Silver

by Andrew Motion

  If I have made the place sound fearsome, I have good reasons. Many times, walking alone under its vast sky, I heard footsteps behind me where none existed, or felt silence itself seizing my collar like a hand. Yet to tell the truth, the voices of the marsh, and of the river in particular, were never entirely one thing or the other; they were a mixture of sounds, pitched between sighing and laughter, as though they had never decided whether they meant to convey sorrow or joy. Perverse as it may seem, this is what I especially loved about the place; it was always in two minds.

  The picture I have already painted of my father will make him seem straightforward by comparison—and so he was in certain respects. In others he was as contradictory as the landscape that surrounded him. I shall now show why, from the beginning.

  My father’s own father had also been an innkeeper—of the Admiral Benbow in the West Country, around the coast from Bristol. Here he died young—whereupon my father found himself at the start of the great adventure that it has been my fate to continue. This adventure began with the sudden arrival at the Benbow of Billy Bones, a battered old salt who once upon a time had been the first mate of the notorious buccaneer Captain Flint, and whose sole possession was an even more knocked-about sea chest. For a week or two, the presence of this rascal caused no great difficulty at the Benbow—until the appearance of a second stranger, a pale, tallowy creature who, despite his ghostly countenance, went by the name of Black Dog—and soon after him a blind man named Pew, whose effect was so shocking that poor Bones fell dead almost the instant he saw him. To be particular, Pew tipped him the Black Spot; a man cannot long survive, once he has received that fatal sign.

  There soon followed a whole history of dramatic episodes: an assault on the inn by pirates; a miraculous escape; the discovery of an ancient map; a perusal of the map; the understanding that treasure had been left by Captain Flint on a certain island; an expedition planned in Bristol and launched to recover said treasure; the treachery of the crew, and especially of a smooth-talking rogue named John Silver, who came ornamented with a parrot in compensation for missing a leg; a very dangerous and thrilling sojourn on the island; the discovery of some parts of the treasure; and a subsequent return to England and safety.

  I have mentioned all this in summary, omitting the names of most of the principal characters and even some parts of the adventure itself, for the important reason that I have heard it told so many hundreds of times by my father, I cannot bear to write it down at greater length. Even the most celebrated stories in the world, including perhaps that of Our Lord himself, weary with the retelling. I will only add, in the interest of illuminating what follows, that close attention should be paid to the phrase some parts of the treasure, in order to encourage the idea that certain other parts of it were left undisturbed. I will also point out that when my father eventually quit the island, three especially troublesome members of the crew—whom my father called maroons—were left behind to meet whatever fate they might find. Much of what remains to be said will depend on these details.

  Once my father had returned to Bristol he received his share of the wealth, which was valued in total at the astonishing sum of seven hundred thousand pounds. He often boasted of the amount, using it as an excuse to moralize—in a rather more ambiguous way than he intended—on the wages of sin. Of his own portion he never spoke precisely, referring to it as merely “ample” before running on to say how Ben Gunn, a wild man he discovered on the island and helped to rescue, had been granted an allocation of one thousand pounds, which he contrived to spend in nineteen days, so that he was a beggar again on the twentieth and given a lodge to keep, which he had always feared.

  Whatever the precise amount of my father’s treasure, it was clear that he need lack for nothing so long as he did not follow the example of this Ben Gunn. Accordingly, he returned to his mother, who was now in sole charge of the Benbow in Black Hill Cove, and helped her to manage the place until he gained his majority. At that time, being tired of living in such an out-of-the-way spot, which contrasted very markedly with the excitement he had known on the high seas, he departed for London and devoted himself for several years to the pursuit of his own pleasure.

  It is hard for any son to imagine the youth of his father—to the son, the father will generally be a creature of settled habits and solid opinions. Yet it is clear that throughout his time in the city, my parent lived more dashingly than I ever knew him to do in the course of my own existence. Released from the burden of caring for his mother (who now rested her head on the shoulder of an affectionate and elderly sailor, who would shortly become her husband), and provoked by a million new temptations, he became by his own admission a figure about the town.

  This was before the period in which a man of fashion would be able to cut his cheek upon his own collar if he turned his head too sharply. But it was nevertheless a time of increasing opportunity in our country, when a man of means could easily footle his way through a fortune if so inclined. My father was never one to spend the best part of a day patrolling the Strand just so that a young lady might notice the tension in his trouser leg, and the particular shade of a canary glove. He was, however, of a disposition to enjoy himself—and it is evident from the gradual slide in his fortunes that a period of living in fine lodgings, with good pictures on the walls, and expensive china on the table, and servants to bring him whatever comforts he required, was sufficient to consume a large part of the wealth he had dug from those distant sands.

  Whether he would eventually have slithered all the way into poverty I cannot say. What I know for certain is this: before his third decade was very far advanced (which is to say the first part of the 1780s), he encountered the steadying influence that was my mother. She was the daughter of an ostler who ran a successful business on the eastern edge of the city, where day-visitors from Edmonton and Enfield would stable their horses, and often stay for dinner before completing their journeys home. Her experience in this place had turned a diligent child into a thrifty young woman. She soon persuaded my father to moderate his ways, and set him on the path that led to respectability in the world. He surrendered his cards and dice. He abandoned certain doubtful connections. He regulated his hours. He made himself a more pleasing prospect. And when he had showed the steadiness of his resolve for almost a year, she accepted the sincerity of his feelings and they were married.

  It now became necessary for my parents to find useful employment. The obvious choice, given the history of both of them, was to run an inn—which soon they did. Not, however, an inn lying close to either of their previous connections, but one that proved the spirit of independence I would like to claim as my inheritance. The inn I have already mentioned, and will now give its proper name: the Hispaniola.

  The place was at once marriage bed, home and livelihood. And one more thing besides. For it was here, after only a year of bliss, in a room more like a fo’c’sle than anything on dry land, with a timber ceiling and walls, and a bay window overlooking the river, that my mother gave breath to me and was deprived of her own life in one and the same instant. I had, of course, no immediate knowledge of this. But from my first moment of remembered consciousness, which occurred some three years later, I was aware of what I had lost. To speak plainly: I grew up in an atmosphere stained by melancholy.

  The weight of bereavement must nearly have broken my father. If the evidence of my own eyes had not told me this, I would have understood it from those who drank in our taproom, and had known him before the tragedy occurred. In the accounts they gave me, what had formerly been spirited in him was now subdued, what had looked for excitement now longed for moderation, and what had imagined the future now clung to the past.

  You might wonder how the Hispaniola managed to survive these changes in my father. Sadness, after all, is not the common fare of inns. Yet survive it did—for reasons that shed some light on the variety of pleasures men seek in the world. Some individuals, it is true, did not appreciate his somber character, and
these my father dismissed with directions to other establishments on the waterfront, which they might find more to their taste. But there were few ejections of this kind. The majority of our neighbors looked on the Hispaniola as a welcome relief from the raucousness and vulgarity of the world. They considered it a haven.

  In saying this, I realize that I might appear to suggest my father had an unfriendly and withdrawn character. Yet while he could certainly seem fierce he also understood the need for human beings to live in the world—which I saw in his determination that I should have a better education than any he had received himself. The school he chose for me was in Enfield; I was dispatched there at the age of seven, and remained a “boarder” for a large part of every year until I was sixteen.

  This establishment, which was proud to describe itself as a Dissenting Academy, was managed by a liberal-minded gentleman whose good qualities deserve great praise. But I do not propose to divert myself from my story in order to dwell on this part of my existence. Suffice it to say that when I eventually returned home again I had “the tastes of a gentleman” in reading and writing, and a clear idea of what it means to behave with decent concern for others. Also, and in spite of the influences to which I had been exposed, I had a quickened appetite for what had always pleased me most: my own company, and the life of the river and marshes.

  I must mention one further thing before I continue—and that is another paradox. In his sadness after my mother’s death, my father often seemed the opposite of grieving. This was thanks to his habit of reliving the adventures of his youth, as I have already mentioned. Sometimes this was done at the request of new customers who knew his reputation and wanted to share a part of his history. But when no such requests were forthcoming, he was inclined to tell the stories anyway, pausing sometimes to expand on a moment of particular danger, or to digress into the background of an especially striking individual or event.

  Indeed, it would be fair to say that long before my boyhood was over, the story of Treasure Island had become almost the whole of my father’s conversation. Its inhabitants were more companionable to him than the customers he served, and more vivid to me. They were not quite inventions, and not quite figures from history, but a blend of these things. This almost persuaded me I might have met them myself, and had seen with my own eyes the wickedness of John Silver the sea cook; and glimpsed the Black Spot passing into the hand of Billy Bones; and even watched my father himself when he was a child, climbing the mast of the Hispaniola to escape Israel Hands, then firing his pistols so that Hands fell into the clear blue water, and finally sank onto its sandy bed, where he lay with the little fishes rippling to and fro across his body.

  With the mention of these ghosts, I am ready to begin my story. I will therefore ask you to remember where we stood a moment ago—on the marshes behind the Hispaniola—and then to jump forward a few hours. My solitary day had ended and I was reluctantly wandering home. Darkness had fallen. The moon had risen. Mist crawled along the river. When I stepped indoors from the towpath, candle flames burned still and straight in the warm air of the taproom, where my father’s adventures were once again approaching their crisis before an audience of visitors. I kept in the background of the scene, slipping upstairs to my bedroom so that I did not have to follow him through the final windings of his tale.

  A moment later I had reached my own space under the roof. This was the least comfortable room in the house—hardly a room at all, but infinitely precious to me because it was like a cabinet of curiosities. Every wall was covered with shelves, on which I had arranged the feathers, shells, eggs, pieces of twisted wood, rope, skulls, curious knots and other trophies I had collected from the marsh in the course of my short but busy life. And in the middle of this cabinet, my crow’s nest—which I might properly call my bed, where I lay every night to survey the rolling universe. Here it was that I lay down at last. And here it was that I turned my face to the window.

  The towpath was deserted, patched by a large square of yellow light falling from the taproom window. The marshes all around had been simplified by moonlight into an arrangement of powdery gray and greens. The river seemed a richer kind of nothing—a gigantic ingot of solid silver, except that now and again it crinkled when a log rolled silently past, or a dimple appeared and then vanished.

  I lay staring for long enough to feel I was entranced, and so cannot tell exactly when the boat and its occupant arrived. One moment the water was empty. The next it featured the crescent of a hull, with a figure sitting upright in the center, oars in both hands, holding the vessel steady against the current. What sort of figure I could not say, only that it appeared slim and youthful; the head was covered with a shawl and the face was invisible.

  It was an unusual sight so late in the evening. More remarkable still was the way the figure seemed to stare at me directly, even though it could not possibly have seen me in the lightless window. I propped myself on my elbows, but gave no other sign of interest. As I did so, the figure released the oar from its right hand, allowed the boat to spin a little, lifted this hand in a solemn salute, then beckoned for me to come near.

  3

  My Visitor

  SO GREAT WAS my astonishment at being invited to meet my shadowy visitor, I could not obey, but continued to lie unmoving on my bed. After several minutes, during which nothing in the world seemed to change, I grew uncomfortable and sat upright. At this, the long oars immediately plunged downward, the boat turned around, and the silhouette disappeared as moonlight shuddered across the surface of the water.

  What had I seen? A prank of some kind? Something not meant for me, but for a customer in the taproom below? Or was there a less comfortable explanation—namely, that I had seen a sprite or a vision. When I eventually rolled onto my back, I lay awake until the last of my father’s customers had made his farewell and departed along the towpath, without reaching a definite answer. The clear light of morning, I hoped, would make everything obvious to me.

  It has been my habit since childhood to rise early, no doubt because my father required me to help him prepare the Hispaniola for her voyage through each new day. (I say help him, though generally I worked single-handed, while he dozed.) On the morning after my visitation, my eyes flew open so suddenly I thought someone had called my name. Possibly they had, since when I peered through my window again—there was the boat come back. Suspended in the current as if it had never left.

  Because the sun had just risen, and although mist was curling over the water, as well as lying more thickly across the marshes in the background, I could make out the detail of things more definitely than I had been able to do the night before. The boat was a wherry, with the wood of the hull well maintained and polished, and a name painted in flowing black letters around the prow: the Spyglass.

  In the stern of the boat, covered by a plain orange cloth, was a domed object like a large thimble, about two feet tall, which I could not explain. The figure seated at the oars was also very puzzling. The whole upper part of the body was swathed in a tartan blanket, whose reds and greens made a powerful contrast with the gray of the river. Another blanket, this one sober brown and small enough to be used as a shawl, was drawn around the head and shoulders and concealed the face entirely. I guessed, rather than knew, that the eyes were turned toward me, which produced a strange sense of reversal: I was in hiding (behind the protection of my window) but felt in full view. The thought unnerved me, and as I steadied myself against the wall of my room, the figure did as I half-feared and half-hoped. It raised a hand and beckoned to me for a second time.

  I did not need a third invitation. Stamping into my boots without tying their laces, and descending the stairs with my feet unnaturally wide apart to avoid falling over myself, and at the same time as quietly as possible to avoid waking my father, I passed through the smoke-scented air of the taproom and outside onto the towpath. I did not pause to think how foolish I must look, nor to imagine what dangers I might be courting. Although my visitor w
as full of mystery, there was no menace that I could detect.

  The sharpness of the air made me cough—which produced an answering chuckle. I took this to be a form of mockery, and spoke more rudely than I might otherwise have done.

  “What do you want?”

  The words hung heavily in the stillness, and after leaving a decent space for reply but receiving none, I stepped forward—half-expecting to drive my visitor away again. In fact the wherry immediately veered toward me—and as the prow hissed into the grass overhanging the bank, I bent to collect the mooring rope, pulled it tight, then took the marlin-spike tied to the end and pushed it into the earth. I felt I was obeying an order, although none had been given.

  When I straightened again, the figure had arranged itself to look at me, still facelessly, with water trickling in silver links from the oars it held poised above the surface of the river. Once again I was startled into boldness.

  “Who are you?”

  Without any more to-do, the figure slowly took hold of the hem of the shawl, raised it, and showed its face. This was all done in the manner of a play, and I was immediately delighted—making a theatrical delay of my own, so that I had time to notice the hair crowning the face was very dark and cut short, the skin a warm olive-brown, the lips broad and the nose less so. I decided that it was beautiful, though whether it belonged to a boy or a girl I still could not be sure. More certainly, I knew it was a face with the power to lead me on, and to give instructions I could not easily ignore.

  Later, I would understand how the seclusion of my childhood was being exploited for a purpose of which I had no knowledge. At the time, I was purely and simply flattered that such an appealing creature had sought me out. Squatting on my haunches, I brought our eyes level in a way that would have seemed intimate had it not been so innocent: I wanted to look into her eyes to understand my situation better. A girl’s eyes, I was now sure. Deep brown, with scratches of green in them. Eyes which showed amusement, yet also withheld something nearly opposite.