The Little Walls by Winston Graham

  A man came into the loggia from the room and looked round. When he saw me he came towards me. It was Hamilton White. ‘‘I thought I saw you slip out, Norton. Are you coming with us on this trip tomorrow?’’

  ‘‘What trip?’’

  ‘‘To the Blue Grotto. I’ve never been, you know, and I should never hear the last of it in the States if I spent two weeks on this island and didn’t see its most famous sight.’’

  ‘‘Oh … No, I hadn’t heard about it. Who’s going?’’

  White stared at me rather foggily. ‘‘Leonie and Jane and Nicolo. Sanbergh’s lending us his small boat, and we figure on starting at dawn. There was some talk of inviting you to be in the party.’’

  At that moment there was a sound like angry bees as the door opened and Leonie slipped out. She didn’t see us, and looked as if she were going into the garden.

  White turned and called to her, and she saw us and slowly came across. Her eyes were big and very dark, and there was still that stretched paleness in her face.

  White said: ‘‘I was asking Philip for tomorrow, Leonie. I don’t know if he wants to be included in.’’

  ‘‘I’ve only just heard,’’ I said.

  Leonie said: ‘‘I’m sure there won’t be much in it for you, Philip. Perhaps you could stay behind and question the staff.’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’ White interrupted, looking from one to the other of us. ‘‘ Question the—I don’t quite get it.’’

  I said: ‘‘Oh, it’s just a low-spirited little joke we have between us.’’

  ‘‘Well, if you make up your mind——’’

  ‘‘I have. I’ll come.’’

  ‘‘Good. That’s fine. We’ve all agreed to be down air the Piccola Marina at five-thirty prompt By the way, I noticed you have a friend with you this evening. I don’t know whether there would be room——’’

  ‘‘There isn’t,’’ Leonie said. ‘‘Charles advised us against taking more than five.’’

  ‘‘Martin Coxon won’t mind,’’ I said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was bitterly disappointed at the way the evening had gone, and on the way home I told Martin so.

  He didn’t speak for a while. When he did it was almost to himself. ‘‘Queer how one gets tensed up for a thing. I thought I was too seasoned for that.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘Well, Buckingham’s absence made a damp squib of it, but we can wait Leonie Winter is certainly a high-octane number.’’

  ‘‘She was hard going tonight.’’

  ‘‘These pretty girls usually are.’’

  ‘‘I don’t mean in that way. Da Cossa had been talking.’’

  I told Martin of the arrangement for the early morning. He said rather irritably: ‘‘Mme Weber has invited us both to dinner tomorrow night, did you know? I wonder why she’s entertaining these people? I don’t like women over fifty. They’re like floating wrecks, water-logged, drifting; you’re liable to run foul of them at any time.’’

  ‘‘My feeling is she knows little or nothing about it. I think Sanbergh is simply making use of her home until this blows over.’’

  He stopped at a wall, part lit by a window near, and picked a couple of wild flowers. ‘‘ Some of the real aristocrats of the island,’’ he said. ‘‘Probably they were blooming here before the Phoenicians set foot on it. I wonder which is the end-product nature’s most interested in—us or them.’’ His long elegant face was preoccupied as he put the two flowers in his pocket-book. Then he said: ‘‘What do you intend to do tomorrow after this early rise? Didn’t she promise to explain her letter today?’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ I said. ‘‘To be fair I haven’t given her the opportunity. One thing I’m worrying about is whether Sanbergh has taken fright and already gone.’’

  ‘‘Left the island? Why should he? No one knew I was coming. No one knows that I knew Buckingham.’’

  Before going to sleep I did the last big piece of the diary, but for the most part there was little beyond a day-by-day record of the excavations. I’d almost decided to give it up when I came on an entry dated ten days before they left.

  ‘‘Up for the first time today and feeling pretty seedy. Distinguished it by my first row with J.B. Ungrateful I suppose in view of all care he’s taken of me while ill—certainly couldn’t have been in better hands. For four days had hell of a time—must be less resistant than used to be. Came on very suddenly, one hour well, the next shivering so badly could hardly stand. Temp. 104.3. 20 grains quinine. Jack up most of first night constantly refilling hot-water bottles at my feet and back. First morning clearer in head and less thirsty, but at ft again before midday. From then on very confused memories, chiefly of head flaming and body and legs of ice, of trying to get up and being kept in bunk by force or persuasion, of Jack pressing more quinine on me, or drinks, or relighting fire. He tells me in my delirium I solved all the problems of phylogeny of man. Wish I could remember how! I doubt if he got much rest any night. All the same while I’ve been ill he has catalogued and crated most of our finds to date and has kept the men at work on the diggings. Invaluable fellow.

  ‘‘Row started tonight somehow over discussion about slave labour and concentration camps and the possible defeat of the human spirit He contends that no human will can stand up against the scientific degradation which can be so easily switched on In such places today; That merely by the applied technical tricks worked out In last generation any man of whatever spiritual calibre can be reduced to primitive animal crawling in the primeval mud, that such tricks are being and will be more and more applied in the modem world, with mass propaganda the first step and individual coercion the last. The individual is lost and his cause is lost.

  ‘‘This an insufferable contention. If it were true I think one would be capable of that desperation absolute and complete that William James speaks of, the whole universe coagulating about the sufferer into a material of overwhelming horror, surrounding him without opening or end—and no other conception or sensation able to live for a moment in its presence.

  ‘‘I quoted this to B, but told him his contention completely untrue. Must be—and it must be for us to make certain of it. For man of his quality and education apparently to believe it … Less inexcusable for the barbarians of the East who have never been under same influences, same traditions. But if common grounds on which our civilisation built is destroyed, nothing left of value on the earth.

  ‘‘At this B began to say something about Christianity, but told him Christianity only part of story. Many men in West reject religion or its dogmas. This is wider, draws from all beliefs—Jewish as much as Christian, Greek as much as either. Everything we’ve learned, breathed, inherited, irrespective of race, creed, kind. To reject it is the ultimate betrayal.

  ‘‘Of course should not have got so hot about this were it said by anyone whose opinion I didn’t care about. You laugh at the fool but get angry with the man you respect.

  ‘‘After time he followed me out of tent and apologised—whereupon apology from me, and a greater harmony than before. But after it a discussion on contemporary vegetation in lake muds falls noticeably flat. These last weeks our talks and arguments together seem to have become of greater importance than the excavations.’’

  I didn’t sleep well, partly because of what I had read. There were not many more pages of notes now, and I was tempted once or twice to switch on the light and spend the rest of the night finishing them. At about a quarter to five I got up and shaved and put on a blue seaman’s jersey and a pair of grey denim trousers and started off.

  It was still very dark, and after I came out of the narrow alley and turned down the motor-road I saw that there were no stars out. A heavy cloud hanging over the Island had snuffed out the sky. We had arranged to meet at the Piccola Marina to avoid disturbing people at the Villa Atrani, and it crossed my mind as I went down the hill that the assignment might be a drunken jest which none of the others would remember this morning.


  The darkness before dawn is like no other part of the night, and the island was very still. When at last I got to the last hairpin I saw three figures moving across the little jetty and caught the flash of a torch. By now in the farthest reaches of the sky there was a stain of light, and imperceptibly the land was less dark.

  As I crunched across the pebbles to join them, Jane said: ‘‘Ah, here he comes. Good morning, Philip. I’m sorry to say there’s quite an argument in progress right now. Are you weather-wise, darling?’’

  ‘‘Scarcely ever,’’ I said. Leonie was standing very still against the wall of rock. Da Cossa, who had said no word of greeting, was paying off some slack rope and staring out to sea. ‘‘Where’s White?’’

  ‘‘We couldn’t get him up,’’ said Jane. ‘‘ He said he wasn’t feeling too good, but I think it was that party. It went on for quite a while after you left, darling. And now Nicolo refuses to go because of the weather.’’

  Da Cossa turned. ‘‘ There is a storm coming. I have repeated that three times. I know the signs too well.’’

  ‘‘What sort of a storm?’’ I asked, my eyes on Leonie. ‘‘ If it’s a munderstorm, it shouldn’t hurt us.’’

  ‘‘If it is a thunderstorm, it may not hurt you—though it will certainly wet you. But the wind will get up. You think because the sea is so calm it is always calm. Nothing is less true.’’

  Jane shrugged. ‘‘Well, I suppose you should know. But I surely do hate to give up after all the effort of an early rise. I shall be awful mad if we stay ashore and nothing happens. You’re taking a great responsibility, Nicolo.’’

  ‘‘Very well, I take it’’

  ‘‘What does Leonie think?’’ I asked, trying to draw her in.

  She did not turn.

  ‘‘Leonie thinks we should go,’’ said Jane.

  ‘‘I agree,’’ I said.

  ‘‘That’s three to one, Nicolo,’’ Jane said, patting da Cossa’s arm.

  ‘‘What Norton does is his own responsibility. He is of age and may please himself. But I too am the same. I have lived on this island all my life. I dived and swam here before you were born, Jane. I shall not go to the Grotto today, and I shall ask you not to go either.’’

  The paleing in the east only showed up the pall of cloud. ‘‘Oh, well, perhaps we’d better call it off.’’

  I said: ‘‘The boat’s seaworthy, isn’t it?’’

  ‘‘Of course.’’

  ‘‘Da Cossa need not come.’’

  ‘‘Jane must not go,’’ said da Cossa. ‘‘It is not safe——’’

  ‘‘What about you?’’ Jane said to Leonie.

  She spoke at last ‘‘ Oh, I don’t mind. Give it up, if you like.’’

  ‘‘Why should we like?’’ I said. ‘‘Da Cossa has put it fairly enough. We can go on our own responsibility.’’

  ‘‘Not Jane,’’ said da Cossa again.

  ‘‘It’s up to her,’’ I said. ‘‘Anyway, perhaps Leonie will come with me.’’

  Leonie looked at me then for me first time. ‘‘Do you think that would be a good idea?’’

  ‘‘I think it would be a good idea.’’

  It wasn’t easy to see, but I felt we stared at each other then with that antagonism which had got into us and which wasn’t antagonism any more.

  She said: ‘‘Ah right I’ll go with Philip.’’

  It was quite chilly when we started. The outboard motor puttered away easily enough, and I sat in the stern with it Leonie sat in the bows. She had got as far away from me as she could. It wasn’t very far.

  I’d thought at first, from her silence on the quay, that she had been prepared to carry on the vendetta from where we left off yesterday. Now I knew it wasn’t so. My blood seemed to be beating rather thickly. Even the fact that we said nothing for the first ten minutes made no difference.

  The run from the Marina Piccola is a good bit longer than from the Marina Grande. Seen from a tiny boat, the rocks are very grim, and I steered well out to begin. Then as the light grew I came in close beside that thousand-foot cliff we had been peering over a couple of days ago. The sea here was probably sixty or seventy fathoms deep. Thunder mumbled in the distance.

  I said: ‘‘ Is it much farther?’’

  ‘‘I don’t think so. I’ve only been once before.’’

  A flicker of forked lightning lit up the cliffs and the cloud. We both waited; the thunder came quickly; when it had gone the sea seemed quieter, more oily, slithering and sucking round the boat. I steered out to avoid a nearly submerged rock that raised its snout on our bow. Presently we rounded the second headland.

  I said: ‘‘ Leonie.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Why did you agree to come out with me this morning?’’

  ‘‘Shouldn’t I have?’’

  ‘‘I. thought you’ might want to side-step a private meeting.’’

  ‘‘Was I very rude last night?’’

  ‘‘I gave you cause.’’

  ‘‘Some time I hope I’ll be in a position to explain why.’’

  ‘‘It wasn’t only the most obvious reason, then?’’

  ‘‘What reason?’’

  ‘‘My searching your room.’’

  ‘‘No …’’

  The breeze was blowing her hair and she put up her hands to fasten it.

  I said: ‘‘ I’m glad you feel better today.’’

  ‘‘Do I? It isn’t all that straightforward yet.’’

  I watched her. ‘‘You look like a caryatid supporting the world.’’

  ‘‘A small and rather shabby part of it.’’

  ‘‘If you told me about that I might be able to judge.’’

  ‘‘I wish——’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘You still puzzle me, Philip. I w-wish you’d tell me something more about yourself first.’’

  She lowered her hands, but the breeze was having none of that. It blew the new tidiness after the old so that her hair was unexpectedly doubled in quantity and made a shining cloud about her face, fluffing and ruffling in the drawn light.

  ‘‘Tell me at least one thing,’’ she said.

  ‘‘What’s that?’’

  ‘‘Why do you feel so strongly about this—about your brother’s death?’’

  ‘‘That doesn’t seem unnatural to me.’’

  ‘‘No, not unnatural. Not if it was just grief. But is it just grief? There seems to be something else as well.’’

  ‘‘You’re perceptive.’

  ‘‘I don’t know … There’s the opening—beyond this next rock.’’

  I peered at the low narrow hole we were coming up to. She said: ‘‘There’s usually a boat outside to collect the fees, but we’re ahead of them.’’

  I felt a few spots of rain on my head. Then another scribble of lightning lit the sky, and the thunder grew heavier as it rolled downhill.

  I said: ‘‘It may not be safe in the cave if the sea gets up.’’

  Full day was coming now, but it was a coffee-coloured light dominated by the cloud.

  She said: ‘‘Who wants to be safe.’’

  She’d never been like this before. I shut off the little motor and unshipped the oars and paddled nearer. After a minute or so I said: ‘‘Duck your head—in we go.’’

  The entrance is so small that you have to crouch in the boat and pull yourself in by a chain fixed to the roof. I did this, and the boat slipped quietly into the still water of the cavern.

  I don’t know if Sanbergh had been right in telling us that this was the best time to see the place, but he was certainly right in supposing that the effect would be greater before the exploiters were at hand. We drifted for some minutes in silence gradually towards the back of the cave. As we did so the water got more blue and more blue and the entrance dwindled to a thin funnel of grey light. When I dipped the oar in, it was as if the whole blade was lit with blue incandescence. When I stirred the water it was like tearin
g shot-silk.

  After what seemed a long time I said: ‘‘Tiberius used this cave, didn’t he?’’

  ‘‘Yes. There used to be a way up from inside the cave to his villa. He’d come down here and watch the swimmers and swim himself from a ledge somewhere over on the right. Then the cave was lost for eighteen hundred years.’’

  ‘‘What became of the ledge?’’

  ‘‘It’s still there. And some of the steps. But they don’t go all the way.’’

  I said: ‘‘When I was seven my father shot himself. He thought he was alone in the house, but I was in the garden and heard the shot and went up and found him. Grevil was seventeen at the time and Arnold twenty-one. Four years after that my mother died, and from then on Grevil did almost everything for me. I thought he was wonderful, aped him in all the ways I could, but unfortunately didn’t have his brilliance. People used to say I was like him—not merely in looks but in impulses and tendencies. They said I was like my father, too … So when they both die, apparently after the same fashion, that’s both barrels at once, as you might say.’’

  I dipped my oar in the water again and looked at it, glittering and luminous. She sat very still. I’d noticed before this quality in her, able to watch or listen or think in absolute silence.

  She said: ‘‘Why did your father——’’

  ‘‘His doctor had told him he’d got a growth, might be malignant, he didn’t know—they’d have to operate at once.’’

  ‘‘Well, then, surely that’s a good enough reason for anybody——’’

  ‘‘But it wasn’t malignant—the autopsy proved that.’’

  After a pause she said: ‘‘Yes, but all the same ifs not an inexcusable thing——’’

  ‘‘No, of course not I didn’t say it was.’’

  Now that I’d stopped paddling, we seemed to be drifting slowly towards the entrance.