The sun shone fully into my face. I didn’t even want to think about how late it was, and I certainly lacked the energy I had grown used to in my mornings here. So I lay still and gazed out of my window at the Mountain. Had the snow crept just a little lower overnight? When I had woken unexpectedly, the stars had been out in force, but it’s possible it could have snowed before that. Certainly the glare from the moon off the slopes had been quite illuminating, I recalled vaguely.

I wasn’t moving anywhere right away, so I decided to take stock. Have an audit of what I knew and who I might have become. By my uncertain reckoning, this was my seventh morning of waking in this bed, although that seemed too short in some ways and far too long in others.

Whatever the time period and the distances involved, I had to admit that the mainland seemed a long way away indeed. Home, even further.

 

It had been summer when I packed up and left my flat. Not the height of the season any more, but still undeniably summer. The 30-hour trip to the port had changed all of that. I had moved between seasons somewhere, while I was blindly cocooned in one of the two buses or three trains which carried me to my staging post.

The sun sat noticeably lower in the sky, and took a longer while to schlep the whole way across. The temperature had dropped a degree or two, and the few clothes I had packed in my holdalls were pitifully insufficient. An idiotic and avoidable mistake, and I worried, with some justification, it turned out, that it might be the first in a long line.

I had travelled light deliberately. There was to be enough emotional and sensory baggage, I had predicted, so I decided to keep encumbrances of the physical variety to a minimum. For that, I engaged a container shipping company to shift the rest of my stuff all the way to the island. It allowed me to take much more than I had originally thought and removed a number of potentially difficult decisions.

Still, though, I wanted to be selective about what went into my container. I spent several days considering. The shipping firm was actually based in the port from where I would take the ferry, so they had to send down the container to me, and would collect it upon my command and ship it back via what seemed a ludicrously circuitous route. If they remembered.

By the time it turned up I had made and re-made a master list several times. I was having terrible trouble picturing my life on the island. I had been in touch with my future employers several times, had asked pertinent questions and been given clear responses, for the most part, but still I seemed unable to conjure up any kind of representation in my own head of how things might look. I had never done anything comparable in my life, and naturally I was having doubts. Panic attacks, they might have been called by a professional practitioner, but I preferred to think of them as doubts.

As it happened, that didn’t matter at all. The container was, for want of a better description, ginormous. I could have fitted every last one of my possessions, including things I had jettisoned in my last clear-out, not two years previous and considerably more violent, into the limitless sarcophagus. But, paradoxically, its sheer size cleared my mind of vast acres of clutter and I found myself editing my belongings quite calmly and sensibly. I kept the majority of my stuff – after all, I hadn’t had a great deal of time to accumulate too much that was already superfluous – but succeeded in pruning a couple of branches of my life that weren’t thriving. I shifted the empty container with some difficulty to my neighbour’s flat, packed everything carefully and enjoyed a farewell curry. He had been a good neighbour, if not a lifelong friend, and I was happy to spend my last night there in his company. The subject of his coming to visit didn’t arise. Next morning I called the shipping company, disconnected the phone and closed the door on that flat for the last time.

I hadn’t pre-booked anywhere to stay in the port, but I knew there were options and I didn’t expect them to be overflowing. I walked down towards the harbour from the bus “station” and stopped at the first place I found. I had never been less fussy in my entire life. I had no idea how long I would be staying, but it certainly wouldn’t be longer than a couple of nights. After the journey I had had, I could put up with anything for that short time.

‘Twenty quid a night, my love,’ the crone with the patchwork apron spat at me. ‘Pay in advance. How long you staying for?’

‘I’m not sure yet. Two, maybe three days. It all depends on the ferries and my container.’

‘I don’t know nothing about no container,’ she belched. ‘Will you be wanting an evening meal too?’

‘Errrr, I don’t know. Do I? What other options are there for eating around here?’

‘There’s the chippy. It’s not as bad as it used to be. Open until 6. And there’s The Old Lighthouse, that’s the pub on the front. They might be able to rustle you something up, if Ronnie’s stayed sober enough. Wouldn’t bank on it though.’

I thought far too hard about my options. Could I go these few days without even eating at all? In the end, I settled. ‘I’ll eat here, if I may. That’ll be fine.’

‘Seven fifty a night. You get a beer with that, too. Stuff they brew over there on the island. Locals reckon it’s alright, though. Cheap, anyway. Can’t do you anything tonight; too late. So that’ll be seventy-five quid, then.’ She took my money, lit a cigarette and sat in a chair, from which I really couldn’t picture her moving. Ever.

It was nearly 4.00. I’d risk the chippy later, but first I was keen to locate the shipping company office. I continued down the hill towards the harbour. It was hardly the most attractive seaside scene, but it had a certain sense of freedom and cleanliness. The harbour itself gave a good enough account of itself from that vantage point. It billowed impressively behind the imposing sea-breaking wall and offered scope for a considerably larger seaborne population than was currently taking advantage of it. But that was a good thing: every boat had its own space and there was no jostling. Just like it was in the vast ocean beyond that wall of mighty rocks, expertly dropped into place by the inexhaustible wit and strength of man.

I stood above for a minute and surveyed the scene for possible offices. A clutch of low-slung buildings, not necessarily of the specialised maritime variety, sat back respectfully behind the loading and unloading area, and what passed for heavy machinery. Behind them, the shipyard gave the impression of cutting a huge square slice from the coastline as it swung around to face north, although I knew full well the effect came from manmade building out into the sea, not the other way around. It lay dormant, not a soul to disturb its slumber moving anywhere along its wide roads or between its hulking warehouses. I felt empty just looking at it, not to mention slightly voyeuristic.

Despite all that, I reckoned that the cluster of unloved offices would probably be my best bet, and set off towards them, keeping my eyes peeled all the way in case I had sent myself on a wild goose chase.

I needn’t have worried. Between my vantage point on the hill and the office complex I passed no more than six buildings. One was The Old Lighthouse, the pub referred to in such glowing terms not fifteen minutes previously by my landlady. It was shut and I could discern no signs of life through the grubby windows. I wondered what Ronnie was up to at that very moment. Was he out the back, or upstairs, with a bottle of malt, preparing himself for another monotonous session of the same old faces and conversations? Or maybe he was down at the harbour, selecting some of the finest of today’s catch for this evening’s menu, drinking in the texture and aroma of the muscular aquatic flesh and expertly matching a complimentary companion from his sprawling and well-kept cellar, ready for the specials board? I couldn’t say.

The others were either lock-up storage, presumably for ropes, nets, pitch and the like, or miniature houses. I had never seen anything quite so tiny and weatherbeaten. I didn’t count myself large: a touch under six feet in height and a healthy twelve stone. Alright, closer to twelve and a half. But still, nothing out of the ordinary. And I would have struggled with those front doors.

It was emptiness I felt, for sure, but not a sort with which I was familiar. I could only describe it to myself as a kind of external emptiness, if that made any sense to me. Of course, I was full of my own knowledge and past, but I couldn’t find anything in my emotional lexicon to attach to what I saw on the outside. Like being totally and incomprehensibly foreign. Worse than lonely: my life experiences had been rendered irrelevant, which had robbed them of any sense of reality. And they died, instantly.

Somehow, I continued on my way, despite my personal struggles, which I thought I did well to conceal from the public at large. I passed and was greeted, perfunctorily, by a few seafaring types, pottering with boats in various incomprehensible ways which could have been pointless for all I knew, and arrived at the commercial centre of the dockyard. For the first time in many weeks, I congratulated myself and my stock rose. There it was: Sound Move Logistics. The Head Office, no less. And somebody appeared to be inside.

I opened the door and he looked at me. It wasn’t an unfriendly look, but much more than that in its favour I couldn’t offer.

‘Afternoon. Can I ‘elp you?’ the owner of the look said, out loud.

‘Good afternoon.’ I could barely believe my luck; firstly that I had found the office with no disastrous slapstick-inspired detours along the way, secondly that it was open, in a town that I bet had a relaxed approach to trading hours, thirdly that there appeared to be a human being who understood that he was there to help potential or actual customers, to wit, me. I told him my name and explained that I had arranged for their express shipping service to the island. He looked impressed and turned to his computer for backup. The machine looked as ancient as some of the fishing boats I had just passed, yet he operated it solely through what appeared to be a touch-screen interface. His lumpen head office finger tracked wearily across the glass for an eternity before he put it carefully away, around an oversized navy blue mug of something milky and not steaming in the slightest. He looked at me as if I had won the lottery and his was the happy job of breaking the news to me in person.

‘Yep, I’ve got you ‘ere. We was due to pick up the box today, from your neighbour, was it?’ I nodded, ‘and get it to your local depot. Should be there now. After that it’ll get driven up ‘ere via the Exchange. That’s in Bridlington. Then we can load it onto a transport for the island. Maybe one of the ferries if there’s room and they let us.’ He stared at me with a fixed grin.

I didn’t know where to start. I counted slowly to five and began at the beginning.

‘You say you were “due” to pick it up today…’

‘That’s right. Between 10 in the a.m. and 3 in the p. Can’t be any more pacific than that.’

‘Ok. Well, can you tell me if it was picked up? And where it is now?’ I squeezed out as calmly as I could manage.

‘No’m. Your guess is as good as mine.’ He sat back in his chair like some kind of sultan, except his headdress looked like it might have once been a Stussy, before the salt and the gulls got to it.

‘Doesn’t it say anything about it on your computer?’ I tried.

‘Fat chance! This computer don’t tell me nothing I ain’t already told it. Don’t you know how they work? Big city fella like you, I’d’a thought you’d know about stuff like that,’ he laughed, or coughed, or a bit of both, for quite a long time. I hoped he wouldn’t die right there in front of me, at least not until we had established where my container was.

It seemed my earlier appraisal of his state-of-the-art system was a little premature. His fingertip was nothing more technologically advanced than an anchor for his undisciplined eyeballs. But plan B was hatching inside me. I noticed a telephone on his desk, within his reach, and burst into action.

‘Well, could you maybe give the guys a call? The guys who were meant to pick it up, I mean. Then we could get an idea of how far along the process we’ve got,’ I pleaded with my eyes as well as I could. It occurred to me how far we are willing to go down the road of humiliation, and what for? I wondered how many of the things I had packed in that box, so meticulously, would have been considered vital elements of anybody’s lives one hundred years previously. Fifty years, even. My guess was none.

It worked, though. There was something in him that responded to my prostration and he picked up the phone, muttering but seemingly not massively put out. I guessed he didn’t have anything much better to do right then. Despite being less than three feet away, I could make out almost none of the conversation, but I got the impression it was going quite well. It lasted longer than I would have expected. Finally, he replaced the receiver carefully and looked back up at me, smiling once more.

‘I got good news and bad,’ he said. ‘Which do you want?’

Christ. ‘I’ll have both, but start with the good please.’

‘Good news is that your box got picked up from your neighbour’s. 11.31 in the a.m. All present and correct. Took straight to the local holding depot. Got there 12.46. Bad traffic on your ring road. Overturned potato load, apparently. You got to be careful with them: heavier than you think.’

‘Great. That’s something, then,’ I interrupted. ‘So what’s the bad news?’

‘Ah, yeah. Well, the driver that was going to take it to the Exchange in Briddy has called in sick. He was s’posed to pick it up tomorrow, but there’s some problem with his wife or his kids or something. Sounded serious. He’s going to be out of action for a few days, sounds like.’

I gawped, incredulous. ‘That’s terrible. I wonder what it could be.’

‘’e told me, but I couldn’t really get ‘is drift. I think the missus has been comin’ down with something for a few…..’

‘No! Stop! Stop talking. I really don’t care. I was joking. I hate to sound heartless, but I really couldn’t care less about his domestic tribulations. All I’m interested in is my container, about which we have a contractual agreement. I want it transported to the island within the timescales agreed.’

‘What timescales were those?’ he sniffed, defensively I thought.

I knew it. I had no idea why I had blurted that out, and effectively destroyed any hope I might have had of getting on the front foot. I had taken this firm completely on trust, mostly because they were as local as I could find, and, of course, considerably cheaper than the competition.

‘Alright, alright, Let’s forget about that,’ I tried to gloss over the whole subject as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. ‘Is there not somebody else who can do that run?’

Bridlington? Why, in God’s name, would anybody put the fulcrum of their organisation in Bridlington? Especially one that specialises in transportation. It’s not on the way to anywhere.

‘Might be. I’ll give ‘im a call tomorrow, see what’s going on. Might have to get someone else. If ‘e can. Not that easy to just rustle someone up at short notice.’

I asked him to try whatever he could, if he didn’t mind, and left the office before I ruined our professional relationship beyond repair. I resolved to return the next day and follow up. The situation seemed unlikely to work itself out if left unattended.

After a slow and aimless stroll around the harbour, simply sniffing the air and watching the changing outlines of the clouds jogging across the languorous sky, I stopped by the chippie for a liberal helping of the local delicacy. I made no effort to finish them before I reached my hotel, and took the odour with me upstairs.

It was a large and comfortable enough room, although the decorations would have seen a fair few changes of Prime Minister, maybe even monarch. And it was mostly empty: a naked chair sat unhappily in front of a skinny desk; a sink was boxed into the corner, possibly by a child, and a crude pine cube on stubby legs unconvincingly took on the role of wardrobe. The bottle on the desk stood out like a sore thumb. New and shiny, it gleamed like a gold tooth, and I had to approach it.

According to the label, it was produced on the island. Good of her to bring that up, even if there hadn’t been time to prepare the meal itself. I looked around: an opener was attached to the wall by the bedside lamp. The top came off with a precocious yet polite frothing noise, and I settled myself against the tired bedhead, chip paper spread at my drawn-in feet and the rest of my life as empty and uncharted as it had ever been. I polished off the feast – the brew was life-altering, and I couldn’t decide whether it was a curse or a lucky escape that I only had the one bottle – and drooped down lazily into a prone position. The ceiling was a maze of tiny cracks, none of which seemed structurally worrying. I followed a few on their journeys across the aging plasterwork and they lulled my eyelids heavily downwards. I hadn’t slept well on the train the previous evening, and it was catching up on me. I had the presence of mind to drain the last dregs from the bottle and place it carefully on the side table before the inevitable happened.

 

I made it down just in time for breakfast. I was the only guest, and my hostess made sure I knew that the kitchen was operating just for me. It seemed that paying for the service was not enough: I had to be grateful, too. Mostly, she sat in her chair in the corner of the parlour, smoking and coughing. Fortunately, I didn’t feel too much like conversation.

The bus station was not much more than a couple of portakabins lining a lay-by on the main coast road. Still, it was well enough appointed for me to establish that a bus ran into the nearest decent-sized town every two hours. I would have to wait around 20 minutes for the next one, which I did, alone, not taking my eyes off the road for more than a split-second. Once it arrived and I boarded, another 20 minutes took me to the town. I was relieved to see something approaching urban bustle, although my definition of that had undoubtedly altered.

At least there were shops. I needed more appropriate clothing, and found it. Evidently I wasn’t the first one who had realised the same, and commerce had reacted like it always does. This was walking and mountain-climbing land.

I treated myself to a light lunch of the local produce, definitely part of the pasty family, although what you would probably call the black sheep. The accent remained mostly a mystery. From what I had read about the island, there was no reason to expect that I would meet anything like the same challenges in terms of basic understanding when I reached there.

Despite its relative size, the town only kept me occupied until early in the afternoon. Satisfied with my jaunt, I hopped aboard a returning bus (the same vehicle, I noticed, by the singular graffiti) and was back in my hotel room just as if I had never been away. I emptied both my holdalls onto the bed and added my latest purchases to the unimpressive array. Once I had decided on a departure time, I would re-pack for the last leg of my journey. Until then, I stacked what needed stacking and hung what needed hanging in the equally unimpressive wardrobe. I went back down the creaking stairs.

The place was empty, if you didn’t count me. I peered nervously into the parlour and saw her chair empty, the ashtray redundant, the morning’s smoke strata tightly packed underneath the yellowing ceiling. Emboldened by the silence, I entered and wandered around. The dining table had been folded down and shoved back into the far corner, which gave more space for I had no idea what. The room had such an old-fashioned and musty feel to it that I found it hard to assimilate the minimalistic decoration. I would have expected enough knick-knacks to send a feather duster into raptures, faux sentimentality to plunge even the most hopeless romantic into a strop of cynicism, all wrapped in the fussiness of a domestic regimental sergeant major. But, for the most part, I found unadorned flat surfaces that showed clearly the accumulation of dust, scuffed and unloved wainscot and no more art, sickly-sweet or otherwise, than what the Creator had fashioned and the greasy nets allowed in through the stingy front bay. The antimacassars were spotted with death and tacky with the sap of the dying. I lifted and uncritically examined the few ornaments that had been deemed deserving of houseroom. Maritime in nature, for the most part, and as tawdry as the soft furnishings. I blew the dust from a couple and re-examined them, but it didn’t improve them any. It was a suicidal room.

I was slightly put out, in that, for the first time since I had arrived, I actually wanted to speak to the old crone. I had no confidence that she would remember my evening meal, despite my having paid up front for it, and I was not going to let her wriggle out of it. The previous night’s fish supper was not something I particularly wanted to repeat in a hurry. I made a cursory check of the kitchen. At first glance, it seemed clean and sanitary enough, and I didn’t allow myself to get any closer to the working parts of it than that. She was not there, and that was all I needed to know right then.

Uneasily, I left the hotel totally untenanted and took another stroll down to the harbour. There was nowhere else to go. This time, though, I was armed with a pair of rather extravagant binoculars: they represented what might well have been my last ever act of pure consumerism. I had read about the unparalleled birdlife on the island, and been encouraged by those islanders I had spoken to before setting off, so had taken the plunge, despite never having shown an interest previously in my life. Now would be an ideal time to break them in.

The harbour, once more, was humming, sotto voce, with lethargic semi-activity. If anything it was slightly more sparsely populated than the previous evening. I took a different route and strode out carefully along the top of the harbour wall. It was a reassuringly thick wall, and well surfaced, but it was a new experience for me to be simultaneously on dry land yet so closely surrounded by what seemed like a lot of untamed sea. I stood still for a while, adapted to the situation and got my bearings. Slowly I raised the binoculars to my eyes and scanned the horizon for the island.

Closest to me stood the lighthouse. It was clear enough for me to want to touch it. Those binoculars could well have been worth it. The lantern room on top glistened like a polished diamond with the sun behind it, and the whole impression was of a pristine, impeccable operation so far removed from what I stood among there in the grubby harbour of the grubby port that it was hard to believe I could see it with what was not much more than my naked eye.

Beyond the lighthouse was more difficult to make out, and I came away with nothing more than tantalising suggestions. The cliffs along the eastern coast rose black out of the sea. I knew, perched somewhere on top of them, was the prison that shared the island’s name. For me, it had always been a byword for the harshness of the justice system and the foolishness of a life of crime. If it hadn’t been for that establishment and its already obsolete reputation, it was unlikely most people would even have heard of the island. Yet, frustratingly, even those expensive binoculars knew their limitations and they weren’t quite able to give me the sneak preview I craved. Before long I wouldn’t be so reliant on them, I told myself.

I scoured the distance for a few more minutes without unearthing anything of much interest. I managed to make out distant silhouettes of the vast wind farm off the north coast of the island, but it was all too ghostly to get excited about. I was happy enough with my prize of the lighthouse, and wandered with more purpose back along the wall and across the harbour to the shipping office one more time.

The same old face greeted me. For a split second, before he recognised me, I got a glimpse of the friendly and open look he clearly reserved for brand new customers, ones without an axe to grind. It was soon replaced into its rightful file and substituted with something altogether less promising.

There was no update for me. What was worse, he refused to even call the remote end for the latest. He made out he already knew there was nobody there to answer. I was extremely concerned that I had already burned any bridges I might have had the right to expect, and I was ridiculously deferential with him. I mostly begged him to give them a call the next morning, and promised to return around lunchtime to find out what the story was. I made it clear, without any unnecessary conflict in my tone, that I would be happy to continue to come back every day until I got the news I was looking for. I might not have been able to bully him into any action, but I could always threaten him with my continued whining presence. To be honest, I was in a good position to carry it through for quite some time. Quite apart from not wanting to let him off the hook, I didn’t actually need to leave immediately, and saw no harm in letting a few ferries depart without me on board.

My mood lightened a touch when I returned to the hotel and smelled the unmistakeable aroma of food being prepared in the kitchen. I had pretty much resigned myself to the inevitable absence of dinner, accompanied by its litany of lame excuses, so to find an agreement being stuck to in good faith lifted my heart. I knocked and entered the kitchen, and asked her when I should come down for the feast.

‘Ready at 6,’ she replied without even turning to face me. ‘In the bin by quarter past if you’re not here.’

I had a quarter of an hour, which I used for the briefest of ablutions and the careful stowing of my priceless binoculars safe within the depths of my baggage. I had no specific reason to doubt the honesty or integrity of the landlady or anybody else associated with the establishment, but nothing about the town made me comfortable and my behaviour reflected that.

Dinner was warm and freshly prepared, which was all I could say for it. The beer was identical to the previous night and made everything better, but I struggled to dispose of a reasonable amount of what was on offer. I felt ridiculous making out that I had a small appetite – that was patently a lie, and I refused to use it – so merely thanked her and commented on how fine the beer was. Before she could engage me any further, I headed straight for the door.

‘I’m off down to The Old Lighthouse, to get a better feel for the place,’ I informed her. ‘I’ll be back by 10. That’s when you lock the door, isn’t it?’

‘Doors locked at 10 sharp,’ she confirmed, holding my half-finished plate as if she were going to bag it for forensics, a disgusted scowl on her face.

‘OK, see you later,’ I trilled, halfway out already. I’d got away with it.

 

The pub was probably about as full as it was ever likely to get. Four men sat at the bar on stools. Three of them were dressed in filthy overalls and the other in working clothes, equally squalid. He appeared to be the centre of their attention. Nearby, the landlord was pouring drinks for a more fragrant younger man, who I discerned to be entertaining an impressively well-presented female at a table by the fireplace. She looked less than thrilled, and my guess was that, if this was a first date, a second might be wishful thinking. The young beau fiddled nervously with his change as he waited for his drinks, lining up the coins on the bar in order of value. At the front, by the windows to the street, past which I had strolled the night before, two tables were taken with desultory local men and their desultory local observations. As I entered, every conversation, bar none, stalled.

The landlord looked over at me, and looked me over. He nodded. I nodded back.

‘Ronnie!’ he called. ‘Customer! Get off your arse, will you?’ He looked back at me. ‘Someone’ll be right with you, chief.’ I smiled, took my place on a barstool and waited patiently. The background hum re-started.

From a room behind the bar, a woman appeared. She carried a glass in her right hand, half empty, clinking ice cubes and well-stocked with lemon and lime slices. She was certainly a stickler for vitamin C. She put down the glass, steadied herself on the back bar for a second and surveyed the scene. It took a long while before her eyes reached me and registered my significance. The landlord looked knowingly at the four regulars in front of him:

‘Let’s hope he’s not too thirsty,’ he said with half a grin. ‘Might be a while before he gets anything.’ The men sniggered guiltily.

Ronnie pushed past behind him. There was plenty of space for two back there. ‘Prick,’ she muttered, completely audibly, as she passed. She arrived in front of me. At first sight she seemed older than I was, but something about her betrayed a hidden, or maybe just a battered, youth. Her face was lived-in and sallow like a grandmother’s, and her lachrymose eyes made me want to weep along with her. Her neck and bare arms were covered in young, taut skin and toned like a teenager’s. Her hands, at least until reaching the grubby and chewed fingernails, delicate and undamaged by time. I looked back at her.

‘What’ll you have, my darling?’ she slurred. Her features were perfect, under the superficial wear and tear. Her cheekbones were classical and the whole face tapered softly to a rounded finish any artist would have been proud of.

‘Oh, I don’t know. A pint of whatever’s local, please,’ I replied, without taking my eyes off her. She smirked as she retreated, pushed her husband aside and pulled a pint of the local hooch with exaggerated precision. She returned to me without catching the eye of any of the others and without disturbing a single drop.

‘There we go, gorgeous,’ she growled, and stayed put. I thanked her and paid her. She stared at me.

‘Ronnie!’ her husband called. The sound bounced off her. He seemed agitated.

‘So, it’s you, is it?’ she started, leaning on her side of the bar with her elbows.

‘What’s me?’ I replied, nervously.

‘Off to the island. The next sacrificial lamb.’

I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got no idea what you’re referring to,’ I said.

‘You’re off to the island, yeah?’

‘I am, yes, in a day or two,’ that much seemed common knowledge, somehow. I wasn’t hugely surprised, in a place like this.

‘You’re taking over for the next season,’ she continued.

‘Yes, I start when the winter comes,’ I confirmed.

‘Reckon you’ll be coming back ever?’ she asked with a sneer.

‘Ronnie! That’s enough!’ came the harsh voice of her husband. He had advanced along the bar towards us. ‘Can you do Jim a big piece of that game pie? Jen’s not cooking for him again tonight. Sort him out with some gravy too.’

Ronnie turned and fixed the landlord and the hungry punter in question with a look that would have sunk the appetite of a more sensitive sort. She addressed me again, at some volume, as she set off slowly to the kitchen. ‘If it was up to me I’d let the prick starve. His wife hates him so much she won’t feed him, but I have to. What a fucking life.’ She picked up her glass, returned, leaned over into my face and lowered her voice. ‘Go, if you must. You just steer clear of that crazy fucking wizard. Mark my words. Do your job, don’t get involved and get out of that hellhole as soon as you can.’

The landlord’s hand closed around her arm and physically propelled her towards the kitchen. She protested theatrically, but disappeared into the kitchen without genuine ado. I sat vacantly for a minute or two, then rose to visit the gents.

I stood in front of the urinal and replayed the actual words she had used. In reality, there was nothing too sinister. I had no idea what she meant by her allusion to a wizard, or what it was in which I was not to get involved, but it seemed just words. Drunken ones, too. The look she had given me was a different matter, though. Her dark eyes had burned like a priceless opal and her brows were knit into some kind of primal and terrible metonym. That hadn’t been the gin talking.

But she was clearly unhinged. I physically shook the memory of her twisted face from my head. I was relieved to find her deeply ensconced in the kitchen as I returned around the far side of the bar.

Even more happily than that, the landlord beckoned me over to his end. An empty stool sat by the bar next to the four smuts, proudly mounted astride their stools like chevaliers at a tournament. In front of it a frothing pint of my usual.

‘Come and join us,’ he called. ‘I apologise on behalf of my wife. Her manners leave a bit to be desired on nights like this. I always say it’s the full moon that plays havoc with her, but I imagine it’s something a bit less unearthly than that…’

I shrugged and waved away his apology. I was glad to join them. Some uncomplicated male boozing company was what I had been missing, it seemed. I was getting far too tied up in my own problems and had lost the ability to think clearly or trivially.

They asked me question after question, not related to my impending departure, but about my background, what I had done before this startling career change, what it was like living in a big city, that sort of thing. The three overalled ones had never travelled more than 20 miles from this, their home town. The builder, Edward, was a bit more experienced: he had travelled for jobs in Spain, the Gulf and even Kazakhstan, although his knowledge of his home country was not much greater than that of his mates. The time passed quickly and pleasantly. I bought my round. I found out that most of the running boat repairs you would witness on a typical afternoon’s tour of the harbour were either totally unnecessary or at least wildly premature.

I heard a sound of breaking glass, followed by a string of obscenities, from the kitchen. Thinking about it, Jim’s pie had been a long time coming. The landlord looked over his shoulder and listened for a second or two. We heard nothing. He rose, dejected, and traipsed out to the kitchen.

‘She’s in a bad way tonight,’ Jim broke the silence. The others nodded sagely. He looked at me. ‘Always like this at this time of year. The last full moon of the summer. Cursed, she says she is.’ He checked to see that the landlord wasn’t on his way back out. ‘I used to believe maybe there was some truth in that, but she’s getting like this most of the year now. Can’t stay off the sauce. I don’t know how Mick deals with it. He has to carry her to bed most nights. And she pisses the bed.’

‘Filthy,’ Edward concurred. Branded filthy by this lot; her night was going from bad to worse.

The image was certainly a far from pleasant one. Such a handsome woman, so totally ruined. And so young. ‘What kind of curse?’ I asked. I was intrigued that they all appeared to assign a certain amount of credence to the idea.

They all looked at Jim. This was his story, after all. ‘The Child,’ he said, simply. ‘He’s the one she meant when she talked about a wizard.’

‘Who’s he? “The Child”??’

‘He doesn’t have a name. Least, not one that anybody knows over here. From what I reckon, nobody over there does either. What you say, Eddie? You’ve just been there.’

‘They just call him The Child. If they call him anything. Won’t find too many over there happy to talk about him with the likes of me, either.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I interrupted, ‘I’m losing track. When you say “over there”, are you talking about the island?’

‘Course. Where else?’

I had to slow this down and get to the bare bones of it. ‘Well, why on Earth would some mystic from the island cast a curse on the landlady of this pub? I don’t understand.’

‘She wasn’t always here,’ Jim continued. ‘Born on the island, she was. In the north-west. Some say she’s actually The Child’s daughter, but they say that about all of them that get born up there. Bunch of fucking weirdos. It’s kind of a commune or something. They all look after each other and the children are sort of shared. Nobody knows who’s whose. So she grew up there, and then Mick went over to work.’

‘Mick? The landlord here?’

‘Yeah. His uncle had run The Griffin for ten years or more. Died in a storm. They found his body washed up on the north-east rock a few days after he disappeared. Mick thought it was his duty to take over. Unfinished business, he called it.’

‘So, what? Mick was from here originally?’ I was trying to fill in all the details for my own benefit.

‘Yep. Born in this pub. His parents were islanders, but they moved over before he was born, to start up this place. So, anyway, he wasn’t a complete outsider. And he took over as soon as his uncle was confirmed dead.’ He sipped his pint. The others followed suit. I didn’t feel that I couldn’t also.

He continued. ‘Course, he met Ronnie when he got over there. She must have been 16 or 17 then. Nothing he could do about it. Devil in an angel’s outfit, she was, by all accounts. He fell for her; hook, line and sinker. Before long she’d moved in with him, and folk weren’t happy. More to the point, The Child weren’t happy. He can make life very difficult if he wants. Mick had been warned by his uncle about his powers, but Mick weren’t scared of him, didn’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo. Ronnie, though, she’d grown up over there and took it more seriously. She called it off when she realised they’d gone too far. But it weren’t as simple as that. Never is. Mick didn’t want to let her go. Neither did she, when it came down to it. Only took a few days and they started to sneak around in secret. But there’s no secrets over there, and they got found out again. Got banished.’

‘Banished?’ I repeated his word.

‘Banished. Sent away in disgrace. For ever,’ he explained.

‘Yes, I know the meaning of the word,’ I assured him. ‘I just can’t believe that sort of thing actually goes on nowadays. This isn’t the Middle Ages.’ Was it?

Mick emerged from the kitchen, carrying a steaming plate. He set it down on the bar in front of Jim. ‘Sorry for the wait, Jim. It’s Ronnie. I need to take her up.’ He looked at our glasses. ‘Anybody for a refill before I go?’ He did the drinks, I paid for the round and he disappeared once more.

The glimpse we caught of her unconscious arm draped around his shoulder as he transported her up the stairs was apparently pretty standard for that time of night in The Old Lighthouse. Jim attacked his pie as if it were an old adversary.

Another overall took up the narrative. ‘They can banish from there, alright. Islanders take that sort of thing seriously. Mick might not have done, so much, but Ronnie would have made him come back here. Not much point them staying over there, anyway. Not when everyone’s against you. Besides, he’s a lucky one. The Griffin landlords since then haven’t had it so good.’

‘Alright, Kenny. Let’s not get too deep into it. This gentleman doesn’t want to hear all the gory details,’ Jim intervened, his mouth full. ‘And anyway, look at Mick now. Look at Ronnie! You call that lucky? Beautiful girl like that, brought to what she is now. Can’t say if she’s actually cursed or not, but as long as she believes it’s real, it might as well be.’

There was an awkward silence, only disturbed by the couple by the fireplace, who were sucking each other’s faces and making squelching noises. That second date could have been back on. I couldn’t stand it for long.

‘What about those subsequent landlords then?’ I suggested, to see if anyone would pick up from where Kenny had led us. He did the decent thing himself.

‘Been a few,’ he snorted. ‘None as have come back though.’

‘What do you mean, none have come back?’

‘Just what I say. Accidents, mysteries, you name it. Once they leave this port we don’t see ‘em again. You can call that a curse, if you like. Or not. Don’t matter what you call it, you can’t argue with the facts of life. Some last longer than others, but they don’t none of ‘em come back.’

They were all looking at me as if I had done something. I laughed nervously in an attempt to break the tension.

‘Surely that’s not true,’ I forced the words through my unconvincing grin. ‘Surely not all of them vanish in mysterious circumstances? That sounds a bit macabre to be true?’

‘Tell ‘im, Eddie,’ Kenny barked. ‘Just got back, Eddie has, so ‘e knows what ‘e’s talking about.’ We all gave our attention reverently to the builder.

‘I’ve been over, working. Got a cousin over there. Been there years, he has. Anyway, he got me some work there – plenty of building on the island, usually. Not normally any jobs for outsiders, but they needed someone and I’m the closest to a native they could get. Working all summer on a few houses in the north-west. Got ‘em mostly finished, too, but I had to get out of there. Came back today on the afternoon ferry.’

‘Came back for good?’ I asked, calmly, drinking.

‘Bloody right. You won’t get me back there. I missed my last week’s money, but I don’t care. I made sure I got out before the Winter came.’

‘Why? What on Earth happened?’

‘Rimmer, it was. He’d been at The Griffin for about two years. Nice bloke. A bit like you: clever, knew loads of stuff. Knew about boats, knew about building, about birds and sealife. He was looking forward to going over there. Even came back every now and then to look us lot up and spend some time at the shipyard. That was his favourite place.

‘We hadn’t seen him for ages by the time this summer came round. I put it down to last Winter. Shocking, the weather was. Messes with the ferries, of course, but it makes The Griffin busier, too. The more snow, the less they close there. People in at all hours of day and night. He wouldn’t’ve had time to come back here. So I didn’t think much of it. I was quite looking forward to getting over there and having a few beers with him. The landlord gets the summer off, pretty well. Hardly anything to do there then. Everyone’s too busy.

‘So I got there in June, and I can’t find him anywhere. I went to the pub first, and he wasn’t there. Nothing too sinister about that. By then he’s winding down after the Winter. I got on with my work – there was plenty to be doing. But I never saw him around anywhere. After a week I asked after him again. They’re all pleading ignorance. They say maybe he’s gone back to the mainland for a visit. I suppose that’s pretty plausible, especially since he didn’t get the chance for months, and he’d want to go before the shutdown. No joy in an empty shipyard. And another week passes. I’ve never known him be back here for a whole week. Weather was perfect – beautiful, this summer, it was – so there was no problem with the ferries. I started to ask some more serious questions. Nothing. I knew there was something up. Bloody rubbish liars they are, over there.

‘I know closed ranks when I see them. They didn’t even have a story that they were all sticking to. Just silence. I spoke to my cousin about it in The End of The World – he likes to go there when there’s drinking and talking to be done, since nobody else ever does. And it gets him away from The Shipbuilders.’

‘He’s the landlord of The Shipbuilders,’ Kenny whispered to me.

‘He told me,’ Eddie continued, ‘that Rimmer hadn’t even known Tony very well, and he couldn’t see any way he’d have had an axe to grind with him.’

‘Hang on, who’s Tony?’ This time I had to butt in.

‘Keeper of the north-east rock, he was. Sometime in the spring he’d been found hanging from the sign in front of The Heretic. The one with the picture of the old Italian fella.’

‘That’s Galileo,’ Kenny explained. He added that he had fallen foul of the authorities for persisting in his arguments in favour of heliocentrism.

‘Hanging? Like, dead hanging?’

‘Yes,’ Eddie replied very carefully. ‘Dead, hanging. So would you be if you were dangling by your neck from a twenty-foot pole, on the end of a rope, and had been all night.’ He paused to make sure I had the picture. I gave him a look like I wouldn’t interrupt again for a while. ‘Turns out he didn’t even use The Heretic. Been barred for years. Used to be a bit of a troublemaker, by all accounts. Went in The Griffin sometimes, so Rimmer would have known him for sure, but spent most of his time in The General Gordon. Mind you, he should have been on the rock looking after the nesting birds, not getting tanked up in whatever boozer would have him. Selfish twat: that was the general consensus.’

‘But what has any of that got to do with this Rimmer character?’ The point of his rambling story seemed a long way away still.

‘I’m getting there…… Bobby, that’s my cousin, who runs The Shipbuilders,’ he added, pointedly, for my benefit. I flashed my best sardonic smile of appreciation. ‘says that Rimmer disappeared just after Tony’s body was found. Nobody else was ever accused of any foul play, and there’s no way he could have committed suicide. Besides, there’s a rumour going around that he was dead before he was even strung up. Bobby’s seen it before: they’ll finger the easiest target for anything like that. Shut themselves up like a clam and let the outsider drown. Don’t matter that he had no motive.’

‘So what would have happened to him? Do you think they rubbed him out?’ I was unsure of my melodramatic terminology, but I was being carried along with the intrigue.

‘Bobby says unlikely. They’re funny about that sort of thing over there. If someone dies they have to have a ceremony, a proper burial. Even Tony got one of those. Death is important on the island, and so is how they deal with it. If they’d done that for Rimmer, too many people would have got to know about it. Bobby reckons he might have legged it: he’d been around for long enough to know how they operate, and was smart enough to act quick. He’d become part of the island in a short time. The last two Winters were hard, harder than normal, and he’d got everyone through them. People liked him.’

‘Yet you still think he might have run?’

‘I don’t think anything. I’m only saying what Bobby said to me. And he didn’t say no more, either. He’s not one to talk about second hand stuff, or pass gossip on. That doesn’t go down too well there. Made it clear, though: once The Child gets involved, anything’s possible. Rimmer might have been disappeared. There are stories they tell over there, going back hundreds of years, that nobody can explain. One thing you can be sure of, though, and don’t forget this: nobody dies of old age there. And another thing: you can trace everything back to The Child, sooner or later.’ He looked at me and shivered, despite the warmth of the evening. The windows were wide open and the last rays of the reddening sun were streaming in.

‘Hang on,’ I started, ‘you say these stories go back hundreds of years. This Child character can’t have been responsible for them. How old is he supposed to be?’

They all looked at me, faces frozen. Jim put down his fork for the first time since he’d started on his pie. ‘That’s just it,’ he said quietly, so quietly that I noticed everybody else’s attention on me, too. ‘Nobody can remember a time when he wasn’t there. Not even the old buggers there, that’ve been there all their lives.’

I held his terrified gaze for a few seconds, then looked at my watch. Ten to 10. There was no way I was getting into the situation where I was locked out of my hotel. I downed my drink, thanked them for their company and rushed out of the door and back up the hill. I arrived with a couple of minutes to spare. She looked disappointed. She locked up and retired upstairs, leaving me to catch my breath in the dark hallway. I crouched against the floral wall and thought about what I had just heard. How much of that should I believe? Maybe they were all in the pub now laughing like hell at what they’d got me to listen to. I had never before been such an absolute outsider, effectively clueless in that society, and totally at their mercy. I certainly wished I had been the butt of a huge joke; if what they had told me were all true, I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle it.

 

She intercepted me in the cobwebby corridor, amid the welcoming smell of breakfast cooking. I was in nothing more than a towel.

She pulled something out of her apron pouch. It might have been an elephant: I didn’t want to look too closely, but I could have sworn it had a trunk. She brandished it, semi-secretly, mostly concealed in her possessive palm. The cigarette smoke rising from between two of the encircling fingers didn’t make identification any easier.

‘Recognise this?’ she growled at me, not shifting her gaze from my eyes, ignoring my shivering semi-nakedness. It was no good: I was far from an expert, but I was going to have to take a punt. I gambled that it wasn’t a trick question.

‘An elephant?’ I proposed.

‘Smart-arse, are we? That figures. I don’t know who, or what, you think you are, but as long as you’re here you’ll do me the courtesy of treating the place with respect.’

I was completely lost. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me completely. Is it not an elephant, then?’ I really was not being disingenuous. My zoological knowledge was no worse than your average man on the street, but I was quite willing to admit to a certain level of ignorance.

‘Course it’s a bloody elephant.’ she opened her palm. I was proved right. ‘And since you’re such an expert, you can tell me how many legs an elephant should have.’

Now we were getting somewhere. Her elephant was a bit short in that department, only laying claim to three. Had I heard somewhere that an elephant was the only animal with four knees? Not this one. ‘I see. It’s broken,’ I informed her.

‘Genius. And maybe you can enlighten me as to how it got like that?’ she suggested, glibly, I considered.

‘No, not a clue,’ I replied suspiciously. Was she implying I had something to do with it?

She glared at me and leaned her hand on the wall, effectively blocking off even the awkward emergency escape route I still had at my disposal. ‘Have a good nose around downstairs yesterday, did we?’

I cast my mind back. Yes, of course I had been ferreting around the parlour, and had probably left signs of having been there, mostly by disturbing the dust that she had so miserably failed to. But it was hardly out of bounds. And I had handled a few decorative trinkets, but I couldn’t for the life of me recall this elephant. It would have been so out of place among the maritime theme that I would certainly have remembered it. In fact, I would have picked it up, undoubtedly, had it been there, just out of increased curiosity. There was no question: it hadn’t been there. And I told her so.

‘Yes, I did have a nose around. I was looking for you, and couldn’t find you. I picked up a couple of things, mostly to see what they were under all the dust, but, as I’m sure you know, your elephant wasn’t there. I don’t know exactly what you’re suggesting,’ I lied, ‘but I can assure you I am in no way responsible for the poor beast’s current condition.’

The thing was perfectly clean, too. Not a trace of dust. It had been nowhere near that room for some while. She stood her ground, though.

‘If that’s true, which it isn’t, how do you account for its broken leg? Are you saying I broke my own elephant?’

‘I’m not suggesting that at all. What I’m saying is that I didn’t do it. For all I know, it could have been like that for weeks. Years, even.’

‘Nonsense. I’m going to have to charge you for it. Sorry, I didn’t want things to get difficult, but if you won’t admit to it, that’s all I can do. I expect it was an accident, but that don’t mean you can’t come clean.’

‘Charge me for it?? You’ll do no such thing,’ I was incensed, when perhaps I should have been seeing the funny side. She raised her eyebrows and turned to go, although not before casting withering piteous glance at my exposed flesh. I stood and watched her disappear slowly down the creaking stairs. She was smirking, I knew it.

 

I had to get out of the hotel and find somewhere to empty my head. I dressed in my best windproof gear and stormed off to the bus station to take the next trip on offer. That happened to be the opposite journey to the one I had taken into town a couple of days earlier. I was glad: some fresh scenery was just what I wanted. Judging by the timetable, it seemed a good deal further to any form of civilisation in that direction. I didn’t care: the route took me along the coast and for a good while I enjoyed the tranquillity of the monotonous view.

A stop loomed by the side of the clifftop road. We appeared to be deep in the middle of nowhere, but I thought it would be a fine idea to jump off here and walk back along the cliffs. A bit of exercise and fresh air was probably what I needed to lighten my mood. I wasn’t used to being as sedentary as I had been in that last week, and lethargy always affected me badly. So, before I could stop myself, I was stepping down to the road, skyscraping above the agitating ocean, and sucking in the salty sky.

There was a minor road worming inland, which I guessed was the reasoning behind the bizarre stopping point, but my route was directly back along the edge of the land. I figured I couldn’t very well go wrong: even though the long-range view was obscured by a high rocky headland that looked like wolves might live on it, the port could have been no more than five or six miles back up the coast, judging by the time I had been on the bus. It was blustery but the clouds were high, and I thrust out my right foot to start the return trip.

I walked strongly along the side of the deserted road for a while. I wanted to feel like I was controlling something. At the headland, I made the pretence of briefly considering the three possible routes: all the way around the edge, cut the nose off completely or head right to its middle and the highest point.

It was quite a scramble up to the summit of the outcrop, and the rocks had been worn mirrorlike by generations of walkers like me who just couldn’t resist trying out the view from the long flat top. There was no sign of wolves, and I lost my footing a few times before clambering onto the magnetic plateau. It would have been more appropriate had I actually been a matted mountain goat up there, all bearded and proud. The view over the land was about as far-reaching as that over the sea, and both gave me an endless and effectively featureless vista to consider. A tableau only fit for that goat, indeed.

The only interruptions to the view were the island, and from that height I could make out more of the fabled prison than I had been able to from the harbour wall, and the port. I concentrated on the prison first. Despite not being able to discern the perimeter fence, even with such impressive binoculars, I could easily tell where the grounds finished: the grass within the compound was noticeably deader than the outside growth. Behind it, the mountain glowed a warm chestnut colour and I wanted to lie down on it. To the left, the lush south-west stretched out to its various extremities like roots of a tree. There were houses, but more than that I couldn’t tell. I was tantalised. Momentarily, a picture of the intransigent lump in the shipping office flashed before my eyes and I fumed involuntarily, but I banished him into the wraparound blue sky: I wasn’t there to agonise over that.

Closer to me, the only sight of interest on land was the port, which seemed almost directly beneath me. It looked lonely from up there on my goat’s rock. The harbour was almost empty and just a few flags fluttered gracelessly in a wind that seemed gentler down there. A few houses were strung along the path I was to follow down into the harbour, and I could see my hotel on the main road in and out. Past the shipyard, more of the same cliffs as where I stood. They were so much the same that I was frightened to turn around in case I saw an exact copy of the scene there, too.

Down the rocky path, the descent was both easy and therapeutic. The way snaked more than I had expected, and the wider views diminished with every few footsteps as I dropped towards sea-level. I slowed my pace almost by default. It was a very different experience from coming in on the bus, and I wasn’t about to recommend it to anybody.

Presently I came within striking distance of the harbour. I could see the beginning of the wall not a hundred yards ahead, where it swung out and round into the ocean like an eagle’s talon and two boats were returning from sea, sounding their lazy horns as they made the smoother waters of the harbour. I made for the vibrating web of disturbed air as if a fly, and almost tripped over her outstretched bare legs.

For a moment I thought it was Ronnie, but I could soon tell it wasn’t. This one really was middle-aged, although just as broken and just as drunken. Her hair was dark, untouched by grey, but it had clearly known the ravages of more years than Ronnie’s. The pain on her face was as ancient as anything I had ever known. The bottle of gin on the ground by her right hand was mostly empty. She squinted at me and said something unintelligible. It was no later than two o’clock in the afternoon.

I squatted beside her and screwed the abandoned lid onto the bottle, then placed it carefully out of reach.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked. She muttered something into her chest that I couldn’t make out. I lifted her chin gently so I could see her face properly. ‘Do you need some help? Where do you live?’

She looked at me the best she could. A lascivious grin spread across her face. ‘Tryin to get me into bed, are you, filthy fucker? Tryin to take ad….,’ her eyes bulged and she swallowed carefully, before letting out a belch that almost took me off my feet. Bits of it got lodged in my nostrils, I think.

‘Help…. sit’ she croaked, and pointed unsteadily at something behind me. I turned and tried to make out what might be there. On the other side of the path, a stone bench overlooked the sea. That must have been what she was after.

‘You want to sit on the bench?’ I prompted.

‘Yea….. sea, settle me stomach,’ I thought she said. The idea was that a view of the sea would settle her and make her less likely to vomit on me. I was in favour. But getting her there was trickier than it might have been. I got a decent grip under both armpits and hauled her up, but her legs weren’t operating to the same agenda. It was like trying to lift an enormous child, mid-tantrum, from the floor of a crowded public building.

‘Can you stand?’ I said. I didn’t have to do any more than whisper, and my breath would have been hot on her ear. Her weight fell forward a touch more.

‘Don’t waste any time, do you,’ she drawled. Her right thigh insinuated itself between mine and she rocked it back and forth with a surprising sensuality. Wasted on me. I stood her up as well as I could and tried to hold her at arm’s length.

‘Give it a rest,’ I said. ‘Can you walk to the bench? Do you need to lean against me?’

‘Where’s me drink?’

‘It’s safe. I put it somewhere safe.’

‘Want it.’

‘You don’t need any more of that right now. Why don’t we get over to the bench and you can have a sit down. Watch the sea for a bit. I can get you a drink of water or something.’

She looked straight into my eyes. ‘Want me to scream for help? I reckon I could raise a few neighbours from here,’ and her body sank towards the ground while her eyes remained locked onto me. I had to take a tighter grip of her just to stop her falling over completely. If I dropped her now it could have been awkward.

‘Alright, I’ll get your bottle,’ I caved. What did I care if she drank herself to oblivion? I wasn’t there to protect her from herself, just to….. Just to what? What exactly was I doing with her? Why had I not left her where she was? What was it with the women here? When might I learn?

I guided her hand onto the windowsill of the house outside which we were standing, kind of. Dancing. It seemed relatively steady and I felt confident in letting go of her while I retrieved the bottle. I got the feeling she was sobering up remarkably quickly. I returned with it in a few short seconds.

‘Here it is. Shall I give you a hand over to the bench?’

‘You’re beautiful,’ she grinned at me. She grabbed the bottle with her left hand, put her right around my shoulder and we set off. The bench sat on a raised hillock opposite, which turned the track into more of a ditch for the majority of the remaining run down to where the harbour wall began. Crossing the path was relatively easy, but the hillock took it out of her, and we made progress one pace at a time, with refreshment breaks. We made it well before the sun set, and she splayed down in the corner, the high stone arm taking most of her weight. She signalled for me to sit down next to her.

‘I won’t, thanks. I’ve got to be getting on. I just wanted to make sure you were ok. Do you feel any better now you can see the sea?’ I began on my exit strategy.

‘Come and sit here, my darling, and I’ll show you how ok I am,’ she patted the bench with her grazed and dirty hand.

‘Honestly, I’ve got to be going. You seem a lot better now. Is there anyone you want me to call for you? Can I get someone to come and sit with you?’ What was I thinking of? My strategy was to be firm, and get out of there with no further responsibilities. Now I’m offering to go and find a complete stranger and explain something I wasn’t sure I could explain even to myself. She laughed at the suggestion. I took the opportunity. ‘Well, if you’re sure. I’ll be off then. Glad you’re ok. Bye?’ I set off back down the rise, to the path. Before I had reached the bottom, I heard violent convulsions and the unmistakeable splash of vomit on stone. I looked around, but had no choice. I climbed back up, checking my pockets for anything that might help.

I sat beside her while she emptied her stomach of clear, warm liquid which trickled down off the plinth towards the ocean. As she sat upright again, I passed her a clean handkerchief I had known I had somewhere. She wiped her mouth and her eyes looked mischievously up at me.

The silence hardly lasted. Behind, a door slammed and a string of expletives approached up the rise. She grabbed her bottle and stood to face it. She had great legs.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, you filthy whore! Found yourself another mug to keep you in gin, have you? Who is he anyway? Doesn’t look like your sort. Eh? Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he turned his vitriol to me. My earlier misgivings had turned out to be spectacularly well-founded. That sort usually are.

Before I had a chance to reply, she had stepped in. ‘Aaaaahhh, piss off you big useless lump,’ and she waved her bottle in his general direction, spraying wildly what was left in there, and mostly over me. Now I smelled of gin. ‘What the fuck do you care what I get up to now anyway? You want me to be someone else’s problem? That’s fine. But make up your asshole mind!’

‘I couldn’t give a shit. You can drown yourself off the edge if want,’ he made to advance cautiously towards her, but she brandished the bottle and he stopped, cowering behind his outstretched arms. He was like a tree trunk with one side totally stripped bare. His hair flew around in the strengthening wind on the unsheltered hummock. ‘But don’t you be hanging around outside here doing whatever it is you’re doing with this prick.’

‘Honestly, it’s not anything like you’re making out,’ I butted in. I could sense my reputation getting raped in front of me and I had to take steps to protect its honour. ‘I just saw this woman in trouble and stopped to see if I could help her out. I was just on my way down to the harbour, that’s all. And I’m still on my way now.’

‘You shut up,’ she snarled without looking at me. ‘I’ll do what I like, and you won’t tell me fucking anything,’ she fishwifed back at the big, useless lump. ‘If he wants a bit of fun, I’m up for that. I’ll do it anywhere I choose. Right here, or back in your bedroom if I feel like it. I’ve still got a key, haven’t I? Or we might go up to your mother’s grave and he can do me there. I’ll fucking scream the place down, see if it wakes the old bitch up.’

He advanced like a barracuda and grabbed hold of her arm. The wrong arm. She leapt backwards and freed herself from his grasp with one swift blow of the empty bottle, which smashed as it made contact with his wrist. He withdrew it instinctively as the blood trickled out. It had broken the skin, but not caught anything vital, it seemed. His eyes began to fill with tears.

‘I’ll fucking kill you. Then I’ll start on him,’ he squeaked out through the sobs bubbling up from the back of his throat. He held his injured wrist with the other hand and alternated his glance between that and her. She stood in a defensive position, the jagged bottle raised at the ready.

‘You’ll fucking leave me alone if you know what’s good for you,’ she gurgled back at him, taking small steps backwards along the thin top of the hill. Christ, was she crying now, too? I turned to look at her for a moment, and she was. She caught my eye. ‘What are you looking at, you fucking rapist? Thought you’d cop a good feel earlier, did you. Well, here goes, take a proper look!’ and she pulled up her jumper to reveal her braless breasts, bouncing around like happy children running from the incoming waves. Any other time I would have considered them to have been quite sensational examples, but that didn’t seem an appropriate response at the time, and it was suppressed by something inside me. Instead, I just gazed with my mouth wide open. She put them away.

‘For fuck’s sake, Bets. You can’t leave me for him. What’s he got? You’re not fucking leaving me. Give me another chance.’ He was on his knees now, still holding his bloody arm. It was actually giving out quite a bit more blood than I had originally thought. ‘I don’t want you to go…’

She stood her ground. Her tears were streaming down her face now and she dropped her attack arm to her side. She took a few steps towards him. I did, too.

‘Can you get out of here?!’ she screamed at me. ‘Haven’t you done enough already? Look at him!’

‘I just wanted to see if he’s ok. He’s losing a lot of blood,’ I replied.

‘And whose fault is that??’ she flung the remainder of the bottle at me. It missed by a long way. ‘I’ll sort him out. You just fuck off. Leave us alone! Mind your own business!’ She knelt beside him and took out the handkerchief I had given her, then tied it roughly around his wound. Her voice as she comforted him had become small and wheedling.

Without a second thought I raced down the hill once more and ran into the harbour complex. I even gave the shipping office a wide berth and continued up the hill to my hotel. I was getting out of here as soon as I could.

My landlady was smoking contentedly in her cloying chair. From the parlour’s threshold, I cleared my throat gently to attract her attention. She darted a glance at me.

‘Good afternoon,’ I started, and got a grunt for my trouble. No matter. I was getting through this conversation no matter what the obstacles. ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow,’ I informed her. ‘What time do I need to check out?’

She looked through me and took a drag on her superking-sized cigarette. ‘Check out is by 9.30. Otherwise I have to charge you for another night.’

‘You have to charge me for another night?’ I echoed.

‘’s right. That’s the terms. Got to be ready for others coming. If I can’t accommodate them because of you dragging your heels, I’ve got to be compensated.’

There were at least seven rooms in the hotel, maybe more. I had not seen hide nor hair of another guest since I had arrived. But I wasn’t going to argue with her again. My motivation by then was to get out of the whole town as soon as I could, and without engaging in any more arguments. How wrong one man can be.

I went up to my room to pack. I had a couple of hours before dinner and intended to use both of them determining the optimum configuration of my meagre belongings within my meagre luggage. That I considered myself fairly successful in achieving that did almost nothing for my self-confidence. I still had an hour left, so I went to stand in the bathroom and gaze out to sea from the window there. My room overlooked the back yard and the rear of some mouldy terraced houses that looked as if they had been unoccupied for some while. I easily filled the hour occupied thus, and strolled down for dinner.

She dropped my plate before me, wordlessly, and deposited an unsealed envelope on the table next to it. A receipt, I hoped. Pushing the food to one side for a second, I made sure of the contents of the envelope. As expected, it was a list of items and prices. At the foot, though, something unexpected. It appeared to be a demand for a further £47.50 of my money. I set it carefully down on the table, refusing to allow myself to rise to the bait, and investigated what was on my plate.

It was no good: I couldn’t make head nor tail of my dinner. I sensed some leeks in it but, beyond that, a complete mystery. I took a closer look at the items on my ‘bill’.

4 nights @ £20              £80

3 meals @ £7.50            £22.50

Elephant                        £20

Total                             £122.50

Paid up front                 £75

To pay                           £47.50

 

I retraced my steps. The first night I had risked the chippie and fallen asleep in my room. The next was spent in The Old Lighthouse, and this was my third. Three nights, two meals. She had made a mistake, it seemed. As for the ‘Elephant’ entry, I would deal with that separately. I ate as much of the contents of my plate as I could, and waited for her to reappear. I guessed she was watching me, so she wouldn’t be long.

She wasn’t. She barged into the parlour to take my plate, no more empty than last time. Before she could escape, I piped up. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake with this bill.’

She looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if to say ‘Oh? Have I?’

‘Yes, it says four nights and three evening meals, and I’ve only been here for three nights and two meals. I’ve already paid for that in advance.’

‘I know that. But I’ve got to charge you for another night and a meal,’ she was a study in deadpan inhumanity.

‘Why?’ I raged. ‘Are you assuming I’ll miss the 9.30 checkout time? Why is that? Is it based on another time zone or something? Have you got guests coming from Russia?’

‘Nothing to do with that,’ she sighed. ‘You’ve not given me enough notice. Got to give two nights notice of departure. You’ve only given one. Got to charge you for tomorrow too.’

‘Now you’re taking the piss,’ I had lost my cool. ‘Are you really telling me that you’ve got anyone coming to stay in this God-forsaken hovel in the next six months? Am I actually taking up room you could profitably be using for other customers? Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody in their right mind is going to set foot in this town unless they genuinely have no other choice. To suggest that there might be some kind of red-hot competition for your services is an insult. I’ve never had to give any sort of notice of departure at any hotel in the world, and I’m not going to start now. And as for that stupid elephant, I’m not handing over a penny for it for two reasons: firstly, I never touched it, and secondly it’s not worth anything. Twenty quid?? For that piece of tat? Where the hell did you get it from? Harrods?

‘I’ve paid you up front for my stay and you’re not getting any more off me.’

She stood, completely impassive, and replaced my plate on the appalling table. She folded the fingers of each hand into the other.

‘The rule is two nights’ notice. I didn’t break the elephant and you’re the only other one here. I’m not the one being unreasonable here,’ she explained quietly.

‘No, I wouldn’t call it unreasonable,’ I agreed, ‘I’d call it criminal. Is this the way you make ends meet?’

‘I don’t have any trouble making ends meet,’ she said dreamily, her eyes cast down slightly. ‘My whole family lives in this town. My brothers run the ferry service and my nephews the container shipping company. They look after me very well.’ She raised her eyes and brought back out the eyebrow that said ‘Oh?’ I snatched the bill back up from the table, pushed my chair back extremely carefully, so as to not incur any additional charges, and left the room. Upstairs, I lay on my bed, utterly defeated. It was only 6.30. My walk hadn’t even tired me out.

I found her in the kitchen.

‘I’ve only got 20 pound notes. If I give you 60, can I take one more beer for tonight? It’s my best memory of the town.’

She sneered, took my money and passed me a bottle from a locked cabinet next to the fridge. I muttered some inaudible thanks and scuttled back up.

 

I caught the afternoon ferry the next day. The morning one left at 10.00, and I wasn’t going without one last visit to the shipping office, which opened around then. The chap was quite chipper and helpful. Apparently he’d found someone who needed the extra work and had agreed to drive it to Bridlington. He had been laid off from a portering job a month or two previously, and his wife was pregnant again. His benefits hadn’t all been approved and he was short of ready cash, so he was glad to take on the job.

I was strangely ecstatic: it meant that my container was on its way. He told me it would be with him in four days maximum, and then over to the island in about a week.

There was a small shop near the harbour which dealt in a bizarre selection of tinned and preserved goods, not to mention some outrageously good wine. I had plenty of space in my holdalls so I decided to stock up. I had no idea what the facilities would be like when I arrived, and I considered it a sensible precaution against starvation. I had barely eaten for the last few days and was already starting to feel my ribs rubbing against my clothes. I appeared to make the shopkeeper very happy indeed. I was definitely getting on much better with everybody on this, the last day I would ever spend there.

Still, I had a long while to wait for the afternoon ferry. It was due to leave between 2 and 3 pm, and it was barely midday by the time I had finished my shopping. The Old Lighthouse was open but I wanted to keep a clear head, and to stay away from any of the locals, despite my improved recent track record on that front. I treated myself to more fish and chips, and took a seat on the harbour front, where I was soon watching the returning ferry ply its lugubrious path back across the sound from the mysterious island. It seemed, as my view of it became clearer, that crew outnumbered passengers, but I thought nothing of that. I considered it incredible that there was even a twice-daily service to such a remote and self-contained outpost of the country. It had never even occurred to me that it might be profitable.

A brawny man came past once the ferry had reached the harbour wall. He looked like he worked there.

‘Wouldn’t stay out here if I were you, pal,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Ferry’s not due back out for at least an hour and it looks like rain. Lighthouse is open. Get yourself into the warm. Get some of Ronnie’s game pie. I’ll give you a shout before we go if you like.’

He was right: the rain did appear to be rolling in, and fast. But I didn’t feel like moving. I wanted to get every breath of this untainted air that I could. The fact that I was planning on spending the rest of my days among it only made me even more greedy for every last available drop of it.

‘Thanks, but I’m fine,’ I called back to him. ‘If it gets too bad, I’ll nip into the pub, but I’m alright here for now.’

He shrugged and continued on his way. When the ferry arrived at the jetty a burly crewman threw him a hawser, which he wound expertly around a bollard, repeating the treatment at the stern as the engines cut out. I watched them go about their business of readying the vessel for its return trip. When they were done they walked together past me.

‘Should be ready to board in half an hour,’ Brawny said as they passed. Burly stared at me but said nothing. I thanked him, moved not an inch and gazed into the distance, straining my eyes to see how far across the sound I could make out. The weather was pretty dirty out there, and visibility was poor, and I soon gave up.

Rightly enough, in around 25 minutes, the crew emerged from The Old Lighthouse, boarded the ship and ushered the passengers aboard. Around me, a small group of others had formed. There must have been 10 or 15 of us in total.

I wanted to be alone for the crossing, so I made for the small foredeck. I was well equipped with waterproofs, so the weather would have to worsen quite considerably to force me into the deckhouse. I shuffled into a seat near the front and felt the wind on my face. My exposed skin felt the burn of the catharsis in the wind, and my blood rose closer to the surface than it had dared for as long as I could remember. Hello, blood, I told it.