The butcher had been spot on. When I returned home I found a sliding panel set into the wall in the far corner of the guest room, behind it a granite door mounted on a simple wooden frame and hinge. Pulling open the door revealed a sizeable square box, also lined with granite on each side, with breathing holes at the top, I presumed to allow any warm air to escape. An outer granite shell meant that no direct sunlight could find its way in, even though the box would have been in shade for the majority of the time anyway. I placed the milk and one steak carefully in there.

I chopped logs, not because I needed more but because I wanted to chop logs. Not a soul stirred on the island. Not on the high street nor in the harbour nor around the school nor even toward the mountain. The sun broke through and I removed my shirt and continued chopping and I pictured myself somewhere on the lower-lying land watching a silhouetted man on a hill swinging an axe. And he didn’t even need more logs.

I organised my cellar. Mostly empty now. It didn’t need a reshuffle but I wanted to be underground. All my doors were shut and the only light there was electric. The hum of the sub-station reassured me with its man-made imperfection.

I cooked the other steak with just a few of the mushrooms. I chewed it thoughtfully and pondered the idea of the food mile, before deciding I could safely clear that space in my consciousness, ready for the arrival of something better. Even my claret was beginning to taste unsophisticated and mass-produced when compared to everything else that had passed my lips that day.

I ate, I read and I fell into the sort of sleep that was becoming the norm. Even though I hadn’t had my trainers on for a few days, there hadn’t been a day that had ended without me completely physically drained.

 

I breakfasted on eggs and several cups of the local tea, which was worryingly addictive, and set off on the run I had meant to take on all that time ago, when I had almost taken out the young boy by the rhododendron. The north-east corner of the island was mostly what I had expected: vast tracts of grazing land covered in weather-lashed livestock. The rain stung. The odd farmstead was dotted across the landscape, and each one added to the picture of limitless sprawling nature, as if I had stumbled on a greener version of The Wild West or the Australian outback. It was only when I crossed the river, close to its mouth at what I calculated must have been the most northerly point on the island, that I got the true sense of the vast rock plateau rising up in front of me with a dissonant clang. Once again, I turned inland rather than approach it directly, and followed the river upstream, back towards The Mountain.

A couple of miles under that distant shadow brought me to a crossroads, marked by a naked black post, whose function I was unable to discern. Yards later, I found myself passing, reverently, in front of the brewery. Immaculate in its red brick, it was one of the very few two-storey buildings I had encountered on the island; on the left-hand side as I stood before it, its windows reached from the ground to the very top of the second storey. A large brick chimney rose up from a central circular hall, and the right-hand side seemed to snake around behind, lower and altogether less sure of itself. There was none of the usual sweet and tacky brewery smell: the wind was behind me, for a start, and I reckoned that production would be so clean and efficient that there wouldn’t be much call for by-products.

The path led me back to the windswept northern face of The Mountain. I could choose between clockwise, back down the path alongside the perimeter fence, or anti-clockwise and then along the haunting southern extent of The Sanctuary.

I plumped for the latter, and allowed myself to study the dingy depression in more detail. You certainly couldn’t call it a valley: it was bounded on my side, the south, by the path and the steep ridge, some 30 or 40 feet high. On the north, the plateau loomed over, neither protective nor threatening, rising sharply at first, then more gently spreading towards the edges of the land. I got a much better sense of that corner than I had on my very first run. Signs of habitation were dotted regularly across the top, and I could clearly make out The Griffin, much larger than its neighbours. Restless smoke rose from the chimney, barely even making it into the open air before being picked up and flung south-westerly, across the fenced-off and wooded area. Somebody was in there, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid it indefinitely.

Strung out in front and behind were small cottages, betraying a larger than expected population. I figured the human density must have been the same or even greater than the environs of the town and harbour. Towards the near end, one or maybe two more were in the process of construction.

Where the ground rose to its highest, approaching the point at which the land began to narrow into what eventually became the north-west finger, the church sat defiantly dark and invulnerable under the whistling onrushing winter. The weathervane twisted angrily under its endless buffeting, which lent a sense of even greater serenity to the neighbouring solid stone cross set atop the muscular, stubby tower at the western end. The view beyond, where the ground fell away to the sea, was hidden from me at that angle.

I had reached the junction by the hand-painted sign once more, and stopped. Turning back to survey the land towards the Mountain and the brewery, I could discern the eastern extent of the low-lying area of the Sanctuary. The river formed by the meeting of the two streams, just in front of The General Gordon, flowed lazily across the plain, the couple of miles to the sea, where it emptied at the foot of the plateau’s initial rise. The ground changed colour noticeably between its banks. The left was a joyless muddy green which seemed to suck in any sunlight foolish enough to stray into that area, slipping down towards the Sanctuary proper. The right bank beamed rude health across to its counterpart, its lighter tufts of hardy grasses illuminated by the sandy hue of the large boulders forming the edge of the wide, solid path which followed the river obediently to its end. If I had needed an illustration of the importance of the purely geographical in the development of demographics or linguistics or sociology, I had just received one. Nobody in their right mind would cross from one side of that river to the other.

Satisfied with my explorings, I took the most direct route back home. I was due at the old girl’s at 11, and I had wandered far and wide. It was already 10 as I set off again.

I was home within a quarter of an hour. Ten, nearly eleven miles in all. I felt like I could run for ever on this rock of mine, but there were other things. I hadn’t tuned a piano for longer than I could accurately remember, but I guessed it had been not long after my son had been born. That would make it more than ten years.

It couldn’t be so difficult, surely. My ears were still as keen as they ever had been, and all senses appeared to function more effectively amongst the uncontaminated atmosphere here. Besides, she was hardly going to demand concert hall standard. I was confident I could meet her expectations.

At 11 on the dot, I rapped on her immaculate door. It gave off the residual odour of a fresh application of paint.

‘Come in, chicken, I’m just sorting out these potatoes,’ she shouted from a couple of rooms distant. I pushed the door and stepped inside. A long hallway led down to the kitchen, and she was standing at the far end with her back to me. It would have been forgivable to have mistaken her for a 21-year-old, such was her posture and her movement. I stood a moment and watched her flit left and right to pick up or deposit tools, vegetables or detritus. Something had been lubricating those joints for many a year.

She turned to face me, wiped her hands on the front of her plain cream apron, then removed it while approaching me with a disapproving look on her face.

‘Don’t just stand there, you daft ha’p’orth. You’re here to work, aren’t you?’ and she ushered me into the first room down the hallway on my left, tutting. The piano stood upright in the corner. It was a honey-coloured wood with a noticeable wide grain and angular to the degree that I could barely make out a rounded corner. It might have looked out of place anywhere else, but it slotted into that corner of that room like a hand into a glove. I didn’t recognise the maker’s name, but that wasn’t all that unusual: I had never been a particularly diligent student of the industry. The fall board opened very nicely, as did the top. I played a few bars of Chopin. It didn’t sound too bad, although she was right: it needed a bit of work.

She brought me the bag of tools. They were old and visibly worn, but perfectly functional. It was good of the mainland guy to leave them lying around there. He had probably dreamed of this exact scenario: I was glad to oblige.

I tuned methodically and tried to keep my mind off the sweet, earthy aromas drifting in from along the hallway. Whatever she was preparing smelled too good to eat. I admonished myself for thinking that a half-decent tuning job would suffice. It was time I got it into my head that everything was done properly here. To discharge my own responsibilities with anything less than the same insistence on quality would have been an insult.

As a result, the job took me more like three hours. For the final 30 minutes, I could tell I had company. Evidently lunch was prepared, but it would wait its turn. She sat quietly, just within my field of vision, but careful not to cause any unnecessary distraction. As I had thought, the piano itself only required a few small adjustments, but each was going to be made to perfection. Removing the final mute, I turned to face her and smiled.

‘There. That should do the trick. Do you want to give it a go?’ I asked her.

‘Why don’t you?’ she replied. ‘I was always a bit of a butcher, and my fingers aren’t quite what they used to be. I’m sure you’ll do it more credit.’

I agreed reluctantly. I hadn’t played for almost as long as I hadn’t tuned. What was appropriate? I had been brought up on Schumann and Chopin. I felt it both disrespectful and foolish to play Schumann, the distant strains of which had so recently drifted across to my solitary corner of the world from the infinitely more talented fingers of her grandson. So, Chopin it was. The early nocturnes came back to me like winter floods down an arroyo. It was a surprisingly moving experience, for me at least.

She seemed equally entranced. Her gaze drifted out of the front window, past the lighthouse, small droplets forming at the corners of her grey eyes. My playing was fine, and the instrument sounded as good as it probably ever had, but I wasn’t used to moving my audience to tears. I broke into some Scott Joplin, ostensibly to test some different quality of the tuning job, but really to lighten the mood.

‘How does that sound?’ I turned to her as I polished off a rusty rendition of The Easy Winners. I loved that film. Everything about it was perfect.

‘Like we’ve gone to heaven,’ she whispered hoarsely. Her eyes were still a bit of a dream. She must have been uncommonly beautiful when she was younger. Certainly her granddaughter looked like she would break a few hearts as she grew. I hadn’t caught sight of the hands that her dad had given such an unflattering report of. Probably a good thing, at least until I got to know her better. It was always easier to overlook things like that once they seemed less important, more of a detail than a characteristic. ‘You never said you were that good. Modest, are we?’

‘I’ve got a few favourite pieces that I bring out if I’m trying to impress,’ I admitted. ‘Honestly, I haven’t played for years. I used to be good when I was young, but never good enough. As my pond got bigger and bigger, I grew into a smaller and smaller fish. It was quite soul-destroying really. I always kept a piano and played for myself whenever I got the chance, and tuned on the side, but the opportunities to be alone mostly disappeared once we had my daughter. Then when my son came along we needed more space, and my wife made it pretty clear what she thought needed to go. To be honest, it would probably have been preferable to her in many ways if I’d gone and taken everything that came as part of the package, rather than just the piano. But I suppose I still had some uses, and she wasn’t quite finished with me then. Anyhow, that rag was the last thing I played before they came to take it away. I thought it was poignant at the time.’

‘That’s a shame, love,’ she seemed genuinely touched. ‘Everybody should have music in their life. Still, sounds like you brought it on yourself, being so precious. Maybe if you’d played for her she wouldn’t have insisted on losing the piano. Maybe you’d still be together.’ She paused to consider that last suggestion. Or to let me. ‘There’s no music on this island, except that piano there,’ she sighed. ‘Nobody here understands its properties. Interested in more practical things, they are. How to stay alive… Don’t get me wrong, that’s important. All I’m saying is that sometimes I wish it wasn’t the only thing. Some of them have got real talent, too, and their creative side comes out despite themselves. Look at the Robertsons. That beer they brew up there is a work of art. I know the older one has lost his way a bit, but there’s no mistaking: a real artist. And it’s good that he puts his talent to practical use, just I wish sometimes it wasn’t so everyday. Same goes for Santino. You’ll know as well as anyone by now: he’s been touched. Can’t bring it out here though. Nobody trusts art enough to give it the time it deserves. I won’t have that. And they can’t stop me.’

‘Have they tried to stop you playing your piano, then?’ I asked. Was I getting myself into something here?

‘No, you daft goose. Nothing like that. It’s not illegal, you know! Not much is, around here. But it’s hard to keep art alive where there’s no air for it to breathe. I feel happier now. There’s me and you, and my grandson when he’s here. We can start our own little iron lung for the creative arts. We’ll have a regular session. What do you say?’

‘A wonderful idea,’ I enthused. There was something about this family that drew me to it, and I decided to go with the benign current I had somehow caught.

 

We ate a couple of hours after we were due to, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to either of us and it didn’t matter to the food. It was a simple feast: no more than vegetables, herbs, stock and the hand of mother nature, all washed down with a bottle or two each of something approaching poetry from the theatre of dreams past which I had so ignorantly trotted earlier in the day. My host explained to me how meat was only a small part of the diet here, on account of the limited amount of livestock, most of which I reckoned I had encountered in person during my jaunt that morning. She already knew I had been treated by the butcher. I got the feeling there wasn’t much she didn’t know about me.

‘Back home,’ I started, then corrected myself. ‘Back when I lived on the mainland, I would eat meat every day. I didn’t think twice about it.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. ‘Everyone gets used to things.’

‘I know. I’m sure I will. I’ve been here less than a week and it’s incredible how much I’ve learned, how different my whole outlook is now from even a few days ago. I love it, but it’s like an enormous mystery tour. I don’t know where I’m heading, and I’m not getting any closer to it. I keep stumbling on new discoveries that amaze me, and they lead me down paths I wasn’t prepared to take. Every day I’m watching the winter coming closer, and I’ve spent no time preparing for my job. My real job, I mean, not piano tuning. One day, any time now, I’m going to find myself in the deep end, and I’m not going to be ready. It’s like the island is shifting me around like some character in a novel, then sitting back and laughing while I fall for it.’

‘Good point, and you’re right: Winter will be here, and it’ll turn up one morning without any warning. Nobody can say when.’ She put down her fork and looked seriously at me. ‘You need to get yourself to that school tomorrow, at the latest.’

‘The school?’ I repeated.

‘That’s right. The school. If you want to know more about this place before the Winter, that’s the place to go. Penny’ll be there by now. She’ll be getting it ready for the term. But make sure you get there tomorrow. Might be too late otherwise.’

It seemed like another day had been at least partially mapped out for me. I couldn’t very well not take her advice, not after such a display of hospitality.