Lord of the Far Island (28 page)

here some as is doomed never to be content. Your father be one of them, me dear.

ell me what happened during the days just before Silva went away.

he came to see me twice she did in the week before she went away.

id she seem unhappy?

ou could never be sure with her. She laughed and laughed and you could never be sure whether her laughter was tears. She said: verything going to change now. I shan be here much longer, Tassie.Then I talked to her and she wanted me to read her palm and I could find little for comfort there. But I didn tell her that. Sometimes I don tell the bad.She stared over my head as though she were watching something. f I see darkness hovering there, I don always say so. What I say is: ou be watchful.For who can say when the dark shadow of danger ain hovering over us all, me youyes, you, Miss Ellen. That what I say.

I looked uneasily over my shoulder and she laughed at me. Then she said: hat what I tell m to be, me dear. Watchfulever watchful. And there nothing more I can tell e about Miss Silva.

It was the signal to go. I had, however, gleaned just a little more about my half sister.

I put several coins into the bowl on the table and, as when Jago had done the same, her shrewd eyes watched and counted.

ome to me again, me dear,she said. ome whenever you do feel the need.

I thanked her and went on into the sunshine.

Two days later, as it was calm, I rowed over to the mainland once more. On this occasion I intended to go to the inn for a glass of wine and to look at some of the shops, for Christmas was not so very far off and if I were to be on the Island during that season I should need to find some presents for everyone.

I should not stay long this time, I promised myself, and being near the coast would be watchful for a change in the weather.

After having tied up the boat I went first to the shops, where I bought one or two little items, and then I paused before a window, for displayed there was a picture which caught my eye. It was a seascape clear summer day with a sapphire-blue sea and waves edged with white frills rolling gently on a golden shore; but what was so arresting was a cloud of white sea gulls rising and swooping above the water. The contrast of white birds and blue sea was dazzling and I was fascinated. I thought I must have that picture. It was so evocative of Sanctuary Island and I knew that, wherever I was, when I looked at that picture I would be back there.

Then it occurred to me that it would be an ideal Christmas present for Jago, and no sooner had that thought occurred to me than I was even more delighted at the prospect of giving it to him than keeping it for myself.

I went into the shop and told the man behind the counter that I should like to have a closer look at the picture entitled he Gulls.It was brought from the window and was, I thought, reasonably priced. The more I saw it, the more I liked it. I would have it, I said.

While this transaction was taking place a man came from the back of the shop. I knew him immediately. He was James Manton, the artist who lived on Blue Rock and whom I had met when I was with Jago on Sanctuary Island.

His eyes shone with pleasure and for a fleeting moment I thought he was expressing his delight at seeing me. Then I understood. he Gullswas his work and he was merely showing an artist appreciation for someone who appreciated his work.

hy, it Miss Ellen Kellaway,he said.

remember you too,I told him.

o you are buying he Gulls.

was completely fascinated by it when I was passing the window and I just felt I had to have it.

hat was it you liked about it so much?

he color of everything struck me most. And the birds theye so alive. They seem as if they are going to fly right off the canvas. And the sea it so calm and beautiful. I don think Ie ever seen such a perfect sea but I know I shall, and I shall wait for it.

ou have given me great pleasure,he said. t is such a joy to talk with someone who sees what one is trying to express. Are you taking the picture with you?

thought I would. Though I suppose I could have it sent.

id you come over alone?

es. I keeping an eye on the sea though. I don want to get caught.

He laughed. have an idea,he said. hey can pack up the picture and you and I will go and drink a cup of tea at the inn. Then I shall carry the picture to your boat. How that?

t an excellent idea.

So that was how I came to be sitting at the Polcrag Inn opposite James Manton drinking Mrs. Pengelly strong brew and eating scones with jam and clotted cream.

He asked me how I liked the island life and I replied that sometimes it didn seem like being on an island, although it would when the sea made one a prisoner there.

oue on a bigger one than Blue Rock,he commented. t makes a difference, you know.

ou knew my father, I believe,I said, for I was determined to discover all I could and this seemed a heaven-sent opportunity.

His face hardened. es, I knew him.

can see that you did not like him very much.

would prefer not to talk about him to you, Miss Kellaway.

ut I want to talk about him and nobody seems to want to.

ou could hardly hope to hear what you obviously want to from one whom he regarded as his enemy.

e regarded you as such? I am sure he was wrong.

our father was a man who thought he was never wrong.

know his first wife died.

e was cruel to her. Had he been different

oue not suggesting that he killed her!

here are more ways of killing people than driving a knife through their hearts or dropping poison into their soup. You can kill with cruelty, and that what he did. Her life was so wretched with him. He was a jealous and vindictive man.

I shrank from the vituperation in his voice; he had seemed so placid before, a mild middle-aged man mainly interested in his art. Now his hatred of my father seemed to endow him with new life, a greater vitality than he had shown before.

o you knew her well,I went on.

knew her and I knew your mother, too. Your mother was an artist. She could have been a good one but he despised that. She and I had a good deal in common naturally.

see. And she too was unhappy with him.

he was and finally left, taking you with her.

id he care very much?

James Manton laughed ironically. are! He was probably glad.

hat did he feel about his daughters?

oor Silva. He hated her. She might have been so different. I wish He shrugged his shoulders. ilva was never given a chance. That was why

he disappeared,I put in, as he did not appear to want to continue. er life seems to have been a very sad one. She was unbalanced, I gathered.

ho wouldn have been in such an atmosphere? She wasn very old when her mother died and to be brought up in that place

remember so little, being only three years old when I left. Did he hate me too?

e wouldn have had time for children.

o you know what happened after my mother went away with me?

e didn try to find you. He would never forgive your mother for running away just as he never forgave Effie.He shook his head. shouldn be speaking to you like this about your own father.

hat I want is to get at the truth. If it unpleasant I have to face it. I rather know it all and see it clearly than have it dressed up to look pretty to please me.

ou must forgive me,he said. was carried away. Your father and I were not on speaking terms. When he was alive he wouldn have had me on the Island. If I had put a foot there someone would have been ordered to throw me into the sea.

ell, I hope that unhappy situation is over now.

h, these family feuds get carried on for generations. They exist when the families don know the original cause of the quarrel. Did we ever know what was the start of the trouble between the Montagues and Capulets? I wouldn go to Kellaway Island nowust wouldn dream of it. I content to stay at Blue Rock.

ou enjoy your little island all to yourself.

t suits me. I paint most of the time I there and then I go up to London to arrange exhibitions and see other people. I come to the mainland and put my pictures in shop windows hoping that art-conscious, beauty-loving young ladies will come along and buy them.

glad I saw he Gullsand I glad it yours. I hope my appreciation of your picture has done something to break through a little of the feud.

He smiled at me. t miraculous,he said, hat you could be his daughter.

It had been an interesting afternoon, and after I had rowed myself back with the picture I set it up in my room and studied it.

Then I put it away, for if I was going to give it to Jago it would have to be a secret until Christmas.

It was a golden October and people were talking about an Indian summer. The days were warm and hazy and there was no sign of the gales. Jago said it was hardly possible that we should avoid them altogether and that they had probably delayed their visit until November.

I took the Ellen out every day. I loved to row round the Island. The place was growing on me. Jago used to talk to me about the troubles of the various people and I was beginning to know a few of them. They accepted me and I was gratified when they appeared to like me, and I felt especially delighted when they hinted what a good landlord Jago was.

tern,said one old woman, ut just. Youe got to keep your cottage neat and clean and the garden shipshape, then hel see your roof mended if the need arises.

It was a lovely afternoon with a rather hazy sun visible through the slightly misty atmosphere. My thoughts were with the people of the Islandot so much those who lived there at this time, but those vague figures of the past whom it was so difficult, on the flimsy evidence available, to bring to life.

Why was I so anxious to know about the lives of people who were gone?

dle curiosity,Philip would have said.

h, you always want to know everything,I could hear Esmeralda telling me. articularly about people.

Yes, it was true. But there was something more. I could not help feeling that my life was interwoven with those of the people who had lived here and that there was some reason why it was important to me to know what had happened to them.

Never far from my thoughts was Jago himself. My feelings for him were so varied that he was of perpetual interest to me. I often looked at the pictures in my mother sketchbook, from which I would not be parted. She, too, had been aware of a dual personality. But then she had felt the same about Silva. Perhaps she had meant to convey that there were two sidesnd often moreo everyone character. My father, for instance. He seemed to have been very difficult to live with and yet both my mother and Effie must have been in love with him at one time to have married him.

I shipped the oars and drifted on the tide. It was so beautiful with the faint cool breeze on my face and that benign reddish sun up there. The clouds drifting slowly in the wind were taking on weird shapes. There was a face up there woman face, a nutcracker of a facend I immediately thought of Tassie. Dark shadows hovering over all of us, she had said. e watchful.Had that been an oblique reference to some danger threatening me, or was it just the fortuneteller jargon? When I was with Jago it had been all the appy ever after if you take the right turningtheme. Wouldn that apply to anybody? Wasn there a ight turningin everybody life which if taken at the flood leads on to greatness or happiness, which was more to be desired? I was misquoting and mixing metaphors but truth was there.

I had drifted nearly a mile out from the Island, I should think. Perhaps I ought to go back.

As I moved the oars I stared at the bottom of the boat in sudden consternation. Water was seeping in.

I bent forward and felt with my hand. The water was very shallow so the boat had only just started to leak. I touched the bottom of the boat. There was something sticky on my hand. It looked like sugar.

Even as I looked the water started to come in faster. The whole of the bottom of the boat was covered now. I seized the oars and started to row for the Island as fast as I could.

The Ellen had sprung a leak. There was no doubt of that. How far off the Island seemed! The boat was going to sink at any moment and I was not a strong swimmer.

It was sooner than I expected. The Ellen tipped to one side and I was in the water.

Frantically I sought to get a hold on the boat. By great good luck I managed to clutch at the keel as she turned upside down. She was floating and I was clinging to her with all my might. Temporarily I was safebut it could not last, I was well aware.

Could I swim to the shore? I could feel the water saturating my skirts and making them heavy. They were dragging me down. I had swum very little; Esmeralda and I had bathed in the sea at Brighton when our governess had taken us for holidays there, but then we had gone into bathing machines set up on the beach and emerged from them straight into the water and just let the waves toss us about as we hung on to the ropes. I could manage a few strokes but could I reach the Island, hampered as I was by my clothes?

My hold on the boat was precarious. I shouted: elp!My voice sounded feeble. Overhead gulls wheeled, screeching in what seemed to me a mocking fashion.

h, God,I prayed, et someone find me.And into my mind there flashed an image of Silva in another boat. They never found her but the boat was washed up.

Oh, this treacherous sea! How powerful it seemed even in its present moderate mood.

Should I try for the shore? I could feel my wet skirts wrapping themselves around my legs and I knew it would be disastrous to attempt it, and yet with every passing second my hold on the Ellen was becoming more and more slight.

My hands were growing numb. I can cling much longer, I thought. Is this the end? It was strange that it should all have led to this. No, no. Someone would come. Jago would come. Yes, it must be Jago. If only I could will him to be taking a stroll along the cliffs.

ago!I called. ago.

I slipping, I thought. I can hold on much longer. What is it like to drown?

I would make an attempt to swim. Who knew, I might manage it. It was said that when one was in danger nature provided extra reserves of strength. I wouldn die, I was going to fight for my life.