Reflections: an island story

Not so long ago, in a village not so far away from here, there lived a boy named Cai. His people were poor people and they lived by their wits, day to day, generation to generation.

Cai was a smart boy, but he had no time for school. Nobody on the island had time for school; not when there were little brothers and sisters to be fed, chores to be done, and a whole world of caves and dells and crannies to be explored.

Cai’s dad worked at sea. Everybody’s dad did; all summer long, and sometimes well into the winter too. As soon as the first green shoots appeared on the shrubs that dotted the dunes, the men would catch the spring tide across to the mainland to look for work at the docks. And whilst the men were away, the task of finding food and firewood to keep their families fed and warm, fell to the boys.

The lucky families whose dads found good jobs for the summer looked out for fat envelopes of cash whenever the mail boat came. Sometimes gifts came, too, and strange goods from abroad. But never the men themselves – not before the nights drew in and the hoarfrost rimed the grasses. From spring to autumn, the island was left to the women and children, the invalids and the very old – and to Cai and the boys.

For as long as he could remember, Cai’s days had been spent fishing and foraging; hunting and hiding. The boys knew the island inside out. They knew where to root for wind-nipped fruits, nuts and seeds. They knew where to snare whatever unsuspecting fish or fowl were too slow to escape them. With their sharp eyes and quick hands, the boys brought food to their families tables, and the island held no secrets from them.

Or, no secrets but one. There was one craggy cave, bearded with trailing moss and not far from the bay, where the boys didn’t go. For it was whispered – softly, and after dark - that the wellbeing of the island folk depended on that cave. In that secret cave, the Spirit of the Island lay sleeping.

Long, long ago, it was said, a bargain had been struck between the Spirit and the island’s first settlers. No one remembered the how the deal had been struck, whether it was made in friendship or in enmity; but every man, woman and child knew its terms, and they were simple: the island would provide for the settlers, and in return, the settlers would leave the Spirit to rest alone in his cave. The settlers could roam all over the island; they could explore its deepest nooks and corners; discover its hidden coves; feed on its plants and animals and make the island their own – but that single craggy cave belonged to the Spirit, and no one must ever enter it.

The story of the Spirit was handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, and all the while the island provided for its people. It was rarely bountiful, but never mean. Years passed, and no one ever dared to disturb the forbidden cave. But there is a first time for everything …

In the summer of his 12th birthday, Cai was hungry. Everyone was hungry; late frosts had blighted the harvests, and there didn’t seem to be enough of anything to go round. Long days spent scouring the rock pools yielded nothing but seaweed and, all too rarely, a small crab or fish; never enough for a good, rich broth. Cai’s mother’s soups grew thinner; boiled-up dregs of last week’s gatherings. Across the island, tempers grew shorter; faces grew longer. The boys' hunger grew sharper; competition between them was played out now in earnest. In other summers, they had stuck together as they roamed the beaches and coves, playing between the pools. Now, they grew solitary. Each boy ranged as far from the group as he dared, alone, hoping to be the first to spot a store of food or fuel and claim it as his own. 

Cai roved about the beach, sharp eyes sweeping the rockpools and the shore. Squinting against the setting sun, he edged further and further from the other boys. And as their figures dwindled to distant dots, the unmistakeable, bearded mouth of the forbidden cave loomed larger. The waves lapped its shady mouth, water glinted in the shadows just inside; the promise of rock pools unpillaged, and rich with salty, mouth-watering goodness …

The tide crept in and the sun inched lower. Cai gathered up the day’s lean pickings with a sigh, and turned for home.

Days came and went. Cai’s mum’s face grew paler and the broth grew greyer, the flavour long washed out. Finally, one afternoon, Cai’s roving feet brought him right up to the mouth of the cave. He hesitated. Wind ruffled the cave’s mossy curtain and released the scent of rockpools teeming with sea-life and shellfish – forbidden feasts! Without a further thought, Cai ducked through the moss and stood up blinking. 

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, all thoughts of fear and apprehension were forgotten: Cai was consumed by his hunger for the fresh fish, sweet seaweed or shells that surely lurked beneath the surface of the rockpool at his feet. Eagerly, he peered downward – but saw only his own reflection peering back at him.

He leaned in closer. The pool showed nothing. Only the reflected blackness of the cave, and the pale cheeks and tousled hair of a boy with wide eyes locked on his. Bending lower, Cai plunged his hand into the reflection. The watery boy shimmered and wavered, shattered into a thousand pieces – but almost at once, the reflected world closed in around his wrist. The pool showed nothing of the rough shells his probing fingers found; no shimmer betrayed the fish whose silky skin slipped by his hand. By touch alone, Cai plucked a fat cockle shell loose from the rocks – then another, and a third. Soon he was scraping jangling handfuls of shellfish from the pool’s rocky edges, and he laughed aloud – in effortless moments, he’d gathered more food than he'd seen in weeks.

- Aren’t you hungry?
A voice spoke from the depths of the cave, and Cai leapt away from the pool, guilty and startled, dropping his clutch of shells as he spun around to face the blackness.
- Poor scraps like that would hardly feed a seagull! Don't be shy. Take all you can eat!
Cai gaped and stammered, and the unseen speaker laughed.
- Yes, I am the Spirit of the Island. You know of me, perhaps? You’re the first visitor I’ve had in … oh, longer than I care to remember. I must admit, I’m surprised to see you. I wasn’t expecting a guest. But you are welcome. My pools are rich with fishes, so please, take what you want. Rainbow fish and silver fish. Flat fish and fat fish. Oysters and crabs, if you want them. Crayfish and starfish, if you like them. Please, help yourself.

Cai’s brain whirled with questions and with possibilities. Who …? Why …? What if …? But politeness and curiosity could wait; hunger could not.
- But I can’t see them! I can’t see anything!
The spirit laughed again, this time as if in delight.
- Aha! You can’t see past your reflection! Is that it?
Cai nodded in the darkness. The amused voice of the spirit continued,
- And you really are hungry, aren’t you!
Cai nodded again, and at last he remembered his manners.
- Yes, sir. Yes, I’m very hungry – and I’m sorry to have disturbed you, sir, and to have come into your home unasked - but you see my family are very hungry; my little brothers and sisters; and my friends are starving too. We’ve not seen fish for weeks, sir – not even a tiddler. If I could take just one fish for my mum to cook tonight … oh, sir, or a crab - I’d give anything for a fish or a crab; anything at all.
- Anything, you say? Well, perhaps I can help you there. You’d give anything at all for the fish in my pools, would you?
- Oh, yes sir!
- Anything at all, the Spirit repeated, his soft voice quickening. Well, alright then. I think we can help each other. Look again!
Cai looked down again to the pool. In place of his hollow-cheeked reflection, he saw a living larder of flat fish and fatfish and shellfish and crayfish, just as the Spirit had promised! He gasped in delight, dipped his arm elbow-deep into the pool and grasped a fish, fat and fresh and unresisting.

- Oh, thank you sir, thank you!
- Oh, please. The pleasure is all mine, crooned the smiling voice of the Spirit. Come back whenever you like; these pools are all yours. Yes, they’re all yours now, the voice murmured, growing more distant even as it spoke.
- But – wait! What can I do to repay you? You’ve saved my brothers and sisters from starving; you’ve saved our lives! And I have nothing to give!
- Oh, you’ve given enough, called the voice, fainter now and far away. Goodbye, boy!

Cai paused a moment as the silence settled back around him. The lapping of the waves on the shore reminded him of the incoming tide, and he thrust the still-wriggling fish into a pocket, together with the shellfish that he’d collected before. He hesitated a moment, then snatched a surprised crab from the water and turned to run for home.

As he drew near to the village, Cai thought only of the delight of his little brothers and sisters; his mum’s proud face as she would take cook up a supper fit for a king. He ran up to his front door and let himself in silently, planning to surprise his mum where he knew she’d be worrying over the watery pots at the hearth. As he tiptoed through the hall, he cast a glance at the mottled mirror that hung there – and stopped.

No eyes looked back at him. Blood drained from his unseen face as he looked through his unreflected self to the papered wall beyond. He held a hand before his eyes, pinched his skin to feel it. He waved at the empty mirror, perplexed then suddenly frantic. His shadow waved on the wall, but in the blank window of the mirror nothing stirred.

* * *

Far out at sea, the Spirit laughed. Too long invisible, too long imprisoned; far too long subsisting on the fish and weeds of one dark cave. Far out at sea, he slipped alongside the worn hull of a fishing boat that rocked on the swell, hungry eyes fixed on the figures of fishermen who leaned against the rails above.

A bearded face glanced down to follow the flicked ash of a cigarette that arced out to the sea – then spun back in shock to look again.
- Cai? Cai!? Isaac!! Isaac, it’s your boy!
- Wha’? What’s that, mate?
- Isaac! It’s Cai! He’s here; he’s drowning!
Beneath the waves the Spirit gaped, waving up at the stricken face at the rail.
- What? How? What do you … A rumble of boots on wood, and a second, younger face appeared, wild-eyed, at the railing. Cai! Cai! Hold on, boy, I’m coming!

Pulling off his jacket, Cai’s dad vaulted over the rails and into the dark swell.

Food for thought



Cake. One of the Good Things in Life.



My local restaurant’s not quite open for The Season. It’s open-ish; you can eat and drink there, but it’s not quite firing on all cylinders. And that means a number of things. It means that for the next ten days, it's as if the No Smoking in Public Places law never happened: you step through the door into a fug of roll-up smoke. It means that the only lights are the lights around the bar; there are still great cavernous restaurant spaces in there I’ve never seen. It means that I've never yet had to pay for a drink (though who does pay, I can’t quite fathom). And it means that the full menu isn’t up and running yet, it’s Plat du Jour or nothing. Or, as the barman told me, ‘No a la Carte yet – just Wish of the Day’. Wish of the Day! Now, who wouldn’t trade an a la carte lunch menu – however mouthwatering! – for a daily wish?

Just imagine: one wish every day, and all the worry taken out of it. ‘Be careful what you wish for’, they say. Sound advice for a la carte wishers - but no such caution needed with a Wish of the Day! Here it is, today’s wish; priced and packaged, chalked up on the blackboard. Take it or leave it or come back tomorrow and try your luck again.

And all this begs the question: what sort of wish should a Wish of the Day be? In an ideal world, perhaps World Peace; An End to Poverty; A Cure for Cancer … but this is no ideal world (wish fodder there?) – and, let’s be realistic – this is a quick lunchtime Wish we're talking about, so it really needs to fit within a sub-10 Euro price bracket. So. A promise of fair weather? Put a price on that. An afternoon better than the morning? A letter from a friend; a good word from the boss? And just how specific ought a Wish of the Day to be? Quite open ended, I think; one size must fit all and it needs to cover every sign of the zodiac. So, a stroke of luck? A compliment; a piece of good news, perhaps? (Maybe A Tall Dark Stranger …?)

So, the Wish of the Day: food for thought. For now, I can tell you that today’s Wish was faux filet. And no, I didn’t try it … but perhaps I’ll try my luck again tomorrow. Perhaps it’ll be croque monsieur tomorrow! (I wish …)

Bounded in a nutshell

Oooh, it’s been too long since I wrote. Anything. But surely that’s one of the great things about Notes to No-one: maybe I have been neglectful – but who’s complaining? In fact, if I’ve been neglecting no-one recently, well, surely I deserve a commendation.



No place like home



Trouble is, too much stuff – that’s capital S, Stuff – builds up, and then, where do I start? And soon enough, the temptation is not to start at all … I get all caught up in Doing Stuff. Whereas writing’s not Doing Stuff, it’s Thinking Stuff – and that’s trickier.

So, many thing’s’ve preoccupied me since I was last here – but the one that keeps coming back is the concept of Boredom. Boredom! It’s an interesting one. Boredom. The more I think about it, the more I wonder. What’s it all about? And where can I find the time for it?

Let me put this in context. I’ve been here – here, out of season, in the resort – for maybe 6 weeks. More people are arriving every day; the place is filling up – the world’s descending; life’s starting. And these new people, they say – incredulously, or just as if they’re stating a fact – ‘you must be bored!’ Or else, ‘call if you’re bored’, ‘pop round when you’re bored’ – things like that. And I ask myself: am I bored? Have I been bored? Should I have been bored?

Well, I’ve been many things since I got here. Frustrated – ooh, many, many times frustrated. No one does bureaucracy like they do it here. My word, at times it’s been frustrating - Catch 22’s a fine novel, but imagine living in it! More on this another time. Scared – well, yes, a few times; you’ve heard about Halloween but there’ve been other times too. And I’ve been pretty solitary – yes, out of season it’s certainly quiet here.

But bored? No. I’ve thought about this a bit, and it seems to me I don’t have the patience for it. But is having the capacity for boredom a good thing or a bad thing? The jury’s out. Define Bored. I’ve not got the internet right now (of course not! It's Sunday!) (This comes under Frustrations and Bureaucracy; see above ...) and no dictionary, so I’ll just have to scratch about inside my head for a definition of my own. Bored: having nothing to do? Nothing to think about? No demands on your time, no worries? Well, it sounds just dandy! What a luxury. How easy is the life of the bored! “Lord, I could be bounded in a nutshell and think myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams” … or something like that.

But, just a minute: back to those dreams. Aren’t they what makes the nutshell interesting? In the nutshell, without the dreams … well, how would I even imagine Infinite Space, let alone rule it? So, without the dreams, yes: I reckon that soon enough, I might get bored. Do the dreams have to be bad? Not sure. But I’ll take bad dreams over no dreams, thank you very much. Inquietude over boredom, yes please.

Is that my conclusion? Well, for now, yes. I’d say it is. Just about bedtime, and I think I’ll stop right there. Don't want to bore you …

Halloween Horror Story



The snowline: endless winter/autumn valley

 No idle thoughts and musings today: today, it’s a real-life Halloween Horror Story, fresh from my Mountain Idyll. Illustrating that Idylls are for Idiots – but we’ll come back to that another time.

So, are you sitting comfortably?

Once Upon A Time in the Mountains, it was a bright October morning. A sunny Sunday morning; sparkling snow and clear skies; and I set off – backpack, sandwiches, camera (survival bag; headtorch; emergency rations; better safe than sorry) – for an all-day adventure over the skyline to a village in the next valley and back. 

Phase One: 1900m up to the col at 2417, a mere hop. Out of my village; into the snow. An aside: some aspects of French cartography are a mystery to me. By and large, the IGN maps are marvellous – but how can it make sense not to differentiate between the kind of ‘path’ you could drive along, and the kind where you scramble across rocks on all fours? As a walker, it’s no worse than baffling – but if I were trying to negotiate the route by car, what then?

Anyway, my path started as the first kind, but soon dwindled into the clambering sort. The snow grew deeper; features disappearing into white. I pressed on. Truth be told, I was unwilling to retrace my steps over the increasingly treacherous terrain; blundering through deeper and deeper snow; each step more cautious than the last; images of avalanches, trips, slips and falls running riot in my head; ice filling my boots as I sank knee-deep or deeper.

So, stumbling along the rocky edges of the snow-bound path, I reached to the top. Cold, wet and shaken, I crawled up over the skyline into a biting wind. Imagination full of snow-filled quarry holes and broken limbs, I felt sheepish and relieved. And – joy! – surprised and delighted to see that the valley below was utterly free from snow. Thanks to the direction of the sun and wind – or who-knows-what other factors beyond my understanding; another mental note, I Do Not Understand These Mountains and Must Not Treat Them Lightly – the snow stopped in a crisp line along the mountain crest; some fairy curse had plunged one valley into Endless Winter whilst the other basked in autumn sunshine.

Phase One, done. All that remained was to get back ...

Relating what I could see on the ground to what I could see on the map, I judged that I could make my way back without straying from broad, snow-free cart-tracks. I checked the map; I double checked – and I headed on down. Down, down; 1,200m down to the village below. Which, as I approached, grew increasingly unlovely, promising nothing but the prospect of turning to head back up, up, up …

I reached the village at last, said hello to an (unnervingly red-eyed) ginger cat, and set off back. So far so good. At every junction I chose the widest track; the one I was sure a car could pass; the track that must surely lead me to the lowest col and the safest crossing back into my valley. I was making good time as I headed towards the top of the treeline at around 1,850m ... and then I heard it. A car engine sputtering behind me. I was warm in my hat and gloves – but a chill ran through me. Why so? Impossible to say; but let’s just say that sometimes you know when something’s not right. And this car, here, now – it wasn’t right. As it drew nearer, my skin began to crawl. Every nerve cried out that I should not be seen; hide NOW; whoever was in this car must not see me. Why so? Why indeed! I fought down the impulse to dive off the track into the cover of forest.

The engine noise inched closer. I braced myself and kept walking. The roof of the car bounced into view along the rutted track behind me and, as it dropped out of sight again, my instincts screamed, run! Hide! I hesitated at the edge of the track. Should I run? Was it too late? (And what am I running from anyway? And could these thin trees really hide me?) And all too soon it was too late; the car jolted up out of the last dip and into plain view. A battered old blue car; ordinary enough – but my skin was prickling from the effort of resisting the impulse to get away.

Far from anyone and anywhere, the car drew up. The driver was alone, and he wound the window down as he approached. Bonjour, he said. Bonjour, I said, as nonchalant as I could manage, determined to compose my face. What he was looking for, I don’t know, but a cold horror ran through me as I met his eyes. He seemed to pause. The car slowed almost to a halt; the world held still – and then he drove on. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, his brake lights came on and he stopped just metres ahead of me – but, again, he seemed to reconsider and set off again, oh so slowly. I kept walking, determined to appear as purposeful and assured as possible. The moment he rounded the corner out of sight, I was searching my map in a panic, desperate to spot some thus-far-unnoticed track that would take me back into civilisation in minutes, not hours. Of course, no such path materialised – but I did find a three-way fork in the road ahead. All three tracks converged again in a kilometre or so, but – hopeful that one of the branches might be the kind that would be impassable to a car – I abandoned my resolution to follow the widest roads, and determined instead to take the narrowest path I could find. And at all costs I would take whichever track he hadn’t taken.

I rounded the corner and came to the fork. Disappointment: all three routes were cart tracks and – worse yet – there was the blue car, just past the junction, almost hidden around the corner of the right hand track. I chose the centre fork as the one that would take me most quickly out of sight; walked briskly up it and – the minute that I was out of view – started to run, aiming to take the next branch in the path – however narrow it may be; the narrower the better – anything to get myself away from the road. But before I’d run a hundred yards, I heard it: his car engine, unmistakeably behind me again. Now this time there was no reasonable reason for him to be on my tail; the road he’d set off on soon converged with mine, after all, and there was no feature, no building, no chalet, nothing to cause him to switch from one track to another. Only me.

This time, I didn’t hesitate. The final clump of trees before the mountain scree was just ahead of me, and I sprinted that last 50 metres and threw myself into the undergrowth. Just in time, as the engine growled round the hairpin onto the stretch of track I’d been standing on moments before. I’d snatched my coloured hat off my head, the better to hide, and I cowered low amongst the broken branches, heart thumping, waiting for the car to pass. Slowly, slowly, oh-so-slowly. I peered up through the branches, torn between the need to be ready to react if worse came to worst, and the compulsion to stay well out of sight. The roof loomed into view, and soon I could make out the man in his wound-down window, searching. The car slowed. I cowered. The car half-halted – and passed on by. I breathed again – but didn’t move; didn’t dare rustle my map nor put on my hat; listened whilst the engine noise moved slowly, oh so slowly, up the track ahead of me. And now what? All day I’d been heading for this safe route home – and now it was no longer safe; no longer even an option. What to do? I looked again at the map … and at last spotted an ‘un-marked’ path, a route straight up the mountainside that would take me far above my safe col but well out of the way of this new, more pressing danger.

I waited a little longer. I had only a borrowed French mobile phone with me and no local numbers, so I made a quick call to a number that I knew, reasoning that someone, at least, ought to know where I was. Answerphone. I left a message, reasoning that the danger of doing so – what if the call should be returned at the wrong moment and give me away? – was less sure than the danger of being caught high up in the Alps with the evening drawing in. I ate a bit, reasoning that low blood sugar was maybe, just maybe, the source of this sense of dread; I waited just one moment longer … and heard that engine again. Approaching, again, from below me: he’d driven a loop around the three converging tracks, and was coming back to find me. This time there was no doubt in my mind. The first time I’d heard that sound, my rational mind had overcome my instincts, and I’d regretted it. The second time, my instincts had overcome my rational mind. This time, there was no rational doubt left: I was far from anywhere, and, for reasons unknown, the man in that car was looking for me.

In the moments before the car rounded the hairpin bend, I pressed myself further into the undergrowth, I drew myself in, I held still and hardly dared breathe. The engine coughed and spluttered; the car came up alongside me and crawled on by … and then I heard it stop. Gravel crunched; gears shifted; the car reversed. I cowered down, unable to see it; visualising its movements. It manoeuvred again, the engine rattled.

An age passed. The door didn’t open. The engine didn’t stop. And the car drove on. I breathed. Now, no time to lose – I’d lost half an hour already, dusk was falling and the temperature was dropping – I had to break out of this loop in the road. I set off running. My phone rang – thank heavens it hadn’t rung five minutes earlier. Hurrying up the hillside, trying to find a balance between speed and the need for endurance – my new route meant that I now had over 600m to climb, and quickly – I forged on, map in hand. Looking across towards my original intended route, I saw the car blocking the way; looking out onto the path I should’ve taken. I hurried on. The temperature continued to fall, but I was grateful as the visibility closed in – I could follow the line of the chairlifts up here, if need be, and in the fog the man in the car would stand less chance of picking me out against the landscape. Up, up up, and the snow began.

Colder and colder. The snow grew heavier; I hurried on, not yet daring to put my bright, warm hat back on for fear that I’d draw his attention, the only coloured thing in a black and white world – up, up, up, until at last I was sure I was out of sight … and growing colder. And, once again, in the situation I’d sworn that I wouldn’t put myself in – battling up a steep, narrow track in deep snow, this time in the gathering dark. I pressed on. The snow was lying, thick and thicker, covering my tracks behind me and driving into my face. And night was falling.

And shall we leave it there? Ugh. Shudder!

I’m here to tell the tale; so there’s my happy ending.
What was it all about?
Who knows.

But I’ll say this. My skin crawls now at the thought of it. The image of that man; that car; the sound of that engine ... I won’t easily forget them.

And yes, it was Halloween.