The Dangerous Islands

by Ann Bridge

  ‘No, but Mrs. H. will.’

  ‘Ring her up, then.’

  Julia obeyed this command. Like many independent women, she didn’t in the least resent a measure of peremptoriness from the man with whom she had decided to spend her life.

  ‘Yes, he went off two days ago,’ Mrs. Hathaway told her.

  ‘Do you know where he’s staying? Aren’t there endless islands where one can stay.’

  ‘Oh no, dear child. In confort moderne, only on two: St. Mary’s, which is really the capital—the steamer and the little aeroplane both land there; and now there is that Grand Luxe hotel on Tresco. But I think he said he was going to stay at a flower-farm on some other island, nearer to where he wants to dig.’

  ‘He didn’t say which?’

  ‘No, he was rather secretive. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Hold on,’ Julia said, and put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.

  ‘Mrs. H. has no address for him. May I tell her we’re going?’

  ‘You’ll have to.’

  ‘We’re going there,’ Julia said down the telephone. ‘Philip has to, and I want to be along.’ No answer came. ‘Are you there?’ Julia asked. ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word came rather gaspingly, ‘Julia, is there more trouble?’

  ‘Not from this end; practically all clear. That’s what we want to tell him.’

  ‘Oh, I am so thankful! Gould you come and tell me about it? When do you go?’

  ‘Hold on,’ Julia said again, and asked Philip.

  ‘The day after tomorrow. Better give her our address—The Zennor Hotel, St. Mary’s—and tell her to write at once if she hears where the old boy is staying.’

  Julia passed this on.

  ‘So soon? But can you come and see me tomorrow?’ Mrs. Hathaway asked. ‘Oh dear, I have people coming to lunch!’

  ‘I’ll look in about eleven-thirty. Bless you. Goodbye.’

  ‘You went rather far,’ Jamieson said temperately, ‘saying it was all clear at this end. That was for you.’

  ‘I only said “practically”’ Julia pointed out.’

  ‘I see I shall have an argumentative wife,’ Jamieson said, but with a smile. ‘Oh well, intelligence and argument generally go together.’

  ‘Gracious, you don’t think I’m intelligent, do you?’ the girl asked. ‘God help you, my poor Philip!’

  He looked at her with a curious expression.

  ‘You asked me, the day we got engaged, why I thought you were nice,’ he said after a pause. ‘Humility is one of the most engaging qualities in the world, and I see you’ve got that too. Oh darling, you have the two best sorts of intelligence that exist: horse-sense, and l’intelligence du coeur. The so-called intelligentsia usually have neither.’

  ‘Ah, I expect I was thinking of them,’ Julia said cheerfully, though she blushed at his praise.

  The Isles of Scilly—the inhabitants naturally object to their being referred to as ‘The Scilly Isles’—lie out in the Gulf Stream beyond Land’s End; they can only be reached by a small plane, which flips to and fro several times a day, or by steamer from Penzance. Jamieson and Julia drove down in his Bentley in one day; slept at Penzance, leaving the Bentley in a garage, and next morning set off on the steamer. The tourist season is practically over by October, and there were not many passengers; but they noticed one little man with dark hair, a rather Jewish nose and a faintly green complexion, because he was so oddly dressed: sea-green whipcord trousers fastened under his insteps by elastic straps, a white wind-cheater, and dark glasses, although the day was grey and overcast.

  ‘There’s your Russian spy, to the life,’ Julia muttered to Jamieson, with her giggle.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Jamieson replied—an automatic reflex from a man to the woman who is practically his wife. But she noticed that he went and had a gossip with a member of the crew; presently he returned to tell her that the little man was the newly-engaged chef at one of the hotels.

  ‘Marvellous cover-job,’ Julia said, undaunted. ‘You keep your eye on him.’

  Presently the boat entered that strange little archipelago, and Julia looked about her with interest. Many of the Islands were merely oddly-shaped piles of rock; the larger islands, eaten away by the restless movement of the waters round their shores, showed their structure diagrammatically: rock or gravel below an upper skin of dark soil only a few feet deep. This however was densely cultivated: the small dark fields between the high evergreen hedges which served as wind-breaks against the fierce Atlantic gales were either neatly ploughed, or showed thin faint green lines—the first leaves of the daffodils which, flowering in mid-winter, make the islands’ fortune.

  ‘I can’t conceive how the Russkis can plant any installations here,’ Julia observed. ‘The soil isn’t deep enough to hold their machinery, for one thing; and how can you put secret stuff in places where people are at work all the time? I think whoever put you on to this idea was dotty.’

  The steamer drew in to the harbour at St. Mary’s, and tied up beside the quay; houses stretched along the small bay, and climbed a hill above it on the right. Several motor-boats were moored at the quay; Julia noticed that the little man she had cast for the role of Russian spy got into one of these. A porter from the Zennor Hotel met them with a hand-barrow and wheeled their luggage along the quayside and through a stone archway; beyond this he directed them up some steps in a garden still bright with flowers.

  The Zennor Hotel was a comfortable, straightforward place, with good beds, good plain food, hot water, and friendly service. The pair had had a long hard drive down from London the previous day—nearly three hundred miles, and most of the way in pelting rain; and after a second early start from Penzance that morning Julia was glad enough to accept Philip Jamieson’s suggestion of a rest in the afternoon. Afterwards they strolled about the little town. St. Mary’s is a curious place, it has a character all its own: built up, much of it quite modern, it yet retains a flavour wholly unlike that of the mainland—the islanders’ own highly idiosyncratic atmosphere.

  They became more fully aware of this when after dinner they went down, as everyone does in St. Mary’s of an evening, to have drinks at the Mermaid. Jamieson, untireable, had spent the afternoon taking a walk; he had been up to the ‘Met.’ Station, and also to the Radio Station—and had picked up some local gossip which amused them. When the English discovered that German bombers were coming in ‘on the beam’ to attack the South Coast, they closed the Radio Station; the Germans retaliated by bombing it, and other parts of St. Mary’s as well.

  The Mermaid, formerly a disused warehouse, has been converted with imaginative cleverness. A long bar runs down one side; on the other are settles and small tables. Steering-wheels off wrecked ships, slung from the ceiling, carry electric lights; a maritime wall-paper increases the nautical atmosphere. But this is real, not phoney. When Julia and Jamieson went in more than half the people drinking beer were men in peaked caps from the local Boatmen’s Association, who run the launches from island to island, and maintain communications in this strange community, or bearded fishermen in long tasselled knitted caps. Dogs wandered about, sometimes wickedly lifting their legs to a central pillar with circular shelves, where people could park their beers; at the farther end a game of darts was in progress. A piano stood opposite the bar, with trays for glasses on its top and on the keyboard—drinking, and talk, are the real business of the Mermaid. But both Philip and Julia, sitting with their beers on one of the wooden settles opposite the bar, were struck by the impression of a ‘classless society’—something completely native and spontaneous, created by the strong, odd personality of the islanders themselves.

  Presently an oldish man came up and asked if he could sit down by Julia. ‘D’you know the Islands?’

  ‘No,’ Julia said, making room for the new-comer.

  ‘Ah. Well you should go out to the Western Rocks and see the Great Grey Seals.’

  ‘Goodness, are they her
e too? We’ve just been seeing them in the Hebrides.

  ‘The Hebrides? Where’s that? This is the place for the Grey Seals,’ the elderly man said, rather irritably.

  ‘Oh well, I suppose they live all over the place,’ Julia said amicably, bending her doves’ eyes on the oldish man. She was about to ask about the Professor, but just then the trays of glasses were removed from the keyboard of the piano, a young man sat down and struck some chords, and a group of men gathered round him and began to sing in harmony. The singing was unexpectedly good; during it the elderly man went away, and presently she and Jamieson returned to their hotel.

  Jamieson had armed himself with a guide-book to the Islands, and a small pamphlet about their antiquities; next morning at breakfast he said to Julia—‘I think we might try St. Agnes. It’s near a bird sanctuary, and people can take their own bedding and camp in a disused lighthouse; from the map it seems to have twin anchorages, separated by a sand-bar; so boats—I mean Russian boats—could come in whichever way the wind was blowing.’

  Julia agreed, and presently they went down to the quay and boarded the motor-launch bound for that particular island. But there is one snag about the motor-boats which ferry tourists about the Isles of Scilly; they make fixed runs, and usually the visitor has a choice of being dumped on a given island for an hour, or at best an hour and a quarter, or else being left there for four hours or more. It was a grey disagreeable day, with a chilly east wind, and they felt disinclined to take a picnic lunch and shiver for four whole hours; they opted for the short trip.

  From their point of view St. Agnes was a complete failure. There were the two anchorages all right, but both were overlooked by modern buildings on the smaller island beyond the sand-bar. As to the island itself, as they climbed up from the stone quay to the old lighthouse on the summit ridge—‘But this is a built-up area!’ Julia exclaimed in dismay. She was not far out. Houses and flower-farms cover most of the island. The old lighthouse was shut and locked; enquiries evoked the information that no one was camping in it. They went down and looked at the small church on the further slope, and then scurried back to be in time for the launch. These island launches are small and open; the wind had increased, and quite a sea had got up—they were soaked to the skin with splashing spray by the time they got back to St. Mary’s. They had hot baths before lunch, and decided to call it a day.

  Over tea Julia took a turn at examining the guide-book—she was worried by this working quite blind.

  ‘Look, Samson is an uninhabited island,’ she said, ‘and it seems to be full of tumuli and kists and things. Why don’t we try there tomorrow? Besides, it has black rabbits. I’d love to see those —how extraordinary.’

  ‘I’d much sooner see the Professor than any amount of rabbits, black or white!’ Jamieson replied—he too was troubled by the vagueness of their search. ‘I want to find him quickly. You never asked that old type about him last night.’

  ‘No, because the singing began. We’ll try again tonight.’

  That evening Julia had better success.

  ‘Don’t let’s sit; let’s stand and drink,’ she said. ‘One’s more accessible that way.’ They stood near the central pillar, Julia occasionally stretching out her long leg and well-shod foot to kick a dog which came up with the intention of defiling it. One mongrel bared its teeth and snarled at her, but withdrew cringing —a middle-aged man, with a rather intelligent face, used the small occasion to accost her.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘More people ought to kick those tykes.’

  ‘I don’t like dirty dogs,’ Julia said.

  ‘You are so right! Are you staying here long?’

  The stranger proved to be a flower-purchaser, who came down from London to book daffodils for the winter season, and knew the Islands well. Presently—‘All these prehistoric remains; have they been fully excavated?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Oh no—there’s a lot more work waiting to be done,’ the man said. ‘But of course no one can dig without getting permission from the Duchy Office.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘The Office of the Duchy of Cornwall; they are really the landlords of the Islands.’

  ‘Where does it hang out?’ Julia asked vulgarly.

  ‘Up on the Garrison. Why? Do you want to dig?’

  ‘I might. Are they on the telephone?’

  ‘Certainly. Duchy of Cornwall Office.’

  ‘Oh thank you.’

  At this point the part-singers started up again; Julia and Jamieson listened for a little while, and then left.

  Next morning they went round early to the Duchy Office. Yes, a Professor Burbage had been given permission to dig on Samson, they were told. Did they want permits too? If so, they must produce credentials. Jamieson took over.

  ‘I might want a permit later,’ he said; ‘for the moment I just want to see what is there—the Kist-vaen with the grooved slabs, for instance, and the tumuli. I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and this lady is a friend of Professor Burbage’s.’

  As they walked away down the sunny little street—‘What did I tell you?’ Julia said. ‘Samson it is.’

  ‘We’d better take lunch—this will be a whole-day job,’ Jamieson replied.

  But by the time their picnic lunches had been got ready, and they hurried down to the quay, the boat for Samson had already left. Jamieson tried to hire a launch, but the St. Mary’s boatmen like to stick to their routine; he had no success. An old fisherman, who had overheard the fruitless discussion, came up to the pair as they started back towards their hotel.

  ‘There’s the Black Swan from the hotel on Tresco, waiting for people off the plane.’ He pointed to a large motor-boat moored below the quay. ‘If you went over to Tresco on her you could get Hicks from Bryher to take you to Samson; he has his own boat. It’s no distance to walk across Tresco from Old Grimsby to New Grimsby, and Hicks would come across for you if you telephoned —it’s only three minutes from Bryher by water. If you wade at low tide it’s more,’ the old man said, chuckling.

  This timely suggestion worked. Jamieson first asked a man with an auburn beard and a knitted tasselled cap on the Black Swan how soon he expected the plane passengers? Learning that they would not arrive for at least twenty minutes he walked rapidly back to the hotel, and set about telephoning to the Bryher boatman. Unluckily almost everyone on both Bryher and Tresco is called Hicks, but the clever girl at the exchange was able to help—‘If you want a boat, it will be Vernon Hicks you’ll need. Hold on.’

  Like Glare Island, the Scillies have radio telephones—impossible to keep cables in action among those surging tides—and soon Jamieson was talking to Mrs. Hicks.

  ‘To Samson, is it? And you’re coming over on the Swan? Wait a moment.’ Pause. ‘Yes, if you walk across to the quay, either my husband or my son will have the boat there for you. What name?’

  ‘Robertson,’ Jamieson said. After their two evenings in the Mermaid he already recognised that the grape-vine in the Scillies is almost as well-developed as that in the West of Ireland.

  They scrambled on board the Black Swan. Today the sea was calm, and the air balmy; Julia and Jamieson sat on seats round the deck. Jamieson opened his map—‘That must be Tresco Abbey, there on our left,’ he remarked.

  ‘Aren’t there marvellous gardens there, that we ought to see?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Yes. We’ll see them when we’ve found the Prof.!’ he muttered.

  The boat pulled up at a long narrow jetty. The man with the auburn beard helped the passengers ashore, and heaved their luggage up to a youth in charge of a small mo tor-trolley belonging to the luxury hotel. Julia, waiting her turn to be handed ashore, suddenly noticed the little man with the green trousers and dark glasses, whom they had observed on the steamer, emerge from the small cabin and nip ashore ahead of them.

  ‘There’s your Bolshie agent,’ she muttered in Philip’s ear.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ But when they went ashore,
instead of taking the road straight ahead to New Grimsby, he followed the trolley and the passengers to the right, along a track leading to the hotel. The passengers went in at a glass door; the little man bore away to the left, and disappeared into the back regions.

  ‘I can’t think why I’m silly,’ Julia said. ‘Here he is, at this hotel—just what that man on the steamer said, a chef.’

  Philip turned away down the drive between the bright garden beds.

  ‘You’ve no proof of any of your ideas,’ he said. ‘We don’t know that he’s the chef, we don’t know that he’s an agent. Now, how do we get to New Grimsby?’

  They returned on their tracks to the end of the jetty, and followed a road which led straight inland; it curved round a small church, and rose steeply uphill—when they reached the crest of the rise, there was the sea below them again, and another quay projecting into it—beyond the channel lay two rather bare islands. On either side of the road were fields of dark earth, the green shoots of the daffodils tracing faint lines across them; on the island immediately across the channel was a sizeable group of houses, and even green-houses, whose glass roofs glittered in the sun.

  ‘This is all quite dotty,’ Julia said. ‘Your people in London must be mad. How can there possibly be secret installations in a place like this? You might as well try to plant one in Ealing!’

  ‘Wait till we’ve seen a bit more,’ was all Jamieson said.

  A small launch was waiting at the quay.

  ‘Mr. Robertson?’ asked the young man on the launch.

  ‘Yes. You’re taking us to Samson, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The launch, towing a dinghy behind it, shot away across the water; the young man, kindly anxious to impart information, pointed out to his passengers the exact route by which, at very low tides, one could wade from Tresco to Bryher. The launch pulled in to a small sandy bay on the east side of the north tip of Samson; the young man threw an anchor overboard, drew the dinghy alongside, helped Julia and Jamieson into it, and rowed them ashore.