Wyl Menmuir - The Many

But Tomas does not look as though he is there to gloat. He looks concerned. At the state of the car, and at the state of Timothy, who has not washed or shaved for three days now and has barely eaten either. He is aware from Tomas’s stare that he does not look like a well man.

‘There’s no fixing this one then?’ he says.

Tomas’s grin is friendly and suggests he knows there isn’t. Two nights of heavy rain have fallen in through the open doors and windows, which has done nothing for the old estate, and it looks as though it has already started to sink into the verge behind the house. Tomas indicates the bag of tools he’s brought up with him and waits for Timothy’s go ahead. Timothy tries to conceal his surprise, but he nods and Tomas reaches in through the driver’s door and pulls the catch for the bonnet beneath the steering wheel. He brings the bag of tools round to the front of the car and disappears beneath the bonnet, and Timothy stands at the kitchen door and fixes them both a coffee. As he drinks, Timothy becomes aware of how cold he had become sitting by the window for so long, despite the blanket he had pulled round his shoulders. There is some warmth in the sun that falls onto the back of the house and he stands on the step feeling the light rest on his face. Eventually, Tomas’s voice rises up from within the silent engine.

‘She’s dead. Simple as that. She won’t get you a mile let alone make the kind of journey you’re looking to do.’

He comes out holding a piece of the engine in his hand and passes it to Timothy apologetically before returning to close the bonnet.

‘Best you could do for her is point her in the direction of the sea and take the handbrake off, I reckon,’ he says and smiles. ‘I’d offer to take her off your hands, but she’s a pile of junk.’

Timothy looks down at the blackened item in his hand. He is unable to identify it as something that plays an essential part in the running of an engine and he rolls it over back and forward in his hand, watching a streak of grease or dirt spread out across his palms and fingers. He hears Tomas is still talking to him and tunes back in.

‘I could sort you something else out if it’ll help?’

He nods at Tomas, who is packing his tools back into their bag and, as the fisherman starts to walk back into the village, he thanks him and Tomas raises a hand in response.

Later that afternoon, Timothy hears a car pull up outside Perran’s, and then the reedy sound of its horn. Since Tomas had left him, Timothy had changed into the remaining clean clothes from the canvas bag and shaved in cold water from the kitchen sink, the only tap that seemed to be working. He feels slightly more human for it. Hearing the horn again, he walks through to the kitchen and sees Tomas waving at him through the windscreen of a car that makes the broken Volvo look practically new. The car Tomas has brought up to Perran’s looks as though it has been welded together from thin sheets of metal that have been dragged up from the wreck of a ship. The bonnet and roof are almost totally clear of paint and the windows, too, look as though they have been scoured over and again with wire wool.

‘She’s a bit of a beach wreck, a bit sandblasted, but she’s a runner,’ Tomas says and he slaps the roof as if to prove his point. As he does so, the engine note dips a little and Timothy wonders for a moment whether it is going to give out completely, but it picks up again a few seconds later and Tomas’s grin towards him broadens. Timothy looks in through the side window, shielding his eyes from the glare from the white sky reflected in it. The interior is all plastic leather effect. It is ripped and worn through in patches and cheap yellow foam sticks out from the gashes in the seats. Beneath the plastic steering wheel, wires of varying colours hang loosely and the handbrake sticks up from the floor, bare metal. He stands up and looks at Tomas across the roof. Tomas is still grinning.

‘Looks as though someone’s rolled it a few times,’ says Timothy, running a hand over the uneven roof panels.

‘That’s possible,’ replies Tomas. ‘It’s my sister’s. She’s got no use for it now. Never was the most careful driver. Could be why she lost her licence, come to think of it. Either way, she doesn’t drive it any more and you’ll not find much else here. Just sits down on the front most times, hence the slightly washed-out look. She’s a runner though and yours if you want her.’

He waits for a response from Timothy and when it does not come, he continues.

‘There’s not a garage for miles and if there’s another car going in the village, I’ll be surprised.’

Timothy walks around the outside of the car and plays the buyer, though he knows there’s little other choice. He flinches when Tomas gives him the price. Tomas shrugs his shoulders and gives him a look that tells him take it or leave it. Timothy pays with what cash he has left and after showing him how to start the engine by crossing two of the loose wires hanging beneath the dashboard, Tomas walks back down into the village, leaving the car ticking over on the road at the back of the house.

When Tomas has gone, Timothy gets into the driver’s seat and feels the body of the car sink beneath him, though whether it is the springs beneath the seat or the car’s suspension that cause this he cannot tell. He checks the switches for the lights and the few other controls on the plastic dashboard, though the lights do not seem to work at all and only one of the windscreen wipers functions, scraping slowly across the windscreen. He pushes a few buttons on the stereo and succeeds in getting only a loud static howl through one of the speakers. Standing on the doorframe, he looks around for an aerial and finds a rust-edged hole where one might have been. He gets back in and pulls his jumper sleeve up over his right hand and tries to clear the windscreen with it, but ends up smearing dirt around it, and when he reaches his hand round onto the outside of the windscreen, he can feel beneath his fingertips the scars left by the sand the wind carries with it from miles and miles away, from another country or another continent.

‘Timothy, he’s gone.’

He had taken his wife’s words in silence.

‘Can you come, Timothy, please?’

There is nothing for a while then, save a few shards; seeing himself standing on his neighbour’s doorstep knocking, hoping they are in, and would they do him a favour and drive him over to the hospital; staring out of the windscreen as the red lights stretch out along the road in front of him and asking himself what he can do to make this right.

When he arrives at the hospital, there is a midwife waiting for him in the hallway and in the tiny room by which she stands he finds Lauren with a doctor explaining what will happen next, handing them both forms to sign, consent for procedures only some of which he has heard of.

The delivery room is dimmed and the midwife busies herself in the corner, filling in forms, moving papers from one pile to another. They have been there for hours now, maybe. Timothy is at his wife’s head whispering he does not know what, smoothing her hair with one hand, his other clutched tight in hers. The midwife only raises her head when Lauren’s breathing becomes laboured and, when she looks up at them, he wonders what it is she sees.

The room is quiet and in between contractions Lauren tries to sleep, though he sees the morphine is making her too sick to close her eyes for long. In one hand she has the controls for the drug and in the other she holds his hand and compresses each from time to time as if to check they are both still there. She talks to him, though what she says he does not remember and he knows his words back to her are just a voice that she recognises. He thinks they are telling each other stories, stories with different endings, stories that confirm and console.