(1958) Robinson Read online

  We had brought a picnic and were settled on the banks of the blue and green lake. In front of us was a lumpy patch of goat meadow leaning down towards the cliff, and below, since there was no mist, was the sea. To our right was the vivid yellow mustard field. The effect was fairly Arcadian, if only one could relax and enjoy it.

  ‘Why did you come?’ I said. I was curious to know where Jimmie had come from, why he had taken the Lisbon plane to the Azores with the purpose of finding his way to Robinson, how long he had known Robinson, and at the same time was irritated by this curiosity of mine which did so indicate that these people were becoming part of my world. I had rather regarded them as travelling companions — as one might take up with a man on a plane. I like to be in a position to choose, I like to be in control of my relationships with people.

  On the sixth of June I had written in my journal:

  I feel that we were all unwelcome on the island. The emergency is over. Tom Wells is now able to get about. I am beginning to use my left arm. Jimmie, who received only a small cut in the head, and in fact had not even lost consciousness at the time of the crash, is suffering from nerves. Robinson seems rather irritated by all of us.

  ‘Why did you come?’ I said to Jimmie.

  ‘Is Robinson’s vast properties,’ he replied. ‘Robinson’s family beseech me, 'Go and bring back Robinson to his birthright. Begone, we shall foot the bill.' Thus, I came. But is first I should reside at marvellous Azores and next is pleasant ocean voyage to the island of Robinson which I envisage, and to behold my kinsman old Robinson. Mayhaps a month I should reside here, or two. I should say, 'Robinson, return!' He should say, 'Not me, chum.' I should say to him, “Is properties, Robinson. The old uncle has died and, behold, the properties fall to neglect.” Robinson should reply, 'So what?' and I should say, 'Who is to administer these great estates?' He should tell me, 'Not me, chum. Is all yours.' And I figure, six months should elapse before I return my steps towards the family of Robinson to reveal to them I fail in my great mission. As I have planned, I should say to them, 'I fail.' They say to me, 'Alas.' They pay the bill. So I have had six months’ merry voyaging and they should pay up. Whereafter they should say, 'Now who shall administer these properties?' I say, 'Robinson desires this post to me.' But,’ said Jimmie, ‘this destiny has not come to pass. Is fizzle out and I fall from the sky. I languish.’

  ‘I don’t see,’ I said, ‘how your plans are changed at all. You can still return within six months and take over Robinson’s affairs for him.’

  ‘All is changed,’ said Jimmie, ‘since I am cast from the heavens. Is numerous dead. Robinson is cross. I lose my nerves. Robinson takes no care for the honour of his family.’

  I began to reflect on Robinson’s lordly estates.

  ‘Where are these properties?’ I enquired.

  ‘In Tangier,’ said Jimmie.

  ‘Do his family live in Tangier?’

  ‘No, in Gibraltar. They possess abundant cash. I am but the poor kinsman.’

  ‘What sort of lands do they possess in Tangier?’

  ‘Is not lands. Is motor-scooters. Is vast import business. For my part, I tell you, I should have been fine and dandy a managing director. But I lose my nerves.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘They will come back.’

  ‘Is multitudinous prospects for motor-scooters in the north of Africa. In the course of time I should create many factories. But all is lost. In point of fact I consider how I want my head examined.’

  ‘Perhaps in any case Robinson will return to his family.’

  ‘Nevermore,’ said Jimmie. ‘I am acquainted with Robinson from the days of my youth, and is for cert he chuck the world.’

  To teach a cat to play ping-pong you have first to win the confidence and approval of the cat. Bluebell was the second cat I had undertaken to teach; I found her more amenable than the first, which had been a male.

  Ping-pong with a cat is a simplified and more individualistic form of the proper game. You play it close to the ground, and you imagine the net.

  Gaining a cat’s confidence is different from gaining the confidence of any other animal. Food is not the simple answer. You have to be prepared to play with it for as long as two hours on end. To gain the initial interest of a cat, I always place a piece of paper over my head and face and utter miaows and other cat noises. This is irresistible to most cats, who come nosing up to see what is going on behind the paper. The next phase involves soft whispering alternately with the whistling of high-pitched tunes.

  I thought Bluebells of Scotland would be appropriate to Bluebell. She was enchanted. It made her purr and rise on her hind legs to paw my shoulder as I crouched on the patio whistling to her in the early afternoons.

  After that I began daily to play with her, sometimes throwing the ping-pong ball in the air. She often leapt beautifully and caught it in her forepaws. By the second week in June I had so far won her confidence and approval as to be able to make fierce growling noises at her. She liked these very much, and would crouch menacingly before me, springing suddenly at me in a mock attack. Sometimes I would stalk her, one slow step after another, bent double, and with glaring eyes. She loved this wildly, making flying leaps at my down-thrust head.

  ‘You’ll get a nasty scratch one day,’ said Robinson.

  ‘Oh, I understand cats,’ I said.

  ‘She understands cats,’ said Jimmie unnecessarily.

  Robinson walked away.

  Having worked round Bluebell to a stage where she would let me do nearly anything with her and play rough-house as I pleased, I got an old carton out of Robinson’s storehouse and set it on end against the patio wall. Bluebell immediately sat herself inside this little three-walled house. Then the first ping-pong lesson began. I knelt down two yards away from her and placed the ball in front of me. She crouched in readiness as if it were an ordinary ball game. With my middle finger and thumb I pinged the ball into Bluebell’s box. It bounced against the walls. The cat sprang at it and batted it back. I sent it over again to Bluebell. This time she caught it in her forepaws and curled up on the ground, biting it and kicking it with her silver hind pads. However, for a first lesson her style was not bad. Within a week Bluebell had got the ping-pong idea. Four times out of ten she would send the ball back to me, sometimes batting it with her hind leg most comically, so that even Miguel had to laugh. On the other occasions she would appropriate the ball for herself, either dribbling it right across the patio, or patting it under her body and then sitting on it. Sometimes she would pat the ball only a little way in front of her, waiting for me, with her huge green eyes, to come and retrieve it.

  The cat quickly discovered that the setting up of her carton on the patio was the start of the ping-pong game, and she was always waiting for me at that spot after lunch. She was an encouraging pupil, an enthusiast. One day when she was doing particularly well, and I was encouraging her with my lion growl to her great excitement, I heard Robinson’s voice from the back of the house.

  ‘Bluebell! Pussy-puss Bluebell. Nice puss. Come on!’

  Her ear twitched very slightly in response, but she was at the ball and patting it over to me, it seemed in one movement. I cracked it back, and she forth again.

  ‘Bluebell! — Where’s the cat?’ said Robinson, appearing on the patio just as I was growling more. ‘There’s a mouse in the storehouse. Do you mind?’ he said to me.

  The cat had her eyes on my hand which held the ball. I picked her up and handed her to Robinson. Bluebell struggled to free herself and go for the ball. I thought this funny and giggled accordingly. But Bluebell was borne reluctantly away by solemn Robinson, with Miguel following like a righteous little retainer.

  Jimmie grinned. Something about Jimmie’s grin and Robinson’s bearing embarrassed me. I began to wonder if Robinson felt intensely about incidents like this. I should not myself have thought of the affair as an ‘incident’ at all. It was a great bore.

  I could see that Robinson was makin
g an effort to form some communal life for the period of our waiting on the island. I could see he conceived this a duty, and found it a nuisance. It had been different in the first few weeks, when we were impaired by the crash. Then Robinson had met the occasion. So, too, had Jimmie, who was now suffering belatedly; he kept insisting he had lost his nerves.

  Robinson rose at five, we at six, by which time our plateau was flooded with the early sun, and not far below was the white mist, swathing the mountain right down to the coast. It seemed that the whole sky was beneath us and we on a sunny platform in space, with our house, mustard field, blue and green lake, the goat meadow before us and the mountain rising behind.

  At this hour Robinson would go to the goat in its pen with a quantity of three-leaved plants, like large-leaved clover. These he had sprinkled with a considerable handful of salt.

  ‘Why do you salt its food, Robinson?’

  ‘It works up a thirst, and so increases the milk. Besides, it gives the milk a good salt flavour.’

  It was one of the few bits of husbandry I saw Robinson practise. For the most part he made shift as easily as possible with tins and the derelict orchards of the croft.

  I cooked the breakfast. Having found a sack of good oats in the storehouse I now made porridge every morning. Previously he and Miguel had eaten a mango or half paw-paw from one of the old croft orchards with a tin of baked beans. My institution of the porridge was designed to eke out the beans, for I saw that the stores were not large.

  ‘Oh, when we’ve finished the beans we would go on to something else,’ said Robinson; ‘there are other tinned things.’

  It was not only a matter of what was and was not proper for breakfast:

  ‘Are you sure the pomegranate boat will come in August?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  I did not care for the thought of its omitting to come and leaving the five of us tinless and starving. I did think Robinson might have grown something. The climate was suitable for maize, which is not troublesome. Fresh vegetables would have been no trouble. I decided to search the island for roots or berry-bushes which could be transplanted into Robinson’s plateau. I was moody whenever I thought of the kitchen garden that Robinson did not have.

  It is true that, with Robinson’s makeshift system, the place was easy to run. As Tom Wells regained his health, our chores were finished by eleven in the morning. We took turns to prepare meals. The rest of the day we were free. We frequently quarrelled.

  To my surprise, when we were sufficiently recovered and organised, and first sat down to meals together, Robinson said a prayer for grace. Despite the crucifixes on the walls of each room, I had not thought Robinson was a religious man; and I had vaguely supposed that the crucifixes had belonged to the previous owner, Robinson not troubling to remove them. I was even more surprised to observe that the form of grace he said was that used by Roman Catholics, ‘Bless us, 0 Lord, and these Thy gifts…. In the name of the Father, the Son….’ And when we had finished he gave thanks according to the form used by English Catholics, following it with that usual prayer for the faithful departed which frequently suggests to my mind that we have eaten them.

  I had entered the Catholic Church the previous year.

  I wondered if Robinson really was a member of the Church. But I do not care to ask people this question.

  I assumed, meantime, that he was so, and I wondered really why he chose to live so separated from the Sacraments; but that was his business.

  After supper Robinson had us all into his sitting-room. This was a strain. It never seemed to be the simple and normal thing for us to do. And I felt he did not so much invite as have us in, as one’s headmistress would have one in to tea; an obligation on both sides.

  Robinson encouraged a certain formality among us. We were as yet ignorant of each other’s antecedents.

  Robinson did not ask any questions or lead us to talk about the circumstances which had brought us on the Lisbon plane, our homes and destinations. I gathered from this that he was anxious to regard our intrusion into his life as temporary: once you know some facts about a person you are in some way involved with them. Evidently Robinson wished to avoid this. So did I. At first this reserve gave an illusion of natural growth to our relationships.

  But of course the decent gulfs did not last. Sometimes it seemed that Robinson did not so much desire to preserve distance between us as to prevent intimacy; he seemed more anxious that we should not be friends than that we should not intrude upon each other. And, for many reasons, I did not want Robinson to know what Jimmie had told me about him.

  In other ways, as I saw my companions day by day, I did begin to feel curiosity about them.

  Sometimes in those evenings we would play chess. Robinson and I were more interested in chess than were Jimmie and Tom Wells who approached it as if it were some therapeutic task set by Robinson. They would talk too much.

  ‘Look here,’ Wells said one evening, ‘where does this get us, anyway?’

  ‘Is question you ask,’ said Jimmie.

  Robinson said pleasantly, ‘Chess is good for the mind.’

  ‘Look here,’ Wells said, ‘who are you to say what’s good for my mind?’

  I thought this reasonable enough. But I simply did not like Tom Wells. So I said,’ Oh, don’t be difficult,’ without looking up from the board where Robinson’s King’s Bishop, his only remaining protection, would threaten my Queen, should I move my King’s Knight as I desired.

  ‘Would you like to hear some music?’ Robinson said. He put a record on his gramophone. It was the first of six, a whole opera of Rossini, La Cenerentola.

  I felt that Robinson was determined to keep control. He was fixed on controlling himself, us, and his island. He was not prepared to permit any bickering to bind us together and shatter the detachment which he prized.

  Jimmie started to relax and listen politely. I did the same, though I felt a difficult mood begin to overtake me. I don’t think Tom Wells had any intention of rudeness, it was only that he had never thought of music as anything but a background to talk. And more, not even a background; according to his notion, you had some music to take away the silence and then you continued talking, but in a louder voice.

  ‘Ah, now,’ said Wells, looking genially round the company, ‘naturally this is a strain on us all, but we’re lucky to be alive.’

  He often said ‘We’re lucky to be alive’, for no apparent reason save that he was pining to chew over and over our advent on the island, and thus for us all to get to grips with each other. ‘It’s unnatural living like this alone with Nature,’ he would say, ‘but we’re lucky to be alive.’ And sometimes he would bring out this phrase after he had spent half an hour calculating how much he was out of pocket through the plane mishap.

  Perhaps there was nothing really objectionable about his ‘lucky to be alive’. You must understand that I did not like Tom Wells.

  ‘Amazing lucky shave,’ said Wells. ‘It’s a remarkable thing, only that morning when I got my plane ticket at the Bureau I said___‘

  ‘Do you like Rossini?‘ said Robinson. He handed us glasses of rum for which I was most grateful at that moment.

  ‘I hope this won’t make me remiss,’ said Tom Wells, holding his glass up to the lamp for some reason, and squinting at it with one eye. He said to me, ‘Do you like cabaret?’

  Robinson smiled weakly and sighed. At the sound of his sigh I suddenly decided to annoy him too.

  ‘I love cabaret,’ I said, ‘if it’s good.’

  ‘A jolly good floor show,’ said Tom Wells.

  ‘Extremely nice,’ I said. ‘Do you know the Caribee Club in Duke Street?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Wells.

  ‘And the Daub and Wattle? They do a nice floor show there.’

  ‘My word,’ said Wells, ‘we’ve got a lot in common, you and I.’

  Robinson sat with his music, affronted. Serve you right, I thought, for your inflexible pose. Give you something, I thought
, to exercise detachment upon.

  ‘If I had the right music and a decent dress,’ I said, ‘I could perform a floor show all on my own.’ It is true that I can do a rather effective song-and-dance turn, and often do, to amuse my intimate friends.

  ‘Got any jazz?’ Tom Wells said to Robinson, who was putting Rossini on the other side of the record.

  He didn’t answer.

  Jimmie raised his eyebrows and looked wise.

  ‘You and I must have a chat,’ said Wells to me.

  Miguel was reclining on the hearth. He looked to one and the other of us, not following our actual conversation, but feeling out for himself how things stood between us all.

  Jimmie sat like three wise monkeys, taking an occasional sip from his glass. It struck me he was secretly happy that Robinson was being slightly challenged and things were pepping up.

  Presently Jimmie winked at Robinson who made no response, sitting vigilant by his gramophone, winding the handle every now and again, and replacing the records of his Rossini.

  I left them, and went for a walk. My moods are not stable at the best of times. It was on this occasion I experienced that desire to worship the moon, and I thought, how remarkable, since I was a Christian: I thought of my grandmother bowing in the roadway,

  ‘New Moon, New Moon, be good to me.’

  After that, of course, I had difficulty in shaking off Tom Wells. He followed me about, as far as he was physically able. This was not very far; he was still fairly weak and still bound in his tight corset of canvas strips. He resented a great deal his injuries being more severe than Jimmie’s or mine.

  ‘You two were lucky,’ he would say. ‘That Robinson,’ he would say, ‘has no feelings or he wouldn’t expect me to move about in my condition. It’s not natural; I ought to be taking things easy.’

  ‘You need exercise to avoid complications, Robinson says.’

  ‘Robinson says! Robinson says! — Haven’t you any guts?’

  ‘It’s his island.’

  Robinson said to me, ‘He seems to want jazz music. I haven’t any jazz.’