Silver

by Andrew Motion

  As my eyes lit on him now, I knew at once that I had been a fool to ignore my father’s judgment. I say this in spite of the ways in which time had eroded the contours of the man’s body. He was lying on a chaise longue covered in faded green cloth, the velvet patched here and there with darker swatches, wearing an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, that would have hung as low as his knee if he had been able to stand; the high collar rose up around his ears and pushed them outward.

  To call this body emaciated does not do justice to the ravages it had suffered—especially since he had detached his wooden leg (from close by the hip) and laid it on the floor beside him. It would be better to say that his form seemed to be disintegrating, even as I looked at it: the collapsed folds of his trousers, the speckled brown stalk of his single leg, where it protruded beside its absent partner; the chest sunk beneath the grimy flounces of his shirt: all these led me to marvel that the spirit governing them was still active, and to suppose it could not endure much longer.

  It was the head, and not the body, that made me recognize the menace my father had so often complained about. According to him, Mr. Silver’s face had been as big as a ham—smooth and plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. Now it was shriveled and sunken, and capped with hair that had become so extremely sparse it was more like an arrangement of threads than anything natural, and hung greasily from his crown as far as his shoulders. This itself seemed to imply a sort of abandonment, and was made all the more alarming by the fact that his eyes, which I had expected to see fixed on my own with a seductive intensity, boiled from side to side and were completely clouded over. Mr. Silver was blind.

  While this affliction might have produced an appearance of pathos in other men, and a mood of dependency, in him it had only inspired rage—which he was continually trying to control. His head rocked on the gold cushion that supported it, while his left hand clenched and unclenched beside his absent leg, as though searching for a dagger he might hurl instead of a greeting.

  “Are you there? Are you there?” he demanded, scratching the air with his right hand. The voice was not so much exhausted as weathered—scrubbed and ridged and whitened.

  “I’m here, Father,” said Natty, whose own voice rang very sweetly, although its mollifying tone had no effect. Once again the hand rose impatiently, and now that I looked more closely, I saw it bore the faded mark of a tattoo, blue and purple, running upward from the knuckles and disappearing beneath the untidy shirt cuff. I thought it might be a snake, with the mouth open and fangs about to strike.

  “I’m here, Father,” Natty repeated.

  Since entering the cockpit I had been so preoccupied by the magnificence of its view, and the mingled decrepitude and threat of its sightless inhabitant, I had not paused to consider Natty’s behavior. Now a host of questions rushed into my mind. Why had she not introduced me to her father? Did she want to give the impression that she was alone? She was certainly ignoring me, avoiding my eye as she set down the cage for her bird (on a small round table that was evidently its regular home), and tugging her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. As I watched a frown begin to cloud her face, it seemed there was an element of subterfuge in her actions, as well as of reassurance.

  I was confused by these thoughts, which made me wonder, who was the governing authority in the room? My uncertainty soon deepened. Instead of taking her father’s hand and planting a chaste kiss on his skull, Natty bent to the still-twitching figure and rubbed her cheek against the side of his face like a cat. At this the old man finally lay still. “My love,” I think he said, although it may have been “My life.” When this was done, he inched his sparrow-body across the chaise, making a space for her to lie down next to him. This she did willingly, sliding her arm across his chest. I could not see her face, which was buried in the material of his topcoat. His own face continued to stare directly toward the invisible view; it was a mask of bliss.

  The embrace continued for at least a minute, during which father and daughter lay in each other’s arms without any acknowledgment of my presence. I have thought about the scene a thousand times since, often unhappily, but however I change the angle of my regard, I end with the same conclusion. The question of control was exceedingly vexed. Mr. Silver had no remaining physical power to carry out his wishes, yet he still possessed a determined mind. Natty’s intelligence was not yet independent, but her youth and energy gave her a kind of domination. They appeared to have settled the contest between their abilities by developing an exceptional devotion. A love, indeed, that I saw at once might mean the rejection of anyone else who wanted their attention.

  As if to confirm the unease provoked by these thoughts, Spot now began to fidget very nervously, scraping his wings against the bars of his cage and repeatedly opening and closing his beak as though about to regurgitate a word or two. When he finally succeeded, he began the same phrase I had heard him utter before, when I first made his acquaintance outside the Hispaniola: “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” In the same instant that he began to speak, Natty suddenly sat upright, keeping her place beside her father’s shoulder, and patted her hair like someone waking from a refreshing sleep.

  Although she smiled directly at me, it was her father she spoke to: “Now,” she said quietly, “we must get to business. I have brought Mr. Hawkins to see you, Father, as you asked.” Her tone of voice was absolutely even, and the look in her eye absolutely steady, as if she were daring me to object that I had seen anything strange or disconcerting.

  “Mr. Hawkins!” the old man cawed, as if he were a bird himself, and extended both his arms toward me. The idea that he might expect me to embrace him was something that filled me with revulsion, and I stood my ground—which of course he did not actually see. “Mr. Hawkins!” he said again, in the same crooning tone. “My-my, boy, here’s a treat for an old man. Come here. Come here and sit by me. Let me see you.” He pronounced the word see with a drawling slowness that made me want to shrink away—but as if I had lost the command of my faculties, I now moved forward until I found myself sitting on the chaise longue across from Natty, almost touching the bare brown skin of her father’s leg. At this proximity, I could not help noticing the smell hanging over him—very musty and dark, as if he had lain underground for a while and recently been resurrected.

  I sat still as a statue, accepting with a kind of passive sorrow that everything I now did, every breath I inhaled, was either a betrayal or repudiation of my father. I felt incapable of taking any other course. Natty, meanwhile, had kept her place on the opposite side of the chaise and gave me another of her sweet smiles, with her head bent slightly forward in encouragement.

  Returning her look, I said: “I am here, sir.” My voice was hoarse and small, so I thought to repeat myself, but this time managed to drop the “sir” in deference to my father.

  As the memory of my father continued to flash across my mind, I lowered my eyes. It was extraordinary to think the emaciated body before me had sailed the Seven Seas with my own flesh and blood. Bewildering, too. Not just in the difference between then and now, but because the past seemed at once infinitely remote and intensely present. I thought that if I were to lay my hand on Mr. Silver, he would quicken into his former self, and my own fingers would become my father’s, clutching at him for help, or to repel him.

  “I am here,” I said again—eventually.

  I expected some further warm outburst to greet my words, but Mr. Silver did not answer. Instead he fixed his milky eyes upon me, let one arm drop into his lap, and ran the other over every feature of my face; his nails felt sharp as claws as they scraped over my skin. He touched my hair, my brow, my eye sockets, my nose, my cheeks, my lips, my chin, and the beginning of my neck—all the while making a low ruminative humming noise with his mouth tight shut.

  “Yes, you are Jim,” he said at last, and snatched his hand away with a surprising suddenness; I saw the snake wrinkle across his wrist.

  “I am.”

 
; “I would know you in the street or anywhere. You are your father’s son exactly.”

  “Thank you,” I said, somewhat foolishly as it seemed, but Mr. Silver did not notice.

  “You are young,” he went on. “But of course you are—very young. It is a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes, you may lay to that. When you want to go for a bit of exploring, you just ask old John, and he’ll put up a snack for you to take along.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, feeling still more awkward, but once again Mr. Silver seemed to ignore me and to be talking to himself.

  “Young, and an educated boy, I should wager,” he said. “I had a good schooling myself, in my own days. I could speak like a book when so minded. Genteel. That’s what the captain called me. Genteel. You know whom I’m speaking about?”

  “Captain Flint, sir,” I said, remembering what my father had told me.

  “Captain Flint exactly!” Mr. Silver sighed, a dry rasping sound in the bottom of his throat, then broke into a weak singsong. “First with England, then with Flint, that’s my story. Here’s to old Flint. Here’s to ourselves and hold your luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff.” He paused again and swallowed. “But that was long ago, long ago. I have not spoken with your father since he was a lad even younger than you are.” The eyes hooded as he said this, which showed he must be calculating how many years had passed since their last encounter. His frown showed he did not like the number that occurred to him.

  “Does he talk of me—your father?” he asked.

  “Very often,” I said, which sounded more like a common courtesy than I meant.

  “Does he!” Mr. Silver exclaimed. “Does he indeed? Did you hear that, my dear?”—this, turning to Natty—“Mr. Hawkins often speaks of me!” He nodded a few times, while Natty and I exchanged a shining look. “Well,” he continued after falling still again. “It is no great wonder, I suppose. Your father and I had great adventures together.”

  “So I have heard,” I said stiffly.

  “I’ll warrant you have,” he said; “I’ll warrant you have”—and then, after a pause: “I have often sailed past your haunt the Hispaniola. A quaint old place, very shipshape and busy, I dare say. Very convenient for yarns and news and all sorts. Very handy for a bottle of rum.” He leered when he came to the word rum and then, turning to include Natty, straightened his face and continued, “Isn’t that so, my darling! We have often looked in through the windows along the estuary, and wondered whether we might call in and surprise Jim Hawkins. Old Jim and young Jim.” He gave a dusty cackle. “But who wants to see a ghost and have their happiness shaken—eh, Jim? Who wants to see a ghost?”

  I could only nod at this, which of course meant silence to Mr. Silver, while my brain began to understand what he had told me. It made me feel that my entire existence, which I had hitherto believed to be my own affair, might in fact have been an open book, of which Mr. Silver and Natty had turned every page as my story developed.

  “But I am not a ghost, am I now, lad?” Mr. Silver cackled again, and lifted his revolting claw to nip my cheek between two of his talons. “What flesh is left of me is real flesh. Real flesh! And real blood running in my veins, eh!” His hand dropped into his lap with a soft thud. “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” he said suddenly, in a kind of scream. “I’m not done for yet! Not by a long chalk.”

  When I heard this, I thought Mr. Silver might actually have lost his wits, and was not surprised to see Natty run her hand across his brow to calm him. “Hush, hush, Father,” she said, in a soothing voice. “Hush, hush”—then, more briskly: “Remember why Jim is here, and what you have to say to him.”

  Mr. Silver breathed deeply two or three times, bringing himself to order; I suspect he was remembering a drill that he and Natty had devised for just such a moment as this. But when he began speaking again, it was evident that his mind was still rambling; he only gradually arrived at the point Natty had indicated.

  “Your father was a most valuable friend,” he whispered. “A brave boy. A clever boy, too—a lad of spirit. The rabble that surrounded me in those days—he saw they were worth nothing. Outright fools and cowards. He gave them what they deserved.” He reached forward and searched for my hand; when he had caught it, he gripped it very tight, squeezing my knuckles. “But with me he was always understanding,” he continued. “He saw we were gentlemen of fortune—the both of us. And I told him, ‘Jim, I’ll save your life—if so be as I can. Then see here,’ I told him, ‘tit for tat—you save Long John Silver from swinging.’ ” With this, he withdrew his hand, and set about heaving himself more nearly upright on his chaise, squaring his narrow shoulders and shaking his head as if tossing hair out of his eyes. “Really,” he said, in a slow and dignified voice, “I might say he was like a son to me.”

  These last few words sank into me as heavily as stones. And as often happens at moments of especial intensity in our lives, I became conscious that a part of my mind had withdrawn, and was observing its own operations. I began thinking that some of Mr. Silver’s fascination came from the fact that his voice, with its rolling vowels and comfortable patterns, showed he had been born in the same part of the West Country as my father’s family. This meant his talk had a kind of familiarity, and the air of comfort, even when he was saying astonishing things. Truly, it was outrageous to hear this man, whom my father had called the devil, recollect him as a son—and yet it was convincing as well.

  “My father—” I began, with no clear idea of how I might continue.

  “Your father!” Mr. Silver interrupted. “Your father would have understood the reasons for what I am about to ask you. I always liked him for a lad of spirit, and the picture of myself when I was young and handsome. A brave boy and a clever one, as I say. Very brave and very clever. Clever enough to know the value of an adventure, at any rate, and brave enough to carry it out!”

  As Mr. Silver finished speaking, he clenched his jaws and stuck out his chin. The effect was to show how collapsed his mouth was, over gums that had long since lost their teeth. Yet the impression of defiance was unmistakable.

  “What adventure do you have in mind?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

  “Why the map, of course, boy!” His voice rose once more into something like a scream, which completely destroyed the impression of gentleness he had just given. “The map and then the treasure across the sea! The beautiful silver! All the beautiful silver we left there in the old days, with the old captain.” He paused and struggled for breath, then continued more softly. “You know the story, boy, and don’t say otherwise. Your father and I only took what we could carry—us and the rest of them. But there’s more. All the beautiful silver. Silver lying in the ground, and the map will tell you where!”

  “Supposing I refused?” I said. In my heart, I already knew how I would respond to Mr. Silver, but thought I owed my father at least this show of loyalty.

  “Suppose nothing!” the old man flashed back at me, shuddering as he spoke. “Think! Do not suppose! Think of the fortune waiting for you! Think of who is speaking to you! It is me! Long John Silver as was. Old Barbecue as was. But neither of these any more. Not for many a day. It is Mr. Silver now—the same man but different. Like music set in a different key, you might say. Your father will understand that. O yes, he will understand that, being subject himself to the same changes. The changes that govern us all.” The voice was beginning to fail now, although in these last words there was still a hiss of steel, like a sword being pulled from its sheath. He then added two more words, both as sharp as stab wounds. “Bravery!” he said. “Cleverness!” When this was done, as if he had spent his last drop of energy, his head sank onto the gold pillow, and his face relaxed into a smile. I thought he might suddenly have fallen asleep.

  Natty evidently believed so, and leaned toward me across her father’s body. “You know what he means,” she whispered, with an unnecessary candor. “He wants you to find the map of the island, and make the voyage
to bring home what remains of the treasure. You might say it is his dying wish.”

  A plaintive note came into her voice with this last sentence. I disliked it, for making me understand how palpable were her designs on me. But because I could not easily resist her enthusiasm, I fell back on complaining it was impossible for practical reasons.

  “How would I manage?” I asked. “I am too young. I have no ship, and no crew, and no money. It is a hopeless cause.”

  Natty was not in the least put out by these objections, but only leaned closer still, until I felt her breath on my face.

  “My father has settled it,” she said, then straightened again, as if there were no more to add.

  “What do you mean, he has settled it?”

  “He has a ship waiting. And a crew. And a captain. He has paid for everything.”

  I was astonished to hear this, feeling once again that my future had presumptuously been decided for me.

  “All that remains,” Natty added with a smile like a cat, “is for you to give us our destination.”

  “Us?” I said.

  “I shall come as well,” Natty said. “I shall be my father’s representative.”

  I had hoped she might say this, without quite believing she would, and the effect was to turn my discomfiture into something like relief. “Supposing I were to come,” I replied, with a shrug that I hoped would give the impression of indifference, “then I would be my father’s representative. It is the same thing.”

  With this I pushed myself to my feet, stepping back from the chaise longue and turning toward the window so that I could debate more clearly with myself. My dilemma was very stark. If I declined to help, I would be asked to leave the Spyglass and would never see Natty again; it would mean I had refused the great adventure of my life. If I accepted, I would betray my father and damage forever my idea of myself.