Caryl Phillips - A Distant Shore

Dawn broke without emergency. I had been presented with the gift of the whole night to think everything through. I wanted Solomon to understand that he wasn’t going to be able to just take me for granted. I wanted to be able to tell him about my adventures with my sister, and then I would wait a few weeks and disappear again. Lonely Solomon. I wanted to keep him on his toes until he realised for himself that he really didn’t like it if I wasn’t around all of the time. Then he would want me. I swung my legs down off the side of the single bed and felt the damp chill of the floor. I remembered something else about single beds that I didn’t like. They reminded me of when Sheila turned up at university with her rucksack. After I’d cancelled my music practice for that evening, I sat back on the edge of my bed with her and we both cradled our cups of tea in our hands. And then she told me. I knew I should have made more effort to help her instead of just staring at her, but it wasn’t easy to hear what she had to say. I kept trying to get the conversation back onto more pleasant things like Mum’s embarrassing attempts at singing, but Sheila would have none of it. She kept asking me why I wouldn’t believe her, and why did I think that she would lie about something like that? “You know he used to take me to the allotments with him. I mean, what’s the matter with you? Why can’t you believe me?” The problem, of course, was that I did believe her. I knew she was right when she said that the fact that it had stopped now didn’t make it any better, but underneath it all the real question that I wanted answered was how come I escaped his attention? Did he love her more than me? I knew that he loved me more than he loved Mum, but why take Sheila down to the allotments with him? Of all people, why our Sheila? I tried again to change the subject, but Sheila still wasn’t having any of it. She wanted to make sure that I’d heard her, and I had. I eventually slipped my arm around my sister’s shoulders, but her weeping had now given way to silence. Trying to change the subject was stupid, and I’d not said the right things. I’d failed her, and we both knew that something had changed between us. In those few moments, sitting on the edge of my single bed, a part of my sister simply disappeared from view. The rest of her life had not been very satisfactory. Including our brief time together in London. After nearly thirty years we tried once more to be together, but it was too late. Following that night in my dormitory room, Sheila couldn’t talk to me again, and her grief was not something that I could simply penetrate by sympathy. We were civil with each other, but I’d lost her that night, with her rucksack standing by the door. After Sheila died I wrote to myself and pretended it was her doing the writing. It was all I had left of her. My imaginary Sheila who likes me and still needs my help. But my cowardice had lost me my real sister. My poor, grieving Sheila. Daddy’s little pet.

My memory is getting stronger. I think that’s a part of convalescing. If so, then it’s a good part for I don’t want to forget things. The people in this place give me tablets and hot milk, but although they don’t help me to sleep, they help me to remember. I checked out of the depressing hotel and spent my second day by the sea sitting on a bench on the promenade. The water was being lashed and torn, and it leaped upwards in great buffalo-headed waves. What I really desired was a steady, comforting beat, with the surf printing its pattern like lace against the sand, but instead I had been presented with an angry summer sea. The wind was making a clown of my scarf, and it kept blowing strands of grey hair across my face. Regular as clockwork I had to take the loose hairs and pull them back from my eyes, but there was not much to see. A cargo ship far out on the horizon, and just beneath the promenade an energetic dog acrobatically fielding a Frisbee that its bored owner was dispatching with increasing impatience. I kept wondering what he’d be doing right now, whether he’d be knocking at the door to make sure that I was all right, or just peering from behind his blinds and wondering where I’d got to. By the time the afternoon came it was starting to get a little chilly, so I picked up my suitcase and began to make my way to the bus station. I thought about killing some more time by popping into a pub, but the only one that I saw had a garden out front whose grass was worn bald, no doubt by yobbo powwows, and wooden tables that were covered with empty pint glasses and overflowing ashtrays. I pressed on, and I waited in the station until a bus was leaving for Weston. Once on board I sat near the front so I could look over the driver’s shoulder. Across the aisle a blowsy woman proceeded to annoy me, for she slapped sand from her unshod feet onto the floor of the bus, where she no doubt imagined that somebody less important than her would clean it up. I decided not to get off at Weston, and instead I went straight through to town and saw Dr. Williams, which was a waste of time. But the truth was I just wanted to take up a bit more time so that Solomon would miss me even more. However, an hour or so later, when I finally got back to the village, I knew that something was wrong. When I saw the policeman and the policewoman standing at the door I felt my stomach lurch. I told them to come in, and they took off their hats as they did so. Then they told me.

Gabriel wipes the blood from his friend’s eyes. An hour earlier Said had fallen from the bottom bunk and onto the hard concrete floor, and although Gabriel had immediately jumped down and made an effort to haul Said back into bed, he soon realised that his friend should not be moved. Said had hit his head as he fell, and Gabriel continues to mop the petals of blood from the floor with a paper tissue. Said does not seem to notice the blood, and he lacks the energy to wipe the vomit from his mouth. For much of the past hour Gabriel has been kneeling beside this man, and hoping that Said might talk to him. When not kneeling beside him, Gabriel has been holding on to the bars of the cell and begging the night warder to call for a doctor. But the night warder continues to watch television with his boots up on the desk, his legs crossed casually at his ankles and the flickering glow of the screen illuminating his face. Suddenly Gabriel looks up as the man in the next cell once more kicks the wall.

“Can’t you lot just fucking shut it with your puking and carrying on?”

Gabriel climbs to his feet and crosses to the door of the cell. He prepares to launch yet another appeal for a doctor, but his neighbour’s outburst has won the night warder’s attention. The boots swing down off the desk and the man walks slowly towards Gabriel. The night warder is a tall stocky man, and his dark uniform, and the jangling keys that hang from his belt, suggest a severity that is betrayed only by his boyish face. He stops short of Gabriel, who watches as the man places both hands on the bars of the cell next door. For a moment the night warder simply stares. Gabriel imagines that, faced with this display of authority, his loud-mouthed neighbour will now be backing down, for he is sure that this man is a coward. The night warder continues to stare, and then the neighbour speaks, but this time in an almost helpless voice.

“What am I supposed to do? I can’t get no fucking sleep with them going on like that.”

The night warder leans forward. “I told you to be quiet, sunshine.” He pauses. “I’m trying to watch the telly.”

“How can you watch the telly with all that fucking puking? It’s disgusting.”

Gabriel watches as the night warder lifts one hand from the bars of the cell and points directly at its occupant.