Victoria Holt: Road to Paradise Island

One day Benjamin was talking about the colouring of maps and he said that very soon he believed there would be a breakthrough and we should be putting coloured lithography on the market.

He showed me a print—not a map but a rather sentimental picture of a family scene. It was in colour.

"It was done by a man called George Baxter," said Benjamin. "Just look at those colours. If we could get those into our maps..."

"Why can't you?" I asked.

"He kept his method a great secret. But I have a notion how it was done. I think he used a series of blocks of different colours, but he would have to have had the correct register. It would be more difficult with maps. You see you cannot afford to be a fraction of an inch out. If you were you'd make a country miles bigger or smaller than it actually was. You see the difficulty."

"So you will go on colouring by hand?"

"For the time being, yes. Until we get the breakthrough."

"Benjamin, I could do that."

"You, Miss Annalice? Why, it's not an easy task."

"Now, why should you think because it is difficult I could not do it?"

"Well, you're a young lady."

"Young ladies are not all stupid, Mr. Darkin."

"Well, I wasn't saying that, Miss Annalice."

"Well then, let me try."

The outcome was that I was given a trial. I did well and after a while I was given a real map to colour. How I enjoyed it! That blue, blue sea... a colour I loved. As I worked I could hear the waves pounding on coral beaches. I could see dusky girls with flowers about their necks and ankles; I could see little dark children running naked into the sea, and long canoes cutting through the waves. I was there.

Those were afternoons of adventure. I climbed mountains and crossed rivers; and I wondered all the time what new lands had yet to be discovered.

Benjamin Darkin thought I should get tired of the work but he was wrong. The more I did, the more excited I became about it. Moreover I did it well. They could not afford to spoil those maps by careless colouring. Mine were examined by Benjamin himself and declared to be perfect.

I began to learn something about the art of map making. I studied those maps of the past and I became interested in the men who had made them. Benjamin showed me a copy of Ptolemy's map of the world which had been made round about 150 A.D. and he told me how even the great Ptolemy had learned from Hipparchus who had lived some three hundred years before. I became even more absorbed and spent those magic afternoons dreaming of far-off places and the men who had been there years ago and made their maps so that others could easily find their way.

Granny M came sometimes to watch me at work. There was speculation in her eyes. Her grandchildren were a credit to her—both of them caught up in the fascinating world of maps. She could not have asked anything better. She was a schemer by nature and there was nothing she liked better than managing other people's lives because she was always sure she could do it so much better than they could themselves.

At this time she had made up her mind that Philip should marry a sensible girl who would come to the Manor and bear more Mallorys to continue in the business of map making in Great Stanton and at the same time making sure that squiral status was kept up in Little Stanton. As for myself she was beginning to see that neither Gerald Galton nor Charles Fenton was the man for me. She would wait until she found someone who would fit more neatly into her ideas of suitability.

This was respite for me—to pursue my vicarious adventures in the shop and enjoy life at the Manor.

The Manor was a house full of interest which one was apt to forget having been born in it and lived one's life in it. For one thing it was said to be haunted. There was one dark corner on the second floor where the structure was rather unusual. It was at the end of a corridor which seemed to come to an abrupt termination—almost as though the builder had decided he had had enough of it and wanted to cut it short.

The servants did not like to go along that corridor after dark. They were not sure why. It was just a feeling one had. There was a rumour that someone had been walled up in the house years and years ago.

When I tried to find out something from Granny M, I was told: "Nonsense. No Mallory would be so foolish. It would have been most unhealthy."

"Nuns were walled up sometimes," I pointed out.

"They were nuns—nothing to do with the Mallorys."

"But this was long ago."

"My dear Annalice, it's nonsense. Now I want you to go over to Mrs. Gow and take some of that calf s foot jelly. She's poorly again."

Mrs. Gow had been our housekeeper for many years, and was now living with her son over the builder's yard which was situated between Little and Great Stanton.

I could never fail to admire Granny M who dismissed walled-up ancestors as decisively as she had Granny C.

But I used to wonder about that spot in the corridor. I would go up there after dark and I was sure I felt a sensation—a little frisson... something. Once I imagined that something touched me lightly on the shoulder and I heard a sibilant whisper.

I was trying to create something out of a long-ago rumour just as I dreamed of those coral beaches when I coloured my maps.

I used to go down to visit my mother's grave and make sure that the bushes there were well tended. I often thought about her. I had built up a picture of her from Granny C who had always wept a little when she talked of her Flora. Flora had been beautiful, too good for this world, said her mother. She had been a gentle, loving girl. She had been married at sixteen and Philip had been born a year afterwards so she had been only twenty-two when she died.

I had been able to tell Granny C how very sad I was because it was through me that she had died. That was the sort of thing one could never have said to Granny M who would have immediately retorted: "Nonsense. You knew nothing about it and therefore had no say in the matter. These things happened, and she was a weak creature."

Granny C was more sentimental. She had said that my mother would willingly have given her life for me. But that worried me even more. There is nothing that makes one feel worse than having great sacrifices made for one.

So I had not talked nearly as much as I had wanted to to Granny C about my mother.

However I did visit her grave. I planted a rose bush on it and a rosemary "for remembrance," and I used to go down rather secretly for I did not want even Philip to know of my remorse for having caused her death. Sometimes I would talk aloud to her and tell her that I hoped she was happy where she was and I was so sorry that she had died bringing me into the world.

One day when I was there I went to get some water for the bushes. There was an old pump some way off and a watering pot and jugs. As I turned away from my mother's grave I fell sprawling, for I had caught my foot in a jutting stone. I had grazed my knees a little, but nothing much, and as I was about to pick myself up I examined the stone which had been the cause of my fall, and I saw that it was part of a curb.

I delved beneath the weeds and discovered that it was part of a surround of a plot which must have been a grave. I wondered whose it was. I had always thought that piece of land was waste ground. Yet it was among the Mallory graves.

I set to work pulling up the tangled growth and there it was—a grave. There was no headstone, otherwise that would have betrayed its existence. But there was a plate on the grave. It was dirty and the letters were almost obliterated.

I went to the pump and brought back water. I had an old rag with me which I used to wipe my hands on after I had watered the plants, and with this I washed the grime from the plate.