Free The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis Page A

Harry. ‘She probably came over in the summer and just stayed on. Hordes of people come over in the summer.’
    ‘Like birds . . .’ said Jessica, thinking how alarming it would be if you were a migrant bird and all your fellows suddenly flew off while you were trying to make a telephone call, or find your bra or something. ‘You know this island, don’t you?’ she said to Harry. ‘You’ve been here before.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve been here before.’
    ‘I thought so,’ said Jessica, ‘when the boatman recognized you.’ She had had a brief fantasy in which Finlay had been, not the boatman, but Harry’s batman in the war. Some sense which was partly natural to her and which had been partly acquired through the practice of her profession made her aware that she should not pursue the matter.
    ‘I’ll show you a bit of the island if you like,’ said Harry, grateful for her reserve, and he began to walk along the road he had thought never to walk again in this life. Jessica walked beside him with her collar turned up. There was a cold rain in the air which could at any moment turn to snow.
    ‘We’re coming to the Point,’ said Harry when they had walked for a while. ‘Beyond that head there’s nothing until Iceland.’ He stood looking out at the sea, and then turned slowly to look inland. A square-built house, half covered in leafless creeper, stood on the first slope of a low hill, gazing with blind windows out at the ocean.
    ‘My wife was born there,’ said Harry after what seemed to Jessica, who was beginning to freeze, a very long time. She felt herself grow colder.
    ‘What happened to her?’ she asked.
    ‘I took her away,’ said Harry. ‘I was stationed abroad after the war and I took her with me. She died on the boat home and we buried her at sea.’
    ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Jessica.
    ‘I know . . .’ said Harry. He turned towards the sea. ‘And some years later,’ he added in a conversational tone, ‘my son was drowned just beyond those rocks there. He was seventeen.’
    Jessica had the sensation of one who has forgotten her lines. ‘Oh,’ she said.
    ‘. . . and on the face of it,’ said Harry, ‘that wasn’t anybody’s fault either. His dinghy capsized, but he could swim like a seal. He must have hit his head . . .’
    There was a seal just beyond the rocks. It went under water as Jessica watched. ‘Why did you come?’ she asked. The question was abrupt, but there are no lines to speak to those in grief.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Harry. ‘I really don’t know.’
    ‘We’d better get back,’ said Jessica. ‘It’s beginning to snow.’
    ‘When we brought him out of the water he looked as though he was asleep. His grandfather buried him . . . did I tell you my wife’s father was the minister here?’
    ‘No,’ said Jessica, ‘you didn’t tell me that.’
    ‘Finlay dug the grave. One of his tasks is to dig the graves. Did you know?’
    ‘No,’ said Jessica, ‘I didn’t know.’
    ‘How could you,’ said Harry. ‘Forgive me. I was thinking aloud.’ He had never spoken before of those deaths, but had carried them around with him, secretly strapped to his heart. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I shouldn’t have burdened you with that.’
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jessica absently, wondering why there was no antidote to grief. If a person had a headache, or broke his leg, or developed cancer there was always
something
other people could do – aspirin or whisky or morphia, or just kindness. ‘I’m going to buy you a brandy,’ she said, since there was nothing else.
    She took off her coat in the hallway of the inn and hung it on a peg beside an old fur. She supposed someone had got drunk and forgotten to put it on when she left. There were several people in the bar eating ploughman’s lunches. If they eat the ploughman’s lunch, thought Jessica idiotically, what will the poor ploughman eat? Eric was offering only soup, sandwiches