Silver by Andrew Motion Page A

relief to see, but Spot evidently suspected otherwise. As her hand pulled back again, the bird hopped from the floor of his cage onto his perch and clung there with his bright yellow feet, rocking backwards and forwards. ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ he shouted, with enough defiance to keep us all still for a moment.
    ‘I have it here, Mr Silver.’
    It was my voice that spoke now, and my hands that were holding out the map. I had already unfolded it, which meant I was seeing it in daylight for the first time. The underlinings appeared even more childish than when I had glanced at them in my father’s room. Yet the
names –
the names and the rusty cross-marks – held such extraordinary power, the air seemed to shiver around me.
    Mr Silver did nothing for a moment except stare, his milky eyes narrowing with an effort of concentration, his brow tightening, and his head lifting an inch or two from the pillow.
    ‘Give it to me,’ he said. ‘I need to be sure.’ His voice was very thin and scratchy, but had a note of command that Captain Flint himself would have obeyed. When I did as he ordered, he laid hold of the paper with great delicacy, as if he feared that it might melt between his fingers. When he had stroked it a few times, and reassured himself of its robustness, he raised it close to his face and breathed in two or three times very deeply.
    ‘Do you smell it, boy?’ he asked in a much quieter voice, when he had allowed his head to sink back onto the pillow again. ‘And you, my girl, do you smell it? The sea and the earth and all that in them is!’
    Neither of us answered, but watched in amazement as he returned to touching all over the map with his finger-ends. To and fro they wandered, to and fro, as though he had transported himself from his bed and was in fact strolling around the coves of the island, exploring its valleys and forests, drinking from its streams and hauling himself up its hillsides. Eventually he settled on the words ‘bar silver’ and seemed to pluck at them, teasing them upright. When he had satisfied himself in this way, he caressed the whole surface of the map with a most lingering fondness, which made the snake tattoo writhe along his arm. Next he performed the same action with his face, sliding the paper backwards and forwards across his white bristles, over his nose and forehead. Finally he held it to his lips, and puckered them into a tender kiss.
    It was a revolting performance, as well as a spellbinding one, and by the end of it Mr Silver’s mouth had filled with saliva, so that he had to swallow not once but twice. Natty took this to be a sign that she should bring things to a close, perhaps fearing for his health. She therefore leaned forward and prised the map from between his fingers, all the time murmuring, ‘There, there, Father; we will take it back now. There, there.’
    When she had returned the paper to my safe keeping, Natty sat down on the chaise longue beside her father and took both his hands in her own. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, in the voice of sweet reason. ‘We have come to show you the map, and now you have seen it. We have also come to say goodbye to you. You know what we must do. We must begin our journey. Will you give us your blessing; and say you look forward to our safe return?’
    ‘My blessing? Why of course you have my blessing,’ said Mr Silver; his voice was very quiet, as if he were speaking in a church. ‘You have my blessing and my prayers – my prayers for your safe return, and your
success
.’ He drew out the last word so that it soundedlike a serpent’s hiss, then collected himself, which showed he was about to say something he wanted us to remember. It was this: ‘Your success will be the end of everything. It will set me free. It will set all of us free. Bring me the silver and I will be able to die.’
    ‘Hush, hush, you must not say that,’ Natty told him quickly, but her father would not respond, except by tightening