“You know,” I said as we shook hands, “it’s deuced hard tobelieve this island of yours is real.”
Le Marinel,as if to consider this cocked his head to one side, like a thoughtful bird thistime. I had been but one week on theisland, having come to look after the practice of a doctor friend, an oldfellow student, who needed a change. Theduty so far had been almost a sinecure, although I was, in fact, then meetingthe avocat to report on a patient about whose condition he was anxious.
“You mean,” hesaid at length, “that it looks the sort of place where nothing happens.”
This timethe side-long glance he gave me was more than ever bird-like.
“That’strue; it does look like that; but it’snot what I meant. What I meant was thatfor an island in the Channel less than ninety miles from England it has toomany incredible differences; it looks in fact almost Oriental.”
The avocatseemed mystified.
“Oriental?” herepeated, with a rising inflection.
“More like abit of Tunis or Algiers,” I affirmed.
“Why look, forinstance, at this very road, so long and narrow, stretching between those highblank walls, with invisible houses and hidden people behind them, I suppose. And look at those tall palm trees which seemto be peering over the walls as if stretching their necks, watching forsomething to happen in this deserted alley. Look at those shadows too, sharply cut as if by a knife in thisbrilliant white, un-English sunlight; and look at the colour, is that notEastern?”
I indicatedthe end of the tunnel-like Rue Galette along which we were now walking, for atthe far end, framed like a picture by the tall shadowed, one caught a glimpseof an incredibly blue sea, on the horizon of which another island was justdiscernible, 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.
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