Wyl Menmuir - The Many

The February water is a shock as he lowers himself into it and he wades in as far as the ledge, where the water rises up to his thighs. He stands there a moment, and looks out to sea. He could turn back now and he would have been in the water and maybe that is all he needs to do. He pushes himself off into the deeper water, breathes in sharp and hard and against his will, and feels the muscles in his chest contract as the water rises up above his stomach. He tries to turn himself back towards the shore as the freezing water comes up over his shoulders. And then he is in up to his neck and he is kicking hard back towards the ledge, pulling air back into his lungs. The rocks in the ledge cut his knees and shins as he pulls himself up into the shallows and he climbs out of the water on feet he can no longer feel and makes his way back to the small pile of clothes, clothes which are surely further away than they were when he took them off.

He dries himself as best he can with his running shirt, puts it back on and tries to stop the uncontrollable shivering that is now taking hold. As he pulls his socks on over numb feet, he sees they are cut and bleeding. He jumps on the spot a few times and wraps his arms around his chest and then sets off back towards the village.

By the time he reaches the door of the cottage he is limping on feet he feels now only as a formless ache. Inside again, he wraps himself in a blanket from the car and sits in front of the fire on a patch of threadbare carpet. As his feet warm up again, he rubs the soles of his feet on the threads of the carpet where coals had rolled off the grate at some time and burned through.

It is a blazing hot, late October afternoon, too hot for the time of year. It’s almost six months since he first met Lauren, and their first holiday, three days out of season on the coast, a precursor to him asking her to move out of her flat and into his.

They are too early to book into the small hotel so they park the car in the car park and head straight down to the shore. When they arrive, Lauren looks dubious. The beach has an industrial look about it. Grey stones over which lies a thin coating of diesel, dropping steep down towards the sea, which looks unnaturally calm under the same film of oil. There are a few rusting hulls on the hard standing below the road, and bisecting the beach is a chain which runs up into the mouth of a stone building, in which he can see a heavy winch, and everything looks shut up, closed down. The beach is overlooked by a tangle of houses, packed together in tight rows above, silhouetted by the late morning sun.

Lauren gives him a look and he asks her to trust him. He knows what he’s doing and he will find the right place. Before they set off that morning, he had spent an hour with an Ordinance Survey map spread out across his kitchen table scouting the beach and the perfect spot. He tells her a story about an orienteering and camping trip with school when he was twelve, though leaves out the part where he and a small group of friends became lost and, with the light fading, had flagged down a car to ask for directions. Somewhat sheepishly, they had ended up accepting a lift to the gates of their campsite from the elderly couple who had stopped for them, accepting too the handful of sweets that had been dug out for them from the glove compartment to see them through the cold night.

They make their way round to the right of the beach and Timothy helps Lauren up over the rocks, towards the mouth of the cove, and they have to jump over small inlets where water rushes beneath and into the land and Lauren looks nervous.

‘Trust me,’ he says and takes her hand again.

A tiny sandy beach hidden among the rocks, a speck of yellow on the map. It is there too, out of sight of the mouth of the cove, though when they arrive, the waves have already covered the sand and painted it light green. Instead, they spread a blanket on the rocks overlooking the submerged beach and look down into the green water. The picnic, he remembers too late, has not made it beyond his mental shopping list, and what food they have brought with them is still in the boot of the car. They sit on the rocks and eat the fruit gums he has in his pocket and drink what is left of Lauren’s bottle of water and she lies back against him and they talk and stare out at the white peaks on waves as far as they can see, peaks made whiter by the bright sunlight.

Timothy will not later remember the argument that ensues when they turn back towards the cove to find themselves now cut off by the rising tide, but cannot forget the hours in which they slowly back closer and closer to the cliff face as the sea rises around them.

At first they laugh. They are going to end up like one of those couples from up country who are caught out by the tide and have to be rescued by helicopter. Their rescuers will be a dedicated and earnest team who will try to hide their true feelings about the waste of time and money the couple represents. They will both be embarrassed and apologise profusely, and feel admonished and exhilarated. But when they try their phones, neither of them is able to get a signal, and they are overlooked now by no one. There is not even a boat other than a container ship way, way out, sitting static on the horizon.

The sun disappears over the top of the cliff face and what is left of the afternoon’s heat soon dissipates. Timothy wraps Lauren in his coat and puts his arms around her, partly to keep her warm and partly for his own warmth. Later, he decides to attempt the cliff. It is only a few feet higher than he can reach up and he makes it halfway before a ledge beneath his feet crumbles and he slides down and he is glad he did not bring more of the cliff down with him. He puts his arms back around Lauren, and she complains to him about his getting mud on his jacket. They cling together on a flat rock a metre square and the tide peaks a few inches below their feet.

It’s a hungry, frayed couple that walks back up the beach towards the hotel, several hours after the time they had arranged to check in.

Later in the day, aware what food he has brought with him, beyond the remains of the sandwiches he packed for travelling, is packed in boxes in the boot, Timothy goes out to the car and retrieves a waterproof coat from the back seat and walks down between the tight rows of houses to the shore. He pulls his collar up against the fine rain now blowing in from the sea and as he passes along the narrow streets, he feels he is observed through the curtained windows, though at a distance, as a nurse would observe a patient. As he approaches the village shop, he slows. Outside the shop is a huddle of people, two women in striped aprons and beside them two men and another woman. They are deep in conversation and when they see him their conversation ceases and five heads turn towards him. He feels foolish under their gaze and smiles apologetically, as though he has found himself in the wrong place or has taken a wrong turning. Unwilling to submit to their stares any further, he turns away from them and takes a footpath that continues down the hill between two of the houses closest to him.

When he reaches the beach, he finds the same grey stones, the same stacks of empty lobster creels and long coils of frayed rope in tall piles by the sea wall, topped with a mat of green through lack of use. The same quietness too. There is no one else on the shore, though he can see a boat in the middle distance, beyond the entrance to the cove. And as he looks back up towards the house — his house — he can see no signs of life, no walkers with dogs or runners pounding the coast road, no couples nesting down into the beach out of eyesight of their parents, no doors or windows open in the houses between here and the bare hilltop above the village.