The Goose Girl and Other Stories (8 page)

‘Now this was the third sunrise since the Pomfrets had gone to the island, for the first day and the second night and the second day had passed like one morning in the sandy hall of the Little Men; so many things were there to hear, and such good jokes an old crab made, and so shockingly attractive was a mermaid story that the afternoon tide told. Even the sand had a story, but it was so old that the Peerie Men themselves could not understand it, for it began in darkness and finished under a green haze of ice; and since the Pomfrets were so busy there they heard no sound of the chauffeur's visit and the Peerie Men said nothing of it. They had taken below all the rugs and cushions and hampers and gramophone records, and brushed the grass straight, so that no trace was left of the Midsummer dancing—except the tag of Joan's stocking-suspender, which was overlooked, so it seems.

‘The old grey seal told them, in the days that followed, of all that was going on by land, and even Mrs Pomfret laughed to hear of the bustle and stir they had created. There was no need, the Peerie Men found, to make them hide when more searchers came, for none of the Pomfrets had any wish to be found. Disney said he was learning something about the sea for the first time in his life (and he had followed the sea all his life), and Norah sang Iceland cradle-songs all day. Old Pomfret swilled his ale, glowing like a ruby in the green cave, and Joan—Joan was the queen of the Peerie Men, and the fosterling of the old grumbling sand, and the friend of every fish that passed by the sea-door. And at night they danced, to the music of the tree-root
fiddles and pink shell-drums, and above all to that music which you think was made by Grieg. They danced, I tell you!'

The young man tossed up his arms and touched his fingers above his head; he placed the flat of his foot on the calf of the other leg; twirled rapidly on his toes. ‘Danced, I say! Is there anything in the world but dancing?' And he clapped his heels together, high in the air, first to one side and then to the other, singing something fast and rhythmic and melodious.

Mr Pinto coughed nervously—he was feeling cold—and said: ‘That is an extraordinarily interesting story. But, if you will pardon my curiosity, do you mind telling me what reason you have for thinking that this actually happened to Mr Pomfret and his friends?'

‘Reason!' said the young man, staring at him. His hair blew out on the wind like a black banner, and he laughed loud and melodiously.

‘This reason,' he said, ‘that I am Otto Samways!' And he turned, very neatly, a standing somersault on the deck and came up laughing.

‘They sent me away to buy something,' he said, ‘and when I have bought it I am going back to Eynhallow to dance the Merry Men, and the Herring Dance, and the Sea Moon's Dance with Joan.'

And once again he sang, very melodiously, and turned a rapid series of catherine-wheels along the deck.

‘To buy what?' shouted Mr Pinto, as he disappeared.

‘Gramophone needles!' bellowed the young man, laughing uproariously.

Iam Not Mad. It is necessary to realise that, to accept it as a fact about which there can be no dispute. I have been seriously ill for some weeks, but that was the result of shock. A double or conjoint shock: for as well as the obvious concussion of a brutal event, there was the more dreadful necessity of recognising the material evidence of a happening so monstrously implausible that even my friends here, who in general are quite extraordinarily kind and understanding, will not believe in the occurrence, though they cannot deny it or otherwise explain—I mean explain away—the clear and simple testimony of what was left.

I, of course, realised very quickly what had happened, and since then I have more than once remembered that poor Coleridge teased his unquiet mind, quite unnecessarily in his case, with just such a possibility; or impossibility, as the world would call it. ‘If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream,' he wrote, ‘and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he woke—Ay, and what then?'

But what if he had dreamt of Hell and wakened with his hand burnt by the fire? Or of Chaos, and seen another face stare at him from the looking-glass? Coleridge does not push the question far. He was too timid. But I accepted the evidence. and while I was ill I thought seriously about the whole proceeding, in detail and in sequence of detail. I thought, indeed, about little else. To begin with, I admit, I was badly shaken, but gradually my mind cleared and my vision improved, and because I was patient and persevering—that needed discipline—I can now say that I know what happened. I have indeed, by a conscious intellectual effort,
seen and heard
what happened. This is how it began …

How very unpleasant! she thought.

She had come down the great natural steps on the sea-cliff to the ledge that narrowly gave access, round the angle of it, to the western face which to-day was sheltered from the breeze and warmed by the afternoon sun. At the beginning of the week she and her fiancé,
Charles Sellin, had found their way to an almost hidden shelf, a deep veranda sixty feet above the white-veined water. It was rather bigger than a billiard-table and nearly as private as an abandoned lighthouse. Twice they had spent some blissful hours there. She had a good head for heights, and Sellin was indifferent to scenery. There had been nothing vulgar, no physical contact, in their bliss together on this oceanic gazebo, for on each occasion she had been reading Héaloin's
Studies in Biology
and he Lenin's
What is to be Done?

Their relations were already marital, not because their mutual passion could brook no pause, but rather out of fear lest their friends might despise them for chastity and so conjecture some oddity or impotence in their nature. Their behaviour, however, was very decently circumspect, and they already conducted themselves, in public and out of doors, as if they had been married for several years. They did not regard the seclusion of the cliffs as an opportunity for secret embracing, but were content that the sun should warm and colour their skin; and let their anxious minds be soothed by the surge and cavernous colloquies of the sea. Now, while Charles was writing letters in the little fishing-hotel a mile away, she had come back to their sandstone ledge, and Charles would join her in an hour or two. She was still reading
Studies in Biology.

But their gazebo, she perceived, was already occupied, and occupied by a person of the most embarrassing appearance. He was quite unlike Charles. He was not only naked, but obviously robust, brown-hued, and extremely hairy. He sat on the very edge of the rock, dangling his legs over the sea, and down his spine ran a ridge of hair like the dark stripe on a donkey's back, and on his shoulder-blades grew patches of hair like the wings of a bird. Unable in her disappointment to be sensible and leave at once, she lingered for a moment and saw to her relief that he was not quite naked. He wore trousers of a dark brown colour, very low at the waist, but sufficient to cover his haunches. Even so, even with that protection for her modesty, she could not stay and read biology in his company.

To show her annoyance, and let him become aware of it, she made a little impatient sound; and turning to go, looked back to see if he had heard.

He swung himself round and glared at her, more angry on the instant than she had been. He had thick eyebrows, large dark eyes, a broad snub nose, a big mouth. ‘You're Roger Fairfield!' she exclaimed in surprise.

He stood up and looked at her intently. ‘How do you know?' he asked.

‘Because I remember you,' she answered, but then felt a little confused, for what she principally remembered was the brief notoriety he had acquired, in his final year at Edinburgh University, by swimming on a rough autumn day from North Berwick to the Bass Rock to win a bet of five pounds.

The story had gone briskly round the town for a week, and everybody knew that he and some friends had been lunching, too well for caution, before the bet was made. His friends, however, grew quickly sober when he took to the water, and in a great fright informed the police, who called out the lifeboat. But they searched in vain, for the sea was running high, until in calm water under the shelter of the Bass they saw his head, dark on the water, and pulled him aboard. He seemed none the worse for his adventure, but the police charged him with disorderly behaviour and he was fined two pounds for swimming without a regulation costume.

‘We met twice,' she said, ‘once at a dance and once in Mackie's when we had coffee together. About a year ago. There were several of us there, and we knew the man you came in with. I remember you perfectly.'

He stared the harder, his eyes narrowing, a vertical wrinkle dividing his forehead. ‘I'm a little short-sighted too,' she said with a nervous laugh.

‘My sight's very good,' he answered, ‘but I find it difficult to recognise people. Human beings are so much alike.' ‘That's one of the rudest remarks I've ever heard!'M

‘Surely not?'

‘Well, one does like to be remembered. It isn't pleasant to be told that one's a nonentity.'

He made an impatient gesture. ‘That isn't what I meant, and I do recognise you now. I remember your voice. You have a distinctive voice and a pleasant one. F Sharp in the octave below middle C is your note.'

‘Is that the only way in which you can distinguish people?'

‘It's as good as any other.'

‘But you don't remember my name?'

‘No,' he said.

‘I'm Elizabeth Barford.'

He bowed and said, ‘Well, it was a dull party, wasn't it? The occasion, I mean, when we drank coffee together.'

‘I don't agree with you. I thought it was very amusing, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Do you remember Charles Sellin?'

‘No.'

‘Oh, you're hopeless,' she exclaimed. ‘What is the good of meeting people if you're going to forget all about them?'

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Let us sit down, and you can tell me.'

He sat again on the edge of the rock, his legs dangling, and looking over his shoulder at her, said, ‘Tell me: what is the good of meeting people?'

She hesitated, and answered, ‘I like to make friends. That's quite natural, isn't it?—But I came here to read.' ‘Do you read standing?'

‘Of course not,' she said, and smoothing her skirt tidily over her knees, sat down beside him. ‘What a wonderful place this is for a holiday. Have you been here before?'

‘Yes, I know it well.'

‘Charles and I came a week ago. Charles Sellin, I mean, whom you don't remember. We're going to be married, you know. In about a year, we hope.'

‘Why did you come here?'

‘We wanted to be quiet, and in these islands one is fairly secure against interruption. We're both working quite hard.'

‘Working!' he mocked. ‘Don't waste time, waste your life instead.'

‘Most of us have to work, whether we like it or not.'

He took the book from her lap, and opening it read idly a few lines, turned a dozen pages and read with a yawn another paragraph.

‘Your friends in Edinburgh,' she said, ‘were better-off than ours. Charles and I, and all the people we know, have got to make our living.'

‘Why?' he asked.

‘Because if we don't we shall starve,' she snapped. ‘And if you avoid starvation—what then?'

‘It's possible to hope,' she said stiffly, ‘that we shall be of some use in the world.'

‘Do you agree with this?' he asked, smothering a second yawn, and read from the book:
‘The physical factor in a germ-cell is beyond our analysis or assessment, but can we deny subjectivity to the primordial initiatives? It is easier, perhaps, to assume that mind comes late in development, but the assumption must not be established on the grounds that we can certainly deny self expression to the cell. It is common knowledge that the mind may influence the body both greatly and in little unseen ways; but how it is done, we do not know. Psychobiology is still in its infancy.'

‘It's fascinating, isn't it?' she said.

‘How do you propose,' he asked, ‘to be of use to the world?'

‘Well, the world needs people who have been educated—educated to think—and one does hope to have a little influence in some way.'

‘Is a little influence going to make any difference? Don't you think that what the world needs is to develop a new sort of mind? It needs a new primordial directive, or quite a lot of them, perhaps. But psychobiology is still in its infancy, and you don't know how such changes come about, do you? And you can't foresee when you
will
know, can you?'

‘No, of course not. But science is advancing so quickly—'

‘In fifty thousand years?' he interrupted. ‘Do you think you will know by then?'

‘It's difficult to say,' she answered seriously, and was gathering her thoughts for a careful reply when again he interrupted, rudely, she thought, and quite irrelevantly. His attention had strayed from her and her book to the sea beneath, and he was looking down as though searching for something. ‘Do you swim?' he asked.

‘Rather well,' she said.

‘I went in just before high water, when the weed down there was all brushed in the opposite direction. You never get bored by the sea, do you?'

‘I've never seen enough of it,' she said. ‘I want to live on an island, a little island, and hear it all round me.'

‘That's very sensible of you,' he answered with more warmth in his voice. ‘That's uncommonly sensible for a girl like you.'

‘What sort of a girl do you think I am?' she demanded, vexation in her accent, but he ignored her and pointed his brown arm to the horizon: ‘The colour has thickened within the last few minutes. The sea was quite pale on the skyline, and now it's a belt of indigo. And the writing has changed. The lines of foam on the water, I mean. Look at that! There's a submerged rock out there, and always, about half an hour after the ebb has started to run, but more clearly when there's an off-shore wind, you can see those two little whirlpools and the circle of white round them. You see the figure they make? It's like this, isn't it?'