‘I suppose you think I was a bloody fool? Barging in, after all these years, and taking it for granted you’d be pleased to see me.’
‘No, Michael. No—of course I don’t. We are pleased. And I think that’s the best way to do things: on the spur of the moment.’
‘When they showed me that postcard, it seemed like a sign … I’ve been wanting to come and see you for a long time. I kept finding out, in different ways, where you were. I hoped we’d meet in India, but I just missed you. And, last summer, I knew you were back at the Schwarzsee, but I was so busy, and then I got myself into that trouble in the Sudetenland, and it was too late.’
‘Why didn’t you ever write?’
‘I did, I wrote several letters.’
‘We never got them.’
‘I always tore them up.’
‘You should have let us know you were coming here,’ I said—to avoid the question he probably wanted me to ask.
‘So that you’d have had time to clear out?’
‘Don’t be an idiot. I only mean we might have missed you again.’
‘Wouldn’t that have been a disaster!’
‘What’s the matter with you, Michael? Why do you talk like that? You know how fond we both are of you.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Michael exclaimed with abrupt violence, ‘can’t you at least be sincere? Stop pretending you don’t understand.’
‘What is there to understand?’ I asked, and again I heard my voice ring false. I felt excited and just a little scared of what was coming next.
But Michael seemed suddenly to have lost his aggressiveness. ‘Nothing,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m sorry. I was a fool to have come here. I’ll leave tomorrow. Or as soon as I can get a boat.’
‘Nonsense! We won’t let you.’ I put my hand on his shoulder for a moment, with a sickening, big-brotherly familiarity that was worthy of a professional scoutmaster. ‘I want you to stay,’ I added.
‘Do you mean that?’
‘Of course I mean it.’
For the third time. Michael looked at me; trying vainly to search my face, as it seemed. But the darkness protected me, I knew. He wouldn’t find anything there.
‘I don’t believe you do mean it,’ he said, at length; and now he sounded beaten and rather pathetic. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I’ll stay as long as I can, because I want to. I’m sorry I was such an idiot, just now. Let’s talk about something else.’
‘All right,’ I said.
But, of course, there was nothing else to talk about. We walked most of the way back to the hotel in silence. Just as we reached it, Michael said: ‘You won’t tell Elizabeth anything about this, will you, Stephen?’
‘You know I won’t,’ I said; and then added, rather too innocently: ‘Anyway, what is there to tell?’
Michael didn’t answer.
Three or four evenings later, Michael and I were sitting on the hotel terrace after supper. Elizabeth had left us for a few minutes, to get a book from the bedroom. We were smoking in silence and watching the ghostly glowing line of phosphorus which the waves made, breaking out of the night along the shore.
After a little while, two of the other guests came out on to the terrace, a man and a woman. I had a glimpse of their faces in the light from the window of the dining-room: they were an American couple who had arrived the day before. They couldn’t possibly have recognized us, sitting back in the darkness against the wall. They walked over to the corner of the terrace and stood looking at the sea, with their backs to us.
‘Sure,’ the man was saying, ‘that’s the one I mean. She’s a writer, the manager told me. She’s here with her husband.’
‘Her husband?’ The woman laughed incredulously. ‘Not either one of those boys she runs around with, surely? They must be her sons.’
‘The older one’s her husband.’
‘He couldn’t be!’
‘Want to bet?’
‘Well, if he is, I think it’s disgusting. He must be all of twenty-five years younger than she is.’
‘I guess she has the money,’ the man said.
Michael grabbed my arm and stood up, pulling me to my feet. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he muttered, in a hoarse angry voice. I followed him down the steps from the terrace on to the beach.
‘The swine!’ Michael exclaimed. ‘If we’d stayed another second, I think I’d have knocked their heads together.’
‘They didn’t mean any harm,’ I said. ‘They were just talking.’
‘You don’t mind?’ Michael sounded quite shocked.
‘No, not really.’
‘But you must mind.’
‘I did at first, a little. You see, this has happened before—several times. I’d mind if Elizabeth had overheard it.’
‘But she knows, surely?’
‘Knows what?’
‘Well’—Michael was embarrassed—‘that people might think such things—’
‘Listen,’ I said; ‘this isn’t as tragic as you make it sound. Elizabeth’s fortytwo. I’m nearly thirty. I dare say I do look younger than that. And perhaps she looks a bit older. She was terribly sick, you know, the winter before last … But all that’s pretty unimportant when two people have been together as long as we have. I’m sure it doesn’t worry her.’
‘I’m not thinking of Elizabeth,’ said Michael, almost impatiently.
‘Then I don’t see—why all this fuss?’
‘It’s just that—no, you’ll be angry if I say it—’
‘Say what?’
‘I’d better not.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Go on, tell me.’
‘Stephen, I can’t stand seeing you unhappy like this.’
‘I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,’ I said sharply. ‘Me unhappy? However did you get that idea?’
‘I told you you’d be angry.’
‘But, Michael, I’m not. It’s too ridiculous.’
‘I’m sorry I said it.’
‘That doesn’t matter. But it just isn’t true at all … Don’t you believe me?’
‘If it isn’t true, I’m glad,’ Michael said, in his formal everyday voice.
We had turned toward the hotel. And now I saw Elizabeth come out on to the terrace, and stand there, with the light behind her. Obviously, she couldn’t see us. The two Americans were still there, watching.
‘We’re down here,’ I shouted. ‘We’ll come up.’
As the three of us passed the Americans on our way into the house, Michael turned a scowl on them which made them lower their furtively inquisitive eyes. I wonder what you’d do, I thought, if I were to tell you all there is to know about us? And, thinking this, I gave them a broad grin.
6
ONE DAY AT lunch, about a week after this, Elizabeth told us that she had been having a long talk with the Swiss woman who kept a small bookshop in the town. ‘I went in there because she had some volumes of Tauchnitz in the window; and she was so interesting, I stayed nearly an hour. She was telling me about the middle of the island, down in the old crater. Very few tourists go there, it seems. And there are villages where they still practise witchcraft. They put spells on their enemies, and brew poisons for them—in case the spells don’t work … Oh, and there’s an enormous rock called El Nublo—that means The Cloudy One, doesn’t it?—which nobody had ever been able to climb, until last autumn, when a party of young Germans did it—they were Nazis, I’m sorry to say—and they planted a flag on the top … Doesn’t it all sound like a fairy-story?’
‘The flag ought to have been a beautiful maiden,’ I said. ‘Then a prince could climb up and rescue her.’
Elizabeth laughed: ‘Poor thing, she’d be rather weatherbeaten by this time, wouldn’t she? But that’s where the symbolism breaks down, I’m afraid—because, of course, this is an ugly wicked flag: a swastika.’
‘You mean,’ Michael asked, ‘that it’s still there?’ He was obviously very much interested.
‘It was, a fortnight a
go. Frl. Etter saw it herself. She makes trips over there from time to time, to look for rare wildflowers.’
‘I suppose the Nazis have left the island, by now?’
‘Oh yes. They were only here on a holiday. Frl. Etter says they refused to tell anyone how they climbed El Nublo. They even claimed they’d been drunk when they did it, and didn’t remember … Why, Michael, of course—you ought to go there, and take pictures and write the story! Oh, why don’t you?’
‘I’m afraid it wouldn’t be much of a story, if I can’t talk to the climbers themselves, and photograph them.’
‘Then why not go just for fun? I’d so love hearing all about it. And I know Stephen would enjoy going with you. He hasn’t done anything like that for ages.’
‘Stephen may not want to go,’ Michael said, giving me one of his questioning looks. They didn’t puzzle me now.
I grinned at him teasingly: ‘Elizabeth’s whim is my pleasure.’
Michael frowned slightly. ‘Do you honestly want to go, Stephen?’
‘Yes. Don’t you?’ We were talking to each other in the voices we used when Elizabeth wasn’t present.
‘You know I do. Only—’
‘Only what?’ I looked straight at him. Michael dropped his eyes.
‘It might be quite a rough trip,’ he said, lamely, after a moment.
‘I’ll survive it. If my corns hurt, you can carry me.’
‘And you needn’t hurry, you know,’ Elizabeth put in, smiling. ‘Stay away as long as you like. Frl. Etter says Maspalomas is beautiful. You ought to see that, too. I won’t expect you back for three days at least.’
Michael looked at her uncertainly. ‘Will you really be all right,’ he asked, ‘here by yourself?’ It was as if he half hoped she’d say No.
‘Of course I shall be all right,’ Elizabeth told him gaily. ‘And I shan’t be by myself. There are lots of people in this hotel I want to get to know more about. I can smell at least two short stories.’
Michael still didn’t seem quite satisfied, but ‘All right,’ he said, ‘in that case, we may as well start tomorrow.’
Next afternoon, we took the post-bus to Tejeda. The village lay at the bottom of the extinct volcano-crater; a deep thickly-wooded bowl, into which the bus descended by violent zigzags from the top of the pass. Michael and I were the only tourists on board, and we would have seemed absurdly typical to anyone who could have understood what we were talking about; for we stuck to the guarded British-intellectual ‘Have you read—?’, ‘Did you ever see—?’ kind of conversation which goes with pipes, heavy boots, rucksacks and hikes.
At the fonda, we were given a big dusty room which looked out on the back of the church. There was nothing in it but two ramshackle beds, one chair, and three ornamental wall-brackets. The toilet was overrun with chickens, and the food was lukewarm. We went to bed early. At intervals, the church bells would ring furiously for a few minutes and then stop abruptly. The bell-ringers must have gotten drunk and decided to practise.
In the silence after one of the bursts of bell-ringing, Michael said: ‘Isn’t this hell?’
‘Utter and complete hell,’ I laughed. Actually, for the first time since we had left Las Palmas, I was starting to enjoy myself. Throughout the bus-drive and supper I had felt bored, and vaguely apprehensive about what I had let myself in for: stodgy dullness or emotional tension. But now it seemed that perhaps, after all, we were going to have fun.
‘You aren’t sorry you came?’ Michael asked, after a pause. In the darkness, he was nothing but a voice from the other bed, and I instantly noticed his change of tone. It was timid, hesitant, and yet, somehow, teasing. Here it comes, I thought. Oh, damn him. He’s going to start something.
‘Of course I’m not sorry,’ I said firmly. ‘I wasn’t expecting the Ritz.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I just wondered how you were feeling—about Elizabeth not being here.’
‘But, Michael, she couldn’t possibly have come. You know how careful she has to be.’
There was a short silence. Then Michael said: ‘I wonder what she’s thinking about, at this moment.’
‘She’s sound asleep, probably.’
‘I bet she isn’t. She’s lying awake and thinking about us.’
All right then, I said to myself: let’s have it out now. Why not? It’s got to come out, sooner or later.
‘Michael,’ I said into the darkness, ‘why do you keep harping on what Elizabeth’s feeling? What are you trying to make me say? This just doesn’t ring true, somehow. Do you really care what she’s feeling? I don’t believe you do, one bit.’
There was a long pause. ‘Of course I don’t,’ Michael said, at last: ‘I don’t care a damn about Elizabeth.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘at least that’s honest.’
Michael didn’t answer. But, just when I’d started to wonder what would come next, he got out of his bed, crossed over to mine, and sat down on the end of it. He felt for my hand, and gripped it hard.
‘You hate me now, don’t you, Stephen?’
‘Don’t be an idiot.’ I pulled my hand away.
‘It isn’t that I’ve got anything against Elizabeth. And I didn’t mean what I said just now. You know that. I’d be awfully fond of her—if it wasn’t for you. That’s how I really felt, even, at the Schwarzsee. Only I wouldn’t admit it to myself then. I ran away from it … Do you understand what I’m talking about?’
‘Of course I do. I wish you’d stop it, though.’
‘I was always jealous of her, underneath,’ Michael continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps, if you’d been there alone, you might have felt—differently, about me. It was because of her that you treated me as a kid. She wanted you to see me like that. So bloody pure and innocent. I’ll bet she knew, all the time, what I really wanted. And she was afraid you’d start to want it, too.’
‘Shut up, Michael,’ I said. ‘I’ve let you say all this, to get it off your chest. But that’s enough about Elizabeth. I’m not going to listen to any more—’
‘You’re not going to listen?’ His voice trembled with rage. ‘You won’t be able to help yourself. Because I’m going to tell you a lot of things—things you’d rather pretend you don’t know—’
As he spoke, he made a violent forward movement and grasped my arm, as though he actually thought I might try to stop my ears with my fingers. But this was too much for the crazy old bedstead. Its back legs collapsed. In fact, the whole back part of the bed fell right off and hit the floor. And, exactly at that moment, deadening what would otherwise have been a crash sufficient to rouse the whole household, there was a tremendous clash of bells from the church tower.
Michael lay against me for a moment, where we had fallen. Then he began to laugh, explosively and rather hysterically. Still laughing, he picked himself up. ‘Oh, Christ!’ he exclaimed. I laughed too, partly to cover the situation.
‘You’d better sleep in my bed,’ he said, after the bells had stopped as abruptly as they’d started.
‘No, thanks. I’ll be all right on the floor.’
‘Look here,’ Michael’s voice was getting tense again. ‘It was my fault that it happened, and I’m damn’ well going to be the one who’ll sleep on the floor—if anybody does.’ There was just a hint of a question in the last part of the sentence.
But I felt I was master of the situation, now. ‘You can sleep on the floor if you want to,’ I said. ‘But I shall, too. I don’t trust that other bed any more than this one.’ Michael didn’t move at once, so I added, in my scoutmaster voice: ‘Now let’s get some sleep.’
Later that night, I woke and heard Michael sobbing quietly to himself. I felt sorry, but I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t want to start a new scene. Besides, the mattress was warm. I turned over and went to sleep again.
When I woke next morning, Michael wasn’t in the room. I found him downstairs, morosely drinking a cup of coffee. The gloom was thick around him,
and he barely reacted to my greeting. After we’d sat together in silence for some minutes, he said abruptly: ‘I suppose you want to go back to Las Palmas?’
Just for an instant, I felt so irritated with him that I could have slapped his goodlooking, tiresomely tragic face. But I controlled myself, knowing that a quarrel was exactly what he wanted. ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘In fact, if you won’t come, I’ll go on alone.’ Then, with a change of tone which I felt was even more revolting than my scoutmaster act, I added: ‘Michael, we’re supposed to be here to enjoy ourselves. Let’s try to, shall we?’
It worked; I was a little ashamed to see how well. Michael flushed; and then, after a quick nervous scowl, his face brightened into the charming smile that was his best feature. It had always reminded me of a child being tickled under the chin. ‘All right,’ he said. Then, after a pause: ‘Sorry. Vamos.’
The valley was still full of cool shadow. But high above us, on the edge of the crater-bowl, the great pillar of El Nublo stood in full sunlight, with the red speck of a flag, too small for the swastika to be visible, flapping from its summit against the blue sky. We made our way slowly uphill, through woods of laurel, full of waterfalls and streams that had roses growing wild along their banks. Men and women waved and shouted to us encouragingly from the doors of their farms. It was as if they all knew where we were going and wanted us to get there.
By midday, we had climbed out of the woods on to a naked slope of glaring, colourless rocks. Nublo was directly above us, towering several hundred feet into the air, as sheer as a slice of cheese. Its enormous mass gave me a kind of upward vertigo. I caught my breath when I looked up at it. As for Michael, he had become almost hysterically excited. He kept bounding on ahead and shouting back to me to hurry. Now and then, he yodelled. Everything was deathly still in the noon heat, and his voice, echoing around the crater, must have been audible for miles.
Presently, we scrambled up on to a huge platform of rock which was Nublo’s base, and began to work our way around the pillar. This was awkward in places, and I began to feel really giddy. As we moved westward, the platform narrowed to a ledge, and then turned a corner where there was little more than a toe-hold. I hesitated. Michael edged himself round it and out of sight.
The World in the Evening Page 20
