Lord of the Far Island (24 page)

urely she wouldn have any say in the matter.

he a sly one, planting doubts and suchlike. You know the sort. A woman in that position can have great influence. She was his nurse. She looks upon him as her child still. Clucks over him, pampers him. Nobody good enough for her dear Michael.

e strikes me as a man who would make up his own mind.

reckon the Kellaways are good enough for anybody, but there the story of our bastard branch having something of the Devil in us.

e wouldn believe such a legend, I sure.

eople are superstitious and although he might not believe it, he be aware of what people were thinking and the effect it might have on future generations and all that. They were getting along very well and she was going to help him with his book. Now she comes back a little upset.

hy?I asked boldly.

She moved closer to me. I just could not bring myself to look at her face then. If I did I knew I should see the evil expression there which I had caught in the mirror on my first night.

ou know, don you?she said. e was very taken with you, wasn he? All that play about a twisted ankle.

t wasn play. I really did hurt my ankle.

ell, it made a romantic beginning, didn it? I daresay he found you different from most of the girls he meets. Ambitious mothers of neighboring squires are constantly bringing their daughters forward and they are country girlsall of a piece. And then you comeifferent, already having lived, as some would put it. Naturally his interest is aroused and although youe a Kellaway too, yours is the pure strain. Your branch escaped the Devil taint, didn it?

I felt exasperated. isten,I said almost fiercely. met a man when I arrived. I was lost in his woods and he took me back to the inn. I met him again with Gwennol and lunched at his house, and you are suggesting I am trying to snatch him from under the noses of ambitious mothers with marriageable daughters. Ie met him; I like him; I like his house. There nothing more in it than that.

wennol seems to think

wennol is in love with him and sensitive. I can assure you I am not desperately looking for a husband and ready to take the first man I meet.

She rose and picked up her candle and as she stood there I shivered slightly. She was holding the candle in front of her, below her face, and it had the effect of lighting it up while the rest of her was shadowy, so that it seemed like a disembodied face there in the mirror. There was a faint color under the skin and her eyes were half closed. She looked malevolent.

erhaps I have said too much.Her voice was a whisper. ut, please, do not try to take Michael Hydrock from Gwennol.

y dear Jenifry, from what I know of him he will not be a man to be taken. He will make his own choice.

t is Gwennol,she said. t was Gwennol before you came.

hen,I answered, ou can rest assured it is still Gwennol.

ood night,she said. hope you understand a mother anxieties.

understand,I told her.

The door shut on her and I saw her back looking at my reflection. I was certain that there was something more than the fears of an anxious mother for her daughter happiness. She filled me with apprehension, for it was as though she were warning me.

As if enough had not happened on that day, before I slept that night I found the first of the notebooks.

I was so disturbed by Jenifry visit that I knew it would be foolish to try to sleep, so I decided I would write a letter to Esmeralda. She would be longing to hear about my first impressions of the Island and it would be soothing to write to her of the more peaceful aspects. I would tell her about the small farms and pretty houses with their orange-colored roofs, the Lives and Moonlight Cottages and the rest.

There was a rather charming little desk in my room, small, its sloping top covered with leather and inlaid with ivory. I had already noticed it, admired it and put my writing materials inside it. I tried to open it but it was difficult and I imagined the paper had become jammed in some way. I forced it open with all my strength and as I did so a flap which I had not noticed inside the top compartment fell open and the notebook came out.

I picked it up and saw that inside was written in a childish hand: .K. Her Book.This, I guessed, was the one who had scratched those words in the cupboard and whose picture my mother had painted.

I flicked through the book. Some of the pages had been written on and sentences caught my eye.

hate it here. I wish I could escape.And then: y father hates me. I don know why. But then I don think he likes anyone very much not hernor Baby.I turned to the front page. It was headed ife on an Island.

This was only a child exercise book, I realized, but it had clearly belonged to the mysterious S.K. am a prisoner in this roomwould most likely have referred to her being sent to her room as punishment for some misdemeanor as most children had been at some time. But the two portraits had fascinated me and I wanted to know more of her. I decided to ask someone at the first opportunity. Gwennol was the obvious one, but I thought it might be advisable to avoid Gwennol for a few days.

I looked down at the large scrawl on the page.

am supposed to be writing an essay,I read. t is to be called ife on an Island.Miss Homer said I shall stay in my room until it is done, but I am not going to write an essay. I writing this instead. It is a secret and I shall not show her. She wants me to write about crabs and jellyfish and tides and scenery, but I don care about those things. I going to write about Them and Myself in a way I can talk because there is no one to talk to. It will be fun to write it because then I can read it afterwards and remember it all afresh. My father hates me. He always did. My stepmother doesn like me very much either. Nobody likes me except Baby and she too young and silly to know. My stepmother loves Baby. She said to me: ook at your little sister. Isn she a love?I said: he only a half sister. That not a real one. I glad. I don want a silly baby for a sister.Baby cries for what she wants and then she smiles when she gets it and everyone comes and looks at her and says how lovely she is and what a good baby, although she has been screaming for something a minute before. I suppose I was a baby once. I don think they said I was wonderful though.

There were blank pages after that, and then the writing started again.

have just read what I wrote when Miss Homer sent me up to do my essay. It made me laugh so much I going to do some more. It reminds me how cross she was when she found out I hadn done my essay. She said: don know what will become of you.That what they all think. I can see it in their faces. What will become of her! I am rather naughty really, although I can be good for a while. utter wouldn melt in her mouth today,they say. I wish I could see my father. He doesn want to see me although he sees Baby now and then. Even he likes to see her. It something to do with my mother, I think I mean the reason he doesn like me. He didn like her. I was the reason, I heard one of the servants say. It funny to be a reason for something and not know it. Then she died. I was seven then. I remember it was just before my birthday and everyone forgot ity birthday, I mean. She was buried in the cemetery. I go to her grave sometimes. I cried a lot because she loved me and I didn really know until she died that nobody else did. Miss Homer doesn. Nor does Nanny. They say Il come to a bad end with my tempers and tantrums. My mother used to hide my birthday presents. There was always more than one. I suppose that was because she knew no one else would give me anything and she wanted to make it seem as though they had. But there was always a mystery present. She never said who that came from. I said she gave it to me like the rest but she said she didn. But after she died I looked for the mystery present and it never came, so that shows it was hers too. I became worse after she died. I do terrible things, like the time I threw Miss Homer hair dye over the floor when she didn want anyone to know she used it.

hen my stepmother came and it all changed and was better for a while. Stepmother used to have them dress me in my white embroidered dress and she gave me a lovely blue sash to wear. I had to go and talk to my father but I knew he didn like me and only spoke to me because Stepmother asked him to. Baby came then and everybody made a fuss of her and nobody cared about me. My stepmother only cared about Baby and gave up trying to make my father like me.

h dear, this is silly. What the good of writing down what I know already?

I wanted to know more, but the pages at the end of the book were blank except one on which she had done a few sums. She had written at the bottom of that page: hate arithmetic.

I put the notebook back into the desk. I was in no mood for writing to Esmeralda now.

I took the oars and Jago sat opposite me in the boat. We were going to row to the bird sanctuary, which he was eager to show me. It was not very far from Kellaway Island, he told me, and it would be good practice for me.

It was a beautiful day with a pellucid sea as still as a lake and with that pearly tinge which I had noticed before and which I had thought so attractive.

t the best time of the year,said Jago, efore the October gales set in.

re they very wild?

hey can be. On the other hand, they might not come at all. There only one thing that certain about our weather and that its unpredictability. You row very well, Ellen. I can see youe going to be quite a champion.

realize that if I going to stay here for a little while it something I have to learn to do.

f youe going to stay. My dear Ellen, I hope you are going to stay here a very long time.I looked up and was a little disturbed by the intensity of his gaze. hy not?he went on. ou are fitting very well into our way of life. You are beginning to love the Island, confess it.

finding it all very interesting, yes. I don need to have to confess that, do I? Isn it obvious?

t is and it pleases me. After all, you are a Kellaway.

here is something about a place which has been the home of one ancestors for generations. I think that, when I was in Cousin Agatha house, I was, without realizing it, dogged by the notion that I didn belong.

ou belong here,he said earnestly.

I was silent, concentrating on rowing. The island sanctuary lay before us, a green hump in the ocean. un her up to the beach here,he said.

I was proud that I was able to do so with a certain competence because I had an absurd childish desire to shine in his eyes.

He helped me out of the boat, tied it up and we started to walk up a slope to a kind of plateau. Birds rose all around us, gulls mostly, screaming their indignation at being disturbed.

Jago produced two bags containing scraps of food, one of which he gave to me.

always bring them something when I come,he explained. t a sort of apology for coming at all. This is their sanctuary and they need some compensation for receiving unwanted visitors.

o you think they are as inhospitable as that?

ndoubtedly. Look at those choughs over there. There are hundreds of them. We get the occasional stormy petrel. She just lands to lay her eggs and then departs. I saw a beauty once. It was quite an occasion.

surprised that you find time to be interested in these things.

find time for anything I want to do, don you, Ellen?

suppose so.

He put his arm through mine, ostensibly to help me up the slope, but I felt he was conveying the fact that he was going to find a great deal of time available to spend in my company.

oul become more and more absorbed in the life of the Island,he said. ou won really want to go on trips to the mainland very often. It was interesting that you went to Hydrock place. Pleasant, isn it? But very conventional. Gwennol has a romantic attachment to the place. Poor girl, if she ever married Michael Hydrock she be bored for the rest of her life.

hy should she be?

ecause of the life she would lead. Imagine it. Social occasions. Hunt balls, good works, one day very like another and the same thing going on year after year.

I didn answer.

et sit down here,he went on. He had brought a traveling rug with him and spread it out on the grass for us to sit on. We looked over the sea. The main island looked beautiful with its gentle green slopes and sandy bays and the sun glinting on those orange roofs. And not far off was the Blue Rock Island. The rocks looked very blue today because of the clear air, and I thought I could make out the house which someone had told me was there. It was sheltered by tall shrubs and was not far from the beach.

ell me,I said suddenly, ho is S.K.?

He wrinkled his brows. ho?he asked.

think she must have occupied the room I am now in. There are scratchings on the cupboard wall and the initials S.K.

He continued to look puzzled, then he laughed. ou must be referring to Silva.

ilva? Was she Silva Kellaway?

es, she was your half sister.

hen I the Baby referred to. Oh, you see, I found one of her notebooks in the desk and she had written something in it about her stepmother and a baby. How strange! My sister!

our half sister.

e shared the same father and the stepmother she mentions is my mother.

oor Silva, her life was tragic.

as? She is dead then?

t almost certain that she was drowned.

lmost certain?

er body was never found, although the boat was. It was washed up on the shores of the Island without Silva.

ow very sad. How old was she when this happened?

t happened about eighteen months ago. She would be well into her twenties. Twenty-eight perhaps.

nd she lived at the castlein my roomuntil then?

es. She was a difficult girl. No one knew why she should take a boat out on such a night as she did, but that was what happened. It was a crazy thing to do, but then she was crazy.

ou mean she wasmad?

h no, just unbalanced. She be very docile for months on end and then suddenly she would create scenes. She was a queer creature. I had very little to do with her.

o tell me all about it. I longing to hear everything about the family.