Arrival at the Island (2) – Retrospective (2)

The contents of the envelope were a surprise, several surprises really. The main thing was an offer of a job for Medinger and Litvenyenko. He had needed to review the amount they offering him several times before he convinced himself that he had understood it correctly. They were offering him almost twice what he had been expecting, and they said that “for practical reasons” they would provide him with accommodation and food while he was on the island. They had also included railway and bus tickets and travelling instructions. This was extraordinary. They seemed extraordinarily keen to have him, and he still felt that he didn’t understand exactly what it was they wanted him to do, except that “he had demonstrated his suitability”.

One reservation he had about the whole thing was the remoteness of the work location. He had looked up Eilean Banrigh first in an atlas, he hadn’t found it, and then on Google which had found it, but confirmed that it was remote. If it was necessary for him to work there, then he could understand why they felt that they needed to provide accommodation.

The other reservation was that he needed to depart the day after tomorrow. Not much time to set things in order for several weeks away from home. Still, the pay being offered was extremely good and he had nothing to tie himself to where he was living, not even a pet cat!

So, after a long railway journey to Glasgow, and a long coach trip he had arrived at a tiny village post-office cum shop. His instructions had said that he was to ask at the shop about a transfer to the ferry, and to say that the shop was to charge it to the Medinger account. He had been surprised when the shopkeeper had asked him to wait and had then delegated his wife, a taciturn little woman, to drive him over a mile through the sand dunes and coarse grasses to “the ferry terminal”. The ferry terminal turned out to be a car park and a shelter in the middle of nowhere. His driver had told him that he had half-an-hour to wait for the ferry and had suggested that he use the tearoom, which had been built with the intention of “fleecing the tourists”.

 (Part of the “Tyson” project: 1st February 2017 – 385 words)