Eddie trained as a lawyer but quickly realised the error of his ways, and has put that on hold to focus on writing. He’s currently polishing the first draft of his novel, Before Us, the Sea, which follows a gay twenty-something who quits his job to pursue his creative dreams (art mirroring life), falling in love in the process (wishful thinking). He also writes stories and flash fiction, mostly about queer Londoners. His fiction has appeared in Queerlings magazine, and he was long-listed for the Primadonna Prize 2019. This extract is taken from the opening to his novel.

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Before Us, the Sea

Chapter One

We stand in a line, ascending the stone steps of the quay one after the other, and pass the bags up between us to make a pile at the top. No one asked me to help and at first I didn’t think to. I wanted to be first off the boat and on my way, heading straight into the deep green corners of this new place that I’ve come to. I’d watched with excitement as land appeared ahead of us, at first a single distant mass but slowly unfurling into individual islands. Standing up as we got closer, I admired the boatman as he unravelled a rope and jumped to the quay to tie it. He offered his hand as I stepped over the gap and I took it, letting him steady me though I didn’t really need to (nice to have a strong arm to hold me, the brief security of his grip). I wanted to leave right then rather than hang about, but I saw the other passengers, most of them, forming a line and as the boatman passed the first bag to the man at the bottom I joined too, as if I’d always meant to. Now I’m the last one, stacking the bags in a neat pile out of the way. It’s not difficult, and hardly takes long, but I get some satisfaction from it — from working together — and I know that I’ve arrived.

It shouldn’t have been this easy, coming here: to have walked out of my life and started again. I quit my job in London barely a week ago, simply telling them I was finished with it and wouldn’t be coming in the next Monday. I had a half-formed idea of what I wanted to do. I remembered some guy I’d been seeing, ages ago, mentioning this island, that he’d come here and had the most relaxing holiday he’d ever had. He quickly became the latest in a string of short-lived romantic ventures, but for some reason the island stuck with me, how he’d described it, so I looked it up and found a cottage to rent without too much trouble: it’s off-season and out of the way and relatively cold, any normal year, in September. And now here I am, arrived with a vague plan to paint — not that I know, really, if I have any talent. I was good at school but that seems a long time ago. Most of all, I just needed to leave.

Now the unloading is done, and I pick up my own two bags, pleased at how little I’ve managed to pack even for this trip of indefinite length. I follow the directions on my phone to the cottage I’m renting. Already I notice a lightness here, in this tiny island a few miles off the Cornish coast, with its soft beaches and dirt tracks under trees. Turning down one of those tracks now, I reach the cottage and let myself in. The first thing I do is turn off my phone and throw it somewhere in a drawer. I unplug the wifi, too: cutting out the world.

❖

I spend the first few days exploring. The cottage is alone amongst trees in the centre of the island, away from the town on the seafront with its tiny supermarket and clustered holiday homes. The town is small and hardly busy at this time of year, but I avoid it as much as I can, preferring solitude for the moment because it’s different from what I’m used to. I know it’s affected, a persona I’m putting on — the lonely artist — but it’s only for myself; I have no audience. At the cottage I can still hear the sea, if I stand in the garden at the back, head tilted and eyes closed. On still evenings, I light a fire and open all the windows, enjoying the cool breeze on my face, the scent of the sea that it brings, and the sounds of a night uninterrupted by the hiss of cars on wet city streets.

I have enough savings to last me for now, thanks to a recent inheritance from my mother: just me and my sister, Abbi, to split it between us. I wonder if that’s why I have come, if I might be trying to escape grief at mum’s death through bold action. But I don’t think that’s right, it doesn’t feel that way. I expect in the grip of an intense sadness I’d be more likely to rely on routine, to buckle down and try to forget. In truth we were never that close, my mother and I. Not that we didn’t get on, not exactly; there was just little love, or at least not what you might expect between mother and son. I can think of only a single time that I attempted a truly personal conversation with her, when I came out during the summer holiday after my first year at university. I marched into the front room in a fit of bravery to tell her, expecting an emotional outpouring of love or of anger or just anything, but she looked up at me only briefly, almost confused — as if she couldn’t think why I might have mentioned it — and said something entirely disinterested like oh, okay, thank you, and went back to her reading.

So I don’t feel like I’m in mourning, not at all really. Maybe that will come later, but for now there is only fear that I have made a mistake, and with it just beginning to blossom an impossible joy, because I’ve wanted to do this for years, or something like it. I’ve wanted to quit my job, leave London, and try one more time (or for the first time, really) to do something different, something that I actually like. Now that I’m here, it terrifies me to think that it may not work.

Probably for that reason, because I’m afraid of it, I don’t start painting quite yet. Instead, I walk, up and down the paths behind the beaches, looking out at the birds and the rocks and the wide expanse of sea. I’ll sit on one rock or another above the cliffs, just watching the waves breaking below in showers of white salt spray, and underneath it the deep rumble of the ocean. I’m giving myself time to clear my head before I start, not worrying yet that I should be doing more because just now it feels like I have time. I shouldn’t rush this, and anyway I tell myself I’m doing my research, scouting the best views and the best places to sit. It’s an easy justification, an excuse I’ve given myself, but the walking and doing nothing is also a kind of recovery. Working in London, I felt constantly in the grip of a strange sort of lethargy, so that the days seemed tinged with grey and I never had the energy to do anything I actually wanted. I felt myself rushing from one obligation to another, always thinking of the next thing with that sense, following me as I went, that I had forgotten something, failed to do some crucial chore: that a bill was going unpaid, perhaps, or simply the house un-cleaned, dust gathering in the corners. I would push my way onto an already full Tube, stumble into work and once there steel myself for a day spent doing tasks I hardly understood and cared about even less. I knew I should have been grateful. There were people there who loved what we were doing and more still who would have wished to be there, to have my job; and thanks to that job I wasn’t going hungry, I had a comfortable life. Still, I knew, from the first day or even before, that I was in the wrong place. It was impossible to be myself at work, or work was making me into someone I didn’t recognise; someone less kind, less different, almost a clone. Each day I felt less myself, as if whoever I was, or thought I had been, was being chipped away, so that soon there would be nothing left. I had the constant feeling that my real life was somewhere else, waiting to be lived, and I was missing it.

Now, I’m barely arrived here but already I feel a new freedom, with nothing but time and space to do as I wish. It would be daunting, but for now I’m finding ways to fill it, even without painting quite yet (I will come to it; I will, I will).

❖

On my fifth day I decide to walk along the northern end of the island. It’s less rugged here, more sheltered, with paths of mown grass instead of muddy tracks, the beaches whiter. I come across a farm, its fields reaching towards the sea, farm buildings scattered in brown and grey on a low hill above the sandbanks and the rocks. Further off is the next island with its distant stretch of brilliant beach. Closer, right here on the path ahead of me, a man is clearing a fallen tree, the thud of his axe beating a low rhythm in the still air. I stand and watch, because he is in the way; but also because he is handsome, because I have a foolish fantasy of seducing a local farmer, because I haven’t really spoken to anyone properly for days. Eventually he notices me and comes over to apologise that the tree is blocking the path. He helps me get round, his fingers firm on my arm as I climb the trunk, looking at me intently to be sure I don’t slip. That’s it, the extent of our interaction, and much like with the boatman I probably didn’t need the assistance. But I keep thinking of him — rough smile, the smell of his sweat as he steadied me — as I walk back through town. I don’t think that anything more will come of it, of the meeting, because probably I won’t see him again. I’ve never met a man I am attracted to and found out he is attracted to me and got together with him, not in a natural way unforced by apps or introductions. I have no sense for how that might work.

Heading home, I stop off at the island shop with its slate-tiled roof and green-painted door. I’ve been exploring its shelves even as I explore the cliffs and the beaches. I’d forgotten to enjoy cooking, in my old life (I’m thinking of it as that, some past me, already), but now this shop with its limited stock is helping restore some of that pleasure. Shopping here is quite different from how it was in London. The first time I came here to stock the house I arrived with my list, set and certain on what I wanted. It was late — an hour before closing, my first day on the island — and of course by that time much of what I thought I needed had gone, the morning’s delivery of fresh food depleted. Today I know to make do with what there is, inventing something from whatever happens to be delivered on the boats on the day. It’s unexpectedly liberating. I find aubergines, tomatoes, onions, and walk home with my shopping as the sun sets. I round the bay then turn off into the trees and to my cottage. When I get in I cook slowly, chopping the vegetables with a thorough precision where once I would have rushed through, fingers risked to get dinner made, eaten as fast as I could. Now, the window is open and I stand in its sea-scented breeze. The tomatoes spurt their red juice across the chopping board. Outside, there is fresh thyme in the garden. I pick it, pluck its leaves, and scatter it into the stew. Later, its woody taste is warm on my tongue as I eat my solitary meal.

❖

I’m up early the next morning, quick out of bed and thinking, I will paint today. As I get up I can actually visualise what I’ll draw: it seems easy, as if the pictures are right there to be painted without any effort. In the shower, the water on my skin is the sea trickling back down the beach as the tide recedes in foamy waves, and I’m itching to be outside with a canvas or a sketchpad to get started. I’ve brought with me oils, watercolours, assorted brushes and papers. I don’t know what I like or can do, but I decide today is a day for sketching: I should start small, charcoal and paper, nothing else. I pack these into my bag, throw on a coat and scarf and am out into the blustery day.

I walk down the track through the wood towards the beach. Above me, the branches clatter against each other and I feel small, insignificant against the weather and the tall trees. The wind makes the trees’ leaves flip over, exposing their pale undersides, glinting like scales. I emerge from the wood into the marram grass which whips and rustles too, out in the open. The dunes rise up in front, blocking the view, but I know that the sea is there just beyond them. It stretches before me as I crest the rise and pick my way down the steep sandy path to the beach. Either side, the sand stretches flat and empty, curving round at each end into rocky points where the waves churn and break. In the middle, here, is exposed so I make my way round (shoes off, now, and clutched in one hand) to sit in the lee of the rocks out of the wind. The full sweep of the beach spreads in front of me, an ideal first sketch to capture the place. There is an awesome power in the waves against the rocks, opposite, and a remoteness to the empty beach as it arcs around. But there’s beauty here too, if I look for it. I watch an oystercatcher on the wet sand right at the shoreline, darting in and out of the waves as it searches for food.

I start to sketch, then, with an easy confidence, thinking the scene will yield itself to my fingers just as I see it, but I realise very quickly that I can’t manage it. My perspective is wrong, the line is wrong. I persevere but I’m rushing now, already giving up, and manage a recognisable beach, just about, but little else. There’s no movement in the waves, no sense of the cold or the wind, and my oystercatcher is a smudge in the water: the whole thing is a failure. Suddenly I am cold and annoyed, oppressed by the emptiness of the beach and the layered grey horizon. I gather my things, stand up and start back towards the path up the dune. The heavy sand slows my steps and in my hastiness I trip, hardly a serious fall but even so I feel it like a physical blow. I lie on my back and wonder why I am here.

My self-reflection is rather rudely interrupted by a shout from above. I twist around in the sand and look up to the top of the dune, where I can now see that same man I met yesterday, the man with his axe and his sweat. I’m not sure how long he’s been standing there but most likely he saw the whole ungainly episode.

“Are you okay?” He shouts this but his voice sounds distant, carried off by the wind. In response I sit up and start collecting my scattered possessions, the pencils and rubbers spread across the sand. By the time I’m up and back on my feet he’s made his way down. He stands before me now with a hint of a grin. “I was worried for a minute — it looked like quite a fall.” He did see it, then.

“Thanks but don’t worry, I was just in a bit of a rush. I guess I lost my footing…” (Obviously) “… but no major harm done. The sand makes for a soft landing.” I’m trying to recover whatever dignity I had but it’s difficult, much harder than picking up a bit of dropped stationery.

“Glad to hear it. I’m Harry, but the way.” He holds out his hand, grin now fully emerged, and I give up on those last shreds of dignity.

“Jacob.” His hand is unexpectedly soft. “Nice to properly meet you.” This is overly formal, and I’m at a loss what to say.

“So, what’re you doing out here, on a day like today?”

I don’t particularly want to tell him that I was out here to draw because he might ask to see.

“Just out for a walk, I like the wind.” This is perfectly true. “It feels like real weather…” I trail off lamely.

But he nods, accepting my explanation or agreeing with it. “Well if you’re sure you’re okay, I should be off.”

He looks me over a final time, his gaze lingering as he assesses for injuries or for something else, I’m not sure. Then a last smile and he turns back across the sand, sure-footed and confident. I watch as he climbs the rocks (much closer to the crashing waves than I would brave) and is gone, out of sight round the outcrop and to the next beach. I try to put him out of my mind rather than let myself be distracted. I’ve been single or mostly single for a long time and I thought I was used to it; I thought it was what I wanted, preferring to focus on trying to paint.

I turn round and continue, more slowly this time, towards the path up the dunes behind the beach. As I climb, the buried tips of grass poke the soft soles of my feet, and at the top I bend to brush away the sand before I put on my shoes. Looking back inland there are shades of green ahead: the pale grass of the dunes first, then the wood and the central hill of the island, rising up trees first but crested with fields and a deeper fuzz of gorse. I despair of ever being able to paint this, in its subtlety. I’d fail even if I had years and all the colours in the world on my palette.

I walk home to a cold house, lighting a fire with wood that I carry in from the store at the back. Sitting in a chair by the fire, I take out my sketch from this morning. I hold it up in front of me. Now that I’m no longer there, no longer have the beach in front of me, it’s even less recognisable. I crouch down in front of the fire and hold the paper to the blaze. It curls slowly black, the flames spreading orange-red up towards my hands until I let it go and it falls amongst the burning wood and dissolves into ash. I want something to show for having come here, but just now I struggle to see what that might be.

❖

I’m starting to realise that the weather here can change very quickly, from one day or even one hour to the next. After a few grey days of wind we have sudden sun, the sky a vast blue vault above the sparkling sea. I go out with my pad and my charcoal, to find that in the brightness the island is beautiful but uninspiring. Apparently I need a more moody kind of light, something melancholy, to feel like drawing. Today the birds chatter happily in the trees, and there is too much sun.

Instead of drawing or painting I explore the wood around my cottage. It’s not large — a ten minute walk at most from end to end, though there is variety here, plants and birds that in my ignorance I can’t identify. The hill behind the house is thick with pines that stretch up and curve, some of them, as they climb towards the top. I walk beneath them, but instead of taking the path up I turn off, pushing through the trees and the dense green gloom of the understory. The hill turns steep as it climbs and without the path to follow I have to scramble a little, the rocks beneath my hands wet and padded with moss. When I reach the top, the trees fall away to an open field, and beyond that nothing but the wide, unknowable sea.

Later, on my way home, I pass through town. Outside the pub, I notice a blackboard advertising a local band playing live this evening. I’d like to go though I probably shouldn’t. I’m here to paint: live music doesn’t fit my romantic vision of myself as lonely painter, clutching a brush out in the wild. And yet I’ve been here for over a week and have met next to no one, my attempts at drawing have hardly proceeded at pace or with any success. I have to wonder if I might need people, conversation, a pint, to relax into this new life and break my painting block. I give into the urge and push open the door to the pub.

I sit at a corner table with a drink and listen to the band tuning up. I have a good view of the bar on my left, and over in the opposite corner the band. The pub is filling up but so far I’ve talked to no one but the barman. After my self-inflicted isolation the busy pub is slightly startling, and sitting there alone I soon consider giving up. But then at last I notice him, Harry, coming in after I’ve been there for an hour at least. I admit to myself that this — the chance to see him again — was my real reason for coming. I’ve told myself not to get distracted but it seems I can’t help it. In the dim light of the pub, standing tall amidst the milling crowd, I can’t fail to notice him. I hope that he’ll notice me. It’s different, seeing him here inside amongst other people, more real now but no less striking than he was before with his axe and, later, looming above me on the beach with the wind in his hair. I try but fail to catch his eye. I look away towards the band. They’ve finished warming up and are striking out now into their set, a kind of breathy rock that’s not really my thing, but out here in the mid-Atlantic you can’t be picky. I drink my pint and listen.

I make no progress with Harry, not confident going up to him when he’s here with his friends, and eventually I go outside for some air. The pub has a terrace at the back, right on the edge of the sea. I sit up on the wall at the far side, my back to the pub. Behind me, the electric thrum of the music is muffled by the door, shut tight against the cold night. In front, the blue waves fade quickly to black and then nothing, nothing else. I think at first I could sit here for hours, but eventually the lonely cold seeps through and I’m ready to leave. It’s easier to go home now that I’ve come outside, separated myself from all those people and what I hoped might happen. I swing round on the wall, about to jump down, but before I can the door to the pub opens and Harry comes out. He sees me and comes over across the terrace through the gloom. I wonder if he was looking for me. It’s not a warm night but he doesn’t have a coat, hugging his arms to his sides. I think that maybe he is nervous. Maybe he, too, thinks there might be something between us but hasn’t done this before — hasn’t acted on whatever this is and approached someone, as good as a stranger, in (outside) a pub.

“I hope you’ve recovered from your fall,” he says as he reaches me. He holds out his hand and I take it, jumping down from the wall. Again there’s a tiny thrill at that brief, unnecessary touch. We turn around, standing side by side to look out to sea. I feel the closeness of him, our arms touching and all down our bodies to our feet. If we were facing each other I expect I’d want to kiss him but wouldn’t know how.

“So, the band — did you ever think you’d get world-class music like that out here?”

It’s not much of a joke but I laugh anyway, and it releases something so that we talk more easily. He asks me what I do and I struggle for how to answer. I don’t know if I want to admit everything — that I’ve quit my job, my plan to paint, all the pictures in my head which I try to draw out fully formed onto paper and yet fail each time. It seems pathetic, a very self-indulgent thing to have done.

“I’m not really sure, is the honest answer,” I say, eventually. “I wanted to move out of London so I’m trying out being here. As an escape.”

He considers this, and I wish I hadn’t spoken or had said something better. I don’t want him to think that this place, his home, is here only for my benefit, somewhere for me to heal in some indefinable way.

“And how’s it going, the trying?”

“It’s lovely,” I say. “The island is lovely. But I don’t know if I made a mistake. Maybe I should give up on it, go back to London.” I glance at him but he’s still gazing out ahead of us, into the darkness.

“After a couple of weeks? Don’t give up on us yet.” He does look at me then, and I look at him.

“But there isn’t much reason for me to stay. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to properly in days.”

“You’ll find a reason,” he says. “And now you know me, so I can introduce you to some of the others. I could even show you around, if you like?”

I agree to this though really I’ve done nothing but explore and don’t think I particularly need a tour.

We go back inside. The pub has filled up even more while we were on the terrace — a few late holidaymakers but mostly locals, crowding around the bar, knowing each other and laughing. Now that I’ve met one of them, sitting here with Harry I feel less a spectator. People are dancing in front of the band, one or two couples at first but soon more of a crowd, everyone egging each other on. I’m feeling the mild effects of the drink and I want to join them, not caring that they’re all strangers. I move my head, swinging it slightly, tapping my foot. Soon I am up, on the edge of the anonymous crowd, alone I think but no Harry gets up and is dancing now too. I see immediately that he is a good dancer, has that natural ability to move with the music almost without seeming to, so that when it changes he is with it, responding to the rhythm. I abandon myself too, closing my eyes, and when I open them he is closer, smiling. I am smiling too and then we’re dancing together, at times almost touching, and it feels good, good just to sway together and nobody cares.

When finally the band plays their last song and the lights come up we stumble outside together, delighting in the crisp air, and clutch our coats while we wait to cool down. Harry seems about to say something but then he doesn’t. We’re standing close but we could be closer. I smile slightly awkwardly.

“So, that tour — tomorrow?” Harry says finally.

I nod. “Yes, sure. I — well, I have no plans, any time works.”

“Great. I’ll come to yours at, say, 9?”

He phrases it as a question but there isn’t time to answer, to ask how he knows where I live. He’s already striding off, everyone else too coming out of the pub and dispersing in groups until suddenly it’s just me left here in the cold with the bright glow from the pub window at my back. I’m not quite ready to go home. My head is still ringing, echoes of the music in my ears. I walk away from the pub and everything else is silent, the complete quiet of an island where everything shuts down at night. I make my way slowly along the front onto the beach, wanting to enjoy the feeling a little longer as I wait for the adrenaline to recede. The sand is cold beneath my feet when I take off my shoes, so I sit down and bury my toes for warmth. All I can hear is the calm lap of the waves, that soft sound as they caress the shore, and occasionally the louder splash of something, some invisible creature, out in the water. In the bay, a few lights glint in the dark, marking the tops of the masts of boats moored for the night. I think of the people sleeping in those boats, rocked in their cabins by the gentle back and forth of the sea. I think of Harry, maybe home now wherever he lives and also in bed. I didn’t come here for that, to find a relationship, but if it happens by itself I don’t think that I’ll stop it. I’d like him to know me.