by Wyl Menmuir
Ethan waves the same hand back out in the direction of the sea.
‘And if the tide doesn’t get you, the chems will. You want to stay healthy past forty, alive past fifty, you’ll remember to stay well out of the water.’
Timothy opens his mouth to respond, but Ethan has lowered his gaze back to the deck and returned to his work on the boat, and it seems clear to Timothy the conversation is over.
As he passes back towards the village, Timothy sees someone has hung, over the railings between the beach and the road, a row of jellyfish that are drying in the cold breeze, tattered and dirty, like snow that’s been walked over too many times.
‘We ought to move down there. Let’s do it. Now, before it’s too late.’
Lauren laughs and throws a tea towel across the tiny kitchen, from where she is washing dishes, towards Timothy, who is sitting on the only worktop, finishing the glass of red wine she has left there. Timothy catches the tea towel and gives it a puzzled look before setting it down next to him by the hob.
‘Before we get entrenched. You know. Before this place gets its claws into us. Just think of the place we’d be able to afford down there.’
‘With whose money, mister? And anyway, it wasn’t all postcard stuff, there was something weird about it,’ Lauren replies and nods towards the towel he has set down and again towards the plates on the draining board. ‘I see my subtle hint failed again. Pick that up and give me a hand.’
Timothy balances Lauren’s glass on the tips of one of the stove’s four-pronged burners and jumps down from the worktop. He drapes the towel over his shoulder, walks up behind Lauren, puts his hands around her waist and kisses her neck.
‘And no distractions either. Not until we’ve finished in here. You. Tea towel. Draining board. Full concentration. Now.’
Timothy feigns a look of reproach and picks up a plate from the crowded draining board. By the harsh light thrown by the bare bulb in the tiny kitchen Lauren is striking, and her neat bobbed hair throws dark shadows on her pale cheeks.
‘And what, right now? Just because you like a place we’ve been doesn’t mean we should move there. I’ve still got the rest of the year to go, and if you think Morgan will let his prize cow go without putting up a fight I think you’re naïve,’ Lauren says, and hands him a bundle of cutlery dripping water and soap bubbles, which he receives onto the tea towel in both hands.
‘Morgan can screw himself,’ he says without conviction. Lauren is right. He has held the job at Morgan’s for just under a year, and to throw it away now would be foolish even by his standards. A rising star of the profession, or so Morgan tells him whenever he comes back with a new contract signed and sealed, or another client waiting with his chequebook open and his pen poised.
‘Umm, hmm?’
Lauren flicks soap bubbles up at him and he flicks back with the tea towel. After putting her wet hands up in a motion of mock defeat, she pushes him gently backwards through the door into the sitting room of their new flat. He lets himself be overbalanced back onto the sofa, and pulls her with him.
Afterwards, he reaches up and takes a throw from the back of the sofa and lays it over the two of them. Lauren is on the brink of sleep, her head balanced on his chest, and Timothy listens in the darkness to the sounds of the city as they rise up from the streets and in through the window.
Some hours later, Lauren slides off the sofa and Timothy watches her stretch as though he is not there at all, and then she silently picks up the clothes from the floor and chooses some more to wear for the day from the wardrobe that stands in the corner of the room. He watches her half-silhouetted as she dresses in that economical way she does and he marvels at the way her body fits into the thin woollen sweater she puts on. When she is gone, he rises from the sofa and transfers himself to the bed, taking the journey of four feet they had not managed to make the night before.
Sometime later in the morning, Lauren returns from her lectures and climbs into bed with him. The snow is thick on the pavements and roofs outside and they spend the rest of the day under the thick covers. At some point between the waking and sleeping as the afternoon wears itself out, she pulls him over onto his side so their foreheads and the tips of their noses touch and stares into his eyes and they stay like this for what may be minutes, but may also be hours.
6
Timothy
TIMOTHY IS STANDING on the deck of a vast ship, an expanse of thickly painted deck, as wide as a football pitch or wider. No birds perch or roost on the railings, though there are gulls wheeling far above in the white sky. He walks across the deck to the side facing the shore and can see the shape of the coast, unfamiliar from this angle. There are fields marked out by their boundaries and clumps of trees, and he wonders whether it is the distance that keeps him from seeing any sheep or cattle grazing. At this distance, the entrance to the cove is hidden from him and blends into the landscape, but he thinks he can see the village rising up the steep hillside, and above it the white beacon on top of the hill. This is the only sign there is life here, other than the sea road that follows the contours of the coast as far as he can see in one direction and that comes to an end at the far side of the village. Beyond the village, the landscape is indistinct.
To his left, though far off, rising up from the deck of the ship there is a tower, sombre and tall and featureless aside from the broad expanse of glass that obscures the bridge, where the captain and crew would have looked down, over their cargo. The reflective glass stretches all round this tower, so the captain would have seen, too, the broad curving route he ploughed through the sea, though now the boat is stationary, fixed in place. He can feel the massive engines far beneath him, inert and cold.
There is no movement from the tower and no noise other than the wind in his ears and the screaming of the gulls overhead. The gulls turn in wide arcs above him and take turns to dive down towards him, warning him off, warning him to stay clear, though as far as he can see, there is no way off the ship.
The huge plate-glass windows of the bridge reflect the grey sky and Timothy has a strong sensation, though there is no sign of anyone else there, that he is being observed dispassionately, of something or someone behind the glass looking down onto this tiny figure far below on the deck. He feels there could be someone, or a bank of someones, standing behind the glass watching to see what he will do next, with clipboards lowered, making notes on his progress or lack thereof. Or maybe it is the blank gaze of someone or something still asleep, something passive that he should not disturb. The intensity of this feeling grows as he stares up at the tower, and with the gulls diving closer with each pass, he looks around for shelter, but there is no hiding place.
The offshore wind is cold and there is no protection from it on the exposed deck. He does not feel like moving towards the tower despite the shelter it might offer from the wind biting at his face. From where he stands, leant against the railings, he sees, between the ship and the land, small boats circling, like fish in a glass bowl and he has the sense if he threw something, anything, down into the water below, they would turn towards him, to the disturbance in the water. The sensation that he is looking in on something is overwhelming.
Timothy is suddenly anxious about what lies beyond the ship in the other direction, of what he will be able to see from this platform from the other side of the deck that faces out, away from the land. He has a strong feeling there will be nothing there when he gets to the other side, no horizon to see, no waves, no features at all, that this boat represents the very edge of something. He turns from the railings and starts to walk across the huge deck to the other side and, as the sense of anxiety increases, the walk becomes a run. He trips several times over hatches and iron rings anchored into the deck on his way across and beneath him he can feel the gaping emptiness of the cargo holds and beneath that the emptiness of the sea. When he reaches the guard rail and looks out over the other side, he br
eathes again, relieved to see, far below him, waves that are evidence the sea continues beyond, though when he follows the scene up from the point where the ship’s hull meets the water, he finds he cannot distinguish between the sea and the sky, and the empty expanse feels oppressive and close.
Timothy wakes and, for a few moments in the darkness, he wonders whether he is still aboard the ship, somewhere deep within its hold, and he lies still and waits for some sensation of the boat moving on the water beneath him. The feeling of oppression stays with him and he cannot shake the sensation that the boundary marked out by the container ships is important somehow.
Timothy has been here several weeks now and he wonders sometimes whether he is causing more damage to the house than he is improving it. He coughs. It is a cough he has developed from the clouds of plaster that sit heavy in all the rooms, dust that has found its way into his lungs and beneath his fingernails and eyelids. The feeling of oppression, he realises, had been there before his dream. His throat is dry and he feels the house pressing down on him.
To shake off the feeling, he gets out of bed and walks down the staircase, running his hands along the wooden struts of the walls. They are the thin ribs of the house, exposed as he has peeled back layers of wallpaper and then crumbling plaster from the walls. He heads for the kitchen, pours himself a glass of water from the sink and sees someone has slid an envelope beneath the back door and it stands out white against the slate floor. Ethan has reconsidered the offer he made weeks before and they are to sail the following morning. He looks at the clock on the kitchen wall and sees it is just gone four in the morning. Too early to continue his work on the house and too late to return to sleep. In any case he cannot face returning to the dream he has just left, and instead he puts on his running clothes and walks out to stretch in the darkness that will last another hour yet at least. As he leaves, he tucks his phone into the pocket in the back of his running shorts. He will call Lauren later, when he can get reception. He runs out into the dark and the mist of the early morning. Lauren will still be asleep, warm and ensconced in duvet. There is still some way to go before he can call for her to join him. He will not tell her his worries for the task that is still ahead, or the scale of the work that still faces him in the house, nor that it feels to him in some way like a thin soil that crumbles between his fingers as he touches it.
On his run out of the village, he takes a detour past the beach. There is a light on in the cabin of one of the boats and by it he sees Ethan’s jacketed torso haloed on the deck of the Great Hope. Ethan’s head is down, his face hidden in the dark shadow of a cap as he works at something on deck. Timothy thinks about approaching him and asking him again about the line of container ships and whether they can pass out that way when they head out. But already the dream is losing its intensity and he is sure by the time it is light he will have shaken whatever it is that is pulling him out to them. Ethan is absorbed in his task and the sound of the waves on the beach means Timothy would have to shout above it to get his attention. He will ask Ethan about it later perhaps.
7
Ethan
‘WHAT’S OUT THERE?’
This is the evening before they are due to sail, when they stand on the deck of the grounded boat and Ethan talks Timothy through what they will be doing the next day.
‘Out there? You mean in the water?’ Ethan replies. ‘What’s left when there’s nothing worth catching. Dogfish. Jellyfish. Dead things or dying things you wouldn’t put a fork to.’
‘Why do you, then . . . ?’ Timothy starts to ask, but changes tack. ‘No, beyond the ships. Why do you stay this side of them? Is it a safety thing?’
Ethan, backed into a corner, can think of nothing to say in reply and, instead, goes back to running the edge of the net along the palm of his hand. Checking the nets usually calms him, but now his thoughts are out on the water, out beyond the line of ships.
In the sky’s gradual lightening before dawn, half an hour or so after they have passed out from the protection of the rocks at the mouth of the cove, Ethan steers the boat on a heading away from the rest of the fleet and mutes the radio. The morning air is calm and the dark sky above them shifts from a band of darkest blue to a light yellow and then to a deep orange on the horizon. The outlines of the container ships are silhouetted in the darkest band of orange, where it starts to gradate back to the deepest blue of the sea below.
Ethan observes from the small cabin of the Great Hope as Timothy stands on the foredeck trying to find his legs. He has not said a word to the newcomer since they cast off, and Timothy looks unsure as to whether he should stand or sit, and he settles for an uncomfortable position somewhere between the two, with his leg braced against the side of the boat, one hand gripping the guard rail hard, his knuckles white and the rest of his hand pale already in the freezing sea air. Timothy is about Perran’s height, though he has none of the same thinness around the neck and face, nor the same thick head of hair, but for all the differences between the two, they might be related. Something in the way he holds himself perhaps, or something in his eyes. Ethan checks their heading again, makes some adjustments and tries to shake off this transplanting of Perran onto the newcomer.
As they head out towards the ships, he concentrates on the spaces in between them, and tries, unsuccessfully, to block them out of his mind. After an hour or so, in which the ships grow in stature, at first steadily and then with increasing speed, they come up close alongside one, as though it has drawn the smaller vessel in, the larger body exerting its own gravity. The ship looks as though it is rooted straight down into the seabed for all it moves in the water. It looks to be a fixed point, as steady and solid as any of the houses in the village. Ethan has never sailed this close to the sentinels, let alone passed between them to the other side. Until recently he has never even thought of going out between them, not since the ships arrived a little short of ten years ago.
First the letters, then the ships.
Letters from the department start to arrive shortly after Perran’s death, edicts and instructions for the new fishing grounds worded in archaic and obscure language. It is left to Clem to interpret these missives, and he reads them aloud to the fleet as they congregate on the beach, and then he tacks each of the letters to the noticeboard in the winch house.
‘Pursuant to the department’s previous notification of the revised fishing grounds, boundaries will be marked for the purpose of controlling fish stocks in restricted zones and for the containment and management of harmful waterborne agents,’ Clem reads.
Clem is standing on the step outside the winch house, a head higher than the other fishermen. Looking at him brings to mind a sepia photograph Ethan has seen in a frame on the wall of the winch house beside the noticeboard. The photograph shows a stern priest standing alone on the beach as the boats cast off. The priest wears full canonical robes and holds in one hand a chain and censer that is leaking smoke. He is swinging the censer out in front of him with one hand and the other is raised to the departing fleet in a gesture of benediction. Ethan has always felt sorry for this man in the photograph, standing alone on the grey stones, looking out of place.
‘Motorised and sail-driven vessels, of classes one to four inclusive, are not to be permitted to come within 500 feet of boundary markers, and owners of vessels straying into the restricted zone will be subject to prosecution under the following Acts . . .’
Ethan has stopped listening to Clem and instead turns to look for the reaction of the other skippers and crews around him. They are, as usual, silent for the most part, though some are talking beneath their breath, or kicking the stones under their boots. One or two have already started to walk away from the beach.
When Clem has stopped talking, Ethan looks around and sees some of the older skippers shaking their heads in disgust or shame. He watches one, a fisherman who has been sailing out of the cove as long as any of the others there, as he walks off
the beach and throws his son the keys to his boat, before he retreats to his house for good.
That morning no one sails out of the cove. And over the course of the next few days a few of the skippers go down to their boats, strip them of anything useful or valuable and retire to their houses, leaving their boats to rot on the shore. For some this news is more than they are prepared to take, with the fish stocks falling fast and the prices so low.
Overnight the ships arrive and are anchored at regular intervals along the horizon. After a few days, Ethan wonders whether the ships might always have been there, unnoticed and waiting for their chance to edge closer towards the shore, into sight.
The letters, still tacked up on the noticeboard, are now speckled all over with mould. The ink on them has faded and they hold less power somehow in the face of Timothy’s questions. And having Timothy on board, Ethan finds, gives him a sense of confidence, a sense of having been dared and of not wanting to lose face.
As Ethan steers a course between the ships, his feeling of unease grows. With the sun still low on the horizon, the small fishing boat comes into the field of a long shadow cast across the water by the ship’s derrick. The Great Hope passes closer to the hulking mass than he had intended, as if the smaller boat is being drawn in towards it. The water around the boat is still and darker for the mass that lies beneath it and the ship’s hull rises sheer and steep, dwarfing the smaller boat. The lower half of the ship’s visible hull is painted red and is stained with patches of rust, and at the waterline he sees the sea is oil slicked and contaminated. Above, the upper part of the hull is painted a dark grey, and the derrick and uppermost part of the deck are white, or were at some time. Rust shows through the white paint even from a distance, and as they get closer they see long scars drawn into the paintwork. On the side of the ship, what is presumably its name is written in letters ten feet tall or taller, though it is written in a script Ethan does not understand. The letters look familiar, as though he should be able to read them, though each is transfigured and mutated, and though they pass close to the ship, the letters do not resolve themselves into anything that carries meaning he can decipher. Deeper into the boat’s shadow, he sees signs riveted onto the hull at intervals. They are warnings perhaps, or impart vital information, though they are all written in the same familiar, but unreadable, script.
