Silver (4 page)

‘I beckoned to you.’

I protested that I had not seen in the darkness, and reminded her it had been very late. Then I tried to regain some of the advantage her questions had taken from me, by asking one of my own.

‘Where did you spend the night? Surely not on the river?’

‘Why not on the river?’ she came back at me. ‘It is summer. I have my blanket.’ She settled the shawl more smoothly across her shoulders, then patted the springy wires of her hair.

When her hands returned to her lap, I glanced at them and saw she was not telling the whole truth. The tips of her fingers were wizened with cold. This made me wonder whether I should ask her to come inside and warm herself in the taproom, but on second thoughts I decided that she belonged in the open air. ‘Can I fetch you something to drink?’ I asked. ‘For your breakfast?’

‘A noggin, thank you,’ she said. Although the answer was one that my father’s more ancient customers might easily have given, I went to do her bidding without delay. This was partly because I wanted to collect my thoughts in private. It was immediately
apparent that my visitor was unlike anyone among our neighbours. While this drew me to her, it was also baffling. She was certainly mysterious, with the air of being engaged on a secret mission, but she was also steady – and this was the strangest thing of all. When I looked through the taproom window of the Hispaniola, while pouring our grog into two glasses, I found that she was not glancing round or showing that she was on guard in some other way; she had calmly settled herself on the farther side of her seat, so there would be space for me to fit beside her when I returned. All this might have seemed unaffected, and so in a way it was. Yet it was also done with an air of planning, and left me pondering her larger intentions.

When I came back outside, I stepped into the boat and passed her the grog as though it were the most sensible thing imaginable to drink hard liquor outside at six o’clock in the morning. Then I sat beside her with a show of conviction that was meant to match her own. As we began talking, alternately sipping the grog and chewing the two pieces of bread I had also produced, some of the mysteries of the
Spyglass
lifted. The name itself was taken from the inn owned by her mother and father – in London, close to the docks in Wapping. Her own name was Natalie, often shortened to Nat or Natty, since (she said with her characteristic air of simplicity) it sometimes suited her to pass as a boy. I wanted to question her about this, wondering what could require such a measure, but delayed in case I stopped the run of her confidences. Her age, for example; I wanted to know her age. All she would say was it was not much greater or less than my own, which at the time was a few months short of eighteen.

Throughout this conversation Natty glanced from time to time at the object she had placed in the stern, and then towards me, as if challenging me to ask what it might be. The truth is, I had already
decided – thanks to the whistling and warbling that occasionally floated through the cloth. I recognised them as the sounds made by a starling, and assumed it was a bird she kept in a cage for company, and the amusement of its imitations.

I now did as I felt I had been invited to do, and asked if I could see the bird. Natty immediately bent forward to remove the cloth – and revealed not what I had supposed, but the starling’s larger relative, a mynah. I had never before seen one except in drawings, and felt at once that none of these had done justice to the reality. It was a most impressive bird, with very glossy black feathers, a large yellow bill, and a shrewd red eye. On seeing my face for the first time, it cocked its head on one side and said in a rasping voice, ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’

I laughed at this, which the bird did not find at all entertaining; it stabbed fiercely at the bars of its cage.

‘This is Spot,’ Natty told me, anticipating my question. ‘Take care what you say in his hearing. He will most likely remember it.’

‘Good morning, Spot,’ I said solemnly – which started some banter about the origins of the bird, its age, its repertoire, and suchlike. By the time this had run its course, I was in a kind of daze – for which the grog should probably take some responsibility, as well as Natty herself. Her voice had entered me, carrying its meanings into my mind and heart, yet also seemed to play over me – like light or water. In between her words, I heard the sound of the river fingering the planks of the hull, and felt the growing warmth of the sun as it destroyed the last rags of mist on either side of us. Every so often another little gang of vessels would glide past, and our talk would be interrupted by the creak of oars or a sail. At other times it was footsteps along the towpath, and a voice calling down ‘Good morning’, as my neighbours set off to their work. Occasionally the interruptions were my own – when I lifted
my eyes to the windows of the Hispaniola, for example, and wondered whether my father would wake, and see us, and come down to demand an introduction. More generally, though, I kept my eyes fixed on Natty’s face, or on the little pools of water that lulled and glittered among the duckboards beneath our feet. It is strange to admit, but the initial surprise of our meeting had already given way to a feeling of complete trustfulness. It seemed that our friendship was new in nothing but name.

When we reached the more precise reason for her visit, this sense of intimacy was to some extent explained. I have already described how my father had repeatedly been drawn into telling the story of his boyhood adventures; the character he most often invoked was the one-legged buccaneer John Silver.
Long
John Silver to his friends, as well as his enemies, who was also known as Barbecue on account of his being a sea-cook. At the end of each telling and retelling – with Captain Flint’s coins rescued from the sand of Treasure Island, and my father and others (including Mr Silver himself) safely ashore in Spanish America – my father always gave the same detail. Mr Silver, he would say, had given his companions the slip, taking with him a part of the hoard, which was worth some four hundred guineas.

My father did not only mean to shock his audience when he revealed this. There was generally a note of admiration in his voice, to indicate that he and Mr Silver had a kind of sympathy because, during the course of their adventures, each had saved the other’s life. Perhaps this was the reason he liked to speculate about the later existence of his hero. Some evenings, depending on the amount of drink he had taken, and the enthusiasm of his listeners, my father would imagine Mr Silver dragging through Mexico and into the south of America itself, perhaps to sink at last into an inland sea of rum, as Captain Flint had done before him in Savannah. Or perhaps
to become a buccaneer again, and take to the high seas in pursuit of further adventure. Perhaps even to return to England and the wife he had left there.

The name of the boat in which I was now sitting should have told me that only one of my father’s speculations was likely to be true: the inn where my father had first met Mr Silver was called the Spyglass, which was also the name of a hill overlooking the site of the treasure on the island and, I now supposed, the name of Natty’s home. I blame my failure to see the significance of the letters curling around the prow of the boat – almost under my hand! – on the distractions created by my companion. That said, the basis of the connection I had felt with Natty now grew increasingly clear, as our talk veered into more open waters.

If it is not already obvious what I mean by this, let me speak plainly. Natty’s father was John Silver – which she now told me as a matter of fact. My first response, I am embarrassed to say, was to glance down at her legs, and be sure she had not inherited his disadvantage. To hide my foolishness, and any nervousness I might have felt about her kinship with so disreputable a man, I said:

‘And your mother?’

Natty pursed her lips, then began speaking fluently. As I listened, I felt the sunlight strengthening across my scalp, and saw wisps of steam rising from the roof of the Hispaniola, as if it were about to catch fire.

Silver had first met his wife on one of the islands of the Caribbean Sea, where he had courted her in his rough way before returning with her to Bristol. She was younger than him, being really no more than a girl when they first met, but already bold enough to fulfil the role he required of her, which was to join him in the management of the Spyglass. The same Spyglass in which he would eventually meet my father, and from which he would sail to Treasure
Island. When this momentous journey took place, Mr Silver’s wife did as she had always done during such absences: stood guard for her husband and repelled those who tried to take advantage. (As Natty told me this, she gave a sharp sense of her mother’s beauty as well as her courage.)

On this particular cruise Mr Silver was away for many months – so many, in fact, that his wife began to imagine the sea might have swallowed him, or some other tragedy had struck. But she knew better than to feel convinced of this, and in due course her husband returned to her – in disguise, in so far as any man minus a leg, and whose constant companion is a voluble parrot, can ever be said to be in disguise.

Natty told me this last detail with a smile that showed all her small white teeth, and proved that she regarded her father not merely as a parent, but as a
character
. It was a further example, I decided, of how she stood a little detached from life, observing its ebb and flow as if she did not entirely care whether events had one outcome or another.

‘What sort of disguise might that have been, I wonder?’ I said this hoping to surprise Natty into something candid – but she immediately slid back into the smooth current of her story, as if she were reciting a speech learned by heart. The changes her father had made to himself were more a matter of alterations within than without, in the sense that he had reformed himself during his absence. He had left Bristol a buccaneer, with a skill in pretending to be far nobler than he ever was, and returned denouncing his former habits. He had asked forgiveness for his trespasses. He set himself to his old business, of running the Spyglass, as though to manage such an establishment were all he had ever wanted to do in the world.

Natty herself was the living proof of this new steadiness, and as
I watched her pause for a moment, tear another piece from the bread I had provided, and place it in her mouth with a contemplative slowness, I felt our sympathy increase still further. I told myself that although the story of our two childhoods appeared to be very different – mine solitary and natural whenever my schooling allowed it, hers lived in a perpetual hubbub – in truth they were similar, because a shadow lay across them both. The shadow of our fathers’ adventures.

At the same time, I did not know how much of his past Mr Silver might have revealed to his daughter. In particular, I found it difficult to believe that he had told her about his history as a buccaneer. His treacheries and murders. His double-dealing. His slippery pursuit of wealth at any cost. Alternatively, Natty might be perfectly familiar with the whole story of his life, and not care what it had contained. This left me with a deep question: was my companion an innocent, sprung from ancient corruption? Or was she an expert in the art of dissembling, as her father had also been?

I did not want to decide – not on our first morning together. I was too interested in knowing what purpose Natty had in coming to find me, beyond establishing what we had already discussed. I knew that everything we had said so far was nothing but a kind of scene-setting, and realised that my original question (‘What do you want?’) had been deferred. Now I returned to it again.

‘Why have you come here?’ I said.

Natty evidently felt, as I did, that we had enjoyed ourselves long enough, and had reached the time for business. ‘My father sent me,’ she replied very directly.

I was about to ask how he knew where to find me, when she continued without any encouragement.

‘He has not liked to inconvenience your father, although he has known for a long time that you are living here. He did not want to
disturb an old acquaintance who might not believe him to be the man he has become.’

It was now my turn to smile, imagining how reluctant my father would have been to change his opinion of Mr Silver. I began to confirm this, saying, ‘I think –’ But I was interrupted.

‘My father wants to meet you,’ Natty said. ‘He has asked me to fetch you.’ She paused as suddenly as she had begun, and her right hand lifted to brush a speck from my shoulder. The gesture was meant to soften me, and it succeeded. Rather than denying her request, or putting some difficulty in its way, I merely said:

‘Today?’

‘Today if possible,’ she replied. ‘Though not you alone. My father has asked me to say: does your father still own the map, and if he does, would he allow you to bring it to him?’

At this, sheer astonishment at her boldness overwhelmed everything, and I could not help half-shouting, ‘The map! My father’s map! Borrowing it!’

Natty said nothing but sat with her shoulders slumped, staring along the river to the point where it swerved out of sight towards London. It was clear that she had expected my incredulity, and knew it must run a course. The effect was to make me feel I had been reproached, when in truth I knew I should be reproaching her. It was extraordinary to think that her father – a pirate, a
murderer
– should approach my father in so casual a way. Worse than extraordinary, in fact. Insulting and impossible. As far as my father was concerned, Mr Silver was a monstrous impostor; he deserved jail or the gallows, and not cooperation.

I debated with myself how best to sink Natty’s request so that it would never rise again, also staring downriver and concentrating very fiercely on a family of moorhens that were fussing around their nest. As I did so, my mind began to change. Natty’s remarks,
when I considered them, were not addressed to my father. They were addressed to me. Would
I
take the map. Would I, in fact, be willing to enter into dealings that my father would think were nothing less than criminal?