On the Island (6 page)

11

“W
HAT WAS MY
father like?” said Iain one day to his mother as she sat in her chair knitting while Iain sat on the floor with a picture book open in front of him.

“Your father? He was just like anyone else. He was a sailor.”

“Where did he sail to?”

“He sailed all over the world.”

“I know, but what places?”

“I can't remember all the places. I think he was in Australia and New Zealand. But I don't remember all the places.”

“Was he always a sailor?”

“No, he wasn't always a sailor. We lived in Glasgow for a while. He used to be in the gasworks.”

“The gasworks? What's that?”

“Just gasworks. Why do you want to know anyway?”

“Nothing. It just came into my head. Everyone else talks about their fathers. Petey's father was in the Navy.”

Her fingers stopped their knitting and she said, “It's a long time since your father died. We were living in Glasgow at the time. He caught pneumonia and then he got TB and when they tried to keep the windows open he was always getting up and shutting them. I used to go and visit him. I would get the bus from Sauchiehall Street and I would take it to the hospital. He would sit up in bed and say to me, ‘Another week or two, eh, and I'll be as good as new. I'll be out of here. I think I'll leave the gasworks and go back to the boats. The fresh air will do me good but I'm not having them keep the windows open all the time. All you get is a draught. You don't get the proper benefit of the air.' That's what he used to say, your father.”

“Was he an officer?”

“He was a bosun and that's almost as good as an officer. He would bring things home, little presents, and I knew that …” She clamped her lips together as if she had decided not to say whatever she had been going to. “Anyway that was how he died.”

After a while she said, “He was a good dancer. That was how we met, at a dance. He came up to me and he said, ‘Would you care for this one?' And I danced with him. He was very light on his feet. When we lived in Glasgow we were in a tenement and we had good neighbours.” She stared dully out at the day which was turning cloudy and said, “I liked Glasgow. A lot of people don't like Glasgow, they say it's too big and dirty, but I liked it. We had very good neighbours. The people there are very warm-hearted. If anything happened to you the others helped you. I used to go to the shops on Sauchiehall Street. We didn't have much money but I used to go and admire the shops. When your father had any money he would spend it right away. I used to tell him, ‘Keep some of your money for your old age,' but he didn't keep any of it.”

“Did he have a lot of money then?”

“No, he didn't. But what he had he spent. That was the way he was. I hope you're not going to be like that. When you grow up and earn money you should put it in a bank, and that way you'll never want.”

“I want to be a sailor too,” said Iain who was looking at his picture book in which he could see a big schooner becalmed on a blue sea. “I want to go away and see the world.”

His mother looked at him for a moment in silence and then said, “Is that what you want to do?”

“But I would take you with me,” said Iain earnestly.

“What good would I be on a ship?” said his mother, laughing so that her face was transformed as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. “What would I do on a ship?”

“I would take you on a tour,” said Iain. “I would take you on a tour round the world.”

“One day he went out,” she said, “and he didn't come back till night, and he'd brought some of his friends with him. He had met them in a pub, they were sailors, and they came from the island. He was very thoughtless that way because of his kind nature. And we didn't have any food in the house. They stayed all night and one of them had to sleep on the floor in the same room as your father, because we didn't have another room. I had no food at all and I was ashamed. But they didn't need any food, all they did was drink and sing. They went away in the morning, the first time anyone left a house of mine without eating. You see, in my father's time, when people came to the communions there was plenty of food. But we didn't have any food that night. I remember it well because I was so ashamed and your father said to me, ‘Why didn't you give them something to eat?' He didn't know that there wasn't any food in the house. He never thought about things like that. That was why he was so popular. Come day, go day.”

She had forgotten about Iain while she was talking and sat staring into the past as if she were gazing at a series of pictures in a book or on a moving screen and the pictures were so vivid that her eyes followed them intently as they passed in front of her eyes.

“I wonder if he was in Hong Kong,” said Iain suddenly.

“Hong Kong?”

“Yes, it's in China and there's a picture of it here. It's got a lot of shops and there are Chinamen there.”

“I don't know about that,” said his mother. “I don't know about Hong Kong. Maybe he was. He was in a lot of places. He told me about a place where they left food for their dead people. That might have been Hong Kong. He was very alive, you see, your father. I wondered …”

And again she clamped her lips together as if she had decided against saying something that she had intended to say. “It's not a good thing when a man is away so long. But he said that that was where the money was. He didn't like the gasworks. Sometimes on Saturdays we would go out into the country and we would visit Loch Lomond. He was quite happy there watching the boats sail up and down the loch. When he would come home at night he would start singing
Loch Lomond
, you know, the song.” And her lips suddenly softened as if she were hearing her husband's voice as he stood in the kitchen in their tenement singing,

“Where me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”

But of course she would never sing herself, she had never sung a song in her life and she wasn't going to start now, at her age.

Iain turned another page of his picture book and said, “Maybe he was in New York too.”

“He might have been,” said his mother, who after her moment of becalmment had gone back to her knitting. “Everyone liked your father. Only … But it doesn't matter. And you tell your friends that he was a bosun. He was always a good seaman.”

Iain sat happily on the floor thinking about his father. His image of him was that of a sailor shouting orders to his men while they rushed about all over the decks or hauled at sails as the breeze propelled the ship through the hissing water on its way to the East. “Come on then, lads,” his father would shout to them, “get a move on there.” Kindly but firm, but able to deal with any of them if they became cheeky. “You know, my lad, that you have to take your orders like anyone else. Five lashes for him. We must have discipline on board this ship.” Sometimes in a strange way his father's face faded into that of his mother and then became itself again.

“He loved children,” said his mother. “He would tell them stories and when you were a baby he would take you on his shoulders and show you off to people. He would say, ‘This boy is going to be far better than me. He won't waste his life as I did.' And then he would laugh and …” She fell silent again and then began to speak in quite a different voice. “But it's true just the same. He didn't think about anything really, not about food or rent or furniture or anything like that. He left all that to me. He left you to me as well. What he said about you was true in a way.”

“What did he say, Mother?”

“Oh, nothing. He didn't say anything. He liked children, that was what I was saying.”

I am Jim Hawkins and my father is captain of the good ship, the
Hispaniola
, and we are in search of treasure. My father can handle Long John Silver all right. To the hold with him and keep him there till he learns some sense. He's got to be disciplined. Don't give him food or water for three days. And then his father would shout, “Keep her going boys. Keep her on course. Steady as you go, you lubbers.”

“He died a brave death, they said,” his mother remarked, broodingly bent over her knitting. “The nurses told me that. His last words were, ‘Shut that window, will you?' So they said. And the people in the tenement took a collection and gave me the money. That was a long time ago. They came into the house, six of them, and they pressed the money into my hand. They didn't wait for tea or anything. That must be, oh nine years ago. You were two at the time and Kenneth was one. Oh well, this won't do.”

And she put the knitting away, got to her feet, and put the kettle on. “You'd better run to the shop and get some sugar.” She counted out the pennies to him, and he ran down to the plank and then at full speed along the road towards the shop. She stood at the window watching him and thinking, I hope he won't turn out like his father. But while she was thinking that she was also thinking, I loved him and I miss him. She stared at Iain's diminishing figure till eventually like a small boat he disappeared over the horizon of the brae.

12

E
VERY MORNING
I
AIN
used to go to buy the milk from a woman called Big Dollag who lived with her two sons in a house which stood slightly back from the road at the bottom of the brae. Big Dollag was large and extremely deaf, and for this reason she shouted when she was talking to someone as if she was speaking through a high gale, her hand held to her right ear.

She would say to Iain, “Have you heard anything new, eh?” and he would shout back that he hadn't, and she would look at him in a disappointed manner, encased in her prison of almost total deafness.

One of her sons always sat in a corner of the kitchen, never speaking but smiling benevolently and hidden behind a green net which he seemed to be endlessly repairing, so that Iain thought of him as a pleasant spider who was weaving the net out of himself in some strange way.

Iain would stand in the scullery while Big Dollag poured the milk into his jug from a big red ewer and all the time she would be saying things like: “Who was that man who passed along the road yesterday? He was wearing a hat and he had an umbrella. Do you know who it was? I nearly went to speak to him but he went by too quickly.”

And Iain would stand on the stone floor impatient to be gone, for he found it very exhausting and hard on his voice to converse with Big Dollag. She got the milk from a brown cow which she allowed to wander among the houses, sometimes chewing the washing that had been hung on ropes to dry. Once she had almost eaten Iain's own green jersey but his mother had said nothing to Big Dollag in case she stopped selling them the milk, for no one else would do so.

Iain found the house very strange because apart from the son who was always repairing the green net, another son would sometimes emerge from his room and then go back to it like a shy deer when he saw Iain. It seemed odd that the two sons should be so silent when Big Dollag herself was so noisy, her deep voice echoing through the house, and almost reverberating from the cold stone.

One morning when he had arrived for the milk as usual he found a stranger sitting in the kitchen by the fire which was, unusually, glowing brightly; and this stranger was wearing a coat, which Iain thought odd as he had never in his life seen someone doing so in a house before.

“That man you are seeing there,” Big Dollag shouted, “is my son Jim. He is home from America. He came yesterday and he is not going back again.”

Iain looked at the man shyly and the man in turn looked at him, and Iain saw that he had soft haunted eyes as if he had suffered a great deal.

“How are you, lad,” said the man to him. “Who is he, Mother?” At first Dollag couldn't hear what he was saying, for his voice was even softer than Iain's, and it was only after some protracted verbal confusion that she eventually replied:

“He is Agnes's son. Do you remember Agnes? She had just come to the village when you left.”

The stranger shook his head and Big Dollag continued: “Agnes is not from our village at all. She came from another village. She's an incomer. Don't you remember her?”

The man shook his head again, and ignoring his mother said to Iain: “Come in here, lad, so that I can talk to you. What's your name?”

“Iain, sir.”

“A very polite boy.” The stranger spoke in a peculiar accent that Iain had never heard before and now and again he would swivel his neck nervously as if he were searching for some object that he couldn't see.

“Are you a clever boy? Are you smart? Do you go to school?”

“I go to school, sir,” said Iain who felt too embarrassed to admit to being clever. However Dollag, who would at times, surprisingly, hear certain statements as if they were struck like bells through a deep silence, suddenly remarked:

“They say he's clever. They say he's good at his books.”

“Good boy, you keep that up. You keep that up, boy.”

“Jim's been away in America for twenty years,” Dollag shouted joyously. “We never heard from him and then yesterday he knocked on the door. I didn't know him at first. I thought it was a man selling carpets,” and she laughed loudly, her belly shaking like a vast jelly, “but it was my own son Jim. You tell your mother that, that Dollag's son is home. You tell her that.”

When Iain went home he did tell his mother, as he had been instructed to do, and she said: “Jim's home, is he? Would you credit that now? He's been in America for twenty years or so. They say he was very clever but he had an argument with his father and his father told him to clear off and he did too. He ended up in America. No one knew what the argument was about. It was when I came to this village with your father more than twenty years ago. I was just a bride.” And she looked out of the window at the bare landscape as if she expected to see herself by miracle rise from it, in her white bridal gown with a bouquet of flowers in her hand, her husband holding her by the arm.

“Some say the argument was about a girl. He's not married, is he? Is his wife there?”

“I don't know. I only saw him.”

“Hm. Anyway, as I was saying, he went off to America. Others said that the argument was about the croft. Jim's the oldest, you see, and his father said that he wouldn't leave him the croft because he didn't show any interest in it. He was a shy boy or so I've heard. And so he's come back again after all these years. That's very funny. Did he look poor?”

“He was wearing a coat and he was sitting by the fire,” Iain volunteered, for he was glad to see his mother in such a good humour, and so interested.

“Is that right? Of course their climate is different from ours. He finds it colder here, I suppose. I can see that. Did he come on the bus?”

“I don't know.”

“Of course he might have a car. Coming from America he might have a car.”

“I didn't see a car,” said Iain judiciously. “There might have been one but I didn't see it.”

“Well, if you didn't see one,” said his mother, laughing, “there can't be one. He wouldn't keep it in the bedroom, would he?” And she continued her ironing.

“I wonder if he's come for good or if he's just on holiday. Maybe he's retired. A lot of them make enough money to retire on but many of them take to drink too when they're out there. What did he say to you? Was he talking to you? He asked you if you were clever? What did you say? I hope you didn't tell him that you were. That would be boasting. Anyway you're only clever in certain things.” She put down the iron decisively. “I don't think he's married and I don't think he's done well for himself. That's my opinion.” She resumed her ironing, pressing the iron against the white sheet, and added:

“There was a man from our village who came back from America and he spent his time walking about the moors with a stick. He never did a stroke of work but that was because he had retired and had plenty of money.”

She didn't say any more and Iain forgot about Jim, Dollag's son, till one day he was rather late in collecting the milk and found that Jim was the only person in the house apart from his brother who was quietly repairing his green net in the usual corner.

“Come in, lad,” said Jim. “Tell me, do you read books?”

“Yes,” Iain replied shyly.

“Well, then, I'm getting crates of books sent to me from the States and you can read some of them if you like. Would you like that?”

“Yes thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”

“Remember that then. Every day you come in here you ask if the crates have come and I'll tell you. Is that OK, lad?”

So every day Iain would ask that question, till one beautiful morning, when the sun was shining and the dew was wet on the grass and the birds were singing, the books did finally come and Iain was allowed to search among them to his heart's content. It was a day he would remember for ever, for among those books he found P. C. Wren stories of the Foreign Legion, a collection of detective stories edited by Dorothy L. Sayers, a massive book of ghost stories, another huge volume of stories about the sea and finally one of spy stories.

Every evening, that enchanted summer, he read those books, firing from forts in a desert glittering under the merciless glare of the sun, duelling with Germans in a dark Prussian forest, investigating cases with Sax Rohmer, sailing tropical seas and lying at anchor in blue lagoons.

And every morning before going to school he would go for the milk and Jim would be sitting by the fire in his coat and saying to him, “How are you getting on, lad? You keep reading.”

Was it his imagination or did Jim appear to be getting thinner every day, did his face appear more and more unshaven and shadowed, did he shiver more uncontrollably beside the large fire?

And his mother would say, “He's home for good and everyone says he has no money. He's like the rest of the family, a bit odd. Did you know that he's drinking a lot and that the other night the bus driver had to help him into the house?”

“Shut up,” Iain shouted.

“What? What did you say?”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You said ‘Shut up.' Who do you think you're saying ‘shut up' to? Don't speak to me like that.”

And Iain muttered something under his breath while his mother glared at him, hands on hips.

Jim said very little to him. He never told him what had happened to him in America, what the cities were like, what criminals haunted the streets, what buildings towered into the sky.

And evening after evening Iain broke complicated codes, made dying confessions about stolen jewellery, hung from the yard arm, travelled through deserts and seas.

One morning Jim wasn't sitting by the fire as he usually was and Dollag told Iain that her son was resting in bed.

“Would you like to go and see him?” she shouted though not with her usual cheerfulness.

“Yes, please,” said Iain and he was ushered into a small room with a bed, chair and curtains that had only been partially drawn.

“It's you, boy,” said Jim. “Come in. I'll be up soon. It's just that I don't feel so good. How are the books going? OK? When I was your age I read a lot too. Even in the States I read. When you get right down to it, boy, people fail you but books never fail you, and you can take that from me. You remember that.” He sat up in bed, wearing a blue cardigan, his face a bluish colour, and continued, “You know something, son. I left home because my father was always telling me ‘You give up those books now. You're wasting your time. Why aren't you learning to fish like your brothers? Why aren't you learning to scythe?' In the States though I had some peace.” And then he muttered as if to himself, “I should never have come home.”

“What did you do in America, sir?” Iain ventured timidly.

“What did I do, eh? Well, I'll tell you. I worked on the elevators, lad, and every night after a hard day's work I would go home to my books. Do you know what elevators are? Well, they're not what you call lifts. They're grain elevators. That's where I worked till I got tired. My boy, America is a terrible place. Don't ever go there. America is the most terrible place on earth.” His hollow eyes seemed to stare towards it, that desolate vast country almost too violent and brash for his imagination to encompass. Then he settled back on to his pillow again and said, “Books never fail you, lad, though people will.” He didn't say another word, as if he had passed on to Iain the final epigram which contained his whole experience of life, and after a while Iain left the room, almost on tiptoe.

“How is he this morning?” Big Dollag shouted anxiously and Iain replied, “I don't know.”

The jug of milk in his hand he left her house and went home through the singing birds of summer among the flowers which grew all around him.

Two weeks after that his mother told him, after he had come from school, that Jim had died and it seemed to him that there was a certain triumph in her voice.

“He was drinking too much. Everyone was saying that. He killed himself, going up town night after night, and never speaking to anybody. Big Dollag won't like that, the scandal of it. He was just like her other sons, there was a weakness in that family. When I came here first Big Dollag wouldn't speak to me because I was an incomer, and she would say things about your own father – that he drank too much – but now I'm getting my own back on her. There's a want in her family and everybody knows it,” and, thin-lipped, she stared into the bleak world of her triumph.

Iain gazed at her horrified as if he knew that of all the people whom he had met in the village Jim had been the one who had been most like himself, quiet, withdrawn, imaginative. He ran out of the room and climbed into the attic where his books were. Weeping he took them out, thinking about Jim but not as if Jim were dead, for he was too young to imagine what death was.

Then he began to read “Beau Geste” by P. C. Wren and was soon lost in the desert again with the Foreign Legion, having forgotten his mother's petty words; Big Dollag; the village, bare and unharmonious below him; and was himself, in spite of everything, true and upright and honourable in a fortress in the desert almost devoid of humanity and beaten upon by a torrid sun. And it seemed to him as if Jim was there also, standing beside him, his rifle at his shoulder, wearing a pill-box hat, while the tribes attacked, appearing over the horizon in undisciplined but venomous hordes.