Juliana Gray

THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER

Imagine the White Cliffs of Dover: rough shears of chalk, slightly bulged, like flanks of a white rhino, if white rhinos were actually white. Chunks like crumbly cheese tumble to the beach, where disapproving waves hiss.

But you are imagining the cliffs as viewed from the ocean. Try it from above: a narrow white edge where the green world falls into the blue-gray sea. You and a friend are walking along the edge, but not too close-- the cliffs are very high. It would be easy to fall.

The day is warm and unbelievably lovely, blocked into azure, emerald, gray, chalk white. You and your friend, L, have been lucky during this trip; in ten English days, only two have rained. You were prepared. A light rain jacket sits at the bottom of your backpack. But while the ocean wind buffets your ears and sends your hair swirling, you do not need the jacket. The sun slides in and out behind clouds like a marked card in a shuffling deck.

To the south, you make out a hazy smear: Calais. When L takes a picture, her phone welcomes her to France. She is roaming.

Walking trails meander the ridge, some mere inches from the drop. They are pitted with rabbit holes, though you and L have seen no rabbits. In fact, you’ve seen almost no wildlife during this trip, not even roadkill. Where are the foxes and hares? Where are the magical creatures from children’s books, badgers in waistcoats, a hedgehog in an apron chiding you for coming late to tea?

Don’t trip in the rabbit holes. It would be very easy to fall.

You walked here from the South Foreland Lighthouse, where you took a tour and had tea. It was a long walk from the bus stop to the beach and then to the lighthouse, so you were glad to sit down. You and L ate scones with clotted cream, and laughed when you saw that both of you had chosen the tiny jars of black currant jam.  Beyond the picnic tables, families flew kites, which plunged and snapped in the wind.

Now, at the cliffs, L calls you to look at a tiny yellow flower growing at the cliff’s white lip. Neither of you knows what it is called. You’re tempted to take a picture, but you don’t want to stand at the edge, where it would be so easy to fall. For the chalk to crumble. For L to push you.

If this were America, there would be rails holding you back ten feet from the cliffs, danger signs, funnel cakes and lemonade stands. You passed one warning sign at the lighthouse: a triangle in black, white, and faded red, with a drawing of a figure tilting off a broken cliff edge into wavy lines representing water. The sign was amusing, rather than alarming. You took a picture.

Here’s a plant that looks like kale, with snails the size of chestnuts nestled in the leaves. Is the plant edible? Are the snails?  Would they be served together, elegantly plated, sauced with butter and garlic?

L would not push you, of course, nor you her. You have been friends for almost twenty years. You came to England to see a famous play, starring a famous actor. You saw the play two nights ago, in London, and will see it again tomorrow. The actor, whom you’ve admired in many movies and on television, was inhumanly handsome, with cheekbones like knives. Or cliffs. It had been difficult to convince yourself that he was real, fifteen feet in front of you, not projected on a mitigating screen.

One of the walking trails is an old army road, a lighthouse guide told you. It leads to a visitors’ center, but along the way it passes some recently unearthed tunnels and underground barracks used during the Second World War. Tourists can buy a ticket to the tunnels, but you and L agree that this sounds grim. The original lighthouse lantern burned whale oil.

You and L are both writers. Does this matter? Probably not, though it explains the Woolf jokes. You took a picture, back in town, of a sign: “LIGHTHOUSE ROAD.  NO ACCESS TO LIGHTHOUSE.”

She would not push you, but you do think of jumping. Or, not exactly jumping, not so dramatic an action, but stepping off with a little hop, like leaving an escalator. The cliffs are curved, first concave and then convex, so you wouldn’t plummet straight down, but would strike and bounce all the way down to the rocks. It would be quite painful. Most of you would be broken before you touched water. Yesterday, at Canterbury Cathedral, you saw the spot where Thomas Becket was killed, the top of his skull struck off by four knights with swords.

You step back.

There was a third friend, J, at the beginning of this trip. She is a friend of L’s, but you were growing to like her. She and L have been planning this trip for over a year; you’re just tagging along. Then her mother-in-law died suddenly, and she had to fly home. She never saw the play with the famous actor. But at least, she said to L with a nod at you, she wasn’t leaving L in England alone.

You and L banter as you walk, kicking white pebbles, exchanging the jokes of the last ten days, of the last twenty years. You’re going to write a coffee table book called Cheerful Little Dogs of Great Britain, another called Tragic Women’s Pants of Great Britain. She’s going to write Misleading Signs of Great Britain. When you get back to Dover, you’ll take a bus to Canterbury and your hotel beside the cathedral. If the bus is a double-decker, you’ll sit up top.

Back at the lighthouse, on the picnic tables, beneath the waving kites, black currant jam melts in the sun. Bees drown happily in the jars.

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JULIANA GRAY'S THIRD POETRY COLLECTION, HONEYMOON PALSY, WAS PUBLISHED IN 2017 BY MEASURE PRESS. HER CREATIVE NONFICTION HAS APPEARED IN THE HOPKINS REVIEW, CUTBANK, WACCAMAW, AND ELSEWHERE. AN ALABAMA NATIVE, SHE LIVES IN WESTERN NEW YORK AND TEACHES AT ALFRED UNIVERITY.