Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) (14 page)

The only event of the night was that just before dawn someone shook my arm and I heard Antonia say: ‘Sally’s just back from her pattern, Edward. She says that there’s nobody at all at the Doctor’s house. Isn’t that good news?’

When I came to remember this the next morning, as soon as I awoke, I couldn’t make sense of it. It wasn’t a dream and I was sure that I had heard Antonia’s voice. Yet how could Antonia have known about Sally and the pattern? Or if Antonia was now Sapphire, why should she have called it ‘the Doctor’s house’?

‘Why did you call the Nonsense House “the Doctor’s house” last night?’ I asked Sapphire sharply, waking her.

She opened her eyes wide.

‘But I didn’t,’ she said.

‘Yes, you did. You said it in Antonia’s voice, but you said it. You woke me up to tell me about Sally and her pattern.’

She sat up wild-eyed. ‘I didn’t wake you up. I said nothing at all to you after you’d gone to sleep.’

‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘Of course.’

‘But the night before last, didn’t you laugh and say something important – I can’t remember what – in Antonia’s voice?’

‘No.’

‘But
someone
did. It must have been you. It couldn’t have been anyone else. You held out your arms to me.’

Sapphire turned pale. ‘Someone has been playing tricks on us,’ she said.

‘Whom do you mean? Sally? Or is there another witch about?’

She stared at me in confusion and horror. ‘Sally? But Sally is my dearest friend. Why should you think that it’s Sally?’

‘I’ll tell you why, if you’ll promise not to tell anyone else.’

She kept silent, but continued to look horrified, her mouth wide open like a child’s. So I asked: ‘Isn’t it true that she’s fallen in love with me and is madly jealous of you? It’s not a nice question for a man to ask, but we must get things straight before we see her again.’

As she still kept silent, I continued: ‘I’m a stranger here and don’t understand your ways and couldn’t say how powerful your magic is. But if someone has been playing tricks on us – and it’s a woman, we know that – then everything points to Sally. She seems to have a motive, at any rate, and I don’t see who else it could have been.’

I didn’t suggest Erica. After all, Erica was no witch and it was absurd to suppose that she could have impersonated Antonia.

At last Sapphire said: ‘We’re breaking custom. We shouldn’t be talking like this before breakfast. But one thing: there’s been a spell around this house since dusk and it should have prevented anyone from coming in without the password which only Sally and I know. We laid the spell together on purpose to keep the brutch out.’

Should I tell her that it had been a remarkably ineffectual spell? No: I needed more time yet to get things straight in my mind.

‘I must have been mistaken,’ I lied soothingly. ‘I must have had a particularly vivid dream. Forget all I’ve said.’

But I could see that this did not altogether convince Sapphire, and her manner towards Sally at breakfast and after was noticeably reserved.

This was a Monday and my friends were bound to spend the working day in private study of poetry, music or magic. That was fortunate, I thought: it would give Sapphire a chance to commune with the Goddess before she said anything to Sally, and perhaps solve the Antonia mystery that way. After breakfast Sally told me that since we should not meet until the evening smoke, I was free to go out with the Interpreter and visit other estates, unless I wished to observe custom by remaining at home and studying.

I pointed out that I should be only wasting my time if I stayed, not being able to read the shorthand in which their books were written. Besides, I wanted to see more of the commons. So she recommended a visit to Sanjon, a few miles’ walk along the coast – or what had once been the coast – where there was a market. I guessed that Sanjon must be the small town of St Jean-des-Porcs where Antonia and I used to go by bus every Saturday to shop: it would be fun to see what the New Cretans had made of the place.

I was once again baulked by custom. The Interpreter had to go on foot because he belonged to a dismounted estate, and if I had to keep with him all the way I could not very well borrow a horse, as I had intended to do. ‘No,’ said Sally. ‘You couldn’t do that in any case. If the commons saw you on a white horse on Monday, they’d be shocked to the marrow. They’d force you to dismount and walk home.’

We started off together along the railway line. It was a very close day, but turf makes easy going and I had nothing to carry. The Interpreter wore a milkmaid’s yoke on his shoulder with a capacious wicker basket hanging from each end. This had at least the advantage of preventing him from taking my arm, as politeness to a fellow-traveller would otherwise have obliged him to do. I rather like walking arm in arm with a woman, though it makes me shorten my pace uncomfortably, but to have a man linked to me in tenderhearted brotherhood embarrasses me.

‘What’s the yoke for?’ I asked.

‘I am going to buy at the market,’ he said. ‘I hope to find certain vegetable produce of sorts that are not raised in our own village, i.e., alligator-pears and red potatoes.’

‘Buy? But I thought you used no money here?’

‘That is so. But I use the word advisedly. Villagers do not go empty-fisted to Sanjon market.’

‘Do you mean that they swap peas for alligator-pears, say, and baskets of strawberries for bottled beer?’

‘I will explain the system. Yesterday and this morning the gondoliers have conveyed truck-loads of produce from the outlying villages to Sanjon. It is whatever the villagers find superfluous to their needs: for custom rules how much food shall be withheld for consumption in the home. At Sanjon the trucks are unloaded and their contents conveyed to the market, where all is displayed, and anyone is allowed to carry off whatever produce he happens to require. That which remains when the market closes at midday is collected and sorted by the recorders of Sanjon; and all that can be stored for future distribution, or pickled, or conserved, is handed over to the people whose obligation it is to keep the store-houses replenished; the rest goes to the pigs or poultry. Most villages are self-supporting in food, and those that are not so have some other product to offer, e.g. wool, or linen, or charcoal, or baskets, or shoes, or soap, which they send to the same market. But no record is kept of the amount of goods that are delivered or consumed, since custom ensures that everyone shall farm according to the most enlightened principles and that no one shall lack the necessaries of life. The commons supply the other estates with the aforesaid necessaries; but these must make some token-payment, consisting of a present to the Goddess, to show that they are not “eating idle bread”. In my left-hand basket I carry a gift, viz., a peacock’s feather: in the right-hand, another, viz., a bunch of delphiniums. The rule is: “A gift for a gift”. For this reason I use your word “buy”.’

‘Shall I be able to shop too? I haven’t anything to give.’

‘You may pay, if you please, with a poem or a prayer.’

‘And in exchange for my prayer, I may help myself to whatever happens to be on sale?’

‘To as much as you please. What you do not wish to carry in your arms you may leave with the gondolier to drop at our village on his return journey.’

‘That’s extremely generous. But don’t some people get more than their fair share under this system?’

‘Why should they do so? It is part of our religion never to waste food or any other product of the soil; and since there is enough to go round no one carries off more produce of a perishable sort than he needs for himself and his family until the next market day.’

‘That’s all very well, but it’s hard to believe that religious scruple, or even commonsense, can keep a family from behaving selfishly: from grabbing more than their fair share, for example, of sugar and fruit and making a larger quantity of jam than they can eat. Jam keeps for years.’

‘But why should they make more jam than they can eat?’

‘To exchange for something of lasting value that can’t be bought in the market – Jewellery, perhaps, or silver spoons, or a china dinner-service.’

‘You are right in thinking that jewellery and silver-spoons and china are not offered for sale in the market; they are to be had in the shopping-streets of the town from jeweller or silversmith or dishmonger.’

‘But surely not free?’

‘As free as fruit and sugar. If a woman needs half a dozen silver spoons and forks when she marries, or a gold scarf-pin if she has lost one, she needs only to define her wants and they are satisfied. She has no hesitation in doing so. “A gift for a gift”, she will say, confident that neither the silversmith nor the jeweller eats idle bread.’

‘But if she were to ask for three dozen silver spoons and forks?’

‘Why should she want so many unless, e.g., there had been a flood or a fire and a great number of homeless people had come to live in her house.’

‘She might merely want to be better off than her neighbours.’

‘How would she be better off with three dozen silver spoons and forks when all she needs is half a dozen? Silver must be cleaned. It is against custom to let it tarnish.’

‘Well, say half a dozen gold scarf-pins. They wouldn’t tarnish.’

‘But she has need for only one.’

‘Surely some women would like to wear a different scarf-pin every day of the week?’

‘Not in our midst. The scarf-pin has a design that incorporates the owner’s nickname. She always wears the same pin unless, perchance, she changes her name.’

‘Well, then, clothes? Can a woman buy as many dresses as she pleases?’

‘She may buy the material but she must labour at it herself, or with the help of her neighbours. Custom rules that what she needs and can be troubled to make for herself she may wear, after asking the Goddess’s permission at gown ceremonies held in the sixth and tenth months. But a woman of the commons is limited to the possession of two thin Sunday gowns, two thick Sunday gowns and a gala gown, five in all, besides plain working frocks, the number of which is not limited by custom.’

‘Who makes
your
clothes, by the way?’

‘I make them myself.’

‘I thought so.’

He took this for a compliment and looked at his oddly cut white linen suit with satisfaction. ‘I have worn this and its fellow for seven years. But you should see my gala suit! It is in rain-grey linen, covered with little pearl-buttons. To-day I go to buy half a dozen more, to replace ones that have fallen away from the hinderpart.’

‘What else are you buying?’

‘For myself, nothing more. But I am instructed to order a pair of wrought-iron gates for our new garden; I have the measurements on a tally-stick in my pocket. The master-smith of Sanjon will wright them for me.’

‘Excuse a criticism of your otherwise faultless English, but there is no such verb as “wright”.’

‘Indeed? But surely “wrought” is formed from “wright” as, e.g. “fought” from “fight”. And, surely, one can wright many things, inclusive of plays and wheels and wains and carts?’

‘Did you get this misinformation from your colleague Quant?’

‘Regrettably no! Quant holds that “wrought” is formed from “wreak”, so I suppose that I should have said: “The smith will wreak them for me”.’

‘No, Quant himself has slipped up, for once. One can’t wreak gates; about the only things one can wreak are vengeance and havoc – as, by the way, one can’t monger dishes, but only iron, cheese, scandal, fish and whores, but don’t ask me why. “Wrought” is a very irregular past participle of “work”.’

‘Oh, how glad Quant will be to hear that he is proved wrong!’

‘Glad?’

‘Yes, overjoyed! It so seldom happens that he is wrong. As it so seldom happens that he wins a game of croquet. When he does win, we all garland him with daisies from the grass-borders.’

‘Let’s get back to your economic system. You say that everyone here works hard without hope of reward?’

‘Sir: what greater reward could there be than the knowledge that the Goddess approves and that one’s neighbours will benefit?’

‘That’s all very well. What about oneself?’

‘Every man is his own neighbour,
verb sap.
as Cleopatra has shrewdly said.’

‘Exactly my point. Charity begins at home. What’s to keep people from getting lazy and not sending enough to market?’

‘It is the captains’ duty to see that all goes well in that respect.’

‘By waving the big stick?’

‘They carry no sticks; they merely exhort to virtue and the good life.’

‘I may be perverse, but at school I always preferred the master who threw the book at my head to the one who exhorted me to virtue. I think the captains are about the worst feature of your society.’

‘Come! Come! As yet you know very little of our society. Captains are the friendliest and most devoted of people.’

‘In a way, that makes it worse.’

But, of course, he refused to see my point. ‘You cannot prefer tyrants to friends?’ he asked, wide-eyed.

‘No, but I prefer potshots to pijaws.’ While he was trying to work this out, I asked him: ‘But what would happen if the captains were to fail in keeping the commons up to scratch?’

‘The magicians would then be consulted. They would diagnose the malady and prescribe a cure.’

‘And if that failed, too? If there were a general malaise? If even the magicians lost their interest in maintaining the good life?’

He stopped, took off his yoke, and sat down under a service-tree. ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ he said, ‘but I find this last question difficult to answer while walking.’

‘Take your time.’

He opened and shut his mouth two or three times, as if afraid of divulging a secret, yet at the same time anxious to tell me the truth. Suddenly his eye caught something in the distance and his face lighted up. ‘Look!’ he said excitedly. ‘Look yonder!’

‘I don’t see what you’re pointing at.’

‘Flapping through the air across the hill, with her legs stuck out behind her!’ He bowed his head nine times.

‘Oh, that heron. What of it?’