The Sea Change (28 page)

He opened his eyes – the ship was well away from Piraeus; there were new lands ahead and to the right. There was something lighthearted and dashing about their progress – they had
seemed to him to leave Piraeus at full speed from a standstill, and they tore along through the marvellous blue water at the same gay and purposeful pace. The sun was getting steadily hotter, and
the air smelled sweet; a warm mountain smell, more feminine than the pure smell of sea. Was there no way of making one aim cover all pursuits? To be left less open to chance and casual
requirements? That was what he needed; ‘and you won’t find it by thinking,’ he said sternly to himself. One’s thoughts were no better than oneself, and worse, they were no
different. He watched the mountainous land – brown and grey rock with deep olive and prussian blue shadows; smelled what might be thyme and verbena, and saw the colours of the sea invariably
changing; heard the ship moving the water with a rich creaming hiss above the reassuring bloodbeat of her engines, and felt the hard dry caulked boarding of the deck with his hand. ‘Coming to
my senses; if I am any kind of artist, it’s time I did that.’ The senses can help to make a good climate for the heart. This made him suddenly remember writing with a kind of reckless
ease when he had been very hungry, and the clutches of hard-boiled eggs that he had used to keep all over the place . . . the sun! He put on his dark glasses and the day changed its mood for him:
he was warm and thirsty and nearly asleep . . .

There was Alberta standing hesitantly before him.

‘Mrs Joyce wondered whether you would like to come down and have a drink?’

He took off his glasses. ‘Perhaps I should: I have been dreaming of hard-boiled eggs which is thirsty work.’

‘I don’t think they have those. They have things called
tiropetas
: hot cheesy things – thirstier than eggs, I should think. Mrs Joyce has had three, but poor Jimmy
can’t even watch her eat them – he’s lying down. I really came up because Mrs Joyce is worrying about how to get him off the ship.’

‘Can’t he stand?’

‘I don’t know, but we don’t walk
off
the ship on to the island. We are put into little boats, like a shipwreck, and rowed ashore, and Mrs Joyce is afraid they will throw
him at a boat and miss; she does not feel calm about his prospects.’

He got to his feet. ‘I’d better infuse some strength into him. When do we arrive?’

‘I don’t know exactly; poor Jimmy went and lay down first on some boxes stacked along the sides of the boat. They made him feel much worse, and then he found that they were full of
chickens who were behaving exactly like his insides felt – lurching and fluttering about and uttering low squawks of misery. It is such a pity for him that he misses all this lovely
travelling.’

‘Is it lovely travelling? Are you enjoying it?’

‘Immensely.’ As they went down the ladder, she added: ‘I’m so sorry to have woken you up – you looked rather tired.’

He was about to deny this – felt his mouth start to curl like an old sandwich with a wry, dry inner sneer – when he recollected the private collection he had just been making of
himself, and ceasing to feel tired he said: ‘I was tired: I am restored now.’ It was much more comfortable to be in one’s place, than to have someone – anyone – put
one there.

2

ALBERTA

Hydra
,
Greece

My darling Papa,

Where shall I begin? Where I am, I think, and work backwards and forwards out of it. I’m sitting on a snow white terrace with my back to a wall eating figs and every now and then looking
round me at a scene of unimaginable beauty (unimagined by me at any rate). We are on the island, and the above address
is
a complete one, although you might not think so. We came in a
gleaming white boat that was filled and packed and crammed with people and animals. We charged into the harbour and literally stopped on our haunches – in a way, Papa, that you would hardly
approve – much worse than how people drive through our village, but I think Greek captains are better than English drivers. He stopped the boat with an anchor which rattled out like gunfire,
and then we were collected in little boats – some with motors, some with oars – which they filled until they were practically swamped with old ladies in black and rather tragic-looking
men and boxes and chickens and babies and us, suitcases, furniture, everything. The
moment
the last chicken was over the side the ship roared away at full speed. The harbour is small –
and the place mountainous; it looks like one huge mountain with rocks right down to the water, and the houses are built a long way up its slope; they are nearly all dazzling white, and look as
though someone had spilled a packet of lump sugar from the top of the mountain and most of it had rolled to the bottom. At first there seem to be no trees, but there are, dark spiky cypresses and
dusty-looking olives. The harbour front is beautifully paved – I’ve found out in
pink
marble that comes from a nearby island – and there are wonderful stalls of figs and
tomatoes and grapes and peppers, and wineshops and cafés and other shops with sponges hanging in bunches. There are no cars – only a rubbish cart – on the island because after
the harbour it is all built in roughly paved steps, but there are donkeys and mules; they were all standing in a row near where we landed. They wear turquoise blue beads and so do children: this is
to guard them from the Evil Eye – I don’t know why donkeys and children should be so especially prone, but evidently they are. Perhaps grown-ups can take other precautions. We had to
wait for a man called Aristophánes who knows all about houses: so we had drinks and olives and white cheese that takes the skin off your mouth if you let it, and very good bread.
Aristophánes was rather disappointing when he came, rather fat and nearly bald, but I do see that it is a difficult name to live up to and he was extremely friendly and spoke a great deal of
melodramatic English so at least I could understand what was going on, because we embarked upon hours and hours of talking, and waiting, and having various kinds of refreshment. To begin with
Aristophánes said that we should at once have the house which we should discover quite perfect for everything we could wish; then he told us so much about it and everything that was
happening on the whole island that after we had all had dozens of olives and pieces of bread and cheese and drink we were longing to go to see the house but then he said we must have lunch, as a
key was necessary for the house and the key was uncertain. He kept sending little boys off on mysterious errands in Greek – and they always ran off at top speed and came walking back slowly.
After lunch he suddenly started suggesting other houses which now he knew us he felt would more perfectly suit our needs – he went on and on about it until he persuaded Jimmy and Mr Joyce to
go and look at a house and Mrs Joyce said what a pity he spoke English at all. We agreed that there was something odd in Aristophánes’ change of heart about the house, but Mrs Joyce
knows a painter who had just been staying in it, so she knew that it existed and was nice, and she said that if we sat there long enough with our luggage round us something would happen about it.
We drank little cups of Turkish coffee and longed to bathe. The others didn’t come back for hours: and afterwards they told us that the reason Aristophánes didn’t want us to have
the house was because he was living in it himself rent free, and he wouldn’t take money to go: we had to rent another house for him to move into and then it was all right. In case this sounds
shocking to you, Papa, I must explain that Aristophánes is an
Athenian
and doesn’t live on this island at all. He broke his arm eighteen months ago, and he gets relief for
incapacitation (that’s what he said); anyhow Mr Joyce managed to get a house arranged for him and he became overjoyed again and rushed off to take his things out of ours. Then two little
donkeys were absolutely
laden
with our luggage and we went, with Mrs Joyce on a third donkey. As soon as we left the port there were a great many narrow lanes built in steps for climbing.
The houses are
beautifully
whitewashed; they dazzle in the sun; they all have shutters which were closed and there were very few people about during our walk which was in the middle of the
afternoon and the hottest walk I have ever been. The donkeys had a kind of delicate, leisurely stumble, and it seemed to take ages to get to our house, but it was so lovely when we got there that
even Jimmy cheered up (he does not really like walking in the sun which is most unfortunate for him). Our house is adjoining a little church – everything snowy white: it has two terraces
facing east and west. The western one looks over a small ravine – I think that is the right word – leading down to the sea. You can see the mainland quite clearly – just
undulating masses of mountain softened by blue shadows – very beautiful and mysterious, and a sea planted with one or two islands in perfect positions. The other terrace has a well –
it’s the one I’m on now, and a much closer view so that you can see the colours of the rock of the opposite hill, and there is a small field, only it’s not like our fields, with
olive trees and one or two figs. There are cactus and sea plants, but I haven’t explored them properly yet. I have a dark cool little room on the ground floor. It is a small house, one room
for the Joyces, one for Jimmy, and one for me, and a sitting room between the two terraces: the kitchen is in a separate place, and the privy which really is one is in another little hut.

Dear Papa, and how
are you
? I do hope Mary is proving of some use with the Magazine, and that Lady G. is not upsetting Aunt T. too much over the Flower Show. I will go to a Greek church
as soon as possible, and describe it carefully to you. I wish you were here, and the whole family. If only I was rich I would take you for a wonderful holiday – do you remember telling me the
story every night after Mamma died about you and me going to India? Every night I could choose something to go into the story, and in the end we had so many elephants that when I chose a tiger, you
had to make him tame to ride on an elephant to use one of them up. The extraordinary thing about travelling is that it
is
quite as wonderful as you made it – not the same, of course
– but not disappointing.

It’s very odd, Papa, but I never realized, until the other evening when I was talking with Mrs Joyce, how very difficult it must have been for you to keep up that story every night for so
many weeks at the time that you did it. You were the most reliable man, and that was what was needed. Perhaps it is the first thing to be, and on the way to anything else? Anyhow, wherever I am, I
love to think that you are somewhere, at least, and particularly when I am not at home. Please give my love to everybody, and tell Aunt T. that I will write to her soon. I’ve finished
Middlemarch
.
Villette
next: it’s nice to have home books with me, and I shall always remember that I read them here.

I wrote a long letter to Papa in the end – but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about them wanting me to play Clemency – I don’t know why – perhaps because it
looks as though we shall go straight back to New York, and that may make him sad – that I shall be away so long. But if we
do
go straight back, and I don’t go home, won’t
it be just as sad, or will giving him more time to get used to my being away make it better? This is nonsense: I’m just afraid to tell him because I’m not sure he will approve of my
becoming an actress in this manner. But then I may not become one at all, in which case it will save a lot of worry not to tell him now. Jimmy says that we are to have two days’ holiday
before we start work: I asked him whether I should learn my lines, and he said no. How do we work, I wonder? It is rather useless to go on asking questions in a diary, as who is to answer them?
Perhaps I shall in the end, if I really want any answers. Jimmy is a much more interesting person than he appeared to be at first. An extraordinary childhood – not belonging to anybody
– and then the tremendous luck of Mr Joyce sending for him to England. I must say it must be pleasant to be rich and famous if one can do things like that: it simply transformed Jimmy’s
life – almost too good to be true. Both of the Joyces are very kind to him and treat him as one of their family, which I expect is what he needs. He is illegitimate and does not know who his
father is: I wonder whether he imagines that he was a duke or a magician or something notable like that. Oh dear. Papa once said that diaries were generally filled with idle speculations or idle
introspection, and I begin to see why. One is poor company in them because one hardly ever objects to oneself; it is far worse than a doting mother with her children – there does not even
seem to be a last straw.

Portrait of Jimmy. Medium height, very soft brown hair, hazel eyes (heavens, I’m not getting anywhere), a very nice, wide, curving mouth, and hair growing to a peak on his forehead.
Very
surprising and beautiful hands – each finger interesting. Can’t remember his nose enough to describe it. Has an authoritative air some of the time, which seems to come out
of standing a bit away from people as though he’s just there to watch them. But in spite of that, and in spite of his appearance of toughness, there is something vulnerable about him: perhaps
he is afraid of being caught up with people, and feels it is safer to watch. He moves about most neatly, with no wasted movements – like a cat, and he has a funny laugh – a sort of
shout – as though he surprised himself doing it. He has an
extremely
kind heart, so that if he stops simply watching people, he becomes very protective about them. This is especially
true of Mr Joyce: his voice becomes quite different when he talks about Mr J. – he tries to sound elaborately casual, but he isn’t, at all. He believes in Mr Joyce, and that’s
that. I do hope Mr J. never does anything that upsets him – he would find it so hard to bear. I like him: he is very good when he is not enjoying himself, which, since we have arrived in this
country, has been too much.