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She's reading a magazine and she sees an ad in the back. It says, writer seeks wife for year on tropical island. Welcome back to what to Carry, what to Burn. I'm Blair Braverman. I'm a writer, an adventurer, and a long distance dog sledder. And today's story is pretty different. I've actually gotten a lot of listener requests for this one. I want to give a heads up that the story has some pretty adult topics. It's not kid friendly. There's a lot about sex, and it includes some verbal and sexual abuse, although I don't and will never linger on the details of those things. Today we're going to meet two people who chose to put themselves in into a survival situation with no way out. But the survival you think you're choosing is not always the survival you end up in. Let's jump in. We meet a girl named Lucy Irvine, who was born in 1956 in a small town in England and has a really rough childhood. She has trouble at home. She escapes that by dropping out of school at age 13. And she works some pretty rough jobs to get by. She becomes a monkey keeper, like a literal monkey keeper at the zoo. And she's a topless waitress, a nude model, a house cleaner. She has some pretty traumatic experiences during this time, as you might imagine. But she keeps traveling and she has this inner restlessness. It feels almost like she's soothed by new places and by being outdoors and books. She loves reading. In her early 20s, she starts working for the IRS, which is not a job she loves. She wants to be having adventures. And one day she's reading a magazine and she sees an ad in the back. It says, writer seeks wife for year on tropical island. And wife is in quotes. This is just weird enough to pique her interest. And she calls the number and talks to a man named Gerard Kingsland, who strikes her as very glamorous. He's a professional writer. He's on assignment from a book publisher, and he's looking for a companion who wants to be dropped off on a deserted island with him for for a year so that they can live off the land and write a book about it. He's actually tried this experiment twice before, and each time he lasted less than a month. But this time he's convinced it's going to be different. About 50 different women have answered the ad, and Gerard interviews maybe 20 of them. And Lucy becomes a finalist. She's super energetic and she's upbeat on the phone. He's looking, he says, for a good Conversationalist. And. And he's also looking for someone who he thinks will make a good story for the book. She's an interesting character and he likes that she uses bigger words than he does. They meet in person. Gerard thinks Lucy is beautiful. She thinks he's old because he's 49, he's more than twice her age, and things actually get a little bit flirty. They end up hooking up, and then they're talking more about the trip and she's like, look, I'd want this to be platonic, you know, I wouldn't really be your wife, right? Like you. You said that in the ad. But that's marketing. Like, that's a gimmick for your book, right? He's like, yeah, of course. Of course you're not really going to be my wife. There is one catch, though. The uninhabited island they're going to is Australian, and in order for Lucy to get a visa to accompany Gerard, the immigration authorities say actually they do have to get married. Lucy hates this idea, but by the time she finds out, she has already sold her belongings to get ready for the trip. So she agrees to actually marry Gerard on the condition that they both know it's a technicality. They're not dating. They're not husband and wife. This is just a paper marriage. They are going to be companions on a desert island. The narrative framing for Gerard's book is that they're going to be acting Adam and Eve. The island they're going to is called Tuin. It's in the Torres Strait, which is a strip of water between Australia and New guinea. And there's about 20 islands in the strip of water that are inhabited by indigenous people there, the islanders, and then there's about 200 more that don't have any people at all. Tuin is one of those tiny islands with no people, and Gerard has gotten permission from the local islander council for them to live there. Lucy and Gerard arrive by boat in 1981 in the dry season, and the boat is just dropping them off. They won't be picked up again for a year. They have never seen Tuin before, but it's beautiful. It's only a mile long. There's palm trees and a little bit of dense jungle in the middle and swaying grasses everywhere. There's these wide gold beaches and the sand is the color of sunlight. The water around it is shallow for ages. The tide goes out so far that you get these epic sand flats. And in the deeper areas, there's rocks and coral reefs that come almost to the surface, the ocean is this unearthly turquoise. It is so colorful that it looks like glass, except when it's cloudy or the sun is setting and then it turns silver. This is a commitment. They don't have a way to call for help if they need it. They will be trapped on this island for 12 months. And so the boat leaves them and they're standing on the shore. Lucy is having so many thoughts at once. She's so excited to be here after all this buildup. There's so much she wants to do and build and explore. She wants to go fishing, she wants to map the island. She's also feeling kind of queasy about being married to Gerard. But she thinks it'll work out. Like, after all, they have the same dream, right? They're both here for the same reason. They pitch their tent at the edge of the beach and take stock of their belongings. And in this case, they have brought supplies. They have a pot, they have knives, various tools. They have food, but it's not enough to sustain them. It's basically food for like a week long camping trip, not for surviving a year. They have one bag of rice, some oatmeal, some salt, a box of tea. But the idea is that they're going to be hunting or foraging or fishing for almost everything that they eat. It's already pretty late in the day, but Lucy still wants to go fishing. She's poking around on the rocks. Gerard is like, what's the rush? We're here for a year. I'm going to bed. He goes into the tent and immediately starts cussing really loudly. It turns out that there's some mosquitoes that have gotten in the tent and they're biting his legs. And he starts scratching himself really violently. Lucy rushes in a little bit later and discovers that his hands are bloody. Like there's blood under his fingernails and he's wiping the blood off on his shirt. She's like, oh my God, what happened? What's wrong? Are you injured? He's almost got this like, swagger. He's like, oh, no, no, I fixed the problem. I just scratched off the bites. Like, I just scratched the bites off my skin so they don't, they don't itch anymore. I can handle pain. Lucy's thinking, okay, great, now you have open wounds all over your legs that might get infected. And they've only brought one course of antibiotics. But she doesn't say anything. It's still the first day. They go to bed and it's a small tent, it's a Two person tent. So they're just lying beside each other trying not to touch. At least Lucy's trying not to touch him. Now, who is Gerard? I think we should back up a moment and learn who this guy is. He describes himself as having a series of successful jobs before this island thing. He was a soldier, he was a journalist, he was a publisher, he was a wine grower. And when I say successful, I mean that his author bio that he wrote about himself literally describes him as, quote, very successful and wealthy. He is recently divorced. He has three sons whom he left behind for this experiment. His author bio does not say what he was a publisher of, but I did some digging and apparently at one point he did make a certain amount of money by starting an extremely graphic adult magazine called Curious, which you can occasionally still find copies of online with the keywords number one, hippie sex magazine, hairy Women. I also acquired a copy of his memoir from ebay. And the this has almost never happened to me before, but I actually had to stop reading for a couple reasons. The first and least important is that he writes sentences like this one about being in a bumpy boat. Quote, my insides were being shaken, not stirred. He's constantly telling us how much everyone respects and admires him and those two things, whatever. But disturbingly, he also writes extremely long, detailed, graphic descriptions of killing animals. And it is for food. One of the animals is a shark. But to me, it felt clear in reading it that he was fetishizing the killing itself. And I couldn't handle it. It was too graphic, it was too disturbing. I had to stop. I did flip through a few more pages and perhaps unsurprisingly, he then goes on to use racial slurs and brag about killing people in the Korean War. So the book just made me viscerally nauseous. I could not keep reading it. It hadn't been published at the time that Lucy met Gerard, so she wouldn't have had a chance to read it. And I think it's also safe to say that probably he could come across as charming. He was a good conversationalist, he could be witty. So in their first meetings, at the time she agreed to this, she didn't have a real picture of who she was going to be on the island with. But by their first day there, by the time they're trapped, she already has this growing unease, and now she's stuck here with him for 12 months. So she tries to just push down that discomfort and focus on the things that she finds exciting at first, things on the island Seem okay. They're getting bit by sandflies. They're trying to get coconuts, which they're both pretty bad at. So. So they're laughing and waving sticks and jumping around. And it's also so hot that neither of them are wearing many clothes, like they're both hippies. He goes naked a lot. She just wears a cloth around her waist. Right away Gerard starts calling Lucy derogatory terms. He refers to her as a pig. He calls her shithouse as his nickname for her. And also much cruder terms than that that I don't care to repeat. So just know that from this time on, pretty much every time Gerard is talking to Lucy, that's the kind of language he's using. He also starts complaining pretty much immediately that she won't sleep with him. He's calling her frigid. He's saying she's not really a woman, saying that if she won't sleep with him she's worthless. It makes her really upset. Also for. For worse or maybe for better. Gerard almost immediately starts being too uncomfortable to help with any physical tasks on the island at all. He says he has serious pain in his legs from scratching all the bug bites off and they are really swollen. So Lucy is largely left to her own devices. She gets up early and she. She'll make breakfast for them both, which is usually a cup of tea and like a quarter cup of oatmeal between them. And then Gerard will just go back to bed after he eats. And it's kind of great because Lucy can just be out doing things. She doesn't want to be thinking about Gerard or hearing the terrible things he calls her. She has island to herself. She's going for walks and she's obsessed with the plants. She finds these paper bark trees where the. The bark peels off in strips like paper, and she gathers that as tinder for the fire. And she finds passion fruit. She's super fair. So if she finds two fruits, she will always eat one and bring one back for Gerard. And when she's away from him, when she's away from the camp, she has this sense of total freedom, perhaps unshockingly because she's ended up in this situation in the first place. She doesn't have the keenest sense of self protection. So whenever she sees a new plant she'll just like eat some to see if it's good. Don't do that. But so far it's working out for her. She's also fishing a lot, all the time. And half the fishes that she catches aren't even in her guidebook. Lucy knows that some saltwater fishes are poisonous. The rule of thumb is that freshwater fish are mostly safe to eat and saltwater fish are more of a coin toss. So she develops a method which is classic Lucy, which is that she will look at a fish if she catches one and can't identify it, and she'll just sort of vibe with the fish and see if her body is telling her that she wants to eat it. The idea she has is that if something is repellent to her, it's repelling her for a reason. And if something is appealing to her, it's appealing for a reason. And this is her method of toxicity testing the fish. She's trying to tap into her instincts. It's a technique again. It's. It's a decision she's making. But her main goal really, in all this time is looking for water. Because there is a tiny freshwater spring by their camp, but it is legitimately tiny, like just dribbles of water coming out of the ground. So Lucy and Gerard, whenever he's feeling up for it, which is not very often, are. Are always looking for another spring. And they're digging wells where the ground seems damp. They're just trying to find fresh water. One day, Lucy is gone for a long time. She's exploring, she's eating weird plants. She's just having a nice time on her own. And when she gets back to the camp, it's evening and Gerard is pissed. He says he was worried about her. He's berating her. There are some really serious dangers on this island. So it's not unreasonable if you have a companion and they're gone for longer than you expect them to be gone, that you would be worried. There's sharks, there's saltwater crocodiles, There are extremely venomous snakes. And Gerard's like, it would be just like you to go get yourself killed right at the beginning of the year. Like, what am I supposed to do then? Lucy, in her mind is like, he wants me to be alive. That's a good sign, right? Like, he. He cares about me as a person. He. He doesn't want me to be eaten by a crocodile. She knows things are bad. She's tense around him, she's anxious. But she's also trying so hard to find a way to tell herself that things with Gerard might be okay. I want to step back and say a thing about abusive relationships of any kind, Whether it's a partner or a parent or the guy. You're stuck on a desert island with and you happen to marry as a technicality, it's very easy from the outside to judge the person who's in them for not responding the way that we think they should. Lucy has been through a lot in her life, starting in childhood, which means she has been developing her personal survival skills for a long time. And one of those skills, I suspect, reading about this story, is a tendency to try to smooth things over with someone who could be a threat. To try to find the best in someone and then appeal to that better self rather than fixating on everything they're doing that's wrong. Also, I think if you're the kind of woman or person who sees yourself as adventurous and or tough in general, if that's part of your identity and you're proud of those traits, there can be a shadow side of that because that pride in what you're able to tolerate and endure when it comes to relationships can keep you in an abusive situation because you're not just thinking, this is bad. You're also thinking, look, what I can handle. Lucy is tough as nails. She can handle a lot. She feels like she has two lives on this island. There's one life with Gerard in camp where he's cursing and berating her and she's just trying to make tea and keep him happy. Or she's lying beside him at night and she's keeping her arms pressed in tight so she doesn't accidentally touch him because brushing his skin at all makes her feel instantly repulsed. She just listens to the sounds of the island through the fabric of the tent walls, the waves sliding up the beach and the sound of grass in the wind. And she also has this life without Gerard where she's exploring and free and finding all this magic. She even loves the littlest moments where she climbs out of the tent to pee at night. And she sees the palm trees in the moonlight and they're casting these long shadows and the ocean around her is dark and sparkling. She's learning and she's discovering things and that feels good. Like, she figures out that certain kinds of sticks burn differently. So some burn hot and some burn slow. And the wood changes the flavor of the fish that she's smoking. And she finds these big flat stones and uses them like grills. And she figures out how to make cordage out of plants by beating the stems with a rock and letting the fibers dry and then twisting them all together. She figures out that fish bite more based on the phases of the moon. The more Lucy discovers these things, the more it feels like this island is a place she can finally belong, which is honestly the feeling that she has spent her whole life looking for. But she's also getting really hungry. Like, really hungry. They both are so hungry. She is losing weight. They're not catching enough food to get by. They have identified pretty much every single individual fruit tree on the island, and that's not enough to get them by either. Lucy describes this almost a kind of intimacy with Gerard, knowing that they have this shared obsession with food. The same feeling like their stomachs are caving in. I have to say that in reading Lucy's account of this time and also reading Gerard's, which I forced myself to go back to, I have very little sense of how much time is passing. They really. Neither of them tell us where we are in the year, but I'm guessing that this point where they're starting to get really hungry is about two months in. That's where they're really starting to starve. And every morning, Lucy gets up first and she builds up the fire and she makes breakfast. It's their only meal of the day. She uses their quarter cup of oatmeal and she has this package of dried fruit. She treats it as precious because she knows that the dried fruit has vitamin C and she really, really doesn't want to get scurvy. So each morning she'll carefully take out a little pinch of the dried fruit and she'll chop it up into tiny, tiny pieces and she'll sprinkle it over their teaspoon of oatmeal just so it's ready for Gerard when he gets up. One morning. She's doing this, and she said later it was like something came over her and she couldn't help it. She's been so hungry for weeks. I, um. She's losing weight so fast. And she reaches in with her hand into the dried fruit bag, and instead of taking her little pinch, she takes every morning, she just grabs a fistful and shoves the whole thing into her mouth. It barely fits. She's just trying to chew, and it's sweet and it's tough. And while she's trying to chew this wad of dried fruit, she hears the sound of unzipping and it's Gerard coming out of the tent. Lucy is instantly terrified he's going to find her like this. She's the one who's supposed to be disciplined. What's he going to do if he gets mad? Gerard comes out and starts talking to her about whatever. She can't even pay attention. She just Keeps her mouth closed, and she's trying to swallow this wad of dried fruit as fast as she can without him. Seeing the lump go down her throat, she manages to swallow it. He doesn't seem to have noticed. But then he asks her a question and she opens her mouth and she sees this look of recognition go over his face and realizes there's little bits of fruit skin all over her teeth. Gerard is looking at her and he gets what she calls an appalling smile, this growing smile just stretching over his face. And he says, I see you've had your breakfast. And instead of being upset, it's like he's actually glad to see her in this position, to have something to hold over her. Lucy is drenched in shame. They are legitimately in a starving position. And what she's done now, she thinks, is about the worst thing a person can do. Like she says, if she were the leader of an expedition and someone did this when they were starving, she would think they deserve to be shot. She literally writes that she feels that no punishment is enough for what she's done. Like now she has this debt to Gerard that she can never repay. She immediately says the whole second box of dried fruit is only for him. She won't have any more. There's no more. Nothing else is for her. But she still feels like it's not enough. She owes him. And Gerard is taking this grotesque satisfaction in this fact. Like he enjoys seeing her so ashamed. He's almost nicer to her afterward. He. He can be nice to her as long as he has this sense of power now. For Gerard, being nice doesn't mean that he's helping with survival tasks. Like, he still isn't building the shelter. He's promised to build the shelter since day one, and he hasn't even started. She doesn't really feel like she can bring it up. Like, mainly, Gerard is just telling stories about himself. That's what he wants to do and talk about. He talks about being a kid, and his parents were staff for a rich family. His dad was their chauffeur. So he grew up living on this estate that wasn't his, but it was still gorgeous. And he tells Lucy these stories about looking up the maid's skirts and seeing how proud everyone was when his older brother joined the military and how he wanted that same attention himself. He talks about buying a Jaguar. The car, not the animal. Although with him you never know. And he's had so many different careers. He's had that magazine. He studied mechanics. He's more interested in Telling Lucy these great things about himself than in building the shelter or carrying wood or even boiling water. He has a little hand mirror and he looks in it all the time and says things like, you know, people always tell me I look really young for my age. Lucy doesn't know what to say. Because he's saying, like, don't you agree? Don't you think I look young for my age? And frankly, no, he doesn't. He looks really bad. No one looks good on a desert island. They have wounds all over. They have bug bites, they have scratches. It's so dry that their skin is flaking off and there's this layer of dust rubbed into it that makes it look like leather. Every little fold and wrinkle in their skin looks like a deep crack. He doesn't look young. He looks 95. They both look 95. They're bony, and part of this is from starving, not having enough food, but it's also from the fact that they haven't had enough water since they arrived. Their little spring is getting drier and drier. It's getting to the point where between them, they only have a single pot of water to last them through the day. Lucy's terrified that the spring is going to dry up completely and they'll die just like that. One day she's out on the beach and she's looking out at the horizon and she sees something unusual. It looks like there's two strange birds coming toward them, these white birds. But the water and the sky are so blue that she can't tell where one turns into the other. And eventually, as the birds come closer, she sees that they're white sails. There's two catamarans with white sails coming toward them. And they look like they're going to go right past the island. Lucy starts waving her arms and jumping around, and it must work. They see her because the boats turn around and they circle back toward her. And eventually they pull up on the beach. Each one has a young man on it, these two young Australian guys. The first thing that strikes her is that they look healthy. She and Gerard are bony and their wounds are weeping. But these two men are like, tall and tan and well fed and hydrated. They jump off their boats and they come toward Lucy and they're kind of laughing and they're holding out this envelope. It turns out that they are adventurers who are doing a sort of sponsored long distance sailing trip. And someone had told them that there were castaways on an island around here. So they brought a census form For Lucy and Gerard. At this point, Gerard has been hearing the commotion, so he limps out of the tent and he's got this not great expression on his face and he seems unusually weird to Lucy, but he's acting cheerful and he tells her to start building up the fire so that she can make everyone some tea. It's late in the day and it becomes clear that these guys are thinking they'll spend the night on the island. Lucy's nervous about that. She doesn't know how Gerard's going to react. She really likes these guys, but she's self conscious being around them and Gerard at the same time. Like he's snapping at her like, go put on a shirt. And she just is afraid she's going to do the wrong thing. But the guys, whose names are Peter and Derek, start unloading tubs from their boats and it is clear that they have powdered milk and sugar and sunscreen and supplies that they are willing to share. So that gets Gerard on board. The men pull out a first aid kit and they start cleaning all the cuts and bites on Lucy and Gerard's legs. And they're talking. They're definitely flirting with Lucy. And she likes it. She's into it. She wants to stay up late talking with them. She hasn't talked to anyone but Gerard in months. And these guys are cute, she finds them attractive, but she's afraid to piss Gerard off. So even though they're inviting her to stay up and talk by the fire, she just pretends she's tired. She goes to bed early and then she lies there with her eyes closed, just wishing she were outside and feeling really weird about the whole thing. In the morning, when she gets up, Peter is already working on the rudder of his boat. Like clearly he has to do some repairs. And the guys are planning to stick it out through the day. Gerard makes a big point of lying back and putting his feet up and saying he's gonna do fuck all, he's just gonna watch them work. And Lucy feels so uncomfortable, she just tries to keep busy. So she starts gathering a bunch of firewood and the other guy, Derek, starts helping her, which is great. Like they're working way faster than if she were gathering wood alone. But it also makes her so nervous she knows she's gonna have to pay for this. Later with Gerard, Gerard starts loudly making fun of her. He's doing this performance of complaining. He's like, ugh, like you guys, you don't even know. Like this one Lucy, she drives me nuts. She's always moving around, she's always doing things. You young people are all the same. And eventually he closes his eyes and clearly is pretending to be asleep. Lucy just wants out of this situation. So she says she's going to go for a walk. And then Peter and Derek say they'll join her, which, again, like, she's happy about that, but she's also scared and feels like it's a bad idea. But once they start walking, Lucy relaxes and she starts having a great time. Like, she loves this island. This is her first chance to show people what she's discovered. Like, she shows them the trees and the fruit and the grasses that she loves. And she points out turtle eggs and shows them where she finds the eggs. And it's fun. Like, there's all these places she normally has to scramble on all fours to get over rocks. And now the men are, like, given her a hand up. And it feels sort of, you know, flirty and sweet and, you know, they like everything. Like, they're pointing at the trees and the bushes and they're saying, oh, this is so cool. Like, if we were here, we'd make a shelter out of these leaves and we would build a raft out of this. And it just seems like such a contrast to Gerard. Eventually the guys steer the conversation around and they're like, okay, what is the deal with him? Like, who is he? Are you dating? Why doesn't he do anything? Lucy tries at first to be diplomatic, but eventually it just all comes out and she tells them everything. Like, even things she has barely admitted to herself. Like, she tells them, and she doesn't even want to think about this, that she has started sleeping with a knife beside her. And she tells herself it's for crocodiles, like if somehow a crocodile came into the tent. But it's also in case she needs to protect herself from Gerard. And she feels so weird about all this because she loves the island so much. She's so happy when she's out exploring, even though she's starving. But the moment she sees him, the moment she gets back to camp, it's like dark clouds cover the sky. Like, her heart just clenches up. Peter and Derek are affirming her. They're like, yeah, this is really wrong. And more than anything else, that makes her feel guilty. Like, she feels like the fact that they agree with her, the fact that they're seeing a problem, she has said way too much. And she also feels like she has this guilt where she's like, oh, Gerard has put up with me doing terrible things, like eating that Handful of dried fruit. And now I've gone and betrayed him and I haven't been loyal. It's just another sign that she feels like she's weak. She shuts down the conversation and she makes an excuse to turn around and go back to camp and just starts walking ahead of the guys. Like she's almost angry at them for bringing out this dark side of her. The guys chase after her and catch up and they hold out some feathers and they're like, look, we're sorry we said too much, we were too pushy, we don't want to upset you. We found you some feathers for your hair. And she thinks this is really sweet. She puts the feathers in her hair and they get to a pool and Derek asks if he can carry her over it so she doesn't have to wade through. So she says yes and he picks her up and it feels really like sweet and attentive and good. But before they get back to camp, she pulls all the feathers back out of her hair because she does not want Gerard to see. They all get back and they sit around the fire. They're cross legged in the sand. And for Lucy the tension is unbearable. Gerard is being so friendly, he's chatty, she can tell it's completely fake. And the guys seem not to notice, like they're just being nice. They Derek's like, hey Lucy, like do you want a massage? And she's like, take a hint. And finally Gerard says he's going to bed. He gets up and he gives Lucy this look. So she stands up and she says she's going to bed too. That night she's lying there in the tent and she's so confused and lonely and honestly all she wants is just for someone to hold her. Like it's hard because she feels like she can handle Gerard. But now that she's around people who are actually kind, it's almost harder to be with him because there's such a gap between how Gerard treats her and how these guys do. It's almost easier when she doesn't have that point of comparison. In the morning the guys are actually packing up to leave and they're not holding back anymore. They're like, so Gerard, are you going to be helping around here? When are you going to build that shelter? And he's like, oh, you know, I'm just waiting for the weather to be a certain way. And every word that everyone is saying to Lucy seems so fake. She's just scared. She's trying not to piss anyone off. She tries to stay Busy. She gets more water. She hears footsteps behind her, and it's Peter. And he looks over his shoulder and makes sure they're alone. And he's like, lucy, what are you gonna do? Are you going to come with us? Like, do you want to leave? Do you need help? We are here to help you. We're leaving. We'll take you with us. We will get you off this island. Lucy's looking around and she. She can't do it. She knows this might be her only chance, but she can't leave. She can't even talk. Like, she just turns around and starts walking away. And she goes over to the boats and starts wordlessly helping them load up. And when she hugs the men goodbye, she doesn't want to let go. She lets herself just have this moment of Peter hugging her. And she sort of leans against him and closes her eyes. And for this moment, like, he even smells good. For this moment, she's just not being defensive. She's just letting something feel good. And then she hears footsteps beside her and Gerard's voice saying, let go of my wife. She's so nervous now. She doesn't even hug Derek goodbye. She just shakes his hand, which feels absurd. The men look at her like they're giving her one last chance, and she doesn't give an inch. She goes and she stands next to Gerard and she just waves goodbye. And as soon as the sails are up on the catamarans, as soon as the boats are really leaving, Gerard turns silently and he goes into the tent and he zips it closed after him. Lucy just stands waist deep in the cool water, and she watches the white sails shrink away until they completely disappear. The confrontation that happens after this, the things Gerard says to her and accuses her of. I'm not going to repeat the wording, but he's just making really graphic sexual accusations of what she must have done while she was out walking with the guys. And she grabs him and apologizes and just begs him to believe her, but he's shaking her off, and her body can't stop shaking. They're entirely alone on the island again. And this man is volatile. And finally something explodes inside of her. And she says, you know. You know I'm never sleeping with you, right? I'm never having sex with you. And his voice goes completely calm, and he says, lou, I think you're acting crazy. She just collapses. And he stands over her, and he looks down at her again so calmly. He's turning his hat over in his hands, and he says, I think you Need a hiding. And she's braced for him to kick her, but he just walks away. She gets up, she pours them both some tea, and she drinks hers in one gulp. And then she puts some rice on the fire to cook for him. And she picks up her notebook and she just says she's going into the jungle. Don't wait up for me. She walks straight into the jungle, barefoot. And she just stays there, sitting in the grasses, watching the birds, writing in her journal until it's dark. And when she gets back, Gerard's already in the tent. He's pretending to be asleep. And the next day, she does the same thing. She just gets up in the morning, she goes into the jungle. She goes to the clearing that has the softest grasses on the whole island. And she lies there. And she just, like, feels the bugs crawling over her. And she doesn't move. She almost likes those feelings. She watches the sky through the treetops. She does this for four days in a row. She doesn't eat, she barely drinks. She's just thinking and writing in her notebook. Meanwhile, Gerard's also not doing anything. He's not fishing, he's not building shelter. Finally, Lucy comes to a conclusion. She writes in her journal, we are here as 20th century castaways. Our main aim is simply to survive, not to achieve. Influences, opinions and comparisons from the outside world can contribute nothing to our project in real time. You can see her reframing the situation. So it's the guys, Derek and Peter, who were wrong for coming there and judging them. There's a pattern that can happen in abusive relationships where people get feedback from the outside about something being wrong. And they say, well, that person's on the outside. They're on the outside of this relationship. They are on the outside of this world that only me and my partner understand. And if this abusive relationship is happening in isolation on an island, it's even easier to say, well, how could they possibly begin to know what's going on? My mom always used to tell me that the only people who know what's actually happening in a relationship are the people inside it. And if those people are on a deserted island, it literalizes the metaphor. It becomes even easier to say, how could someone on the outside know what we have? Lucy writes this journal entry for pages. She starts writing about how much Gerard has put up with her. She writes, my enthusiasm and energy must have exasperated him terribly at times, et cetera, et cetera. And then she goes back to camp and reads Gerard the entry out loud. And she says, look, this is proof that I've learned my lesson. She starts cooking some rice, and she has some milk powder that Peter and Derek left her. And she's really excited because now she can make rice pudding. But she intentionally brings it up in this really dismissive way. Like she's like, ugh, I got this from the guys. And that really seems to make Gerard happy. Like, he gets up, he goes fishing. She knows that they've reached a truce. A couple more weeks pass, and again, I couldn't find dates anywhere. So just from the order of events, let's say this is like four or five months in, and their little spring of fresh water is getting drier every single day. They're down to drinking just two cups of water a day. Even though it's hot. They're outside working. And on top of that, like, sometimes the high tide will affect the spring, so. So sometimes they get the water and it's actually salty, not fresh. They've been cutting back on water so gradually and for so long that it's almost like their bodies are adjusting. It's like they're becoming human succulents. They're not thirsty. They don't sweat anymore. They barely pee. Lucy feels like she still has energy, but it's like everything is getting physically harder, Like a bucket of water has somehow gotten twice as heavy as it used to be. Gerard finally plants a little garden, but he has no water, so all the plants are shriveling up. He has one tomato sprout that might make it, and he waters it with a teaspoon from his own cup, just one spoonful at a time. Lucy is still spending a lot of her time out foraging, and she finds that she's almost in this, like, dreamlike state. She finds some yams and a gully, and that's really exciting. They can make yam cakes, but it's still not water. What she really wants is water. So she gets into these elaborate fantasies. Like, she'll go for a slow walk on the sand and she'll imagine that she's the only land animal left on earth. Like everything else that's living is somehow under the sea. And it's like in the water that's lapping over her toes. It's like the whole world is upside down and she's on the wrong side of it. They're these almost delirious daydreams. Gerard seems torn between being angry and admiring her. He sits down and he tells her one day that he's in love with her. To Lucy, this is just something else to feel bad about. She writes in her journal, there's little justice when two individuals marry for a set purpose, and then one has the misfortune to fall in love with the other and wants that paper union to stand for all the things we are brought up to believe a marriage should. She thinks he wanted a wife and he stuck with me. One day, Lucy is taking one of her dreamy long walks on the sand, and she looks down at her body and sees that she's covered in really visible veins. Like, it almost looks like looking down at rivers from the sky. And suddenly she has the realization that she might be pregnant. Like, she slept with Gerard before all this. She hasn't had her period since then, so, like, maybe that would put her in second trimester. Her stomach's completely flat, but she's so thin. She knows that, you know, sometimes a pregnancy is not visible. And also, like, things can survive on barely any nourishment. So she goes back to Gerard and she tells him, and he's like, you just need to be kicked in the belly. And she writes later, like, okay, those words came from the depth of Gerard's hurt. She imagines him, like, physically weak and being in love with someone who doesn't want him and angry at everything he can't have. And I am so struck reading her book, by the way. She is trying as if her life depends on it, which maybe it does, to put herself in Gerard's shoes. The logic that she's applying to things isn't whether his behavior is right, it's not whether it's acceptable. It is whether she can understand why he might do it. If she can understand why he does something, why he thinks something. If she can trace it back to some kind of hurt or anger or fear, then in her mind it becomes excusable. The problem with being an empathetic person is you can almost always imagine someone's perspective. So if you fall into that trap of thinking, I know why they did it, I can explain it so I can excuse it. You can excuse just about anything. But also, Lucy thinks, like, if he tried, if he kicked me in the stomach, I would kill him. I would put his body in the water, he would be eaten by a shark. No one would ever know it was me. She tries to eat a little bit more food. She's working really hard in case she's pregnant, but there's really nothing to eat. She finds some beans around and she tries eating them, and they actually make her really sick. Like she has diarrhea, she's throwing up that makes her even more dehydrated. Gerard helps her back to the tent, and it gets to the point where she and Gerard are just lying there. They're shells of people. When they look at each other's bodies, it's clear to both of them that they look like people who are imminently going to die. At this point, all they're eating is a spoonful of rice cooked in seawater. Once a day, every now and then, they hear a sound like engines or boats in the distance, but nothing ever comes close. And they just think if it rains or if a boat comes, will live. But otherwise it's like, almost out of their hands. They're so weak now that they don't even have the energy to argue. She says, look, I'm sorry I haven't been the wife you wanted. I'm sorry I haven't slept with you. And he says, look, right now I don't even want to sleep with you. I can't even think about sex. It's almost like they've struck this kind of peace. As they're lying there waiting to die one day, they hear a rumbling in the distance. And there's a flash of silver on the water, but it's zigzagging, it's stopping, swerving and accelerating in different directions. And finally, a metal dinghy pulls up on the beach. There's two islanders inside it, fishermen from one of the islands nearby. Their names are Titam and Ubia. And Lucy realizes the boat was zigzagging because the driver, Titam, was so adept at steering around the rocks and reefs beneath the surface. The islanders immediately see that Lucy and Gerard are in trouble, so they bring them some water. They say they will teach them how to find food. So they bring Lucy in their boat and they take her to another island and teach her how to find turtle eggs. They find, like, 80 turtle eggs, and she starts eating them. She's so happy and she's joking with the guys, and she can't believe that she now has, like, food and water in her belly. And she gets back with turtle eggs for Gerard, and he's, like, kind of happy, but he's also just seething. He eats the turtle eggs, but he also accuses Lucy of flirting with these guys. Word must be getting around, though, because pretty soon another islander comes by, and his name is Ronald. And Ronald insists that Lucy and Gerard come back with him to a nearby island, Badu, which has a town on it. And they have to at least get medical care. He says, like, they need to see a nurse for their wounds. Lucy's glad to do this because A, they have a bunch of wounds and they don't have antibiotics anymore, and B, she's still kind of worried that she's pregnant. When they get to the other island and see a nurse and she takes a test and finds out that she's not, she doesn't totally know if she's happy or sad about that. They end up staying in town for a little bit to recuperate. And they're staying with their host Ronald, who's the guy who found them and helped them out. And one day Ronald is complaining because his sewing machine doesn't work. And Gerard's like, well, I can fix that. And so he fixes the machine and word gets around that he has mechanical skills because apparently this is something that is sorely needed in that area. Pretty soon people are coming almost daily and they're bringing their outboard motors and sewing machines and just anything that needs repairs. And Gerard starts doing the repairs for free, as he should, because people are hosting him, but they're still bringing rice and porridge and other foods as thank you gifts as sort of payment for his work. Lucy ends up hosting everyone who comes. She's making them tea. She feels like a hostess, basically. Like that's now her full time role. It's interesting to me that this is the first time we've really seen Gerard be industrious all year. And it's happening when people are treating him like a God. Like they're telling him all the time he's so amazing and talented and like they're giving him these gifts. And now Lucy's the one who doesn't know what to do. She's not on the island she loves, so she doesn't have to fish and forage all day. They have plenty of food. They're both gaining weight, which is good. They're getting a lot stronger. But she's really depressed. Gerard sees her slowing down and he actually sees it as a good thing. He's like, ugh, thank God you're being less harsh. Like, you're softer now. You're. You're being a better woman. And he starts really pushing again about how she's not having sex with him. He complains about it basically all day. Like from the moment she wakes up beside him until bedtime. He's like, what? It wouldn't hurt you? Like, why, why won't you do it? It's not like it would hurt, like, or if she bends over near him, he'll, he'll get really upset and say, it's unfair for you to move like that around me. But now, instead of shrugging it off like she was doing before, she starts feeling much worse. She's feeling worthless and she's kind of lost. And she sees Gerard doing so well, she thinks, like, okay, here's a man I guess I care about, and I feel like the only thing that's keeping him from being really happy is the one thing that I could give him to. Which I say, it's never one thing if you're ever in a relationship and you feel like someone wants you to give in on one thing and it's all they need. Like there's always going to be something else after that. But Lucy feels bad enough about herself that she ends up giving into the pressure and the harassment. And she sleeps with Gerard. And just like that, he's so happy. He's warm and he's joking and he's putting his arm around her and giving her compliments. He's whistling all the time while he's working on the engines. He's so happy that Lucy becomes ashamed that she had the power to make his life this much better and had been denying it to him for so long. And then, funny thing, he stops whistling and he starts getting crabby again because it's not enough for her to be sleeping with him. He wants her to love him. He wants her to love him and be his real wife. And now that's the thing between him and happiness. Like it's never the one thing. And Lucy now is. She was a shell of a person when she was starving, but now, even though her body is doing so much better, she feels more like a shell than ever before. She writes, in my miserable confusion and guilt, was I not once again in a position to be the only thing marring Gerard's happiness? I had lost sight of the notion that I had any personal abilities, any character, any strength of mind. Whenever she has a free moment, she just walks down to the shore of the island. They're on Badu. And she looks back in the direction of the islands that she thinks of as hers. Tuin. And the weeks go by and Gerard doesn't want to leave. He wants to stay here in town and have people, you know, praising him and bringing him engines. And the rains start coming. It's monsoon season now, so Lucy will just stand dripping in the warm rain, and she'll stand down on the beach and watch the horizon and the way the walls of rain hit the ocean. And it looks almost like this milky green is rising up into the sky. There's just a few months left in the year and she wants so badly to finish them on Tuin, on her island. That's what she was fighting for this whole time. And just finishing out the year on the island has been her North Star. It's been the only thing she's focused on. And people in the village are so kind, she really likes them, she's making really good friends. But she feels trapped there in a way that she never did before. And every day she's just begging Gerard to go back. And finally he agrees. But it's going to be different now. Like for one thing, they're going to be bringing plenty of food, dried milk, sugar, tea, and Gerard is going to keep working as a mechanic. So people are going to be coming by boat every day to their deserted island and spending time with them. They won't be alone. Lucy doesn't like having enough food on the island. She does not like having a way to get to the doctor. To her they. That seems like a bastardization of real survival, which I think it reveals. Like Lucy has a lot of fixed ideas, right? And one of them I would argue is her conflation of quote unquote survival as in doing cool self sufficient things in the wilderness, with survival as in actually staying alive. Anyone who chooses to put themselves on an island without food or water or a way to leave is objectively bad at staying alive. They're choosing to do something that is likely to kill them so that they can prove to themselves that they won't die from it. So for Lucy, the draw of survival isn't surviving. Even though that's what she's telling herself, it's proving to herself that she can rely on her own capabilities. She is stressed about being on the island with food and water and other people in, in part because, yeah, she loves the solitude, but also who is she if she can't prove to herself that she can do the impossible? Who is she if she can't prove how much she can take? I mean, that's my theory and I'm very aware that there's some projection going on here. But I also see Lucy's choices that a lot of people would think don't make sense. And I think I understand them. I know what it's like to be a young woman who is drawn to the wilderness or adventure of or anything and you feel like you need it so much that you will swallow whatever the cost. And also there's this fear that if the cost is too high if you can't take the violence or the control or whatever it is that seems to go hand in hand with that adventure or with this thing you want, then it means you were never cut out for it in the first place. And you need to believe that you are. So Lucy, she's on this island now, this place she loves and needs. She has tea and dried milk and sugar and they have glass jars to drink out of. And one night she opens the tea kettle and she finds a dead lizard floating in it like it crawled in for moisture and drowned. And she realizes that a few months ago she would have had to drink that water anyway. But now she has the luxury of pouring it out. Lucy also starts her period again and Gerard starts harassing her about wanting to get her pregnant on purpose. He's saying like, oh, now that's the only thing he needs to be happy. See, it's never one thing. And she's pushing back. She knows now she doesn't want to get pregnant. The year's almost up, but she's still going so far out of her way to keep him happy and to try to anticipate anything that might set off one of his moods. One day one of the islanders brings them a stack of mail. Like he meets them on the sand and he hands them these very dog eared envelopes that have been sent over the months. And Lucy sees she got a letter from an old boyfriend and her heart rate just spikes because she knows this is not going to go over well. She really wants to read it. She misses her friends, she misses people she knows. But she also knows that if Gerard sees her reading anything, he'll ask and she'll have to show him and it could be really bad. So she slips the whole envelope unopened into the fire, trying to hide it from him, but he sees her do it and absolutely blows up. Once again, I'm going to skip over the details, but around this time also, especially when he's angry, he starts getting really rough with sex even when she's begging him to stop. Like she'll say, just please be gentle, that hurts. And he'll say, well, if I were gentle, I'd be making love to you. And how can I make love to you when I know you're just going to leave me when the year is up? He actually starts accusing her when she goes into the jungle to gather fruit or just breathe for a moment of secretly hiding men on the other side of the island and that she's only going into the jungle so she can have Sex with them. It occurs to me now, and this is totally a conspiracy on my part. There's nothing to back it up but the fact that Lucy had to marry him last minute for the visa. It's entirely possible that that's true. But it also seems completely in character for him to have made up or exaggerated that need just because he wanted her to marry him. And he knew that that way she would agree. Gerard is also working on his book. Like he has a book deadline coming up and he has a typewriter that he's brought. He'll just sit on the beach with his typewriter and gaze out at the horizon and write nothing. And he says the reason he can't write. Can you guess? It's because of Lucy. Obviously it's because she doesn't love him. And finally he announces that he's written his first sentence. It took a couple weeks, but he finally has a. A first sentence that he says is really good. I want you to know that I reopened his book just for that, as much as I hate it, to check what the first sentence is. And it is a description of his ex wife's legs. As the year is finally coming to a close, Lucy's taking all the time she can alone. She says the more time she spends alone walking on the beach or climbing on the rocks or being in the jungle, the more she feels like a creature with a will again. She can feel her ability to make choices coming back. Gerard's awful lot. He's fixing engines, he's testing him out on the water. And she's just waiting for the day when she'll have completed her mission, when a float plane is going to come pick her up. Gerard is going to be leaving the island too, but he's just going to the island nearby to be a mechanic. That's what he's decided. Lucy keeps a fire going on the beach so that when he's out testing boat motors, he'll be able to find his way back. But other than that, she has freedom. Her feet are so tough from walking barefoot all year. She can walk on anything. Barnacles, it doesn't matter. It's so satisfying. It feels like her body has adapted, like she's really built for this place. It's rainy season and the air around her is humid and salty at once. And she's climbing out on these boulders to fish. And then finally the plane comes and she's getting ready to get on it. And Gerard comes and gives her a speech. He says, look, I know you've found some happiness. Here. And as someone who's older than you, I can tell you happiness isn't easy to find. And you know what? Lucy did find happiness on the island, but it wasn't because of Gerard, it was because of her. It was because of this thing. She wanted to be built for adventure. And she had that all along and more. And she's still so young. She's only 25 when she's leaving this year. She's going to do so many incredible things in her life. Even now, today, 40 years after these events. Do you know where Lucy is? She lives in a yurt in Bulgaria and she runs an animal shelter rescuing stray dogs. And you know where Gerard is? He's dead. And his book sucked and it was a flop. Lucy, on the other hand, wrote her own book about the year on the island and it became a bestseller. And then she went on to write more books about more adventures she had. And her writing is good. Like, there were sentences that stopped me cold because they were so precise or funny or beautiful. Like she wrote at one point about getting up in the early morning and stepping out onto the dark sand and it was cool from the night and the. The spreading saucer of light that preceded sunrise. Like, I just love that sense. And she writes about like these little crabs that she finds at the edge of the water and they're sort of scuttling around sideways on their pointy feet and they always hold their big claws up like they're saying, like, come at me, but they're tiny. And she says they remind her of Ozymandias, which is of course the poem by Percy Shelley about a statue of a king with the words, look on my works, ye mighty in despair. But in the poem, the statue's broken and all that's left are legs. And this broken statue of a king is in the middle of a desert with just nothing for as far as you can see. It's about seeing someone who's so self important, so attached to the idea that they're powerful and. And actually, if you step back, you realize they have nothing at all. I want to say that I realized three quarters of the way through recording this episode that I was saying Gerard's name wrong. It's actually Gerald, but I don't care enough about him to fix it. So I'm sorry to you about that, but I'm not sorry to him. The main sources for this episode include the book Castaway by Lucy Irvine, which I want to say in case you look it up or want to read it, it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. But it was written shortly after Lucy's time on the island and she really concludes that she's the one who did Gerard Gerald wrong by not loving him enough. I think it would be a good read for like a book group where people could talk about that dynamic and why it's dangerous. But I guess I feel a responsibility to say that if you read that book because of this episod, it's so beautiful. But just keep in mind it was written by someone who still seems to be in the fog of abuse. In addition to the book Cast Away by Lucy Irvine, other sources for this episode include the movie based on that book, which is very bad, and the book the Islander by Gerald Kingsland, which is infinitely worse. Research, writing, narration and editing are by me, Blair Braverman. Audio version, production and music by Brandon Chabell by the way, I'm researching stories for future episodes which is really exciting and in particular I'm looking for more survival stories from a non western perspective. So if you have any suggestions or requests, please let me know. As always, if you like this podcast, it's incredibly helpful if you leave it a review or a rating. And thank you for spending this time with me. I'll be back with a another true story in two weeks. Take care.