The Island at the End of the World Read online

  ‘I brought you some wine, if you want it. And Daisy here has some cherries. Freshly picked.’

  ‘Daisy? Hi, I’m Will.’ Bending down to speak to her, coaxing her out from behind my legs; the blush and smile on her face the fucking bastard if he touches my daughter if he very kind of you I love cherries such a warm welcome I really appreciate on and on the charm so false pouring out his mouth just like his father but more natural better at lying because he doesn’t yet have that steel dollared glint in his eyeballs because he’s younger and more handsome I want to Alice watching her cheeks ashen horror-struck or and Finn and Daisy eating out his palm the innocents the ignorants after all I told them warned them last night about contamination and here they are I want to wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously pull them out like sheep for the slaughter O Lord and prepare them for the day of.

  Will.

  My nephew.

  Their cousin.

  They must neverever

  We walk towards the ark. Alice and Goldie have gone on ahead. Daisy holds my hand and looks back over her shoulder as she walks, so she keeps stumbling into me. Finn is behind us, holding hands with Will (the son dishonoureth) as he talks away. I half-listen to his chatter, but it’s safe, anodyne, all gollies at the beauty of the island and the books the kids have read and the food we gave him, and I look up at the still-misty sky and remember a harsh blue sky that boiling day in the City of Angels the last time I saw him when was that eight summers ago I’d lost my ad job it was after the earthquake and my so-called nervous breakdown I was working for a firm of swimming-pool builders called Deep Blue Heaven in Christian’s garden he’d hired us to construct an infinity pool hired us why us because he was friends with my boss because he wished to humiliate me that summer was one of the hottest on record and this was August we’d been there for weeks every day the same ritual me calling them Mr and Mrs Highfield they treating me just like any other worker on their land because they said they didn’t want to embarrass me in front of my colleagues all surly Mexicans and they were right God-damn it which only makes it worse but that day that day Charlotte sorry Mrs Highfield had invited Mary round with the kids because she knew there was no aircon in our apartment (and whose fault was that) and Mary and I had argued at the bottom of the drive hissing almost silently at each other her saying I had a bad attitude a chip on my shoulder and then she’d driven home and I’d gone back to work on my knees tiling in the deep end with Dez Rez or some such shit coming out the radio and then the call for lunch and sitting in the shade of the company truck on the grass eating limp sandwiches and drinking lukewarm water hating Christian knowing my kids were in his living room too shy (or ashamed) to come out and say hello to me with Chloë and Will watching TV and going up to the house to use the bathroom as usual taking off my shoes at the door wiping my hands on my shirt a glance into the living room (Alice and Finn sat either side of Chloë their eyes glued to the screen and Will lounging coolly on the beanbag twelve years old gelled hair earring ironic smirk not looking at me as I pass) and then down the passage to the bathroom long piss wash hands splash face long gulp of water and then out back up the passageway and look at my children see Alice glance up at me then back at the TV the sad glimmer of panic embarrassment on her face and Finn little Finn still a toddler lost in the waves of friendly colour and noise both of them CONTAMINATED and Will fucking Will sitting there in his fucking beanbag in his fucking Lakers T-shirt hands behind his head turning his gaze from the TV to me the cold contempt in his eyes and saying in his polite-to-the-workmen voice Excuse me but my father said you aren’t allowed in here and me What the hell are you talking and Will He said it wasn’t appropriate for you to come in here and me My own children are and Will He said if you insisted on coming in I was to call my mother and me You can’t stop me saying hello to my own and he It’s our house and me Come on kids we’re going and Finn and Alice looking nervously at Will who’d been Put In Charge and me Forget it and going outside into the heat wrapped in humiliation hating my nephew hating his father hating my own contaminated children and

  ‘Did you really swim all that way?’

  Finn’s voice shocks me back to Now.

  Will begins to say something, but I interrupt. ‘What happened to your boat?’ I demand, stopping and turning to face him.

  ‘My boat?’

  ‘Don’t play the innocent! I saw you, with my binoculars.’

  ‘Oh, you saw me.’ For a second the charm drops from his face and he stares coldly into my eyes I want to fucking kill him the fucking but is it already too late the children like him now how can I. ‘It sprang a leak. I had to abandon it.’

  ‘So you probably only swam a mile or two?’

  ‘I guess so. Something like that.’

  ‘But Pa, you said that water’s …’

  ‘Poisoned, yeah. I know, Finn, but if he only swam a couple miles, he might be OK.’

  ‘Might be?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The seed of an idea. ‘He might be.’

  ‘The water’s poisoned?’ Will looks at me again, raises an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s common sense surely, after all that’s happened.’

  ‘I suppose so. But don’t worry Finn, I’m sure your dad’s right, a couple miles won’t kill me. It’s not like I swallowed it or anything.’

  We walk back to the ark and drink some mint tea. We eat lunch, but Will says he’s not hungry any more, only tired, so I tell him to sleep in my bed. After lunch I go to check on him, and hear his breathing, deep and regular. So I leave the kids to rest in their room and walk back across the island to the cove. Will’s rucksack is where he left it, in the shade near the cat’s gravestone. I open it up and remove his belongings one by one. Clothes, suncream, biscuits, a bottle, a sleeping bag, a hunting knife. I take the last of these and stuff everything else back into the bag. He’ll know I’ve been through his stuff, but I don’t care. In fact I want him to know. This is MY island and MY laws apply.

  On the way back I think through all the ways I might kill him. A shooting accident in the forest. A snake in his sleeping bag. Crushed rat poison in his wine. A quiet strangling at night. An accidental fall from a treetop. But each time some voice inside me says it’s too late, I already missed my chance. If I couldn’t shoot him when he was a mere dark mark in the distance, anonymous, not even human, how can I possibly do it now? How can I kill him? My own flesh and blood. But what if he.

  Fuck O fuck what a fucking mess.

  Back in the ark, Finn’s awake, but all the rest are asleep. Finn begins asking me questions, but I tell him I’m tired and go to lie down in his bed. I don’t intend to sleep – I intend to listen out for the click and creak of my bedroom door, the sound of Will’s voice – but fatigue steals over me in the gently wheezing dimness and I.

  When I wake my mouth’s dry and tastes bitter. The other two beds are empty. Panicked, I sit up and walk to the door. There, I stand, fingers poised on the handle, ear to the wood, listening. Their voices are quite loud; they must be in the living room.

  (FINN: ‘… you come from, Will?’

  WILL: ‘It’s nothing like this place, that’s for sure. It’s so beautiful here, so peaceful.’

  DAISY: ‘Are there very tall houses where you come from?’

  WILL: ‘There sure are. Buildings taller than the tallest tree you ever saw, Daisy. We call them skyscrapers.’

  FINN: ‘But didn’t they all get destroyed in the flood?’

  WILL: ‘Well … not all of them.’

  FINN: ‘What about cars, are there still …’)

  I open the door and say loudly, ‘Wow, I didn’t realise I was so tired.’

  Will, who was sitting in the armchair with Daisy and Finn one on each arm, jumps up apologetically and says something about me obviously needing the sleep. It’s nearly evening, I can tell from the colour of the light coming through the porthole. ‘What have you all been talkin
g about?’

  ‘Will was telling us about where he comes from,’ Finn volunteers.

  Will blushes. ‘Yeah, and before that, Finn was telling me about all the work you guys do here: milking the goats and digging fields and chopping down trees and so on. It was fascinating.’

  I stare into his eyes as he talks. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. He meets my gaze for a few beats, then looks away, uncomfortable. But, as Daisy and Finn start to chatter at the same time, their words colliding, I understand that Will has not contaminated them. Not yet. And I breathe out relief through my mouth.

  The evening passes without damage. We eat outside, under the branch roof, and then I get Alice (who’s sulky and hostile for some reason) to play the violin. After that, I put the children to bed, close the door of the living room, and sit down across from Will, each of us with a glass of wine.

  ‘It’s been a long time since we last saw each other, Will.’

  ‘Yes, it certainly has.’

  ‘And it’ll be even longer before we see each other again.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I want you to leave tomorrow morning, early. And never come back.’

  I watch his face as I speak: a soft frown; the smile curdling, pursing: an expression that signals not shock, but only mild disappointment.

  ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that.’

  The slight tremble of nerves in his voice. I stroke the clasp of my hunting knife.

  ‘Would you care to tell me why not?’

  ‘Well, for a start, I don’t have a boat any more. You can hardly expect me to swim all the way back, can you? I mean, if the water’s poisoned …’

  We look in each other’s eyes for several moments. He doesn’t smile or look away. It’s like we’re arm-wrestling, and I’ve tried a couple pushes, only to discover my opponent is stronger, much stronger, than I’d imagined. And so far, he hasn’t pushed back.

  ‘That’s true,’ I say.

  He leans back in his chair. ‘This is a beautiful island. I’d like to stay a little longer … with your permission.’

  ‘While you build yourself a boat?’

  ‘Sure. I imagine it’ll be done before the end of the summer.’

  ‘Long before, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Well … I have to get it right. Make sure it doesn’t have any leaks this time.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that makes sense.’

  ‘Your children seem very happy and healthy. They’re great kids. You must be proud …’

  You do anything to my children you fuck and I’ll fucking.

  ‘I am.’

  There’s a silence. I drink some wine. I hear him sigh, breathe in, and then:

  ‘My father didn’t send me, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t say he did.’

  ‘I know, I just … thought you’d like to know.’

  I nod, slowly. ‘How is your father?’

  ‘He hasn’t changed.’ A trace of bitterness? ‘I have, though.’

  ‘Naturally. You were only, what, twelve, when I last saw you. It would be strange if you hadn’t changed.’

  ‘That’s right. Only twelve. It seems even longer ago than that somehow …’

  ‘Yeah. Another world. The flood changed everything, of course. No one could go through that and still be the same person. Except for the children. They were so young, you know. Finn and Daisy, they don’t remember the world before the flood at all. And Alice … well, she’s got a few memories, but nothing very solid. I think it would be better if you didn’t talk to them about it – about the world you come from. I fear it would disturb them.’

  ‘Right.’ He nods. ‘I understand.’ Then, swallowing, leaning forward, he says, ‘So … tell me what happened to you and your family during the flood. I don’t actually remember it too well myself, to be honest with you. You say you knew it was coming?’

  ‘Yes, Will, I knew.’

  And I tell him the story.

  I tell him the story, from beginning to end.

  I tell him about the Year of Disasters and that evening, soon after Daisy’s birth, when I sat with Mary, watching TV, and the President came on screen to warn us that a war might be coming, a war he wished to avoid, but would not back down from if the other side did not see reason. And how I didn’t even feel the old hatred for him any more because I could see God through the lightwaves and the pixels, I could see the catastrophe that was yet to come, the Great Wave. And I tell him how Mary and I sat on the couch, holding each other close, images of death and disaster blinking from the TV screen and flashing in the silent tears that rolled down Mary’s face, and how God spoke to me through the hissing baby monitor, He said the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy them. Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, and everything upon the earth shall die, all but YOU. And how the next day I went to the hardware store and bought all the wood they had, and I went to the library and borrowed a book called How to Build an Ark, and I set to work in the back garden of our Crenshaw apartment. How I stopped turning up for work because I knew money would soon lose its value, would mean nothing, and how I stayed at home in the garden, sawing and measuring and hammering and sanding and varnishing for four hundred days and four hundred nights until finally the ark was ready, and how everyone neighbours colleagues family everyone thought I was crazy because they did not see what I saw they could not hear what I heard everyone yes even my wife believed I was wrong wrong in the head and but I KNEW that the Wave was coming and on the night when the storm began and the heavens opened Mary believed me then O yes and she followed me and the children and animals into the ark and we sealed up the door as the rains fell upon the earth and the waters rose and the thunder roared and the lightning flashed brighter than the sun illuminating horrors I saw trees and hills crawling with people all of them pushing and crushing the weakest to save themselves the cowards but IN VAIN for the waters were rising ever higher and the naysayers knew in their hearts that I had been right after all and their lives were ending now they were dying arms upraised to the sky faces disappearing under water and we watched through the portholes as Babylon fell and became the habitation of devils and how we sailed for many days and how Mary died saving baby Daisy from the waves and how we finally sighted land and made our home here here on this blessed island and how the world beyond these shores is CONTAMINATED and I will not let anything or anyone touch or harm my children for if he did I would KILL him I would SMITE him I would GRIND YOU INTO DUST YOU FUCKING do you understand me do you understand what I’m saying and he says yes yes I understand.

  His face’s white and his eyes are wide and he says he understands.

  Yes, yes. Everything’s going to be all right.

  He understands.

  XIV

  Its go-ing to be a nother flamer of a day I can tell. But erly morning here in the shade of the Afterwoods the grounds still damp an cool. It raind last night like its raind nearly evry night since He came. Pa said the other day its like a mirror cull. No rain for moons an moons an then the great storm an His coming an ever since the night rain filling the lake an feeding the tatoes an matoes an melons an strawbrees an keeping the river all clear an deep an I-see cold.

  I hant askt Pa if Hes an angel sent by God but I reckon He must be. Weare all happy an saved since He came afterall. Even Daisy who wer shy an fraid of Him to gin with. Even Goldy who barkt an wer spicious of Him. Even Pa who reckond Will wer taminated wen he rived an spoke real dark an force full to Him an crusht his Devil on the ground. Even Alice who wer cold an weird to Him for days an days even she seems happy now an smiles wen ever she sees Him. No there int any of us who dont like Will.

  I walk thru the long grass barefoot so I can feel the damp erth on my soles. My trainers are tied by ther laces round my neck. Ahm on my way to Wills shelter so we can talk like all ways an side wat we need to do t
his morning. The last few days weve been sawing an stacking firewood for the winter. Theres a massive pile of it now by the river behind Alices field of sun flowers. If you climb up an stand on top of it you can see over the sun flowers heads to the grass tween them an the Afterwoods.

  Befor that I helpt Will make His shelter. We made it from willow branches an tar porlin. Inside its not big but its cool an the rain slides off it wen it falls at night. Wen it wer finisht Will thankt me for all my help but He dint have to cus I joyd it I joy jus be-ing with Him an us do-ing stuff to gether. He said ahm the hardest worker Hes ever met. The berfly seemd to grow inside me wen He said that. Ahm thinking maybe we shud dig a nother field of tatoes this morning cus weare eating more of em now Wills here. Pa cud even help us if hes not busy in the Afterwoods. An then after the noon sleep we can go hunting like mos ways. We shot a deer a wile back. Pa made a stew from it an we ate it for days.

  I come out from the first line of trees an into the sun so I can check the traps in the long grass. I stop an put my trainers on first tho case I get trapt my self. With a dead branch I push the long grass out the way. The first ones emty an sos the second but wen I come to the third I dont need to push the grass out the way cus its all ready flattend in a half circle round the trap an I can hear a noise like Goldy makes in his sleep wen hes having bad dreams. I slow down an hold my breth as I draw closer. The memry of Snowys stiff body flashes in my mind. The duum duums loud in my ears.

  Wat is it.

  Wen ahm standing bove it I let my breth out an the duum duums quite down. Its only a rabbit. Poor things still a live tho thrashing an nawing its leg caught an bloody in the steel mouth. It shakes like crazy for a couple moments then lies down like its dead for a few mor. My two eyes look into its one blackun wen its calm an I feel like I can read its thoughts. Ahm hurting its eye says Let me go. I wonder wat it means at first cus it cunt run far with its leg smasht but then I stand that Let me go means Put me out my misry. It means Kill me please. Ive got a hunting nife hanging on my belt but wen I take it out an look at the blade an think bout slitting the rabbits neck I can feel the black bird flapping inside me. Wat am I fraid of. Ive cut up rabbits hunerds of times befor. But theyve all ways been dead hant they. Pas all ways kild em. Some thing bout the I-dear of sliding the nife in a throat thats pulsing breathing tensing makes me feel sick an weak an I cant do it.