Hy Brasil Read online

  The cliffs opposite Ferdy’s Landing were barely a hundred feet high, but they formed a dramatic curve where the cries of kittiwakes echoed back and forth. Little waves broke over the rocks, and golden seaweed rose and fell in gentle undulations. There was little sign of activity; even the colony of cormorants on the farthest skerry stood like statues, outlined against a soft blue sea.

  The jagged stacks at the south-west point of Despair formed as inhospitable a seacoast as it was possible to imagine. Ironically, they were barely two hundred yards from the pearl-coloured beach which made Despair, seen from Hy Brasil, look like a tropical paradise. Close to, the beach was not white but grey, grains of black lava mixed with pure shell sand. The Frenchmen, who had given the island its name as a token of their joyful thanks at their deliverance, had been driven, like the luckless Cortes a hundred years earlier, on to a lee shore, but somehow they’d managed to hit the shell strand, and every life had been saved, including that of the ship’s goat. Nor did Hope deceive them; the story was that when they were delivered as prisoners to Richard Morgan the Pirate King, the French capitaine had suggested that he bargain for the lives of his whole company at piquet. So the capitaine and the Pirate King sat down to their cards in the Great Hall of Ravnscar, and played from eleven in the morning until the sun went down. The Frenchman won by the very last turn of the cards, and Morgan honoured his promise, and shipped the whole crew back to Boulogne, where they arrived barely eight months after they first put out.

  Since then the white beach had served as a cod-drying station for Portuguese, Irish, Icelandic and English fishermen successively. Only since the Second World War had the strand reverted to its pristine state, apart from the ubiquitous plastic jetsam. Otherwise, apart from the stone jetty built by the Commissioners of Lights at the end of the strand, it was as Brendan himself had found it, if it were true that the first landing had been, not at Ogg’s Cove, as most people claimed, but on Despair.

  Jared walked along the high-tide mark. He picked up scraps of wood as he went, and as soon as he had a bundle he dropped it at the top of the beach. He found a metal trawler float with a rope still attached, and chucked that up beyond the tide’s reach too. There was nothing else today except seaweed and plastic bottles. He rounded the spit and Lyonsness came into sight across the sound. He was just turning for home when something white gleamed and caught his eye. He picked it up.

  A sealed plastic packet. He felt the contents, and they gave under his fingers like sand. He knew at once what he was going to find, even before he opened his knife and slit the corner. He shook a little of the white powder into his palm. He’d seen it before. In London. In Rejkjavik. In Nuuk. In Aberdeen. And long before then, too. It wasn’t his thing. He’d decided that years ago. He’d always needed his health and his wits about him for the things he wanted to do, but he’d never interfered with anyone else doing what they felt like. His attitude was that they hurt no one but themselves, and that was their own decision. Only lately that had been in another country. This was home. His hand shook a little, and he realised that he was shocked. That surprised him.

  Jettisoned? He was thinking fast. He’d noticed various signs of activity since he came to live on Despair, but he’d done his best to ignore them. He hadn’t wanted to know. There had always been unexplained money in Hy Brasil. In the twenties, during prohibition, the economy had boomed; Nantucket had been the main smuggling port, 2843 miles away. Before that, sugar, rum and tea from South America and the Caribbean had made their way into England from here without benefit of excisemen. These islands had lain at the centre of the triangular trade, and human beings had been bought and sold in the market place at St Brandons while governments preached abolition. Ironically, under the lawless reign of the Pirate Kings, the Africans who escaped into the hinterland of Hy Brasil did well. A country beyond the reach of law or constitution was for them, during the terrible years of the trade, an earthly equivalent to the Promised Land. For centuries the Privateers had also made their haven here, paid by one government to rob another, often bribed by several nations at once, literally holding the fortunes of Europe in their hands, but never officially. Nothing was written down; they were never acknowledged by any of the rich and powerful whom they held in place. So nothing changes, thought Jared, only what the gold is made of. Only the substance of the dream. He understood; he had dreams enough of his own.

  What he was doing now was one: all his life he had intended to live on an uninhabited island. Ambition takes a myriad forms. He had an impressive CV. He could be diving for whatever survey company he chose, and be making his fortune. He could be teaching in the Marine Studies department of the University of the Hesperides, and have his own carpeted office on the third floor of the Cabot Building, with a fine view east over the harbour. Or he could be employed in any major maritime city in the western world. But he didn’t like being indoors, was terrified of institutions, and had always got on best with informal employers, such as Francis Morgan who hired him to mow the lawn as soon as he turned fourteen, Ishmael Pereira, who had taken him on as part-time crew a year later, or Cally Simpson at Ogg’s Cove, who used to pay him 3d per jar for collecting lugworms.

  His island had always existed inside his head. He remembered waking from it when he was very small, and although it vanished as it always did, there were drifting shreds left behind that melted at his touch. One of those fleeing images contained the lighthouse, and another the cleft between the rocks where the boat crept in when the weather was calm enough. He had a picture in his mind of a surge of white water between black rocks, and the seaweed lifting and falling like a hairy submerged beast. Parts of the island must have been woven out of stories, but he had no recollection of anyone telling them. Other parts must have grown out of the shore at Ogg’s Cove where he grew up, although that was so familiar that he only noticed what it was like when he went away, and understood for the first time what was familiar to him because it was no longer there.

  He’d fallen for Despair on his first visit, twenty years before he came to live there. He’d been six years old; his father had taken him across the sound on a blue day of sun and breezes. They’d moored at the lighthouse jetty, walked up the steep green slope to the light, and had tea with Per Pedersen. He remembered best climbing up and up the red-painted spiral staircase inside the lighthouse, but he no longer had any recollection of reaching the top. They must have done so; Per must have shown him the light, but that part of the day was gone for ever.

  There were forty-nine islands and skerries in Hy Brasil, of which seven had been inhabited. Jared used to argue with his friends about what constituted an island; his definition was that it must contain soil. If there were soil, it counted, even if it were less than a cupful. Thrift required less than that, and sea campion, and sea holly. Soil, he insisted, in pubs when everyone was discussing it, with soil there can be land-based life, and that makes an island. If you counted all the bare skerries that were never covered by the tide, there would be too many islands to count. But sometimes at night, when he was falling asleep, he did try to count. He always began at Ogg’s Cove, sometimes turning north, sometimes south. North, he never stayed awake beyond Lyonsness, and south, he had seldom reached Dorrado. Insomnia had never been his problem.

  Later he used to visit Despair as often as he could get hold of a boat. That was when the lighthouse was still manned. When Per and Romeo were on their shift he would be invited to stay, illicitly, for the night, and he’d be shown the light, still lit by paraffin then, with circles and circles of glass around it, magnifying the one small flame into a great ring of light that flashed out into the empty Atlantic night. Two short, two long, a pause, and then again. He used to lie in his sleeping bag on the kitchen floor while the light swept over him, and he would fall asleep to its rhythm. When Perce and Dan were on their shift he never got to stay at the lighthouse for more than a cup of tea; also, those two used to ask him awkward questions about why he wasn’t at school.

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nbsp; The University of the Hesperides offered among its freshman courses Marine Biology, Atlantic Studies and Literature in English. Jared studied all of them desultorily for a few months, and then left Hy Brasil to seek a better fortune. He returned with a fund of stories which would have assured him a welcome in every pub on the island. Jared avoided all of them. He began to haunt the library archives instead, reading all he could find on the Pirate Kings, whose reign began at the end of the Portuguese supremacy in 1589 and ended with the capture of St Brandons by the British in 1812. He bought Ishmael’s old Boston whaler, and began a survey of the shore between Ogg’s Cove and Lyonsness. On every clear day Despair loomed over him across the sound, but it wasn’t until the summer was more than half over that he paid attention to what the island was telling him.

  As soon as he shifted his search to the shores of Despair he began to dream about the island every night, and woke each morning with a sense of loss so poignant that it hurt him like something real sticking into him just under his ribs. One hot night he was lying in his rented room above Caliban’s Fast Food Diner in Water Street, naked except for a rucked up sheet that kept wrinkling itself sweatily around him, and he fell into a doze without precisely forgetting where he was. The light began to sweep over him rhythmically. Two slow, two long, and a pause. He accepted it drowsily, his eyes half closed, and then remembered that this was not where he thought he was, and he sat up suddenly. But it’s all automated, he thought irrationally; no one lives on Despair now. Per had retired to Lyonsness, to a bungalow with a huge picture window looking over to the island. Romeo was dead. Perce was living with his married daughter just outside Dorrado, and Dan had gone back to sea and never been heard of since. The lighthouse had been empty for ten years.

  Jared fell asleep again, and dreamed that the lighthouse was not real any more, but only a place he had read about in a book. He was sitting in a medieval library, somewhere in England, reading the title page, only the writing kept sliding away and he couldn’t make out the words. Thousands of other readers were breathing quietly in the dark around him. He could not break the silence to ask. The book was heavy in his hands, and he knew that it was great and important. It held an authority that he dared not defy or question, certainly not in that dim library, but the conviction was growing in him, and he knew that there was something he must say.

  He cleared his throat, and the echo whispered up and down the rows of tables, and every one of the readers heard it, and sighed impatiently. Jared put the book down with trembling hands, and spoke. ‘I know it’s good. I know it’s important. But I have to speak.’

  He felt their hostility breaking in on him like waves.

  ‘It’s wrong, though, about the island. The island wasn’t like that at all.’

  He woke in a sweat of terror, and the sheet was tight around his throat. The lights of Water Street illuminated the grubby window, and the lace curtains shone like frost. Jared got up and looked out.

  Over the street lights the moon was up. The harbour shone like a sheet of Spanish gold. The fishing boats cast midnight shadows, and a small cat ambled along the pier past the fretted lobster pots. All that was left of the first dream was the image of a light flashing slowly, out into the Atlantic, telling every ship that passed that there was an island here, whether they knew it or not. Two short flashes – ‘There … is’ – and two long – ‘an isl … and here’. ‘There is … an island here.’

  Two days later he and Ishmael found the barrel of a bronze cannon lying in a hollow of white sand.

  So he knew something about dreams. He looked at the white powder in his hand, and for a fleeting moment considered what it might have to offer. The notion passed; he realised with extreme and final clarity that he did not want it. The only question that remained, what to do? For the law he felt all the repugnance natural to a young man who had once been the worst case of truanting Lyonsness Junior High had ever had to report. At present he had a personal grudge against the government, as well as the more general antipathy he usually felt towards it. Moreover, he had a filial duty of revenge towards the President, the implications of which he had avoided all his life. He knew exactly what it was like to risk his life in a small boat in order to defy authority of any kind. On the other hand, this was his island; he presided over one of the most unpolluted beaches left in the whole world. This thing intruded; it was a personal insult. He didn’t want it here.

  Ishmael. As soon as he thought of his partner his course of action was immediately quite clear. If he took the boat over tomorrow after he’d checked the gannets, maybe stayed the night at Ferdy’s Landing, he could consult Ishmael, get rid of the packet, do his shopping, and come home. Jared poured the powder carefully back into its plastic envelope. He felt relieved. Ishmael would know what to do.

  THREE

  Sidony Redruth. Hesperides Room, St Brandons’ Public Library.

  POSTCARDS

  Art – 9/5/97

  Today the fog cleared when I was standing on the tower of St Brendan’s Cathedral, and for the first time I saw where I was. The thing I don’t get when I read a map is the contour lines. I mean I read them in my head but I don’t see the height until it’s real. The islands rise straight out of the sea like dragon’s teeth, and the mountains are isosceles triangles still capped with snow, just like we used to draw them. People are kind and talk to me. It’s OK. Sid.

  Dear Mum and Dad, 9/5/97

  Today the fog cleared while I was in the Cathedral. Nice Romanesque architecture – most of it was built in the C15 by the Portuguese. It has a lantern tower over the transept a bit like Ely only smaller. Amazing mosaics – Jonah and the whale by the font and the calming of the storm in the chancel. Unusual. St Ailbe’s chapel has a curragh hanging over the altar. I like that. Love, Sidony.

  Dear Lance, 9/5/97

  The answer’s no. Finally and definitely no. As soon as the plane took off I just felt like I was alive again. I’m sorry, but I’d rather be lonely than stuck. It’s not your fault. This place is magic, like walking into a book. I want to see what happens next. Love (really) from Sidony.

  Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title). May 9th

  The archipelago of Hy Brasil first appears on a map in 1380, made by the brothers Zeno. Experts doubt whether they actually landed, in spite of the detailed and dramatic description of the islands and their inhabitants (see below). It seems these guys were a couple of chancers and no one was too sure what to make of their admittedly fishy story. Whether they got there or not, the Zenos were by no means the first discoverers. Scholars are still arguing about whether Hy Brasil is in fact Hvitmannaland (see Eyrbyggia saga). The archeological dig at Ogg’s Cove seems to have produced incontrovertible evidence that the Vikings did get here (write up), but no one’s published a report yet, even though they started digging back in 1972. Apparently archeological conclusions take that long and sometimes they don’t happen at all.

  I read over what I’ve written, and see that it’s inadequate in every way. Firstly, the style is wrong. Be informal, the guidelines say. Does informal mean debased American gangster-style jargon? Probably not. I put a wavy line under the beginning of sentence three, signifying that the sense must stay but I need to find different words. Secondly, the structure is wrong, back to front in fact. I circle the bit about the Zenos and make an arrow putting it in after the Vikings, who came first. That makes a hopeless beginning. No one will have heard of Hvitmannaland, most people won’t even try to pronounce it. Thirdly, the content is wrong. The guidelines say be informal but substantial. The readers want facts, but facts made as digestible as possible. They need to trust you to be reliable and accurate. Don’t become involved in issues they’ve never heard of without explaining the context first. Fourthly, don’t get controversial. Don’t knock the government, the tourist office, the industrialists, the educationists, the entrepreneurs, the nationalists, the whalers or even the archeologists. Make a spicy stew without touching the salt and pepper. Start again
.

  I put down my pen, lean back in my chair, and look around the library.

  I tried to resist starting here. Libraries these days induce in me an uneasy feeling of transgression, which is a shame, because all my life, until this happened, they have been places which made me happy. I like this one. The air smells erudite, and the oak chairs with green imitation leather seats are capacious enough to make me feel small and still full of wonder. The public library is downstairs. It is large and airy, full of varnished pine and municipal rubber plants.

  Here in the Hesperides Room there is a long oak table with carving in Gothic letters round the edges, which I’ve not been able to decipher. I can’t look at it all the way round because there are three people sitting at the table. A man in a brown mackintosh has a handwritten register open in front of him and is making cryptic notes in a red, spiral-bound notebook. I thought he was quite old until he looked up just now; I’d put him about mid-thirties. He has been looking at the same page for over an hour. Two girls in uniform – green gym tunics, green cardigans, green-and-black ties and white shirts – have maps and books spread out in front of them and are making notes sporadically in green jotters on which are printed crests identical to the ones on the green blazers that hang on the back of their chairs. Each time I pass behind them to get to the computer I glean another titbit of information. I have read the crest, Ad Occidentem Navigemus, and the name on the jotters, ‘St Brandons’ Academy’. I have looked at the open books. One has a reproduction of Gerard Mercator’s map of the world (1587), the same one that I studied in Penzance library when I began my literary voyaging just over a year ago. The other book has rather dull drawings of what seem to be fortifications, of the British fort at Port o’ Frisland, I think. I can just make out the date:1812. And the spread map is one of the series I’ve bought myself, the 1:63,360 five-map series of the whole Hy Brasil archipelago. The one the girls are consulting is Map 4, St Brandons.