The crowd beneath us wasn’t moving any more. The procession had turned into a party. A tumbling act started up in the middle of Water Street, with accompanying jugglers, and people gathered round to watch. In the distance we could still hear the pipe band, but it was so far away that the orchestra behind us had become audible again. Now they were playing Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance No. 1’.
‘I just can’t believe it,’ I said to Lucy. ‘I’ve voted in two elections in my life. We just strolled down to the village school in the afternoon and dropped our papers in the box. Last May was the first time I even bothered to stay up through the night and watch the results coming in. Even then I wasn’t sure until nearly halfway through if there was much point. But this – this isn’t an election. This is wild.’
‘It’s our kind of election,’ said Lucy, ‘and I don’t think much of yours, by the sound of it.’ She wiped her sticky hands on her handkerchief. ‘Well, that’s that. How about something to eat?’
Caliban’s was packed out. We had to sit on the pavement, and there was nothing left to eat but hot dogs, which I abominate, and green-and-blue, orange or pink ice cream. But I was starving, so we sat leaning against the wall, with people stepping over our legs as they surged by, their faces far above us. Lucy squeezed tomato sauce on her hot dog, and passed the rest of the sticky envelope over to me.
‘What are you laughing at?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing. I mean, just everything. I don’t know. Life’s a mess. My life’s a mess anyway. But look at us! Look at all of this. Do you realise,’ – she nudged me so I squeezed ketchup all over the knee of my pale blue trousers – ‘do you realise nothing like this has ever happened before? I’ve never voted before in my life.’ She laughed again. ‘Maybe it’s silly. A tin-pot republic, is that what you’re thinking? Toyland? I don’t care if you do. I think it’s splendid.’
‘I wasn’t thinking anything like that,’ I licked my fingers. ‘You know, when we went into Lyonsness Junior High this morning, and you cast your vote, I was wishing I had one too. I was thinking I’m the only person over eighteen in Hy Brasil who hasn’t got one. I felt left out.’
‘Well, you needn’t. The place is heaving with foreign journalists. I never saw so many strangers in my life. Butting in. What business is this of theirs?’
‘It’ll be the whole world’s business on the news tomorrow.’
‘For five minutes. Then it’s back to where we came from. Into the shadows. Do you know what the punishment used to be for giving away the bearings of Hy Brasil? If you sold a foreigner our latitude and longitude we’d cut off your tongue and your right hand, and a whole day later we’d keelhaul you, and then hang you from the yard arm. Charming, eh? But necessary.’
‘I like the legend better: the island that isn’t always there.’
The crowd in front of us thinned suddenly. Two policemen on motorbikes drove by, both armed with sub-machine guns.
‘Tough,’ said Lucy. ‘If you’re here, the island is always there. There’s no getting away from that.’ She wiped her hands. ‘Are you done? Shall we walk around a bit?’
We wandered through the crowds, eating blue-and-green ice-cream in cones. It was like being at a fair. Only perhaps it was a fair in a dream, because at every street corner there were police in green uniforms, with guns. No one seemed to be taking any notice of them, except me. They seemed like extras who’d strayed into the wrong film. Or maybe it was the crowds and the music and the colour that were out of sync, and the green men with the guns were what was real. ‘I don’t like seeing them,’ I said to Lucy.
‘Then shut your eyes,’ she said impatiently.
‘It’s not that simple.’ We were in one of the back lanes behind the library, between high walls with fuchsia hedges atop of them. The flagstones at our feet were sticky with pink and red petals. Something I’d been wanting to say to her, but hadn’t quite dared, suddenly surfaced, and I heard myself speaking out loud almost before I’d decided I’d do it. ‘I keep thinking about that man’s sentence,’ I told her. ‘I mean, it’s my doing in a way. Imagine being shut up for life. I’m not sure anything as dreadful as that should happen to anybody, and if it wasn’t for me he might have escaped. Got clear out of the country.’
‘And done it all again somewhere else?’ said Lucy. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you draw a line around what you’re responsible for, and be done with it? You didn’t sentence him. And a life sentence never is life anyway, not nowadays. Can’t you see that having the trial right now, in the middle of all this, is just a tactic? Like, the manifesto is, “Some trades are out. Look what good guys we are. Merciful too. Don’t you realise we could so much more easily have had him shot?” It’s all politics. Get real, Sidony.’
‘If the new government has Olly West shot, I shall feel as if it’s all my fault.’
‘I think that’s pretty self-indulgent. But they won’t. You’ll see, ten years from now he’ll be skipping about in a state of nature on Ogg’s Cove sands again, and we’ll have to go back to swimming from Hogg’s Beach.’ She took my arm and gave me a little shake. ‘Come on, m’dear. It’ll all end happily.’
When we were tired of walking round the town, we had tea and doughnuts at Finnegan’s. They’d had a crowd through, but things were growing quieter. We talked for a long time, mostly about men. It made me realise I’d been missing my friends at home. Certainly I’d never felt so close to Lucy before. I realised that for her my way of dealing with life is completely foreign. My friends and I cope with relationships and stuff like that by telling each other all about it for hours and hours. That was partly why I broke up with my Fiction 1700–1900 tutor, or so I think in retrospect. It seemed at the time as if he’d dumped me, but in fact it was driving me demented having to be so discreet all the time, and the thing that made him really nervous was that I didn’t always succeed. I told Lucy all about that too. She said I’d be hard put to it to find anyone more open about what he was up to than Jared. We talked about her situation too. I’m amazed how calmly she deals with this latest development, about which she swore me to secrecy, but advice is utterly wasted on her. She listens to my opinion, and I think she’s learning to like the way I talk about things, but I know all the time she’s not going to act on anything I suggest. But at least now we don’t have to pretend that nothing’s happening.
She admitted that the events of the last week had shaken her. The police, guided by the landlord of the Red Herring, had used the hidden road for what they had to do. No one had come to Ravnscar, except a soft-spoken inspector, who had gently explained to her what Jared and Colombo had told us already, and warned her that she might hear sounds and odd noises from below, but nothing to hurt. ‘But then Cally Simpson came over from Ogg’s Cove with coley for the cats,’ she said, ‘And he was full of it. Two police cars and a mortuary van parked by the Pele Centre, he said, and guys in yellow helmets going in with blow torches and God knows what. By the evening they were gone, so I guess they did what they had to do. Colombo says the memorial service will be announced in the Times. Funeral private. No flowers.’
‘I liked Mr Baskerville, I think,’ I said. ‘God, it’s all so complicated.’ She looked an enquiry. ‘I mean, I read the letter he wrote to Lemuel. I care about Jared. But even so I can’t hate Baskerville.’
‘Hate is a very tiring emotion,’ said Lucy. ‘You should thank heaven you’re spared it.’ She took a large jammy bite of doughnut, and a moment later said with her mouth full, ‘Is Jed OK? About the letters, I mean? He’s not said a word to me, and I’m not likely to ask him. Is he very upset?’
I took a moment to think about what Jared would consider private. ‘He has nightmares,’ I told her.
‘About that?’
In fact, I realised, it was a relief to talk to somebody, and if there’s one thing I know Lucy can do, it’s keep a secret. ‘The copies that Ishmael gave him – he keeps them on the fish crate by the bed. I know he reads them, over and over, though ne
ver in front of me. Already the paper’s getting quite worn and dog-eared. I guess he knows those letters off by heart. In the daytime he doesn’t mention it much. But, like I say, he has bad dreams.’
‘Does he tell you what about?’
‘Yes.’
When she realised I wasn’t going to elaborate, she said, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea keeping them on the bedside table? It seems a bit morbid to me.’
‘They won’t be there for ever,’ I said. ‘He’ll read them as many times as he has to, and then I reckon he won’t read them any more.’ I poured out the rest of the coffee, dividing it equally between our two mugs. ‘You see, in the daytime he doesn’t worry about the past. He’s got a life; the present is what he thinks about when he’s awake. But the other is there too; one can’t pretend it isn’t. I don’t mind being woken in the night, anyway. It’s not as if either of us has to get up early for anything just at present.’
It was already evening when we came out into the street again. It was almost time, and we joined the bands of people who were climbing up the narrow streets and gathering in the courtyard outside Government House. The crowd was quiet now. We could hear the sound of many footsteps like the pattering of hailstones, and voices coming together in one long subdued muttering. We reached the vantage point at the top of the steps up from the High Street, and there was the view I now knew so well, over the ranks of red-tiled roofs to the harbour. I stood with my back to the statue of the Trojan horse and the four underdressed warriors, and looked out on the seething town.
I saw it all so differently now, in the late summer twilight. Opposite us, directly up the hill from the harbour, rose St Brendan’s Cathedral. That roof just below it was the library, with the weathercock on its gable. That was the museum next door. The building with a grey slate roof could only be that grimy block of flats, Artillery Mansions. The line of roofs between it and where we stood was the High Street. The tallest one, with the fluted chimney pots, must be Kidd’s Hotel, and so that would be the Tourist Board diagonally opposite; so coming down from there: that must be Finnegan’s, that the Bank; then that would be Gunn and Selkirk, and that the house above Kirwan’s photography shop. Then coming north from the High Street; there was the block of flats where Colombo lived, and I’d visited with Ishmael when they were plotting to get Jared out of prison. And two streets across from there, five minutes from where we stood in front of Government House, was that lovely Queen Anne brick terrace, where Colombo once told me that Nesta Kirwan lived.
I looked across the harbour. There was a grey haze over the industrial area between the town and Port o’ Frisland, but I could see the outline of the cider factory, and the concrete rectangle of the abandoned jail. On the tip of Port o’ Frisland was the hexagonal outline of the British fort. Jared says that’s the first thing you see when you come into the harbour on the ferry from Southampton. Then you turn the corner, into the harbour entrance, and there’s the whole town suddenly laid out before you.
The town was still full of noises. I could make out ‘Men of Harlech’ and the distant echo of the Marseilleise. All of a sudden the bells of St Brendan’s pealed out, striking the hour. The deep tones of the clock followed: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT. There was a sudden hush, as if the whole town were holding its breath. And then the bells rang out: St Brendan’s, St Martin’s, St Mary’s, St Bride’s, St Anthony’s, St Columba’s, St John’s, all in one marvellous cacophony of sound. Every ship in the harbour hooted its horn at the same time, some piercing, some deep and low. The brass band broke into the wild swirling melody of the Hy Brasil National Anthem down at the Market Cross. The pipe band picked up the same tune and skirled it along the High Street. A deep chord went up from the town like a long-drawn clap of thunder, as if the red roofs themselves were crying out with one great voice. The polls were closed.
We drove over the mountain, in the scarlet light of yet another volcanic sunset, back to Lyonsness, and started watching it all again, this time on Per’s television. Lucy and I were curled up on the sofa. Jared lay on the floor at my feet with Per’s cat purring loudly on his stomach. Per sat in his usual chair and smoked his pipe. I looked round the room in the flickering light from the screen. It was strange to think that a month ago I’d never been inside this house at all. I seemed now to know it very well. I looked at the empty grate piled with pine cones, at the brass coal scuttle and fire tongs glinting in the changing light. I looked at the framed photograph of Cape Horn over the mantelpiece, taken from the deck of a Royal Navy destroyer, and its companion piece, of Table Mountain, above us over the sofa. There on the mantelpiece were the china dogs and the imitation carriage clock, and next to it the photo of a young couple on the steps of St Ninian’s Presbyterian church in Lyonsness, she in her white dress with the veil pushed back, he in the uniform of a Royal Navy petty officer. He was instantly recognisable: Per had outwardly changed remarkably little in forty-five years.
He insisted on making us fish and chips as we hadn’t really had supper. I think Per feeds us too often, considering he never visits us, except that one time when he came to go over the gannet records with Jared, when he did stay to have some mutton stew. Jared says Per likes to cook for people, and I should stop doing all these addition sums in my head, because that isn’t what it’s about.
We’d just started to eat when the results began coming through. Somehow I’d got it fixed in my head, because I’m used to being one of millions, that it would take all night, and when the camera shifted to Ogg’s Cove just after ten it gave me quite a shock. But there it was: the infant classroom at Ogg’s Cove Elementary. In the background you could see the children’s paintings of erupting volcanoes on the walls: lots of red and black paint. In the foreground I could see Ishmael and Anna, and various vaguely familiar faces. The returning officer came to the microphone.
Jared sat up. Lucy put down her plate and leaned forward. Per sat motionless, his fork halfway to his mouth. I looked round at them. I was the only one in the room who hadn’t voted.
The officer read the names of the other two candidates first. Their tally was pitiful. We knew then what was coming. He read the last name, and we could hear the shout go up, from the classroom at Ogg’s Cove and from the crowd outside, who suddenly appeared on the screen in front of us.
‘Ishmael Pereira! Ishmael Pereira!’
It was all one babble of voices, in Per’s sitting room and on the screen, all mingling in with one another. And then another hush. Lyonsness. We were in the Assembly Hall at Lyonsness Junior High, just down the road from where we sat.
‘We should be out there!’ Lucy burst out.
‘Hush!’
Again there were faces there that I knew. The owner of Trink’s Garage. Mr Allardyce. Peterkin’s aunt.
Again, the returning officer read the others first. They’d done better than the opposition in Ogg’s Cove; between the two of them they’d at least pulled in the majority. Jared gripped my knee. ‘He’s done it! He’s done it!’
There was the crowd again. Only the setting looked different. I could see the harbour. For one unreal moment I could see Cerberus moored at the end of the jetty where we’d left her this morning. Then we panned back to a sea of faces, cheering in unison:
‘Pereira! Pereira! Ishmael Pereira!’
We cut suddenly to a shot of a blue-and-white fishing boat coming neatly into a jetty. ‘There’s the Mayda ferry!’ said Lucy and Jared together. I realised then that there was no fishing gear on that spick-and-span wooden deck. A rope was cast ashore. The camera zoomed in on the captain at the wheel, and I recognised Colombo’s eldest brother-in-law. Then, before they’d finished tying up, another man jumped ashore clasping a couple of wooden boxes that looked for all the world like the collection box in our church at home.
The Community Hall, Dorrado. The last time I’d seen it, in real life, it had been full of coastguards and voluntary services preparing for possible evacuation. I tried to peer behind the commentator
. I could see the same trestle tables, but this time they were being used by a team of polling officers, all still counting. In the foreground all the focus was on those little boxes from Tuly and Mayda.
On Tuly, the recording officer told us, there were thirty-two inhabitants over the age of eighteen.
First candidate: no votes. Second candidate: one vote. Third candidate, Ishmael Pereira: thirty-one votes.
‘Must be a story behind that one,‘remarked Per. ‘But I don’t suppose we’ll ever hear it.’
On Mayda, they told us, there were nine inhabitants over the age of eighteen.
First candidate: no votes. Second candidate: no votes. Third candidate: one vote.
‘They always did keep themselves to themselves on Mayda,’ said Per.
The commentator announced that they were doing a recount at Dorrado. There was a pause for a while, with panoramic views of St Brandons interspersed with a desultory argument between the Bishop of St Brendan’s, the Professor of Political Science from the University and the editor of The Hesperides Times. Jared turned down the sound, while Per poured out cider for us all from a big earthenware jug. The editor mentioned Tidesman, and I pricked up my ears, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, because Lucy and Per and Jared were all speaking at once. The picture changed. ‘We’re back in Dorrado!’ I squealed. They shut up at once, and Jared turned up the volume. I could feel the tension through the room.
The returning officer was the landlord of the Red Herring. He read from his paper like Moses just back from Sinai. We held our breath.
First candidate: two-thousand-one-hundred-and-seven votes. Second candidate: two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-twenty-seven votes. It was going to be a very close thing. Third candidate: Ishmael Pereira, two-thousand-nine-hundred-and-thirty-eight votes.
Jared jumped about a foot into the air, and the rest of my cider went flying. I careful y mopped up Per’s chintz sofa and the carpet, which luckily is brown, while the television went mad in the corner.
Hy Brasil Page 44
