I said: "What are you talking about, Felicity?"
"Were you listening to what I said?"
"Look, it's stopped raining."
"Oh God! You're impossible!"
She was smoking a cigarette. I imagined the smoke drifting about my white room, settling on the new paintwork, yellowing it. It would reach the pages of my manuscript, discolouring those too, setting down a layer of Felicity's influence.
The manuscript was like an unfinished piece of music. The fact of its incompleteness was bigger than its existence. Like a dominant seventh chord it sought resolution, a final tonic harmony.
Felicity started to clear away the plates, clattering them in the kitchen sink, so I picked up my manuscript and headed for the stairs.
"Are you going to pack?"
"I'm not coming with you," I said. "I want to finish what I'm doing."
She appeared from the kitchen, suds of washing-up liquid dripping from her hands.
"Peter, it's all been decided. You're coming back with me."
"I've got work to do."
"What _is_ it you've been writing?"
"I told you once."
"Let me see." Her soapy hand extended, and I clutched the manuscript tightly.
"No one is ever to see this."
Then she reacted the way I had expected before. She clicked her tongue, tilted her head quickly back; whatever it was I had done had not been worth doing.
I sat alone on the shambles of my sleeping-bag, holding the manuscript to me. I was near to tears. Downstairs, Felicity had discovered my empty whisky bottles, and was shouting up at me, accusing me of something.
No one would ever read my manuscript. It was the most private thing in the world, a definition of myself. I had told a story, and had crafted it to make it readable, but my intended audience was myself alone.
At last I went downstairs, to discover that Felicity had lined up my empty bottles in the small hallway at the bottom of the stairs. There were so many I had to step over them to get into my white room. Felicity was waiting there.
"Why did you bring in the bottles?" I said.
"You can't leave them in the garden. What have you been trying to do, Peter, drink yourself to death?"
"I've been here for several months."
"We'll have to get someone to take them away. Next time we come here."
"I'm not leaving with you," I said.
"You can have the spare room. The children are out all day, and I'll leave you alone."
"You never have yet. Why should you start now?"
She had already taken some of my stuff and put it in the back of her car. Now she was closing windows, turning off taps, checking the plugs. I watched her mutely, holding the manuscript to my chest. It was spoiled now forever. The words would have to stay unwritten, the thought remain unfinished. I heard imaginary music in my head: the dominant seventh rang out, forever seeking its cadence. It began to fade, like the run-off track on a gramophone record, music replaced by unplanned crackle. Soon the stylus in my mind would settle in the final, central groove, indefinitely stuck but clicking with apparent meaning, thirty-three times a minute. Eventually someone would have to lift the pick-up arm away, and silence would fall.
5
Suddenly the ship came into sunlight, and it was as if I had broken with what lay behind me.
I narrowed my eyes against the brilliant sky, and saw that the cloud was some effect of the land, for it ran in a clearly defined east-west line.
Ahead, all was clear and blue, promising warmth and calm seas. We headed south, as if propelled by the cold wind blustering from astern.
I felt my senses extend, and awareness spread around me like delicate nerve-cells reaching for sensation. I became aware. I opened.
There was a smell of diesel oil, of salt, of fish. The cold wind reached me, even though I was protected by the ship's superstructure; my city clothes felt thin and inadequate. I breathed in deeply, holding the air for several seconds, as if it might contain cleansing agents that would scrub out my system, refresh my mind, rejuvenate and re-inspire me. Beneath my feet, the deck was vibrating with the grind of engines. I felt the pitching movement of the ship in the swell, but my body was balanced and in tune with it.
I went forward to the prow of the ship, and here I turned to look back at what was behind me.
On the ship itself, a few other passengers huddled on the foredeck. Many of them were elderly couples, sitting or standing together, and most of them wore windcheaters or plastic rainproofs. They seemed to look neither forward nor back, but within. I stared past them, and beyond the ship's superstructure and funnel, where silent sea-birds glided effortlessly, to the coast we had left. The ship had turned slightly since leaving the harbour, and much of Jethra was visible. It seemed to spread along the coast, sheltering behind its quayside cranes and warehouses, filling its broad, estuarine valley. I tried to imagine its daily life continuing without me there to see it, as if everything might cease in niy absence. Already, Jethra had become an idea.
Ahead was our first port of calclass="underline" Seevl, the offshore island I had never visited. It was the island of the Dream Archipelago closest to Jethra, and for all my life had merely been a part of the scenery. Dark, treeless Seevl dominated and blocked the view to the south of Jethra, yet to all but a few people with family connections, Seevl was prohibited to Jethrans. Politically it was part of the Archipelago, and while the war continued neutral territories were inaccessible. Seevl was the first, the nearest; there were ten thousand neutral islands beyond.
I wanted the ship to go faster, because while Jethra lay behind I felt I had not truly started, but the sea at the mouth of the estuary was shallow, and the ship changed course a number of times. We were approaching Stromb Head, the great broken cliffs at the eastern end of Seevl, and once we had rounded this all that lay ahead would be unknown.
I paced the deck, impatient for the journey, cold in the wind and frustrated by my fellow passengers. Before boarding I had imagined that I would be travelling with many people of my own age, but it seemed that almost everyone who was not crew was at retirement age. They appeared to be self-absorbed, heading for their new homes; one of the few methods of legal entry to the islands was by buying a house or apartment on one of a dozen or so listed islands.
At last we rounded the Head and sailed into the bay outside Seevl Town.
Jethra disappeared from view.
I was eager for my first sight of an Archipelagan town, for a glimpse of what other islands might be like, but Seevl Town was a disappointment. Grey stone houses rose in uneven tiers on the hillsides surrounding the harbour, looking untidy and drab. It was easy to imagine the place in winter, with the doors and shutters closed, the rain slicking the roofs and streets, people bent against the sea wind, few lights showing. I wondered if they had electricity on Seevl, or running water, or cars. There was no traffic that I could see in the narrow streets surrounding the harbour, but the roads were paved. Seevl Town was quite similar to some of the remote hill villages in the north of Faiandland. The only obvious difference was that smoke was pouring from most of the chimneys; this was a novelty to me, because there were strict anti-pollution laws in Jethra and the rest of Faiandland.
None of the passengers disembarked at Seevl, and our arrival caused little stir in the town. A few minutes after we had tied up at the end of the quay, two uniformed men walked slowly down and boarded the ship. They were Archipelagan immigration officers, a fact which became clear when all passengers were instructed to assemble on Number One deck. To see the other passengers together gave me the opportunity to confirm that there were very few young people aboard. While we were queuing up to have our visas checked I was thinking that the nine days it would take to reach Muriseav, where I was leaving the ship, might turn out to be lonely. There was a youngish woman in the queue behind me--I guessed her age to be in the early thirties--but she was reading a book and seemed incurious about anyone else.