Morning, Early

Illustrated by Ella Clayton.

It was morning, early, and the birds sang him out of sleep. 

He had not known the sleep was going to come. It had stolen upon him like a thief. It had taken some of his tiredness away, but not the feelings of earlier that night.

Light was drifting through the curtains. He got out of bed and looked outside. The street looked softer in this morning light. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see that it was only four am. He had forgotten how deceptive summer mornings could be.

There was a beauty in this empty start of day; he knew that as an objective fact. But he did not know it as a subjective feeling. He turned away from the window, paced the room, head pounding, throat-dry yet bladder-full, unable to sit, unable to stand. He lay down on the bed for a few moments, got back up again. He could not stay here. He could not be here. 

After a while, he dressed in jeans and an old sweatshirt; he felt sure that the summer air would be kind, even at this early hour.

He was right. As he stepped outside the house into the sleeping street, the air already carried a suggestion of the hot day to come. He walked out of the street, onto the village’s main road which he followed down to the seafront.

The birdsong was much louder now. It came from the trees that lined the road, from the great wedge of woods to the west. It was so loud that he struggled to distinguish the calls of individual birds. So he tried to fix his mind upon just that mass of sound and nothing else. By focusing on it, he might silence his unquiet mind.

For a time, it worked. It worked all the way along the main road – quiet at this time of morning – along the promenade, past the rows of holiday cottages, down the steps to the beach. At this point the birdsong had faded out of earshot; only the harsh cry of the gulls was left. 

He made his way carefully down the steps; they were slimy from seaweed and lack of use. Most of the tourists used the bigger steps at the other end of the promenade. These steps had been used to access the jetty for the fishing boats. There were no fishing boats here anymore. There had not been for some time. 

He moved off the steps onto the moist sand of the beach. Ahead of him, almost at low tide was the sea, bluish under the newly dawned sky. The water’s edge was not too far away.

He glanced behind him, to see if anyone was about. There was no sign at all. He had the world to himself, for now. There was a certain irony in that, he thought. He walked towards the outgoing sea, catching up with the source of his destruction. 

His overwhelming feeling was one of not wanting to cause a fuss; indeed he was embarrassed at the prospect of doing so. He wanted it to be quiet, clean, as though some switch had been flicked, turning light into darkness. These thoughts all crossed his mind, but he knew the impossibility of these imaginings. A fuss could not be avoided. 

He felt a sudden wave of self-loathing come upon him at describing what would happen with such a trivial little word.

Fuss. No, it would not be a fuss. There would first be a nagging worry at his absence, then fear, then a search, then a discovery, or a lack of one, but all the same result. He knew the pain all this would cause, knew what it might do. Yet he felt, walking further down the beach towards the waiting waves, that he had no other choice. The self-hate, the inadequacy, the fear of he knew not what; surely by removing himself from all of this he would not only spare his cowardly heart from having to endure it any longer, but save those around it from experiencing the effects it had on him? It was to him a grotesque but evident truth. Grotesque, as he knew himself to be.

He was almost at the water’s edge now. The retreating waves had left a thin sheen of water on the dark brown sand, as though great sheets of glass had been placed over the rippled land. His shoes splashed along and his feet were soon soaked, but that hardly mattered. The sun had risen to a point where he now saw himself reflected in the water below his feet. He wondered absurdly, as this mirror-self kept pace with him, whether it thought and felt as he did. Or was it free of all of that?

He came at last, to face the sea, and what he had come here to do. The waves lapped eagerly towards, round, his feet as though encouraging him in. Beyond, in the middle of the bay, he could see the slight change in sheen of the bluish water, the change that signified the wicked current that rushed out to sea. It was to this he aimed to swim, before letting it grip him and carry him where it would. 

He took a deep breath that swiftly turned to a sob. His head pounded to such a degree that it felt as if an iron weight had been placed within his skull. His eyes felt ready to burst; he had to raise a hand to his face to check they were not actually doing so. 

“I don’t want to do this,” he said aloud, though there was no thing to hear him but the gulls overheard. “I don’t.” There lay the problem; he did not want to do this, but he had to. There were no other alternatives.

He swallowed, tears running down his face. Walking as steadily as he could, he moved into the waves. The temperature of the sea often lagged behind the seasons, and so the cold of the sea shocked him. He took a deep breath, and kept moving.

 His jeans were sodden by the time he was calf-deep. He kept his eyes fixed on the current a short swim away. Get to that, he thought. Get to that, and this will all be over soon. 

The cold had shocked the tears from his eyes, but now his thoughts turned again to who he was leaving behind. He knew the pain he would cause, and he felt a sorrow at this fact that was so strong it seemed a blow to the chest. 

The waves were slapping at that same chest now. He could feel the taste of the salt spray in his mouth. The current was out of sight, but he knew it was not far. He pushed his feet off from the sand, and began to swim. 

I can’t do this. 

I have to.

I can’t. 

He stopped swimming, trod water for a few moments. He did not know how far down the bottom was. He could not see the current.

A wave came crashing forwards towards him. Too late he realised he was in a bad position to meet it. This thought came into his head just as the wave reached him.

He was tugged backwards, downwards, deepwards. For a momentary span that felt timeless, he did not know which direction he faced. He was being crushed beneath a space that was without a conscious concept of up, down, in, out. He was vaguely aware that his limbs were flailing. There was a roaring sound, and that roaring sound was the sea. 

The sea spat him out into the shallows. He coughed, went under again. His feet scrabbled on sand, and for a moment he was upright. 

His legs folded under him, whether from weariness or shock or the cold he did not know. With a splash, he fell backwards into a sitting position, the water up to his chest. The tide, so keen to be rid of him a moment before, tugged him forwards again.

This time he would not let it take him. He turned in the water, half-crawled half-stumbled out of the sea, sat down on the beach.

He coughed up sea water, slowly got his breath back. 

The dialogue in his head was still there, but fainter now.

I can’t do this. 

I have to.

I can’t. 

You have to…

No, he thought. I don’t have to. 

I don’t have to do anything. 

He did not know how long he sat there; time no longer seemed to be a concept that mattered. He was aware that the sun grew higher in the sky, and began to dry his soaked clothes. Finally, an understanding came over him that there was no longer any purpose to be gained from sitting where he was.

He stood and walked away from that place, through the mirrors of abandoned sea water that the incoming tide was beginning to reclaim. Once again, he saw himself reflected. This time, he knew that the mirror-self was simply that. It felt just as he did, went through the same pains, though the same thoughts, because it was him. At this very moment it would be feeling blank, as though the sea had washed all feeling from it. 

There is only me, he thought. He found it strange how this thought could swiftly switch between being a source of peace and an overwhelming fact.

The birdsong was quieter as he walked back the way he had come. 

He went in through the back door.

They were all there at the kitchen table, having breakfast. The children hugged him, asked why his clothes were damp. He said nothing to them, just gave them a smile that he did not truly feel.

When the children went back to breakfast, she stepped forwards. Held him, wordlessly. She knew. Understood. 

She held him for a long time.

An embrace. Understanding. That would be enough for now. 

The town was awake now. The sun was already strong in the sky, shining down on the hot shimmering land. 

And beyond, the far blue sea.