And I was on the island,
And you were there too
But somehow through the storm
I couldn't get to you
Going a million miles from nowhere takes planning. If you set off, and then change your mind, going back is so tedious that staying on in a place you hate often turns out to be less trouble than leaving.
And yet I do not know why I have come here.
The blockade of British ships around the island was unnoticeable enough to be inconsequential when I arrived today. The ships were bobbing thoughtfully on the waves, as unthreatening as though they were made of air, and I had felt infinitely more threatened by the possibility of seasickness than I had by the uniformed lickspittle charged with examining everybody's papers as soon as they came ashore (there is no port). I amused myself, from a distance, in watching the identical way that he would treat each passenger in the line – look, stamp, pass – the same rule for everyone, even for the only other Frenchman apart from me, who might, for all the officer knew, have been carrying secret papers to deliver toGeneralBonaparte to assist him in the causing of further apocalyptic European mischief.
The reason for the officer's nonchalance only occurred to me later.
On Saint Helena, there is nowhere to escape to.
There were many things I felt unsure of as I left Jamestown on foot and began to walk up towards Longwood. Whether he'd be glad to see me. Whether I'd have the courage, when it came to it, to see him. Whether I'd recognise him at all. Whether he'd recognise…me, at all.
There was, however, one thing of which I could be certain, even after all this time.
He hated it here.
I had known it from the moment that I had seen the island filling up the horizon, and then my vision, with its enormous, jagged crags of rock that towered down on ship and man alike. I knew it now, as I turned back and looked down on black rock beaches and uneven mountains that were draped, overlaid, blanketed with savage tropical vegetation. The island was a living fortress: a prison that breathed, yes, but that breathed like an animal rather than a human being, offering nothing but a sharp and cruel horizon of miles and miles of ocean that I knew could do nothing but leave him wondering, sans cesse, what was on the other side of it.
Though I'm sure he'd known what was on the other side before he even arrived here. Perhaps I do know him just a little after all.