The white flag

Source: an original fiction extract.

From the ferry, the island looked deserted. The hotel windows were shuttered, the landing stage was empty and a white flag hung without movement beside the boat shed. Finn lifted his camera. He had come to photograph the last inhabited house on the island for the local paper. The editor wanted a picture of isolation: one person, a wide sea, perhaps a gull if one appeared in the right place. Finn had already imagined the frame. He waited until the ferry's railing slipped out of view and took the photograph.

At the landing, a woman in orange waterproof trousers caught the rope. She asked whether he was the photographer and told him to follow the path past the shed. Finn asked about the flag. 'You'll see,' she said. He walked uphill, hearing only his shoes and the occasional clatter of a loose shutter. Behind a wall, something metallic rang twice. He paused, but the sound stopped. The path turned towards a small house with washing pegged along its porch. There were six pairs of boots beside the door.

Inside, people filled the kitchen. Two were chopping vegetables; another was reading a shopping list aloud. A boy sat beneath the table repairing the wheel of a toy truck. The woman from the landing introduced her father, who lived there throughout the year. The others had arrived to help repair the jetty. Finn lowered his camera. The room was too crowded for the photograph he had planned. The old man asked whether he wanted tea and moved a pile of gloves off a chair before Finn could answer.

They explained the flag over lunch. White meant that visitors should come to the house; blue meant that the owner was working on the far side of the island. It saved people walking to the wrong place. Finn asked what happened when nobody visited. The old man shrugged and said he usually had plenty to do. Then he described waiting for a boat that had not arrived during a storm. Nobody interrupted him. Through the window, Finn could see the empty hotel and the grey stretch of water beyond it. For a moment the crowded room seemed less permanent.

In the afternoon, he photographed the old man holding one end of a timber beam while the others carried the weight along the jetty. He took another picture from the ferry as it left. The flag was still white, and the hotel still empty, but people stood close together on the landing. Back at his desk, Finn placed the two distant photographs side by side. Neither was false. He sent the editor the picture of the beam, with a caption naming everyone whose hands were visible.

Consider the whole source. Analyse how the writer structures the text to challenge and complicate Finn’s first impression of the island. You could consider shifts in viewpoint and setting, the order of revelations and the ending. Support your explanation with references to the source.