clifftop picnic
“Tell me again,” you say, for the twentieth time clawing your hair out of your eyes as the wind snatches at it, “why you thought you’d make a clifftop picnic in a hurricane?”
My grin is only slightly forced. “Blow out the cobwebs, innit.”
The wind is onshore so we’re in no danger as we walk the cliffside path by late afternoon light. I’m wearing my #3 backpack, a blue thing about the height of my entire torso that has aluminium rails in the back and clips comfortably about my hips. You’re dressed in something thick and comforting, not the flowing black dress that the location and weather demands, but that wind does its best to give drama as it howls at us and lashes your long hair this way and that. The sky is textured grey the colour of slate: a bad-news sky, a sky with attitude.
You have to raise your voice over the rushing of the wind in the scrubby coastal trees. “If I tell you I don’t have any more cobwebs, can we go back to the car?”
“Have faith!” I reach for your hand, characteristically cold so mine feels deliciously warm in yours. “The weatherman said encouraging things!” Seeing your frown I drop the relentlessly upbeat façade. “Give it another twenty minutes? I’ve got a place I want to show you.”
Maybe it’s not your idea of a good time. Maybe you wish you were back home. But you go along with it for my sake.
A short walking rain stings our faces, three waves then done. I apologise like I caused it. Beside and below us, a seagull is flying backwards, unable to keep pace with the gust.
“… This is ridiculous,” I shout, looking out on a sea like a cement mixer. “Maybe we should turn back.”
But you’re looking to the horizon. Perhaps you see something I don’t. “No. You may as well show me this thing like you wanted.”
So we trudge on. But as the path climbs, the sounds change. Howling receeds, your hair starts to stream behind you rather than all around. The light, too, changes. Stripes of watery gold appear in the sky, though belts of rain graze the sea, miles away.
All of a sudden the path circles to the right, skimming a broad bay. That golden light washes a ring of cliffs, picking out iron-rich, jagged rocks among the pale sandstone that slopes precipitously into the sea. Waves channeled by the walls of the bay lens into rows of partially submerged boulders, causing the air to be filled with spray. You taste salt on the breeze.
The air is so clear. The chaos, natural and powerful, is magnificent. We stand there for a while, close enough to hold hands, just looking out.
“Okay,” you say, grudgingly. I smile, relieved. “Picnic now.”
Two boulders provide us backrests and, to some degree, shelter. We are unwilling to hide the sea from view so the wind still occasionally chases locks across your face. We sit side-by-side for warmth and provide one another further shelter. I squeeze your hand after setting up and weighing down the blanket.
“Dinner is served.”
It’s a spread, indeed. Two thermoses contain nearly two litres of butternut squash soup I wouldn’t shut up about in the car, having impressed myself by deciding to add coconut cream and so accidentally producing the creamiest, autumniest soup possible. I hand you a Tupperware of sausage rolls and a cap full of steaming autumniest soup and make dipping motions. The combination is surprisingly moreish and you polish off four sausage rolls without really thinking about it. I kiss your cheek and you give me a pastry-speckled smile.
We talk as you eat. I discuss code, programs I have built that scour social networks for hints of various things. Threats, opportunities. We discuss what it might be that could bring more ancient souls to you, put them on your dinner plate.
“It’s not going to be an algorithm,” you say, but we’re both just guessing.
A rainbow of sandwiches gives you so much variety. You sample everything first—cheese savory, tuna and sweetcorn, beef and horseradish, full English (there’s quite a few of these; I like feeding you sausages), the ever-present cheese-and-tomato, chicken salad, ham. All different breads. If I didn’t show it in other ways, you’d know from just these two lasagne-sized tupperwares full of sandwiches that I will put every ounce of effort I can into making you happy.
A contemplative silence falls over us both as you munch your way through the first container. You eat your favourite sandwiches first, which I find adorable, as it’s the polar opposite to how I operate.
By this point hunger is well and truly assuaged. You’re heading past full and into bloated, but there’s a load of food to go. I bring out another container from my backpack and practically unveil the contents. Chicken skewers, in three flavours.
“Charred, barbecue and satay. I’ve never made satay before.”
You open your mouth expectantly and I take on the delightful job of placing a morsel before your mouth. You sink your teeth into it and let me pull the wooden skewer away before taking it in and chewing. A gulp and then another offering from me. Repeat a few dozen dozen times. A lot of chickens give their lives for you.
“You’re so…” I stop myself speaking, just stroking your cheek. You turn to look at me. Pellucid skies allow early evening gold to illuminate your skin. Still shapely and profoundly beautiful, your cheeks show the faintest plumping from your decadent diet. The eyes that scan my face cause my heart to skip a beat.
Despite all the time we spend together, I have never grown used to being the subject of your gaze. You have the quality of always making me feel seen anew.
“‘I’m so’?” you prompt, with a twisted smile that shows you know precisely how soppy I want to be right now.
“So… goddamn… right. The most concrete thing in this world.” I throw an incoherent hand-gesture into space. How the hell am I supposed to communicate how perfect you are?
“Stick to cooking,” you say, though you lean across and thrill me into silence by nuzzling into and kissing my neck.
The chicken demolished—your burps entirely taken the by the wind—it’s time to revisit the sandwiches. I select and feed them to you, aping the order in which you emptied the first tray. You lie back against the boulder and sigh in between mouthfuls, relaxing as your stomach pulls blood away from your other systems. Between sandwiches I stroke your belly, feeling its soft mountains and valleys smooth beneath my palm.
It’s chilly in the wind. You warm up by finishing the soup with the remaining four sausage rolls. They squeeze into your packed tummy far slower than the first lot did, though the first lot has presumably been long since reduced to pulp by your ravenous insides.
And then I’m feeding you dessert. An entire Battenburg waits to be devoured, and Bakewell tarts, and chocolate cake. I change positions to kneel before you as I place sweet things into your mouth, seeming fascinated by the magic trick you perform over and over. Perfect little items of confectionary enter, are reduced by smooth and powerful motions of your jaw, are somehow made by the bobbing of your throat to disappear. Part of me can’t believe it’s all disappearing to inside you. So much food… and yet it’s all inside you.
You finish up the last little aluminium forkful of chocolate cake. A little frosting remains on your lips. I cannot help myself but kiss you. You lick it all away, taking everything for yourself.