One Night on the Island(40)

I take a warming slug of coffee and let my eyes rove across the beach, and that’s when I notice something different about the swathe of damp sand. I squint and then huff quietly under my breath, trying to decide if I’m impressed by the five large capital letters etched deeply in the sand. SORRY. I look away, wrapping my blanket closer around my shoulders.





Mack





18 October


Salvation Island


I DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING


I feel as if Salvation Island has permeated my bones. I’d heard so much about this place as a kid that I thought I had a good idea of how it was going to look, but all of the photos and folk tales in the world hadn’t prepared me for the reality of actually being here. The land undulates beneath the soles of my boots, rolling green hills sliced through by low, stark, hand-built walls, earthy peat bogs and the occasional frill of salt-crystal sand. It’s an unforgiving place but wildly beautiful too, somewhere that feels entirely separate from the rest of the world. It must be something else to see it bathed in summer light. My head is full of its scents, of salt and damp earth and purity. Cleo said the air tastes of diamonds; it’s an accurate description. Exclusive and rare. I’ve never been anywhere that made my fingers itch for the shutter of my camera quite so much as here, the remarkable lights and moods as weather fronts roll in. It would make a perfect movie backdrop for a tense whodunnit or a bluesy gothic. Things at Otter Lodge are a little tense and bluesy too. It was a massive mistake to let things get so out of hand Wednesday night; it’s Sunday now and the atmosphere between us is wearing on me. I behaved like a dick, but the things Cleo said afterwards about me not getting the memo that my marriage has ended felt like a knife tip pressed against a taut balloon. I’m furious that she felt she had the right to pass judgement on my personal life. She doesn’t know me well enough, or Susie at all, or what we have together back in Boston. What we had together. I don’t need anyone else to tell me that it’s time to let go. I might be in the waiting room of my life, but I decide when it’s time to walk out of that door. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t give up on family. Ever.

Welcoming lights from village windows loom in the distance. It’s only just past noon, but it’s one of those dark-grey days that never seem to get properly light, a ‘close the doors and build up the fire’ kind of day. Not that I could do that at Otter Lodge; Cleo and I have taken to prowling around each other like wary animals since the other night. It’s a relief to be out of there.

I lost track of time filling my eyes and my camera with countless shots around the village, my imagination caught by foundation stones with dates running back hundreds of years, by the sureness that my ancestors walked these same streets, touched these same stones. But now I’m suddenly aware that it’s two in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten, and the illuminated windows of the Salvation Arms beckon to me like a sea siren to a sailor. I don’t try to resist. The warm welcome of strangers beats a frosty reception from Cleo. Sometimes a man needs a drink.

I nudge the pub’s heavy old black door open and find it packed, as if most of the island’s residents have taken refuge from the weather here too. I’ve already been in once or twice for a beer on quiet weekday afternoons, lucky enough both times to take a stool at the bar and bend the ear of Rafferty, the owner – Raff, as everyone calls him – about the island’s history. He’s a man of indeterminate age; the lines on his features suggest seventies, but he’s quick to laugh and has a jaunty glint in his eye that lends him an air of youth.

‘Mack, my man! Come on in and take a load off, why don’t you?’ Raff stands up from a table in the corner by the fire and gestures his hand towards me. ‘Over here. Budge up, people, we’ve a guest.’

‘Leave your stuff by the door, Mack, you’ll have someone’s eye out if you don’t.’

I follow the voice and find its source: Ailsa with her wife, Julia, working their way through heaped roast beef dinners. Ailsa raises her glass at me as I unzip my admittedly massive jacket. She’s right; there isn’t room to navigate the pub in it without sending pints flying. I leave everything but my camera by the door and thread my way across to Raff.

‘Hungry?’ Raff says, his hand on my shoulder as I sit down. Out of nowhere it touches me, a more fatherly gesture than I can ever recall from my own dad.

‘You read my mind,’ I say.

‘It’s beef or beef,’ Raff says. ‘Or there’s beef if you prefer.’

A bubble of laughter slides up my windpipe. ‘Beef sounds good.’

Raff catches the eye of the girl behind the bar. ‘Bring Mack a plate of food over, Tara, will you?’

I appreciate the simplicity of not having a choice, the way he’s drawn me in and made a place for me among the locals. He makes it look effortless but beneath his natural bonhomie I sense a person who’s spent his life putting others at ease. It’s not a skill you can learn.

A pint of Guinness and a plate of good roast beef arrives in short order, and I find myself relaxing into the ebb and flow of chatter as people speak across tables to each other and Raff introduces me to people I haven’t yet met on my travels around the island.

‘So you’re a photographer, then?’ Julia says, eyeing my camera. ‘I take a few pictures myself. You’ll have to call in.’