stood at this lectern, absorbed by a sudden thought.
That memory of him haunted me as I set out on this desperate quest to reach him before he died. The family had delayed too long in telling me of his illness, perhaps deliberately — a second message I received
Downstairs the mourners were gathering, awaiting the summons to the church.
I had arrived after most of the other mourners. It had taken me four anxious days to reach Piqay. It was so long since I had made the journey across this part of the Archipelago, I had forgotten how many ports of call there were on the way, how many lengthy delays could be caused by other passengers, by the loading and unloading of cargo. At first the islands charmed me, as always, with their variety of colours, terrains and moods. Their names had memories for me from last journey to Piqay, all those years ago: Lillen-Cay, Ia, Junno, Olldus Precipitus, but they were reminders of that sense of breathless anticipation on the voyage to meet him, or of the quiet, contented thoughts on the journey home. My recollection of the journey home, or experiences ashore, telescoped into one brief episode.
This time the charm soon faded. After the first day on the ship the islands simply seemed to be in my way. The boat sailed slowly across the calm straits between islands. Sometimes I stood for hours at the rail, watching the arrowing wake spreading out from the sides of the vessel, but it soon came to be an illusion of movement. Whenever I looked up from the white churning wake, whichever island we happened to be passing still seemed to be in the same relative position as before, across the narrows. Only the seabirds moved, soaring and diving around the superstructure, and at the stern, but even they went nowhere that the ship did not, and no faster. I wished I had wings.
At the port on Junno I left the ship because I wanted to find out if there was a quicker passage available. After an hour of frustrated enquiries in the harbour offices I returned to the ship on which I had arrived, where they were still unloading timber. The next day, on Muriseay, I managed to find a flight with a private aero club: it was only a short hop by air but it saved visits to the ports of three intervening islands. Afterwards, most of the time I saved slipped away, while I was forced to wait for the next ferry.
At last I arrived on Piqay, but according to the schedule of funeral arrangements that arrived with the news of his death, there was only an hour to spare. To my surprise, the family had arranged for a car to meet me at the quay. A man in a dark suit stood by the harbour entrance, swinging the passenger door open as soon as I appeared. As the driver steered the car swiftly away from Piqay Port and headed into the low hills surrounding the town and its estuary, I felt the commonplace anxieties of travel slipping away. It was even relaxation of a sort. I felt able at last to surrender to the complex of emotions that I had managed to keep at a distance while I fretted about ships and arrival times.
Now they returned in force. Fear of the family I had never met. Apprehension about what they might know about me, or what they might not. Worse, what they intended for me now, the lover whose existence might undermine his reputation, were our affair to become publicly known. The bottomless grief still sucking me down as it had done from the moment I heard the news about his illness, then later his death. My defiant pride in the past. The untouchable sense of loneliness, of being left only with memories of him. The hope, the endless irrational hope that something of him might yet live for me.
And I was still confused about why the family had sent the messages. Were they motivated by concern, by spite, or by just the dutiful acts of a bereaved family? Or perhaps, and this was one of the hopes I clung to tightly, he had remembered me and made the request himself?
But above all these, that endless grief, the loss, the feeling of final abandonment. I had suffered twenty years without him, holding on to an inexpressible hope of seeing him again one day. Now he was gone and I was forced to face the prospect of a life finally, absolutely without him.
The driver said nothing. He drove efficiently. After my four days aboard ships, with engines and generators constantly running, the bulkheads vibrating, the car’s engine felt smooth and almost silent. I looked out of the dark- tinted window at my side, staring at the vineyards as the car speeded along the lanes, glancing at the pastures, at the rocky defiles in the distance, at the patches of bare sandy soil by the roadside. I must have seen these the last time, but I had no memory of them. That visit was a blur of impressions, but at the centre were the few hours I had spent alone with him, brilliant and clear, defined for ever.
I thought only of him, that time. That one time.
Then, the house. People crowded around the gates, pushing each other aside to make a way for my car. They stared at me curiously. Some women waved as the car slowed, leaning forward to try to see me, spot who I was or who they thought I might be. The gates opened to an electronic signal from the dashboard of the car. They closed behind, as the car moved at a more stately pace up the drive. Mature trees in the park, mountains behind, glimpses of the cerulean sea and dark islands, far away. It was painful to look around at a view I had once thought I would never forget.
On arrival I stood silently in a reception room with other mourners, knowing no one, feeling what I sensed was their silent disdain. My suitcase stood on the floor outside the room. I moved away from the cluster of people and went to an inner door, from which I could see across the main hall towards the wide staircase.
An elderly man detached himself from the group and followed me. He glanced up the stairs.
‘We know who you are, of course,’ he said, his voice unsteady.
His eyelids fluttered with apparent distaste and he never looked directly at me. What struck me most was the facial similarity. But this man was old! In my sudden confusion I felt embarrassed, unable to make a polite guess as to who he was. My first thought was he might be the father, but no, that was wrong. I knew his parents had died many decades ago, long before we met. There was an identical twin brother he had told me about, but he said they were alienated. Could this now be that twin, a living likeness? Twenty years had passed and you never imagine what changes there might be in someone you have not seen. Was this how he had looked before he died?
‘My brother left clear instructions for us to pass on to you,’ the man said, solving the mystery, but too late for me to respond courteously. ‘You are free to go up to his room if you wish, but you must not remove anything.’
So I made my escape and went quietly and alone up the staircase to this room beneath the eaves. But now I was trembling.
A faint blue haze remained drifting in the room, a vestige of his life. The room must have been empty for several days, yet the light mist of the air he had breathed remained.
With a sudden flowing of renewed unhappiness, I remembered the only time I had lain with him, curled up naked on the bed beside him, glowing with excitement and contentment, while he sucked in the acrid smoke of the cheroots and exhaled it in a thin swirling cone of blueness. That was the same bed, the one in the corner, the narrow cot with the bare mattress. I dared not go near it now, could barely glance at it without the pain of loss.
Five of the cheroots, probably the last he ever bought, lay in an untidy scrambled pile on a corner of one of the tables. There was no sign of a packet. I picked one up, slid it beneath my nostrils, sensing the fragrance of the tobacco and thinking about the one I had shared with him, relishing the dampness of his saliva on my lips. A delirious exhilaration moved through me and for a moment my eyes lost focus on the details of the room.
He had never left the island during his lifetime, even after the prizes and honours began to be bestowed. While I lay naked in his arms, exulting inwardly over the touch of his fingers as they rested on my breast, he tried to explain his attachment to Piqay, why he could never leave to be with me. It was an island of traces, he said, shadows that followed you, a psychic spoor that you left behind if you departed the island. If you did you would become diffuse in some way that he could not explain. He said if he followed me when I left he would never be able to return to Piqay. He dared not try, because to do so would mean he would lose the trace that defined him to the island. For him, the compulsion to leave was less powerful than the urgency of staying. I, feeling a different and less mystical urge rising in me again, quietened him by caressing him, and soon we were making love again.
I would never forget the time we had spent alone together, but afterwards, in the many years of silence that followed, I had never been sure if he even remembered me.
Too late I had the answer, when the first message arrived. Twenty years, six weeks and four days. I had always kept count.
I heard large cars moving slowly on the gravel drive outside the house, and one by one their engines cut
