Читать книгу The Eyes of the Gull - Margaret Duley - Страница 5

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Isabel Pyke was pale under her golden tan as she poured boiling water into the earthenware teapot. She was afraid of her Mother’s eyes after her great experience. Anything as big as that must surely show on the outside! She put the tea on the stove to steep, and tiptoed to a square of mirror on the kitchen wall. Fearfully she gazed at her own face, but to her eyes she looked just the same. In the crimson-floored kitchen she had become again the creature of food and drink. She put her long hand up to her face and stared again. ‘Why have you got such a different face?’ What did different mean? She dropped her hand and started to lay a tray. There was only work in the house on the lane.

Isabel Pyke had a hundred and twenty dollars a year of her own. It came in ten dollar cheques once a month from some Trust Company in the City, and she cashed them at the store. She gave the storekeeper a slip of blue paper and he gave her back a ten dollar bill. Isabel Pyke bought all her own clothes and saved money to go to Andalusia! In spite of her dream, once a week she paid out the sum of fifty cents to a woman in the village to do the washing and scrubbing. She did all the rest herself, but she was lost to everything on her knees wringing out a scrub-cloth. Her Mother made her pay for her laziness, telling her that in her young day she had worked from daylight to dark without any hired help.

Emily Pyke owned her house and bit of ground, and two more houses in the village, and her tall, frail husband had left her a sum of money. Isabel didn’t know how much, but there was always enough for citron, raisins, cherries, and currants, and if Mrs. Pyke couldn’t buy a supply at the store, she wrote to a shop in the City, and the parcel came in on the train.

Mrs. Pyke’s baffled resentment was that her soft spoken husband had left his house and his bit of money in Trust for his daughter. It had to go to that pale pilgarlick after her death! But Isabel would die first! The Wilkes’ didn’t lie down to illness! Grandfather Wilkes had reached ninety-four without an ache or a pain, and the week he had died some seals had drifted in on a pan of ice, and he had enjoyed a large meal of flippers.

Isabel knew all that her Mother felt. There was no silence about it as she talked ‘at’ her through her Aunt Dorcas. When Mrs. Pyke scornfully dismissed the ways of her husband, Isabel became doubly grateful to his memory. He had always been so gentle with her and when he was home from the sea, it was his figure that came to her bed when she called in the night. Her Mother never heard. When she slept she died to sound, and when her Father went back to the sea Isabel learned not to call.

The next afternoon as she walked over the promontory her heart beat fast under her second cotton frock: but it was bluer than the other and she had washed her hair to high lights of gold. As she neared her rock she saw him painting in absorbed concentration with his back to the land. The wind was low on the Head, the sea rolled lazily in, and with the light on the copper hair Isabel couldn’t say Helluland! She had been on the rock for sometime before he saw her. He rested his elbows on his knees and sat looking at her with his thumb stuck through his palette. Her hair was a soft mass and only lightly stirred by the breeze.

‘Isabel, you’re here! You should come with the wind! This is surely not your Helluland to-day? It’s an Italian sky and a Mediterranean sea. Come and look at my picture.’

She came and stood shyly by his side while he studied her regretfully. ‘Your dress falls straight to-day Isabel. I can’t see you so well.’

‘What are you painting?’ she asked hurriedly.

‘Can’t you see Isabel—the beautiful golden day—and all that lovely light.’

He watched her expression and her contracted brows. She looked puzzled, and turned her eyes towards the surrounding view, and back to his picture.

‘Don’t you like it Isabel? I’m supposed to be a very good painter.’

‘It’s very yellow,’ she said doubtfully.

‘But it’s a yellow day, and your own golden skin has captured all the light, and your hair is full of it. I must paint you Isabel.’

‘Will you paint me yellow?’

‘Yes if I see you that way—full of sun. I suppose you’d like me to look across the Bay and paint six little houses and six little fish-flakes with a man in a blue shirt sitting in a boat.’

She felt he was laughing at her but she said steadily, ‘that’s what’s there.’

‘But if you were painting Newfoundland Isabel, wouldn’t you paint Helluland, and by the sound of your voice it would be a pretty grim picture.’

Isabel contracted her black brows in deep thought. ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘I look at it one way and you look at it another.’

His smile bathed her. ‘More or less Isabel, in relation to the light.’

‘Did Murillo paint like that?’

‘And what do you know of Murillo, Isabel?’

‘Nothing,’ she muttered, ‘except that his pictures are in Spain.’

‘Isabel,’ he commanded, ‘I’ve got to hear all about Spain. You’re going to tell me what you meant when you said you couldn’t see Andalusia.’

He laid his palette carefully on a chair, and with a friendly gesture took Isabel Pyke by the hand and drew her down beside him on the dry scrub. They sat with their faces looking towards the sea.

Isabel Pyke was silent. She didn’t know how to begin, but he smiled into her eyes. ‘Go on Isabel I’m waiting.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

He leaned back on his elbow and looked up. From where he lay her lashes seemed to stretch to enormous length to end in light brown tips. He saw her clenched hands and said soothingly. ‘I’ll ask you questions Isabel, and do answer. I’m so interested.’

His voice claimed her confidence before her words gave it. ‘What will I tell you first?’ she asked shyly.

‘Tell me about the eyes of the gulls and Andalusia.’

His voice made it as smooth as Uncle Seth’s port wine, but he said it differently with a sound like a ‘th’.

She said wonderingly. ‘You don’t say it like I do.’

‘That’s the way they say it in Spain Isabel. Andalusia! Lovely word isn’t it? Lovely place too, and such exquisite architecture. It’s a challenge to an artist, but the Alhambra is too delicate and beautiful to have been made by human hands. Angels must have come down to fashion it.’

Isabel’s eyes of grey light were swamped in black, and she said breathlessly. ‘My book says the Virgin Mary often comes down to visit the cathedrals in Spain.’

Peter Keen said gravely, ‘I haven’t seen Her Isabel. Perhaps I didn’t go to the right places. What else does your book say?’

‘It says,’ she gushed out, ‘that when the devil took the Lord up to a high mountain, that it was well the Pyrenees were in the way or He would have fallen down and worshipped Spain.’

Peter Keen smiled into her excited eyes. ‘It’s a beautiful country Isabel. Perhaps beautiful enough even for Him.’

‘You’ve been there,’ she breathed.

‘Of course Isabel and I shall go again, and sit in the sun under snow-capped mountains. It restores my faith in the achievements of man, when I go to Spain.’

‘But where do you live every day?’

‘I don’t Isabel. I just momentarily reside, here, there, and everywhere.’

‘You must be very rich,’ she said in an awed voice.

Now he lay on his back with his eyes closed to the strong rays of the sun, and his lips curled in a smile. The sun made his teeth like shining pearls, and his lashes curled and golden like his gleaming hair. Isabel stared down at him as if he were magic from another world while she watched the words come out of his mouth. ‘Too rich for my own good, Isabel, but that’s the fault of my Father and Grandfather. I’m trying to live it down in a temporary period of asceticism.’

‘My Father left me money,’ she whispered, ‘and I’m saving to go to Spain. Sometimes I think it will take all my life.’

‘But why Spain Isabel? It might be any other place.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve always liked the sound of it. Orange, olive, palm, and pomegranate.’

His blue eyes opened quickly, momentarily dazzled by the strong rays of the sun, but Isabel was looking out to sea and her face was closed and secret. He sat up and turned slantways towards her.

‘Isabel I told you to tell me about Spain. Now begin.’

‘I can’t put it into words,’ she muttered.

He laughed and took her by the shoulders. ‘Oh yes you can Isabel Pyke from Helluland! Tell me why you’ve come to this haunted Head for twenty years and when you began to think of Spain.’

Isabel looked into his eyes and felt as if she were facing bits of the burning sky. He put his arm around her, and strangely her head went into the hollow of his shoulder. His nose received the fragrance of Uncle Seth’s Bay Rum, while she began to talk. She fumbled with her words at first but Isabel Pyke had found a companion, and she savoured the novelty of conversation. He liberated her tongue, he aired her mind, he listened to everything she had to say, and when her speech faltered, and her eyes questioned, he pressed her hand and bade her go on. For the first time in her life her dream found verbal expression. She told it to a blue shirt underneath a square chin with a minute stubble of auburn beard. She found words for Andalusia, the roll of bills, the red book, the olive oil, and how the eyes of the gull always destroyed her picture. In describing the yellow eyes her head pressed into his shoulder.

‘The eyes of the gull Isabel? How fanciful! I must look.’

‘No, no, they’re yellow and cold and take away from you what you want.’

‘But I don’t know what I want Isabel, so I think I’ll have a look. It sounds interesting.’

She was silent and content for a long time, until he put his hand under her chin and turned her face up to him and the sun. ‘You said I was worse than the eyes of the gull Isabel.’

‘Yes,’ she said gravely, ‘but Andalusia will come back when you go. Will I go?’ she asked fearfully.

‘I don’t know,’ he said looking at her strange face, but he held her sustainingly, and she felt reassured. She whispered shyly under his chin. ‘Tell me about Spain. You know all about it.’

‘No Isabel, not to-day. I want to hear all about you, and I don’t see it as you do. I might spoil it for you. Tell me what it’s like down there? What the boats do when they go out in the morning, and what you do all day shut up in this little Bay?’

Isabel was very comfortable. She found herself telling him about Aunt Dorcas, her voice, and her peace. She told him about Uncle Seth, his foreign travel, his Port Wine, his Guava Jelly, and his Bay Rum, but she was chary of words about her Mother. He said directly, ‘Isabel you and your Mother are antagonistic?’

She jerked her head from his shoulder, ‘no, no,’ she said in denial. She could hear Aunt Dorcas’s profound voice. ‘My maid, honour thy Father and thy Mother.’ But he had no Aunt Dorcas, and he insisted, ‘yes, you are Isabel. Face facts my dear. You’ve stored up a lot of psychic poison behind those great eyes. Tell me how she feels about you.’

She didn’t understand all that he said but she whispered in reply, ‘her eyes despise me.’

‘Why,’ he asked gently with his blue eyes on her face. (Isabel had accepted the fact that he was very close to her.)

She threw it out wildly. ‘Because I’m a pale pilgarlick, and because I don’t like onions, and pea-soup, and fatback pork.’

If she hadn’t been trembling on the verge of liberated hysteria, he would have laughed out loud. Red spots burnt in her cheeks and her eyes looked black. ‘Hush, hush Isabel, I understand.’

It was too much. The kindness of the beautiful voice burst the founts of her repression. She had walked along so long! Great sobs shook her and tears flowed through her body like a river. He held her closely in the arms that had gone around so many women, and his nose received again the fragrance of Uncle Seth’s Bay Rum. She cried against a blue shirt and found a strange peace. She felt like Aunt Dorcas’s voice. His eyes went out over the distant horizon and because her hair was fresh and sweet he kissed it with the ease of long practice. But when her tears were wept out of her she drew primly away in sudden consciousness. She saw the slant of the sun, and in a second was on her feet like a hunted thing and streaking over the Head. His copper head gleamed as he looked after her. ‘Her exits are rather sudden,’ he reflected. ‘Damn it all, where’s my palette?’

When she appeared again she came with the wind. With a terse command he turned his easel towards the land and dug the legs into the ground. He drew her in long sweeping lines while she stood in the scrub, lashed by an inshore wind, and the pose was too familiar to her body to give her any consciousness of it. She had a way of lifting it out of her waist and pointing her breasts to the wind that maddened him with its beauty of line. He worked with contracted brows and did not throw her a word. But when her time came to go she left him in equal silence.

The next day she walked up behind him and demanded, ‘am I like that? Have I got such big cheek bones, and do I look as if I had on no clothes?’

He smiled at the outraged face. ‘The wind was your lover Isabel. He took them away. His name was Boreas.’

She turned away and hunched on the rock. She was worried about the look of her dress. It must be too small for her. She had a thin white one for Sundays. She would wear that to-morrow. But her Mother would ask why. Isabel sighed and looked out to sea with her eyes brooding.

Peter Keen laid down his palette and followed her. He was very satisfied with his work. It grew free and clean and vital and seemed to be blown by the wind. It was better than space and light, and it appealed to him to put Isabel’s strange face above her long virginal body. She was very paintable and lent herself to light and shadow. He lay down in the sun and stretched luxuriously. His white teeth gleamed as he murmured to the brooding face. ‘Have you ever had a lover Isabel?’

‘No.’

‘What a very uncompromising no, Isabel. Why haven’t you had a lover? You must be so different to the people down there. He pointed vaguely to the huddle of whitewashed houses far away at the head of the Bay.

‘That’s why. They think I’m queer, because I walk every day by myself and don’t talk much.’

‘Have you ever been kissed Isabel?’

His voice compelled her confidence but she said reluctantly. ‘Once, when I was fourteen. A boy kissed me in the meadow behind our house, and we sat in the grass by the vegetable-cellar. I hated it. His lips were dry and cracked.’

‘Is that the limit of your experience Isabel?’

His voice had the smooth quality that she feared. She said angrily, ‘I’ve told you. That’s all. I don’t want those men to kiss me.’

‘Why Isabel?’

‘They don’t wash enough,’ she muttered with her face burning.

‘It’s an excellent reason my dear. Don’t be cross Isabel. I only wanted to know all about you.’

He took her hand and studied its long lines. There was a Botticelli touch on her outward body as well as in the shadows breaking through her face.

‘Tell me,’ he murmured caressingly, ‘haven’t you any friends in the village?’

‘No,’ she said confused by the varying expressions in his voice. ‘The girls I used to go to school with are all married.’

‘I know, with lots and lots of babies. Wouldn’t you like to have lots and lots of babies Isabel?’

‘No I wouldn’t, she said in the same uncompromising way. ‘It means having false teeth, and being fat and ugly and working from daylight to dark.’

‘A very unattractive picture Isabel, but isn’t that rather a primitive marriage you describe?’

‘That’s the kind they have down there, except for one or two.’

‘Maybe my dear, but it’s not love. People nowadays love for the sake of love, as something delightful, independent of families.’

She didn’t know what he meant but she said obstinately, ‘if you love outside of marriage you have to be married. Three girls got into trouble last year, and now when they go out everybody looks at them.’

He whispered softly, ‘there are no babies in the love I mean my dear. Tell me how you think of it apart from the way of the village.’

She searched his face, then looked out to sea, but his blue eyes drew her gaze back to his own. He waited patiently until she said in a far away voice, ‘I like to think it could be like the Song of Solomon.’

He lay back with a smile on his face. ‘Isabel you’re delightful! Like the Song of Solomon? Sensuous, exotic, and beautiful.’ He closed his eyes and murmured through half shut lips, ‘ “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled.” You look so undefiled Isabel.’

Her eyes flew spontaneously to his closed lids. ‘But you know it too!’

‘Of course I know it. I hope I know most good things. How do you know it so well?’

‘Because I wasn’t allowed to read it. Every Sunday in the winter I have to read a chapter to my Mother and my Aunt. I can pick where I like, anywhere except the Books of Genesis, Leviticus, and The Song of Solomon.’

His eyes opened and he laughed on a note of deep delight, while the flawless teeth gleamed in the sun. Isabel whispered to herself. ‘Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn.’ (Teeth were a thing of beauty to her. The people in the village kept theirs for such a short time.)

‘So of course the forbidden books became your favourites?’

‘Oh no, not Genesis or Leviticus. They have no music, and the story of Adam and Eve sounds like the people back there.’

‘But the Song of Solomon. “We have a little sister and she has no breasts.” You’re not like that Isabel.’

‘I must go,’ she said springing up, and again her exit was a sudden streak.

But he lay on in the warm sun, looking like a relaxed Pan, with lips smiling under closed eyes. He wondered if he wasn’t committing the greatest sin of his life. No, no he was sure he wasn’t! No one had a right to expect continued happiness. It only came in fugitive gleams. ‘Happiness was but a wayside camping.’ He smiled a little wider. He was camping out.