Nine Hundred and Twelve

Arthur counts the steps from his front door to the waterline every morning. He has done this for six years. The number goes down. When he started, it was nine hundred and forty-seven. Measured in his steps, which are not long steps, because he is seventy-eight and his left hip is mostly metal. His wife, before she died, told him his steps were exactly two feet each. She measured one afternoon with a tape measure while he walked across the garden, not knowing he was being observed. He suspects she adjusted for the limp. This morning it is nine hundred and twelve. The path from his front door crosses the garden — what remains of it — then the lane, then the field where Ackroyd used to keep sheep. Ackroyd sold the sheep four years ago and moved to his daughter's in Whitby. The field is just grass now, bitten short by rabbits, tilting gently toward the cliff. The cliff is the problem. The council put up signs. DANGER — CLIFF EROSION. KEEP BACK FROM EDGE. Arthur walks past them every morning. They are twenty feet from the edge now. When they were installed, they were forty. He supposes someone will come and move them eventually. Or not. The council has other cliffs to worry about. He stops at what he considers a reasonable distance from the edge and looks down. The beach is brown and narrow and littered with chalk boulders that used to be part of the field behind him. The sea works on them patiently, grinding them into pebbles, grinding the pebbles into sand. The sand washes away. Nothing is wasted, exactly. Just relocated. His house was built in 1920 by a man who wanted a view of the sea and got one. The view has gotten better every year. The sea has gotten closer. Arthur has done the arithmetic. At the current rate — about five feet a year, more after storms — the cliff will reach his garden wall in seven years. His front door in eight. His kitchen, where he is sitting right now eating toast, in eight and a half. He will be eighty-six. If he makes it that far, which he is not counting on but not ruling out either. His father made it to ninety-one, though his father did not have a metal hip or a house sliding toward the North Sea. The insurance company stopped covering the house two years ago. The estate agent said she could list it, but that she'd have to disclose the erosion risk, and nobody wants to buy a house that's walking into the ocean. Arthur thought "walking" was generous. "Falling" was more like it. Chunks calving off in the night, the sound of it like a cough. His son wants him to move. His son has a spare room in Leeds. Arthur has visited the spare room. It looks onto a car park. "It's safe," his son said, as though Arthur had asked for safety. Arthur finishes his toast. He washes the plate. He puts on his coat, because even in June the wind off the sea has an edge to it, and walks to the front door. Nine hundred and twelve steps to the water. He counts them again, as he does every morning, and when he reaches the edge he stands and watches the sea and does not think about moving to Leeds. The fulmars wheel below him. The chalk is white in the sun. It is a good view. It has always been a good view. He turns and walks home. Nine hundred and twelve steps. Tomorrow, maybe nine hundred and eleven.