Elysium. Part One. (2 page)
There was nothing to hear but the surf against the bay.
From the platform of the lighthouse Ted Corbin sat in his deck-chair and surveyed the hazy orange dusk radiating from the sand-choked clouds. The amber horizon cast a sepia glow in the calm stratosphere, and behind him the stars slowly pricked their way through the gown of night.
Customarily unperturbed, Ted found himself in a troubled state. He had spent the day attending Kelly’s funeral, and had come away from it with a mind mired in morbidity.
He had spent hours listening to people deliberate the capricious nature of mortality, how it both ‘makes you think’, and ‘doesn’t bare thinking about’. He had pondered on the expression ‘ashes to ashes’, and scared himself with the realisation that for all the billions of years prior to birth, and the trillions of years that would follow, he was now experiencing the brief, and only, glimpse of sentience that was but a spark of static in an ocean of black.
In the morning he had considered the passing of young Kelly, no older than thirty-seven, as being nothing more than a reminder that life was the same now as it would always be, the same as it always
had
been. It had given him a certain comfort that they were not so very different from the rest of the world, but the sudden notion that his brief part in the limelight of life was three-quarters over, and soon to be replaced by unending unconsciousness, tugged at his nerves like an unexpected call to arms.
He countered this with a thought that he had long ago accomplished the life objective of any organism: reproduction. He could leave the world in the knowledge that he would, in a genetic sense at least, continue to live through his son, Reighn, and his granddaughters.
His daughter-in-law was due to give birth again in little under a month. Ted pondered on her for a moment, reflecting on the sex of the child and whether it would live, for both her boys had died stillborn. ‘Such a shame,’ he found himself saying.
He sat overlooking the sea, sitting atop his home, a stocky lighthouse with a view of Bull Point that had been redundant for over a century. He warmed is hands on a ceramic mug steaming with whiskey-spiked coffee as gulls arced and hovered about him in the swelling breeze.
Breaker, his black and tan Alsatian, clacked across the grid-iron balcony and sniffed Ted’s thigh, his tail wagging frantically.
‘Ah! What’s the matter, boy?’ Ted said, rubbing Breaker’s snout as he continued stargazing. ‘I fed you an hour ago, don’t pretend you forgot,’
Breaker complained, then collapsed on the grid-iron, sighing.
It had been an odd day; an odd week, really. Richard Kelly had been found dead in his home. He had been a carpenter and runner to the community’s contacts in Ballycotton, on the southern Irish coast. Ted had always found him a personable fellow, if slightly aloof at times, but knew he would be sorely missed by all quarters of the village.
‘Only thirty-seven,’ Ted mused, shaking his head with a sigh and thinking melancholic thoughts once again.
*
Semilion Tupper relaxed in his lounge on the second floor of the Smuggler’s Rest. He sat with
Paradise Lost
open in his lap, curling the pages in his fingers and staring at the floor. Each year he would find the scratched and tormented book and promise he would progress beyond page thirty-one. He was doing well this year, having pushed three pages deeper, though he had read the last paragraph nine or ten times - and had wholly lost interest in the tale.
He put the book down. ‘You won’t beat me, you bastard,’ he muttered, turning the oil-lamp beside him down a little as he stood.
His family was running the bar for the evening while he rested. His wife, Sarah, had told him to take it easy for a few hours – organising Kelly’s service and wake had taken its toll, she suggested - and he had reluctantly conceded defeat.
Stepping to the drinks cabinet, he retrieved a bottle of plum wine and twisted the bulbous cork. When it popped open he sniffed it and smiled; plum was his specialty. Pouring it into a small oak goblet, he savoured its sweet aroma and honeyed aftertaste.
Checking the oil-lamp again, he crossed the threadbare carpet to a large curtained window and peered outside. From his vantage he could see most of the high street, including the sea crashing against the bay far below. It was warm in the room, and Semilion opened the window wide, the rushing sound of the sea lulled gracefully into the room.
He inspected the silhouette of the squat lighthouse high on Bull Point. It reminded him that the shipping report would be transmitted in three days. Although it was one of the most essential facets of his position as community overseer, he hated listening to the shipping report. There was nothing he found more depressing.
He anticipated an approaching storm, so still and humid was the air, and dropped the black curtain back into place. He observed the draw and drag of the long thick fabric for a time, watching the curtain bulge and suck against the window; if it parted even fractionally he would have to close it and endure the heat. He couldn’t afford the light being spotted in the dark. None of them could.
He retraced his steps to the drinks cabinet, poured himself another glass of plum wine, and returned to his chair. ‘Right, Milton,’ he muttered, picking up
Paradise Lost
despondently, ‘let’s try again,’
Three rooms along from his own, his daughter Eryn sat upon her bed, wiping her swollen eyes and fighting the burning in her throat. Kelly’s death had shaken her greatly; not only would she miss him and the future she had fantasied about since she could remember, but he was the only person she had been close to whom had died.
She was eighteen, and her raven hair cascaded over her ashen face, hiding her bloated, bloodshot eyes. She had spent most of the ceremony crying and hadn’t been shy of doing so. And why should she have been? Everyone was aware of the playful friendship between her and Kelly; they knew, though never spoke of it outside of whispers, and the necessary postures required for gossip, that she had looked up to him more than her own father.
She composed herself after the burial, and walked back to the Smuggler’s Rest where she prepared food for the wake. She didn’t hear the short elegy Jack Little had written, though Betty had told her about it when the villagers were talking amongst themselves over drinks and pasties. It had started her off again, and Betty had cooed: ‘Don’t you worry y’self, my girl. Kelly’s in a better place now. He wouldn’t want to think his passing caused you a grief.’
‘I know… I just…’ She didn’t know what she just, she thought as hot tears warmed her cheeks.
Betty nodded and smoothed Eryn’s hair – and then returned to her table and conversation with Reighn and Dawn Corbin.
She stood quietly for a moment and collected herself, and then turned quickly – she had heard her name being whispered sharply and had the impression that it hadn’t been the first time, though in her dissociation she’d failed to notice the voice was directed at her.
The whisperer was Boen Waeshenbach, the fisherman’s son. He was a year younger than Eryn, though they had both been schooled together. He was a loner and, as most would happily concur, a comprehensive waste of space. He spent his evenings at the bar trying to engage her in inane conversation. It was obvious he desired her, whether physically or to a deeper extent she didn’t care to know, and though there was nothing tangibly unattractive about him – she had always thought he had nice, if somewhat plain, features; he reminded her of her father in so much as he lied when there was no reason to. It seemed as though if there was a silence, he would fill it with some cock-and-bull tale about nothing in particular.
Tonight, however, she wasn’t in the mood for it.
‘I’m busy, Boen.’ She said with a sniff.
‘You look rough, are you Ok?’ He leaned on the bar.
Instead of answering she poured him a pint and passed it to him. She wrapped one thin arm around herself, and wiped her sore eyes with the other.
‘I saw something the other night.’ He said hoarsely. Eryn rolled her eyes.
‘I don’t think I can take this today, Boen.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’m not in the mood for your lies, that’s what I mean.’
He was quiet for a moment while Tinder North came to the bar, winked at him and walked away with a pint.
Boen was frowning at Eryn. ‘I’m serious!’ he said, sternly.
‘What! What did you see then?’
‘Someone running out of Kelly’s place the night he died.’
Eryn thought she would scream. She flushed with rage, but instead of unleashing her fury she trembled with anger. Boen couldn’t help but see.
‘I mean it! Don’t get pissed off.’
‘You saw someone running away? Really! And you didn’t think to mention it until now?’
Boen’s cheeks coloured. ‘It was…’
‘Get out, Boen.’ Eryn whispered curtly, her tone stoic.
His mouth hung open, about to resist, but her eyes were empty of compromise and he left.
*
Jasmine Sooth knelt at the hearth in her cottage. With twilight handing the day to night it was permissible to light fires, and she sighed relief to be able to finally boil some water. She began piling the logs beside the grate before placing a flame to the tinder in the cast-iron fireplace. It took a few moments, and then a rich blaze licked and took hold of the fragile kindling. Carefully placing the firewood in the grate she stood and returned to her comfy chair, a mass of throws and blankets, before stopping at the window. Lifting the heavy black curtain slightly she looked towards the rising cliffs, and stared for a moment at the summit.
It was cloudy, and the wind was churning it angrily. A gust rattled the blossoming trees in the garden and sent a whistling draft through the kitchen. The chimney groaned mournfully.
‘Benjamin,’ she called, her voice mellifluous. Instantly she heard her son’s feet on the floorboards above, and a few moments later he was pounding down the first few steps of the staircase. He remained at the top, and ducked between the banisters. ‘yeah, ma?’
‘Stay in tonight,’ she said, turning back to the window as a hail of pink blossom whipped passed the frame.
He stood, and was about to go - then ducked again, ‘Why?’
Jasmine remained quiet for a moment, and then turned back to him. ‘Something’s coming… the wind’s picking up.’
Benjamin bit his bottom lip, and then returned to his room.
*
The atmosphere in the Smuggler’s Rest was wearying, as were the coals in the hearth. Most villagers had left Kelly’s wake fearing they would be caught in a downpour, though a few remained drinking, and Tom Barnaby – hoping to lift the sentiment of the day - played his fiddle merrily whilst sitting on the long-decayed snooker table.
All the curtains were drawn tight, the solar lamps burned brightly, and the storm, nothing more than a shadow far out at sea, would give them little trouble.
Tom came to the finale of his piece, and lay the fiddle down. He picked up his pint and took a large swig, half of which disappeared in his copious moustache. He placed the tankard down with an exaggerated burp and listened in on a conversation between Betty Longshank, the resident handywoman, and John Summer.
She said: ‘It weren’t no cat I tell you, I know a cat as when I see one,’
