A Journey To Hell Island

I’ve been in one or two fixes in my time, all through no fault of my own, but nothing quite prepared me for life on the island.

I was just twenty-one years old and feeling adventurous. So I set off to explore the world. Talk about an innocent abroad.

I had just got back from hitch-hiking through France and Switzerland, where I came far too close to being shot in the back by a Swiss border guard by inadvertently illegally crossing the border.

It is no fun having an SG550 assault rifle poked in between your shoulder blades by a man trained to kill I can tell you.

Two hours later, after having all my belongings gone through and a Swiss finger un-sympathetically inserted up my anus poking around for drugs, I was out of there.

In the end, I was frog-marched outside and ordered to re-cross the border back into France, have my passport checked, and then re-enter Switzerland legally.

Amazingly this was all achieved by the simple expedient of crossing a white centreline down the middle of the road. There was more to come on that trip, but this is about the island.

I can’t tell you the exact location of the island, because although all this happened over forty years ago, there could still be consequences.

Apart from the authorities, there are those involved to think about. And those kinds of people don’t mess about, even if they do manage to make old bones. Those kinds of people hold more grudges than lonely high court judges.

In the end, I felt like that guy in the novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps. I got caught up in something which resulted in two distinctly different groups out to get me. Neither group had good intentions for me, I knew that much. And all I was guilty of was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Having been born and brought up on an island, all be it quite a big island called the United Kingdom, I am used to a certain type of closed-minded mentality. However, it seems to me that the smaller the island the more concentrated is what can be quite crippling and debilitating closed-mindedness.

This is the sort of mental or psychologically twisted thinking that says it’s okay to have sex with your sister, or any female in your own family, even if it produces offspring.

And it also seems to give the green light to all sorts of other dark and weird stuff, like thick and threatening plots to kill folk. If I had known all of this beforehand I would never have gone there in the first place.

Then I would never have had to run for my life and spend many years looking over my shoulder. As they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Looking back now I can see a lot clearer how easy it is to get innocently sucked into something dark and dangerous. To do so and live to tell the tale from a safe distance in both time and place, well this is sometimes a rare stroke of luck not afforded to all who find themselves in a similar position of vulnerability. You live and learn, if you’re lucky, I suppose.

The big bright yellow Sea King helicopter that was to take me to my biggest nightmare gently rose as the noise of the whooping and whooshing propellor seemed to get noisier and yet quieter at one and the same time.

The pilot slowly drifted us over the adjacent railway line just as a train came into the station a few hundred yards further on. It felt like we might have barely missed a train carriage roof by no more than a foot or two. For me, it was a close call that I would later see as a forewarning of what was to come. But for now, I was on my way to what I hoped would be a new adventure for all the right reasons.

Down below I could see the crashing waves of the sea as they moved inexorably towards the shore. The time would come when I would wish it would wash me away forever, but for now, I was enjoying myself. And within thirty-five minutes we were safely coming in to land on the main island. From there a thirty-five-minute sea crossing in a small boat would take me to the island from hell. There were no warning signs to be seen anywhere to warn me of the impending doom and gloom that was to befall me. I simply went along with the ride. There should have been a sign that read something like “ Abandon All Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”

Chapter Two

The boat trip across from the main island, St. Antoinette, to what I would come to call Hell Island, was uneventful.

The boat belonged to a family of boatmen who had served the needs of the island for decades.

If it wasn’t picking up passengers to transfer to one of the other islands, it was out on a trip to the lighthouse where holidaymakers could see oily seals strewn out across the jagged sea-washed rocks.

Sometimes the boat was used by the police on the main island to carry out surprise raids on the neighboring island pubs and bars to make sure that they were observing the law in terms of opening hours.

This was something of a waste of time since the boatman the police hired would immediately alert the pub owners he was on his way with the men in blue. By the time the police got there the pub was empty and closed

Onboard with me for the short run across the channel that ran between the islands, were a small group of no more than half a dozen other passengers. The sea was as turbulent as it could be which was prescient of matters to come. Fortunately, I've never suffered from seasickness, though one or two of my fellow passengers looked a little queasy.

The boatman piloting us was accompanied by somebody who appeared to be a friend. They chatted the whole way, totally oblivious to the rest of us. There was a guy wearing working overalls and carrying a soft tool sack bulging with tools. Some big wrenches poked out of the top of the sack.

Then there was a very pretty, fair-haired, independent-looking backpacker with her head buried in some sort of travel guide. And there was yet another worker only this time without tools. He had a rude boozer's complexion and a permanently fixed smile, suggesting he didn’t have a care in the world. How little did I know at the time that the two workers would be dead within the next 24 hours? Even less did I know that I was seemingly next on the list to die!

The boat slowly crept up to the wooden jetty under half throttle and bumped gently against some big old rubber tires. The barman’s friend leaped out and secured the boat to the pier with an old, well-used rope.

Up on the pier stood a heavily bearded local farmhand who used a mini tractor and trailer for a taxi service. The island had no roads to speak of and so no cars. When it wasn’t hauling hay the tractor transferred passengers from the pier to either the local nearby inn or the five-star hotel on the other side of the island.

There was only one other person on the pier and he stood out for two reasons. One he was incredibly well dressed in an expensive-looking Italian suit and tie, with Gucci shoes to match and Rayban sunglasses. He looked a million dollars, and who knows, maybe he was worth a million too. And as I edged past him I detected the distinct aroma of bitter almonds. It was not what I would call an attractive aroma.

It looked like this guy was waiting for somebody unknown to him to climb out of the boat. He seemed to be eyeing all of us as we walked along the short pier towards him. When everybody had passed him he simply turned heel and slowly followed us onto dry land. He was trying to appear not to look at us and doing a very poor job of it.

After that, I just made my way to the inn where I was due to start work as a barman cum cellarman. As I stopped to enter the inn for the first time I looked back only to see Mr. Bitter Almonds standing at a distance of a few hundred yards watching me. He had stopped just stopped where the pier was attached to terra firma. I paid it no mind and turned to push on the entrance door to the inn. And there blocking me was a heavily suntanned, brawny, handsome, giant of a man with a healthy shock of blond hair who would turn out to be my savior.

“ Hi, are you our new barman? Welcome.” Kell said as he thrust out a giant reassuring paw to shake my hand. “ Stash your bag and I’ll show you around the island a little.” The next time I held that hand it was to literally save my life.

A split second later I got a very strong smell of bitter almonds wafting over my shoulder from behind. I turned to look, but all I could see was shrubbery. I gazed down the misty, leafy lane and noticed that the well-dressed man had vanished into thin air in the space of one or two seconds.

Kell looked at me concerned. “ Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I just…….err, it was nothing, just a little sea breeze I guess. Let’s go.” And inside we went. I was entering a little part of Hell Island that was to become a safe haven, at least for the next twenty-four hours, maybe a little more if I got lucky.”