by James, Ella
I remember how they stood out in her pale, grimy face. Unlike all the other eyes I saw, hers hadn’t leaked with tears. They seemed as depthless as the sea itself, and hot, almost like brownish-yellow fire. I think they stuck with me because I couldn’t pinpoint the emotion in them. Not for years.
A gull caws, bringing me back to the moment. I can hear the swish of waves against the boat, can feel the wet fog on my face.
I did it. I’m back here. I laugh. Genius or crazy?
I don’t have time to decide before someone slaps my back. I turn around and give the captain a smile. For the next hour, I’m Homer Carnegie—household name. I tell myself to buck the fuck up, try to act like the record-breaking Red Sox pitcher they expect. I sign everything from baseballs to a woman’s sports bra, telling jokes and answering a bunch of questions while the chef serves me two omelets I can’t taste.
“Thanks, man. Real good.”
I sign his apron, listen to someone’s account of a record I broke last summer. When I can, I steal away to have a smoke and hide my shaking hands.
I close my eyes and try to feel the warm sun on my face, but all I feel is pressure in my throat and chest, behind my eyes.
“Hey, dawg.” I look up and find one of the crew lighting his own smoke. I think his name is Chris. He’s kind of short and wiry, with brown hair hidden beneath a gray beanie. He’s another one of the American crew members. “Just want to tell you thanks. My kid loves the Sox. He’s gonna be so happy when he sees that ball.”
“Yeah—no problem, man.”
“If you don’t mind my asking…whatcha doing way out here, in the middle of the ocean?”
I smile tightly. “Here with the Carnegie Foundation. We’re laying new phone lines. Maybe internet, too, if we can find a way to make it work.”
He nods once. “Riding back to Cape Town with us?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn, that’s eleven weeks. I’m surprised you can be gone that long. Aren’t things firing up?”
I guess this guy’s an actual fan. I shrug. “I’ll miss some, but it’s a one-time thing.”
He nods. “Yeah. It’s cool you’re doing what you’re doing. It was nice to meet you.” He holds his hand out. I shake it, squeezing harder than I have to so he can’t feel my fingers shaking. “You’re an idol to so many. Don’t forget it.”
I give him a small smile and a nod, and, thankfully, he turns and goes downstairs.
I spend the next half hour packing up and helping haul wooden crates—full of supplies provided by the foundation—to the boat’s ledge. From there, they’ll be lowered in an elevator type of apparatus that’s hooked onto the boat’s side, and eased into a boat from Tristan.
Since the island’s coastline is mostly rocky cliffs, with just one tiny harbor, ships dock out about three hundred yards, and islanders come out in small boats to get visitors like myself.
Morning crawls toward noon. The fog burns off, and I can see the island more clearly. Is that a seal? Fuck, there’s a bunch of seals or sea lions on the cliffs. I reach for my phone, snapping a few shots. I remember those guys.
Finally, I spot the smaller boat—a nickel-sized brown dot moving from the island toward Miss Aquarius. The crew shuffles around me. I step closer to the rail, stopped short by a hard lump in my throat.
Meanwhile, two crewmembers go overboard on rope ladders to attach the smaller boat from Tristan to the side of this one. After that, the crates are slowly lowered.
I fill out some departure forms, toss my pack over my shoulder, and move to the boat’s edge, where my gaze falls down a rope ladder to the waiting boat. It’s pretty small, maybe even smaller than a cabin cruiser—the smallest of all yachts—and looks like it’s powered by a single motor on the back. I’m watching two guys strap down the crates when the captain’s voice startles me.
“Pack off,” he says. “We’ll lower it. Just climb down and you’ll be on your way.”
Then I’m over the boat’s side, clinging to the ladder as I inhale salt and brine and the scent of wet rope. I can feel the dim sun on my shoulders, the boat’s slight rocking underneath my boots. One rung at a time, and I can see the sea shifting between my moving feet. Then I step into the boat and turn to greet my island escorts—two ordinary-looking, middle-aged men in ordinary, working-class clothes. One—in a pair of oil-smudged coveralls—reaches to shake my hand as the other tips his ball cap.
“Homer Carnegie,” the hat-tipper says, as the hand-shaker says, “I’m Rob.”
“Mark,” the one with the cap says. “You got everything?” His face is creased with sun-lines, and his pale brown eyes are kind.
“Once you’re here, you’re here to stay,” Rob chuckles.
I nod. “Good for it.”
Rob nods to the wooden bench behind me. “Have a seat.”
I sit, the motor rumbles, and we’re off.
The sea looks like a sheet of black glass as we zip over it. A fine spray arches up on each side of the boat, dotting my arms and cheeks with cool water. The breeze lifts my hair off my head as we move along the island’s rocky coast.
I look up at the grassy cliffs with eyes that sting. From down here on the surface of the water, I can’t see the valley that covers most of one side of the island; Tristan da Cunha simply looks like grass-covered cliffs that stretch to an unseen plateau.
I’m wondering where the boat will land when its nose points slightly inland, toward the cliffs, and I see…yeah, that’s penguins. A bunch of little dudes on a low-lying, flatter-looking rockface, hopping up and down and doing penguin shit. As we pass by, I swear one looks right at me. A cold sweat flushes my skin, but I shake my head and laugh and rub my hands together.
I’ll feel better by the time I leave this place, if everything goes right. Until then, penguins.
We curve around the island’s edge, and finally I see it—Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the long name of the little village I remember.
From here, it looks like a smattering of brightly colored buildings in the shadow of a mountain. Fuck—it looks like almost nothing.
I wrap a hand around the top of my pack, take a deep breath. I rub my forehead. Christ.
We’re headed toward the jagged shoreline, which has dipped down lower, rising only ten or fifteen above the crashing waves. I tighten my grip on my pack and try to look alive when Mark glances at me.
Soon the motor’s noise softens, the boat slows slightly, its nose tipping up, and I see we’re coming up on the strange dock—two lines of cement jutting outward from the shore like two arms forming an almost-circle. Waves crash into them, shooting toward the sky in a wall of frothy white. As we edge closer, spray slaps my cheeks. I push a hand back through my now-wet hair and smile as my escorts grin back at me.
As we idle into the gap between the arms of the dock, the waves beneath the boat smooth out some, so we’re bobbing lightly. I can hear birds caw above us, smell the thick, salty air. A wave hits the dock behind us, and I see a flash of rainbow just ahead of the boat. I’m looking at it when I notice people standing at the shoreline—blurry figures through my wet eyelashes. They’re clearly here to greet us. To greet me.
Fuck, I’m really here again. And suddenly I feel like I can breathe.
Three
Finley
I see him coming up the hill from Calshot Harbor like Richard the Lionheart, trailed by half the island.
I’m the watcher—Miss Alice’s eyes and ears outside the kitchen. I turn and hurry down the backside of the hill, toward Middle Lane, where the café sits half a mile down, between the Smiths’ house and the Crenshaws’. My arms swing with my long, fast strides as I pass homes with wreaths and flags that weren’t there yesterday.
On our island, Carnegie is a holy name. Has been since his father, Charles Carnegie, wandered off a ship bound for Antarctica in 1988 and failed to step back on before the ship’s departure from Tristan. He was here almost three months before leaving on another ship, not to return for sev
en more years. But his resources came in his stead. Crates of medical supplies, books, food, and other goods started arriving a few months after Charles departed, and in 1991, his famous family’s foundation upped the ante even further with a million-dollar donation for updated farm equipment.
We got a new schoolhouse in 1992; in 1993, a new medical clinic was built. Carnegie Foundation dollars have helped lure three fulltime school teachers to Tristan—and, of course, Doctor. Before Dr. Daniels arrived four years ago, the island had only transient physicians. Prior to those, my grandmother and Mrs. Petunia White cared for sick people, Uncle Ollie for the unwell animals. Before Charles Carnegie and his pocketbook, children here stopped attending school at age sixteen. Now we’re in class until twenty. For those eighteen-year-olds who are eligible, there are scholarships to schools abroad for university.
The last time a Carnegie stepped foot on the island was in 1998, when Charles and his young son visited, ostensibly to look in on their wealthy family’s charitable endeavor.
When Declan began playing baseball for the Red Sox—about the time Doctor arrived here, I believe—the island was star-struck. The few times the Red Sox have played and we could get the signal, a group gathered to cheer him on at the café. When they heard this past September that the foundation was sending a crate of signed baseballs, they were quite beside themselves. Then the shipment was delayed. When word came, around Christmas, that “Homer” would be bringing them himself, no one believed it.
The day Mayor Acton got Declan Carnegie’s travel application, people gathered at the pub and nearly drained the bar dry. When I got his medical records, it was as good as confirmed.
We Tristanians have been busy in the last week. Drew Hollis smoothed the packed dirt of Upper, Middle, and Lower lanes with a tractor; flowers were planted in every last window box; front doors were re-painted; two homes got new roofing; the café was redecorated; the barber shop stayed open an extra hour each day to accommodate the many who wished to get hair cuts; the island’s twelve vehicles—four rusty Land Rovers, five pick-up trucks, and three Broncos—were washed and cleaned. Fresh crawfish were caught, meat pie was made, beef was marinated, and lamb was stuffed—but not yet sliced.
Miss Alice, the café’s chef, didn’t want to cut the lamb until she knew Declan had stepped foot on the island. Couldn’t have it drying out.
I’m panting slightly when I shove through the café’s teal door. My friend Holly looks up from where she’s setting a table, and Dot laughs from a corner where she’s watering a plant.
“You look a mess,” she says.
I sniff and march past them into the kitchen.
“Slice the lamb, Miss Alice! The Carnegie has arrived!”
She smiles from underneath her hair net, blue eyes twinkling in her lined face. “I’ll get to it,” she says gamely. She turns to a counter bearing four platters of lamb, and I watch her slice for a moment, marveling at how quickly she works. I hope I’m that dexterous when I’m ninety.
I walk back into the dining room, which is buzzing with activity. If one half of the village is escorting him here, the other half is waiting for him. Rachel, Maura, and Blair—all clad in Sunday best and lacy aprons—wave their arms, herding the stampede, while Holly stands behind the largest chair at an empty table, fussing with the ribbons tied to the end of her blonde braids. She’s wearing her favorite candy-apple-red dress and red lipstick, and I’d wager she’s got those inserts in her bra. Holly’s flat as a boy, but she’s got something that resembles cleavage peeking from behind her dress’s neckline. She gives me a panicked wave, and I laugh. Holly’s single, and she loves celebrities. At least she thinks she does. No one here would really know.
As I wave back, our friend Dot comes to stand beside her. She’s wearing a white dress that makes her lovely skin look deeper olive. Her dark hair is piled atop her head—perhaps a bit extravagant for the occasion, but she looks none the worse for it.
“Finley!” She gestures up and down her body as her eyes bulge, and I gather she’s not pleased with my wardrobe choice. I step closer to her. “I’m headed to the slopes right after this.” Which makes my blue jeans, boots, and flowing green blouse perfectly appropriate.
“Your hair!”
I run my hand over my ponytail as more familiar faces arrive, almost everyone dressed in Sox gear. Babies wear hand-painted onesies, kids homemade sport jerseys. Old Mr. Button has his face painted—God spare him.
I try to spy the guest of honor as more people cram inside, but it’s bedlam. Villagers crowd ’round the café’s eight tables and then line the walls, their bodies heating up the air and scenting it with ghastly quantities of perfume.
I spy Anna, my dearest friend, on the other side of the room. She’s wearing a navy dress with a pink hydrangea print, and wee Kayti is draped over her shoulder in a pale pink onesie. Anna slides into a spot behind the coat rack to the right of the door, and I start toward her, swimming through the sea of elbows and shoulders.
I smile in greeting as I squeeze past Mrs. Dillon, whom I’ll need to speak to after the gathering is over, to see if she’d like me to show Declan Carnegie to the house. I’m maneuvering through the crowd when Anna shifts Kayti in her arms, turning her around to face me. Kayti blinks her big, blue eyes, and I grin, pausing mid-step to make a silly face at my goddaughter.
I’m sticking my tongue out when it happens—something hard and warm bumps my shoulder. I turn and blink at one Declan Carnegie.
That first glance drives the breath out of my lungs. I know it’s him because his face is unfamiliar; there’s no such thing as a stranger on Tristan. At the same time, I feel as if it can’t be him. If he was quite so stunning, surely I’d have heard.
His hair is chestnut brown: rich and dark, with streaks of burnished gold. Stubble lines his hard jaw, drawing my gaze to his thick lips, then to his nose—strong and straight—and at last to his eyes. It takes me a moment to note their color—sea blue—because the set of them, above those high cheekbones and under strong, thick brows, is so disarming.
He looks like a warrior. Like a king. He’s tall and large, with hulking shoulders, smooth, tanned skin, an air of confidence and ease.
Privilege, I almost murmur.
Then I feel his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry.” He smiles, revealing dimples and a set of sparkling white teeth.
My breath is hung up in my throat. I swallow and croak, “Quite all right.”
It’s work to tear my eyes from his, but somehow I manage. Time trips back to normal speed as I near Anna and wee Kayti. Anna’s arm wraps around my back. Her pink lips smirk. I laugh, too, only half aware of how the volume in the café has grown louder. By the time I have the wherewithal to turn around, facing the table Dot and Holly claimed for Declan, he’s standing beside it with his arm around Sara Hollis. She looks bewitched as she stares up at his statuesque face.
“Shockingly gorgeous,” Anna murmurs.
Her husband, Freddy, nuzzles her hair and pulls a mock frown. “Is that right?”
We all laugh, and I’m supposed to help serve lamb, so I stroke Kayti’s pudgy cheek, smooth her silky black hair, and blow Anna a kiss before turning toward the kitchen.
“Watch your step,” she calls, and I shoot her a wicked look.
The kitchen is hot enough to make me sweat in my jeans and boots. As soon as I step in, Miss Alice smiles at me and holds a plate out.
“Take this to him, Finley. I think you should be the one. His dear father cared so for your mum, you know.”
Hank Smith is standing at my elbow. I look up at him, and he winks.
“Rawr.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not the one, you are.”
“Go on, dear. Before it cools.” Miss Alice waves toward the door.
I take the plate, but as I walk through the doorway, Dot appears.
I thrust the plate toward her. “Take his food, Dot.”
Her hazel eyes widen. “Oooh, is this for him?”
I
nod, and she grins wide enough to hurt.
“Okay.” She sounds breathless. I watch from the wall just outside the kitchen as Dot serves Declan his plate. The way she smiles and preens. The way he smirks and winks. My body warms just watching his big shoulders shift, seeing flashes of his white teeth. When he smiles, he looks like a playboy prince. When he frowns, a pirate.
And you’re ridiculous.
As if he can hear my thoughts, his gaze rises to meet mine. Our gazes lock, and for that moment, nothing’s on his face; his features freeze as if he’s been hexed, and I feel like I’m looking through his eyes into the heart of him.
I can’t breathe, can’t even move my throat to swallow. Dot touches his elbow, and his eyes are ripped away from mine.
My heart hammers. My stomach flips. I don’t want to stand here anymore. I suck in, tucking my elbows to my sides, and try to sidle through the crowd as quickly as I can.
When I reach the café’s door, I push through carefully. Outside, I find the smooth, dirt street cloaked in strange silence. The green Land Rover is parked near the door—for him, I’m sure. Being the least rusty of our vehicles, it’s reserved for foreign dignitaries and other honored guests. God forbid they should have to walk a mile or two.
I walk quickly down Middle Lane, looking at nothing but my own two feet. As I follow Upper Lane toward Gammy’s cottage, my heart feels as if a stone’s become lodged in my belly.
What did you think, Finley? What did you think he would look like? Who did you think he would be?
I wipe my eyes and fetch the bags I stashed beside the kiln at Gammy’s house. When Mrs. Dillon doesn’t find me at the café, she’ll show Declan here. She has the key. It was never necessary for me to show him inside. I just…wanted to. But now I have no interest. Now I’ve seen him.