(1958) Robinson
Page 10
Half-way to the Furnace, at the point where we had sight of the sea on both sides, Tom Wells clutched his ribs and said he could go no further.
‘Go back,’ I said, ‘and take Miguel with you.’
‘No, I’m coming after Robinson,’ Miguel said.
‘Come with Mr. Tom,’ said Tom Wells.
‘I want Robinson.’ He was beside himself, both younger and ages older than his years.
Jimmie and I pressed on while Miguel went fitfully ahead looking from right to left, and behind him to see if we still followed.
At some point I said, ‘I wonder, would there be another inhabitant of the island — someone we don’t know about?’
‘Is possible,’ said Jimmie.
He gave me a hand up the steep places, automatically, not with his usual deliberate air.
‘It seems that Robinson has been attacked. At least someone has been attacked,’ I said.
‘Excuse me,’ said Jimmie, ‘that I do not converse, as I lose my nerves.’
We found other blood-stained articles on which the blood had dried in the heat of the afternoon. We found a small pocket handkerchief — it was mine, it had been in my pocket at the time of the crash; we found a blue silk vest which Jimmie had been wearing at the time of the crash; the other of Robinson’s shoes; and lastly, at the head of the dip leading to the Furnace, we saw more of Robinson’s clothes, another jacket of his, dark tweed, his brown corduroy trousers, his underclothes. These were scattered bloodily down the slope that ran into the gurgling crater, and a clear streak of torn-up vegetation, revealing the raw red earth as if there had been a landslide, completed the run from the rim of the crater to its mouth. The volcano chuckled, and gave out its red vapours, as if that too were a sort of blood. I thought of the crater’s scream, and I screamed. Jimmie limply placed the brandy to my lips.
I had all this blood before my eyes as I lay awake, trying to isolate the details of the day. On the journey back we had found other things: a blood-stained scarf which Robinson always wore against the mist; his fountain pen, his pocket compass.
I did not remember if or how we had eaten that day, nor do I remember this even now, except that we gave Miguel a sedative tablet with warm milk, and that he was asleep before the sun had set.
I recalled, too, there had been some talk between Tom Wells and me. Jimmie had gone out in his stunned silence and was roaming about the beach at the Pomegranate Bay. All I recall of my conversation that evening with Wells was the following:
I said, ‘Those blood-stained articles of clothing must have been planted by someone.’
‘Oh, must they?’
‘They would not be scattered about in quite such an obvious manner if they had been dropped accidentally.’
‘Oh, wouldn’t they?’
I could not put out of my mind the blood. Even when I closed my eyes it was like a red light penetrating the lids. And when I tried to recall the past day, I had the rare and distressing experience of becoming objectively conscious of my rational mind in action, separate from all others, as one might see the open workings of a clock. This only happens to me when faced with a group of facts which hurt my reasoning powers — as one becomes highly conscious of a limb when it is damaged.
But having set my mind painfully to arrange the facts, I immediately got out of bed and, slipping my coat over my borrowed pyjamas, padded bare-foot along the corridors to Robinson’s rooms, aided only by the moon sidling in through the narrow slit windows.
There I found Robinson’s bunch of house keys hanging in their usual place. At the same time I fumbled among the pigeon-holes in his desk until I found a small electric torch which he usually kept there. I used the torch, since I did not know my way very well, to guide me up a flight of two or three shallow steps, round a stoneflagged bend and along another corridor to the gun-room. There, without bothering to light the lamp which stood ready with its box of matches, I tried one key after another in the door until I had found the right one. With the help of the torch I extracted this key from the bunch, and locked the door. I returned the bunch of keys to its peg in Robinson’s room, keeping the gun-room key for myself. I went next to the kitchen where string was kept in a drawer. Here in the kitchen my whole body shook as I thought, with a new realization, of Robinson and what could have befallen him. However, I cut myself a length of string, and with this tied the gun-room key round my neck. I snapped out the torch and returned to my room, led by the moonlit window slits. As I passed Jimmie’s room I jumped, for instead of the dark shut door there was an open space with Jimmie standing in it, regarding me.
I did not speak to him, but walked on to my room, satisfied that he had only just opened his door having heard the moving about, that he had seen nothing of my performance with the key, and that I had done a reasonable thing, considering that I was on an island with a child and two men, one of them probably a murderer. I had done this, but the small reasonable satisfaction was swallowed up in fear, in the gashes of red on the screen of my mind, and the absurdity of all I had seen, which made me exclaim aloud from time to time throughout the night, ‘It can’t be so! How can it be?’ I kept thinking that Robinson was bound to walk in next morning and explain everything, the seriousness of the situation being evident to me then only by my recalling Miguel’s distress.
Throughout the next two weeks I lived in a state similar to my first weeks on the island, concussion, stupor. So it appeared. I feared and suspected much. I formed opinions, and wondered sometimes if Robinson’s disappearance were a dream or the whole island affair a dream, or life itself, my past life, Brian, Chelsea, were a dream.
We collected the blood-stained clothes from the route. The stains were still sticky, having dried and become moist again from the mists. I piled them up in a heap on the floor of Robinson’s bedroom, thinking as I did so that an inquest on Robinson would be held after the boat should come to rescue us with our news.
It took us twelve days to search the island. But already by the third day after Robinson’s disappearance we all more or less assented that he was dead.
I thought: either, therefore, he has been killed by Jimmie or Tom Wells, or by both together. Suffering from headaches, I chewed over all other hypotheses —that he had killed himself, had been murdered by Miguel, or by myself in my sleep, or by another, unknown inhabitant of the island; but I rejected these as folly. Again and again I returned to Jimmie, Tom Wells, or both together. I did not think it at all likely that they were accomplices, but I added that possibility to my list for a show of objectivity.
Tom Wells produced a theory of his own, one which I considered brought him under suspicion for having suggested it. A supernatural force, he declared, had done away with Robinson, in revenge for some sacrilege done to the lucky charms which Robinson had confiscated.
‘You mean a poltergeist?’
‘Something like that.’
There were many difficulties in the way of our searching the island. Tom Wells pleaded his damaged ribs against the exertion required of him for the amount of climbing entailed. And so the task of searching the island fell on Jimmie and me, with Miguel for our guide. Neither Tom Wells nor Jimmie seemed to see it as an imperative task, but I insisted on this course, formality though it might be, so that we should know as far as possible where we stood.
‘Is evidence that he lies in the Furnace,’ Jimmie said.
‘Still, we must eliminate everything else.’
Tom Wells said, ‘There’s an evil force on this island. I think we should stay put here in the house. I’ve had a serious time of it with my ribs.’
Now I had resolved, if possible, to avoid being alone with any one of these men, these strangers. Therefore I had to go everywhere, in the course of our examination of the island, with Jimmie and Miguel, rather than stay at the house with Wells. He complained, ‘I don’t like the idea of your all going off from early morning till late at night. I don’t like being alone, quite frankly, after what’s happened.’
Also there was trouble about guns. Jimmie said we must take a gun with us. ‘Is only reasonable. We see a stranger, we shoot.’
‘Haven’t you seen enough blood?’ I said. But this was my being afraid, making a diversion while I worked out what could be done.
‘The gun-room’s locked,’ said Tom Wells, ‘for some reason which is beyond me.’
I said, ‘I have the key.’
‘It’s time we had a bit of rabbit,’ said Wells. ‘You’ll have to hand over the key. We have to have guns for food.’
I said to Jimmie, ‘I’ll fetch a gun for you now, if you promise to give it back to me when we return. I want to keep charge of the guns.’
‘Is entirely to be understood. Is reasonable,’ said Jimmie.
‘Look here,’ said Wells, ‘I don’t think a woman should have charge of the guns. I don’t agree to that.’
‘You will agree,’ said Jimmie.
‘I hold the key,’ I said, or something to that effect, and went to fetch a Winchester rifle for Jimmie, with some cartridges. For myself I chose a baby Browning automatic. I could not find any cartridges. I have a fear of handling guns, and so it was an effort for me to examine the Browning. I found it loaded. I locked the armoury, went to my room to fetch my coat, gave another neurotic look at the safety-catch of the automatic, and, putting it in my pocket, I then felt safe to take the big gun to Jimmie.
This was Tuesday, the 6th of July. That day we explored the South Arm, descending from our mountain to rich downy grassland. We examined the deserted mill and cottage. We walked round the coast, stopped only by the perpendicular cliffs, which stretched for half a mile on the western seafront of the little peninsula. Here, there was no beach nor access by land, the cliffs dropping sheer into the sea.
Trailing along beside Jimmie, I experienced over again the days of concussion when my actions were mechanical, my senses hazy. But then I had been safe. You must understand that Jimmie and Tom Wells had all at once become strangers to me, far more than when I first fell in with them, for now their familiar characteristics struck me merely as a number of indications that I knew nothing about them.
Five times we were lost in a sudden mist, and once it seemed that we should be wandering all night until, with Miguel huddled on Jimmie’s shoulder, we found ourselves to be a few yards from home. Usually, we were home before the big night mists fell.
I remember watching my shadow with the sun behind it, making me tall, very tall, but not so tall as Jimmie in his shadow.
By the end of twelve days we had completed our search, having covered the South Arm, the Headland with its neat pomegranate orchards, the rocky North Arm and North Leg, the ferny meadows of the West Leg. We covered the black and white coast-line, with its cliffs and beaches; we gave two days to the central mountain, climbing, trekking, leaping, and I was glad of our exhaustion and the lack of any energy to speak to one another. Usually I followed after Jimmie, but if ever I found myself in front of him I took firm hold of the automatic concealed in my pocket. Miguel was usually some distance ahead of us. On one of these excursions I had said to him, ‘I have a little gun in my pocket. If you should hear me fire it, you must run away.’ I said this in case he should be hurt in any tussle between Jimmie and me.
These, I thought, were reasonable precautions. All the time I really suspected Tom Wells. And all the time I smoked cigarettes, Robinson’s share as well as my own.
My shoes were worn through. I rummaged among the tidy bundles of salvage, for I had no more squeamishness after the sight of so much blood. At last I found a pair of shoes only slightly too big, and a little charred at the toe.
On the eleventh day we rested. On the twelfth day we set out for the subterranean caves. Miguel was at first reluctant to take us. I suppose he felt their secrets were a sort of possession of Robinson.
‘It’s important, Miguel. Suppose we should find Robinson?’
‘Robinson could not live in the caves. They aren’t for living in. They’re for going through.’
‘Someone else may be hiding there.’
‘There’s no-one else on the island.’
Miguel was still frightened. We kept telling him that everything would be all right, that we would look after him, that he was our boy. He did not take in this talk. He did not fail to interpret the strangeness, the suspicion, and the fear between us.
At last I had to say to Miguel, ‘If you won’t take us to the caves we will have to look for them ourselves. We might get lost and never come back.’ And so he set off with us on the twelfth day of our search.
There were three tunnels in all, one leading from the Pomegranate Bay in the south to the region of the deserted mill and homestead at the South Arm. A second passage cut through the mountain from the cliff top behind our plateau, its entrance being a vertical cleft among some thick shrubbery; this led to a point in the mountain approaching the Furnace. The third tunnel started among the lava boulders of the North Arm. This was the longest, and most difficult to negotiate. It emerged at the beach on the east side of Vasco da Gama’s Bay.
The first tunnel was the one through which Miguel had given me the slip when I had taken my first walk down to the beach. The entrance was amazingly obvious once it was pointed out. I had passed it several times without noticing how it stood like a slim shadow in the mountain wall, within a fluted grotto. Miguel led the way, then Jimmie. After the narrow mouth the tunnel was about nine feet in width, the height here being about seven feet, although presently Jimmie had to stoop. I began to cough. I said, ‘I shall choke.’ This was caused by a combination of sulphurous dust, breathless heat and a powerful lava smell. I felt we were walking into the hot centre of the earth. ‘I shall choke, choke,’ said my echo.
‘Please to return and await for us,’ said Jimmie. He too seemed suffocated by the dust and heat. Miguel coughed, but did not seem to mind.
I could not answer Jimmie for coughing, but I intended to agree to his suggestion, when he added, ‘Is not suitable conditions for a lady.’
I do not know why, but his phraseology caused me to remember that Jimmie was heir to Robinson’s fortunes. And when I had recovered from my fit of coughing, I said, ‘I’m coming with you. I wish to satisfy myself that the caves are empty.’
His flashlamp cast a rusty light: I suppose the place was filled with motes of red dust. By this light Miguel’s dark skin and lean figure showed up fiendishly. Jimmie’s head was in darkness, and I could only see the dim red glow of the man’s long body. Very much later, thinking over the scene, it occurred to me that I too must have looked ghoulish in the caves.
A shallow rivulet led to the entrance of the cave, and was flowing feebly beside us. Jimmie turned and squelched his way down into the tunnel. Miguel and I followed. I stopped every few minutes to recover from my coughing.
We came to a point where even Miguel had to stoop very low, and to squeeze round a narrow bend in the rock. Here the stream was deeper, reaching my knees and Miguel’s thighs. This narrow passage gave out on to a vast chamber, all over which Jimmie directed his torch. The air here was cleaner. I could not see any further opening from this huge cave-room, but Miguel splashed over to the far wall and there he seemed to climb up the wall and melt into it. We followed him to that spot, and found a small shelf behind which lay a gap. We heaved ourselves up and slid through, emerging at the foot of a steep slippery black cliff which Miguel had started to climb very skilfully. Several times I had to take the hand which Jimmie held down to help me. At the top we came to daylight, and the tall grasses of the South Arm. We had been in the tunnel about twenty minutes.
I could see that Jimmie did not want to do any more subterranean crawls. Nor would I have been reluctant to put off our ventures into the two remaining tunnels until the next day. But
Jimmie did not make any suggestion to this effect — I think because he was convinced I would disagree. And I said nothing, fearing he would think my vigilance was waning. I was not in a condition which could be called vigilant: I was half-doped, my imagination overwhelmed. I could hardly look at the facts, far less piece them together, but I felt bound to impress on Jimmie and Tom Wells that I was capable of doing so.
We returned to the house to wash, for we were covered with rusty grime. Immediately after our meal we set out for the second tunnel, the entrance to which lay near the back of the house. ‘Is pity,’ said Jimmie, ‘that no policeman resides here who should undertake these searchings.’ I thought, perhaps it is irony, or perhaps it is only one of his silly remarks.
The second tunnel took fifteen minutes to explore. This too was full of volcanic dust, and on the floor throughout lay a lot of slimy weed which made our progress dangerous. When Jimmie called back to me, ‘Is dangerous’, the words were repeated again and again on the walls of the cave and its recesses and I listened to the ‘dangerous, dangerous’, encouraging myself with the thought that although I was outmatched in physical strength by Jimmie and Tom Wells, their joint intelligence was probably not superior to mine. I realised that my sense of danger was enhanced by the loss of Robinson’s intelligence. It also occurred to me that Tom Wells, should he become troublesome, would not hesitate to use Miguel as an ally. Miguel was well acquainted with the island. On the other hand he was not clever in the sense that Tom Wells would find cleverness useful.