Grand Canary (19 page)

‘Thanks! It may surprise you, but I'm hungry.'

Whilst Harvey buttered a roll, she made a long arm and pulled upon a hanging bell-rope. There was a pause, then a Spanish girl entered. She wore a bright pink petticoat, no stockings, and high-heeled shoes; her hair hung over her generous young bosom in two glossy, untidy plaits; she smiled first at Mother Hemmingway, then lingeringly at Harvey.

‘Hey, Cuca. Bring some coffee. Hot coffee. Presto, pronto.'

‘Si, señora.'

‘And tyke off the smile, Cuca. It don't myke no beans with this señor.'

‘Si, señora.' But Cuca was smiling as she went out of the door, and still smiling when she returned with the steaming coffee-pot. It was not an amused smile, but simply a look of unconquerable amiability which seemed fixed as though she could not put it off.

‘Nice little bit is Cuca,' said Mother Hemmingway when the girl had gone. She poured the frothing coffee and passed the cup. Then she sucked her teeth reflectively. ‘Been with me five year come Ash We'nsday. ' Appy as a lark. Refined, too, in 'er own quiet w'y. Put on weight, she 'as, since she been with me. Sancta Maria, but 'er figure's come up a treat. You should 'ave seen 'er when I took 'er. My 'at, she was thinner'n a rat's tyle. You wouldn't believe it, the upbringing she'd ' ad. Yes. ' Adn't it been neglected shockin'? W'y, she ' adn't even been confirmed w'en I took 'er. Yes, mister, call me a liar to my fyce if I didn't 'ave Cuca confirmed the first week she was in this ' ouse.'

Harvey, slicing cold sausage upon his roll, said nothing.

‘You wouldn't believe it, I sye,' repeated Mother Hemmingway with unctuous vehemence. ‘I treat all my gals 'andsome, so 'elp me, criminy. I don't run no Sunday-school class 'ere, I'll admit it. But I runs it stryte. See? Fair wind and no fyvour. And them that don't like it can vamos.'

Vaguely Harvey had suspected the latitude of Mother Hemmingway's establishment. And now that suspicion was amply confirmed. But the knowledge awoke in him neither scorn nor disgust. Within him something had changed. There came over him, instead, from deep down in the roots of his soul, a curious acquiescence. Life must be accepted, not scorned. The run of his misfortunes had wakened in him a tolerance he long had needed, a saving humility he had sadly lacked before.

‘This coffee is good,' he said, looking across at her. ‘And so are these rolls. Almost better to have missed the ship than this breakfast.'

Caught by the unexpectedness of the remark, she drew herself up, instantly on guard.

‘'Ere! wot's wrong with you, cocky? No funny-bones 'ere. None-of your 'umbuggin' sarcasm for me.'

‘I'm not sarcastic. I appreciate your hospitality more than you seem to think.'

She tossed her earrings with a wounded air.

‘You ain't generous. That's the trouble with you, mister. You thinks you know the whole issue. 'Igh up on the throne, superior like. But you've a lot to learn. Believe me, you 'ave. 'Ere I ups and tips you a free feed, friendly. And you turns round and spits in my eye. Be broad, cawn't you? Try and learn something that 'asn't come out of a book.' And she picked up her paper in a huff, began indignantly to read it.

He studied her with a wry smile.

‘Perhaps I've learned more than you imagine. Perhaps I've been doing a little thinking these last few days.'

She threw him a suspicious look, went back to her paper.

‘P'raps you've thought out wot you're going to do in Santa, cocky. P'raps you're clever enough to think that one out.'

‘Have you any suggestions?'

Still distrustful, she answered with a sniff:

‘Stay ' ere if you like. Then you'll find I'm not so black as you paint me. You think the worst of everybody, you do. If you want the truth, I didn't know the bloomin' boat 'ad gone. Thought it wasn't leavin' till the afternoon. Dropped me all of an 'eap w'en I saw it in the bay, 'al an 'our ago. I don't wish you no 'arm. Stay 'ere if you like. Tyke it or leave it, as the lydy said w'en she threw a banana to the sea-lion.'

He sat with a phantom smile upon his lips, his manner quite devoid of animosity. There was a long pause. Then she looked up and, gazing at him closely, she suddenly tapped the paper in front of her.

‘If you're 'ard up for a job, w'y don't you 'it out for Laguna? You're a doctor, ain't you? Leastways, if we believe all we 'ear. And there's a rare rampagin' fever up there. Passing out like twelve o'clock they are. The Spañola medico 'as just took wings – it's in this mornin's
Gaceta.
' E's the second to go flyin' after 'is ' arp. And the rest don't seem to like the destajo mucho mucho. W'y not try that, mister?'

He stopped crumbling a fragment of his roll; there was a silence.

‘Yes, why not?' he echoed.

The malicious look lurked once more in her button eyes as she scrutinised his face.

‘You don't mind w'ether they tyke you away in a nice black box,' she suggested insidiously. ‘Not you! You don't mind nothing like that.'

He hardly heard her words. Filled by that new fatalism, he sat considering his position.

He would go – yes, he would go. Why hadn't he thought of it before? Something deeper than circumstance had arranged it. He had the strange sensation that this was a moment he had long awaited.

‘You'd 'ave to go to Hermosa village,' she went on. ‘Up by Casa de los Cisnes. That's the 'ouse where the bother started. And a rummy plyce, too. No one goes near it mucho, best of times. Tumbling to bits. She's 'alf-cracked too – the old bird what 'angs out there.'

‘I will go,' he thought again. ‘ Yes, I must go.' The sudden impulse quickened within him and he repeated half to himself: ‘ Casa de los Cisnes.'

A silence fell, during which a blinking curiosity showed in her shiny red face.

‘You 'ave got guts,' she said suddenly. ‘I'll say that for you.' Hastily she corrected herself. ‘But, 'streuth! you'll come a mucker if you do go up.'

He thrust back his chair. As though drawn by an invisible hand, he rose from the table and advanced to the door.

‘Sancta Maria,' she cried, astonished. ‘You ain't going pronto. You got to ' ave a rest. And, blimey, you'd look the better for a shyve and a shine.'

‘I'm not going yet,' he answered. ‘I want to see Corcoran. It's time I looked at his arm.'

‘'Arf a chance, then. Don't rush at me or I'm liable to 'ave a weakness. And don't go without me or you're liable to lose your way.' She winked archly, crushed the end of her cigar upon a plate, and got upon her diminutive feet. Leading the way across the landing, she descended a short flight of uncarpeted wooden stairs and swept along a narrow corridor. A frowsy comfort filled the place. From below came a clatter of pans, a burst of high laughter, the sound of female voices raised in argument.

Then with an air the Hemmingway drew up and flung open the door of a large and dingy bedroom. In the middle of the bedroom stood a large gilt bed draped by a stained flamboyant quilt. And in the middle of the bed was Corcoran. Clad only in his blue and red striped day-shirt, he sat propped up against the musty pillow with a sort of placid unconcern. His arm was bandaged; upon his nose his steel-rimmed spectacles lay; and on his knees the tattered, dog-eared Plato. His lips moved silently; he did not hear them come in.

‘Wyke up, grandma,' cried Mother Hemmingway loudly. ‘'Ere's little Red Riding 'Ood come to see you. Cawn't you smile and look 'appy? You that bled shockin'hover the best carpet in the'ouse.'

Jimmy raised his head and looked owlishly across his glasses at Harvey. Then he gave an exaggerated start of amazement and delight.

‘Well, well,' he cried, ‘ if it isn't the greatest pleasure of the mornin'. Respect me emotion if ye please, for, faith, I thought ye'd gone and left me widout one word of a good-bye. But tell me quick, now. Why aren't ye on the boat?'

‘The ship's gone. Sailed without me.'

‘Well, well,' said Corcoran again, ‘if that isn't the worst of black misthfortune.'

‘Be quiet,' Harvey said. ‘You knew all the time it had gone.'

‘Did ye ever!' Corcoran persisted with a blarneying grin towards Hemmingway. ‘And afther the throuble I got 'im out of, an' all. For him to turn on me like that! But niver mind' – he turned to Harvey – ‘it's a treat to know ye're still beside me. And a sight for sore eyes to see ye walkin' on yer feet again.'

Harvey went up to the bed, began to unfasten the bandage.

‘How does it feel?' he asked briefly; and, bending, he inspected the wound, which had pierced the triceps muscle superficially.

‘Sure, it feels nothing at all. To a man like meself that's took hard knocks and gave them – why, this isn't nothin' but a pinprick. I only hope that one of thim days I'll meet the yellow boy that done it.'

‘A few days' rest and you'll be all right,' said Harvey. He replaced the dressing, rebound the bandage neatly, and stood up. Then his voice turned stiff, his manner constrained. ‘In the meantime I'm going to Laguna. Going to have a look at the epidemic up there.'

Caressing his bristling chin, Jimmy absorbed this information.

‘Well,' he said at length, ‘that's fine. But what about me? At the moment me business plans have fallen thru'. I'm uncertain in me outlook. Faith, I'd better come along wid ye.'

‘That's quite absurd. You can't possibly get up for a couple of days.'

‘Then I'll come after ye when I do get up. Faith, ye'll not lose me easy as that. I'll be afther ye the minute I put foot upon the ground.'

‘It's no use,' Harvey insisted. ‘I don't want you.'

‘So much the bether,' answered Jimmy, with his grin. ‘I'll come just to annoy ye.'

And, using his free hand, he fumbled beneath the pillow and solemnly took snuff.

In the late afternoon, as the sun drew down to the western shoulder of the Peak, Harvey set out to walk to Hermosa – the village below Laguna. The distance was considerable and the ascent steep – free of the town the road rose sharply in short vertiginous slants – but he had a grim, unreasonable determination to make the journey on foot. Somehow it eased the tumult of his mind to inflict this rigour upon his body; and as he climbed higher into the vibrating air, coating his shoes with dust and his brow with sweat, a sense of calmness came to him. He was walking directly towards the sunset, a dark mote in that glittering river of light which poured over the jagged lava cliffs of Telde. Above the volcanic lip a tiny shining cloud lay like a puff of steam. The sky sang with colour which the earth re-echoed. On either side the dark green leaves of the banana-trees hung low, their wind-torn fleshy fronds adroop in the pellucid calm. Round reservoirs of brackish water, yellow and precious as gold, lay listless, glinting obscurely through the plantation foliage. At one pool three mountain goats were drinking. He climbed higher, traversing a grove of eucalyptus-trees, tall as cedars and gracious with their aromatic attar. Then the road opened out, the trees fell back, and beneath him the bay was spread tranquil and remote, dotted with toys of ships and tiny pointed sails. Around the bay the town lay flattened, its miradors foreshortened, its balconies set out like little mouths to catch the air, its mass of huddled roofs gashed by the silver brightness of the Barranca Almeida. But another turn of the road dissolved this vision of the town and instead a range of bare basaltic hills reared themselves coldly. Great lava slags with huge embedded boulders absorbed his gaze.

Now he had been walking for about an hour. A moment later he passed through the hamlet of La Cuesta: a handful of houses, a glass-cased shrine with its flickering light, a white-walled church. It seemed deserted or asleep. He left the village and mounted higher on the narrowing road. Presently, about a mile further on at a steep-angled bend, he saw before him the small, slowly moving figure of a girl carrying a water-jar. He quickened his pace, made up to her.

‘Señorita,' he asked in his slow Spanish. ‘ Is this the way to Hermosa? The village beneath Laguna.'

Still walking, she studied him obliquely without moving, her head burdened by the heavy jar. Her eyes were darkly lustrous above the weathered scarlet of her torn blouse. Her body was erect, her hips swayed forward with unstudied easy grace. From the thin dirty fingers of her left hand a yellow blossom trailed. She was not more than fifteen.

‘San Cristóbal de la Laguna,' she said at length; and then, ‘La Laguna.'

‘Yes. Am I on the proper road?'

‘The road? It is the King's road.'

‘The King's road?'

‘Carretera reãl. The old road. Assuredly it is a proper road.'

‘But is it a proper road for Laguna?'

This seemed to amuse her; her smile was dazzlingly white; but for fear of upsetting her jar she might have laughed.

‘Ay de mi,' she cried. ‘How tired am I of ever fetching water.' Then she seemed to forget all about him. They walked together in silence around another loop of the interminable road. She waited till they swung past a clump of cork-trees, then indolently she raised the yellow flower and pointed.

He lifted his head. There, quite close, above its range of grass-topped walls, rose the sombre towers of an old citadel.

‘De la Laguna,' she repeated. ‘San Cristóbal de la Laguna.'

The words had a queer melodious sound.

‘There is sickness in the town?' he asked.

‘Si, señor.'

‘Much sickness?'

‘Si, señor.' She put the flower in her mouth and began indifferently to chew the stem.

‘I wish to find Hermosa. The Casa de los Cisnes. Can you tell me where that lies?'