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"That was my last night, that was. I'd got to be back at the bank
on Monday morning. When I looked at those two great rocks sticking
out of the water, with the moon above them, and all the little lights of
the fishermen in their boats catching cuttle-fish, all so peaceful and
beautiful, I said to myself, well, after all, why should I go back? It
wasn't as if I had anyone dependent on me. My wife had died of
bronchial pneumonia four years before and the kid went to live with
her grandmother, my wife's mother. She was an old fool, she didn't
look after the kid properly and she got blood-poisoning, they
amputated her leg, but they couldn't save her and she died, poor little
thing."
"How terrible," I said.
"Yes, I was cut up at the time, though of course not so much as
if the kid had been living with me, but I dare say it was a mercy. Not
much chance for a girl with only one leg. I was sorry about my wife
too. We got on very well together. Though I don't know if it would
have continued. She was the sort of woman who was always
bothering about what other people'd think. She didn't like travelling.
Eastbourne was her idea of a holiday. D'you know, I'd never crossed
the Channel till after her death."
"But I suppose you've got other relations, haven't you? "
"None. I was an only child. My father had a brother, but he
went to Australia before I was born. I don't think anyone could easily
be more alone in the world than I am. There wasn't any reason I could
see why I shouldn't do exactly what I wanted. I was thirty-four at that
time."
He had told me he had been on the island for fifteen years. That
would make him forty-nine. Just about the age I should have given
him.
"I'd been working since I was seventeen. All I had to look
forward to was doing the same old thing day after day till I retired on
my pension. I said to myself, is it worth it? What's wrong with
chucking it all up and spending the rest of my life down here? It was
the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. But I'd had a business training,
I was cautious by nature. 'No,' I said, 'I won't be carried away like
this, I'll go to-morrow like I said I would and think it over. Perhaps
when I get back to London I'll think quite differently.' Damned fool,
wasn't I? I lost a whole year that way."
"You didn't change your mind, then? "