Paradise re-loved

"You can't run away from yourself, my boy," the words still rang in his ears even now, long years after his Auntie's passing. "Wherever you go, you always take yourself with you, to the ends of the world and beyond."

He had come to the ends of the world. Some years ago now, he made his home in this idyllic paradise, thousands of miles away from all he knew before. And his new life couldn't be further away from the one he used to live. 'A good life, and simple,' he mused, 'so why does it still feel like I'm running away from something?'

He poured more rum into his glass and turned another page in a book of old photographs. And there she was again, sat by the window in her reading chair, an open book in her lap, and he standing next to her, a boy of ten or twelve, proudly holding some school trophy. Auntie was still in her prime then, he saw, before the years robbed her of her strength and dementia took away her wits and memories.

He traced his finger along her face and remembered how she would gently cup his chin in her hand and look him in the eyes, trying to cheer him up after one mishap or another.

"Don't hate yourself, it'll do you no good, my boy," she would say. "We all fail sometimes or do stupid things and not all things broken can be fixed again, but that's no reason that you shouldn't love yourself some." She had the warmest smile, but there would be a hint of sadness in her voice. "You're such a clever boy, and kind, but life can be harsh, and it will set a trap on you when you least expect it. Sometimes you may feel like the whole world is trying to bring you down. But should you fall, it will be easier to get up again, if you save some of your kindness for yourself."

He took a sip and turned a few pages. There was nothing special about his childhood and the few photographs he had seemed to confirm that. He never knew his parents, really, but there was one photo where they were all there. He was very young there, maybe two or three, sat on his mother’s knee, with his father standing behind the chair, his hand on his mother’s shoulder. It was a stern face his father had, but there was pride in it. And his mother was beautiful. “She was an angel,” Auntie would always say, when he asked her about his parents. “So pretty and kind, and clever, she was. All the boys in town would fight for her favours, but she only had eyes for your father. When you looked at them together, you knew they had something special. A true love that really lasts ‘till death us do part’, you know. But death came for them too quickly, my boy, and it took them together.”

He checked his watch and looked outside through the open door of his shack. The beach was empty, but he expected nothing else. He could see the sun shining through the palm trees shading his veranda, casting a motley of lights and shadows across the worn wooden planks. There was a soft breeze coming off the ocean, but it did little to relieve the oppressive heat inside.

“Time enough for a swim, a shower and then off to see Veronica,” he said aloud, even though there was no one around to hear.

He swam every day since coming to the island, sometimes more than once. It was one of the commitments he made to himself when he decided to move here, and he kept his word religiously. Well, except for when there was a hurricane, of course, but there was no danger of that today. The water shimmered in the sun, tiny waves gently lapping against the white sand of the beach. ‘My very own slice of paradise,’ he thought, putting on his swimming goggles, ‘and I’m done running.’

He took it easy for the first few hundred yards, alternating between breaststroke and backstroke, letting the warm water caress his skin. His thoughts went to Veronica and their upcoming date. Their first date, to be more precise.

He knew Veronica almost as long as he’d lived on the island. She and her husband Josh were amongst the first friends he made here, and they helped him set up his boat charter business. It was Josh who helped him find the first boat and ‘turn it from a sinking wreck into something that may even fool a tourist or two into thinking it was a boat’. But that ‘sinking wreck’ was all he could afford at the time, having brought to the island only his meagre savings and a heavy baggage of failures and disappointments.

It took him almost a year to fix the boat, plugging the leaks, sorting out the engines, scraping the old paint and grappling with a myriad of other jobs he never anticipated. During that year, Veronica and Josh became frequent visitors on the boat, one or both of them popping in unannounced, but never empty-handed.

“Came to check on my progress again?” he would ask with a mock sour face.

“No, to bring encouragement and support, should you need any, but if I’m not wanted…’ Veronica would reply with a playful smile. He loved that smile. Just like…, someone else’s, from long ago.

The ‘encouragement’ usually included local beer or wine and ‘something for you to nibble on whilst you work’. Veronica’s support came in the way of light conversation and helpful suggestions, like, ‘you missed that bit there’ or ‘c’mon, put your back to it, it won’t move by itself, you know’. But it was from chatting with her that he learned about the island, from the ancestral beliefs and traditions of the indigenous people, through the history of foreign invaders, each more eager than the last to claim the island in the name of one distant monarch or another, until they discovered the island had no riches to plunder and moved on to plumper pickings.

“They all came in search of something that was never here, and most left disappointed, but some stayed and became part of our ancestry. You can hear it in how we talk, you can taste it in our food, and you can feel it in how we live,” she said once. “And what are you searching for?”

The question took him by surprise then, and he still wasn’t sure he knew the answer now.

Josh was a quiet type, always happy to let his wife ‘do the talking’, but his eyes missed nothing, and when he spoke, people listened, Veronica most of all. In Josh’s own words, his help with the boat was mostly limited to carrying the ‘encouragements’ on board and keeping the drinks topped up. But whenever a problem occurred or some specialist work was needed, Josh would reach for his phone and a solution would soon materialise, along with some locals and even more food and drink.

The locals addressed Josh as ‘Father’, which seemed queer at first, especially when coming from older men, until Veronica explained it to him. It was short for ‘the Father of the People’, a term derived from the old tongue spoken on the island in the pre-colonial times. The old tongue had no word for ‘prince’, it would appear, but when the Dutch first came to the island, they had little time for local customs or titles, so they took to referring to the island’s most senior chief as ‘the prince’, and it stuck. The French and Spanish were happy enough with ‘prince’ when they ruled the island in turn, but not the English when they came at last.

‘A prince is a person of royal blood, and the British Empire knows no princes except for the sons and grandsons of Her Majesty Queen Victoria,’ read the edict issued by the then Governor of the island, following with the harsh penalties to be dealt upon those who dared usurp the title and all their ‘rebellious followers’.

The British Empire was long gone, he reflected, gliding through the water in smooth efficient strokes, and the locals never called Josh anything but ‘Father’ to his face, but still spoke of a ‘prince’ when among themselves.

And if princes are supposed to be rich, Josh certainly was that. Except, he made his millions himself. The guy was a genius with computers and the ‘dot-com’ bubble came just at the right time for him. Josh seldom spoke about it, but Veronica gave him the ‘short version’ one day. Josh was still a student in Switzerland, where they both met, when he set up his first online business. Three years later, he sold it for over twenty million dollars, and later that year, Veronica and Josh got married. By that time, Josh had three new businesses, and when they floated several years later, the profits made the first twenty million look like pocket change.

That was when Josh decided to retire from business and return to the island. Perhaps Josh’s father’s fast deteriorating health had something to do with that decision? Perhaps Josh felt obliged to take his father’s place on the island? Or maybe he wanted ‘the boys’ to grow up here? Whatever the reason, Veronica explained, one morning Josh asked her to start packing and announced they will be ‘leaving for home’ in two days.

“It looked like the whole island came to greet us, when we arrived,” Veronica told him once. “I only visited the island twice before, and I didn’t really know what to expect. But I needn’t have feared. The islanders loved their young prince and there was enough space in their hearts for me, too.”

Not to mention that the ‘young prince’ was loaded, he thought, and that he invested a lot of his wealth in various ventures around the island, boosting tourism, creating new jobs and bringing in prosperity hitherto unknown to the island.

Oh, Josh was a prince, alright, even without a title, he agreed, but if so, what did that make Veronica? A princess? She certainly looked like one. She must be over forty, he thought, but she has a body of a twenty-year-old. And a smile that melted his heart, every time. The locals called her ‘Ma Nika’ and her kind heart and charitable work earned her universal love and adoration of the young and old across the island. A real princess could not have hoped for more.

More to the point, where did all this leave him, with his far-from-brilliant past, no success in life to speak of, and little in the way of future prospects to offer? A pauper going on a date with a princess. A beggar with his sights set too high, nothing more.

Josh had been dead three years now. Killed in an avalanche whilst ice climbing in Switzerland. What a stupid way to die! Why go and freeze on some mountain half a world away when you have a tropical paradise on your doorstep?

So, why did it feel like betrayal? And if it was a betrayal, who was he betraying? Can he not hope for some happiness in his sunset years? Will the islanders see him as a man in love with a woman, or a traitor come to steal their princess? Was he still running away from the past? But what was he running towards? Salvation? Humiliation? Damn it, damn it all.

His arms were thrashing the water in a frantic rhythm of the butterfly stroke, his lungs were burning, his whole body, launching half out of the water with every stroke, seemed to be crying for oxygen. He had to slow down, he realised. He looked around. The one-mile marker was way behind him. He couldn’t even remember when he passed it, or when he’d switched to butterfly.

He veered towards the beach and crawled out onto the sand, breathing heavily. ‘Maybe I should walk back to the shack’, he thought, ‘save some of my powers for tonight, whatever may come out of this date of mine.’

After Josh passed away, he became even closer friends with Veronica, but there was never anything more than friendship between them. Until that last time they met.

It was his fiftieth birthday party. Maybe he did have one too many. More like a few too many, he thought, as the memory came back to him. They found themselves alone for a few moments, standing by the bar at Tommy’s, when everyone else went to the beach to watch the fireworks.

They’d been chatting about something or other and she was laughing at his jokes. She was so close he could smell her perfume, but underneath was the scent of her body. A scent of a woman on a hot tropical night. When she put her hand on his arm, he pulled her closer and kissed her on the lips. She didn’t push him away, but she didn’t return the kiss either.

He let go of her and stepped back, embarrassed. He began to apologise, but she cut him off.

“Don’t apologise. It felt…” she stopped herself, as if searching for the right words. “I have not been kissed for a very long time,” she said, “not since Josh…” her voice trailed away and her eyes met his. There was that smile on her face again.

“Now, that wasn’t very gentlemanly of you, trying to take advantage of an aging woman,” her voice had a lighter, playful tone.

“I’m not a gentleman,” he responded, trying to rescue the last shreds of his dignity with a show of bravado. “And you are not an old woman, either.”

“Perhaps not, but I’m a mother, and soon to be grandmother, if Gustave’s passion about his new wife is anything to go by. I can’t have a fling or bring a boyfriend home. People would know and they would talk. I can’t do this to my boy, I hope you understand.” He did. Gustave was the Father of the People now, the prince of the island.

“But you’re still young, and beautiful,” he tried to save the situation. “Surely, you don’t mean…” She put her finger on his lips to silence him.

“Whatever will be, will be,” she said quietly, that old mantra that seemed to reflect the islanders’ outlook on life so perfectly. “Now, what would a gentleman do, if he had a decent interest in a lady?”

“Ask her out on a date?” he replied.

“Why don’t you? I’m leaving for Europe tomorrow, to spend some time with my parents and family, but when I’m back, you can have your date, if you still want it.”

***

The sun was setting when he arrived at Tommy’s Bar. There were a few locals at the bar, but most of the tables were taken up by the tourists, sipping their drinks and admiring the fiery colours of the sunset over the ocean. He smiled at the memory of his first sunset on the island. There was something magical about it. He almost felt sorry for the tourists that they would have to go back to their homes and possibly never see a sunset like this again.

Their table was in the corner of the veranda, slightly to the side to give them a little privacy, but still offering the full view of the ocean. Veronica appeared a few minutes after the sun dipped below the horizon. Tommy waltzed up to the table as soon as they were seated.

“It’s a brighter day when Ma Nika comes to Tommy’s, and the gentleman, too,” he greeted them in his usual good humour. “Would you like a recommendation? We have some excellent lobster, very fresh, and only the best for Ma Nika…”

“… and the gentleman, too,” Veronica finished together with Tommy, laughing her sparkling crystal laugh.

“Yes, quite so,” Tommy confirmed. “I’ll bring the drinks in no time, so you just sit and enjoy yourselves.”

It felt good to see her again. They had so much to talk about. She asked how the business was going, and he asked about her trip and her family back in ‘the old world’. By the time the lobster arrived, it was dark outside, but the dimmed lamps under the canopy provided just enough light, bathing the diners in a warm, romantic glow, brightened up here and there by a few candles.

“So, tell me about this first true love of yours,” Veronica asked when a waiter cleared away their plates.

“You don’t mess about, do you?” he replied, taken by surprise.

“It’s a date, what are we to talk about if not love,” she smiled. “Besides, we’ve known each other so long, it would be difficult to find another subject we haven’t yet discussed, don’t you think?”

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “What do you want to know?”

“All there is.”

He told her. The words came awkwardly at first, but then he found his pace and the story flowed. Her name was Angie. They were teenagers when they first met, on a school trip. She was a year older, which seemed unusual, but he didn’t care. They had a connection right from the off, he knew. They spent hours talking and talking. He fell in love, he had no doubt, but she maybe wasn’t ready for a romantic engagement. It didn’t matter, he would wait for her, as long as it took.

When she finished high school and went to university, their contacts became less frequent. There was more than a hundred miles between them. It was before the internet and mobile phone, you know. But he would wait for her at the train station whenever she came back home. And sometimes he would go to see her for the weekend, but maybe she didn’t like it much.

Then, his mate, studying at the same university, told him that his Angie perhaps wasn’t quite his alone. It hurt like hell, but Angie said there was nothing to it, and he chose to believe her. Somewhere along the line, they had their first kiss, years after they first met. Sex was amazing. Then she broke up with him. He was devasted. Then they got back together. He was the happiest man alive. And she broke up with him again. And they got back together. And again, and again. When it finally started working between them, she announced she was going abroad for a year, as an au pair. That was too much for him. ‘If you go, it’s over between us, for good,’ he told her, but she went anyway.

A year later, he was engaged to another woman and the date was set for their wedding, when Angie called out of the blue. They met at a café in town. She told him how sorry she was to have treated him so. She had time to think it over and would be happy if they could get back together again.

“I told her I was getting married in a few months, and that it really was all over between us. After she walked out from the café that evening, I never saw her again,” he finished. Reaching out for his drink, he found his glass empty, but he couldn't remember drinking it. He frowned.

“That was the worst decision of my life, to let her go,” he added, looking around for the waiter. Most of the tourists were gone, he saw, but the locals were still hanging around, and there was a woman sitting alone at the bar, but not a waiter in sight. Disgruntled, he turned towards Veronica.

“So, that’s the story of my true love,” he said, “is that what you expected?”

“I expected, hoped rather, that you would tell me the truth,” Veronica replied softly, “and I wasn’t disappointed.”

“How would you know if I’d lied,” he asked incredulously. She laughed.

“A woman always knows. It’s the men who never know,” she teased him. “Like you, you think you know me, but you don’t.”

“I’ve known you for years,” he objected.

“Oh yeah? How many years?”

“Five, six, what does it matter?” Something wasn’t right here, he could sense it now.

“You don’t even know who I am, do you,” there was little playfulness left in Veronica’s voice.

“Did we ever meet before?” it was all he could muster, after a long silence. “I mean, before the island?”

“Yes. I was a girl then and you were a young man, that’s probably why you don’t remember me, but I recognised you the first day we met on the island.” The smile was coming back to Veronica’s face. “Still no clue?”

He was looking at her face, trying to imagine what she might have looked like as a girl, desperately trying to remember. He thought he knew that smile, but other than that, there was nothing.

“You’ll need to help me some,” he said, giving up.

“Maybe you’d remember my sister? She was older.”

“Whose sister are you?” he felt he was about to lose it.

“She’s my sister,” a voice came from behind. He turned and saw the woman who sat at the bar a moment ago. He knew her in an instant, the smile, the voice, the eyes. He knew her all.

“Angie?” he whispered.