| |
The next day dawned with a gorgeous sunrise and held great promise of welcome warmth after a couple of weeks of cold and strong wind. The previous evening, Damien and Hector had packed their fishing tackle and provisions for another day of fishing.
In their own huts, the men mirrored each other’s pre-fishing routine before meeting outside Hector’s place.
‘Ready, Damien?’ said Hector, trying to appear more awake than he felt. Damien slapped him on his back, knocking the wind from Hector’s lungs. Once he had got his breath back, Hector said, ‘You watch out, mate, or I’ll push you into the sea!’
‘Ha! You and whose army?’ scoffed Damien.
‘He doesn’t need an army, Damien, he’s big enough to drown you!’ The two men span on the spot to see who the booming, broad Glaswegian voice belonged to.
‘Vicar!’ exclaimed Damien, who broke out into a huge beaming smile and embraced the Scotsman. They smacked each other on the back, each man delighted to see the other.
The vicar turned to Hector and extended his hand, which the German gladly took and shook with vigour.
‘Hector, I presume? Pleased to meet you. Did Damien tell you about when he and Nancy met me at Nancy’s funeral?’ The vicar raised his eyebrows expectantly in the direction of Damien.
‘Yes, yes, I did, and I told him how amazed Nancy and I were when you nodded to us in the service.’
The vicar giggled at the memory. ‘Rodney. Call me Rodney. I’ve tried telling the curator to use her real name with you bunch, but she won’t listen to me.’
‘I doubt that woman would ever listen to anyone trying to tell her what to do, especially not a man,’ Hector said with a deadpan face. ‘Actually, what is her real name?’
Rodney chortled. ‘Nice try, Herman.’
‘Not you calling me Herman too, Rodney! Don’t tell me, the curator told you that Damien calls me Herman?’ Hector shook his head at the complex situation in which he found himself, just because he had gone through an out-of-bounds door in his local museum.
Rodney smiled sympathetically at Hector. ‘Try not to worry. You won’t be stuck under her thumb for too much longer.’ Rodney looked into the distance over Hector’s shoulder as if deep in thought.
Damien and Hector looked at each other, perplexed. Their plan for a simple, relaxing day of fishing had seemingly just been turned on its head.
‘Fancy a coffee or tea, Rodney? We’d better convene in Hector’s place. I’ll go and wake up Nancy and Maxine.’ Damien jogged over to his hut, went straight inside and into his bedroom. Shaking Nancy lightly on her shoulder, he whispered, ‘You’ll never believe who’s just turned up here in the village!’
Nancy jumped, not quite knowing where she was for a moment. Rubbing her eyes, she said, ‘Who? Is it Marcus?’
‘Sadly not, no. Besides, I wouldn’t want to see him in the afterlife for many years. No, the vicar from your funeral is here!’ Damien barely stopped himself from breaking into a jig. ‘He’s called Rodney, and he wants to see us and Maxine in Hector’s hut ASAP. Get yourself sorted out, love, and I’ll see you over at Hector’s. I’m sure he will already be getting the brews in.’
Damien left Nancy to get ready and practically skipped over to Maxine’s hut.
Nancy watched him through the window. That really is the man I fell in love with. It’s so amazing to be back together again. She chucked on some casual clothes as quickly as she could, put her hair into a pony tail and ambled over to Hector’s place.
Meanwhile, Damien knocked with a quiet urgency. Don’t want to risk waking the whole village. Maxine didn’t answer, so he eased her door open and slipped inside the tastefully decorated living room. How can anyone make decorative skulls look so stylish and not out of place?
‘Maxine! Wake up!’ he called towards her room.
Maxine eventually poked her head around her bedroom door. ‘What is it, Damien? Is something wrong?’ Her face was lined with worry.
Damien reminded himself that he had invaded her space. He spoke smoothly to try and put her mind at ease. ‘No, nothing is wrong. Remember Nancy and I told you about the vicar at her funeral?’
‘You mean the one who could see you? Is he here?’
‘Yes, he is in Hector’s hut. He wants to see us all there right away. Do you want me to get Hector to make you a strong coffee? You look tired.’
Maxine wagged a finger at him. ‘If I wasn’t naked, I’d come round there and give you a slap!’ She laughed, as did Damien, and he left her to get ready in peace.
Damien went back to Hector’s hut and wasn’t surprised to see that his German friend had already made hot drinks for everyone.
Rodney sat back in a large leather chair, caressing an oversized mug of hot chocolate. Hector had created a lopsided cone of squirty cream on Rodney’s drink, topped with some marshmallows. Damien pointed in awe at the drink, some of which now sat on the edges of Rodney’s moustache. He said, ‘Hector, can you make me one of those this evening please? That looks great.’
Hector kept his deadpan face and said, ‘Sorry, mate, you need to look after your figure.’
Damien tried not to laugh but didn’t succeed. Rodney chortled too. ‘I see what the curator meant when she said that you two are close friends. It seems a happy coincidence that you are both here at the same time.’
Hector’s expression became more serious. ‘I doubt it was a coincidence. I think everything is planned out, right down to the smallest detail.’
Rodney smiled empathetically and raised his hand up in front of his chest. ‘No, really, it isn’t. But there is often a chain reaction, both here and on Earth. Look at when Damien and Nancy interfered with Niall; he ended up topping himself. That wasn’t foreseen, which is a shame really.’ He shook his head a little and avoided eye contact with Damien, making it plain that it was a sad ending for a man who didn’t deserve it.
Nancy and Maxine arrived at the same time, the door rebounding off the wall as the two women burst through it.
‘Vicar!’ Nancy exclaimed, a huge smile breaking out on her face. ‘How lovely to have a visitor here. It’s not the kind of place where people pop in very often.’
Rodney looked at Maxine and said, ‘Hi Nancy, it’s great to see you. Maxine, it’s very nice to meet you at last. The curator speaks highly of you.’
‘Really? I doubt it. She put me in solitary after all,’ Maxine said while adjusting her hair.
Rodney smiled with the patience of a man of the cloth. He was obviously used to speaking to many different types of people. ‘Her bark is worse than her bite. She really does like you.’ He placed his empty mug on a coaster on Hector’s table and rubbed his finger over a small smudge of coffee to wipe it away.
Satisfied that everyone present was happy and ready to talk, he said, ‘Apart from coming to meet you all and to get to know each of you face to face, there is a reason why I am here, which came to my attention even before the curator came to speak to me about what is happening here on the island. As you know, Maxine was separated from the rest of the islanders because she strived for so much more than simply waiting for fate to take its course. Most people, as you know, come here and don’t even want to explore.
‘Hector came along, and he had the same spirit but was too meek to try and push boundaries. But that all changed when Damien arrived. He pushed the boundaries, in a positive way. So, from having no one to challenge her for the last few hundred years, the curator suddenly has three of you here.
‘As she told you previously, getting into the SMG is terribly difficult and is considered an honour. It has taken a long time for her to get to where she is, but this situation is exactly what she needed to be able to prove herself capable and worthy of a bigger and better challenge. Your rebellions would have been difficult for anyone to manage, but she did manage, and she did so very well too.
‘The time has arrived for changes to be made. I’ve come to tell you beforehand so you can organise an event to celebrate her promotion. Eloise didn’t cope as well, as you know, so her move has been sideways to another island like this one. She will get another chance and hopefully will have learned from you four people.’ Rodney stood and walked around, waving his hands about at the same time. ‘I have sent her to be an island executive—in other words, to an island like this but much smaller, where she will be answering directly to me. In time, she will recognise what an important lesson you gave her: to stay humble and use power wisely.’
Hector asked, ‘So, Father, what about us?’ He shrugged his shoulders up and down in an exaggerated fashion, emphasising that this was an uncertain time for each of them.
Rodney beamed, his face expressing a look similar to that of a parent seeing their offspring walk for the first time. ‘Ah, Hector, I am so glad you asked. I’ve noticed you starting to come out of your shell a lot more since Nancy arrived on the island, but you still need to work on your self-esteem and self-confidence before moving onto the next adventure by yourself.’
‘Not by himself, you say? So who with?’ Nancy asked, her brow furrowed with intrigue.
While laughing, Rodney said, ‘Well, unless you don’t want to stay with Damien, then it’ll be Maxine. They will make a great team in my opinion. Hector is a great thinker and Maxine is a doer, so together, I think they will be a force of nature.’
Maxine and Hector looked at each other, grinning widely. Damien said, ‘Yes, he is right. You’ll make a smashing team, mainly because Hector will definitely do everything you tell him to. Maxine is going to be like the queen.’
‘You are such an idiot, Damien,’ said Hector, laughing and shaking his head, but he knew his friend was completely correct.
Rodney picked up his empty cup and gazed inside. ‘Hector, you should ask the curator for bigger mugs. You and Maxine need to come with me to the control hut right now, and I’ll teach you how to use the teleporter properly. I know you haven’t been taught everything about it yet.’
He stood and walked out of the hut, with Maxine and Hector hot on his heels.
Damien said, ‘What about us?’ This really feels like limbo now!
Nancy picked up all the dirty crockery and put them on the side in the kitchen. Without thinking, she filled the kettle with water and switched it on. Neither she nor Damien said anything for the couple of minutes it took her to make drinks—they were too busy thinking. Taking a sip of the scalding hot brew, she said, ‘Well. Eloise gone. The curator going—to where, who knows—and Maxine is going with Hector. Unless Rodders has someone else in mind, either we inherit leadership or the island becomes leaderless, which I can’t even remotely see being an option. The SMG needs a leader or leaders here to control the inhabitants.’
After blowing the steam away from her tea and musing over what she had just said, Nancy continued. ‘This place is ideal for a couple to lead. Like, even though Eloise wasn’t romantically involved with the curator, it still took the pair of them to run it as well as doing their Earth stuff.’
Damien said, ‘You are right. There’s nothing we can do, is there? That is until Rodney decides to enlighten us. Let’s finish our drinks, then we can go fishing.’
‘Fishing? Really? No, I’m washing my hair.’
Damien laughed. ‘Well, it’s not a job for girls really.’ He ducked on instinct as Nancy’s mock punch flew over the top of his head. Laughing, they walked out of the building hand in hand. Outside the hut, Damien leaned down to retrieve his fishing gear and noticed the curator sauntering into the village. ‘Come on, quick! No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ he hissed at his wife. They dashed into their hut as if floating on air, away from the curator before she saw them. Damien looked through a slit in the curtain to see what she was doing.
The curator stopped by Hector’s fishing equipment and scratched her head. Damien heard her say, ‘This is weird. Hector is normally organised. No matter.’ When she picked up Hector’s gear, Damien held his breath. What is she going to do? I bet she’s going to knock on his door. Awkward.
To Damien’s bemusement, she picked up the gear and stacked it neatly by his front door and then wandered off as if nothing was out of place. He turned to his wife and shrugged a little. ‘Either she knows that the vicar is here, or she’s just weirdly chilled out.’
‘I expect the former. They like controlling us and messing with our heads,’ Nancy said while looking at her fingernails. ‘I need to get these sorted out. I’ve found out how to make an appointment at any time, anywhere. Cool, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, shit hot, darling...maybe I should have mine looked at too?’ mocked Damien, looking at his own grubby fingers.
Nancy laughed and slapped his arm. ‘Maybe we should go to the control hut and see how they are getting on?’
Damien flashed her a dirty look. ‘But we weren’t invited. We’ll have to find something else to do.’
***
IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, Hector and Maxine followed Rodney into the control hut. Rodney stood still, taking a moment to absorb the importance of the many screens before him. A droplet of water welled in his eye. Hector noticed and said, ‘Is that a good tear, Rodney?’
The vicar seemingly snapped out of his daydream. ‘All good. I started my journey here too, on this island about a hundred and sixty Earth years ago. I also arrived through the door in a wretched museum in Edinburgh. Really, I dropped lucky because the person running it was ready to move on, pretty much like how the curator is now, and I haven’t looked back since.’
Maxine said without hesitation, ‘So what you are saying is that there is a career ladder to climb? And there is an eternity in which to do it?’
‘Yes, that’s right. You can go more or less in any direction you want. Spend more time on Earth or move to be more or less solely about your island. Having said that, once you get used to helping people supernaturally, you will never look back.’
Maxine and Hector felt this was too much to take in at once. Their brains shut down and prevented them from asking more questions, knowing they would not be able to process anything else. Hector said, ‘Okay, so we are here to learn about moving about, ja?’
Rodney nodded an affirmative, and the lessons for the day began.
***
AT SIX THAT EVENING, Maxine and Hector arrived back at their respective huts, exhausted. Rodney, however, was still as fresh as a daisy. ‘Maxine, meet in Hector’s hut in the morning at ten.’
Before she had a chance to reply, Rodney was striding over to the Lennons’ hut to tell them the same instruction. He knocked on the door, and Nancy answered.
She looked at Rodney and smiled. ‘Hello, fancy a brew?’ Although I’m still not sure why you are here, Vicar.
Rodney shook his head and thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘No, thank you. I’ve just popped over to ask you and Damien to meet me at Hector’s place in the morning. At ten.’ He smiled his best clergyman’s smile and walked away, whistling an out-of-tune melody as he shuffled across the village.
Nancy watched him walk away, feeling unsure as to what tomorrow would bring.