The Eyes of the Amaryllis

by Natalie Babbitt

  “I don’t know,” said Jenny, laughing. “I guess so, sometimes.”

  “You’ve still got my red hair,” Gran observed, “but otherwise you’ve changed a little since Christmas. How old are you now?”

  “Eleven,” said Jenny. “Last February.”

  “Yes, and now it’s the middle of August,” said Gran. “So you’re halfway to twelve. Not a child at all, really, though you mustn’t expect me to stop calling you a child. I have a hard time remembering new things, sometimes. But I can remember the old things as if they happened yesterday. I met your grandfather for the first time when I was thirteen. Imagine that! He was twenty-one, and as handsome…well, as handsome as a walrus.”

  “A walrus!” said Jenny, laughing again. “Walruses aren’t handsome.”

  “Well, now, that’s a matter of taste,” said Gran with a smile. “Your grandfather was a big man, heavy-set, with a fine, big pair of mustaches. To me he was wonderfully handsome, and I fell in love with him at once.”

  “When you were thirteen?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “I’m not in love with anyone,” said Jenny, “and no one’s in love with me.”

  “Someone will be, someday,” said Gran.

  “Oh, no,” said Jenny. “I don’t expect it. I’m much too ugly.”

  “Ugly!” Gran exclaimed, throwing up a hand in mock dismay. “But, child, how can you be ugly when you look so much like me? Your grandfather fell in love with me, remember.”

  “When you were thirteen?”

  “Oh, no, certainly not,” said Gran. “Years later. He was a sailor—well, you know that, of course—and when he wasn’t on a voyage he would come to Springfield to visit his sister. Your Great-aunt Jane. It was ten years later, when I was twenty-three and he was thirty-one—that’s when he noticed me. Two years after that he had his own ship, and we were married and came to live right here, in this house.” She looked about her with satisfaction at the tidy, low-ceilinged room with its simple chairs and tables, and its mantel full of odd bits of china. “Then—let’s see. Your father was born six years after that, in the spring of ’36, and then when he was fourteen, that’s when the Amaryllis was…lost. Out there on the rocks in a terrible storm.” She said this calmly enough, tipping her head to indicate the stretch of sea outside the window behind her, but a look of intensity came to her face and she leaned forward and put a hand on Jenny’s arm. “You went down to the beach just now?”

  “Yes,” said Jenny.

  “Did you see anything? Anything at all?”

  “Well,” said Jenny, “I saw sand, and pebbles, and some long, stringy-looking weeds, and—the ocean, Gran! Oh, it’s wonderful! It makes me feel…”

  “Free!” said Gran triumphantly.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly,” said Jenny, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “How did I know?” said Gran. “What a question! It keeps me strong, that sense of freedom. And yet your father doesn’t seem to feel it at all. Isn’t that peculiar! But, child, was there nothing unusual on the beach? Nothing washed up?”

  “What sort of thing?” asked Jenny, puzzled by the urgency in her grandmother’s voice. “What are you looking for?”

  “Never mind,” said Gran, turning away from it. “Plenty of time for that later. Hand me the almanac on that table over there. I’ll check the tides and then we’ll have supper. Yes. Thank you, my dear. Now, let me see…here we are.” She ran a fingertip down the page. “I thought so. High tide at 12:15 tonight. Good. Well! Now for supper.”

  “What shall I cook?” asked Jenny nervously. This was the part she had dreaded.

  But Gran said, mercifully, “Cook? Why, nothing at all! What an idea!” She bent and picked up the crutch, and then, pulling herself up onto her good leg, she stood tall and straight and glared at her granddaughter. “I’m not an invalid, you know. And I don’t intend to sit here and be fussed over. I shall do the cooking.”

  “But, Gran, I thought—”

  “Never mind what you thought. Follow me. You can set the table, and fetch and carry now and then, but that’s not why I sent for you.”

  Jenny tried hard to disguise her relief, but Gran, looking at her narrowly, recognized it anyway. “You don’t like to cook?”

  “No,” said Jenny. “Not very much.”

  “Neither do I,” said Gran. “We shall do as little of it as we possibly can without starving. Come along.”

  In the dining room, over the mantel, hung a drawing of a ship. “That’s the Amaryllis,” said Gran as they sat down to eat. “A brig, she was, a big two-master. A beautiful thing to see. Your grandfather owned her, and he was her captain, too. He sailed her up and down the coast from Maine to the Caribbean.”

  “Did you ever go along?” asked Jenny.

  “No, I never did. Women aren’t welcome on trading ships, you know, and anyway, I had your father to care for. No, I stayed right here. And yet in a way I did go along. Look more closely there. Do you see the figurehead? Go and look.”

  Jenny got up from her chair and went to peer at the picture. “It’s a woman,” she reported, “and she’s holding some kind of flower in her hands.”

  “It’s a likeness of me,” said Gran proudly. “That’s an amaryllis I’m holding. A big red lily from the islands. Your grandfather thought they were very handsome, and he always said they reminded him of me. A romantic notion, but that’s the way he was. So he named the ship after them, and put me on the prow. He tried time and again to bring me one—an amaryllis—but they always died on the way. Sometimes he’d be gone for months at a time, you see. It’s a long way down to the islands.”

  “You couldn’t have had much time with him,” said Jenny, coming back to the table. “If he was gone so much. Weren’t you lonely?”

  “One gets used to it,” said Gran. “But when the Amaryllis was due, I would go out to the bluff there and watch for it, and then we’d have such lovely parties when he was home again.”

  “My father comes home at the same time every day,” said Jenny. “Five-thirty, when he’s closed up the store.”

  “I know,” said Gran, without interest. “It sounds very dull.”

  Jenny thought so, too, now. It seemed unbearably dull. But she added, in unconscious imitation, “Still, one gets used to it.”

  “I suppose so,” said Gran.

  Supper was nearly over when suddenly Gran put down her fork. She lifted her head, holding out a hand in a signal for silence. “Shh!” she whispered. “There! Do you hear it?”

  Jenny listened. Nothing came to her ears but the breeze and the slap of waves. She looked at Gran questioningly. “What? What should I hear?”

  “The tide,” said Gran. “It’s turned.” She stared at Jenny and her eyes were blank, as if she’d forgotten for an instant that she was not alone. Then she was herself again, but with a difference. Something in her concentration had shifted, some inner curtain dropping while another opened. “Finish your supper,” she said. “Then we’ll clear away and go out to the beach.”

  Leaning on her crutch, with Jenny at her other side to steady her, Gran stumped across the swaying grass to the little bluff that thrust out before the house. On three sides of it, the land dropped steeply four feet or so to the beach, so that it formed a small point, and here there was an old wooden bench. Gran eased herself down onto it and settled her bundled ankle out in front of her with a grimace of pain.

  “You shouldn’t go about on it so much,” said Jenny.

  “I have a doctor to tell me what to do,” said Gran indifferently. “And if I don’t pay attention to him, what makes you think I’ll pay attention to you? Now, be a good child and sit here beside me. It will be dark soon. We’ve only an hour before bedtime, and I want to talk to you.”

  Jenny sat down and waited, but Gran was silent, leaning forward, staring out to sea. The sun, dropping rapidly behind them, seemed to be drawing the daylight with it like a veil, revealing behind the blue, as it slid away, the endle
ssness of space. A star appeared, and before them the green-brown waves took on an iridescence and spilled a sort of glow along the sand.

  “At this time of day,” said Gran at last, “it looks different. There almost seems to be a light…coming up from the bottom.”

  Jenny had to lean close to hear her grandmother’s words, for the breeze had quickened and was whispering again in her ears. “The wind almost talks, doesn’t it?” she said shyly.

  Gran, at this, turned and looked at her closely. “So you hear it, too? Good. I was hoping for it. Give me your hand.”

  Gran’s sun-browned hand was dry and strong, hard in spite of the rumpled skin at her wrist and knuckles. But her long fingers, holding Jenny’s, were trembling slightly. Jenny looked down and saw how different this hand was from her mother’s, so soft and padded and white. “It’s important to look after your hands,” her mother always said. “A lady doesn’t go about with ragged fingernails, dear, and get her skin all chapped. You must learn to take more care. Your hands look so…used, Jenny. Like a boy’s.” Now Jenny saw that her hands were like Gran’s, and for the first time she was proud of them. Oh, they were younger, to be sure. But very like.

  “Pay close attention, Geneva,” said Gran. “There’s very little time. We must go to bed soon, and sleep, if we’re to be fresh again by midnight.”

  “Midnight?” Jenny echoed.

  “Certainly,” said Gran. “We must be up again at midnight.”

  “But why?”

  “High tide, child,” said Gran, and then she stiffened. “Hist! Look there.”

  Jenny, startled, turned her head in the direction of Gran’s gaze, and saw the figure of a man trudging slowly toward them along the shadowed beach. It was impossible to see his features, for his head was bowed, but Jenny could tell that he was rather small and hunched. He wore a dark, short coat of some heavy material, and his hands were plunged deep into his pockets. Then, as he came abreast of them, below the little bluff, he halted and looked up, and in the last gleam of daylight, Jenny saw a bearded face, ruined and rutted, with quiet but watchful eyes. “Good evening, Mrs. Reade,” he said to Gran, and his voice had the same insistent rustle as the wind.

  “Good evening, Seward,” said Gran, and her fingers gave Jenny’s a brief, unconscious squeeze.

  The man stood looking at Gran for a moment, and then his gaze shifted to Jenny and his eyebrows lifted. But he said nothing more, and, dropping his head again, he moved off slowly down the beach, disappearing at last in the gloom.

  “Who was that?” asked Jenny.

  “Then you saw him, too,” said Gran, and there was evident relief in her voice.

  “Yes, of course I saw him,” said Jenny. “What do you mean? How could I not have seen him?”

  “Never mind,” said Gran. “Now. There’s very little time.” Her fingers tightened once more on her granddaughter’s. “Geneva, listen carefully. Do you believe in things you can’t explain?”

  Jenny sat silent, considering. No one had ever asked her such a question before. At last she said, “Like things in fairy tales?”

  “No, child,” said Gran. “I mean—that all the daily things we do, and all the things we can touch and see in this world, are only one part of what’s there, and that there’s another world around us all the time that’s mostly hidden from us. Do you ever think such things?”

  “Well,” said Jenny, confused and a little uncomfortable, but pleased, too, that Gran should speak to her this way. “Well, I think so. Yes, sometimes. Especially at night. But it’s kind of scary.”

  “Ah!” said Gran. “Then you don’t see quite what I mean. To me it’s not ‘scary’ at all. Why should things we can’t explain have to be frightening?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jenny, “but they are. Sometimes, at night, I’m afraid to hang my hand down over the edge of the bed, because…well…”

  “Because you’re afraid something will grab it from under the bed!” said Gran, finishing the thought for her. “I know. Everyone has that notion sometimes. But that’s our imagination, Geneva. I’m not talking about imagined things. I’m talking about…well, never mind. I’ll just have to take a chance and hope you’ll understand. You did see Seward just now, after all…” Her voice trailed off, but before Jenny could speak, she began again. “At high tide, child, I want you to come down here to the beach and search. I’ve done it by myself for thirty years, and then, last week, I stumbled in the sand and broke my silly ankle, and now, with that and this blasted crutch, I can’t get about well enough. Not to do it properly. That’s why I sent for you, Geneva. I’m depending on you to help me. You must come and search, and if you find anything, you must bring it back at once. You must get there first, before Seward.”

  “Seward? The man who just went by?” said Jenny.

  “Yes. He goes for miles along the beach,” said Gran, “and picks things up.”

  “But who is he?”

  Gran ignored this question. “I’ll give you a lantern at midnight. Then you must come out and search.”

  “But what am I to look for?” Jenny cried. “I don’t understand at all.”

  Gran drew her hand away and laced her own fingers tightly together. There was a long pause, and then: “For thirty years,” she said, “I’ve waited for a sign from my darling. It will come, it will, on the high tide someday. Any day now, surely. But someone must be here to find it. You must be my legs now, and my eyes, on the beach. To think of its coming, and my not even seeing it! No, Geneva, you must find it for me.”

  “A sign? From my grandfather? Oh, Gran!” said Jenny, dumfounded. “Gran, how?”

  “When I tell you,” said Gran, “you mustn’t think I’ve gone mad.” It was nearly dark, but Jenny could see that her grandmother’s eyes burned brightly, her heavy brows drawn down into a furrow. “I’ve never talked of this to anyone before. But now it appears I must. Dear child, the Amaryllis, and all the swallowed ships…I know it seems impossible, and yet it’s true. Seward told me. At first I didn’t believe him, but then, when I saw how things were, I knew. He watches me. He has to, poor soul—he hasn’t any choice. And he knows I’m waiting for a sign. Geneva, namesake, after the Amaryllis sank, I walked on the beach for weeks. I wanted something back—a button, a length of rope, anything to make the sinking real. Because it was so strange, Geneva, so strange to stand here and watch the ship go down in such a gulp, so near to shore, and then—for there to be nothing! Do you see how strange it was? It was as if there had never been a ship at all, and no beloved husband—as if my happy life with him had only been a dream that was over suddenly and I had waked from it to find that it had never even happened.”

  “But, Gran,” said Jenny, “you had my father, didn’t you? Why wasn’t he a good reminder?”

  “George?” said Gran, surprised. “Yes, yes, there was George. But he was so…he didn’t make the difference I needed. So I walked on the beach and waited for something, some sign to hold on to. But Nicholas Irving had been drowned, too, at almost the same time, and nothing had been found of him, either. It seemed as if the sea was taking everything, and giving nothing back.”

  “Who was Nicholas Irving?” Jenny asked.

  “Poor Nicholas!” said Gran. “So gifted. He carved the figurehead for the Amaryllis, and made that drawing in the dining room. He could do things with a pen or a bit of wood or plaster that were wonderful to see. He drowned himself, they said.” Gran’s voice turned careful for a moment. “I don’t know. That’s another story. But, Geneva, some time after that, one night, Seward came to me on the beach, and when he told me—when we walked and talked—he told me things, and at last I understood. And I knew that there would be a sign sent back to me and that I must wait and watch for it.”

  “Then you mean,” said Jenny, “that my grandfather’s ship is down there somewhere, and that something is bound to be washed ashore sometime?”

  “No, Geneva,” said Gran, and her eyes burned bright again. “I mean that there wil
l be a sign. Not by accident, but on purpose. From him. Because the swallowed ships, it keeps them at the bottom to guard its treasures. And all the drowned sailors are there, Geneva, all the poor drowned sailors, sailing the ships forever at the bottom of the sea.”

  Upstairs, in the room that had been her father’s, Jenny leaned against the big four-poster bed and blinked. She hardly recognized herself against these strange new backgrounds. She had often thought of herself as a character in a story—a story where nothing ever happened. But now it was as if she had been lifted bodily into a new story—Gran’s—where everything was different. Out there on the beach, Gran had talked to her as if they were two women, not a grandmother and a child, and Gran expected her to understand.

  But what would her father say? He had told her that Gran was getting on. He had said that Jenny would “see.” Did he know, then, about this waiting for a sign? No, somehow Jenny knew he didn’t. And all at once she feared that, if he were to know, he would decide that Gran was mad. He had not wanted Jenny to come here. And he might never have allowed it at all if he had known about the waiting. Would he have come, instead, by himself, and taken Gran away? But taken her where?

  There was a building at home, a large, square building of yellow brick, standing in a barren, treeless yard inside an iron fence. There were rows and rows of narrow windows, blank and silent, and some of them were barred. Remembering that building, Jenny shuddered. They had passed it many times, she and her friends, passed it on purpose, taking the long way home from school to scare themselves with what they hoped and feared to see. Or hear. For the building was a madhouse. If her father thought that Gran was mad, would he put her there, behind those silent windows? No, he wouldn’t do a thing like that. That was Springfield. Here, things were different.

  Then, as she leaned against her father’s bed, the music at the back of her thoughts—the music of the rising tide—pushed through and commanded her attention. She went to the window and looked down at the beach. The water was black now, much blacker than the star-strewn sky, and it looked thick, almost solid, like gelatin. But the foam still glowed with an inner light that made it seem a different substance from the spilling waves, like a magic kind of lace on a black satin skirt.