On the Third Day

by Rhys Thomas

  ‘Joseph,’ she said, crouching in front of him and shaking him by both arms. ‘Joseph, please.’

  He looked at her like he didn’t know who she was. Miriam closed her eyes and tried to release the tension in her body. He was gone.

  ‘Want me to do him for you, love?’ said a voice. It was dirty and saturated by a discordant timbre.

  She opened her eyes and looked at the man with the silver pistol, the same man that had shot the boatman who had come from the tanker. He was so young, little more than a boy. His tracksuit was too big for him. His face was pink and grubby, his eyes stupid and dead. He blinked hard. He moved in short, jerky movements.

  ‘I’ll fucking do him for you, la. Bang. Easy. Twenty quid.’

  She looked across the sand to the man he had just shot. He was lying on his back with his wife crying on his chest. She looked back to the boy with the silver pistol. He stared at her with his mouth half open, waiting for an answer. He shuffled his weight from side to side.

  ‘You’re so young,’ was all she could say.

  ‘I’m twenty-two, like,’ he said defensively. ‘You want me to fuck him up or not?’

  Miriam stood and put her body between the boy and Joseph. She was scared and angry.

  ‘He’s dead anyway. What if he goes mental?’ He swung the gun recklessly around him. ‘Makes no difference to me, like.’ As he finished each sentence he pursed his lips and stuck out his jaw.

  ‘Leave us alone.’

  ‘Look,’ he said. He lowered his voice and glanced about him. ‘If I do it, you won’t have to later. Know what I mean? Fucking hell, I’m trying to do you a favour.’

  ‘You want me to pay you to kill him.’

  ‘I’ll shoot him for free, la. It’s the bullets you gotta pay for.’ He smiled wickedly. ‘It’s putting him out of his misery.’

  A whole series of memories rushed through her head, of Joseph telling her to let him go if this precise scenario ever presented itself. The boy was vile, his actions abhorrent, he made her feel sick, but this was what Joseph would have wanted.

  ‘I haven’t got all day. There’s plenty of people here who’ll pay for these bullets. I asked you ’cos you looked like a nice lady, like.’

  ‘Get away,’ Miriam mumbled.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said get away!’

  She pushed him in his bony chest and he stumbled back. He twisted his body around and used the momentum to walk away.

  ‘Fuck you then, bitch,’ she heard him say.

  He threw his hands into the air as if Miriam was the fool who couldn’t see. He walked over to another man and woman. She was lying in the sand and her husband was stroking her hair with a bewildered expression on his face. Miriam watched the husband look up when the boy called to him.

  She turned back to Joseph, her heart beating, and waited for the sound of the gun to be fired, for the boy to make his deal. But the shot did not come.

  It had just happened. She suddenly remembered the preacher with the red T-shirt in London. The world will come and swallow our souls. That was what he had said. From up on the cliff that was what it had seemed like. The earth had sucked something out of them. It had come up from beneath the ground, through the rock and sand, and unfurled its tentacles.

  She looked at the sea. It was still moving up the beach. Some of the people, the ones without families to help them, already had water lapping at their feet. They made no attempt to move back to safety. Surely they won’t let themselves drown, she thought.

  ‘Joseph.’

  He was looking at the sand directly in front of him.

  ‘We have to move.’

  Still nothing.

  A stab of despair across her chest. She tugged at his arm to stir him but he jerked and pulled away.

  ‘Leave me here,’ he said in a quiet, low voice.

  ‘No.’

  His head dropped again.

  ‘I’m not going to leave you. I said I wouldn’t.’

  She pulled at his arm again and thought of the day he had bandaged her knees when she had hurt them, and of his face when he played with the children. She tried to think of the good things. But it was just so hard. Her mind suddenly went into freefall.

  ‘Please help us,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

  The front of her head hurt, as if somebody had stuck a lattice of pins and needles in there. She could no longer tell if she was crying for Joseph or for how lost they would be without him. Hope drained out of her with each falling tear. He was going to die and their history would remain an unclotted wound. In a few days, all that he was would cease to be. The sound of the sea hissed in her ears. Everything, everything had changed in a breath of the wind.

  By the time she had recovered herself the water was just feet away. She quickly dried her eyes and reset her mind.

  ‘We have to go.’

  She knew Joseph wouldn’t answer. He was happy to let the sea drown him. The thing that had made him what he was, the survivor, had been taken from him. There was a brown apron of scum at the prow of each wave. It edged closer and closer with each tired flop. A sheet of tarpaulin floated a few feet away, half submerged. The water came closer.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. She was pleading.

  A large wave reared up in front of them. It splashed down and ran up the beach all around them. The shock of the cold made her jump to her feet. She grabbed Joseph by the arms and pulled him backwards. But his body was too heavy. It wouldn’t move. Miriam groaned with exertion as she pulled. Her feet slipped forwards and Joseph still did not move. Another wave. It fizzled with froth. The coffee brown of the scum swirled about Joseph’s prostrate form in delicate patterns. He lay back in it. The water soaked his T-shirt and turned it dark. It slopped in his hair.

  ‘No,’ she cried as she lost her grip on him. His head lay in the wet sand looking at the sky. ‘No you don’t.’

  She had to crouch down to pull him, stretching her back too far forwards. The water sloshed over her feet and around her ankles. She could feel the sliminess of the scum between her toes as she tried to pull Joseph out. The muscles of her lower back stretched under the pressure.

  The water was past them. She was losing him. The extra buoyancy meant that she could pull him but as each wave receded it would suck Joseph with it. She was losing ground. She lost grip of Joseph’s wrists and slipped backwards. Her backside hit the ground and the impact cracked up through her abdomen. She watched with sudden terror as Joseph’s body was pulled out into the water. He was like the other bodies in the shallows; just lying there, floating. She turned inland and leaned over to get a clear line of air for her lungs. She put her hands on her knees.

  ‘Somebody help me!’ she screamed. Nobody listened. ‘Will somebody please help me!’

  The despair rose in her. She ran out to Joseph and grabbed hold of his wrists once more. A wave broke in front of them and splashed into her face. She turned away and closed her eyes. The taste of salt was overpowering.

  The sound of the wave was immense; a great punch of exploding air. It smashed into her and she felt the sand beneath her suck back, but her knee held in place. She refused to let go of his wrists as the freezing water tried to prise her fingers open. Particles of sand bounced around her. Back again, knee in, pull.

  She heaved with every last inch of her. Her clothes were soaked. Her body ached with the effort. The tide was turning. But she had to hold on. There was a bond between her and Joseph that she could not break. Whatever it was that the monster had stolen from Joseph was still in her. She was not giving up. She felt the strength in her arms as they bent, her muscles tensing taut as she pulled him through the sand. They were out of the water again.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ she panted.

  The sun had dipped low in the sky. It had taken her an hour to get him safe and her body threw a long shadow behind her. At last she pulled him between the clumps of marram grass that grew at the fringe of the small dunes in front of the car park. They
had drifted right across the bay and she hadn’t even noticed.

  She let go of his wrists and flopped backwards. She drew breath in deep, long gasps. They both lay on their backs and looked at the sky. Ribs of stratus glowed red on one side and indigo on the other. She wondered what Joseph saw when he looked at them. Did he see something beautiful, or was it just chemicals? She panted until her breath came back and tried, just for those few moments, to think about what she should do next.

  She went to look for others in the sea but none were left. Black shapes floated out in the water but they were too far away and none of them were moving. She went back to Joseph and looked for the keys to the car that he had left in the car park but they were not in his pockets. He must have thrown them into the sea.

  As the light of the day faded the bright light on the front of the ship glimmered again. It no longer shone into the cliffs. The tide had turned the tanker so that the beam struck the coast obliquely.

  ‘I’m going to have to go back to the house so I can get the spare keys. And then we’ll take you back home,’ she said to him. She stroked his hair. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Just leave me,’ he said. ‘I’m fucked.’

  She stopped. ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

  His Adam’s apple moved up his throat and he didn’t answer.

  Miriam stood and found her way through the tough grass to the cliff path. She climbed it slowly, her body aching. Her muscles were stiff with acid and she could feel cramp setting in. There was a handrail at the side of the path that she used to pull herself up. Every movement was a struggle.

  When she reached the top of the path the house looked distant. She broke into a slow run. The windows of the house were black squares in the dusk. She knew that leaving Joseph was dangerous. He would probably run away but she had no choice. She had to get the car if she was going to get him back up here.

  She went in through the front door.

  ‘He’s ill,’ was all she could say.

  Her mother walked slowly towards her down the hallway. A streak of sunlight cut across it and as her mother passed through it her whole body turned gold.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  They drove down to the beach in Joseph’s van.

  ‘He should never have gone down there,’ Miriam said. ‘It wouldn’t have happened if he’d stayed in the house.’

  They parked the van and went along the head of the beach to where she had left him. She had always expected him to have disappeared but when she saw the empty patch of sand her mind emptied of thoughts and she couldn’t move.

  Her mother called Joseph’s name and hurried along the beach, searching. But Joseph had gone. He did not want to be found.

  That night Miriam slept in the same bed as her mother. Every few minutes the sounds of new cars passing the house and travelling down the hill to the beach washed in through the walls.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ her mother answered.

  They lay awake for a while longer. Miriam looked at the ceiling that glowed dimly in the half-light from the tanker.

  ‘Miriam? Are you still awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She could feel her mother’s warmth lying next to her.

  ‘What if Joseph comes back?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Miriam raised her voice above a whisper.

  ‘Then we look after him. What are you suggesting?’

  Her mother’s voice was calm as she spoke. ‘You’ve seen how he’s been acting lately.’

  ‘So? So what? Where would we be without him? We have everything we need up here because of him. And now you think we should just turn our backs on him?’

  ‘It’s what he wanted us to do.’

  ‘No it’s not. He didn’t know what he wanted. He never did.’ She stopped. The curtains swayed. ‘I was so horrible to him.’ Her breath left her. She was back in the car with him, travelling towards the supermarket. ‘I said horrible things to him.’

  She felt her mother’s hand touch hers.

  ‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘You’re upsetting yourself.’

  ‘All he was trying to do was protect us. And maybe he was right.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You know what. People.’

  Her mother paused. ‘Go to sleep, Miri. We’ll talk about this in the morning.’

  ‘There was a boy on the beach today, Mum; going around asking for money to shoot the people who were ill, to put them out of their misery.’

  Her mother said nothing.

  ‘Is that the sort of person who has good in them? Who can be redeemed? He wasn’t broken, or beaten, or confused – he was just doing what came naturally.’ She moved her hand away. ‘The last time we were at the supermarket somebody took a flamethrower and sprayed it all over a crowd of people. For no reason. They didn’t care who lived or who died. They just did what they did. These are the people Joseph warned us about. We didn’t believe they existed but I’ve seen them with my own eyes. They’re real, and they’re out there. And Joseph tried to tell us but we didn’t listen.’

  ‘Miri, stop talking like this.’

  ‘You weren’t there.’ Her skin was hot. She threw off her blankets. ‘And now you’re telling me you want to desert him, to become like them. What is it exactly you want to do if he comes back? Push him off the cliff?’

  ‘No,’ said her mother.

  ‘Well, what then? What do you really think? What will Joseph do if he comes back?’

  She sat up in the bed. ‘You know what, Miriam.’

  ‘But I don’t know what it is you think we should do.’

  ‘I don’t know either, so that means we should just ignore it, does it?’

  ‘This is pointless.’

  Suddenly her mother spoke sharply.

  ‘Now you listen here. We can’t bury our heads in the sand. You don’t seriously think the possibility of Joseph becoming violent is not a real one. You saw how he was with the man in the cellar – he was like an animal.’

  ‘He was protecting us.’

  ‘He was like an animal,’ she repeated. ‘And we all know what happens when these people change. He won’t show us any mercy, and he won’t show any mercy to the children either.’

  ‘Do you know what Joseph said to me?’ said Miriam. ‘He said he was protecting us despite himself, not because of himself.’

  ‘I believe that.’

  ‘Doesn’t that mean anything? Doesn’t that mean he had to be good?’

  ‘We’ll continue this conversation in the morning. Things will be clearer then.’

  Her mother turned away and rested her head on her pillow.

  Reluctantly, Miriam lay down in the bed with her eyes open. Sleep seemed far away. Her body was telling her it might never need sleep again. She no longer felt the urge to plug into that great unconscious. It was only nightmares for her anyway.

  By morning the ship had turned nearly a full ninety degrees. It had listed further and come to a rest with its deck tilting inland. The containers had slipped along the deck. Many of them had fallen into the sea. Their sheer weight had snapped open the bulwarks like balsawood.

  A low, thin cloud had covered the sky during the night and the air was clammy.

  Mary and Edward came running into the living room.

  ‘Has anybody seen Pele?’ said Mary, out of breath. Her cheeks were flushed.

  ‘He was here this morning,’ said Miriam’s mother.

  Mary bit her lip in puzzlement. ‘He’s disappeared,’ she exclaimed.

  The two children dashed out of the house again and a few seconds later they could hear their voices outside calling for the dog. Miriam followed them out. Down the hill towards the beach a few tents had been erected in the field behind the car park. She looked around for any sign of Joseph but there was none. He had vanished.

  ‘Kids,’ she called.

  Edward a
nd Mary stopped and looked at her.

  ‘If you see Uncle Joseph I want you to come and tell me, OK?’

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Mary.

  ‘He’s down on the beach.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Edward, his head cocked to one side.

  ‘He’s gone to help the people down there.’

  ‘Did he take Pele?’

  ‘I don’t know. Listen.’ She crouched down to their level so that they knew what she was saying was important. ‘If you see him coming, you come right to me. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ they both said together.

  ‘Promise on robin?’ she said.

  She had heard them mentioning the robin. Mary laughed.

  ‘That’s not how it works,’ she chirped. ‘We’re the robins.’

  Mary had not picked up on it but Edward was looking at her suspiciously. He didn’t say anything. But he knew something was wrong.

  The next day it started to rain a light drizzle. It filled the sky and the ship out in the bay became shrouded in mist. Miriam drove into the village but still could not find Joseph. She finally started to think she might never see him again. The rain cleared by evening. A sliver of brilliant orange cut a laser line across the horizon. The children were put to bed and Miriam’s mother turned in early.

  Miriam sat in the chair next to the window that Henry’s father had always used. Pele had still not returned. She looked out of the window and tried to forget all her thoughts. The silence was absolute.

  There was a low cabinet underneath the window. She leaned forward and pulled open one of the doors. Inside were stacks of old photograph albums. She took out the topmost, ran her hand across the smooth vellum cover and lifted it open.

  The first photograph was of the whole of Henry’s family. The two sons were very young. Henry must have been around six years old but his face was still easily recognizable. His mother had her arm around him. Joseph was different though, looked like a different person. He had a mischievous smile.

  She turned the page. The next photograph was of Henry and Joseph on a fishing boat. It looked familiar and then she remembered the photograph she had seen in Joseph’s flat in London. It had been taken on the same day. The sky was a brilliant, clear blue and their faces glowed orange in the evening light.