My son and daughter both attend the local school, though I make time to give them the lessons which will enable them to return to England one day, should they choose to.
I myself will never return. Though life on the island is in many ways simple, it is also whole and complete. I can stand on the harbour wall looking out at the vast blue sea – which, in reality, isn’t vast at all – and feel the centuries of history and civilisation vibrating beneath my feet. I can climb to the highest point on the island and make myself at one with the gods who ruled long before the holy mystic of Palestine entered Jerusalem on an ass.
I have a small sailing boat now, and once every few months, my wife and I will leave the children in the care of my frail grandmother and her sturdy nurse Jo Torlopp (now happily married to a barrel-chested Greek fisherman), and sail away to other magic islands. Marie says that I’m a natural sailor, but my once hard-boiled private eye has so lost her judgement that she seems to think, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that I’m good at everything I do.
I love my life here, and am living it for myself and my family, but there is a sense, too, in which I try to live out my brother John’s dreams for him.
I feel I owe him that much.
The Company Page 31
