Charles Butler - Calypso Dreaming

To Stephen, Ute, Æfleda,Wulfric and Dunstan,who made a go of it.

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

PART ONE: THE GOD-BOTHERERS

1. Sweetholm

2. Crusoe’s Castle

3. The Asklepian

4. The Cursing Candle

5. The God-Botherers

6. Genesis

7. Winstanley Explains Himself

8. Harper

9. Joseph

PART TWO: THE TOR

10. On the Beach

11. Queenie

12. Revelation

13. Good Fences

14. The West Walkers

15. The Lady’s Finger

16. Finding the Lady

17. St Brigan

18. Calypso and the Healer

19. Mr Robinson Underground

20. Plagues on Both Houses

21. Dusk on Sweetholm

PART THREE: CALYPSO DREAMING

22. Transfiguration

23. Longholm

24. The Iconoclast

APOCRYPHA

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COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

“Sweetholm! Do you remember it?”

Tansy peered through the telescope. In its depths a piece of clockwork was counting out their time and turning it to cash. The island bobbed up against the glass. It was low and flat, but for the abrupt brown hill at the western tip.

“Of course she doesn’t remember, Geoff,” said Tansy’s mother. “She was hardly walking when she came last.”

“You’d be surprised what sticks sometimes. Even at that age.”

Tansy opened her mouth to reply, then clapped it shut again. Dad was wrong, of course. Of course and as usual. But she didn’t need to say it. Not today, when everything ought to be perfect.

“I remember it from the photos Uncle John sent. It looks closer than I imagined, though. Is it really five miles out? I can see buildings.”

“Five miles by ferry,” said her father. “But that’s going from Plinth. And the ferry’s got shoals to negotiate, remember. Tricky waters.” He gestured to where the water was stippled with dark patches. “As the gull flies, we’re closer here on the headland. Of which, as you can see, Sweetholm is geologically an extension – and Longholm beyond it.”

Geoff unfolded the map on his knee, standing like a flamingo with something to prove as a thermal billowed up and ballooned the paper.

“It’s not that we don’t believe you, Dad,” said Tansy, turning back to the car.

Their car was parked in the small semicircle of gravel at the head of the Down. A lane ran back, dividing one bleating field from another. It led into the main road down to Plinth. There were two cars parked there, their own and a black Volkswagen in which an elderly couple were eating sandwiches under the late June sun.

Geoff ignored the retreat to the car and put another coin in the slot. He moved the telescope over to the next bay along their own coast, and the harbour town of Plinth. Every day in summer a ferry set sail from there to Sweetholm, with a cargo of ornithologists, hermits and trippers, though Sweetholm was just too far away to make a day trip comfortable. That was where the beauty of the place lay – in its splendid near-isolation. Then he noticed the time and that the ferry was already docked.

But in such a place hurry was impossible. With the telescope still whirring, Geoff climbed into the car then inched it to the road and let it drop, braking all the time, down the steep, ear-popping hill into town. It was eleven in the morning and some of the shops were only just opening. One man, unlocking the door of his picture gallery, glanced at the car as it parked beside the ferry offices and shook his head with an air of frank reproof. Geoff looked out instinctively for No Parking signs, but found none. Perhaps they just looked disreputable in the unwashed Volvo.

Tansy and her mother waited as Geoff dealt with the ticket side of things. Her mother seemed exhausted, with her head on her hand, her hand propped on an elbow, her elbow wedged into the car door. It seemed as if she were thinking of something else, or of somewhere she would rather be than here, teetering on the brink of an adventure.

The ferry was the open-air kind, with room for four vehicles at most. The mate hauled boxes of supplies into the dark hold. Even before she was out of the car, Tansy noticed the boat’s slight movement and the slapping of the water against its sides. But there was no wind to speak of as they descended to the deck. Then the ropes were cast, the water churned and they had left Britain behind.

Tansy’s parents stood on either side of the ferry, having settled into a mutual sulk. They had their backs to each other, like a pair of novelty bookends. The female bookend was a bit queasy: Hilary had never been good with water. The other passengers had drifted into groups. Three men with backpacks made their way to the bows and stood, eyes shielded, to catch the white wing of a seabird flashing fifty yards out on the tinselled water.

“Isn’t that a Mediterranean gull?”

“Yes, look!” Tansy heard them exclaim with quiet excitement. “This far north!”

The gulls all looked the same to Tansy. She supposed birdwatchers would be migrating daily to the island. Meanwhile, another group of passengers was chatting with the captain, whom they clearly knew. Locals, she guessed, wanting to distinguish themselves from the tourists with whom they shared the boat. She remembered what her mother had said about the islanders: “They’ll never let us in, Geoff. They’ll talk to their sheep more than they will to us. And you expect us to house-sit here all summer?”

“Well, John’s made a go of it and he’s no more an islander than I am. You do come out with the most awful prejudices, Hilary,” said Geoff. “You never used to be so cynical.”

“I speak as I find. As I have found.”

To which there was no answer – except the gabble of the water turned by the ferry’s prow and the wash pushed out behind it. Tansy stared down at her palms. All at once she felt immensely old, older by far than her parents. As old, possibly, as the limestone pebble scuffing the boards at her feet. She looked south to Plinth, now fast receding, and welcomed the invisibility offered by distance. A curse couldn’t follow them across the water, could it? Those experiments with Kate Quilley, the Cursing Candle and the rest – surely the sea would wash the memory of their magic from her? But she was not easy until they had rounded the rocky islet of Longholm and seen its sleek, unreflecting blackness ooze up between them and the village.

The only other passenger was a young man, tanned and lean with several days’ black stubble. He had spent half the journey sitting at the wheel of his old white camper van before stepping unsteadily on to the deck. He was looking at his watch now. Like Hilary he seemed impatient for their journey to be over, but not because of seasickness. More as if he had an appointment on Sweetholm that he dared not break. There was nothing in him of holiday excitement, no curiosity to see the Longholm seals, which the captain was bringing to their attention. The camper van, now Tansy looked at it, was actually a converted ambulance. You could see the words underneath the paint job, ghosting through: Wessex Health Authority. At the front someone had once painted ‘AMBIENCE’ in backward letters, but now that lame joke too was censored with white paint.

There were grey seals on Longholm. The captain had brought the boat about, to give their cameras time. He stood there sucking at his pipe, while the tourists crowded to the side of the boat to watch the great, clumsy-sleek lumberers rear their heads or slide down the rocks to reappear as a black, inquisitive dome, no more than a shadow in the waves’ cup of shadows.