Letters from Blackwell Island Pt. 03

I returned my attention back to the words - I wanted to at least get a couple of thousand words down before lunchtime. The rest of the afternoon I'd planned on getting everything set up for our big celebratory barbecue. We'd invited everyone I had interviewed during the first year of our stay, so it was a good job that Marea and Jackson's garden was plenty big enough to accommodate everyone!

Our sponsors obviously loved hosting people, so it came as no surprise that when I'd finally set aside my laptop and made a start on getting everything ready for our big bash, that when I entered Marea's kitchen both she and Lisa, as well as Aiden's new wife Merryanne, were busily preparing some of the many side dishes for that evening's feasting. It was a fifty-fifty mix of traditional Pã'ele food and more recognisable European dishes - one thing that could be counted on of course, was that all of them would be utterly divine.

Likewise, Jackson and Aiden were busily setting up two of the biggest barbecue grills I'd ever seen. It took me a moment to notice that they were made up of old oil barrels cut in half and filled with charcoal, topped with a grill made up of steel mesh -- there would no cheating with any gas-fired nonsense here! Beside the two grills, several folding tables had been set up and were already groaning under the weight of steaks, burgers, sausages, chicken wings and drumsticks, pork, lamb, loads of freshly caught fish and even several lobsters, all ready and waiting to be grilled. It would be nothing less than a feast that even Henry VIII himself would've taken a second look at!

"Methinks that might be more than enough sustenance to feed a battalion of a hundred stout yeomen!"

Marea and Jackson both assured me that everything was in hand, so I found myself being assigned to drinks duty, and once Niamh returned from her trip into town we set about setting up a bar area, with crates of bottled beer, boxes of wine, a selection of spirits and of course soft drinks for younger guests and non-drinkers. I shuddered to think of how much all of it cost, but both Jackson and Marea assured me that they would be more than happy to pay for the lion's share of it all. They were generous almost to a fault, but I soon discovered that this sense of generosity was deeply ingrained into Pã'ele culture. If the first islanders hadn't shared out their catches from the sea and the forests caught by the menfolk, and the nuts and fruits foraged by the womenfolk, then the community as a whole would not have thrived.

"I hope himself over there realises how lucky he is to be living here in such an amazingly beautiful place," Niamh said to me, nodding in the direction of her brother as he helped Jackson load up the first of the barbecue grills with charcoal.

"It took him a while, but I think he does now," I answered as I helped set up the bar.

"Enough to want to stay here longer with you, obviously!" my sister in law chuckled. "Sure, he looks so happy I could even see the big eejit wanting to spend the rest of his life here!"

"Yeah, well so would I, but that would come with, well, a bit of an obligation on his part," I replied with a sigh. "And I don't think he'd be willing to do it. I mean, yes he's come a long way from that conservative Irish Catholic upbringing, but I reckon there's only so far he can be pushed."

"You're gonna have to fill me in here, Allie," Niamh said, clearly sounding a little confused. "What do you mean, an obligation on his part? What the feck's that all about?"

I sighed, realising that I had inadvertently slipped out something I'd kept bottled up for the past couple of months. Well, perhaps it would be good to get an outsider's opinion, so in a hushed tone so that I wouldn't be overheard by the boys nearby, I filled her in.

"Jaysus, you mean he'd have to get three women pregnant?" Niamh gasped once I finished explaining how the island's immigration service demanded that any new settlers seeking permanent residency on the island had to first make a contribution to the population's gene pool - a rule that only applied to male applicants. In contrast, women seeking permanent resident status merely had to stay on the island for a minimum of five years before they could apply.

"So he'd have to like, y'know, do the old wank into a cup routine, huh?" Niamh asked me to explain a little further. "Sure I can't see how he'd have a problem with that, if he was serious about staying here with you."

"Well, maybe, but it's not quite as simple as that," I went on, and then took a deep breath and just came out with it. "He'd have to actually have sex with them."

"Ho-oly feck! Did I just hear that correctly?" Niamh exclaimed in astonishment.

"The island's hospital doesn't have a fertility department - so any form of IVF is out of the question, and artificial insemination isn't really something the Pã'ele people believe in either. I guess it's just regarded as unnatural to them," I explained. "Plus, I guess going through things the, ahem, natural way, shows the island's immigration department that a man is serious about committing to stay here.

"So, as you can imagine, Patrick would never agree to it, so I'm just going to have to enjoy the time we have here, and when our time is up here we'll just have to pack up and head back to England. Or maybe Ireland -- we could settle in some nice little village down in County Cork to be nearer your family. Or maybe out on the west coast somewhere. Galway, perhaps. Either way, never in a million years would he voluntarily have sex with one other woman, let alone three."

"What if I, y'know, had a word with him?" Niamh suggested, evidently picking up on my downcast tone of voice.

"Huh! Like that'd do any good whatsoever!" I huffed dismissively. "But I do appreciate the offer, Niamh. No, the only thing I can do is put it to him myself and wait for him to rule it out altogether. Or maybe get Toby to speak to him about it."

"Toby?" Niamh queried.

"A friend of ours here," I explained. "Toby and his wife Angela came here from England just like us, and they decided to make the island their permanent home. Which of course means that Toby's been in the same position Patrick would be in, and faced the exact same dilemma."

"Perhaps," Niamh mused aloud. "But if you want my advice for what it's worth, I'd say nothing to him, for the time being at least."

"Wouldn't that just be delaying the inevitable?" I asked her.

"Well, look at it this way," Niamh answered. "You want him to stay here with you, right? And you would happily live here forever, yeah? Well I think the best thing to do would be to let him fall as head over heels in love with this place as you have, so that when the time comes and you both look into applying for permanent residency, he would literally do anything to stay here with you."

Well, I have to hand it to her, it was a reasonably logical suggestion. I knew that despite having spent an entire year here with me, having only gone back to wearing clothes for a short interlude over Christmas and New Year, a time when he confessed to me that wearing clothes once more felt a little unnatural and constricting, Patrick was still lagging behind me as far as committing the rest of our lives to this place. Perhaps it really would be best to just say nothing and let him come around to falling for this unique island as much as I had fallen for it - he was around ninety percent there already.

He just needed to let go of the last of his inhibitions and do what the immigration department demanded of him. If Toby, from his Jewish background could do it, then I was sure a good Catholic boy like Patrick could be persuaded in time too. And so in that moment I reached a decision, to not mention it at all and just let us both "accidentally" discover the immigration department's unusual covenant when we apply for permanent resident status, hopefully by which time he would do anything to stay.

Wishful thinking, perhaps, but I now knew it was the best and only approach to take. Besides, there wasn't much time to dwell upon the issue much longer - the first of our guests for the evening had arrived.

* * * * * *

The smoky aroma of barbecue wafted around on the cool evening breeze whilst a large throng of people, naked adults who stood around in small groups chatting and drinking whilst fully clothed kids gleefully ran around playing in the garden, gathered to help us celebrate our first anniversary as Blackwell Islanders. It was wonderful to celebrate with all the friends we'd made over the past year, plus quite a few more whom Marea and Jackson had invited along, and it was nice to catch up with those whom we hadn't seen for a while.

Mrs. Opuni, the island's high priestess, had given the feast a formal blessing in the name of the island's goddess Haumea, and I was pleased to see that even old Thomas had come along. I had to smile when I saw the attractive young man accompanying him - the wily old fox had clearly snagged himself a toy-boy! Of course, I simply couldn't resist taking a peek at the handsome young fellow's equipment, and I can confidently report that he was very nicely endowed indeed. I also took a quick appraising glance at his bare behind too, and noticed no tattoos of any kind, so it was clear that Thomas's guest was a tourist.

After an hour or so, and just before the food was ready to go, I felt it was about time that I said a few words. I managed to get everyone's attention, minus the children who were still busily playing hide and seek, and started by first raising a glass to thank Marea and her family for helping us to put on that evening's soiree.

"As most of you know, the reason we have asked you all to join us here is that today marks a year to the day since my husband and I first arrived here on Blackwell Island," I began. "I can safely say for both of us, that the past twelve months have been the most wonderful time we have ever known. If you'd have told me about this place before my editor at Estelle told me about it, and that I would get to spend an entire year here living among you all completely naked, I would have probably told you to stop sniffing whatever mad hallucinogenic you were sniffing!"

That elicited a collective chuckle from the gathering, and once it died down I continued.

"Also, if you'd have told me back then that we'd have made dozens of new friends, I would also have told you to stop pulling my leg. Today was originally meant to be a rather downbeat occasion, as it was supposed to be our last day here before moving back to England. But, as I'm sure many of you know by now following my appearance on the radio a while back, our stay on the island has been extended, so we'll be with you here for at least the next five years. Which also means that I'm going to need your help. So, if any of you have any good ideas or suggestions for something that would be a good subject for an upcoming edition of Letters From Blackwell Island, well, you all know where you can find me!

"Patrick and I have come not just to enjoy living here, but to absolutely love it - living like this, as naked as the day we were born, in this tropical paradise has been like finding ourselves in some exclave of heaven in the middle of the vast ocean. Like being a million miles from the cares of the rest of the world. When I first saw the island as we flew in from Honolulu, I compared it to a nugget of green malachite in a sea of sea of sapphires and diamonds. I know now, after spending so much time on this nugget of green malachite, and having swam in that sea of sapphires and diamonds, that this island is far more precious than any of those gemstones."

That particular, rather poetic statement (if I do say so myself), elicited a smattering of applause from all our friends and acquaintances.

"So, what else does one do at the end of a speech like this but raise a toast," I went on, wrapping things up because it was clear that the food was ready, and like everyone else I was ready to get stuck in to the delicious fare. "To Marea and Jackson and her family for being our hosts during our stay here, to all our new friends, and most of all, to Blackwell Island! Or should I say, to Ka Aina o ke Kuʻikahi!"

"Ka Aina o ke Kuʻikahi!" everyone chorused in response, and all raised their glasses in unison.

It had taken me a year, but finally I had learned to say the island's name in the Pã'ele people's tongue!

"Anyway, I'm sure you've all had enough of me waffling on whilst the smell of all this amazing food is wafting around on the breeze," I added. "So, friends and fellow islanders, let's get stuck in!"

"Now I can definitely drink to that!" I heard Toby chuckle from nearby.

* * * * * *

And so, dear readers, that's all there is to say for the time being - the end of our first year on Blackwell Island. It had been perhaps the most valuable learning experience I'd ever had, and I was sure that over the next five years of our extended stay, there would be plenty more yet.

Of course, there still loomed the issue of how to approach the thorny issue of how to break the unusual condition imposed on Patrick to secure his permanent residency, assuming that like me he wanted to make the island our "forever home", but I had one thousand, eight hundred and sixty five days to do my best to convince him.

But of course, that could wait until day three hundred and sixty six of our island adventure.

Well, that's all from Allie, Patrick and the rest of the residents of Blackwell Island for the time being -- I really hope you've enjoyed reading their exploits so far. I'm definitely not done with the place yet, so hopefully in the not too distant future I'll get on with writing "More Letters From Blackwell Island".

Please leave a comment below (always appreciated) and be sure to check out some of my other stories.

Peace and love!