Silver (10 page)

This was my father. My father, who as a boy had enjoyed a greater adventure than any I thought possible in my own life. My father, who had never lifted a hand against me. My father, who had offered me advantages of schooling and suchlike that he had never known himself. My father, who had kept honourable the memory of my mother. My father, who had raised me in his loneliness, and whose only fault had been to expect hard work and too much loyalty. No doubt if he had not done so, I would have said he was ignoring me! I can honestly say that I had never loved him more than I did in the moment before I betrayed him.

This might explain why, as my fingers set about the work they were required to do, they appeared not to belong to me but to a stranger who had taken possession of my body. Mercifully, they did not have to be busy for long – because my father was now lying flat on his back, his night-shirt open at the throat, with the string loose around his neck and the key sunk into his right armpit, where it lay half-buried in damp black hairs. Gently I teased it out. Tenderly I felt along the string, which seemed gilded in the yellow lantern-light and was warm with the heat of his body. Gladly I found the knot. Deftly I picked at the knot to loosen it …

And failed. The knot was pulled tight and, having been left undisturbed for many years, had hardened into a solid mass. I knew what I must do next. I also knew that if I delayed for a moment longer I would be overwhelmed by fear, and lose my capacity. It was at this moment the thought of Natty burst into my mind – how the night would be sighing round her, how she would scorn
me if I returned to the
Spyglass
empty-handed. So vividly did she appear to me, in fact, it might almost have been
her
head that I slid my hand beneath, and lifted. It might also have been her warm throat I brushed with my palm, as I reached for the string and drew it upwards, gripping the key between my thumb and forefinger.

In the middle of this operation my father appeared to stop breathing for a moment, opening his eyes wide and staring directly at me. I stood still, returning his gaze. But whereas my eyes were able to understand what they saw, his were blind – or fixed on some object that lay inside me. For a moment I also held my breath, with the uncomfortable sensation that I was being searched and found wanting. It was the crisis of my visit. I understood that if I dropped the key now, I could return to my old ways. Alternatively, I could proceed – into adventure and danger.

I do not need to say how I decided, or how quickly I finished my work. As my father closed his eyes again, I slipped the string over his head (which I then laid back gently on the pillow) and stepped away until I was able to crouch down beside the sea-chest. Thanks to the lantern, my work was much easier than it would otherwise have been.

To my surprise, the key entered the lock very smoothly and also turned very easily, with a pleasant heavy click that told me my father had often used it himself, for reasons I did not want to consider – they would have made its contents seem more important to him. The lid opened with an almost silent sigh, and released a faint whiff of tobacco and tar as it rested against the end of the bed. I bent forward as though I were peering into a well, and might at any moment lose my footing and fall headlong.

Mementos that we collect in the course of our existence are bound to have a value for ourselves that is unaccountable to others. So it was in my father’s treasure-chest. Among the objects that I
found, and held to the lantern so that I could see them clearly, were a quadrant; a tin canikin; several sticks of tobacco; an old Spanish watch; a pair of compasses mounted on brass; five or six curious West Indian shells; a leather pouch holding coins (which I assumed to be the residue of his share from the island); a loop of brown hair, braided and coiled; a green eyeshade; assorted notebooks, which were filled with columns of numbers, and must have been the business accounts of the Hispaniola; several articles of clothing, including a grey shawl and a pair of matching gloves; another small pouch containing three or four milk teeth; a very handy pistol with a label attached to it, on which a childish hand had written ‘the weapon used to dispatch Israel Hands’; a sealed envelope on which was written, in the same hand, ‘the Black Spot, as given to Billy Bones by Blind Pew: do not open’; several newspapers as frail as cobwebs; an empty scabbard; the large fang of a creature, on which had been scratched the image of a ship; and, where I expected it to be, at the very bottom of the chest, a small satchel made of green silk. This had a strap of braided string attached, so that it could be worn round the neck as handily as my father’s key, and was held shut by a ribbon tied in a neat bow.

I immediately guessed this satchel would contain what I had come for – and I was not disappointed. Indeed, when I lifted the satchel closer to my face, and touched the ribbon that held it shut, the material crumbled into dust, and the sheet of yellow paper inside seemed actually to
give itself
into my hands, rather than requiring me to remove it. I hurriedly knelt down and held this sheet towards the lantern. As I remember it now, it seems extraordinary that I did not fear my father would awake at any moment, and call me a traitor. But I did not. My good sense, like my conscience, had been entirely consumed by curiosity.

The map had evidently been very often folded and unfolded in
years gone by, and was grimy with the print of many hands. Yet it was still strong, and the drawing sharp. The island was about nine miles long by five across, and had two fine harbours, and a hill in the centre marked ‘the Spyglass’. There were several additions that appeared to be of a later date; but, above all, three crosses of red ink – two in the north part of the island, one in the south-west, and, besides this last, in the same red ink, and in a small neat hand, very different from the tottery characters elsewhere, these words: ‘Bulk of treasure here.’ Over on the back, the same hand had written the further information:

My head dropped as I reached the end of these words, and for a moment the map seemed to swim before me. Then, with a strange slowness, as though the air around me had suddenly become dense as water, I raised the map towards me again and my eyes roved to the topmost edge of the sheet. I found what I wanted. A statement of longitude and latitude, which was branded on my brain in an instant, but shall never be repeated. My relief was so intense I think I may actually have gasped aloud. But it would have been a gasp that faded quickly into a smile, as I noticed the artist had taken the trouble to underline his information with irregular blue lines, as a child might do to indicate the waves of the sea.

The fascination of all this was so immediate I might as well have been holding a page of the Gospels. The map was a sacred thing – a source of primitive knowledge that had been mentioned time and again throughout my childhood, but always kept out of reach. My father and everything in his room fell absolutely quiet as I gazed on it. At the same time, a sensation crept out of the document and passed into my hand, and I could not tell whether it was like weakness or strength. My hand trembled yet felt strong as iron. Still wondering at this contradiction, I folded the map, replaced it in the satchel, slipped the braided strap around my neck, tucked the satchel inside my shirt, then set about returning everything to the chest as quietly as possible, and in the original order, so that my father would not know the contents had been ransacked.

When this was done, and the chest was locked again, I tiptoed back to my father’s bedside and once more lifted his head from the pillow, so that I could restore the key to its place around his neck. Often in my childhood I had silently condemned my father for sending himself drunk to bed. On this occasion I thanked him for it very profusely – although in total silence: his only response to my interference was to give an especially loud snore. When everything was settled again, I stared down at him for the last time.

In spite of all the recent disturbances, he seemed to have moved into a different chamber of sleep, and now lay more deeply below the current of the world than when I had first come into his room. His forehead was smoothed clear of trouble. His jaw was set as if nerved for a long journey. ‘Goodbye, Father,’ I heard myself say – which I had not planned to do. The words fell on him as lightly as snow and he did not feel them.

I returned the lantern to its place beside his shoes, and left the room quickly without looking back. I had not expected such sadness to be a part of my leave-taking, but now I felt it, I could not ignore
it; it meant that when I came downstairs I paused in the taproom and wrote my father a message. Using the slate he kept to remember orders of food and drink (and wiping those away), I wrote that I was resolved to make a journey, as he had done when he was my age, and that I would be home again later in the year. I said nothing about the map, nothing about my destination, and nothing about my companion and her ancestry. In this way I both confessed and dissembled. When I was finished, I left the words basking in the moonlight.

It was the work of a minute to cross the marsh again, and find the creek where Natty was waiting. As I stepped into the
Spyglass
and sat down beside her, she looked into my face without speaking, saw my expression, then put her arms around me. It was the first time we had embraced, and the warmth of her body, with its faint scent of sweat, almost overwhelmed me. I hardly had the wit to notice she did not mention the map – and I was grateful she did not. In fact we did not speak at all. We let one another go, took an oar each, and rowed into the river, then a mile towards London. There we tethered our boat to a jetty and slept until morning. When the sun rose we continued our journey, with my treasure still hidden inside my shirt.

My father advised me never to pick over the reasons for a decision once it has been taken. As a young boy I thought this meant he always knew his own mind. By the time I left for Treasure Island, I had come to believe he preferred not to look at past mistakes.

Perhaps this change of opinion proved nothing except the doubt I felt about my own behaviour. Certainly, when I woke head-to-toe with Natty in the
Spyglass
, and lifted my head to inspect the marshes warming in the early sun, I imagined that each mist-wraith I saw wandering across them had come to accuse me. The whole shimmering panorama spoke directly to my moral sense – and I clutched nervously at the satchel inside my shirt, where I found the map safe enough.

When a fuller consciousness returned, I realised not even a whole army of accusers could now force me to return my prize to the
sea-chest from which I had stolen it. Accepting this, I also understood that henceforth I would do better to keep looking forward, contemplating my future, rather than sneaking guilty glances over my shoulder. I therefore made a silent promise that in due course I would return to my father with a share of whatever I brought home from my adventure, but – until that time – think of him no more than was absolutely necessary. How well I succeeded in this endeavour will appear in the pages following.

The moment Natty awoke she gave a wide yawn that showed the pink inside of her mouth, and wiped her hands over her face. She then looked at me very boldly, as though refuting any accusation of having slept at all.

Because this was our first experience of beginning a day together, we were shy of one another, and spent the next few moments in silence. But after we had splashed the Thames over our faces, reassured ourselves the tide was running in the direction we wished to proceed, rowed away from our mooring, travelled a mile or two upstream, eaten our breakfast at one of the inns that offered food to sailors and bargees and suchlike, and settled our plan for the day, we were comfortable again.

The rest of our journey unfolded very easily. The strong propulsion of the river carried us swiftly back to Wapping. We safely escaped the traffic of merchant ships and barges to find a mooring where we wanted. We happily scrambled ashore and found a lane that led us directly to the Spyglass inn. The creaks and whispers of that building swept us rapidly up the stairs towards Mr Silver. By this time it was midday, and the haze of morning had long since burned away, leaving the sky as blue as a blackbird’s egg; when I opened the door, I was once again so dazzled by light from its large window, I actually shielded my eyes as if I were staring into the sun itself.

Our host began speaking to me immediately, calling out my
name in a high, imperious whisper: ‘Jim! Jim!’ I could not see him yet, being still blinded, but it was obvious from the direction of his voice that Mr Silver’s chaise longue had been moved into a different position since my last visit, and was now alongside the window. The change was a trifling thing, but enough to shake my confidence that I knew what to expect from my host.

Indeed, when I had lowered my hand and blinked a few times, I saw Mr Silver was leaning so far towards me he had almost fallen onto the floor. Natty moved quickly to his side, and knelt to straighten him; his only response was to batter her lightly with feeble hands. Spot did not like being passed over by his mistress in this way, and began calling his name very angrily from his cage on the table, which convinced me that I should intervene. I went over to run my finger along his bars – whereupon he spluttered like an ancient and outraged gentleman, then fell silent.

Now Mr Silver was settled again, he began hissing at his daughter. ‘Do you have it? Do you have it?’

‘We have it, Father,’ she interrupted. ‘We have it safe.’ As she said this, she beckoned for me to stand beside her. Mr Silver was wearing the same blue sailor’s coat and ragged trousers as yesterday, although his face was even more collapsed, if such a thing were possible. It was extraordinary to remember that my father had described him as looking ‘like a ham’.