(1958) Robinson

by Muriel Spark

  I understood that he was making this fuss about his best brandy to save us the embarrassment of the question why we had his brandy at all, and I thought it rather nice of him.

  ‘It tastes very good with mineral water,’ I said.

  The tears continued to pour from my eyes.

  ‘Is woeful,’ said Jimmie.

  Robinson sat down beside us. He said to Jimmie,

  ‘Any left in the flask?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  Jimmie handed him the flask. Robinson passed it to me and told me to take a good swig, which I did.

  The brandy glow, almost like an emotion itself, began to spread within me. I felt it was demanded that I should say something about my crying. I did not know what to say. I thought of saying, ‘I feel such a fool,’ but stopped myself, reflecting that women usually say this when they cry. I said, ‘Oh dear, I don’t know what to say.’ But this sounded to me the depth of inanity.

  ‘Try a cigarette,’ said Robinson, and offered me his open cigarette case.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you have one of mine.’ I fished into our picnic pack and brought out the envelope in which I kept my cigarettes.

  ‘All right, I will,’ said Robinson. ‘Many thanks.’ Not that I cared much, I was too absorbed in my crying.

  It stopped for a bit, while I smoked the cigarette.

  ‘I wish I had some make-up for my face,’ I said, trying to think up and utter some concrete complaint. And it was true that while I was on the island I greatly missed my make-up; I do not care to go about with nothing on my face so that everyone can see what is written on it. One of the day-dream fantasies that came to me like homesickness when I was on the island, was a make-up session. In my mind, I would be in my bedroom at home, performing the smoothing and creaming and painting of my face, going through the whole ritual of smoothing and patting, down to the last touch of mascara, taking my leisure, one hour, two hours. Whereas in reality, at home, I make up my face rather quickly, and only when, rarely, the idea seizes me do I make a morning of it.

  ‘We have some stuff among the salvage,’ said Robinson. ‘You could use that, if you feel it absolutely necessary.’

  ‘No fear,’ I said, and started to cry again.

  ‘It isn’t absolutely necessary,’ said Robinson.

  ‘Is essential,’ said Jimmie, ‘for a lady that she adorn her visage with a bit of paint.’

  ‘Simply and factually it isn’t essential,’ said Robinson, ‘but I have no objection to it.’

  How it annoyed me when Robinson stated what he had or hadn’t objections to! I stopped crying. I said, ‘Your objections aren’t in question.’ I started to pack our bag as a sign that the picnic was over. It was not the first time that Robinson had intruded when Jimmie and I were out picnicking.

  Robinson, as if he knew what was in my mind, said to Jimmie, ‘I came to tell you about Bella. She’s been vomiting. Milk her as usual but throw away the milk in case it is infected.’

  He hurried on ahead while Jimmie and I followed. We stopped to watch the mist as it began to form, swirling like curdled milk below us.

  It was the afternoon of the next day that I crossed the mountain with Robinson to procure mineral water for the goat. Jimmie had wanted to accompany us but Robinson had found an emergency to prevent him: dampness in the storehouse. All the packages had to be moved, and the piping behind one of the walls replaced.

  ‘Keep up your journal; it will keep your mind off Jimmie.’

  To which, of course, I should have replied, ‘You are insolent.’

  And while I answered, ‘I don’t see that I want to keep my mind off Jimmie’, I was wondering how best, during the five weeks remaining to me on the island, to preserve some freedom from Robinson’s interference in the matter of Jimmie, while retaining his protection from Wells.

  Robinson enquired, ‘Has Jimmie told you much about himself?’

  I said, ‘Jimmie has told me a lot about you.’

  ‘What has Jimmie told you?‘ I expected that question. Looking round, I saw Miguel above and behind us, following. Watching him, I sorted out my few sensations, and noted, one, that Miguel must have approached subterraneously, and, two, that I felt rather sorry for Robinson. It is hard for a recluse, and such an upright one, to feel his seclusion threatened by others’ knowing a little about him.

  ‘Here comes Miguel,’ I said.

  Robinson made an effort to look interested in Miguel’s approach, then he casually repeated, ‘What has Jimmie told you?‘ He gave an amused chuckle, as if to say, whatever he has told you isn’t to be taken seriously.

  ‘Hallo there, Miguel,’ I shouted. The truth is, I have a sharp tongue when I am annoyed, and it is better to say anything beside the point rather than what I might say, at such moments, pointedly.

  Miguel was grinning happily as he clambered behind us.

  ‘You came by a secret tunnel,’ I observed to him.

  Robinson looked surprised for a second, then defeated, as if his last friend had betrayed him. It is always the same with people who make a fetish of self-control: they strike the most histrionic attitudes. How was I to know that the existence of the underground channels was supposed to be a secret?

  Fortunately Miguel did not seem embarrassed by my remark.

  ‘From this point,’ said Robinson, who was a little way above me, ‘you get a sight of the sea on both sides:

  Vasco da Gama’s Bay on the north, and our Pomegranate Bay on the south. I call it the Pomegranate Bay because that’s where the pomegranate boat puts in.’

  It was, very much, a splendid sight. I was prepared to say no more on the troublesome subject of the underground caves, but Miguel devilishly put in, ‘I know all the secret tunnels on the island.’

  ‘I should like to see them,’ I said.

  ‘They are nothing much,’ said Robinson, ‘they are slimy holes in the mountain. In one of them there’s a point where you have to crawl on your stomach. And they are, of course, no longer secret.’

  ‘She doesn’t know them,’ said Miguel.

  ‘I only know of them,’ I said.

  ‘She doesn’t know the secret tunnels,’ said Miguel again with delight.

  ‘I can smell the Furnace,’ I said. I could also hear the rumbling, and presently I saw the red earthy smoke rising in puffs on the far side of a hill.

  On the side of the crater from which we approached the slope leading to its pit was fairly gradual, covered with tropical foliage, plants thick as ox tongues, but green from the numerous rivulets that scored this bank. As these streams of water reached the bottom of the crater they sizzled and steamed, this sound and vapour mixing with the rumble and sulphurous clouds of the eruption. The far wall of the crater was steep and sheer, and it was against this cliff that the breakers of red cloud beat and dispersed so that we could stand on the lip of the crater at our side watching the bubbling opposite, without much discomfort. From where we stood it would have been easy to walk down or slide into the bottom. But from the opposite edge it was a sheer drop.

  ‘How awful to fall in,’ I said. ‘No-one would survive it.’

  Robinson said, ‘The body would be sucked under immediately. There is a continuous action of suction and rejection going on down there.’ He added, ‘Curiously, if you throw in anything sizeable the eruption gives out a sort of scream. There must be a narrow tubular shaft leading down from the pit of the crater, and the suction action through this narrow pipe causes the sound, do you see?‘ I didn’t see, but I lifted the biggest stone I could manage, and sent it rolling into the milling mud. It gave out a very dreadful scream.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Robinson, ‘without provocation it sighs.’

  ‘I should like to hear it sigh,’ I said.

  Miguel was half-way down the bank, picking some large-petalled flowers which seemed to have been by their original nature blue, but through the constant activity of red vapour had evolved to streaky mauve.

  ‘Don’t go too far, Miguel,’ Ro
binson called. ‘It’s slippery further down, and you might find yourself sliding in. We shan’t come and drag you back.’

  Miguel laughed. He said, ‘The flowers are for Mr. Tom.’

  On the way back, Robinson once more referred to my journal.

  ‘Keep it up. You will be glad of the notes later on. After all, you did intend to write about islands.’

  ‘Not this island,’ I said.

  ‘Man proposes and God disposes,’ he said.

  I thought, there’s something in that, and a pity you don’t keep it in mind when your own scheme of things is upset.

  I had been commissioned to write about islands in a series which included books about threes of everything. Three rivers, three lakes, and threes of mountains, courtesans, battles, poets, old country houses. I was supposed to be doing Three Islands. Two of my chosen islands I already knew well: Zanzibar and Tiree. I had thought one of the Azores would complete an attractive trio. Someone else, now, has written the book on Three Islands. I believe someone has added to the series Three Men in My Life.

  Robinson continued to harp on the advantages of my keeping a journal. My anger had dwindled to nothing at the sight of the Furnace, and in a more congenial humour I said, ‘Oh well, I’ll see.’

  ‘Stick to facts,’ said Robinson. ‘There’s the Furnace for one. And there are so many curious things on the island — the moths, have you noticed? And those very long lizards, the trees, those miniature junipers in the stunted parts of the mountain, the ferns.’

  I thought, ‘And the derelict croft, the lack of cultivation.’

  As if I had said it, he continued, ‘You have not seen my pomegranate orchard.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’ll take us there.' He was silent for the rest of the journey home.

  Chapter VII

  BLUEBELL was chasing butterflies on the patio. Tom Wells was indoors sitting in his braces.

  Jimmie was with Robinson repairing the leaky pipe behind the storehouse. Miguel was sitting at the kitchen table doing his arithmetic. I sat in the sun, extremely tired in my bones after the crossing of the mountain on the previous day. I was making an entry in my journal:

  Wednesday, 30th June — Robinson was born at Gibraltar in 1903, of a wealthy military family. He was educated in England and France. Then, about the age of twenty-four he entered an Irish seminary to study for the priesthood. This was highly regarded by his widowed mother, a Catholic, whose only child Robinson was. His father had been killed in 1917.

  After a period in the seminary, and just before he was due to become a Deacon, Robinson refused to be ordained. He travelled in Spain, Italy, and South America, making observations of Catholic practices, and at the end of a year he left the Church on account of what he considered its superstitious character. In particular he objected to the advancing wave of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and to this effect he wrote many letters to Catholic papers and articles later collected into a book entitled The Dangers of Marian Doctrine. Still professing the Catholic faith himself, Robinson maintained that the Church had fallen into heresy.

  Robinson fought with the Republicans in Spain, but suffered a revulsion and deserted after six months. He then retired to Mexico, where he lived on a deserted ranch for some ten years.

  In 1946 Robinson’s mother died. He returned to bury her. He entrusted his considerable fortune to an uncle resident in Gibraltar with interests in Tangier. He bought this island which was then called Ferreira, from a Portuguese called Ferreira. He has been living here ever since.

  His full name is Miles Mary Robinson. For some reason not clear to me one does not call him Mr. Robinson, nor imagine anyone calling him Miles.

  I sat limply in the cane chair, exhausted by this assembling of facts. I had enjoyed the small catty task — since by his ‘stick to facts‘ Robinson had not meant facts about himself— and now obtained satisfaction from the thought, ‘He has got what he asked for’, but I could not rest in this simple thought. I was not even certain at this time whether all these facts were true. I had got them from Jimmie.

  I was wondering again which of my sisters would consider herself Brian’s guardian. He had recently gone away to school, and it was a question whether, when the summer holidays started, he would reside in the home of Curly Lonsdale or Ian Brodie.

  I had seen, lying on Robinson’s desk, his publication The Dangers of Marian Doctrine, with pages of pencilled addenda on which he was apparently still working.

  My brother-in-law Ian, a Catholic from the time of his birth, and rather aggressive about his religion, was always using that word, danger, in connection with Our Blessed Lady, though for my part I did not see the connection. On returning from his continental holidays Ian frequently wrote to the Catholic newspapers letters of concern about the Marian excesses he had witnessed at feast-day processions in Italy or Spain, and their danger. What, he once demanded of me, were the bishops thinking of to permit these dangerous extravagances?

  ‘I don’t know, Ian,’ I said, ‘what bishops think of, for I don’t know any bishops.’

  ‘Any good Catholic,’ said Ian, ‘should be horrified to see the Mother of God worshipped as if she were a pagan goddess.’

  ‘Do you believe in pagan goddesses?‘ I said. ‘Do you believe they exist, have power?’

  ‘Well, in the psychological sense—’

  ‘I mean, in the real substantial sense.’

  ‘No, not exactly.’

  ‘Then I don’t see the danger. Prayers addressed to the Blessed Virgin are not likely to be received by pagan goddesses.’

  ‘There’s a question of distortion of doctrine,’ said Ian. ‘These people make more fuss of the Blessed Virgin than of Jesus Christ. That’s dangerous. And it’s becoming prevalent all over the world. I’ve just written a letter—’

  ‘I don’t see that devotions to the Blessed Virgin are likely to be rewarded with the gift of corrupt doctrine.’

  ‘It puts people off the Faith,’ said Ian.

  ‘What people?’

  ‘Non-Catholics, lapsed Catholics, respectable Christians….‘

  ‘There’s always a stumbling-block. If it isn’t one thing it’s another.’ I was thinking of Ian himself, and how for years I was put off the Catholic Church because he was a member, and carping exponent, of it.

  ‘I said in my letter,‘ Ian continued, 'it is time these dangerous impurities were purged .‘

  After that I seldom argued with Ian lest he should win the argument. He could support himself with a range of theological reference unknown to me, and which I simply did not trust him to handle rightly. Moreover, he was a Catholic by birth, and I but a convert; those hereditary Catholics cannot bear to be opposed by newcomers. And again, perhaps most important, I was partly afraid of Ian Brodie, obscurely endangered by him.

  Agnes had told me once that her husband was sexually impotent. She had no right to tell me any such thing, but I felt she was not telling me anything that I did not really already know. To this day, I vaguely feel that Ian’s impotence is in some way bound up with his suspicions of the Blessed Virgin, which he termed jealousy for the True Faith — a phrase which I noticed Robinson had used in his publication.

  During these first weeks on the island I was increasingly struck by similarities between Robinson and Ian Brodie. At the time I exaggerated them, but still, tenuously, they existed. Robinson, short, muscular and dark-skinned, did not at casual sight look anything like long seedy Ian Brodie; only a likeness between the shape of their heads came to me at odd times. But Robinson was far more intelligent and more controlled.

  Again, Robinson’s anti-Marian fervour was far more interesting to me than Ian’s, for with Robinson it was an obsession of such size that he had left the Church because of it; he had formed for himself a system bound by a simple chain of identities: Mariology was identified with Earth mythology, both were identified with superstition, and superstition with evil. Sterile notion as it seemed to me, still it was a system and he had w
ritten it up in his book. Ian Brodie, on the other hand, was dark with inarticulate emotions about religion, which his spasmodic rationalisations failed to satisfy; he was mean by temperament, was a miserable minimist, and was forever demonstrating how far he could go against the Church without being excommunicated.

  And whereas I could never really dislike Robinson, I hated Ian Brodie’s guts.

  But when Robinson showed his anxiety to keep authority on his island, to know what was going on between us, to prevent our quarrelling or behaving other than impersonally, and to prevent our making friends with Miguel, and, most of all, to detect any possibility of a love affair between Jimmie and me, I was reminded of Ian Brodie, and noticed very much the shape of Robinson’s head. I was reminded of instances of Ian Brodie’s extraordinary urge to ferret into my private life, and in particular of a morning towards the end of the Easter holidays when I said to my son Brian, ‘Let’s get out of this.’ I telephoned to Agnes, who had arranged to come to tea next day, to tell her I was going abroad for a couple of days.

  We went to Dieppe, then caught a bus to Rouen. I was sitting alone outside a café looking at a tower with a big clock, Brian having gone for a walk round about. I half-noticed an English car passing. I was feeling too agreeable with life to be on the alert for anything whatsoever. The car passed again. Brian returned to announce he had found a pastry-cook’s owned by a man by the name of Marcel Proust, and this seemed to us both excessively funny. The English car passed again. I saw immediately that it was Ian Brodie’s Singer, and that Ian was driving.

  ‘I thought he was in Germany,’ said Brian. So did I think he was in Germany. I felt sure he had followed us. I was wrong, but he deserved to be the victim of my suspicions, because of the suspicious way he was driving round and round, past the café where I had been sitting alone. I was not wrong in this, that having caught sight of me alone in Rouen, he had determined to find out who my companion was. He was always inexhaustible in trying to catch me in an illicit love affair, but he never succeeded; and whether this was because I never, in fact, had a lover, or whether I had, but effectively concealed the fact, you may be sure Ian Brodie is still guessing. It was my plan, from the time I became aware of his absorption in this question, to keep him guessing; and always, should his horrible curiosity about my private life appear to flag, I revived it quickly by some careful chance reference which, on his greedy investigation, led him nowhere.