The Island

by Ben McPherson

  ‘Almost done, honey,’ whispered Elsa.

  And then my little daughter sniffed heavily, and looked straight down the barrel of the lens. ‘Please, Licia, it’s time to come home.’ And her eyes were raw, and tears were cascading down her cheeks.

  I leaned forward and took her in my arms.

  After the longest of pauses the journalist said, ‘Viktoria, that was amazing. I’ve cut.’ She stood up, turned off the camera, slid out the memory card and placed it in a small metal holder.

  Dan crossed the floor to the table and crouched in front of us, eyes shining. ‘That, people, was the one.’

  The journalist was at Dan’s side, crouching down.

  ‘Viktoria, that was very moving. People will share what you said.’ She turned to me. ‘Mr Curtis, may I ask you a question off the record?’

  ‘Sure.’ I got to my feet.

  ‘OK. Would you wish Alicia had her gun with her during the events on the island?’

  Elsa raised an eyebrow. Vee looked as if the someone had slapped her across the thigh.

  I looked at the journalist. She was serious. I laughed. ‘What a strangely American thing to ask.’

  ‘This in no way affects the way we will present your case,’ said the journalist. ‘It’s just a question that’s been troubling me these last few days. I can’t quite pray it away.’ She smiled a self-deprecating smile, then produced a photo, which she handed to me. ‘Someone at the station found this. It’s being widely shared.’

  The picture showed Licia, wearing ear protectors and clear plastic glasses, her stance upright and confident, her shoulders locked. Her right forefinger curled around the trigger of a heavy black pistol, the fingers of her left hand bracing her trigger hand, her right eye half-closed. Vee looked furtively at the image, then away, as if she didn’t want me to read her reaction.

  ‘This has to be a fake,’ I said. ‘Right?’

  Elsa nodded. Vee avoided my gaze.

  ‘OK,’ said the journalist. ‘Sure.’ I could see there was more she wanted to say about the picture. Instead she said, ‘The interview will be up on the website by seven. I hope it will make a difference. And – again, personally – please know that your family, and most especially your adorable blond children, will be in my prayers over the coming days.’

  ‘You’re praying for us?’ said Vee. ‘Wow.’

  ‘I have been. I will continue.’

  Vee smiled, a little uncertain.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m strangely comforted by the thought of your praying for us.’

  She smiled and embraced me very warmly. ‘And that is the wonderful thing about the power of prayer, Mr Curtis.’

  ‘That picture, Vee,’ I said, as the journalist was packing away her things.

  ‘Yeah, honey,’ said Elsa. ‘What was that?’

  Vee swallowed hard. ‘So, the picture’s not a fake.’

  I took out the photo again. ‘It isn’t?’

  How confident Licia looked in the picture. Lithe and alert.

  Vee said, ‘You know when you and Mum were at the modern art museum, and we said we would go to the aquarium?’

  ‘Virginia Beach,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Licia got ID and we went to the range.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Elsa, almost admiringly.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Vee. ‘I mean, we did go to the aquarium, but we were there like half an hour.’

  ‘Vee,’ I said, ‘did you get ID too?’

  Vee shook her head. ‘Licia was my “designated guardian”.’

  ‘You fired a weapon?’

  ‘Only like a two-two. Licia fired a Glock.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Elsa.

  ‘Licia was actually pretty good,’ said Vee. ‘We both were.’

  ‘You guys about ready to go?’ I looked up. Dan was standing with the journalist by the door of the studio.

  ‘We’re going to need five minutes,’ I said.

  ‘Sure, bro.’ He opened the door for the journalist and stepped through it after her.

  The door swung slowly shut. Elsa’s expression was unreadable. I looked at Vee.

  ‘What?’ said Vee. ‘Are you going to tell me, “We’re not gun people”? Or all about how Mum stopped shooting?’

  ‘Please don’t anticipate my reaction, Vee …’

  ‘You can stop judging me. I promise I will never again do such an irresponsible thing.’

  ‘I’m not judging you. If anything I’m judging your sister. What was she thinking?’

  The next morning I drove Dan to the airport. He sat in silence all the way to the terminal. ‘No need to come in,’ he said as I drew up.

  ‘Wish you weren’t going to be so far away,’ I called after him.

  He stopped, turned, looked at me for a moment. ‘Me too, brother,’ he said and headed inside.

  I was back by seven, making breakfast. The smell of coffee in the grinder; of oranges in the squeezer: these things made me feel Licia’s absence so keenly.

  At home in DC she and I were always first up. Licia would sit at the breakfast bar, finishing her homework from the night before. Sometimes she would look across as I was fitting the filter into the coffee maker, or pressing oranges through the squeezer, and we would stop what we were doing and smile and say nothing. Then she would go back to her maths, and I would return to making breakfast. I would cut bread and boil eggs and fill lunchboxes and when I looked up she would be frowning quietly at her exercise book.

  ‘I would like to be exceptional, Dad, of course I would,’ she would say if I noticed she was struggling. ‘And maybe one day I will achieve something exceptional.’

  ‘Licia,’ I would say, ‘you are utterly exceptional to me.’

  ‘I’m more a doer than a thinker, I guess. And you don’t need to over-praise me.’

  She didn’t want my help. I would watch a little heartbroken as she forced her way through the problem, quietly speaking the numbers to herself. Mostly, though, this was a happy time. Just the two of us, without her sister there to remind Licia of what she was not.

  * * *

  On the countertop my phone chirruped. Already people were attaching hashtags to the video of our appeal: #blondgrrl and #islandheroine, as well as #Licia and #fightback. Dan had good instincts. In the video we looked united in our grief.

  Dan had been right about Tvist too: the police had briefed the press about Licia. Thanks to them, people knew that a girl matching the description of my daughter shouted out a warning in the main house; that she comforted a boy she met in the woods; that she shielded that same boy from harm in the water despite the wound in her shoulder. Licia had cut short the massacre, it seemed, by throwing away the metal case so that the men had eventually run out of ammunition. She was a hero. An actual, all-American hero. Amid all the uncertainty, that one thought brought me comfort.

  I didn’t like the picture of my daughter holding the pistol. I didn’t like the way the image began to mutate, to combine with images of the Andersens and calls to action. I hated the hashtags #blondgrrl and #fightback. But people were angry about the attacks on Garden Island and wanted revenge. They needed a hero too, and in my daughter they found someone they could believe in.

  None of us had predicted that future for Licia.

  17

  I slid Franklin’s car seat out of its mount, slammed the car door shut. The sound cut harsh and sharp across the drowsy heat of the day. In the hedgerow the crickets fell silent, though Franklin did not wake.

  A hand-carved wooden sign stood to the left of the path:

  Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight

  By the house was a large meadow. Above the meadow a sparrow hawk hung noiselessly, watching for the rustle of mice in the long grass below. I heard a cuckoo and, further off, crows. I crossed a cattle grid, slid an iron gate open on silent hinges. My footsteps echoed off the white stone building.

  In an upstairs window I saw movement and looked up. A moment of recognition: the woman who had stopped me at the
gate gave a slight nod, then vanished.

  The hawk hung in the air, wingtips vibrating in an unseen current. As I approached it tilted and slid towards the far edge of the meadow, hung there watching silently down.

  Above the open door hung another carved wooden sign.

  You are entering a place of contemplation.

  The air in the hallway was cool.

  ‘Hello?’

  The timbers of the house flexed and creaked. I heard a large dog barking close by, then another.

  ‘Hello?’ I called out, louder this time.

  ‘Ah.’

  Bror stepped into view from a doorway halfway down. He pulled the door to, then turned, stood there in his grey vestment, arms open in welcome. ‘What a luminously beautiful child.’

  ‘His name is Franklin.’

  ‘You and Franklin are welcome. Would he like to continue his nap on some lovely soft cushions?’

  ‘He’ll be OK in his car seat. Thank you.’ I set the seat on the flagstones.

  ‘Handsome little fellow,’ said Bror. ‘He will be fine there by the door. Now, we’re just finishing off …’ With that same open-armed gesture, he turned away from me and into the room behind him.

  I heard voices. A woman appeared. Heels and a pressed linen suit. She saw me and hesitated, a look of surprise on her face.

  I stepped forwards. ‘I’m Cal.’

  Arno’s mother narrowed her eyes.

  I said, ‘I’m Licia Curtis’s father.’

  ‘I know who you are. I just …’ She smiled, took my left hand. ‘Anyway, hello again. I’m Mari.’

  ‘Hello, Mari. I didn’t expect to see you here either.’

  She looked towards the side room. Bror emerged, his arm around Arno’s shoulder. The boy saw me and stopped. With empty eyes he looked at Bror. Bror bent down, whispered something. Arno nodded, walked slowly past me towards the front door.

  ‘It was nice to see you, Cal,’ said Mari as she passed. ‘This is an extraordinary place. The man has something …’ She took her son’s hand, and together they stood for a moment on the front step. Then they were gone.

  I turned towards Bror. ‘That was unexpected,’ I said.

  ‘Sadly the boy is yet to speak. I do what I can to provide counsel.’ That same reassuring gentleness. That same disarming smile. I tried to imagine Bror twenty years earlier, in the days before he became a priest, smoking cigarillos and talking earnestly about politics. I could not.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Follow.’ He waited until I drew level, then turned down the hallway. ‘I understand Police Chief Tvist is taking an interest in your case? Did he cite “exceptional operational circumstances”?’

  I laughed. ‘Why?’

  Bror was not smiling as he turned to me. ‘You must be careful of this man. He may not be the ally he appears to be. Coffee?’

  ‘Coffee would be good,’ I said.

  The kitchen was a huge vaulted room, wood-beamed and white-painted, with glass doors that gave on to a vegetable garden. On the facing wall a single oil painting showed a young girl kneeling in a dark stone vault, gazing upon the tomb of a knight.

  I stood, listening. You could almost feel the house breathe, feel the timbers as they expanded and contracted.

  From a cupboard above his head Bror took a stiff-sided paper bag. A single fruit fly zigzagged up into the air. It hovered above him like a mote of dust trapped in the sunlight. He caught my gaze, looked up, smiled. ‘Ineradicable little buggers. They come in on the coriander plants. Then they make the kitchen their own.’ A twinkle in his eye, as if he were challenging me to challenge him.

  My phone rang.

  ‘Your wife, perhaps?’

  I looked down at the screen. ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I walked out into the hall.

  ‘Cal. You disappeared. With Franklin. I got a little worried.’

  ‘Franklin’s here, with me, sleeping peacefully.’ I walked to the front door, stood on the porch, watching the doves in their pear tree. ‘I was about to call you. I’m having lunch.’

  ‘Kind of a late lunch.’

  ‘Coffee, really.’

  ‘You’re in town? The car’s gone.’

  I could feel the next lie coming. Yes, Elsa, I’m in town.

  I stopped. I looked about me, at the gravel drive and the courtyard and the birds circling a tractor in the field below.

  ‘I’m not in town. I’m at Bror’s farmhouse.’

  ‘With Franklin.’ The longest of pauses.

  ‘You told me I could meet him.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Can I be honest with you?’

  ‘Honesty’s always good …’ she said cautiously.

  ‘He’s actually kind of an amazing guy. I can see how you would have hit that … I mean, spiritually, at least …’

  She laughed. ‘You’re not actually jealous?’

  ‘He radiates something I don’t have. I wish I had his charisma.’

  She gave a theatrical sigh. ‘You beautiful jealous lying fuck of a man.’

  ‘Forgive me?’

  ‘Sure. Just don’t go getting converted.’

  I ended the call and returned to the kitchen. In the middle of the kitchen floor the young woman in the grey shift dress was standing, her head inclined towards Bror. She turned as I entered, stood facing me, hands folded formally at her waist. Her feet were bare. She wore no jewellery.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  She glanced at Bror. Bror nodded.

  ‘I was abrupt when you last came.’ She looked at me, then looked down at her feet. ‘I am contrite. You are the father of a heroine. You are always welcome here.’ Far too young, I thought, to be speaking so formally.

  ‘You wish perhaps to apologize,’ said Bror, his hand on her arm.

  She smiled, her gaze still averted. ‘I do. I wish to apologize.’ She glanced up at me, eyes dancing, smiled the most charming of smiles.

  ‘No need,’ I said.

  ‘I believe there is,’ she said. Again she averted her gaze.

  Bror said, ‘I’m sure Cal understands that your instinct is to protect, Milla, and that on that day you were dutifully protecting me.’ He looked at me. I nodded. ‘And perhaps you will serve him with coffee? As a token of your contrition?’

  ‘Gladly.’ She turned towards the counter.

  Strange to see this woman so submissive, when before …

  ‘How is your extraordinary wife?’ asked Bror, breaking my thought.

  ‘She’s well,’ I said. ‘All things considered. She sends her very best.’

  My mind flashed to an image of Elsa, fresh from the shower, throwing her arms around this strange otherworldly man.

  Bror stepped towards me, studied my face. He smiled a wry smile. ‘You have my respect. To take on a woman so committed to her cause requires moral strength.’

  I laughed, but he was serious.

  ‘Elsa set a standard that I could not meet. Her radical honesty defeated me in the end. Though she inspired me perhaps to seek out my own calling.’ He smiled, placed a hand on my forearm. ‘But total honesty is not easy when you are dealing with a missing child. People blame each other, and say things that are better left unsaid. Are you being kind to one another?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Good.’

  He turned towards the woman, who handed him two cups of coffee. He nodded, and she returned to the counter, where she stood, watching us, her hands folded at her waist. Bror turned, offered me a cup. The woman hovered by the sink. I smiled. She half-smiled, then looked away.

  ‘Will you not join us in a cup?’ I said.

  Her eyes flicked to me, then away. Bror sent her a look that I could not read. Now she was slipping from the room. Sound of bare feet on dry stone, the gentle swish of her shift dress.

  ‘That was kind of you,’ said Bror. ‘But unnecessary. Tell me, why are you standing here before me?’

  ‘I want to know who you are.’<
br />
  ‘Ah.’ He considered this. ‘How very direct. Do you mean the Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight? Or do you mean the student who once knew your wife?’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Locking horns with the priest.’ He smiled a wry smile. ‘This is the job of the satirist, no? You are wondering if we are in some way connected to those men and their brutal acts? After all we – and they – carry the name of the Knights Templar.’

  ‘I have asked myself that question.’

  ‘The Patriotic Order of the Temple Knight is a chivalric order, committed to honour and valour. With our young followers we meditate on the figure of the crusader knight, whom we consider the most complete embodiment of courage and honour. We seek inspiration from his deeds. But he is a metaphor. Which should be obvious. We are not literal knights and nor is he. We do not wish to rampage through the Middle East, spilling the blood of our Muslim brothers. Though we do have some very fine horses in our paddock.’

  ‘And those other Knights Templar?’

  ‘The – quote-unquote – Tactical Brigades?’

  I nodded.

  He shook his head. ‘These boys have a narrow understanding of metaphor: the gun is the lance; the boat is the horse; the refugee is the Saracen. They lack the intelligence to understand that this is a ridiculous proposition. But they outwitted our police. And their talk about employing children as actual soldiers? If that’s where we are headed in the West then we know from other countries it’s a terrifyingly effective tactic, no? What decent man would dare to return fire, knowing his target was thirteen?’

  ‘These men admire you. They quote you very widely.’

  ‘We’ve taken down our websites. All materials. You can’t even google us now. I will not have these acts on my conscience.’ A sorrowful look passed across his features. ‘I sincerely hope better people admire us too. What I teach – the praxis our true followers observe – is more akin to Buddhism or Sufism. Live the good life. Balance duty with pleasure. Take time out to breathe.’

  ‘I still don’t really understand what you believe.’

  ‘Cherish and protect those you love. Beyond that I don’t really care what my followers believe. It’s the praxis that counts. Live the good life. Know the consoling qualities of a good cup of coffee …’