Les Noyades

7: Ode to the West Wind

It was murderous cold that night. They crouched all three of them in the back of the van with the blankets hunkered over their bodies as they ate their lukewarm food. Yves and Declan had moved from poetry and counties now to France.

Yves had lived in Bayonne until the age of fifteen, when the family had fallen out (over what he would not divulge) and he had moved to live with an aunt in Toulouse. This aunt was a prominent literary critic herself– Declan knew of her work, and had once met her at some function– and she wanted him to get the English education of the writers she lauded. At seventeen she packed him off to England with her and she lived now somewhere outside Kent.

"France was a harsh place for me to grow up," he explained as he folded up the grease-stained chip shop paper. "My family didn't approve of me very much."

Rumi understood already what the family argument had been about, and why Yves was so falsely cheerful explaining his childhood.

"My aunt and I have always been close," he continued, "and she wanted me to stay with her from when I was a boy. Her husband was killed early on in the war and she never married again; I think she was very lonely out there on her own. Hey, Rumi, you've been quiet for a while. Are you tired?"

Rumi hardly noticed that his name had been spoken; his mind had slid back to what Yves had told him earlier.

'He pays a lot of money to undress me and hear me read poetry.'

The thought of it made his stomach tense up. He had not entirely suspected that this was his relationship to Culshawe, but there had been a small conception that it might have been. That Yves was involved in that sort of thing ought probably to have put him off, but rather he felt more intrigued than before, and he found himself wishing that he had money of his own to exchange for the gifts Culshawe was receiving.

"Come on," Yves said decisively, "let's get some sleep before tomorrow."

They shifted and rearranged the various cushions and blankets until three makeshift beds were pressed together along the length of the van. The order was deemed Declan, Rumi (on account of being the smallest he would be in the middle), Yves.

Rumi could not decide whether or not he was content with this— glad for the proximity to Yves for the excitement it would give him, but wondering also what contrivances that excitement might lead him into like willing lamb to pleasant slaughter.

He squirmed down into the blankets and tucked them up about his chin as if he could protect his outer self from the turmoil his inner self was experiencing. His hands he pinned determinedly to his sides with all the furore of a fidgeting choirboy.

His body he retained control of, however with nothing concrete to restrict his mind it began quickly to stray to places undesired. He would try counting sheep and the sheep would transform into bizarre fascinations. He would move then to attempting difficult equations in his head, or reciting poetry to himself backwards, or counting how many hairs he could feel on his arm. It was no good any of it; all he came back to was Yves' dark form across from him, just at the reach of his breath even.

Frustrated out of his own head, he held his breath until his head span. It was an old trick his father had taught him. Once done enough times it made him so unable to keep his eyes open he fell asleep before he could take a breath in again.

For the first time it did not work and he started to think that he would never rest until he was back home.