(1958) Robinson Read online

  Ian usually got into a state of horrible excitement if he had cause to suspect that I might get married. At the same time as I let my mind wander round the possibilities of Jimmie — possibilities like his threatening to black Ian’s eye — I was calculating the price of this tempting form of entertainment. And when I tell you that I have another category of acquaintance, certain dry-eyed poets and drifters dear to my heart, you may see the extent of my temptation in the matter of accepting Jimmie. For many a time did I sit on the banks of the blue and green lake reflecting how highly these intelligent loafers, whose regard I valued, would regard me, should I fetch into captivity so exceptional and well-spoken a bird as Jimmie. They would have him along to Soho. They would have delight for at least half a year.

  Journal, Thursday, 1st July —Jimmie Waterford was born in 1919. He is a second cousin of Robinson, having been brought up in Gibraltar by Robinson’s mother, his father being dead, his mother having disappeared.

  The circumstances of Jimmie’s mother’s disappearance were this. Soon after her widowhood she went on a visit to her parents in Namur, leaving Jimmie with his nurse in Holland. In her father’s household was a chef of whom he was very proud. He set so much store by his chef’s cooking that he would not permit his family to season their food according to taste. Few guests came to his table, lest they should require salt and pepper, and then only those who understood and acquiesced in their host’s rule, for this father held that the food was excellent without additional seasoning, but with it all would be ruined, the chef insulted.

  Invariably, however, the ancient silver cruets were caused to appear on the table, for form’s sake. Regularly, they were emptied and refilled, any laxity in this respect being a high domestic crime.

  On the first evening of her visit, Jimmie’s mother casually reached for the great heavy salt, and ignoring the choking cries which proceeded from her father’s throat, ignoring his bulging eyes and her mother’s fluttering hands, she placed a little salt on the side of her plate. The father turned her out of the house that very hour. She was not impoverished, she went to an inn for the night, and might well have returned to her home in the north of Holland the next day. But the being turned out on the streets with all her baggage seemed to give her the idea, and she remained on the streets for the rest of her known life.

  To this day, I don’t know whether this particular story is true. There was just enough of the element of rootless European frivolity in Jimmie to make any yarn about his connections seem possible, or, on the other hand, to make suspect his stories; and this may have been part of his wooing, he may have sensed that I am a pushover for a story, that I would far rather have a present of a good story than, say, a bunch of flowers, and will more or less always take kindly to the raconteur type.

  I was able to substantiate some of his tales later on, when I found the evidence among Robinson’s papers. Certainly he was related to Robinson and had been brought up in Gibraltar by Robinson’s mother. I think it possible that Jimmie was an illegitimate child of Robinson’s father, and so a half-brother to Robinson. The facts he had given me concerning Robinson were apparently correct, for I found letters addressed to Mexico, and many touching on the theological problems which had engaged him then, and on the question of his leaving the Church. But where Jimmie himself was concerned, his life and adventures, I doubted as much as I was amused.

  When, up to our seventh week on the island, he sat beside me in the afternoons, between the blue and green lake and the mustard field, and embarked on his memories: ‘Along about the time that the hostilities were declared …‘ I felt sure that Jimmie was the most delightful man I had ever met, not in the least without wondering whether he had, in fact, taken such a part in the Resistance, had escaped with a pair of Gestapo trousers as a memento, had rescued the Polish countess — she in the hollow sideboard, he disguised as a furniture remover. About these and other exploits I shall never quite know. Of course, it is possible they are true; I myself once attended the Derby disguised as a gipsy, and there waylaid Ian Brodie who refused to cross my palm with silver, though I importuned him somewhat, he being present not to bet or to watch the races, but on business which he called sociological research — in reality to lacerate himself with the loathsome spectacle of an hysterical nation. I got away with it: Ian never knew that I know what he is like when solicited by a gipsy. And so perhaps I am wrong to doubt the adventures of Jimmie.

  Later that day I added to my journal of 31st June:

  The uncle who was entrusted with Robinson’s future died at the beginning of this year. The money is mostly in the motor-scooter business, and one of the reasons for Jimmie’s concern about it is this. He is the next beneficiary after Robinson, and is Robinson’s heir. So far Robinson has been indifferent to Jimmie’s arguments, refuses to return, or in any way to consolidate the motor-scooter concern.

  Tom Wells is still making a fuss about the papers which he says are missing from his case. He has even been to the scene of the crash to search for them. He swears that he saw the papers in his bag in the plane just before the crash. Robinson maintains that the papers could not have escaped from the bag, since it was firmly shut when he found it.

  The next day, Friday, the second of July, I discovered that my rosary was missing again, from the pocket of my coat where I had put it. For the rosary devotion a chain of rosary beads is not strictly necessary, you can say the rosary on your fingers. The reasons for my distress were, one, that it was my only material possession apart from the clothes I had been wearing at the time of the accident; two, although you can say the rosary on your fingers, there is nothing quite like the actual thing; three, this was a beautiful object, unique and, unlike my clothes, intact; four, I had intended to show it to Miguel, and so win his attention; five, and most pressing, to lose my rosary so soon after having found it gave me a sense of fatal misgiving, and I realised that I had attached to its discovery an important mystique. Then there was a sixth reason, the mystery of its disappearance. Last thing at night it had been in the pocket of my coat hanging up behind the door of my room. First thing in the morning it had gone. The rosary had been removed from my pocket during the night. I decided to make a fuss, and went to look for Robinson.

  He had left the house, and there was no sign either of Jimmie or Miguel. I remembered then that they had arranged to leave early on their expedition to the West Leg Bay to examine the old ship’s boat.

  I found Tom Wells out on the patio shaving, a sight which usually I could not bear. Tom Wells would wash and dress all over the house and grounds, rubbing his face with a towel as he walked along the corridors, putting on his shirt as he came into breakfast; and although I think Robinson did not like it, he put up with it.

  As I approached, Wells said, ‘Pardon me shaving out here. The light’s better.’

  I said, ‘Have you seen my rosary? I’ve lost it.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  I repeated my question.

  He said, ‘Didn’t know you had a rosary. What’s it like?’

  I said, ‘A chain of rosewood beads with a silver crucifix at the end.’

  He said, ‘Oh, one of those R.C. items.’

  ‘Have you seen it anywhere?’

  ‘No, lovey.’

  ‘It was in the pocket of my coat last night. This morning it was gone.’

  He said, ‘I heard Robinson up and about during the night. They all left early.’

  ‘If Robinson has taken it,’ I said, ‘I’ll murder him.’

  ‘Could be Robinson,’ he said. ‘He’s R.C., isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘The point is, he has no right to take my possessions.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Wells. He put away the shaving things neatly in Robinson’s fitted box. ‘And I should like to know what’s happened to my papers. Now listen, while we’re on the subject, dear. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘I must look for my rosary,’ I said. ‘I must make sure I haven’t dro
pped it somewhere.’ I was still prepared to make a fuss.

  ‘Wait a minute, dear.’

  ‘You’re ready for breakfast,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and make the coffee.’

  But, over our coffee with tinned milk and hard biscuits, he said, ‘What d’you make of Robinson?’

  ‘If I find that he came to my room while I was asleep and took my rosary there will be hell to pay.’

  Wells laughed. ‘He wouldn’t come to your room for anything else, my dear, I can tell you that much. He’s not a lady’s man, I can tell you.’

  ‘Oh, I was not suggesting———’

  ‘I bet you aren’t. There’s your boy-friend too. He’s another.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘Queer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Homosexuals, both of them. Disgusting. Unnatural.’ He pushed away his plate violently as if that too were disgusting and unnatural.

  I have come across men before who imagine that every other man who does not rapidly make physical contact with his female prey is a homosexual. And some who I know regard all celibates as homosexuals.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Tom Wells, ‘your boy-friend has looks, I don’t deny. And of course I don’t deny that Robinson is a fine chap in his way. To hear him talk is an education in itself. But what I’m telling you is for your own sake, sweetie; these homos can be spiteful, so just watch yourself.’

  I said, ‘I prefer not to discuss the subject, for I don’t think you understand it.’ I did not at all feel that I could convey the temperamental shades of Robinson and Jimmie to Tom Wells. I did not feel called to do so.

  It was true that sometimes a sort of tendresse was evident between them, that Jimmie would crinkle between his third and index finger the light waves of his hair, that Robinson was not ‘a lady’s man’. I felt incapable of convincing Tom Wells that such things were not conclusive, not even unusual in men. For he would have repeated, as I had heard Curly Lonsdale say, ‘Do you think I don’t know a man when I see one?’ — as if the whole world consisted of the class of society with which they were familiar. But in any case I did not feel obliged to explain anything to Tom Wells. ‘In any case,’ I said, ‘it is not our business.’

  But Tom Wells gave me a look that might be described as ‘knowing‘ except for the fact that it was also calculating. He winked knowingly at me, and I detected the calculation in the other eye. It was at this moment that the idea first came to me that Wells was a blackmailer. I had no clear reason for retaining the idea, but certain propositions came clearly to my mind. One, it was probable that Wells believed a homosexual relationship to exist between Robinson and Jimmie; two, whether this was true or not was irrelevant to Wells; three, his purpose in speaking of it to me was not, as he had said, to warn me, but to establish it as a fact in my mind; four, he was capable of saying anything about anyone if it served his own ends.

  Miguel came rushing in dangling a dead hare by its ears. He ran to show it to Tom Wells, his enchanter.

  I enquired of Robinson that afternoon about my rosary. He neither admitted nor denied having taken it.

  ‘If you came into my room while I was asleep and searched my pocket, that was very wrong,’ I said, using my best moral tone, since, after all, he set himself up as our moral organiser.

  ‘Whose room?’ he said.

  ‘Mine,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Yours?’

  I could tell by this rather mean defence that Robinson felt himself to be in the wrong.

  ‘I should like to have my rosary,’ I said.

  ‘Will you promise not to teach Miguel to recite it?’

  ‘I’ll promise nothing. Give me my property.’

  ‘I am thinking of Miguel,’ he said. ‘I wish him to grow up free from superstition.’

  ‘To hell with you,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing superstitious about the rosary. It’s a Christian devotion, not a magic charm.’

  ‘All those Hail Marys,’ he said.

  I realised suddenly that Robinson was not speaking in the normal course of argument, not stating his objections to my request, or putting his point of view against mine. He knew very well the contents of the rosary meditations, and he was probably less ignorant of their nature than I was. It struck me for the first time that he was not simply attempting to make small difficulties, or to exercise his authority on the island simply from a need for power, but that he was constitutionally afraid of any material manifestation of Grace.

  ‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘I can do without it.’

  I was not surprised that, late that night when I was going to bed, Tom Wells stood in my path to tell me that his brief-case containing his samples of lucky charms, all his proofs of Your Future, and the articles he had been writing, had disappeared.

  Chapter VIII

  NEXT morning, Saturday the third of July, Robinson was gone. It was nothing for him to have gone out before the rest of us were up, but he had always returned before eleven o’clock. We had breakfast and proceeded with our usual chores. At noon we asked each other where Robinson could be. At one o’clock Miguel began to cry.

  Robinson’s bed was made, his room in order. He was nowhere in the house. He was not in the storehouse, nor in that vicinity. We assembled at the cliff’s edge calling, ‘Robinson! Hey there, Robinson!‘, lest he should be down on the beach, or have fallen.

  We gave Miguel some soup, feeding him by spoonfuls, for he was sobbing frantically. Jimmie and I, taking with us some chunky biscuit-sandwiches and the first-aid box, set off to look for Robinson, for it seemed certain that he had met with some accident. We took a route over the mountain to the north-west since this was a part scored with the streams rich in iron deposits, from which Robinson frequently drew our mineral water supplies in the early mornings. Tom Wells remained with Miguel, promising to keep a look-out for Robinson from the plateau.

  We had gone a short way when Miguel climbed up behind us, calling on us to stop. ‘Come back now! Come back.’ He had stopped crying. He looked suddenly like an old man who had started growing downward with age, or again like a child of the very poor, with a face lined with responsibility and want.

  ‘Has Robinson turned up?’

  ‘No. Mr. Tom has found the blood.’

  ‘Robinson must be hurt,’ I said.

  We returned, Jimmie carrying Miguel astride on his shoulders, and Miguel hunched and clinging to him.

  Tom Wells came to meet us. He held out towards us a heavy corduroy jacket of a faded tawny colour, which I recognised as one of Robinson’s which he would sometimes wear when the weather turned cold, or if he went out of doors at night.

  ‘We found this in the mustard field,’ Tom Wells said.

  ‘What is with Robinson?’ said Jimmie.

  ‘Look at the coat.’

  I saw a bright red stain on the coat. I felt it. The stain was damp, it was sticky with blood, and it spread across three separate gashes in the material.

  Jimmie exclaimed some words in Dutch.

  I said, ‘Someone must be hurt.’

  ‘It was lying in the mustard field,’ said Wells. ‘Miguel lifted it up, and this knife fell out of the pocket.’ He reached in the pocket of the coat and produced a clasp-knife. The blade was open. I recognised the knife. It was very sharp, the handle about three inches long, the blade about four inches. Robinson always carried it with him, clasped in its sheath.

  I said, ‘That’s Robinson’s knife.’

  We went down to the mustard field, and there, even before Miguel ran to point out the spot where the coat had been found, I saw the dark trampled patches among the glaring yellow plants. There was blood on the ground, still slightly sticky. When we came to look closer, there seemed to be the marks of blood all round about. There was also a complete pathway of trodden-down plants spattered with blood, leading out of the field from the spot where the coat had been found. Following this newly-beaten track, towards the mountain path, we found a green silk neck square which was Jimmie’s p
roperty. This was also soaked in blood, not yet dry.

  Jimmie opened our pack and brought out the brandy. This he solemnly handed round. We all had a swig, even Miguel.

  Tom Wells said, ‘There’s something fishy about all this. Someone wounded has been dragged through the field, you realise.’

  I lay awake all night, listening to Robinson’s elegant eight-day clock chiming the hours. It occurred to me obscurely that I had better wind it in the morning, otherwise we would be without a time-measure on the island. Winding this clock was of course Robinson’s concern, and Robinson was gone. But the thought was absurd, muscling its way in among the major disturbances of my mind. For the turmoil and the frightened talk and conjecture, the strangeness and dread of the past day crowded in, almost as if I had a capacity prepared for it; as if, from the time of the crash up to this day I had been a vacuum waiting only for the swift delayed rush of horror to enter in; as lf, really, the getting away with a mere concussion and a broken arm, my luck in falling into Robinson’s hands, my easy recovery, and the normal life of Robinson’s household, were not to have been trusted; and as if the proper consequence of the plane disaster were now upon us. From among the shapes and shadows of the past day I discerned several hard outlines: the trail from the mustard field had led to the mountain. Here, a path linked up with that which crossed the mountain to the Furnace. Now that we were definitely looking for blood, we saw blood smeared everywhere along the trail. There must have been a steady bleeding, a dropping of blood all the way. Moreover at various stations we came across blood-stained articles either on the actual track or nearby: a shoe belonging to Robinson, a shirt — the one I had been wearing on the previous day while my dress was being washed, and, a little farther up the path, the scarlet cashmere tablecloth which I had worn as a sari. These I had laid aside the previous night, and, putting on my newly washed dress in the morning, had not noticed their absence from my room. The white cotton shirt was streaked with blood which had almost dried and on the red cashmere was a patch of darker red which stained the whole of one side down to the fringe and which, in places, was still sticky. Tom Wells, who had picked it up from among the thick plants a few yards off the pathway, pulled his hand away quickly as it touched the sticky patches. I noticed that he did this every time his hand encountered blood not yet dry. I thought this gesture odd, until I noticed that I myself gave the same involuntary jerk of withdrawal when my hand touched wet blood. After stopping to look stupidly at each of these objects, we left them lying on the track and pushed on like somnambulists.