Wyl Menmuir - The Many

He lies like this for the next two days and nights, sweating and shivering. Unable to find any comfort in the bed, his sleep and dreams converge with his waking. Sometimes, in moments of drifting between the two states, he hears voices around his bed. Some of the voices are patient and concerned and others are angry and rave wildly at him, and others still are indistinct and he cannot work out from them what emotion the speakers are expressing. For the most part though, the voices sound to him like those of bureaucrats and he feels they are trying to impart to him information he is unable to absorb. He cannot make out from any of the speakers any words, just the sentiment of the words, just the impression they are important and that he should be paying attention. At one point he wakes, or dreams, he is not sure, to hear an argument taking place around him, an argument in which he feels he is the centre. And as his fever rages, he tries to follow the shadows of the speakers around the room, and the harder he listens to make sense of the voices, the further ahead of him they slip. Later, after it has been quiet again for some time, he hears the voice of one person talking to him and it is a voice that is familiar to him, though he cannot grasp to whom it belongs, and, over the deafening sound of his own breathing, he hears the words of the question that has been in his head for some time now. On waking one time in the pitch dark, he feels a more solid presence in the room, a figure sitting at the foot of the bed watching him. He knows it is Ethan and he tries to get some words out, but his throat is too parched by now, and no words escape. The effort of trying to talk pushes him back into sleep, and when he wakes again there is no one in the darkened room and he is unsure whether the glass of water sitting on the bedside table has been placed there while he slept, or whether it has been there the whole time.

When the fever breaks, the question is ringing loud in his head, too loud for him to ignore now, as though it had risen to make itself heard over the dull roar of the argument that raged around him during the worst of his sickness.

When he gets up he is still weak and he pulls a blanket around himself and stumbles downstairs into the kitchen. Standing on the linoleum floor, he lifts a large cardboard box from one of the kitchen surfaces and places it on the kitchen table. He runs a hand over the packets and tins looking for anything he has that is still edible. Among the disarray there is a half-full bottle of gin that came with him when he arrived. He pulls it out of the box and sets it down on the table in front of him, and when he has surveyed the rest of the box, he pours himself a glass.

The first taste of the gin makes him gag. He does not know how long it has been since he last ate, but the liquid burning its way down his throat takes his mind off the question in his head for a moment, and he drinks down the rest of the glass and pours himself another. Some time later, he has the urge to be in the company of others after being so long without conversation and he pulls on some clothes and walks down through the village.

‘WHO WAS PERRAN?’

It is Timothy’s opening question and he slurs it as Tomas approaches the bar. It is the first thing he’s said all evening other than a few words he exchanged with the barman when he entered.

He has been there over an hour, working his way slowly through a beer, when the skippers of the fleet arrive. They acknowledge him, and the barman too, nodding towards them as they head towards a table as far away from the bar as it is possible to be in the small pub. By the time Tomas approaches the bar, the request has been waiting to be said for too long, and it comes out blunt and unlovely.

For a while it seems as though Tomas is going to wait for the barman to pour the pints and return to the others without answering him, but after the drinks are all gathered, he leaves the tray untouched in front of him and rests both hands on the edge of the bar. He then sits on one of the high bar stools and leans slightly towards the drinks, as though he is addressing them and not Timothy.

‘You’ll not hear about Perran from anyone here,’ Tomas says quietly and turns again to go, and Timothy is considering begging him for more information when the other man turns back towards him.

‘We held a eulogy for him at that table over there when he didn’t come back in, but you’ll not hear a word of it from anyone here,’ Tomas says, though he says it kindly. ‘Nor any of the words that were read out for him up on the beacon after. Nothing I can tell you, nothing any of us can tell you.’

‘And what about Ethan?’ Timothy asks. ‘He took it hard.’

‘Ethan blames himself. Figures he was the part of the reason Perran went out onto the rocks that night. Happened not long after they started to draw closer together again, like things were about to change for the better then. Figured he was the jinx that sent Perran down. Though whether he still believes that, or that he could have said anything else that would have kept him off the rocks that night, I’m not asking him, and I suggest you don’t bother him about it either.’

Tomas looks down at the tray for a moment.

‘Afterwards, Ethan wouldn’t believe he had gone, not for a long time. Kept a watch on Perran’s place these ten years gone. I guess he’ll have to give that up now.’

He continues to talk, but Timothy is no longer listening. He has the feeling he is no longer on land and that the village itself is a sea. He feels he has found himself surrounded by boats with their nets already cast into the water, spiralling in towards him in ever decreasing circles, and he knows he must retreat to Perran’s house. He steps down from the barstool onto a shifting floor and his knees buckle beneath him. Arms flailing and the sensation of being caught and released. Asking the question over and over again. Pushes and shoves and raised voices, the voices muddled and indistinct. Glass shattering on the stone floor and he is caught and held. Being carried, by two, maybe three. Arguing and flailing. Cold air on his face. Sweating and cold. Silence. Sleep.

When Timothy wakes, it is to a dark room and, trying to reach his hand up to his face, he realises he cannot move and panics. He arches his body and kicks his legs, but whatever is restraining him holds fast and the effort causes him to cough. And while he coughs, what he can see of the room spins around him. After a minute or so, his eyes start to make out details. He is back in the bedroom at Perran’s, lying in the narrow bed. Memories of being carried out of the bar come back to him, vague memories of being carried up through the winding streets to the house, along with the feeling someone is lying to him, or withholding the truth, and the question repeats itself over and over, though whether it remains unspoken inside him or he is repeating it out loud he is not sure. He has been laid on the bed and the sheets pulled tight over him, with bolsters of clothes laid out on either side of his body, presumably to stop him falling out of bed. He watches the walls rotate around him from where he lies and is aware he is not yet recovered from his sickness.

WHEN TIMOTHY IS well enough to pull himself out of the narrow bed again, late the next day, he sees his clothes are now folded and laid out on a chair, and wonders who has done this for him. He pulls a sheet around himself and walks slowly down through the house, trying to get his bearings again, though the house feels strange, transfigured yet again in his absence from it, and he is still unable to feel Perran in it. Feeling cold, he fills a bath and lies in it watching the steam rise from the water towards the unfamiliar ceiling until the water cools.