On the Island (7 page)

13

“I
WANT TO
go for a walk to the sea,” said Pauline, tiring of sailing paper boats on the small pond.

“All right,” said Iain.

Pauline was the daughter of a lady who came from London to the village every year during the summer holidays and who in fact belonged to the village though she was now married in the metropolis. Most of the villagers were polite to her, but behind her back they said that she put on airs and adopted a condescending manner to them as if they were peasants who had seen nothing of the world. She dressed in a green costume, and always carried a handbag (“even to the byre,” some of them said, meaning of course the lavatory, since none of the houses had toilets or even water of their own), and spoke as if there were marbles in her mouth. One would have thought from her conversation, they said, that she knew the Queen well, that she regularly bought her jewellery in Bond Street, attended a doctor in Harley Street, and was regarded with reverence when she appeared at Horse Guards Parade. In actual fact, as far as could be ascertained, her husband worked as a clerk, was a small hunted-looking man with sleeked hair and shiny suits who never was heard to speak in his wife's presence, and, when he did speak, conversed in an extraordinary form of English that no one in the village understood. Iain, however, was allowed to play with Pauline who was eleven years old like himself, wore ribbons in her blond pigtails and unlike many of the village children seemed preternaturally well dressed and clean: on this particular occasion she wore pink stockings and a pink dress.

As they walked down the path between the cornfields, Iain now and again kicking moodily at a stone, Pauline was thinking of the expedition as a great adventure. It was only after she had been chattering on for some time that Iain realised that she had never been at the sea before, though she mentioned that she had been on a boat on the river Thames. He found it quite extraordinary that anybody could have lived in a place which was not near the sea and desperately tried to visualise London.

“Is it bigger than Stornoway?” he asked.

“It's so big that you can get lost in it,” Pauline replied, completely disdaining the reference to Stornoway. “I got lost in it,” she added proudly. “One day when Mummy was in a shop I got lost and a policeman had to take me home.”

“Was it Scotland Yard?” Iain asked.

“No, of course not. It was a policeman with a helmet.” She said this decisively as if it settled the truth of her story once and for all. “He was very tall and he had a helmet,” she repeated for good measure.

“What do you call this lovely lovely flower?” she asked, staring down at a yellow plant that grew in the field.

“I don't know. Is there no water in London then?”

“I told you. There's the river Thames. I told you that before.”

“Oh?” Iain gave up trying to visualise London and told her, “When we get to the bottom we go through a gate and then we walk to the sea.”

“Is it much bigger than the Thames then?”

“Rivers are fresh water, you know,” said Iain expansively. “The sea is salt. That's the difference between the sea and a river.”

“Salt. How does it get salt?”

“I don't know but it is. Maybe the salt was in from the beginning for thousands and thousands of years. The clouds drop their rain on it all the time.”

When they arrived at the gate Iain had to open it for her, because she didn't understand how the bolt worked, and she wasn't strong enough to pull the gate back. Her shoes had blades of wet grass on them, and even her socks were wet from walking through the high wet plants; she stopped to wipe her shoes clean and then followed Iain who had gone on ahead, proud of the fact that he was the leader, that he knew where he was going, and that under no circumstances would he get lost.

They walked along the road to the sea, passing cows on the way who stared loweringly at them, and then turned their heads away as if they were tired of the sight.

When they arrived at the beach, Pauline gazed at the vast glittering expanse of sea in astonishment:

“Is that all water?” she asked.

“Of course it is. You can get drowned there. Some boys were drowned in a boat there.”

“In a boat?”

“Not in the boat. When they were out in the boat. See. That's what you call seaweed.”

“It's like long ribbons. Long brown ribbons. Do you think I could take some back to show Mummy?”

“No, it's too dirty. Come on. We might find a crab. Have you ever seen a crab?”

“Not alive. Where can we get a crab?”

“There may be one in the pool. Not all the time but sometimes. And you can get whelks on the rocks.”

Pauline daintily picked her way among the rocks, making sure that her shoes didn't get wet and clutching her skirt as if she were a ballerina.

“There are the boats there,” said Iain. “See. There are the oars.”

“What are oars?”

“They're for rowing the boat. Don't you know anything?”

“I know lots of things. Do you know who Madame Curie was?”

“Of course I do. She invented radium.”

“All right, so you know. You don't need to boast.”

“I wasn't boasting. I was telling you.”

“I knew already anyway. It's not my fault I don't know about oars. I bet you don't know about subways. I bet you've never been in a subway. I was in a subway lots of times. You go up and down an escalator.” She paused for a moment as if wondering whether she had said the word right but in any case Iain wasn't listening to her for he had seen a crab.

“See,” he said, “you can touch it. It's a big crab. Don't let it nip you.”

“Nip you?” she said enquiringly.

“Bite you with its claws,” replied Iain despairingly. One would think someone who had come from London would at least know the English language.

Pauline touched the crab reverently and gently and it moved a little through the water under her hand.

“I wonder what it's thinking about,” she said. “I wonder what crabs think about.”

“I don't know,” said Iain impatiently. “You were lucky to see a crab. You don't find them here all the time. Look, there's a jelly fish.”

“Just like an umbrella,” said Pauline delightedly. “It's like a tiny umbrella.” She touched it very lightly with her finger and then followed Iain who was standing among some rocks.

“Here are the whelks,” Iain instructed her as if he were a teacher. “They stick to the rocks but you can pull them away. See. Inside it, there's the meat. We take it out with a pin and then we boil it in a pot.”

“Is the meat good? Is it not very salty?”

“It's not salty. Out there, do you see, there's a ship. It's a liner. Do you see it sailing past? That island has got sheep on it.”

“How do they get out there? Do they swim?”

“Of course they don't. People take them out and leave them there. Sheep don't swim.” At least he thought they didn't swim, though perhaps one or two might: dogs certainly could swim.

“Maybe,” said Pauline, “their wool would pull them down into the water. Maybe they would drown,” said Pauline seriously. “Maybe that's what would happen.”

And then, “Can we not go over there,” pointing to the stone quay.

“If you like,” said Iain airily though he didn't want to go.

“We were at the fish market,” said Pauline suddenly. “It's called Billinsgate, I think, and we were at Madame Tussauds. They've got statues of murderers and they've got axes and knives with blood on them and it's very dark. And they've got chains and pots.”

They walked over to the stone quay, which was deserted, though sometimes there would be boys fishing with bait for cuddies, dangling their legs over the edge. Iain was glad that there was no one there, for he didn't want to be seen with a girl, especially one from London who had never seen the sea before, and who wore pigtails as well. He would never live it down. He was angry with himself that he hadn't thought of the boys before and had agreed so thoughtlessly to come down to the sea. It just showed one that one must remember things like that.

When they reached the quay, Pauline stood at the very edge to peer down into the water and Iain called her back.

“If you go too near the edge you'll fall,” he said, and for a moment he had a vision of her small body with the pink frock and the blond pigtails floating eerily among the stones.

“Look,” said Pauline, “I can see more seaweed and stones. The water's green here. It's beautiful.”

“It's blue further out,” Iain told her. “That's because it's deeper.”

Suddenly Pauline turned away from the edge and began to jump over the capstans which were sunk into the stone of the quay, three or four of them, made of iron.

“You do that, Iain,” she shouted; “you jump too.” At first he didn't want to, because the capstans were so near the edge, but he knew that he must jump because she had and he jumped too, following her little figure over capstan after capstan.

After a while she grew tired of this and sat down on one of them. “What are you going to do when you grow up?” she asked Iain.

“I don't know. I might be a writer.”

“I'm going to be a nurse and cure people. I'm going to work in a hospital. I saw little fish there just now.”

“Where?”

“Just there. There.”

“I can't see any. I'm going to write about the Foreign Legion.”

“What's that, Iain? Do you see it? It's a ladder.”

Iain pretended not to notice it. “Where?”

“There. Just below. I dare you to climb down the ladder.”

“I don't want to. Anyway we should be going home.”

“No, not yet. I want to climb down the ladder.”

“It's too dangerous. You would fall into the water.”

“I've climbed a ladder before. It was in a big empty house we found. And we saw this ladder and I and another girl climbed it.”

“I won't let you. It's too dangerous.”

“You can't stop me.”

“I will stop you.”

“You're scared, that's what you are. Scaredy, scaredy.”

“I'm not.”

“You are.”

“Not.”

“Are.”

“Not.”

“Are.”

Iain stood on the stone quay while she taunted him and it seemed to him strange that she should have found out so soon what he was most scared of, and at the same time he knew that he would have to climb down the ladder because she was a girl and he was a boy. He walked over to where the ladder was and as he stood above it he felt it as a snake that was ready to flash out at him with its fangs. Pauline was now sitting on the capstan again dangling her legs and watching him, her face small and pretty and cruel.

“All right,” he said and knelt down on the quay feeling for the first rung of the ladder, his hand grasping the iron bar sunk in the stone of the quay.

His leg felt and felt for the first rung, and his breath was short, for there seemed to be a constriction in his chest, and there was sweat on his brow. He found it and clutching the iron bar as if with a death grip he let his foot stand on the first rung. Then it was the second rung and he was still holding the bar which he would soon have to let go. Below him was the water and the stones but he did not dare look and he had forgotten about Pauline and all he could see was the dented wet stone in front of his face. He felt for the third rung and the fourth rung and then he moved his right hand away from the iron bar while still clutching it with his left. Then his right hand had grasped the top rung and now his left hand had gripped it. As he descended slowly, still not looking down, he felt his foot slip on the rung below, for it was smooth with seaweed, and for a moment he thought he was going to fall as he slithered hither and thither, checking the scream from his throat, and trembling violently. He could hear no sound from above him as if Pauline had also forgotten about him, and disdained even to follow his progress.

Below him was the sea and the stones and the seaweed and his sandals were sliding along the rungs, not getting a proper grip, and his hands grasped the rungs as if they would never let go. Steadily, steadily he descended, cursing his sandals and wishing that he had worn proper boots, slithering, sliding, his arms sore, his teeth biting his lips. Then he had reached the last rung and he was safe below among the shallow water and the stones.

And at that moment he was filled with such joy as he had never felt before in his life, so that he danced among the shallow water and the stones like a Red Indian, and gazing at the iron ladder which now seemed so harmless he shook his fist at it. “I've done it, I've done it,” he shouted. Then above him he could see Pauline looking down as if she were a princess in a tower and he shouted to her, “Don't come down, I'll come up. The ladder is all slippery. There's seaweed on it.”

He ran splashing through the water and arrived at where she was standing on the stone quay, small and pink in her dress, her pigtails about her head, her red lips parted.

“I didn't want you to go,” she was saying and she was almost crying, as she looked at his drenched sandals.

“It's all right,” he replied grandly. “I wanted to go. It's not too difficult.”

She came up to him and put her hand in his and he ran away embarrassed, while she ran after him. He thought he could do anything: he could climb down that old ladder any time now. He raced down the road at full speed, Pauline less quickly running after him, and then after a while he slowed down and waited for her. After all if it hadn't been for her he wouldn't have gone down the ladder at all and it would have remained forever in his mind as something that had defeated him. Her pigtails flying, she was shouting something to him that he couldn't understand.

He was older than her so he had to wait: at least he felt older than her now, older and calmer and wiser. It was as if she were his younger sister, though she was just as old as him, and much more ignorant since she had never seen the sea before and didn't know anything about crabs and whelks and things like that. Her eyes turned down shyly to the ground when she reached him as if she had sensed the change in their relationship and were acknowledging his superiority and that was, he thought, as it should be.