Sleeping Tiger

  “That’s because she doesn’t speak English. Go on in, she’s longing to give it to you.”

  Selina disappeared into the house. A strange exchange of conversation could be overheard, and presently she reappeared, carrying the basket with the cloth off the top.

  “Oranges.”

  “Las naranjas,” said George.

  “Is that what they’re called? I think she said they were from Maria.”

  “Maria’s husband grew them himself.”

  “Wasn’t that kind?”

  “You’ll have to go up and thank her.”

  “I can’t do anything unless I learn to speak Spanish. How long did you take to learn?”

  He shrugged. “Four months. Living here. I didn’t speak a word before that.”

  “But French.”

  “Oh, yes, French. And a little Italian. Italian is a great help.”

  “I must try to learn just a few words.”

  “I have a grammar I’ll lend you, and then you can mug up some verbs as well.”

  “I know Buenos días is good morning…”

  “And Buenas tardes is good afternoon, and Buenas noches is good night.”

  “And Sí. I know that. Sí is yes.”

  “And No is no, which is a much more important word for a young girl to learn.”

  “Even I, with my pin-brain, can remember that one.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure.”

  Juanita came out with the breakfast tray and began to lay the cups and plates and the coffee things out on the table. George spoke to her, telling her that the Señorita had been made very happy by Maria’s gift, she would doubtless be going up to the village later on in the day, in order to thank Maria personally. Juanita beamed more widely than ever, and tossed her head, and carried the tray back to the kitchen. Selina picked up an ensamada and said, “What are these?”

  He told her. “They are made each morning by the baker in San Estaban, and Juanita buys them for me and brings them, fresh, for my breakfast.”

  “Ensamadas.” She took a mouthful off the end of one, and soft, flaky bread and sugar encrusted her mouth. “Does Juanita work for anybody else, or just for you?”

  “She works for her husband and her children. In the fields and in the house. She has never done anything but work, all her life. Work and get married and go to church and have babies.”

  “She seems so content, doesn’t she? Always smiling.”

  “She has the shortest legs in the world. Have you noticed?”

  “But having short legs has nothing to do with being content.”

  “No, but it makes her one of the few women in the world who can scrub a floor without kneeling down.”

  When breakfast was over and before it got too warm, they walked up to the village to do the marketing. Selina wore George’s shrunken navy-blue trousers and the espadrilles she had bought in Maria’s the day before, and George carried the baskets, and as they walked he taught her to say “Muchas gracias para las naranjas.”

  They went into Maria’s shop, through the front section, where the straw hats were piled, and the sun oil and the camera films and the bathing-towels, and into the high, dark room at the back. Here, in the cool, were barrels of wine and bins of sweet-smelling fruit and vegetables, and loaves of bread as long as your arm. Maria, and her husband Pepe, and Tomeu, were all busy serving, and there was a small gathering of waiting customers; but when George and Selina came in, they all stopped talking and looked around, and George gave Selina a prompting dig, and she said, “Maria, muchas gracias para las naranjas,” and there was much gap-toothed laughter, and back-slapping as though she had done something enormously clever.

  Their baskets were filled with groceries and wine-bottles and bread and fruit, and left for Tomeu to deliver at the Casa Barco on his bicycle. George accepted the glass of brandy offered him by Pepe, and then he and Selina walked over to the Cala Fuerte Hotel to see Rudolfo. They sat at the bar and Rudolfo gave them coffee, and was told that a cable had been sent to England for the money and that very soon, in days, they would be able to repay him, but Rudolfo only laughed and said he did not care how long he had to wait, and George had another brandy and then they said good-bye and walked home again.

  Back at the Casa Barco, George dug out the Spanish grammar which had eased him through the intricacies of learning a new language, and gave it to Selina.

  She said, “I’m going to start right away.”

  “Well, before you do, I’m going out to Eclipse. Do you want to come too?”

  “Are you going to take her for a sail?”

  “Take her for a sail? This isn’t Frinton, you know.” He put on a comic Cockney voice. “Once round the island, arf a crown.”

  “I just thought you might be going out in her,” said Selina, mildly.

  “Well, I’m not.” He relented. “But I have to take that new propeller out some time, and it might as well be to-day. You could swim if you wanted, but I warn you the water’ll be frigid.”

  “Can I bring the grammar book with me?”

  “Bring anything you like. We could take a picnic.”

  “A picnic!”

  “Juanita’ll put some food in a basket, I’m sure. It wouldn’t exactly be a Fortnum and Mason hamper…”

  “Oh, do ask her. Then we wouldn’t have to come back for lunch.”

  Half an hour later they piled into the dinghy. Selina sat in the stern, with the box containing the propeller between her knees. She had the grammar book, and a dictionary, and a towel in case she wanted to bathe. The picnic basket lay in the bottom of the boat at George’s feet, and George rowed. As they moved away from the slipway, Juanita hung over the terrace and waved a duster, as though she were saying good-bye for ever, and Pearl walked backwards and forwards along the edge of the water mewing plaintively because she had wanted to come too.

  “Why can’t we take her?” Selina wanted to know.

  “She’d hate it once she got there. Too much water gives her traumas.”

  Selina trailed her hand and gazed down at the depths of waving green weed. “It’s like grass, isn’t it? Or a forest in the wind.” The water was very cold. She withdrew her hand, and turned back to look at the Casa Barco, fascinated by this novel view of it. “It’s quite a different shape from all the other houses.”

  “It was a boat-house. Barco is boat.”

  “Was it a boat-house when you came to live here?”

  George rested on his oars. “For the Organising Secretary of the George Dyer Fan Club, you seem to have read my book with remarkably little attention. Or did you read it at all?”

  “Yes, I did read it, but I was only looking for things about you, because I thought you might be my father. And, of course, there was really nothing about you. It was all about the village and the harbour and Eclipse and everything.”

  George began to row again. “The first time I ever saw Cala Fuerte was from the sea. I’d come from Marseilles, single-handed, because I couldn’t pick up a crew, and I had the devil’s own job finding the place. I brought Eclipse in under power, and I anchored, not a few feet from where she’s lying now.”

  “Did you think then that you’d stay here, and live here, and make it your home?”

  “I don’t know what I thought. I was too tired to think. But I remember how good the pines smelt in the early morning.”

  They moved in under Eclipse’s hull, and George stood up and took hold of the guardrail and, holding the painter, climbed up on to the stern deck and made the dinghy fast, and then returned to help Selina unload. She handed up her towel and her book and the picnic basket and then scrambled up herself while George returned to the dinghy to deal with the heavy box containing the propeller.

  The tarpaulin cockpit cover was still draped over the coach roof as George had left it, and bone-dry again after its soaking. Selina stepped down into the cockpit and put the picnic basket down on to one of the seats, and looked about her with the confused admiration of one w
ho has never been in a small boat in her life.

  She said, “She seems terribly small.”

  “What did you expect? The Queen Mary?” George dumped the propeller onto the floor of the cockpit, and squatted to shove it, out of harm’s way, under one of the slatted seats.

  “No, of course not.”

  He stood up. “Come along; I’ll show you around.”

  The steps of the main hatch led down into the galley, a portion of which had been fitted out as a navigation table, with drawers beneath wide enough for charts. Beyond this was the cabin, with two berths on either side of a folding table. Selina asked if this was where George slept, and when George said it was, she pointed out that while he was a good six feet, the bunks could only be four and a half feet long. George, with the air of a conjurer, showed her how the ends of the bunks extended beneath the sideboards.

  “Oh, I see. So you sleep with your feet in a hole.”

  “That’s the idea. And very cosy it is, too.”

  There were a great many books, held in position on their shelves by retainer bars, and the cushions on the berths were blue and red, and a paraffin lamp swung on gimbals. There were some photographs of Eclipse under sail, complete with the ballooning stripes of a massive spinnaker, and a locker door, left open, bulged with yellow oilskins. George went forward, easing his way around the white painted column of the mast, and Selina followed him and in the tiny triangular forepeak there was a lavatory, and the chain and sail lockers.

  She said again, “It seems so small. I can’t imagine living in such close quarters.”

  “You get used to it. And when you’re single-handed, you live in the cockpit. That’s why the galley’s so handy, so that you can reach in and grab sustenance when you’re under way. Come on, let’s go back.”

  Selina went ahead, and behind her he paused to unscrew the portholes and push them open. In the galley, she reached through the hatch for the picnic basket and brought it in, out of the sun. There was a slim-necked bottle of wine which felt sadly warm, but when she told George about this, he produced a length of twine and tied it around the neck of the bottle and hung it overboard. Then he went below again and returned, carrying one of the foam-rubber mattresses from the cabin berth.

  “What’s that for?”

  “I thought you’d like to sunbathe.” He heaved it up on to the coach roof.

  “What are you going to do? Are you going to fit the propeller?”

  “No, I’ll wait till the sea warms up a bit, or get someone else to do it for me.” He disappeared below again, and Selina took the Spanish grammar and climbed up on to the coach roof and draped herself over the mattress. She opened the grammar and read, “Nouns are either masculine or feminine. They should always be learned with the definite article.”

  It was very warm. She dropped her head on the open book and closed her eyes. There was the lap of water and the smell of pines and comforting heat of the sun. She spread her arms to its warmth, and her hands and her fingers, and the rest of the world slid away, so that reality was here and now, a white yacht anchored in a blue inlet, with George Dyer moving about below, in the cabin, opening and shutting lockers and occasionally swearing when he dropped something.

  Later, she opened her eyes, and said, “George.”

  “Umm…?” He was sitting in the cockpit naked to the waist, smoking a cigarette, and winding a rope into an immaculate coil.

  “I know about masculine and feminine now.”

  “Well, that’s a good start.”

  “I thought I might swim.”

  “Well, swim then.”

  She sat up, pushing her hair back from her face.

  “Will it be terribly cold?”

  “After Frinton, nothing could be cold.”

  “How did you know I used to go to Frinton?”

  “It’s a primeval instinct I have about you. I see you spending your summers there with Nanny. Blue with cold, and shivering.”

  “You’re right, of course. And there are pebbles on the beach, and I always had an enormous sweater over my bathing-suit. Agnes used to hate it, too. Goodness knows why we got sent there.”

  She stood up and began to unbutton her shirt.

  George said, “It’s very deep. You can swim?”

  “Of course I can swim.”

  “I’ll keep the harpoon handy in case of man-eating sharks.”

  “Oh, funny!” She pulled off the shirt, and she was wearing the bikini he had given her. He said, “Good God!” because it had been meant as a joke, and he had never imagined that she would have the nerve to put it on, but now he felt as if the joke had back-fired and he was left standing with egg all over his face. Again the word innocence stood up and hit him, and he thought, unfairly, of Frances, with her weather-beaten, black-tanned body and the raffish bikinis which on her could never be anything but vulgar.

  He was never sure whether Selina heard his astounded exclamation, for at that moment she dived, and he watched her swimming, neatly and without a splash, and with her long hair fanning out in the water behind her like a new and beautiful species of seaweed.

  When at last she came in, shuddering with cold, he shoved a towel at her, and went down to the galley to find something for her to eat; a round of bread with some of Juanita’s goat’s milk cheese. When he returned, she was back on the coach roof, in the sun, rubbing her hair with the towel. She reminded him of Pearl. He gave her the bread and she said, “At Frinton it was always a ginger snap. Agnes used to call them shivery bites.”

  “She would.”

  “You mustn’t say things like that. You’ve never even met her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’d probably like her. You’d probably find a lot in common. Agnes always looks desperately cross, but it doesn’t mean a thing. Her bark is much worse than her bite.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “It’s meant as a compliment. I’m very fond of Agnes.”

  “Perhaps if I learn to knit you’ll grow fond of me too.”

  “Is there any more bread? I’m still hungry.”

  He went below again, and when he returned she was lying on her stomach once more, with the grammar book open. She said, “Yo—I. Tú—you, (familiar), Usted—you (polite).”

  “Not Usted. Usteth.…” He gave it the subtle Spanish lisp.

  “Usteth…” She took the bread and began to eat it, absently. “You know, it’s funny, but although you know quite a lot about me … I’ve had to tell you, of course, because of thinking you were my father … but I don’t really know anything at all about you.”

  He did not reply, and she turned to look at him. He was standing in the cockpit, his head on a level with hers and not two feet away, but his face was turned from her; he was watching one of the fishing-boats move out of the harbour across the pellucid, blue-green water, and all she could see was the brown line of forehead and cheek and jaw. He did not even turn when she spoke, but after a little, he said, “No, I don’t suppose you do.”

  “And I was right, wasn’t I? Fiesta at Cala Fuerte wasn’t about you. You hardly came into the book.”

  The fishing-boat edged between the bearings of the deep-water channel, and George said, “What are you so anxious to know?”

  “Nothing.” She was wishing already that she had not broached the subject. “Nothing in particular.” She turned down the corner of the page of his grammar, and then smoothed it out again quickly because she had been taught that this was a bad habit. “I suppose I’m just being inquisitive. Rodney, my lawyer—you know, I told you—it was he who gave me your book. And when I told him that I thought you were my father and that I wanted to come and find you, he said that I should let the sleeping tiger lie.”

  “That sounds a very imaginative thing for Rodney to have said.” The fishing-boat passed them, moved into deep water, quickened her engines and headed for the open sea. George turned to face her. “Was I the tiger?”

  “Not really. He just didn’t wa
nt me to stir up a lot of complications.”

  “You didn’t take his advice.”

  “No, I know.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Just that I’m naturally nosy, I suppose. I’m sorry.”

  “I haven’t anything to hide.”

  “I like to know about people. Their family and their parents.”

  “My father was killed in nineteen forty.”

  “Your father was killed, too?”

  “His destroyer was torpedoed by a U-boat in the Atlantic.”

  “Was he in the navy?” George nodded. “How old were you?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Did you have brothers and sisters?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to you then?”

  “Well, let’s see … I stayed at school, and then I did my National Service, and then I decided to stay on in the army and take a commission, which I did.”

  “Didn’t you want to be in the navy like your father?”

  “No. I thought the army might be more fun.”

  “And was it?”

  “Some of it. Not all of it. And then … my Uncle George suggested that as he had no sons of his own, it might be a good idea if I went into the family business.”

  “What was that?”

  “Woollen mills in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”

  “And you went?”

  “Yes. It rather seemed to be my duty.”

  “But you didn’t want to.”

  “No, I didn’t want to.”

  “What happened then?”

  He looked vague. “Well, nothing. I stayed in Bradderford for five years, which I’d agreed to do, and then I sold up my share of the business and got out.”

  “Didn’t your Uncle George mind?”

  “He wasn’t awfully pleased.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “I bought Eclipse on the proceeds and after a few years of wandering I fetched up here and lived happily ever after.”

  “And then you wrote your book.”

  “Yes, of course, I wrote my book.”

  “And that’s the most important thing of all.”

  “Why so important?”

  “Because it’s creative. It comes from inside you. To be able to write is a gift. I can’t do a single thing.”