(1958) Robinson Read online

Miguel said, ‘It’s cruelty to give to a child and then withdraw.’

  ‘Is humorous,’ said Jimmie.

  Robinson looked round at us and said, ‘You are clearly in the wrong, as my guests, to alienate the child.’

  ‘Give those articles to Mr. Tom like a most noble youth,’ said Jimmie to Miguel.

  The child began to cry at this first sign of desertion.

  ‘Give them back to me for the meantime,’ said Wells. ‘I’ll keep them for you.

  ‘You must not subject the boy to trickery,’ said Robinson. ‘He must know I don’t permit him to have them at all.’

  Wells tried again, ‘Give the lucky charms to Robinson,’ he said, ‘and they may bring him some luck.’

  Miguel cheered up. ‘Robinson can have one of them,’ he said. ‘Robinson can have the medal for luck, I’ll keep Ethel and Natty and I don’t mean maybe.’

  ‘I shall not keep it for luck,’ said Robinson ruthlessly. ‘I shall throw it into the Furnace over the mountain. You see, Miguel, these bits of metal are full of harm. ‘As he looked at them lying in the boy’s palm, I caught an expression of nausea on Robinson’s face. I thought to myself, ‘He really believes they have evil properties.’

  ‘Miguel,’ I said, ‘give them all back to Mr. Tom, and presently we shall give you something better to make up.’ I wondered desperately what we could give him.

  ‘You must not mislead,’ said Robinson. ‘The fact is, you have nothing to give him. Apart from this rubbish of Wells’, and the clothes you wear, you are all, for the time being, destitute.’

  The boy was mildly weeping again. I said, ‘You ought not to torment him with all this argument.’

  ‘Well,’ said Robinson, ‘I shall not take the things from him by force. In any case, I wouldn’t care to handle them.’

  ‘That’s rather superstitious of you,’ I said.

  I could see that Robinson was furious. As if retorting to a challenge, he lifted up a few of the charms from the patio and examined them. He really hated handling them.

  Suddenly he poured them into Wells’ lap and said, ‘Bella is sick, Miguel. Come and have a look at her. ‘Bella was the goat. ‘Bella,’ said Miguel. He followed Robinson, putting the amulets in his pocket.

  ‘There’s something wrong with that man,’ said Tom Wells.

  ‘It’s Robinson’s island,’ I said.

  ‘I’m a British citizen,’ said Wells. ‘He has destroyed my property. Those are the simple facts; I’ll take it up with the authorities when we get home.’

  He started picking up the pieces of his magazine. This was difficult owing to his encased ribs. Jimmie and I scrambled round trying to help him. When we had gathered all the bits I had an idea, and obtained some transparent sticky tape from Robinson’s desk.

  I brought this out to the patio and set about piecing the torn pages together like a jigsaw. Like Miguel, I found the advertisement section with its supporting photographs the most alluring. There was an intense turbaned Indian, a scholarly fellow in horn-rimmed glasses, a motherly soul, a good-looking young man in a monk’s cowl, a wild-eyed girl resembling Emily Brontë, all accompanied by appropriate announcements, which also fascinated me.

  BARI SAWIMI can provide Tactile Regeneration. Send fragment of Personal Garb, cloth 3” x 7” for immediate postal reply & satisfaction. P.O. 37s. 6d. no cheques to ‘Bari Sawimi’, Box 957 Your Future.

  MURIEL THE MARVEL with her X-ray eyes. Can read your very soul. Scores of satisfied clients….

  CONSULT BROTHER DEREK. Troubled? Anxious? Is that well-paid job just out of your reach? Write to Brother Derek….

  I discovered in one of the pictures a touched-up likeness of Wells himself, entitled Dr. Benignus.

  Trust DR. BENIGNUS. Treat him as your Father. FREE advice to all readers of Your Future and members of the Dr. Benignus Magic Circle of Friendship. Financial, Matrimonial and Moral Problems treated in Strictest Confidence. Dr. Benignus has brought Consolation and Happiness to Thousands….

  At last I had the proofs complete, though ragged. ‘That’s sweet of you, honey,’ said Wells.

  ‘Is not to call Miss January honey,’ said Jimmie, ‘as if she was a trumpet, and any—‘

  ‘You mean strumpet,’ I said.

  ‘Strumpet,’ said Jimmie, ‘and any indignities vented upon this lady, I black your eye full sore.

  Tom Wells clasped his ribs, closed his eyes, and addressed me: ‘To be serious for a moment, there’s an article in this issue that will appeal to you. See page twelve. It’s called “Are We Fulfilling the Prediction of the Apocalypse?”‘

  ‘Is serious,’ said Jimmie.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Wells, ‘it’s extremely serious.’

  ‘I mean, that I black your eye,’ said Jimmie.

  Chapter VI

  To reach the other side of the island there was no way but over the mountain. From our plateau it rose steeply, but the path wound to east and north-east, cutting off the higher reaches, and descending through stretches of squelchy moss on the lava rocks, through juniper woods to a green plain at the North Arm. At some points on the path where the clumps of juniper lay above, and only a thin white sunlight penetrated the clouds, the scene was sharp, its dark and light the texture of a woodcut. In direct sunlight a variety of greens twinkled suddenly, glimpses of mossy craters. Curious red lights appeared, which I later discovered were caused by vapours rising from the soil like rusty dew. To the west of this route the mountain was pitted with deep wide craters. The shallower pits were filled with iridescent blue and green pools. This was the moonish landscape of which Robinson had spoken. The feel of the earth underfoot, the colours, even the air, were strange.

  I have never seen so many mountain springs. Robinson said these little brooks were constantly appearing, so that every time he crossed the mountain, which was about every month, he would notice some two or three new springs. At a point just above our plateau, where the rock was uncovered and the sun particularly strong, I saw a small cactus type of plant, and, from the wedge of rock where the cactus had taken root, and as if from the plant itself, a small stream bubbling with force. This was on the occasion of my first crossing the mountain. I was with Robinson, who was bound for a certain mineral spring which contained strong healing properties: he thought it might cure his sick goat. Robinson was very taken by the sight of the water apparently gushing from the cactus. ‘That’s a new spring,’ he said. He left me there and went back to the house to get his camera. I still have the print of the photograph. It looks a fake, the cactus opening its thick lips, like a carved fountain gryphon, to disgorge a stream of water.

  Robinson walked ahead. He addressed me over his shoulder,

  ‘Are you keeping up your journal? ‘

  ‘No, I’ve lost interest lately.’

  ‘You should write it up every day.’

  ‘I don’t care for it. I may continue later.’

  ‘You should care for it. I thought you were a writer.’

  ‘You don’t catch me writing anything unless it suits me,’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see. You write for pleasure. Taken to its logical conclusion your attitude—’

  ‘Look at the mimosa clump,’ I said. There was a coppice on a plateau below us, and at its edge about six mimosa trees. I am always angered when people say to me, ‘Taken to its logical conclusion your attitude …

  ‘Keep up your journal,’ he said. ‘It will take your mind off Jimmie.’

  ‘I don’t see that I want to keep my mind off Jimmie,’ I said.

  Of course, working over this conversation later, in my fury, I regretted not having replied, ‘You are insolent’, or something like that.

  Jimmie and I had been planning an expedition over the mountain, and after some hesitation we had consulted Robinson about the route. I had, in fact, attempted to pump Miguel as to the best way across the mountain, but ‘Ask Robinson,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything worth seeing on the mounta
in,’ I said purposely.

  Miguel laughed, and then to give me something to think about he said,

  ‘There are three secret tunnels.’

  ‘I’ll believe them when I see them,’ I said.

  ‘Ask Robinson,’ he said.

  Jimmie and I did not particularly want to ask Robinson. We would have preferred to set out on our own, for we felt that Robinson would somehow contrive not to take us both together. As it transpired, this was true. Robinson had made it clear that he was not in favour of my friendship with Jimmie. Now it is true that I was becoming rather attached to Jimmie, mostly because of our situation on the island, and the qualities of the island, the colours and the atmospherics and mists, and that sort of thing.

  One afternoon when Tom Wells was sleeping, Robinson and Miguel fishing in one of the streams above our plateau, I said to Jimmie, ‘Let’s get out of this.’

  ‘Whither?‘ said Jimmie.

  ‘Over the mountain, perhaps?’

  He shook his head. ‘I know not the mountain.’

  ‘What other parts of the island do you know?‘ I said.

  ‘The burial ground,’ he said.

  Robinson had promised to show us all of the island. It was now our eighth week. My only excursion had been that to the beach by the southern path. Tom Wells, partly because of his injury and partly because of a lazy incuriosity, did not attempt to explore very much; I thought he seemed to wish to reproduce about himself as far as possible the environment of his magazine office at Paddington. Robinson had put a desk in his room, where he had his papers spread before him and wrote articles for forthcoming numbers of Your Future on paper sadly provided by Robinson. Sometimes he read such of Robinson’s books as would hold his attention. He complained much of the food, the climate, and the money he was losing by his incarceration on the island — that is how he expressed it. ‘This enforced incarceration,’ he said every day, along with other often repeated phrases such as ‘My wife’s gone over to her sister’s, I daresay’, ‘We’re lucky to be alive’, and ‘There’s something unnatural about that Robinson‘. He complained, too, of Robinson’s having wheedled the trinkets out of Miguel and cast them in a live crater known as the Furnace: ‘That Robinson’s a religious maniac’, or ‘That man goes crazy if you give the child a kind look’.

  On one occasion when Robinson had been particularly irritated by my winning Miguel’s praise for a very fine ping-pong match with Bluebell, it occurred to me that I, compared with Robinson, Jimmie, and Tom Wells, was bearing up pretty well in the circumstances. Having mused thus, I immediately helped myself to four of Robinson’s share of the cigarettes, to safeguard my soul against the deadly sin of pride. It is really mortifying to do a small mean injury to someone; but a theologian once told me that this is not sound doctrine.

  Jimmie observed my theft, and while I lit up and luxuriously puffed one of the plundered cigarettes I explained the motive to Jimmie. It was then, it being the early afternoon and Tom Wells being asleep, that I said, ‘Let’s get out of this.’ We planned an excursion for the following day. Jimmie led the way to the burial ground which lay slightly to the north-west of our plateau, less than a mile from the house. We had a short steep climb; after that the downward slope was easy. On the western side of the mountain there were a few lava pits, but not nearly so many as I subsequently saw on my north-eastern crossing with Robinson. I was surprised to see that the plane had been wrecked, not on one of the hefty cliff faces of our mountain, but on a gentle green hillside, merging into downland. Here, on the night of the crash, Robinson had found us, Jimmie wandering in a daze with blood running down his face, I unconscious and lying still as death on my side, Tom Wells groaning and twisting by the light of the blazing plane. Eventually, as dawn broke, and Jimmie was calmed, he and Robinson had carried us to the shore of the green and blue lake.

  Quite nearby, in a flat-bottomed hollow, Jimmie and Robinson had buried the dead, and lest the graves were not deep enough — since two gravediggers for the remains of twenty-six dead are too few for deep digging —they had unsettled a number of rock boulders and lava lumps from the sides of the mound surrounding the hollow, rolling them down into the graveyard. These newly uprooted rocks, some a sort of porous red and some black lava, littered the hollow, protecting the burial ground from disturbances of mist and rain, until the pomegranate men should arrive in August and perhaps be persuaded to work over the graves, thus to give the bodies more security.

  Sometimes, on the plateau where Robinson’s house stood, when the wind was from the north or east, a curious smell of burning would pervade the atmosphere, penetrating the rooms. It was sulphurous. Robinson said it came from a bubbling eruption still lively on the mountain, which he called the Furnace.

  ‘I should like to see the Furnace,’ I said.

  ‘I will take you there, one day.’

  Whenever the wind was north-east, bringing the burning sulphur smell, I had reminded him of his promise.

  Sitting with Jimmie above the burial ground I noticed a burnt-out smell, although there was no wind.

  ‘There must be a molten lava pit nearby,’ I said.

  ‘Is the odours of the aeroplane which you smell,’ said Jimmie. He rose and beckoned to me. I followed him down the hill and there, to our left, lay the wreck of the plane, reclining on its grassy slope, and still, after eight weeks, giving off a smell of burning as a dead fire-eating dragon might smell in its decay.

  When I saw the wreck I started to cry. Jimmie said, ‘Ah me! Partake of a drop of brandy.’ Even so, I could not stop crying, even though I giggled at Jimmie’s words, and even though I had already, many times since my recovery from the accident, pictured to my mind the scene of the wreck, attempting to realize it as an exercise for pity, since pity is an emotion which does not come easily in the bewilderment and first fears of a very strange environment.

  I do not know whether it was for pity that I wept at the sight of the wreck, only that I could not stop crying. We walked on until both the wreck and the burial ground were concealed behind a grassy hump, and we settled, watching the sea shimmering below us, but still I went on crying.

  We had a picnic pack with us — two guavas, some banana cream biscuits and a bottle filled with the pale yellow mineral water which Robinson and Miguel frequently brought from the mountain. Jimmie opened the pack and poured out a drink for me into an enamel mug. Although I was crying hard I thought it looked yellower than usual, and when I tasted it I said, ‘What have you put in it?‘ recognising the taste and glow of brandy.

  ‘Where did you get the brandy?‘ I said, at the same time weeping away.

  Jimmie took his leather and silver flask from his jacket pocket and held it to my nose. ‘I give you a drop more should you desire.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Is personal gift which I have received from a kinsman. When I am salvaged from the aeroplane, so also is my worthy flask.’

  I did remember Jimmie’s flask in the plane, and his sharing his brandy with me there. I said, dabbing my eyes, ‘Where did you get the brandy — I know that the flask is yours but where did you get the brandy? ‘For, on the plane, Jimmie and I had emptied his flask between us.

  Jimmie looked lovingly at the flask, smelt it, and then, placing it next his ear, swilled it round to hear the splash of liquor.

  ‘Is salvage,’ he said. ‘Alas, drink up and weep no more.’

  I knew it was not salvage from the plane. The few battered bits of luggage that had been found in the vicinity of the wreck had been examined and labelled by Robinson, and some of the clothes distributed to Tom Wells and Jimmie for their present needs, I refusing such creepy garments. Certainly, there was no liquor intact in those far-flung battered and pathetic suitcases.

  ‘Salvage from where?‘ I said, with my simply physical tears streaming. ‘From Robinson?‘ I said.

  And I said, ‘Look here, Jimmie, this is Robinson’s brandy. You shouldn’t take Robinson’s brandy.’

&
nbsp; ‘Is in order to mortify my immortal soul, I help myself,’ said Jimmie, ‘like you have declared to me. And after all, bloody hell, a little of that which you fancy does good things to one.’ He took a spotted silk scarf from his neck and gave it over to me to use for a handkerchief, since my own was wet with my crying. He poured himself out a portion of new brandy. I did not notice at the time, but realized later that the scarf was salvage. Meantime, I used it to cry into.

  Jimmie lay back on his elbows and sipped.

  ‘Many times past when Robinson has been old buddy of mine___‘

  But he stopped, and presently he said, ‘Robinson approaches.’

  I looked up, and saw Robinson’s head bobbing behind a hill some distance away, then, after a space, his head and shoulders behind a nearer mound, until gradually he wholly appeared, climbing up to our picnic place.

  ‘What are you crying for?‘ he said, looking from me to Jimmie and then back at me.

  I giggled, without stopping crying, at his suspicious look. I did quite like Robinson, but lately in his anxiety to keep order on his island he had seemed to me rather quaint.

  ‘She laments for the aeroplane disaster, I guess,’ said Jimmie leaning still on his elbows and sipping the brandy.

  It did not sound quite convincing, which caused me to giggle again. At this Robinson looked hard at me, and then he said, ‘Take some brandy.’ And still looking closely at me he addressed Jimmie, ‘Give her some brandy.‘ This surprised us both, for he had not seemed to have observed the flask cup in Jimmie’s hand, far less that it contained brandy.

  ‘I have some here,’ I said, holding up the enamel mug.

  Robinson put his nose inside.

  ‘What’s that mixture?’

  ‘Mineral water and a dash of—’

  ‘Not my best brandy?‘ said Robinson.

  ‘Is so, naturally. Have sense,’ said Jimmie.

  ‘Do you mean to say,’ said Robinson, ‘that you have put my best brandy into mineral water? No wonder January is crying.’