Island Hopping

It was the summer before university. We were in love. In love like no other couple before us.

 

We being Sarah and myself.

 

We had worked weekends and some evenings to save for a holiday together. Three whole months of pure pleasure.

 

The gods were on our side. It was a perfect weather all summer long, too perfect, as if it was nothing more than a story in a book, or an edited memory.

 

We spent the summer island-hopping. We went to a town you probably know, one surrounded by an archipelago of over 200 islands and spent the summer in a cheap boat we'd borrowed/hired/stolen from someone we met drunk in a pub. Sleeping on a different island every night. As if we owned the world. Well, we did, we were young and in love.

 

We had a tent, sleeping bags, a sack of condoms, an inflatable cushion and a map of the archipelago. We even had a post-it-note containing instructions for the boat.

 

Most of the islands were small, unpopulated, many of them probably privately-owned, but abandoned. Until we got there. We'd explore our new home, find a place to pitch our tent, explore a bit more, have sex, heat up a tin of food, drink a bottle of water or can of beer, wander around gazing at the night sky, return to the tent, make love, sleep, wake, make love, heat up a stove of coffee, pack the tent and zoom off to find an island.

 

Entire weeks passed this way, without encountering a soul, as if to verify that the entire universe was ours, ours to borrow at least, if not to keep.

 

Every once in a while we'd dock at a larger island, one with a shop, where we'd dump our rubbish and stock up, maybe sleep in a youth hostel, a bed, luxury, buy some fags, drink in a pub, play pool, maybe a game of dominoes, live like royalty for a day, then move on, with our replenished box of provisions we were ready to take on the world afresh.

 

Adrift from civilis ation the islands were quiet in a way neither Sarah nor myself had ever experienced before, until night fell and the wildlife woke up. The night was also night in a way we'd never known, all darkness, not the dark of a room, or a cupboard, or a deep dark well, but an-all-consuming-expanse-of-darkness, as if the world had switched off it's light, which of course it had, the sun had shied away to enjoy a brief Australian winter then whizzed back round to warm us again the next day. It gave the world an empty feel, a feeling I still think about sometimes.

 

And so we toured, barely planning, drifting, two drifters off to see the world, hopping from island to island.

 

One day we had set up camp and began to explore a small island we'd settled on, when we came across an enormous house, a billionaire's mansion, far too big for the island we were on, like a real house where a dolls house should be.

 

We knocked, because we were wild-eyed adventurers and explorers, and also because the house meant it must be a privately owned island, which meant we should ask permission to camp there. We might also be able to blag a can of Coke, as, let's face it, they were billionaires, they must be able to spare a can of Coke.

 

No answer came.

 

"No-one here," Sarah said. 

 

"Billionaires, they probably own fifty islands around the world with a house like this on all of them,they probably only come here once every few years, if at all."

 

"Let's go in."

 

"Should we?" I said.

 

Instead of replying she tried the door. It was locked. Undaunted, she lifted doormats, nearby flowerpots and a gnome in search of a key. She found it, under the gnome.

 

She looked at me as if to say 'Shall we?'. I shrugged, as if to say 'why not'. Words, you don't need 'em when you're young.

 

"Hello," she called out. We could hear her word echoing around the empty house. No response. No nothing.

 

We crept in, awkwardly, it was a huge house, a mansion, with an enormous stair towering in front of us. We found rooms, an enormous lounge, with a selection of comfortable chairs, sofas, all with a view to die for. 

 

The house was enormous. Upstairs we counted no less than thirty bedrooms, one for every night of the month.

 

We had supper in the kitchen, we didn't want to be caught eating in the lounge or dining room, if we were caught by the owners we could say we were just borrowing the stove.

 

Afterwards I said we should return to our tent.

 

"That seems a bit silly," Sarah said. "After all, we've got thirty beds going free. It'll be nice to sleep in a proper bed."

 

"What if we're caught?" I said.

 

"We won't be. Even if the owner returns in the night, which frankly seems unlikely, we've a one in thirty chance of their using the same bedroom."

 

We chose a double room in the upper floor. An en suite room, who knew such things were possible. The bed was huge, soft and springy. We made love as many times as we could manage, loving the luxury, loving the bounce.

 

We slept late, like babies unwilling to leave the cosy comfort of the womb. We left the room cautiously, half expecting to find the owners back, but the abandoned house remained abandoned.

 

We ate breakfast at the kitchen table,  packed up our tent, and left. That was the rule. Different island every day. No matter how comfy the bed. We put the key back under the gnome as we left. Apart from the obviously-romped-in bed we left no other sign of our having been there. We were like ghosts. Ghosts who enjoyed fucking messily and wildly.

 

We continued island hopping for another month. The summer lasted forever, as they do when you're young and in love.

 

"We should go back to the mansion," Sarah said as our last day approached. "Get another night in a proper bed before our holiday ends."

 

We sailed back to the island the next morning, moored our boat in the same place and set off to find the house.

 

"It's not there," Sarah said, and sure enough it was nowhere to be seen.  It wasn't that the house had been knocked down, or dismantled, in the place where the house should have been were grass, trees, bushes, ferns and flora that had been there for decades.

 

"This is the place," I said, incredulous. "This is the footpath to the cliff." We walked the path and sure enough there it was, but where was the house?

 

"It must be further down the coast," I said. We walked on, ended up touring the entire island, but there was no sign of the house.

 

"It's more likely that we're both misremembered than the house has disappeared into thin air," Sarah said. "Maybe it was never there at all. Maybe it was just a dream."

 

We pitched our tent in the same spot as we'd pitched it a month previously. This time we had no choice but to sleep in it. The last night of our holiday.

 

Even eternal three-month-holidays end. It was time to return to study. It was time to split. Sarah had got a place in Durham University. I was at Cardiff. Different ends of the universe.

 

We saw each other when we could. We wrote and phoned every day.  Every weekend one of us would visit the other. For a few weeks at least. Then one day she just wasn't there. Her phone number no longer worked. Nobody at her halls of residence admitted to knowing her.

 

I phoned her parents. Worried that something terrible had happened. I spoke to her mum. "She asked me not to give you her new number," she said. "She said you'd understand."

 

Understand? I don't understand at all. "But she's okay?" I said.

 

"She's fine. She just doesn't want to see you. I'm sorry."

 

Sorry. So was I.

 

Our love had seemed as eternal as stone, as fixed and founded as a house. Then one day it just wasn't there. Maybe I misremembered the whole thing, maybe it was never there at all. Maybe it was just a dream.