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I'll be here when you're ready. Welcome back to Nightfalls. The bed time show of classic and original stories designed to guide you into a calm and peaceful sleep. I'm Jeffrey, and I've just been out for the most gorgeous walk with our so, it's quite
hot and humid here today, but I suspect it's nowhere near as hot as where we're heading tonight. Let's go back to the easier waters and lush green forests of the Caribbean island of Nivas, where Catherine and Sam have eased into a simple and wonderful life together. But there's so much Catherine doesn't know about him still, like where does he disappear
to when he takes off for the day? So Catherine takes it into her own hands, to uncover the secrets of this man she's fallen in love with, relax, get comfy, and let's begin. Caribbean islands such as Nivas have worked their magic on visitors for hundreds of years. It is hard to visit places covered in palm trees, fringeed by white sand beaches and
turquoise seas, and not feel as if your life has been blessed in some way.
Catherine and felt the magic of the island from the first moment she arrived.
She knew, and she trailed her hand in the sea from the little boat that carried her across the narrows from St. Kits to patiently waiting Nivas, head in the clouds. She knew that she had found somewhere special, and where she was meant to be.
“The fact is, she still felt the same pool every time she made the crossing between the”
islands, and every morning when she woke, and looked out at her tumbling green view that reached to the sea.
But that early magic had always been tinged with something like regret, for having made that
trip to the island, to her new home, all by herself. Now she had Sam, and her world was complete. They still spent time taming the garden together, weaving boog and villia back to where it should be, and easing honey suckle, and jasmine to the perfect places, so their sense filled the night hair on the veranda.
“But now, Catherine's walks through the jungles, the pathways woven with intertwined”
tree roots, were not alone.
She had someone to head to the beach with, to float in the sea with, to dive for sand
dollars, and watch his fish dressed in colors, not even seen in her glorious garden, played hide and seek behind the gently waving fans of corals. They often went out on Sam's boat, heading to New Coves and coroners you couldn't reach from the land. There were private places, barely larger than there are two beach towels, and surrounded
by jagged black rocks that hit them from the rest of the world.
“They found the places the turtles hid from the swell of the waves, and lay with them in”
the warm waters. One evening Sam took her to the beach, and they watched the light of the moon as turtles dragged themselves slowly, heavily up the sand to the waiting dunes, digging holes, and laying eggs before heading back to sea. They were there too, when the eggs hatched, and Catherine watched her hearts in her mouth
as hundreds of tiny turtles battled their way across the beach, and into the gentle midnight wash. They were headed home in that same determined way she had originally arrived at the island, following something deep inside, that drew them to where they must be. Sam had become a part of Catherine's everyday life as if he'd been there forever, slipping
into her mornings and afternoons and evenings. He knew everything about her, and for a while, this was enough. Till she realized that she had been so wrapped up in the way he loved her, that she had laughed little space for finding out about him. She knew that he sailed, because she went with him.
She knew that everyone on the island seemed to know him, and like him, for everywhere they went, they were greeted with kindness and smiles. She knew that every few days he would disappear for some hours, returning with a fresh pile of shards, and the stubble swept from his face.
She took to disappearing for longer and longer, and one evening he never returned.
Catherine stood in the garden at midnight, remembering how she had been drawn by that slow, steady swish of the machete in the dark, and how she had found him there, bringing the garden back to life. For some reason, she didn't want to ask more about him. Not directly, there was a spell that she didn't want to break.
So, the next time, a few days later, when he kissed her softly on the lips, a...
a promise that he would return soon, she let him get to the end of the driveway, before
“she dashed to her pink jeep, and leapt inside.”
Following someone on nervous, without being seen is tricky. This isn't an island where the car is piled up in a New York style traffic jam. Following someone on nervous, without being seen in a pink jeep, is almost impossible. She almost felt the sunlight dancing off the shining paintwork, pointing around as if to say to Sam, "Here, here she is, she's following you."
But the roads he took were full of twists and turns, and she seemed to always catch a glimpse
of him, disappearing around a corner, just as she came around her. The massive plants clearly showed the gates at the end of his driveway, had been open for some time.
“Catherine parked the pink jeep and walked slowly, cautiously up the winding drive, standing”
behind the trunks of flamboyance that dripped red petals onto the green grass, and then dashing across to palm trees.
Once the house slowly rose into view, she saw that it was one of the old mills, rescued
from ruin, and transformed into a home that stood firm, and strong against the prevailing winds. Drawing closer, she saw how the outbuilding had been rescued too, with dark green shutters waiting to block out any storms, and dark green doors, so strong, they looked as if they could hold back an army.
Looking at the sea, the other sea, the wild one, for her home was on the Caribbean facing side of the island, and his was on the Atlantic. She realized you could see no other rooftops from here, no roads, no evidence of human life at all. Even the roads she had followed had disappeared into the jungle of trees, her pink jeep
completely hidden. The door of the mill itself stood open, and she walked in, looking at the kitchen that had been perfectly rounded to fit the curving walls of the building. Sam's keys and phone lay on the table in the middle of the room. His head, presumably once hung on the back of a chair, had fallen to the floor, and out
of habit she picked it up, and placed it beside the other things on the table. A staircase leaned against one of the walls, and up she went, into a sitting room where again the sofa's curved companionably against the wall. The windows all round were divided into four neat pains of glass by a crisscross of white wood, and light seemed to pour in from all sides.
She went up to the next floor, stamping as softly as she could on the wooden staircase, and this time found the bedroom. A four poster bed draped with soft white muslin curtains stood in the center, sheets thrown back, and tangled in a massive pale blue and white. Spinnered footsteps from the floor above, and Sam's low voice, as if he were talking quietly
on the phone, or perhaps mumbling to himself.
“That I said given away no secret, there was no sign of anyone but Sam here.”
That onwards she went to find him standing in front of a huge canvas, paintbrush in hand, stepping forwards, and sweeping it in broad strokes to at a moment to see your sky. He grinned at her and winked, "I've been waiting for you to follow me for a month," he said,
"with a laugh in his voice.
Sam's secret was out.
“He was a painter, obliged on rare occasions to leave the island, in order to head to the glitz”
and glamour of New York and London, and Paris galleries, dragged by his publicist and
paraded for the press. He'd been planning to tell her soon enough. But only because he was due to disappear the following week, and he thought she might just notice his absence. He showed her the outhouses, throwing open those solid doors and revealing gallery after
gallery, his paintings capturing everything that made nevis magical.
The final room he seemed almost reluctant to show her, fighting with himself at the doorway,
“but in the end he shrugged his shoulders and threw open that door too.”
There was their life in a gallery. The view from her veranda, as it was when she arrived, and there, on the other side of the room, as it was now. She looked at the tangled mass, and her mind went back to those early silent days working side by side with Darren, his deafness, and her longing for peace, the perfect companions.
And here was a darker painting, the thousand greens and dreads and pinks of her garden, replaced
with muted silhouettes, and in the center stood two people, hand in hand, lit by the moon beams and the starlight as they gazed towards the distant sea.
“Another showed them leaning back against that sun-wormed boulder on the top of the peak,”
and another had her diving from his boat, her fingers just breaking the surface of the sea. He asked if she minded, and she borrowed her head into his neck. None of the other paintings had shown any people. They were all sweeping seascapes and skies, and tangled jungles, and breadfruits, jostling alongside mangoes, and donkeys peering around corners.
They were the island she had learned to love, before she had met Sam. But this gallery was the island she knew after he had found her. This room was everything. He wanted to take them with him to Paris, and he wanted to take her to, of course, but at the last minute she found she couldn't leave.
She knew he wanted the world to know her the way he did, but suddenly she was shy and afraid of abandoning everything she had come to know. The garden, she said, the garden would be impossible if she left it for a week. They both knew it was an excuse, but he let her have it. Looking back at her, over the dancing water, as he had to cross the narrowed.
When your days have, for so long, been consumed by a single person, then it's hard to know what to do with them. Catherine went back to her swimming, and star-gazing, but something was missing now. She joined a group of ladies on a hike to the waterfalls one day, rising early, and getting to the start just as the sun was considering joining them.
They chatted about this and that, and Catherine tried to be entrusted in a tennis game on Saturday, and a brunch meet-up on Sunday, but it all felt like filling in time, and just waiting for when Sam would be back. But she went to the tennis, and surprised herself by enjoying it, and on Sunday, she turned up for the brunch, and she laughed with the others as she sipped her orange juice in
champagne, and ate the lobster fresh from the ocean.
She didn't join the conversation so much as to listen to it, an enthusiastic ...
from the sidelines.
“Later that evening, thinking back over everything she'd heard while she sat on the veranda,”
her feet, swishing this way in that in the coolness of the pool. She made a decision. It was to be a full moon that night, so it was the perfect opportunity. The world synchronizing in such a ways to confirm her idea as the perfect choice. She waited until after ten o'clock, until the only signs were the locusts and the frogs
and the breezes and the trees, and then she climbed into her little pink jeep and disappeared down the side of the mountain.
She was looking for a house she'd never been to before, but one that had been talked
about that morning at brunch.
“Mrs. Lily lived quite alone, and had done so for some years now.”
She was one of those women who fought against the inevitabilities of age, refusing to give in to aching bones and pushing herself to be as much a part of the world as she could for as long as she could. Mrs. Lily had seemed to have tripped some weeks ago and had a badly broken ankle. While friends had taken it upon themselves to deliver both food and company, nobody had
thought to help her with the garden.
Mrs. Lily was by no means a wealthy woman. She had come to the Caribbean decades ago with her husband, searching for a quieter and simpler life and finding it among the mangoes and the monkeys.
“Mrs. Lily had used her skills as a seamstress to make a way of life there, becoming the”
go-to person for anyone who wanted the latest fashions, but didn't want to leave the island. She had used one of the old singer machines sat out on her porch, pushing the paddle up and down with her foot, and sliding the richly patterned materials through the needle that dance and flashed in the sunlight. Even though her work was now so slow that by the time she had created, the trend had passed,
but people still went to her for dresses to be let in and let out, for both to be added and sashes removed. Her garden was small, but beautiful, something for her to look at while she sold, and from
which she had always drawn inspiration when daring to design something herself.
For the last few weeks while she had been barely able to move, the garden had started to turn itself back into something of a jungle, a tangle of vines and leaves that were becoming so knotted that plants were disappearing by the day. The children found the house, a single story wouldn't home surrounded by a white painted picket fence.
It was a charming cottage, exuding warmth and happiness, and kindness. Catherine pushed open the latch of the gate, and silently let herself in, placing her tools carefully on the ground. Dreambeams reached into all corners of the garden and lit the way for her, and she worked slowly and steadily, unwrapping vine from vine and retrieving flame ginger, and delicate
yellow and white frangey-pangey flowers from increasingly hidden corners. It was after her fourth night in the garden that Catherine over her to conversation at the market one morning. If you heard, Catherine leaned in and listened, picking up a pair of pineapples and seeming to compare them intently, Mrs. Lily's garden is tidying itself up for her.
Catherine heard the snort from the other lady, and smiled to herself. "I've got, and my dear can't tidy itself up now, can it? Be sensible, Doris." Doris was clearly not going to be ignored.
"It's true," she said.
Each day Mrs. Lily wakes up and the garden is a little more unraveled.
“She says it must be the spirit of the island, I think so too.”
The other lady said she'd never heard such nonsense, and of course spirits didn't exist,
and there must be a perfectly rational explanation. After another few nights of working, the garden was just as it should be again, and it was perfect timing, for Sam was coming home the next day. Catherine played the tricks people always play when they're expecting someone. Working out how soon he might be there, but then convincing herself that, no, flights would
be delayed, and baggage take forever to be found, and tax is full, and he would miss the little boat that worked its way back and forth across the narrows. All the while, secretly hoping that he would get there a little earlier, and she would be back by side, a little sooner.
He was the first off the boat.
He was the first to walk down the dock. He pushed past the porters, and the driver's waiting for the tourists, and found his way to Catherine, lifting her up, and twirling her round, and round, before standing with her at arms length, and looking at every part of her face, searching the familiar lines. The show would be in a success, until it sold all, but one of his paintings.
“Their story was out there and I, shared with the world, but still a secret, for nobody”
had more than one painting, and nobody knew the connections between all the images. And Sam had placed a red dot and one particular painting before the gallery had even opened to the public, making sure that nobody could buy the image of two people, silhouetted in a garden, and lit only by the moonlight. That painting was for them, and would be back on the island soon, ready to be hung in her
bedroom, so it would be the last thing she saw at night, and the first thing she saw in the morning. Sam had been home for a few days when he heard the rumors of the spirits, and Mrs. Lily's garden.
“A group had determined to gather together, and had done their at midnight, to see for”
themselves who had transformed the garden from a knotted tangle into a beautiful paradise once more. As Sam told Catherine, he raised an eyebrow at her, an unspoken question, and she said, "It sounded wonderful, and they should go too," looking steadfastly at him, and refusing to acknowledge the question of that single raised eyebrow.
And so they joined the group late at night, at the end of the lane, that led to Mrs. Lily's cottage. They whispered in hushed tones, all of them agreeing to approach as silently as they could, so it was not to disturb whoever might be there.
Doris chattered excitedly about the spirits of the island, and how she had always known
they were there, and this was finally her chance to see them. And other lady's exchanged glances over her head, but smiled kindly to her face. Four dozen people must have gathered to head down the lane that evening, Sam and Catherine hung back, and in hand, following the others as they stepped carefully in the dark. As they rounded the final bend, the gasped, and put their hands to their mouths, just as
the others had done. For there was the cottage, with the sewing machine sitting peacefully on the porch, and the rocking chair alongside it, with a boot waiting for the morning, and a garden lit by thousands upon thousands of fireflies that darted and dashed and dive and danced.
The fireflies threw light into all corners of the little garden, and seemed a...
brushing against the leaves and vines and flowers that folded and wrestled gently in the warm
“breeze. Doris broke the silence, whispering, "I knew the spirits of being here. I just knew it."”
And the lady who had chided her in the market, put her arm around the other woman's shoulder.
Sam turned to Catherine and held her face softly in his hands, and I knew you were magic,
the first time I saw you. The fireflies danced a little harder, and the moon beams shone
a little brighter, and the secret stayed unspoken, and where it belonged, with the spirits of
“the island, and the magic that is everywhere in the world. All you have to do is look.”
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