okay’; ‘If I can climb down to watch this sunset, I married the right person …’
He reached the bottom of the slope and, holding on to two chunky tufts of grass, turned to lower himself down the fifteen feet of jumbled granite that led to the platform. His toes found a tiny ridge, and he twisted round to see where his next foothold would come, but his eyes stayed ahead.
The sun was now winking over the edge of the horizon. Going, going, gone. He felt a calming chill descend in the now colourless dusk. He’d drive the long way home, round the top of the Island. Maybe stop off at St Catherine’s harbour and walk along the breakwater, watching the moon on the sea and listening to the creak of the boats.
He looked down at the ledge he’d been making for and, to his surprise, saw a figure. It was a young boy, a teenager. He stood, feet together, right on the edge of the gently undulating rock that formed the basin, looking down the sheer drop to the sea below. He leant back, his face to the sky, arms raised above his sides. The light wasn’t clear enough for Colin to be sure, but the boy seemed to be preparing to jump.
Colin was about to cry out when one of the tufts he was holding on to tore out of the loose earth and he was sliding and scrambling down the rock. The boy ran over, helping to break his slow fall as he crumpled at the base.
‘Sir?’
‘Aah! Ooh! Hello, Duncan,’ Colin said, rubbing his knees, which had been scraped on his descent. His mind was split between the pain, the general awkwardness of meeting a pupil out of school, and the specific angst that he might have interrupted a suicide attempt.
‘Just sit for a second, sir. Don’t put any weight on it.’
Colin wanted to stand, partly for the sake of his dignity, but also so that he could grab the boy if he had indeed been about to jump and was minded to make a further attempt. ‘I’m fine. I can stand – better to walk it off,’ he said, wincing as he got to his feet and hobbled round to put himself between Duncan and the drop.
‘It’s hard to spot the footholds in the dark,’ said Duncan. ‘I can go and get my bike light to help you climb up.’
Colin was confused by how normal the boy sounded. He was talking as though they’d ended up stuck there as part of an agreed climb. Maybe he’d been mistaken in what he thought he’d seen. But what if the boy wanted to get away from him so he could fling himself off from another point?
‘No, it’s fine. The moon’s up, I should be okay. What are you doing here, Duncan?’
‘Looking at the sunset. It’s the best place to see it from.’
‘You gave me a jump when I first saw you. You were very near the edge.’ That was as close as Colin felt he could get to the subject.
‘I was just trying to get a view without a sense of the Island. You know, just the sun, the sea and me. It’s quite a rush.’
Duncan’s articulacy was no surprise. He was one of Colin’s star pupils, an eloquent and sensible boy, the youngest of three brothers. Both of his siblings had excelled in the classroom and on the sporting field, both had been head boy, both had secured places at Oxford. Duncan was matching them in the first two, and was expected to follow them in the others.
‘Why are you here, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’ he asked.
‘Same as you. The sun sinking into the Atlantic. It’s an incredible sight. I was hurrying, hence my heavy landing. Don’t tell anyone about that, by the way. If I end up limping round the school tomorrow I’m going to say I hurt myself kicking down the door of a burning house to save some baby pandas.’
The boy smiled. That was a relief. Colin was closer in age to his pupils than most of the other staff and shared more of a rapport with them. He was open and approachable, and the sound that rang out from his lessons was rare in other classrooms: laughter. But, in the present circumstance, mannered reticence flooded back. ‘Do you live nearby?’ he asked.
‘Not really. St Martin’s.’
‘You cycled halfway across the Island? You must really have wanted to see the sunset.’
‘It’s only half an hour or so. I’ve gone right round it in under three.’
‘Still … everything all right?’ As soon as he’d said it, it felt too pointed. Colin retreated. ‘I mean, workwise. You do history as well as English, don’t you? Not having an essay overload or anything?’ He was gabbling now.
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘’Cause you know my policy?’
Duncan nodded. Everyone knew Colin’s policy – ‘If you really can’t do it, tell me and I’ll give you an extension, everybody has off-moments.’ It was frowned on by his colleagues and envied by the pupils not under his tutelage.
‘Are you okay now? We should get back up,’ Duncan said. Was this concern about Colin’s knee, or an attempt to change the subject?
‘Yes, I’m fine. Do you want to lead the way?’
They picked their way up the steep path in silence under the ghostly grey light. Duncan went first, turning regularly to check on Colin and to show him where best to put his hands and feet. When they reached the top, they turned to look at the moon on the water, a cool balm after the searing sun.
‘Why don’t I give you a lift?’ said Colin. ‘I’m sure if I put the seat down we can fit your bike in the back of my car.’
‘I quite like the exercise.’
‘I’d feel better, if you don’t mind. It’s getting late, and you should be back home. I wouldn’t feel right leaving you alone in the dark on the wrong side of the Island.’
The boy conceded and they collected his bike, then used the light to pick a way past the potholes and loose rocks to Colin’s car. After they had silently wrestled it into the boot, Colin felt an unease that built as they settled into their seats. He had a mild panic over what music to play. One of his most popular lessons was when he told the boys to bring in their favourite songs to discuss the lyrics. Now he felt as if his own taste was on the spot. He ran through the options, hesitating over Springsteen’s Born in the USA and The River. Some people, wrongly in Colin’s opinion, labelled Springsteen as a sickeningly bombastic American flag-waver, so he dismissed him as too controversial and polarising. He discarded Dire Straits’s Brothers in Arms as too ubiquitous and too obvious, something a teacher would play to appear cool while clearly having no idea what that constituted. He decided Erasure were too camp – he wanted to avoid a potentially unshakeable nickname – then became dismayed at the ludicrousness of worrying how his musical taste would be perceived when twenty minutes earlier he’d thought the boy was about to hurl himself to his death. He started the engine and pulled off the track that led from the headland on to a main road. Eventually, to mask the silence, he slid in the cassette tape of Paul Simon’s Graceland, which was both mainstream and off-beat enough hopefully to score a multitude of points.
‘I don’t understand that lyric,’ said Duncan, out of nowhere. ‘The one about “lasers in the jungle”?’
‘I think he’s talking about the double-edged sword of technological expansion. How it affects every area of life, often with a detrimental effect. How we might gain in science, but lose
