Calypso Dreaming. Charles Butler

       1 Sweetholm

      “Sweetholm! Do you remember it?”

      Tansy peered through the telescope. In its depths a piece of clockwork was counting out their time and turning it to cash. The island bobbed up against the glass. It was low and flat, but for the abrupt brown hill at the western tip.

      “Of course she doesn’t remember, Geoff,” said Tansy’s mother. “She was hardly walking when she came last.”

      “You’d be surprised what sticks sometimes. Even at that age.”

      Tansy opened her mouth to reply, then clapped it shut again. Dad was wrong, of course. Of course and as usual. But she didn’t need to say it. Not today, when everything ought to be perfect.

      “I remember it from the photos Uncle John sent. It looks closer than I imagined, though. Is it really five miles out? I can see buildings.”

      “Five miles by ferry,” said her father. “But that’s going from Plinth. And the ferry’s got shoals to negotiate, remember. Tricky waters.” He gestured to where the water was stippled with dark patches. “As the gull flies, we’re closer here on the headland. Of which, as you can see, Sweetholm is geologically an extension – and Longholm beyond it.”

      Geoff unfolded the map on his knee, standing like a flamingo with something to prove as a thermal billowed up and ballooned the paper.

      “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Dad,” said Tansy, turning back to the car.

      Their car was parked in the small semicircle of gravel at the head of the Down. A lane ran back, dividing one bleating field from another. It led into the main road down to Plinth. There were two cars parked there, their own and a black Volkswagen in which an elderly couple were eating sandwiches under the late June sun.

      Geoff ignored the retreat to the car and put another

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