Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  Olly had read his fax, typed and sent an answer, and now he picked up the phone, dialled a number, and began a one-sided discussion which, as far as I could make out, was about whether someone or other should be allowed to have money for some sort of salvage operation. Olly seemed to be arguing vehemently against the idea. I assumed he’d forgotten all about me, and I began to sidle towards the door. Suddenly he turned round and began gesticulating wildly, talking down the phone at the same time. I signalled back total non-comprehension, and made my escape to the other office.

  Peterkin had his feet up on the table and was studying the cricket scores in the Times. He jumped up when the door opened, but when he saw it was only me he relaxed again.

  ‘I think Olly’s forgotten me,’ I said. ‘I need to go now, anyway. But thanks – it’s a pity there’re no tourists really. You’d deal with them very well.’

  ‘Natural charm,’ said Peterkin. ‘Have a coffee. I’m due for a break.’

  I hesitated. ‘Can we sit outside?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We settled ourselves on a grassy bank littered with cigarette ends, which looked out over Ferdy’s Landing and Despair. I could see a boat just crossing the entrance to the sound, and I said to Peterkin, ‘Isn’t that one of the new twenty-eight-foot medium rescue boats from Ogg’s Cove coastguard station?’

  The amazed respect in his eyes was balm to my soul. ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing from me to the boat and back again. ‘They go up the west side of Despair, and sometimes all the way round the island, depending on the tide. It hardly seems necessary. Nothing ever happens round here. But it’s a job. I wish I could get into the coastguards, but I’d never pass the medical.’ I was too polite to ask why not, and he didn’t say.

  We looked across the water in silence for a bit. Then I asked, ‘So no one lives on Despair now? It seems a pity.’

  ‘No one till last year,’ said Peterkin. ‘Right now there’s a guy out there monitoring gannets. We’ve got a brand new gannet colony in Hy Brasil. Did you know that?’

  ‘Oh yes, come to think about it I did know about him. He’s the one who found a packet of heroin on the beach about a fortnight ago? I read about it in the paper. I’d like to get to Despair. Do you think there’s anyone who’d take me over there?’

  ‘Cocaine, not heroin. Per Pedersen at Lyonsness goes over. Jed – the gannet guy – he’d take you, but it’s hard to get hold of him.’

  ‘I think Lucy knows him.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’d heard you were staying up at Ravnscar. Now there’s a place! Found any hidden treasure yet?’

  ‘Is there any?’

  ‘Of course. Ravnscar is heaving with treasure, everyone knows that. It’s built over the chapel that St Brendan used when he came here. That’s why it’s an unlucky house. It was built on holy ground.’

  ‘I should have thought that made it lucky.’

  ‘Sacrilege,’ said Peterkin with relish. ‘At least, it was all right for the Portuguese, because they built a chapel there—’

  ‘The chapel’s still there.’

  ‘—they built a chapel, and they kept the lamp burning and a… what do you call it? I don’t know, we’re Methodists – but they kept the bread already blessed or whatever it is …’

  ‘Reserved sacrament.’

  ‘Yes, that. They did all that, and the ghosts were satisfied. But when the Portuguese were gone, and the Pirate Kings took over Hy Brasil – this would have been in the sixteenth century, something like that – they say the original Morgan marched into Ravnscar, into the chapel with his helmet on and his spurs, and when the old monk, or the chaplain, or whoever it was, tried to defend the door Morgan cut him down with his broadsword. And the pirates desecrated the altar and flung down the sanctuary lamp, and held their secret ceremonies before the crucifix. At least, I’m not sure if that was supposed to be there or in the original chapel, because like I say, Brendan’s chapel is underneath the later building somewhere, so they say. So Brendan put a curse on Morgan and all his house, and said that though they might survive until the end of history they would never prosper long. And it’s true, that’s how it’s been. In the eighteenth century the Morgans got rich and even respectable, I believe, but then the volcano went up and they lost all their best land.’ Peterkin pointed dramatically at Brentness. ‘See that? That was all vineyards and apple orchards until then. And so it went on, right up until now.’

  ‘I don’t see many signs of a curse now.’

  Peterkin gave me a strange look. ‘You don’t? But surely you know …’

  ‘Ah Peterkin! Sidony! Taking a break, I see. Sorry I was called away. An urgent message came through, and I had to deal with it at once.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said, getting up. ‘I was only waiting to say goodbye. And thank you very much for showing me round.’

  ‘Come again, come again. Feel free to drop in whenever you like. And if you want a companion for your swimming expeditions, I’m down on the beach every day. The morning is the best time to find me.’

  I caught Peterkin’s eye, and realised that he was reading my thoughts. I blushed.

  When I looked up from the first bend in the road the Pele Centre was already invisible in its snug hollow. Olly had gone, but Peterkin was still standing on the grassy bank, two empty mugs dangling from his left hand. The last glimpse I had before I turned the corner, was of him still waving to me. And then I was on my own again, with the rest of the day before me.

  TEN

  ‘ISHMAEL’S IN ST BRANDONS. He’s gone to talk to the President.’

  ‘What? About smuggling?’

  ‘Smuggling?’ exclaimed Anna Pereira. ‘No, of course not. He wants a working group on his new employment project.’

  ‘Oh, is this what he was saying about 800 numbers?’

  ‘That’s right. You see, these companies can have answering services anywhere in the world. Location doesn’t make any difference, now that everything you want to know is stored out there in the ether anyway. And the big companies could be attracted here because people in Hy Brasil learn a high standard of literacy and politeness at school. Also they have an accent which other English speakers find attractive, and they’re prepared to accept low wages. Ishmael says information technology is the only way forward for us, and if we can land contracts now that provide a lot of clerical employment it’ll address the immediate problem, and there’s no reason why more interesting projects won’t follow.’

  ‘I see: nice manners and low expectations,’ said Jared. ‘I suppose that’s one way to go down in history.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t expect you to be realistic. Your coffee, Jared.’ She put a small cup of espresso and a glass of water in front of him.

  ‘Thank you.’ Jared took a spoonful of sugar, and stirred it in slowly. Whenever he was in the Pereira kitchen he found himself thinking with vague nostalgia about domestic life. At home in Ogg’s Cove they’d had a white-scrubbed kitchen table just like this one, only half the size. His mother had had pots of plants on the windowsill too, only she used to breed African violets, not geraniums. There had been a drying rack over the stove too, just like the one that Anna had lowered now. He watched her sorting socks into pairs and rolling them together in little balls, and suddenly the memory of his mother was so near that he could hear her voice in his mind, a thing he’d hardly ever been able to do since the day she’d died. A familiar sensation of sorrow mixed with guilt rose chokingly inside his chest. He cleared his throat and said to Anna, ‘I wish I hadn’t missed him. I wanted to talk to him before I went to St Brandons.’

  ‘Were you needing the car?’

  ‘I borrowed Per’s motorbike. My boat’s at Lyonsness. No, there was just something I needed to tell him about.’

  Anna took down Ishmael’s blue workshirt, and began to fold it. ‘Jed?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve talked about this smuggling business, you know, Ishmael and I. Has something else happened?’

  ‘Well,
sort of. Maybe.’

  ‘OK, you don’t have to tell me.’ Anna pulled down a line of children’s t-shirts, and sorted them rapidly as she talked. ‘Only have you seen today’s Times yet? Tidesman’s written another piece that might interest you.’

  ‘He has? Already? Where is it? Can I see?’

  ‘Sure, the paper’s over there on the rocking chair, under the cat.’

  Jared carefully lifted an ancient cat without uncurling it, and slid the newspaper out from underneath it. He turned to the centre page, and read:

  TIDESMAN: FREE ENTERPRISE OR A NEW VERSE TO AN OLD SONG?

  There’s no hiding the facts; not even a government can do that. The statistics speak for themselves: sixty per cent unemployment in rural areas. Outside St Brandons we have seven thousand adults registered for employment. Just over four thousand are in work, which leaves approximately three thousand unemployed. Nearly all those drawing government benefit are male; nearly all were fishermen. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg. The adult population of employable age, outwith the capital, is close to eleven thousand. Granted not all want work, but how many, in this depressing climate, even bother to register?

  Life on the dole is a new concept in Hy Brasil. We’re an independent people. Traditionally we’ve survived by pursuing what might arguably be designated the second oldest profession. Piracy is one form of theft, smuggling another. It’s pretty clear to most of us that there’s as much revenue coming into Hy Brasil as there was in the heyday of the Pirate Kings. So who’s bringing it? Where’s it coming from?

  Disregarding my iconic status and advanced years, it seemed incumbent upon me to undertake a little practical investigation …

  Jared read to the end of the article, and looked up. ‘He’s right, you know. What did Ishmael say when he read this?’

  Anna pulled up the empty drying rack. It wasn’t until she was refilling the kettle that she said, ‘Ishmael’s being very cautious. But while I was trying to read that, he was talking about the drug trade. Apparently all the stuff that comes here is grown in South America, then exported to Europe. So it has to come in by sea. Anyone who could offer a halfway house, as it were, could make a fortune.’

  ‘Precisely. So is anyone making a fortune around here? Apart from Ishmael?’

  ‘Ishmael’s about the only one around here doing a job that makes sense. There’s got to be a way forward, Jed; all the more so if you’re right, and we’re filling our treasury out of the wickedest trade the Atlantic ever saw. One of the most wicked, I mean. Someone has to do something, and if they don’t do it for good they’ll do it for evil.’

  ‘OK, so if it’s not cocaine, it’s Silicon Valley. Did I ever say I had any objection? It’s this 800-number business that bothers me. Anyway, I hate the things. It’s like if you phoned to find out what time the 227 gets to the harbour War Memorial, and you found yourself talking to some chap in Nebraska. If you’re lucky enough to get a human being at all, that is, never mind a sexy accent.’

  He was interrupted by scuffling sounds and shrill voices at the door, and he turned round, smiling.

  ‘Jared! We didn’t know you were here! You didn’t come by boat!’ The youngest Pereira flung herself upon him and climbed on his knee, wedging herself between his arms and the table. ‘Jared! We might be getting some Rhode Island Reds. Rachel and Pappa are looking at some chickens on the way back from St. Brandons.’

  ‘Jared, Eva found a glass fishing float on the beach. A pink one. Did you ever find a pink one?’

  ‘Leave him alone and let him drink his coffee.’

  ‘They’re all right.’ He couldn’t say to Anna that he loved it that her children adored him, that their attentions were a delight at a time when no one else ever came close enough even to touch him. With Susanna’s arm around his neck, half choking him, and Eva leaning on him and getting between him and the page he was trying to read, Jared was happy, but only half aware of it. He was trying to concentrate.

  ‘Anna, you do agree? I’ve thought about everyone I know who seems to be making any money, and there really isn’t anyone, apart from you lot. And you keep pretty quiet about it, apart from the holidays in Bali and a byre that’s turned into something out of Star Wars.’

  ‘I don’t know if I agree or not. It’s so far-fetched. But I read the paper, and I find that this year we’ve spent public money on a swimming pool, an art gallery, and a new wing for Ogg’s Cove Elementary. For the first time we’re supporting unemployed people on welfare; for the first time there are any unemployed. It doesn’t seem to be bothering us much, does it? And who, apart from my husband, is doing the kind of work that brings the money in, that’s what I’d like to know?’

  ‘Our Pappa brings our money in,’ said Susanna, dipping a wet finger into the sugar bowl.

  ‘So does your Mamma,’ said Jared, ‘when she works at the hospital.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ said Anna, ‘This year we applied to get a radiology unit of our own, so we wouldn’t have to send folk into St Brandons. And we got it. We got other things too, more or less everything on the list. Hardly anyone in Lyonsness is earning a decent wage any more, so where’s it coming from?’

  ‘Is this what Ishmael says too?’

  ‘No, Jed, it’s what I’m saying. And if I’m right, the last place you should be just now is on Despair.’

  Susanna wriggled off his knee, and stood expectantly beside him. Jared smiled at her absently. ‘What’s that got to do with it? Can you tell me why ever not?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘You must see that I can’t.’

  The children were determined to wait for him, obviously. ‘Yes, I see. Well, I’ll have to think about that. I must be off now.’

  ‘You’re going into St Brandons?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll hitch in from Lyonsness. It’s my shopping day.’

  ‘You won’t do anything foolish, will you, Jed? Not without talking to Ishmi first?’

  ‘No, I won’t do anything foolish.’

  * * *

  Jared stood in the President’s office in front of the President’s vast knee-hole desk, behind which a big plate-glass window looked out on the most famous view in Hy Brasil, which had once adorned the front cover of Time magazine. Jared was conscious of his seaboots on the thick pile carpet, and that he was wearing the same jeans and sweater that he’d had on for the last week while he did his bird rounds on Despair. He was also painfully aware of himself as the same Jared who’d found the transition from Ogg’s Cove Elementary to Lyonsness Junior High an agonising denial of everything that he’d ever understood himself to be. Deliberately he conjured up an image of his later self as he’d been in England, in Norway, in Iceland, everything he’d learned to become away from this ridiculous little country that happened to be his own. Thus he faced the President.

  James Hook sat behind his desk, against the backdrop that had become a cliché in any televised discussion of the state of Hy Brasil. He leaned back in his chair, and regarded his latest petitioner with the saturnine look that had become so associated with his image it was hard to imagine now that it was not a deliberate part of the performance. He reserved it, however, for citizens like Jared. Where he met with no opposition or hostility, he became the jovial epitome of approachable government. The likeness to Charles II was an asset he still exploited for all it was worth. The current underground joke in Hy Brasil was that he was already apologising for taking such an unconscionable time a-dying. As he well might, some would add, seeing that only the life of the President stood between them and the democracy he’d sworn for ever to uphold.

  Good form, however, had always been maintained. Good form demanded that the President be accessible to all who wished to speak to him. Good form disguised the electronic metal detector discreetly within the Georgian panelling of the door frame through which all visitors must pass. Good form placed his personal bodyguard six feet away in the ante-room with a Smith and Wesson 357 at the ready, watching every move in the President’s of
fice on screen. Good form arranged his alarm button under the desktop so that it was invisible to any suppliant on the far side of the desk. Good form revealed the great man himself: alone, unarmed and affable.

  ‘So,’ Hook was saying, ‘Mr Honeyman. I heard that you were back in Hy Brasil. You did well abroad, so I was told. Won’t you sit down?’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jared sat uneasily on the edge of an uncomfortably low chair. ‘I want to talk to you about the Mayda Trust.’

  ‘The Mayda Trust? An excellent institution. Have you visited our new Art Gallery at Maldun’s Mill? I was there for the opening ceremony, and I have to say it’s most impressive.’

  ‘No,’ said Jared, and took a deep breath. ‘I applied to the Mayda Trust for a grant so that we could salvage the Cortes. Maybe you saw my application?’

  Hook made a dismissive gesture. ‘I may have glanced over it. I’m afraid I don’t remember.’

  Jared bit his lip, and remembered the part of himself that had gone away and made good. He told Hook about the project with the same quiet assurance that had got him everything he’d wanted when he was out of Hy Brasil. He convinced himself all over again. The President pressed his fingertips together, and listened with apparent attention.

  ‘Yes, Mr Honeyman, I appreciate all this. However, you must see that it would be quite unconstitutional for me to dispute any decision reached by the committee of the Mayda Trust. All I can really suggest is that you re-apply next year. You do understand, of course, that in a time of recession we can’t follow up every cultural project, however meritorious it may be within its own terms.’