The Islanders

Piqay (2) PATH FOLLOWED

[THE TESTAMENT OF WOLTER KAMMESTON. Reproduced by permission of the Collections Department, Piqay University Library.]

My name is Wolter Kammeston, and I was born and have lived all my life on the island of Piqay. My younger brother is Chaster Kammeston, the Inclair Laureate of Literature. I always loved my brother, in spite of the many events in our lives which have tested that love.

With his reputation secure and permanent, I have decided, with dread in my heart, that I owe it to posterity to describe what I know is the truth about him. This is not to try to deny his real achievements as a writer but to add a human context to the work.

The whole family — that is myself, my sister and both my parents — were aware there was something strange and difficult about Chaster all through his childhood. He and I were alike in many ways, but there was something deep inside Chas that would not come out. It was dark and unreachable and it always felt risky for us to try to approach it.

Our childhood was both difficult and easy. It was easy because Father was a successful businessman with a direct line of connection to the Monseignior of Piqay, so we were a wealthy family with many of the attributes of advantage and comfort and influence. We were educated privately, at first by a series of governesses, later at a private school on the other side of the island, and all three of us attended Piqay University.

But our lives were also difficult because of Chas’s dysfunctional behaviour. He was taken several times to see doctors or analysts, and these people made various efforts to find remedies: allergy treatment, dietary control, psychological testing, and so on. He was almost always given a clean bill of health, with the general consensus that he was going through the growing pains of youth, which would resolve themselves in due course. Chaster himself, I feel sure, somehow manipulated things to achieve these non-interventionist verdicts.

When Chaster wanted to be charming he could bring down the birds from the trees, as our mother used to say. But when he was not in a mood to believe there was anyone in the universe apart from him, he was awful to know. He could be angry, sulky, threatening, selfish, deceitful, and much else . . . all those childish tantrums everyone knows and which are fairly normal, but in Chas’s case he could resort to them all at once, or switch between them, one after the other. I was often — usually — the target, and if it was not me then it was my sister, Suther, and if it was not her then it was both of us at once.

If these were growing pains we could hardly wait for the process of healing to begin, but with Chaster the progress was in the opposite direction. When we were small, his difficult nature only appeared briefly, almost undetectably: a likelihood of tears if he did not get his own way, a period of sulking, and so on. But these were always short-lived. Chaster’s real difficulties began to emerge only as he headed through his teenage years, and every year it grew worse.

By the time he had reached his twenty-first year he was almost impossible. The least worst manifestation of his odd behaviour was his prickliness, the quickness with which he would take offence, his inability to warm to others, even briefly in a social setting. More disconcertingly, his behaviour was eccentric: he was always straightening or cleaning objects around the house, or counting things aloud, pointing to them pedantically, as if expecting those of us around him to check or confirm his result. Much worse than that were his rages, his threats of violence, his aggressive physical demeanour, his controlling behaviour, his attempts to undermine everyone around him, his constant lies.

He got through his university years somehow, perhaps by curbing this behaviour as by then we knew he could, at least to some extent, but he left university with only a poor degree. He blamed everyone except himself.

Then, several months after leaving the university, he suddenly announced that he had been offered a job and was intending to take it up. To be candid, my reaction, and that of the rest of the family, was relief. We all felt that a break with the family environment, fresh horizons, working with other people, might well induce a change in him.

There was no indication at all at this time that he might one day become a writer. He had never been particularly bookish, often declaring he could not be bothered to finish a book once he had started it. Nor did he have any apparent facility with the written word — indeed, for a time at school one of his teachers had thought a serious and lasting problem with literacy might be underlying his behaviour. However, this turned out to be a false alarm, possibly related to one of his darker behavioural periods. If Chaster had any ambitions at all, we assumed they would lie in the direction of Father’s business. This of course has been my own route through adult life.

We were surprised to discover that Chaster’s job was not on Piqay. It was in fact in a part of the Archipelago none of us had ever heard of, in the north, a small group of islands close against the northern continent, at least two weeks’ sailing from home with many ports of call on the way. He would tell us little about the job, but he said he would be working as an assistant manager in a theatre. No sooner had he told us this than he announced the ferry was sailing that night. He hastily packed a couple of bags, our driver took him down to the port, and then he was gone.

He stayed away for a long time without any contact at all with his family. Naturally, we were concerned for him. It was all too easy for us to imagine this irascible, unpredictable, moody, short-tempered, sarcastic young man provoking something with strangers, and coming off much the worse for it. But it has always been our parents’ method to allow us to make our own way in life, to learn by experience, while keeping a distant watch on us. In Chas’s case, when he first went away, my father employed a private detective to locate and then to observe him.

The first report came back a few weeks later: Chaster was working every day in the town’s theatre, he appeared to be happy and productive, he had found somewhere to live, he seemed to be looking after himself. My parents allowed another six months to pass before asking for a second report — it was much the same as the first. After that, they asked for no more observations. Perhaps they should have done.

The first sign that something had gone wrong was an urgent email from Chaster to me, not long after we had read the second report. He demanded I sail immediately to join him. A few minutes later a second message arrived, and in this he made me swear that on no account must I leave Piqay. He said he was returning home, but would not say when.

Then a third message. He warned me that people — he did not say which people, nor how I would recognize them — might come to the house asking questions. He pleaded with me that if they did I was to pretend to be him and to swear I had been on Piqay for the whole of the time he had been away. He told me nothing more.

Both parts of this request were in theory easy to fulfil. I could say with complete truth that I had been here at the family house on Piqay, and if necessary I could produce witnesses to confirm it: my parents, servants in the house, friends in the town. The second part was also not a problem, or not in practical terms. Chas and I look alike, and we had grown up with people constantly mistaking each of us for the other.

But to maintain both of these amounted to a lie, one made worse because I had no knowledge of what Chas had been up to, nor even a clear idea of where he had been.

I had hardly any time to think about this, because the morning after I received Chas’s last email two officers from the policier seignioral came to the house, demanding to see him. With great trepidation, and with feelings of doubt and misplaced loyalty to a brother who for the past several years had been little short of a monster to me, I went down to meet them.

I lied as little as possible to them. They assumed I was Chaster, so I did not disabuse them: a lie by omission, but still a lie. I told them, truthfully, where I had been during the last few months. No lies there, except in what I again omitted. The officers remained respectful to me — which brought home to me the influence my father continued to have on the island — but it was clear they were suspicious of everything I was saying.

I was questioned for at least two more hours and everything I said was recorded, as well as being noted in writing by one of the two officers. They told me nothing about the reasons for their questions but gradually the mysterious unspecified spaces behind the interrogation began to take on a definite shape. I was able to piece together some idea of what might have happened, what must have happened, and my brother’s assumed role in it.

It did not take me long to work out there had been a violent death at the theatre where Chaster said he was working. He was thought to have been in the theatre at the time, or at least in the same town, but they were not sure. He (I) was no longer there, but they did not know when he had left. The death was caused by some kind of failure or accident with stage machinery or props: scenery was involved, or perhaps a trapdoor. Someone had died on stage but the officers were trying to find out if it had been a real accident or a deliberately prepared attack on the victim, disguised to make it look like an accident. Again, my brother’s role in this was uncertain.

The officers tried to lead me, implying that if I would only admit the whole thing had been an accident that would be the end of their enquiries. I said nothing. Terrified of saying too much I invented no details, did not depart from the broad outline of what Chaster had told me to say.

They went away at last, warning me that they might need to interview me again. They ordered me not to leave Piqay without informing them first. In fact, that interview turned out to be the end of the policier involvement, because I never heard from them again and neither, I believe, did Chaster.

He stayed away, sending only occasional messages that he was ‘about to return home’, and pleading with me once again to remain silent, or at least compliant to his wishes.

The problem for me was the fact that I had been forced to lie to protect my brother. Although the lies were minimal, evasive, partial, they were none the less lies, and clearly my brother had been mixed up in something serious. I brooded on this endlessly. With every day that passed I became more resentful of him and angry. Because he was not there I could not confront him, so the pressure inside me mounted.

I believed I could not live with him any more should he return to the island, so with my parents’ help I bought a small house in Piqay Town, well away from home. I moved in, settled in, began a life I hoped would be my own, free of Chaster and his moods and his way of manipulating me. Had I never seen him again that might well have succeeded.

But one day he did return, slipping in to Piqay harbour on a night-time ferry, then walking all the way to the house carrying his belongings in a bag across his back. He was found in the morning by one of the servants, sleeping in his own bed.

Curiosity, mingled with undeniable relief that he was home again, made me forget my decision not to see him. I went to the house later that day.

Chaster was a man transformed. He looked leaner and healthier, and his manner was calm in a way I had never known before. Although he was weary from the long shipboard journey he was in an expansive, friendly mood. He embraced me in his arms — something that he had never done before. I could smell salt and marine engine oil on his clothes. He complimented me on how well I looked, said how happy he was to be home again. He asked why I had moved out of the family home and said how much he’d like to see my new house.

We went for a long walk together, across the grounds and through the girdling woods, to the clifftop path high above the sea. There we enjoyed the views of the neighbouring islands in the emerald sea, the gleaming waves, the shining sunlight, the swooping gulls, all familiar as background to our shared lives, full of reassurance and memories, a sense of joining up the present with the past.

We walked and walked, not saying much, but that was because it was windy. The steepness of the path, as it roamed up and down the cliff peaks, made talking difficult. We came eventually to a place we had often rested in before: a small valley in the top of the cliffs, where a stream ran through then plunged out and down to the rocky foreshore below.

Chaster said, ‘Thanks for doing what you did, Woll. Getting the policier off my back.’

‘You never told me what you had done.’

He said nothing, but stared away across the sea. We were looking south-west and it was mid-afternoon, late enough for the sun to be throwing shadows of the islands. Whatever else happened in life, there was always this: the view, the gusting wind, the great panorama of dark-green islands, the slow ships and the endless sea.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Chaster said after a while. ‘I’m never going to leave again. This is where I’ll stay for the rest of my life.’

‘You’ll change your mind one day.’

‘No, I’m certain about it. Now and for ever.’

‘What happened while you were away, Chas?’

But he never gave me an answer, then or ever. We sat there on the rough clifftop rocks, staring down at the islands, a great unsaid thing hovering around us. Eventually we walked back to the house.

Chaster’s behaviour still made me nervous: I kept waiting for an outburst of his dark side. He had always frightened me when he was like that. In a sense it was more alarming when he assumed a pleasant persona, when he seemed to be approachable, because of the sudden way in which I knew he could change. That was how he was on his return to the family: he seemed reasonable, sensitive to the needs of others. It put me on edge. And because he would say nothing about the months he was away, I was still left with that unresolved sense of injustice, of having had to lie for him. Surely, at least he owed me an explanation?

I was not to receive that explanation for many years, and then only indirectly and not from Chaster himself.

His change in temperament on his return did appear to be permanent, though, and in spite of my initial nervousness I gradually grew used to the idea. If the darkness of his behaviour was still inside him, that was where he kept it and he did so for the rest of his life. Whatever else had happened while he was away, somehow it had led to that. He was a reformed character.

Something else had changed, too, but it took longer to become apparent. Because by this time I was living permanently away from the family home, I rarely saw him and so was hardly aware of it.

Chaster became contemplative, thoughtful. He read constantly. He took many long and solitary walks through the grounds of the house, and further, around the cliffs, into the town. At some point he began writing. I knew nothing about this, and I understood from Suther that he almost never spoke about it at home. She said he was always there in his room at the top of the house, a quiet presence, integrated into the various family events, but always retreating afterwards to be alone, wandering away up the stairs to the study from which a long silence then emanated.

He finished his first novel and sent it away to find a publisher. Some time later, maybe a year or so, it was published. He presented me with a copy, dedicated and signed on the title page, but I confess I did not read it.

A second novel appeared, then a third, then more. This was his new life.

I too had a new life: I had married my wife Hísar, and soon we had a young family and all the preoccupations that go with that. Suther also married, and she moved away to the island of Lillen-Cay. She too had children. Eventually our parents died, the house and grounds became our joint property. Chaster was the only one of us who remained living there, alone in the large house with a reduced number of servants.

My first realization that Chaster was becoming a well known writer was when I came across something about him in my daily newspaper. It reported simply that he had a novel due to appear later in the year. I found this mildly startling, that the mere prospect of a novel from him was considered newsworthy. By then he had written four or five novels, and from time to time I had even seen them reviewed, but this was a notice of something as yet unpublished. I cut out the item and sent it up to the house for him, because I was not certain he would otherwise see it. He never acknowledged it, but by then we hardly communicated about anything.

Another sign of the change in his reputation came when Hísar started telling me of some of the gossip she was hearing around town. I heard none of this myself — I assume people kept their thoughts to themselves when I was there because they suspected it would get back to my brother. But Hísar was different: she led a sociable life in the town, had friends of all types, often went with the children to other people’s houses, belonged to theatre groups, historical societies, a walking club, she worked one afternoon a week in a charity shop, and so on.

The story was that Chaster, who never married, was constantly being approached or visited by women who were fervent, devoted admirers of his writing.

Some of them came shyly, almost furtively. They would arrive quietly on the island, find somewhere to live or stay, then wander around the town and the island, apparently trying to contrive accidental meetings with him. According to Hísar these women were easy to identify, since they were just about the only people who would ever talk about him. They asked after him in shops, they would plague our local librarian with questions about his novels, or they would simply sit or stand somewhere in the centre of the town, reading one of his books with the cover held up to be seen. Sometimes this method succeeded — Hísar told me that Chaster had been spotted several times walking around the town or the harbour with one or other of these people.

Some of the women were bolder. They would go straight to the house and ask for him at the door — most times, I gathered, he would not agree to meet them, but sometimes he would. What would happen then was no one’s business but Chaster’s, but presumably he had normal sexual appetites and many of these women were allegedly young and presentable.

All this would be a matter of tittle-tattle, were it not for the significant visit by one such woman.

Hísar and I knew nothing about this event until afterwards, by which time she had long departed from Piqay. Her arrival in the town had caused something of a stir, because she was easily recognized: it was the famous social reformer and writer called Caurer.

She arrived unannounced on the first scheduled ferry of the day, disembarking in the dawn light with the other foot passengers. No one from her staff appeared to be travelling with her. She was delayed on arrival and went through the dock formalities with everyone else, although by this time she had been noticed and recognized. The officials dealt with her transit papers quickly, while the other passengers kept a respectful distance.

On leaving the dock, Caurer walked straight across to the town’s taxi rank and climbed into the first available car. She acknowledged nobody, did not respond to the ripple of applause that had followed her across the harbour apron. As the car drove away and up the hill towards the interior of the island, people stood by the roadside to wave to her.

She went to my brother’s house and stayed there for a period of time, but I have never been able to establish exactly how long it was. It might have been for the rest of that day, she might have stayed for one or two nights, or even longer. The tongues that wagged disagreed on this, but the only thing that matters is that she was definitely there.

She left in the dark, boarding the usual overnight ferry towards Paneron.

Two weeks later Chaster came to my house. Hísar was conveniently out with the children, but they had only just left. It made me suspect Chaster had been waiting outside the house for them to leave. He and I greeted each other as if we had seen each other only recently, but almost at once he launched into what he had come to ask.

‘Woll, I need your help,’ he said. ‘I’m in a terrible state. I can’t sleep, I can’t work, I can hardly eat, I can’t settle down. I’ve got to do something.’

‘Are you ill?’

‘I think I’m in love.’ He looked as embarrassed as only one brother can to another. ‘Her name’s Esla. I’m obsessed with her. I think about her all the time, I imagine her face, I think I can hear her voice. She’s so beautiful! So intelligent and articulate! So sensitive and understanding! But I can’t contact her. She left me and I don’t know where she is or how I could ever find her again. I think I’m going mad.’

‘Do you mean Caurer?’

‘Esla, yes. I call her Esla.’

Until then I had not realized Caurer must once have had a given name.

Once he had started there was no stopping Chaster. He talked endlessly, obsessively, with little chance of my interrupting. Any question I managed to break in with only produced another outpouring of his love for this woman and the frustration she had left behind her.

‘You should go to her,’ I said, when at last a pause arose. ‘You must know where she lives, which island she’s from. She sometimes calls herself Caurer of Rawthersay. Is that still her island?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Then it must be a simple enough matter to find a shipping route to get there.’

He looked diffident. ‘I can’t do that. You know I can’t leave Piqay.’

‘Why not?’

‘Have you read any of the novels I’ve given you?’ I responded with what I intended should be seen as an ambiguous look, because although he had sent me a signed presentation copy of every new book as it appeared, I had yet to read any of them. He went on, ‘I’ve created a kind of . . . well, I call it a mythos. It’s in all my novels. I write about Piqay, describing it realistically, as it is. Sometimes only as it was, because two of the books are set in the past. But as well as being realistic, the Piqay I create in the novels has a mythology. I call Piqay “the island of traces”, a place that holds its inhabitants in a spell. No one can leave, no one wants to leave. Anyone born here is said to be forever trapped here. The island is covered with psychological spoors, traces of ancestors and ghosts and past lives.’

‘It’s not true.’

‘Of course it’s not true. It’s a mythos. I invented it. I use it as a metaphor, as symbolic language. I write novels, fiction! You don’t understand, do you?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, in practical terms it means I can’t ever leave Piqay. Not now. All my books would become invalidated. And if the readers found out — well, it doesn’t matter about most of them, but it matters like hell about Esla. She above all people must never know the truth. I can’t go after her.’

He was indeed a man in love, deluded by his own passions. Now I knew him to be also a man trapped in his own fictional invention.

The afternoon went by. I let Chaster talk out his obsessive needs, partly because I genuinely wanted to help him, but also because I found it fascinating to see my own brother, about whom I had such mixed feelings, acting in a totally new and unprecedented way. He could barely keep still. He was always levering himself energetically from his chair, then prowling and pacing around my sitting room, waving his arms, grimacing, declaiming theatrically.

In the end I said, ‘What is it you want, Chas? You said you need my help.’

‘Would you go to find Esla Caurer for me? You are the only person I can trust. I’ll give you every detail I know about her. The island, the people she works with, some lecture dates she said she had coming up. She travels a lot, but her appearances are usually publicized in advance. I’ll pay for everything. All I want you to do is find her, tell her how much I love her, then plead with her, beg her, use any means you can think of to make her come back and see me again. If she won’t do that, then get her at least to contact me. Tell her it’s urgent, a matter of life and death, anything at all, anything you can think of. I’m desperate. I can’t go on like this. I have to be with her!’

And I was meanwhile thinking: I have a wife and children, and a home to keep and maintain, I have a job with serious responsibilities. Does he truly imagine I am going to abandon everything and rush off on this fool’s errand?

Once before I had gone out on a limb for my brother, lied on his behalf, tried to save him for reasons I barely understood, and all for what? Grudging thanks much later, and a long silence.

I thought about it, though, while he sat there in the sun as it poured in through the large windows, and I heard Hísar and the children coming noisily into the house at the side entrance, and the contentment of my normal life regaining its shape around me.

Finally, I said, ‘All right, I’ll do it.’

He looked at me in pleased amazement. ‘You will?’

‘There’s a condition, though. I’ll only search for this woman if you tell me why you made me lie to the policier for you. What were you mixed up in, back then?’

‘What does that have to do with any of this?’

‘For me, almost everything. Tell me what went on at the theatre. Did someone die? Were you responsible?’

‘It’s a long time ago. I was just a young man. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘It still matters to me.’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because you made me lie to the policier. Do I have to tell lies to Caurer for you too?’

‘No — everything I’ve told you about Esla is true.’

‘Then tell me the truth about the other matter.’

‘No. I can’t.’

‘Then I can’t go off and look for this woman.’

I suppose I had expected the old dark Chaster to burst out again, to threaten me, wheedle at me, use some kind of blackmail or other manipulation on me, but on that day I realized he had finally and for good buried the old destructive demon.

He sat in the chair across from me and he seemed to slump. He cried briefly. He wiped his eyes, stood up, left the chair and leaned against the window, staring out into the street. He did not react when Hísar briefly entered the room — she left when she realized who was there with me and that something difficult was happening between the two of us.

‘I’m sorry I troubled you, Woll,’ he said suddenly, and moved towards the door. He would not look across at me. I stood up. ‘I won’t ask you again. I’ll find her some other way.’

‘Chas, this other thing at the theatre still stands between us.’

‘Let it go,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘And I can’t understand why everyone is still so fascinated by all that.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Esla kept asking about it too.’

I should have realized then what that woman had been doing at my brother’s house, but because I did not I said nothing.

Chaster left, and if anything I felt worse about him than I had done before.

The years that followed, broadly speaking, were a stable period for us all. Chaster presumably pined for his lost love, and he must have got over it eventually. Hísar told me that the trickle of his women literary adherents continued to arrive in the town, so I imagine he was able to find relief from his sorrows with some of them. I know not, and I care not.

Chaster went on writing, because books of his continued to appear. Our children slowly grew up and we suffered and relished the various crises and triumphs of a growing family. Hísar and I took several long holidays off-island. My job continued. All seemed well.

I decided it was time I caught up with Chaster’s novels, so I read them all, slowly and carefully, in the order in which he had written them.

They were not, I must say, the kind of fiction I normally like to read. I prefer a strong storyline, a range of interesting and successful characters, a colourful or exciting background. I like adventures, intrigues, brave deeds. Chas’s novels seemed to me to be about losers or failures: no one could succeed at anything in his stories, doubts were constantly expressed, the language was understated or ironic, everyone went in for perplexing actions that took them nowhere. As for the background, all the books seemed to be set on Piqay, and in the town in which I lived, but I found it hard to recognize the places I knew. One book even contained a mention of the street where my house was, but almost every detail was wrong.

One of the novels did briefly interest me, because it described a violent death that had taken place in a theatre. My attention focused sharply, but it soon became clear that this novel was much the same as all the others. If there were any clues in it about what had happened to Chaster in the past, I missed them all.

I was glad to finish reading his books but I felt my conscience was now clearer. At least I knew what he had written, even if within a day or two I could remember hardly any details about them.

I had almost forgotten about Caurer and her disruptive impact on Chaster, when unexpectedly she burst back in on his life.

The background to it was the execution of a mentally subnormal young man, for a murder he was alleged to have committed. This had happened several years before.

I had not taken any special interest in what happened, although I did remember the controversy that surrounded his execution. Capital punishment is not common in the Archipelago, but there are several islands where it is still carried out. It’s a subject that always causes heated argument. I am personally against the idea of state-sponsored killing and always have been, so whenever I hear the news that another hanging or guillotining has taken place I get a sick feeling in my stomach, wish that it had not happened, but try to console myself with the thought that due process must have taken place and all appeals would have been exhaustively heard.

In this respect, the guillotining of Sington was little different from others. I knew from news reports that the evidence was overwhelmingly against him, that he had made a full confession, that he showed no remorse, and that on his island group the law and its remedy were clear. Beyond that, I knew few details.

Caurer, a famous liberal reformer and campaigning writer, had for some reason taken it upon herself to re-open the case and investigate whether Sington had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Her conclusion, unsurprisingly, was that he had.

I saw her book on the subject discussed in the press and felt interested and pleased that this might persuade more people to my point of view. But because of Caurer’s brief but disruptive impact on my brother’s life, I could no longer treat anything by or about her with complete neutrality.

One day, not long after her book had been published, Chaster turned up at my house. It had been more than a year since we had seen each other, but by that time separations of several months at a time were not unusual. He did not stay long.

‘Have you seen this?’ he said loudly, holding aloft a hardback book with a pale cover. ‘Why has she done this to me?’

He tossed the book towards me but as I tried to catch it, and failed, he was already heading back towards the street.

I picked up the book from the floor, and saw what it was.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘Read it, and you will. I can’t believe I fell for that woman. I should have realized what she was up to, coming to my place that time. All those questions about the job I had in the theatre. Had I seen anything that happened? Did I know anything? I thought she was different from the others but I was a damned fool and besotted. I was taken in by her.’

‘Let me read it,’ I said, already sensing that the book contained information about my brother. ‘Does it damage you in any way?’

‘Just read the thing then throw it away. I never want to see it again.’

After he had stormed out I sat down immediately and read the book from beginning to end. It was not particularly long and was written in a terse, attractive style that I found readable and unusually compelling.

Caurer told the story of the killing that had led ultimately to the execution of Kerith Sington. She went into a great deal of background detail about the victim, a theatre performer called Commis, and also about the theatre where Commis’s death had occurred.

Her skill in reconstructing the scene was remarkable. She followed the policier investigation carefully, referring back to original statements and interviews wherever they were available. Then she moved on to the story of Kerith Sington, how he had become involved, how a certain amount of circumstantial evidence incriminated him.

In the longest chapter in the book Caurer went into Sington’s childhood and psychological background, and the kind of deprived and socially chaotic world in which he lived. She produced several examples of other, less serious offences in which he had been involved, how he had been secretive about them at first, then bragged to impress his friends. After she had analysed his alleged confession in detail, the reader could have been left in no doubt that Sington had been wrongly accused. She certainly convinced this reader that an innocent man had died for a murder he had not committed.

Nothing, to this point, had any relevance to my brother, or so it seemed. But in her final chapter Caurer tried to answer the question: if Sington was not the murderer of Commis, who was?

She examined the lives and backgrounds of other people who had been near the scene of the crime at the time. There was the manager of the theatre, the directors of the company which owned the theatre, several performing artistes, the technical and backstage crew, some itinerant manual workers, townspeople, visitors, members of the audience on the night when the killing took place.

And — ‘a young man, employed on a part-time basis as a general assistant backstage.’ No name was mentioned. Later the young man was brought into the story again. Shortly before the death, ‘he had been involved in a violent street scuffle with the murdered man, but according to witnesses in the street it had appeared to be a misunderstanding and the two men parted amicably.’ And again: ‘the young man had applied for the job under an assumed name, a fact which greatly interested the investigating officers. Furthermore, he left the island in mysterious circumstances, and at a time no one was able to be sure about. These two facts made him the number one suspect, at least for a time.’

Then this paragraph: ‘The policier authorities later established the true identity of this young man. Although he was then unknown, he later became a world-renowned writer of novels, a man of unquestioned integrity and honesty who is entitled to remain anonymous. Moreover, once his real identity became known, investigations were taken to his home island, where a conclusive alibi was established.’

There was no other mention of this young man, either directly or by implication. Of course I realized he was Chaster: the story about a violent scuffle in the street certainly had a ring of truth to it. At that age Chas had always been quick to ball his fists and strike an aggressive pose, and as a teenager he had involved himself in arguments in Piqay Town several times, and been beaten up for his trouble.

Caurer ended her book with the statement that although it was impossible for her to identify the real killer of Commis, the central truth remained unchallenged: that Kerith Sington had been wrongly accused, convicted and executed.

At first, I was not sure how I should react to this book. Chaster was not named. Nothing in it implicated him in anything illegal, and the identification of him was so vague that the ‘true identity’ could have been one of several people — Chaster was by no means the only world-renowned novelist of his, or my, approximate age.

When he threw Caurer’s book at me, though, he had clearly been upset, which made me wonder if there was more to know or tell than there appeared. Perhaps he was concerned that Caurer had revealed enough clues for other people to follow up. Surely there would be an interest in trying to identify who this mysterious young man had been?

I assumed that his anger against her was more or less the same as mine: that he realized now that she had gone directly to his house, not to seduce him or in any other way inveigle herself into his life, but simply to ask some questions, while she researched her book on Commis’s death.

The fact that he had fallen for her so completely had probably helped her cause on the day, and was a matter of indifference to her afterwards.

As had become my habit for many years, I decided to say nothing to Chas, nor to ask him any questions about the book. I continued to feel angry with Caurer on his behalf.

A few weeks later, I was amazed to receive a card from Chaster, inviting Hísar and myself to the house for drinks one evening. It was totally unprecedented. I had not been near the old house for several years, so if nothing else I was curious to see it again.

When the day came, Chaster greeted us with great friendliness and apparent good cheer, introduced us to the other friends he had invited, and made us welcome not only with generous quantities of drink but a superb meal too.

I couldn’t help noticing that a copy of Caurer’s book was standing prominently on one of the bookshelves, its cover facing out. Later, I spotted another copy, less obviously on show, in a neat pile of books stacked on a reading table in one corner.

When I could I took Chaster aside and asked him outright what had happened to change his mind about her.

He said, simply, ‘I love her, Woll.’

‘Still? After all this?’

‘More than ever. Nothing has changed since the day I met her. I think about Esla every day. I hope and plan to see her. I imagine that every letter that arrives, every email, every telephone call, will be from her. She is an inspiration to me, the woman I most admire and love. I shall never meet another like her. I live my life for her, I write every word for her.’

‘But you were so angry with her about the book.’

‘I was hasty. I thought she had betrayed me, but I realized later that in fact the opposite was true. She protected me, Woll.’

‘So this means — do you have any plans to see her again?’

‘All I know is that one day she will come back here to see me.’

Tragically, he was right.

Only three weeks after this evening meeting at the house, Chaster went down with an attack of pneumonia. He fought for life and the hospital did everything possible to save him, but he died in terrible discomfort a few days later.

Of course there was a funeral and following his instructions, whispered to me from his hospital bed, and later found in a sealed letter addressed to me in his study, Caurer was to be invited to be present.

She was then well into her sixties but she was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She said hardly anything to the other people who were there, and always stood alone. I could not stop looking at her. I began at last to understand much that until then I had not.

We returned to the house after the funeral ceremony, and everyone had a few drinks. As the guests started to depart, Hísar and I stood formally by the main door to give our thanks and say our farewells.

When Caurer’s turn came I felt overcome with a strange but powerful sense of wanting to hold her, embrace her, possess her in some way, however briefly. I did not want to lose sight of her, let her away from me. I was finally understanding the charismatic effect on which so many people had remarked, over the years and in so many different contexts.

She thanked us politely for our hospitality. I held out a hand to shake hers. She did not respond.

She said, ‘He told me a lot about you, Wolter. I am pleased to meet you at last.’

Her voice had the unmistakable and always attractive burr of the Quietude islands, that picturesque but remote group far to the south.

I said, fumbling for adequate words, ‘I’m sure Chaster would have been pleased to know that you were here today.’

‘He certainly did know I would be here. This is the day when I should tell you that Chaster and I were in love for many years, although we only ever met once, years ago. He is the only person I ever allowed to use my given name.’

‘He always called you Esla.’

‘Indeed, but now no one ever will again.’

I noticed then that her right hand, which I had tried to take, had a reddish-brown smear across the fingers and palm and that she was holding it slightly away from her body. Hísar had noticed it too.

‘Have you cut yourself, Madame Caurer?’ she said. ‘Let me have a look. We have a trained nurse here, so we could have it cleaned and dressed for you.’

‘No, it’s not a cut, but thank you.’ She moved her hand back, further away from us. ‘I hurt myself, that’s all.’

Then she left, stepping across the gravel drive to the car that had brought her, which drove away slowly towards the town.

Wolter Kammeston died thirteen months after his brother. He was survived by his wife of fifty-two years, Hísar, and two adult sons. His funeral was a private ceremony at the local crematorium, the only guests being family and close friends.

Chaster Kammeston’s grave may be visited in the church burial ground, close to the crematorium, where there is also a commemorative plaque for his brother.