The Islanders (14 page)

MK

Foort

BE WELCOME

F
OORT
is of medium size, one of the Manlayl group of islands in the northern subtropical zone. Its name in patois is rendered as B
E
W
ELCOME
, of which there is more to say.

Foort has several features which make it unusual, not to say unique, in the Archipelago. One of these is that it has a self-sustaining economy. It is almost entirely independent of other islands. It exports nothing and imports only essentials. Few people from other islands ever visit it; few residents of Foort ever travel to other islands. There is a ferry service but the ships that call do so at irregular intervals and are invariably en route to somewhere else. Foort is a brief stopping place, a port of call. In many ways, Foort is an island that is in but not of the Archipelago.

As facilities for visitors are few, and it has little of historical or cultural interest, we shall not devote much space to it in this gazetteer. One of our researchers did visit the island in the preparation of this book, so we know our information is up to date. For the sake of completeness, and the likelihood that some of our readers will have relatives living on Foort, here are a few facts about the place.

Firstly, its patois name is a fake. There never was an indigenous population who would make you welcome. Throughout the island you will see odd references to the island’s mythical past, restaurants and streets and parking lots named after presumed indigenous greats or events of the past – our researcher noted in Foort Town that there was a ‘King Alph’ housing development, a market square named ‘Victory Plaza’, a bistro called the ‘Old Castle Restaurant’, and so on. All this is false. Until the modern property developers moved in, Foort was a barren island of sandy soil and rocky foreshore, with a single mountain at the western end and a range of sand dunes in the east.

A more accurate patois name would be I
SLAND OF
C
ONDOMINIUM
. The gleaming white towers of Foort dominate the skyline as you approach from any direction across the sea.

The only low or humble buildings on Foort are those of the people who have flocked to the island in search of work. They are the builders, cleaners, security guards, domestic servants, drivers, gardeners, shop-keepers.

There are twenty-seven golf courses on Foort. There are more than one hundred digital television channels. There are five private airstrips. Restaurants and wine bars are found in every street. Alcohol is inexpensive. Nursing and residential homes are numerous. There are three cinemas, one theatre, several dance halls and five casinos. There is a large lending library, with a range of books but a much wider range of videos imported from the northern countries. Every condo is surrounded by a gated private park. The beaches are clean and patrolled by security guards.

There are no massage parlours, strip joints, table-dancing bars or escort services, and there is no red light district. Violent crime does not occur on Foort, but there are occasional cases of dishonesty and these are dealt with effectively by the authorities. Havenic regulations are non-existent, but shelterate laws are in existence. Anti-importunate rules are strict, and erotomanes are not tolerated.

On the extreme eastern edge of the island there is reputed to be a sand dune which lights up at night. Speculating that this might be one of the coastal installations built by the artist Tamarra Deer Oy, who is known to have spent time on Foort, our researcher went to the location. He was unable to find it, or at least to pick out which of the many hundreds of dunes it might be. He met several people who claimed to have seen it, but two of them told him that the power supply was intermittent and in need of repair. No one knew how to do that. Oy himself left Foort a long time before.

There are few freshwater springs on Foort, and no rivers. All water on the island is either recycled or produced by the huge desalination plant on the north coast. A light pall of pollution, created by the plant, as well as by the heavy traffic and the thousands of air-conditioning devices in the condos, hangs over the island.

There is a network of roads that serve all parts of the island. Traffic is continuous, night and day. Every urban street has a track alongside it, used by the mobility vehicles of the halt and the elderly.

The biggest service and retail industries on the island are based on property: the supply of furniture and flooring, painting and decorating, garden maintenance, and so on. The demand from buyers for property is normally matched by the availability caused by death or incapacity. Almost the entire population is expatriate, people who have chosen to abandon the rigours of life under the wartime economies of the northern countries. Apart from the expense of buying property on the open market there are no immigration restrictions, although a return to the mainland is made difficult to the point of impossibility.

People from both warring alliances are welcome on Foort, and all mainland languages are spoken. Although the seignioral authorities maintain there is no zoning in Foort Town, people from the Faiand Alliance do tend to live in one part of the town, the Glaundians in another. There are expat-themed events all year round, with nostalgic playing of familiar music, cooking of traditional dishes and the wearing of folk costumes. Our researcher attended one of these events, and was surprised not only by how late at night it ran, but how uncontrollably drunk most of the people became.

Currency: all.

Gannten Asemant

FRAGRANT SPRING

G
ANNTEN
A
SEMANT
is one of the smaller islands in the Gannten Chain. Its existence would barely be known outside the Chain if it were not for one remarkable event, which was a personal appearance by the artist Dryd Bathurst.

The occasion was a retrospective exhibition of his works, in which many of his smaller pieces were planned to be included, while four or five of his epic oils would also be hung. The gallery set the date for the private view and sent invitations to a select number of guests. Although there were not many of them they did live in many different parts of the Archipelago. Because of the distances involved, the invitations went out a long way ahead of the event. The select few were all known admirers of Bathurst’s work, regular patrons or representatives of major galleries, or his professional acquaintances and colleagues. Because of Bathurst’s itinerant ways, and his habit of arriving unannounced and departing in haste, few of these people had previously met him in person.

The press and visual media were not invited to the show. Bathurst had a lifelong aversion to publicity, both for himself and for his work. He never allowed tV cameras anywhere near him or his paintings, so no one present was expecting to see any of the television channels there. However, the almost total absence of print or internet journalists was surprising to some. It implied that Bathurst was entering a new and perhaps contradictory period of his life. The exhibition itself suggested he was seeking acceptance. The absence of the media indicated he wanted to shun fame.

In fact, one reporter did turn up, having blagged a ticket from another invitee. The journalist was a young trainee called Dant Willer, who was working on the local newspaper, the
Ganntenian News
. As events turned out, this young reporter’s presence transformed what was intended to be a private party into an incident with many consequences.

The gallery was a small and until then insignificant one, called the Blue Lagoon. Before Bathurst’s arrival on the island it was known only for local paintings by enthusiasts and amateurs, sold to tourists. For the gallery owner, a man called Jel Toomer, it was a genuine scoop, because at this time Bathurst’s reputation, personal as well as professional, was a constant talking point.

His distinction as a painter of symbolic or portentous landscapes was never higher, with wealthy collectors practically fighting with each other to buy his huge canvases. In addition, there was a veritable industry of theoretical, analytical and academic papers attempting to unravel the enigmas perceived in the paintings.

His wider influence was also felt in the work of scores of young or emerging artists who were eager to identify themselves as
socius
Bathurst Imagists.

He was also routinely denigrated as an exhibitionist, a dauber, a plagiarist, a populist, a coxcomb, an obscurantist and an opportunist. Much else was said – privately, but in a more energetically vindictive and heartfelt way – by a string of husbands, fathers, fiancés and brothers, on a large number of islands throughout the Archipelago.

Dryd Bathurst’s celebrity was not then wholly for his work. Endless tittle-tattle and gossip surrounded the more public aspects of his private life, filling the popular tabloids and celebrity magazines, which otherwise had no discernible interest in art. Stories about Bathurst’s exploits, and alleged exploits, were told, re-told and endlessly embellished.

Photographs of him were rare – in fact, there was only one known to exist, taken years before, when he was an art student. It was still used to identify him: he appeared as a tall young man of slender build, narrow-hipped, with a chiselled face and lustrous fair hair. He looked sullen and aggressive, but also vulnerable.

Bathurst and his aides took extraordinary measures to disguise or conceal his features when he was travelling around. Travelling around was something he did almost constantly, of course. Should some enterprising photographer manage to obtain a candid shot with a long lens, or when Bathurst was caught unawares, then the painter would use any means at his disposal to suppress it: invocation of privacy laws or physical threats were instantly uttered, but most often he would resort to his vast wealth to buy the picture. Naturally, all this heightened the intensity of the attention around him.

It followed too that people were curious about his physical appearance. His enemies said that he had grown old, put on weight, that his flowing locks had thinned or fallen out, or that some cuckolded husband or lover had managed to disfigure him.

None of this was true, as the chosen ones who were allowed into the private view on Gannten Asemant immediately discovered. Although he was no longer the fragile youth blessed with classical beauty, Bathurst’s body had filled out while maintaining a look of fitness and agility. His face remained aquiline and attractively angular, his fair hair flowed about his shoulders. He moved with feline grace and carried himself with an aura of manly strength. Fine lines of maturity that were forming around his eyes only emphasized the sensuality of his features.

His force of personality was extraordinary. Everyone present felt acutely aware of him, as if he was exerting a magnetic attraction. People could not help staring at him or trying to edge closer to him, eager to listen in on the few conversations he engaged in.

The temptations of the bounty aside, Bathurst was one of the most photogenic men they had ever seen. In order to remove temptation, all photographic equipment and cellphones were temporarily confiscated and secured in a guarded room along the corridor. The guests had to content themselves with gawping, and the lesser satisfactions of being able to tell their friends they had at least been there.

Even allowing for Bathurst’s celebrity the canvases were still the dominant presence. The five large paintings, all completed comparatively recently and therefore unseen even by most of his entourage until this event, were hung on the gallery walls. The two largest were placed one at each end, the other three being hung side by side on the wall facing the window.

No catalogue was prepared by the gallery, so none of the paintings was identified. Was this Bathurst’s own wish, or just a mistake by the gallery? No one seemed to know. However, we do know what paintings there were, because the enterprising young reporter from the
News
managed to elicit the titles from Bathurst or one of his close aides, and diligently recorded them.

With hindsight, we therefore have the remarkable information that this was the only known occasion when all five canvases of Bathurst’s H
AVOC
S
EQUENCE
were displayed together.

Final Hour of the Relief Ship
was on one of the end walls. Opposite, at the further end of the gallery, stood
The Breakers of the Earth
. Arrayed along the wall between them were the three paintings which today are recognized as supreme even amongst Bathurst’s supreme canvases:
Virtuous Magnificence and Decadent Hope
,
Willing Slaves of God
and
Terrain of a Dying Hero
.

The mere thought of these five masterpieces being in one place at the same time still has the capacity to take the breath away.

However, even the presence of the five Havoc paintings did not provide the surpassing moment. Bathurst had promised to display several of his smaller paintings. Four of them were hung there, quietly filling the available spaces on the walls. Dazzled by the Havocs, the guests might have been excused if they had not immediately noticed the others. But there they were, four canvases placed unobtrusively at eye-level on a slightly uneven and not especially clean gallery wall.

Two of them were sketches for details in the Havoc Sequence: one of these was the head of the sea serpent from
Final Hour of the Relief Ship
. The other was the body of the naked woman about to be consumed by a burning tide of fast-moving lava, from
Willing Slaves of God
. Either of these so-called sketches would stand alone as a crowning achievement for any other painter. In particular, the draft of the serpent’s head (which was in fact a full-sized canvas painted in oils) gave an astonishing insight into the close attention Bathurst paid to detail. With these two canvases set beside the ultimate paintings, it was possible to discern the artistry and technique that had been demanded of the artist.