A Sea-Grape Tree

by Rosamond Lehmann

  Skirting the palm tree grove that fringed one side of the bay, they emerged upon the beach—upon that crescent of dazzling­­­­ coral powder, sifted with sand, with pounded mother of pearl, scattered with black driftwood, with ribbons of dry parchment-coloured seaweed, with broken palm shells, crab shells, with papery slivers of bamboo and other brine-bleached shards and skeletons, all frozen beneath the moon’s full incandescent eye. Presently they pause just clear of the water’s filmy verge, where the last crystal shallows and blue-rinsed transparencies slide in, dissolve, spilling over and over again a whispered breath, a lacy ruffle. They look towards that striking image in the middle distance: a hut, a sea-grape tree, moulded and spectrally illumined, netted in hard, snaking­­­, blue-black shadows; the whole complex standing out in stereoscopic relief, with that air it has already started to create of mystifying weight and meaning. At the heart of it glows the amber effulgence of a lit lamp.

  The visitor removes her sandals, feels the soft furry tingle of midget waves expiring round her feet. The other lifts her head and calls a long high-pitched coo-oo-ee. Silence; then an owl’s hoot answers. ‘That’s him,’ she says. ‘It means All Clear’; and they start to walk towards Johnny’s improbable dwelling. ‘It’s not just anybody I’d introduce, but he’ll take to you. You have repose. Noisy people are what he cannot bear—loud voices, horse play. That lot Jackie collects up there—he can’t abide them. And Jackie’s as jerky and restless as a puppet on a string. I’ve mentioned he’s the love of my life—it’s the truth. He doesn’t love me back of course, but he puts up with me. He’s very kind. As I said before, I hope I shan’t be jealous.’

  ‘Of course you won’t be—what an absurd idea. Does he love Jackie?’

  ‘I think he hates her. I shouldn’t have said that, forget it. The fact is, I doubt if he loves anybody. Perhaps he did once upon a time, before he—I believe he was engaged and broke it off, after the crash. Poor girl, whoever it was. I imagine her one of those long-legged outdoor English blondes. Perhaps he did love that old Mrs—I’ll remember her name in half a tick. She was old enough to be his grandmother, but—well, I don’t know, she didn’t act like one. I suppose she must have been a famm fatall—and with that sort old age doesn’t mean they’re on the shelf. They’ve got something different from ordinary common or garden sex appeal. The same of course goes for Johnny, in a different way. You’ll see for yourself.’

  Then they have arrived before the hut, whose shell-encrusted­­­­ surface gleams and sparkles; beyond it, Johnny is to be seen in a wheel chair drawn up to a table upon which a chess-board is set out.

  ‘Johnny,’ she said, ‘I’ve brought a new friend to see you. She arrived a few days ago.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking straight at me, with a pleasant smile.

  ‘I still haven’t caught your name dear.’

  I said: ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t much like my name.’

  ‘But you can’t just be anonymous, my dear.’

  I was struggling with my neurotic compulsion to obliterate my identity, not to reveal my name, when he said gently:

  ‘She can if she wants. She’s travelling incog. We’ll call her Anonyma.’

  ‘Anemone!—that’s pretty—Greek isn’t it? It suits her, doesn’t it, Johnny?’ Poor Ellie, thrown by some element in this botched introduction—perhaps by the sense that his unexpected response seemed to establish some immediate link between us—began to lose her nerve and gabble.

  ‘I promise,’ I said, ‘I’m not on the run from the law—or from anybody.’

  ‘I’m delighted to meet you in any case,’ he then said in a formal manner. He had a deep throaty voice, tinged with melancholy like all seductive voices. One could imagine him using it once upon a time to tease and to beckon and to keep at arm’s length the women whom he fascinated.

  ‘Excuse my not getting up,’ he said, still looking at me, wheeling himself forward. I saw then that his knees were covered with something that looked like a light blue cloak. ‘Come and sit down. But where?’

  ‘On the step,’ said Ellie sharply. ‘Here’s a cushion for you.’ I thought once more that she was put out by this long exchange of looks, fulfilling, so it would appear, her worst suspicion: that love at first sight had taken place—or if not that, that she was telling herself: Really! to stand and stare, how rude. For it was he, all right, that I had seen earlier: dark hair, thick and wavy with a broad white lock in it, points of it sticking up on end, still damp from bathing and unbrushed; blue shirt open at the neck, tremendous shoulders; black, angled eyebrows, smile uncovering large regular white teeth and all. His eyes were long and light, the colour of clear sea water on a sunless day, and cold—yes, cold. His skin had a waxen look, with a stain of carmine over each prominent cheekbone. This gave his dramatic face an extra touch of unreality—that sea-god, ship’s prow look I had watched before.

  We sat one on each side of him on the top step, looking out at the sea’s great lustred semi-circle. Louis brought us rum punches; and later little grilled fishes with lemon, and platters of mixed fruits: pawpaws, bananas, avocado pears. Our tongues were loosed. Johnny drank steadily; perhaps we all did. Looking over my shoulder I saw a room lined all round with well-stocked bookshelves. There were bamboo screens; a gramophone; a guitar; a typewriter; a cane chaise longue.

  At some stage in the evening Ellie persuaded him to show me a folio of line drawings washed with water colour: still lives of shells, leaves, orchids, lilies, fruits—all sorts of ravishing indigenous objects. They were charming. But when I said so, he said: ‘Oh, rubbish,’ and shut the folio. ‘It was just a hobby.’

  ‘You don’t mean you’ve given it up? That’s naughty,’ Ellie exclaimed. ‘You were going to make a book of them.’

  ‘So Sibyl imagined. It was an absurd idea.’

  ‘You and her together—a book about the island. She was an authoress, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Among other things.’ His smile broadened, then abruptly faded.

  ‘Anstey!’ cried Ellie. ‘It’s just come back to me, Sibyl Anstey. You should have known her, shouldn’t she Johnny? A most unusual person.’

  ‘I did know her,’ I said; but either they didn’t hear or I said it only half aloud. By that time my head was spinning.

  He said reflectively, with a tinge of irony: ‘She certainly kept us all up to scratch.’

  ‘Oh, she did! Do you remember those—what was it?—spiritual exercises she taught us?—to release something or other. What was it she was always going on about?’

  ‘Our untapped creative potential, I expect.’ He laughed a little.

  ‘Well, they didn’t tap mine,’ said Ellie, glum.

  ‘You didn’t try hard enough.’

  ‘Or Jackie’s, or Kit’s, or Trevor’s. I did try—she wasn’t interested, except in tapping yours.’

  ‘Ellie didn’t really take to her,’ explained Johnny.

  ‘That’s not true. I admired her so much. She had no use for me, why should she have? So brilliant and … Still, when people make you feel it, it’s not very …’ Her speech by now was blurred. A gush of tears spilled over and ran down unchecked, giving her moon-chalked face with its slightly protuberant round eyes and cupid’s bow mouth a look half comic, half pathetic, like a woe-begone Pierrette.

  I broke in saying: ‘You mustn’t be upset. It wouldn’t have occurred to her, what you were feeling. She would have said: “I don’t know how it is but there seems some kind of malaise between that charming woman and myself. What can be the cause? Could there possibly have been some failure on my part?”’ I heard my own voice adopting more and more of remembered tones and inflections. ‘Oh, and other things she would have said. Like: “You must educate your eyes to see. Learn to observe with accuracy. I can paint flowers very beautifully. So could others if they could only learn to notice the green in the white.”’

  They
were both staring. Ellie looked awestruck; one of Johnny’s eyebrows shot up sharply. I launched into my explanations. In a blinding flash I saw myself, with Jess and Mademoiselle, toiling up the goose girl hill with primrose baskets, opening a blue door in a high strawberry-brick wall, and for the first time confronting the Enchantress.

  ‘I adored her,’ I said. ‘She told me long long stories, she bewitched me. She had three grandchildren, Malcolm, Maisie and Cherry. We used to play bicycling games in her garden. And climb; and swing. There was a Major, her husband. He never spoke: Major Jardine. She was called Mrs Jardine when I knew her. I remember, Anstey was her maiden name. Wasn’t she called Mrs Jardine here?’

  ‘I never heard her mention any Major of that name. Did you, Johnny?’

  ‘Not often,’ he said guardedly.

  ‘Perhaps there’d been a tragedy in her life,’ said Ellie, struck with a happy thought. ‘She may have wanted to forget. This is a great place for—well, for leaving the past behind.’ She shot me a part-conspiratorial part-apologetic glance.

  ‘There were quite a few tragedies in her life,’ I said. ‘Dramas galore, from the days of my grandmother onward, from when she was a girl. The Major died during the war. He was a very sad silent man: what Miss Stay would call a drinking man, I realise, looking back. It couldn’t have been easy, living with her. She used to correspond with my mother, but after the war we all lost touch. I wonder why she came here. Pour le recueillement? She used to talk of the necessity for that.’

  ‘Yes, that was it,’ said Johnny.

  ‘She came because of you, Johnny,’ said Ellie sharply. ‘She followed you—you know she did.’

  ‘I was in her hospital for months in France,’ explained Johnny, stubbornly sticking to facts. ‘We got to know one another fairly well. She was very good to me—helped me put myself together again. She had a gift for that. Occupational therapy, you know.’

  ‘Basket weaving?’ suggested Ellie.

  He laughed. I said: ‘She would be more original than that’; and he agreed. I saw their relationship in a sort of clouded flash: this beautiful stricken man; why she had followed him. Out of a cave of memory sounded again the dark harsh-tender siren notes of Mrs Jardine’s voice proclaiming and lamenting her lost lovers.

  ‘She died here?’ I said. ‘I can’t believe it. When?’

  ‘Not all that long ago—two years, wasn’t it Johnny? She had a doctor granddaughter she was very proud of. Did you know her?’

  ‘Maisie—oh yes! I didn’t know she was a doctor.’

  ‘Dr Maisie Thomson.’ He sounded amused. ‘Splendid person.’

  ‘She was sent for—Staycie sent for her, I think. Anyway she was here at the last. But I never met her, such a pity. Harold took a fancy that year to go cruising round the Islands. When we got back it was all over. There’s only one tiny church here, on top of a hill—that’s where she is. I went once with Kit and Trevor to see her grave. Just SIBYL ANSTEY on the headstone, not even the dates. A little insipid for such a colourful personality, but her express wish, I gather, Johnny.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fancy you having known her, what a strange coincidence. It’s a small world and no mistake. I suppose you’ve read her books?’

  ‘No, never. They were banished from our library. Disapproved of. Very unpleasant books, my mother said.’

  ‘Good gracious! Somehow I would have thought they would have been—romantic more. Idealistic. Were they on the frank side?’

  ‘Trash, my father said. Somehow I suspect they may have been.’ To intercept her reaction to this harsh opinion I went on quickly: ‘But Sibyl Anstey, Mrs Jardine—oh, she was like a legend! Mythical Queen. One doesn’t forget such phenomenal persons, ever. I used often to dream of her.’

  I hurried on with my reminiscences, playing them out as it might be on a length of rope to reach a group of human figures marooned in time past, myself among them. The element of something approaching the uncanny in this turn of events excited me and made my descriptions vivid, picturesque.

  ‘What a happy childhood you must have had,’ said Ellie. ‘Those lovely homes and gardens. Such a happy family, so many playfellows. I was an only child and—well, pennies were scarce after Daddy passed away. Mummy couldn’t give me all the opportunities she would have wished.’ Another freshet of tears spilled over, and Johnny handed her his big clean handkerchief, saying kindly:

  ‘Mop up, ducks. Wipe the tear baby dear from your eyeee’; at which she burst into weak giggles and exclaimed: ‘Aren’t I an idiot? It’s your fault Johnny. I can’t explain, but it is. Thank you for this gorgeous hankie, how good it smells, may I keep it?’ She flung it over her face, inhaling deeply; then said with a sly peep in my direction: ‘I had a dinky one, but it went west earlier this evening. Soaked, dear—wasn’t it?’

  I too was giggling now. I said: ‘Yes. That was Johnny’s fault too, I expect, though I can’t think why.’

  ‘It’s the fault of the full moon,’ said Johnny, ‘according to Louis. If you feel like howling, that’s the reason.’

  ‘I can well believe it,’ said Ellie, lifting her head accusingly towards the sky. ‘Princess says the same. Never expose your face to it when it’s at the full, and look at us!—absolutely plastered with it. Plastered is the word … I do feel very queer.’ She stood up, not quite steadily. ‘I must go. Harold may be waiting for me—may be. Johnny dear, goodnight. You look like a handsome ogre in the moonlight, your teeth quite glitter.’

  She ran a hand over the wall of the hut, lightly tracing out an ornate cluster of shells. ‘All Sibyl Anstey’s work, eh, Johnny? Well, I know you helped. And we all helped to collect them. Louis built this dinky little house for her, didn’t he Johnny?’

  ‘Yes, he did. And dinky it is not,’ he snapped.

  I said, to help her to recover: ‘It’s a work of art.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You could call it a bijou residence, I suppose; but it’s very solid and neatly designed inside.’

  ‘Did she live here all the time?’

  ‘No. She slept up aloft under Staycie’s wing. But every day Louis would carry her down and carry her back again at night. She liked that.’ He smiled with a downward look, spreading his hands out on his knees, smoothing the blue wrap that covered them. He had big useful hands with spatulate finger tips. It was then that I suddenly recognised the wrap.

  Ellie said: ‘Louis made her a sort of chair on stilts, didn’t he Johnny?—for doing her shell work. She always seemed so busy, but the funny thing was she’d often lie for hours on her chaise longue just staring out to sea.’

  ‘Busy all the same,’ I said.

  ‘Inside herself, you mean—busy with her thoughts. You could tell she was a deep thinker.’

  ‘The arrangement is,’ said Johnny, ‘that this delightful dwelling is mine until Maisie claims it. I’m her tenant. What’s more, the rent I pay is nil. Am I not lucky?’

  ‘Will she come out?’ I said, telling myself that nothing would surprise me now. Maisie might well appear, saying in her ironic way: ‘Oh, so it’s you again, Rebecca.’ I conjured her up in a white overall, a stethoscope depending from her formidable bosom, calves bulging above sensible flat-heeled shoes: a square, highly-coloured figure with brilliant penetrating eyes.

  ‘She might come one day,’ he said. ‘I hope so. But I doubt she’d spare the time. She’s head of the gynaecological department in some hospital—somewhere in the north; and a private practice as well. She sends me postcards now and then.’

  ‘And do you write back?’ Ellie spoke severely.

  ‘Of course.’ He grinned.

  ‘I wonder!’ Addressing me, she continued: ‘Her granny was so proud of her.’

  Another random image flashed on me, this time recollected, not invented: Maisie with burning cheeks, her hair standing up on end like copper wire, tilting ba
ck her head to blow a pheasant’s feather up, up, till it lodged in a bunch of mistletoe. In the huge kitchen, on Christmas Eve, 1916, in Mrs Jardine’s desecrated house.

  What I was being told seemed to follow naturally, logically from that night of our last meeting, despite the huge gap in time and space: a natural outcome but also phantasmagoric—even slightly sinister.

  Johnny had now picked up his guitar, and was strumming on it in an absent way—giving us, I thought, our congé. As we finally moved away he glanced at me and said quietly:

  ‘Come again.’

  We walked off, not quite steadily, arm in arm; and when we came to the place where our paths diverged—hers through the grove of palms, mine to the steps cut in the rock—we stopped. Turning, she held out Johnny’s handkerchief and waved it once, twice, in his direction. She murmured: ‘Goodnight, my bonny love, God keep you.’ Then she dropped her arm and said with a quaver: ‘Well now you’ve met him. I knew he’d take to you.’

  ‘I don’t see why you think he did.’

  ‘Oh, I can tell! For one thing, he asked you to come again.’

  ‘That was just politeness because I was with you.’

  ‘No it wasn’t. He’s never said it before. I expect you think I drop in on him any old time. I know I told you I did, but the fact is I don’t. For one thing, Harold’s not all that keen. He thinks Johnny unsettles me.’ She fell into a brooding silence. ‘Besides which, I can’t get over my silly shyness when I’m with him. Till I’ve had a few drinks, and then I’m even sillier.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s very fond of you,’ I said.

  ‘Do you really think so? He can be so—not exactly snubbing. Keeping his distance.’

  ‘That’s just in self-defence. His way of coping with his—handicap.’ It seemed to have become my turn to be the comforter.

  ‘You may be right: in case anybody ever hints at pity. He’s so proud. Oh, the cruelty of life sometimes!’ She sat down on a rock, pressing his handkerchief to her face. ‘I worship him. I have such wicked thoughts sometimes, such as, I’m almost glad he’s like he is. Where would he be? What would he be doing? It doesn’t bear thinking of—breaking women’s hearts, letting them eat him up between times, I dare say. As things are, he’s grounded.’ She jumped up, shook her skirt out, but still made no move to leave me. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying, take no notice. We’re all mad about him—Staycie, Louis, me … He doesn’t love us, but we don’t mind.’