In the morning, Dona da Seda brings me a simple breakfast of goat’s cheese and bread. It is like my orphanage days, yet a good-sized portion, and this time I relish the plain food, to settle my stomach. She shows me the road I must walk down to the sea, adding the name of the man who will ferry me to the island – Horacio – the name of his boat and that he wears a red neckerchief. I carry with me a bag, in which I have my sea floor viewing box; three little boxes suitable for animal specimens; a book of thick paper for pressing plant specimens; a notebook and pencils; a leather water bottle and a simple lunch of figs, chestnuts and bread wrapped in muslin by my hostess. I wear a cap and carry my parasol to guard against the weather.
Squat white houses with red roofs line every street, while every few houses I find one painted green, or pink, or a rich terracotta, with yellow window frames or filigree ironwork balconies, or an attractive image painted on the closed shutters, of flowers or fruit; on walls there are lines of flat fish hung out on wires to dry in the sun, their black shadows thrown sharply against the white walls by the bright sun. I walk past an open workshop full of women and young girls making lace placed over bolster cushions. I slow to peer more closely and see that the lace is pinned on to the cushions in elaborate designs, each thread attached to large clusters of round wooden bobbins. The ladies nod at me as I pass.
‘Bela,’ say I and they smile. Beautiful.
‘Obrigada,’ they say and I walk on to the sea.
At this moment, I realise this is the first walk I have taken without a companion in years. The first time since my street days that I have been able to proceed, alone with my thoughts and impressions, able to speak to people I pass; without recourse to another, without care for another, without the opinions of another to guide or hamper me. Nobody knows me here, nobody expects anything of me or wants anything from me. And I own a sovereignty over my life that heretofore I have never had. For a moment only, I close my eyes as I walk and feel the seaside air play across my cheeks and the Portuguese sun beat down on me. I am truly free.
The sea spreads sapphire blue from the tumbling rocks of the coastline, frowned over by an imposing grey fort. The beach is butter yellow and soft, as I trudge across the sand to find the boat I need, the Gaivota, or the Seagull to you and me. I cannot see any names on the rowing boats lined up on the beach but there is a fellow with a red neckerchief beside one. He is waving at me. He confirms he is Horacio and says that I must not be sick in his boat. He mimes vomiting over the side to ensure I understand. He stows my bag, takes my hand in his rough, calloused one and helps me step in. I cannot see how this petite craft can possibly convey us all the way out to the Berlengas without dashing us on the rocks. I am about to question the wisdom of such a journey when I see he is rowing us towards a small sail boat anchored further out, Gaivota painted in white letters on her bow; and I think that for a person of scientific mind, I can be insufferably stupid at times.
Soon we are proceeding westwards, away from the Peniche harbour and out into the choppy seas. The journey seems endless, but perhaps is two hours or more. I vomit four times, I am glad to say over the side and not in Horacio’s boat. Every time I am sick he roars with laughter and nods. I am annoyed the first time, but by the third I wipe my mouth and try to laugh with him. He tells me the return trip is not so bad, as the winds and waves act differently towards the mainland. This gives me something to focus on, as I hold my stomach and gaze ahead, willing the islands to race towards me and end this misery. I resolve that there is no way I can stomach this trip twice a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, and six months altogether. I simply cannot. When I arrive, I will enquire about a place I can stay on the island, for perhaps a week at a time, and resolve to stay over in Peniche on Saturdays and Sundays instead. My benefactor may not understand, as he has an iron stomach from his sailing days. But I cannot waste my study time and risk my health by undertaking this despicable journey twice a day. I vomit again, my breakfast all gone, my head light with hunger and exhaustion, retching emptily now. To think I strolled down the streets of Peniche this morning, the happiest woman in town, and now I am in misery: the costs of liberty.
At long last, the Gaivota arrives at Berlenga Grande, the largest island hereabouts. The mooring-place is at the foot of the fortress I had seen from the Prospect. The water in this cove is luminous turquoise, almost green, and crystal-clear. Ahead of us rise stately granite rocks painted red, yellow, pink and grey by nature and the sunlight. We dock by a short jetty beside a bobbing row of boats with oars, and I step out on unsteady legs on to thick clumps of bright green grass that curl round my shoes in fleshy tufts. Oh, how I love the land! Horacio passes me my bag. He tells me he will see me here when I am ready to return, but will come to find me if he tires of waiting. He says it all with a cheerful grin, then steps back into his boat, settles down on his back, folds his arms and closes his eyes for a nap.
I turn to my island. I retrieve my sketchbook, lunch and parasol, leave the bag on the jetty and spend this first day exploring the length and breadth of Berlenga Grande, getting my bearings. On my climb up to a headland, I pass by a small stone hut by a well. I look down the well and judge the water to be clean, as it smells sweetly. The dwelling looks like it was once used by a goatherd or some such thing, and needs a good clean out. But it has shutters that are solid and not rotten, and even an old stove and a fireplace. I carry on up to the very top of the highest cliff on the island and look out at my domain. I see clearly the three groups of islets that make up this archipelago: here is my island and its adjacent reefs, then nearby the rock that surely must have once been a part of this island: the Ilha Vela or Old Island, somehow cut off from here, by an ancient disaster, an act of God perhaps. Further off are two other island clusters: nearest are the Estelas and quite far are the Farilhões. They are home to many seabirds, I have heard, and to no people: a perfect menagerie, unadulterated by human interference. I will ask Horacio to take me to all of these, in good time.
I look to the fortress, which became so only in the last century, as it was built on the ruins of an ancient monastery. I think of the religious men who praised God here and tried to fight off attacks from enemies of Portugal, pirates and corsairs, often unsuccessfully; dying of untreatable diseases or falling from the cliffs, eventually driven away for good. I know there is a small garrison here in the fort, and there used to be some goatherds and fishermen; I contemplate why they chose to come to this island, away from the comforts of the mainland. I think of the people who made their way over here in ancient times, in boats far less reliable than Horacio’s; perhaps on rafts, or even floating logs. And I marvel at the human need to explore, conquer and settle. I wonder how long we have been doing it, how many hundreds of years. Or, could it be, thousands? For now, there are no people evident from my viewpoint up here, and I feel I could be the only person in the world, the last woman alive. But I am surrounded by life. From where I stand, I feel the islands throb about me with independent existence, rich with industry and a battle for survival, against each other, against the pounding sea and the scouring wind.
14
The goatherd’s hut will be mine. I am determined to have it for the duration of my stay, to reside on the island for some months and not to return to Peniche at the end of each week. After all, no one else makes use of the hut presently, so what is the harm? I go to see the captain in charge of the small garrison at the fort and ask him to arrange for a spare bunk and simple bedding to be sent up. He looks at me strangely but sees I am quite serious and does not refuse. He also agrees that his men will divert the course of their evening patrol to within shooting distance of my hut, in order to protect me. From what? I wonder. Vicious seagulls? When I tell Horacio of my plan, he clearly thinks I am insane and tells me so. He tells me there are a few malefactors incarcerated at the garrison and it is not safe. But I assure him I trust the soldiers there to guard them efficiently, at which he narrows his eyes and shakes his head. But he knows me enou
gh already to doubt he will ever sway me, once I have set my mind to something. A few miscreants in a heavily guarded fort will never prevent me from my course of action, nor even the entire army of Portugal, I warrant.
Eventually I win round Horacio and he says he will enlist his wife’s help in thoroughly cleaning out the hut and even providing some home comforts. We go back to Peniche and I purchase supplies of food, blankets, crockery, cutlery, candles and soap, Horacio agreeing to furnish me with more necessities from time to time during my stay. I tell Dona da Seda of my plans and she looks sourly upon them. I give her two letters: one for Mrs Dewar at the English Hotel – firstly to order for me some coloured pastels and more sketchbooks, for me to fashion accurate drawings of the wildlife I find on the islands – and the other to my benefactor in England, informing both recipients of my movements, for courtesy’s sake. They may not approve either, but they are miles away and I am here. I am my own person and nobody can stop me. I have a mind to do something and – if it not be against the law of the land or cruel to another person – I will do it, and I will brook no objections on the grounds of what is normal, or usual, or even considered wise by others. If I hear protests, I question them carefully, I tease them to pieces and thereby destroy them, but gently. It is a method that seems to work very well for me, so far.
Pilar is the name of Horacio’s wife; she is in middle age, like him, with the kind of face in repose that looks like it has never seen a moment’s joy. On introduction, she tells me solemnly in Portuguese that she makes lace in Peniche and saw me that morning I greeted the ladies – that she would not have forgotten me, as a stranger in town is memorable – and she narrows her eyes at me in a rather severe manner. But when her husband tells her of my plan to live in a goatherd’s hut on Berlenga Grande, she considers it for a moment, then creases into mighty guffaws and we all fall into laughter together. She does not seem to think I am foolish; rather, she is enamoured of the challenge and accompanies us on the boat trip (she does not vomit once); she brings a broom, a mop, cloths, pots and pans, a blanket, and even a stool for me to sit on in my hut. We make light work of the cleaning, as Pilar reveals she speaks Spanish and is delighted I speak it too. My Spanish is much more fluent than my Portuguese, and she seems happy to converse in it again, though she tells me her native language is different. She explains that she was brought up on the island of Minorca and they speak a dialect there, but that Spanish will do for us. It reminds her of home. She misses it still. Minorca became a British possession around forty years ago, and she remembers as a girl the English ships arriving. But she has surprisingly little malice in her about it, and said her family were glad when the English came, though there were families against it, who favoured one or other of the many invaders over the years. She came to Portugal as a restless young woman to visit relatives. She lived in Lisbon for a time and met Horacio, then moved to Peniche. She married Horacio at seventeen and the Lord did not grace them with children, so they live alone. She says she dreams of islands and envies me sleeping here.
Each evening I drift into sleep to the sound of the sea. Each morning I wake to the sound of the sea. I spend my days exploring and learning of my island’s wildlife. I find I soon discard my parasol, as it seems always cumbersome and in my way; though my cheeks at first become a little sun-scorched, thereafter my skin seems to take to the climate here and bronzes quite unfashionably. The archipelago’s relief is jagged with a flat central plain. No trees of any significance grace the scene, only a few stunted olive and fig bushes. There are a variety of seabirds hereabouts: yellow-legged gulls and black-backed gulls, petrels and shags and guillemots, storm-petrels and shearwaters. I watch the shags with their funny crests, yellow beaks and green eyes, bickering and complaining among themselves. The guillemots possess a strange calm, I think only due to their matt black faces and the curious white streak beside their eyes, which gives them the air of wisdom. There are black rats, probably arrived with mariners, and a curious lizard, bright green-yellow along the flank and back, mottled with black and brown patches. I know from speaking to Horacio that there are sardine and mackerel aplenty in these waters, as well as skate, eels and an ugly-faced fish, called by Pilar el mero, which some consider a delicacy. The flora is very appealing, with drifts of pink-purple thrift fluttering across the swells of land, flanked by yellow fleabane, and the rocks creep with a matting plant with delicate green florets which I believe is of the family herniaria or rupturewort. Pilar tells me that the odd thing is that these flora and fauna are quite different from those found in Peniche, as well as the red granite rock here being completely different to the limestone on the mainland – almost as if the island had been plucked from another continent and deposited here by a mighty hand, or perchance islands in the distant past did float across the seas, picking up curious animals and wind-borne seeds as they went.
There are numerous caves and hollows hereabouts. Some are on the other islets and thus far unreachable to me, yet I have managed to clamber into some on the main island. In one I find the floor strewn with old things: mounds of seashells, remains of fires and scattered piles of the bones of animals. I collect a few and examine them in my hut. It seems some of these bones may even be human. I consider how old they may be. Also I find several stones that seem too similar to be a coincidence. I would swear they have been fashioned in some way, flaked with perhaps another piece of rock to create sharp edges on both sides. They fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. And I could call up into my fancy the act of holding such a stone and cutting fruit with it, or even carving shapes into wood or bone, scraping, slicing, creating. It is a tool, I am sure of it. But what kind of people would need to use such a hand-made, lowly tool as this? Even the monks will have had cutlery, axes and knives. It must be so old it is beyond memory. I keep them all laid out in my hut and study them over and over, considering the hands that made them, and what their eyes did see in that distant past.
Once I have scoured the land of my island, I venture into the sea to study the life within it. At first I hitch up my skirts and wade into the shallows. I carry my glass viewer beneath my arm and peer down into the water for the first time. And what a world I find! Never have I dreamed of such a complete system of life so separate from my own, in this other medium, this water they have no knowledge of; they swim through it and yet have as little understanding of it as does a babe the air it breathes. I see flat rocks spreading out beyond me, home to a multitude of plants and creatures, a city of the shallows, buzzing with silent yet vibrant life; rather, it is silent to this outsider, looking in from the world of air, but I imagine within the water there must be a cacophony from all those tiny vivid inhabitants fighting for space, light and life, just as noisy as any London thoroughfare. Tiny fish dart between delicate plants constructed of waving fingers, spread across the rocks plastered with splashes of every colour I can imagine, strange jellied organisms – plant or animal? It is a mystery! – forests of tree-like structures spreading and contracting, moving in unison with every whim of the water, looking almost alive, sentient. I spend days looking at the reefs near to the beaches, up to my waist in ocean, my skirts sodden and salty. I scramble back to the beach and my bag, scribbling down notes and sketches of each new plant or animal I find, labelling each one with the names of the correct shades of colour, which I can later transfer into full drawings when my pastels and paper arrive from Lisbon.
In the evenings, I compare everything I have seen with the exquisite drawings in my book on sea life – how grateful I am to Mr Applebee for his gift – and find there are some species here not present in that volume. I imagine comparing them to all known species back at home, perhaps finding they are new to science, and the gratification of fashioning my own names for these enchanting specimens. To think, an animal or plant named by a woman, named after me! I swell with pride at the thought.
I soon grow impatient with my wading as I can see there is so much more to see beyond my depth. I venture further yet fear d
rowning. I anticipated this back in London and read a copy of the book The Art of Swimming; I have learned the techniques out of the water first, as the book suggests, practising in my room only when alone, as I look a fool doing it in the air. Now I begin to practise the arm and leg movements in the water, dabbling in the shallows to perfect my technique, and discover I am a strong swimmer. Within weeks, I have developed enough confidence to swim a little further out. Yet I want to go further still, so I borrow a small boat from the garrison and row myself out to quiet spots in deeper water, peering over the side of the boat through my viewer. Here I see even more stunning specimens of coral: bright yellow tree-like structures with white twiggy tendrils; a collection of terracotta tubes mottled with white-outlined red bumps; a pallid snowflake-shaped structure with transparent flowers that resembles an explosion of sparks. All these varied corals have one thing in common: though I am sure they must be plants, I have a peculiar feeling that they are thinking. There is something about the way they move, that they do not always sway with the current, but sometimes start as if in fear, and respond shockingly to outside intruders or even seem to engulf smaller creatures, as if eating them. It occurs to me that perhaps coral are animals, and not plants. But if they are, they are a form of animal without eyes or legs, or the other forms one associates with animals we know and love. If they are not animals, then they are intelligent plants, another uncanny thought.
Song of the Sea Maid Page 12