Silver

by Andrew Motion

  When faced with a puzzle at previous times in my existence, I had always been able to ask others to help me toward a solution. Now I had to decide for myself—the only other noise in the room was not a human voice, but a curious soft snapping that came from Spot in his cage, as though he were swallowing flies.

  I ignored this as best I could and kept my back turned, staring at the panorama of the city below—the Tower with the dark door of Traitors’ Gate looming above the waterline; the great dome of St. Paul’s floating above higgledy-piggledy streets; and the river rolling through everything, gathering its strength to the east and disappearing past Rotherhithe toward my home and the open sea beyond. Just as I had done when first coming into the Spyglass, I thought the wind pressing against the window might as well have been blowing against my face; the creak of the timbers might as well have been a ship’s deck beneath my feet.

  Without taking my eyes off the scene before me, I gave Mr. Silver and Natty my answer.

  6

  The Woman of Color

  AFTER I HAD given my decision, which made me a traitor and free in the same breath, I expected Mr. Silver to stretch out his arms and once again embrace me as a son. But his only response was to open his milky eyes, turn toward Natty as though he could really see her, and give an inward sort of smile. I understood this to mean: “We never doubted him, did we?”

  Natty brushed his hand with her own, then came to stand beside me at the window. With the light now falling on her more directly, I noticed a fine dew of sweat sugaring her nose and top lip. It was a strange comfort to feel I had given her more anxiety than she could admit.

  “My father is very pleased,” she told me in a soft undervoice. “You will see him again when we return with the map. But now we should leave him to rest—we have tired him.”

  I wanted to remonstrate with her, saying something to the effect that I had been wrestling with a greater difficulty than either of them knew, and deserved some consolation myself. But I reckoned this might sound heartless. Besides, the news that Natty would return with me to the Hispaniola had softened all my other considerations.

  “When do we leave?” I asked, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  “Now,” she said. “To get there before sunset.”

  “No,” I explained, “when do we leave for the island?”

  “Oh,” she said airily. “Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. Whenever the wind will carry us. Everything is ready.”

  “I understood that,” I told her. “But is it true he knows the crew? Are they good men? Is the ship a good ship?” I did not ask these questions because I felt troubled by the haste with which I had been swept up; I wanted reassurance that the men chosen by Mr. Silver belonged to the later and more nearly decent part of his life. I needed to know, in fact, that they were not pirates.

  Natty seemed to think I was making a fuss about nothing. “Yes, yes,” she replied, with a flap of impatience. “All good men, especially the captain. And a good ship too. There is nothing that need concern us—not in respect of men and sailing, at least.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Natty put her hand on my arm—I felt its warmth through the cotton of my sleeve. “The world is very wide—that is all I mean. It is full of dangers we cannot predict.”

  Instead of alarming me, the admission was a sort of assurance; it reminded me that I could rely on Natty’s honesty, even if her expertise might sometimes be in question. Encouraged by this, I decided to be forthright myself, and said, “Supposing I cannot find the map—or find it but for some reason cannot take it?”

  “You will find it,” Natty said, with a curious flat emphasis. “You already know where it is, and know you will take it. It is the only way for us.”

  With that she let her hand drop, and suddenly became brisk and amused. “We had best be on our way,” she said, tipping her head backward to include me in the joke.

  “What?” I asked her. “What is it?”

  Natty would not answer, but quickly crossed the room and said good-bye to Spot by tingling her fingernail across the bars of his cage and then to her father by kissing his forehead, which she did with her eyes tight shut.

  The old man barely stirred. I took this to mean he was finally asleep—and then as Natty stepped away I moved into her place to look down at him once more. The crumpled body was like a rag covered in rags; its energy had entirely faded. But when I looked at the face I felt another flutter of fear. Beneath their waxy lids, Mr. Silver’s eyes moved with a bulging energy, as though they were hunting prey, and his thin lips closed and parted to give orders or curses—I could not tell which. I thought if I looked on him for more than a few moments, I would begin to hatch ideas I had never previously dared to imagine.

  This confusion vanished—or rather, changed its character—when Natty ushered me away, and led me down two or three flights of stairs, and I began to hear the same singing that I had noticed before, on our climb toward Mr. Silver’s room. The voice sounded softer now, and had a more definite wistfulness.

  Mary’s son, the King in Heaven above,

  Has taken me for wife and made me his;

  My song has told the rapture of his love,

  My heart has burst the gates of Paradise.

  When we reached the door where this singing was loudest, Natty paused and knocked—which produced a rapid scuffling sound and then, as the door slowly opened, the sight of a large Negro woman. She was some sixty years old, with long gray hair wound tightly into braids, and wore a white dress that included so many petticoats and whatnot, she might as well have been enveloped in a cloud. Her face showed flickers of the light that must once have shone from her, but was now too heavy to be called beautiful.

  “My mother,” said Natty, with an ironical bow that proved she thought her relation was ridiculous, or at least strange. In fact I felt nothing but curiosity. This was the same woman of color who had appeared in my father’s stories—the woman with whom Mr. Silver had shared his early life in Bristol, and to whom he had evidently returned following his exile in Spanish America. Like her husband, she was a fable come to life.

  Mrs. Silver stared at the hand I was offering her to shake, as if such a courtesy were unheard of. Her own right hand was pressed to her bosom, which rose and fell very quickly. When I glanced beyond her I understood why. One entire wall of her room was a shrine, a gigantic plate of shimmering metal, into which various hooks and holders had been screwed to support candles. These were all casting their yellow light onto a table where more candles stood—surrounding a complicated silver crucifix, embossed with animals overlapping one another in a writhing dance. Mrs. Silver had been at her prayers, and was breathless because she had been prostrate in front of her altar when we happened to disturb her.

  I wondered why Natty had not been more circumspect. The explanation came when Mrs. Silver recovered her composure and finally grasped my hands in both her own—which were peculiarly warm and moist. She did not consider us to be intruders, and never would have done; she seemed as uncomplicated in her friendliness as her husband was devious.

  “Master Jim!” she exclaimed, in a rolling West Country voice. “Natty told me you would be here. Come in, my lover, come in”—and before I even had the chance to hesitate, she clamped one heavy arm around my shoulder, the other around Natty, then swept us across the room to an ancient settle, where we sank in a single swooping collapse as though glued together, and listened to her talk.

  Barbados (where she had been born); harbors; sea sailing; tuna fish; salt; bunks; disagreeable biscuits; storms; phosphorescence; starlight; sunshine; following winds; the smell of vegetation; the River Severn; and the great old port of Bristol were all subjects she touched on, and then abandoned, as she ferried us with her from her native land to her first home in England with her young husband. His subsequent journey to Treasure Island she passed over, except to say it was “a cruise” that left her alone for longer than she expected, but had allowed her to take on the
management of the Spyglass. Since her husband’s return, she wanted me to believe, they had worked quietly and happily together, blessed by the arrival of our angel (here our shoulders were given a terrific squeeze)—although now their existence was overshadowed by her husband’s ill health.

  As this sad subject came into view, Mrs. Silver redoubled her efforts to be cheerful. “Thanks to Jesus,” she declared, or I should say sang, for she drew out the name of her Savior into a long steady note. “Thanks to Jesus we are still able to count our blessings, and look forward to greater ones in the time that remains to us.”

  This speech had taken several minutes to complete, and for most of this time I kept my gaze fixed on the altar in front of me. I could see now that it had been cleverly made to create a wholly irregular surface, which reflected the candlelight at unpredictable angles. Because thick curtains blinded every window in the room, and the other walls were hung with dark shawls and drapes of various kinds, she had created an impression of unusually concentrated devotion—and also of considerable danger, since the slightest gust of wind would certainly fan one of the many flames and set everything on fire.

  This possibility meant I kept very still. Mrs. Silver, by contrast, quivered and shook and fluttered while she spoke, and gradually convinced me that she resembled everything around her, and the altar especially, in blending rapture with recklessness. The longer I reflected on this, the more uncomfortable I became. My original response to her had been a kind of relief after the strangeness of her husband. Then I had felt puzzled that two such different people might actually be man and wife. This in turn had led me to speculate that her amiability was in fact a sort of tyranny: her story was designed to entertain us, but also to assert her control. The possibility had become more and more convincing as she continued talking, with the weight of her arms across our shoulders steadily increasing, and her grip steadily tightening, so that by the end we were more nearly her prisoners than her audience.

  For Natty, who must have heard her mother’s speeches countless times before, the detention would have been especially tedious. So I supposed, at any rate—and as her mother began another long paragraph of thanks to Jesus for blessings past, present and to come, I decided that I must bring our captivity to an end.

  “Mrs. Silver,” I said loudly, wriggling away from her and jumping to my feet. “Natty and I have something to do, which we must begin immediately.”

  The effect of my announcement was instantaneous, and much more powerful than I had expected. All the buoyancy that had filled Mrs. Silver, all the bounce and assertion, escaped like air from a balloon.

  “Something to do?” she said weakly, as if flabbergasted.

  “It is a task,” I told her. “A task your husband has given us.”

  A second change now took place in Mrs. Silver, which was like a hardening after the recent deflation. She folded her arms across her bosom, and disappointment stiffened her face. My first thought was: I have annoyed her by interrupting her. But as she began speaking again, I realized at least some of her irritation was directed toward her husband, either because she did not understand his mind, or because she disliked what it contained.

  “I know your task, Master Jim; I know your task,” she said, with the singsongy note in her voice now distinctly sinister. “Whether it is God’s will or the devil’s is another matter. Ye are the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, not of darkness.” Mrs. Silver unfolded her arms and placed her hands upon her knees, before adding with a defiant emphasis and a glare at both of us, “The First Epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter five, verse five.”

  At this Natty also rose to her feet and edged away from her mother—glancing uncertainly from me to her and then back again. Mrs. Silver ignored this. “Go to your task then,” she continued. “Go to your task, young man. Come back when it is done and I shall decide whose work you do. And you, young lady”—she darted another look at her daughter, which had nothing of a mother’s love in it, but only jealousy and disdain—“you go with your young man and do your father’s bidding. It is your practice, after all.”

  In the agitation of the moment, with candlelight shifting across every surface, it was impossible to see what effect this little tirade had on Natty. Outwardly she remained calm, extending a hand to help her mother stand. But I do not think it was in my imagination that I saw the color of her face deepen, and a strange low fire—more like coals than flames—burn in her eyes.

  The blaze continued for a moment, then receded as Mrs. Silver heaved upright. Whether or not she had noticed Natty’s discomfiture, she wanted to end our interview as suddenly as it had begun. Although I had no experience of what it meant to have a mother, this struck me as nothing less than unkind. The rapid changes in the temperature of her mood, and the remorselessness she now showed, might have threatened the happiness of any childhood. When such things combined with the influence of such a husband, they might shipwreck it altogether.

  There was no time to dwell on these thoughts, since Mrs. Silver was suddenly all business, shooing at us as if we were chickens, while the folds of her dress quaked and its hems hissed along the floor, which made the candle shadows sway about us even more violently. As she scuttled toward the door there was no word of good-bye, no blessing for our journey, only an absolute determination to see us gone—as though she had just remembered a matter of far greater importance than anything our plans could represent.

  My own desire to leave the house was equally powerful; I did not even wait for Natty, but quickly bounded down one flight of stairs, then along the landing past the taproom, then down the last flight and so into the street. Until she caught up with me, I was glad to be alone. In the last few hours I had grown so used to others knowing my future, it was almost shocking to realize I still had the chance to reject everything Mr. Silver had offered. I told myself it would be the easiest thing in the world to melt into a side street, find my way home to the Hispaniola, and ignore any further visits and instructions from the Spyglass.

  The easiest thing—but impossible, since all my ties of loyalty to my father, and all my instincts for safety, were as nothing compared to the feelings that now worked against them. To speak plainly: Natty had caught me in a bewitchment far stronger than any of the reasons I had to shun her. The more doubtful I felt about the character of her parents, the more willing I was to think of her as their victim—the prisoner of their wildness and eccentricity. Yet such was her power over me, and my desire to please her, I did not feel inclined to rescue her from her father’s designs—but rather to accept them. I now see my reasoning was casuistic, and I cannot admire it. At the time I was content, since it allowed me to suppose that my betrayal of my own father was not an act of selfishness, but of kindness.

  When Natty appeared from the darkness behind me her face was cheerful again: eyes bright, mouth settled into her cat’s smile. Such brave composure confirmed everything I had been thinking. I was not a traitor but a redeemer.

  7

  Downriver

  I SHALL NOT rehearse the details of our return to the Hispaniola, except to say the river, in which the tide had turned, and then turned again, made us labor hard to reach our destination. As we toiled along, with the light of day beginning to fade around us, I felt we were also brought together. By this I do not only mean to acknowledge my willingness to steal the map, but also to show that we needed to combine our efforts, and help one another, in order to complete our purpose. Our oars made untidy splashes as they propelled us through the water; our backs and arms ached. My consolation was to imagine the lights of ships and boats around us (much less numerous than in daytime) winked like partners in our conspiracy. Men and women tramping home along the towpath, heads down and intent on their own purposes, persuaded me that we were invisible to the rest of humanity.

  Arduous as they were in certain respects, these circumstances encouraged Natty to speak about her parents more freely than before. As we passed through
Rotherhithe, and began to tackle the widening stretch toward Greenwich, she told me that Mr. Silver’s ill health and her mother’s religion, which might easily have united them as patient and nurse, had in fact led them into rather separate existences, him in the crow’s nest of the house, her in the midships. It was Natty who cared for her father, while her mother managed the business of the inn.

  At this time in our knowledge of one another, I hesitated to press Natty for more details of her life, since my questions might easily have given hurt when they only meant to show interest. I felt no such reserve in mentioning our adventure—so when I thought we might have exhausted the subject of her father for the time being, I asked, “Supposing we find our island. Supposing we find it, and afterward come home safely and rich. What do you see after that? What do you want?”

  I expected a bright reply, but Natty surprised me by speaking very gravely. “I don’t expect to come home,” she said.

  “Not come home?” I repeated, looking into the narrow fields that now began to open on either side of us.

  “No, never come home.”

  “You mean not survive?”

  “Oh,” she said, with a weary relaxation, “I expect to survive. I mean not come home to England. You have seen my life here.”

  This invited me to make a judgment that might offend her, so I replied evasively. “Both our lives have their frustrations,” I said.

  “Mine are more than frustrations,” Natty replied, with the same air of steadiness that characterized all her conversation. “This adventure will allow me some liberty, at least.”

  I thought her admission proved she would not mind me speaking more directly. “Does your father know this?” I asked.

  “What does my father know of anything? He rambles—you’ve heard him. He knows the past but not the present. Perhaps your father is the same?”