He has spent his days in the Observation Tower above Gull Rock, near where his daughter was found. The tower is hollow and silent. There is no one working here now, nor will there be for the next few weeks. Over at Choet it’s a different matter. The watchtower there will have men crawling in and out like bees in a hive.
There are five levels to these towers, and unlike their defensive predecessors, built in another age, they face almost exclusively to the sea, ignoring any danger that might emerge from the hinterland. Only from the roof, reached by an awkward twenty-foot climb, can one see an uninterrupted three hundred and sixty degrees. The island, say the towers, is ours. There is no danger within. Each floor looks out onto a different level of sea, viewed through long curving slits which elongate the seascape. The ocean looks wide and flat, squashed into a solid vertical plane. Paradoxically, for these are direction-finding towers, built to enhance the accuracy of the guns, the overall effect is to distort distance.
Since he has been here he has observed nothing, least of all direction. It has rained almost constantly with an accompanying thick mist. Waking that first morning it was as if he had been born again into a cocooned world of white, a fairyland of floating spirits, and when the wind came and blew away a veil or two, the water appeared as elusive, shimmering silver, chemical, amniotic. He is becalmed, floating like a baby, standing by the aperture hoping to see the soul of his daughter float past, lying on the roof waiting to hear the beat of her heart coming from the looming flap of a gull, white on the wing. He wants nothing now but for the island to have an eternal untouched life, and for him and those he has lost to be a part of that eternity. But this perturbs him, for he worries that within the structures he has built, there might lie a fatal, undetected weakness, similar to the one which must have run through his family life. Either that or the island harbours some grudge against him. But why? What has he done? Has he not woven round it a most marvellous protective shell, one which will keep the sea at bay for a hundred years? Is not the island made whole? Is it not tended and watered and kept in good order as never before? And what was asked from it in return? Nothing but that it might take his family to its bosom. He tries to remember the colour of his wife’s eyes or the first time Isobel spoke but he cannot. He tries to picture his daughter as a little girl, running barefoot in an Egyptian courtyard, but though he can see the chickens scattering in her wake he cannot see her or even detect the sound of her voice above their flapping squawks.
He does not move much, except when needs must, when he crosses the room to the high narrow window at the back, under which he drops his trousers and deposits whatever he can onto the cold concrete floor. He is glad to be alone, for he has done with speech. He has nothing more to say. Time will not restore this faculty, for though time might heal a memory or set a fractured soul, time cannot shine light where no light can escape. His speech had been designed for buildings and viaducts, to describe the sweep of roads, to weigh structure in balance. He has no phrases to summon a wife or conjure up a daughter. He has used up all the words that were in his command; his vocabulary is obsolete, redundant, a faulty design. He is lost for words.
He finds it difficult to sleep at night. The damp sea air rushes in through the openings. There are scufflings and scratchings below. It is cold. Every so often he can hear the voices of soldiers in one of the gun emplacements a quarter of a mile away, a guffaw of laughter, a snatch of song. He marks the passage of time from the beam of the slit-eyed headlamps shining forth from the hourly motorbike patrols which bounce towards him along the high cliff road before disappearing down the wooded hill, only to be recaptured minutes later, out of the rear window, as they cruise up along the road that runs the length of the bay, the insect buzz of their engines fading fast. The road has its hidden travellers too, padding shadowy footfalls, or the stealthy creak of what, a handcart, a bicycle? So much dark activity.
He has not eaten for two days, but today, as he shakes out his coat, which he uses as a pillow, he discovers a large bar of chocolate within one of its deep pockets, a gift from Major Ernst, a far and distant figure who he can remember only by an overbearing shape. He tears back the wrapping and pushes it into his mouth. It is difficult to chew, for there is nothing to chew on. It is evasive like his memory, hard to dislodge: it glues to the roof of his mouth, coats his tongue and, when he attempts to swallow, large lumps stick in his gullet. Though he knows he should not, he eats the bar as quickly as he can, licking the waxed paper clean, smearing his mouth and beard. Almost immediately he feels sick. He feels his stomach lurching, feels the green bile of it rising. He feels giddy, his breathing becomes problematic, a hand is clutching at his heart.
He can smell the stink of himself and that of the room. He needs to get out, to break free. He charges down the circular steps, out of control. Halfway down he retches; he bends double; he straightens up. A great spray, sudden like a geyser, leaps forth from his mouth, splashing onto the walls and down in front of him. Then another. The volume is excessive, the noise unbearable. His hand slips on the running smear. He skids down the stairs, spraying once more, vomit on his shirt and trousers, before stumbling out into the open air, gasping, grabbing handfuls of grass to wipe himself clean. He needs to rinse his mouth out with water. Water! It is not hunger which assaults him. It is thirst.
He sets out across the scrubland, to the hill and the bay below. The dying wind tugs at his shirt. He falls a number of times, breaking a shoelace as he scrambles back up. Once on the road, he half trots down the hill, and at the bottom, jumping down from the sea wall, he starts to walk along the beach. It would be easy for him to be caught; snagged on the barbed wire, between whose Unes he walks, a foot or leg blown off by one of the landmines he unwittingly avoids; arrested by one of the motorcycle patrols; shot at by one of the convoys of artillery men. But no one appears during his twenty-minute walk of the bay. It is as he suspected. He no longer exists.