A Sea-Grape Tree

by Rosamond Lehmann

  ‘Ah, don’t worry, I shall wait to see him over. Any time now—any time.’

  ‘You mean—he won’t live much longer?’

  ‘I mean that. His course is nearly run. Now and again he has a despondent turn. I tell him his contribution is not to be despised: he has made his own contribution. Sensitive as you are, dear, you will grasp my meaning.’

  ‘Well … He certainly makes a powerful impact.’

  ‘Speaking as one with a lifetime of hotel management behind her, I deplore the inconvenience. But there’s love among the cinders there—that’s the thing to cling to.’

  ‘You mean his feeling for Daisy?’

  ‘I knew you would catch on. I grant you in this instance love has run amok, but who are we to judge? It’s a beginning. Better to have loved and—well—than never to have loved at all. Tempered by wisdom it will stand him in good stead his next time down. I see him as a high-up in the bloodstock line; or as a grand worker, maybe, for poor, goaded, belaboured, patient animals in the evening of their days. Remember him in your prayers, dear. He is in need of them.’

  ‘I don’t pray, I’m afraid, I don’t know how. Perhaps I will learn some day.’

  ‘You will. You will.’

  ‘But I’d do anything for you, Miss Stay.’

  Suddenly Miss Stay abandons her contortions, facial and verbal, and says quietly: ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Yes—I do.’

  ‘Then care for my lamb, should occasion offer.’ She gestures in the direction of the bungalow. ‘Should she ever come to England your paths might cross again. She might need help, and you could give it.’

  ‘Of course. I’d always help her if I could. But I do hope—you sound rather—I do hope she’s not likely to need anybody’s help. How is the Captain this morning?’

  ‘Not stirring when I left—nor Ellie either. Oh, the Captain’s not about to kick the bucket by a long chalk. He has the constitution of an ox.’ Pensively she adds: ‘And a virile chap to boot.’

  ‘They are the dearest people. They have both been so good to me. Everybody has.’

  ‘The truth is you’re a perfect little catalyst, as I’ve said before,’ exclaims Miss Stay.

  ‘I wonder what you mean. That I cause changes in people?—in their lives? How can I? How do I do it?’

  ‘Oh, not by meddling!—not by wiles and guilefulnesses—quite the contrary. Sometimes it takes an innocent, Mistress Anemone, to be a catalyst. I fancy it is written in your destiny. There’s the mystery.’

  Casting a rapid backward glance over her troubled wavering life history, the visitor thinks, with consternation, that this judgment might contain a truth.

  ‘A stranger bringing changes, that is what showed up—or seemed to.’ Miss Stay’s tone is dreamy. She adds with a delicate hint of triumph: ‘And thus it has turned out. Now wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Certainly my life has changed.’ She blushes.

  ‘Mysterious are His ways,’ acknowledges Miss Stay. ‘Deep called to deep.’

  ‘You said—there would be a miracle,’ stammers the other, feeling the blush take over uncontrollably. ‘I wonder, did you mean—what’s happened? You know, don’t you, what has happened?’ Miss Stay is silent. ‘Do you think he will be—what you hoped, expected—saved?’ Lamely she concludes: ‘What he said he didn’t want to be.’

  Miss Stay now appears to be returning from a far journey. After a pregnant pause she sighs, then mutters: ‘Yes. Yes. All is well.’

  What can she be getting at? The visitor superstitiously fingers the medallion hidden beneath her blouse. Tension grows in the empty dining room: it is as if a long withdrawing wave of air were being sucked out, out.

  At this moment Winkliff appears from the verandah with a basketful of fresh-picked flowers. Miss Stay receives it from him and begins to make up mixed bouquets and plunge them into the little Victorian-glass table vases. She is fully awake now, voluble, vivacious, twitching.

  ‘Ah, it was a mortal shame. Poor blessed woman, how I pitied her. She went into deep waters—deep deep waters, they closed over her. And ever since? … Oh, now and then I have been tempted to despair.’ Her floral task accomplished, she stands rocking on her heels, her head flung back. ‘Take you and I dear, place us side by side, even our guardian angels might conclude one of us cannot be a woman. But I am one!’ Her arms fly up, she strikes her breast. ‘I love the man. I would have died for him. Well, now I need not!’ Wiping her eyes, she chuckles—a youthful cheerful sound, before which the visitor cannot but feel abashed. ‘You are a sly puss, Mistress Nemone! However, the wind bloweth where it …’ Again she chuckles, vehemently nods. ‘Who knows? Maybe she had a hand in it. Who is to say? It would be like her, eh? Should she pull him over? Should she let him go? Destroy him? Save him? I take it she was ever one to take her opportunities regardless—’

  ‘She was ruthless,’ admits the candidate.

  ‘And do herself some good to boot,’ continues Miss Stay, equally regardless. ‘You were her opportunity, heaven sent—in a manner of speaking heaven sent.’

  ‘I think she really wished me well; she was always fond of me,’ protests the candidate, trying for strict fairness with a dash of pity. ‘And she must have loved him very much.’

  ‘No doubt of that. Ah well! he’s safe now: she can’t pull him over. The world tastes sweet to him again—the world, the flesh—hmm hmm …’

  ‘We love each other,’ cries the departing visitor. ‘It’s more than—I adore him. It’s nothing to do with her, with anybody else. You must believe it!’

  ‘I do.’ Miss Stay is soothing. ‘No, no, she’s gone. Bless her, that’s one of us saved, that’s one thing certain.’

  ‘You said once … He told me you said you didn’t expect him to make old bones.’

  ‘Did I say that? That’s just old woman talk, you must know that: just cackling old nurse’s talk. Don’t give it another thought.’

  A car has been climbing the steep drive from the plantation road. It stops. Next moment Kit and Trevor have appeared, with shining morning faces, with immaculate new shirts, one rose, one duck egg blue, bow ties, cream shantung suits.

  ‘God bless you,’ says Miss Stay. ‘God keep you.’

  They embrace.

  ‘Take care of him,’ whispers the visitor.

  While the luggage is being stowed she runs to the verandah for one last look across the flowering terraces down to the bay, ablaze with morning sun. No boat. No figure moving. No sign of that white ever-wheeling bird. Dissolved in light, the hut, the sea-grape tree have disappeared.

  Postscript

  My last novel was A Sea-Grape Tree, published in 1976, a sequel to The Ballad and the Source. I have, in my mind, a third novel in the sequence, which will now never be written, which draws together the threads of the first two books. But first, for those readers who may wish to be reminded of these novels, I shall attempt to reintroduce, briefly, some of the characters.

  The Ballad and the Source spans the years of the Great War. The story unfolds through the eyes of Rebecca Landon, a ten-year-old, who lives with her family in the quiet of the English countryside. Through Rebecca we meet the scandalous Jardine family, who have returned to the country and live near the Landons: the enigmatic Sibyl, and her grandchildren Malcolm and Maisie (who is to be become, for Rebecca, ‘the first woman friend I ever had’). It is, however, Mrs Jardine who is the central character of the novel, a woman with a passionate, stormy past, who is to haunt Rebecca throughout her life.

  Sixteen years later we encounter Rebecca again in A Sea-Grape Tree. Deserted by her un-named, married lover, she travels alone to a magical island in the Tropics. Here she meets Johnny who tells Rebecca that Sibyl Jardine is buried on the island. The other residents include Miss Stay, presiding genius and advanced psychic; Captain and Mrs (Ellie) Cunningham; Tony de Pas, the local planta
tion owner; Kit and Trevor, artistic lovers; and the once dashing Johnny, Mrs Jardine’s last adored protégé, paralysed from the waist down in the First World War, his servant Louis, and his wife and nurse Jackie. Rebecca (or ‘Anonyma’ as she is known on the mysterious Isle) has a passionate affair with the reclusive Johnny, and as a token of his trust he gives her a medallion: inside is the address of the girl, Sylvia, he was to have married before his accident. Rebecca leaves the Isle with two promises: the first is to Miss Stay, to care for her ‘lamb’, Ellie Cunningham, ‘should occasion offer’; the second to Johnny, to pass the medallion to his former love should anything happen to him. But what echoes in her mind long after she leaves is neither of these two charges—it is the conversation she has had with the vibrant spirit of Mrs Jardine, who is still haunting the island and all its inhabitants. Her sinister shadow is finally lifted.

  A Sea-Grape Tree is generally considered an unsatisfactory work. It would ill become me to argue for it; but perhaps I might just venture to say that Anonyma’s conversation with Sibyl Jardine was intended to be a telepathic one. Telepathy between the incarnate and the discarnate is much less uncommon than is generally supposed. Sibyl is made to speak as she spoke on earth, as in The Ballad and the Source, in a somewhat didactic or mandarin style; but I see the experiment was rash and courted irritation, head-shaking, even mockery from a few critics ever willing and never afraid to wound. The action takes place on the brink, as it were, of another dimension, part poetic, out of time, part realistic: a kind of fabled or Prospero-type isle, where misfits, exiles in the world’s terms, shipwrecked people, are washed up, find shelter, healing, loving kindness; even the dream of love accepted and fulfilled. In her generous and beautiful introduction to this edition, Janet Watts writes that the book requires a sequel. I did intend one. For the last time, I imagined, my ‘daimon’ descended, as of old, and drew back the curtain, showing me in one flash the entire landscape with figures, static, waiting to be animated, woven into an organic pattern. I saw it all; I knew it could be done, but the prospect daunted me, the energy required seemed altogether lacking. I have never in my life made a synopsis or sketched out a plot beforehand, but I do quite often think about this novel, seeing particular vignettes with clarity. This postscript gives a rough idea of this book that I shall never write.

  The world of myth and magic is left behind for good; Anonyma resumes her name, Rebecca, and returns to ‘ordinary life’. She goes back to the flat which she had shared part-time with her lover. She discovers the extraordinary reason why he failed to keep his date when she embarked for that tropic isle. The reason is quite clear in my mind, but I wish to keep it a secret. She breaks with him, and he disappears. Johnny writes that he will be with her exactly a year from now, but he does not come. It is now 1939. She hears, probably through Kit and Trevor, with whom she has kept in touch, the appalling news. Tragedy has struck the island. Tony de Pas has been murdered, found shot dead in his car. By whom? It is not known, but he had many enemies. Jackie, who loved him, is distraught. Johnny moves back to his own house on the hill, which he had left whilst having his affair with Rebecca, feeling that he cannot desert Jackie until she has recovered. After all, he married her, he says, and he is an honourable man. He says he will come as soon as he possibly can.

  After that, months of silence from the Isle; and now it is September 1939. Rebecca has a compulsion to go in search of Maisie, and she finds her, running, perhaps, a maternity clinic in the East End, and it is from Maisie she hears the truth. Remember that Maisie was there when Sibyl Jardine died, and had made friends with all the community on the island. Johnny died in Louis’ arms, without warning, of a heart attack. I don’t see any of this clearly, but what is vivid is that Rebecca gets into her car and goes to somewhere in the West Country to return the medallion to Sylvia as she has promised. From the lane she watches Sylvia in the rather large garden of her thatched cottage, picking blackcurrants. I see exactly what Sylvia looks like—rather faded and untidy, nice face, wearing slacks. In the end Rebecca simply slips the medallion through the flap of the letter-box and drives away. On the journey back it suddenly strikes her: ‘But he knew he would never come back. He must have known even when he gave me the medallion.’ War breaks out. She and Maisie have re-established their old intimacy and she agrees to take Tarni, Maisie’s daughter, and perhaps one or two other children to her cottage in the country out of reach of the bombs. Tarni’s father? Oh, Tarni is the fruit of a casual encounter on a walking tour, perhaps in France. ‘I told you’, said Maisie, ‘I would never marry, but it doesn’t mean I preserved my sacred virginity—not by a long chalk.’

  Now comes Part II, and I think Rebecca writes it in the first person. This is mainly the story of Ellie Cunningham, whom she runs into by chance on a brief visit to London. Ellie has changed her name to Mrs Macleod, ‘Mummy’s name’, has inherited a large, dreary London house from her only relative, an aunt, and has become an anxious, haggard landlady, keeping up soignée, lady-like appearances. She does fire watching. She takes lodgers, whom she distrusts, and finds ‘very common, but you can’t be too choosey’. But what has happened to her husband the Captain? ‘Oh, he became totally infatuated with that awful nurse.’ Told Ellie to clear out. ‘It was sex,’ says Ellie. Shortly after he had a massive stroke, and that was that. Rebecca recalls her promise to Miss Stay of the Isle, now passed on, to care for her lamb if she ever had occasion, and starts befriending Ellie, though with a sinking, uncharitable heart. Ellie has become more and more of a bore and a chatterbox; she has retained something of her pre-1914 appearance of a pretty woman (‘She has much thicker hair than she used to have and the colour seems unreal. Can it be a wig?’) She doesn’t like dwelling on the past; it is too painful, but comforts herself with pious slogans. Sometimes Rebecca hears her murmuring ‘God is kind.’ She invites her to her cottage for the weekend, and Ellie and Tarni strike up a close schoolgirl friendship. They gossip together and garden, and wash their hair. Ellie teaches her to cut out and sew. Tarni has inherited much of her great-grandmother Sibyl Jardine’s beauty, but not her character. She is a splendid girl—candid, stubborn, literal-­minded, good as gold. After a couple of gin and tonics at the village pub Ellie bursts into tears, and out come all her woes. She has had hopes: her solicitor, a little younger of course, but not all that much, had obviously fancied her; taken her out to supper, gone home with her, made love to her. But she hadn’t seen him since. Once or twice she rang up, and he always made excuses. But she’s so lonely. She longs for a man in her life: she’s a born homemaker, she says. Surely she has much to offer. ‘There must be lots of lonely chappies, widowers retired from service abroad, still active and healthy—a gentleman, of course, it would have to be.’ She’s heard of a certain highly recommended Marriage Bureau. What does Rebecca think? Rebecca, of course, is only too happy to pay the quite stiff entrance fee. Hopes revived, Ellie has been introduced to a rather attractive, middle-aged bachelor, retired from the Indian Civil Service, so there is much in common.

  Time passes—no word from Ellie. The telephone seems out of order, or is never answered. Finally Rebecca rings up the Marriage Bureau. ‘I am sorry to tell you, my dear, that Mrs Macleod lied to us about her age. We cannot have that sort of thing. It would give us a bad name.’ And where is she? They have no idea, she’s no longer on their books. Next Rebecca hears that Ellie is in hospital. She goes to visit her, and finds her in a Jerry-built annexe of an evacuated hospital somewhere not too far away. At first she does not recognize her. She’s deteriorating rapidly but still hopes that her friend the solicitor will pay her a visit—he has promised to do so. Tarni is very upset, she goes red in the face with angry, choked-back tears, when she hears that Ellie has died. ‘She was nicer than, much nicer than—’ I waited ‘—than almost anyone,’ says Tarni. She insists on going to the funeral with Rebecca, carrying a huge bunch of flowers. Ellie is buried, by her request, beside ‘Mummy’, in a pleasant country churchyard. The
only other mourner is the solicitor, a smooth-faced, old-young man wearing an old school tie. He has an opaque, cold eye. ‘She was my mother’s friend,’ he says more than once, in case of any misunderstanding about her age and status in his eyes. Rebecca goes back to the hospital to collect poor Ellie’s things which have been left to her, and a stout, plain, bespectacled nurse who had been kind to Ellie says ‘She wandered sometimes near the end. They do, you know. She would keep on saying “Stay, stay”—something like that. Well, at first I thought she was on about her stays, or else she was wanting more of my attention, but I had plenty of other patients to see to. At the very end, about 3 a.m. one night, she opened her eyes wide, and gave such a smile and said that word again. “Stay”, it sounded like.’ (Ellie is seeing Miss Stay, Staycie, who has ‘come to fetch her over’ as she had promised, long ago.)

  Most of this is taken straight from life, sad life. I knew the original of Ellie quite well during the War. She left me her only trinket, a little brooch. It has disappeared.

  Rosamond Lehmann, London, 1985

  About the Author

  Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) was born on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral, in Buckinghamshire, England, the second of four children. In 1927, a few years after graduating from the University of Cambridge, she published her first novel, Dusty Answer, to critical acclaim and instantaneous celebrity. Lehmann continued to write and publish between 1930 and 1976, penning works including The Weather in the Streets, The Ballad and the Source, and the short memoir The Swan in the Evening. Lehmann was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1982 and remains one of the most distinguished novelists of the twentieth century.

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