The Wind Off the Small Isles Page 4

  ‘And then,’ said Mrs Gresham, ‘in the secret compartment of the old deck you found the papers?’

  He laughed. ‘As I said, it’s all in the treatment. I did find papers, certainly, but highly unromantic ones. Simply a shelf of files, and two or three books of farm records – accounts, mostly, and on the whole not particularly interesting. Mike had a look at them – his Spanish is fairly good – but they turned out to be just a sort of log, giving details of crops, harvests, prices and so on. Well, that might have been that, except that I’ve never been the kind of person who could sit idly in an interesting place and not begin to think about it. It occurred to me to wonder if there were anything interesting recorded about any of the eruptions, for instance. The last big one was in 1824, and I had an idea the logs went back that far at least, so Mike and I got the books out and started hunting.’

  ‘And you found?’ I asked.

  ‘Very little – but this in itself is interesting, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘How?’

  He turned up a hand. ‘I take it you’ve seen the Fire Mountains in the south, and those appalling deserts and glaciers of lava? Most of it was thrown up in the eruptions of the 1730s, which went on at intervals for about six years, and devastated hundreds of square miles; then part of the same area was destroyed again in 1824. Well, there’s no reference to the eruptions in the log book except to say that “Cousin Andrès from Yaiza came over with his daughter and his dromedary”. He seems to have stayed, and ten years later the daughter married the son of the house. The inference one draws is that Cousin Andrès lost his house and land – and possibly the rest of his family – in the eruptions.’ He looked at me. ‘But it remains an inference. That’s what I find interesting, humanly speaking.’

  ‘I see. They take eruptions in their stride here.’

  ‘Shall we say they give them rather less news-value than we give a snowstorm at home?’

  ‘And Cousin Andrès from Yaiza gives you your story?’ asked Mrs Gresham.

  ‘No, no. A ten years’ love affair is hardly dramatic material, would you say?’

  ‘I wouldn’t, certainly, but then Coralie Gray’s readers like love at first sight, however much cynics like you and my son may deny it ever happens.’

  ‘Did I?’ said Mike.

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said his mother. ‘It’s the kind of thing young men do deny, isn’t it?’

  ‘I can see I’d better guard my real story from you with my life,’ said James Blair, ‘because it is love at first sight, and it would probably suit Coralie Gray down to the ground.’ He hesitated. ‘You’d really like to hear the rest? I’m afraid the bones are very bare as yet, but you know as well as I do, Cora, how it goes.’

  I saw her smile, and knew why, but I don’t think he noticed. He was moving off again into his private world. As I watched him I became conscious – as one is of a switched-on heater – of some other steadily focussing concentration. But when I glanced again at Michael, he was studying a grasshopper on the pavement beside his foot.

  ‘After that first entry,’ said James Blair, ‘we read the rest of them for the time of the eruptions. Did I say that the 1824 eruptions lasted about three months? The only other reference to them was that “the wind off the small isles by God’s mercy blew day and night, and carried the smoke and ash away to the south, thus sparing this end of the island.”’ He paused. ‘That was Mike’s translation. It struck me at the time. I told you the other thing that struck me – the almost routine acceptance of this kind of cataclysm. I went back through the books to see if there was the same kind of reaction, or lack of it, to local eruptions here in the north. I knew that the main eruptions at this end of the island – the ones which made the dead cinder-cones and the old lava fields that you drove through today – those eruptions would be a good deal earlier than 1824, but of course in any volcanic island there are small disturbances from time to time which may not have even been recorded, I mean at a national level. Mike and I hunted through the books to see if any of them had happened here.’

  ‘And had they?’

  ‘Yes, once or twice in a small way. But what caught our eyes was the same phrase again, used this time in an entry about an eruption just north of here. Is there any more wine, Mike?’

  ‘Sure.’ Mike refilled the glasses.

  I said: ‘If the eruption was to the north, and the “wind off the small isles” was blowing again, I suppose it would bring the gas and ashes this way?’

  ‘Certainly it would, but, true to form, that’s not what the entry was about. Something was going on here in the house on the night of the eruption that affected the writer, the farmer, a great deal more than any local volcano going off. His daughter eloped.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Cora Gresham.

  ‘I told you this would be up your street. Her name was Maria Dolores; she was the elder daughter, and there was a fair amount of money; at that time the cochineal farm was still doing well. His name was Miguel, and he was a boy from a poor family in Mala, who used to fish from the beach down below there, the Playa Blanca. It seems nobody knew anything about it until it suddenly happened. It seems doubtful, even, if the boy and girl had exchanged more than a few words. You may be sure that at this date – it was 1879 – even if Maria Dolores didn’t have an official duenna, she would be well looked after. But it seems they just looked at one another and fell in love. As girls did in those days, she’d collected over the years a good dowry, clothes, household goods – you know the kind of thing – but none of it was touched; her younger sister got it all. All Dolores took with her that night was a small bundle of clothing, and her silver rosary. All the boy owned was his boat, and as far as the elopement was concerned, it was enough.’

  He took a mouthful of wine. In the hot silence I could hear the small, clear ringing of a bell, as the goats strayed grazing along the cliff. From where I sat I could see three of them moving nearer in Indian file, up a path that scored a shallow diagonal across the face of the southern arm of the bay. They ambled, white and yellow-dappled, past the black gape of a crevice in the angle of the cliff, then leapt one after one over the rock beyond the retaining wall to pause, grazing apparently with relish, among the cochineal cactus.

  ‘And that,’ said James Blair, ‘is all we know. She left a note for her father, but we’re not told what was in it. “Ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm.” Did I tell you it was St Agnes’ Eve, January 20th? Only this time it wasn’t the frost-wind blowing, “pattering the sharp sleet Against the window-panes,” it was the wind from the small isles, full of smoke and hot ash and gases. But it was, all the same, the right wind for them. They took the boat from Playa Blanca – at any rate it vanished and was never traced – and the wind would take them straight to Fuertaventura and the other islands. And in 1879, even Grand Canary was far enough away.’

  ‘The father never tried to trace her?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s never mentioned again, and her younger sister fell heir to everything she should have had. Dolores is written off then and there. “Let her not return. The wind from the north still blows, and it is all she shall inherit.”’

  There was a short silence. Then Cora Gresham asked: ‘How are you going to finish it?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’m still looking for the point of entry. I see it as the father’s story, rather than the lovers’. I said she had been written straight off, but that wasn’t strictly true. There was one other entry, made a week or so later, but not mentioning her name. It just said, “The rosary was the one I bought her in Las Palmas, of silver with each bead made like the leaf of the cochineal pear. Very pretty.” Here, Mike.’ He thrust his glass at Michael, and stood up abruptly. ‘Now, come and see what I’m doing to your dream house, Cora.’

  ‘Delighted to.’ She got up and followed him to the edge of the patio. ‘Good heavens, what’s that?’

  She was staring out to sea, apparently at something beyond the north arm of the bay. I stood
up to see, then stared in my turn. A short way out, previously hidden from us by a jut of the cliff below, floated the ghost of a ship. Literally a ghost. It was an old fore-and-aft schooner, its warped timbers bleached to silver, which rode quietly above its grey reflection in the shelter of the curved coast. No canvas, no rope, no sign of life. A ghost ship from years ago.

  ‘It can’t be true,’ I said, still staring.

  ‘It’s true enough,’ said Mike from behind me. ‘It’s an old ship somebody in Arrecife bought a little while ago, and they’ve moored it down here. Weird, isn’t it? It’s just a shell, quite empty. I’m told the idea is to make a night club or a floating restaurant, or something of that sort. We were scared stiff they’d improve our horrible little road, and bring all the cars down this way, but there’s a better track further along and they’re going to use that.’

  ‘Well, James,’ said Mrs Gresham briskly, ‘that’s my story, at any rate! I take it you don’t want the copyright on that? No? It’s exactly what I want for my pirate story. Maybe it’s not exactly the right kind of ship, but since I’ve never been on an old sailing ship at all, this will do marvellously. Is there any chance of getting across and looking over it?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Mike can fix it for you, if you like. In fact we’ve got a boat in the bay; we can take you across ourselves, once you’ve got permission. Now come along, and I’ll show you the house.’

  As I turned to follow them Mike touched my arm. ‘Will she want you to explore the ship with her and take notes, slave-girl, or could you come swimming with me?’

  ‘Won’t Mr Blair want you to row the boat, slave-boy?’

  ‘Probably. We could leave them there and come back. Perdita—’

  ‘Yes?’

  He appeared to review, at speed, some half-dozen statements, reject them all in turn, and come back to banality with a kind of relief. ‘Do you do any skin-diving?’

  ‘Love it. Is it good here?’

  ‘Terrific. Sandy bottom, and submerged reefs and outcrops from the cliff, and plenty of small caves where the sand runs in and there’s lots of weeds and fish. Sheltered, too, so the water’s usually clear. You’ll come?’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Then let’s go and put the screws on your employer,’ said her son, ‘and get them to make it soon, shall we?’

  3

  … Like a mermaid in sea-weed,

  Pensive awhile she dreams awake …

  KEATS: The Eve of St Agnes

  In the event, I went without him. That evening when Mrs Gresham mentioned the old ship in conversation with the manager of our hotel, it turned out that the next day, Sunday, would be the only reasonable chance she would have of seeing over it until the following weekend. He knew the new owner very well, he told us (a cousin of my wife, you understand?) and he would himself telephone immediately and seek permission. There would be no difficulty, no difficulty at all … Naturally, the Señora was at liberty to go any day of the week, but she must understand that there were men coming on Monday to assess its possibilities as a floating restaurant, and they would be coming and going all week. So if what the Señora wanted was to gather atmosphere, to try and visualise the ship as it had once been …?

  This was certainly what the Señora wanted. We set off next morning.

  Since the farm at Playa Blanca was not on the telephone, we had not been able to warn James Blair of our prompt return. And when for the second time our hired Volkswagen bumped and slithered down the abominable lane the farm seemed as quiet and deserted as it had yesterday. In fact more deserted. There were no workmen there on the cliff below the cactus slope. When my knock failed to get an answer I walked right along to where the piles of sand and cement lay covered with tarpaulins against the dew. No sign of life but a family of rosy-looking bullfinches flirting and twittering over the tamarisks.

  ‘Not a sign,’ I reported to my employer. ‘Sunday, of course. And the car’s gone, too. What do you bet they’re all at church?’

  Mrs Gresham snorted. ‘The day George St Bernard Shakespeare darkens the door of a church I’ll eat my royalty cheque,’ she said. ‘Never mind, let’s go down to the bay. They’re probably down there swimming.’

  ‘Their car’s gone,’ I repeated.

  ‘We’ll go down anyway.’ She got out of the car with decision. ‘There’s no point in staying here. The only thing I’m afraid of is that they’ll have taken the boat away and gone fishing.’

  For myself, I rather hoped they had. I had horrible visions of having to row my employer out myself to the schooner. But I said nothing, just picked up my swimming things and the picnic basket and followed her down the path.

  They weren’t in the bay, but apart from that, luck was in for both of us. The boat – a boat – was there, and beside it at the water’s edge a boy, a young man of about seventeen, stood with bare feet in the creaming shallows doing something to a fishing line.

  He spoke a little English, and he and Mrs Gresham very soon came to terms. He would certainly row her out to the schooner, he said, and she could stay there as long as she liked. He would be within reach, fishing. She had only to call him, and he would come and bring her back. And the Señorita …?

  My employer looked at me. ‘Do you want to come?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘It’s your day off, Sunday, remember?’

  ‘So it is. Well, do you need me to take notes or anything, or would you feel better with someone else there?’

  ‘No to both. All right, my dear, enjoy yourself. And don’t start watching the path yet. Church doesn’t come out for at least an hour.’

  The boat was afloat and half out through the white breakers, before I could think of anything to say.

  The water was cool, and alive with chill, stinging bubbles. I sat on a flat rock and put on my mask and flippers. The sea was tranquil, its long, shallow swells lifting and falling softly like a sleeper breathing, but since I was alone and didn’t know the shore I had no intention of diving, but decided to cruise along the reefs at the surface or just below it. I adjusted my mask, gripped the mouthpiece of the snorkel in my teeth, and lowered myself into the water.

  Anyone who has ever done skin-diving will tell you that there is one moment they will never forget – the first time they ever put on the mask and looked down at the bed of the sea. It is, literally, like opening a gate on a new world. And for myself the first few moments of every dive bring the rapture of discovery over again.

  And this was new country. The colours and shapes, the life and tempo of this ocean bed were as different from the sea-beds I knew in the North Sea and the Mediterranean, as the Mountains of Fire were different from the Cotswold Hills.

  I saw no sea-anemones, no starfish or urchins or grey coralweed, none of the thick bladdery straps or green sea-mosses of our home water, just the clean sand, unrippled, the sharply shaped rocks, and the drifting patterns of the thin clear weed. Weeds in sable and silver and olive moved like windblown hair, like cloud, like waves themselves across a sea-bed of every shade from gold to grey and white, with the ripples of shadow and reflection pulsing across it as the sea moved. A school of tiny white fish drifted below me, a score of them all moving together like tiny paper fish on some mobile stirred by a current of air. Then all at once, twitched by some invisible master-thread, they slipped to the right and were gone. A pair of striped fish nosed across at right angles, then hung motionless a foot above their own shadows. Something emerald-green and vivid shuttled ahead of me, from shadow to light to shadow again.

  I surfaced, and reached with my feet for the sandy bottom. I was not much more than breast deep. I must have been cruising with the drift of some current, for I found that I had swum – as one always does – further than I had imagined. I had gone right along one arm of the bay, and was standing now almost below the southern headland. I couldn’t see the farmhouse, set back as it was from the centre of the bay’s crescent, but the tops of the palm-trees were vis
ible above the ruined outbuildings. Beyond the other arm of the bay the bleached hulk brooded over its glimmering reflection. Though I could see no sign of life aboard her my employer must be there still, as the fishing boat was a little way beyond the ship, the boy busy in the stern over net or line.

  I looked up at the towering black basalt above me. The skirts of the cliff thrust out into the sea in ridges or folds, as the lava had spilled, almost like stiff pleats of black velvet, forming a series of narrow coves or inlets. In cruising along the base of the cliff I had found myself passing from light to dark and back to light again, as these buttresses threw and then withdrew their shade. A little way out to sea the water whitened round black stacks of rock, some of them massive enough to act as breakwaters, so that the water along the foot of the cliff was calm.

  I turned, and began to trudge back the way I had come.

  I idled along the surface, the sun warm on my skin through the milky water. There was no sound but the hush of the far waves, and the occasional booming echo of the swell as some tongue licked into the caves and smoothed creaming under the hollow rocks. Spray hissed and whispered, and my whole body and mind were brimful of that happiness and well-being which sunlight and salt water and peace can bring.