17

Harbour ♦ Harbwr ♦ Mina’

EFA LAID HER ARM across the bed and realized that he wasn’t there. The sheets had been pushed back, the bed cold. She opened her eyes. He was gone. She descended the stairs calling his name, her panic rising with each step. The front door was open. Her heart sank. She pulled a coat off the bottom bannister and ran outside, the moon strong enough not to need a torch. The gate was open, too.

He had wandered off in the supermarket before, sometimes failed to find his way back from the gents in cafés, but he had never walked out of the house. Efa instinctively turned left down into the village, the way they usually took, because the pavement seemed to tip you that way down the slope. She shouted his name, but nothing came back except the barking of dogs and the sound of her own voice reverberating in the empty street.

She thought about what they had discussed before bed, combed her mind for any clues as she walked, her coat opening to reveal the white cotton nightdress underneath.

‘Emrys!’

It was quiet. She scanned the road, up and down. Cursed herself for having slept so soundly. It was just that he had seemed so settled. The night before he had been crying in his sleep and calling out for his mother. She had been unable to console him or convince him of who she was. Anything to make the calling stop, for her heart’s sake as much as his. His clumsiness meant he was dirtying his clothes much more than usual; she had spent the day doing the laundry and, with it being so cold, everything took so long to dry.

‘Emrys?’

The harbourside was quiet. Nothing but the gentle rocking of boats, their lines slapping on the masts occasionally and the moon setting a path across the water. ‘Emrys?’ Her voice sounded around the harbour walls.

‘Yes?’

Efa stopped. Her breathing laboured.

‘Where are you?’

He was standing by the slipway into the harbour. Alone. Feet from the water.

‘We’re taking the new boat out today,’ he said. ‘Have I forgotten something?’

Efa stopped. He was barefoot. His thin pyjamas hanging loose on his wasted shoulders.

‘Emrys, what are you doing here?’

He laughed as she embraced him.

‘Working. What do you think? What’s wrong with you?’ Efa felt her face crumple. Warm tears on his shoulder. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ He stroked the back of her head. Thirty years of rising at four in order to be at the harbour by five had ingrained themselves. And the repetitiveness had worn grooves in his memory and, occasionally, the pin of his mind would find them as his consciousness swirled and an old familiar routine would resurface. Crackle with static. Emrys felt his wife sob on his shoulder. ‘I won’t go today, then,’ he said into her hair, an instinct to comfort her. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

They stood, as dawn began to stir, a leaving delayed, their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

Joseph woke and squinted against the morning light. His mouth dry, the smell of vomit near by. He sat up, his arms and back aching from having slept on the hard floor. He tried to focus. He rubbed his face. She was still there, looming above him. His father’s boat. He remembered looking at her, the night before, bottle of brandy in hand. He hadn’t looked at her since she was dragged up the beach after his death. He’d thought of the way his father was tied to her as he breathed his last, Joseph unsure whether she had tried to save him or drown him. His father had bragged about the hours he and the shipwright had put into her. To perfect her. How he had smoothed his rough hands over her, elevated her to perfection. Joseph only ever saw her as a boat, a beautiful one, yes, but she didn’t sing in his mind the way she did for his father. They had had to cut the ropes, cut his body from her in death – not that he could remember much about that day, except that he had lain awake during the storm, watching the waves thunder in. He had prayed, too. At sixteen years old, he’d stayed there until his back ached, his knees numb on the wooden floor, but his father had still died. Death, it seemed to Joseph, had come to him slowly. With the leaving of his wife, the reincarnation of her face in Nefyn’s, and his separation from the boat.

He remembered looking at the boat last night, drawing the tarpaulin away before walking back towards the village. Towards The Ship. He had talked to some old acquaintances there, heard about the Doctor’s funeral. The theories circulating. Talk of some plain-clothed officers going door to door. Something was going on. Joseph kept quiet. Held on to his whiskey glass a little tighter. Feigned ignorance. After all, he had only just come home. The usual teasing over his ‘fishing trip’. A distraction at least. Then there was a man, by the bar. Fair-haired. Big talk in his drink. Bitterness in his words. He said there was more to all this than they could ever imagine. Joseph had watched him down his drink and smirk as he walked away.