“Men” was the word chiselled out of the lintel. Simple as that. A few yards to my right, an identical stone block had been hacked until it spelled “Women”, but that one interested me less.

I entered the public baths with some trepidation: in all my travels, and they had been extensive, I had never once visited such an establishment. The closest I had come was a shared Scandinavian sauna, or a private and costly hammam experience in Morocco. This was, as far as I understood, an actual public bath, where strangers went to get clean.

Of course, there were no strangers on the island. I counted as a novelty and I certainly hadn’t come across everybody in my short time there, but I was now part of their community and would be living among them. Despite that, it had taken some internal coaxing and cajoling to get me to that point, the threshold.

Several arguments had won over my reluctance. Firstly, I admit it, The Child’s words had stuck with me during my walk home, my interrupted sleep and my breakfast: I needed to participate more completely in the life of the island. By my own anti-social standards, I had made some effort to meet people and to get to know them, their families, their roles in the community. But that hadn’t been enough: almost everybody I had spoken to had professed surprise at my having taken so long to introduce myself. I needed to step it up a little, before the Winter made it too difficult.

Secondly, I had a growing hangover, once more, and hoped a proper soak might ward it off. My suffering was, at least, far less intense than it would have been in my previous life: I didn’t even want to think about how many of those schnapps I had put away, and I put my relatively unharmed state down to the pure, additive-free nature of what I was throwing down my neck. As long as my body had only to deal with alcohol as a foreign import, it seemed to hurt less. In fact, the perspective that thought gave me regarding all my previous years was almost the more painful after-effect. Still, I felt woolly and in need of a kick-start.

Thirdly, I was involuntarily falling into line with the whole “Winter’s coming” theme. The entire island was running around like a bunch of squirrels, preparing themselves for an elemental siege. It had taken days for me to fully understand the significance, and I was still unsure if I did, but I had reached the point where I needed to do something positive. Ritualistic, if you like. I knew I still had to prepare for starting my job, but that could wait another day without doing me any harm: the snow had barely crept down an inch or two overnight. So, in the continued absence of my container, which would have made a fine ritual sacrifice to the oncoming Winter, I improvised. A symbolic, not to mention actual, trip to the baths was an apt way of my marking both my next level of integration into society and my appreciation of the changing season.

Lastly, it had been quite a while since I had taken a bath of any description. Of course, I had my heavenly shower, which I would use once or twice a day, depending on my levels of exercise or boozing, but a bath was a different matter. Total submersion in communal water was something I knew had to figure on a regular basis as part of a comprehensive sanitation regime.

I undressed, alone, and emerged, naked, into the central foyer. I felt like a character in a riddle, as three identical doors waited before me. They were marked “hot”, “cold” and “steam”. The hot and cold rooms were fed directly by their own springs. Steam had to be created, of course, but I had not managed to find out exactly how. There was the solar and wind power, but I wasn’t convinced that was the right sort of energy to efficiently produce the required amounts of steam. It would be like boiling a huge kettle, constantly. Joshua’s charcoal was potent enough to fire a furnace, but the official literature hadn’t made it clear what technique was used. Anyway, it had informed me that the female side of the complex, currently on the other side of a double-thickness stone wall, was identical to this one.

The foyer was eerily silent, and I wondered if anybody else was using the baths at this time of day. A trip to the baths might have been something I could dress up as a pre-Winter ritual, but I knew others had more practical concerns demanding their time. The door on the far left led to hot.

As soon as I entered, I got my answer. I couldn’t see clearly initially, through the light veil of steam, but I couldn’t miss the low lazy plash of male bodies shifting around like fastidious pinnipeds and the hovering hum of the incidental conversations. It was impossible to tell, at that range, how many of them there were.

The room itself, I discovered, was another in the long line of jaw-loosening artistic masterpieces that had still not become commonplace in my eyes. The foyer had been immaculate, tiled in perfect white, accent colours reserved for the areas around each doorway, but this was something different entirely. My pre-conceived vision, for whatever reason, had been of a Moorish extravaganza, all pillars and geometric patterns, topped by a few arches. Instead, the whole wall was what I could only describe as an organic mural of some physical significance. Knowing what I knew, I thought it unlikely it was pure art.

Rising, falling, interlocking, overlapping strata were laid out in the most natural shades. I got the feeling I was being challenged to some kind of contest. “You come here and tell me I’m not the perfect colour for [insert relevant role in the mural here]” they were saying. Others might have named them: ochre, bricktop, cobalt, avocado, pelt, yellow; but I didn’t have the capacity. To have looked at them in any other state than totally naked would have been an insult.

Rays of strong-enough sunlight cut down from the high slits of windows, through the layers of vapour, and I made out some of the faces strung around the circumference of the large round central pool. The four dock workers I had seen in The Shipbuilders were together again, dipping in and out of their eternal conversation. They had been joined by Martin, the junior partner in the greengrocer’s. He stared at whomever was speaking and contributed nothing. Next to them, but far enough apart to be clearly separate, a grey head, sporting a nautical beard. Underneath it sat a pair of strong shoulders, the muscles of which rippled sinuously as its compatriot hands scrubbed hard at the soles of its feet with some form of rigid sponge.

There were other bodies in the pool, but they were turned away from me and the haze wouldn’t allow for a proper view. I felt there was a space earmarked for me alongside the nautical foot-scrubber, and at first I sat on the side, my feet testing the water. It almost sucked me in, and I made a larger splash than I probably ought to have. He turned to inspect me.

‘Good morning,’ he enunciated beautifully, and nodded his head slightly.

‘Good morning,’ I replied, openly. But he turned politely away and continued working at the harder parts of his soles. I lost myself in the walls for a minute or two. The hum of the low chatter surfed the gentle waves and snatches made it as far as my insignificant corner. Every now and then something would jump from the hubbub; a filthy thought, a belly laugh, a hacking cough followed by summary expulsion of the recent contents of a set of lungs. I hoped for spittoons, reminding myself not to look too closely into the water which embraced me like a satisfied lover.

Above and on either side of the central pool, tall alcoves were set into the walls. Water ran constantly down from the ceiling, above what looked like giant rotating kebab skewers, sheathed with the same kind of rough sponge so beloved of my footsore neighbour. Within one of the alcoves a bear of a man sat on the stone seat and let the kebabs run across his back while he groaned gently. One of the four stevedores turned, giggling, to shout up to him.

‘What about you, Seth? You heard if Joshua’s settled in for the Winter yet?’

Seth opened his bloodshot eyes and smiled a tiresome smile. ‘Aye, you said it. They think they can feel it coming. Every year the same.’

‘Yeah,’ the young docker followed Seth’s lead. ‘My Dad says they don’t know any better than we do. Especially him, the old pisshead. Remedist, my arse. Can’t imagine why so many people fall for it. Quacks and phoney mystics, the lot of them.’

‘So he’s not in his stool yet, then?’ another of the four yelled up to Seth, barely suppressing his hilarity.

‘Ahhh, piss off the lot of you,’ Seth quipped. ‘Nothing to do with me, as you well know. No idea what they’re getting up to. Keep myself well away. Just because my sister can’t do the same, don’t mean she shares anything with me. If you want an update, go and ask her yourself.’ He shut his eyes once more and leaned back into the kebabs.

The yeller turned back to his mates with a nervous sort of grin. I got the impression that he had no intention of sounding out Seth’s sister on the matter.

I had tuned in to their wavelength now, and couldn’t help but listen to their conversation as it progressed.

‘I might go up there this Winter, see what all the fuss is about,’ the ringleader announced, proudly.

‘Bollocks,’ countered another. ‘You say that every year and never dare. Won’t even try it out in the summer. You’re just talking your shit, as usual.’

‘You do it, then, Captain Fearless. Wander in, have a pint, a game of arrows, a nice chat with the freaks and wander back to The General. We’ll wait for you in there,’ the first boy retorted.

‘Get fucked, Justin. It’s not me giving it all the “I might go in there this year” bullshit. You do a load of talking about it, but that’s all it is. Why don’t you give it a rest if you’ve got no intention of following it up?’

‘What’s wrong, pussy? Getting the willies just talking about it, are you? It’s all just stories, you know. There’s nothing mystical about any of it. They spread it around to keep the likes of you away. And to keep their women to themselves. It’s just a massive con.’

‘Don’t even joke about it,’ Martin’s voice was low, but carried clearly across the water. The four all turned to look at him, without smiles. ‘You know why Seth doesn’t like to talk about them. He’s right. You don’t understand the powers. You can take the piss all you like, but I’ve seen it. It’s real.’

‘Martin, your brother was poisoned by your Dad. It was an accident: nothing to do with anybody from the pub. I’m sorry it happened, and all that, but you can’t go on blaming some imaginary curse. It’s not true.’

‘That’s what they tell everyone. Even Daniel’s started to believe it. But I know the truth,’ Martin drifted off. The playful mood of the others dissipated into an uneasy silence, and the other conversations around the tub took up the slack.

‘Try this,’ a voice on my right darted in unexpectedly. I turned and saw the nautical face. His hands were offering a fresh piece of sponge. I stared at him for a second or two. ‘It’s amazing, especially the first time you try it,’ he continued, and brandished the gift almost in my face. I took it. ‘Rub it on any hard skin. Feet are the most likely, of course, but it’ll work anywhere.’ I obediently rubbed it on my left heel, which had been a corneous mass of impenetrable skin for as long as I could remember. The sensation was different from anything else I had previously known. As if the sponge was sending tendrils in under the invulnerable skin and massaging it from the inside out. I yanked it away. He laughed.

‘Feels peculiar, doesn’t it? Nothing quite like it! That’s a reflex action. Go on, carry on. It’s amazing, but it doesn’t work that quickly.’ I smiled gingerly and applied myself deliberately to the task in hand. ‘They’re farmed just off the north coast, you know,’ he told me, proudly. ‘Takes a certain type of diver, and these little beauties aren’t to be found anywhere else in the world. Least, not anywhere that anyone’s discovered yet. I’ve looked, on my travels, and I know what to look for, but not seen anything approaching it.’

I could feel a change in my heel already. Even after only a minute or so of vigorous scrubbing, I knew the difference. It was like pouring a glass of water onto hardened mud in a drought. Even though most of it would be thirstily sucked up, or run away down cracks, the mud darkened and softened just enough to give some hope that everything was reversible.

‘You know what to look for? Are you one of that “certain type” of diver, then?’ I asked. ‘Have I to thank you personally for my heel’s new lease of life?’

‘Ah, once upon a time, yes,’ he replied. ‘Alas, not now. Past my best. But my son has taken on the mantel.’

‘Your son?’ It was so difficult to tell the ages of anybody here. His grey hair certainly gave him some seniority, but I struggled to imagine him with anything like grown-up children. But, what did I know?

He looked aghast. I wondered what I had said now to make myself look foolish. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he sputtered as he pushed himself up straighter against the stone back of the tub. ‘I haven’t even introduced myself. So unaccustomed to it nowadays. I’m Neville Lambert. I look after the lighthouse. Been looking forward to meeting you for some time. I almost came up to visit yesterday, but thought I’d leave it a while longer. Didn’t want to overwhelm you with new acquaintances.’ We shook hands, in the bathtub.

‘So, if it’s your son who retrieves these miracle-workers from the seabed,’ I looked at my heel, ‘then I do owe you a debt of thanks, indirectly,’ I suggested, obsequiously.

‘Yes, he’s one of the chosen two. He and his partner spend most of the summer out there past the turbines. Five years now, they’ve been doing it. It’s a tough job, physically and mentally, but we all appreciate it. And it’s not just these sponges they bring back, but we can talk about that another time.’

My heel continued to melt under the ministrations of the underwater jewel. I could understand how the supply of such a treasure needed to be such a challenge, and those charged with the task highly respected. My gaze drifted away to the far wall and played along the multi-coloured strata. I guessed, in a muted sort of way, that the lighthouseman would be able to fill me in on the meaning of it, but that could wait until the numbness in my head had subsided. The unloved back of my foot was proving to have surprising depths.

‘What do you make of our wall’ he interrupted my ecstasy in full flow.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s the thing. I’m not sure what to make of it at all. It’s quite exquisite, of course, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such vibrant colours indoors, but I can’t figure out what it is. It seems almost geological in its form.’

‘Very good,’ he nodded. ‘You’ve hit the nail right on the head. You’ll do well here. What you can see is an exact representation of the geological formations that have led to this particular hot spring. I’ve been told it’s a hundred percent accurate, and I have no reason to disbelieve that. I’m not convinced that the colours are truly representative, but I think we can forgive that. Some level of artistic licence is acceptable, and probably required in this case.’

He left me for a while to follow the contours of the rock formations. He was right: a display of browns and dirty greys wouldn’t have had the same impact, especially among the steam and the borrowed light. ‘It’s quite spellbinding,’ I apologised. I was struggling to contribute to the conversation.

He stood, climbed out of the big pool and lifted a sort of stone gate just behind him. ‘Come in here,’ he beckoned me. ‘Let’s move down below.’ I picked up my sponge and dragged myself up. My foot felt like it was walking on the surface of the warm water. We both passed the stone he was holding, into a small shallow chamber that just covered our feet with the clear water from the main pool, He let the stone fall gently into place once more, and flicked a small lever under the water with his foot. The chamber emptied immediately. He moved to the far end and lifted an identical stone and waited politely for me to proceed. Down five wide stone steps, we came to another, smaller, pool. The surface of the water was perfectly still, even when I broke it with my newly refurbished foot. Underneath, though, a gentle effervescence felt like tendrils around my ankles. It was warmer than the main pool, and had a greener sulphurous tinge. I found it incredibly refreshing, especially after the soporific listlessness of above. The lighthouseman set himself down next to me.

‘An offshoot of the same spring,’ he explained, – ‘but with a more volcanic upbringing. Interesting, no?’

Interesting was the word, given that “disturbingly hypnotic and erotic” was probably not appropriate under the circumstances.

‘You mustn’t listen to those boys up there,’ he signalled vaguely towards the five in the central pool, whose conversation had restarted and was approaching full volume once more. ‘It’s just a bit of youthful bravado, and mostly for your benefit. Although they know my habits as well, of course.’

I was at a slight loss. What, exactly, had been for my benefit? ‘I don’t follow,’ I said. ‘I got the impression they were talking about The Griffin, but I’ve heard too much about that place already. Already like water off a duck’s back. I don’t expect boys here are any different from boys anywhere else. Whatever they can find to measure against each other, they’ll do it.’

‘Quite right, too,’ he nodded appreciatively. ‘You form your own opinions. You seem like a very sensible young man.’

‘You might not say that if you knew me better!’ I replied, laughing. ‘I’m trying to start a brand new leaf. There’s plenty to leave behind that I bet even that lot up there would be ashamed of.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ his grey beard twinkled in the prickling air. ‘We all suffer from the curse of unwanted memory. That’s one thing this place can’t cure.’

We moved to the cold room, which lived up to its name. The decoration was along similar lines to that of its hot neighbour, and the room itself was completely empty. A semicircle of individual deep pods stood empty save for their icy water. Behind them, water gushed from a gaping mouth in the ceiling, dropping to the tiled floor like a glacier on fast-forward and filtering down the various channels to the pods. It was impossible to spend more than a minute or so submerged, and even more so to carry on a conversation through chattering teeth, while the skin tightened around frozen bones and hyper-oxygenated muscles. I was desperate to leave and almost ran down the steps to the foyer on the way to the steam room.

Impossible though it was to be completely sure, I got the feeling that we were the only occupants of the last room, too. We sat side by side on the warm stone ledge, as far up off the ground as possible. He was barely visible, even from such close range.

‘I take it you’re a regular in The Griffin, then?’ I started. ‘You mentioned that those lads might have been targeting their conversation at you, too.’

‘I wouldn’t call myself a “regular”, but I do use the pub, certainly. There’s a lot of nonsense spoken about the clientele. They’re quite welcoming to anyone who chooses to drink there. Even those youngsters would be made to feel at home if they did dare step over the threshold. And it’s the best beer on the island. Some might say the best anywhere. Myself, I swear by our wonderful brewery, but I can’t tell the difference between the beer served in The Griffin and anywhere else here. Some can, so they claim.’ He paused for a moment and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, savouring the thought. ‘But it’s not an all-or-nothing thing. I’m proof of that. I spend just as much time in The General Gordon. I just love the views up the Mountain, even in the Winter. You can sit at the back, behind the fireplace, and gaze up at the snow drifting across it, the foxes foraging, the owls that never give up. I’ve seen one try and take a fox before. Incredible fight, it was. Fox got away, just.’

‘How about the others?’ I asked. ‘I got the impression they’re a bit of a close community up there. Do many of them come down this way?’

‘No, not really. There’s the likes of me, and Bobby, who’ll head up there and have a drink with the old timers quite regularly, but we don’t see many of the northerners down this end. A couple of the younger ones, maybe. Pete comes most days, but he’s got his eye on a certain young lady. I don’t fancy his chances much, but he’s a trier. Even comes in here: you wouldn’t catch any of the others here.’

‘Really? There’s that much of a split?’ I was surprised. I had assumed it was a close community. ‘So I’d be unlikely to run into Santino or Joshua in this neck of the woods?’

‘It would be a miracle. Santino comes down as far as the school. He still gives a few classes. But you won’t see him, unless you happen to be there at the time. He won’t stray into the town, not any more. Joshua has probably been this side of the Mountain a handful of times since he turned 14. Only ever to visit Evie, or her mother back in the day, when they’ve been too crippled to move themselves.’

‘How about The Child? I’ve seen him down this way.’ I proposed.

Neville’s eyes opened a bit wider and broke into a light laugh. ‘Yes, you may well have done,’ he humoured me. ‘He’s a slightly different kettle of fish. I would have expected you to have seen him by now. You’re a very important part of the island, and you can’t really function without knowing him. It stands to reason you’ve met him, wherever you might have been.’

‘But he wouldn’t drink, say, in The Shipbuilders, or come in here for a bath?’

‘Ha ha! Can you imagine that? Imagine him waltzing in here, naked as the day he was made!! Those five youngsters would run, screaming, for a start. That’s if they didn’t drop dead on the spot with a heart attack. It’d certainly shake things up a bit. But no. I can’t see that happening.’

His response was not quite what I expected. I saw no good reason why those shadowy figures shouldn’t overlap with those down here in the south. I knew enough about the island to understand that its self-sufficiency was a result of the whole organism. Power, for example, came from the springs in the south and the turbines in the north. All the buildings, regardless of location, pumped their solar energy into the grid to the benefit of everybody. The magical sponges emerged from the northerly waters, while the commercial centre of the port and, in the past, the shipyard, was firmly rooted in the south. Livestock from the grazing land in the north was distributed from a butcher’s shop in the town. To me, the island was a single entity. To everybody else, it was split into two.

‘What are your plans for the rest of the day?’ he asked, after allowing me to consider the picture he had drawn in my imagination. I tried to recall what they had been.

‘I don’t think I had a concrete plan,’ I admitted. I planned to come here and see if I could get to meet some new people. I suppose I’ve done that.’

‘Excellent!’ he declared, rising and momentarily dispersing the thick steam. ‘It must be time for you to have the tour. You can come with me right now. I think you’ll like it. It’ll give you a perspective you weren’t even sure you needed, but once you’ve got it, you’ll wonder how you ever knew anything before.’

I could instinctively tell he was right. We showered and dressed, then left the Baths and turned away from the port, up a narrow path between two grand, brightly painted and immaculate houses until we reached a domed clifftop path that spilled over to a rocky descent on both sides. It tapered dramatically straight towards the towering trompe l’oeil, which appeared to rotate and approach us as we stood silently at the summit. I got the impression that Neville found it as magical as I did, despite its familiarity.