“Oh?” said Natty, echoing me.
“I’m not sure,” I said. And then, as if I were speaking for a ghost that lived inside me, or was being manipulated by Natty herself, I added, “Map or no map, I should like to meet your father.”
It was not just curiosity that made me say this, but a sense that something so merely inquisitive could hardly be counted a crime. I was of course denying to myself the possibility that it might be a step toward crime.
Natty straightened her back, as if a burden had been lifted from her. “When?” she asked.
“Today,” I told her, full of confidence. “Now. I shall go inside to my father, and tell him not to expect me until this evening.”
With that I collected our two empty glasses, and stood up so abruptly the boat dipped and rasped against the bank—then stepped onto the towpath. When I paused in the doorway to look around, Natty had already untethered the Spyglass. She sat with the prow pointing toward London, the oars in her hands, and her face filled with the satisfaction of someone who is doing what they have always expected to do. Spot was looking in the same direction, and when he began talking, his words reached me very clearly. “Hoist the mainsail,” he said. “Hoist the mainsail.”
4
To Wapping
NOTHING WAS SAID or done on our journey to London that suggested my life had abruptly changed. Yet as the river carried us forward I felt I was not so much setting out from home as leaving it. The wide marshes smoking in the early sun were a sight that I had known all my life, but now they seemed as bewildering as images in a dream. Even before the Hispaniola sank below the horizon, I had started to think that ghosts might feel as I did—being intimate with the places they haunt, while remaining separate from them.
Natty took charge of the journey for our first few miles; I sat in the stern beside Spot, who tilted his head to observe me through the bars of his cage and made a continuous low hissing noise, which proved how greatly he resented my company. It was not in the least surprising to see Natty so expert in everything she did—strong as a boy in her handling of the oars, and like a boy too in the way she hardly seemed conscious of herself, but only of the task she performed. When sweat trickled from her forehead along her nose, she pouted and puffed it away; if other craft dared show any sign of wanting to cross her path, she shouted at their pilots to have a care. I understood she did not want to speak to me while she worked, and contented myself with watching. Although I often threw her a smile, and wished her to know I admired her dexterity, I felt the looks she gave me in return were intended to cut directly through me, in order to concentrate on some invisible thing that followed behind us.
I soon settled for living in a kind of trance. The marshes slid by as if a hand had descended from heaven to unroll a canvas of infinite length, on which everything seemed static and a picture of itself. Here was a piebald pony, clambering onto a shingle-spit as though debating whether to take a bath. Here was a boatyard where boys melted tar in a bucket—the heavy smell crawled over the river like a shadow. Here was a knot of sailors’ homes around a stagnant inlet, and here a complete large village, where the inhabitants were beginning their day of chattering, bargaining, working, cursing and comforting. Each of them took as much notice of the Spyglass as if she had been a water bug. Likewise the sailors looking down from their high decks, or the oarsmen in their rowing boats that were more nearly our equal. They had their own business to attend to, and concentrated on that.
The estrangement continued even when my manners revived (I mean: when I had new orders from Natty) and I began to share the work of rowing. This was accomplished with a minimum of talk, as though we were old comrades dropping into familiar routines, and our silence continued for the final part of our journey. The effect was to make the beginning of my adventure seem inevitable. Our shoulders and arms (her right, my left) rubbed together with a soft friction. Cold river water dripped onto our knees, and puddled around our shoes. Our lips blew out steady gasps, whereupon our breath mingled in a wake that (had we been able to see them) would have imitated the curling signatures left by our oars on the surface of the water.
In as little as an hour—such was the force of the current working in our favor—we had traveled through Greenwich and reached a part of the river I barely knew. Here, watching the houses crowd together on the bank in much greater numbers, I had better reason to think I was entering a new phase of my existence. This was not because I had never been to London before: I had several times accompanied my father on trips to provision the Hispaniola, and to pay our respects (before their death) to my mother’s parents in Shoreditch. It was more a matter of this being the first expedition I had made on my own account, fulfilling my own wishes.
If anyone had asked me to say precisely what those wishes might have been, I could not easily have told them. The pleasure of sitting beside Natty would have been one honest answer. More than that, my journey showed a willingness to see her father—but a willingness that was accompanied by a great deal of doubt. I had yet to decide, for instance, what I would say to Mr. Silver when he questioned me about the map. I reached the same point of indecision when I debated with myself whether I might be able to steal it. In my surrender to Natty’s invitation, I assumed that appropriate actions would occur at appropriate times.
As we came close to Wapping, the safety of the Spyglass required all our attention. It also persuaded Natty to break her silence, and give me instructions about how to avoid obstacles by swerving now this way and now that. Although I had lived on the river for most of my life, I did not feel in the least demeaned by this. So long as Natty presented us to the world as equal partners, and did not embarrass me by suggesting otherwise, I was content to do her bidding, and bide my time until my own initiative might be required.
In spite of her cleverness, the dangers of traffic squeezed so tightly together in this part of the river were a good reason to think we might be rammed and sunk at any moment. The distractions of the quayside made our risk all the greater. At home in the Hispaniola, staring from my father’s windows, I had often seen ships returning from the four corners of the world, and let my imagination play among the bales of silk and boxes of spice they carried in their holds. Now, to look up from my seat in the Spyglass and contemplate the towering walls of such vessels—to see the scars inflicted by their voyages across enormous seas, to watch the sailors with their skins browned and hair bleached by the heat of exotic suns—made me feel that the dream into which I had fallen was spiraling downward still further.
When Natty eventually lifted one hand and pointed toward the shore, I saw a pair of tall warehouses that appeared so nearly on the point of collapse they had leaned together and formed a kind of tunnel. I understood this was our destination, and pulled more sharply on my oar, as I was told to do. The Spyglass slid between two ships, entered much calmer water—and Natty’s fist landed in my chest to push me backward, so that we could more easily approach our landing place by slipping beneath a web of mooring ropes. In this way I had the appearance of a sleeper, as well as the drowsiness of one, when we reached the end of our journey.
I should more properly say: reached the end of one part of our journey and began the next. For as soon as we had tethered the Spyglass to a ring attached in the quay, and climbed a slimy ladder onto solid ground (which meant following Natty, and passing up to her the cage containing Spot, who objected loudly to this change in his circumstances), it was immediately obvious that I must sharpen my wits. In the space of a moment, I was entirely surrounded by men and women who did not care if they knocked me with their elbows, or struck me with their baskets, or trampled me with their clogs, or in some other way encouraged me to disappear over the side of the quay and into the river to drown.
Natty signaled to me, and we set off beneath the arch of warehouses. By now I was accustomed to behaving obediently with her, and soon found myself passing through a sort of labyrinth made of greasy walls and billowy washing lines. When we escaped
at last—which happened in a sudden blaze of sunlight—she turned toward me with a strange catch in her voice.
“This is my home,” she said.
It was a house backing onto the river: that much was obvious, since beyond it to left and right lay a glimmer of water. But a house built on what method was difficult to say, since the entire construction contained little of anything that is generally accepted as being necessary in a house, and much that is not. A single door was squeezed to one side of the façade, windows were scattered here and there (some oblong, some round, some square), the roof was pitched high over one side and dwindled almost to nothing on the other, and several chimneys (all breathing smoke) stuck out at unexpected angles like gigantic whiskers.
The composition of the thing was more peculiar still. For rather than being made of bricks and mortar, the walls were comprised of planks, spars, logs, branches, roots, pieces of barrel, and every other sort of wooden material the river happened to have carried within reach—some of them with barnacles and hanks of dried weed still attached. It was impossible to explain, unless the Thames had hoarded every scrap of its flotsam and jetsam for an appreciable time, then been provoked into flinging the whole collection into an upright position, where it remained thanks to a miracle of balance. Hard wood and soft wood, dark wood and light wood, carved wood and plain wood had been hammered or bound together, without regard for any principle except that of chaos. Only one thing immediately made sense: the ancient brass telescope hanging above the door, which gave the building its name—the Spyglass.
I gazed at all this with such rapt attention, I realized Natty had taken hold of my hand only when she released it. Whether she felt cheered by the sight of home, or alarmed by the idea of how it might appear to me (and therefore wanting to set me at my ease), she now became more talkative.
“You will ask my father how he built the house,” she told me. “He becomes quite expansive on the subject.”
“I can see why he might,” I replied. “But tell me yourself: when did he first come here?”
“Before I was born. With my mother.”
“You have said only a little about your mother,” I said, thinking I must soon meet her and needed to know as much beforehand as I thought I knew about Mr. Silver.
“Does a person have to say much about their mother?”
“They do not,” I said. “For instance, I will most definitely not even mention my own mother, because I do not have one.”
A shadow came over Natty’s face, which made me regret I had spoken so crisply. “My mother you shall meet soon,” she said. “My father you will not see for long.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but she did not answer immediately, only looked at me with a frown. It occurred to me then that her silence during our journey upriver had not been a result of indifference, but rather of absorption in herself—a kind of anxiety.
“My father …” she began at length, then faltered. I could see from the confusion in her face that a host of different explanations were clamoring for precedence. In the end she settled their argument by giving a sigh, and saying no more than this: “My father is a very old man.”
Although I now felt more bewildered than ever by what Natty was trying to explain, or perhaps to conceal, I told her that I understood—and to make this answer seem as warm as I wished it to be, I reached forward and touched her arm. The upshot was the opposite of everything I meant. Natty flinched as if I had waved a flame at her, and backed away.
“Understanding, understanding,” she said impatiently, and avoided meeting my eye. “So long as you are ready, that is all I need to know.”
With this she turned her back, pushed open the door, and invited me to follow as she began climbing the stairs that rose before us. I could not help noticing that Spot hopped from the floor of his cage onto his perch as she did so, and closed his eyes so tightly that wrinkles appeared among the feathers around their sockets.
The whole interior of the house was dark, and smelled strongly of damp and mold. It made the place rather disgusting, though whether I would have felt the same if we had entered any of the rooms we passed on our ascent, I had no way of knowing. When we had reached the landing on the first floor, I heard a rumble of conversation and laughter which suggested the taproom was nearby. On the second floor, beyond a door where Natty stopped and pressed her finger to her lips, then whispered, “My mother,” I heard a woman singing. The music was a kind of ditty, a jaunty sound, although the strangeness of its setting made it seem melancholy. One verse in particular came through to me, which I have never forgotten:
Take my heart, sweet Jesus, take my life,
I borrowed them from you, now have them back.
Come down to me, possess me as your wife,
The breath I lose in you I never lack.
I tilted my head, meaning to inquire whether I should enter and introduce myself, but Natty’s eyes widened as though the very idea were ridiculous. Once again, I had no choice but to agree—and so on we went, following the stairs upward for several more flights in a succession of zigzags until I began to wonder whether we had reached a height that was actually dangerous.
I say this because I could not help noticing as we climbed that a gentle swaying movement began to affect the whole building. Gentle—but definite. It occurred to me that since entering the Spyglass we had somehow contrived to pass from a house onto a ship. Onto the top of a mast, in fact, from which there would be wide views over the river and the city, if only we could find a window to enjoy them. The murmur of the wind, as it tumbled all around us, added to this sensation of being at sea. It was at once absurd and thrilling, and gave me a shiver of excitement.
As we began the last and narrowest flight, Natty glanced over her shoulder and waggled her left hand (while still keeping hold of Spot’s cage with the other) to show I must not make a sound. She meant well, I am sure, but the gesture reminded me of the shadow which had crossed her face when we had been waiting in the street a moment before. Whatever pleasure she had in carrying out her father’s orders was accompanied by a good deal of nervousness, or perhaps even fearfulness. It gave a peculiar urgency to all her actions.
I took some comfort from this, since it suggested that Natty’s feelings about Mr. Silver might after all resemble those I had inherited from my own father. And for this reason it did not surprise me that my father now rose into my head like a specter. “Long John Silver,” I heard him say very distinctly, in the booming voice he used to attract the attention of customers in the fog of the Hispaniola. “Long John Silver with his peg leg and his parrot and his plausible ways. Oh, he was a charmer, certainly, if lies and flattery can ever be called charming. At the end of everything, he was the most damnable villain in the world. I would as soon speak to him again as give my soul to the devil!”
If there had been a chance to think about these things more deeply, I would have seen that my presence in the Spyglass now damned me as a villain—and probably as a fool as well. But I was traveling too fast in the stream of my self-importance to feel the reality of such ideas. When Natty at last reached the head of the stairs, and turned to encourage me with a smile of the most melting sweetness, I had no thought in my brain except this: everything we do, we must do together.
5
I Meet a Ghost
WHEN NATTY THREW open the door to her father’s room, I expected to find myself in some sort of aerial burrow or bolt hole. The narrowing stairs had predicted this, and so did my father’s opinion: Mr. Silver would only have made his dangerous return to England if he had been sure of hiding in shadows.
I found nothing of the kind, but rather a deluge of such brilliant light that for a moment I was dazzled. When my sight returned, I saw I had entered a large cockpit, of which one wall was made entirely of glass, held together by the slenderest bars of wood. This window had been constructed in order to bulge outward, and gave such an exceptional sensation of looking I could not decide whether it was like an eye,
or whether I was actually inside an eye. In any event, I thought I might as well have been an eagle, because I was now able to scrutinize the city and everything it contained with the same clarity.
By the time I had taken this into account, and stepped forward to enjoy a precipitous view of the quay directly below me, where I could see our wherry lying like a seed among the larger ships, Natty seemed to have forgotten me. She had moved away as we entered the room, slinking along the wall furthest from the window as though she disdained its vistas, and coming to a halt alongside the figure I now turned to see for the first time.
Thanks to my father’s stories of Treasure Island, Long John Silver had first come into my mind with the appearance and habits of a demon. His only saving grace was the trick of expediency; in all other respects he was entirely evil—a “horror,” my father used to say, “of cruelty, duplicity and power.” The screech of his parrot—“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!,” like the clacking of a tiny mill—was a refrain of my nightmares. Another was the tap-tap-tap of his wooden leg, his left leg, which replaced the original he had lost in his country’s service under the immortal Hawke. Whenever I felt liable for any sort of punishment, and often when I did not, I had a dread of feeling the stab of his wooden crutch, which he would aim and fling with extraordinary ferocity, like a thunderbolt between my shoulder blades.
With the passage of time these childish fears receded—in the way of such things—and in some cases even modified into images I paraded in my mind’s eye, in order to calculate how much braver I was becoming. It impressed me that whenever I belittled Mr. Silver my father would call me an ignorant boy who knew nothing of the world. But while these reprimands reduced me to silence, they did not alter my opinion. Long John Silver, I am ashamed to say, had gradually been diminished by familiarity into a feeble form of his original self.
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