Read The Return (Enigma of Modern Science & Philosophy) Page 1
The Return
A Novel by Des Greene
Copyright 2013 Des Greene
ISBN 9781301073856
Discover other titles by Des Greene
www.desgreene.com
One
Setting Off
People say you should never go back. The past will have changed. There will be little left to remind you of past glories, or ignominy - thankfully. Yet back I’d decided to go. The memory of my brief sojourn on the island had left a deep imprint on my being. There was, perhaps, unfinished business. At least I hoped there was but I strained to define what was, as yet, incomplete - other than my constant striving for a meaning to my now somewhat solipsistic existence. I had become a total recluse. I shunned the world and cocooned myself in the inner mind where I sought solace in the knowledge that my quest was noble. Noblesse oblige and I had decided to return to the island.
The quay was gray in the autumn sky and a shower was threatening. I searched for the same boat that I had taken on my first visit but it was not there. The season had been poor and the wet October had put paid to any tourists wanting a boat trip to an inhospitable remote island. An old man sitting on the quay wall advised me that the only way out was by fishing boat and that I’d have to negotiate the fare carefully.
‘Those bastards would fleece you if they could.’
His words were bitter. They disturbed me. I felt he was betraying his own. I wanted to berate him but held back wanting more information.
‘They’re not all that bad,’ I ventured. ‘They have a hard life particularly now with the fish stock depleted and all their quotas.’
‘Ay, the fish are gone and why wouldn’t they, with the amount of over fishing that went on.’ He was still in grumpy mode.
‘I take it you are not a fisherman.’
‘A fisherman?’ he growled. ‘Who’d want to be one of them? It’s a hell of a life. No, I never wanted to take to the boats. I swept the roads and made an honest living.’
His hand fumbled in his inside pocket and a blackened pipe emerged. He busied himself, packing it with tobacco, and the sweet scent filled the air. It brought me back in time to when I was a child. There was no particular memory but I felt myself in a child’s body and all around me was filled with enchanting scents: freshly mown grass, damp hay, honeysuckles, cracked chestnut shells. A crowd of scents invaded my memory and the feeling became euphoric. I would have given anything to be back there but time does not allow such self indulgent reversion.
‘No I swept the roads and smoked my pipe through rain, hail and snow. There was the odd good day too.’
His eyes softened as the memories came flooding back.
‘There were some lovely days of a summer - lovely days.’
He became lost in the sweet recall and let the unlit pipe hover before his lips. Then with a deep sigh he flicked his lighter and sucked hard. The tobacco smoke was sweeter still.
‘Ay, that’s better,’ he sighed contentedly.
I envied him his simple pleasure. I let him savor the moment a while before getting round to what I really wanted to ask him.
‘Not being a man of the sea, you probably haven’t been out to the island of late, have you?’
‘I wouldn’t go near the place. It’s bad news.’
His face darkened and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Why’d you ask?’ His defense was raised.
‘Just out of curiosity. I’m heading out there for a stint. I was wondering had there been many changes since I was last there. It’s over ten years now.’
‘Changes!’ His voice was raised, almost indignant. ‘Sure everything changes. But yea, there have been many changes on the island. Killings are unusual even in this queer locality. I suppose you heard of the murder case?’
I said I had. It was on all the news reports for weeks. I was gutted to hear of the tragedy and felt as if I had lost one of my own. In a way I had. She had been pregnant. That was the likely cause of their tragic deaths. He shot her and then turned the gun on himself. I still feel nauseous at the thought. Time has dimmed my memory of her. I see her framed there in the half door of the cottage, staring at me. Her hand stretches out half in offer of greeting, half in supplication, seeking help. I had sensed there was violence in her life. The silence of our encounters shouted out its presence. Our brief affair was all physical with no making contact of minds. It was never allowed and never, now, will. Time had taken its course. Fate has ruled.
‘Yes, I heard.’ I struggled to keep tears from my eyes. ‘It was shocking - how can anyone get over it?’
The old man looked at me intently. Perhaps he sensed more than I was saying.
‘You’re not one of them shagging reporters are you?’ He gestured at me with his pipe. It was clear that he was closing ranks.
‘No, nothing like that. Just curious about how the island had coped.’
I turned my head away to hide the fact that my eyes had watered. I mumbled a goodbye and moved along the quay towards the fishing boats. I sat on a stone pillar to collect myself. The past had streamed back into my present but it was a ghost that as I stretched out to embrace it, evaporated into invisible ether. Never go backwards, I chided myself, and yet here I was going back to the island. I was testing fate - a fate that had delivered already a strange hand of lust and violence.
I was returning to the island that I remembered. I hoped that the place would not have changed much, yet I knew that that was not possible. Change was such a constant of existence. There is nothing that is purely static - even the physical outlines of the island. The sea will have battered its coast into new scraggly shapes. The wind will have made the few hawthorns even more hunched over. The constant rain will have molded and eroded the soil.
These physical changes are very apparent and sensible. But there is a less obvious change and that is the location of the island in space-time. It is still in the same place in the earth’s relational field - its inertial locale. Yet when viewed from outside this local area, from another solar system within the galaxy, or even from outside the galaxy, the place of the island has changed dramatically. The island is being carried along by the earth and the sun and the galaxy at great speed through the emptiness of the cosmos. It will never re-find a previous position. It never retrieves the past.
These thoughts still plagued me. I had continued my exploration of reality over the intervening ten years. I felt that I was no nearer an understanding but I was coming to terms with the extent of our ignorance of the truly strange world we inhabit.
I pulled my rucksack from my back and found my notebook and started to write.