A Sea-Grape Tree

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘It was snowing.’

  ‘Oh snowing!’ Her voice rose, lamenting and ecstatic. ‘What wouldn’t I give to see a white world again!’

  ‘Burst pipes, what wouldn’t she give for ’em.’

  ‘Or one of those rainy soft spring evenings, the scent of wet lilac, thrushes and blackbirds singing their hearts out. Real birdsong. There’s a bird in these parts that gives me the pip, Mrs … Squeak, squeak, up and down, over and over on two awful piercing notes. Every blessed morning.’

  ‘Not the brain fever bird, I hope?’

  ‘Not quite so bad as that. The natives call it the day clean bird—cleaning the day you know—giving it a rub up. It’s a picturesque thought.’

  ‘Damn bird, I’d like to picturesque it. Innerkleen bird I call it.’

  Such genuinely hearty chuckles shook the couple that, next moment, the rustle and creak of wickerwork signalled Miss Stay’s return to consciousness. As if galvanised by an electric battery her face started to twitch throughout the layers of rouge and powder caking it. Next, one eye fell open, winked. Presently she exhaled a long tremolo of beatitude; murmured:

  ‘Ah, what a treat to drop off after the long day’s toil. A mor-or­-ortal treat. Hark now!’

  Violently she flung her head up; assumed the look of one intently listening.

  In truth the throbs, brays, moans of a recorded dance band had begun to float from far across the bay.

  ‘Jackie and her chums!’ declared Miss Stay, exulting. ‘They will be at it over there. Dancing and prancing! Prancing and dancing!—as the saying goes.’

  ‘Jackie and young Tony get up little hops,’ Mrs Cunningham explained. ‘I fancy he’s got a friend over from Trinidad, and one or two girls as well—nurses from the hospital. They seem full of go. You ought to join them dear. It’s dull for you, sitting here with us—though we love to have you.’

  ‘Oh no, no thank you, no,’ cried the visitor appalled. ‘I don’t dance—I hardly ever … I love being here with you.’

  ‘Jackie lives for dancing—she’s taken up ballroom dancing. She and Tony went in for a competition a year or so ago in Georgetown. They got third prize. They’re ever so skinny both of them, light on their toes. Strange when you think of it, him lying there, her swooping and twirling around just above him, so to speak.’

  ‘Doesn’t he … does he mind, do you think?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say,’ remarked her hostess dreamily. ‘Johnny’s a dark horse, you never know what he’s thinking. He never gives himself away.’

  The visitor once more raised the binoculars and gazed at the shore penetrated now with the full moon’s lambent pallor: the leaf-crown of the tree was rimmed with silver; the hut was a square patch of darkness. She strove to reach the person living silent and invisible within, who never gives himself away.

  I will never give myself away.

  Then the clock inside her head again; and then again the crepitation, recurring automatically, stringing her skull with red-hot wires. And on this verandah or inside her head, voices chattering, crooning, quacking: sounds without meaning, signifying nothing. Then all the sounds spun themselves together into a thick knot of toneless sound; which dissolved into a high-pitched humming reverberation; on which she was sucked out through a long tunnel into some kind of unfamiliar space. She was floating, bouncing a little, just above a strip of shore—the same shore, not the same: grainy, faintly iridescent, the tumbled rocks that ringed it insubstantial, moving like semi-fluid pools of bronze. The tiny shift of the waves crashed in her ears. And that old stranded reptilian-vegetable growth had lost its petrifaction, had come alive, was coiling down violently to earth itself, upward as violently into an explosion of undulating tentacles upon which floated a cargo of shimmering fruit and foliage. One great multi-fingered arm stretched across the hut, enfolding it in what seemed a tender gesture of protection.

  Then suddenly, within this tent, with stereoscopic sharpness, the figure of a man appeared, standing as if in mid-air: naked to the waist, towering, edged with light from some source behind him. Primitive he looked, powerful, cold, with a fixed expression; like a ship’s figurehead; or like a sea-god standing beneath a panoply made of those marine-fleshed leaves. Looking straight at her … through her? All at once he smiled, showing a mouthful of strong white teeth. The shock of this was piercing. It brought her back into her body with a bump. She looked round wildly, gasped out:

  ‘Oh!’

  The binoculars fell off her lap; were retrieved by her host with a glance of strong disapprobation. Gazing into a pocket mirror, reshaping her mauve lips a bright vermilion, Miss Stay was temporarily inattentive; but Mrs Cunningham enquired:

  ‘What is it, dear? … Ah, you’ve seen Joey! Yes, there he is, that’s our Joey, our lizzy-boy, our tame lizard.’

  Sure enough, something vivid, sinuous, emerald, streaked along the balustrade, ran up a vine-wreathed pillar and froze there, only its throat pulsating.

  ‘A lizard!’ she said stupidly.

  ‘Did he startle you? Isn’t he a poppet? He’s come specially to have a look at you—he always does when we have company. He’s such a nosy boy. He lives up there, under the roof. The other day Harold put his hand out, and we held our breath, and he scuttled on to it, right up his arm and rested on his shoulder. It’s quite uncanny how he watches us. Staycie calls him our familiar.’

  ‘Our visitor will soon become acquainted with our local fauna,’ declared Miss Stay, nodding and winking vehemently. ‘Not to speak of our flora. This island is a paradise for nature-lovers. I daresay our visitor is a botanist and would put us all to shame with her lore.’

  ‘Oh no!’ protested the visitor, repudiating in the manageress­ a questing note, as of one bent, though delicately, upon a probe. ‘I’m entirely ignorant. I’ve only just learnt … bougainvillea … frangipani … the trumpet tree … the flamboyant … the entrance flower. …’

  ‘The what?’ barked the Captain.

  ‘A climbing plant with a marvellous bell-shaped flower. It was all round the porch of the Inn where Deshabille picked me up. I asked him its name and he said: “Oh, dat is de flower of de entrance of de house. We call it de entrance flower. And dat dere is a common bird. On dis island we have no expensive birdies runnin’ wild.”’

  Laughter rang out; Miss Stay exclaimed that that boy was a mortal caution.

  Saved, I am saved, she told herself; hauled out in the nick of time, able to amuse and to partake in cheerful trivial conversation. Not the final crack-up after all. Merge yourself in flora and fauna, excellent therapy: for instance, identify with Joey. She observed the lizard who had now descended half-way down the pillar and was watching her, she thought. For a second she managed to change places: she was Joey on the pillar, motionless, indifferent, observing human specimens with a lizard’s microscopic cold, intent percipience.

  She dared now to tackle the binoculars again and see what could be seen afar by moon and starlight. Look straight into the dead centre … No longer dead. Light streamed steadily outwards from the hut.

  Next moment, clearly seeing two figures move out and stand within the doorway, she hastily returned the glasses to her host, who exclaimed:

  ‘Now what? Seen a duppy?’

  He was irritated by her nervy ways.

  ‘No. But it seems like spying.’ Apologetically she added: ‘I thought I saw him—the man—Johnny. I didn’t know he could stand.’

  ‘Ah well … Louis would be supporting him.’ Mrs Cunningham had reverted to the dreamy note. ‘The fact is he keeps it to himself what he can do, what he can’t. He may surprise us all one day.’

  ‘He will, he will!’ cried Miss Stay in fervent affirmation. ‘That blessed patient long-suffering fellow will rise up one day and walk towards us. Take up his bed and walk! I pray for it. More things are wrought by prayer … How did the poet put it?’

/>   ‘I believe in miracles. My spouse does not,’ said Mrs Cunningham, shaking out the hem of her skirt to fall just so, examining one neat ankle and pretty plump little foot in a white high-heeled sandal. ‘All my life I’ve told myself: every day, every hour of every day, somewhere in the world a miracle is happening. God is showing himself to someone. Mummy taught me that, and I know it’s true. Only we’re so blind. Watch and wait. Expect but don’t expect, she said.’

  ‘Your mother was a wonderful woman, God rest her soul, no doubt of that.’

  ‘She was. And we were all in all to one another. Some might say I was spoilt.’

  ‘Privileged, not spoilt.’ Miss Stay’s nods grew more emphatic. ‘And the privilege not one-sided, some might say, with such a daughter!’

  Hypnotised by the voices’ rhythmical monotony the visitor sank by degrees into a state of semi-somnolence. All bearings lost. Let them go. In the irrational element immerse. She let her hand move almost imperceptibly back and forth over her lap, rapidly scribbling on an imaginary pad. Are they all mad? it wrote. The things they say! Is it the enervating climate? Are you dead drunk my dear? Captain, unbeliever, spouse, behold I will show you a mystery. A few moments ago sitting here beside you sipping one of your rum punches extra special brew I was cleft in two. My body stayed here dressed in pale blue-green shantung, I ME I was on the beach. Good God my dear. Very very very strange Madam!!! But it’s true, very very strange but true. Everything but everything had stopped being solid was made of iridescent rays in webs and patterns that tree had come alive I saw its nature then I saw a MAN he smiled—did he see me? I don’t think so the shock I came back with a bump and here I sit. Captain, a miracle has been vouchsafed. Perhaps I died for a moment. Another time perhaps for longer and never come back. This won’t do now, wake up, pay attention to your hostess …

  Miss Stay was saying:

  ‘My mother was a beauty. It was a mortal treat to see her dressed for the ball or it might be the opera. How she came to bring forth such an object as yours truly is one of life’s enigmas. But she made the best of it! I never lacked for maternal love. “Now Clemmie never forget you have your own appeal,” she’d say. As Ellie mentioned I was a seventh child. All the rest stillborn or died young. Povera Mama mia! The only one to reach maturity was little Clementina. The last of the line. Just a skinny ginger now. Just a stringy featherless old fowl.’

  ‘Hey Hey Hey! Cheer up, old dear!’ shouted the Captain. ‘Never say die! Tell me your past I’ll tell you mine I don’t think! There’s life in the old dog yet y’know! Plenty of staying power!’

  ‘Oh Harold, what a shocking pun. Don’t mind him Staycie dear, he’s in one of his naughty moods.’

  ‘Aha?’ cried Miss Stay in strong appreciation. ‘A joke! What a mortal treat it is to be among dearest chums and pass the joke around! And I know the Captain! He would never take advantage of a woman’s thoughtless word. He’s the perfect gentleman for all his wicked ways.’

  ‘Take advantage?—never! Pure in thought word and deed—that’s me!’

  ‘And we are past all that, are we not, Captain dear? Casting sheep’s eyes … canoodling in the moonlight. All our youthful peccadilloes, all behind us. No more beaux for Miss Clementina. Just an old stay-at-home, that’s what she is, contented with her lot.’

  ‘What what? Another pun? Didn’t you hear my lady wife? Punning strictly forbidden on these premises.’

  ‘Oh, and it slipped off my tongue quite unawares!’ marvelled Miss Stay. ‘It’s a shame I do declare to be taken up so quick. And it was nothing but a case of tit for tat.’

  ‘Let you off lightly this time. Shilling in the collecting box, Temperance mission to sailors. Come on, come on!’ He extended a puffy hirsute paw with a tremor in it.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you, Mrs …’ said Mrs Cunningham gracefully lighting a cigarette, ‘my spouse has somewhat of the bully in him. If you had had the misfortune to be married to such a brute for over twenty years you would know better than to try anything in the nature of—well, tit for tat. That would never answer. His ideal is the slave woman.’

  ‘That’s right! Give ’em stick! They thrive on it.’

  ‘Will you listen to the man? Fawning—crawling on hands and knees—that is his notion of a woman’s place. Ladies, are we to take it lying down?’

  ‘Abser-lutely! Ver-ry nicely put! Ask nothing better! Hach hach hach!’

  Miss Stay collapsed, gripping her bowed head in both horny hands, uttering moans expressive of mingled protest and delight. Perhaps acknowledging a limit to permitted badinage, the Captain heaved himself up and seized his walking stick.

  ‘Ah well! Time for my constitutional. Just chunter along to the store—stocks need replenishing I fancy. So long girls, chin chin! Don’t get into mischief. Any bridge tonight?’

  Not waiting for an answer, he took a large canvas bag from a peg on the wall, whistled to his dog, went limping down the verandah steps and disappeared.

  ‘Don’t be late. Supper will spoil,’ his wife called after him; adding after a moment: ‘He won’t have heard. He’s getting very deaf.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a problem how to tempt his appetite. He simply pecks. You wouldn’t credit it in such a powerful build of man. It’s the drink, I fear me. Would you call him a very heavy drinker, Staycie?’

  Miss Stay gave herself pause before declaring upon a note compounded of the staunch and the judicial: ‘I would say the Captain is partial to his drink. Exceptionally partial. But never have I seen him what you might truly call the worse. Never! What that man can put down while keeping on his legs is a mortal marvel. Sometimes with a drinking man the liver takes its toll. My own dear father succumbed—oh dear dear dear! Mark my words, Ellie, drink will never get the better of the Captain. All honour to you for your care of him. All the same, the man must be blessed with a champion specimen of liver.’

  ‘Well. . . I keep out of his way some mornings,’ objected Mrs Cunningham, smoothing away a little frown with the tips of her plump tapering fingers. ‘He’s a bit on the morose side.’

  ‘Take no notice!’ cried her friend. ‘The man’s leg might be playing him up dear, remember that. No—by and large, I do declare, if it came to matrimony I would never boggle at a drinking man. There’s a masculine appeal …What says our visitor? Would she agree?’

  ‘Well … I haven’t much experience of—of drinking men. They can be a bit—a bit boring, don’t you think? They repeat themselves … or want to quarrel, or …’

  ‘Ah, when the dividing line is crossed!—that is another story.’ Spasmodic twitches registered her sense of the need for delicate discrimination. Gazing towards the shore, Ellie murmured, as one speaking on the verge of sleep:

  ‘Oh, I take no notice. That’s married life, isn’t it? —give and take. His leg does play him up. I wish he had more to occupy his mind—he gets so restless. But men are restless aren’t they? —more so than women. It’s their nature.’

  ‘Ah, women are the givers, that’s the way of it. They were created to apply the balm.’

  ‘Well, not always they don’t.’ A light mischievous chuckle issued from the throat of Mrs Cunningham. ‘I do rub him up the wrong way now and then. On purpose.’

  ‘A calculated risk!’ declared Miss Stay.

  ‘He’s somewhat primitive.’ The chuckle came again. ‘I often recall what Mummy said to me when we got engaged. “Well Ellie,” she said, “you are taking on a man with hidden depths. He’s a man to put the woman he has chosen on a pedestal. Should she topple off she’d rue the day.”’

  ‘Oh, you’d never do that dear! Never!’

  ‘Well, I’d never be a doormat. He knew that from the beginning.’

  ‘The man worships you.’

  Still reminiscent, Mrs Cunningham continued:

  ‘I was a flirt, I must confess. I could not make my mind up.’

  ‘So man
y admirers!’

  ‘Ah well. . . Everyone spoilt me. And with Harold there was the age difference. But Mummy thought that was all to the good. You see,’—addressing the visitor—‘she kept it from me but she knew her days were numbered. She wanted to see me settled.’

  ‘Security for her one ewe lamb!’

  ‘Oh, security? Sometimes I wonder about security—where is it? The more we seek it the more … But yes, that was her idea. So we had a very quiet wedding. And afterwards she said with such a smile: “Now Ellie, remember, when the Call comes I’m ready.”’ Her face worked, her voice failed, went on shakily: ‘That was the first hint, to prepare me, but I didn’t take it in. Harold knew, she’d told him, but he’d promised her not to break it to me suddenly. He simply adored Mummy … and we shared the nursing right to the very end. Three months and she was gone. He was wonderful, I will say. Of course she’s very often with me—oh! very often. I tell it by the perfume she leaves—white roses, her favourites. And I sometimes think her going when she did was for the best. It would have grieved her when no grandchild came along. Believe it or not, Mrs … I haven’t a single relative in the wide wide world, apart from a second cousin somewhere. It’s the same on Harold’s side. We’re a pair of lone lorn orphans.’ After a pause she added: ‘Not that Harold ever wanted children.’

  ‘Oh, as to that dear you must not repine. It was God’s will for you in this life.’

  ‘Oh, no doubt it was meant. I was delicate as a girl. Harold said from the first he’d never let me risk it. And starting married life out East … Oh, that was such a jolly life! Waited on hand and foot—so much going on, such a cheery crowd, always someone dropping in, dances galore, theatricals … I had some lovely friends. The war put paid to that gay life, of course. Harold threw up his job, he was getting to the top, and back we came. We both did our bit. After he went out to France in the REs I worked in a canteen, all through. It was hard, but there were some jolly times, so much esprit de corps. I daresay you were still in the schoolroom Mrs …’