The Islanders

Goorn CHILL WIND THE SEACAPTAIN

It was not much of a course, but I was not much of a student. Choices of college education on my cold home island were always limited, unless you were able to win a scholarship to somewhere on another island. I was not, so in the company of many Goorn people of my age I headed for the technical college in Evllen. This town, sheltered by a range of hills in the surrounding countryside, and touched by the tepid last flow of a warm sea current from the southern reaches of the Archipelago, enjoyed a comparatively moderate climate. In Goorn terms this meant that it rained almost every day.

I completed my first year and then prepared for the obligatory gap year. A gap year was a way of saving expenses for the administration, while maintaining their grant-in-aid by keeping the student count technically higher. It was not for students an option. Most of my fellow students drifted off home, while the ones whose families had money set off on several months of vacation, the most popular choice being an extended sequence of island-hopping in the warmer island groups to the south.

I did neither of these because unexpectedly I landed a gap-year job in the north of Goorn.

My subject was practical stagecraft, the course I had drifted into by default, but which after the first week or two began to interest me. By the end of my first year I was sufficiently motivated to write several application letters, and when a temporary job in the town of Omhuuv was offered to me I jumped at it.

Omhuuv. I had never heard of the place, but soon tracked it down to a part of Goorn I never imagined I would visit. It was in the region known as the Tallek, in the mountains along the northern coast, a small port whose main industries the year round were the packing, smoking and canning of fish. Until I started applying it had not occurred to me there would be a theatre up there, but it seemed this was so. Teater Sjøkaptein, located in the heart of the town, closed its doors during the winter months, but maintained a repertory of drama and mixed entertainment throughout the summer. Tourism appeared to be the third industry in Omhuuv. Internet checks revealed that climbing, trekking, water sports, orienteering and tunnelling were all popular activities around Omhuuv’s fjord, or in the surrounding mountains.

Once my place was confirmed I was anyway told that because of the winter closure there was no point in my attending until spring was due. I went home to Goornak Town, where my parents lived, and drifted through the cold months. Then, after an email confirmation from the theatre, I set off for Omhuuv on one of the round-island buses. The trip took four days.

My first priority was to find somewhere to stay. I had been browsing a college website which listed possible addresses, and in the weeks leading up to my departure I made provisional bookings at three of them. The one I chose after I arrived was an upstairs room in a house close to the seafront. The window looked out towards one of the smaller wharfside smokehouses, with a view beyond it across the smooth waters of the fjord. On the far side a mountain rose sheer from the water, and for the first few days of my time there the steep sides were patched with traces of clinging snow. Later, when the thaw settled in, the same mountainside was etched with white watercourses, as a dozen wild falls tumbled down to the sea.

I went shopping — there appeared to be only one general food-store in the town, but compared with the prices in Goorn Town and Evllen it felt inexpensive, at least for the sort of food I usually bought — then the next morning I walked through the narrow streets to find the theatre.

The centre of town was set back from the main road, so even the trucks, with their huge engines and deep-treaded tyres rumbling through towards the interior of the island, hardly broke the silence. In one of the side streets I found a large, almost monumental building: a white fascia wall, and two mock towers, castellated and painted deep blue. Across the white front was a long electric banner, presently unlit, with the words Teater Sjøkaptein picked out in electric bulbs. Next to the name was a stylized picture of a fishing boat, casting its nets, with the snowy mountains of the fjord in the distance behind. The grizzled face of a mariner, with a waterproof cape and cap, was superimposed across the view.

The main doors to the theatre were closed and barred, with brown paper pasted on the insides to discourage people from looking in. There were several glass display panels next to the steps, but I saw no announcements of performances, and there were no show cards visible. However, the building did not look at all derelict and was in good repair. The paint had been recently applied.

I pressed my face to one of the door windows trying to see into the foyer beyond. I rattled the handle lightly, not trying to force the door but to make enough noise to alert anyone who might be inside.

After a few moments a man appeared from within. He stooped to peer at me past one of the brown paper covers, then seemed to realize who I might be and unlocked the door.

‘I’m Hike Tommas,’ I said. ‘I’m starting a job here.’

‘Hike? I was expecting you last week,’ the man said, but not in an unfriendly way. He extended his hand, and we shook. ‘My name’s Jayr. I’m the acting manager here. For the moment there’s no one else on the staff, so we’ve a lot of work ahead of us.’

‘What’s to be done?’

He ushered me in, closed the door against the cold wind and led me through the lobby, where dust-covers had been laid over the carpets and counters, and down two narrow passages and a short staircase up. The theatre building was unheated and lit only by dim bulbs set high in the ceilings.

Jayr gave me a hot drink from the coffee machine he had set up in the tiny office behind the pay-booth. We sat casually in the cramped space, leaning against the edges of furniture.

‘Do you have any experience in a theatre?’ Jayr said.

‘We had to do practicals in my course.’

I described some of them, naturally embellishing the facts to make them sound more impressive. In fact I had already set out my c.v. when applying, and I assumed Jayr would have seen it. Most of my real experience had been in watching other people working behind the scenes, but my interest in stagecraft was genuine and I had spent a lot of time reading the books and talking with other students.

I gained the impression Jayr was glad to have someone to work with him, and his questions soon sounded desultory to me. I decided he was probably unimpressed with his new assistant, but it did not seem to matter much. It was not he who had hired me, it turned out. We were both temporary staff, although I was more temporary than Jayr. He lived in Omhuuv all year round.

I slowly pieced together some idea of what the story was. The previous owners had sold the theatre to a new company, or there was a transfer of a trust document, or another kind of legal dispute. No one was officially the owner for the time being, so they needed staff to stand in temporarily and prepare for the season ahead. Although Jayr lived in the town he had not been born on Goorn, but on one of the other Hetta islands, at the far western end, a small industrial island called Onna. He had worked here the previous summer, more or less in the same position I was now in. He said he had been given a big chance, a fabulous opportunity to prove what he could do as manager. He told me the technical facilities in the theatre were as good as you would find anywhere. The official tech crew had not yet arrived and were not expected for a few more days.

He took me out to show me around the backstage area, giving me a guide to the main technical facilities. I took all this in without a problem: my course had given me a thoroughgoing background in stage management and theatrical craft.

The theatre was about to re-open after the winter break. Bookings had already started coming in. The Sjøkaptein was a popular feature of the town. The problem, Jayr’s problem, was that the programmes were so unimaginative. He told me the previous year the season had included several plays, but now he was here he had discovered that this summer the main bookings were for variety shows, comedians who were famous from television, pop tribute bands, magic acts. There were problems with the need to hire musicians, finding out what special or extra lighting effects were needed, obtaining releases from TV companies, dealing with agents, all in addition to the normal concerns of staffing, safety measures, office paperwork, and so on.

The programmes at the end of the season were more to his taste. During two weeks towards the end of the summer a couple of plays were scheduled, and he was looking forward to those. In the meantime he was making the best of the rest. There was a renowned clairvoyant coming for a short season — Jayr was looking forward to her too. Clairvoyants always filled the seats, he said. And a mime artiste. Jayr liked mime. But he found the rest uninspiring. He told me there was plenty of scope for me to become involved.

Later, when Jayr had to make some phone calls, I wandered away on my own and walked down to the semi-dark auditorium. The seats were protected by vast over-thrown translucent plastic sheets. I sat quietly in the luxuriantly cushioned rows of seats, somewhere in the middle of the stalls. I leaned back, staring up at the ornately decorated plaster ceiling, the cluster of small chandeliers, the velvet plush on the walls. The building had clearly been renovated recently, but it still felt like a traditional theatre.

A sense of contentment spread through me. The only other theatre I had been in was the civic playhouse in Evllen, but that was financed and managed by the local authority, part of the leisure complex, with squash courts, a gym, a swimming pool and a lending library. The Sjøkaptein had the grace of tradition and years on it, but it was magnificent and alive, and dedicated to the calm illusionism of drama, entertainment, amusement.

The next day it began snowing again in earnest. The snow fell day and night, high, thin flakes blowing up the fjord from the direction of the open sea, drifting in the streets and against the houses, the wind gusting relentlessly from the frigid north-easterly quarter. Snow was an accustomed part of life for the people of the Tallek region. Snow changed the mood of everyone — snow had to be dealt with as a practical matter. Every morning and evening, and sometimes during the nights also, the Seigniory snow-ploughs and blowers were out, keeping the streets and wharves open, allowing the shops to trade, the fish to be landed, the trucks to enter and leave. I kept the stove in my room alight all day and night, as did everyone else in the town, fusing the billows of snow with thin grey woodsmoke. For me, Omhuuv took on a more rustic, medieval quality, feeling closer to the elements, deeper in a wild history.

I settled into daily routines. Jayr set me to work testing and checking all the mechanical equipment in the theatre: the ropes, the trapdoor, the rigging, the lights, the sound system. The scenery bay was cluttered with flats from last season’s plays, and because we had no use for most of them I set about breaking them up, keeping intact the pieces that I could, or which Jayr said were standard pieces of scenery. I discovered I knew less about this kind of thing than I had thought, but because I was working alone I soon picked up what I needed to know. I carefully kept all the pieces of reusable timber, storing them in the scenery bay.

Jayr was concerned about the slow intake of his bookings: the theatre was due to open in the first weeks of spring, when the snow was supposed to be no longer falling, if not completely melted from the mountains. This was the regular schedule, but according to the records the bookings this year were unusually low. Jayr fretted and complained about the lack of audience support for some of the artistes, especially about the acts he favoured. There was one in particular: a man who worked under the stage name ‘Commis’, a renowned mime artiste. Jayr swore Commis would probably be the most popular act in the year, as he had been in the past, but at the moment his performances were being no better supported by the public than any others.

With two weeks to go before the first opening the blizzards still swept in every day, the gutters were blocked with ice, the roads were crested with dark and dirty mounds of old snow, compacted by their own weight and the endless passage of vehicles.

I began to like Jayr. He did not say much but he was always alert to my needs. He worked me hard but we took regular breaks and he often paid for lunch out of the theatre budget. I never really found out what he thought of me: sometimes I seemed to amuse him, sometimes to annoy him, but during most of our working days we were in separate parts of the building.

One day, during a break for a cup of tea, he said to me, ‘Have you seen the ghost yet?’

‘Are you trying to wind me up?’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘Is there one?’ I said.

‘Never knew a theatre without a ghost.’

‘Is there one here?’ I said again.

‘Haven’t you noticed how cold it is in the scenery bay?’

‘That’s because the doors are often open.’

I don’t know what he was intending. It turned out that he had been in the Sjøkaptein for about five weeks before I arrived, often after dark, always alone, going into many of the deeper recesses of the large building, below and behind the stage, along the corridors, up to the high circle.

Everyone who worked in theatre was superstitious, Jayr said: there were plays the actors would never name, parts they would never accept, scripts they would not read without someone there to cue them, ropes the stagehands would never pull when working alone, the weird or sudden deaths onstage and offstage when mechanisms unaccountably failed, or the accidents with scenery or props, and the supernatural consequences of them all.

Jayr told me about hauntings reputed to be a feature of every other theatre he had worked in, but here, the Sjøkaptein, seemed to be entirely free of spirits, wild or sad or bereaved.

‘Never knew a theatre without at least one ghost,’ he said again at the end.

‘Except this one,’ I said. He was making me feel nervous, maybe intentionally.

‘Wait and see,’ he said.

I expected a cold draught to wind its way under the door and chill me, or an eerie cackling laugh to break out in the distance, but then the telephone rang and Jayr answered, speaking with his mouth full of food.

Every day, I would trudge through the narrow streets to and from the theatre, skidding and balancing on the rutted frozen snow, to do what I could to assist Jayr in his endless preparations.

Although he was dealing efficiently if unenthusiastically with the daily cascade of paperwork, Jayr’s main concern was the non-arrival of the tech crew, whom he knew were trapped somewhere on mainland Faiand, held up by visa regulations, the weather and the irregular ferry service. Even if they should negotiate themselves free of the bureaucrats, much of the sea around Goorn, and the Tallek region in particular, was still full of ice floes. Although most facilities could be prepared before they arrived, the actual operation of theatre performances was impossible without a full crew.

Jayr became especially anxious when a message unexpectedly arrived from one of the first acts due to perform in the theatre. It was a magician, an illusionist, who styled himself THE LORD OF MYSTERY.

The message contained some straightforward publicity material (including obviously posed photographs of the great man performing, whose appearance and archness we both found amusing) and what appeared to be a standard list of demands he felt he had to make before he arrived: lighting requirements, the need for technical rehearsals, the raising and lowering of the curtains, use of stage apparatus and so on. There was nothing unusual in that, which would anyway be arranged in the technical rehearsals all performers underwent as a matter of course, but with it came a document that was obviously an extra item.

It consisted of a detailed drawing to scale, with measurements and angles drawn meticulously, of a large sheet of plate glass. At the bottom, written in capital letters, was the following:

‘PART OF MY ACT HAS TO BE PERFORMED WITH A LAYER OF CLEAN GLASS BETWEEN THE APPARATUS AND THE AUDIENCE. THIS SHOULD BE OBTAINED PRIOR TO MY ARRIVAL, AS PER OUR CONTRACT, AND MUST EXACTLY MATCH THE ABOVE SPECIFICATION. ON MY ARRIVAL THE PANE OF GLASS MUST BE FITTED TO THE APPARATUS WITH WHICH I TRAVEL, AND WHICH HAS PRECISE MEASUREMENTS. LORD.’

‘Do you suppose his parents gave him the name “Lord”?’ I said.

‘That’s how he signed the contract,’ Jayr said, showing me a copy.

He seemed amused by the whole matter. The act had been booked at the end of the previous season by the outgoing management. It was true that it contained a clause written in verbose language, presumably dictated by the Lord himself, about the venue’s responsibility to arrange the supply and fitting of the glass.

Other than the contract, Jayr knew nothing more about this Lord. He appeared to be resigned about it, saw it as part of the day-to-day life of a provincial theatre, a problem to take in his stride.

One morning, when the snow was blowing fiercely down the main street where I lived, I was as usual struggling towards the theatre. Staying upright on the slippery ground was always a problem but on that morning the difficulties were increased by the blustering of the wind. I had long developed the technique of watching the icy ground wherever I walked, but I also knew how to keep a general look-out where I was going. Moving about was hazardous in the snows of Omhuuv.

I was therefore not too surprised when I collided with a man walking in the other direction, although I had definitely not spotted him coming. He was somewhat shorter than myself, and as we bumped into each other his shoulder hit against my chest, spinning me around violently. I managed, just, to keep my footing, but I did so only by an ungainly manoeuvre with both legs spread and my hands reaching down desperately to avoid the fall. I skittered across the ridges of frozen snow, my chest aching from the blow and for a moment I found it difficult to breathe.

The man I had crashed into, though, was much more affected by the collision. As I was struggling to stay upright, I saw him first bounce away from me, and then in some fashion seemed to fly backwards, his arms flailing. He landed on his neck and shoulders in a heap of soft snow deposited during the night by the blowers, his legs aloft. He was struggling furiously to release himself as I skidded anxiously over to help him.

‘You bloody fool!’ he shouted at me, shaking his head and spitting out snow. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re walking?’

‘I’m sorry!’ I said. ‘Here — take my hand!’

He clasped my wrist and after much pulling and shouting I managed to tug him out of the heap of snow. He clambered laboriously to his feet, shaking his arms and head, trying to bang the loose snow away from his clothes.

‘You nearly killed me, you careless bastard!’ he yelled, as the wind continued to howl around us. ‘Look where you’re sodding well walking in future, do you hear?’

‘I said I was sorry.’

‘Sorry isn’t enough. You might have killed me.’

‘Were you looking where you were going?’ I said. His reaction to the accident seemed extreme, to say the least. Now he squared up to me.

‘Where are you from, you bloody fool?’ he said in a fierce voice. He leant towards me, as if trying to memorize my face. ‘I don’t recognize you. You don’t talk like a local.’

I was still struggling to get my breath back. The man was thrusting his face pugnaciously towards mine.

Although his aggressive behaviour was frightening, I was struck, in the extremity of the situation, with the calm thought that in fact I had never seen him before, either. My way to and from work every day was always the same, always along this road, skidding on the frozen ruts, and I usually passed or saw the same people every time. I knew none of them, but in harsh weather a silent brotherhood of wintry endurance seems to arise.

This was the first time I had seen this bellicose little man. Although he was wearing a hood over his head, and a scarf was wrapped around his forehead, his eyes were visible — they were a pale and watery blue. He was crusted with frost and snow, but I could see he had dark and bushy eyebrows, a moustache that grew outwards and down, and a brown-red beard. More than this I could not see because he was, like me, wrapped up thickly against the cold.

‘Look, I’m sorry if you were hurt,’ I said, although the more I thought about it the less responsible for the accident I felt.

‘Goornak Town, that’s where you’re from! I’d know that annoying accent anywhere!’

I tried to step past him, get away from him.

‘When you come to Omhuuv, young man, you bloody behave yourself. You get that?’

I pushed past him, and staggered on across the frozen surface. He was shouting something after me, but because of the wind I could no longer hear his words.

I was shaken up by this unpleasant encounter, and not just because of the physical impact. Of course I was an outsider in the small town, a newcomer, but until that moment the worst I had experienced from local people was a mild curiosity about where I had come from and what I was doing in Omhuuv. In almost every case, the reactions were friendly.

I arrived at the theatre, warmed up in the office while drinking a cup of hot coffee with Jayr, then started my round of the daily chores. I was upset and preoccupied for an hour or two, but by the time we broke off for lunch I was back to normal.

As I walked home that evening, though, I kept an eye open for the man, distinctly wary of seeing him again.

The next morning, not far from where I lived, the man suddenly appeared. He seemed to have been lying in wait for me, because he dashed out of an alley that ran between two houses. He skidded forward like a man making a sports tackle, his feet thrusting at me and catching me on my shins. I fell violently to the side, on to the hard and impacted snow beside the edge of the road. One of the haulage trucks went by at that moment, narrowly missing my head.

I struggled to my feet, but my assailant was up before me. By the time I was upright again he had stumped off down the road, head low against his shoulders, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

I hurried after him, grabbed his arm and spun him around.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ I shouted. ‘You nearly killed me!’

‘Then we’re quits, you bastard. Leave me alone!’

He pulled his arm away from me with surprising strength, and slithered on.

‘Look — what happened yesterday was an accident. That wasn’t! You attacked me!’

‘Call the policier if you have a complaint.’ He turned to look at me, and once again I saw that unremarkable but hostile face, the frosted eyebrows furrowed against the cold, the droopy moustache, the pale skin.

I grabbed hold of him again, angry and frightened, but with great ease he released himself from me and carried on up the road once more. He seemed immensely strong, for all his small build.

I brushed myself down, knocking the snow off my arms and chest. I tried to be calm, tried to put him out of my mind, but it was difficult.

I stared up the road after him, watching the way he moved. Everything about his body language evinced anger and hostility, a tightly coiled rage, compressed violently into his hunched body. I knew nothing about him except that from that moment on I resolved I would watch every step of the way when walking through the town.

Aching again from this second rough encounter, I stayed put. I watched him until he was out of sight, disappearing around a bend in the road, somewhere near the bus terminus. From the way he was waving his hands, I guessed he was still yelling at me.

Jayr said he was too busy to be bothered with Lord, so he delegated the preparatory work to me, as I had expected from the outset that he would. The great man’s arrival was not long away.

His image was already part of our daily background as Jayr had placed several of Lord’s rather ostentatious publicity photographs in the display cases by the theatre doors. I knew I had to buckle down to the task of obtaining the sheet of glass he had demanded.

My first problem was to locate somewhere that would supply plate glass of the high quality specified by him. There was nowhere at all in Omhuuv, and the businesses in the town I asked about this all told me that glass had to be specially ordered from a firm of glaziers in the neighbouring town of Ørsknes. Because I did not want to risk getting any detail wrong, I borrowed Jayr’s car and drove over to Ørsknes myself and contacted the glaziers. They were bemused by the exactitude of my requirements, but they obviously assumed it was for a shop front or window. Payment and delivery were soon arranged.

The fall of snow ceased during the night after I returned from Ørsknes.

When I was up and dressed in the morning I discovered that the long-awaited thaw had followed almost at once. The cold northeasterly wind at last dropped away, and had changed overnight into a balmy breeze from the south. For a day it seemed nothing in Omhuuv was going to change: the air trapped in the fjord had been chilled into what seemed to be a permanent freeze, and the snow in the streets and on the mountainsides was so deep, hard and solid that it felt that even a summer heatwave would never shift it. I walked the precarious streets with many of the other inhabitants of Omhuuv, still wrapped in protective clothes, sliding and skidding on the familiar frozen ruts, while a weak sun shone. But the hated north-easterly wind from the mainland was uncannily absent.

On the second day the thaw unmistakably began, with meltwater running through the streets, while the great frozen layers of impacted snow began to slide dangerously from the roofs. Seigniory workmen hurried from one building to the next, trying to control or manage the crashing of ice on to the pavements. Now at night I fell asleep to the burbling sounds of water running. There was water everywhere in the town, but most of it ran off into planned conduits leading down to the fjord.

All around the town streams and falls were appearing, and every day there were public warnings of likely avalanches in the hills above us. However winter was of course part of the normal life here, and long established avalanche barriers kept much of the danger out of the town. I was content to watch the steep mountainside I could see from my window, as it was transformed into a lacy pattern of white waterfalls.

On the third day the warm wind gave a daily rain shower, but it fell only in the late afternoons and helped speed the thaw. Every day was now a mild or even warm one, and the breeze from the south carried with it a smell that brought back to me memories of my childhood: somewhere in the warmer islands to the south of us the spring was already well established, and the wind bore scents of distant cedarwood, campion and herbs.

Jayr was more cheerful, because as the weather changed it seemed a signal of encouragement had gone out on some subconscious level. More bookings arrived with each delivery of mail or visit to the messaging service. Every morning he spent more than an hour on the theatre computer, selling and confirming seats for the long summer season ahead.

The sheet of plate glass I had ordered from the firm in Ørsknes was delivered as promised. It took the driver and his two mates, plus myself, to carry the bulky pane through the crowded backstage space and place it in the stage area. The driver gave me some padded mounts to rest it on, but it was obvious that it could not be left where it was.

After the delivery men had departed I turned on some of the stage lights and inspected the glass.

In the Lord’s specification he had noted the minimum distortion that he would accept, and I checked this with a special gauge — the glass was well within that spec. It was also exactly the right size, and the four bevelled slots where the glass was going to be attached were again absolutely correct. I checked and re-checked all the measurements, pleased at having made sure this was right. However, the bright lights revealed that the haulage of the glass, and our manhandling of it, had left several hand and finger prints, so I thoroughly cleaned and polished the sheet on both sides.

Jayr helped me move it on to the fly lines, and we slowly raised it into the rigging loft. I knew it would be secure up there, but it was discomfiting to know that the sheet of plate-glass was being held directly above the stage. It looked like a huge transparent guillotine blade, sharp, heavy and deadly.

In the town the thaw was continuing and I realized that in these early weeks of the spring the fjord became a place of great beauty and tranquillity. The mountains, which looked so barren when covered by snow, now brought forth grasses, flowers and bushes. Whitewater falls continued to course down the steep mountainsides, splashing into the dark blue waters of the fjord. The houses and shops, which looked so grim in the cold, broke out their seasonal colours: the people removed the wooden and metal shutters from windows, let their curtains blow in the breezes, hung flower baskets on the walls in the street, left their doors ajar. They painted and cleaned their houses, and tidied their gardens.

Visitors arrived, some in cars, many in buses. Shops and restaurants opened. During the days the streets of Omhuuv were crowded with pedestrians wandering around the newly re-opened boutiques and galleries, while the wharves continued their noisy work and the pungent odour of curing smoke drifted across the quays. More boats appeared on the fjord, but now they were pleasure boats, some bringing in more visitors, others simply sailing around. Two herons nested on the roof of the house I was staying in.

Inside the theatre also the seasons were changing. Our work was increasing daily, partly because bookings were now pouring in every day, and many members of the public called at the theatre with enquiries, but also because the tech crew still had not arrived. The ice cleared from the sea almost as soon as the thaw arrived, but there was some kind of visa anomaly that prevented so many people exiting the mainland at once. Because I had always lived in the calm neutrality of the islands it was too easy to forget that Faiand, the mainland country in the north closest to our part of the Archipelago, was a nation embroiled in war.

One day, shortly before our season opened I had to go to the trap room, the substage area, where one of the traps had proved to jam when I tested it. Jayr said I should try to find out what had happened — he was thinking of Lord, who was due to appear in the second week. Illusionists often needed to use a stage trapdoor, Jayr said.

The trap room in a theatre is sometimes used to store unwanted items, so out of season it can become cluttered. One of my first tasks at the Sjøkaptein had been to tidy up down there. By this time it was fairly easy to move around. There was little or no lighting when the theatre was not working, so I had to check the mechanism in darkness, leaning over the drive housing with a torch. The place was unheated, and cold draughts wafted against me.

My arm was down inside the housing, checking the clasps of the drive cover were tight, when I suddenly became aware of a silent presence. Somewhere near to me. It was as if something or someone had moved, dislodging air but making no sound.

I froze in position, my arm inside the machine, my shoulder and head pressing against the outer housing. I was surrounded by darkness, because I had placed the torch on the floor, the beam pointing through an access hatch close to the floor. I listened, not daring to turn my head.

The silence was complete, but the sensation of a presence was overwhelming. It was close to me, very close indeed.

Slowly, I began to slide my hand out from inside the machine, so that I could straighten and turn, look around, shine the torch about, make certain no one was there. The silence endured, but as I turned my head I became aware, on the periphery of my vision, of something white and circular, seeming to hover.

I sucked in a breath in surprise, turned fully towards it. The shape was a mask, a face, but it was horribly stylized, almost a child’s cartoon of a face. It was frozen, immobile, but in some way I cannot describe I knew it was alive.

As soon as I was looking towards it the face backed away smoothly, disappearing into the darkness almost at once. It made no sound, left no trace.

My heart was racing. I grabbed the torch, swung it around in the general direction of the apparition, but of course there was nothing to see. I stood up fully, clouting my head against the low ceiling, the under-surface of the stage. The shock of it further frightened me, so I backed quickly away, hurried to the steps, rushed up to the wings of the stage. I was trembling.

A little later, Jayr saw me.

‘I heard you making a lot of noise,’ he said. ‘Did you see something down there?’

‘Shut up, Jayr,’ I said, embarrassed at my reaction to something I had only half seen. ‘Was that you messing about in the trap room?’

‘So you did see something!’ he said. ‘Don’t let it bother you. Happens in every theatre. Sooner or later.’

The tech crew had at last received clearance from the authorities and were on their way to join us. But now the problem they faced was the multitude of ferries they had to board, the circuitous routes, the many ports of call where cargoes and mailbags were loaded and unloaded. We did not expect them to arrive until a day, or at best two days, before our opening performance.

I continued to work as hard as before, but now I had a background concern. I was worried by the sheer weight of the pane of glass we had lifted into the flies, hanging there, swinging sometimes if there was a draught of air when the scenery bay doors were opened. I quietly checked it periodically to make sure it was still secure in its harness, but other than that there was little I could do about it. Lord of Mystery was due to arrive for the second week’s show.

Two days after I saw the apparition in the trap room, I had a similar experience. Once again I was alone, and again I was in one of the more inaccessible areas of the theatre. I had climbed up to the higher of the two loges at stage left. Jayr told me there was an intermittent electrical fault. The lights in the box sometimes flickered when turned on. It was probably caused by a simple loose connection, but the loges at the Sjøkaptein were popular, and were booked in advance for most performances. It had to be repaired before any member of the public could be allowed in.

As usual I worked beneath a dim overhead light from high in the ceiling of the auditorium, which barely shed any illumination and none at all inside the loges. Of course to work on the wiring I had had to isolate the current, so once I was inside the loge it was completely dark.

I was on my hands and knees, working with the torch between my teeth, peeling back the carpet to expose the wiring beneath, when once again I suddenly sensed there was something close to me that had not been there before.

My first instinct was to close my mind to it, concentrate on what I was doing, hope that the feeling would pass. But an instant later I changed my mind and moved rapidly. I raised my head, sprang to my feet.

The white face-like mask was there again! This time it had appeared between the curtains that closed off the loge at the rear. I caught only a fractional glimpse of it, because once again it backed off, vanishing almost immediately.

I knew that behind the curtain was the access door to the loge, and beyond that was the upper side-corridor used by the audience as they found their way to their seats. I dived across the loge, snatched the curtains back then pushed the door open. I half-fell out into the corridor. This was a windowless part of the theatre building and Jayr and I never normally switched on lights along the corridor. I swung the torch in both directions, trying to see whatever it was that had intruded on me like that.

Of course, I saw nothing.

Shaken, nervous, a little frightened, I went swiftly down to find Jayr, who was working on the computer terminal in the office.

I said nothing, but collapsed into one of the spare chairs along the wall. I could not suppress a shudder, and I exhaled sharply.

‘Was it a silent ghost or a noisy one?’ said Jayr, without looking across at me. ‘Does it moan, dress in ancient gowns, carry its own head, make a breathing noise, clank long chains, or does it just hover?’

‘You don’t believe me, do you? There’s something out there. I’ve seen it twice now! It’s really bloody terrifying.’

I was regarding my forearms, bare because I always worked with my sleeves rolled up. All the hairs were standing on end.

‘Remember . . . this is a theatre. Everything that happens in a theatre is real!’

With the last word, Jayr turned in his chair, lowered his head like a hunting animal, and made a snarling noise, baring his teeth.

At the end of that day, walking back to my room along the usual streets, I caught sight of my bearded assailant. His tense, hunched way of walking was distinctive, and the moment I noticed him I was on my guard. I held back, watched him for a few moments until I was certain he could not see me.

He was ahead of me, striding along in the same direction and did not turn back to look. It was certainly him but because the weather had improved so much he was of course no longer wrapped up against the cold. On the contrary, he was wearing rather large and loose beach shorts, bright blue, and a yellow shirt that flapped behind him as he walked.

Just the sight of him made me nervous, so I stood quietly by the side of the road, half concealed by a shop canopy, until the man had turned off the main drag, entering a side street at the other end.

The tech crew finally turned up. As soon as they had settled in their lodgings, and familiarized themselves with the facilities in the theatre, my working life changed. All the routine chores around the theatre — cleaning, checking, aligning and repairing — were taken over by others. I was impressed by the professionalism of the crew: four men and three women, who in just two days had the theatre prepared and technically rehearsed in time for the opening night.

That first week’s bill was one of mixed variety turns. As the acts started to arrive at the theatre, roughly at the same time as the tech people, I was eager and curious to see them. The Teater Sjøkaptein was quickly being transformed from a cold, ill-lit and above all empty building into a place where a large number of people worked, bringing all the noise, companionship, squabbles, minor emergencies and sense of purpose that surrounds any group of people existing closely together.

Backstage, the building echoed with the noise of last-minute scenery building, lights being focused and calibrated, of tabs being raised and lowered, instructions shouted down from the balcony, and so on. Three musicians appeared, to provide the accompaniment. Meanwhile the front-of-house manager was hiring a temporary assistant to help with cleaning and preparing the auditorium, selling tickets and refreshments, and organized emergency medical cover for each performance. I was entranced by the sense of busy purpose, but my own working role was almost eliminated by these new people.

On our opening night I watched much of the show from the wings, but I soon wished I had not. The acts were of the most basic and unimaginative kind, the sort of live entertainment I had no idea was still being performed in theatres. The show was compered by a middle-aged comedian who specialized in off-colour jokes, which were offensive mainly for being so unoriginal and therefore unfunny. The acts he introduced included a juggler, an operetta duo, a ventriloquist, a trick cyclist, a soprano, and a troupe of dancing girls. By the end of the show I realized I was staying on only because of these dancers. I thought one of them was rather pretty and seemed to be encouraging me with several smiles flashed in my direction, although when I tried to speak to her she cut me dead.

After that first evening I wasted no more time watching these acts, and was puzzled but rather relieved by how much the audiences seemed to enjoy them.

We were expecting the Lord to arrive halfway through this first week. The morning of the day we were expecting him — we had had to make a space for him in our already crowded vehicle park behind the building — I was sitting with Jayr in the office. He was entering the week’s takings and expenses into the computer, while I sat idly by, rather enjoying the quietness.

A matinée performance was due that afternoon, but for the time being our temporary solitude was almost like those last days of winter.

‘Have you been seeing your ghost again, Hike?’ Jayr suddenly said, without turning away from the computer monitor.

‘Not since the last time.’

‘Are you sure?’

I had long wished I had concealed my earlier reactions from Jayr, as he had been teasing me repeatedly about my sightings of the ghost.

I stayed silent.

‘I thought you might have noticed what’s behind you,’ Jayr said. ‘That’s all.’

Of course I turned to see, and to my surprise and (for an instant) horror, that impassive mask-like face was right beside me, lurking behind my shoulder. I could not help it: I leapt to my feet, startled, turning to get a better look.

‘Hike, this is Mr Commis, our star turn the week after next.’

Standing next to my chair was the slight figure of a man dressed in a mime costume. He was clad from head to foot in some kind of soft, black, non-reflective fabric, hugging his skin. Only his face was clearly visible, and that was because it had been painted a brilliant, almost dazzling white. Every facial feature had been covered into blended invisibility, with stylized cartoons drawn in their places: he wore quizzically inverted eyebrows, a down-turned mouth, two painted black spots for his nose. Even his eyelids had been painted, so that when he blinked two stylized bright-blue eyes seemed to replace his real ones.

‘Commis, this is my deputy Hike Tommas.’

The mime leapt into action. With an exaggerated motion he swept a non-existent hat from his head, swirled it elaborately, then crossed it in front of his chest as he bowed. When he straightened he momentarily spun the invisible hat on an extended forefinger, then threw it up in the air, waggled his head from side to side as the hat curled through the air, and with a sudden diving motion managed to get it to land on the crown of his head. Smiling, he bowed again.

‘Er, good morning,’ I said inadequately. Commis the mime smiled briefly, then turned away and with an agile motion jumped backwards on to the surface of a spare desk, and crossed his legs.

A moment later he began to eat an imaginary banana, peeling it slowly with precise movements, then pulling away the pithy strings that attached to the side of the fruity flesh. He ate it with great attention, chewing thoughtfully. When he had finished he licked each of his fingers, then tossed the peel away so that it landed somewhere on the office floor.

He raised a buttock, mimed a long fart, then wafted away the smell with an apologetic look on his face.

A little later he sharpened an invisible pencil, puffed on the loose shavings from the pointed end to blow them away, then used it to evacuate wax from his ear.

When Jayr and I took some drinks from the coffee machine, Commis rejected our offer of a real one but suddenly produced an imaginary large cup and saucer, clearly full to the brim with a scalding liquid. He fussed over this, holding it gingerly, blowing gently across the surface, stirring it with an invisible spoon, tipping some of the liquid into the saucer so he could sip from that. He continued this performance until Jayr and I had finished our cups of coffee, then he put away his own cup.

When I tried speaking to him he made no answer (but cupped a hand behind his ear, pretending, I think, to be deaf). Jayr shook his head at me, discouraging me from what I was doing.

Later, Commis developed an itchy rash that appeared to travel all over his body.

He sat there and sat there, perpetually performing his imaginary feats.

Finally, not at all entertained by this self-centred behaviour, I decided to leave. As I crossed the office floor. Commis mimed intense fear and warning, shrinking back across the desktop in horror, pointing at the floor and imploring me with his eyes.

I could not help myself. I stepped carefully over the banana skin as I went into the corridor outside.

After that, Commis’s presence around the theatre was a constant. He was due to headline the third week of our season, so his early arrival meant that he was underfoot practically all of the time. I found his endless pantomimes aggravating but harmless, and did what I could to ignore him. However, he was always there, sometimes mimicking me, sometimes leaping out in front of me to show me a cat he was pretending to hold or a photograph of me he had just taken, or trying to involve me in his fantasy world by throwing balls to me, or trotting in front of me, pretending to open and close non-existent doors. He never once spoke, never emitted any kind of sound. I kept expecting that I might one day see him out of character, but as far as I could tell he appeared to be staying and sleeping somewhere in the theatre building itself. He was always there when I arrived and was still there after I left at the end of the day. I never did find out what Jayr knew of him, what their relationship was, if any. It was obviously more than Jayr said, perhaps even close or intimate, but I was not that interested and did not enquire.

I realized that my work at the Sjøkaptein was now only marginal, and by agreement with Jayr it was to finish soon — in fact I was due to leave at the end of the following week, before Commis started his run of performances, when I would be paid off.

My final task before I left was to lend whatever assistance the Lord would need when he arrived. I was nervous about this: my weeks at the Teater Sjøkaptein had shown me that a professional interest in stagecraft was one thing, but a sympathy with the people who trod the boards was another.

The Lord’s self-generated advance publicity was not for me a sign that he and I were going to work together well. However, to my surprise it turned out that in life he was a quiet, almost invisible presence, apparently shy and self-effacing. For instance, when he arrived in Omhuuv he let no one in the theatre know, so none of us realized at first that he was there. He and his female assistant had been waiting patiently in the foyer for so long, unobtrusively sitting in the chairs at the side, that one of the ticket office staff eventually went to ask if they needed any help.

When we finally saw him costumed and made up for his show he became impressive and extrovert, with an entire repertoire of theatrical gestures and loud and sometimes amusing remarks, and exuding endless confidence in his own powers.

His main illusion, with which he concluded his performance, was a set-piece which to the audience looked transparently simple, but which required careful and exact technical preparation.

He called the illusion ‘THE LADY VANISHES’.

The effect seen by the audience was of a bare stage, backed by curtains, and dominated by a large, metal structure made entirely of steel rods. This consisted of four slanting legs, and a heavy cross-member across the top, strong enough to bear weight. The audience could see that this was the full extent of the apparatus: there were no curtains, no trapdoors, no hidden panels, just a skeletal steel structure standing in the centre of the bare stage. While performing the trick the illusionist could pass around and through and behind the structure and be seen at every moment. He would then produce a large chair, and this would be connected to the cross-member by a rope and a pulley.

His female assistant — transformed from a mildly attractive woman in her late twenties into a dazzling vision of glamour by her scanty costume, flowing wig and make-up — would sit in the chair, and be blindfolded.

As the small band in the pit played suspenseful music, with an insistent drum-roll, the magician would laboriously turn the handle of a winch, and the chair and Lord’s assistant would rise towards the apex of the immense structure, twisting slowly. Once she was at the top, the illusionist would secure the rope and utter trance-inducing words. The assistant would slump in the chair, as if hypnotized. He then produced a large gun and aimed it directly at her! As the drums reached a climax the magician fired the gun. With a loud bang and a flash of light the chair would come crashing noisily down on the stage, its rope trailing behind it. The lady assistant was no longer in the chair, and indeed had vanished entirely.

The method was both much simpler and more complex than anyone in the audience would imagine. The illusion was achieved by a combination of stage lights and a mirror. Or in this case a half-mirror. Or in reality, a pane of clear glass, the one I had obtained for the Lord from the next town.

The glass was attached to the front of the metal scaffold. Because of the way the lights were shone on it, and with the assistance of more lights concealed behind the front struts, the glass was entirely invisible to everyone in the audience. Everything that happened inside the apparatus, or behind it, was completely visible. When the young woman was winched to the top, everything that could be seen was actually happening: she was really there, in the chair, and suspended from the cross-member.

However, at the firing of the gun (which by intention made a loud bang, emitted a huge flaming discharge and a cloud of smoke) two things happened simultaneously. Firstly, the lighting of the stage was switched. In particular the concealed lights inside the struts were turned off, and front lighting was increased. This had the effect of turning the sheet of glass on the front of the structure into a mirror. Because of the direction of the lighting, and the angle at which the glass was placed, it ceased to be transparent and now reflected an image of curtains (otherwise invisible to the audience) behind the proscenium arch. These curtains were identical to the backdrop curtains upstage, and lit appropriately. From the point of view of the audience, nothing inside the steel skeleton could now be seen. Meanwhile, in the same instant, the rope lifting the chair was severed by a small built-in guillotine beside the winch. This released the chair, so that it crashed down spectacularly to the stage with the rope snaking behind it. The assistant grabbed the cross-member with her hands and swung there out of sight. She hung on gamely with her hands, until the curtains closed on her and, out of sight of the audience, she dropped athletically to the stage.

All this was straightforwardly achieved, but it was also a technical challenge for myself, a stagehand called Denik and the lighting engineer. We worked for a morning and an afternoon, learning how to erect the frame (which Lord had brought with him in his property van), and arranging for the plate glass to be lowered from the flies then secured to the front of the structure. We aligned it with the hidden curtains and finally ran several repeated technical rehearsals, not only with assembling the apparatus but with the lighting cues. Although this was of course computerized, all the lights had to be set at the correct angles to achieve the desired effect.

Lord fretted over these preparations. The plan was that during a live performance, he would move in front of the main drop to perform small-scale magic, engaging members of the audience who briefly left their seats to walk up on the stage. While this was going on Denik and I walked on to the stage, behind the curtain, to lower the massive structure. We would secure it firmly, connect up all the concealed lights, run a brief test to make sure everything was working, then get out of the way to allow Lord to perform his climactic illusion.

We rehearsed it again and again.

During one of our final rehearsals, and entirely without our realizing it, Commis managed to find his way to the rigging loft. He somehow clambered across to where the dummy curtains had been hung behind the proscenium. When the technician threw the switch to change the lighting, suddenly Commis was in full view of the auditorium, apparently now mounted on the top cross-member, a manifestation instead of a disappearance, scampering to and fro like a caged monkey.

Jayr had walked into the auditorium to watch this, and he applauded.

It was the last straw. I marched off the stage, headed towards the office. I wanted to collect my stuff and walk out.

I don’t know how he did it, but Commis climbed down quickly from where he had been and hurried along the corridor behind me. He was still pretending to be a monkey, so he ran with a wide-legged waddle, his knuckles running along the floor.

I did something I was instantly to regret. Halfway along the corridor, I mimed opening an invisible door, passed through it, looked back. As Commis reached the door I slammed it in his face.

To my amazement he reared up in apparent pain and surprise, his face contorted as it collided with the invisible door, he tipped backwards and dropped like a felled tree. He collapsed in a supine position, arms and legs outstretched, completely motionless. For a moment I thought I had really hurt him, until I realized that the blankly staring eyes were the ones that were painted on his lids.

I wished I had not done that! I felt that I had somehow descended to Commis’s level of aggravating playfulness.

I went on to the office and stood there by myself, feeling confused but also angry, still not sure why the mime should provoke me so. After a while Jayr came to find me.

I did not after all walk out of the Teater Sjøkaptein. Jayr was unexpectedly sympathetic, but he explained Commis’s behaviour as the erratic actions of a highly tuned and sensitive artiste and told me I should be more tolerant of theatrical talent. We argued about that. I vented much of the irritation and frustration that had been mounting ever since I became aware of the man.

Finally, Jayr pleaded with me to stay until the end of the coming week, as the backstage work I was doing with the Lord’s apparatus was crucial, and he didn’t know if the technical rehearsals could be completed with someone else in the time that was left.

In the end I agreed and Jayr promised to keep Commis out of my hair. A mental image briefly tormented me: of Commis picking over my scalp with his monkey fingers, in search of salty excretions. I stayed on.

The Lord’s first performance went smoothly. So did the second, and all the rest. Denik and I worked together well. The illusion was achieved every night and at the two midweek matinées.

Lord duly finished his week at the Teater Sjøkaptein and I helped Denik break his set, and carry the pieces of the dismantled frame to his van. The pane of glass was ours to keep, according to contract, and after Lord had departed Jayr and I briefly discussed what to do with it. Our options were few: we could give it away, or try to sell it, break it up and dispose of it, or keep it in the theatre somewhere. Jayr pointed out that we had been playing to almost full houses for most of the week, and if Lord wanted to make a return visit to Omhuuv in the next year or so the theatre would no doubt book him. If so, it would make sense and save time and money to retain the plate glass.

Accordingly, Denik and I put the sheet back into its harness of hemp ropes, and winched it up to the loft above the stage. There it hung, gleaming and deadly, swinging quietly like an immense blade whenever the scenery bay doors were opened and let in the wind.

I was now free to leave, so I packed my belongings, purchased a ticket for the long return journey on the circum-island bus, and then walked back to the theatre to say my farewells.

The conflict with Commis had tended to overshadow my last two or three weeks, and it took a conscious effort of will to appreciate that in fact I had benefited enormously from the experience. Even my negative feelings might one day serve me well, if a career in other theatres became mine. I was painfully aware that I was learning, that I had more to learn, that were still another two years of my course to run at the college in Evllen. Perhaps it was simply that as the least experienced member of the crew I had been subjected to a kind of initiation by the others. Thoughts on parting, probably too late. I still seethed with irritation.

I found Jayr straight away and he thanked me for the help I had given him over the weeks. I responded in the same way, acknowledging my debt to him.

Then I said, ‘Tell me about Commis. What was all that about?’

‘He’s always miming when he’s in costume, or rehearsing. You should have just played along with him.’

‘I did,’ I said. ‘Only a little. How well do you know him?’

‘No more than any of the other acts that come here. He’s been performing at this theatre for several years and has a huge following in the town. We’re almost sold out for next week.’

‘He lives here in the theatre?’

‘He rents a place somewhere on the edge of town, but when he’s performing he moves into the same dressing room — the smallest we have, at the top of the tower. He rarely goes outside the building. You’re about to leave — why don’t you go and see him? Say goodbye. He might even speak to you, if you’re lucky. He’s a different character when he’s not in part.’

‘All right.’

He seemed to make normal everything the weird little mime had done around me. I shook hands with Jayr, thanked him again, then before I could change my mind I ran up the spiral staircase that led to the highest level of the building. I had rarely been to this area in the past. I had done some cleaning of the dressing rooms when I first arrived, but otherwise there was not much need to go up there.

As I clambered up the stairs I could not escape the thought that he would probably realize I was on my way. Sometimes he seemed psychic in his anticipations of me. I half-expected a new trick: Commis would hide somewhere, then leap out on me, pretending to be a large spider, or would mime throwing a net over me, or some other foolishness.

Slightly out of breath from the climb I rapped my knuckles lightly on the door, staring at the shiny star attached to the panel, and the name written neatly on a card beneath it. No answer, so I knocked again. Reasoning that with a silent artiste like Commis it might be wrong to expect a spoken summons, I pushed the door open. Full of apprehension I went inside and switched on the light.

He was not there, so I backed out immediately. I had glimpsed the usual mirror and table, the familiar sticks and cakes of makeup, the folding screen, the costumes hanging on the rack. The only unusual feature of the room was a narrow folding bed, placed along the wall. His outdoor clothes were lying on it.

I switched off the light and closed the door. Then instantly I opened it again. I turned on the light.

His outdoor clothes included a yellow shirt, and bright blue beach shorts. Now I noticed, lying on a chair beside the bed, theatrical disguise: a bushy red beard, a droopy moustache, false eyebrows.

I returned to the backstage area and saw Commis was alone on the stage. I was in the shadows, way back in the wings. I believe he did not know I was there, because for once he seemed to be concentrating on his work. He was moving about the stage, blocking in his moves. He used a piece of chalk to make minute marks on the boards, then made a brief practice of his mime in those places. I saw him start to struggle with an umbrella in the wind, I saw him trying to remove a piece of sticky paper when it landed on his face, I saw him prepare to take a bath. He did this quietly and expertly, without apparent consciousness of an audience, or of a colleague he wished to torment with his endless tomfoolery.

His presence in my life always made me take actions I might later regret. I could not ignore the discovery I had just made in his dressing room, that I had without knowing it already met Commis several times, out of role. I felt I understood him for what he really was. I realized all that as I went to the access stairs, even through my seething anger, even as deep down I recognized that what I was intending was wrong.

I reached the rigging loft, I found the hemps that held the huge sheet of glass in its place, I loosened two of the ties. I left them just tight enough to hold the glass safely. Probably.

When I looked down at the surface of the stage, I saw, as I had expected, that Commis’s blocking marks were directly beneath the suspended pane of glass.

I went from the theatre at once, exiting through the scenery bay. I purposely left the largest door ajar, letting in a persistent draught. I felt frightened and guilty, but I would not, could not, return.

Outside the theatre, in the narrow streets of the town, the sun was shining and a brisk but pleasant breeze was coming onshore from the long fjord. There was still some time before my bus was due to leave, so I walked slowly by an indirect route, down to the closest wharf and then from there along a narrow lane that followed the shore of the fjord. I had never walked that way before and immediately wished I had. It was at a lower level than most of the town, closer to the water, and I could barely hear the noise of the traffic that passed constantly through the town.

It was a moment of symbolic liberation for me: I had abandoned if only temporarily the world of theatrical make-believe, of artifice and illusion, of light and shadows, mirrors and smoke, of people who played roles, who acted, who made themselves look and behave differently from their real selves.

The mime artiste was the extreme example of the common activity: his make-believe could never exist, even within the fantasy he created. Released from all that, I walked along the peaceful path, feeling the warm sunlight and being sheltered from the breeze, looking at the greenery of the spring’s new growth, the sudden flowers, the signs of a coming summer. I was thinking of home.

Then behind me, disruptive and insistent, came the sound of footsteps. Someone was hurrying along the path behind me, a quick pace, almost a run.

I glanced back and realized that my pursuer was almost upon me. I could see his small determined figure, the bright-blue beach shorts, the fluttering yellow shirt.

When he saw me looking back, he raised a fist and shouted, ‘I want words with you, pal!’

I suddenly realized how precarious my situation had become. I knew already the violence Commis was prepared to use when he was out of his role — here on the waterside path there were no houses in sight, there was no passing traffic, no other pedestrians walked along the lonely track. Just the trees and flowers, the deep and silent waters of the fjord.

I shouted no reply. I was genuinely frightened of the man, what he might be capable of doing to me. The guilt that was already in me deepened: perhaps he had already worked out the trap I had laid for him in the rigging loft above the stage.

I turned and ran, but behind me Commis started to run too.

I saw the path ahead: it showed no sign of coming to an end, of leading back to the main road, the houses of the town. It extended along the shore, at least as far as the next headland, created by the sheer side of a mountain as it met the water.

I was carrying some of my baggage, weighed down by it. Commis was closing on me.

Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.

I flung my bags aside and turned back to face him. He was now only a short distance away from me, and I saw him raising one shoulder, starting to measure his pace, just as I had glimpsed him doing that day he came skidding across the frozen ruts at me, felling me violently with a sliding tackle. I braced myself for impact, but in the same moment I lifted both my arms, strained at some imaginary weight, and raised a huge sheet of heavy glass between us.

I held it at the vertical, clinging to its sides, ramming it down against the loose gravel of the path, making a place where I could let it stand unsupported.

I leapt back and in the same instant Commis ran headlong into the glass. His body struck it first, but an instant later his head banged against it and he was thrown painfully backwards.

The glass collapsed down towards me, so I leapt back from it to avoid being struck as it fell. Perhaps it shattered on the stony surface of the path, but now there was nothing between Commis and myself.

He was standing away from me, turned to the side, slumping forward, holding his head in his hands. He kept moving one of his hands down to where he could see it, looking at the palm as if blood was pooling on it. He shook blood off the hand, emitted a low cry of pain. He pulled out a kerchief, mopped his brow, buried his nose inside it. His head was rocking up and down. I could see him breathing heavily, and just as once before I was momentarily convinced I had really injured him.

In a state of bizarre contrition and concern I stepped back towards him, to see if he needed help, but as soon as I was closer to him reality returned to me. I heard the words he was using, a string of vile invective and threats against me.

I went away. I grabbed my baggage and hurried on down the path. In a short distance I saw a place where I could with some difficulty scramble up the slope through the undergrowth. I could hear traffic not far away.

As I started to climb I looked back. Commis was still where I had left him, still in the same pained posture of defeat. I gained the road, soon saw where I was, and found my way back into the main part of the town towards the bus station.

I heard nothing more of Commis. All my way back home, and for a long time afterwards, I kept thinking about him — for all I knew he was still standing there beside the fjord where I had left him, or he was not. And I often thought remorsefully about the heavy pane of glass hanging above the stage, or it was not.