Skein Island

by Aliya Whiteley

  BOGOF!

  Balls and tees special at

  JIMBO’S GOLF ACCESSORIES EMPORIUM

  If there’s wisdom in there I can’t see it.

  The usual double-decker arrives and I manage to get a seat on the top deck. An older woman takes the seat next to mine and we sit with our knees touching because it can’t be helped. She puts her large patent leather handbag on her lap and hunches over it, opening and closing the silver clasp.

  I pull myself into that inner space I’ve perfected specifically for journeys on public transport. The town centre slowly rolls past, punctuated by the stops and starts of arrivals and departures. I have a long way to go yet.

  ‘Here,’ says the woman sitting next to me. She’s holding out a pen.

  ‘Pardon?’

  She points at my hands. I’m still holding the leaflet, but I’ve folded it once, down the centre, to reveal its clean white reverse. It looks like it’s waiting to be written on.

  ‘Did you need this?’ she says. Then she looks past me, out of the window, and jumps up to push the stop button on the vertical bar. She leaves the pen – a cheap biro – on the seat, and walks away. I watch her descend the stairs and emerge on the pavement. The bus jerks, and moves on.

  So there are signs, when it comes to writing. I’m not strong enough to resist them.

  My ghost is an old man.

  He’s not a kind old grandfather type. He’s annoyed and bitter and he sees the funny side of being stuck in those emotions forever when he thought they would switch off. The cigar habit probably killed him – that rasping edge to the laugh gives it away – so now he smokes them ironically, no longer needing the nicotine but wanting to make a point of not giving up because it keeps him human, even in death.

  I bet he got offered the chance to go to the afterlife. I bet there was a long tunnel, white and swirling, and he felt the pull of it at the moment of surrendering his corporeal form. It opened up above the armchair in which he was slumped (in a cheap-end-of-the-market nursing home, with the skeleton of a half-formed jigsaw puzzle on a small wobbly table beside him) and he looked up at the afterlife to see relatives waving at him, beckoning him in. Then he thought: No thanks very much, I’ll hang about at the fish and chip shop and scare generations of bloody students instead.

  Who knows how long he’d been doing exactly that before I came along? Perhaps I was the first one who didn’t shiver or scream at the whiff of tobacco and the throaty laugh. I’d imagine my lack of interest in his tricks piqued his interest. It touched him in a way he hadn’t been touched in a long time, metaphorically speaking, because he obviously hadn’t been touched at all. I stayed with him and he got to know me, and when I moved out he decided to follow. He thought: I’ll stick with you, girl. You’re all right.

  We’re happy together. Sort of. He hates my boyfriends because not one of them has been worthy of me yet. He chases them away and he will continue to do so until Mr Right comes along and then he’ll disappear up to heaven, job done, and this is turning into a ridiculous fairy tale and I have no idea who my ghost is or what he wants or even what I’m writing about and now I’m at the bottom of this piece of

  I look up. The road is unfamiliar. I’ve gone past my stop and run out of paper. We pass a road sign: Uneven Road Surface Ahead.

  I’m sick of signs.

  * * *

  When you visit Skein Island you write a declaration. It is the story of your life. You give up your declaration to be stored in the library along with the stories of the thousands of other women who have visited. This isn’t about your story being read, or appreciated, or turned into a thrilling adventure for all the family. It’s how it has to be enough to know your story exists because that’s all there is.

  Susan wrote her declaration, then came back to this town to discover she had been set free from it. She could move on and create a new story. There was more to her.

  I sit at my kitchen table, before my open laptop that displays Skein Island’s official website, and I make a phone call to their administrative office before I can change my mind.

  The woman on the other end of the line is polite but regretful. No, they can’t accommodate me just because I’ve discovered the burning need to write a declaration right now. No, I can’t get a place without filling in an application form, and no, it won’t make any difference if I just turn up at the dock to see if anyone else drops out at the last minute. Sorry.

  So I pour myself a glass of wine and fill out the online application, and all the writing I’ve been doing makes it easier to reach into myself and find some strange new twist of truth in the Other Information That May Influence Your Application box:

  The ghost of an old man visits my bedroom at dawn each day. He sits on the edge of the bed and smokes a vile cigar. He chuckles to himself. I want to go to a place where he can’t reach me because I have no idea who am I without him, and I’m scared that I no longer want to find out.

  Everyone knows men aren’t allowed on Skein Island. Can the same be said of ghosts? Will my ghost obey your rules?

  * * *

  An open-plan kitchen and living room. A sofa and an armchair, a microwave and a fridge. Behind a thin partition wall I find a bedroom with two single beds positioned as far away from each other as possible, which isn’t far. There’s the same amount of space as I’d have in my flat. Do I feel at home?

  But it’s the view outside the window that matters. A ragged expanse of green grass and weeds, wild and tufted, leads my eyes to a cliff edge, and the blue sea beyond. Late summer on an island. It’s the feeling of being held in position as the giant world turns and the tide sweeps in and out according to its own rules.

  I waited four months for this, and got lucky with a cancellation. I’m not sure whether it’s serendipity or not. I’m still attempting to believe in that concept.

  I choose the bed nearest the window and put my case on it. I find my thick socks within and slide them over the socks I’m already wearing. The floorboards are cold, and there’s a strong draft at ankle-level; the main door has a thick gap at the bottom through which I can see daylight. This place is not well-built, it seems. It’s a flimsy shelter with its makeshift walls and breeze-admitting gaps. How is it meant to keep out a ghost?

  The light at the bottom of the door is blocked. Then the door swings back with a creak.

  For a moment I expect my ghost, made flesh.

  ‘You all right?’

  No. No, it’s a woman. Of course it’s a woman.

  ‘There’s a draft,’ I say. ‘Hi. I’m Min.’

  ‘I suppose we’re sharing this cabin. I’m Katie. Is this my bed, then?’

  ‘I’ve put my case on this one,’ I say. ‘I hope that’s okay.’

  ‘It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be fine?’ She shakes her head and frowns as she shrugs off her small rucksack and places it on the other bed. I don’t know whether she’s annoyed or not. Her dark hair is cut very short, threaded with white, and she’s dressed entirely in red of varying shades of stridency. I’d guess she’s at least twenty years older than me but wearing it very well. She looks complete, comfortable, finished. I still feel like a work in progress.

  ‘A single bed,’ she muses. ‘I haven’t slept in one of those for a long time. I’ve got a king-size all to myself at home. I’m difficult to live with at the best of times so I should probably apologise up front. I’m sorry you got me as your companion for the week, Min.’

  ‘Why are you so difficult to live with?’ I ask.

  ‘I can see right through everyone’s bullshit,’ she says, and gives me a hard stare. I feel my innards shrinking away from her.

  ‘I’m just messing with you,’ she says. ‘Sorry. I’m not good with people. It’s also probably why I became an estate agent. Dicking people around on the topic of the most expensive purchase they’ll ever make appealed to me. Again, just messing.’ She sits on her bed and removes her leather boots, pushing down the long zips from her knees to her ankles so they
slide from her feet to land on the floor. She’s wearing scarlet socks, too. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m in administration.’

  ‘Well.’ She looks out of the window, then says, ‘Someone has to be. I thought all the cabins were for four people? How come we’ve ended up in a two-person outfit? There must be something special about us. What do you think it is?’

  At what point do you tell an acquaintance that you’re followed around by a ghost? I start to speak but she holds up a finger and says, ‘No, no, I’ll find out for myself.’

  ‘All right. It’s your funeral.’

  I have no idea why those particular words came to mind. Those are obviously not the right words for this situation; I can tell that from the way she’s choosing to ignore them.

  ‘I’m not good with people,’ she says. ‘I came here to learn if I wanted to be. Good with them. If I’m missing something.’

  ‘What do you think you’re missing?’

  ‘I already suspect the answer to that question is nothing.’ She hums as she unpacks.

  She probably thinks I’m an idiot. But that’s okay because I think she’s an overconfident bully who’s attempting to verbally dominate me. At least we have one thing in common: We’ll both find out what’s going on for ourselves. We are women together for a whole week.

  I’ve got a feeling it’s going to pass slowly.

  * * *

  What makes a boy?

  When I first began to understand that I was not a boy, I began to look around me and categorise others as I was being categorised in turn. I couldn’t have been more than six years old; I remember many things feeling new to me, including school. I hadn’t settled into familiarity with the routine or the others of my age who now surrounded me on a daily basis. There were so many of us, all in orbit around the larger bodies of teachers. I understood I was a kid, but not that I was a girl. That came later. I don’t really understand it now, except if I define it as not a boy.

  I don’t believe girls exist, really, except as a disguise. And I’m still not certain that boys grow into men. Perhaps a man is a disguise too. An acceptance of certain rules. No different to firing a gun in the playground and demanding that the other fella lies down dead.

  Having had these thoughts during a long and sleepless night, I’m in no way surprised when my ghost turns up with the first creeping rays of dawn. He sits on the end of my bed, and I wonder why I thought the rules of Skein Island might ever apply to him. If he wasn’t really a man when he was a man, then why would he be one as a spirit?

  I wish I could talk to him.

  I feel the pressure of him, by my legs. He’s not large. He’s creating only the smallest of dents in the mattress. He shifts his weight every now and again, and I can imagine him muttering to himself – bloody sciatic nerve, won’t leave me in peace even for a nice sit-down – but if he is talking I can’t hear it. I thought the countryside was meant to be quiet but the birds outside the thin window are rhythmically raucous. I’ve never heard these throaty calls before; I think it must be the sound of seagulls en masse. I lie there and listen.

  My ghost gets up and breathes out his smoke, long and freely, into the room. I think he likes the extra space to fill. I watch the smoke stream forth from an empty space, then form a thin fog above my bed. A pause. Then he does the same over Katie’s bed, and he laughs.

  She coughs. She’s awake.

  We both lie there, being awake. Being breathed over.

  ‘Oh God,’ she says.

  ‘He’s just a ghost. An old man’s ghost,’ I tell her. ‘It’s really not a big deal. He visits me at dawn every day. He doesn’t mean any harm.’

  He chuckles again, and is gone. The light of day is brighter, strengthening, but it cannot chase away his smoke. It’s still chewy.

  I get up and pad over to the tiny bathroom. I close the door gently, then have a wee and brush my teeth. The toothpaste never quite takes all of the taste of cigars away. It has a habit of sitting right at the back of my throat.

  When I emerge Katie is still in bed. ‘Come over here,’ she says. I sit beside her. She looks younger. Her eyes are very wide and her lips are pale. I keep watching them as she speaks; I find it difficult to follow what she’s saying, in a jumbled rush.

  ‘…understand how that could be because it’s been years and why would he be with you? Unless you’ve got some sort of other connection to him?’

  ‘What?’ The seagulls are raucous and it’s so early. I don’t want her to feel in control of this. Why is she talking about a connection? ‘It’s a spirit. A ghost. I know that’s a bit of a shock—’

  ‘It’s my grandfather,’ she says.

  ‘No, it’s not your grandfather—’

  ‘I knew him straight away. It’s him. It’s him. How do you know him? Tell me why he’s here. Is he here to speak to me? Has he told you about me? Is that why you came? You asked the staff to put us together? Did you—’

  ‘I think it’s time for breakfast,’ I tell her. I get up and walk to the kitchen.

  ‘Min,’ she calls as I hunt out a bowl for cereal, and switch on the kettle. ‘Min.’

  Let her wait.

  Let her fail to take him as her own.

  * * *

  We have a morning of activities ahead of us. Yoga and poetry and self-defence. Katie finds a space beside me for all of these classes. She seems weakened, in a way I can’t define. She overbalances while attempting Crescent Moon pose and puts out her hand, urgently, to me; I grasp it, and hold her as she rights herself.

  During a group conversation about overcoming personal issues one of our number reveals that she has a degenerative disease. She doesn’t tell us what the disease is, and nobody asks. I notice nothing but a slight tremor in her voice as she talks. It could just as easily be down to nerves, if she’s not used to public speaking.

  ‘I wonder what bits of me will last the longest,’ she says, to our circle. ‘Not physically, so much, but mentally. No, not even that. Not my faculties but my personality. How it feels to be me. The way I pick at the sleeves of my jumpers until they start to unravel, and the way I hate the smell of salad cream, even at a distance. What if one day soon I lose the ability to smell salad cream and be repulsed by it? I won’t be me any more at that point.’

  ‘Your entire personality hinges on salad cream?’ says Katie, waspishly, perhaps even maliciously, and it triggers a reaction from the group that feels passionate and righteous. There’s a general condemnation of saying hurtful things for the sake of humour, and I find I want to say something too. Something loud. Shouting would suit me now, but what would I shout about? The only thing that comes to mind is an explanation of how hating salad cream might turn out to be the only element of a person that remains in their afterlife, and wouldn’t that be worse? The woman with the degenerative disease is frightened to lose herself entirely but I suspect she’d prefer that to becoming a vengeful spirit who roams around restaurants slapping sachets of salad cream out of the hands of unsuspecting diners.

  They’re all shouting about the same thing, which is the need to listen to each other, and it takes them a while to realise it. I sit in my own circle of silence, and observe. The moderator restores order and the session goes on. People list what they would most hate to lose about themselves and when it comes to my turn I say, ‘My sense of humour.’ Let me remain as a long mouthless laugh that hangs in a room. I can see the appeal of that destiny, now.

  Next it’s Katie’s turn. She says, ‘My personality.’

  ‘You can’t lose that,’ says someone. ‘Nobody can ever take that away.’

  ‘How naïve of you,’ says Katie, triggering another intense conversation. She doesn’t speak in the group session again.

  * * *

  She only wants to talk about the ghost, and all I want is to refuse her. Whenever she tries to raise the issue I put another task between us and the conversation. A swim. A shower. Dinner. And now, at the end of the day with the meal all eaten, I d
emand to spend half an hour on my declaration.

  Katie sits across from me at the kitchen table and puts down her own words. She writes fast, without pause. She has a lot to say.

  I don’t try to pick up where I left off. I don’t think this whole thing will find any order, chronologically or otherwise.

  I feel so badly for that woman with the wasting disease. I’m learning from her. She taught me something. But who wants to be there just to be an inspiration? We went around the group and said our names and I registered hers for a second at most, then forgot it. Her pain is nothing more than an impetus for me to have my own thoughts. She’s a ghost too, I suppose. We’re all ghosts to each other. We breathe out smoke, and others take it in. But we’re no more than the smoke.

  I must be more.

  Those are all the words that will come to me. I put down my pen and wait for Katie to stop writing. She levels a calm stare at me, and I meet it.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Tell me about your grandfather.’

  She reads it straight off the page in front of her and I try to take it in and hold it.

  The Declaration of Katharine Johnston

  I’m forty-seven years old and I have never been close to anyone if I can help it. I mean that in both the emotional and the physical sense, although I’ve had times when I’ve been unable to keep my barriers in place. I feel disappointment in myself when these rare events occur. I can’t explain why, except to say closeness appals me. It feels like a way of avoiding certain realities. We’re born alone, we die alone; that kind of thing. I hate the things people do to evade this inevitability, like taking a scenic diversion to a place that you already know is a shithole.

  I think my attitude to life is probably very similar to my grandfather’s way of seeing the world. Let me give you an example:

  My grandfather got married for a bet. It wasn’t even a bet he made.

  He couldn’t have cared less about the idea of human companionship as a necessity for a fulfilled life. Nothing mattered to him but being outdoors, alone, miles from anyone. When he was young he would go walking for months, across the breadth of Yorkshire. He would eat what he could find, beg or steal. He would only return when his shoes had worn through.