Extract from "All the Treasures we Can Have," by Ruth Thomas. Forthcoming in The Book of Iona: an Anthology, edited by Robert Crawford. (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016)
There was something funny about going to an island. The only island she’d ever been to (unless you counted St Michaels’ Mount) was a place called Sifnos, off the Greek coast. She’d gone there with her parents the previous summer.
‘Wasn’t it lovely, that time in Sifnos?’ her mother would sigh sometimes, and Catherine would try to recall what had been lovely about it. All she could remember was an algae-bright raised swimming pool, a lot of heat and hills and whitewashed buildings, and a man called Theophilus who’d kept bringing them pomegranates. He’d just kept turning up with them and leaving them in a basket outside their apartment door. This strange gift. They hadn’t known what to do with them, and in the end her father had put them all in a bag weighed down with stones and thrown them into the sea.
‘But we could have let them float away like little boats!’ Catherine had protested, standing beside him on the gritty beach.
‘Yes, but they weren’t little boats, Catherine, they were fucking fruit!’ her father had said, striding empty-handed back up to their apartment.
‘But what about Theofferlus? Won’t he be sad?’
‘I don’t give a monkey’s about Theophilus’
This summer they were going to an island again - a place called Iona. It sounded quite Greek but it wasn’t, it was in Scotland. It was, her mother said, going to be nothing like Greece.
*
Catherine’s best friend at school was called Fiona, coincidentally, and you pronounced her name to rhyme with Iona. That was quite funny too. Although Catherine had always known it was pronounced oddly - even before they’d met - because that was what Fiona’s mother yelled as she walked her children up to school.
Paul!
Kevin!
Mary!
Steven!
Fie-oh-nah! Fie-oh-nah!
The Walshes always set off ages before they needed to, and you could hear them coming a mile off.
‘Oh, it’s Mrs Walsh: it must be twenty past eight,’ Catherine’s father would joke: he made that joke a lot. And then after a couple of minutes you would see them all progressing past the window: this little line of Walshes, pressed tight up against the verge to keep safe from the cars. Mrs Walsh, squat and overweight, walked at the back of the line, and every few seconds she would open her mouth and bellow her children’s names into the air.
Paul!
Mary!
Steven!
Kevin!
Fie-oh-nah! Fie-oh-nah!
‘Wasn’t it lovely, that time in Sifnos?’ her mother would sigh sometimes, and Catherine would try to recall what had been lovely about it. All she could remember was an algae-bright raised swimming pool, a lot of heat and hills and whitewashed buildings, and a man called Theophilus who’d kept bringing them pomegranates. He’d just kept turning up with them and leaving them in a basket outside their apartment door. This strange gift. They hadn’t known what to do with them, and in the end her father had put them all in a bag weighed down with stones and thrown them into the sea.
‘But we could have let them float away like little boats!’ Catherine had protested, standing beside him on the gritty beach.
‘Yes, but they weren’t little boats, Catherine, they were fucking fruit!’ her father had said, striding empty-handed back up to their apartment.
‘But what about Theofferlus? Won’t he be sad?’
‘I don’t give a monkey’s about Theophilus’
This summer they were going to an island again - a place called Iona. It sounded quite Greek but it wasn’t, it was in Scotland. It was, her mother said, going to be nothing like Greece.
*
Catherine’s best friend at school was called Fiona, coincidentally, and you pronounced her name to rhyme with Iona. That was quite funny too. Although Catherine had always known it was pronounced oddly - even before they’d met - because that was what Fiona’s mother yelled as she walked her children up to school.
Paul!
Kevin!
Mary!
Steven!
Fie-oh-nah! Fie-oh-nah!
The Walshes always set off ages before they needed to, and you could hear them coming a mile off.
‘Oh, it’s Mrs Walsh: it must be twenty past eight,’ Catherine’s father would joke: he made that joke a lot. And then after a couple of minutes you would see them all progressing past the window: this little line of Walshes, pressed tight up against the verge to keep safe from the cars. Mrs Walsh, squat and overweight, walked at the back of the line, and every few seconds she would open her mouth and bellow her children’s names into the air.
Paul!
Mary!
Steven!
Kevin!
Fie-oh-nah! Fie-oh-nah!