She wrote a string of books, each one a memorable campaign in a liberal cause. There was a polemic about the horrors of capital punishment, and numerous examples of miscarried justice. This was followed by a book concentrating on a detailed examination of one such case: the execution of Kerith Sington for a murder he could not possibly have committed. Long after Caurer’s book was published, Sington received a posthumous pardon. Two books on the rights of the individual followed — Caurer campaigned endlessly to make every island adopt a bill of human rights. There was a book of interviews with deserters from the southern war. She wrote several books on feudalism, and although the system remains in place in most parts of the Dream Archipelago, numerous reforms in many islands have followed. The publication of her book
As well as the books, Caurer produced many articles and essays, often written in response to an invitation from one organization or another — she became notorious for the way in which she sometimes came up with a view or a position contrary to the ideas of the people who had commissioned the piece. These essays were the closest she came during this period of her life to answering questions, because after she retreated to the seclusion of Rawthersay she granted no more interviews.
The first of the Caurer Special Schools opened on Rawthersay when Caurer was in her mid-forties. It remains a principal centre for higher social learning. Other Caurer Schools have followed and now they are to be found on many islands.
She occasionally agreed to be present at the founding ceremony of some of these schools, but she never made a speech and always took a minor role in the celebrations: cutting a ribbon, symbolically capping a foundation stone, for example, then returning quietly to the shadows. It was this sort of event that gave rise to the speculation that Caurer was using a woman who looked like her as a stand-in. Because Caurer herself, and later the Caurer Foundation, never denied it, and these brief appearances continued, the speculation was probably correct and it was never seen as harmfully deceptive.
Caurer herself was positively identified in public only once more in her lifetime, when she ventured out from Rawthersay alone to attend the funeral of the author, Chaster Kammeston. She was noticed boarding a ferry in Rawthersay harbour — at the next port of call several journalists went aboard. More of them boarded the ship at every stop. She had booked a private cabin, so they only saw her when she went to the dining saloon for a meal. Later, she had to change ships at the island of Ia and on the new ship there were no private cabins. She sat out the voyage on the deck, or in the public areas, staring away as the cameras took shot after shot of her. She ignored every question. Later, after a plea to the captain of the ship, she was able to remain out of sight in crew quarters for the rest of the journey.
The return voyage was an even greater ordeal for her. Stress and unhappiness marked her features and although she was allowed to use the captain’s quarters she was able to find only a little privacy. Finally, she agreed to make a statement to the press, and allow photographs, if afterwards the media would leave her in peace.
As the ship sailed between Ia and Junno she stood in the saloon before more than fifty reporters, television cameras and photographers. She simply said that she was devastated by the sudden death of one of her most admired colleagues and wished to be left to mourn alone. She moved back, signalling that her comment was finished.
The media harassment continued afterwards, in breach of the bargain, until a manager from the shipping line intervened and arranged a private flight for her from an airstrip on Junno. Her arrival home on Rawthersay was unobserved. She retreated to her house, the security staff closed the gates and the shutters and no lights showed.
What followed has always been uncertain and the subject of much critical scrutiny. Caurer was said to have died within a few days of her return from Piqay. No one outside her immediate circle ever saw her body and the death was certified by a doctor who worked on her staff. Her body was allegedly cremated immediately afterwards. The cause of death was recorded as: ‘Natural causes — infection / infestation.’ None of this has ever been proved, and there is a strong body of belief that Caurer used the aftermath of Kammeston’s death to slip away to a secret haven on some other island.
However, her death was accepted as a legal fact. Most of her books and papers were left to the Museum Nationale in Glaund City, capital of the Federation, and they are stored there to this day. Found amongst them, and catalogued separately, was a large collection of Kammeston memorabilia, including a complete set of his books as well as many letters, photographs, notebooks and photocopies of diary pages. Most of this written material is either to or about Caurer. There is even a lock of hair which has been positively identified as Kammeston’s.
Caurer never bore children and there is no surviving family. There are several touching tributes and memorials from people who worked on her staff: notable amongst these is the long essay by Dant Willer, the journalist on the
Visitors to Rawthersay are always made welcome, but there is little on the island for the conventional tourist to do. For the serious student of Caurer’s life and work, a visit is of course essential. No visas are required and there are no anti-havenic laws.
Currency: Archipelagian simoleon, Quietude obolus.
Rawthersay (2)
SPOOR
THE TRACE
The study was lodged high beneath the eaves of the house and it was imbued with traces of him. It had not changed much in the twenty years since I was last there — it was more untidy, a mess of papers and books, standing on, lying beside, heaped below the two tables and a desk. I found it almost impossible to walk across the floor without stepping on his work. Otherwise, the room was much as I remembered it. The window was still uncurtained, the walls unseeable behind the crowded bookcases. His narrow divan bed stood in one corner, now bare of everything except the mattress. I will never forget the tangle of blankets we had left behind when I was here before.
Being there again was a shock. For so long his study, this exact room, had been a memory, a hidden joyful secret, but now it was bereft of him. I could detect the scent of his clothes, his books, his leather document case, the old frayed carpet. His presence was in every darkened corner, in the two squares of bright sunlight on the floor, in the dust on the bookshelves and on the volumes that stood there in untidy leaning lines, in the sticky ochre grime on the window panes, the yellowed papers, the dried careless spills of ink.
I gulped in the air he had breathed, choked by sudden grief. It was incomprehensibly more intense than the shock I felt on receiving the news of his illness, his imminent death. I knew I was rocking to and fro, my back muscles rigid beneath the stiff fabric of my black mourning dress. I was dazed by the loss of him.
Trying to break out of the grief I went to his oaken lectern, where he had always stood to write, his tall shape leaning in an idiosyncratic way as his right hand scraped the pen across the sheets of his writing pad. There was a famous portrait of him in that stance — it was painted before I met him, but it captured the essence of him so well that I later bought a small reproduction of it.
Where his left hand habitually rested on the side, the invariable black-papered cheroot smouldering between his curled knuckles, was a darker patch, a stain of old perspiration on the polish. I ran my fingertips across the wooden surface, recalling a particular half-hour of that precious day, when he had turned his back on me while he
