The Last Kings of Sark (3 page)

Every morning after that, we cycled to work from Bonita's. She let us borrow these two bikes: lilac-coloured, no suspension, dingy chains, and pedals your feet slipped off. But that first morning, we walked, and I saw Sark for the first time in daylight.

The sky was as white as this page, just so much brighter. You couldn't look directly at it. I found it hard to look at anything. Sofi was not a good tour guide. She pointed out that the postbox was blue when I was already staring at it. It was just like the old red Royal Mail ones – a chess castle, but blue. We passed a woman with a gargoyle face and a huge sunhat, and scaffolding erected by E&G Builders (on closer look, Ewan and Glenn). We saw red garden apples, shiny as yo-yos and about the same size, left out in cardboard boxes on front steps for anyone to take. I heard people saying hello, mostly men, and mostly to Sofi, who was wearing tiny denim shorts. But it wasn't like arriving on holiday, when you look at things so you can write them on a postcard, when you walk slowly. We were late and walking fast to somewhere I didn't want to go.

‘You look a bit ill,' Sofi said, when we got to Eddy's gate. Her eyes floated over my face as if she were reading it. ‘Pasty,' she said. ‘Don't be scared.'

I told her I wasn't, I just got cold easily. I said I was fine, twice, in case she didn't believe me. I tried to smile and she opened the gate.

Pip – odd, eye-avoiding Pip – had done something to his hair. He'd slicked it back with water, I think. You could see the shallow dents of his temples.

‘Sofi, I don't want eggs this morning,' he said as she pulled open the walk-in fridge. ‘I had toast already.'

‘What colour?' she asked.

‘What colour what?'

‘Toast. What colour toast did you have?'

‘Brown.'

‘With what on?'

He thought for a second.

‘Nothing.'

‘Not even butter?'

‘No.'

‘Gross. Doesn't it get stuck to your mouth?
What
have you done to your hair?' she said, combing back into place with her fingers. ‘I'm making you eggs.' I watched her with him and she was just so easy. She put her hands where she wanted to. Pip still hadn't looked me in the eye once, but there she was, touching his head. We sat at the table and waited for his eggs. Sofi was singing. She didn't have a nice voice – pitch was a problem – but it kind of jangled like bangles on a wrist. What did she sing that first day? I don't remember any more. But she had a thing for Tina Turner, and also drum and bass. Pip's eggs came, scrambled to smithereens, and he ate them very slowly, clenching his eyes with every swallow as if each mouthful was a burr.

Sofi left the room and then there was silence. Fork on plate, sips of tea – louder than I wanted them to be – but silence, really. I was wearing shoes, but my toes bit the sole the way they do with loose flip-flops at the beginning of summer.

Finally, when Pip was done – apart from a curve of crust and a few pellets of egg – he took me through to the study.

‘We have to do it in here,' he said. ‘I'm not going to open the curtains, though, because the sun gets in my eyes.'

It was a dark room that smelt of books and unbeaten cushions. The ceilings seemed lower than anywhere else in the house. Pip pushed his hair back off his face again.

‘You look smart today,' I told him. It tasted wrong as soon as I'd said it. Smart is such a dad's word.

He ruffled his hair out again, the way that Sofi had done. He shuffled in his chair, sat awkwardly, couldn't get comfortable. Still, his back was straight for a sixteen-year-old. He wasn't at all small. Even at the beginning of summer, his shoulders were wider than the chair's, it's just that he was sunken somehow. The mast and sails were there, but there was no wind.

I asked him to tell me exactly what he wanted to learn from me. I had a vague idea we'd write ‘objectives' on a piece of paper. We could draw tick-boxes next to each one; the path through summer would be set.

‘I don't know. This was Eddy's idea. I don't need a tutor.' He touched the top buttons of his shirt as if their being done-up was proof of this.

My face replied without me asking it to.

‘I've never had teachers before,' he continued, ‘and I've been fine.'

‘“Teachers” doesn't just mean the teachers you get at school,' I said. I was speaking in sound bites and barely knew where they came from.

‘I don't need anyone,' he said, but as soon as he said it, it seemed to both of us like such an impossible thing to feel that we moved on.

This time, he talked to my forehead. He told me he'd just done his GCSEs: four days a week at Sark School, but on computers mostly, in a room with no working windows. The majority of lessons were online for students over fifteen, on video feeds from schools in England and the States. He said they went too slowly and he hated American accents.

I later learned that when Pip chose to speak, he sometimes spoke very fast, like no one had ever let him speak before, so he was going to take his chance. This was one of those times. I asked him about his friends, if they were leaving Sark at the same time as him, if they were going to the same school. He said they had all left a long time ago.

‘There are only three children my age at Sark School.' He was so tall, I found it strange when he said children. ‘And the other two, they're not exactly…' He touched his temple. ‘They have special classes and stuff.' He looked at the heavy curtain, a square halo of sun pushing through at its edges.

Was he excited about leaving the island after the summer? He picked at the arm of the sofa. Scratch, flick, scratch flick. Had he visited the new school he was going to be going to in England? He shook his head. The seconds stretched.

‘What does Eddy
think
I have to learn?' he asked eventually.

Maths and science, I said, were the subjects his father had stressed. I'd bought books off Amazon and tried to read them. Long division, X and Y chromosomes; there was so much I'd forgotten.

‘Look, I'm not trying to be rude,' he said. ‘I just don't want to waste your time. Honestly. You have to believe me. There is no point in you doing this.'

‘English?' I tried. It sounded like my last breath.

‘You probably don't even like
books
…' he said, turning away to the heavy velvet curtain.

That was when I said, ‘I do, I do, I do,' lots of times and very fast.

And that was when he looked up, and looked me in the eye.

‘You do?'

I did like reading, it was true; I liked the idea of reading. ‘I'm a great fan of Proust,' I said.

‘You are?'

‘Yes.'

‘Me too. I read it a couple of summers ago.'

‘The first one?' That's what I'd read. Most of it anyway, before I'd left it on a bus.

‘No, the whole
Recherche.
It was Esmé's.'

I was nodding.

‘I also like Borges,' he went on.

‘Yes,' I said. The name was familiar. ‘Excellent choice.'

‘Only in translation, so far. I don't always like magic realism but I do like Borges. What do you think of
Ficciones?
'

‘Hemingway?' I segued, ‘I like Hemingway.' I had
A Moveable Feast
in my bag; I'd had it on my lap in the plane. It was a second-hand Penguin copy with an orange spine. I'd been carrying it around for a while, put it on the table when I sat in cafés.

Pip said he hadn't read Hemingway. I said he should, because he was really good. I think I even said he was one of my favourite writers. I got out the book and showed him the cover.

That was when Sofi burst in without knocking and called us into the kitchen for cake. I found myself wanting to say ‘Pip and I both like reading,' so she knew we hadn't been sitting there silent, but I was perturbed by the size of the slice of cake she'd cut for me.

‘I
know,
' she said, ‘and it's not even nice. Fucking put
salt
instead of bicarb. And I was so lonely I also made quiche.' She said it ‘quish' and put a tablespoon of cake in her mouth. Two chews in, she puffed out her cheeks and reached for the kitchen roll. ‘Oh fuck, it's
rank.
No one eat it.'

I should say now that Sofi doesn't come across quite right on the page. Writing it down, it's not accurate. She did say ‘fuck' a lot, but she said it lightly, like a laugh. It felt right when she said it. ‘Do you know what it is?' she told me later, when we were standing close to each other over pink drinks at Dixcart Hotel's karaoke night. ‘It's because I can't help looking at people's lips when they talk to me.' It was true, she'd look at your lips, even to see if you were listening. Anyway, right now she was rubbing at hers with kitchen roll and glugging my water.

‘Ah, cake!' said Eddy, walking in, red polo shirt spotted with sweat rings. He had a bagged-up tennis racket in his hand and took a swing at an imaginary ball. ‘Six–three. Too easy.' He clasped Pip's neck with his hand, which was supposed to be affectionate. ‘Do you play?' he asked me, and then, before I could answer, ‘Cake. Lovely. Lemon?'

‘It needs icing,' Sofi said quickly, taking it away and putting it under a silver meat cover in the corner. ‘And it's almost lunchtime. You can have a beer instead.'

There were days when Sofi's abruptness would make him bristle, but Eddy had just won his game, so he laughed, unbuckled his hand from Pip's neck and took his beer into the shower with him.

We ate lunch in the front garden, under a gazebo to the left of the croquet lawn. There was a slight slope, so Eddy looked a lot taller than Pip or me, who sat side-by-side opposite him, careful not to bump hands reaching for the salt. Sofi brought out a dish of hams; Eddy took most of it onto a plate with his spoon. I ate slowly. I composed small mouthfuls on my fork, held it up to my mouth then put it down again. I bade my time until the plates were cleared. I looked at other people's food, the quiche crumb on Eddy's lip, Pip's face when he swallowed, a wasp circling the salad bowl. The sun hit the table but the gazebo kept our heads in the shade.

Those first meals, I remember that the food tasted as if it had come straight from a fridge. The water made my glass mist, and the tomatoes were so cold they hurt my teeth. It's coldness I remember. Eddy asked me how the first lesson had gone, and we talked about Pip as if he wasn't there. When Sofi brought coffee, I said thank you without looking at her.

We were always slightly better after eating, when the food had been cleared. Before it came, we didn't know what it would be; when it came, we might not like it. While we were eating, there were the noises, and the way that you can suddenly zoom out and find it strange to use metal things to bring food up to your mouth. Too intimate, embarrassing. We spilt things.

After lunch, another lesson in the study. Those I remember with my nose, the dust and the dark. Pip drew a diagram of a cell which was better than the textbook's, and I drank coffee till it coated my organs.

Occasionally Pip would ask me questions, but it was never about what he was supposed to be learning. How old are you? – Young for my year. But old enough. What is your surname? Have you been to Sark before? Do you have a brother? Husband?

I stalled, and then, soon, it would be supper, inside at the dinner table. Outside, inside, both were far too cold. ‘Cold spell,' Eddy said, flicking his barometer with his finger as if he could change things. I counted beats with my teeth to try and make the meal pass. There were tall heavy cabinets, with feet which dug into the carpets. I imagined them falling over onto us. The air was heavy with the weight of having nothing to say. I don't know if I wanted Sofi there, or if I didn't. Would she have broken the ice or made it thicker? Either way, it was clear that she wasn't invited.

She made it easier for all of us by pretending it was her choice. ‘Wouldn't want to sit with you anyway. Conversation round that table is dry as Ryvita. Dryvita. Not into it.' I know this wasn't true because later she told me she didn't like eating alone, that she found it harder to swallow. But she'd lay the table and bring us our food, and clear our plates, and prod Pip for leaving his carrots, and then eat in the kitchen, stool pulled up to the work surface, with her dirty white headphones in just one ear in case Eddy called out for anything.

‘She's the help,' Eddy said, when Pip asked if we should invite her in for dessert.

‘Isn't Jude helping us too?' Pip replied. I didn't like the way he said ‘helping'.

‘Yes, but that's different. Anyway, Sofi's … Sofi's
Polish
 … She understands.'

Eddy turned to me, his hand with the signet ring held out for confirmation, and I smiled.

5

That second night, we came home to a kettle. ‘Kett-lay!' Sofi sang as we walked into the walnut. ‘Love a kett-lay.'

Bonita had left us two mugs and a Sandwich Spread jar, rinsed out and refilled with instant coffee. We'd been given caster sugar too, in an old curry pot with the label half scratched off, and there were teabags, loose, on the side. A handwritten note said ‘tea and coffea', and Bonita had done some sort of origami with our towels. I think they were supposed to be swans, but Sofi lifted hers up by its long neck and said, ‘She's done us
turkeys!
Such a gangster.'

Sofi sang songs I didn't know and dry-brushed her teeth for about fifteen minutes. I went to the bathroom on the corridor, and got changed in there too.

‘They say you live for seven years longer if you floss, you know,' she said proudly. She wasn't flossing (she didn't even own any floss), but she was happy, so I didn't point it out.

‘Night night, private dancer,' she said. And then, pants only, half-in and half-out of the duvet, she reached over towards me and turned off the light.