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A Sea-Grape Tree
A Novel
Rosamond Lehmann
For Hugo and Mollie with love
Every evening, before the hour of sunset, Princess, the young maidservant, starts to light the lamps in the hotel: oil lamps, long glass funnels enclosed in brass containers with handles. Taking one in either hand, swinging them to the rhythm of her languid barefoot gait, she goes down, down the steep spiralling rock path to Captain Cunningham’s bungalow. As darkness falls she is enfolded in soft light, she becomes a lustrous image, a black Madonna with a golden aura, borne through waist-high hibiscus bushes by invisible bearers to the sea. Her black eyes catch a gleam; and moths and fireflies drift to the lamps and hover round her. Sometimes she has set some object or other nonchalantly upon her shapely astrakhan-capped head: a jug or a bowl for instance, or a roll of toilet paper, or the Cunninghams’ clean laundry. Down she sails through the electric air, through the thrumming, whirring, susurrating world of tropic nightfall; taking these beautiful lamps to the Cunninghams to give extra light to their verandah and their bridge table. This mosquito-proof verandah, its wooden pillars wreathed with bougainvillea, jasmine, clematis and flowering vines, is the social focus of the bay. Every three weeks or thereabouts in the winter months one group of visitors arrives at, another departs from the modest Victorian guest house which crowns the bay: British travellers mostly—stoutly upholstered middle-aged couples from the Midlands; occasionally a pair of honeymooners. But now and then appears a solitary person, a retired colonel maybe, or a naval captain (bachelor? —widower?), spry, alert, with innocent ideas and courtly manners; or maybe a woman on her own with paints and brushes; or botanizing; or convalescing; and self-sufficient; or a few wild, unsteady, wincing, patiently cherished or tolerated alcoholics, apt to linger; or just now and then, and usually male, someone who, though carrying a UK passport, and often seen around, and not overtly disreputable, broken, discredited or ignominiously labelled, continues silently, unassumingly to declare—but who notices or hears? who knows why or when? who asks? who cares? —‘I have resigned’; and to generate the miasma of failure and of humiliation; thereby causing social discomfort: or would cause it anywhere but here.
All these, going concerns and otherwise, quite a cross-section as Miss Stay the manageress frequently declares, are shepherded, under her strong leadership, down to the Cunninghams’ bungalow, to add to the number of those who have signed their Visitors’ Book, frequently adding a grateful tribute, or an appropriate line or two of verse.
The island is one of the smallest in the Windward group, not at all fashionable. Up to this year, which is 1933, it has scarcely begun to emerge from a paradisal state. Birds, butterflies, flowers, shrubs, flowering trees, and creepers abound in immeasurable splendour, profusion, and variety. No snakes. Idyllic isle. Only the natives do not correspond.
Princess is a physical exception—a perfect specimen, like a sudden rose in bloom on a waste patch; and some of the young children have a tender animal charm. But mostly they grow up undernourished, degenerate, vacant. The old sit slumped on the doorstep of their wretched shanties, smoking clay pipes, sunk in primeval lethargy. The more able-bodied, men and women, work in young Mr de Pas’s plantation on the hill. They come down at sunset with their baskets and cutlasses, striding swiftly, not smiling when they pass a white-skinned visitor but staring, staring and muttering in their throats. Once though, so Mrs Cunningham recounts, a young English woman, wandering alone (not very wise) to gather tree orchids, had an unpleasant experience. She was wearing candy-striped beach pyjamas—a garment never before encountered in these parts. When the natives saw her they stopped dead, doubled up with laughter, howling ambiguous comments. Then the women made a rush, surrounded her, fingering and patting her, half jeering, half admiring. ‘What a belle! Oh, what a belle!’ they cried. One of them snatched her beads and one her bracelet. She was frightened: they seemed on the verge of mayhem, about to tear her clothes off. The men stood aside watching with expressionless faces.
Young Mr de Pas came crashing round the bend of the hill in his antediluvian Ford, straight into the midst of them, honking his horn and braking with a blood-curdling screech. They scattered; in silence they sloped off down the hill. You would have thought he would have offered her a lift; but he passed on, not moving a muscle of his face. Not very chivalrous—but you have to get to know his funny ways. Queer chappie; lonely; you have to make allowances.
Whoever you are, no matter how recently introduced, you are urged, urged by Mrs Cunningham to stay a little longer. It is pleasant to relax in a rocking chair on the verandah and watch the sunset burn out from flame to rose to primrose and unearthly green on the horizon; to be fanned by the off-shore breath of wind that comes with the last of light. Also, far out beyond the towering palm-feathered bastions that enfold the bay you can watch the reef, watch the leaping ghost forever signalling, vanishing, as the wave forever breaks on it. Superstitious natives fear this beckoning spectre. Captain Cunningham, who is a splendid handyman, has cut back the bamboos, oleanders, tree-ferns in front of his abode to make a sizeable window; so that if he has a mind to he can train his binoculars upon the beach and spot any funny business that might be going on—anybody monkeying with other people’s property: for instance, anybody making off with young Mr de Pas’s motor boat, which is anchored in the bay; which the Captain borrows (with permission) when the fancy takes him to go fishing, or to drop in on a fellow he knows the other side of the headland. More often though he just sits on the verandah and keeps a sharp look-out.
‘But would anybody?’ asked the visitor: anonymous female person, with a discarded self, sitting between Captain and Mrs Cunningham, pressed, though delicately, to establish an identity, tense with the effort at all costs to conceal it.
‘Would anybody what?’ enquired the Captain brusquely; though perhaps not meaning to sound rude.
‘Well, steal … make off, you said, with …’
‘My dear Madam,’ his stare flickered over her ferociously; though here again it might be merely the effect of eyes both prominent and bloodshot-blue, ‘this isn’t Paradise before the Fall y’know. They’re born thieves all of ’em in these parts. Don’t know the meaning of honesty. No use trying to teach ’em any different.’
‘Do be careful, dear, to lock up any valuables,’ said Mrs Cunningham. ‘I’m sure you’ve got lots of pretty things, cosmetics as well—anything in that line the girls will take—scent or face cream or lipstick or even nail varnish.’
‘Princess did ask me for my talcum powder this morning.’
‘Oh, she’s a naughty girl, she really is—we’ve all tried so hard to teach her better. I hope you said certainly not.’
‘Well, no … I gave it to her. She said it was to powder her baby.’
‘Oh, she is a bad bad girl! She’s only just turned twenty and she’s got three babies. I don’t know who looks after them—her poor old granny I expect.’
‘She told me she didn’t fancy marriage, her husband might beat her, she said.’
‘What she needs, the brazen hussy!’ cried the Captain with enthusiasm; and his wife added, a thought swiftly: ‘They don’t go in for weddings much in these parts. Except just now and then, when they pass round the hat for a party. Then a whole bunch of them—all ages—pair off and the party goes on for days. By the way dear if you’ve got a camera be careful: they’ll never leave you alone.’
‘I’d like to photograph Princess.
She’s such a beauty.’
‘A beauty? Hach! Ah well, tastes differ. Can’t say she appeals to me.’ He shot her a glance of furious distrust, seized his rum punch and throwing his head back took a long pull at it. Hoping to propitiate him, the visitor said hurriedly:
‘What I meant about stealing … I thought they—the natives—rather avoided the beach. After dark anyway. The house boy, the one called Deshabille, looked scared stiff yesterday when Miss Stay told him to go down with a message for—for whoever lives in the hut on the beach. He wouldn’t. Miss Stay had to go herself.’
‘And Deshabille’s such an obliging boy as a rule,’ commented Mrs Cunningham. ‘Oh, they’re sure the beach is haunted. Staycie would bear that out.’
She turned for corroboration to Miss Stay, supine in a rocking chair behind her. But the manageress, her sinewy prehensile arms hugging her bony chest, her shingle cap askew, was sunk in deepest slumber.
‘Oh ho, the duppies! Hach hach hach!’ The Captain’s mirth produced a series of loud hollow barking sounds. He raised his binoculars and raked the circumference of the bay.
‘My dearly beloved spouse does not hold with ghosts,’ piped Mrs Cunningham. ‘He wouldn’t even if he saw one. But I believe in them—oh yes, I do indeed. Some people are born psychic. Mummy was very psychic. So was my Highland granny. Second sight was second nature to them. And of course Staycie has the gift. She’s a seventh child, you know. Are you psychic at all, Miss …?’
‘Care to have a squint?’ To put an end to foolish prattle the Captain handed the visitor his binoculars, and watched her sharply while she fumbled with the instrument. Managing at last to focus on the beach, she trapped the double image: a hut, a sea-grape tree.
Stereoscopically vivid in the powerful lens, the sea-grape tree reared up, its pale trunk twisting smooth and serpentine, its branches carrying a canopy of glaucous blue-fleshed leaves and pendant clusters of green berries, sterile and hard as stone. Beneath the tree the hut: a sort of cottage orné, set up on stilts, with a high-pitched roof of rosy shingles, its walls stuccoed a deep shade of tawny pink; ornamented with shell encrustrations: silvered-bronze shells, pearl, honey-coloured, milky flushed with rose and violet; shells of all shapes and sizes in convoluted patterns. A clumsy tarred old rowing boat was pulled up close to the front step, its oars propped against the tree. In the lambent twilight between lingering end of sunset and rise of the full moon every detail was still sharply defined. The close of day suffused the images in a dramatic darkly rose-gold light, defining every detail. Next moment all was blotted out. A long low whistle, an owl’s hoot twice repeated floated up from the direction of the hut. Who was the inhabitant?
‘That will be Johnny,’ exclaimed Mrs Cunningham on a note of triumph. ‘I always wait for it. Then I know everything’s tickety boo down there. Louis will come now and row him out for his evening dip. There’s a comfort in routine, don’t you think, Mrs? … especially if you have to lie there day in day out like Johnny.’
‘Doesn’t have to,’ growled the Captain. ‘Got a very jolly bungalow, you can see it opposite, half-way up the hill. Every convenience. Stays down there for choice. Rotten luck on his wife.’
‘Oh, he’s married …’
‘Yes. Well,’ said Mrs Cunningham, with caution. ‘Oh well, you can understand it, can’t you? Swimming keeps him fit—and the hut’s so much more handy. Louis is our boatman. He’s as strong as an ox: he can carry Johnny as if he was a little child.’
‘Can’t he walk at all?’
‘Paralysed from the waist down dear. The war. Oh, Jackie doesn’t mind being on her own, I fancy! She goes her own way … and Johnny’s grown to be more and more of a recluse. Morning and evening Louis rows him out and helps him roll into the water and then he swims and swims. Can’t you imagine what it means to him, the freedom?—tearing through the water like a seal? I do believe he could swim for miles with those huge shoulder muscles and splendid arms of his. But Louis keeps within hailing distance, just in case. He’d lay down his life for Johnny. Poor old Louis, he’s getting on. Some say he’s a hundred, but of course he can’t be. I do sometimes wonder—’ She broke off, looking mournful.
‘Hach!’ The Captain took another swig. ‘All getting long in the tooth, if you ask me. Still, never know your luck. Keep yourself in trim, m’dear. Work those biceps up. Dumb bells every morning.’
‘Don’t be silly, Harold. It’s a tragedy, Mrs … if ever there was one. Such a handsome chap he must have been, gorgeous!—well even now … He puts me in mind of Gary Cooper … you’ll see for yourself. He was one of our ace pilots—a real dare devil. He crashed on a test flight behind our lines in France and broke his back—in the very last month of the war or thereabouts.’
‘Rotten luck,’ conceded the Captain glumly.
Though not glamorous, he too, with his stiff leg and bronchial wheeze was probably a war hero.
‘Jackie was his nurse in hospital, and in the end she married him. I nearly said she caught him—though I suppose some might say he wasn’t much of a catch, poor Johnny. Still, quite a step up for her socially, her background’s very different, he comes from landed gentry, north country I believe. We always thought it couldn’t have been a love match—I knew it couldn’t. A man like that, such a proud chap, would never have borne to feel himself a burden to a truly loved one. I dare say it seemed the best solution.’
‘Plucky of her,’ muttered the Captain. ‘Give her credit.’
He seized his walking stick and struck the floor a volley of violent blows; at the same time shouting to a tough-coated preoccupied looking mongrel terrier on the step of the verandah: ‘Bob! Leave yourself alone, Sir! Have you got fleas or what’s your trouble?’
The dog shot him a look of blank affront, described a half turn, and continued his investigations, his back towards his master.
‘Now you’ve hurt his feelings. Poor Bobby, he can’t help scratching, he’s itchy all over. It’s time you gave him a bath. Bobby’s a somewhat morbid dog, Mrs … He broods and he broods. He brightens up if you throw sticks for him but don’t start it, he’d never let you rest.’
The visitor surprised herself by breaking into laughter.
‘We all get morbid here,’ continued her hostess. She sighed. ‘It’s the climate. It’s a most enervating climate.’
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Since nineteen twenty-two. We were the first white settlers, weren’t we Harold—in a manner of speaking. There were one or two old Creole families, like the de Pases, going a long way back. But they’ve mostly died out or left the island. Young Tony de Pas is the last of his line. Though I suppose he might marry … some nice strong healthy girl and … But somehow I don’t—’
‘Rotten bad life,’ chipped in the Captain. ‘Stands out a mile. Bad blood somewhere back along the line.’
‘Too true, poor old Tony. There was a curse put on the family, so they say. I don’t know why or when. We don’t listen to gossip. Oh, but Tony’s a scream. He ought to be on the Halls. He keeps us in fits with his imitations.’
‘What does he imitate?’
‘Animal noises chiefly—quite uncanny. He’s a ventriloquist as well. He quite takes in poor Bobby when he throws his voice and barks from just behind him. He makes a rude noise and Bobby thinks it’s him! Oh, and lots of other animals—birds too. You must meet him dear—he’s a most versatile chappie. Oh, this’ —she waved an arm widely—‘was one great flourishing estate once. You’ve noticed the old mill? Isn’t it picturesque? The natives still tread the cocoa once in a while. But soon after the war our poor little island fell on bad days. There was a terrible hurricane, it stripped most of the plantations to the bone. The shock killed old Mr de Pas. Tony was just a boy then. He left school and set to and worked like a—well I mustn’t say like a black, and got most of the land going again. That’s when he put up part of it for sale.
Harold saw it advertised and we came out on spec. The first guests at Invergarrie, weren’t we Staycie? Oh, she’s still snoozing. The old de Pas home that was, he turned it into a guest house. Those were happy times. We bought our plot and built to Harold’s very own specifications.’
‘How tremendously clever of you, Captain Cunningham. It is so charming.’
‘Hach! Ah well … Suits our modest requirements pretty well. Show you over it one day.’ He flashed a brief smile, more a twitch of the lips, in her direction. (Is he very shy, perhaps? —a sensitive, wincing man under the coarse exterior?) ‘Not a palace. Fact is, m’wife thinks it pretty much of a come down.’
‘Well, after Malaya, you know—that’s where we were before the war. Waited on hand and foot!—we were spoilt I dare say. And then … it was lonely here at first. My husband is a very active man, he didn’t take kindly to retirement, did you Harold? He can be very grumpy.’ She cast a speculative eye in the direction of her unresponsive spouse. ‘But then our little crowd started to come along—Jackie and Johnny—and a most interesting elderly lady, devoted to Johnny, she’s dead now. And old Mr Bartholomew up at Invergarrie. He’s Miss Stay’s special pet. Now there’s an interesting man. Such exquisite old-world manners. A great traveller, it seems; speaks six languages, very brainy.’
‘Spouts poetry,’ intervened the Captain.
‘Oh, by the yard. He does let drop the strangest remarks. He’s in love with his horse—Daisy her name is. He calls her his best girl, he dotes, my dear. Never a day passes but he’s riding, riding, though he must be getting on for ninety, waving his hat and whooping like a cowboy, and talking to himself—or her, poor animal.’
‘He sounds a little eccentric.’
‘Oh yes, he is. If you want to study human nature, dear, you’ve come to the right spot. Then there’s Kit and Trevor, the gay lads we call them. Dear boys, not boys exactly any more, very artistic and so kind and helpful. So we’re quite a little colony. I only hope we can keep the atmosphere—well, you know, British. Oh, but I do miss England! How was it when you left? The weather?’
A Sea-Grape Tree Page 1
