Shining Sea

by Anne Korkeakivi

  He pulls up the collar on his jacket and starts down the road past Martyr’s Bay toward the harbor. He’s missed the first thread of locals heading out to check on their sheep or fishing boats or to the neighboring isle of Mull. The next ferry doesn’t reach the dock until 8:55 a.m.

  When he arrived on that ferry five weeks ago, pushing his way against the wind, past the crumbling rosy-gray stone of a long-ago nunnery, wondering where the hell he’d ended up, he fell in step with a short, stocky man with a white beard, a heavy Celtic cross swinging around his neck.

  The man glanced at him sideways, lingering over his guitar and worn cowboy boots. Are you looking for a place to sleep? We need a young set of arms up at the Community and could make you up a bed somewhere.

  The strange calm of the island drew an honest answer from him. I don’t mind hard work, but I’m not among the faithful.

  Do you believe in the existence of God?

  It wasn’t an issue of whether or not to lie. He wasn’t sure of the truth. How could he feel so let down by something if it didn’t exist?

  I guess so.

  That’s enough, then.

  They gave him a solitary cot in a small office inside a thousand-year-old stone shed by the water that once served as the abbey’s infirmary and offered him a regular seat at the communal dining table. In exchange, he does the odd job around the abbey: rebuilding a wall ravaged by winter snow, patching a roof, turning the half-frozen May soil for the kitchen garden, lending a hand to the ongoing reconstruction. Now a beacon for believers all over the world, the abbey was founded by an exiled Irish monk named Columba back in the sixth century. There’s plenty of upkeep to be done. Yesterday he cleared spring weeds from around the graveyard and Saint Oran’s Chapel, final resting places for a gallery of early Scottish kings, among them Macbeth of Shakespeare fame. Luke would have liked that.

  The Community doesn’t give him cash, though. He has to get that however he might if he’s going to purchase a ferry ticket back off the island. Or just to buy this morning’s cup of coffee at the general store, down by the dock. Thus, the gifts of the ladies. The generosity of its women has been the one familiarity on Iona.

  He pushes open the general store’s door. The ginger-haired girl who runs the shop looks very young, fourteen or fifteen, but the coffee she brews is as black as the most starless night and as stern as the stiffest island wind. Maybe the best coffee he’s ever had, even better than any he drank during the months he spent picking olives in Italy or the spring he passed busking on the Karlsplatz in Vienna. The girl’s father must be gone to work on the mainland, and the mother must be sick or tending a newborn. She’s dropped out of school to pull on her mother’s apron, a girl who is fifteen going on forty.

  But that doesn’t make her not jailbait. He had a couple of run-ins of that sort early on in Europe; young girls still have hopeful imaginations. They blur the lines. They romanticize the lives of wanderers like him.

  He nods at her curtly, careful not to appear too friendly.

  The coffeepot on the shop counter feels heavy, like it’s just been filled. He pours a cup and takes a sip. Not a twinge on the end of the girl’s long nose, not a blink of her ginger-lashed eyelids. It’s like a dance they are doing together. He throws some coins on the counter, more brusquely than he intended.

  There’s that old feeling of being watched, of being followed, like the way he started to feel even with Georgina. It’s not that he didn’t like Georgina. That was, in a way, the problem. From the first time they spoke it was as though they’d known each other always. Georgina once remarked, The thing about Francis and me is we’re both so serious we can’t take anything seriously. It felt, when she said that, as though she’d seared a hole right into his heart.

  She got under his skin. She made him feel too much. Georgina, stretched flat on a chaise longue in a black leather miniskirt and black lace shirt with no bra under it, her delicate chin tipped back, her caramel-colored hair sprayed out over the cushions, laughing and adjusting a leg to let him see that she had no panties on, either.

  A track mark in the crook of her knee catching his eye instead.

  He doesn’t have the stuff to help someone like Georgina. And he doesn’t need another lost life on his conscience.

  The general-store girl drops the coins in a small chipped cup with a couple of lonely clinks.

  He tries not to feel ashamed of himself for being so rude to her, throwing those coins down like that. As though it were her fault he’s been stupid enough in the past to sleep with too-young girls like her. The people on Iona are nice. They deserve better than a person like him on their little island.

  He was at a bar in Manchester, a scatter of empty beers in front of him, no idea where to go next or how he’d get there except that it had to be someplace where Georgina wouldn’t find him and try to drag him back into their sick life together in London. The idea of making it east to India and Nepal had come up over the years, but all that love and lies, dregs from a decade earlier—the very thought depressed him. Anyhow, the hippie trail pretty much closed down with the Soviets in Afghanistan and the shah out of Iran.

  Up to Oban the morra, the guy on the neighboring bar stool said. My sister makes cheese there, sells it to a wee island, Iona. Crazy wee place. Hae to tae the ferry fae the mainland to the island of Mull, cross all of Mull, and then tae a second ferry just to get to it. A dot in the middle of nowhere.

  Hey, man, he said. Can I hitch a ride with you?

  In the middle of nowhere, and yet there. Not in the middle at all: the end of the earth, or maybe the beginning. Iona is solid. Iona is timeless. If he stayed longer, he might even find that elusive holy trinity or at least get closer to it: Peace. Freedom. Absolution.

  With summer coming, though, other young men and women will start stepping off the ferry with strong arms and backs and considerably more commitment to the Community’s mission of seeking new ways of “living the Gospel in today’s world.” Locals say the island swells with visitors over the warmer months, the population exploding along with purple-blossoming wild thyme. The Community won’t need to turn to a prodigal son for its heavy work.

  Men will be returning, too, from winter jobs on the mainland. Back to their women.

  Time to move on.

  “You know, miss,” he says to the girl, “you make a killer cup of coffee.”

  An ugly wash of red creeps across the girl’s round face.

  He carries his mug down to the dock. The morning sky is clear enough for him, with his prodigious eyesight, to see the captain stepping in and out of the small cabana on top of the ferry, the mile away to Mull. Of course, the correct word can’t be cabana. The bridge? Wheelhouse? Boats never have held any appeal for him.

  Three last passengers stride onto the ferry, all wearing red jackets. Two men, one taller than the other, and a woman. Already the island’s population of ninety has begun to grow in number daily, along with the meadowsweet and Scottish bluebells bursting forth in the fallow fields. Some of the new arrivals come toting heavy duffels or suitcases and letters of introduction to the island hotel or the Community, ready to settle in for the summer. Some come, as he had, just for a day and find themselves unable to leave. The peace of Iona.

  Georgina, spilling her pill case onto her naked lap, a cascade of light blue and pink and yellow polka dots against her pale pubic hair. Francis, darling, I had a looooong talk today with Daddy.

  Are you really going to take that shit?

  Her laughter, hiccuping up through her lank hair as she bent over, picking the pills out of herself. Well, I’m not going to fuck it.

  You know, Georgina. You go alone. We’ll dance another night.

  Her pale fingers, waving this away, then selecting a light blue pill. Oh, don’t be such a bore. It’ll be a loooovely party. It’ll be an ecstatic party. She popped the pill on her tongue and stuck it out at him. The point is, Daddy says we can get married.

  He stopped strumming his guitar.
Married?

  He quite fancies the idea. He says it’ll be good to add some fresh American blood to the family. He says you’re sure to give him attractive grandchildren.

  Down went the pill, her lovely swanlike throat rippling slightly.

  As wasted and useless as his life might be, he doesn’t have a death wish. He doesn’t need to be around anyone else who might, either. Done that. Not doing that again.

  The ferry separates from the pier, lurching its way into deep water. Once clear of the dock, it moves slowly but smoothly through the water toward him. It will take ten minutes to cross, the wind warming and sweetening.

  Time to get a start on his day also.

  Back in the store, he sets his cup on the counter and flashes the girl a smile. Red rushes again across her smooth young face, spilling into the roots of her carroty hair. She hurriedly begins counting up the change in the register, and he looks away. It’s been good on Iona; he doesn’t want to leave anything bad behind him. At least Georgina was twenty-two, or almost twenty-two, old enough to be held responsible for bringing him to the British Isles and settling him into her fancy Belgravia apartment.

  Who’d ever have guessed her father would decide they should get married, him a shiftless, penniless SOB from America? What kind of parenting was that? Fuck, Georgina must have been in even more desperate shape than he thought.

  People are out in the village now, a few tending gardens beside their low-roofed, whitewashed stone homes, a woman bicycling down the road lined with golden yarrow. He nods at each islander as he passes. Some greet him by name; five weeks now, and it is such a small island.

  Around back of the abbey, his makeshift bedroom is still chilly from the night. He lifts his guitar case onto his cot and pops it open, checking the instrument for damage from the cold. He adjusts the tuning, then picks out a few bars of “Roxanne” by the Police. “Roxanne” was playing the first time he saw Georgina, in a club in Palma de Mallorca, leggy in a pair of yellow silk shorts, dancing with three Spanish boys wearing sorbet-colored Lacoste shirts with the collars turned up. Smooth, handsome, dark boys, a striking contrast to fair-haired Georgina, creating a tableau watched by everyone around them.

  Don’t put on that red light, she mouthed in his direction, abandoning her dance partners to pull him onto the floor.

  Someone had brought him over to Palma from Barcelona on a long white yacht with two levels and teak trim, although who it was and how it came to pass he can’t remember. He had his own room for the week they floated around on that boat, with its own little bar and a double-size bed that he wasn’t alone in for long, then they docked on Mallorca and everyone on the yacht spilled out into the breezy Mediterranean night. He took up with Georgina and, once he’d fetched his guitar and pack from the yacht, never saw those people again. Instead he and Georgina spent a couple of sangria-soaked weeks hopscotching around the clubs of Palma, fucking like rabbits and laughing. Suddenly, she had bought him a ticket to come back to London with her. They were still having fun, and winter was coming. There was no reason to say no. The minute they disembarked at Heathrow, however, rain slapping down around them, Georgina wasted from downing four Bloody Marys during the two-hour flight, everything felt different. Everything felt rotten. He should have split right then.

  I don’t normally live like this, he told her after she’d thrown open the door to her posh apartment.

  She dumped her ankle-length leather coat on the floor and sank onto a massive chintz-covered sofa. I don’t imagine you do, darling.

  Georgina’s father had bought the flat, and her mother had gotten it put together, lavishing it with flowery prints in silk. Georgina joked that the only thing she did herself was change the locks, so they couldn’t sneak in and lift her stash.

  He’s not one to judge others’ lifestyles, but how Georgina managed to hold so many drugs in that slight body mystifies him. In London, it no longer seemed like holiday fun. She was still lively and wry and, of course, pretty, but she became something else, too. Dangerous. The smooth walls of the room where he sleeps on Iona, the tiny square window facing onto the sea and the stone fragments of ancient grave markers stored under the gables; if he’s going to thank God for anything, it’s that he managed to get out before there was real trouble.

  Tomorrow, however, he’ll bundle up his things and say good-bye to Iona. Better to leave before the Community has run out of need or space for him, struggling to tell him to go, with a lot of coughing behind fists and embarrassed glances. He’ll ride the ferry back to Mull, hitch across it to the larger ferry for the mainland. From Oban, he’ll hitch again or hop on a train. He is sure to have enough money in his pockets to pay for a ticket and a couple of weeks in a room somewhere until he picks up another job or meets a nice lady. Maybe he’ll go to Glasgow—it’s supposed to be a scruffy town with a decent music scene. So far, Scotland has been good to him.

  He digs his shaving kit out from his duffel and, pouring water from a pitcher into a porcelain-covered bowl, mows the stubble from his face, nicking the slight cleft in his chin in the process. He dabs at the blood with a towel, slaps on some oil to guard against midges, and slides into a clean shirt. He’s been shaving since he was sixteen but for some reason has never grown hair on his chest. Some women ask whether he shaves it; at least one asked whether he waxes it. Like a swimmer? Nah. Then I’d have to shave my head, too. Of course, she took it as an invitation to run her fingers through his wavy shoulder-length hair. Well, fair enough. Although he didn’t enjoy her calling him Goldilocks.

  Maybe he should head north when he leaves instead of east to Glasgow, up to the Isle of Skye. According to legend, selkies guard the Isle of Skye’s shores. Jethro Tull has moved up there. Or was it just Ian Anderson? He slides his canteen into his jacket pocket and picks up his guitar.

  He stops in at the abbey kitchen. He tucks a fistful of warm oatcakes and a scrap of cheddar cheese into a paper bag and fills his canteen up at the tap, the clear, cold water spilling onto his fingers. He writes a swift note for the cook: I won’t be eating at the abbey tonight, thank you. Francis. If he eats with the Community, the groundskeeper may mention a task for tomorrow or the day after, and then he’ll have to say he’s leaving, and then there will be the need for good-byes. Better to leave quietly.

  And then he’ll be gone, and they will swiftly forget him. Someone who actually belongs here, someone of faith, will take his place. He made his peace with not being at peace with God or even knowing whether there is a God years ago, maybe when, as a nine-year-old boy, he saw his father die right before his eyes. Certainly when he watched his brother’s coffin being lowered into the ground beside the mound over his father’s body.

  And then Eugene’s, two years later, in unconsecrated ground because the son-of-a-bitch priest at the Catholic cemetery said they couldn’t take him.

  One thing is certain. If there is a God, he wouldn’t turn Eugene away. Not any God he could ever believe in.

  * * *

  A soft northeasterly wind is blowing, rustling the new wildflowers in the machair. White-bellied, long-beaked oystercatchers and flocks of small black starlings pass overhead, as though leading the way to Saint Columba’s Bay. He hasn’t taken the long hike down to the southern tip of the island since shortly after he arrived, although some in the Community make the hour-and-a-half pilgrimage over rocky hill and sheep-strewn meadow every Sunday afternoon, regardless of the weather. After rowing across the open sea from northern Ireland, with the help of his twelve acolytes, Columba pulled his wooden currach up onto the shore here in the sixth century and effectively established Christianity in Scotland. Spiritual seekers on the island consider the bay sacred.

  No one much walks down to the bay during the week, however. Maybe in the summer, when the number of overnight visitors with more time to spend on the island picks up, but today the bay should be a good place to play music and enjoy some sunshine undisturbed and disturbing no one, a good way to spend his last day on the isla
nd. He hasn’t brought his guitar outside much here for fear of it being damaged by rain or the heavy mist that often veils Iona. Other than the guitar, the sum total of his possessions is the shaving kit, a wallet, a US passport, a knife, his boots, the leather jacket Georgina gave him, a rugged sweater a Norwegian girl made for him, a few changes of clothes, a bandanna, a belt, the two books he always carries, and the canteen. Georgina gave him stuff during the five months they were together, but he left everything except the jacket behind. He had to take that because she’d ruined the one he had, throwing up on its shoulder outside the Wag on a cold January morning. This new jacket—warmer and softer leather than any he’s ever owned—appeared two days later, with a note saying: So I don’t have to lean my head against my own sick. Your G.

  Ah, lovely Georgina.

  He likes his guitar, though. Don’t get some dumb, lousy one, Eugene said after they’d fried enough fish sticks and poured enough sodas for him to afford it. Get one you’ll want forever. Cause you are going to want it forever. Well, Eugene is gone, but he still has the guitar. He’ll busk on the street in decent weather, but he’d go hungry before exposing its rosewood curves to snow or rain.

  There’ve been some hard times in Paris, one very difficult winter in Amsterdam. But something or someone has always come through. When not caught up in wars, the world is a pretty hospitable place.

  By the far end of the machair, the relentless beadlike rattle of the corncrake call is almost deafening. He heads up over the hillock, past the tiny heather-ringed loch, and down toward the bay, almost stepping on a nest containing four large eider eggs. The sea opens up before him, a deep blue seething expanse ringed by an orange-, green-, and black-pebble beach divided in half by a large rocky outcrop jutting into the sea. He settles into a nook on the eastern side of the outcrop, out of the wind and not too far from the water’s edge, knocking a couple of carrot stubs out of the way with his boot. The remains of someone’s picnic, maybe the rest carried off by the seabirds swooping overhead. Maybe the picnicker was carried off by the birds as well. Or a mermaid or a selkie. It feels wild enough here for that.