The Quiet Sea

ENTRY TWO

It's amazing how loud the world is with no humans to disturb it. I thought that people create noise, but they are nothing compared to the ocean. People have to sleep eventually, but the lap-lap-lap of waves never ceases throughout the night, an unending rhythm that seems to me to gain in strength during the hours of deepest darkness.

As it was, I got little sleep last night with this dissonant melody playing in my ears. With time, I'm sure I'll grow accustomed to it, but I found myself grateful this morning when the seagulls' chorus drowned out the voice of the water. No, it isn't a pretty sound, but at least their squawks are made by living throats.

I left most of the unpacking for this morning, as by the time we had hauled my luggage up the path, most of the light was gone. The cottage smells damp. Though the granite of its walls will probably outlast me and my descendants, there is an air of decay that lingers in its two rooms, as if it knows, as I do, that I am likely the last person to ever stay here.

The other cottages on this island are completely uninhabitable. Although they have only been abandoned for a generation, the two I saw while walking up from the beach are in a state of ruin that could easily describe the passing of a century as that of a couple of decades. I know the locals salvaged what they could of roofs and interiors before they left, even stripping some of the stone, though the act of relocation couldn't have been much easier than starting from scratch. Plant life has devoured what is left of their carcasses, enclosing them in a hedge of thorns I'm happy enough to leave be. There's something about those empty windows that's quite alarming – or at least it seemed that way last evening, helped by the growing twilight and my own trepidation for the first night.

The owner of my cottage didn't leave. She clung on here as the well dried up and the last of her starving neighbours gave up on picking limpets from rocks when the salty earth refused to yield a crop. Some crossed to join their families on sister islands; others abandoned the archipelago entirely and headed for the mainland. I'm indebted to her, for she has kept this cottage in good repair, but now even she has been forced out, age finally beating her into submission where the pleas of her children and grandchildren failed. When I leave, this island will be utterly abandoned, with only the birds and the rats for company.

Mrs Andrews, as she helped me with my bags yesterday, said that they tried to keep cattle here in the early years of depopulation. They might still roam the two hills if someone hadn't overlooked a weakness in the fencing, allowing the cattle to escape their enclosure. The poor, dumb things tried to cross the channel at low tide. Mrs Andrews says most of them drowned, and since then, no one has attempted to bring more across.

I told her it was a shame they had not tried again; a herd of livestock would go a long way to keeping this undergrowth in check. Still, a part of me was disquieted by her story. With a history like that, perhaps the island wishes to be alone. And where does that leave me?

It leaves me with too much time spent on imaginings, that's what! I should get to unpacking so I can begin my work, or else this whole trip will have been for naught.

I do hope I sleep better tonight. I fear exhaustion has me unsettled – even fearful.