Wyl Menmuir - The Many

Standing waist deep in the hold and passing the crates up to Rab, who had climbed on board to help him, Ethan had removed a couple of the pale fish from each of the crates and placed them into the one of the empty boxes down in the shadow of the hold.

When all the crates were unloaded, he came up onto the deck and saw the grey woman was still staring down towards the Great Hope from the road. In the space between the boat and the woman in grey looking on, the two men in their suits looked incongruous carrying the crates of fish and they struggled with them on the stones, watched by the villagers.

As the last of the crates had made its way up to the van, the grey woman had exchanged words with the two men. One of them held his hands out away from his suit as though he was worried he would contaminate it. The other was leaning against the van and had the ankle of one of his legs resting above the knee of his other leg and was wiping his black shoes with a handkerchief he had pulled out from his suit pocket. All three were looking down towards the boat and towards Ethan. He wondered whether they were going to return to the beach and insist on inspecting the empty hold, but after a few raised words that carried across to him, they did not return to the boat. Ethan wondered whether she suspected he had held some back, and as he was clearing the boat, he threw some nets down over the box in which he had stored the fish for Timothy.

TIMOTHY IS SURPRISED when Ethan seeks him out a few days later and asks him if he will come out on the boat again. He considers it for a while. The house is disintegrating under his care and Lauren is due to arrive in less than a month.

That evening at sundown, he makes his way down to the shore, and he reaches the beach to find it busy again, this time with the crews preparing their boats, and a larger gathering than he has seen before amassed around them. As he passes between the boats that crowd the mid-tide beach, Timothy is aware of the sideways glances of those standing around. The earlier hostility he had felt is no longer there and it has been replaced by interest — intense interest and scrutiny. The villagers still avoid speaking to him as he walks by. His nods towards those whose eyes he catches are returned hurriedly, before each in turn averts their eyes.

Clem is the only person on the beach who speaks to him directly, and in a voice loud enough to be overheard.

‘Problem for most of them is they have to pass the pub to get to their boats, and most times the pub wins out,’ he says, and there is a volley of insults from the fishermen and laughter too, a sound Timothy realises he has not heard since he arrived in the village.

Clem then lowers his voice.

‘All change now though. The haul you brought in last. Regular golden hen you are.’

Timothy stares at Clem, trying to figure out the meaning of this last statement, but Clem has already moved away, heading down the beach with a stack of crates, which he passes up to one of the boys standing on the deck of the nearest boat.

Timothy spots Ethan arranging crates of nets on the deck of the Great Hope , and he watches the fisherman as he organises the crates, like he is completing a puzzle to allow the two men room enough to walk on the crowded deck. When Ethan looks up and notices Timothy, he gestures to him to come up.

Timothy is unable to interpret the look Ethan gives him as he climbs aboard the Great Hope . It’s the same look he saw on the other man’s face as when they pulled up their catch of silver fish. He steps off the ladder onto the deck and has the feeling that in some way the Great Hope is, itself, a net of sorts and, somehow, that he is starting to become caught up in its folds. The afternoon is wearing itself out and the crews make ready to leave.

‘Bremming tonight,’ says Ethan, the first words he has spoken to Timothy since he came on board. ‘Good sign.’

They leave the cove and, as they pass the rocks, Timothy understands what Ethan means. With the light fading fast, he sees, in the boat’s wake, burning phosphorescence that dances just below the surface where the water has been disturbed. He watches it in the eddies and small currents caused by the boat’s passing until it tails off, as the wake calms and the water becomes dark again. After a while, the darkness is punctuated only by the lights of the small fleet of fishing boats and the occasional brighter flash of a searchlight as one of the crew works on the foredeck. As they make their course over the water, these thin lights spread out from each other like the long fingers of a hand flexing. One of them Timothy loses in the darkness, and the others stay close to the Great Hope, and the lights of the small, silent waterborne community dance unsteadily on the sea’s surface.

AFTER THE CATCH, no one, not even the other crews, had asked Ethan about his excursion beyond the container ships, as if they did not really want to know the answer. Their celebrations that night had been strained with all that was unsaid. No one wanted to talk about the fish themselves, though the catch warranted discussion, nor the circumstances in which they had come to be landed.

‘Catch is a catch,’ a few of them had said, and others around had nodded in agreement, as though that was all that needed to be said on the matter. Timothy, on the other hand, was discussed in detail. Ethan had noticed the stories about the newcomer had started to transform, to transfigure somehow into fictions of redemption, and the more beer that was drunk, the wilder the stories of his influence became. But of the Great Hope passing outside the fleet’s boundary lines, Clem was the only one who came close to asking.

‘Lucky catch,’ he had said. This was after most of the others had gone home and the two men surveyed the beach that was littered with the cans and bottles of their impromptu party. ‘Wouldn’t want to interrogate it too closely though, for anyone’s sake.’

Clem had stood up from his seat by the wheelhouse and pushed his hands into his jacket pocket, perhaps waiting for Ethan to comment or perhaps waiting for his words to sink in. In place of an answer, Ethan had proffered Clem another beer from the crate by which he was sitting, and Clem had shaken his head and walked off up the beach, leaving Ethan alone in the dark, two hours before the sun threatened the horizon.

‘Who was Perran?’

Timothy looks startled by the question that has slipped out, breaking the silence, and Ethan watches him as he wishes it back into his mouth. It is out though and contains, within it, an accusation that Timothy has been misled somehow.

The boat feels small now and Ethan’s feelings of warmth towards Timothy compete with the feelings of guilt he drags up, with the acute anxiety Timothy brings on board with him. As they stand side by side on the deck, Ethan thinks how it would take only a few steps and a shove to tip the other man into the water, and how few questions would be asked of him later if that were to happen. They are a long way from shore and he is stronger than the incomer, he is sure of that, and more stable on his feet on the shifting deck.

Timothy has decided to return to silence, as though he sees the point of the rules now it suits him, as though the silence is fine with him after all. He is looking out of the boat, back towards the shore, his fingers fretting at the bare wood where the paint is peeling away.

‘What will you gain by knowing?’ Ethan asks finally, though whether he asks the question out of pity or despair, he is not sure.

He is unwilling to encourage Timothy, but it is clear to him Timothy now has nothing but the question burning out through his eyes, and the urge to push the incomer over the side comes back to Ethan stronger than before. He wonders whether Timothy even knows why he is asking, where the question came from, why it has taken hold of him.