Silver

by Andrew Motion

  Tall tree. Spyglass shoulder, bearing a point to the N of NNE

  Skeleton Island ESE and by E.

  Ten feet.

  The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find it by the bend of the east hummock, ten fathoms south of the black crag with the face on it.

  The arms are easy found, in the sand-hill, N point of north inlet cape, bearing E and a quarter of N.

  J. F.

  My head dropped as I reached the end of these words, and for a moment the map seemed to swim before me. Then, with a strange slowness, as though the air around me had suddenly become dense as water, I raised the map toward me again and my eyes roved to the topmost edge of the sheet. I found what I wanted. A statement of longitude and latitude, which was branded on my brain in an instant, but shall never be repeated. My relief was so intense I think I may actually have gasped aloud. But it would have been a gasp that faded quickly into a smile, as I noticed the artist had taken the trouble to underline his information with irregular blue lines, as a child might do to indicate the waves of the sea.

  The fascination of all this was so immediate I might as well have been holding a page of the Gospels. The map was a sacred thing—a source of primitive knowledge that had been mentioned time and again throughout my childhood, but always kept out of reach. My father and everything in his room fell absolutely quiet as I gazed on it. At the same time, a sensation crept out of the document and passed into my hand, and I could not tell whether it was like weakness or strength. My hand trembled yet felt strong as iron. Still wondering at this contradiction, I folded the map, replaced it in the satchel, slipped the braided strap around my neck, tucked the satchel inside my shirt, then set about returning everything to the chest as quietly as possible, and in the original order, so that my father would not know the contents had been ransacked.

  When this was done, and the chest was locked again, I tiptoed back to my father’s bedside and once more lifted his head from the pillow, so that I could restore the key to its place around his neck. Often in my childhood I had silently condemned my father for sending himself drunk to bed. On this occasion I thanked him for it very profusely—although in total silence: his only response to my interference was to give an especially loud snore. When everything was settled again, I stared down at him for the last time.

  In spite of all the recent disturbances, he seemed to have moved into a different chamber of sleep, and now lay more deeply below the current of the world than when I had first come into his room. His forehead was smoothed clear of trouble. His jaw was set as if nerved for a long journey. “Good-bye, Father,” I heard myself say—which I had not planned to do. The words fell on him as lightly as snow and he did not feel them.

  I returned the lantern to its place beside his shoes, and left the room quickly without looking back. I had not expected such sadness to be a part of my leave-taking, but now I felt it, I could not ignore it; it meant that when I came downstairs I paused in the taproom and wrote my father a message. Using the slate he kept to remember orders of food and drink (and wiping those away), I wrote that I was resolved to make a journey, as he had done when he was my age, and that I would be home again later in the year. I said nothing about the map, nothing about my destination, and nothing about my companion and her ancestry. In this way I both confessed and dissembled. When I was finished, I left the words basking in the moonlight.

  It was the work of a minute to cross the marsh again, and find the creek where Natty was waiting. As I stepped into the Spyglass and sat down beside her, she looked into my face without speaking, saw my expression, then put her arms around me. It was the first time we had embraced, and the warmth of her body, with its faint scent of sweat, almost overwhelmed me. I hardly had the wit to notice she did not mention the map—and I was grateful she did not. In fact we did not speak at all. We let one another go, took an oar each, and rowed into the river, then a mile toward London. There we tethered our boat to a jetty and slept until morning. When the sun rose we continued our journey, with my treasure still hidden inside my shirt.

  8

  Reading the Map

  MY FATHER ADVISED me never to pick over the reasons for a decision once it has been taken. As a young boy I thought this meant he always knew his own mind. By the time I left for Treasure Island, I had come to believe he preferred not to look at past mistakes.

  Perhaps this change of opinion proved nothing except the doubt I felt about my own behavior. Certainly, when I woke head-to-toe with Natty in the Spyglass, and lifted my head to inspect the marshes warming in the early sun, I imagined that each mist-wraith I saw wandering across them had come to accuse me. The whole shimmering panorama spoke directly to my moral sense—and I clutched nervously at the satchel inside my shirt, where I found the map safe enough.

  When a fuller consciousness returned, I realized not even a whole army of accusers could now force me to return my prize to the sea chest from which I had stolen it. Accepting this, I also understood that henceforth I would do better to keep looking forward, contemplating my future, rather than sneaking guilty glances over my shoulder. I therefore made a silent promise that in due course I would return to my father with a share of whatever I brought home from my adventure, but—until that time—think of him no more than was absolutely necessary. How well I succeeded in this endeavor will appear in the pages following.

  The moment Natty awoke she gave a wide yawn that showed the pink inside of her mouth, and wiped her hands over her face. She then looked at me very boldly, as though refuting any accusation of having slept at all.

  Because this was our first experience of beginning a day together, we were shy of one another, and spent the next few moments in silence. But after we had splashed the Thames over our faces, reassured ourselves the tide was running in the direction we wished to proceed, rowed away from our mooring, traveled a mile or two upstream, eaten our breakfast at one of the inns that offered food to sailors and bargees and suchlike, and settled our plan for the day, we were comfortable again.

  The rest of our journey unfolded very easily. The strong propulsion of the river carried us swiftly back to Wapping. We safely escaped the traffic of merchant ships and barges to find a mooring where we wanted. We happily scrambled ashore and found a lane that led us directly to the Spyglass inn. The creaks and whispers of that building swept us rapidly up the stairs toward Mr. Silver. By this time it was midday, and the haze of morning had long since burned away, leaving the sky as blue as a blackbird’s egg; when I opened the door, I was once again so dazzled by light from its large window, I actually shielded my eyes as if I were staring into the sun itself.

  Our host began speaking to me immediately, calling out my name in a high, imperious whisper: “Jim! Jim!” I could not see him yet, being still blinded, but it was obvious from the direction of his voice that Mr. Silver’s chaise longue had been moved into a different position since my last visit, and was now alongside the window. The change was a trifling thing, but enough to shake my confidence that I knew what to expect from my host.

  Indeed, when I had lowered my hand and blinked a few times, I saw Mr. Silver was leaning so far toward me he had almost fallen onto the floor. Natty moved quickly to his side, and knelt to straighten him; his only response was to batter her lightly with feeble hands. Spot did not like being passed over by his mistress in this way, and began calling his name very angrily from his cage on the table, which convinced me that I should intervene. I went over to run my finger along his bars—whereupon he spluttered like an ancient and outraged gentleman, then fell silent.

  Now Mr. Silver was settled again, he began hissing at his daughter. “Do you have it? Do you have it?”

  “We have it, Father,” she interrupted. “We have it safe.” As she said this, she beckoned for me to stand beside her. Mr. Silver was wearing the same blue sailor’s coat and ragged trousers as yesterday, although his face was even more collapsed, if such a thing were possible. It was extraordinary to remember that my father
had described him as looking “like a ham.”

  “Let me see it,” he whispered, rolling his eyes feverishly to and fro in their sockets. “Let me hold it in my hands again.”

  I glanced at Natty, searching her face for a sign of what I should do, and again she acted for me, indicating that I should take the map from its hiding place. It occurred to me as I did so that this would be the first time she had seen it herself. Whatever excitement she felt was well concealed, which I thought was proof of her trust in me.

  While I began to undo my shirt, Mr. Silver clawed the air as he had done during our previous visit. “And what of yourself, Father,” Natty said gently, ignoring this. “What of yourself?”

  The old man did not reply. He merely clenched up his face like a fist so that all his wrinkles were emphasized, and looked at her with disdain. Natty affected not to notice, and ran her hand over his forehead. There was nothing more than goodness in the gesture, which was a relief to see, but Spot evidently suspected otherwise. As her hand pulled back again, the bird hopped from the floor of his cage onto his perch and clung there with his bright yellow feet, rocking backward and forward. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” he shouted, with enough defiance to keep us all still for a moment.

  “I have it here, Mr. Silver.”

  It was my voice that spoke now, and my hands that were holding out the map. I had already unfolded it, which meant I was seeing it in daylight for the first time. The underlinings appeared even more childish than when I had glanced at them in my father’s room. Yet the names—the names and the rusty cross-marks—held such extraordinary power, the air seemed to shiver around me.

  Mr. Silver did nothing for a moment except stare, his milky eyes narrowing with an effort of concentration, his brow tightening, and his head lifting an inch or two from the pillow.

  “Give it to me,” he said. “I need to be sure.” His voice was very thin and scratchy, but had a note of command that Captain Flint himself would have obeyed. When I did as he ordered, he laid hold of the paper with great delicacy, as if he feared that it might melt between his fingers. When he had stroked it a few times, and reassured himself of its robustness, he raised it close to his face and breathed in two or three times very deeply.

  “Do you smell it, boy?” he asked in a much quieter voice, when he had allowed his head to sink back onto the pillow again. “And you, my girl, do you smell it? The sea and the earth and all that in them is!”

  Neither of us answered, but we watched in amazement as he returned to touching all over the map with his finger ends. To and fro they wandered, to and fro, as though he had transported himself from his bed and was in fact strolling around the coves of the island, exploring its valleys and forests, drinking from its streams and hauling himself up its hillsides. Eventually he settled on the words bar silver and seemed to pluck at them, teasing them upright. When he had satisfied himself in this way, he caressed the whole surface of the map with a most lingering fondness, which made the snake tattoo writhe along his arm. Next he performed the same action with his face, sliding the paper backward and forward across his white bristles, over his nose and forehead. Finally he held it to his lips, and puckered them into a tender kiss.

  It was a revolting performance, as well as a spellbinding one, and by the end of it Mr. Silver’s mouth had filled with saliva, so that he had to swallow not once but twice. Natty took this to be a sign that she should bring things to a close, perhaps fearing for his health. She therefore leaned forward and prized the map from between his fingers, all the time murmuring, “There, there, Father; we will take it back now. There, there.”

  When she had returned the paper to my safe keeping, Natty sat down on the chaise longue beside her father and took both his hands in her own. “Listen to me,” she said, in the voice of sweet reason. “We have come to show you the map, and now you have seen it. We have also come to say good-bye to you. You know what we must do. We must begin our journey. Will you give us your blessing, and say you look forward to our safe return?”

  “My blessing? Why of course you have my blessing,” said Mr. Silver; his voice was very quiet, as if he were speaking in a church. “You have my blessing and my prayers—my prayers for your safe return, and your success.” He drew out the last word so that it sounded like a serpent’s hiss, then collected himself, which showed he was about to say something he wanted us to remember. It was this: “Your success will be the end of everything. It will set me free. It will set all of us free. Bring me the silver and I will be able to die.”

  “Hush, hush, you must not say that,” Natty told him quickly, but her father would not respond, except by tightening his jaw.

  This made an awkwardness in the room, which I felt I must end for Natty’s sake. “Before we set sail,” I said, “I have a request. I was not able to say good-bye to my own father—for reasons you will understand. Can I ask you: will you give me a memory of him that I might have instead?”

  I thought Mr. Silver would ignore my request or brush it aside, so contemptuous was the expression on his face. But as the words sank into his brain they exerted a most curious influence. His eyes widened, his features relaxed, and a smile spread through him that was as warm as sunlight. It gave me a glimpse of the sweetness my father had witnessed many years earlier—the sweetness that was always false, and expedient.

  “Jim!” he said, as though suddenly astonished. “Dear boy! You saved my life and you kept your word. We were two of a kind. We wanted to save our skins and get rich, didn’t we lad? Liberty and riches, they were the things.”

  These were sentiments I had heard before, at our first meeting, but now they were uttered with a deeper sense of recognition. And my response to them was the more uncertain, because although I understood that Mr. Silver was speaking of my father, I could not help gaining the impression that he thought of me as his own child.

  This was not the memory I had requested, but it gave me a reassurance about the journey that was very welcome—at the same time as it troubled me.

  So welcome, in fact, and so troubling, that for a moment I stood quite still and felt nonplussed. When I was able to move again I surprised even myself. I stepped forward and kissed the crown of the old man’s head; it was a thing I had neglected to do when leaving my own father a few hours earlier, for fear of waking him. The threads of white hair felt ticklish against my lips and the skin very tight.

  “You are a good boy, Jim,” he murmured as I straightened again. “You are a good boy and you must take care of Natty. You must …”

  But the voice cracked as he spoke, so whatever he intended to say was lost. Instead, and with an awkward gulp, he lurched out to grasp his daughter’s left hand and my right, holding them together in the grip of his claws and shaking them slowly up and down.

  With the light pouring over us, and the wind pressing against the window, and the immense silent pageant of London and its river spread out below, it was a moment of the most complex solemnity. A wedding and a farewell at once. And when it was finished, Mr. Silver threw our hands into the air, making us understand that he was sending us on our way, and if we stayed any longer we would offend him.

  It was a sudden conclusion, although no doubt for the best. It allowed Natty the dignity of seeming trustworthy to her father, and us both the privilege of feeling united in a common purpose. I waited a moment while Natty once more laid her hand on her father’s brow, closing her eyes as she did so—as if, by a great effort of concentration, she could absorb all the knowledge preserved inside his skull. Then she moved swiftly to collect Spot (who was now settled more calmly on his perch) before joining me again.

  We walked slowly backward out of the room as if departing from royalty, and kept our eyes fixed on Mr. Silver for as long as possible. He never stirred—except, as the door closed, to lift one long hand and so repeat the blessing we had asked for.

  9

  The Silver Nightingale

  AS I LOOK back today from the vantage point of my lat
er age, I am astonished that so much remained unsaid during our final interview with Mr. Silver. Very little about my father. Next to nothing about the adventure they had shared. Nothing whatsoever about their later lives. Our haste in setting sail was partly to blame for this—and also my reluctance to ask questions, having already heard so many answers at home. The main reason, however, was my youth. I showed insufficient curiosity about the means of arriving in a particular situation, and excessive concentration on the situation itself, and my importance in it.

  I was equally complacent about the preparations for our journey. In fact, as I followed Natty downstairs from her father, I had the same expectations of removing immediately to our ship that a gentleman might feel on leaving his house for his carriage—except I did not have any of my own possessions for the voyage. When I asked Natty whether we should fill a trunk with things we might share, she brushed me aside: her father had sent ahead with everything we could possibly need. What about her mother then? Should we not say good-bye to her? Natty frowned as if dismissing the idea, then changed her mind and led us to the taproom of the Spyglass.

  Unusually for such an establishment, this was on the first floor of the building, as though to escape any floods that might occur—as well as other kinds of unwelcome visitation. When I opened the door, I found a low-ceilinged, smoke-filled den where everything was brown as a kipper: chairs, tables, floorboards, hands and faces. The ebb and flow of talk, which broke occasionally into arguments or laughter, filled my head with memories of home. But to say this was my chief impression would be to underestimate Mrs. Silver. While we made our way among the customers (who were a very rough crew bundled up in old sailors’ coats, with pipes fuming in their mouths and neckerchiefs pulled around their ears), she rose from behind a trestle table that filled one end of the room. Her face flushed a deeper mahogany with the effort of standing, and she spread her arms wide.