Grand Canary (11 page)

They went out of the cabin into the liquid sunlight, crossed the gangplank, and walked down the dusty mole. Strutting along with thumbs in both arm-holes and a toothpick between his lips, Corcoran assumed proprietary rights over the harbour, deplored the indolence of the natives, philosophised upon the women, purchased a bunch of violets for his buttonhole from a crumpled old woman, donated a pinch of snuff to a fly-infested beggar, and finally drew up before a disreputable one-horse tartana.

‘Aha!' he exclaimed. ‘Here's the ticket for soup, fella. The horse can stand up and the carriage has wheels.' He turned to the driver. ‘How much drive Las Canteras, bucko?'

The driver made with his shoulders a gesture indicative of extreme unworthiness and extended four yellow finger-nails.

‘Four English shilling, señor.'

‘Four English tomatoes! It's too much. I'll give ye two peseta and a pinch of snuff.'

‘No, no, señor. Much beautiful tartana. Plenty quick.'

‘Ah! Plenty quick me foot.'

The driver burst into a flow of Spanish, making little piteous grimaces of entreaty.

‘What does he say?' asked Corcoran, scratching his head, ‘I'm slow at the lingo.'

Harvey answered calmly:

‘He says that he knows you well. That you are the most arrant humbug that ever breathed. That you have never knocked Smiler Burge over the ropes. That Smiler Burge nearly killed you with one swift blow. He says that you are ugly, old, and that you do not speak the truth. He says further that his wife is dying, that his ten children are dying, that he himself will die of a broken heart if you do not pay him four shillings for the hire of his lovely tartana.'

Jimmy thrust back his cap until it lay upon his collar.

‘We'll give him a couple of shillin', then,' he said doubtfully. ‘Two English shillin', kiddo.'

The driver's face split in a dazzling smile. With the air of a grandee he flung open the rickety door, leaped upon the box, and flourished his conquest to the world. Two English shillings! It was exactly five times his legitimate fare.

‘That's the way to handle them boys,' said Jimmy out of the corner of his mouth. ‘'Tis the business instinct. If ye don't watch out they'll swindle ye hollow.' And he lay back expansively in his seat as they bumped down the rutted street.

Mary Fielding had come to the Playa de las Canteras. She, too, had heard from Renton of the beauty of this little-known shore, and now, in her wet green bathing-suit, she lay flat upon the sun-bleached sand, letting its soft warmth creep into her. Little drops of sea-water still glistened upon her white legs. Her body, moulded firmly by the waves, held a vibrating life. The curve of her small breast was lovely as a flower, graceful as a swallow's flight. Her eyes were closed, as though to shutter the exquisite abandon of her mood; yet she could see it all, the lovely, lovely scene. The gracious sweep of yellow sand; the water bluer than the sky; the foaming whiteness of the breakers cresting in thunder across the reef; the distant peak – shining, translucent, omnipotent as a god. Oh, she was glad that she had come.

Here she could breathe and, pressed naked to the earth, be herself at last. Within her something rose, whiter than the crested foam, more shining than the mountain peak – a memory, an aspiration, or a mingling of them both. Never before had the conviction swelled so intensely within her that all the life that she must lead was but a subterfuge, the paltry shadow of reality. And never before had she so intensely hated and despised it: the plumaged performance of society, the ritual of Buckden – yes, even Buckden, rising in mellowed bricks, seemed now oppressive with the crushing dignity of years.

Now, close to the earth's simplicity, it all seemed remote and vague: formless as the loose sand that streamed through her fingers.

Raising herself, she looked over at Elissa and Dibdin, who sat back to back under the shadow of a big umbrella. Elissa had not undressed: her skin did not like the sea. But Dibs, with a sort of senile friskiness, had bared his scaly hide and, like a mummy masquerading in blue serge shorts, exposed his desiccated carcass to the breeze.

Supported by her elbow, Mary listened to their talk. She listened deliberately, filled by a sense of its futility.

‘Elissa,' Dibs was saying, ‘you're not really bored at coming here?'

For two full minutes Elissa Baynham went on interestedly powdering her nose: the fourth time within the hour she had consummated her passion for perfection.

‘You know I'm always bored,' she answered, when all hope of any answer had been lost. ‘There are no men here.'

‘No men,' giggled Dibs. ‘What about me?'

‘You,' said Elissa; and that was all.

There was a short silence, then she demanded:

‘Light me a cigarette. And don't wet it or I shall have hysterics.' She paused. ‘I've suddenly thought of a new name for you – now that I've seen you in the altogether. In future I shall call you Sex-Appeal.'

He found an onyx case in her gold mesh bag, extracted a cigarette with his veinous fingers, and lit it.

Trailing a hand over her shoulder, she said:

‘Give it me so I don't have to turn round. The sight of your skin is agony.'

‘My skin,' he exclaimed, touched on the raw at last. ‘It's a perfectly good skin. Hundreds of women have loved that skin.'

‘That was before you took to wearing corsets, darling.'

Dibs quivered with rage, and retaliated on a different flank.

‘You're damned silly, Elissa. I don't know what's come of you. Letting that Tranter fellow run after you.'

‘Yes, isn't it harassing? He's trying to bring me to salvation.'

‘But – but the damned fellow's head over ears in love with you.'

‘He doesn't know it.' She took a long puff at her cigarette. ‘He's such a bore or I might like him perhaps once. Just once – for fun you know, Dibs – sorry, I mean Sex-Appeal.'

He stiffened his bony back.

‘That's too much, Elissa. I'm hanged if it isn't goin' a shade too far. I don't know what the younger generation is comin' to. In my time we had our affairs, but we had the decency to be discreet about them. We were never obvious. And we were at least polite.'

She answered in a taunting voice:

‘You always said, “ May I?” – didn't you, Dibs darling?'

‘Upon my soul!' he gasped. ‘Really, you're a most immoral woman, Elissa.'

‘No. Not immoral, Dibs,' she considered. ‘Merely improper. I shall never consider myself immoral until I allow myself to have a lover on the sofa.'

Mary, listening with a set face, made a faint movement of distress.

‘I wish you wouldn't talk like that, 'Lissa,' she said suddenly in a low voice, her eyes fixed upon the moving sea. ‘It's too horrible. You spoil everything.'

‘Spoil,' answered Elissa. ‘I like that, Mary pretty. Who dragged us to this devastating spot? Who refused Carr's invitation to Quinney's? Who insisted on his coming to lunch with us here? He hated it pretty thoroughly, I don't mind telling you. There was a wounded look about his dignity.' And, making a hole in the sand with her forefinger, she entombed her glowing cigarette-end delicately.

‘I hate smart restaurants,' murmured Mary, as in apology. ‘Everything stiff and horrid. That's why I wanted to come here. It's so odd and lovely. And Mr Carr doesn't mind. He needn't come if he doesn't want to.'

‘He'll come,' said Elissa carelessly. ‘His tongue lolls out when he looks at you.'

Something disagreeable flowed over Mary – a sense of sordidness. She shook her head to free herself, checking a thought as yet unformed.

‘I'm going to swim again,' she said without warning, and, rising to her feet, she ran swiftly into the foaming water. Beyond the foam, which creamed around her waist in eddying rings, the sea was opalescent, blue and strangely ethereal, like light screened through deep crystal caverns. Her feet left the warm sand, and suddenly she was deliciously beyond her depth, surging buoyantly towards the raft which curtseyed at anchor half-way to the reef. Now she felt clean, her limbs whipped by the tanging brine, her blood enriched by the electric air.

She swam and swam, then with a little cry of sheer delight she clasped the edge of the bobbing raft and swung herself, exultant, upon its matting-covered surface. There she rested with arms outstretched, her cheek pressed closely to the warm, wet fibre. Now she felt herself a thousand miles away from Elissa's flippant tongue. A moment passed, then all at once she became aware that she was not alone. Slowly she turned her head. Harvey Leith lay on the far side of the raft.

They looked at each other for what seemed to her a long, long time. Stripped of his nondescript clothes, his figure had an unsuspected grace; his shoulders wide and narrowing downwards, his legs both muscular and fine. At last, filled with a curious perplexity, she let her lashes fall.

‘I didn't think. I didn't know,' she said queerly, ‘that you were here.'

‘I didn't think I should be here myself,' he answered slowly. ‘But here I am.'

‘And here am I too,' she said with a little laugh. ‘We're afloat again on another ship. Isn't it fun?'

Nothing more banal than the words which she had spoken, yet under the flat surface of these words she felt returning, quivering more urgently within her, that queer unrest which previously had taken her. A sense of something upthrown from the past, of something vital, predestined, stretching towards her from the future. It transformed life, tinting this moment with the colours of her dream, flooding her body with a strange expectant helplessness. Never before had she known this deep and throbbing harmony of emotion, never before had this strange constraint possessed her like a pain. She did not understand, she could not defend herself. Her fingers played nervously with a loose fibre of the matting; she had not the power to look at him.

‘It's so lovely here,' she said at last, almost nervously. ‘The sea – the sun – the snow upon that peak. So lovely. It makes me feel I've known it always.' Her voice was low, and sounded dull upon her ears, the fine inflections flattened by the constriction of her throat.

Quite motionless, yet swung by the swaying raft as though he floated between sea and sky in some enchanted medium, he did not answer. With eyes fixed, absorbed by the living beauty of her form, he seemed to contemplate the words within himself. So lovely, she had said. He felt his heart pounding the blood hard into his temples. So lovely! He had never thought of loveliness, nor sought the soft mystery of beauty. His life had been hard, like granite, governed by known laws, inflexible. He had been seeking. Yes, truth alone had been the object of his search. And the motive of his search? It was no ardour to aid humanity. Simply a cold stretching after reason – indifferent and austere. But now, under a blinding light which seemed to burn upon him from afar, something fused within his soul, different, immutable.

‘They call this island Gran Canaria,' she murmured. ‘Grand Canary! There's colour and movement in that name. When I think of this voyage I shall say away down into myself. Grand Canary! It has a thrilling sound.'

Her words, acquiring another meaning, reached him dimly through the blinding whiteness of that secret light. And he asked:

‘You leave the ship tomorrow?'

‘Yes, we shall stay at Orotava.'

It had a strange inevitability. She was going. To-night the
Aureola
would sail, cleave through the warm darkness to a farther island, and in the morning she would be gone.

‘It is quiet at Orotava,' she went on. ‘A small place and all unspoiled. That above everything is what I like. Mr Carr has arranged everything for us at the hotel – San Jorge. He is my husband's agent here in the islands.'

‘I see,' he said; and all the light within him suddenly was quenched. There had been something; and now it was taken back. His lips drew in; calmly he forced himself to look at her.

‘You will have a happy time, I know.'

‘You go on, of course, with the ship?' she asked, her eyes bright upon him.

‘I go on. And back again.'

A silence fell, forged by their inscrutable thoughts. Suddenly she made that impulsive little movement of her hand, as though capturing an elusive joy.

‘Will you have lunch with us today? Oh, yes, please – please do. At the little
cabine
place. It is so delicious there. Mr Carr is coming. And I want you to come too.'

There was a painful pleasure in knowing that he must refuse.

‘I'm not alone,' he answered. ‘Corcoran brought me down here.' He made a movement towards the outer sea, where, like an old seal sporting amongst the surf, Jimmy's figure was dimly seen.

‘He must come too,' she said quickly. ‘You must both come.'

‘He has to go into the town on business.'

‘But you – you haven't any business?'

Already he had been sufficiently boorish upon the ship; stung by the very memory, his refusal died upon his lips.

‘That's good,' she cried happily across his silence. ‘You're coming. You're coming to lunch with me.'

Her words forced a faint smile to his lips, and at that smile she sprang to her feet, arched her thin arms with a sort of innocent delight, and plunged deeply into the sea. The impetus of her dive made the raft so suddenly recoil he rolled after her, falling upon the back of an advancing wave. Beneath the surface he opened his eyes. Shining through the subaqueous light, her body slipped away from him, glistening as a moonbeam and as white. He rose, filled his lungs with air. He wanted suddenly to pursue that flashing whiteness. But he did not. He swung away and swam with over-arm strokes to the
cabine.

In his dressing-box that smelt of resinous pine-wood he put on his clothes slowly. His skin, alive with pricking currents of life, had a pinkish glow. His eyes looked straight ahead, studying remotely the unreality of what they saw.