by Wyl Menmuir
When Timothy wakes, it is to a dark room and, trying to reach his hand up to his face, he realises he cannot move and panics. He arches his body and kicks his legs, but whatever is restraining him holds fast and the effort causes him to cough. And while he coughs, what he can see of the room spins around him. After a minute or so, his eyes start to make out details. He is back in the bedroom at Perran’s, lying in the narrow bed. Memories of being carried out of the bar come back to him, vague memories of being carried up through the winding streets to the house, along with the feeling someone is lying to him, or withholding the truth, and the question repeats itself over and over, though whether it remains unspoken inside him or he is repeating it out loud he is not sure. He has been laid on the bed and the sheets pulled tight over him, with bolsters of clothes laid out on either side of his body, presumably to stop him falling out of bed. He watches the walls rotate around him from where he lies and is aware he is not yet recovered from his sickness.
16
Timothy
WHEN TIMOTHY IS well enough to pull himself out of the narrow bed again, late the next day, he sees his clothes are now folded and laid out on a chair, and wonders who has done this for him. He pulls a sheet around himself and walks slowly down through the house, trying to get his bearings again, though the house feels strange, transfigured yet again in his absence from it, and he is still unable to feel Perran in it. Feeling cold, he fills a bath and lies in it watching the steam rise from the water towards the unfamiliar ceiling until the water cools.
The house has not been cleared, the agent had said to him from behind a wide empty expanse of desk, and the words come back to him as he lies back in the bath. Timothy gets out of the bath quickly and wraps a towel around himself, and not bothering to dry off, he goes down to the kitchen. With a growing puddle of water gathering around his feet, he stands in front of the kitchen units and takes the handles of the cupboards nearest to him in both hands, opening both units simultaneously. There is the briefest moment in which he feels the open cupboards retain their darkness for a fraction longer than they should before they allow the light in. Both cupboards are empty, and so too are the drawers in the kitchen and the small pantry cupboard by the fridge. All he finds is yellowed newspaper lining the bottoms of all the drawers and shelves. He takes some of the paper out of one of the drawers and, on the paper that is still legible and that does not disintegrate as he pulls it up, he sees the articles are written in a language he does not recognise and the pictures that accompany the articles are blurred, as though the hand that took the photographs was shaking at the time they were taken. Going through all the rooms he finds the small items of furniture that have been there all along and the items he has brought to the house himself, but no sign of any clothes that were there before he arrived, no personal belongings. His search becomes more and more frantic but he finds nothing that could give him any clue about the previous owner, as though all evidence of who he was has been erased.
When Timothy has been all through the house, he dresses quickly and walks out through the kitchen door and around the side of the house to the smaller garden at the back. He searches the garden, turning over stones and moving his hands through the long grass where he thinks he sees objects below the grass line, but comes up with nothing. He walks round to the front and stands for a while by the tree beneath which he had buried the fish, and looks down the garden. At the bottom of the garden, the strips of paper caught on the thorns in the bare hedge hang like the markers of a roadside shrine, limp without the breeze and colourless in the fading light of evening.
He looks back towards the house, which is now a dark shadow against a darkening sky, and tries to picture Perran, but there is nothing of him to grasp, nothing to reveal him or suggest him to Timothy.
Perran is a shifting sand.
Timothy looks up at the upstairs windows and tries to imagine his wife, his children perhaps there too, looking back at him through those windows on a summer morning at some point a few years from now. His wife shouting down at him, asking would he like her to bring him tea in the garden. But he cannot transplant her face onto the scene, nor bring to mind now what the house itself looks like in the light.
How long he stands like this he does not know, but eventually the chill of the evening drives him indoors, where he sees, even by the bare bulb in the kitchen, the scale of the work there is still do.
Timothy realises he is hungry, and finds he cannot remember the last time he ate any proper food. Perhaps it was before he last went out on the water with Ethan, and he is not sure how many days and nights have passed since then. He picks up the empty bottle of gin from the table and throws it into the bin and investigates the fridge. He assembles what food has not already started to rot, turns the kitchen light off, and sits at the table to eat in the dark. Once he has eaten, he stacks the dirty plate with the others he has piled up by the sink and makes his way back up towards the bedroom. Though the darkness is almost complete, he does not turn on any more lights, wanting to avoid having to confront the unfamiliarity of this place. He feels his way across the bedroom, shuffling his bare feet forward to avoid colliding with anything in the room, and climbs into bed, and when he closes his eyes the feeling of unfamiliarity follows him into his own head and he lies still and waits for sleep to come, though it is a long time in coming. He lies still and listens to the sounds in the house and wonders what more he will find changed in the morning, what more will be unfamiliar to him.
When morning comes, he still feels weak, but Timothy feels the need to move, to rid himself of the cold that had seeped into his bones somewhere out on the water and that he has been unable to shake for however many days his illness has taken up. He pulls on his running clothes and, jogging and walking alternately for a few yards at a time, makes his way out slowly along the coast road, and the feeling that has grown in him overnight starts to shift and fade. It takes him a long time to warm himself through and he is way beyond the village by the time he is warm enough to stop and wait for his breathing and his heart to slow. When he stops, he looks down from the road at the waves breaking over the rocks and remembers Ethan’s warning. He wonders whether the illness through which he has now passed was related to his earlier swim, some prolonged incubation period of a waterborne virus, or brought on purely by the effects of exposure to the cold and the waves. At this point, a mile or so after the houses have thinned out, the landscape becomes more and more featureless. To one side of the road the water and the rocks and the white foam that separates the rocks from the sea, to the other side fields, surrounded by walls made up of tightly packed stones, and the further he runs, the less he finds he is able to judge time and distance in this landscape that repeats itself over and again.
There is a thin mist on the ground in the fields beyond the low wall that separates them from the road, and through it the uneven ground looks like it too could be water from the way it dips, rolls and peaks. For a moment the road feels more like a narrow bridge across an expanse of sea, a long ribbon connecting an island to the mainland.
Some of the fields contain, within them, large clumps of trees or large stones around which the farmers must navigate their tractors to plough or harvest the field. At least a couple of the fields are host to stone structures and, from where he stands now, Timothy sees the one in the field closest contains an opening into the earth. As he looks closer he can make out the arch of a door, with a lintel stone above the entrance. He turns towards it, climbs the wall, and lowers himself carefully over into the field. He jogs over to the structure and stands looking down into the opening between the stones. The lintel stone casts a shadow, even in the half-light of early morning and what light there is does not reach far down through the opening. There is a steep step down from the field level into the cave and he can see nothing beyond the patch of earth directly beneath the lintel stone, worn smooth and grassless. He steps towards the doorway in order to see further in an
d stands just shy of the shadow it casts. Unable to see further, he lowers himself down into the darkness to see better what lies beyond. He feels the cold rising up from the ground as he descends and it brings to mind a memory of lowering himself into the burning cold of the sea. The floor is deeper than it had looked originally and when his feet touch the floor he is in the shadow, unable to see anything in front of him. He edges forward, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness. There is a rustling in front of him and two heavy bodies hurtle out of the darkness and Timothy is knocked back sharply onto the smooth floor. Thin feet jab at his head and he raises his hands to protect his face, gripped by a panic that threatens to overwhelm him and he flails his legs and keeps his hands and arms up over his face and ears as the assault continues. A heavy body lands on him and he struggles to breathe beneath its smothering weight, and the scrabbling resumes. He feels something sharp connect with his mouth and there is a sudden pressure on his chest and then there is silence. He tries to bring his breathing under control and tries to fight the feeling he needs to run from this place and forces himself to lie still. Lying on his back in the darkness, he feels the weakness his fever has left him with start to spread through his body.
When he stands and emerges into the light, he looks around and as his eyes adjust again, he sees two sheep, huddled together, just a few yards away in the field, eating grass with some urgency and ignoring him and he is glad he has not been seen by anyone else, panicking over a couple of sheep trapped in a cave in a country field. Unnerved, he jogs back to the field boundary, climbs the wall again and turns to run back towards the village.
He slows to a walk a hundred feet or so from the house, and looks at it alongside the others on the row. As he does, he has the feeling if it were not for its position on the road, flanked as it is by two other houses in the same style, he could walk past Perran’s and not know it at all.
Back inside and sitting at the kitchen table, Timothy scribbles an advert for a decorator onto a piece of card he has ripped from one of the packing boxes, which he later takes down to the café by the beach. It seems to be the only place open aside from the pub and the store, and the girl behind the counter says he can put it on the wall by the door for a week.
After only a few hours a note is pushed through the door of his house. He reads it, puts it on the kitchen table and watches it for a while, before consigning it to the kitchen bin. It was another bad idea.
The next time he walks down to the seafront, and passes the café, the same waitress who told him he could put up his advert catches him as he walks by the open door.
‘You want someone to help with that house?’
He nods, though he is not now sure that he does.
‘Tracey. My sister. She’ll do it fine. She’s done work in most people’s houses round here. She’ll do fine. I’ll send her over ’round three.’
And it is arranged. The waitress has retreated back into the café. Though he does not want anyone to come to the house now, he cannot find a good enough reason to put her off, so he continues his walk between the café and the winch house propped up against the wall that separates the road from the beach.
Clem is sitting outside on the deep concrete step looking out at the sea and Timothy sits down next to him. Clem says nothing, and Timothy wonders whether he has heard him arrive.
‘I ran out beyond the village this morning,’ Timothy says. ‘I had a look at those stone structures, the ones in the field. Do you know what they are, what they were? They look old. Are they storehouses? Or graves? Are they symbolic of something?’
‘The barrows?’ Clem replies and his voice is far away. ‘No, no one knows what they’re there for. No meaning in them I know of.’
Clem settles back into his silence and after a minute or so Timothy wonders whether the other man has forgotten he is there.
‘Tell me about Perran then,’ Timothy says. ‘Or at least tell me why you won’t talk about him.’
The winchman says nothing, but continues to stare out to where the gulls sit on the rocks at the mouth of the cove, waiting on the return of the fleet. Timothy has a feeling it is not Clem sitting next to him at all, but that he is out with the birds on the rocks, watching with them in hope of a catch for the fleet, and in hope of their safe return. That the man beside him is a golem, an empty shell left to sit by the water while its inhabitant walks elsewhere. Timothy stands and walks down off the concrete step onto the stones, and Clem speaks before he has gone five yards.
‘What is there to tell?’
Clem’s voice still sounds as though he is talking at a distance.
‘What is there I could tell you would make him real to you?’
He is silent then a while longer and Timothy thinks he is finished and the stones crunch beneath his feet as he turns to walk on.
‘You want to hear me tell you he was a good man, and one who worked hard for his lot. A grafter. You’ll want to hear he was the best of us, the one who looked out for all the rest and never tired, and never bitched and never moaned when the fish dried up, and kept the fleet going until they made their way back.’
Timothy feels each of the words as though they are stones from the beach pitched into dead calm water. Each one drops into the deep and makes its way down through forests of kelp to settle heavy on the sea floor. Timothy feels his legs start to buckle beneath him and he wants to sit down again before he falls down onto the stones.
‘You want me to tell you he was gifted. Or a gift. A talisman. That when I took over from him, I was stepping into shoes I could not hope to fill. There’s some will tell you that, sure.’
More stones falling one after the other into the water, each one small and heavy, and each one heavier than the last. The words reach him as if transmitted over a vast distance and he feels each fall on him like a mote of infinite density that punctures and passes through him.
‘What do you want him to be? What do you want to feel about him? You want to feel proud? You want to feel he was okay, that he lived out a life he was happy with?’
The distance with which Clem had spoken earlier is receding now, and with each sentence, he gets louder and closer to Timothy, though as far as he can tell, the older man has not moved from where he is sitting, on the concrete step. Clem’s voice has risen too, as though the question has dragged him back from his place out with the birds on the rocks, and his words are sharp round the edges, as with smooth stones that break and splinter when they are thrown down among others on the beach. Timothy wants to be far away from Clem now. He wants to be far away from this village, out in the open space of the sea, though as he looks out that way, the line of container ships on the horizon stares backs at him. He stands and walks away from Clem, who is still sitting outside the hut, staring out onto the water, and the winchman’s words follow him until he is out of sight of the beach and back up on the road.
Timothy wanders back up through the village and as he walks along the top row, he sees there is a girl or woman waiting for him on the front step of the house.
Tracey’s bleached hair makes her look younger than she is, and when she moves it aside from where it has fallen across her face, he sees her skin, sun-scarred and pocked. Standing on the doorstep talking to him, she is already looking around him into the hallway with open curiosity, though why this is he cannot understand, as she has arrived to work in the house and she will be inside soon enough. He wonders again whether this move has been a mistake, though she is here now and soon enough in the house, wandering from room to room, looking appraisingly, a little shocked, unimpressed, he cannot tell. He leaves her to her exploration and sits in the kitchen, not wanting to put the kettle on in case she takes it as an invitation to stay any longer.
‘I know what this house needs,’ she says. ‘Leave it to me, I’ll make a start now.’
There is something suggestive in the tone of her voice. Timothy
considers telling her he has not made up his mind yet about taking her on for the job, but she has taken out a notepad already and is scribbling in it with a pencil stump. He feels obliged to take her instruction, and he picks up his jacket from the back of a kitchen chair and leaves through the side door.
By the time Timothy returns to the house, Tracey has gone, though as he walks through the house to check, he has the passing thought she might be waiting for him in the bedroom. She is not, but she has left behind her the smell of smoke, which lingers throughout the rooms and on the stairs, and he finds a small pile of cigarette ends by the doorstep. He walks through the house and sees she has been trialling swatches of paint over the walls in the front room, lines of powder blue by the chimneybreast. It’s not what he would have chosen, and he starts to wonder, now he has invited someone else into the house to make decisions, what his role here might be. He paces the house and thinks on the different ways in which he might rid himself of her.
He decides the next time he sees Tracey, he will tell her it is all a terrible mistake, and that he will pay her for the work she has done so far but that she need not come back again. He pats the pocket where earlier he put the spare key for her to use, and he is glad he forgot to pass it over to her.
That night, as he lies in bed waiting for sleep to come, he hears noises around the outside of the house, and several times he gets up and looks out of the windows down into the garden. When he looks though, the darkness is too thick to make anything out, and whether the sounds are of animals or people he cannot tell. He reminds himself he bolted the doors before he came upstairs and, though he listens hard now, he hears nothing more and eventually he falls asleep. When he wakes it is still dark and the sense of unease remains with him and he lies staring up at the ceiling that he still does not recognise as belonging to this place.