A Distant Shore (36 page)
I like to lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. Particularly at night. Of course, days in this place never really begin. There’s no routine. There’s nothing that you have to do, except take your tablets and your hot milk and behave. A piano would help. Especially now that the years of discord between the keys has been resolved, and I’m once more able to make them speak easily to each other. I’m lucky because the patterns of music that Sheila helped me to discover remain firmly stitched together, as I knew they would. But there’s no piano. There’s no routine. The unit, as they like to call it when they’re being official, is supposed to be a place that’s different from out there. A retreat. Somewhere where you can lick your wounds and gather some strength before going back to the world. A place where you can learn to remember, and therefore understand your life. But what use is that now? They say they’re protecting us. In here, time doesn’t matter. At night they allow me to leave the curtains open and I watch the shadows of the trees making strange shapes against my wall. I know that this is not Weston. Or Stoneleigh. There is no viaduct in the distance. My heart remains a desert, but I tried. I had a feeling that Solomon understood me. This is not my home, and until they accept this, then I will be as purposefully silent as a bird in flight. Sometime before dawn, as light begins to bleed slowly through the night sky, I will ease myself out of this bed and proceed to put on my day face.
Caryl Phillips
A DISTANT SHORE
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies. Brought up in England, he has written for television, radio, theater, and film. He is the author of three books of nonfiction,
The European
Tribe
,
The Atlantic Sound
, and
A New World Order
, and six novels,
The Final Passage
,
A State of Independence
,
Higher Ground
,
Cambridge
,
Crossing the River
, and
The Nature of Blood
, and has edited two anthologies,
Extravagant Strangers
and
The Right Set.
His awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Phillips lives in New York.
INTERNATIONAL
ALSO BY CARYL PHILLIPS
FICTION
The Final Passage
A State of Independence
Higher Ground
Cambridge
Crossing the River
The Nature of Blood
NONFICTION
The European Tribe
The Atlantic Sound
A New World Order
ANTHOLOGIES
Extravagant Strangers
The Right Set
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MARCH 2005
Copyright
©
2003 by Caryl Phillips
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Phillips, Caryl.
A distant shore / Caryl Phillips.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
1. Africans—England—Fiction. 2. Marginality, Social—Fiction. 3. Retired
teachers—Fiction. 4. Illegal aliens—Fiction. 5. Watchmen—Fiction.
6. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9275.S263 P4729 2003b
823’.914—dc22
2004296247
eISBN: 978-0-307-42432-7
v3.0