I want to get started right away, but John tempers my fear-fueled enthusiasm with the promise of tea and a roaring fire. The damp has found its way straight to my bones, and I’m trembling in a rather pitiful manner, so I follow him into the cottage with very half-hearted protests.
“Gwen, look what I’ve found washed up on the shore.”
“John Goveny, I swear to all that is holy, if you’ve brought home another pitiful, broken capall uisce, I’m going to- Oh.” A beautiful young woman with a long golden plait down her back and the grace of a seabird turns from the kettle and stops short as she sees the two of us.
“Pitiful, yes. Broken, yes. But I do hope you’re relieved I’m not a water horse at the very least.”
“Gwen, this is-”
“Lieutenant William Lackland.” She smiles broadly and envelopes me in a warm embrace. Between John on the beach and this strange woman in John’s cottage, it’s the most human contact I’ve had in months. “Welcome.”
“Will, this is my wife, Gwen. Gwen, this is, well, Will, as you already know.”
“I’d no idea you’d gotten married,” I say, looking back and forth between them as he stands with his arm around her waist. The last I’d truly known of John Goveny was a scrawny, shell-shocked young corporal in the trenches doing his level best to keep a stiff upper lip. We’d reminisced over a pint years before when I’d come to the island for the Races, but we’d talked much of the past and little of the present or future. And yet here he stood, with a home, a wife, a good life.
“It came as a surprise to us both,” Gwen laughs, and John looks down at her with the soft light of happiness in his eyes. It makes me inextricably happy and sad in the very same moment. “Now, won’t you sit?”
She gestures to the small table and begins placing cups and pouring tea. Producing a plate of cakes from the oven, she sets it in front of me and takes her place beside John. We make light conversation for some time, allowing the tea and the fire to bring life back to our limbs. Finally, when we’re sufficiently heated through, John sits back and looks at me.
“So what brings you here, Will?”
It’s so open-ended a question, I could easily give an equally open-ended answer. But I’ve spent so very long holding my truths inside, passing grimaces off for smiles. Besides, this is the man who was with me in what we both believed would be my final moments. Lying to him would seem cheap. Seeing my discomfort, Gwen rises to excuse herself, but I gesture for her to stay.
“Stay, please. I’ve no reason to hide. I’ve taken just about as much shame as one man might handle in the last several years. I believe I’m quite impervious to it now.” Sighing and running a hand over my face, I lean my elbows on the table. “I suppose I’m here because I have nowhere else to be and nothing else to lose. I’ve grown tired to the point of illness of London. I’ve proved such a disappointment to my father that I do think he might write me out of the inheritance of the practice before long. And I’ve become so numb to it all that frankly, thundering down the beach on the back of a large animal who would like nothing better than to either drown me or eat me sounds quite palatable so long as it makes me feel something.”
Their reaction is much as I expected: silence. John’s mouth has fallen open slightly and Gwen’s eyes are wide. Shifting in my chair, I suddenly feel very warm, and I think I’d rather be back outside in the damp and the cold than here in this warm, lovely kitchen. It all feels foolish now, daft even, to be so brutally honest with these two people who scarcely know me. Gwen I’d met all of half an hour before and John and I were such different people when we last truly knew each other. And yet… I can breathe.
“Thank you for the tea.” I stand quickly, nearly knocking over my chair in my haste. It isn’t a graceful exit to be sure, made all the less graceful by both John and Gwen standing quickly and nearly knocking over their own chairs. The result is a mad scramble followed by three people looking at each, clearly unsure of what to do with themselves.
“Won’t you stay?” John finally asks. “We have a room.”
“Please do.” Gwen reaches out and gently takes my hand.
“I.. I can’t. I cannot put you out in such a manner. I’ve already got a room in town,” I rush on, as they both open their mouths, no doubt to tell me that it would be their pleasure. And I know that they are sincere. But the thought of sharing such an intimate thing as this small, neat cottage with them makes me want to run as far as I can.
“Well, all right. Come back in the morning. We’ll start training.” John claps me on the shoulder. “We’ll make a racer out of you yet.”
It’s a long way to the inn I’m not sure has a room for me, but the bit of pride I still possess prevents me from turning back. I’ve made a fool of myself twice already today, and will certainly do so many more times before my time on this island is at its end. I do not need to add one more instance to that list. And so I go, picking my slow way toward town and regretting every painful, halting step I take.
