Although it explained a hell of a lot.
Then there was the suicide attempt.
Growing up, Isla had recognised that Kate had a problem with leaving the island, but she’d had no idea how it had manifested into a phobia. She was clearly suffering from agoraphobia and a lack of perspective after not leaving the island for all those years.
Her grandmother’s story was one of incredible highs and terrible lows. Ambition, world travel, living on a tropical island, glamour, passion, and love, too. On the other side of things were the ruthless secrets, the manipulative lies, the destructive personality traits, the adultery, the guilt, remorse, and loneliness, even though she had Grace and other people on the island who either loved or respected her.
Kate had clearly missed her family in England enormously, more than she realised or anyone knew. Communications were difficult of course, before mobile phones and Wi-Fi and satellite links, but there was pen and paper and a postal system, no matter how long it took for letters to be delivered.
It seemed to Isla that Kate’s way of dealing with sadness was to push thoughts of those she loved out of her mind and to cut all ties, so she could ignore the pain of separation and lessen the chance of being reminded of her loss. Is that what she did with me? Isla thought, stifling a sob.
She’d thought Kate incredibly cruel and heartless when she’d bundled her away on a boat and sent her away from the island, telling her that it was for her own protection, and warning that if Leo ever told the authorities that she’d been on the boat with him that night, then she too would be arrested and thrown into prison. She’d never heard from Kate again. She’d never even sent her a birthday or a Christmas card.
Yet now she knew that Kate was just being Kate.
Except, of course, when it came to Ernest.
Why hadn’t she ever let him go?
Why the nightly vigil on the porch at sundown in his memory? Was he really dead when rumour has it that his body was never found?
Chapter Twenty Two
Kate’s Journal – June to September 1985
With Ernest home, life is good again, and after my initial anxiety over whether Jack would tell Ernest about our frisson, I’m starting to relax at last. I haven’t detected any noticeable fall out or change of mood in Ernest after he has spent time out on the boat alone with Jack. On the contrary, he seemed happy and carefree and incredibly busy, because now he is building a golf swing practice area and a small putting green at the far end of the garden.
When he isn’t working on his new projects, Ernest can be found doing home repairs for ‘the village people’ as he liked to call our tenants and neighbours. Or, of course, he is out fishing.
My days are busy and full too. I spend time in the library reading or writing at my word processor, and I rush home from the beach or from arranging flowers in the church to shower and dress and look forward to six pm, when I join my husband on our porch for pre-dinner cocktails. We enjoy music and the finest wines with our meals and we always finish with a vintage tipple; Ernest’s favourite is a 1928 Croizet Bonaparte Champagne Cognac.
Tonight, Ernest has informed me that he’s invited Jack over to dinner. I’m horrified. I spent the early part of the evening in a cold panic, until it got so late that we realised Jack wasn’t actually going to turn up. Grace was annoyed, having delayed dinner. Ernest was hungry. I was relieved.
It has started to get awkward because Jack, despite his numerous invites to dinner or to play poker with Ernest, continues not to show. Fearing my husband might become suspicious by default, I realise I have to go and see Jack, and speak to him about this situation.
Ernest was up and out early to practice his golf swing this morning, so I cycled over to the dockyard to see if I could find Jack. He was on his boat and I saw that he stopped what he was doing to watch me walking toward him. He wiped his hands on an oily rag as I crossed the gangplank.
‘You want something, Kate?’ he asked me tersely.
‘You didn’t come to dinner last night.’
‘I was busy.’
‘Well, it looks suspicious, that’s all. That’s at least six times now he’s asked you over.’
‘Five,’ Jack retorted. ‘He’s asked me five times and five times I’ve been busy. Now if you asked me over, sweetheart, it might be different. I might make the time.’ He threw me a lecherous smile.
I realised I’d made a big mistake going there to try to reason with him. ‘Fine. Stay away. In fact, don’t ever come to my house again.’
I stormed back over the gangplank and cycled away. I have to ask myself how I’d ever thought that man attractive. By the time I’d got home, I’d developed a migraine headache and so I went to bed. When I woke after my nap, I saw it was almost six pm and there was a note on the bedside table from Ernest.
Gone night fishing – don’t wait up.
I didn’t. My head still ached, so I was glad of the reprieve. I took another two painkillers and switched off the light.
I woke early as the sun was rising and creeping across the room from a crack in the curtains. I reached out to Ernest but he wasn’t there. Then I remembered he’d gone night fishing and, obviously, he hadn’t come home yet.
I showered and dressed and went down to the kitchen. I remarked to Grace how Mr Ernest had been out all night and she too seemed surprised that he hadn’t come home at dawn, demanding his bacon and eggs and Grace’s honey plantains.
So I had my breakfast alone on the porch, gazing out to sea. It was a beautiful morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the blue sky. Today was going to be a hot one, I said to myself, and then there was a commotion and I heard Grace telling someone that I was out on the porch. I stood up to see Jack standing in front of me. I looked at him and for the first time ever I could see the whites of his eyes.
‘It’s Ernest,’ he said. ‘I can’t find him. I looked for him but he was nowhere. I’ve just alerted the coastguard.’
Ernest was gone?
‘Jack, tell me what happened?’ I begged.
‘We were on the boat. A few miles out. We’d put out our lines and we’d cracked a couple of beers. It was dark, it was late, but it was a calm night – hardly a wave or a breath of wind. We chatted for a while, just the usual banter between us, then I must have dozed off and when I woke up he was… gone.’
I must have collapsed at this point. I’m told that I fell forward and hit my head on the porch railing. When I came to a while later, Grace had called Nurse Rose and Jack had left.
Grace told me he’d been taken in for questioning by the coastguard.
The search has gone on for days. Help has come from the coastguard and fishing boats from Belize and the Honduras mainland and from the Cayman Islands. The sea currents from that night have been investigated and maps consulted and the search area today has been widened.
But still there is no sign of Ernest.
I’m too terrified of going out to sea on a boat myself, so I wait for news at the harbour.
Mr Garcia, the Chief of Coastguards, came up to the house today to tell me personally that they’d released Jack. I wanted to know why, when he was the last person to see my husband alive.
‘From our investigations and interviews with Jack Fernandez, we can only conclude that this terrible occurrence seems to have been an accident, Mrs Rocha.’ Mr Garcia told me.
‘But how can you be so sure?’ I demanded to know.
‘Lack of motive and lack of evidence to the contrary.’ Is the reason, I’m told.
My head is spinning, my heart is breaking and my soul is silently screaming at me to tell this Mr Garcia that this couldn’t have been an accident. That Jack Fernandez had a motive for killing my husband. But I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the whole world what I’d done.
‘Unless you know something we don’t, Mrs Rocha. Or, if we find a body to autopsy, then I don’t believe we have anything more to go on. Your husband will be considered missing presumed dead.’
Every night, I wait on the porch, watching the sun go down on another day without Ernest.
I pray and I cry and I’m willing him to come back to me. But he never comes.
I have sunk into a deep depression. I know this is my punishment for being an unfaithful wife and I truly wished that I’d drowned on that fateful day instead of starting up an affair with Jack Fernandez. Today the search was officially called off, and Ernest has been declared missing presumed dead. Jack came to see me. I screamed and cursed at him. I slapped his face. I accused him of murdering my Ernest.
‘You were jealous of him. You killed him and threw him overboard, didn’t you?’
His presence mocked me. The fact that he could be so bold to stand there and speak to me so calmly after killing my husband insulted me to the core of my very being.
‘If you really think I killed him, then why don’t you bring in the police?’ he taunted.
‘Get out of my house. I never want to see you again!’ I screamed at him.
He’d known damned well that I wouldn’t go to the police, for fear and the shame of our private affair becoming public knowledge. I pray that Jack would leave the island but he is still here. So instead I have built an unseen wall between us. Jack keeps to his side of the island and to the village harbour and to the Mango Cay peninsula where he has a house. I continue to attend church on a Sunday, knowing he isn’t religious and so would never attend the church. Otherwise, I keep to the confines of my house and garden and our private beach while I mourn my husband.
Chapter Twenty Three
Kate’s Journal -1988
Pearl Island
Life on the island has become a safe routine for me. I am thankful for Grace’s company and for all my activities and hobbies, the garden, the church, and particularly the friendship that has grown between John and myself. He feeds my soul with his readings, his songs, his spiritual guidance, and I feel a great comfort from connecting with another person in a wholly platonic way.
John has become the father I’d lost, the brother I’ve always wanted, the best friend I’ve never even imagined I’d have. I attend all his meditation sessions and he has also taught me hatha yoga and tantric thinking – prayerful mindfulness to overcome anxiety and stress.
My life has been improved by all of these things.
Today I heard through island gossip that Jack Fernandez had taken in a baby found abandoned on the beach in front of his house. I was quite horrified to hear that a child could be abandoned in this cruel way, especially when Grace had told me that no other islander would have touched a sea-gypsy child, because it meant bad luck.
‘The last time a child was left on the peninsula beach by the sea-gypsies, a terrible storm hit the island,’ Grace said, making it clear that she too believes in such suspicious nonsense.
‘My God, do you mean that this kind of thing has happened before?’ I remarked, feeling revulsion at the poor child’s plight.
‘Yes, if it’s sick or unwanted, they’ll abandon a child in the hope that someone else will take care of it.’
I thought about what Grace had just said and realised that I too was no better than the sea-gypsy mother, because I had also abandoned my child believing she would be better off without me.
Yet another sin I had to confess to Minister John in order to be forgiven.
Just a few weeks after hearing about Jack taking in the gypsy-boy, a terrible storm hit Pearl Island. As soon as the warning came over the radios from the national hurricane centre that a weather depression was heading our way and had been re-categorised to a tropical storm, everyone began to prepare for the worst.
Window shutters were nailed shut. People living close to the water were helped to move further inland. Generators were prepped and fuel was stored. Radios and lanterns and torches were charged. Drinking water and food was stocked. Boats were taken into dry dock and those too large for dry dock were taken around to the other side of the island for shelter in the lagoon.
Everyone watched and waited in trepidation as the storm was again upgraded to a category one hurricane with the potential to become a category three as it tracked towards us across the Caribbean Sea. I must admit that I was rather thrilled at the possibility of experiencing a hurricane first hand. I was excited to see the glory of God’s creation in full force and to be able to write about it in my journal. Of course, I might have felt entirely differently about it if I hadn’t had such a sturdy house to protect me, or a roof over my head that had always been well maintained.
As the winds picked up and the rain came down, I invited Minister John over to sit and storm watch with Grace and myself on the porch. We mixed rum cocktails – hurricanes, naturally – and we marvelled at the frightful cracks and loud rumbles of thunder overhead and the spectacular lightning strikes out at sea. However, after several hours of this squall, I was getting rather bored, and I did wonder when the real action might start and the full force of the hurricane might hit.
‘When will we know it’s here?’ I asked Grace, knowing she was a born and bred islander.
‘Oh, you’ll know it when it’s here, Miss Kate,’ she laughed. ‘Because you’ll be running inside, terrified for your life and locking all the doors, not sitting here happily chatting and sipping drinks!’
As it was, the hurricane moved north, and it missed Pearl Island completely.
I went to bed still listening to the rain and feeling a tad disappointed.
In the morning, however, it was reported that after passing us by, the storm had intensified and gone on to eventually be a category five hurricane named Gilbert. It became one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Many people had died, ships had sunk and thousands were made homeless. On hearing this frightening news, I was so very thankful that Gilbert hadn’t hit Pearl Island.
Not that this had anything to do with the sea-gypsy baby abandoned on the beach, of course, as I took pains to point out to Grace. This was still hurricane season, after all.
We have worked hard to repair the storm damaged garden. I keep busy. I write in my journal, although each day often resembles the last, and as time goes by I am aware that Ernest’s handsome face is beginning to fade from my memory and that I’m starting to forget the sound of his beautiful voice. It disturbs me that I don’t have many photographs of us together. So, I have decided to remember him by wearing the gowns that he brought for me and the jewellery he has given me, and by having a sundowner on the porch at six pm each evening. That way, at least, as I watch the sun go down on each day, I can think of him and raise my glass to him, wherever he is, and say goodnight.
Kate’s Journal -1990
Pearl Island
A letter from the UK arrived today on the supply boat from Grand Cayman. I see from the postmark that it has taken two weeks to get to me. I’m filled with feelings of dread. I’d had a letter the year before from Maggie, informing me that my mother had died. It too had taken two weeks to get here.
I had been devastated to hear of her passing. I’d mourned and meditated for a long time over her death. The last time I’d laid eyes on my mother was with a cursory glance over my shoulder, as I’d left to go to London. She had been so mad at me and disappointed. Not wanting me to go and yet I went anyway. I had been so angry that day and ungrateful to her and now I regretted that our cross words were never laid to rest.
My memories are so painful. It felt like a lifetime ago that I hadn’t given a care.
Now that I did care it was far too late.
John had kindly offered to preside over a small memorial for my mother in our church, which was attended by just myself and Grace. We said prayers and lit candles and we sang English hymns; ‘Praise My Soul the King of Heaven’ and ‘Abide With Me’.
It had been a great relief to me at the time to have missed her funeral by happen-stance rather than my steadfast refusal to travel, as h
ad been the case the year before when Maggie had got married.
To try to avoid that particular situation, I simply hadn’t responded to the invitation to her wedding, hoping she might assume it had never reached me. I then spent her wedding day in tantric meditation on the beach so that I didn’t have to think about what was happening all those thousands of miles away without me.
As I hadn’t had any contact from Maggie since then, I was afraid to open this letter. I decided to wait until sundown to read it when I would have a stiff drink to hand, just in case it was bad news.
To my relief, my fears were unfounded. It was the best news I had ever heard.
My dear Katherine, I know we haven’t seen each other in a very long time but I often think of you. Dad sends his love but he is in a care home now and his health and his memory is not what it used to be. I’m not sure if you know, but I married last year, and my husband Jim and I are delighted to inform you of the birth of our daughter. One day we all hope to see you again, but in the meantime, would you agree to being her godmother and also being the one to give her a name? That way, we will have renewed our family ties, dear sister, and we can both think of her and of each other each time we say her name. I hope this letter finds you soon, and that you are happy and well.
Love from,
Maggie and Jim Ashton
I have a granddaughter. Maggie doesn’t realise this, of course, believing that the baby is my niece. Enclosed in the envelope is a photograph of a tiny new born, wrapped tightly in a blanket. I am filled with a great wave of emotions, ranging from heavy-hearted sorrow and sadness to blissful happiness and elation, but as for a name for my granddaughter – one comes to my mind immediately. I will name the girl Isla, a name that means island.
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