Silver (5 page)

Natty began to hum a tune under her breath; I recognised it as ‘Lillibullero’, a melody I have always liked. I made no comment, but continued gazing ahead, as if I might find the answer to all my questions in studying the moorhens as they dived for food, then bobbed to the surface again with water breaking in jewels across their feathers. When I was tired of this, I turned to examine Spot once more. He was not in the least interested in my cogitations, but preened the feathers of one wing with smooth and steady tugs.

The map
, I understood, was the map of Treasure Island. I had never seen it. I was not even certain that it was still in my father’s possession. But I knew where it would be, if he did still own it. In the chest that stood at the foot of his bed. The chest that – as he had told me a thousand times – once belonged to Billy Bones. (It had remained in the Admiral Benbow following the death of that reprobate, and was claimed by my father as a reward for his troubles, when he returned to the inn after his journey to the island.) My father had nowhere else to hoard his valuables, which explained why he guarded this chest with a special vigilance, keeping its key tied at all times around his neck on a piece of string. I had never laid a hand on this key, much less turned it in the lock of the chest. But I accepted that if I were to do so, I would in all probability find the article that Mr Silver wanted.

The second and larger mystery, of whether I dare take it, remained to be solved.

‘Do you know why your father wants this map?’ I asked at length, in a voice that I hoped would convey a sense of general bafflement.

Natty broke off her humming and dipped a hand into the river; the water closed round it with a faint clucking noise, as if it were thick as treacle. ‘Of course,’ she said, at exactly the same moment as I spoke myself, and followed my original question by saying, ‘I can guess.’

The coincidence of our speaking together was enough to end the solemnity that had crept over us, and we smiled again. This lightening, however, did not help me settle what answer I should give. I decided the best I could do, and the course of action least likely to cause harm, was to tell the truth.

‘I do not know whether my father has a map,’ I told her.

‘I said
the
map,’ Natty replied, with a note of impatience.

‘The map, then.’

‘But if …’

‘But if he did have the map,’ I said, taking up her words, ‘I know where it might be found.’ As I spoke, a cloud sailed across the sun and the sparkle died on the river, turning its traffic from a joyful bustle into a melancholy procession. A ferry-boat taking passengers towards London suddenly appeared to be on its way to the underworld. A coal barge, carried by a single ashen sail along the centre of the current, broke a black wash against the side of our wherry. If I had not been so thoroughly seized by the gravity of what I was now contemplating, I might have laughed at the thought of the world so obviously judging my behaviour, and finding me wanting. As it was I merely frowned.

Natty would not allow matters to rest. ‘And where might that be?’ she persisted.

‘Oh,’ I said, then hesitated again. I was imagining how I would creep silently to my father’s bedside as he slept, slip the key from around his neck, open the chest, riffle through its contents until I found the map, remove it, lock the chest again, return the key, then
make my escape – and all in complete darkness, without making a sound!

It was a preposterous idea. Preposterous because dangerous. And preposterous for other reasons, as well. Because the deception – no, the theft – would be a betrayal of my father. He had done nothing to deserve such treachery. Making me toil in his taproom? Leaving me too much to myself? Boasting? Wasting time on former glories? These were hardly unnatural sins that justified unnatural actions.

‘Oh?’ said Natty, echoing me.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. And then, as if I were speaking for a ghost that lived inside me, or was being manipulated by Natty herself, I added, ‘Map or no map, I should like to meet your father.’

It was not just curiosity that made me say this, but a sense that something so merely inquisitive could hardly be counted a crime. I was of course denying to myself the possibility that it might be a step towards crime.

Natty straightened her back, as if a burden had been lifted from her. ‘When?’ she asked.

‘Today,’ I told her, full of confidence. ‘Now. I shall go inside to my father, and tell him not to expect me until this evening.’

With that I collected our two empty glasses, and stood up so abruptly the boat dipped and rasped against the bank – then stepped onto the towpath. When I paused in the doorway to look round, Natty had already untethered the
Spyglass
. She sat with the prow pointing towards London, the oars in her hands, and her face filled with the satisfaction of someone who is doing what they have always expected to do. Spot was looking in the same direction, and when he began talking, his words reached me very clearly. ‘Hoist the mainsail,’ he said. ‘Hoist the mainsail.’

Nothing was said or done on our journey to London that suggested my life had abruptly changed. Yet as the river carried us forward I felt I was not so much setting out from home as leaving it. The wide marshes smoking in the early sun were a sight that I had known all my life, but now they seemed as bewildering as images in a dream. Even before the Hispaniola sank below the horizon, I had started to think that ghosts might feel as I did – being intimate with the places they haunt, while remaining separate from them.

Natty took charge of the journey for our first few miles; I sat in the stern beside Spot, who tilted his head to observe me through the bars of his cage and made a continuous low hissing noise, which proved how greatly he resented my company. It was not in the least surprising to see Natty so expert in everything she did – strong as a
boy in her handling of the oars, and like a boy too in the way she hardly seemed conscious of herself, but only of the task she performed. When sweat trickled from her forehead along her nose, she pouted and puffed it away; if other craft dared show any sign of wanting to cross her path, she shouted at their pilots to have a care. I understood she did not want to speak to me while she worked, and contented myself with watching. Although I often threw her a smile, and wished her to know I admired her dexterity, I felt the looks she gave me in return were intended to cut directly through me, in order to concentrate on some invisible thing that followed behind us.

I soon settled for living in a kind of trance. The marshes slid by as if a hand had descended from heaven to unroll a canvas of infinite length, on which everything seemed static and a picture of itself. Here was a piebald pony, clambering onto a shingle-spit as though debating whether to take a bath. Here was a boatyard where boys melted tar in a bucket – the heavy smell crawled over the river like a shadow. Here was a knot of sailors’ homes around a stagnant inlet, and here a complete large village, where the inhabitants were beginning their day of chattering, bargaining, working, cursing and comforting. Each of them took as much notice of the
Spyglass
as if she had been a water-bug. Likewise the sailors looking down from their high decks, or the oarsmen in their rowing-boats that were more nearly our equal. They had their own business to attend to, and concentrated on that.

The estrangement continued even when my manners revived (I mean: when I had new orders from Natty) and I began to share the work of rowing. This was accomplished with a minimum of talk, as though we were old comrades dropping into familiar routines, and our silence continued for the final part of our journey. The effect was to make the beginning of my adventure seem inevitable. Our shoulders and arms (her right, my left) rubbed together with
a soft friction. Cold river-water dripped onto our knees, and puddled around our shoes. Our lips blew out steady gasps, whereupon our breath mingled in a wake that (had we been able to see them) would have imitated the curling signatures left by our oars on the surface of the water.

In as little as an hour – such was the force of the current working in our favour – we had travelled through Greenwich and reached a part of the river I barely knew. Here, watching the houses crowd together on the bank in much greater numbers, I had better reason to think I was entering a new phase of my existence. This was not because I had never been to London before: I had several times accompanied my father on trips to provision the Hispaniola, and to pay our respects (before their death) to my mother’s parents in Shoreditch. It was more a matter of this being the first expedition I had made on my own account, fulfilling my own wishes.

If anyone had asked me to say precisely what those wishes might have been, I could not easily have told them. The pleasure of sitting beside Natty would have been one honest answer. More than that, my journey showed a willingness to see her father – but a willingness that was accompanied by a great deal of doubt. I had yet to decide, for instance, what I would say to Mr Silver when he questioned me about the map. I reached the same point of indecision when I debated with myself whether I might be able to steal it. In my surrender to Natty’s invitation, I assumed that appropriate actions would occur at appropriate times.

As we came close to Wapping, the safety of the
Spyglass
required all our attention. It also persuaded Natty to break her silence, and give me instructions about how to avoid obstacles by swerving now this way and now that. Although I had lived on the river for most of my life, I did not feel in the least demeaned by this. So long as Natty presented us to the world as equal partners, and did not
embarrass me by suggesting otherwise, I was content to do her bidding, and bide my time until my own initiative might be required.

In spite of her cleverness, the dangers of traffic squeezed so tightly together in this part of the river were a good reason to think we might be rammed and sunk at any moment. The distractions of the quayside made our risk all the greater. At home in the Hispaniola, staring from my father’s windows, I had often seen ships returning from the four corners of the world, and let my imagination play among the bales of silk and boxes of spice they carried in their holds. Now, to look up from my seat in the
Spyglass
and contemplate the towering walls of such vessels – to see the scars inflicted by their voyages across enormous seas, to watch the sailors with their skins browned and hair bleached by the heat of exotic suns – made me feel that the dream into which I had fallen was spiralling downwards still further.

When Natty eventually lifted one hand and pointed towards the shore, I saw a pair of tall warehouses that appeared so nearly on the point of collapse they had leaned together and formed a kind of tunnel. I understood this was our destination, and pulled more sharply on my oar, as I was told to do. The
Spyglass
slid between two ships, entered much calmer water – and Natty’s fist landed in my chest to push me backwards, so that we could more easily approach our landing-place by slipping beneath a web of mooring-ropes. In this way I had the appearance of a sleeper, as well as the drowsiness of one, when we reached the end of our journey.

I should more properly say: reached the end of one part of our journey and began the next. For as soon as we had tethered the
Spyglass
to a ring attached in the quay, and climbed a slimy ladder onto solid ground (which meant following Natty, and passing up to her the cage containing Spot, who objected loudly to this change in his circumstances), it was immediately obvious that I must sharpen
my wits. In the space of a moment, I was entirely surrounded by men and women who did not care if they knocked me with their elbows, or struck me with their baskets, or trampled me with their clogs, or in some other way encouraged me to disappear over the side of the quay and into the river to drown.

Natty signalled to me, and we set off beneath the arch of warehouses. By now I was accustomed to behaving obediently with her, and soon found myself passing through a sort of labyrinth made of greasy walls and billowy washing-lines. When we escaped at last – which happened in a sudden blaze of sunlight – she turned towards me with a strange catch in her voice.

‘This is my home,’ she said.

It was a house backing onto the river: that much was obvious, since beyond it to left and right lay a glimmer of water. But a house built on what method was difficult to say, since the entire construction contained little of anything that is generally accepted as being necessary in a house, and much that is not. A single door was squeezed to one side of the façade, windows were scattered here and there (some oblong, some round, some square), the roof was pitched high over one side and dwindled almost to nothing on the other, and several chimneys (all breathing smoke) stuck out at unexpected angles like gigantic whiskers.

The composition of the thing was more peculiar still. For rather than being made of bricks and mortar, the walls were comprised of planks, spars, logs, branches, roots, pieces of barrel, and every other sort of wooden material the river happened to have carried within reach – some of them with barnacles and hanks of dried weed still attached. It was impossible to explain, unless the Thames had hoarded every scrap of its flotsam and jetsam for an appreciable time, then been provoked into flinging the whole collection into an upright position, where it remained thanks to a miracle of balance.
Hard wood and soft wood, dark wood and light wood, carved wood and plain wood had been hammered or bound together, without regard for any principle except that of chaos. Only one thing immediately made sense: the ancient brass telescope hanging above the door, which gave the building its name – the Spyglass.

I gazed at all this with such rapt attention, I only realised Natty had taken hold of my hand when she released it. Whether she felt cheered by the sight of home, or alarmed by the idea of how it might appear to me (and therefore wanting to set me at my ease), she now became more talkative.