scuffing through the patches of soil we’d spread on the patio and onto the uneven turf. My bare feet prickle against coarse tufts of stubborn thistle. I stop at the Old Barn.

At the open front end, two halves of red and white tape are gesticulating wildly at each other. I walk forwards, slower now, knowing what could greet me on the jagged rocks below. I gaze out at the broken land she loved so much, the sun setting hazy yellow on the horizon. And all I can hear is: The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. But nobody ever told him how fragile it could be. I close my eyes and take a steep breath in, unable to bring myself to look any further.

Suddenly, the cold, grating sound of rusted metal against rustling grasses pulls me from my stupor. My heart is in my mouth. She’s there, on the old swing behind the barn. Not dashed out on those rocks, but sat quietly on that seat, swinging gently back and forth, silver hair wild against the wind as if everything was nothing. Hand in hand with my little girl. Tears of relief, or anger, or some emotion I can’t reach roll down my cheek as I reach the cold stone of the patio.

“I can’t get her to talk,” Isla says. I look into my mother’s eyes, deep and green. She looks straight through me. She’s gone. I should have known we could never take her from here. Not all of her. This is her land. Her rock. No matter how it crumbles.

The seat groans as it takes my load. I enclose Isla’s palm in mine and we sit, hand in hand in hand, silently watching the clouds draw in. Out on the lanes, the distant sound of a van courses slowly towards us. I’ll miss this place. I’ll miss it. And I’ll miss her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A soft blue sea melts effortlessly into the sky, shielding the horizon from anyone who would wish to seek it. Down by the cliffs, a swing seat, shiny silver chain and yellow pine in stark contrast to the sand-grey weathered grasses of the untamed cliffside.

As they sit, his arm clasps her shoulder tightly, drawing them closer. He takes off his hat. She tucks the top of her head into his neck. They sit, staring out, gently swinging with the breeze.


“It’s a good rock, duck.” He says. The seagulls call from the skyline.