by Ben Holden
‘How much are the sandwiches?’ she asked.
‘Tuppence!’ bawled a rude steward, slamming down a knife and fork.
Grandma could hardly believe it.
‘Twopence each?’ she asked.
‘That’s right,’ said the steward, and he winked at his companion.
Grandma made a small, astonished face. Then she whispered primly to Fenella. ‘What wickedness!’ And they sailed out at the further door and along a passage that had cabins on either side. Such a very nice stewardess came to meet them. She was dressed all in blue, and her collar and cuffs were fastened with large brass buttons. She seemed to know Grandma well.
‘Well, Mrs Crane,’ said she, unlocking their washstand. ‘We’ve got you back again. It’s not often you give yourself a cabin.’
‘No,’ said Grandma. ‘But this time my dear son’s thoughtfulness—’
‘I hope—’ began the stewardess. Then she turned round and took a long mournful look at Grandma’s blackness and at Fenella’s black coat and skirt, black blouse, and hat with a crape rose.
Grandma nodded. ‘It was God’s will,’ said she.
The stewardess shut her lips and, taking a deep breath, she seemed to expand.
‘What I always say is,’ she said, as though it was her own discovery, ‘sooner or later each of us has to go, and that’s a certainty.’ She paused. ‘Now, can I bring you anything, Mrs Crane? A cup of tea? I know it’s no good offering you a little something to keep the cold out.’
Grandma shook her head. ‘Nothing, thank you. We’ve got a few wine biscuits, and Fenella has a very nice banana.’
‘Then I’ll give you a look later on,’ said the stewardess, and she went out, shutting the door.
What a very small cabin it was! It was like being shut up in a box with Grandma. The dark round eye above the washstand gleamed at them dully. Fenella felt shy. She stood against the door, still clasping her luggage and the umbrella. Were they going to get undressed in here? Already her grandma had taken off her bonnet, and, rolling up the strings, she fixed each with a pin to the lining before she hung the bonnet up. Her white hair shone like silk; the little bun at the back was covered with a black net. Fenella hardly ever saw her grandma with her head uncovered; she looked strange.
‘I shall put on the woollen fascinator your dear mother crocheted for me,’ said Grandma, and, unstrapping the sausage, she took it out and wound it round her head; the fringe of grey bobbles danced at her eyebrows as she smiled tenderly and mournfully at Fenella. Then she undid her bodice, and something under that, and something else underneath that. Then there seemed a short, sharp tussle, and Grandma flushed faintly. Snip! Snap! She had undone her stays. She breathed a sigh of relief, and sitting on the plush couch, she slowly and carefully pulled off her elastic-sided boots and stood them side by side.
By the time Fenella had taken off her coat and skirt and put on her flannel dressing-gown Grandma was quite ready.
‘Must I take off my boots, Grandma? They’re lace.’
Grandma gave them a moment’s deep consideration. ‘You’d feel a great deal more comfortable if you did, child,’ said she. She kissed Fenella. ‘Don’t forget to say your prayers. Our dear Lord is with us when we are at sea even more than when we are on dry land. And because I am an experienced traveller,’ said Grandma briskly, ‘I shall take the upper berth.’
‘But, Grandma, however will you get up there?’
Three little spider-like steps were all Fenella saw. The old woman gave a small silent laugh before she mounted them nimbly, and she peered over the high bunk at the astonished Fenella.
‘You didn’t think your grandma could do that, did you?’ said she. And as she sank back Fenella heard her light laugh again.
The hard square of brown soap would not lather, and the water in the bottle was like a kind of blue jelly. How hard it was, too, to turn down those stiff sheets; you simply had to tear you way in. If everything had been different, Fenella might have got the giggles . . . At last she was inside, and while she lay there panting, there sounded from above a long, soft whispering, as though someone was gently, gently rustling among tissue paper to find something. It was Grandma saying her prayers . . .
A long time passed. Then the stewardess came in; she trod softly and leaned her hand on Grandma’s bunk.
‘We’re just entering the Straits,’ she said.
‘Oh!’
‘It’s a fine night, but we’re rather empty. We may pitch a little.’
And indeed at that moment the Picton boat rose and rose and hung in the air just long enough to give a shiver before she swung down again, and there was the sound of heavy water slapping against her sides. Fenella remembered she had left that swan-necked umbrella standing up on the little couch. If it fell over, would it break? But Grandma remembered too, at the same time.
‘I wonder if you’d mind, stewardess, laying down my umbrella,’ she whispered.
‘Not at all, Mrs Crane.’ And the stewardess, coming back to Grandma, breathed, ‘Your little granddaughter’s in such a beautiful sleep.’
‘God be praised for that,’ said Grandma.
‘Poor little motherless mite!’ said the stewardess. And Grandma was still telling the stewardess all about what happened when Fenella fell asleep.
But she hadn’t been asleep long enough to dream before she woke up again to see something waving in the air above her head. What was it? What could it be? It was a small grey foot. Now another joined it. They seemed to be feeling about for something; there came a sigh.
‘I’m awake, Grandma,’ said Fenella.
‘Oh, dear, am I near the ladder?’ asked Grandma. ‘I thought it was this end.’
‘No, Grandma, it’s the other. I’ll put your foot on it. Are we there?’ asked Fenella.
‘In the harbour,’ said Grandma. ‘We must get up, child. You’d better have a biscuit to steady yourself before you move.’
But Fenella had hopped out of her bunk. The lamp was still burning, but night was over, and it was cold. Peering through that round eye, she could see far off some rocks. Now they were scattered over with foam; now a gull flipped by; and now there came a long piece of real land.
‘It’s land, Grandma,’ said Fenella, wonderingly, as though they had been at sea for weeks together. She hugged herself; she stood on one leg and rubbed it with the toes of the other foot; she was trembling. Oh, it had all been so sad lately. Was it going to change? But all her grandma said was, ‘Make haste, child. I should leave your nice banana for the stewardess as you haven’t eaten it.’ And Fenella put on her black clothes again, and a button sprang off one of her gloves and rolled to where she couldn’t reach it. They went up on deck.
But if it had been cold in the cabin, on deck it was like ice. The sun was not up yet, but the stars were dim, and the cold pale sky was the same colour as the cold pale sea. On the land a white mist rose and fell. Now they could see quite plainly dark bush. Even the shapes of the umbrella ferns showed, and those strange silvery withered trees that are like skeletons . . . Now they could see the landing-stage and some little houses, pale too, clustered together, like shells on the lid of a box. The other passengers tramped up and down, but more slowly than they had the night before, and they looked gloomy.
And now the landing-stage came out to meet them. Slowly it swam towards the Picton boat, and a man holding a coil of rope, and a cart with a small drooping horse and another man sitting on the step, came too.
‘It’s Mr Penreddy, Fenella, come for us,’ said Grandma. She sounded pleased. Her white waxen cheeks were blue with cold, her chin trembled, and she had to keep wiping her eyes and her little pink nose.
‘You’ve got my—’
‘Yes, Grandma.’ Fenella showed it to her.
The rope came flying through the air, and ‘smack’ it fell on to the deck. The gangway was lowered. Again Fenella followed her grandma on to the wharf over to the little cart, and a moment later they were bowling away. The ho
oves of the little horse drummed over the wooden piles, then sank softly into the sandy road. Not a soul was to be seen; there was not even a feather of smoke. The mist rose and fell, and the sea still sounded asleep as slowly it turned on the beach.
‘I seen Mr Crane yestiddy,’ said Mr Penreddy. ‘He looked himself then. Missus knocked him up a batch of scones last week.’
And now the little horse pulled up before one of the shell-like houses. They got down. Fenella put her hand on the gate, and the big, trembling dewdrops soaked through her glove-tips. Up a little path of round white pebbles they went, with drenched sleeping flowers on either side. Grandma’s delicate white picotees were so heavy with dew that they were fallen, but their sweet smell was part of the cold morning. The blinds were down in the little house; they mounted the steps on to the veranda. A pair of old bluchers was on one side of the door, and a large red water-can on the other.
‘Tut! Tut! Your grandpa,’ said Grandma. She turned the handle. Not a sound. She called, ‘Walter!’ And immediately a deep voice that sounded half stifled called back, ‘Is that you, Mary?’
‘Wait, dear,’ said Grandma. ‘Go in there.’ She pushed Fenella gently into a small dusky sitting-room.
On the table a white cat, that had been folded up like a camel, rose, stretched itself, yawned, and then sprang on to the tips of its toes. Fenella buried one cold little hand in the white, warm fur, and smiled timidly while she stroked and listened to Grandma’s gentle voice and the rolling tones of Grandpa.
A door creaked. ‘Come in, dear.’ The old woman beckoned, Fenella followed. There, lying to one side of an immense bed, lay Grandpa. Just his head with a white tuft, and his rosy face and long silver beard showed over the quilt. He was like a very old wide-awake bird.
‘Well, my girl!’ said Grandpa. ‘Give us a kiss!’ Fenella kissed him. ‘Ugh!’ said Grandpa. ‘Her little nose is as cold as a button. What’s that she holding? Her grandma’s umbrella?’
Fenella smiled again, and crooked the swan neck over the bed-rail. Above the bed there was a big text in a deep-black frame:
Lost! One Golden Hour
Set with Sixty Diamond Minutes.
No Reward Is Offered
For It Is GONE FOR EVER!
‘Yer grandma painted that,’ said Grandpa. And he ruffled his white tuft and looked at Fenella so merrily she almost thought he winked at her.
(1921)
★
The Pipe
by Stéphane Mallarmé
Yesterday I found my pipe while pondering a long evening of work, of fine winter work. Thrown aside were my cigarettes, with all the childish joys of summer, into the past which the leaves shining blue in the sun, the muslins, illuminate, and taken up once again was the grave pipe of a serious man who wants to smoke for a long while without being disturbed, so as better to work; but I was not prepared for the surprise that this abandoned object had in store for me; for hardly had I drawn the first puff when I forgot the grand books I was planning to write, and, amazed, moved to a feeling of tenderness, I breathed in the air of the previous winter which was now coming back to me. I had not been in contact with my faithful sweetheart since returning to France, and now all of London, London as I had lived it a year ago entirely alone, appeared before my eyes: first the dear fogs that muffle one’s brains and have an odour of their own there when they penetrate beneath the casements. My tobacco had the scent of a sombre room with leather furniture sprinkled by coal dust, on which the thin black cat would curl and stretch; the big fires! and the maid with red arms pouring coals, and the noise of those coals falling from the sheet-iron bucket into the iron scuttle in the morning – when the postman gave the solemn double knock that kept me alive! Once again I saw through the windows those sickly trees of the deserted square – I saw the open sea, crossed so often that winter, shivering on the deck of the steamer wet with drizzle and blackened from the fumes – with my poor wandering beloved, decked out in traveller’s clothes, a long dress, dull as the dust of the roads, a coat clinging damply to her cold shoulders, one of those straw hats with no feather and hardly any ribbons that wealthy ladies throw away upon arrival, mangled as they are by the sea, and that poor loved ones refurbish for many another season. Around her neck was wound the terrible handkerchief that one waves when saying goodbye forever.
(1864)
Translated by Henry Weinfield
★
One Sail at Sea
by Edward Thomas
This is a simple world. On either hand the shore sweeps out in a long curve and ends in a perpendicular, ash-coloured cliff, carving the misty air as with a hatchet-stroke. The shore is of tawny, terraced sand, like hammered metal from the prints of the retreating waves; and here and there a group of wildly carved and tragic stones – unde homines nati, durum genus – such as must have been those stones from which Deucalion made the stony race of men to arise. Up over the sand, and among these stones the water slides in tracery like May blossom or silver mail. A little way out, the long wave lifts itself up laboriously into a shadowy cliff, nods proudly and crumbles, vain and swift, into a thousand sparks of foam. Far out the desolate, ridgy leagues vibrate and murmur with an unintelligible voice, not less intelligible than when one man says, ‘I believe,’ or another man, ‘I love,’ or another, ‘I am your friend.’ Almost at the horizon a sharp white sail sways, invisibly controlled. In a minute it does not move; in half an hour it has moved. It fascinates and becomes the image of the watcher’s hopes, as when in some tranquil grief we wait, with faint curiosity and sad foretelling, to see how our plans will travel, smiling a little even when they stray or stop, because we have foretold it. Will the sail sink? Will it take wing into the sky? Will it go straight and far, and overcome and celebrate its success? But it only fades away, and presently another is there unasked, yet not surprising, and it also fades away, and the night has come, and still the sea speaks with tongues. In the moonlight one strange flower glistens, white as a campanula, like a sweet-pea in shape – the bleached thigh-bone of a rat – and we forget the rest.
(1916)
★
MARGARET DRABBLE
We three Drabble girls, Susan, Margaret and Helen, were given a copy of Walter de la Mare’s Songs of Childhood for Christmas 1943 by our mother and father. I was four years old, and learning to read. I loved these poems, and ‘The Isle of Lone’ in particular haunted me. The names of the dwarfs would repeat themselves to me throughout the day and as I fell asleep, like the words of a lullaby. Much of de la Mare’s work has this incantatory, onomatopoeic, drowsy magic. As I grew older I learned that he was not rated as a great poet, but he has a timeless genius which has survived many shifts of fashion. I know many of his songs by heart, most of them soporific and melancholy. The story of the dwarfs and the apes and the quarrel by the sea had a profound meaning for me. How could the dwarfs have died so sadly, in their exotic island paradise? I even loved the grey apes, with their guttural groan.
There is no moral to this tale. There is mystery, beauty, an elegiac yearning, and a kind of comfort for the almost enjoyable loneliness that children (and adults) suffer so frequently.
The Isle of Lone
by Walter de la Mare
Three dwarfs there were which lived on an isle,
And the name of that isle was Lone,
And the names of the dwarfs were Alliolyle,
Lallerie, Muziomone.
Alliolye was green of een,
Lallerie light of locks,
Muziomone was mild of mien,
As ewes in April flocks.
Their house was small and sweet of the sea,
And pale as the Malmsey wine;
Their bowls were three, and their beds were three,
And their nightcaps white were nine.
Their beds they were made of the holly-wood,
Their combs of the tortoise’s shell,
Three basins of silver in corners there stood,
And three little ewers
as well.
Green rushes, green rushes lay thick on the floor,
For light beamed a gobbet of wax;
There were three wooden stools for whatever they wore
On their humpity-dumpity backs.
So each would lie on a drowsy pillow
And watch the moon in the sky—
And hear the parrot scream to the billow,
The billow roar reply.—
Parrots of sapphire and sulphur and amber,
Scarlet, and flame, and green,
While five-foot apes did scramble and clamber,
In the feathery-tufted treen.
All night long with bubbles a-glisten
The ocean cried under the moon,
Till ape and parrot, too sleepy to listen,
To sleep and slumber were gone.
Then from three small beds the dark hours’ while
In a house in the Island of Lone
Rose the snoring of Lallerie, Alliolyle,
The snoring of Muziomone.
But soon as ever came peep of sun
On coral and feathery tree,
Three night-capped dwarfs to the surf would run
And soon were a-bob in the sea.
At six they went fishing, at nine they snared
Young foxes in the dells,
At noon on sweet berries and honey they fared,
And blew in their twisted shells.
Dark was the sea they gambolled in,
And thick with silver fish,
Dark as green glass blown clear and thin
To be a monarch’s dish.
They sate to sup in a jasmine bower,
Lit pale with flies of fire,
Their bowls the hue of the iris-flower,
And lemon their attire.
Sweet wine in little cups they sipped,
And golden honeycomb
Into their bowls of cream they dipped,
Whipt light and white as foam.