Islanders
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(Lots of thanks to Dawnj for her suggestions, editing, help and general support – all mistakes are mine.)
They met outside Nancy’s little shop – the sort of place that sold everything you might want for food, and some practical things like matches and candles, and that was open most of the time.
Marguerite and Evelina had known each other all their lives, their parents had lived practically next door to each other. Marguerite had grown up with her mother and her brother, Rudy. Rudy, who had had a real education, had gone to the States, and she had never seen him again, he got killed when he was twenty-three. Marguerite’s mother was in her late sixties, and she was considered quite a beauty by the male half of the population, but since her sixtieth she wasn’t having any anymore.
Evelina was an only child who was raised by her father and mother together. They had sent her to the small international school on the island, and she was very well educated. Her parents had both died rather young, and Evelina had kept on their house as a holiday bungalow to be rented out. She usually had people in the holidays, sometimes for a fortnight, sometimes for three weeks – it supplied her with enough money to live on.
‘How’s life, Evie?’ Marguerite said.
‘Oh, fine, fine. The house has been rented for six weeks at one go!’
‘Brilliant. Who are they?’
‘I don’t know. They’re from England, Rita, not from the States.’
‘Oh wow – that’s a far way off!’
Evelina nodded. ‘I hope they like it here,’ she said. ‘But if they don’t…’
‘Yes. But what if they don’t turn up, like the last ones?’
Evelina shrugged and smiled. ‘Paid in advance,’ she said. ‘If they don’t turn up I’ll find new people. That would be really nice!’
Then Marguerite looked at her sharply.
‘Evie,’ she said, ‘you’re not pregnant, are you?’
Evelina smiled and nodded. She winked at Marguerite.
‘Four months! I’ll come some distance with you,’ she said, and linked her arm in Marguerite’s. ‘Then I can tell you all about it.’
Tim Palmer taught English at a local comprehensive on the Isle of Wight, and he tried his hand at creative writing sometimes. He’d always liked teaching, but when this school year ran to a close he felt completely fed up with everything. He’d had enough of teaching for the time being, his attempts at writing having come to nothing and he wanted a change of air. He thought about the south of France, but it didn’t seem an environment that would be conductive to writing, not for him, and it was expensive. Moreover, most of his colleagues went to France and he definitely didn’t want to meet them in his holidays. And he would miss the sound and the smell of the sea. He had lived on the Isle of Wight for all his life. When he’d left home he had found a house in Totland, close to the Needles, and he always enjoyed rambling on the crest of the cliffs, to the Needles and then on to Tennyson’s Monument, and Freshwater Bay – the more he thought of it, the more he was convinced France was not a good idea.
Then he chanced upon an advert in the local paper for a holiday home on an island in the Caribbean. It was called Bougainvillea. There was a picture of the place, and it said it was on the quiet end of the island – just like his own home – and it immediately seemed exactly what he wanted. He made arrangements straight away and paid for a six-week stay. Good, he thought, just the place for me, in the tropics with the sea within walking distance, and palm trees, and quiet, and a totally different atmosphere form the daily grind he had wanted to escape from for some time.
He bought a relatively cheap ticket and when the holidays had arrived he went to Heathrow and found himself airborne on his very first day off. The plane touched down some ten hours later at a very small airfield, and after completing the formalities Tim took a tuk-tuk to the address he’d been sent. It was getting on for six in the evening when he arrived at Evelina’s house.
She had expected a family – there were a big bedroom with a double bed and two smaller ones with single beds, and she raised her eyebrows when she saw there was a man alone.
Oh no, she thought, not one of those, please – but she handed him the key and gave directions to the driver, and told Tim to come and ask if there were anything amiss.
Then she went into the house, shaking her head – they did have single men coming to the island now and again, looking for cheap sex – there were a lot of prostitutes in the tourist area of the island, some even came looking for young boys. She hoped to God he wasn’t one of those.
She needn’t have bothered. Tim had had a few short-lived relationships, but both of them had come to nothing, and he had decided long ago that love was a very overrated emotion. He was good-looking and soft-spoken but he kept himself to himself, and the few women who tried to strike up some rapport with him found it impossible to make any dent in his armour.
It was only a ten-minute walk from Evelina’s house to ‘Bougainvillea,’ and the tuk-tuk dropped him off in no time. Tim looked at the house with joy. It was peach-coloured, and there were a few large bougainvilleas and an African Tulip tree in the front garden. He paid off the driver and carried his luggage up to the front door. He unlocked it and went in. The house, built in the late nineteenth century, had high rooms and it felt relatively cool. He put down his suitcase and went around the house. It seemed very comfortable and well-equipped. Everything he could want was there – Evelina had even provided him with a huge bottle of purified water in an iron stand. He especially liked the big polished wooden table with a small reading lamp – the ideal place to get some writing done, he thought. He went around the bedrooms and decided he liked the big one best, got his suitcase and unpacked.
There was a folder on a sideboard with information on shops and sights, and he went to a nearby restaurant for dinner.
It had gone dark, and the restaurant proved a good place to sit and read – and the food was good, too.
When he had finished his dinner – fresh king fish and a salad – he went home. He suddenly felt very tired and he poured himself a drink from one of the bottles he’d bought in the tax-free at Heathrow. He took his drink out onto the veranda and sat listening to the night sounds while he sipped it. Then he went indoors. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
The next day he went shopping, then he went walking in the neighbourhood. He found his way to the beach and sat on a big rock for some time, staring out past the surf to the grey blue sea and the bright blue sky, with the sun on his back.
When he had satisfied his curiosity, he went back to the house and installed himself at the table. To his delight he didn’t feel encumbered by all sorts of restraint, he started writing like mad, his head bubbling over with ideas. He grinned at himself a little – it had been a good idea to come here.
Tim developed a pleasant routine in the first few days – he worked all morning, took a break around noon in which he did some shopping or cleaning, then he worked some more until five when he’d go to the beach and stay there until the sun had gone down.
He went to the same restaurant every night. Linda, the proprietor, was a friendly woman in her mid-fifties, who smiled at the young Englishman and made him feel at home, and her food was brilliant. When he’d come in for the fourth time she asked his name, and Tim was happy to be greeted by name from then on.
Evelina couldn’t make him out. He apparently had not come for cheap sex – he’d gone to town once, they told her, but he had returned within a couple of hours, alone – and he seemed to keep himself to himself. The lady who came to clean ‘Bougainvillea’ told her she usually found him writing, or reading, and she had seen him on
the beach in the evening.
Tim had been staying in her house for a week when she ran into Marguerite again.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Did your tenants turn up?’
‘Yes – but there’s only one, a man alone.’
‘Out for sex?’ Marguerite said.
‘No, apparently not. He only sits and reads and writes. I can’t think why he came here at all.’
‘He doesn’t go out?’
‘He goes to the beach every evening,’ Evelina said. ‘And he eats at Linda’s.’
‘Oh? Is he nice?’
‘I don’t know. He never talks to anyone, even Linda doesn’t really know, and he goes there every day.’
‘Why don’t you go and talk to him, then?’
‘Oh no – I wouldn’t dare. He seems very stand-offish.’
‘I’ll try and get him to talk, if you like.’ Marguerite smiled a little at her friend. ‘He can’t be too dangerous…’
Evie nodded. ‘Tell me what you think, then,’ she said.
Then they changed the subject and went to Evelina’s together.
That evening Tim went out just a little earlier than usual. He had reached a point in his writing that he had to give some more thought, and he expected he’d find some inspiration in the beautiful sunset he’d come to expect. It was great to watch the sun go down behind the palms, and to see the palm fronds move upon the breeze, dark against the sky – it gave him an immense feeling of peace, and it provided him with the quiet he needed for constructive thinking.
He walked along the dirt road between the bushes and hedges, looking at the hibiscus and jasmine flowers, and a few Poinciana trees. He loved Wight – but this was really something, he thought. Beautiful! Oh, man, he had been bloody right in coming here.
When he came to the beach, he wanted to go and sit down on his rock, but it was occupied by a woman in a long, red dress and flip-flops. She had wavy dark hair, and dusky brown skin, and when he turned to look at her he saw she had amber-coloured eyes, that seemed to looked straight into his soul.
‘Hello,’ she said. She had the kind of voice he’d expected – a little husky, low and melodious.
‘Hello,’ he said. He walked up to her. ‘You’re here to watch the sunset, too?’
She nodded. ‘It’s always beautiful on this side of the island,’ she said. ‘Are you Evie’s tenant?’
‘Yes, I am. I love her house. It’s a good place to stay in.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re Tim, aren’t you?’
‘Tim Palmer,’ he said. ‘And you?’
‘I’m Marguerite. I am a friend of Evie’s, we grew up next door to each other.’ She smiled, and Tim saw she had beautiful white teeth. When her mouth was in repose her lips formed a cupid’s bow with two small lines at the corners, and she seemed rosy and self-contained to him.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Do you live nearby?’
She nodded. ‘This is the better half of the island, you know. Not so busy, no hassle, just quiet.’
‘And very beautiful,’ he added.
She smiled again. ‘You seem to enjoy yourself.’
‘I do.’ He thought for a moment and then added, ‘I came here to escape for a moment, and to get some writing done. I succeeded in both.’
‘But you are no writer.’
‘No. I’m a teacher. Why did you ask?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The idea just struck me.’
He looked at her and smiled back at her. He didn’t often smile, but when he did she saw his face light up.
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘I grow fruit and sell it,’ she said. ‘I have a stall at the Friday market in town.’
She looked away from him at the setting sun. It went down slowly and there was a thin line of hazy cloud across its centre.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Tim said. ‘I sometimes go to the coast at home to see the sunset. But it’s much slower than here, and there aren’t that many clear nights.’ He stood looking in silence for some minutes. ‘And I don’t have the time to go too often, either -‘ Marguerite raised her eyebrows and looked at him questioningly. It felt to him as if she knew what he said wasn’t entirely true, and he said, almost stammering, ‘Or I don’t allow myself the time, to be more precise.’
She nodded and gave him a half-smile. ‘Sometimes it pays to forget about the things you were told to find important,’ she said, ‘and to realise other things are so, too.’
Tim looked at her, fascinated by the uncanny way in which she read his mind. Her eyes were quite unlike any he’d seen before, not only in their colour, but also in the way they seemed to enter his perception.
‘You’ve got beautiful eyes,’ he said – and when he realised what he’d said he blushed a deep crimson.
‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile.
The sun had half disappeared beyond the horizon, and it was getting dark. Marguerite got up from the rock.
‘It was nice to meet you,’ she said.
‘It was,’ Tim said. ‘I’d love to talk with you again.’
She nodded. ‘That’s alright. I’ll be here tomorrow night, ok?’
‘Please,’ he said.
Linda thought he looked different, that evening, there seemed to be a bounce in his step. ‘Hello, Tim,’ she said. ‘Everything eyrie?’
He treated her to one of his rare smiles. ‘Everything eyrie,’ he confirmed.
When he sat at his writing that evening, the work on hand got overlaid by the words of a song from an old Buffy Sainte-Marie album he used to play a lot. He tried hard to remember the precise lyrics, and sat scribbling and crossing things out for almost an hour until he got them right. Parts of the song, ‘Eyes of Amber,’ had nestled themselves in his consciousness from the moment he first saw her eyes there on the beach. He looked at the lyrics and softly sang the song to himself:
‘Eyes of blue or eyes of green / eyes of amber / eyes of starlight / have come again / as they have come before
Heart of firelight / heart of the flowers of the jungle / heart of snow / you come again / and you are midnight wind
With hands of moonbeams / and clouds / and call me come to you
And though I never know you / wistful lover / until you’re gone / you’re here to teach me / how to love / a dream of loving love
Breath of jasmine / breast of silk / breast of music / the desert sands that take my tears /
are of your magic too
Eyes of blue or eyes of onyx, / eyes of amber / eyes of starlight / you come again / as you have come before.’
He sang the song once again and put the sheet of text on top of the other papers. Then he poured himself a stiff drink and went out onto the veranda to sit and think. Why on earth should he react this way? For over a decade there had been no woman that could make him even think of her for more than it took to give her the once-over, and here he was thinking of songs, and breasts of silk and music. But her voice was music, and her breasts – he had seen the swell of them under her dress, and he realised he’d love to touch them, to bare them and look at them… There was no one there, but he blushed furiously. Marguerite – it was a wonderful name. Marguerite…
Marguerite had gone home thinking about this foreigner she’d gone to meet to help out her friend’s doubts. She sometimes saw things with an unusual lucidity, but only when the people concerned meant something to her in some way or other. When her brother got killed in the US she knew. She’d already told her mother before the police came round to inform them. She understood why she knew, he’d always been an important factor in her life, and his end had been awful. She didn’t understand why she should know things about this foreigner, though. Because Evie was worried about him? She shook her head and tried to banish him from her mind. She didn’t succeed too well, she realised she was actually looking forward to seeing him again the next evening.
Tim woke up feeling light-headed. He wondered why, and then he remembered his meeting on the beach, and the song, and her promise to meet him again. He whistled while he washed and dressed, and spent
all day writing furiously. There were a couple of poems that seemed to have arrived from nowhere, dying to be written, and then he continued with the piece of prose he’d been composing. It was a great distraction, and it was evening before he knew.
Marguerite had spent the day trying to behave placidly, when it was late afternoon she dressed in a long, dark red skirt and a thin, white, wide blouse, and she put up her hair in a bun. Smiling to herself, she went to the beach, and sat down on the rock, waiting for Tim.
She didn’t have to wait long, she’d only been there for a couple of minutes when she heard him. He was whistling a tune she didn’t know, and he was walking rather fast. She turned her head to look at him and he waved as soon as he saw her. To her own surprise she found herself feeling warm at the sight of him.
‘Hi, Tim,’ she said, ‘what were you whistling?’
‘It’s an old song that reminds me of you,’ he said.
She looked at him questioningly. ‘Can you sing it for me?’ she said.
He blushed, but he nodded and said yes. He had a good singing voice – and she really enjoyed listening to him. It took only a moment for the words to sink in.
It was her turn to blush now. ‘Those words remind you of me?’ she said. ‘That’s a great compliment!’
She looked at his face. He met her eyes, and looked back steadily. Then he smiled. ‘You do have beautiful eyes,’ he said.
Marguerite passed her hands down her temples and cheeks. ‘Thank you very much, Tim,’ she said softly.
He lowered himself unto the sand beside her, and they sat looking at the sunset in companionable silence, each filled with pleasant thoughts they’d rather not communicate – yet.
When the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon Tim got up, a little stiffly, and said, ‘Would you like to come and have dinner with me at Linda’s?’
Marguerite considered his question for a moment.
‘Yes, I would,’ she said. ‘That would be nice.’
They walked over to the restaurant. Marguerite had hooked an arm in his, and they talked about the island, and her house – it was a little like ‘Bougainvillea,’ she said – and his place on the Isle of Wight. At the restaurant Linda greeted them with a hint of a question in her eyes, but they pretended not to notice.
They had a lovely meal, but later neither of them could remember what it had been. Tim had asked Marguerite all about herself, and she told him about her mother, and how she’d only gone to school until she was twelve, as the money was needed for Rudy, and how he’d misused his education and got shot eventually.
Then he asked her if she had a boyfriend, and that really got her talking about the way she’d been misused by Joey, a former lover – when she had got pregnant he had kicked her belly so hard that she had miscarried. She had been glad to be rid of him, and she wasn’t sure if she could have been happy with the child – ‘it was really rough – but perhaps it was all for the best,’ she said – but she did regret having no children, and there were tears in her eyes. Tim went very quiet, he could feel her hurt as if it were his own. He shook his head, and wondered how on earth anyone could do such a thing, and how anyone pretending to love someone could ever mistreat her.
She stopped talking, and they just sat and looked at each other.
‘I knew he was a bad un’,’ she said. ‘But at that time I still thought it was just some foolish fear, it took me just a little longer to realise I really know sometimes.’
They sat and smiled a little shyly after Marguerite’s story. Then they nodded at each other and Tim said, ‘Ay, girl, what a story. I’m so sorry for you. Life is a dubious pleasure, isn’t it?’
‘It’s alright at the moment,’ she said. ‘I really enjoy sitting here with you. And it hurt a lot at the time, but not too much any more.’
‘Would you want any children now, given the chance?’ he said.
Marguerite pulled a face. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’
They talked about less emotional things after that, and she told him a joke over dessert.
When they left the restaurant together, she said, ‘Would you like to come and have dinner with me tomorrow? I can cook a mean fish soup.’
Oceana
- 21.02.2022
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