Stickle Island

by Tim Orchard

  By now Si was ravenous. The bacon sandwich earlier was what Si considered a starter breakfast, an ancillary snack and something just to keep him going while waiting for the real breakfast to come along. He headed into the house, where he removed his boots and hung his hat on the stand in the hallway. But even before he reached the kitchen Si knew something was wrong. There was a certain silence. The sort that hangs in the air. Ominous. The kind of silence that reminded him of childhood misdemeanors discovered and his father sitting at the kitchen table, waiting.

  And he wasn’t wrong. John Newman had watched the little episode from the window at the top of the stairs. He didn’t know what was in the bales but guessed it was something scavenged from the beach, because D.C. had followed the tractor into the yard on his bike, and if D.C. was involved, it was possibly something dubious. If it was, he just wanted to know.

  Si wasn’t good at telling lies, especially to his father. John Newman got straight to the point: “What was that in the barn?”

  Si scratched his head and studied his socks. He took up a frying pan and put it on the stove. At the fridge he took out sausages and black pudding. Without looking at his dad, he said, “Just some stuff D.C. found washed up on the beach.” He got eggs and sparked up the stove, splashed a bit of oil into the pan.

  John said, “What exactly?”

  Although Si’s father was an easygoing man, if he asked a direct question, he expected an answer. Si knew that and said, “Do you want some breakfast?”

  A negative silence. Into the pan went three sausages. Enough for one. The sausages sizzled. Si sighed.

  John Newman said, “Is it something to do with drugs?” At the stove, Si’s back stiffened as John added, “I’ve known you smoked for a long time now.”

  Without turning, Si said, “It’s only a bit of weed, Dad.”

  John laughed. “What about the magic mushrooms?”

  After rolling the sausages around in the pan with the spatula, Si took a tin of beans from the shelf, applied the tin opener, reached for a small saucepan from the cupboard below, poured the beans in, and put a light to the gas. He wasn’t going to talk about magic mushrooms with his dad. No way!

  John Newman said, “I’ve taken them.”

  Shocked, Si finally turned to face his father. “What?! When? Who with?”

  John Newman ignored his son. “Some of the conscientious objectors took them when they lived here. One of them told me that back when the Druids were around, long before the Romans ever came, part of the initiation for the priests and warriors was to be given a large dose of psilocybin mushrooms—see, I even know the right name—and be placed in a water-filled stone coffin with just a reed to breathe through and left overnight. By morning they were supposed to have composed and memorized a hundred-verse ode, which they had to recite when they got out.”

  Si poked his sausages, adjusted the heat under the beans, slid a few slices of bacon and black pudding in the pan, and listened like any son listens to his father: negligently, focused only on his own interests. “Yeh, yeh, that was the Druids, Dad, but who did you take them with?”

  John shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. It’s not about that. It’s about understanding that nothing is new. Look, my grandfather was raised a Quaker and my father still held a lot of their beliefs. That was why he decided to make the farm a co-op for the duration of the war.”

  Si had heard all the grandad and great-grandad stuff before and turned back to poke his cooking breakfast.

  John Newman continued anyway. “You think you are alternative because you smoke a bit of dope! Try standing against a whole country, against the mass of public opinion, against almost everybody. Those conscientious objectors were real outsiders. My father was…” He paused. “…so strong for what he did. Imagine living in a small community like this for the duration of the war and even after—people didn’t let him forget it, you know. That kind of prejudice, well, any kind of prejudice doesn’t end. I didn’t really realize back then, but my dad, your grandfather, was a very brave man.”

  A couple of eggs were cracked into the frying pan and Si let him rattle on. All the time he was talking about the past, Si didn’t have to talk about the present, and anyway, he didn’t really want to remember his grandfather and the way he was all wasted until he was just bones and skin before he died. Or how the funeral had meant nothing to him. Back then, in his mind, it was like the old man was still sitting in his chair in the kitchen, and anyway, he was only eight and almost nothing meant anything from way back then, same with his mother. And his dad was still talking.

  “I was only about nine when the war started, but I was old enough to see what was going on. The conchies, they weren’t country people. My dad had to teach them everything. Some came and worked hard, but mostly they were London people, artists or would-be artists and all that, but that’s not even fair on them. Mostly they were good people with strong beliefs but not really up to country life, and the work was harder back then.

  “By the time the war ended I was fifteen or so, and in a way the conchies had altered the way I looked at things. I think living with so many different people, in what I guess you’d call a commune these days, opened me up at an early age to ideas. The one thing those people could do was talk!”

  Si started to giggle involuntarily.

  “They could talk! Check yourself!”

  There was a coffee cup on the table. John picked it up and passed it to Si. “Make some fresh, and you can laugh, and maybe it doesn’t seem like it to you because I’ve mostly stayed on the island, but I have a philosophy. Why do you think I gave Julie and D.C. the cottage? Why do you think I let D.C. move his trailer into the high field when they split up? I mean, you know I’ve never charged them a penny rent. You know that, don’t you?”

  That was it. Si knew instinctively the mushroom thing had to be with either D.C. or Julie. Under his breath, Si said, “Julie.” John shot him a glance, but Si was back turning and poking various things on the stove. Pretty soon the breakfast was cooked and he was shoveling it onto a plate: two perfect eggs over easy and black pudding, thick slices of home-cured bacon and the homemade sausages, baked beans. Things were going pretty good. He sat at the table opposite his dad and began to eat.

  Sometimes living on an island wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Like your dad knowing everything you got up to. Like seeing Dick and Petal together almost every day. And, like now, the past was always there, ready to tip over into a chat about his mother, and Si didn’t really want to talk about her. Sometimes it was like his dad needed to remember just to connect with the present. Si didn’t get it, but it didn’t seem to matter. Once John had told him, “That’s right, you’ve heard it all before and you’ll hear it again and probably again after that. It’s where you come from, it’s your history, and one day you’ll be telling your own kids.” At twenty-two, to Si, history was still a short thing.

  Si had never known his mother. Well, not so it mattered. She died. He was less than two. He knew. He’d always known. He’d been told, and his dad had loved his mother, yeh, yeh, and he’d heard it all, how they met and how she died. That didn’t mean he knew her. Most people didn’t understand that. He was supposed to miss his mother, but how could he miss someone he never really had? How could he love someone he didn’t know?

  Leaving the Julie thing in the air because he didn’t know what else to do with it, John Newman said, “Do you think I’ve never met people like D.C. before? ‘Bohemians’ is what they were called in my father’s day. In fact, D.C. still calls himself a bohemian, would you believe it! Mostly they don’t cause trouble, they don’t hurt nobody—none of those hippie types do—oh, I know what they smoke. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve known and seen worse.” He rolled his eyes and then fixed a dark look on his son. “Now, tell me the truth about what you’ve put in our barn or I get Paloney.”

  Si didn’t want to explain, and why would he? He wished D.C. or Petal was there to tell it, because whatever
it was, they would tell it better, and knowing whatever he said wouldn’t ever satisfy his dad, Si placed his knife and fork quietly on the table and, in a slow hiss, blew a long breath between his teeth. “Well, D.C.… well, not just D.C. but Petal and Dick.”

  John nodded. “Dick Stick?”

  Si picked up his cutlery again. No sense in the rest of the food getting cold. “Yeh. Well, anyway, whoever. Between them they found these bales on the beach and wanted me to put them in the barn.”

  John Newman tilted his head a little to one side. A question unasked is still a question. Si stuffed food into his face. John Newman said, “I know that. I watched you. What’s in the bales?”

  Suddenly thirsty, Si pushed back his chair and grabbed a carton of juice from the fridge and a glass, because the one thing—well, one of the things—his dad couldn’t stand was drinking from the carton. He filled the glass, finished it in three gulps, and began to try to eat again, but John placed a hand on his.

  “What’s in the bales?”

  Si took his hand out from under, stuffed sausage and black pudding into his mouth, and, as he chewed, mumbled, “Marijuana, Dad. Dope.”

  John Newman shook his head and sighed. The truth and what he’d half guessed collided, and he didn’t know what to say or what to do about it.

  Into the silence, Si said, hopefully, “Look, don’t get worried, I’m sure they’ve got a plan. In fact Petal already has an idea. She wants to call a meeting.”

  Newman wanted to shout and shake Si, but instead he eyed his son in the way one looks at a complete idiot and snapped, “Wants to call a meeting! What the hell about? Come on, Si, this isn’t just a bit of weed. This is a prison sentence—for both of us.”

  He hadn’t really thought it through, but Si liked the idea of the whole island taking control and sticking two fingers up at the council, and other factors were involved. He liked the idea of getting closer to Petal. To his dad, he said, “But you’re not involved.”

  With a shake of his head, John Newman said, “The stuff is on our land and ignorance is no defense in law, and anyway, I know it’s there, don’t I?”

  Everything his dad said was true. But there were still buts. One was the island had survived historically by dodgy means, and times were beginning to look hard again. Another was at least a third of the inhabitants smoked, and they were only the people he knew about. Others kept it on the low. The idea of a co-op could look good to all of them. There were other buts, but Si couldn’t be bothered to think of them. Instead, he said, “But, Dad, Petal has an idea.” Newman made to interrupt him but Si held up his fork and pressed on: “Wait, wait, look, she thinks we could sell it and buy the ferry and run it for ourselves—you know, like something that would benefit the whole island. I’m not really explaining it very well, but like a co-op or something.”

  No, for his father, Si had explained it very well. He’d watched his son with Petal ever since they were kids. He said, “It’s Petal, isn’t it?”

  Si shook his head and lied: “That’s not it.” The notion that anybody could guess or know how he felt for Petal mortified Si. Jumping up, he took his plate and emptied the scraps of his breakfast into the bin by the sink.

  John smiled and shook his head slowly. “Do you think I’m blind? Anyway, where’s that bloody coffee?”

  Si smacked his forehead. He’d forgotten the coffee. Annoyed that the way he felt about Petal was so obvious, Si grabbed the little Italian coffeemaker and, opening it up, emptied the grounds into the bin, washed it out, repacked it with fresh coffee, filled the lower half with water, screwed it back together, and put it on the stove. He wasn’t annoyed at his father really but at himself. He had every right to feel the way he felt about Petal, and yet he somehow cowered from admitting it to himself or anyone else—an emotionless lunk tending the cows and sheep. Now, the bales—something of almost no interest to him three hours ago—were gathering meaning.

  He quickly shifted things around in his head, the way people do, and told himself it wasn’t all about Petal and how he felt; it was more, much more. All right, people in the past had world wars to fight and mad fascist politics to rail against, and maybe he didn’t have anything like that, but couldn’t he have a philosophy? Couldn’t his ideas be on a small scale? What did they call it, microeconomics or micro-politics or micro-something, or was it macro?

  D.C. told him ages ago that everything was political, even having a crap. At the time he’d laughed, and D.C. had pointed out that every time he wiped his arse, he was depleting the world’s forests. Si loved the island and the farm and he didn’t want to leave. Watching the coffee slowly come to a boil, Si thought about how someone like Petal would talk to his father.

  When the coffee was ready, Si poured them both a cup. He rested back against the sink and tried. “You talk about your father and your grandfather and all that stuff, but what about you, what about now, when our whole way of living’s threatened? It’s different times now. Maybe Petal’s idea could work, who knows? Whatever happens, we can’t leave here, Dad, it’s our home. All right, you reckon you have a philosophy. What is it, what’s it called?”

  John Newman rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly at odds to explain his own philosophy on life for fear of looking stupid. “It’s not got a name, it’s a way of being—I try to treat people as I’d like to be treated.”

  Si remembered Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby, from The Water-Babies, and grinned cheekily at his dad. “Who are you, Mr. Doasyouwouldbedoneby?”

  John said, laughing, “Well, really, in a way, stupid as it sounds, yes. Like I said, that was why I gave D.C. somewhere to live.”

  Si couldn’t help a giggle. “Is that how it works with Julie too? Do as you would be done by.”

  John waved a dismissive hand at his son and said, easily, “What? It’s got nothing to do with Julie.”

  Father and son smiled at each other and thought about mother and daughter, Julie and Petal. John wasn’t really worried about the bales in the barn—probably no one else knew. He thought for a few moments and figured whatever was going to happen to the stuff, it would be better if he at least knew what was going on. He said, “How would it be if we had a little meeting to discuss having a meeting?”

  7

  Petal was excited. It was a mad idea, and when she’d come up with it she was only trying to annoy her dad, but now, now the bales were safe in the barn, she began to see things more clearly. Maybe there was a way, perhaps they could do something, maybe the idea of a co-op wasn’t completely mad.

  Moving to the island from London when she was nine was one of the best things that had ever happened to Petal, and now it was home and she didn’t intend to leave, no matter what. Like everyone on Stickle, she’d been left numb by the news and unable to see how she or anyone could fight the cuts. She knew there weren’t even enough people living on the island to mount a decent demonstration and doubted there would be anyone to listen anyway. The rest of the country didn’t know Stickle existed. The government may have decided the island was no longer financially viable, but the people who lived on Stickle had chosen it, despite its shortcomings. Home was where the heart was.

  The residents liked their semi-isolation, their cutoff from the mainstream, and as a group, they did not function. The blow-ins and the younger islanders came together to party or to queue to collect their dole at the post office; the older residents, for church coffee mornings and to queue at the post office to collect their pensions. It wasn’t as though people weren’t friendly—they were—but they liked to keep themselves to themselves. As Petal saw it, the bales of dope were the only chance they had to take control, to own and run the ferry, to keep the island alive, and although she hadn’t yet figured out how to do it, she needed to find a way to bring the people together. It wasn’t just about the kids getting to school or the whole financial well-being of the island.

  When Dick dropped Petal off at Julie’s cottage, they kissed. He said, “I better get back, there’s bound t
o have been wind damage to the polytunnels and stuff like that.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly nine, Dad’s probably going nuts. I’ll have to get things on the go.”

  Petal touched the side of Dick’s face gently with the palm of her hand. Most people didn’t realize how hard he worked. He was a good guy and she knew she took advantage of that, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  Because of the way he dressed, some people, including herself and his father, sometimes treated Dick like a fool, but he was far from that, and she knew the truth was the farm wouldn’t function without him. The farm relied on casual labor. Henry Stick had alienated most of the casual workers over the last few years with his bad attitude, to the point where they would deal only with Dick. He organized the pickers, sorted their wages, and prepared most of the farm accounts to make sense of the black economy, before they went to the real accountants on the mainland.

  Petal had enough of school by sixteen and, like most of the blow-ins on the island, collected her Social Security and worked casually on the Sticks’ farm, when needed, picking fruit and veg in the summer and cutting sprouts and cauliflowers and packing potatoes in the winter. That was how she got together with Dick.

  It was also true that there weren’t that many fanciable people on the island, which made her wonder if a lack of choice didn’t make her relationship with Dick a compromise. Petal didn’t like the idea of that, but then she wasn’t sure what love felt like either. She was pretty sure she wasn’t in love with Dick, and she doubted if he was really in love with her, whatever he said. It was convenient for them both. Was that bad? It wasn’t cynical or calculated or anything like that. They’d known each other as friends for years, liked each other and got on well. A lot of relationships were based on less. A couple of years ago, D.C. had told her, “You can have your own ideas and your own beliefs an’ all, but they don’t matter a fuck. It all depends on where you were born, where you live, and the prevailing culture.” After Dick had driven away, Petal turned and went into her mother’s cottage. The things her dad said annoyed her sometimes, especially if he was right.