The plane rolled along the runway at Southampton Airport, then stopped for a minute as if the pilot was questioning one last time whether it could actually fly. Then the engines rose in pitch and we belted along, finally lurching upwards, our stomachs doing the same but in the opposite direction. We were in the air! We broke through the clouds and buzzed along for about thirty minutes, the clatter of the propellers making any conversation almost impossible. We dipped down again and Alderney came into view. With my face pressed against the window, I looked down on what – from this height – seemed to be a largely uninhabited strip of rock, one that might have been cast loose, floating on the sea. We banked and curved round for landing and I saw a black and white striped lighthouse perched at one end, white froth crashing far below. Hawthorne had been reading his book throughout the journey but as he folded it away, I couldn’t resist it any longer. I leaned over and shouted: ‘Why did you want to come here?’ It was hard to make myself heard against the sound of the engines.
‘What?’
‘In London. You said you’d always wanted to visit Alderney.’
He shrugged. ‘It looks nice.’
In all the time I had known him, I don’t think I’d ever heard Hawthorne shout. It wasn’t just that he was even-tempered. If I had recorded his delivery and transferred it to a screen like a heart monitor, he would have been a flatliner. This was the first time he had raised his voice.
He was also lying to me. I was sure of it. He was here for a reason and it had nothing to do with the scenery.
We landed and then bumped and jolted our way across another stretch of grey concrete. The pilot turned off the engines and I watched the propellers as they slowed down, becoming visible moments before they stopped. The door opened and we uncurled ourselves and made our way out. The airport’s one terminal was right in front of us, managing to look both temporary and thirty years out of date at the same time. We went in through a swing door that led into a small, irregular space: the arrivals hall. Serving the island since 1968 read the sign behind an empty check-in desk. Nothing much seemed to have changed.
There was a solid, rather aristocratic woman in her forties waiting for us beside a weighing machine. She was wearing a tweed jacket, scarf and pearl necklace and was carrying a sign with ALDERNEY LIT FEST typed in large letters. It had to be Judith Matheson. She had seemed nervous, standing alone in the empty arrivals hall, but her expression quickly turned into surprise and pleasure that we had actually arrived. She had spent a lot of time working on her make-up and even more on her hair, a wispy chestnut, which had been beaten into submission. She was someone for whom appearances mattered. That was the appearance she gave.
‘Hello! Hello!’ she announced as we gathered around her. ‘I’m Judith. Welcome to Alderney! I hope you all had a good flight. Plane nicely on time, I see. The luggage will come through in a minute and if anyone needs to use the loo, it’s just over there.’
‘How far is it to the hotel?’ Anne asked. She seemed a little breathless and I wondered if the flight had made her nervous.
‘Ten minutes.’ Judith managed to sound enthusiastic about everything. ‘Nothing’s very far on Alderney. There’s a minibus outside. Can I get you anything? A glass of water? The luggage really should be here very soon.’
‘No. I’m all right, thank you.’
I heard the revving of a motor, a vehicle approaching, and a minute later the first cases appeared, pushed through a rubber curtain onto a silver table. I noticed Kathryn Harris, who had taken her own case but was also struggling with two more belonging to her employer and I went over to her.
‘Can I help you with one of those?’ I asked.
‘Oh – thank you.’
I grabbed one and almost dislocated my shoulder with the weight of it. I was surprised it had even been allowed on the plane.
‘It’s full of Marc’s new book,’ Kathryn explained. ‘I’m sure it’ll be a lot lighter going home!’
Marc Bellamy had overheard us. ‘It had bloody well better be!’ he chimed in.
My own case came through, then Hawthorne’s. Somehow we all managed to disentangle ourselves and made our way out into a car park with taxis and car rentals on one side and a white minibus with Alderney Tours painted above the sliding door waiting just ahead.
Judith continued to fuss over us as we stowed our luggage and climbed into the bus, then finally we were away. Alderney is just three miles long and a mile and a half wide and my first impression as we drove down the very straight lane from the airport was how little of it seemed to be developed. There were no buildings nearby. Fields stretched out in every direction, the grass strangely etiolated, as if the colour had been swept away by the strong breezes coming in from the sea. We came to a main road – not that there was anything very main about it – and at the junction I noticed a makeshift wooden sign hammered into the soft earth with a message in red paint. BAN NAB. I wondered what it meant. I wasn’t even sure what language it was in.
We turned left and passed a farm but no other houses or any buildings, continuing downhill until we came to what looked like a Napoleonic fortress, very square and solid, with tall, evenly spaced windows and a great many chimneys. It was sitting on its own in a swathe of grass with the sea behind. In front of me, Kathryn Harris held her iPhone against the window and took several shots. My eyes were drawn to an old oil drum standing abandoned in the grass with, once again, the same words – BAN NAB – painted in red letters on the side. I wanted to ask Judith Matheson about them but she was deep in conversation with Anne Cleary.
‘Did you see that?’ I asked Hawthorne.
‘What?’
‘Ban Nab. It’s a palindrome.’ He said nothing, so I added: ‘It reads the same forwards and backwards.’
‘Do geese see God?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I’m sorry?’
Hawthorne shook his head and looked away.
The road curved round and we came to an ill-defined harbour area that should have been prettier than it was: too much of it had been given over to retail and industry. Even the chip shop could have been more welcoming, standing on its own, surrounded by concrete. But things changed when we reached the Braye Beach Hotel on the other side. This was a traditional seaside hotel, the sort of place I associated with childhood, long summers and ice-cream cones. It was made up of several houses joined together with a conservatory at one end and a long veranda looking out over the sand. The bus pulled up in front of the main entrance and Judith led us inside, talking all the while.
‘If you want to collect your keys and pop up to your rooms, you’ve got free time until the first session at half past four this afternoon. That’s George Elkin talking about the occupation of Alderney at the town hall on the rue de l’Église, which opens the festival. You’ll find welcome packs with maps and telephone numbers on your beds. We thought we’d all meet for a drink straight afterwards at The Divers Inn, which is right next door. Dinner tonight is at the hotel. If anyone has any questions they can call me any time.’
The inside of the hotel was bright and airy, with comfortable, mismatched furniture, dried flowers, ships made out of driftwood and books on shelves.
‘I’ll see you later, Tony.’ Hawthorne started to move towards the reception desk.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘Drop my stuff … then I thought I’d go out and explore.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No. It’s all right, mate. I’ll catch you later.’
The other writers had piled in behind Hawthorne, eager to get to their rooms, and I wandered into the lounge, where I found myself alone with Judith. For a few moments we looked at each other uncertainly. I decided to break the ice. ‘So this is your first festival,’ I said.