“He won’t have gone far,” says Sandy, reaching out to squeeze my arm. “He’ll call her. He’ll want to get the divorce rolling now. I don’t know what planet Belinda was on, thinking she could just dance off into her hippie-dippie sunset and ignore all the gritty details of a separation.” Sandy sounds angry.
“He’s going to think I hid that letter from him,” says Gerry, pressing his palms against the sides of his head.
“Yeah, he’s definitely not going to pay up for that sea view now,” Sandy says, and then she and Gerry start giggling like children.
“Hey, this is serious,” I say, looking between them. “Who knows where he’s gone?”
Sandy narrows her eyes at me.
“How was your day with Mr. Suitcase Man? I saw the red sports car this morning—very fancy.”
Ted was right about living on a small island, no keeping secrets.
“Fine,” I say, flustered. “I’m just worried about Ted, as a friend.”
“We all are,” says Sandy.
We sit in silence for a moment, all looking out to sea, and I breathe in the quiet.
“That watery horizon is a spirit level for the soul,” says Gerry. “When you look at it for long enough, it puts life straight again.”
In that moment, I know exactly what he means, and I don’t know how I’ve stayed in the city so long, where there’s no chance for recalibration, no clean horizon to level you. Even with all the emotion this trip has thrown up, there’s something about watching the ocean that puts everything into perspective. Maybe Jersey is rubbing off on me. I don’t think I’ve even checked my phone for the last— Hang on, where is my phone? I pat down my pocket and search through my bag.
“Oh no. I think I’ve lost my phone.”
“Did you leave it at Mr. Sports Car’s house?” asks Sandy, tapping a finger against her chin.
“Probably.” I sigh. “This is a disaster.”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” says Gerry, tipping his head backward and looking up at the sky.
“Well, it is. If my boss can’t get hold of me—”
“Oh, I meant to tell you, the internet’s down,” says Sandy. “There’s some glitch across the whole of St. Ouen’s, should be back on in an hour or two.”
“What?” I cry, horrified. “I can’t be offline.” As I say it, I hear how pathetic I sound. I’m not a doctor on call or a politician running the country. Then I think of my argument with Dee, the need to amend my flight, the fact that Dionne and Saul are coming here on Monday—the constant nagging feeling that I have a thousand phone calls I should be making.
“You can use my mobile, if there’s anything urgent?” Sandy offers.
“Do you know what happens when you don’t have your phone?” Gerry asks. I look at him, waiting for an answer. “Life.”
“All right, Yoda,” says Sandy.
“Yes, ‘live for today’ is all very well until I lose my job and can’t pay the rent,” I tell him.
“Someone sparky like you?” Gerry gives me a wink. “You’d find a way.” Then he bows his head and presses his papery-skinned hands together in prayer. “There is an old proverb: He who fears to suffer, suffers from fear.”
“Oh no,” Sandy says, covering her eyes, “you’ve unleashed the proverbial Gerry.”
“Man who waits for roast duck to fly into his mouth must wait very, very long time,” says Gerry.
“He’ll just keep spouting proverbs at you until you beg him to stop,” says Sandy. “He has proverbs for every occasion, mainly from cheap Christmas crackers by the sound of them.”
“Fear blows wind into your sails—”
“OK, she gets it,” Sandy says, standing up and putting both hands gently around Gerry’s neck, pretending to throttle him. This makes Gerry stop his guru impression and wrinkle his nose into a silent laugh. I smile at them, cheered up by their jokes, but the conversation does make me pause to think— Would it be so terrible if I lost my job? If I didn’t have the familiar routine? But then the thought makes me feel a bit sick and panicky, so I ask Sandy if I can bring my laptop over and hotspot off her mobile, just to get through my most urgent tasks.
Sandy goes to make a pot of herbal tea, and she and Gerry carry on chatting as I sit beside them tapping away on my keyboard and making calls from Sandy’s mobile. I change my flight, email work with an update, giving them Sandy’s phone number and the address at Sans Ennui in case of emergencies. I call Maude from Sandy’s phone, asking if she’s seen my mobile at her house; she hasn’t but gives me Jasper’s home number. I call him and it goes to answering machine, so I leave a message explaining the situation, asking if we can meet for lunch at his place tomorrow.
Having been subjected to hearing all my logistical arrangements, Gerry and Sandy both pretend to yawn at how boring I’m being.
“It’s a wonder the human race survived as long as it did without mobile telephones, isn’t it?” Gerry says, pushing his neck back against his collar.
“You are king of the Luddites, Gerry,” says Sandy. Then she turns to me and says, “He was opposed to the wheel when that came in too.”
“Terrible, newfangled round things,” says Gerry in mock disgust.
Taking the hint, I shut my laptop, return Sandy’s phone, and give them both my full attention. I know they are only teasing me, but now I feel rude to have disturbed their peaceful evening. As we drink tea, they share stories about the island and its history, what happened here during the war. Gerry tells me about the Occupation, how the Nazis used forced labor to build most of the tunnels and sea defenses still visible around the island. A few of these prisoners escaped and were sheltered by local families who risked their lives to help them. He tells me his mother and grandmother hid a starving Ukrainian in the eaves of Sans Ennui for more than a month. “He was called Avel and he loved birds; he left scratched drawings of starlings and seagulls in the beams of the loft, and you can just about make them out if you crawl up into the rafters.”
“Oh, you must tell that story to whoever buys your house,” I say, “otherwise it will be lost and no one will even know the drawings are there—that’s a part of history.”
“A lot of history gets lost,” Gerry says somberly.
We move on to talk of cheerier things, and I absorb their words and stories like warmth from a campfire. Sandy kindly suggests I can borrow her bike over the next few days if I want to get around independently. Eventually she stands up and says, “Right, Gerry, I should be getting you back or they won’t let me take you out again. Strict curfew, they said.”