Wyl Menmuir - The Many

The two men hold each other’s gaze, until the boat slides down the face of a wave and both men lose their footing on the deck and stagger about, reaching for handholds. The sea is choppy now, the waves starting to build themselves up into a confusion of white horses, and the wind has picked up too. Timothy’s knee, braced against the side of the boat, buckles. Ethan sees he does not anticipate the wave, which breaks over the side of the boat, and as Timothy scrabbles again for a handhold, Ethan looks away over the side of the boat, as Timothy falls down hard on his knees on the deck.

As they prepare to cast the nets, Ethan looks over at Timothy and wonders whether he is going to answer the question Ethan now wishes he had not asked. Ethan is aware of each sharper intake of breath from the other man, though he can’t make out whether Timothy is trying to articulate an answer to the question himself, or is trying to withhold the question of his own that is fighting to resurface.

Later, after they have dropped the nets several times and the nets have come up empty, Ethan and Timothy stand on the side of the deck. It is Ethan who breaks their silence again.

‘There’s a midden behind the winch house on the beach, you know? In between the winch house and the wall. Have you seen it?’

Timothy shakes his head.

‘Whelk shells. Masses of them. You ever eaten whelk?’

Timothy shakes his head again.

‘Tastes like nothing, just grit,’ Ethan says. ‘There’s folk here know hard times is all I’m saying. You understand?’

Timothy shakes his head. He is lost. Ethan stops talking for a while, rolls and lights a cigarette and the smoke whirls around their heads before it is lifted into a sky that is now heavy with rain.

‘After Perran was born was a hard time. His mother died bringing him into the world and he had to bring himself up more or less. Village raised him you could say, and he was theirs as much as he was his father’s. It was a hard time.’

Ethan stops talking then and stares out across the water for a while, and when he turns back, Timothy is still looking at him, waiting.

‘Always been on boats, from when he was a crawling babe, stowed down with the oilskins when we went out. No way for a child to be brought up, but it kept him in sight see?’

Ethan looks to see if Timothy is listening to him and pauses a moment to roll another cigarette. He lights it, takes a deep pull on it and continues.

‘Never let him out of sight. And where better for him than on a boat, where we could keep watch on him? There were some as said a boat was no place for a child, but if ever there was a boy born of the sea it was Perran. And when he wasn’t on the water he always kept an eye out for the boats. Watched them leave, watched them come back. Wasn’t long before we came to rely on him being there. Like he was a good luck charm. Each of the skippers would put a hand on the top of his head before they sailed or left the beach. It was natural he was given the job down there, hauling up the boats when they came in, dragging them down to the water when they launched. Paid him with a cut of the catch, treated him fair. He moved into that house you’re in as soon as he could. Can’t say I blamed him.’

Ethan watches from the café where he sits with his sometimes crew, drinking as he watches the other skippers gather on the beach. He watches as one of them laughs at something Perran says and then runs his hand roughly over Perran’s tangled hair as he passes him and they both laugh again, and Ethan feels a thin lance of pain in his chest. Perran who understands the sea as if he was born to it. Perran who guides the boats in and out, who comes and goes as he pleases. Perran who lives alone and not in his father’s house, who has joined this adult world before he should have, as though the rules don’t apply to him.

Ethan looks up and sees Timothy is still watching him, his gaze steadier than the rest of his body, which still jars and jolts with each wave that comes up against the boat. Waiting for more. There’s challenge in Timothy’s eyes for him to finish the story, and though he raises a hand to indicate to the other man he is done for now, Timothy stands his ground.

‘There was a storm, see, and Perran was out on the rocks when he fell in, so they reckoned. Couldn’t swim any better than the rest of us can, and that night it was fierce out. He washed up half a mile from the village, and a crew saw him on their way back in. We boarded his house up after that. You’ll understand if some of us weren’t crazy about it when you moved in.’

Ethan breaks Timothy’s gaze, and moves forward suddenly, pushing past him to get to the lines for the nets they have cast. He feels anger rise up within him. He feels that Timothy is rubbing at a delicate fabric beneath his fingers and that whatever lies beneath this thin lining is starting to show through, as though the threads are starting to work themselves loose. As he starts to pull the nets in, he can feel, in their lightness, that he is pulling up nothing from the water.

TIMOTHY FEELS UNSURE what it is he has done to deserve this unasked-for gift. Whether it was joining Ethan on his boat when he could find no other crew, or encouraging him to strike out beyond the boundaries of the fleet. He wonders whether Ethan feels he is somehow responsible for the catch they made out there, that in some way his involvement that has brought new hunger to the fishermen, though he knows he played no part in it.

The only thing he knows for sure is Ethan now considers the matter closed. He has explained Perran. But Timothy’s question remains, like a scar, or an itch that refuses to calm itself, an itch that has not accepted it has been scratched. Timothy cannot shake the feeling he is being lied to, and that Ethan’s exposition conceals within it a veiled threat.

The wind is up now. It has come on quicker than Timothy thought possible, and spray from the tips of waves he cannot see blows in over the sides of the boat. There is no more fishing to be done, and the Great Hope ’s hold is as empty as when they had left. Ethan has returned to the wheelhouse now and Timothy feels the cough of the engine through the soles of his feet as they turn back towards the shore, into the oncoming waves. He is unprepared for the first as it breaks over the bow and is glad he is holding the guard rail such is the shock of the cold and the force with which the water hits him. He wonders momentarily whether Ethan is pushing them on into the waves in the hope one will wash him overboard as it breaks over the deck. He pushes the thought from his head and concentrates instead on anticipating the next wave. The boat heaves from one peak to the next now, lurching forward and unable to find a rhythm, and waves break over the boat with no warning or sign of their approach. Timothy feels sickness rise up from his feet and radiate in towards his core from hands that are now starting to freeze. He looks back towards the wheelhouse hoping Ethan will swing the boat up out of this rough furrow so he can move back without fear of going overboard, but Ethan is busy pushing them on towards the shore, or is ignoring Timothy’s plight on the deck. He looks out of the boat to the sea all around and tries to catch sight of the others, but the dancing lights have all disappeared now, and he wonders whether the other crews turned back before the sea had worked itself up like this.

Timothy edges himself backwards, his hand still gripping the guard rail, avoiding being drenched by the waves breaking over the sides. A crate that has worked its way loose from where it was secured slides across the deck and back. He is aware that this is not a storm, but just what the fishermen would call heavy weather.