by A. J. Cronin
A grim speculation flashed into Harvey’s mind. Is he her lover, he thought viciously; and this meeting the beatific purpose of the voyage?
But whose lover? He was staring now with furrowed brow at Mary. Was there an acquiescence in her face, in that quick impulsive movement of her hands? Her white silk dress clung to her, infused with the warmth of her flesh.
Then, as he remained gazing fixedly at the group below, again a voice addressed him. He started and looked round. Behind him stood Susan Tranter and her brother both dressed to go ashore. She repeated her question, calmly, her eyes quite unsmiling upon his.
‘We wondered if you were fixed up for today?’
‘Fixed up?’ Detached violently from his mood, he echoed the words almost stupidly, aware of her neat and compact figure, the serious directness of her gaze. Her hands were gloved; her small, straw hat cast a softening shadow upon her square brow.
‘Have you made any plans – that’s what I meant – plans to spend the day?’
‘No!’
Her eyes fell – then immediately lifted.
‘Robert and myself have an invitation,’ she said steadily. ‘We have American friends at Arucas. They are kindly folks. They have a pleasant villa, well, you’d say it was real pleasant by its name. It is called Bella Vista. Will you come?’
He shook his head slowly.
‘No! I won’t come.’
Her eyes could not leave his face.
‘It would be a good thing if you came,’ she persisted in a low voice. ‘ The scenery is lovely there. They are Christian people and very kind. You would be made real welcome. You’d be at home there. Isn’t that a fact, Robert?’
Tranter, standing with averted head and gaze fixed upon the lower deck, made an unusually gawky gesture of agreement.
‘Why should I come?’ said Harvey stiffly. ‘I’m not a Christian I’m not kind. I should hate your dear American friends and they naturally would hate me. The very name Bella Vista fills me with loathing. And lastly, as I told you before, I’m probably going ashore to get drunk.’
Her eyes fell away from him.
‘I beg of you,’ she said in an almost inaudible voice, ‘ I beg of you. I’ve prayed –’ She broke off and for a moment stood staring at the deck. At last she raised her head.
‘We’ll go then, Robbie,’ she declared in an even voice. ‘It’s a long drive. We can find a carriage on the quay.’
They descended to the lower deck. Deliberately she took the opposite side from that on which Elissa stood.
‘Say, Susan,’ ventured Tranter as they went along, ‘ don’t you think we might postpone our visit till the afternoon?’
‘No, I don’t think so at all,’ she answered, staring straight ahead. ‘We’ve been asked for lunch.’
‘I know. Sure, I know,’ he said awkwardly. ‘ But we don’t have to spend the whole day there. I guess the afternoon would have done pretty well enough.’
She stopped and faced him, her recent agitation welling to the surface in another cause.
‘This is the third time this morning you’ve suggested we stop back from Bella Vista. You know it’s important we go there, Robbie.’ She asked with trembling lips: ‘What’s wrong with you, and what else is there to do?’
‘Now, now, Sue,’ he protested quickly, ‘You’re not to get upset. But, well – what’s the harm if I did think we might have taken the morning to go over to Las Canteras with Mrs Baynham? She asked me to accompany her party to the beach. She said we might all take a swim. It’s darned hot. And you know how fond you are of the water. Why, back home you were the bestest swimmer ever.’
She gave a little involuntary gasp.
‘So that’s it,’ she cried. ‘I might have guessed. And the way you put it over – trying to get me to the beach. You know you always hated to go swimming. You know you never could swim. She asked us indeed! Don’t you see she’s only mocking at you? Oh, Robbie, Robbie dear. What’s come of you these last few days? You won’t let that woman out of your sight. I tell you she’s guying you all the time. Yet you keep running after her like you were crazy.’
Instantly he turned red.
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he blurted out. ‘There’s nothing – absolutely nothing I’m ashamed of.’
‘She’s a bad lot.’ These words came quivering from her lips.
‘Susan!’
There was a silence during which she fought for self-control; then, speaking with determination, she said rapidly:
‘I won’t stand by and see you made a mock of. I love you too much for that. We’ll go to Arucas. We’ll go now. And we’ll stay there all day.’
He met her resolution with an elevation of his dignity. Knowing himself to be in the right, bitterly disappointed at her refusal to go to Las Canteras, he answered nevertheless, in a calm and lofty tone:
‘Very well, then. Let’s go. But I tell you plain I’m goin’ to speak with Mrs Baynham when we return.’ Turning, he walked off the gangplank with his head in the air.
Suppressing a sigh, her face troubled and unhappy, Susan slowly followed him.
Harvey did not see them go. He was in his cabin, eating moodily the fruit which Trout had brought up for breakfast. Telde oranges, thin-skinned and delicious, and custard apples fresh that morning from the market – a luscious meal. But he thought with introspective bitterness of his recent scene with Susan. He had not meant to take that tone; her intention at least was good; her quality – a downright honesty. Angry with himself, he stood up and began to dress. He had been hurt by life; and so, like a snarling dog, he wished to hurt back in retaliation, to strike at life with indeterminate, unreasonable savagery. Moreover, he must wound first lest he himself be wounded once again. It was the reflex of a stricken soul but he saw it only as a symptom of his own malignity.
He sighed and turned from the mirror. His face, no longer pallid, was hardened by a stain of brown; his hand, with which he had just shaved, no longer trembled; his eye was clear again. His body was recovering quickly, but in his heart there ranged a scathing self-contempt. He despised himself.
A knock sounded on the cabin door, and, lifting his head, Harvey paused. He had imagined himself alone, of all the passengers, upon the ship – left to that solitude he had so insistently demanded.
‘Come in,’ he cried.
The door flew boisterously open. Jimmy Corcoran entered, his chest inflated, filled by the glory of the morning. A new check cap lay backwards on his head, and round his neck a tie of blazing emerald. Harvey stared at him, then slowly demanded:
‘Since when have you taken to knocking?’
‘I thought you might be in your dishabille,’ said Jimmy, grinning largely.
‘And would that have upset you?’
‘Troth and ’twouldn’t. Not by the weight of one shavin’. But it might have upset you. Yer such a cranky divil.’
Harvey turned and began to brush his hair with firm strokes.
‘Why don’t you hate the sight of me?’ he asked in an odd voice. ‘I seem hardly to have been, well, polite to you since we came on this charming trip.’
‘Polite be damned,’ answered Jimmy with gusto. ‘ Sure, I don’t fancy things too polite. Kid gloves wasn’t never in my line. I like a fella to call me a fool to me face and clout me matey on the back like that.’ And hitting Harvey a terrific slap upon the shoulders by way of illustration he elbowed himself forward to the mirror where he ogled himself, straightened his atrocious tie, smoothed his plastered lock and blew a kiss to his image in the glass. Then he began to sing:
‘Archie, Archie, he’s in town again,
The idol of the ladies and the invy of the men.’
‘You seem fond of yourself this morning.’
‘Sure I’m fond of meself. And why not in a manner of speakin’.
I’m the only man that ever hit Smiler Burge right over the ropes. And I’d do it again next St Patrick’s Day for love. Don’t ye know I’m the finest man that ever came out
of Clontarf? Me ould mother told me so. The heart of a lion and the beauty of a faun as Playto says. And this mornin’ I’m feeling that good I wouldn’t call the Pope me brother.’ He went off again:
‘He’s a lady killer
Sweeter than vaniller;
When they meet him
Sure, they want to eat him.’
Then, heaving round, he said:
‘We’re all set for the beach. You and me’s goin’ ashore this mornin’.’ Harvey contemplated him.
‘So we’re going, Jimmy, are we?’
‘Sure an’ we’re goin’.’ He emphasised the certainty by smacking his fist into his palm. ‘We’re goin’ to the Canteras Bay. I’ve just been talkin’ to the captain. It’s the gilt on the gingerbread all right. There’s bathin’ there and a little resstrong where ye can grub. I’m telling ye there’s a strand of yellow sand would drive ye crazy with delight.’
The spectacle of himself being driven crazy with delight by a beach of yellow sand drew a shadowy smile to Harvey’s face. But strangely he said:
‘All right! We’ll go then, Jimmy.’
Corcoran grinned all over his battered face.
‘Be the holy – if ye’d said no, I’d have slaughtered ye. I’ve got important business to tend to in the afternoon. Private and personal ye’ll understand, But all this mornin’ ye belong to me.’
They went out of the cabin into the liquid sunlight, crossed the gangplank, and walked down the dusty mole. Strutting along with thumbs in both arm-holes and a toothpick between his lips, Corcoran assumed proprietary rights over the harbour, deplored the indolence of the natives, philosophised upon the women, purchased a bunch of violets for his buttonhole from a crumpled old woman, donated a pinch of snuff to a fly-infested beggar, and finally drew up before a disreputable one-horse tartana.
‘Aha!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here’s the ticket for soup, fella. The horse can stand up and the carriage has wheels.’ He turned to the driver. ‘How much drive Las Canteras, bucko?’
The driver made with his shoulders a gesture indicative of extreme unworthiness and extended four yellow finger-nails.
‘Four English shilling, señor.’
‘Four English tomatoes! It’s too much. I’ll give ye two peseta and a pinch of snuff.’
‘No, no, señor. Much beautiful tartana. Plenty quick.’
‘Ah! Plenty quick me foot.’
The driver burst into a flow of Spanish, making little piteous grimaces of entreaty.
‘What does he say?’ asked Corcoran, scratching his head, ‘I’m slow at the lingo.’
Harvey answered calmly:
‘He says that he knows you well. That you are the most arrant humbug that ever breathed. That you have never knocked Smiler Burge over the ropes. That Smiler Burge nearly killed you with one swift blow. He says that you are ugly, old, and that you do not speak the truth. He says further that his wife is dying, that his ten children are dying, that he himself will die of a broken heart if you do not pay him four shillings for the hire of his lovely tartana.’
Jimmy thrust back his cap until it lay upon his collar.
‘We’ll give him a couple of shillin’, then,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Two English shillin’, kiddo.’
The driver’s face split in a dazzling smile. With the air of a grandee he flung open the rickety door, leaped upon the box, and flourished his conquest to the world. Two English shillings! It was exactly five times his legitimate fare.
‘That’s the way to handle them boys,’ said Jimmy out of the corner of his mouth. ‘’Tis the business instinct. If ye don’t watch out they’ll swindle ye hollow.’ And he lay back expansively in his seat as they bumped down the rutted street.
Chapter Ten
Mary Fielding had come to the Playa de las Canteras. She, too, had heard from Renton of the beauty of this little-known shore, and now, in her wet green bathing-suit, she lay flat upon the sun-bleached sand, letting its soft warmth creep into her. Little drops of sea-water still glistened upon her white legs. Her body, moulded firmly by the waves, held a vibrating life. The curve of her small breast was lovely as a flower, graceful as a swallow’s flight. Her eyes were closed, as though to shutter the exquisite abandon of her mood; yet she could see it all, the lovely, lovely scene. The gracious sweep of yellow sand; the water bluer than the sky; the foaming whiteness of the breakers cresting in thunder across the reef; the distant peak – shining, translucent, omnipotent as a god. Oh, she was glad that she had come.
Here she could breathe and, pressed naked to the earth, be herself at last. Within her something rose, whiter than the crested foam, more shining than the mountain peak – a memory, an aspiration, or a mingling of them both. Never before had the conviction swelled so intensely within her that all the life that she must lead was but a subterfuge, the paltry shadow of reality. And never before had she so intensely hated and despised it: the plumaged performance of society, the ritual of Buckden – yes, even Buckden, rising in mellowed bricks, seemed now oppressive with the crushing dignity of years.
Now, close to the earth’s simplicity, it all seemed remote and vague: formless as the loose sand that streamed through her fingers.
Raising herself, she looked over at Elissa and Dibdin, who sat back to back under the shadow of a big umbrella. Elissa had not undressed: her skin did not like the sea. But Dibs, with a sort of senile friskiness, had bared his scaly hide and, like a mummy masquerading in blue serge shorts, exposed his desiccated carcass to the breeze.
Supported by her elbow, Mary listened to their talk. She listened deliberately, filled by a sense of its futility.
‘Elissa,’ Dibs was saying, ‘you’re not really bored at coming here?’
For two full minutes Elissa Baynham went on interestedly powdering her nose: the fourth time within the hour she had consummated her passion for perfection.
‘You know I’m always bored,’ she answered, when all hope of any answer had been lost. ‘There are no men here.’
‘No men,’ giggled Dibs. ‘What about me?’
‘You,’ said Elissa; and that was all.
There was a short silence, then she demanded:
‘Light me a cigarette. And don’t wet it or I shall have hysterics.’ She paused. ‘I’ve suddenly thought of a new name for you – now that I’ve seen you in the altogether. In future I shall call you Sex-Appeal.’
He found an onyx case in her gold mesh bag, extracted a cigarette with his veinous fingers, and lit it.
Trailing a hand over her shoulder, she said:
‘Give it me so I don’t have to turn round. The sight of your skin is agony.’
‘My skin,’ he exclaimed, touched on the raw at last. ‘It’s a perfectly good skin. Hundreds of women have loved that skin.’
‘That was before you took to wearing corsets, darling.’
Dibs quivered with rage, and retaliated on a different flank.
‘You’re damned silly, Elissa. I don’t know what’s come of you. Letting that Tranter fellow run after you.’
‘Yes, isn’t it harassing? He’s trying to bring me to salvation.’
‘But – but the damned fellow’s head over ears in love with you.’
‘He doesn’t know it.’ She took a long puff at her cigarette. ‘He’s such a bore or I might like him perhaps once. Just once – for fun you know, Dibs – sorry, I mean Sex-Appeal.’
He stiffened his bony back.
‘That’s too much, Elissa. I’m hanged if it isn’t goin’ a shade too far. I don’t know what the younger generation is comin’ to. In my time we had our affairs, but we had the decency to be discreet about them. We were never obvious. And we were at least polite.’
She answered in a taunting voice:
‘You always said, “ May I?” – didn’t you, Dibs darling?’
‘Upon my soul!’ he gasped. ‘Really, you’re a most immoral woman, Elissa.’
‘No. Not immoral, Dibs,’ she considered. ‘Merely improper. I shall never consider m
yself immoral until I allow myself to have a lover on the sofa.’
Mary, listening with a set face, made a faint movement of distress.
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, ’Lissa,’ she said suddenly in a low voice, her eyes fixed upon the moving sea. ‘It’s too horrible. You spoil everything.’
‘Spoil,’ answered Elissa. ‘I like that, Mary pretty. Who dragged us to this devastating spot? Who refused Carr’s invitation to Quinney’s? Who insisted on his coming to lunch with us here? He hated it pretty thoroughly, I don’t mind telling you. There was a wounded look about his dignity.’ And, making a hole in the sand with her forefinger, she entombed her glowing cigarette-end delicately.
‘I hate smart restaurants,’ murmured Mary, as in apology. ‘Everything stiff and horrid. That’s why I wanted to come here. It’s so odd and lovely. And Mr Carr doesn’t mind. He needn’t come if he doesn’t want to.’
‘He’ll come,’ said Elissa carelessly. ‘His tongue lolls out when he looks at you.’
Something disagreeable flowed over Mary – a sense of sordidness. She shook her head to free herself, checking a thought as yet unformed.
‘I’m going to swim again,’ she said without warning, and, rising to her feet, she ran swiftly into the foaming water. Beyond the foam, which creamed around her waist in eddying rings, the sea was opalescent, blue and strangely ethereal, like light screened through deep crystal caverns. Her feet left the warm sand, and suddenly she was deliciously beyond her depth, surging buoyantly towards the raft which curtseyed at anchor half-way to the reef. Now she felt clean, her limbs whipped by the tanging brine, her blood enriched by the electric air.
She swam and swam, then with a little cry of sheer delight she clasped the edge of the bobbing raft and swung herself, exultant, upon its matting-covered surface. There she rested with arms outstretched, her cheek pressed closely to the warm, wet fibre. Now she felt herself a thousand miles away from Elissa’s flippant tongue. A moment passed, then all at once she became aware that she was not alone. Slowly she turned her head. Harvey Leith lay on the far side of the raft.