‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Chaster said after a while. ‘I’m never going to leave again. This is where I’ll stay for the rest of my life.’
‘You’ll change your mind one day.’
‘No, I’m certain about it. Now and for ever.’
‘What happened while you were away, Chas?’
But he never gave me an answer, then or ever. We sat there on the rough clifftop rocks, staring down at the islands, a great unsaid thing hovering around us. Eventually we walked back to the house.
Chaster’s behaviour still made me nervous: I kept waiting for an outburst of his dark side. He had always frightened me when he was like that. In a sense it was more alarming when he assumed a pleasant persona, when he seemed to be approachable, because of the sudden way in which I knew he could change. That was how he was on his return to the family: he seemed reasonable, sensitive to the needs of others. It put me on edge. And because he would say nothing about the months he was away, I was still left with that unresolved sense of injustice, of having had to lie for him. Surely, at least he owed me an explanation?
I was not to receive that explanation for many years, and then only indirectly and not from Chaster himself.
His change in temperament on his return did appear to be permanent, though, and in spite of my initial nervousness I gradually grew used to the idea. If the darkness of his behaviour was still inside him, that was where he kept it and he did so for the rest of his life. Whatever else had happened while he was away, somehow it had led to that. He was a reformed character.
Something else had changed, too, but it took longer to become apparent. Because by this time I was living permanently away from the family home, I rarely saw him and so was hardly aware of it.
Chaster became contemplative, thoughtful. He read constantly. He took many long and solitary walks through the grounds of the house, and further, around the cliffs, into the town. At some point he began writing. I knew nothing about this, and I understood from Suther that he almost never spoke about it at home. She said he was always there in his room at the top of the house, a quiet presence, integrated into the various family events, but always retreating afterwards to be alone, wandering away up the stairs to the study from which a long silence then emanated.
He finished his first novel and sent it away to find a publisher. Some time later, maybe a year or so, it was published. He presented me with a copy, dedicated and signed on the title page, but I confess I did not read it.
A second novel appeared, then a third, then more. This was his new life.
I too had a new life: I had married my wife Hísar, and soon we had a young family and all the preoccupations that go with that. Suther also married, and she moved away to the island of Lillen-Cay. She too had children. Eventually our parents died, the house and grounds became our joint property. Chaster was the only one of us who remained living there, alone in the large house with a reduced number of servants.
My first realization that Chaster was becoming a well known writer was when I came across something about him in my daily newspaper. It reported simply that he had a novel due to appear later in the year. I found this mildly startling, that the mere prospect of a novel from him was considered newsworthy. By then he had written four or five novels, and from time to time I had even seen them reviewed, but this was a notice of something as yet unpublished. I cut out the item and sent it up to the house for him, because I was not certain he would otherwise see it. He never acknowledged it, but by then we hardly communicated about anything.
Another sign of the change in his reputation came when Hísar started telling me of some of the gossip she was hearing around town. I heard none of this myself – I assume people kept their thoughts to themselves when I was there because they suspected it would get back to my brother. But Hísar was different: she led a sociable life in the town, had friends of all types, often went with the children to other people’s houses, belonged to theatre groups, historical societies, a walking club, she worked one afternoon a week in a charity shop, and so on.
The story was that Chaster, who never married, was constantly being approached or visited by women who were fervent, devoted admirers of his writing.
Some of them came shyly, almost furtively. They would arrive quietly on the island, find somewhere to live or stay, then wander around the town and the island, apparently trying to contrive accidental meetings with him. According to Hísar these women were easy to identify, since they were just about the only people who would ever talk about him. They asked after him in shops, they would plague our local librarian with questions about his novels, or they would simply sit or stand somewhere in the centre of the town, reading one of his books with the cover held up to be seen. Sometimes this method succeeded – Hísar told me that Chaster had been spotted several times walking around the town or the harbour with one or other of these people.
Some of the women were bolder. They would go straight to the house and ask for him at the door – most times, I gathered, he would not agree to meet them, but sometimes he would. What would happen then was no one’s business but Chaster’s, but presumably he had normal sexual appetites and many of these women were allegedly young and presentable.
All this would be a matter of tittle-tattle, were it not for the significant visit by one such woman.
Hísar and I knew nothing about this event until afterwards, by which time she had long departed from Piqay. Her arrival in the town had caused something of a stir, because she was easily recognized: it was the famous social reformer and writer called Caurer.
She arrived unannounced on the first scheduled ferry of the day, disembarking in the dawn light with the other foot passengers. No one from her staff appeared to be travelling with her. She was delayed on arrival and went through the dock formalities with everyone else, although by this time she had been noticed and recognized. The officials dealt with her transit papers quickly, while the other passengers kept a respectful distance.
On leaving the dock, Caurer walked straight across to the town’s taxi rank and climbed into the first available car. She acknowledged nobody, did not respond to the ripple of applause that had followed her across the harbour apron. As the car drove away and up the hill towards the interior of the island, people stood by the roadside to wave to her.
She went to my brother’s house and stayed there for a period of time, but I have never been able to establish exactly how long it was. It might have been for the rest of that day, she might have stayed for one or two nights, or even longer. The tongues that wagged disagreed on this, but the only thing that matters is that she was definitely there.
She left in the dark, boarding the usual overnight ferry towards Paneron.
Two weeks later Chaster came to my house. Hísar was conveniently out with the children, but they had only just left. It made me suspect Chaster had been waiting outside the house for them to leave. He and I greeted each other as if we had seen each other only recently, but almost at once he launched into what he had come to ask.
‘Woll, I need your help,’ he said. ‘I’m in a terrible state. I can’t sleep, I can’t work, I can hardly eat, I can’t settle down. I’ve got to do something.’
‘Are you ill?’
‘I think I’m in love.’ He looked as embarrassed as only one brother can to another. ‘Her name’s Esla. I’m obsessed with her. I think about her all the time, I imagine her face, I think I can hear her voice. She’s so beautiful! So intelligent and articulate! So sensitive and understanding! But I can’t contact her. She left me and I don’t know where she is or how I could ever find her again. I think I’m going mad.’
‘Do you mean Caurer?’
‘Esla, yes. I call her Esla.’
Until then I had not realized Caurer must once have had a given name.
Once he had started there was no stopping Chaster. He talked endlessly, obsessively, with little chance of my interrupting. Any question I managed to break in with only produced another outp
ouring of his love for this woman and the frustration she had left behind her.
‘You should go to her,’ I said, when at last a pause arose. ‘You must know where she lives, which island she’s from. She sometimes calls herself Caurer of Rawthersay. Is that still her island?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Then it must be a simple enough matter to find a shipping route to get there.’
He looked diffident. ‘I can’t do that. You know I can’t leave Piqay.’
‘Why not?’
‘Have you read any of the novels I’ve given you?’ I responded with what I intended should be seen as an ambiguous look, because although he had sent me a signed presentation copy of every new book as it appeared, I had yet to read any of them. He went on, ‘I’ve created a kind of… well, I call it a mythos. It’s in all my novels. I write about Piqay, describing it realistically, as it is. Sometimes only as it was, because two of the books are set in the past. But as well as being realistic, the Piqay I create in the novels has a mythology. I call Piqay “the island of traces”, a place that holds its inhabitants in a spell. No one can leave, no one wants to leave. Anyone born here is said to be forever trapped here. The island is covered with psychological spoors, traces of ancestors and ghosts and past lives.’
‘It’s not true.’
‘Of course it’s not true. It’s a mythos. I invented it. I use it as a metaphor, as symbolic language. I write novels, fiction! You don’t understand, do you?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, in practical terms it means I can’t ever leave Piqay. Not now. All my books would become invalidated. And if the readers found out – well, it doesn’t matter about most of them, but it matters like hell about Esla. She above all people must never know the truth. I can’t go after her.’
He was indeed a man in love, deluded by his own passions. Now I knew him to be also a man trapped in his own fictional invention.
The afternoon went by. I let Chaster talk out his obsessive needs, partly because I genuinely wanted to help him, but also because I found it fascinating to see my own brother, about whom I had such mixed feelings, acting in a totally new and unprecedented way. He could barely keep still. He was always levering himself energetically from his chair, then prowling and pacing around my sitting room, waving his arms, grimacing, declaiming theatrically.
In the end I said, ‘What is it you want, Chas? You said you need my help.’
‘Would you go to find Esla Caurer for me? You are the only person I can trust. I’ll give you every detail I know about her. The island, the people she works with, some lecture dates she said she had coming up. She travels a lot, but her appearances are usually publicized in advance. I’ll pay for everything. All I want you to do is find her, tell her how much I love her, then plead with her, beg her, use any means you can think of to make her come back and see me again. If she won’t do that, then get her at least to contact me. Tell her it’s urgent, a matter of life and death, anything at all, anything you can think of. I’m desperate. I can’t go on like this. I have to be with her!’
And I was meanwhile thinking: I have a wife and children, and a home to keep and maintain, I have a job with serious responsibilities. Does he truly imagine I am going to abandon everything and rush off on this fool’s errand?
Once before I had gone out on a limb for my brother, lied on his behalf, tried to save him for reasons I barely understood, and all for what? Grudging thanks much later, and a long silence.
I thought about it, though, while he sat there in the sun as it poured in through the large windows, and I heard Hísar and the children coming noisily into the house at the side entrance, and the contentment of my normal life regaining its shape around me.
Finally, I said, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’
He looked at me in pleased amazement. ‘You will?’
‘There’s a condition, though. I’ll only search for this woman if you tell me why you made me lie to the policier for you. What were you mixed up in, back then?’
‘What does that have to do with any of this?’
‘For me, almost everything. Tell me what went on at the theatre. Did someone die? Were you responsible?’
‘It’s a long time ago. I was just a young man. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘It still matters to me.’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because you made me lie to the policier. Do I have to tell lies to Caurer for you too?’
‘No – everything I’ve told you about Esla is true.’
‘Then tell me the truth about the other matter.’
‘No. I can’t.’
‘Then I can’t go off and look for this woman.’
I suppose I had expected the old dark Chaster to burst out again, to threaten me, wheedle at me, use some kind of blackmail or other manipulation on me, but on that day I realized he had finally and for good buried the old destructive demon.
He sat in the chair across from me and he seemed to slump. He cried briefly. He wiped his eyes, stood up, left the chair and leaned against the window, staring out into the street. He did not react when Hísar briefly entered the room – she left when she realized who was there with me and that something difficult was happening between the two of us.
‘I’m sorry I troubled you, Woll,’ he said suddenly, and moved towards the door. He would not look across at me. I stood up. ‘I won’t ask you again. I’ll find her some other way.’
‘Chas, this other thing at the theatre still stands between us.’
‘Let it go,’ he said.
‘I can’t.’
‘And I can’t understand why everyone is still so fascinated by all that.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Esla kept asking about it too.’
I should have realized then what that woman had been doing at my brother’s house, but because I did not I said nothing.
Chaster left, and if anything I felt worse about him than I had done before.
The years that followed, broadly speaking, were a stable period for us all. Chaster presumably pined for his lost love, and he must have got over it eventually. Hísar told me that the trickle of his women literary adherents continued to arrive in the town, so I imagine he was able to find relief from his sorrows with some of them. I know not, and I care not.
Chaster went on writing, because books of his continued to appear. Our children slowly grew up and we suffered and relished the various crises and triumphs of a growing family. Hísar and I took several long holidays off-island. My job continued. All seemed well.
I decided it was time I caught up with Chaster’s novels, so I read them all, slowly and carefully, in the order in which he had written them.
They were not, I must say, the kind of fiction I normally like to read. I prefer a strong storyline, a range of interesting and successful characters, a colourful or exciting background. I like adventures, intrigues, brave deeds. Chas’s novels seemed to me to be about losers or failures: no one could succeed at anything in his stories, doubts were constantly expressed, the language was understated or ironic, everyone went in for perplexing actions that took them nowhere. As for the background, all the books seemed to be set on Piqay, and in the town in which I lived, but I found it hard to recognize the places I knew. One book even contained a mention of the street where my house was, but almost every detail was wrong.
One of the novels did briefly interest me, because it described a violent death that had taken place in a theatre. My attention focused sharply, but it soon became clear that this novel was much the same as all the others. If there were any clues in it about what had happened to Chaster in the past, I missed them all.
I was glad to finish reading his books but I felt my conscience was now clearer. At least I knew what he had written, even if within a day or two I could remember hardly any details about them.
I had almost forgotten about Caurer and her disruptive impact on Chaster, when unexpectedly she burst back in on
his life.
The background to it was the execution of a mentally subnormal young man, for a murder he was alleged to have committed. This had happened several years before.
I had not taken any special interest in what happened, although I did remember the controversy that surrounded his execution. Capital punishment is not common in the Archipelago, but there are several islands where it is still carried out. It’s a subject that always causes heated argument. I am personally against the idea of state-sponsored killing and always have been, so whenever I hear the news that another hanging or guillotining has taken place I get a sick feeling in my stomach, wish that it had not happened, but try to console myself with the thought that due process must have taken place and all appeals would have been exhaustively heard.
In this respect, the guillotining of Sington was little different from others. I knew from news reports that the evidence was overwhelmingly against him, that he had made a full confession, that he showed no remorse, and that on his island group the law and its remedy were clear. Beyond that, I knew few details.
Caurer, a famous liberal reformer and campaigning writer, had for some reason taken it upon herself to re-open the case and investigate whether Sington had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Her conclusion, unsurprisingly, was that he had.
I saw her book on the subject discussed in the press and felt interested and pleased that this might persuade more people to my point of view. But because of Caurer’s brief but disruptive impact on my brother’s life, I could no longer treat anything by or about her with complete neutrality.
One day, not long after her book had been published, Chaster turned up at my house. It had been more than a year since we had seen each other, but by that time separations of several months at a time were not unusual. He did not stay long.
‘Have you seen this?’ he said loudly, holding aloft a hardback book with a pale cover. ‘Why has she done this to me?’
The Islanders Page 23
