"Had we but world enough and time..."
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Had it not been for Theo W, the romantic promise of my relationship with Emily would never have been fulfilled. We had met just three times in June, and in July she would fly away to the States.
But damn I was smitten. Not only was she beautiful, she was kind and thoughtful, could reminisce fondly about books and California, had stimulating conversation, evidently shared similar intellectual standards as me, and she seemed to love me too. I hadn't remotely met a girl with whom I could be so close before.
I reckoned that we had not had enough shared experience that our relationship would last the long distance. I didn't want to say goodbye to her before my planned trip to the W's house in the Isle of Wight. So I asked Theo W if I could invite her to the yearly week-long get-together of (generally) Catz students. He agreed. And I invited Emily, and to my surprise she agreed.
I arrived Friday afternoon, and Emily arrived on Saturday morning. Theo very kindly allowed us to stay in the double bed at the top of the house. (The house has about 15 beds so is good for large gatherings.)
It was a beautifully sunny day. We shared some time reading on the balcony in the early afternoon. I was reading Eugene Onegin, and a particularly beautiful passage about how Tatyana's romantic expectations of Onegin grow through the seasons. Yet I had days, not seasons. Approximately what I said to Emily was:
"It must have been so strange even fifty years ago. You would spend years before a relationship could be fully established. Communication would be by letter and could take months. Things would develop by slow increments, by seasons. It had to be so slow, so restrained before anything of magnitude could happen.
Now, you can just call, zip off an email or fly if you desperately need to meet someone far off. There are one-night stands, pretty arbitrary dating is normal. It's so rapid, and there's so much potential for something to be almost, and then gone."
To be honest, I can't remember what she said [which is not very fair, I know] but it was a lovely conversation. In fact, I'm afraid that this blog is going to be pretty much filled with my reflections, and little of what she said - simply because I don't remember her remarks or observations well.
Lingering behind our conversation was the assumption that she would have to depart soon. She had nowhere to stay in the UK, and fully planned to return home in a week or two. The best we could hope for was regular Skype conversation and occasional flights to see each other (a bit like now).
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The beach was marked with squiggles, what looked like tubes of sand displaced by worms; sporadic seaweed; water troughs and the fine sea-blue/sea-green radiance of the water; sometimes particoloured rocks; and every so often a human or two, perhaps with a dog, or kids sculpting castles in the sand; and, in each mind, edifices of memory to be washed away.
We walked along the beach and by the sea, clasping hands. Every day we walked along the beach, feeling the pulse of each other and synchronising our pace. It would become a regular topic to discuss what we saw. We talked about many things.
The sea was a kind of frontier. Perversely it's very ability to isolate had forged the English nation-state, and catalyzed its imperial progress across the world, leaving in its wake the United States (itself made possible by the Atlantic). And that division made it difficult for Emily to stay -as she'd need a work visa; and, as we'd discover, the new government was constricting the influx of even intelligent foreigners like her.
So now the sea was isolating us. I remember approaching the tree-lined part of the beach, and thinking about the many millions walking about here and in the US - the random accidents of encountering someone who really suits you. And I had had very bad luck at that. And here our natures uprooted, straddling an implausibly thin margin between the shore of a sustained relationship, and the fragile break-up of the waves. Perhaps we were like ships passing each other on the ocean, never to encounter each other again.
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"You are walking through it howsoever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander [which means 'sequentiality']. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes...If I fell over a cliff...fell through the nebeneinander ['simultaneity'] ineluctably!"
Our time there seemed unreal, yet confirmed by motion. As we passed along the seaside, we became a part of what we saw and heard, and of the spaces we encountered. The enchanting lull of the sea, the rich colours dappling the shore. The slim line of the horizon rising up to the built-up scape of the seafront walk, via an endless flow of water. Encroaching waves. Together, apart - some compromise would have to be reached.
