Tom Mew
Find
There is no easy way to get back yourself. I hugged my body and the arms around me were this other man’s, who was very cold and was also two shadows meeting. I felt sick and alive. What did James say to me on the cliff? Which James? Which cliff. Interior design cliff. Some beautiful image, they’ve made here, with the text underneath setting the tone of it all, cleverly so the consumer has to supply that little bit of hunger of their own. What time am I writing this from? You know I did not die. You think you know yourself and then. The ocean below a cliff at night’s the fucking worst. It sings. Complete yourself with a final set of experiences: falling and drowning. If there’s too many voices around you that are whispering and pulling, just pick definitively. The way down is the simplest and the quickest. I was thirsty, I was so tired. Have you ever been so tired, I wondered, looking at James. This James unravelled – loose – on a stone beside me, or sometimes nearer. He said: ‘If you want to make gains, you should be eating more protein, ideally from a grass-fed source.’ It seemed perfectly rational at the time. Daniel sat there, not looking at me. Did he know how far away I was? Black bubbles up my throat, the sting of it like there was already salt water flooding it. Pity is a kind of drowning. That feeling was the worst – that he had wanted me, and now I disgusted him, or something like that, so he wouldn’t look to me. I knew I was in a state. I started touching my hair and feeling just sick – it was so greasy. I had done that. For some time I watched Minto or just my idea of Minto come creeping up behind Daniel, and I wanted to warn him he was going to be tossed downwards by the old menace. But I couldn’t speak because I couldn’t speak. The ties of Minto’s dressing gown dragged along the ground – his old pale face was a hermit moon. He had thrown a man out of a window, right? Or furniture or something. Anyway his house was full of broken things; windows, musty books, men. If I was in charge of things I’d put him as a cartoon character, a sticker of a cartoon face, best for crisps or perhaps a start-up for a mystery book club.
With that actual bastard noise in my head the wind outside it was a comfort – actually some girl was away waving at me. Bitch, I thought, she wants something of me and I’m so tired. ‘I don’t want to help you. I’m exhausted,’ I called. I’d been working in the stables all day and loving my master, who never looked at me, though James said, of course I did love you, in the way I could, which was not to look at you ever, to order you to saddle my horses and suck the splinters out my fingers and help me ditch the body. I disgusted myself with the sweat smell of horses which was me. How low I was in his eyes. He never wanted me, I realised. Someone did. I turned to see the woman again, across the darkness, a single light that hit me now on my arm, now on my face. I wondered at it – so precise and bright it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be her that wanted me, could it? Had I failed her too? I was sure I must have. I failed her because I couldn’t place her, at least not right then. I couldn’t see that far. I was falling sick, I thought. I kicked out my foot to shake the pins and needles out of it, and a pinch of stones rolled off the edge of the world and I thought, dully, how simple it is to kick away even something so old and sturdy. Across the heath I saw figures in white – white gowns flapping, little white ruffles at the throats of the men, white cuffs, unbearably white – dancing to music that the wind swallowed. It was the turn of the year. I remembered it was November, and James had lived so far submerged in his unknowing that he would never see a real summer again – would have to invent it forever from these feeble materials. I saw my master dip his hand into my throat, through it, and hold there, as if warming his fingers in the stream of my living blood. Then I was really afraid. I put my head down and I cried, and a patch of light crept up my leg, small as a mouse. It seemed hopeful, then.
‘Órla?’ I said, licking salt off my lips, wiping my hair back off my head. ‘What’s going on?’
I looked around and saw I was sitting at the edge of a cliff. I got up and backed away. Órla came running towards me. Had she been here the whole time? Why had she let me just sit there? I was raw and cold right through to the bone. She gave me a piece of paper. I looked at it. I saw nothing on it. I saw words on it. Afraid of offending her, I gently let it go. It’s for the best to be well rid of some things. To not take all that you’re given. Just refuse to take it. Because you don’t know how you’ll take it, you don’t know what you’ll have to grow into to hold on to it. I shivered and she had me by the arm. She didn’t seem to mind taking a piece of trash like me. We were going inside, back to the bothy. And I walked clumsily over the ground, thinking I’d left something behind. I kept turning to look. It was a man. He had my face, and he did not move. I felt so much love for him, and horror.
But inside there was the three of us. And the firelight expanded and throbbed through me, making me clean. Daniel washed my face with a cloth, and I let him, even when he was bad at it, and I wanted to adjust the pressure of it, to be more gentle with me. I let him go on until I was clean. Órla sprayed my hair and combed out the oils. I was theirs.
Us
How do we keep going?
We were going into the morning.
‘I’ve been having such a hard time living lately,’ Tom said.
‘I know,’ Daniel said.
‘We know,’ said Órla, helping Tom out of the blanket and into a second jumper.
Daniel held the copied toy by one of the narrow windows. Tom watched the curve of his back. Daniel was thinking, what shall we do with it?
‘Let’s bury it,’ said Tom. The three went down to the shore. In weak, pearly daylight Tom knelt to dig a hole in the shallow sand. There wasn’t enough to cover it.
‘It’ll never rot,’ said Órla. We make a thing of lasting endurance, and then we try to forget it. But that is true of so much. Except of us, Daniel thought. After he was done, Tom straightened up and took Daniel’s hand, and Órla’s. The sea was low and still had the colour of night in it. The tide hadn’t taken it out yet. Let us drop into one another like water. Let us go together for a while and make it home safe, Órla thought.
‘You can’t save anybody,’ said Daniel, to himself, and to us.
‘In the end, no,’ thought Tom.
‘No,’ said Orla, ‘but we will keep trying.’
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without Douglas Dunbar, who means more to me than I can say. To all my friends and family who’ve kept me buoyed with their own works, recommendations and judicious comments. Particularly to my father, who is no longer here to read this one and call it ‘good but strange’. Much of the sections on Codicology would not be possible without the colour and vibrancy brought to the discipline by Dr Johanna Green; thank you for speaking to me with such passion for your work. Thank you to Lucila Mantovani and Lourdina Rabieh of the Kaaysá Art Residency in Boiçucanga and Creative Scotland for supporting my writing. Immense thanks to my agent Jenny Brown, to Camilla Grudova for the books and friendship, and the wonderful Ali Smith for giving me a few encouraging words just when I needed them. Thank you to my editor Edward Crossan and the team at Polygon for keeping the book sailing on through difficult times.
Bitterhall Page 26