The Islanders (33 page)

Chaster Kammeston’s grave may be visited in the church burial ground, close to the crematorium, where there is also a commemorative plaque for his brother.

Rawthersay (1)

DECLARE
/
SING

A small island in the southern Midway Sea, R
AWTHERSAY
is sheltered from prevailing winds by the mountains on the curving arm of the Qataari Peninsula that lies to the east. This area of the Dream Archipelago is known as the Quietude Bay, because although deep in the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere the shelter of the landmass has created a vast and tranquil bay where storms are rare and all extremes of weather are virtually unknown. Summers are warm and delightful with nights that are short, and mild winters are endured in short days and chilly nights. Springtime and autumn are periods of picturesque natural change.

Approximately five thousand islands of every size are found in Quietude. All are fertile and inhabited, governments are stable, industry is varied, trade between islands has been harmonious as long as there has been recorded history. The creative and performing arts are practised at a high level of accomplishment. When the Covenant of Neutrality was agreed, the people of Quietude famously neglected to ratify it for more than a hundred years, not affected by the urgent need for peace that was felt elsewhere in the Archipelago.

Although not the largest island in Quietude, Rawthersay is one of the most developed. Its patois name renders as D
ECLARE
. It is situated in the coolest part of the Bay, far to the south. The two principal activities on the island are sheep farming and mining. The tall but fertile hills of Rawthersay provide ideal grazing for the hardy breed of sheep that thrives on the island. The wool the animals produce is warm, soft and hard-wearing, and is a major source of export funds. Coal is mined in the southern valleys of Rawthersay, where a separate patois is spoken (the miners call the island S
ING
), and in the east there are large deposits of iron ore which have been mined for centuries.

Rawthersay is a university island, drawing its students from islands all over the southern reaches of Quietude Bay. Ostensibly specializing in the practical vocations of mining and animal husbandry, Rawthersay University has developed many challenging courses devoted to folk literature and music, with an emphasis on performance skills. Touring troupes of performers from Rawthersay regularly travel around all parts of the Archipelago, where they are much appreciated.

The social reformer C
AURER
is probably the most celebrated alumna of the university. Born Esla Wann Caurer, she was brought up in a small farmhouse in the central valley of Rawthersay, and educated at the local village school. She won a scholarship to the university when she was seventeen.

The farmhouse is open to visitors but an advance appointment is necessary as it is still partly occupied. Many of Caurer’s toys and letters from her childhood are displayed in the public rooms. There is a small but excellent bookstore next to the main building.

Caurer founded the university’s literary magazine,
Free!
, and edited the first eleven issues while still an undergraduate.
Free!
editorialized about the unfairness of the feudal laws that still existed in most islands and the need for universal suffrage and human rights. It also published a great deal of student poetry, reviews, stories and art. The most notable item, the one that ensures the magazine’s immortality, is a long article written by Caurer herself and published in the ninth edition of
Free!
.

This was a review of
Stationed
, Chaster Kammeston’s third novel. How the copy reached Rawthersay and Caurer’s hands is still not fully understood, because Kammeston’s early books were all but unavailable outside his native island, but nevertheless Caurer got hold of it somehow and the article was written.

Using the name ‘Esla W. Caurer’ – she did not drop the use of her first names until after she left university – she wrote a review that is now known to be the first extended piece of criticism of Kammeston’s work. From the text it is possible to discern that Caurer had read earlier novels by the same writer, but this was her first opportunity to discuss them in print. The review of
Stationed
runs for eight tightly printed pages, full of abundant praise for the novel, but also, notoriously, it contains many speculations and pointed insinuations about Kammeston’s presumed motives, proclivities and psychology. More than a year later these immature, unwarranted but witty and highly quotable judgements provoked a hurt but intrigued letter from the author. By this time Caurer had graduated and was no longer at the university.

The letter, addressed to ‘Dear Editor’, was never printed in
Free!
, but the original is today displayed in a case in the foyer of the Caurer Memorial Theatre. The review itself has been widely anthologized, but a facsimile of its original appearance in
Free!
is displayed next to Kammeston’s letter.

The remarkable fact of this review is that Caurer accurately identified, described and praised the unique quality of Kammeston’s work, which did not receive wider critical recognition for several more years. At the time, Caurer’s essay had a negligible impact: it was after all an obscure book by a more or less unknown author, reviewed by a student at a minor university.

After graduation, Caurer left Rawthersay. Her first work was as an assistant community consultant in the neighbouring Olldus Group. She took up the cause of the poor and immigrant classes on that heavily industrialized chain of islands and wrote the first of her three plays,
Woman Gone
.

Woman Gone
is an undisguised attack on feudalism unmodified by human rights, and for several years put her life at risk of reprisals. There were many barons and lords with vested interests. Her powerful, flowing and poetic use of language was unprecedented, and although the play opened in a small theatre in an economically declining part of Olldus Town, within a year it had transferred to Le Théâtre Merveilleux in Jethra, Faiandland. After a long run in Jethra the play was produced in many other theatres around the Archipelago, and is still today regularly revived.

When islanders in all parts of the Archipelago began to demand reforms to the way they were governed,
Woman Gone
was usually cited as the liberating inspiration. Lines from it were adopted as campaign slogans, posters were created using the images of the central characters.

Caurer was soon recognized as a powerful and moving public speaker. She kept Rawthersay as her base and returned there whenever she could, but she travelled constantly to public meetings throughout the Archipelago, where she gained increasingly appreciative audiences. During this period her second play appeared:
The Autumn of Recognition
.

Against expectations,
Autumn
was a light-hearted comedy with musical interludes, although many critics were quick to point out a certain paradox. Beneath the flow of witty dialogue, the scenes of casual adultery and sexual mix-ups, there must be some inconsolable tragedy that the author was not directly addressing. Whatever it was she meant seemed impossible to grasp, but there were clues in the text throughout the play and several of the speeches had a seriousness that was out of key with the rest. The play was delightful entertainment and it played to packed houses, but this enigma at its heart sometimes left audiences puzzled.

Caurer herself rarely discussed her work but during one public speech, in answer to a question from the audience, she mentioned as an aside that if the four acts of
Autumn
were performed in reverse order, certain scenes were removed, the music was omitted, and all the characters were played by actors of the opposite sex, then the play’s real meaning would be revealed.

Soon after this the play was re-mounted in that form, and it was seen to be transformed. These days it is rarely performed in its ‘original’ version, although the Caurer Memorial Theatre does revive it in workshop productions every few years.

Her third play appeared at approximately the same time as
Autumn
was being reinterpreted. Called
The Reconstruction
it was another tragedy: an immense work of some three and a half hours’ duration without an interval. It was presented in the form of a series of heartfelt monologues, describing life on particular islands. Each monologue was reconstructed by the next speaking part, making what had just been stated much more complex, but also more comprehensible. The language throughout was judged to be some of the most graceful and resonant ever spoken on the stage. Audiences were almost invariably reduced to tears by the experience of listening to her prose.

Caurer unexpectedly disappeared from view not long after the first performance of
The Reconstruction
. Thereafter she made no more public appearances, but remained in her secure house on Rawthersay. Rumours went around: she was dead, she was in hiding, she had been abducted – the usual kind of thing, but rumours lose their power if they are based only on speculation. The reality seems to be that she sought seclusion, because she entered a long period of sustained literary output.

She wrote a string of books, each one a memorable campaign in a liberal cause. There was a polemic about the horrors of capital punishment, and numerous examples of miscarried justice. This was followed by a book concentrating on a detailed examination of one such case: the execution of Kerith Sington for a murder he could not possibly have committed. Long after Caurer’s book was published, Sington received a posthumous pardon. Two books on the rights of the individual followed – Caurer campaigned endlessly to make every island adopt a bill of human rights. There was a book of interviews with deserters from the southern war. She wrote several books on feudalism, and although the system remains in place in most parts of the Dream Archipelago, numerous reforms in many islands have followed. The publication of her book
One for You
,
Three for Me
was crucial in impelling economic reform, manumitting millions from poverty. One of her most famous campaigns was for the social rehabilitation of women victims of the war, many of whom had been forced into prostitution. No other individual has been responsible for such effective and wide-ranging social liberalization and reform.

As well as the books, Caurer produced many articles and essays, often written in response to an invitation from one organization or another – she became notorious for the way in which she sometimes came up with a view or a position contrary to the ideas of the people who had commissioned the piece. These essays were the closest she came during this period of her life to answering questions, because after she retreated to the seclusion of Rawthersay she granted no more interviews.

The first of the Caurer Special Schools opened on Rawthersay when Caurer was in her mid-forties. It remains a principal centre for higher social learning. Other Caurer Schools have followed and now they are to be found on many islands.

She occasionally agreed to be present at the founding ceremony of some of these schools, but she never made a speech and always took a minor role in the celebrations: cutting a ribbon, symbolically capping a foundation stone, for example, then returning quietly to the shadows. It was this sort of event that gave rise to the speculation that Caurer was using a woman who looked like her as a stand-in. Because Caurer herself, and later the Caurer Foundation, never denied it, and these brief appearances continued, the speculation was probably correct and it was never seen as harmfully deceptive.

Caurer herself was positively identified in public only once more in her lifetime, when she ventured out from Rawthersay alone to attend the funeral of the author, Chaster Kammeston. She was noticed boarding a ferry in Rawthersay harbour – at the next port of call several journalists went aboard. More of them boarded the ship at every stop. She had booked a private cabin, so they only saw her when she went to the dining saloon for a meal. Later, she had to change ships at the island of Ia and on the new ship there were no private cabins. She sat out the voyage on the deck, or in the public areas, staring away as the cameras took shot after shot of her. She ignored every question. Later, after a plea to the captain of the ship, she was able to remain out of sight in crew quarters for the rest of the journey.

The return voyage was an even greater ordeal for her. Stress and unhappiness marked her features and although she was allowed to use the captain’s quarters she was able to find only a little privacy. Finally, she agreed to make a statement to the press, and allow photographs, if afterwards the media would leave her in peace.

As the ship sailed between Ia and Junno she stood in the saloon before more than fifty reporters, television cameras and photographers. She simply said that she was devastated by the sudden death of one of her most admired colleagues and wished to be left to mourn alone. She moved back, signalling that her comment was finished.

The media harassment continued afterwards, in breach of the bargain, until a manager from the shipping line intervened and arranged a private flight for her from an airstrip on Junno. Her arrival home on Rawthersay was unobserved. She retreated to her house, the security staff closed the gates and the shutters and no lights showed.

What followed has always been uncertain and the subject of much critical scrutiny. Caurer was said to have died within a few days of her return from Piqay. No one outside her immediate circle ever saw her body and the death was certified by a doctor who worked on her staff. Her body was allegedly cremated immediately afterwards. The cause of death was recorded as: ‘Natural causes – infection / infestation.’ None of this has ever been proved, and there is a strong body of belief that Caurer used the aftermath of Kammeston’s death to slip away to a secret haven on some other island.