Islands of Silence by Martin Booth

Author:Martin Booth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

24

Last evening, far off over the wall to the garden, a storm was brewing. Although I could not see them, I imagined hills with their patchwork of fields bright in the last of the day’s sunlight, the sky in the distance beyond them the colour of tarnished gunmetal. Occasionally, lightning flashed deep in the clouds, yet there was no accompanying thunder.

I sat at the french doors of my room, my hands relaxed in my lap, my shoulders a little hunched and my head slightly downcast, the muscles in my neck slack. My feet were planted firmly on the floorboards, several inches apart. This was how, long ago, it had been suggested I should handle moments such as this.

Had I obeyed the instructions to the letter, I should have shut my eyes, not screwing the lids tightly but just letting them close as if waiting for the benediction of sleep or a kiss from someone I loved. Yet although I tried hard to comply, I could not, for I just had to watch, be alert, be on my guard in case the lightning struck too near. In my mind, I knew this was obtuse. There was no way by which I could avoid a bolt of lightning. It would come quicker than a blink. I would still have my eyes open as the million volts turned me into charcoal. One moment I would be watching the rain bouncing on the newly mown grass of the lawns; the next I would cease to exist. This would happen in the matter of a millisecond.

Such is mortality.

Against the backdrop of the storm, I envisaged a village on a hill, the surrounding farmland strangely pristine, like a landscape painted in oils by an artist who preferred to use primary colours, for whom there was only truth and lies, light and dark, reality and falsity. I wondered if the clarity was due to a brief rain shower that had passed by as the storm’s vanguard, cleansing the air of the dust of summer, or positive electrical particles caused by the proximity of the storm somehow affecting the refractive index of the sunlight.

As if the latter theory were correct, I felt the hairs of my forearm rise, as though a charge of static electricity or a cold draught—perhaps the finger of death—had just touched me. In response I shivered, and, as has happened so many times before, with this came my fear.

It rose from somewhere deep within me, somewhere I cannot plumb: a fear I know to be unjustified, unsullied by reason, unadulterated by intellectual analysis. If I had had to describe it, I would have said it was a fear as pure as terror could be.

For half an hour, I watched as the storm edged inexorably nearer, the sky darkening, the sun slanting lower and setting. As the evening drew in, the lightning became more apparent and I began to hear the rolls of thunder, muted but increasing in volume.

Gradually, I became resigned to the storm and, although my fear did not diminish, I came to terms with it.

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