Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  TWENTY-TWO

  Sidony Redruth. Ravnscar Castle. July 29th.

  Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title).

  ‘I DIDN’T MEAN to get involved,’ I said to Anna. ‘But I knew I had, even before I got his letter. He’ll get my answer today if they give it to him. I don’t know: I suppose I must love him or something.’ It was unlike me to speak so intimately to someone I’d known for hardly more than a week, but it had been an intense time, and I’d spent quite a lot of it at Ferdy’s Landing.

  ‘Well, why not? You have to get involved with something or someone in the end, or you might as well be dead. This bit of trouble will soon get sorted out. You can tell your parents you’ve made a fair choice. I know Jed; he has his faults, but they’re all on the surface. The point is he’ll be kind to you, and he’s guileless: he couldn’t lie without you knowing it. He won’t change when things get tough. You’re an Episcopalian and so is he; at least that’s what his poor mother brought him up to be, though she was raised Catholic herself. Sex’ll be good: he’ll usual y notice how you feel and he’s obviously very healthy. Also he’s the kind of man who’ll love his children. I don’t see how anyone could expect more than that.’

  I couldn’t reply for a minute, she took me so aback. This was leaping to far more conclusions than I’d ever, except possibly in my wildest dreams, begun to consider. Because people in this country speak English, one tends to assume they think the same thoughts we do. Wrong. Sometimes I realise I’ve strayed into another world. I didn’t know what to say; political correctness just wasn’t in it. It’s occurred to me several times that there’s a distinct lack of feminist consciousness in Hy Brasil. At last I said tentatively, ‘I suppose one might also hope that a person was going to be interesting to talk to.’

  ‘All the time?’ said Anna. ‘That’s asking quite a lot.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s important.’

  ‘Then I hope you’re interested in salvage,’ said Anna. ‘And gannets. And money, or rather the lack of it. And listening to odd bits of poetry.’

  I must have been in a weak state; when she mentioned the bits of poetry my eyes filled with tears. I looked down so she wouldn’t see, and said, ‘You do think Ishmael will get him out?’

  ‘You can trust Ishmael.’

  She was certain about that, even if I wasn’t. I didn’t say anything. Anna filled up my cup. Espresso is to Anna what tea is to Lucy: a panacea for all life’s ills. I wish it were that simple. I could hear the shrill voices of Eva and Susanna through the open back door. They were in the tree house that burdened down the battered hawthorn tree outside the garden gate. Presumably Ishmael was the kind of man who loved his children, since Eva had told me that it was he who had made the tree house. I don’t think our father ever knocked a nail into a plank in his entire life, but I think Arthur and I were just as lucky all the same.

  Anna pushed a tin of flapjacks across to me, and said, ‘You’re serious about Jed, aren’t you?’

  I wriggled uncomfortably. What right had she to ask? Or I to answer, if it came to that? He wasn’t here.

  ‘Because in that case,’ she went on, as if I’d spoken, ‘I think perhaps I should show you what it is that Ishmael’s taking to Government House.’

  That puzzled me. ‘But I know, don’t I? I mean, he told us? The drugs and stuff from the Pele Centre? Everything he needs to prove it was Olly not Jared? And like I said, I promise I won’t tell anybody until it all comes out.’

  ‘Come into the office. Bring your coffee.’

  I’d spent a fair amount of time in Ishmael’s office this past week. It had a vacant look about it with the computers switched off, and Ishmael gone. I looked round at the blank screens. I’d hate to work in a place where you couldn’t see out of the window.

  ‘Sit down.’ I sat obediently in Ishmael’s office chair. Anna passed me a brown A4 envelope. ‘I’ll leave you to read these. Come through to the kitchen when you’re done. Just shut the door when you leave and it’ll lock itself.’

  The sheets inside the envelope were fresh photocopies. The originals had been on smaller sheets. They were mostly documents with official letterheads, typed on an old-fashioned portable typewriter. There were also three long handwritten letters, each covering several pages. My hands felt cold and my stomach hollow. I had no reason to feel anxious, but it felt like a premonition. Anna closed the door quietly behind her. I raised my head and looked round the empty office. One of the skylights was open. I could hear the penetrating squeals of the little girls outside. I bent my head and began to read the first letter.

  November 29th, 1979

  Dear Lemuel,

  As you requested, I am committing to paper the information I gave you yesterday, on the understanding that you take no further action than to deposit my statement, with the supporting evidence, with Messrs Utterson and Utterson, not to be referred to until November 29th, anno domini 2029, at which date the documents will be delivered into the hands of Jared Alan Honeyman, presently of Ogg’s Cove, if living, or his heirs at law, if deceased. In the absence of any living descendants of John Alan Honeyman, formerly of Ogg’s Cove, the papers are to be destroyed, unread, by the lawyers, as agreed. I cannot emphasise too strongly the necessity of placing these documents in safe hands as soon as possible; it is not too much to say that the peace, and possibly the independent status, of our nation depend upon your immediate discretion in this matter.

  I write under constraint, as you know. Your misapprehension as to the part played by myself is understandable, if unfortunate. I thought we knew one another a little better than that. As things now stand, it behoves me to clear my own name, for posterity if not in the eyes of my contemporaries. It is an honourable name, and although no one else now bears it, I would not see it ultimately dishonoured in the person of its last representative. In the immediate future the best we can hope for is silence.

  As Librarian of our city library, I have, as you know, undertaken certain private enquiries for the government during the last twenty years, in cases where my expertise and access to information were relevant assets. It was with some reluctance that I agreed to compile a dossier on the post-revolution activities of John Honeyman, owing to natural feelings of loyalty towards a former comrade in arms. However, I was, and still am, persuaded in my own mind that my first duty is to my country. I enclose a xeroxed copy of the document in question. The evidence is incontrovertible: John Honeyman joined the Communist Party on February 4th, 1962, just two months after such affiliation was pronounced by our government to be illegal in the state of Hy Brasil. You gave it as your opinion yesterday that it was the mere fact of official prohibition that caused Honeyman to take this step. I find it difficult to believe that a man of even moderate sense would indulge in such an irrevocable step merely as an act of defiance against constituted authority. Jack never made any secret of his socialism, but an enquiry into his private actions has forced me to the reluctant conclusion that his apparently naïve idealism was in fact a carefully constructed façade for more subversive political activity.

  Whatever Honeyman expected, or whether in fact he had considered the matter seriously at all, inevitably demands were placed upon him. I incline towards your belief that he didn’t realise what he was getting into. Unfortunately, however, the dossier includes incontrovertible proof, in the form of two intercepted letters in his own hand, of Honeyman’s seditious correspondence with agents within the Soviet bloc. I do not need to explain to you, of all people, the sensitive nature of this kind of contact in Hy Brasil. Heroism is one thing, patriotism another; anachronistically perhaps, I believe in both. The fact remains, my dear Lemuel, that our nation exists courtesy of the White House, and did so from the moment you, Jas Hook, and I laid our mines in the NATO sewers. The government of the USA was prepared to bargain with us, as we had calculated, because it was in their interest that this nation should no longer remain a British outpost. Certainly we may well wish we were not totally dependent o
n their goodwill towards us; a wish changes nothing. We have no army. Our defence rests with the two hundred employees of the Hy Brasil Coastguard Service, and the benign attitude of the major power in the Atlantic since 1945. Repudiation of Moscow was a foregone condition. You know as well as I do the pressing reasons for our President’s apparent volte-face, in terms of his former left-wing connections, once he was firmly instated.

  Honeyman’s implicit defection was potentially a serious embarrassment. You and I know all too well what it is to become an icon of revolutionary change within our own lifetime. The compensations may be gratifying in their way for a man of a less retiring disposition than myself; the burden is at times too wearisome. But heroic status also confers a certain immunity from the just enforcement of the very authority we risked our lives to set in place. Hook dared not arraign Honeyman for his socialist affiliations, because Hook himself gained the unanimous support of the people, in ’58, through a public manifesto that was overtly socialist in principle. If Honeyman were allowed to defend himself publicly, he would be able to point out, with truth, that Hook had reneged on every point within the ’58 manifesto, beginning with the first principle, that there would be free elections held in this country at a minimum of every four years.

  That was why Hook asked me to prepare the false dossier. As a genuine socialist Honeyman could have become a martyr in the eyes of the people; as a British Loyalist he would merely be seen as a traitor. Ironically enough, it was simplya matter of twisting the evidence a little. Public opinion had looked askance at Jack for his continued adherence to The Socialist Worker after the Revolution. Was it not a British publication? Did it not arrive every week on the ferry from Southampton? It certainly didn’t uphold a primary loyalty to one’s own nation. I felt some compunction, but the fact remained that Jack had made himself vulnerable in the first place. He was one of those who’d fight for a lost cause just because it was lost. He’d turn in the moment of triumph for the sole reason that victory confers authority, and Jack would fight against institutionalised authority whoever upheld it. I should qualify that: he would fight against any immediate institutionalised authority. A totalitarian state in another hemisphere he was apparently able to regard with complacent and ill-informed idealism. I’ll say no more on that; I can still respect the friendship that you felt for him.

  Very well. You have here all the documents that confirm what I have written so far. You demand that I also tell the story that has not been written. With this I acquiesce, for the simple reason that I wish to clear my own name, in our history, as it will be read by posterity, if not in my own lifetime. I swear to you, Lemuel, that I believed Hook when he said the only possible solution was to exile John Honeyman for life.

  Honeyman was arrested at 11.30 p.m, on December 24th, 1978, at his house in Ogg’s Cove. He was at home; the arrival of the police was clearly utterly unexpected. He was immediately detained in the prison in St Brandons. A closed enquiry took place, inside the prison. I was not present. It was reported, eventually, that Honeyman pleaded guilty to espionage, sedition and treachery, in the face of proof positive that he was in the pay of the British Secret Services. Moreover, it was announced that he had a more immediate connection with the new British government then coming into power. The British general election in May 1979 was a just cause for anxiety for a post-imperialist ex-colony in the middle of the Atlantic. It was an emotive moment to reveal the contents of the false dossier on John Honeyman. A verdict of exile for life was pronounced.

  On the evening of August 6th, 1979, Hook required me to be present at a final interview with Honeyman. I had no wish whatsoever to confront Honeyman again. We had been comrades, as I say, and although my first duty must always be to the security of my country, I could wish it had not demanded the sacrifice of a man I had respected.

  I was with Hook in his office. Honeyman was escorted to the door, and sent in alone. I was shocked at the change in him. He’d been in prison eight months. I have never enquired what means were used to extract the plea of guilty, or whether indeed it was extracted at all. Lemuel, these papers must be placed in safe hands, as you promised, immediately. Only when I have your word that they are deposited in the vaults of Utterson and Utterson can I be certain that I have not, by writing this, precipitated my country into the horrors of insurrection and civil war. I had no idea, that I swear, what Hook intended. To cast me as witness was, I cannot help but feel, an act bordering on the diabolical. It is, and will always remain, my word against his. As I write, I am aware of the lack of authority in the words I inscribe. All I can give you is my sworn word.

  I didn’t even see him do it. I was looking at Honeyman, and Honeyman was looking at Hook. I saw Jack’s face change, and I swung round, but too late. I heard the shot before I saw the pistol in Hook’s hand. He said – I can quote verbatim; I’m unlikely to forget – ‘So, Fernando. We have various possibilities. Either you did this, or I did. Either one of us acted in self-defence, or in cold blood. Or he seized the gun and did it himself. Or it never happened at all. I’ve shocked you, I can see. I think it’s only fair, perhaps, if I offer you the choice.’

  What choice was there, Lemuel? What could I have done? If we’d had a revolution at the end of ’79, it would have meant civil war and very likely, given the tenor of the new government at Westminster, a British invasion. I think the only choice I had was to put my country first. Hook knew that, of course, which is why he chose me. And of course he explained to me that he had had no choice either. Exile, he said, was a romantic notion, but in an age of modern media and telecommunication, no longer a serious long-term possibility. The fact was that Jack, if given the chance, could tell his own version to the world, and what he had to say would come straight back to Hy Brasil. There was bound to be trouble if the man tried to contact his family, as he inevitably would. Jack, said Hook, hadn’t the necessary ability to let go and move on.

  And so I chose that it never happened at all. Three men knew the truth: myself, Hook, and his bodyguard Hands. It was Hands and I who had to dispose of the body. We chose the far side of Despair as being the most remote coast in Hy Brasil, well out of sight of any settlement. And I’ll admit to thinking the place appropriate, because it was Jack’s own fishing ground. We weighted the body with stones, and put him overboard about a mile out from the island, right on the edge of the deep. So that’s where he lies, if there’s anything left of him. I enclose no evidence for that part of my story. There is none. You only have my word for it.

  I also enclose documentary proof of a flight made from St Brandons airport to Heathrow on August 10th, 1979, by a passenger carrying a new passport (he’d never been out of the country before) which identified him as John Alan Honeyman; citizenship, Hy Brasil; sex, male; d.o.b. 6/1/ 32; height, 5’ 9”; hair, light brown; eyes, blue; special peculiarities, none. There are no further records following the arrival of flight BA333 in London.

  It’s been a terrible thing to write this down. It haunts me, Lemuel. It’s three months ago now, and still it seems like yesterday. Hook has a new carpet in his office. My God, it makes me sick to tread on it. But no doubt I shall serve the man to the end of my days, or his. I have no other choice.

  You will inform me, if you please, as soon as these papers are safely deposited with Utterson and Utterson. I shall not rest easy until I know they are locked in that impregnable vault, and unattainable for the term of fifty years.

  In spite of all, I am, sir, and hope to remain,

  yrs,

  Fernando Baskerville

  I read the letter through twice. When I put it down my hands were trembling. I stared up through the skylight. The children in the tree outside were shrieking with laughter. A gull flew across the rectangular patch of blue above my head. After a bit I turned to the other papers, and read them through.

  There were two letters in Jack’s own writing. Unlike his son’s flowing script, his handwriting was crabbed and sloped backwards, as if it wasn’t something that ca
me easily to him. But the content showed an ease of expression that was already familiar to me. The letters struck me as being extraordinarily innocent. He wrote to a Soviet agent as if he were a drinking partner in the Crossed Bones. He wrote his thoughts, or so it seemed to me, about why the state of his country seemed wrong to him, and how it upset him that promises had not been kept. As if political promises were ever kept! It struck me that if a man genuinely trusted to that extent in the natural goodness of other people, even the ones employed by a totalitarian system, he was pretty well foredoomed to die, unless history had the decency to leave him alone.

  The typewritten sheets were official communiqués, without either an addressee or a signatory. There was a copy of the paper confirming Honeyman’s CP membership, and a contradictory statement about his affiliation with MI5. The dossier consisted mainly of a record of intercepted letters and tapped telephone calls. There was an official notice that prisoner J.A.Honeyman had been discharged on August 10th, 1979, and taken in a closed police van to St Brandons airport, and placed, still in custody, on Flight BA333 to Heathrow. Attached to that with a paper clip was a letter from British Airways confirming the details of Flight 333, and that the passenger had in fact travelled on the relevant date.

  After I’d read it all, I turned back to Baskerville’s letter. Then I read Jack’s letters again. I felt cold and sick. It had never come home to me before that I lived in a world where this sort of thing could really happen. Whatever had really happened. Even with all the evidence sitting there in front of me, I realised I could only make up my own mind about that. It was all words, not proof. But behind it all there had been a real person, and all one could say for certain was that he had gone for ever.

  I sat there so long that in the end Anna came back to look for me. Then I put the letters back in their envelope, and watched her open the safe, and replace them carefully exactly where they’d been. ‘There’s no need to mention this to Ishmi,’ she said to me. ‘In fact, better not.’