Alastair Bruce - Wall of Days

I will come clean with him before we leave. End the games.

I am stiff from yesterday’s work. I feel it as I sit facing out to sea for seven hours. Bites are infrequent. I clutch my coat around me. My head nods. I am warm. All I can hear is the sea, the noise of the waves.

I barely move other than once or twice to check the cliffs behind me.

I let my head slip forward till my chin lies on my chest. I feel my eyes closing. Then I jerk up suddenly, forcing air into my lungs. I feel as if I have stopped breathing. It is a few moments of panic. My line has stayed still in the oily water as if I hadn’t moved. There is no room for error out here. A heart attack, a stroke and I will be left here on my own. Perhaps unable to move, waiting till the tide comes in and floats my body away. Andalus would be no help.

In the still of the late afternoon I return to the cave. Andalus is standing with his back to me in the middle of the cave. It appears he has not heard me coming. He sways slightly. I do not know if he is dancing or simply unsteady on his feet. He stumbles trying to turn around. Not dancing then. He stares at me. I break the gaze. ‘Fish,’ I say, holding out my catch. Is this what I have come to? Here stands a man with whom I once debated the future of our two settlements, the future of the known world. From a debate over the rights of men, the right to a secure future, the right to life, the duty to the lives of others; from this to a monosyllabic grunt spat out across a cave on an island no one remembers.

Andalus turns away and lies down once more. I do not feed him tonight. He lies on his back and I watch him in the gloom. He snores lightly.

The task of splitting a trunk into planks is an onerous one and requires skills I have not honed. Somehow though by the end of the day I have split two trunks into usable planks and chopped another tree down.

My initial estimates of the amount of wood I will need have proved inaccurate. I will need two more trees. I am determined to build my boat better than the one that brought me here. I was lucky on the journey. Rough weather could easily have capsized the vessel. True, we do not get many storms anymore but they are not unheard of. That was what the settlement wanted. Lacking the courage, the conviction, to condemn me to death, they hoped nature would do their task for them. They should have remembered that nature has seldom done what we want. The crime for which I was banished was one born out of circumstances requiring an intervention in nature, a speeding up of its processes to avoid overwhelming it. That at least was how the Programme was billed and was the gist of my defence. Nature can support only so much life.

But I am being unfair to my people. They are not a violent, vindictive people in spite of what they went through. Pragmatic is a word that suits them, civilized and pragmatic.

It was an unusual court case. Not strictly fair. I was allowed a defence but I was condemned months before the trial began. I knew I would not walk out of there free. The numbers against the Programme had grown too rapidly. There was anger. I asked to send emissaries to our rivals to see what had happened there but this was refused. They may have suspected treachery. I wanted to ask my accusers how they could accuse me when it was their support that enabled me to carry out my duty. I wanted to point at them and say, ‘You! You are in the dock too!’ I wanted to shame them, to make them know their guilt, to tell them, taking their hands, ‘See! You too have hands drenched in blood.’ But I am not a melodramatic man and it would not have helped my cause. I understand that I was sacrificed for the sake of the greater good. Burnt at the stake while the crowds bayed around me.

But there was nothing like that. It was an altogether quieter affair.

Tora, sitting in the corner, barely glanced at me but supported me by coming to the trial every day and sitting through every minute of it.

A few others came but not many. And they were mostly respectful.

One man though had to be dragged from the court. Towards the end of the trial he started coming regularly and sitting in my eye line. I could feel him staring at me. One day in the middle of proceedings he got up and started screaming at me. He used language such that I never tolerated in the offices or from my acquaintances. Deplorable behaviour. I understand he lost several family members. During this episode Tora looked up at me. I fancy I could see tears in her eyes. But I could not see clearly. Guards were standing in front of me while their colleagues hauled the protester away kicking and screaming. I looked at Tora not at him, looked at her, trying to see more clearly, peering through a curtain of burly men.

The day has gone quickly. It has been one of my good days. I have worked hard and achieved much. It is a satisfying feeling. It is dusk when I turn to go. As I do I see Andalus. He is standing behind me about ten metres off. Just standing and looking at me. I do not know how long for. ‘What are you doing?’ I ask him. ‘How long have you been there? What do you want?’ He has startled me. I do not expect answers and I do not receive them. I walk towards him and he half turns as if letting me leave a room first. It is a gesture I remember him making years ago. He was always polite, there was no faulting him on that. This time though I cannot but feel a chill as I walk past.

I can hear him as he walks behind me back to the cave. It is a still day. In between the sucking noises made by my feet I hear his do the same. Only his are louder. When I stop his do too, momentarily behind mine. Like my shadow.

Later he takes his food without much show of eagerness or hunger.

I finish before him and lie down. I am tired and fall asleep almost immediately.

The next day is to be spent collecting food. I return to the seashore and fish for several hours. I spend the afternoon harvesting grass seeds.

It is a good routine, one day of heavy labour, followed by one of foraging and peat gathering and it is one I stick to for another week by which time I have almost completed the raft and gathered about half the food we will need. The raft lies slightly below the high tide mark. I have made sure to drag the planks there from the forest. It is hard work but much easier than moving a whole raft from forest to sea. When I fish I can see it out of the corner of my eye, lashed to the rocks. When the tide was up I tested its balance and examined how low it sat in the water. The sight of the raft makes my heart beat a little faster. With every day the promised return to my land comes closer. I sometimes wonder why I have not attempted a return earlier but at heart I know I could not have done so.

The raft lacks a mast. I am determined to provide one. Not only will it allow me to complete the journey more quickly but it is a matter of pride. They will see I have lived well, that banishment has increased my ingenuity, my will to live, rather than diminishing it.

I am apprehensive about the reaction I will receive, though excited too. I want to return in triumph, a return that shows them I have prospered and that I bear them no grudge. But I am not foolish. I know I will have to approach warily, perhaps lie low for a few days until I am more certain of the mood of the country. Andalus though, might destroy that plan. It is difficult to hide one such as he, difficult to conceal his white bulk in the undergrowth. If there are still scouts in operation we will be picked up in no time. Two old men, one thin, one fat. Like some act from years ago: Andalus and Bran treading the boards.

Though I feed him little, my island companion does not grow thinner.

I have not seen any more evidence of food that he might have gathered but I surmise he might be finding some somewhere. Also, he does not move much. For the weight to go he would have to exercise. It is now weeks since he washed up on shore. Weeks and he has not spoken a word, not communicated with me in any way. Sometimes he follows me around the island. I have seen him sitting on the rocks where I fish.