An Island Waits . . . An Island Waits
The water, the sea, swelled over my face. Stinging eyes and throat, hair wrapped itself close in tentacles about my neck and I saw him. His grey head, his indistinguishable features were stretched and wobbling above the surface of the water. The dark, dark now, I no longer . . . I let my body relax. The figure, the man lifted me out of the water, my body was heavy, so heavy and I . . . I couldn’t, my head, I wanted to see but . . . I was laid out in the boat, smell of soaked wood, oil, fish guts, sun-baked into the timber.
I awoke. The stranger’s cottage. He had made me a bed up next to the stove which had burnt down to nothing. I pulled the frayed corner of the blanket over my shoulder, gathered my knees in close. I surveyed all that was about me with flick of eyes; table, chair, bread-board, knives, books, tackle, herbs. He was not present. The room was cold but adequate, homely even. It seemed more than I could bear, the everyday nature of familiar things; brushes, combs, scissors, socks. The relaxed order about the place, every sign of habit assumed a new day, not too much thought of future. Here was a person’s life; distilled into this slight set on a dim stage, picked out by a single shaft of sun through the window; and here was I, skimmed out of the sea, a blemish in the blue-green, a patch of oily foam that had not yet dissipated. I turned back to the wall, I knew I should leave. I didn’t move.
The click of the latch. The grey man. I felt him looking in my direction, I sensed his eyes were dark. The clip of his boots told me he went to the table first, he made his way from there over to the stove, he stood inches away from my stretched-out body on the burst mattress. In a moment of calm, a fire was kissed to life with a piece of kindling, a new light was cast on this twilight world and I feared the conversation it could elicit in this heat, the semi-darkness.
His music, I hadn’t realised then, but the table was, in fact, a small instrument, a square piano. I heard his music before I had properly seen his face or even heard his voice. His hands pressed the keys where they fell it seemed. One, then one-two-three, higher up the board, then again, one, two, three, but now his fingers stepped down the notes, away from the highest note with the lightest touch. He added a more ornate trill, now another with subtle variation, break, heavy chord, he pushed weight into his fingers from his wrists adding volume and power. Again, pause, now heavy chord again. This time the notes ascended higher and higher in sequence, in a way that made sense to the brain. A moment’s pause, hover of breath suspended. Then it began, the roll of melody sustaining an urgent broken sequence of notes, his right-hand climbing and climbing, building to some undefinable emotion, unquantifiable. He used his whole body, he pushed himself into the notes. He tilted his head, a particular cadence, he was waiting for the instrument to answer his need. The reply came, his hands moved faster, up and down the keys at a most astonishing rate.
As I secretly watched him, I knew I should feel some tingling of what the music conveyed on my skin, in my gut. I would have ached before, with yearning, sadness . . . something. The allure of this man. I hid my body from him under my thin shroud, the rise and fall of my chest quickened with shortness of breath. I stopped my thoughts. When I first walked into the water, the sand kept sucking on my toes, with each difficult step I was being ingested down into the bowels of the earth. My under-slip clung to my calves somehow trying to hold me back. I mastered my fear in the same way then too, I stopped my thoughts and let the waves take over.
He stopped playing. The lid went back down. He sliced carrots, peeled potatoes, his footsteps carried the vegetables over and put them in the pot on top of the stove. He did not move back to his original position immediately. I knew he was staring. I lay as still as possible, clamped my eyelids tight, but the blanket slipped down from my shoulder as my muscles tensed. He hesitated for a brief moment then decided he would pull the blanket up over my shoulder again, the flat of his fingers brushed my chin.
The next morning, stove burnt down and black, same, I was alone. Feet on cold stone. I stood, legs weak, the skirt of my salt-crusted slip dropped to my ankles, I walked out onto his stage, sat down at his square piano, lifted the lid of the instrument. There was decoration on the underside of it. Lacquer aged, glossy and yellow, cracking over swirls of blue and cream, accented with flecks of gold and black. The sea that should have been my grave. I put my finger down on a key, I felt him behind me, his breath, then he was gone, I began to play Ostinato in the left, melody in the right; patterns upon patterns building, motif circling, developing, mathematical and baroque, none of the drama of the stranger’s performance, not an appropriate elegy for myself, but running Glissando, building to Crescendo, thrashing the chords, getting more sound than the instrument should have allowed and for a moment I believed I could live, hands matching the beat of my heart, fingers in place of voice and throat.
I hadn’t noticed him return. His black shape in the doorway. My hands, I saw they were covered in blood, the white keys smeared, dried red, looked brown. He picked up a cloth, bent down on one knee to gain proper access to the wounds. The cloth was soon ripped into strips to make a small bandage for each hand, easily knotted, tight, secure. I would rather he had not paid me this attention, but I had little choice. He finished the job to his own satisfaction then looked at me, in question, for approval, gratitude, I could not rightly say.
‘You should have let me drown.’ I said.
He stared a moment, then backed away. The open door, I rushed towards it. In one bound he closed the door and blocked my way. The look in his eye, determination, I hit him, thumped him, I slapped, I scratched, I kicked and he stood, with the certainty of the oldest of trees, his expression resolute, serene. I gave up, spent. I sat myself down on the bench, eyed the flame spitting in the stove. He removed his work boots, cleaned his tools, shaved the skin off another potato, he tried to hand one to me to do the same.
‘We eat.’
‘I won't eat.’
‘We work.’
He threw the potato to me. I catch it like a whip. I throw it back at him.
‘What need have I of work?’
He launched himself across the piano, with a fist full of my hair, he marched me out to the horse trough nestled in blade-sharp grass the length of deer legs, the nodes of neighbouring islands across the sea were just visible in patches behind the low-lying fog. When he least expected it, I would run, I would just walk into the sea again. He plunged my head into the water.
‘Do you want me to let you drown, now?’
He lifts me out.
‘Yes!’
Into the trough again.
‘You think this is mercy?’ He asked.
The cough. Blood ran down my chin covering my chest, staining my bodice. I laughed at this. I laughed at him.
‘I am already dead.’
Again I laughed. The absurdity of it.
‘Next time let me drown.’
He said nothing, only cupped a handful of water out of the trough. He washed the blood away, the water seemed soothing and pure, it banished the spill of red as though it might have been carried in the very grail itself. His hand brushed against my chest, first time, then again, then another and another. Water ran out of the precipice of his palm down the slope of his wrist.
I followed him back to the house. He turned his back while I removed my dress and wrapped myself in the blanket, I wanted him to look but he was busy working out the stains in my dress, stretching the material hard against the side of the cold-water barrel, forcing the soap downwards in hard, crushing strokes. He hung it up in front of the fire when he was done. He lifted the lid, the piano again, his music. It was time. His music. Andante. Bumping off the skin on my arms, rolling down my body like great wads of cotton, like the sound came from another room in a much larger house, like there would never be a natural end like it would be destined to drift on for all time. It was I who was moving backwards, away from the fire, back across the sea, back to the mainland, before my journey had begun, when time was happily wasted and love was to hand and life was all, and there had been no thought of any kind; other than what was. He stopped playing.
‘Now you.’ He said.
‘What music have I left, now?’
I went and sat beside him at the instrument. He tugged at the knot of my bandages. They unravelled as my hands moved up the keys. The lines of material ended up on my lap and slipped from my lap to the floor. They formed a trail of where my notes had first been born, then died. Now he added his hands to mine. The music was instantly louder, more complex, intricate, we echoed each other’s motif, we split apart, the melody died down, it was barely there now; it became something new. He kissed my neck I wanted our bodies to take over from the music, I turned to meet his lips . . . he was gone. Not anywhere in the room.
I ran to the door, I looked from one end of the island to the other, there was no one, he was never there. Only trees and fog, white sand, or peppered rock. The birds were roosting early. A tiger-striped lizard, carrying his spider meal, zig-zagged his way from under dewy foliage to stone, like a thief escaping with his jewels, not wanting to be spied or apprehended whilst out in the open. There was a need to collect kindling for the fire. Live. For now, live. The cough. Hand to mouth, there was blood on my palm just the same.
I walked down to the water’s edge. I let my toes sink into the wet sand. The Oyster Catchers slotted their red beak-tools into pointy shells. They sent their clipped, thin, notes, far out to sea. How rarely anyone must hear their cries, and still they puffed out their tiny breasts with all their heart.
The sea. Receding fog. I let the waves take over from thought. The head of the moon rose through the blue wash of night. A black figure appeared in the water, the waves gathered it in closer, closer. I ran towards it, this other being. He opened his eyes, they were dark.
By Robyn Hunt (c) October 2016
Blog Image by Gavin Roberts
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In loving memory of Ben Morgan who filled our lives, our hearts, with love that endures. His silhouette still dances on the surface of water. 7th November 2004 - 17th September 2016.
