clouds and cliffs | c.h (au)

prologue

DAY ELEVEN.

She's called Clayworth, just like her father. Her name, she'd stolen it from him just in time, jut before he left, one morning of June. He had packed his bags, he had set off on the high seas. He was gone, to somewhere, somewhere else. Somewhere better, probably. He had left behind him his wife, and the child she had made him in his back. The mother, she cried for days and years, she stills cries sometimes, when she's alone, when she realises there is no one sitting in front of her, when she eats her dinner. The daughter only remembers the sound of the slamming door, waking her up from a nightmare. Looking through the window, she only saw her little street lashed by the rain, and the illusion of a blue oilskin, pulling behind him a suitcase, too small to carry a whole life of dusty relics. That's all she has left of him. This, an old fading memory, her last name, and the freckles scattering across her childish face.

He called her Ewen. He gave her a man's name, like that, without even asking if that would suit her, that little girl. The kid, she would have loved to be called Louise, Claire, or Madeleine. She would have loved to have a name that glides on anyone's tongue, like the toffees her grandmother used to bake her, before she died. She would have loved everyone to tell her how it suited her perfectly. But instead, she got a caricature, an imposture. Ewen. The name of a lost woodcutter, drinking partner of a dead drunk father.

The little Clayworth is sixteen. She's not really tall, just a litlle more than her mother. She has long blond hair, always tangled, dried out by the marine wind, that she cuts herself. Her scissors snips, sharp and fast, clumsy but assured, are as steep as the cliffs ripping apart the horizon. She never tie them, preferring them to flit at the sea breeze, projecting hair locks covering her big eyes. They are grey, grey like the Dover sky, a grey tending towards blue, in which stars can be seen, when the weather's not too bad. They're always wide open, and they stare at you, glaze at you, again and again. They make you feel uncomfortable, sometimes. Especially because Ewen doesn't talk.

Because she's not like everyone else, Ewen. She's ate up, she's lost, she's frustrated. That's what they say. Those who don't know. She's afraid of peole, afraid of crowds, afraid of laughters, of tears. Afraid of suffering. She has always been like that, Ewen. She would have liked to have friends, at the beginning. But normal people don't like what's too different from them. And she understood that quickly. She had hit a wall, hit reality. So she withdrew into herself, like an oyster into her precious pearl. She locked herself in her world of words, her universe of music, her fortress of books.

Ewen Clayworth has always lived in Dover, lost somewhere between its limestone cliff and its potato fields. She lives in a small wooden house, on the old port. It constantly smells fish, and that makes her sick. The scent of sea disturbs her, perturbs her. Dead creatures, eyes and mouth wide open, rotting on local fisherman's stalls, that disgust her. But she deals with it. She has to. Because she's chained up, she's rooted in there, in Dover, in that city where she was born, that city where she lives, and will live. Till she dies. Because that's life. Her life.

She's discreet, fragile. She's the little shrub that has just been planted in the middle of a meadow. Her small leaves fly away when it's windy. She bends, she even falls, sometimes. Yet, she doesn't move, she doesn't grow up. She just gets up, again and again.

But she has someone. Someone much stronger than her. Another tree in the field. But it's not a feverish shrub like she is. It's a young oak, so vigorous and so wise that he seems to be hundred years old. He has tiny wrinkles in the corner of his eyes, and dimples surrounding his child-like smile. He is much older than her, and must be about eighteen, or nineteen years old, already, even though Ewen doesn't precisely know. He is not afraid of the wind. He doesn't give in. He stands tall, he confronts. His name is Calum, and he has already lived everything.

He takes her everywhere. He wraps up his little shrub in his green briefcase and he shows her Dover, his Dover. The Dover that no one knows, the Dover of the Cowgate area, its graveyard, its paved alleys, its narrow pubs. They sit at a table, at the back. They order something to drink, and today even something to eat, because he wanted them to. A vinegar fish'n'chips for him, a simple buttered slice of bread. He puts his elbows on the large piece of varnished wood, rests his head on them, and looks at her, straight in the eyes. So she sits up straight, hand resting on her thighs, a long blonde strand falling down her face, covering her eyes, so he won't be able to pierce her with his chocolate glance. She doesn't talk. He's in charge of that. Ewen listens. She listens to him talking about everything and nothing, she focuses on what he's saying, she immerses herself in his opinions, wipes out hers, and replaces them. She drinks his words like you swallow water, it prickles her throat but she keeps on swimming, she takes the risk that another wave might take and irritate her. Their glasses arrives, their plates too. Calum makes a start on his with appetite, while Ewen just cuts her slice of bread in two, and puts the first half to her lips, chapped by the marine wind and salt. There is a small pause, then he breaks the silence, talking again.

DAY ONE.

« You're Ewen, right ? They told me you don't talk that much. That suits me, in a way. I like it when people listen as I talk. And I want to talk. I'm there for twenty hours. "Community service", fucking shit. I had to choose something in the list. I picked "talking to therapy patients", it was the least exasperating, to be polite. So, as you're there everyday, I thought it was easier. You're gonna have to put up with me. Ten days. Two hours per day. And believe me, that's enough. »

The young lady nods, without saying a word. She doesn't even lay eyes on the man standing in front of her, contenting herself with simply staring at the from now on cold pea soup on the table. It was awful, anyway, and she had only laid lips on it, before replacing it on the tray.

« You can talk as well, some time, if you want. Or not. You don't have to. »