“You know,” I said as we shook hands, “it’s deuced hard to
believe this island of yours is real.”
Le Marinel,
as if to consider this cocked his head to one side, like a thoughtful bird this
time. I had been but one week on the
island, having come to look after the practice of a doctor friend, an old
fellow student, who needed a change. The
duty so far had been almost a sinecure, although I was, in fact, then meeting
the avocat to report on a patient about whose condition he was anxious.
“You mean,” he
said at length, “that it looks the sort of place where nothing happens.”
This time
the side-long glance he gave me was more than ever bird-like.
“That’s
true; it does look like that; but it’s
not what I meant. What I meant was that
for an island in the Channel less than ninety miles from England it has too
many incredible differences; it looks in fact almost Oriental.”
The avocat
seemed mystified.
“Oriental?” he
repeated, with a rising inflection.
“More like a
bit of Tunis or Algiers,” I affirmed.
“Why look, for
instance, at this very road, so long and narrow, stretching between those high
blank walls, with invisible houses and hidden people behind them, I suppose. And look at those tall palm trees which seem
to be peering over the walls as if stretching their necks, watching for
something to happen in this deserted alley.
Look at those shadows too, sharply cut as if by a knife in this
brilliant white, un-English sunlight; and look at the colour, is that not
Eastern?”
I indicated
the end of the tunnel-like Rue Galette along which we were now walking, for at
the far end, framed like a picture by the tall shadowed, one caught a glimpse
of an incredibly blue sea, on the horizon of which another island was just
discernible, pale as an opal, and ethereal as a mirage of the desert.
From John Ferguson, Death Comes To Perigord (Chapter I: Night Visit). London and Glasgow, William Collins and Sons, Co., Ltd., 1931.
All photos depict island of Guernsey.
