Pig Island Read online

  What they were doing was staging this totally elaborate game of musical chairs. My neighbour kept changing every ten minutes. Everyone who sat next to me did this dead intense PR job on the community, working their nuts off to tell me about how much hard work went into maintaining the Positive Living Centre, how much love and honest brain-power had gone into Cuagach Eilean.

  'Everything's done with total, like, sensitivity to the environment – we recycle, don't use pesticides or herbicides, we celebrate what Gaia and the Lord give us through Cuagach Eilean. We want to repay them in some small way. Those trees over there? The tall ones? Planted by us.'

  'The more we love the soil the more it repays us. We grow all our own fruit and vegetables. If I say it myself, when it comes to size and taste our vegetables can give Findhorn's a run for their money.'

  'See the refectory building? I made the windows. I was a carpenter by trade before I came here, through God's grace. It's all timber from renewable sources – some of it from Cuagach herself. I'm working on new doors for the cottages now.'

  There was a tall African guy in a dashiki, who told me he'd arrived in England as a missionary to spread the word of the Lord to the British: 'This proud nation that has forgotten God.' (Get that? A Nigerian bringing Christianity to us – what a turn of the tables is that?) But no one had mentioned Dove's name yet, which I thought was kind of odd. I waited long enough so that when I spoke it'd sound like normal curiosity. Then I said, 'What happened to your founder, Malachi Dove? I don't see him here.'

  The missionary was smiling at me, and when I said the name his smile got a little fixed, his eyes a little distant. But he didn't stop beaming. 'He's gone,' he said, with a fake cheerfulness. 'He left years ago. He lost his way.'

  'Suicide,' I said. 'Story goes he had a thing about suicide.'

  He didn't blink. The smile got tighter, wider. 'He's gone,' he repeated. 'Long time now. Lost his way.'

  'Thank you for asking about Malachi.' Blake was suddenly at my side. He put a hand on my elbow to turn me away from the missionary. 'Our founder, Malachi, the messenger. We hold his name dear, though many have forgotten it.'

  'I did some homework and seems like he topped himself.' I looked across the table at the bloodless faces of the women eating, one of them methodically working a piece of gristle out of her teeth with a broken fingernail. 'Can't think why. On this Paradise.'

  'No, no, no.' He flashed me that cookie-cutter smile – the one the missionary had just wheeled out for me. 'Our founder is not yet with the Lord.'

  I paused. Now this was interesting. 'He's alive?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'Then where the hell—' I stopped. 'Then where is he?'

  'He's – he's gone. Gone, a long time ago.'

  'Where? New Mexico?'

  Silence.

  'London?'

  'Gone,' he repeated, the smile fixed, a veil coming down behind his eyes. 'Thank you, Joe, for your interest. In God's good time I will tell you all you wish to know about Malachi Dove. All in God's good time.'

  While the sun crossed the zenith and the shadows of the trees on the cliffs moved like the hands on a clock, I met at least half of the community: big-chested men in denim smocks and Birkenstocks, who put their heads sympathetically on one side when they spoke; an elderly ex-professor of theology in wire-framed glasses, who had located the fresh-water well they used and created the pumping system that fed the community; serious-faced girl students in flowery skirts, who could talk intensely for hours about the theory behind the Psychogenic Healing Ministries.

  I've got a trick, a way of nodding and keeping up the small-talk while another part of me detaches and floats free. I was smiling and nodding but inside I was off, unravelling what Blake had said: Malachi not dead. Was that why I still had my peace of mind? How had he just slipped off the radar like that? If he'd started up another ministry somewhere else I'd have known about it. I thought of all the places he could have gone, the connections he had. He was from London. Weird if he'd been living in the same town as me for the last twenty years.

  Whatever had happened to their founder it wasn't on the minds of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries members. Once you tuned into it, it was as plain as anything. There was something else happening here. There was a division. Trouble in Paradise.

  At the far end of the table a group of about eight people sat morosely, not making the effort to come and introduce themselves. I noticed them whispering nervously among themselves, and some couldn't resist glancing over their shoulders up at the cliff when they thought I wasn't watching. Blake saw I'd clocked them. He took his glass, patted my arm, and said, 'Come on. Let me introduce you to the Garricks. It'll have to happen sooner or later.'

  Benjamin Garrick, the centre's treasurer, was a tall, pinched-looking man with a severe haircut and a buttoned-up grey shirt. His wife, who sat to his right, was big-boned, man-faced, dressed in a kingfisher blue kaftan and headscarf, gingerish ringlets peeking from the headscarf. They nodded, they greeted me, but I wasn't welcome. You could just tell. Susan Garrick especially would've liked to see me dead. She sat stiffly, pointedly averting her eyes, while her husband gave me stilted details of the community's financial situation, saying nothing, until about five minutes into the conversation she lowered her fork and sniffed the air. 'It's a southerly,' she said, the ringlets shivering and bouncing. 'We shouldn't have come out here if there was a southerly due.'

  'Not now,' muttered a nearby woman in a battered straw boater.

  Benjamin Garrick dropped his face, and subtly covered his mouth with his napkin, murmuring under his breath, 'Darling, let Blake deal with that.'

  But she'd started something. Out of the corner of my eye I could see other women making faces and wrinkling their noses, one or two turning so their backs faced the cliff. I put down my fork and sniffed the air. There it was – the smell of something rotten. Dying vegetation? Or the community's septic tank? It was unmistakable – the smell that is the purest distillation of sickness and death. I thought about the rotting meat clotted behind the outlet pipe.

  At the tables one or two of the women had pushed away their plates, others sat with unhappy expressions, trying to eat their potato salad. One pulled out a handkerchief and covered her nose.

  'Hey,' said Blake, leaning over to them, using his knife to indicate their plates. He continued chewing, giving them a meaningful nod. They hesitated, and after a few seconds, wan expressions on their faces, bravely picked up their forks and pushed some food into their mouths, looking down at their plates as they chewed.

  'What can you smell?' I said, leaning past Garrick so I could see his wife.

  She shook her head and pinched her nose, glancing at Blake and muttering, 'Nothing, absolutely nothing,' under her breath.

  'What is it?' I asked again, my eyes straying up to the clifftop where the sun was so strong it cut out the shapes of individual leaves, like cacti in the desert. 'Tell me.'

  'All in good time,' Blake said, flashing me his reassuring smile. He lifted a carafe. 'More wine? We want you to enjoy yourself.'

  'What's at the top of the cliff?' I said. 'I'll enjoy myself more if you tell me what you're all staring at.'

  'You see?' Susan Garrick said abruptly, pushing back her chair and standing, her eyes locked on Blake. 'I told you he'd interfere. That's what journalists do. He's just going to tempt the—'

  'That's enough, Susan,' said Blake. 'Hold your counsel.'

  Benjamin put a hand on his wife's arm, drew her back to her seat. Slowly she subsided into the chair, staring red-faced at Blake as if she hated him more than anything in the world.

  'Now,' Blake said with a smile, taking my arm and raising me kind of forcefully to my feet, 'come along, Joe. Let's show you the rest of our Paradise.'

  7

  As the afternoon wore on all my questions were answered the same way. Malachi is gone. Gone. He's left us. Blake will tell you everything in God's good time. While the meal was cleared away by two elderly men in
blue cambric aprons, I was treated to a tour of the community. You know the kind of thing: the generator, the sewage system, the orchards and the bean rows. I was handed unripe plums from the trees and a fresh oyster shucked off the rocks near the jetty. I was dragged into a giant barn and made to watch while slate was passed through cutting equipment, turned, polished and rubbed with linseed oil to make the Celtic crosses the community sold on the mainland for an income. A contingent of people came with me everywhere, hovering at my elbow, eagerly pointing out how well they took care of the place. But wherever we went we stuck to the slopes at the bottom of the cliffs.

  'Where are the pigs?' I asked Blake, as we entered a small forest and at last started to climb a path in the direction of the cliffs. By now we'd been going for over two hours and the welcome party had dwindled to him and a sullen teenage girl with toothpick-thin arms who'd offered to hold my camera bag while I took photos. 'It's called Pig Island, but I haven't seen any pigs.'

  'Yes,' he said, taking my arm with a smile, 'but that's just a nickname. The real name is Cuagach Eilean. "Limping Island." Nothing to do with pigs.'

  'So there are no pigs here?'

  He paused – seemed about to answer. After a moment's thought his face cleared and he said cheerily, 'Look at this!' He headed off along a path that led away from the one we stood on, off into the dark of the woods. 'Here we are! We're coming to the real heart of our community.'

  I followed him, and a few yards along the path we came to a weathered clapboard church half hidden in the trees ahead, only picked out by patches of sunlight. It had a rectangular tower ending in a small steeple and two stained-glass, Gothic-style windows, several panes replaced with clear glass. Over the years ivy had clung to it and been removed so you could see where the suckers had been painted over, leaving strange textures like tidewater along the walls. Standing in a patch of sunlight in the grass to the left of the doors was a life-sized crucifix – like the Celtic cross on the green, it was carved out of stone. An effigy of Christ, it had been clumsily made: Christ's face was like the weird Filipino iconography I'd photographed in Manila, the skin drawn back from his teeth, like a howling animal in agony. His body was pocked with small darts and other marks. When I shaded my eyes and studied them I saw they were a series of numbers scratched into the skin.

  'The projected populations of every country in the world in the year twenty twenty,' said Blake. 'Because of medical intervention in the natural cycle of life and death we believe that these numbers are branded in Christ's flesh, that even now where He sits with His father, He feels the agony of the planet. Come in.' He held the door open for me. I saw cool flagged floors in the gloom, and caught a whiff of camphor, wood polish and red wine. 'Walk past Him, Joe. He looks at you with only love. Only love and compassion. Walk past Him. Come inside.'

  I was a bit weirded out to go so close to the crucifix. It was almost my own height and so lifelike that going past its eyes was like being in the presence of the dead. I looked straight ahead and ducked into the gloomy vestibule to where Blake stood facing me in the semi-darkness.

  'I want you to see this, Joe.'

  I stood still until my eyes got used to the light. The two Gothic windows behind me dropped coloured light on to the flagstone floor, but the rest of the chapel was in shadow. It took me a moment to understand why. I turned and looked back at the doors and saw that the weatherboard steeple was only a fascia containing the small vestibule – the remainder of the chapel, which stretched out past Blake into the darkness, had been hewn deep into the cliff face. Everything, the altar, the pulpit, the vaulted ceiling, even the pews, was carved from grey-veined rock. It was one of the hottest days of the year, but the chapel was colder than a meat-locker.

  'We did this,' said Blake proudly, his voice echoing round the walls, 'with hammers and chisels and our own sweat. Three years it took from start to finish. Fifteen of us working round the clock. Can you imagine the love, Joe, the love that goes into a project like this?'

  I fumbled out my camera, handing the bag to the girl, and fired off a few shots, resting the camera on a pew for stability because I didn't want to use a flash. A wooden cross hung on the far wall and below it, painted in a gold-leaf arc that spread like sunrays across the walls, were the words: 'Leave the world when the Lord calls you. Resist not his will. Accept his grace and feel it grow within.' The altar was very large and probably, looking at the imagery, carved by the person responsible for the crucifix outside. 'What happens in here?' I said, moving between the pews.

  'What happens in here?' Blake gave a nervous laugh showing his long teeth, like he couldn't believe I'd ask such a dumb question. He glanced to the girl and back, sharing his disbelief with her. 'What happens in most Christian chapels? We hold our prayer meetings and services.'

  'Prayer meetings?' I lowered the camera. 'Services?'

  He studied me with his pale eyes. 'That's what I said. Have you ever been to a Christian service, Joe?'

  'Yes, Blake, I have. Will I be invited to one of yours?'

  'Oh, you will. All in good time.'

  I smiled at him then, holding his eyes. We were playing a game now, Blake and me, and we both knew it. 'That lock.' I nodded back to the big main doors. 'That's kind of a serious lock.' I'd noticed it when we first came in – a huge iron one that could be opened from either side. The key was on the inside and it was supplemented with bolts all the way up the interior of the door. The windows had no catches because they had been built not to open. For whatever reason, the PHM felt a need to lock this chapel, miles away from the mainland. 'Pretty secure. Feels like a bunker.' I gave him a sly wink. 'But I think that's something else you'll tell me about. All in God's good time?'

  Blake drew himself up to his fullest height and took a deep breath. 'You'll stay with us tonight, won't you, Joe? I've got no plans to go to the mainland. There's a bed made up in my cottage.'

  I gave a short laugh. 'Of course I'm going to stay, Blake. Of course.'

  8

  After the tour Blake let me off the leash for an hour to get some photographs in – I was allowed to go anywhere, as long as I didn't stray further up the slope towards the cliffs. He sent the teenage girl along as a chaperone. She carried the bag when I was shooting, held the reflector for me, and didn't say much until we were out of sight of the cottages. I was busy changing a lens when she crept up next to me and said, almost in my ear, 'They're on the other side of the island.'

  I stopped and looked at her. Her face was very pale. Her eyes were watery and cold blue, like a swimming-pool.

  'The pigs. You wanted to know about the pigs. And I was just saying, they're over there.' She rolled her eyes in the direction of the cliff face, nodding up there, as if she'd have liked to point but thought she might get caught doing it. 'Over there. All the way across the other side. But no one's going to, like, just let you go over there or anything.'

  I lowered the camera. 'Why? What's over there?'

  'I can't tell you that. We're not supposed to talk to you about it. Blake's going to tell you.'

  I studied her. She had lank blonde hair pushed behind her ears and was so pale and thin it was pitiful, with spidery fingers and her feet like a skeleton's, blistered and sore, crammed into pink jelly sandals. 'And who are you?'

  She grinned and wiped her hand on her shorts and held it out to me. 'I'm Sovereign. Yeah, I know, Sovereign. It's what my parents called me. Because I was, like, so valuable to the community when I arrived. Apparently.'

  'You were born here?'

  'Yeah, and this place is so not what I'm about. The day I turn eighteen I'm total history.' She made her hand into a plane and glided it out into the air, off towards the mainland. 'Bye-bye, toot toot, train – you won't see me for dust. Only four months now.'

  'Who are your parents?'

  'The Garricks. You met them. The ones with the sticks up their butts?'

  'Yes. I met them.'

  'I know what you're thinking – like, geriatric ward, yeah?' Sh
e grinned, showing a missing canine in her left jaw. No medical treatment, my mind flashed. 'They waited until they were thirty-eight before they had me, totally ancient. How gross is that? But that's how it is round here. Bunch of retards.' She stopped smiling and took a few moments to look at me, jiggling her legs a bit, chewing her thumbnail. 'You know, you don't look anything like a journalist.' She took her thumb out of her mouth. 'Anyone ever tell you that? I watch a lot of TV and I know what a journalist should look like and the first thing I thought when I saw you was, uh, like no way, he rully doesn't look like a journalist.'

  I glanced down at my battered shorts, my big stained hands and sandals all dirty and fucked from walking everywhere. I had to smile. She was right – in spite of the psychology degree, the cushy detached house and the job, somehow I never had got the Merseyside docker out of my bones. I only did it once over the summer, helping my old man out, but it was in my family and stuck inside me like DNA. 'I know,' I said. 'I look like a docker.'

  'Yeah, you do. You look like a docker.'

  I snapped on the lens cap and studied her carefully. 'Sovereign,' I said, 'what goes on here? What happens in the church? What rituals was it made for?'

  She laughed. 'I know what you're thinking. I know about the video. I told you: we see TV.'

  'Then what is it? The thing on the beach. Who is it?'

  'That depends on who you ask. One person says one thing, someone else says something else.'

  'What about you? What do you say?'

  'I say we're not Satanists. Nothing happens in the church except the usual shit. Prayer meetings, tambourines, Mum and Dad making total muppets of themselves. It's, like, so boring it's not true. And cold. Mum's stopped making me go, except on Sundays.'

  'What about the locks on the doors? Those are some serious locks. Makes it look like they want to stop someone getting out.'