A Winter Book
Annie and I lay in the grass and listened to the sound of the stream and she sang ‘Full Fathom Five’. She stepped into the water and picked up Mummy’s gold bracelet with her toes and dropped it again and laughed. Then she said: “I’ve always longed to have things of real gold.”
Next day all the gold had disappeared and the pearls too. I thought it was odd. “You never know what streams will do,” Annie said. “Sometimes the gold grows and grows and sometimes it vanishes under the ground. But it can come up again if you don’t talk about it.” So we went home and made some pancakes.
In the evening Annie went to meet her new lover at the village swing. He was a Man of Action and could make the swing go right round, and the only person who dared to sit on it while it went round four times was Annie.
PART II
Flotsam and Jetsam
The Iceberg
THE SUMMER CAME SO EARLY THAT YEAR THAT IT MIGHT almost have been called spring – it was a kind of present and everything one did had to be thought out differently. It was cloudy and very calm.
We and our luggage were the same as usual, and so were Old Charlie and Old Charlie’s boat, but the beaches were bare and forbidding and the sea looked stern. And when we had rowed as far as Newness Island the iceberg came floating towards us.
It was green and white and sparkling and it was coming in order to meet me. I had never seen an iceberg before.
Now it all depended on whether anyone said anything. If they said a single word about the iceberg, it wouldn’t be mine any longer.
We got closer and closer. Daddy rested on his oars but Old Charlie went on rowing and said: “It’s early this year.” And Daddy answered, “Yes. It’s not long since it broke up,” and went on rowing.
Mummy didn’t say a thing.
Anyway, you couldn’t count that as actually saying anything about an iceberg, and so this iceberg was mine.
We rowed past it but I didn’t turn round to look because then they might have said something. I just thought about it all the way along Batch Island. My iceberg looked like a tattered crown. On one side there was an oval-shaped grotto which was very green and closed in by a grating of ice. Under the water the ice was a different green, which went very deep down and was almost black where the dangerous depths began. I knew that the iceberg would follow me and I wasn’t the least bit worried about it.
I sat in the bay all day long and waited. Evening came but still the iceberg hadn’t reached me. I said nothing, and no one asked me anything. They were all busy unpacking.
When I went to bed the wind had got up. I lay under the bedclothes and imagined I was an ice mermaid listening to the wind rising. It was important not to fall asleep but I did anyway, and when I woke up the house was completely quiet. Then I got up and dressed and took Daddy’s torch and went out onto the steps.
It was a light night, but it was the first time I had been out alone at night and I thought about the iceberg all the time so that I wouldn’t get frightened. I didn’t light the torch. The landscape was just as forbidding as before and looked like an illustration in which, for once, they had printed the grey shades properly. Out at sea the long-tailed ducks were carrying on like mad, singing wedding songs to one another.
Even before I got to the field by the shore I could see the iceberg. It was waiting for me and was shining just as beautifully but very faintly. It was lying there bumping against the rocks at the end of the point where it was deep, and there was deep black water and just the wrong distance between us. If it had been shorter I should have jumped over; if it had been a little longer I could have thought: ‘What a pity, no one can manage to get over that.’
Now I had to make up my mind. And that’s an awful thing to have to do.
The oval grotto with the grating of ice was facing the shore and the grotto was as big as me. It was made for a little girl who pulled up her legs and cuddled them to her. There was room for the torch too.
I lay down flat on the rock, reached out with my hand and broke off one of the icicles in the grating. It was so cold, it felt hot. I held onto the grating with both hands and could feel it melting. The iceberg was moving as one does when one breathes – it was trying to come to me.
My hands and my tummy began to feel icy-cold and I sat up. The grotto was the same size as me, but I didn’t dare to jump. And if one doesn’t dare to do something immediately, then one never does it.
I switched on the torch and threw it into the grotto. It fell on its side and lit up the whole grotto, making it just as beautiful as I had imagined it would be. It became an illuminated aquarium at night, the manger at Bethlehem or the biggest emerald in the world! It was so unbearably beautiful that I had to get away from the whole thing as quickly as possible, send it away, do something! So I sat down firmly and placed both feet on the iceberg and pushed it as hard as I could. It didn’t move.
“Go away!” I shouted. “Clear off!”
And then the iceberg glided very slowly away from me and was caught by the offshore wind. I was so cold that I ached and saw the iceberg carried by the wind towards the sound – it would sail right out to sea with Daddy’s torch on board and the ducks would sing themselves hoarse when they saw an illuminated bridal barge coming towards them.
And so my honour was saved.
When I got to the steps, I turned round and looked. My iceberg shone steadily out there like a green beacon and the batteries would last until sunrise because they were always new when one had just moved to the country. Perhaps they would last another night; perhaps the torch would go on shining at the bottom of the sea after the iceberg had melted and turned into water.
I got into bed and pulled the bedclothes over my head and waited for the warmth to come back. It came. Slowly at first, but little by little it reached down to my feet.
But all the same I had been a coward, and all because of two inches. I could feel it in my tummy. Sometimes I think all strong feelings start in the tummy; for me they do, at any rate.
Albert
ALBERT IS ONE YEAR OLDER THAN I AM, IF YOU DON’T count six days.
For six days we are the same age.
He sat in the bay where the boats were and baited his father’s long-line with bleak fish.
“You must kill them first,” I said. “It’s awful putting a hook in them while they’re still alive.”
Albert raised a shoulder slightly and I knew that it meant some kind of excuse and explanation: “Fish bite better if the bait is alive.” He was wearing very faded overalls and a black cap that made his ears stick out.
“How would you like to have a hook put through your back?” I said. “You’d be caught and you’d scream and try to get free and you’d just wait to be eaten up! What?”
“They don’t scream,” said Albert. “It’s always done like this.”
“You’re cruel!” I shouted. “You do awful things. I don’t want to talk to you any more!”
He looked up at me a little sadly under his peaked cap and said: “There, there!” Then he went on putting the bleak on the line.
I walked away. At the boathouse I turned round and shouted: “I’m just as old as you are! I’M JUST AS OLD AS YOU ARE!”
“Yes, I suppose you are,” Albert replied.
I went and knocked nails into the raft but it wasn’t any fun. Three nails went in crooked and I couldn’t get them out again.
I went down to the beach again and said: “Fish suffer just as much as people do.”
“I don’t think they do,” said Albert. “They’re a lower form of life.”
I said: “How can you tell? Imagine if trees suffer as well! You saw them in half and they scream although you can’t hear anything. Flowers scream when you pick them, though only a little bit.”
“Perhaps they do,” said Albert. He said it in a very kind way but, even so, a little patronisingly and that made me angry again.
It was a nasty day. It was hazy and hot and sticky. I tried to cheer myself up by going
to sit on the roof and sat there for a long time. I saw Albert and Old Charlie row out with the long-line. On the horizon there was a dirty-looking bank of clouds stretching all the way from Acre Island to Black Ball and the sea was completely smooth.
Then they came back and pulled up the boat.
After a while I could hear Albert knocking nails into the raft. I climbed down the ladder and went over to him and watched.
“You knock nails in well,” I said.
Then he hammered even more violently so that every nail went in with five blows. I began to feel better. I sat down in the grass and watched him and counted the hammer blows out loud. One nail went in with four. Then we both laughed.
“Let’s take it out straight away,” I said. “Now. We’ll find a roller and get it into the sea at once.”
We dragged up two planks and put a pit-prop across them and lifted the raft onto it. It was heavy and it creaked and bent a bit, but we got it up. Then all we had to do was roll it. The raft entered the water and glided out into the bay. It sat in the water beautifully. Albert went to fetch the paddles and we waded out, gave the raft a shove and jumped on. A little water came over the top but not much. We looked at each other and laughed.
It was slow work paddling, but we got going. We reached deep water, but that was alright because we had both nearly learned to swim. After a while we entered the sound near Red Rock.
“Let’s go to Sandy Island,” I said.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Albert answered. “It’s going to get foggy.”
But I paddled on and we moved slowly towards Sandy Island. We punted ourselves along the shore and past the point. The sea was just as smooth and the bank of dirty clouds had grown and reached Egg Island. Albert pointed and said, “That’s fog. Now we’re going home.”
“You aren’t afraid of a little fog, are you?” I asked. “Let’s go a little bit further and then we’ll turn round.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Albert.
“You’re not scared, are you?” I said, and he paddled on and the raft went out to sea again. It was like moving across a black mirror, like standing on the sea; one could feel the faint swell all through one’s body and one moved with it. The swell came from the south-east and rolled on towards Egg Island.
“We’re turning round now,” said Albert firmly. “The fog’s coming.”
It got cold very quickly and the fog was there, moving thickly around us, shutting us in on all sides. The smooth swell rolled out of the fog, crawled under the raft with a swallowing movement and rolled back into the fog the other side. I was freezing and was waiting for Albert to say, “What did I say?” or “I told you so …”, but he was silent and just paddled on and looked worried. He turned his head this way and that and listened and looked at the swell and kept in to the shore. After a while he kept more out to sea instead. Now there was a cross-wave in the swell and it started to come from all directions at the same time. Albert stopped paddling and said: “We’d better wait until it lifts.”
I was a little scared and said nothing at all.
“If only Rosa would moo, we’d get our direction,” said Albert.
We listened in the fog but Rosa didn’t moo. Everything was as silent and deserted as the place where the world ends, and terribly cold.
“Look, there’s something floating,” said Albert.
It was greyish-white and straggly and was moving very slowly in a circle towards us in the swell.
Albert said: “It’s a herring gull.” He poked it with the paddle and lifted it up onto the raft. It looked very big on the raft and went on shuffling round in a circle.
“It’s not well,” I said. “It’s in pain.”
Albert picked it up by the neck and looked at it, and it began to screech and flap one wing.
“Let it go!” I shouted. Everything looked so terrifying with the fog and the black water and the bird creeping around and screaming that I was beside myself and said: “Give it to me, I’ll hold it in my lap. We must make it well again.”
I sat down on the raft and Albert laid the bird in my lap and said: “It won’t get well. We must kill it.”
“You’re always killing and killing,” I said. “Look how it’s cuddling up to me; it’s lonely and unhappy!”
But Albert said, “It’s got worms,” and lifted up one wing and showed me that it was crawling with them. I screamed and threw the bird down. Then I started to cry and sat down and watched Albert pick up the bird very carefully and examine its wing. “There’s nothing you can do about this,” he explained. “It’s rotten. We’ll have to kill it.”
“But let it fly away,” I whispered. “Perhaps it will get well after all.”
“Why should it suffer?” said Albert. He took out his sheath-knife and held the bird by the head, pressing it down onto the raft. I stopped crying and watched, I just couldn’t look away. Albert turned round so that he was between me and the gull. Then he cut right through its neck and let the head and the body of the gull slip into the water. When he turned round again, he was as white as a sheet.
“Look, there’s blood!” I whispered and began to tremble all over. Then he rinsed the blood away.
“Don’t get worked up about it,” he said. “You see, it was much the best way.”
He was so kind that I began to cry again, and now it was lovely to be able to cry. Everything was over and everything was alright.
Albert always put things right. Whatever happened, and however one behaved, it was always Albert who put things right.
He stood looking at me, worried and not understanding. “Don’t be cross any longer,” he said. “Look, the fog’s lifting and the wind is changing.”
Flotsam and Jetsam
IF THE WATER RISES, THERE’LL BE A STORM. IF IT FALLS very quickly and sharply, there might be a storm too. A ring around the sun may be dangerous. And a smoky, dark-red sunset bodes no good either. There are many more things like this, but I can’t be bothered with them just now. If it’s not one thing, then it’s another.
In the end, Daddy couldn’t put up with being uneasy about the weather and set off. He set the spritsail and said, “Now remember that one mustn’t have a single unnecessary thing in a boat.”
We sat still. We weren’t allowed to read because that shows a lack of respect for the boat. You couldn’t trail anything in the water, such as painters or boats of bark, because the pilots might see them. We gave the sandbank a fairly wide berth, but not too narrow because that’s asking for trouble, and not too wide because that looks too cautious and the pilots might see it. Then we were on our way.
There are lots of things to attend to in a boat. You have to watch out for the painter; otherwise it gets tangled round your feet and can pull you overboard. You might slip when going ashore and hit your head and drown. You can sail too close to the shore and get caught in the undertow. You can stay too far away from the shore and end up in Estonia in the fog. In the end you go aground and then everything really gets into a pickle. Although he thinks all the time about the things that might go wrong, Daddy loves great waves, particularly if they come from the south-west and get bigger and bigger.
Things turn out just as he said and the wind gets stronger and stronger. So now he doesn’t need to be uneasy any longer but can be calm and cheerful while the wind blows.
‘Alas and alack we’re leaving the shore, Oh maiden so fair we’ll see you no more.’ We’re living under the spritsail on Acre Island and the wind is getting stronger all the time.
The Hermansons and the Seaforths arrived a little later. They have no children. They put up their sail for the night next to ours. And there we all were in the storm. All the females rushed around putting things straight and all the men rolled huge stones and shouted to each other and pulled the boats higher up. When the evening came, Mummy wrapped me in a blanket. From under the sail one could see a triangle of heather and surf and the sky that got bigger or smaller as the sail flapped in the wind. A
ll night the men went down to the shore to see that everything was as it should be. They pulled up the boats and measured the height of the water and estimated the strength of the wind out on the point. From time to time, Daddy came in to see whether we were still there and stuffed his pockets full of bread. He looked at me and knew that I was enjoying the storm just as much as he was.
Next morning we discovered a motorboat on the far side of the island. It lay there quite abandoned bumping up against the rocks; two planks had split and it was full of water. And they had had no oars with them. They hadn’t even risked their lives trying to save the boat.
It’s just as I have always said: you can never rely on a motor; it just breaks down. People who go out to sea might well bother themselves to learn something about it first. They have never seen a spritsail in their lives and go and buy boats with high gunnels and then leave them lying on the beach without any tar and so they get leaky and become a disgrace to the whole community.
We stood looking at the boat for a while and then went straight up the shore and looked in the clump of willows behind the rocks on the beach, and there it all was – two-gallon canisters like a silver carpet under the bushes as far as you could see and a little higher up they had tucked the brandy under some spruce trees. “Well,” Daddy said. “Well! It can’t be true.”
All the men started to run all over the place and the females followed, with Mummy and me last, running as fast as we could.
On the lee-side Daddy and Mr Hermanson were talking to three soaking-wet fellows who were eating our sandwiches. The females and Mr Seaforth were standing a little way away. Then Daddy came up to us and said, “Now, this is what we’re going to do. Hermanson and I will take them home because they have been drifting for three days without food and can hardly stand on their feet. If all goes well, each family will get four bottles and three canisters. Seaforth can’t go with us as a matter of principle, because he’s a customs man himself.”