Calypso Dreaming
An atmospheric fantasy, set on a remote island where the difference between dreams and truth becomes blurred…Sweetholm is a small island sheltering in the Bristol channel, best known for its colonies of seabirds and seals and the picturesque ruins of St Brigan's Priory. When Geoff and Hilary Robinson are offered the opportunity to caretake a house there for the summer, they see it as a perfect opportunity to work at patching up their marriage.Their teenage daughter Tansy also welcomes it as a chance to put behind her her unnerving and unsuccessful experiments in magic in Bristol. But troubles cannot be so easily outrun and Sweetholm is not the idyllic retreat is apears to be. It is one of the 'frayed places of the world' where the line between ordinary life and ancient magic has become wafer thin.And key to these events is Calypso herself – a strange child whose round lidless eyes and webbed feet hint at her ancestry. Her prophetic dreams have power – but will anybody dare to understand the truth?
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Calypso Dreaming
CHARLES BUTLER
To Stephen, Ute, Æfleda,Wulfric and Dunstan,who made a go of it.
Contents
“Sweetholm! Do you remember it?”
Tansy peered through the telescope. In its depths a piece of clockwork was counting out their time and turning it to cash. The island bobbed up against the glass. It was low and flat, but for the abrupt brown hill at the western tip.
“Of course she doesn’t remember, Geoff,” said Tansy’s mother. “She was hardly walking when she came last.”
“You’d be surprised what sticks sometimes. Even at that age.”
Tansy opened her mouth to reply, then clapped it shut again. Dad was wrong, of course. Of course and as usual. But she didn’t need to say it. Not today, when everything ought to be perfect.
“I remember it from the photos Uncle John sent. It looks closer than I imagined, though. Is it really five miles out? I can see buildings.”
“Five miles by ferry,” said her father. “But that’s going from Plinth. And the ferry’s got shoals to negotiate, remember. Tricky waters.” He gestured to where the water was stippled with dark patches. “As the gull flies, we’re closer here on the headland. Of which, as you can see, Sweetholm is geologically an extension – and Longholm beyond it.”
Geoff unfolded the map on his knee, standing like a flamingo with something to prove as a thermal billowed up and ballooned the paper.
“It’s not that we don’t believe you, Dad,” said Tansy, turning back to the car.
Their car was parked in the small semicircle of gravel at the head of the Down. A lane ran back, dividing one bleating field from another. It led into the main road down to Plinth. There were two cars parked there, their own and a black Volkswagen in which an elderly couple were eating sandwiches under the late June sun.
Geoff ignored the retreat to the car and put another coin in the slot. He moved the telescope over to the next bay along their own coast, and the harbour town of Plinth. Every day in summer a ferry set sail from there to Sweetholm, with a cargo of ornithologists, hermits and trippers, though Sweetholm was just too far away to make a day trip comfortable. That was where the beauty of the place lay – in its splendid near-isolation. Then he noticed the time and that the ferry was already docked.
But in such a place hurry was impossible. With the telescope still whirring, Geoff climbed into the car then inched it to the road and let it drop, braking all the time, down the steep, ear-popping hill into town. It was eleven in the morning and some of the shops were only just opening. One man, unlocking the door of his picture gallery, glanced at the car as it parked beside the ferry offices and shook his head with an air of frank reproof. Geoff looked out instinctively for No Parking signs, but found none. Perhaps they just looked disreputable in the unwashed Volvo.
Tansy and her mother waited as Geoff dealt with the ticket side of things. Her mother seemed exhausted, with her head on her hand, her hand propped on an elbow, her elbow wedged into the car door. It seemed as if she were thinking of something else, or of somewhere she would rather be than here, teetering on the brink of an adventure.
The ferry was the open-air kind, with room for four vehicles at most. The mate hauled boxes of supplies into the dark hold. Even before she was out of the car, Tansy noticed the boat’s slight movement and the slapping of the water against its sides. But there was no wind to speak of as they descended to the deck. Then the ropes were cast, the water churned and they had left Britain behind.
Tansy’s parents stood on either side of the ferry, having settled into a mutual sulk. They had their backs to each other, like a pair of novelty bookends. The female bookend was a bit queasy: Hilary had never been good with water. The other passengers had drifted into groups. Three men with backpacks made their way to the bows and stood, eyes shielded, to catch the white wing of a seabird flashing fifty yards out on the tinselled water.
“Isn’t that a Mediterranean gull?”
“Yes, look!” Tansy heard them exclaim with quiet excitement. “This far north!”
The gulls all looked the same to Tansy. She supposed birdwatchers would be migrating daily to the island. Meanwhile, another group of passengers was chatting with the captain, whom they clearly knew. Locals, she guessed, wanting to distinguish themselves from the tourists with whom they shared the boat. She remembered what her mother had said about the islanders: “They’ll never let us in, Geoff. They’ll talk to their sheep more than they will to us. And you expect us to house-sit here all summer?”
