The Islanders

by Christopher Priest

  A sense of contentment spread through me. The only other theatre I had been in was the civic playhouse in Evllen, but that was financed and managed by the local authority, part of the leisure complex, with squash courts, a gym, a swimming pool and a lending library. The Sjøkaptein had the grace of tradition and years on it, but it was magnificent and alive, and dedicated to the calm illusionism of drama, entertainment, amusement.

  * * *

  The next day it began snowing again in earnest. The snow fell day and night, high, thin flakes blowing up the fjord from the direction of the open sea, drifting in the streets and against the houses, the wind gusting relentlessly from the frigid north-easterly quarter. Snow was an accustomed part of life for the people of the Tallek region. Snow changed the mood of everyone – snow had to be dealt with as a practical matter. Every morning and evening, and sometimes during the nights also, the Seigniory snow-ploughs and blowers were out, keeping the streets and wharves open, allowing the shops to trade, the fish to be landed, the trucks to enter and leave. I kept the stove in my room alight all day and night, as did everyone else in the town, fusing the billows of snow with thin grey woodsmoke. For me, Omhuuv took on a more rustic, medieval quality, feeling closer to the elements, deeper in a wild history.

  I settled into daily routines. Jayr set me to work testing and checking all the mechanical equipment in the theatre: the ropes, the trapdoor, the rigging, the lights, the sound system. The scenery bay was cluttered with flats from last season’s plays, and because we had no use for most of them I set about breaking them up, keeping intact the pieces that I could, or which Jayr said were standard pieces of scenery. I discovered I knew less about this kind of thing than I had thought, but because I was working alone I soon picked up what I needed to know. I carefully kept all the pieces of reusable timber, storing them in the scenery bay.

  Jayr was concerned about the slow intake of his bookings: the theatre was due to open in the first weeks of spring, when the snow was supposed to be no longer falling, if not completely melted from the mountains. This was the regular schedule, but according to the records the bookings this year were unusually low. Jayr fretted and complained about the lack of audience support for some of the artistes, especially about the acts he favoured. There was one in particular: a man who worked under the stage name ‘Commis’, a renowned mime artiste. Jayr swore Commis would probably be the most popular act in the year, as he had been in the past, but at the moment his performances were being no better supported by the public than any others.

  With two weeks to go before the first opening the blizzards still swept in every day, the gutters were blocked with ice, the roads were crested with dark and dirty mounds of old snow, compacted by their own weight and the endless passage of vehicles.

  * * *

  I began to like Jayr. He did not say much but he was always alert to my needs. He worked me hard but we took regular breaks and he often paid for lunch out of the theatre budget. I never really found out what he thought of me: sometimes I seemed to amuse him, sometimes to annoy him, but during most of our working days we were in separate parts of the building.

  One day, during a break for a cup of tea, he said to me, ‘Have you seen the ghost yet?’

  ‘Are you trying to wind me up?’

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘Is there one?’ I said.

  ‘Never knew a theatre without a ghost.’

  ‘Is there one here?’ I said again.

  ‘Haven’t you noticed how cold it is in the scenery bay?’

  ‘That’s because the doors are often open.’

  I don’t know what he was intending. It turned out that he had been in the Sjøkaptein for about five weeks before I arrived, often after dark, always alone, going into many of the deeper recesses of the large building, below and behind the stage, along the corridors, up to the high circle.

  Everyone who worked in theatre was superstitious, Jayr said: there were plays the actors would never name, parts they would never accept, scripts they would not read without someone there to cue them, ropes the stagehands would never pull when working alone, the weird or sudden deaths onstage and offstage when mechanisms unaccountably failed, or the accidents with scenery or props, and the supernatural consequences of them all.

  Jayr told me about hauntings reputed to be a feature of every other theatre he had worked in, but here, the Sjøkaptein, seemed to be entirely free of spirits, wild or sad or bereaved.

  ‘Never knew a theatre without at least one ghost,’ he said again at the end.

  ‘Except this one,’ I said. He was making me feel nervous, maybe intentionally.

  ‘Wait and see,’ he said.

  I expected a cold draught to wind its way under the door and chill me, or an eerie cackling laugh to break out in the distance, but then the telephone rang and Jayr answered, speaking with his mouth full of food.

  * * *

  Every day, I would trudge through the narrow streets to and from the theatre, skidding and balancing on the rutted frozen snow, to do what I could to assist Jayr in his endless preparations.

  Although he was dealing efficiently if unenthusiastically with the daily cascade of paperwork, Jayr’s main concern was the non-arrival of the tech crew, whom he knew were trapped somewhere on mainland Faiand, held up by visa regulations, the weather and the irregular ferry service. Even if they should negotiate themselves free of the bureaucrats, much of the sea around Goorn, and the Tallek region in particular, was still full of ice floes. Although most facilities could be prepared before they arrived, the actual operation of theatre performances was impossible without a full crew.

  Jayr became especially anxious when a message unexpectedly arrived from one of the first acts due to perform in the theatre. It was a magician, an illusionist, who styled himself THE LORD OF MYSTERY.

  The message contained some straightforward publicity material (including obviously posed photographs of the great man performing, whose appearance and archness we both found amusing) and what appeared to be a standard list of demands he felt he had to make before he arrived: lighting requirements, the need for technical rehearsals, the raising and lowering of the curtains, use of stage apparatus and so on. There was nothing unusual in that, which would anyway be arranged in the technical rehearsals all performers underwent as a matter of course, but with it came a document that was obviously an extra item.

  It consisted of a detailed drawing to scale, with measurements and angles drawn meticulously, of a large sheet of plate glass. At the bottom, written in capital letters, was the following:

  ‘PART OF MY ACT HAS TO BE PERFORMED WITH A LAYER OF CLEAN GLASS BETWEEN THE APPARATUS AND THE AUDIENCE. THIS SHOULD BE OBTAINED PRIOR TO MY ARRIVAL, AS PER OUR CONTRACT, AND MUST EXACTLY MATCH THE ABOVE SPECIFICATION. ON MY ARRIVAL THE PANE OF GLASS MUST BE FITTED TO THE APPARATUS WITH WHICH I TRAVEL, AND WHICH HAS PRECISE MEASUREMENTS. LORD.’

  ‘Do you suppose his parents gave him the name “Lord”?’ I said.

  ‘That’s how he signed the contract,’ Jayr said, showing me a copy.

  He seemed amused by the whole matter. The act had been booked at the end of the previous season by the outgoing management. It was true that it contained a clause written in verbose language, presumably dictated by the Lord himself, about the venue’s responsibility to arrange the supply and fitting of the glass.

  Other than the contract, Jayr knew nothing more about this Lord. He appeared to be resigned about it, saw it as part of the day-to-day life of a provincial theatre, a problem to take in his stride.

  * * *

  One morning, when the snow was blowing fiercely down the main street where I lived, I was as usual struggling towards the theatre. Staying upright on the slippery ground was always a problem but on that morning the difficulties were increased by the blustering of the wind. I had long developed the technique of watching the icy ground wherever I walked, but I also knew how to keep a general look-out where I was going. Moving about was hazardou
s in the snows of Omhuuv.

  I was therefore not too surprised when I collided with a man walking in the other direction, although I had definitely not spotted him coming. He was somewhat shorter than myself, and as we bumped into each other his shoulder hit against my chest, spinning me around violently. I managed, just, to keep my footing, but I did so only by an ungainly manoeuvre with both legs spread and my hands reaching down desperately to avoid the fall. I skittered across the ridges of frozen snow, my chest aching from the blow and for a moment I found it difficult to breathe.

  The man I had crashed into, though, was much more affected by the collision. As I was struggling to stay upright, I saw him first bounce away from me, and then in some fashion seemed to fly backwards, his arms flailing. He landed on his neck and shoulders in a heap of soft snow deposited during the night by the blowers, his legs aloft. He was struggling furiously to release himself as I skidded anxiously over to help him.

  ‘You bloody fool!’ he shouted at me, shaking his head and spitting out snow. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re walking?’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I said. ‘Here – take my hand!’

  He clasped my wrist and after much pulling and shouting I managed to tug him out of the heap of snow. He clambered laboriously to his feet, shaking his arms and head, trying to bang the loose snow away from his clothes.

  ‘You nearly killed me, you careless bastard!’ he yelled, as the wind continued to howl around us. ‘Look where you’re sodding well walking in future, do you hear?’

  ‘I said I was sorry.’

  ‘Sorry isn’t enough. You might have killed me.’

  ‘Were you looking where you were going?’ I said. His reaction to the accident seemed extreme, to say the least. Now he squared up to me.

  ‘Where are you from, you bloody fool?’ he said in a fierce voice. He leant towards me, as if trying to memorize my face. ‘I don’t recognize you. You don’t talk like a local.’

  I was still struggling to get my breath back. The man was thrusting his face pugnaciously towards mine.

  Although his aggressive behaviour was frightening, I was struck, in the extremity of the situation, with the calm thought that in fact I had never seen him before, either. My way to and from work every day was always the same, always along this road, skidding on the frozen ruts, and I usually passed or saw the same people every time. I knew none of them, but in harsh weather a silent brotherhood of wintry endurance seems to arise.

  This was the first time I had seen this bellicose little man. Although he was wearing a hood over his head, and a scarf was wrapped around his forehead, his eyes were visible – they were a pale and watery blue. He was crusted with frost and snow, but I could see he had dark and bushy eyebrows, a moustache that grew outwards and down, and a brown-red beard. More than this I could not see because he was, like me, wrapped up thickly against the cold.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry if you were hurt,’ I said, although the more I thought about it the less responsible for the accident I felt.

  ‘Goornak Town, that’s where you’re from! I’d know that annoying accent anywhere!’

  I tried to step past him, get away from him.

  ‘When you come to Omhuuv, young man, you bloody behave yourself. You get that?’

  I pushed past him, and staggered on across the frozen surface. He was shouting something after me, but because of the wind I could no longer hear his words.

  I was shaken up by this unpleasant encounter, and not just because of the physical impact. Of course I was an outsider in the small town, a newcomer, but until that moment the worst I had experienced from local people was a mild curiosity about where I had come from and what I was doing in Omhuuv. In almost every case, the reactions were friendly.

  I arrived at the theatre, warmed up in the office while drinking a cup of hot coffee with Jayr, then started my round of the daily chores. I was upset and preoccupied for an hour or two, but by the time we broke off for lunch I was back to normal.

  As I walked home that evening, though, I kept an eye open for the man, distinctly wary of seeing him again.

  The next morning, not far from where I lived, the man suddenly appeared. He seemed to have been lying in wait for me, because he dashed out of an alley that ran between two houses. He skidded forward like a man making a sports tackle, his feet thrusting at me and catching me on my shins. I fell violently to the side, on to the hard and impacted snow beside the edge of the road. One of the haulage trucks went by at that moment, narrowly missing my head.

  I struggled to my feet, but my assailant was up before me. By the time I was upright again he had stumped off down the road, head low against his shoulders, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  I hurried after him, grabbed his arm and spun him around. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ I shouted. ‘You nearly killed me!’

  ‘Then we’re quits, you bastard. Leave me alone!’

  He pulled his arm away from me with surprising strength, and slithered on.

  ‘Look – what happened yesterday was an accident. That wasn’t! You attacked me!’

  ‘Call the policier if you have a complaint.’ He turned to look at me, and once again I saw that unremarkable but hostile face, the frosted eyebrows furrowed against the cold, the droopy moustache, the pale skin.

  I grabbed hold of him again, angry and frightened, but with great ease he released himself from me and carried on up the road once more. He seemed immensely strong, for all his small build.

  I brushed myself down, knocking the snow off my arms and chest. I tried to be calm, tried to put him out of my mind, but it was difficult.

  I stared up the road after him, watching the way he moved. Everything about his body language evinced anger and hostility, a tightly coiled rage, compressed violently into his hunched body. I knew nothing about him except that from that moment on I resolved I would watch every step of the way when walking through the town.

  Aching again from this second rough encounter, I stayed put. I watched him until he was out of sight, disappearing around a bend in the road, somewhere near the bus terminus. From the way he was waving his hands, I guessed he was still yelling at me.

  * * *

  Jayr said he was too busy to be bothered with Lord, so he delegated the preparatory work to me, as I had expected from the outset that he would. The great man’s arrival was not long away.

  His image was already part of our daily background as Jayr had placed several of Lord’s rather ostentatious publicity photographs in the display cases by the theatre doors. I knew I had to buckle down to the task of obtaining the sheet of glass he had demanded.

  My first problem was to locate somewhere that would supply plate glass of the high quality specified by him. There was nowhere at all in Omhuuv, and the businesses in the town I asked about this all told me that glass had to be specially ordered from a firm of glaziers in the neighbouring town of Ørsknes. Because I did not want to risk getting any detail wrong, I borrowed Jayr’s car and drove over to Ørsknes myself and contacted the glaziers. They were bemused by the exactitude of my requirements, but they obviously assumed it was for a shop front or window. Payment and delivery were soon arranged.

  * * *

  The fall of snow ceased during the night after I returned from Ørsknes.

  When I was up and dressed in the morning I discovered that the long-awaited thaw had followed almost at once. The cold north-easterly wind at last dropped away, and had changed overnight into a balmy breeze from the south. For a day it seemed nothing in Omhuuv was going to change: the air trapped in the fjord had been chilled into what seemed to be a permanent freeze, and the snow in the streets and on the mountainsides was so deep, hard and solid that it felt that even a summer heatwave would never shift it. I walked the precarious streets with many of the other inhabitants of Omhuuv, still wrapped in protective clothes, sliding and skidding on the familiar frozen ruts, while a weak sun shone. But the hated north-easterly wind from the mainland was uncannily
absent.

  On the second day the thaw unmistakably began, with meltwater running through the streets, while the great frozen layers of impacted snow began to slide dangerously from the roofs. Seigniory workmen hurried from one building to the next, trying to control or manage the crashing of ice on to the pavements. Now at night I fell asleep to the burbling sounds of water running. There was water everywhere in the town, but most of it ran off into planned conduits leading down to the fjord.

  All around the town streams and falls were appearing, and every day there were public warnings of likely avalanches in the hills above us. However winter was of course part of the normal life here, and long established avalanche barriers kept much of the danger out of the town. I was content to watch the steep mountainside I could see from my window, as it was transformed into a lacy pattern of white waterfalls.

  On the third day the warm wind gave a daily rain shower, but it fell only in the late afternoons and helped speed the thaw. Every day was now a mild or even warm one, and the breeze from the south carried with it a smell that brought back to me memories of my childhood: somewhere in the warmer islands to the south of us the spring was already well established, and the wind bore scents of distant cedarwood, campion and herbs.

  Jayr was more cheerful, because as the weather changed it seemed a signal of encouragement had gone out on some subconscious level. More bookings arrived with each delivery of mail or visit to the messaging service. Every morning he spent more than an hour on the theatre computer, selling and confirming seats for the long summer season ahead.

  The sheet of plate glass I had ordered from the firm in Ørsknes was delivered as promised. It took the driver and his two mates, plus myself, to carry the bulky pane through the crowded backstage space and place it in the stage area. The driver gave me some padded mounts to rest it on, but it was obvious that it could not be left where it was.