THE ISLAND OF REFLECTION

Le Savoir, René Magritte. 1961 (Sotheby, 2023)

To Jorge Llobet-Guerrero

My father has a peculiar way of using language when he speaks. His essays are forensically precise and erudite, but his verbal expression is always peppered with the most unexpected turns of phrases. My friends used to find him amusing, even funny, and other times, totally baffling. His metaphors as well as his swearing are out of the ordinary.

On one occasion, I heard him raging about a female colleague referring to her as a ‘fantastic slut’, and by that he didn’t mean that she was terrific in bed, no. He meant that she was a true slut. A big one. On another occasion, my mother told me that while discussing music at a dinner party, he described himself as enamoured of Russian classical music down to his last spermatozoon…

So, when I turned up at the farm last Friday evening -yes, he’d become a farmer after a lifetime as an academic, a scholar, hopeless at anything too practical, but oddly enough, he was good at managing finances and when he inherited Poplars Farm from Grandad, instead of selling up, he decided to hang his gown and run it. To say that it was a shocking decision to us all, would be an understatement. Even by my father’s standards, giving up on academia defied all belief and it took mother a week to see that he really meant to go ahead with his plan. On the Sunday following his momentous announcement, she served him his customary grapefruit juice, his fried eggs on toast and a cup of Earl Grey and told him that she wanted a divorce. Without laying his toast back on his plate, he asked her why, to which she simply replied Why do you think?

Dad was lost for words, which if you knew him, you’d find it hard to imagine. Besides, Professor Hines, I would never EVER in my worst nightmares see myself wearing a pair of flaming wellies. It was Dad himself who told us of this marital exchange, and given his records with words, we took it as gospel. Oh, but I digress.

As I was saying, when I turned up that evening, my brother came up to meet me, standing on a somewhat firmer patch of ground, across puddles on the muddy driveway and before we had time to greet each other, Dad materialised from behind the barn, announcing that he had just bought an island. Just like that. An island. It was a hyperbolic statement to say the least, but it was above all the tone he used that made my brother and I think that he had indeed purchased something like Moustique, or the Isle of Skye or… Needless to explain that our assumption was unsustainable. We were not rich, but Dad was unpredictable.

‘I’ll tell you all about it in the morning, but let’s get a cup of tea and see if Sandra can get us some supper. Good trip?’, he asked at last.

He was not going to ask about Mum, but I knew that by “trip” he meant How is your mother? Is she enjoying herself? or something to that effect. The fact is that after visiting her and seeing how she leads her life now, I cannot help feeling grateful for all those years she stayed at home with us, for us, when she must have longed for something completely different. I didn’t say that to her, though. Our family is not very good at expressing feelings.

‘Trip was great, thanks. Florence is a living masterpiece’

‘Surely, you could think of something more original to say’.

‘’course I could. I just thought you would like the succinct version’

My father looked at me from the corner of his eye and I detected the hint of a smile as we walked into the kitchen and straight up to the range to put the kettle on. He took off his waxed jacket and hung it on the hook behind the door, but I kept my coat on for a few minutes until I got warm. He made a pot of tea. We sat down. We chatted. We laughed. Sandra came up from the larder, wiping her hands on her apron smiling the minute she saw me. She is only in her forties, but a perfect home-maker if there ever was one. I told her I would help her with dinner and tell her all about Florence and she gave me a hug.

My brother, the only practical one in the family, came back in followed by Greg, the farm hand, dripping icy water onto the flagstones after helping a sow which had got a leg tangled up in a string of barbed wire. They commented on how the poor animal was so stressed that she kept rolling one way and the other, making it hard to sort her out. Both Greg and Virgil were covered in mud as well as soaked to the bone, their faces reddened by the cold, their hands aching with the strain. Luckily, there was plenty of hot tea.

‘Thanks very much, Greg. Go and have a hot bath now and we’ll all eat here tonight. Your Sandra is cooking us something finger-licking good’, Dad said.

‘I’ll do the same myself. Don’t tell Dad anything about Italy until I’m back’, Virgil told me and disappeared, his long hair tipped with rain water, his shoulders broader than last time I’d seen him.

When we were left on our own, I asked Dad again about the island, but he just stopped me and said ‘All in good time, my shrew (I told you he had a way with words). I don’t want to fuck the whole thing up. I shall tell you tomorrow once I get the whole thing done’

The next morning, I went down for breakfast still in my dressing gown, anxious to hear about Moustique or Iona or…

‘Buongiorno, ragazza’. Virgil said without turning from his frying pan. If there is one thing I miss since becoming a vegan is bacon… and sausages… and prosciutto. Might rethink my stance in the matter.

‘The deed is done!’, Dad burst into the kitchen, his mane of white hair dishevelled by the strong gale, his eyes sparkling with excitement. He throws the car’s keys onto the table, pulls out a chair and sits down on its edge, ready to deliver his good news. He’s always been boisterous, exaggerated in his movements. I remember how Mum used to go mad every morning she overheard him dragging the chairs on the tile floor instead of lifting them or when he unlocked and opened the front door and shut it again with a bang, when just unlocking it would have been enough… All those minor habits that make or break a marriage in the long run. It is not the different political or religious alliances that spark arguments and animosity; it is the daily irritating gestures that poison a relationship by dint of repetition and accumulation.

‘Can’t you just tell us instead of creating this suspense?’ Virgil asked, serving us the fried eggs with their crispy whites and lace-like edges. When he caught my eye, he rolled his upwards and in the direction of Dad.

‘Ok, ok, don’t break my kumquats’. That’s another one of Dad’s frequent expressions meaning ‘Don’t drive me mad’, or something ruder, but you get the picture. It is a long time ago since we have all given up trying to understand how on earth can he come up with such phrases.

‘Thing is… I’ve just shaken hands with Jack Curridge over the purchase of his piece of land with the pond and the island that it’s on our southeast border’, Dad finally tells us.

Virgil rests his elbows on the table and buries his head in his hands. I feel like laughing. ‘Are you saying that you spent money you don’t have and kept us thinking you’d bought.’

‘What do you mean “money you don’t have”? I do have money and I spend it as I see fit, thank you, my shrew. Nevertheless, I bought it because I want to show both something important’

Virgil looks up in disbelief. ‘You bought that marshy field just to show us something important? You’re scaring us, Father, are you feeling alright? You talk of the island when it’s no more than…’

‘Fifty yards long by thirty-three at its widest point, I know, BUT we’ll call it The Island of Reflection, let’s see why’.

Dad stretched out to grab the pen and block lying at one end of the worktop and drew what was supposed to be the shape of the field, pond and island included. ‘Anywhere here or here or here’ he made three crosses with his pen, ‘you, Virgil, are going to build four steps up and four steps down. Any style you wish. Classic Greek, Venetian Baroque, Gothic… whatever…’

By now, Virgil looked as if he was about to call the men in white coats, but Dad raised his right hand in a gesture to stop any interruption.

‘Hang on, hang on, hear me out. You, Dido, are going to install -or get someone to do it for you- a door frame and a door. Again, whatever style you like. Actually, there are some Magrittes that could inspire you, AND… the third feature will be a toilet’

It was me who interrupted now and told him that this time he really had lost the plot and was driving us round the bend along with him.

‘Is there such lack of imagination in your scarce grey matter that neither of you asks what I want you to do this for?

‘Ok. WHAT FOR?’ Virgil and I asked at the same time, struggling to stay calm.

‘Ha, that’s better. First, the steps… I want you to build them in order to remind you that in life, we may go up as easily as we may go down’, there he made a theatrical pause to give us time to absorb the message and we kept quiet, neither of us betraying any sign of recognition for what was starting to sound deep and wise.

‘Second’, he continued, ‘the door… so that you remember that in life, we never know whether we are coming or going’.

Virgil relaxed his shoulders and shook his head ‘You can’t be this fucking clever, father’.

‘One minute ago, I was a loony’, Dad chuckled

‘Wait. How about the toilet?’, I asked, already feeling stupid.

‘Why do you think?’

‘Just so we don’t forget that kings and pawns, gods and devils... all need one’ Virgil answered for me.