The Immigration Problem

It was 6.30 a.m. when I was woken by a hammering on my door.

I quickly dressed and shouted for Alun to come in. He was clearly agitated and refused to sit while I made us both coffee.

“I’ve just got a letter from the council,” he said (in the summer the boat brings the mail at 6.20 a.m. and Alun always gets up early to meet it).

“Here,” he said, passing it to me, “read it. Not all of it, just this paragraph.”

It read: “Due to the population problem we face here on the mainland, it has been decided that Happy Island should accommodate an additional inhabitant.”

“A third person, Jed,” Alun said, “they want to cram three people onto our little island. We just don’t have the facilities. Where will they live?”

“Well,” I said, “I suppose they’ll move into the empty house.”

“Yes, but think of the extra traffic from the mainland, the drain on food resources and medical services. The council just impose a 50% increase in the island’s population and they don’t even bother to consult us. If only we’d won the referendum.”

The referendum was still a source of tension between us. We had had the chance to become our own separate island state, independent from mainland council control, but we needed more than half the population to vote in support of the change. It was a close run thing: one vote for independence and one spoilt ballot. We had seventeen recounts, but the result was unchanged. Both of us insisted we had voted legitimately and blamed the other. Alun had spent an entire month ignoring me, which is quite an achievement on an island this small.

After a hasty coffee Alun departed in a foul mood, threatening to write a letter to the council. However, he left it too late, that afternoon there was a knock on my door. I could tell straight away that it wasn’t Alun, as the door didn’t shake as if it was about to rattle free from its hinges.

“Hello,” I asked, “who’s that?”

A young woman opened the door. “Hi,” she said, “my name is Sue; I’m your new neighbour. I live on the south side of the island.”

“I‘m Jed,” I said, “you must have moved into the empty house.”

“It’s not empty now,” she said, laughing. Alun isn’t going to like this, I thought to myself, he hates people who laugh. It’s the main reason he left the mainland. I didn’t mention this to Sue, it was better she found out the hard way.

“Can I get you a cup of tea?” I said, behaving like a good neighbour. “Do you want to borrow a cup of sugar or something? I’m afraid the only milk we have is geep’s milk.”

“Geep’s milk? What’s that?”

“A geep is a cross between a sheep and a goat. They only exist on this island. The milk’s really nice actually.”

“I’ll take some geep's milk then, if you can spare it, but that’s not why I called. I’m inviting the whole island to dinner tonight.”

“The whole island?” I said, surprised, “Have you met Alun?”

“I’m going round there now, what’s he like?”

I was lost for words. “He’s okay,” I said eventually.

“I’ll see you later then, about 7.30? Thanks for the geep’s milk.”

The meal was an unexpected success. Sue had caught and cooked some Happy Island crabs. “Isn’t it great,” she said, “I can walk a few steps down from my house to the shore, stick a bucket in the ocean and in no time at all I’ve caught myself a crab supper. It’s not like that on the mainland.”

As an accompaniment to the crab, she had persuaded Alun to contribute a selection of veg from his prize-winning vegetable garden (my own garden always came second). Alun had even dressed up in a clean T-shirt and brought a bottle of his cabbage wine.

“This is very good,” I said, referring to the crab not the wine. “Neither of us cooks very often.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, “we can do this on a regular basis. After all, we’re the only neighbours we have.”

This statement stirred Alun to business. “I’ll be frank with you Sue,” he said, “I’ve nothing against you personally, but I’m not happy having an extra person on the island. It’s not big enough for three people. I’m going to be writing to the council about it and don’t want you to think I’m going behind your back.”

She smiled at him, her teeth glinting in the candlelight. White teeth were something of a rarity on the island, most of Alun’s are black and I have worn dentures since my fight with the tooth fairy when I was eleven.

“I’ve some bad news for you in that case,” she said, “it’s going to be four people soon. I’m pregnant.” She patted her tummy, just in case Alun or I didn’t understand what the word pregnant meant - mainlanders often make out we’re backward like that.

“In which case I shall be raising that with the council as well,” Alun said, “the island’s maternity services will be stretched to the limit. However, while you’re here don’t hesitate to call on me, think of me as a friend.”

This was amazing. Alun had never asked me to call him a friend in the thirty years I’d known him.

The nights at Sue’s became a regular thing, she was a good cook and it made sense to pool resources. Alun never heard back from the council but he never took it further. I had expected him to appeal to the uber-council like he had over the dog kennels. (The council insisted we had to have dog kennels, even though neither of us owned dogs. I keep my bike in mine now).

Sue grew even more pregnant and Alun started running antenatal classes. Alun is the island’s doctor, but as I’m never ill and he refuses to treat himself, his practice had become somewhat run down. I didn’t join in the classes, as I was busy finishing my latest novel. I write New York murder mysteries.

“New York must be amazing”, Sue had said when I told her my profession, “it’s my dream to go there.”

“I don’t know what it’s like,” I confessed, “I’ve never been further than the mainland. I did almost go to Edinburgh once, but I was waylaid.”

“How can you write about a place you’ve never been to?”

“Shakespeare wrote about Venice,” I said, “and he never left Warwickshire, and Madonna sang ‘Like a Virgin’. It’s all about imagination, letting your mind run free. Plus I get a lot of ideas watching CSI.”

Sue is a journalist and started writing about everything that happens on the island in her blog. Her blog has a following way beyond the island, several thousand people, it‘s amazing what people will read. She confessed to me that her real ambition is to write a novel. She feels “Inspired by being this close to nature.” She on the south side of the island, which is right next to nature.

The summer passed. Sue grew bigger, as did my novel. I could almost smell the royalty check. Sorry, I mean royalty cheque; you pick up bad habits when you write in a foreign language.

“I’ve spoken to the council,” Sue said one morning, as she was milking my geep, “I asked if we can have another vote on becoming independent. They were fine about it, so the referendum’s happening on Thursday.”

Alun was delighted at the news and started a campaign in support of a Yes vote. Every morning he’d knock on my door asking me to help canvas voters, which meant going down to Sue’s house with the morning papers, having a cup of tea and discussing the Campaign Strategy.

We were truly in a state of election fever by the time Thursday came around. The mainland Mayor himself came over, along with a council official, to oversee the voting process. This time we won. There were two votes in favour and one spoilt ballot. A convincing majority that more than justified our hard-fought campaign.

The Mayor handed over an official-looking piece of paper to Alun and Sue cut a ribbon. This was history in the making; we were now officially on our own, the independent nation state of Happy Island. Sue chose that momentous moment to begin her contractions.

We had planned to take Sue to the hospital on the mainland, but on that particular Thursday afternoon the sea had suddenly worked itself into such an angry foam that we decided to deliver the baby ourselves. It was a true statement of the island’s newfound independence, though the Mayor and council official did help out.

I say deliver the baby, it turned out to be twins, two little boys. Jed and Alun she called them, “Named after my friends,” she said. It’s going to lead to awful confusion at some point, but we were both flattered nonetheless.

Amazingly the island seems to have coped with the 150% population increase. Alun complains that his practice has never been busier, but I tell him that one patient every three months is still manageable. With the extra income Sue brings in we’ve never been so well off, we can even afford beer and whisky instead of Alun’s cabbage wine.

Sue’s pregnant again now. None of us has any idea how; she’s not even been to the mainland. However, here on Happy Island we're not fazed by miraculous conceptions, we're hoping for girls this time.