Grand Canary

by A. J. Cronin

  A shudder ran through Robert; he groaned. He was being kicked out – him – the Rev Tranter – being kicked out of this – this hole.

  ‘You wan’ rid of me.’ He tried to sneer, but his face was too slack – he couldn’t.

  ‘You’ve ’it the nail on the bleedin’ ’ead, cocky!’

  ‘Huh!’

  Susan started forward nervously.

  ‘Oh, come on, Robbie,’ she pleaded, with a quivering mouth. ‘Come on home now. Come on away with me. Let’s be together again. Come on, dear. Just you and me – oh, honest, it’ll – it’ll be great – if you’ll only come now.’

  He dashed aside her outstretched hand. The last drink he’d had rose nobly to his support. He wanted to weep for the indignity he suffered. Get rid of him, would they? Him? Rev R. Tranter. Oh, God, it was too, too much. Blubbering tears ran down his cheeks.

  ‘Lemme be,’ he bawled suddenly. ‘If I ain’t fit to be touched I ain’t fit to be touched.’

  ‘Oh, w’y don’t ’e shut up?’ muttered Mother Hemmingway, and she turned in disgust. ‘“‘Too lyte, too lyte,’ the captain cried, and shed a bitter tear.” W’y don’t ’e dry up and get out – the blasted fool.’

  What! making a fool of him, was she? The little runt. Christ! He’d show her. He’d show them both – everybody! A man, wasn’t he? His face worked. He jumped up from his chair, which fell clattering to the floor. He swayed slightly on his feet. His chest heaved. A luscious emotion suddenly anointed him. He gulped and cried:

  ‘Mebbe I will get out. Mebbe I don’t have to trouble you much further. I’ve denied my God, haven’t I? I’ve levelled myself with the swine? Huh! That’s all you know. Don’t you know the meanin’ of atonement? Don’t you know the meanin’ of sacrifice?’ He exploded the last word, swayed on his feet some more. He was more drunk than he knew. And God! wasn’t he showing them at last? A great – oh, a noble idea – swelled inside him. He’d show them if he had guts – show the whole bloody lot of them. ‘ I’m lost, aren’t I? Lost and damned? That’s what you reckon! But I reckon different. You don’t know everything. You forget about sacrifice.’ He clung to the word. His voice, risen to a shout, became suddenly confidential. ‘And what have I got to live for?’

  Susan started forward. Fear and pity burned in her eyes.

  ‘You’ve got everything to live for,’ she cried. ‘We’ve got each other, haven’t we? We’ll make a fresh start, Robbie. You and me – like we always been – together.’

  He gave a wild, hysterical laugh. His idea was big now – awful big. She needn’t think she’d stop it. He’d hardly meant it first go off. But now – oh, now! He flung out his arms and threw back his head.

  ‘I’m gonna make no start,’ he shouted. ‘I’m gonna make an end. Jesus done it for me. I’m gonna do the same for Him.’ A thousand seraphic voices were ringing in his ears, and through that ringing came the roaring of the river. He straightened himself with a jerk, glorying in the splendour of his resolve. ‘ I’ve sunk myself in sin,’ he bawled in a voice of frenzy. ‘But I kin cleanse myself of my iniquity.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ she gasped. ‘You’re – you’re frightening me.’ She rushed towards him, but with his big buttery hand he shoved her away. He had dramatized himself beyond reason. His eye glistened; his nostrils dilated with ecstatic fervour; in his ears the rushing river swelled in a mad celestial strain.

  ‘I’ve been steeped in evil,’ he chanted. ‘And now I’m gonna wash that evil out.’

  Panic thrilled in Susan’s heart. With sudden desperate intuition she, too, was conscious of the sounding of the river. It was like a nightmare. Again she flung herself upon him. But she was too late.

  He dashed open the door, rushed out of the room, down the corridor. Shouting, he disappeared into the outer darkness. It all happened in a second.

  ‘Oh, my Gawd,’ cried Hemmingway. ‘’E’s gone crazy.’ Paralysed, Susan stood with hands clasped upon her breast. Then she stumbled forward. With a frantic cry she rushed after him.

  The sudden transition from light to darkness benumbed her sight. She stood on the pavement straining with blind, bewildered eyes. And then she discerned his running figure far down the deserted street; large and dark it loomed, like the figure of one possessed.

  He wasn’t – oh, he couldn’t – her Robbie! With a choking cry she raced after him. The rain beat into her frightened eyes, the wind battered against her panting breast.

  She could not gain upon him. And he was making for the river. The knowledge drove her crazy with terror. As she panted on, the thought beat through her brain: He can’t swim. It hammered on her in agony through the tumult of the night, and the frenzied beating of her heart.

  The noise of the river swelled. Nearer and nearer. All at once the darkish flood burst into view before her.

  ‘Robbie,’ she cried, in an agony of love and fear, and again, ‘Robbie.’

  He could not hear. He was there at the water’s edge. His form, outlined against the lowering sky, seemed to poise itself for an instant upon the brink. Then it vanished from her sight.

  She shrieked, calling on God for succour. She reached the bank. Dimly she saw him struggling in the current. Faintly she heard a cry that might have been for help. An answering cry leapt from her lips. She could reach him. She could save him. She called again in answer to his call. She clenched her teeth and flung herself into the river. Her plunge made no sound. Darkness and the roaring of the waters enclosed her form. She swam and swam, straining with bursting heart to reach him. Yes, her heart felt bursting. It was weak, always had been weak. But she never thought of that. She was gaining. She was nearly there. She reached out her arm. And then came a sudden surging wave which cast her side against a spur of rock. It was not a heavy blow, but it was upon that beating, bursting heart. Her arm fell back; her body spun giddily around; dully she felt a greater darkness rush upon her. She felt herself fainting. And then, as if that were not enough, brutally the current took her and dashed her head against those hidden rocks. Again and once again. And that was all she knew.

  Al gran arroyo pasar postrero.

  She didn’t know what that meant; and now she would never know.

  As Tranter – thrown by an eddy upon a lower sandbank of the estuary – staggered to his feet, sobered now and wholly frightened, and began to wade in frantic haste towards safety, Susan’s body floated past him. Scrambling away with his back to the river, he whispered:

  ‘Oh, gee, what was I thinkin’ on? Oh, gee – oh, God – oh, Christ – oh, hell! Guess I was crazy. Guess I near drowned myself. Guess I better get some dry clothes. Oh, Lord, I’m glad – oh, thanks be to God –’ And Susan went sailing out into the darkness of the sea.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A fortnight later, Harvey Leith came down the hill to Santa Cruz. It was afternoon. The wind had fallen, the sun blazed out, the earth was steaming under the shimmering sky. The storm had long passed over and been forgotten.

  He entered the town, skirted the market-place, advanced across the Plaza towards the waterfront. He was walking quickly; he looked neither to the right nor to the left. Passing the barrier of the Aduana, he stepped into the shipping office and advanced to the cubicle marked ‘Enquiry’. He spoke to the clerk.

  The clerk – a young blood with dashing side-whiskers and plastered hair, stared queerly at Harvey, then he shrugged his shoulders with a sort of contemptuous indifference.

  ‘But the senor is unfortunate. Assuredly most unfortunate. The second boat sailed yesterday.’

  ‘And the next one?’ – very quickly.

  A little curl of the plastered one’s lip: ‘Not for a full ten days, senor.’ A pause. Harvey’s face revealed nothing of his thoughts.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. He turned, fully conscious of the odd stare still fixed on him, and went out of the dirty office into the yellow glare of the sunshine. He retraced his steps – very slowly – recrossed the Plaza. Outside a cafe he stopped,
arrested by his image in the mirror. He hardly recognised himself. His unshaven face was like the face of a stranger; one of his boots had burst across the toe; his disreputable suit, torn at the knees and stained by mud, might have been rejected by a tramp. God, he thought – looking into his own gaunt eyes – what a sight!

  He moved off towards one of the public benches in the Plaza. The breeze blew a litter of papers about his feet; on the pavement some rotten melon-rind lay festering with shiny blue flies. Thrown away – left over – like himself.

  He sat down. Well! – now he could at least sit still. On that night of storm – was it days ago or years? – when Susan left him to go to Rodgers’s place, he hadn’t been able to do that. No! He’d been forced to get up, his breast charged with a torturing restlessness which drove him to pace the empty room, whilst the thunder rolled, and the ants scurried across the dry boards.

  How could he have been still! His thoughts were scattered; his mind writhed and twisted like the cedar-trees before the wind. He could not stay in the house. He couldn’t wait for Corcoran’s return. He couldn’t speak to the marquesa. Mazedly he went out of the hall, through the garden, struck up the path towards the mountains. He didn’t know where he was going. Before him the Peak rose dimly outlined in the dying light. It seemed silently to beckon. And he had the strange sensation that to surmount that towering summit would bring peace – oh, fathomless, eternal peace. There, above the littleness of earth and all the puny reaches of the sea, circled by clouds and rare omniscient winds, a man might press his brow against the step of heaven and lap himself for ever in sublime tranquillity. Walking upwards – his eyes affixed to that splendid crest – he had a glimmer of enlightenment. A vision, which words could never formulate.

  On and on. Leaving the bridle-path he had been following. Caring nothing for the rain. Climbing further towards the Peak. Conviction growing that he must – must achieve that distant summit. A range of barren slopes covered by calcareous casts of plants and the poisonous shrub verolillo. He crossed them all. The land of a pale sienna colour, the ravines banked with drifted sand. On the ledges of the rock, stunted vines and wild fig-trees – growing, tangled, inextricable as the thoughts within his mind. And then the terraces, bank after bank filled up with rotten pumice-stone. On and on, striving quite madly to reach the Peak. Darkness falling, the rain and wind increasing, the thunder tumbling about the hills. He stumbled on, following the track amongst a desolation of volcanic cinder-heaps. And then he came upon the caves. Cut deeply in the mountain-side – each fronted by its patch of maize sprouting from the lava ash.

  The barking of dogs – a row of faces drawn to those tiny burrows in the rock. Faces peering towards him, the faces of the cave-dwellers. Dim forms rushing out, shouting, pressing round him – little stunted people – speaking a language he could not understand. But they would not let him go on. Chattering, gesticulating towards the sky, forcing him back into the safety of the caves.

  The caves of El Telde – warm, dry, lit darkly by red embers. There he had lain all night, whilst the storm ranged madly round the Peak.

  Next morning he might have gone. But he had remained. Calmer in mind, his body acquiescent to a strange fatigue. They were friendly, the little people, thrusting on him their simple hospitality. They gave him food – gofio – a porridge made from the maize they grew themselves. When the sun broke through, the children came out and frisked amongst the rocks. Quite naked – tiny and timid as squirrels. Seated on the sun-warmed ledge Harvey watched them play. Free of their first suspicion they rolled and tumbled about his feet, clambered upon his knees. A strange experience. Close to the crest of the Peak. Unsmiling, unresistant to their plucking hands, he let the naked children play about him.

  Day and night. Each night he had said: Tomorrow I will leave. But he had remained. Why should he go? Where could he go? Better, far better wait amongst the hills. He wasn’t needed now – not wanted. Soon they would take Mary from Santa Cruz, just as they had taken her from Los Cisnes. Only when she had gone would he descend to the town.…

  Today – yes, that was today. He sighed gently – discovering himself, here, upon the bench, back again in Santa Cruz, alone. And now no boat for a full ten days.

  The palm fronds swayed above his head. The fountain splashed. Little silver fishes swam in the marble basin at his feet. From time to time he felt people staring at him. An old man tottered past – unwashed, unkempt – begging, selling lottery tickets. His glance dismissed Harvey with disdain. He didn’t even bother to offer him a ticket. Strangely, it brought Harvey an odd satisfaction to find himself passed over – unrecognised for what he was.

  And then a shadow fell across the beach, wavered and drew up. He heard a sudden shout, felt a slap upon his shoulders. With a start he looked up. It was Corcoran.

  Yes – Corcoran – thrust-back hat, straddled legs, swaggering air, invincible grin. But there was a suspicious twitching about the edges of the grin. And the laugh that followed it was queerly near a sob.

  ‘It’s yourself,’ he stammered. ‘Yourself, indeed, that I’ve looked everywhere for days I – I hardly know ye. I thought ye’d –’ Here his smile gave way. He broke off: he almost broke down. ‘Oh, honest, man,’ he faltered. ‘I’m awful glad to see you.’

  There was a silence. Jimmy blew his nose powerfully. Then gradually his grin came back, grew into the old delighted laugh. He was himself again. For a moment he looked as if he might fall on Harvey and publicly embrace him.

  ‘It is you, yerself, it is,’ he repeated, rubbing his hands together. ‘Yerself and no other. What in the name of hivin have ye been doin’? What do ye mane by scarin’ the wits out of a man?’

  ‘You might have known I’d turn up,’ Harvey answered stiffly.… What a stupid thing to say! But he couldn’t for the life of him have been clever at that moment. He’d never thought – never – that anyone might be so glad to see him. It was something after all friendship.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ cried Corcoran, plumping down on the bench beside Harvey, the joy of the meeting still irradiating his humid eye. ‘ Yer the boy for frightenin’ us all right. I searched for ye in every corner of the town. High and low, up and down, I sought. Scoured the countryside. Faith, I’d begun to think that you had gone the way of the river as well.’

  Harvey looked up. There was a pause. Corcoran’s gaze fell. He seemed to wish he had not spoken.

  ‘Ye’ll not know,’ he said in an altered voice. ‘ Ye’ll not know what has happened to Susan.’

  ‘Susan?’ Harvey echoed in wonder.

  Jimmy hesitated, then, in a manner both gloomy and subdued, he launched into an account of Susan’s death.

  ‘They never got her body,’ he ended in a low tone. ‘She’s out there on the sea-bed, the poor thing. Och, I’ve been powerful upset about it all. There was always a glint of sad misfortune in the far-off corner of her eye. She ran after things too hard, she did. And that, I’m thinkin’ is the way she never got them.’

  Harvey stared at him with eyes suddenly wide, horrified. Susan! Oh, it was too horrible – he couldn’t believe it. Susan, so eager, so quick to feel -

  He must have spoken; for Jimmy murmured:

  ‘She don’t feel nothin’ now – out there.’

  Out there. Out on the sea-bed amongst the cool sea-weeds and the corals, striped fishes darting, quivering above the pallid, unshut eyes. ‘Give me a chance – oh, just give me one little chance!’ Pleading, her hand outstretched, too eager, too eager after happiness! And now out there.…

  The thought of it made Harvey shiver.

  ‘I’m terribly – terribly sorry,’ he whispered, as though he spoke into himself. And then, after a long time: ‘Where is her brother?’

  ‘Him,’ cried Jimmy with unutterable scorn. ‘Ye wouldn’t believe it. He’s back again at Salvation. Up to the eyebrows in repentance. Swearin’ to God that his sister died to fetch him back to grace. Jumpin’ Janus, it would sicken ye. He’s brung the harmonium down
to Santa Cruz, he’s rented a bit of a hall, and he’s missionin’ fit to burst – slammin’ out the hymn-tunes and the prayers wid tears in his eyes. Glory, glory, halleluja! By the powers, ’tis scandalous enough to give a man black ja’ndice.’

  Two minutes passed; then Harvey asked:

  ‘And you? What’s going to happen to you?’

  Corcoran took snuff with a conscious air. But no mere act of snuffing could hide his satisfaction. Thrusting one thumb modestly to its arm-hole he answered:

  ‘Faith, it’s happened already ye might say. I’m all fixed up at the Casa. Successor to Don Balthasar, R.I.P. I’ve got aholt of a dozen yellow boys and I’m workin’ the suet off them. I’ll knock the place into shape in no time. Druv down here with me own mule team. I’m tellin’ ye it’s the life of a lord I’ve landed meself into. And, in a manner of speakin’, all by me own endeavour.’

  Harvey’s lips hardly smiled. But he was glad – tremendously glad.

  ‘That’s good, Jimmy,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m happy about that.’

  Corcoran threw out his chest and abruptly stood up.

  ‘Not so happy as yer goin’ to be,’ he said with a sudden change of tune. ‘Come now. It’s time we were goin’. I’ve had me innin’s and now it’s yours. Come away over to the hotel.’

  ‘The hotel?’

  ‘And where the divil else! D’ye think you’re goin’ to sit on this holy bench till the boat comes in? Be sensible for the love of hivin and come on.’ And taking Harvey’s arm he drew him to his feet, led him with some persuasion across the Plaza.

  They entered the hotel. Corcoran swaggered into the empty lounge, sank into a chair, and called loudly for the porter.

  ‘Yes, sah.’ The nigger hurried over, all gold braid and teeth.