Gerontius

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  ‘But not for long,’ Molly said cheerfully.

  Above them the mountain obscured a good part of the blue sky. Its topmost crags seemed as near or as distant as the moon which, as a ghost of its night-time self, perversely lingered in the light of morning and balanced upon Madeira like an eroded pearl. With the herd instinct common among day-trippers their fellow-passengers, most of whom presumably had never been to Funchal before, found themselves getting gingerly into drawn-up bullock waggons.

  ‘I can’t see this getting us very far,’ Edward observed as he stooped under the gay cretonne canopy and settled himself on a hard wooden seat covered in leather. ‘Don’t tell the gentleman up front but I think somebody has pinched his wheels.’

  ‘Ah, there’s a reason for that which you may not know. Many centuries ago a certain Teofilo was appointed first Bishop of Madeira, a young man whose conversion to Christianity had taken place while witnessing the martyrdom of St Catherine. He fetched up in Lisbon as a mendicant theologian famous for two things: his charity and his horror of wheels – for ever since that awful day he couldn’t bear to see anything which reminded him of Catherine’s torment.’

  ‘He must have had a trying time crossing Europe.’

  ‘Abominable. He walked, of course, and to drown the sound of carts and carriages on the few roads he was forced to take he used to stop, face the ditch and sing a psalm as loud as he could. You can imagine he arrived in Lisbon after an unconscionable time and quite hoarse. But what nowadays would be thought eccentricity was in those times accounted piety and he rose rapidly in the Church. When he was appointed Bishop here he was for the first time able to exercise real power in the service of his pet aversion. He simply banned all wheels on Madeira.’

  With a jerk the bullock took up the slack in its harness and they set off along the cobbles, rumbling and juddering.

  ‘This is nothing but a sled!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Molly. ‘They all are. Not a wheel among them. Oh, you’ll see wheels here now and then. After all, despite the monstrous piety and conservatism of the Madeirans it is nearly eleven centuries since Teofilo died. But not many – you look. I believe these things are called carros,’ she added.

  ‘Pray excuse me,’ broke in a gentle voice from the seats behind them, ‘but I couldn’t help overhearing your account.’ Turning, they found the two spinsters from their table leaning forward. ‘Good morning, Sir Edward. Good morning,’ these ladies said in parenthesis. ‘But,’ continued the first, ‘surely your version is at variance with the explanation given in Calixões?’ She held up a battered red volume.

  ‘Ah, Calixões,’ said Molly, somewhat in the indulgent tone of a renowned chemist being lectured by his great-aunt on phlogiston. ‘I don’t believe anybody takes Calixões very seriously nowadays, not since that extraordinary hoax … But here we are. We have to get out here.’

  The fleet of carros had stopped outside a rack-railway station, happening to coincide with the arrival of a funicular train consisting of half a dozen coaches of weird aspect, having been constructed at an angle corresponding to that of the gradient. Little rattly parallelograms, they drew into the platform and awaited new custom. Expressions of interest and amusement made themselves audible, mingled with one or two notes of dismay; but in the event twenty more or less resigned Britons soon found themselves seated in staggered rows being hauled upwards. As the winding-station with its quickly-suppressed images of ad hoc bits of wiring and loose girders fell away, so did the electrical whine of the motors until they were ascending in almost complete silence.

  ‘It’s quite like ballooning,’ offered the red-cheeked explorer, Fortescue. The face which still needed a pith helmet to give it shape was babyish with pleasure. He had brought a pair of binoculars with him, Molly noticed.

  Somewhere beneath them a cable transmitted a soft thrum and cogs engaged the metal teeth of the rack with no more than a crackle of grease. On either side terraces, villas and bulks of naked rock slipped away, and as they did so the passengers’ spirits rose in the morning air. Gradually the town spread itself below, the harbour became a map, the Hildebrand – glimpsed now and then among the hydrangeas – a grey-and-white model. The warm scent of baked earth, dew and dust rose in pockets. Some late butterflies investigated the fig-trees’ remaining leaves. Windings of narrow cobbled roadway disappeared beneath them, re-emerging to turn abruptly aside and fall from sight.

  ‘It’s a pity it’s so late in the year,’ Molly said. ‘Spring must be amazingly beautiful – just look at all the plants: mimosa, hydrangeas, lilies, agapanthus, to say nothing of the things people have growing up their houses. Simply between the harbour and the station I saw bougainvillaea, wisteria, strelitzia, hibiscus and jacaranda.’

  ‘Very showy,’ a lady remarked.

  ‘Even so. When I was here in June it was much clearer from the vegetation that we were passing from a hot zone to a more temperate one as we went up. For instance those fields down there behind the town were full of sugar cane and rice but by this point it’s mostly grapes and wheat. I did some sketches in wash: the colour changes were wonderfully subtle.’

  ‘You can still tell from the trees,’ Edward pointed out. ‘It’s all palms and figs down there but it looks as if those are pines and oaks we’re coming to. I wonder how high up we are?’

  This had been one of those semi-public conversations which self-consciously include people who otherwise could not be excluded except by whispering. Fortescue was able to volunteer without embarrassment:

  ‘About a thousand feet, I’d say. Give or take.’

  ‘Is this a balloonist speaking?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I haven’t done that much ballooning, sir. But I can certainly speak as a pilot.’

  ‘You’ve flown in an aeroplane?’ Edward’s interest was that of someone who had long ago discovered an enthusiasm for motoring and logically regarded flight as the next step.

  ‘Many,’ admitted Fortescue. ‘I was in the RFC a goodish while.’ Something in his tone implied recognition that war heroes were becoming unfashionable and he hardly wished to be pressed. ‘The altimeters were not always reliable, you see, so we became not bad at judging height. Had to be, really. No trick to it,’ he added modestly as if someone were likely to imply there were. ‘Anybody could do it with a bit of practice. In any case I’ve cheated.’ The amorphous face beamed round upon the occupants of the carriage.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ Molly asked him.

  ‘Not a bit of it. But the guide book gives the height of this mountain as three thousand feet and while we were still on the ship I took notice of various features. This line of forest we’re coming up to is about halfway, for instance. And that whitish splash that looks as if somebody’s tipped paint over the cliff, that’s at about two thousand feet.’

  This evidently professional approach to landscape by someone claiming to be a pilot and reputed to be an explorer made Molly look at Fortescue with some attention for the first time. Suddenly the binoculars on their lanyard about his neck looked like a tool rather than a prop, and quite well-worn at that.

  ‘You were wise to bring those,’ she said. ‘The view from the top is quite spectacular.’

  ‘I never travel without ’em.’

  Baby’s dummy, she thought, unaccountably touched by his innocent meaty cheeks, the formless clump of hairs on his upper lip.

  Roughly at the point where he had indicated the two-thousand-foot mark they reached a depressed-looking clearing in the middle of which stood a huge house of un-Madeiran aspect. Here the train halted but nobody got in or out and after a minute it started again.

  ‘What an extraordinary house. It looks like the sort of hotel one blunders on towards nightfall in Scotland.’

  ‘Or one of those places which advertise in the back of Ward Lock’s Guide to Harrogate. You know, “Premier position. Near Moors and Gardens. Electric light throughout. Lift to all Floors”.’

  ‘“Special Suicide Suite�
�,’ put in Fortescue and went an immediate red.

  ‘Well really,’ said one of the spinsters, she and her companion turning away abruptly to glare out of the windows.

  Despite the season the little terminus of Monte at the summit was bright with potted flowers. A uniformed official with operatic moustaches bowed to them as they disembarked and directed their attention to a nearby house where, he intimated, quite exceptional cups of chocolate and glasses of port might be had of his wife.

  ‘Later,’ they said in English and with gestures of stirring above their abdomens mimed that they had already breakfasted or maybe that the sudden ascent had destroyed all appetite. The official made several more melancholy bows and then went and watered his geraniums using a wine flask with an exaggeratedly long neck. The sun winked off the frogging on his shoulders and made pinkly translucent the ears of a motheaten tabby cat dozing on a folded copy of O Correio. A notice board nearby announced the height above sea level. The voices of today’s visitors died away.

  They straggled across a shady square which, had they been able to ignore the surrounding terrain, they might easily have supposed a well-visited Mediterranean village. But in one direction lay a gloomy pine forest in front of which a single-storey building with tall windows stood amid the sort of terraces on which tourists take tea and tell each other how lucky they are to be there.

  ‘I say, what an abominable place,’ said Edward.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Molly agreed. ‘That’s the –’ she consulted her ticket ‘– the Chalet-Restaurant “Esplanade” in which we’re entitled to eat and drink.’

  ‘But not to be merry, I shouldn’t think. How awful pines are. What’s that church over there?’

  ‘Our Lady of Something, I forget. But when I was here before it happened quite by chance to coincide with an immense event. The place was stuffed with bishops and sightseers. We almost missed our boat because the trains were all full. It turned out they were cementing up the Austrian Emperor into his tomb. Charles the Somethingth – Fourth, possibly? Lots of processions, trumpets and whatnot. And about a million little brown choirboys all with cropped heads and monkeyish grins. We sat on that verandah thingy and made jokes about Catholics. Oh heavens, I suppose you’re not by any chance … You are, aren’t you? Sir Edward, I’m most … I mean, of course I shouldn’t have …’

  Much as her confusion amused him he ended it by reassuring her that he was not remotely offended. ‘I daresay it was pretty much of a spectacle.’

  ‘Oh it was. But even so. I’m afraid I’m always putting my foot in it like that,’ she said gratefully. ‘Now, we don’t want breakfast yet, do we?’ she turned to Fortescue and the spinsters who were a pace or two behind in the delicate manner of those who might or might not be considered part of a group. ‘Let’s earn it, then.’

  ‘You’ve planned us some exercise?’ Fortescue asked her. She thought he still had the air of a puppy eager to make amends after a noisome gaffe.

  ‘Only a little. But having come this far it’s well worth getting the view. You’d think people would be glad to stretch their legs after lying in their bunks for the best part of a week.’ She glanced meaningfully towards a divergent group of fellow-passengers who were heading determinedly for the Chalet-Restaurant ‘Esplanade’ before she led off along a path skirting the forest of pines.

  They walked uphill to where the cranium of the mountain broke through all pretence of plants and soil, a fissured plateau of baked rock meeting head-on the subtropical sun. All of a sudden they stopped being on Madeira and were instead on a point above the surface of the globe. In nearly every direction the sea stretched its crinkling sheet over the rim of the world like a drumskin on which solar rays and meteorites were falling in motionless profusion, making a great empty pattering sound they felt rather than heard. There was the sense of having been lifted out of the world, of having been extracted from it even as their memories of it as containing large and solid things such as buildings were replaced by the panorama of Funchal below, a mere map of a town on a toy planet. This majestic detachment was still further heightened by the brilliantly clear morning air, the windless expanse of blue above them and the ruffled pan of deeper blue below, neither of which elements seemed to contain them. What was more, the far-off northern port they had left behind, somewhere over many a stormy horizon together with unreal images of urban fogs and glum wintering, belonged now to a different planet and to people other than themselves.

  Fortescue was studying the harbour with his glasses. Edward could see the Hildebrand was being joined by a rectangular vessel whose stern trailed a short white stalk of foam.

  ‘I think we’re going to take coal on,’ he said around his lenses. ‘It looks like some sort of lighter.’

  ‘The Chief Engineer told me we burn seventy tons a day, but maybe we burned more coming through that storm. This really is a splendid vantage point. I suppose you aviators get quite used to views like this.’

  ‘Not at all, sir,’ said Fortescue surprisingly. ‘That is, one becomes accustomed to them but so far as I’m concerned they’re never boring. Still, to get the full effect you do need that feeling of hanging in air instead of standing on an edge. You’ve never been up in an aeroplane I presume, sir?’

  ‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, you must. It’s really the only thing. You’d be amazed by how solid it is. The air, I mean to say.’

  Edward thought of standing on Worcestershire Beacon in a gale, leaning against the wind, letting more and more of his weight tilt off his toes until for a fraction of a second the airstream might actually have been supporting his body like a yielding bed until he fell forward with a laugh. Oh days.

  ‘I must make the effort,’ he said half to himself.

  ‘I really would, sir. It won’t cost you much just to do a flip from some aerodrome but once you’ve got a taste for it there’s no knowing where it’ll stop. All sorts of people are taking to the air now. Someone told me there’s even a titled lady in her seventies – a duchess, I think – who’s learned to fly and is buying her own machine.’

  ‘You’re such a convincing salesman I can only suppose you must sell the things.’

  Fortescue laughed. ‘Not a bit of it. Really, I’m just enthusiastic because I’ve spent so much time in the cockpit.’

  ‘I hope you’ll excuse me but I believe you introduced yourself on our first evening as an explorer? Is this the latest craze, exploring by air?’

  ‘It may become so, sir. The advantages are obvious.’ And he told a story of a scheme he and an old comrade had dreamed up, to go to unmapped areas of the world and offer to carry out aerial surveying on behalf of governments. The Amazon region had seemed to them a sensible choice since so much was completely uncharted but, as the recent rubber boom had shown, there was clearly untold wealth to be had there. He had already made an exploratory visit to confirm this and now, having raised the capital in Europe, he was returning to Amazonas to put the scheme into operation. The old comrade had gone on ahead; Fortescue was following on with two machines.

  ‘But for some reason you had to leave them behind?’ hazarded Edward.

  ‘No, they’re aboard the Hildebrand. They’re all crated up in the hold. I must say I was a bit bothered in case they got too badly shaken about by that weather. But they’re both stout little buses. Johnny – that’s Johnny Proctor – has got our two old riggers and fitters from service days with him and they’ll have them together in a jiffy.’

  ‘I believe you’re an adventurer,’ said Molly who had been listening with evident interest.

  ‘Well I suppose it is a bit of a lark. But we’ve both sunk so much money into it now we’ve got to make it work or frankly we’ll be on our uppers. It’s a commercial proposition, all right. Regular government salary plus we can undertake work on commission for interested parties. What I mean is, we can map a river for the Brazilians but we might tell only Fry’s or Cadbury’s that its banks are lined with cocoa forest, what?’
And though his thirtyish baby’s face creased and dimpled Molly noticed a beadiness in his eyes as if behind the amiable, malleable world his outer person created as he moved through it certain hard experiences lay which had fixed all manner of edges and limits beyond which there would be no budging.

  By now others of the party who had also spurned the comforts of the ‘Esplanade’ had followed on and were scattered across the rock. Edward, Molly, Fortescue and the two spinsters had remained loosely together and at last turned from the panorama of Funchal and its harbour towards an inland view of Madeira. They reached a point from which they could see a hillside opposite them and several hundred feet lower. This was largely covered in scrub except where vast rectangular bites had been taken from its core of ochre rock. Whatever had once been quarried here must have been exhausted or no longer worth the effort to mine since the working was quite obviously abandoned. Some rusted cranejibs lay on its floor but all the access tracks were now covered in the ubiquitous tough bushes.

  ‘I sketched here too,’ said Molly. ‘I liked those iron-coloured stains. I suppose it used to be for iron ore.’

  ‘Now there I can be of information,’ came the unexpected remark of the spinster who had earlier addressed her in the carro.

  ‘Ah, you know what it is, then?’

  ‘I do indeed. They are the worn-out workings of a cakemine.’

  Molly tried to think what substance this might be when rendered in Portuguese, as she presumed this was. Caïque? Queìque? Maybe after all it was a technical English word for china clay or something.

  ‘What did they do with this cake?’ she asked, hoping for clues.

  ‘Exported it, mainly,’ said the spinster. ‘It was of particularly fine quality just here. Its colour which you noted is believed by geologists to have originated from beds of clay first laid down in the Pleistocene Era. It was on that very spot over there it was first excavated in any quantity for export around the world. As a matter of fact it’s your maligned Calixões we have to thank for the archival discovery that Bishop Teofilo died not as believed from apoplexy brought on by hearing a child bowl its hoop beneath his palace window but from a surfeit of Madeira cake – a substance to which he became hopelessly addicted quite late in life.’