Читать книгу The Eyes of the Gull - Margaret Duley - Страница 4

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The next day the doors of the Head House were open and the wind blew through from front to back: the day after the windows were clean, and Isabel met the eyes of a gull and couldn’t think of Spain.

Aunt Dorcas walked across the beach and brought the village news. ‘The foreign fellow was cleaning the house himself, and he’d hired Joe Perry’s square-bodied wagon to meet the train.’ (It chugged inertly across the curving beach once a week from the capital city of St. John’s.)

‘Haven’t we a taxi?’ asked her cousin belligerently.

‘And how could a taxi get out to Head House Emily? Whoever’s chosen to live there must use the horse like our Father’s before us.’

‘And who’s the fool that’s going to live there? Bella girl make haste with the tea.’

But Isabel waited to hear her Aunt’s voice come slowly over the click of her needles. Her knitting was the antithesis of her movements. With an economy of gesture she consumed large balls of wool: a skein by morning became a sock by night. Click, click, click until the calm voice was ready.

‘I don’t know Emily. Lydia says he don’t answer to questions, but he’s bought up most of the supplies in the store, and leased the house for four months.’

Mrs. Pyke’s laugh was a bark. ‘Leased indeed, and would the devil himself want to take it from him?’

‘I tell you Emily, there’s no fear to them that read the Word and trust in God. “There can no evil happen to the just.” ’

The voice was like a well of peace. It overflowed to Isabel’s taut muscles and liberated her feet to the kitchen. Aunt Dorcas’s mind might be chained to the limits of the small outport, but her spirit lay in profundity.

The night after the train had crawled across the curving beach Isabel had a strange dream. All space was full of snowy-breasted gulls, hovering, soaring, swooping to the level of her eyes: everywhere she looked she met a yellow implacable gaze. She searched wildly for the horizon but it was full of eyes: she tried to cover her face with her hands, but they lay powerless in her lap. Andalusia left her and she spun in the grip of Helluland: desolate, savage, and chill. As she sat in icy paralysis a gull swooped down and hovered in front of her face. Fascinated she saw that it had blue eyes like a human, warm, vital, and compelling. Freedom came back to her hands, but she no longer wanted to cover her face. Her body was released to life and she awoke to the warmth of a July day.

With a foreshadowed feeling she followed the curving beach and walked with long steps over the promontory. In sight of her rock she stopped abruptly in her cheap canvas shoes. In front of an easel sat a long figure, with the sun turning the back of an auburn head to the burnish of a copper kettle. Whatever atavistic blood had mixed in the making of Isabel Pyke it seethed with rebellion at the sight of the intruder. The easel was within a foot of her rock! She slanted into the wind and spoke to the gleam on a copper head.

‘This is my rock. I’ve had it all my life. You’ve got to go.’

‘Good God,’ said a startled voice, and the figure and the chair turned round together.

Peter Keen saw the body of a strange looking girl starkly outlined by the wind from the sea. She narrowed to the waist, to the knees, to the ankles, and the cotton dress tautened over pointed untouched breasts. Spots of angry colour heightened Slavic cheek bones, and dilated pupils made grey eyes black. The elemental quality of the figure wakened all his artistic sense. ‘Don’t move,’ he rapped. ‘You look like Boreas, North Wind, any wind! My easel is dug into the ground. Don’t move for God’s sake.’

‘I will,’ she said, sitting down on the rock with her face turned towards the horizon. ‘You can go away. This is my rock!’

Exasperated he regarded the disturber of his new found solitude.

‘Indeed,’ he drawled, ‘I understood I had leased a house and paid the rent. Inconsiderable I will admit, but paid nevertheless.’

‘You may have the house but you haven’t got the Head,’ she said, speaking to the horizon. ‘This is my rock.’

‘So you’ve said before. Is that all your vocabulary? Shall we sing “Rock of Ages?” ’

Tears burnt in her eyes at the unknown quality of his ridicule, and at the violation of her sanctuary. She was defenceless against the smooth irony of such a voice. She looked like a figure of woe with her hair streaming back from her head. Where had she got that face? Looking at it he saw the tears. He said more gently, ‘let’s talk about it. What’s your name?’

‘Isabel Pyke.’

‘And why is this your rock Isabel?’

‘Because I’ve come here every day for twenty years and stayed until the light told me it was time to put on the kettle for tea.’

‘Are you twenty Isabel? Your body looks so virginal.’

She wouldn’t talk about her body. ‘I’m thirty next January,’ she said sulkily with her face still to the horizon.

‘You don’t look it and yet you do,’ he said reflectively. ‘Your face is angry and secret. What are you secret about Isabel?’

‘This is my rock.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he agreed soothingly, ‘we’ve conceded that. I’m sorry to gate crash, but I’ve taken the house to be completely alone. One day I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t paint. I thought I’d never paint again: I was so full of soft living. Then I looked at a map of the world and shut my eyes and jabbed. When I opened them my finger was lying on Newfoundland.’

‘Helluland,’ she muttered.

‘What did you say Isabel?’

She said out loud with granite in her voice, ‘Helluland or the Land of Naked Rocks.’

‘It has a Norwegian sound Isabel.’

‘Eric the Red. He named it right.’

‘By your voice you don’t like your native land. It looks very fair to me.’

‘You only came yesterday.’

‘True I only came yesterday, but I’m very pleased with what I see. I wanted space above me, beneath me, and around me, and this seems to give me what I need.’

‘You won’t stay,’ she said with conviction.

‘Don’t bank on that Isabel. I’m afraid I will.’

‘You won’t stay.’

‘There’s an element of repetition in your conversation Isabel. Do you think you could turn your face away from the sea and look at me? There’s nothing out there but the gulls.’

Startled her eyes came straight to his. They were blue like the sky, and blue like the eyes in her dream! She stared and stared and her look so reluctantly given stayed on him in fascinated regard. He was momentarily speechless with the quality of her own eyes. Big pools of grey light with unexpected black lashes. They should have been brown like her blowing hair. He wished now she would turn them back to the sea. He said lightly with the even charm of a cultured voice, ‘tell me Isabel why you’re so sure I won’t stay on the Head.’

‘Hasn’t your man told you: the man who was at the widow Rumsden’s?’

‘My man Isabel is the perfect servant. I can take him from Paris to the Pole and he’s equally unaffected. We came to St. John’s and I told him to find the loneliest place in Newfoundland where I could camp out. He hasn’t confided in me the difficulties of his quest, but I’d thought he’d done very well until you came.’

‘Hasn’t he told you about Josiah, Coveyduck, and Elfrieda Tucker?’

‘Good God no, he never gossips.’

‘This,’ she said flatly, ‘is sixty year old gossip. Did you hear anything last night?’ Her voice grew sibylline. ‘The sound of a pick digging open a grave, and a hammer, beating, beating.’

He looked startled. Was she a natural? Not with those eyes. ‘No, I heard nothing Isabel. What should I have heard?’

‘What I told you.’

He laughed with a gleam of teeth, and said with illumination, ‘the house is haunted is that it? That’s why they practically gave it to me.’

‘Yes it’s haunted. You won’t stay.’

He laughed again, and she watched the sun on the perfect teeth. ‘Will I not Isabel? Wait and see. Tell me what haunts the house. I confess I’m very interested.’

With her eyes on the horizon she told him the tale, and he thought her stark sentences were like the brevity of line on a canvas. He sat forward with his arms resting on grey flannel trousers, and his red brows contracted over his blue eyes. ‘Poor Elfrieda,’ he murmured, and his voice was like a caress to the dead girl. ‘She probably met a lovely moment in her life and couldn’t resist it. If it had been a local man everybody would have known. Some bold sailor blew in from the sea and swept her off her feet. I wonder if she thought it was worth while. What do you think Isabel?’

His eyes saw her with comprehension. She answered him slowly. ‘I don’t know. She sinned and spoiled Josiah’s life.’

‘Josiah sinned, Isabel. He let bitterness eat him up. If he’d gone back to his ship he would have been very busy and in a very little while he would have met another girl. There are so many girls in the world Isabel.’

‘Perhaps he could only love one. If you want one thing you want only one.’

‘You seem to know Isabel. There’s knowledge in your voice. What is it you want? And if you’ve come to your rock every day for many years why haven’t you heard the sound of the pick and the hammer?’

‘Perhaps there’s no sound to hear. Nobody will come and find out. When I came first and didn’t hear anything I thought it was because I was like Josiah.’

He laughed and looked at her with amused blue eyes. ‘Like Josiah, Isabel, isn’t that impossible? How could an undeveloped girl understand a story like that?’

‘I didn’t,’ she muttered, ‘I only meant I was like Josiah because I didn’t have what I wanted.’

‘I see Isabel, and you think that makes the place safe for frustrated people?’

She made no answer and he turned and looked at the house. Faded and square it looked to his eyes, and harmless in the yellow sun. The front door stood open above the mouldering steps, and the windows were propped up with bits of stick. These were his orders. He had thought the house smelt damp and musty. He turned back towards the strange-looking girl and gazed straight into her eyes before she could turn, them away to the sea.

‘Do you think the house will be safe for me Isabel?’

‘Have you got what you want?’ she asked slowly, and his laugh was an ironical denial.

He must have what he wanted, she thought. He was so different to anyone she had seen or talked to before, and his voice was so beautiful. It fell on her ears like the roundness of finished things: like Andalusia! Startled, her eyes went to him as he sat forward on the wooden chair, with the sun burnishing his hair and the minute stubble of a copper beard. She hadn’t thought of Andalusia once! His eyes held her in silent appraisement, and he weighed her face against her body. It looked as if a hand had never touched it: it was so long and free and virginal: and her eyes—great luminous pools, like clear light that held no yellow. He had wanted to paint with enormous energy, undisturbed by outside sources: to sit free and untrammelled with the wind in his hair, and to portray space, infinite space: and above all to paint light: light receding towards the misty horizon. Now he itched to paint this strange girl, with the long flowing body and mutinous face. The wind had made her as naked to his eyes as she would be without her faded cotton dress. His eyes left her for the sea, and silently Isabel watched him. Suddenly she saw the sun and her leap to her feet brought him back to reality. ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

‘Home,’ she said briefly as she turned her back to the sea.

‘Are you coming back Isabel?’

‘To-morrow,’ she muttered irrevocably. ‘This is my rock.’

Peter Keen threw back his head and laughed on a deep joyous note. With a backward glance she saw the sun on his hair and the sky in his eyes. He sprang to his feet and put his palette on the seat of the wooden chair. With a long step he came close to her and put his hands on her shoulders, turning her round to his face. She quivered under his grip like a wild untamed thing and he could feel the fine bones of her body.

‘Let me go,’ she stormed, with the red spots standing out on her cheek bones and the black pupils swamping her eyes.

‘Hush, hush,’ he said soothingly, and the lovely voice made her want to crumple up in a heap. ‘I only wanted to suggest Isabel that this place is big enough for us both. Can’t you be generous and let me stay here? I’ll go on painting and you can sit on your rock. Will you Isabel? You can’t take away from me what I want as much as you do. A big wide open space where I can be alone.’

Like a terrified drowning person she looked into his blue eyes—the eyes of the gull in her dream. She had never been so close to a man before, and a man so unlike the men in the village. She wanted to get away, and yet she wanted to stay. Peter Keen sensed it all under his hands, and his fingers pressed her shoulders softly. His eyes like bits of the blue sky burnt down at her and his voice spoke to her upturned face. ‘Isabel, Isabel, poor little frightened Isabel. If I dared put my hand on your heart, I expect it would come out in my hand. May I stay on the Head, Isabel? May I? If you tell me to go, I’ll have to pack up and leave and I want to stay so badly.’

In the simplicity of her knowledge she believed him. It would mean the loss of her dream! She could never think of Andalusia, if he spoke in the beautiful voice and sat with the sun on his hair. She had a strange weakness in her knees, and her eyes closed. Her face looked wrung and he stood staring down at the silky black eyelashes resting on the flat cheeks. He said gently, ‘Isabel, Isabel don’t look like that. Why are you so unhappy and strange? Why have you got such a different face? It’s like the East, except for the eyes, and your bones, the fine bones under my hands. Tell me Isabel—tell me?’

He shook her a little and she opened her eyes widely over flat cheek bones. The red spots were gone now. ‘Let me go, let me go. You’re worse than the eyes of the gull. I can’t see Andalusia.’

She tore herself from under his hands, and her feet and the wind impelled her over the scrub.

Peter Keen stared after her. What a strange girl! Andalusia! What did she mean? What a face and what a body to paint if she could ever become unconscious of it without her clothes. For the moment he shrugged her away. He was damn glad about the haunted house. Josiah and Coveyduck would be too much competition for the village curiosity. He would be all alone except for Isabel Pyke! He stretched his long body in the sun, and the wind stirred his auburn hair. He turned and studied the battered old house. What a strange tale, and he hadn’t felt a thing. It only smelt old and damp, and last night he had dragged his camp-bed to the open window and let the wind blow all around him. He had waked with its strong breath in his face, and seen a white gull pass his window. He looked towards the rear of the house, with all the windows propped up on bits of stick. His man worked away and didn’t seem to be troubled by any ghosts or apparitions. Peter Keen’s lips curled away from his teeth in a wide smile. A ghost to Stevens would be just something different in another foreign country!

Peter Keen didn’t return to his canvas. He started to explore the Head. The plumbing was very primitive and he was determined to find a descent to the sea. There must be many little coves, somewhere in all this granite cliff. He would find one and bathe in it, and perhaps take Isabel Pyke to see it! They might swim together and maybe meet the ghost of Coveyduck on the jagged rocks. Isabel Pyke! Brief, economical, and descriptive! Primitive, Puritan and exotic. She seemed so. He would see. She would be back to-morrow. ‘This is my rock.’

He smiled to himself and with the sun on his back he looked for indentations in the perpendicular cliffs.