The Man Who Loved Islands

by David F. Ross

  ‘Fack are you lookin’ at, you cunt!’ An aggressive skinhead the size of a Shortlees single-end spat venom at Gary and Joey as he was being ushered away from the stage. These were tonight’s bottlers, an aggro-group intent on disrupting the Red Wedge gig with a display of aggression and intimidation. It had clearly worked. The shouting skin approached the stall. Joey Miller stepped back instinctively. Gary stared back impassively.

  ‘Fancy a fuckin’ go then, do ya son?’ The skin’s head was forward, a British bulldog dressed in DM’s, shin-high jeans, Fred Perry and red braces. He stank of the pubs, the prisons and the politics, just the way Weller had famously described them.

  ‘Ah’ll batter your fuckin’ cunt in, you don’t stop lookin’ at me!’ The skin advanced as if to topple the stall over.

  An ineffectual security detail was struggling to cope with the skin’s fellow fascists. Joey started to shrink lower. It was one thing standing up for a political cause, it was an entirely different proposition to get your head kicked in for it, he reasoned. He would have been no use in Detroit in ’67, or in Prague in ’68, and perhaps for the best, he had been no use in Orgreave in ’84 either. He had long since acknowledged that he was a passionate but pacifist supporter of liberal-socialist causes. Actually fighting for your rights was for other, stronger people.

  Suddenly Gary was on the other side of the table. Joey wasn’t sure how that had happened, so swiftly had the former soldier moved. In one brutal movement, the skin was down. Gary had shot an arm out straight and connected with his opponent’s throat. Then Gary Cassidy went to work, pummelling and battering the stricken skinhead in a rapid flurry of blows that left everyone watching with open mouths. In less than a minute, Gary Cassidy had rendered the skinhead unconscious but was still over him, punching his pudgy, rugby-scrummed face to a bloody pulp. The white Fred Perry shirt was now the same colour as the red braces. Young girls screamed and young men turned away; even the remaining skinheads were rendered motionless by the severity of this wiry, ginger-haired merchandise-stall man’s attack.

  Eventually Gary Cassidy stopped. He looked at his bloodied right fist as if it wasn’t attached to him, and then put it in his pocket, like a child trying to conceal the evidence of a theft. Standing over his victim, he glanced down and yelled, as if shocked by what he’d done.

  Joey reached over, trying to calm Gary down. But as he pulled Gary’s arm back, the former Scots Guardsman swivelled on one foot, and in the same motion swung a right fist and connected with Joey Miller’s lower abdomen.

  Joey didn’t feel the pain he thought such a gut punch would bring, though. He felt something cold and sharp. Gary’s shocked and tearful expression now mirrored his friend’s. He dropped the small knife and slumped to his knees, seconds before Joey Miller did the same thing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  February 1988. London, England

  ‘Gary Cassidy, you have been found guilty of the charges against you. In reaching an appropriate punishment for your violent actions on the night of 11th May 1987, I have acknowledged the testimony and positive character references offered by former Strathclyde Police Superintendent, Sir Donald McAllister, and also that of one of the men you assaulted, Mr Joseph Miller. I have taken into account your service for your country in the Falklands conflict and the significant commendations you received for valour. However, the severity of the assault and the consequence of your actions for Mr Andrews leave me with no alternative but to impose a custodial sentence.

  Gary Cassidy, I am sentencing you to ten years’ imprisonment for the armed assault of Kevin John Andrews and Joseph Miller. You will serve a minimum of four years before there is the possibility of parole. Take him down.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  July 1991. HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs. London, England

  Hi pal. Hope things are good with you and Lucy. I know she hates it if you call her that but Lucinda just seems way too formal, do you not think? I’m only kidding (but don’t tell her I said it anyway. She seems pretty scary!)

  Don’t worry about last month, you can’t get down every time. It’s too far and you’ve got your finals coming up. Plus, you’ve got a wedding to plan.

  Thanks for coming down a couple of months ago. I really appreciate it, and all the stuff that you left me. I’d just been getting into the Stone Roses, and even The Smiths … ‘I wear black on the outside but black is how I feel on the inside’ … Fuck sake, that’s me to an absolute tee. But the guy who I’m in with got caught with some weed. Bloody screws turned the cell over and broke the wee cassette player.

  Things are good now though in here. I don’t get much hassle now that the Nazis have been moved. And there’s some high-ranking government investigation going on into the warders and their brutality, so they’re on the best fucking behaviour at the minute. It’s actually quite funny to watch. And Deb brings wee James around every now and then. She said she saw you coming in last time and decided against it herself because you had travelled so far. We’re over obviously but she’s still letting me see my boy, which is great.

  Hettie wrote a few weeks back but she said in the letter not to tell you. What is it with you two? She said she didn’t blame you for telling her not to come to the trial. She knows it was me who made you do that. Go and see her, for Christ’s sake. I think she really wants you to. You’re both as stubborn as each other at times.

  I didn’t tell you this before but Bobby visited too. It was about a year back and totally out of the blue as well. He was over here for some festival gig on an island. I don’t think he said who was playing. As you can guess, it was tough and awkward for both of us. Didn’t know whether to hug him or just shake hands, and we ended up doing neither. He was asking about you. He said he thought he had seen you at the island thing. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this now is that I went to my therapy session after it, and I talked more than I had done ever before. It really helped, and the doc suggested I write my feelings down. Haven’t done any of that since the Falklands, and those daft letters that probably only made things worse with my dad and me.

  But I did write, and I’ve ended up studying for an English Higher, which I’m hoping to sit in here next year. Here I am, turned thirty and back at bloody school! Fuck knows what I’d actually do with it if I passed, but it’s therapeutic. It’s helping me to come to terms with all the shit things I’ve done.

  So Joey, I have a favour to ask. I’ve got a creative writing piece drafted for the exams. Can you read it over and tell me what you think? It’s a few words over the 500-word target, so if you can suggest any ways to cut it down, I’d be really grateful. It’s a bit of a rip-off to be honest. Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe are the only books I’ve read right to the end in here. My story is called The Man Who Loved Islands. I hope you think it’s okay.

  See you next time, pal.

  Gary.

  The Man Who Loved Islands by Gary Cassidy

  I bought an island, or to be more truthful, I won an island. I won it in a card game from the man who owned it, but I had to pay a lot of money to get into the game, so in effect, I bought an island. I had never sought solitude before. I always considered isolation to be depressing. How can I be happily alone with my thoughts when all they do is torment me? When they haunt my sleeping moments until I wake, and then torture the waking ones until I can’t escape them. But such thoughts are always about the perception: the fear of what others will think if I express my true side, the one that is scared of other people, of myself, of what I might do to them. They would never understand that everything is just a cry for help from an inarticulate man.

  But as I came to regard my prize, I started to feel differently about those things. My world occupied by people had been relentlessly painful. I had to hide my shattered emotions from everyone, for fear of upsetting them, or in case they misinterpret them as threats. My island was odd looking, just like its owner. It was anchored in between other landforms but spoke to neither. It sat
proudly, ignoring everything else, revelling in its awkwardness; proud of its brutal sparseness. I admired it the minute I saw it. It wasn’t a remote island, and certainly not a desert island, no … far from either. It was easily accessible but no one bothered because there was nothing of interest there to entice other people. Nobody wanted anything from it. It had nothing to offer. It had no oil reserves; it had no natural beauty other than the abrasive ruggedness that only I could see in it. It benefitted from no sunny climate and it could not be exploited for commercial gain. No tourists were ever interested.

  So I made plans. I hired a boat. I needed no human companions; my dog would be enough. I began to acquire provisions and to prepare for moving to my island. I watched it every day from the shore. Naturally, it never changed, but it changed me. For once I was positive; excited even. Soon I would be there. Alone, except for the gannets and the gulls. In splendid isolation surrounded by water and completely free to do as I pleased with no debilitating fears about how others regarded me.

  But when I got there, circumstances had changed. Not my circumstances; they remained constant. It was the island’s appeal that had changed. The devious card sharp had done a separate deal with another man. We met and the initial impressions were worrying. He had the same papers as I did. We had the same dilemma: to share or to give up our half. My half faced the west of Scotland. His half faced the north of Ireland. I love my island but he said he did too. I’m not sure if I can share it with anyone. Although we have agreed to keep strictly to our half, I worry about his ability to keep to our new deal. I fear he will try to invade. I want to have my island to myself. I fear I will have to kill him, before he kills me.

  (559 words)

  Bobby and Joseph both found out the news that Gary had died in the same way: via a mobile-phone message. Bobby listened to Hettie’s emotional statement of the basic facts three days after their brother’s death. She had called him seven times over those three days. He’d missed them all.

  Deborah was still listed as Gary’s emergency contact. Since their acrimonious and turbulent split, however, Deborah hadn’t kept in contact with Gary’s family. Calling Hettie now seemed too much for her, so it was a nervous young policewoman who informed Hettie of her brother’s death over the telephone.

  Joseph’s number had been given to Deborah by Amanda, his secretary, who felt certain he’d want to know the news. Deborah had some things: personal items, such as the two well-thumbed books that Gary had taken from the prison. She figured that Joseph might want them.

  There had been many times in the past when Joseph had anticipated hearing just this news. But not in recent years, though, with Gary’s treatment seeming to be going so well. Press 2 to listen to this message again. He did, as if doubting its veracity. Press 3 to delete. An ignominious full stop.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  November 2014. Ibiza, Spain

  Joseph Miller has read the words on this piece of paper hundreds of times before, most notably at Gary’s funeral on 4th November 2008. He has carried it with him ever since, like it is a definition of his life’s purpose.

  These words, written on a piece of discoloured notepaper bearing an HM Prisons stamp, were the catalyst for Joseph’s disagreement with Bobby at Gary’s graveside. A distraught, drunken and possibly even stoned Bobby lunged for the paper in Joseph’s hand as he read out the words. Tempers had been simmering between the two for days. Bobby felt the reading inappropriate given that Gary’s sudden death meant he’d left no instructions for how he wanted to be remembered. Joseph had angrily argued that, since Bobby barely seemed to remember that he even had a brother, he had little right to dictate the order of service. One as obdurate as the other, both tumbled into the deep hole in the ground as the small group of assembled mourners – and a local chaplain – looked on, first in disbelieving shock, and then in apoplectic rage. Two forty-four-year-old men emerged from the grave, swinging and slapping like a couple of toddlers high on an overdose of blue Smarties. They were yanked out of the hole by an irate Benny Lewis, who’s life Gary had saved when they had served in the Falklands.

  ‘Show some fookin’ respect, you bastards!’ he shouted.

  Pete D’Olivera led Hettie away from the sodden graveside. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Young James, Gary’s fifteen-year-old son, put one arm around his mum, and held up the large, black golf umbrella with the other. The burial in a far corner of a Bethnal Green Cemetery had begun in drizzle and ended in a sudden torrential blizzard.

  Joseph Miller and Bobby Cassidy stared at each other.

  ‘You’re a fookin’ disgrace, the pair of ya!’ said a disgusted Benny Lewis. ‘I hope this day haunts ya both forever, you pair of selfish cunts. He was the best man I knew.’ And with that he turned and headed after the others.

  Only Joseph and Bobby remained, their suits covered in mud and wet grass-stains. They had fought on the lid of the coffin of their friend and brother. Being haunted by that forever was only beginning to hit home for both of them. They said nothing more to each other. What was there to say? It was well and truly over between them. They headed in separate directions: Joseph to try and vainly apologise to Hettie and Deb; and Bobby to find a Casualty department to ascertain whether he had – as he now suspected – broken his wrist as he landed on Gary’s wooden place of rest.

  Joseph Miller sits at a table in a bar on a small Balearic island six years to the day since that cataclysmic fight with his former best friend. Tears well in his eyes as he reads the words again. As well as a forensic insight into Gary Cassidy’s state of mind while in prison for putting one man in a coma and stabbing another, the story has become something of a metaphor for Joseph’s own life. He too initially craved the isolation of his own company when his marriage to Lucinda Burroughs fell apart. There was no solace to be found in domestic work and he now realises the increasingly fractured relationships with his business partners were precipitated by his own unreasonable behaviour. Running away to develop opportunities overseas was Joseph’s version of buying an island. But, just like Gary’s, it was built on a false premise. The grass is always greener on the other side of the world. Except that, eventually, it isn’t. Unless it’s the rolling hills of Hollywood astroturf, it still needs to be maintained and properly looked after. People need foundation and the sustainance of a loving relationship. Megan Carter was right about the definition of true happiness. Hettie had it with Pete D’Olivera and, although perhaps unlikely at the time, Joseph now has to concede that he was wrong about Pete back in the mid-80s. Hettie was never going to be his.

  Following Gary’s trial and Joseph’s enforced rehabilitation at the flat in Glasgow, he grew closer to Lucinda. It seemed like an unlikely relationship, given her earlier antipathy, but they started to get on better. Lucinda found socialising as awkward and alienating as Joseph, and they spent many weekends at home together. Neither of them had a close circle of friends. It was a strange courtship but almost by accident rather than desire – perhaps out of a growing feeling that this was as good as it was going to get for both of them – they became engaged. Like those shy, embarrassed kids at the school dances, everyone else had been picked; only the two of them remained.

  They were polar opposites, and while there is a certain clichéd attraction in that realisation, it ended up not being enough. Those things that divided the two of them grew in number and intensity, creating a chasm. Increasingly, the only thing that connected them was her father’s money, invested in Joseph to provide him with the necessary capital to fund his share in the formation of a new design practice. It became a stick for her to beat him with, especially in times of recession, when the amount doubled and the possibility of repaying it seemed remote. Her father was a decent man, but Lucinda carried with her an intense bitterness that Joseph could never fully work out. Life had been good to her, latterly at least, and whilst they weren’t her birth parents, her mum and dad had lavished more love and attention on Lucinda and her sister than might have otherwise
been the case. Perhaps that was the core problem.

  When Jennifer was conceived in 1995, it was a surprise. William – Lucinda’s father – had died a month earlier, and it changed her briefly: she was suddenly vulnerable and accessible. For a short period, Lucinda and Joseph communicated in ways that they hadn’t before. They went on holiday, for the first time since their short honeymoon.

  But after their daughter was born, things went back to the way they had been. The stables where Lucinda had gone riding since she was a child had been acquired as a wedding gift to Lucinda from her sister. Since the wedding, it had taken up the majority of her time. That was her island. As soon as she was able, Lucinda went back to work and hired a full-time nanny, against her husband’s wishes.

  Joseph Miller folds the papers that are scattered across the bar table. He’s been absorbed in his writing and hasn’t noticed that the sun has come up, or that Albert’s group is now down to two people: Albert and an older man, who must surely be his father. Albert has put a shirt on and has covered his sleeping father with a shawl. It is cold outside the bar. Albert’s breath is visible in the crisp, November-morning air. Joseph has been in the bar for six and a half hours.

  ‘Would you like coffee, sir?’ asks Albert. He has risen, having seen Joseph preparing to do the same.

  ‘Aye … please. Sorry for keeping ye up, mate.’

  ‘It’s no trouble, I don’t sleep.’ Albert smiles. He goes through a small door behind the bar. Joseph turns his chair one last time to look out at the sea. A coffee, and then up to see Bobby. To do what Megan suggested he do. People need people, she said; her being the apparent exception to this rule. He is aware of movement behind him. He doesn’t turn round, assuming it’s Albert returning with his coffee. But the movement is followed by a sound; a strangely familiar one: