The Last Kings of Sark (14 page)

‘You're not stupid,' I said, ‘just exaggerating.'

‘You can't even see it because you're there, talking about your exxy-ats. I did an interview for college too, you know.' She started talking about it being a secret organism.

I said this was conspiracy theory stuff. I told her to stop it, that it was too much. She took a swig from the bottle of Grand Marnier and told me I wasn't (fucking) listening. She kept going. On and on.

It was when she said that I could ‘turn it on and off' that I had to stop her, because that wasn't true.

I took the bottle from her hands, and said, no, that's you. ‘That's you. That's
you.
And you love it, Sofi. You love the power you have.'

She had her hands up by her fringe. She was trying to smooth it down over her eyes so I couldn't see them, but it was too short now.

‘But you
do,
Sofi. You do it to all of us. Pip, Eddy, Vaclav, the guys at the Mermaid … me…' When I said ‘me' she stopped touching her face, so I said, ‘Caleb. You were definitely flirting with Caleb.'

She was shaking her head and then she said, ‘Do you think I liked that? The way you all looked at me when I came in? I never asked for that. I've never…' Whatever she wanted to say was in her hands. She was looking into her palms and I thought she was going to cry. ‘I'm not like you or Pip, Jude, I don't have the words.'

I had never seen her cry before. There hadn't been any reason to cry. They say this about people with blue eyes but this was the first time I saw it. The blue went brighter. Brighter, unbearable blue.

She said she had to make the coffees, and left me. I looked at her cigarette stubs in the bird bath; I looked at the Grand Marnier. All of it was finished.

22

I went back to the dining room and the men filled up my glass. I drank it because my mouth felt dry as wood.

By then the younger boys were on the sofa, watching a film with lots of shouting and shooting. Caleb's eldest had moved closer to his dad, his beer glass full of red wine now. Eddy was telling a story about joy-riding a tractor, drunk, off a friend's bridge. Caleb was laughing much too loudly and his lips were so wine-soaked he looked like he'd been sucking on a leaking biro. Eddy had almost got to the end of his story, when Pip stood up and started dusting flicked bits of carrots and pastry crumbs into his palm. Eddy asked what he was doing.

‘Clearing the table a bit. For Sofi.'

Caleb leaned back onto the hind legs of his chair. ‘Fuck,' he said. I wondered if the legs would break. ‘Fuck!' Another inky laugh. ‘You're not fucking her, are you?'

Everyone went quiet. That's when I stood up. I didn't mean to stand up; it just happened.

‘No,' I said, and everyone stared at me. For a second, Pip looked so grateful.

‘No,' I repeated. Did I nearly laugh? ‘
No.
Of course not. I mean – he's just a boy.'

Pip's face fell. And that was when Sofi came in with the coffee. I looked at her, and then at Pip. ‘You're just a boy,' I said it like a question. I was asking him to agree.

But he shook his head. ‘I'm not a boy.' Pip looked at all of us. ‘I'm not just some boy.'

There was a second of silence and then Caleb burst into laughter. Right into his wine glass, red waves crashing up the side, and slopping down his chin.

‘Look at her,' he said, and he turned to Sofi. ‘Surely she'd rather fuck a real man?'

‘
Fuck
you,' Pip said, and took a step towards him. Eddy put a hand out to get in his way.

Sofi looked at me. Unbearable blue. She looked for help, and I looked away. Caleb was still leaning back in his chair. I stared at the legs, willing him to fall.

‘Sofi, we're going,' Pip said, and he pushed his father out of the way to get to her.

She still had the coffee in her hand. She banged it down on Eddy's sailing charts. It spilt black.

‘It's instant,' she said, blunt as stone. And then they left together, and Pip put his arm around her.

Caleb tried to fill the space where they'd stood with laughter, but no one else was laughing. His oldest son got up to watch the film, leaving dregs of wine like blood at the bottom of his pint glass.

It was only adults left at the table. I stayed because I had nowhere else to go.

23

I don't know how long it was before I stumbled into the kitchen. Our round table was empty, of course.

Of course. Those were the words I heard again and again. I thought of Sofi touching his lips with her Vaseline, and the way Pip would lean, close, into her to see what she was cooking.

I went to look for them in Pip's bedroom. No one, just blue walls and books for a boy much younger. I was about to leave when I saw my orange Hemingway on his desk. I suddenly felt that he couldn't have everything, and went to take it back.

Underneath it, exactly the same size, was his leather notebook. I knew I shouldn't, and that I would. I opened it on the first page and saw writing: spider small, leaning backwards, the nib of the pen never thin enough. I skimmed the lines and saw a time before us; the mention of a jumper, winter. I skipped forward. I looked for Sofi. All I wanted was to find Sofi.

I turned, until I saw, darker than the writing, taking up a whole page, across the lines, a drawing of a girl. Sofi? I thought. But it wasn't her.

It must have been Esmé when she was younger; dark hair, almond eyes, a sadness that came off the page. She was even more beautiful when she was young; I wondered what she had to be so sad about.

And then I realized that the girl was me.

They were my eyes and my lips. My sadness. It must have been from the start of summer, because Pip had put me in the study. I had my hair tied back. I looked so worried; how had he done that in biro? But the curtains: he'd drawn them open. I ran my finger over the page, felt how his pen had changed the paper.

It was mostly writing, but there were one or two other sketches. One of three backs, a boy-sized one in the middle, sitting on the harbour wall. One of the Coupée, imagined from above. One of me, lying down – thin, too thin maybe, light little lines for my ribs – on our flint rock on Little Sark.

It was only on the very last page that I found Sofi. But it was Sofi and me. Together, heads touching. He'd drawn us in our wicker crowns, except he had put flowers in mine.

Together, touching. It had been us, and now it was them.

I cycled back to Bonita's alone, and there was no moon. Somehow my body remembered when to turn left and right, and that I had to keep moving my legs to go forward. All of me felt heavy, wet wool on a coat hanger. I got back to Bonita's and took a handful of her nuts for the birds, because that's what Sofi would have done.

I lay on my bed and held the stupid nuts in my hand and I wanted to cry but nothing would come out. I kept on looking at my phone, locking and unlocking it to see if anything changed. I didn't have Sofi's number, because I'd never needed it. We'd been together the whole summer. Still, I wrote texts I couldn't send. And what I said changed. I looked at her empty bed, and thought of another bed somewhere that would be full. Pip and Sofi, together. Behind my eyes and nose, it burned sharp and black.

24

In the morning, I knew before I opened my eyes that the world was wrong. I kept my eyes shut. Hayfever head, thick with wine and over-breathed air. Blur. For the meaning, for the sound. The night came back in beats, each one bad. I decided I would never open my eyes again.

Then I heard a noise. I was not alone. Someone was in Sofi's bed. I looked through locked lashes. Sofi was in Sofi's bed. She was wearing pyjamas for the first time that summer, but she was here.

‘I know you're awake,' she said. I made sure none of my body moved. I stopped breathing.

‘It's OK,' she said then. ‘It's OK.' Long breath out. She was smoking. It was freshly lit. ‘It has to be, you're leaving tomorrow. Hey, look at me.' I couldn't.

‘Pip?' I said, eyes shut.

‘Yeah?'

‘Did you—?'

‘We went to see the Czech boys.'

‘But you didn't—?'

‘Didn't what, Jude?' She stopped. ‘After a while he said we had to go back for you. I came here and found you passed out in a pile of peanuts.'

I didn't know if I wanted to say sorry, or thank you. It was right at the back of my throat, but there was so much of it there it got stuck.

‘You can open your eyes now,' she said. ‘It's OK. It's your last day, it has to be OK.'

*   *   *

It was the third Sunday of August, and that morning, my last morning, it was the annual Service on the Sea. There'd been posters everywhere. We'd said we'd go. The two churches on Sark would come together, and everyone would be there.

Everyone would be there, but I couldn't go now: Pip would be there.

Pip. He had given me flowers in my crown, and what had I given him? When he needed me, I had given him nothing.

‘Just
move
it, Judas,' Sofi said, ripping off my sheets. ‘We're not going to be late for church.'

We played tug of war with my sheets, but there was still enough wine in my blood to let her take me. I saw the world through the glass I'd drunk from. Softer edges, separate, still slightly more shine than there should be.

It was raining, but even so there must have been about two hundred people down at the harbour. Half the island, in coloured raincoats or under umbrellas. I saw the woman from the shop, with a baby I thought she'd be too old to have; men who'd said hello to us from ladders; young girls in baggy leggings who'd plaited Sofi's hair. Up at the front, DJ Roger, ringed fingers on his song sheet, and behind him, Bonita, in a huge blue hat. Up high on a ledge at the back, the Barclay brothers, who we recognised, and a few of the Farquarts, who we didn't. A hymn was just starting. It was ‘Great is thy faithfulness'. I knew it from school but I couldn't sing.

Further along the harbour wall from us, I saw them. The men and the cousins, in a black line, practically in height order. A little bit away from them stood Esmé, tiny. Even Esmé was here. And next to her, arm around her shoulders, Pip leant down to kiss her head.

I felt a seam of pins and needles prickle round the back of my neck.

Caleb saw me and tipped an imaginary hat, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he didn't remember. I pretended I hadn't seen. I looked at the vicar, tried to look at every single thing about him so my mind had something to do. I tensed my ears to fill them with white noise, but I could hear the sea slap at the harbour wall. It was that or my heartbeat, I'm not sure, but it was faster than normal.

When Sofi saw Pip, she touched my arm. ‘It's his new suit for school. Fuck, he looks handsome; doesn't he look handsome?'

The rain ran fast. The birds chattered louder behind the Salvation Army band. A trumpeter with a purple nose stopped playing so he could wipe his glasses.

The sermon started. It was the vicar's last service. He was talking about leaving Sark for a different parish.

‘Like you and me,' Sofi said. And I said, ‘Like Pip.'

He was holding Esmé's umbrella for her, her bag, her song sheet. She was holding onto him. I reached for Sofi's hand, hers hot, mine cold. We all held onto something.

By the time the service ended it was raining so hard it made the stone harbour floor bounce and pixelate.

*   *   *

It shouldn't have been, but in the end it was Pip who came to us.

‘Sorry,' he said, and so he said it for me. ‘We shouldn't have left you.' There was rain on his eyelashes.

I suddenly didn't want him to look at me, I couldn't disappoint him again, and so I buried my face in his shoulder. Sofi still had my hand and ran a finger over the veins on my wrist. Then she reached up and touched Pip's tie. ‘Let's go home,' she said. ‘We'll make a goodbye cake.'

Summer would end in Sofi's kitchen.

25

But there was never any cake.

The wind and the rain. The dirt path home from the harbour had turned to paint. By the time we got back, Pip's new suit shrink-wrapped his arms. Eddy was in the kitchen; it had been cleaned. He avoided our eyes, fiddling with his barometer and looking out of the window. ‘Bad one,' he kept saying, ‘I can tell a bad one.' He went into his study to make a call. Sofi got out the flour and the scales. Pip had taken off his suit and was drying himself off with a towel, in his boxers.

When Eddy came back out, he said he was sorry to break up the party. He'd just spoken to Tom at Le Maseline harbour – he was saying this to me rather than the other two. ‘I was right,' he said. ‘They're saying it's going to be a bad one. Force 4 on Alderney apparently.'

Then he asked if my flight from Guernsey was in the morning.

‘Yes,' I said. As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn't. ‘At 11.15.'

He said he thought tomorrow's ferries would be cancelled, that the last sailing they were definitely letting leave was the next one, in an hour.

It happened that fast. Eddy said I had to go; that it was now or never.

26

I cycled back to Bonita's alone, again. That journey is a blur. Maybe there were still the echoes of drunkenness, but I couldn't tell you whether it was raining or not; I couldn't feel anything. It should have been my last day, then my last night. There had been plans. The Venus Caves again, and Port Gorey. Sofi had still never been to the Window in the Rock. We were supposed to go to the Mermaid, we would have said things to each other. You're allowed to, at the end. You imagine that you will be given the chance to join up the dots, and say goodbye. You always think that a last day will be longer than it is.

I tried to pack my things, but kept looking at Sofi's. They were draped in thick piles over backs of chairs, screwed up and strewn around her suitcase. She'd laid down her coat like a lily pad for us to tread on. There were so many more colours on her side. In each of her tops, I saw the day she'd worn them. All of summer was there.