Charles Butler - Calypso Dreaming

The young man hung back a little, as did the Sweetholm locals, who had seen it all before. Not for them the undignified jostle to the side of the ferry. But with him it was not disdain. Tansy found herself wondering if he was superstitious about being snapped by the cameras. Or perhaps it was the domed heads of the seals themselves he found repugnant.

Geoff had taken Hilary by the arm. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” The arm wriggled free. “I just want to be off this boat. Can’t you see I’m ill?”

“Then take a nip of this at least.” Geoff had a hip flask in his hand.

“Why aren’t we moving ?” asked Hilary, almost shouting. She turned to the captain. “Are you going to take us to Sweetholm or do we have to wait for a tow from one of these wretched seals?”

The captain gave her a slow, wide grin. He was charmed.

“Aren’t you even going to answer me?”

Laboriously, the captain consulted his watch. “We always come about at Longholm Point. People like to see the seals.”

“They’ve seen them now, so please let’s get on.”

Still with the same grin the captain turned to the controls and pushed a lever forward. The engine hubbubed, and the ferry turned through a foaming circle of water and progressed unhurriedly to its destination on the far side of Sweetholm.

The Haven was the island’s one harbour. Elsewhere, the land plummeted in stark cliffs or was skirted with lavish margins of mud. The undredged quicksands were an asylum for wading birds. The sand and mud squirmed with life, but had also sucked down sheep, dogs, even (the guidebook said) occasional unwary humans. A party of Edwardian nuns had made their last pilgrimage to the site of St Brigan’s ancient chapel and been swallowed, a hundred years before.

In the Haven a broad shingle beach lashed back the seafront. The land stuck a long jaw seaward, just beneath the water’s surface. The rocks allowed only one route to the jetty, a maze in which the jetty seemed at first to be almost overshot, then curled back upon, sidled up to almost, and surprised by the sudden weight of a ferry upon it. Water gushed out to counter the land’s push. Lorry tyres strapped to the jetty cushioned the stone wall behind. No one awaited them.

Now the nimble mate leapt out to moor the ferry and a hydraulic switch lowered the ramp over which the meagre island traffic was to roll. The cyclists first, and the young man in his camper van, which spluttered a little as it took the one asphalt road on Sweetholm uphill and past the patchwork of shopfronts, the cottage gardens and the harbour master’s house. Past Sweetholm Post Office too, where you could get your card stamped with a date-marked puffin and sent back to the mainland by the same boat. This, for the next three months, was to be their home.

“Where’s Uncle John’s place?” asked Tansy, peering along the sea front.

“Inland, up behind the village. You can’t see it from here.”

The Haven buildings had a huddled look, precarious between wind and ocean. Even on a summer day like this, with the breeze no more than a slight shifting of the light on the whitewashed cottage walls, Tansy was glad to be climbing to the moor above the Haven, beyond reach of the sea’s white fingers. There was no one to be seen behind the green rail above the beach, but a lad in jeans and a cap was fiddling with a bale of netting nearby.

It was quiet here, an odd reflection of unpeopled Plinth, so near, so far away beyond Longholm. Not quiet in the Plinth way, though. This was a busy quiet, almost a furtive one. Somewhere, in those pretty cottages or up on the unseen inland moor, a tremendous subject was claiming the island’s attention. The Haven was a face in which only the eye-whites showed.

“Tansy, are you coming?” called Hilary. She and Geoff had already strapped themselves in, both anxious to get the journey done at last. What waited for them at the end of it would decide their summer happiness. And that might decide their whole lives together. It didn’t make for relaxation.

Geoff had made most of the running, Tansy knew. She had heard him once on the phone, begging Gloria Quilley not to end it, making promises he’d never keep … Hilary had guessed that much from the letters she’d found. But for all Hilary’s resentment of her husband it was on to Gloria that her hatred and contempt had latched. If that was unfair, the unfairness was the price of their family remaining together. That, and this make-or-break summer on Uncle John’s island. Here, without the props of ordinary life, the routines and camouflages gone, they would see what, if anything, remained. What was strong, what was weak. What was left of love in them.

Halfway up the steep hill out of the Haven, turning a corner, they came upon the white camper van. Slowly as he was driving, Geoff had to brake, then back the car downhill a little before creeping round on to the verge.

“Careful, Geoff, you’re inches from that wall,” warned Hilary, but Geoff was a master of the tight manoeuvre and crept a little closer just to show her. Beyond them, the young man was leaning into his van’s bonnet.

Geoff stopped beside him. “Need a hand?”

The young man did not reply. He seemed not to have heard.

“The hill too much for her, was it?”

“Who?” the man responded this time, looking a little startled. “Oh, the camper? Yes, maybe. Don’t worry, I’ve a good idea where the trouble lies.”

“We’re going up to the Robinson place. Hop in, if you want to phone for a mechanic – we’ll give you a lift.”

The man glanced at their car, in which every spare inch of seat space was taken up by bags and boxes.

“I don’t think there is such a thing on Sweetholm,” he answered tangentially. “A mechanic, I mean. Thanks, but I’ll just roll it down off the road. I’m sure the farmer will give me a tow once he sees I’m blocking his gate. I can walk the rest of the way.”

“You’re not staying near John Robinson’s place by any chance? If so we’ll be neighbours.”

But no, the man was not staying nearby. Geoff prodded him with further questions. Was this his first time on the island? Did he perhaps intend to camp, and where?

“I’ll be with friends,” he replied, with an abruptness he did not bother to disguise.

“You see, Geoff, in places like this even the tourists are sullen,” remarked Hilary as they drove off.

“He wasn’t sullen at all. Remarkably good-humoured, considering. Could have done with a shave, though.”

“His clothes were falling off his back. And men like that travelling alone, well – you never know, do you?” Here she shot a glance at Tansy in the mirror. “You never know what they’re like.”

Tansy felt obliged to say, “He wasn’t alone though, was he?”

“Pardon, Tansy?”

“He wasn’t alone. He had a girl with him, didn’t he? In the back.”

“I didn’t see anyone,” replied her mother, as though that settled the matter.

“She didn’t get out during the crossing,” said Tansy. “But she was there just now. You must have noticed her.”

It had been obvious enough, after all. The floral cushion cover pinned over the van’s window had been lifted, and a small white face had shown there, peering curiously into a light that seemed too painfully bright for it. A beautiful child, of four or five. There was no doubt. But those eyes, so large and dark, had no lids with which to squint the light away, so that this girl could do nothing but stare and stare. A shocking, as well as a beautiful, face. But for all her staring, Tansy did not think the girl had seen them either.

Within two minutes they had reached Uncle John’s smallholding. At first they missed it entirely, hidden as it was by a high stone wall and a hairpin entrance. But Tansy happened to look back and see what was only now visible, a sign with the words Crusoe’s Castle painted in black calligraphic script.