Entry Island

Why had this moment suddenly forced its way into his consciousness? The tragic separation of Simon and Ciorstaidh on the quay at Glasgow. And why had his subconscious mind cast himself and Kirsty Cowell in their respective roles? He shook his head. A head that ached. He had no answers and felt almost feverish. Then it occurred to him that if he had dreamt, then he had slept. Although it hardly felt like it. He glanced at the bedside clock. It was just after 1.30 a.m. The television still sent shadows dancing around the room. The ice hockey match was over, but the channel had now surrendered its night-time hours to telesales of a machine for sculpting abdominal perfection. He could have slept for no longer than the real-time passage of his dream.

He slipped off the bed and went through to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water. When he looked up he was almost startled by the pale, haggard young man staring back at him from the mirror. Under the harsh electric light every crease and shadow on his face seemed darker and more deeply etched. His soft brown eyes were weary and pained, the whites shot through with red. Even his curls seemed to have lost their lustre, and although his hair was fair, almost Scandinavian blonde, he could see the grey starting to grow in at the temples. Shaved short at the sides and back, but allowed longer growth on top, it gave him a boyish appearance, which seemed incongruous now with the tired blanched face whose reflection he could hardly bear to look at.

He turned away to bury his face in a soft towel and went back through to the bedroom, dropping his clothes on the floor behind him as he went. He found a fresh pair of boxers in his bag and slid between cold sheets, turning on to his side and drawing his knees into the foetal position. He had slept once already tonight, albeit for less than an hour, and he so much wanted to return to his dream, to manipulate it as is sometimes possible when you are consciously dreaming. To achieve what his ancestor had been unable to do in life. To change its outcome. To hear her voice and find her on the boat, and release himself from that unkeepable promise.

For a long time he lay, eyes closed, with kaleidoscope colours appearing like inkblots behind his lids before vanishing again into darkness. He turned over and focused on his breathing. Slow, steady. Letting his mind and his thoughts wander. Trying to relax his body, let the weight of it sink into the bed.

And then he was on his back. Eyes open and staring at the ceiling. And although every part of him cried out for sleep he was wide awake.

It was possible that he had drifted off into periods of semi-consciousness, but it didn’t feel that way. Unable to prevent himself, he had followed the painful passage of time through the digital figures that counted away his life during the small hours, the wind and rain raging without cease outside the glass doors of his room. Four, five, six o’clock. Six-thirty now, and he felt more tired than when he had lain down the night before. The headache was there, as it always was, and he finally rose to drop an effervescent painkiller into his plastic cup and listen to it fizz. It seemed impossible now to face the day without it.

Back in the bedroom he picked his clothes off the floor and slowly got dressed. His cotton hoodie, which he had hung over the bath the night before, was still damp. But he had brought nothing else, and so pulled it on anyway. He slid open the glass doors and slipped out into the car park. The first grey light of dawn was seeping through clouds so low they were scraping the surface of the island, propelled by a wind that was not yet spent. The tarmac was littered with the debris of the storm. Upturned garbage cans, their contents carried off into the night. Roof tiles. The branches of pine trees from the plantation that grew all around this island conurbation. A child’s trampoline, all buckled out of shape, had been plucked from a garden somewhere and come to rest lodged between a pickup truck and a saloon car. The cross above the steeple of the ugly modern church building across the street had snapped at its base and hung precariously from the roof, attached only by its lightning conductor.

And still the air was not cold. The wind, though little diminished, was soft in his face, and he breathed it in deeply, letting it fill his mouth. Between the hospital and the church, a broad street led down towards the bay, and he could see the ocean piling in along the island’s shoreline in huge green breakers that broke in fearsome froth around the curve of the coast. He crossed the road and walked towards it, hands thrust deep in his pockets, and stopped and stood for a long time on the slope of the hill just watching the power of the sea below him as the day began to make some impression on the storm.