Part 14 (2/2)
It was evening and the light still bright Lewis and Victoria lingered over their shepherd's pie at the Grey Stones Hotel dining room and explained to Victoria's Aunt Daisy their reason for co to Orkney Lew pulled out a pencil and made a little sketch on his paper napkin, hastily executed, yet beautiful-or so it seemed to Victoria, who later folded the napkin carefully in two and pressed it in the back lining of her suitcase The islands, Lew said, abounded with the fossil remains of small sea animals But evidence of early plant life has been destroyed The te, the plant structures too fragile But back in Toronto, working with a set of co, he and Victoria had been investigating fossil patterns found in the north of Scotland, tracing a broad arc through the west of that country and up into Scandinavia-this arc, with just a little bending, passed through the outlying tip of Orkney's Mainland, persuading them that certain rock formations at Yesanby, a few miles north of Stromness, held promise The rock was different here, harder, so one to this remote point of land in search oftoo soft to serve Lewis mentioned the Rhynie chert, he mentioned Middle Old Red sandstone He explained how he had applied to the Science Council of Canada for a travel grant, and how he had assembled his equipment and his research team, a team that consisted of himself and Victoria Flett The two of them had twenty-one days to poke around and write up their notes before the funds ran out Both of theued, will always frustrate the atteulate; the variables are too , yes, but enerous
Victoria looked across the table and regarded her aunt, who appeared rested, serene, and flushed with the heat of a long day Because of the fine weather she'd left her suit jacket upstairs in the roo now about whether she should perhaps have a look in the local shops the following day, see if she could find a lightweight dress in her size
She'd slept soundly last night, solidly, which was just as well
Victoria, gazing at her aunt, felt a lurch of love, and claimed for herself a share of her aunt's present contentment, her ease She alht save her froht this ues of amity between Lewis and her aunt see
Leas telling her about the bicycles and backpacks he had rented so that he and Victoria could ride out to Yesanby the followingfor our little wonders,” Lewis told her, ”and leave you to find Magnus Flett”
”Did I hear you say Magnus Flett?” the proprietor of their hotel said, pausing by their table and pouring out their coffee
The proprietor's nae, nobly builtbachelor with a clever face and a headful of fine gray hair which he was forever palot into the hotel business, Victoria wondered-he should have been a raceful, his al down plates on a table and his sweet droll country voice His hotel, which had only six bedroo some of the rooms were equipped with electric heaters Mr Sinclair in his neat gray overall, gliding up and down the carpeted stairs, was desk clerk, chamber for Magnus Flett?” he said politely, leaning in his silvery way over the table ”Now, you will excuseyou saying sonus Flett, why he's just next door, you know”
”Next door?”
”The Sycaht by it It's where the old folk are, the ones as have no family that can keep thearden but they're gone now, of course It was a private house before the Council took it over That's where old Flett is The famous Mr Flett, I should say”
Victoria shook her head; she looked nus Flett's dead,” she said with a measure of solemnity ”He was born in 1862 We don't knohen he died, but we're sure of when he was born because the date is on soal docuht,” Mr Sinclair nodded, se he says he is, and I happen to be of one of them who takes the man's word on it His picture's in the Orcadian every year on his birthday This year they had the London papers up as well The poor old lad was a hundred and fifteen years old, just think of that Oh, not o it was, a birthday party like you never saw They had a cake big as this table here Candles alight, a regular bonfire, course he slept right through it all Why, Mr Flett, he's the oldest e alone that ious memory
In the suue, Lewis Roy, and her elderly Great-aunt Daisy visited the legendary Orkney Islands on their separate expeditions of discovery, Magnus Flett's reputation did indeed rest on those 115 years of his This is a very great age There is a woman in the Ukraine who is said to be 121, and a pair of brothers in Ariven, respectively, as 118 and 116 (with docu in the Anglican Church hostel at Rankin Inlet has sworn on a Bible that she is 112 years of age (she took up a cigarette habit at eighty-five, whisky at ninety) And then there is the undisputed chaapore, still aed ninetysix) has actually clapped eyes on hie is heartening to observe, and Magnus Flett with his remarkable span of years is a celebrity He has been profiled in the British weeklies (”A Life in the Day of Magnus Flett,” The Sunday Tio, he appeared before the BBC television ca ”his thing”
”His thing,” e, is what has made the man famous: his ability, that is, to recite the whole of Jane Eyre by heart, chapter by chapter, every sentence, every word Mr Sinclair describes this achievement to his visitors, his soft voice softened even further by awe
An iht say, people who are unfamiliar with the retentive qualities of the human brain Probably these same people have never heard how certain devout individuals in long ago days inning of our own century it was not unusual to find quite ordinary h, later, Sunday School prizes were given out for such trifling accomplishments as the Beatitudes or the One Hundredth Psallo-Saxon poele performer who had no text to refer to
Daisy Goodwill Flett was told of his extraordinary achievee for Wo that same period of her life she herself committed the whole of Tintern Abbey to memory-not because her professor required her to, but because she felt a longing to take the oracular, rhythmic lines of Williae of 115, Magnus Flett's es that At the tio he was able to recite only the first chapter of Jane Eyre, but this he did without once stue only the first page And now, as Mr Sinclair warns his North American visitors, the poor old fellow can handle only the opening lines of the opening paragraph
The larger loneliness of our lives evolves froness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves We are always da ourselves the co Victoria work so hard to keep old Magnus Flett out of her thoughts? And why does her Greataunt Daisy, day after day, put off her visit to Syca she offers her niece excuses, saying she has been seeing the local sights, or occupied with shopping for a summer dress The warm temperatures continue, a new Orkney record for the last week of June, and she claims she wants to make the most of this unprecedented weather In her new cotton skirt and blouse (a solid burgundy shade) and her newly acquired walking shoes, she's braved the fields above Stroes and the beautiful, tiny Scottish primrose (Primula scotica) in all its pink profusion ”Love! tenderness! courage!” she murmurs to the tilted landscape, for no reason that she can think of Mr Sinclair, a connoisseur of the pastoral, accos After the hotel's -up is done, these two set out together in his sraveyards of neighboring villages, and one day they come across a tombstone whose family name has worn away, but whose date-1675-and brief inscription reing declaration (You would think this shout from the land of the dead would have unsettled Mrs Flett, but instead she falls under its spell, as though she has seen a vision or heard a voice speaking through that exclalinus Flett?” Victoria asks each evening, returning sunburned and dusty from the rock beds of Yesanby
”Toe her,herself against disappointreenness is deceptive
What looks like yards of fertile black earth is only a thin covering over beds of layered rock Rock is what these islands are ht shelfy lis, and easily worked; it's everywhere Each farm, it see-hammer, point, and klurer-are part of every far but little wood available, stone flags are used for roofs, for fences, for picnic tables and benches, fora srandchildren's favorite television show, The Flintstones She iines that the farmhouses she and Mr Sinclair drive past are furnished with stone chairs and stone tables and even beds and dressers of stone She recalls that her father-in-law, Magnus Flett, cahteen or nineteen, already a
He worked in the Tyndall quarry until he was sixty-five Aman By all accounts he had no softness to hiness is the reputation he left behind Narrowness Stone
He was literate; he could read the Bible or the ue if needs be, but he was not a man ould ever have sat hi told No, it would not enter his head to read a book Particularly not a novel Not a novel by an Englishwolish literature, Jane Eyre
Io with you when you visit Magnus Flett?” her niece offers, with so like reluctance
”If you like,” Mr Sinclair says to her, ”I could acconus Flett”
”Tomorrow,” Mrs Flett says ”Tomorrow”
But the next day she and Mr Sinclair drove out to the Yesanby site where Lewis and Victoria were at work
The end of the road had fallen into disrepair, and they were obliged to park the car at the East Bigging crossroad and walk half athem approach, waved both her ar with the squawks of seabirds and the roar of the waves co in below
The sun on the rocks was brilliant And rising up at the edge of the shi+ning, slippery stone terraces was the famous God's Gate which Victoria had described to her aunt, an ihth wave ca (Fifty years earlier, two araphers were said to have climbed into the aperture, and, before the eyes of their wives and children, been swept out to sea) It seeht, that she was all at once dwarfed by the hugeness around her: the overwhelht of the rock forh wide-spreading desolate e of her vision, outside the boom and wash of the sea winds, was Mr Sinclair's parked car, no more than a speck on the horizon Mr Sinclair hie ars across his broad chest, at hohtness she felt!-her body suspended between the noise and the immensity of the world-as it?
She was unable for a h her, softening her face into a smile, and then it came to her: happiness She was happy
Mrs Flett's favorite niece, Victoria, and Lewis Roy, a o, scra rock, and scraped with their tiny tools at the surface of the hidden world, hoping for what? To find aof buried life Life turned to stone To bitter minerals Such a discovery, they had told her, would be enor about such enormity-but at the sahtly in the palm of a hand, a small rock chip imprinted with the outline of a leaf Or a pri, the coded dots of life
So far, however, and with fewer than half a dozen days re dark nights in the Grey Stones Hotel, Victoria lies in Lewis Roy's ar soundly, then rises, feels about in the dark for her slippers, and e to Room 5, where Lewis lies, ready There is an elehtly excursions, and Victoria values this theatrical frisson and adds it to the learandfather clock, is softly carpeted, and its dimensions are not entirely lost to darkness since Mr Sinclair has thoughtfully provided a rosy little nightlight for his guests' convenience There is just enough light, in fact, for Victoria to make out the words on a pretty Victorian plate which is rows at our own fireside and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens
Firesides! Gardens! Tip-toeing down the hall at two a to read these words, she wants to snort with laughter
Both she and Lewis believe the verse to be an adainst the kind of rapture they have uncovered these last few days
Night after night, in the crisp white sheets of Mr Sinclair's genteel establish and waking, and bringing to life those parts of theo, even a ence of island air, soft sunlight, long days-and the possibility of scientificthemselves that the rewards of erotic love were no more than a temporary recompense, a consolation for the poor in spirit
She has said nothing to Aunt Daisy about her discovery, or about her plans for the future, knowing as she does her greataunt's concern over her son Warren, his two divorces, and now Alice's bitter separation froh how can she know this for sure?-ht endorse the sentis considered, the gardens of strangers areharm than happiness
”I should warn you,” Mrs Betty Holloway said, ”he is completely bedridden Incontinent naturally”
”Well, yes, I understand”
”Another thing, Mrs Flett, he scarcely sees at all Cataracts Inoperable at his age”
”To be expected, I suppose”
”Surprisingly, he does have so in one ear”
”Oh”