Free Island by Jane Rogers

turned his head and his good eye looked into mine. ‘He comes there sometimes. There’re some planks from his b-boat.’
    ‘He’s dead?’
    ‘Yes, in the sea.’
    We walked quite a long way in silence. Mentally I went through the contents of the hall and bathroom. No male things in the bathroom; no big shoes or coats in the hall; no sound of heavy footsteps upstairs. She hadn’t mentioned a husband, only a son. Perhaps there had never been a father, perhaps he was entirely fictitious. I hadn’t
seen
the guy in the woodshed, all I’d heard was a noise. I had no way of measuring how cracked Calum was.
    ‘What did he do?’
    ‘Fisherman.’ He stopped abruptly and stepped into the shallow ditch at the side of the lane. Bent down and started scrabbling through the brambles and ferns. ‘Shiny,’ he said. Then triumphantly pulled out a whole wing mirror on a twisted metal stem and placed it reverently in his rucksack.
    ‘What’re you going to do withthat?’
    ‘Keep it.’ He straightened up and set off again. We went through a gateway and across a rough field, it was curving away down to the sea now, the sea on the eastern side. It wasn’t any different to the sea on the western side; just as brown and flat and sloppy, no waves no foam no golden beaches. Thick low grey cloud squatting on the mainland hills in the distance – a thoroughly dismal sight.
    ‘Why aren’t there any waves?’
    He looked at me as if I was the thick one. ‘Big waves.’ He chanted a verse like a nursery rhyme. ‘The Blue Men are breast high/with f-foam grey faces./When billows toss,/oh who would cross/the Blue Men’s kyles.’
    I knew he wasn’t capable of trying to impress me but I was deeply irritated all the same: I hate the way people who know things act as if it’s incredible that you don’t. Why assume there are certain god-given bloody things everybody’s born knowing? ‘What’s kyles?’
    ‘The c-crossing.’ He waved his arm at the channel between the island and the mainland.
    ‘OK.’
    ‘B-big waves–’ He put his hand up above his head. ‘This high.’
    In his dreams. The channel looked like a puddle in a ditch. He led the way on over the uneven ground, past exciting events like a rock sticking through the soil or a boggy bit we had to skirt. I thought the shoreline was crap. A pebbly shelf, narrower or wider according to the tide – and nothing there. We didn’t even see any gulls, it was like after the endof the world. ‘Look.’ He stood like a post.
    I looked. Nothing. Flat sea with low brown rocks. ‘What?’
    He muttered something I didn’t catch and a hump of rock detached itself and plopped into the sea. ‘Seals,’ said my genius brother. Half-brother. More brown lumps shifted themselves and slid into the water. He grinned at me as if it was some major pyrotechnical display he’d arranged especially for my benefit. I gave him a thumbs-up. Fantastic! And we carried on down towards the water. If that was the high spot – a brown blob falling into the water at 300 yards – I was ready to turn back. We went slithering down the muddy rocks to sea level and then he perched on a boulder and carefully took off his rucksack. He extricated a big old check-patterned thermos and with great concentration poured a cup.
    ‘Does your mum make that for you?’
    He shook his head and passed me the cup. It was sweet tea but I drank it anyway, then I rolled us both a cig.
    ‘Did your dad catch them?’
    He looked gormless.
    ‘The seals. Did he catch them?’
    ‘He took – he took people out to see them. In his boat. The tourists.’ He had the crookedest teeth I’ve ever seen.
    ‘Very good.’
    ‘He told them the story and they l-liked it.’ Come on then, might as well havethe full entertainment package since I’ve paid my fare and I’m sat here with an idiot staring at a puddle of brown sea and sipping lukewarm tea. ‘What story?’
    ‘The seal girl.’ He was staring out to the rocks, his mouth a bit