*
Semilion reclined in the battered chair of the council chamber, the radio headphones roasting his ears. Beside him the radio hummed gently, its filaments glowing brightly; they flickered tentatively as he negotiated the channels. He had been waiting for fifteen minutes. The shipping forecast was late.
It was an unusual, but not unheard of, occurrence. Several times Dr. John Camberwell had been delayed, or experienced difficulty with his equipment, though if ever there was a significant problem there would be a singular pulse that proclaimed a twenty-four hour postponement of the forecast. There was no such pulse, and after the broadcast of the previous month he was growing increasingly worried.
In the days after the last forecast, he had sent Baron and George south, telling them to return the moment they saw anything out of the ordinary. They had returned an eternal week later, saying they had continued until they could see the MoD on the horizon, spraying the land with a billowing purple dust before setting it aflame. A few days later Robin and Jeremy returned from scouting Exmoor in search of whatever ‘storm-front’ Camberwell had been reporting. They described a slight increase of Blackeye activity over the moorland, but nothing out of the ordinary.
‘There were the lights, though,’ Robin said as they had been getting ready to leave.
Jeremy shrugged as though he hadn’t thought it worthy of mentioning.
‘What lights?’ Semilion asked.
‘On the border. The skyline was lit every quarter-mile or so, right across the horizon as far as you could see. Never seen that before, always been a dead lump of concrete as long as I can remember.’
‘But there were no people? No soldiers?’
‘No,’ Robin replied. ‘There never is, is there? What’s this all about, Mr. Tupper?’
Semilion had simply said he intended to begin a new routine of patrols, just to be safe. Robin and Jeremy scratched their chins and thought little more of it as they left.
The static in his ears was ghostly; a nuclear wind howling, racing toward him. After a time though, with his lamp flickering gently, the steady hiss almost sent him to sleep. An echo of music or a reminder of speech from some drifting signal would wrench him back alert, disappointed it was not Dr. Camberwell.
He had waited for over an hour with no sign of the shipping forecast. He hoped Guliven had reached him and extracted more information, and yet had received no word as yet.
He was, a month later, desperately confused about the former report. The code for storm-front was only supposed to be used after a series of other codes, and yet those had been missing. Either the ‘storm-front’ had risen so swiftly that there had been no chance to apply the prefix codes, or it meant something else altogether. He supposed the latter as the two scouting missions had unearthed nothing, nothing but lights and Blackeye’s on the moors. He ran his hand over his eyes and sighed. What did it all mean? He eased the headphones off and lit his sixth cigarette of the sitting. He couldn’t abandon the radio, not with the enigmas of the previous report ringing in his mind.
He should have called a meeting with the community council already. He had to hold a council. He must. And yet...
As he stared at the dusty cement between the floor-tiles, he was wrenched back to his childhood, and the conflict that had arisen between his grandfather and the inhabitants of Lundy.
The union of the communities had been spoken of for years, since he could ever remember, and had always been regarded as a lofty vision that could never actually happen. The reasons from both communities were numerous and constant, though gradually the few who wanted a single colony negotiated and compromised until there were few excuses left to deny them.
A deal was struck on Semilion’s tenth birthday. He recalled how his father had missed the celebrations. He recalled the flotilla of boats arriving on a mild and moonless night. Hands running through his hair as strangers passed him on the beach.
The governor of Lundy, a broad and bearded mariner by the name of Red Sawbone, remained behind with his elderly mother and his two young boys. A grand house had been refurbished for him overlooking an expanse of Woolacombe Beach, a gesture grudgingly carried out by Semilion’s grandfather, Carrick, who bore a life-long animosity for Red after a trivial confrontation in Red’s youth. Red had long ago attempted to appease Carrick, though Carrick hoarded grudges like treasure.
Eighteen families migrated from Lundy, and were given homes in the Woolacombe district, and for several months little changed other than the newfound glee of conversing with strangers. Friendships formed fluidly as each community shared their knowledge regarding various tasks, and gatherings became enriched with Lundian tales and songs.
Nine months passed by, and Carrick grew increasingly frustrated on hearing villagers exchanging their thoughts on how difficult it must have been for Red to break up his community so soon after the death of his wife, Harriet, and how lonely he must have grown after the death of his mother. How hard must it be for him to raise two boys alone, with only the few remaining Lundians to offer any support.
These thoughts burned in Carrick, and his already dark view of Lundians grew darker still. He began to blame them for frivolous occurrences. A blight of carrot-fly, a meagre harvest, a lame calf; all these things would have been rectified had it been left in the hands of a Mortehoe farmer, Carrick seethed. His aggravation, left unchecked, turned to unbridled rage when he discovered a Lundian boy had pushed a cow over in the night and broken its hind leg. The beast had to be killed, and Carrick immediately threw the boy responsible, Joseph Borderly, in the Woolacombe cells.
He starved the boy and made an example of anyone who protested about his treatment. Semilion remembered his own father breaking the jaw of a man who complained to his neighbour about the boy’s incarceration. The blow had been dealt to silence the opinions of others, though all it served to do was divide the communities even further. Several families returned to Lundy, and although Carrick hated them, he deemed it should be he who decided who had the right to leave. He ordered that the remaining Lundians stay, dealing harshly with anyone who showed signs of defiance.
There were many who needed to be dealt with, and in an act of desperation – an act deemed essential when devoid the sagacity of hindsight - Carrick executed the Borderly boy, brutally and publicly. If he had thought the act would conclude the surge of resistance from the Lundians he couldn’t have been more misguided.
Word had returned to Red of the oppression at the hands of Carrick, and without deliberating on the news he took to the water and sailed to Mortehoe. A stern and formidable man in unexceptional times, this extraordinary news of a Lundian boy’s execution set a violent rage inside him. On his route to The Smugglers’ Rest he felled any who opposed him, regardless of their age or sex.
Semilion remembered the knife at his throat as his grandfather tried to reason with Red. He remembered being thrown to the floor and his tooth cracking. He remembered the moment he knew he would fear Red for the rest of his life.
Carrick died that day at the hand of Red, and Semilion’s father had been beaten so violently that he never walked straight again. For a time, even after Carrick’s last breath had left him, Red stood over him, shouting at him in frustrated triumph, calling him an Irish prick and asking him why. Why had he done it? Why couldn’t he let their feud go? Why had he let it come to this? He was crying. With fury or pity Semilion would never know, and after running his bloody fingers through his lank hair, he turned to Semilion’s father.
‘I own this sty now,’ he said between breaths, ‘and I own every one of you pigs.’ Red thrust a length of wood in his father’s ribs. ‘But if I ever have to come back here,’ he growled, ‘if I ever have to step foot in this cancerous warren and attend your incompetence I will finish you... But before you die I will ruin your son.’ He swung the length of wood in Semilion’s direction and it hung before his eyes. ‘Do you understand?’
His father’s bloody, toothless mouth opened momentarily,
but nothing came. Instead he closed them and offered an almost imperceptible nod.
‘I’m a man of my word.’ Red said, before stepping over Semilion’s father and leaving.
Since that day his fear of Red Sawbone, of the memory of Red Sawbone, had increased. In the look of dread in his father’s eyes if the name were uttered, with every mention of his grandfather’s memory, every time he walked by the room in which his father had been beaten and with every dreadful nightmare did he prophecies the return of Red Sawbone.
He slowly replaced the headphones, noting that in the intervening cigarette one of the ear-pieces had broken. Now the static invaded only his left ear, making him feel off centre and slightly nauseous. He had to resolve this problem alone, and as quickly as possible. He couldn’t risk anyone knowing, he couldn’t risk word spreading. As infrequent as contact with Lundy was, his fear of the governor kept what little he knew close to his chest.