Out of nothing

By the time of the  funeral of Lady Edgeworth-Box, everyone who knew her had formulated their own fanciful theory as to the cause of her death. There were too many accounts to approach anything like a general consensus, but both the stable boy (confusingly named "gardiner") and the Vicar claimed that her death was the direct result of a malicious curse place on Lady Edgeworth-Box in the course of her archaeological travels. A similar opinion held that she had contracted a rare tropical disease as a result of coming into contact with a berry from a thought-to-be extinct jungle flower. Lady Wellesley was telling all and sundry how she had seen some preoccupied Russians on the island recently, and whether anybody thought that might bear some relation to the unfortunate turn of events, especially given plutonium-9 or whatever it was that she had read about in the news some time ago. Nevertheless, Palmerston-Napier insisted that his dear sister had merely died of asphyxiation brought about by blocked windpipe, the silly thing having choked on her porridge, and of course because she hadnt heeded his protestations at her putting nutmeg and cinnamon on her breakfast which of course aggravated her  delicate English constitution.

In this way the day proceeded not so much out of sorrow, but with a spirit of mystery and gossip. All the townsfolk using the opportunity to glean whatever information they could, each having a profound sense of certainty that it had fallen on only themself to solve this riddle.

There was one exception it must be said. Lord Wellesley really hadn't the time for such speculative exercises. Rather, he realised that he had misplaced (one might even say lost) the charter papers for the Double Cuneiform Club, without which he would be unable to ratify the club constitution and most likely resulting in thier disqualification from the Auxiliary Arcadian League. Should this happen not only Wellesley would be beside himself, as the club belonged to the members like a family heirloom, such as in the case of Lord Wellesley, membership going back at least 7 generations in the house of Windfroth. "Oh well, something will turn up" he decided, and funnily enough shortly after something did. Gazing out of the car window on the way back from the funeral, Lord Wellesley noticed a strange mound protruding about 100 ft out to sea. "I say, Harriet, I'm not sure I've noticed the strange mound before today." At which point Lady Wellesley burst into inconsolable sobs, completely misunderstanding her husbands words, having not brought her glasses with her. 

Island Pop

To talk of the pirate is to talk of the Zone. And before the Special Economic Zone, there was the Entrepot. Take for instance the great Sulu Sea, and the story of how it was integrated into the world economy, in conjunction with a counter-trade with nearby China. While, such amazing tropical goods were traded that even the birds nest and sea cucumber became sought after commodities (read: would be fun to make), expanding production gave rise to a new slave trade. At the time of conquest, the sea was home to many indigenous communities, many of whom belonged to the Sultanate of Sulu, and who for 400 years have fought subsequent rulers in an ongoing claim for autonomy. To the Spanish colonisers, these muslim pirates seemed all alike, so they called them the Moros, just like the Moors they had at home.

The Moro are famed for the Kris and the the Barong. This motif was taken up by the miltant islamic faction of the Moro, terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, who take thier name from the Arabic ابو, abu ("father of") and sayyaf ("swordsmith"). In a recent war, on the second front (out of sight and out of mind),  this faction of Moro militant insurgents faced the well known multi-pronged strategy, called "Clear–Hold– Consolidate–Develop" and were forced to flee into the mountainous terrain of Jolo island.  

There is a modern aphorism, not dissimilar from those of the past:  "where the road ends, terrorism starts."  Perhaps that's why some people are always so eager to build roads everywhere. To every man there are spaces that appear blank, either (seemingly) on a map or within themselves, and perhaps it all comes down to how one chooses to deal with those blank spaces. 

Boils

Lady Edgeworth-Box made her way back to the house, where her brother was busy drawing faces on the boiled eggs he had lined up in front of him.
'Good lord, Edith, you look frightful! Where is your sense of decency coming to breakfast in your hunting breeches?'
The black slime was pooling at her feet and ants began crawling out of the cracks in the floor boards and feeding at her toes.
'Honestly, dudday would have been quite ashamed to she you, letting yourself go like this. And where, pray tell, is my newspaper? You know I simply cannot eat breakfast without the Observer and the Times.'
A few of Lady Edgeworth-Box's teeth fell from her mouth when she tried to speak and bounced onto the floorboards. There seemed to be some sort of corrosive acid eating at her skin and she could only manage glottal choking sounds as her throat filled with fluid.
'You see here Edith, I have an idea to solve the China problem. See, I've drawn big darkie-poo lips on these eggs and horrid slanted eyes on these to demonstrate. The plain egg represents your standard Englishman. See how many of these darky and chinky poo's there are and there's only one of ours, and in this breakfast, the white egg doesnt have a sporting chance when dropped in a pot of boiling water as it muddy's into a brown and yellow goop. My solution is to let the yellow eggs rule the brown ones and then leave the pot itself in the pantry in the servants quarter and pretend it doesnt exist and be done with the entire horrid business.'
By now, Lady-Edgeworth Box was slumped over the table, face first in a bowl of porridge and the acid had almost burnt a hole through to the other side of the solid oak. A boil on the back of her head suddenly burst and a spray of blood and puss spread a fine mist across Palmerston-Napier's face.
'Edith, how could you? These are my favorite silk rocket ship pyjamas and now they're completely ruined!'

The Silver Mine

Lady Edgeworth-Box raised the hem of her skirt as she tremblingly took her first step into the mud. Her brother had mentioned the hermit that lived at the bottom of his garden for years but, until now she had never taken much notice but suddenly she realized, their father had been missing for some time now and it was time to sort out the estate and all its secrets once and for all. The first step was the worst, as her boots sank deeper into the black slime, and the darkness quickly stained her silk dress to the waist. Between the wetness, the smell and the sense that the irregularly shaped, gnarled roots she could feel beneath her feet might actually be human bones she felt a rush of scarlet behind her eyes, she held her breath, lowered herself and immersed her head in the mud. Then she stood up, dripping, her face nothing but two whites shining out from cascading layers of slime, she barely even resembled anything that could be considered human.
Modernity has a strange effect when it comes into contact with is essentially a pagan culture, it rationalizes the cruelty at his heart, blood offerings and polytheism, the forest spirits become monstrous technological forces which the hysteria of the population cannot control.

A confederacy of hermits

Palmerston-Napier awoke with a frightful headache, seemingly the price for performing his convivial duties at the Double Cuneiform the previous night.  He soon realised that he was totally mistaken, and in fact, he had been struck down with a premonition rather than a hangover. Before he had time to even boil the kettle, the doorbell had chimed and Palmerston-Napier's estranged sister, Lady Edgeworth-Box, was helping herself to his pantry, gesticulating wildly while scoffing scones with sardines, and eggs that Sir had pre-boiled.

The relationship between the brother and sister was strained. He, always the hard-headed pragmatist, despised her bleeding heart apologetics almost as much as her pointless academic waffling. He had always considered it his good fortune that she had gone abroad to study, and spared all on the island of her zeal for enlightenment. 

"Graham, dear, so marvelous to be reunited again. I cannot believe you are still living holed up on this island, you could never believe the ways it has made you into this grump that you are. Why not try living in the rice fields or the pampas for a change, it would do you the world of good, dear."

 

He grimaced. "You know very well how much I would find those things..er, delightful, but I... simply have to much to do here. What - with managing the estate and the affairs. There is a lot of turbulence as you know, and one really can't take all the economic truths for granted these days. One can't take a breather without some poor chap seeing his opportunity to dig the boot in."

"Oh Graham, you've always used that as an excuse! Oh well, I don't mind a bit! I've missed you terribly. I'll be staying for a while you see, I am writing my new book about a smuggling ring located on the island, "A confederacy of hermits" I think I'll call it. There are all sorts of mysteries to be discovered here that we must investigate. The place is simply a treasure trove."

Palmerston-Napier felt queasy. Somehow he doubted it was due to his third martini at Wellesleys.

Archipelago

From the estate, if you rode your bicycle down the row of copses to the ha-ha which divided Wellesley's (pronounced Wall-ee) land from the sheiks you could in theory climb down into the ditch on a series of steps laid out for that very purpose and cross over to the over side where there was a helipad. The helicopter would arrive at 9am Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and bring you to Tresco on the Scilly Archipelago. Once belonging to a confederation of hermits, it was now a rather desolate, windswept place though not without an air of charming parochialism. There was something about the way life was lived on these islands, a way in which daily stories were told which threw into relief the artifice of our more pedestrian narratives.

It was not a matter of content, indeed the dramas of family and claustrophobia, arguments heard from behind closed doors in darkened rooms are somewhat universal. It was more a fact that the architecture of the houses and the landscape, being so dimly lit and crushingly bright with skies so inescapably grey, did not allow for the melodramas of tears rolling down cheeks filmed in closeup.

Instead, crises and daily occurrences were viewed from a fixed vantage point, from a slight distance as figures moved in and out of ones frame of view so that, to a certain extent, the drama of the moment was neither directed or obscene, yet its weight felt all the more keenly as a result.

The characters are not the most important element of the drama, as they were constantly being framed within an unforgiving landscape which belittled them and inserted their foibles into a continuum of hierarchies between nature, culture and man.

There was a remarkable pathos and beauty in observing the everyday, whether the careful preparation of food, running up a hill with your sister, windswept picnics, afternoon drinks, kitchen conversations or riding a bike in the wind.

The remnants

Lord Wellesley, Baron of Windfroth was frightfully cross. He had spent all day waiting dutifully for the carpenter to arrive in order to fix his dining table, and the Mancunian dolt was nowhere to be found. Although the whole house was crumbling before his eyes, repair of the dining table was of great urgency to Wellesley, because that evening he was due to host the monthly meeting of the Double Cuneiform Club (a municipal chapter of the Auxiliary Arcadian League). And he still hadn't a chance to source some dip!

The carpenter was a dollop of a man, unkempt in all ways expect for the exceptionally coiffured and large Mancunian bowl-cut which adorned him like the halo of a Byzantine icon. By the time he entered with a sleepy "Ullo then" all the members of the club, save one, had arrived, and were sitting in a circle of chairs, holding small plates of dip in their lap and crackers in their pockets, that being the only way to drink wine at ease while not putting the Gobelin rug in peril. "Is that a small dog on your head?" asked Sir Palmerston-Napier, "I do say its a feat of balance."

"Excuse me gents, of course the house is a little bit shabby at this moment. But we are in the process of renovating, and you do know how cumbersome all the local council laws can be. Yes actually, Lady Wellesley is all about Feng Shui at the moment and if we do not balance the earth and water elements in the house everything is sure to turn out ghastly."

All in attendance nodded, knowing full well that Wellesley would never have the funds to finish the renovations anytime soon, if ever. Besides, it was quite the Sisyphean task really, with these old estates crumbling quicker than one could build. And it was not as if any of the others were in a different boat, inheriting a whole manner of old keepsakes that were hardly worth their while. And it was hard to keep track of them too, for all Wellesley knew his estate consisted of a Middle-Eastern hydroelectric dam.

Though if you were to listen to conversations they had, you could not really be quite sure. Perhaps it was just an old habit, but they still cared to keep an ear to the ground, or listening for the words of the mountains as you might say. 

"Here, these are sea people - that is what you must know" said Palmerston-Napier, "they know all the soothsayings to conjure spirits from the sea and implore aid from the waters. Its been the same song since the 80s, and even now nothing has changed. " Well, certainly that was the case for Sir Palmerston-Napier.

Despite the lack of surface on which to place their drinks, the evening went off without a hitch.  And as the guests were leaving -  well after midnight - Wellesley made sure to remind them of the next meeting, at which they were due to update the annual ratification of the Club Constitution and Meeting Procedures, to which there were only minor amendments proposed at this stage.