a ferry set sail from there to Sweetholm, with a cargo of ornithologists, hermits and trippers, though Sweetholm was just too far away to make a day trip comfortable. That was where the beauty of the place lay – in its splendid near-isolation. Then he noticed the time and that the ferry was already docked.
But in such a place hurry was impossible. With the telescope still whirring, Geoff climbed into the car then inched it to the road and let it drop, braking all the time, down the steep, ear-popping hill into town. It was eleven in the morning and some of the shops were only just opening. One man, unlocking the door of his picture gallery, glanced at the car as it parked beside the ferry offices and shook his head with an air of frank reproof. Geoff looked out instinctively for No Parking signs, but found none. Perhaps they just looked disreputable in the unwashed Volvo.
Tansy and her mother waited as Geoff dealt with the ticket side of things. Her mother seemed exhausted, with her head on her hand, her hand propped on an elbow, her elbow wedged into the car door. It seemed as if she were thinking of something else, or of somewhere she would rather be than here, teetering on the brink of an adventure.
The ferry was the open-air kind, with room for four vehicles at most. The mate hauled boxes of supplies into the dark hold. Even before she was out of the car, Tansy noticed the boat’s slight movement and the slapping of the water against its sides. But there was no wind to speak of as they descended to the deck. Then the ropes were cast, the water churned and they had left Britain behind.
Tansy’s parents stood on either side of the ferry, having settled into a mutual sulk. They had their backs to each other, like a pair of novelty bookends. The female bookend was a bit queasy: Hilary had never been good with water. The other passengers had drifted into groups. Three men with backpacks made their way to the bows and stood, eyes shielded, to catch the white wing of a seabird flashing fifty yards out on the tinselled water.
“Isn’t that a Mediterranean gull?”
“Yes, look!” Tansy heard them exclaim with quiet excitement. “This far north!”
The gulls all looked the same to Tansy. She supposed birdwatchers would be migrating daily to the island. Meanwhile, another group of passengers was chatting with the captain, whom they clearly knew. Locals, she guessed, wanting to distinguish themselves from the tourists with whom they shared the boat. She remembered what her mother had said about the islanders: “They’ll never let us in, Geoff. They’ll talk to their sheep more than they will to us. And you expect us to house-sit here all summer?”
“Well, John’s made a go of it and he’s no more an islander than I am. You do come out with the most awful prejudices, Hilary,” said Geoff. “You never used to be so cynical.”
“I speak as I find. As I have found.”
To which there was no answer – except the gabble of the water turned by the ferry’s prow and the wash pushed out behind it. Tansy stared down at her palms. All at once she felt immensely old, older by far than her parents. As old, possibly, as the limestone pebble scuffing the boards at her feet. She looked south to Plinth, now fast receding, and welcomed the invisibility offered by distance. A curse couldn’t follow them across the water, could it? Those experiments with Kate Quilley, the Cursing Candle and the rest – surely the sea would wash the memory of their magic from her? But she was not easy until they had rounded the rocky islet of Longholm and seen its sleek, unreflecting blackness ooze up between them and the village.
The only other passenger was a young man, tanned and lean with several days’ black stubble. He had spent half the journey sitting at the wheel of his old white camper van before stepping unsteadily on to the deck. He was looking at his watch now. Like Hilary he seemed impatient for their journey to be over, but not because of seasickness. More as if he had an appointment on Sweetholm that he dared not break. There was nothing in him of holiday excitement, no curiosity to see the Longholm seals, which the captain was bringing to their attention. The camper van, now Tansy looked at it, was actually a converted ambulance. You could see the words underneath the paint job, ghosting through: Wessex Health Authority. At the front someone had once painted ‘AMBIENCE’ in backward letters, but now that lame joke too was censored with white paint.
There were grey seals on Longholm. The captain had brought the boat about, to give their cameras time. He stood there sucking at his pipe, while the tourists crowded to the side of the boat to watch the great, clumsy-sleek lumberers rear their heads or slide down the rocks to reappear as a black, inquisitive dome, no more than a shadow in the waves’ cup of shadows.
The young man hung back a little, as did the Sweetholm locals, who had seen it all before. Not for them the undignified jostle to the side of the ferry. But with him it was not disdain. Tansy found herself wondering if he was superstitious about being snapped by the cameras. Or perhaps it was the domed heads of the seals themselves he found repugnant.
Geoff had taken Hilary by the arm. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” The arm wriggled free. “I just want to be off this boat. Can’t you see I’m ill?”
“Then take a nip of this at least.” Geoff had a hip flask in his hand.
“Why aren’t we moving?” asked Hilary, almost shouting. She turned to the captain. “Are you going to take us to Sweetholm or do we have to wait for a tow from one of these wretched seals?”
The captain gave her a slow, wide grin. He was charmed.
“Aren’t you even going to answer me?”
Laboriously, the captain consulted his watch. “We always come about at Longholm Point. People like to see the seals.”
“They’ve seen them now, so please let’s get on.”
Still with the same grin the captain turned to the controls and pushed a lever forward. The engine hubbubed, and the ferry turned through a foaming circle of water and progressed unhurriedly to its destination on the far side of Sweetholm.
The Haven was the island’s one harbour. Elsewhere, the land plummeted in stark cliffs or was skirted with lavish margins of mud. The undredged quicksands were an asylum for wading birds. The sand and mud squirmed with life, but had also sucked down sheep, dogs, even (the guidebook said) occasional unwary humans. A party of Edwardian nuns had made their last pilgrimage to the site of St Brigan’s ancient chapel and been swallowed, a hundred years before.
In the Haven a broad shingle beach lashed back the seafront. The land stuck a long jaw seaward, just beneath the water’s surface. The rocks allowed only one route to the jetty, a maze in which the jetty seemed at first to be almost overshot, then curled back upon, sidled up to almost, and surprised by the sudden weight of a ferry upon it. Water gushed out to counter the land’s push. Lorry tyres strapped to the jetty cushioned the stone wall behind. No one awaited them.
Now the nimble mate leapt out to moor the ferry and a hydraulic switch lowered the ramp over which the meagre island traffic was to roll. The cyclists first, and the young man in his camper van, which spluttered a little as it took the one asphalt road on Sweetholm uphill and past the patchwork of shopfronts, the cottage gardens and the harbour master’s house. Past Sweetholm Post Office too, where you could get your card stamped with a date-marked puffin and sent back to the mainland by the same boat. This, for the next three months, was to be their home.
“Where’s Uncle John’s place?” asked Tansy, peering along the sea front.
“Inland, up behind the village. You can’t see it from here.”
The
