The Tennis Player from Bermuda by Fiona Hodgkin

see Spanish Rock?”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s a flat rock above the Atlantic. A sailor carved some letters, a cross, and the year 1543 into it. We’ve always called it ‘Spanish Rock,’ but someone in Portugal now says the sailor was probably Portuguese. Perhaps we should call it ‘Portuguese Rock’ instead.”
    “Is it authentic?”
    “You mean, was it really carved in 1543? I don’t know, but the first settlers in Bermuda saw the carving, so it’s been there a long time. The person who carved it must have been one of the first people on Bermuda. Do you want to see it?”
    “Certainly. Where is it?”
    “Just ahead, at Spittal Pond. Turn off here to the left.”
    Mark turned and brought the MG to a stop in a cloud of gravel dust at the entrance for Spittal Pond. We walked down a steep, rough path and then along a sandy track beside the pond. I told Mark, “The pond isn’t really fresh water. It’s a bit salty. We don’t have much fresh water on Bermuda, except the rain water we collect on our roofs. Let’s go this way, to the left.” We hiked up a hill through thick brush to the top, where we had a spectacular view of the Atlantic waves crashing against the rocks of the South Shore and sending salt spray up almost to where we were standing.
    “Down there,” I said, pointing for Mark.
    We scrambled down through the brush to a large, flat rock overlooking the waves. The rock was defaced all over with carvings. I said, “An American thought the carving, I mean the one from 1543, was going to be eroded away, so he made a plaster mold of the carving, and then covered it with a bronze impression. That was sixty years or so ago.”
    I stood looking out at the Atlantic.
    Mark asked, out of the blue, “Were you homesick when you were in the States?”
    “Terribly homesick. All the snow was a shock to me. And I missed my parents. I grew up in Bermuda, it was all I knew until I went away to the States. Well, I’d been to England several times but always with my parents.”
    Then I asked, “Did you grow up in London?”
    “No. Not really. I spent most of my time before I went off to Harrow at our country house in Hampshire. We have a dairy farm there. When my father joined the Royal Navy at the start of the war, he moved Mother and me, and my nanny, to our country house. I had just been born, actually, so I don’t have any memory of it.”
    “Do your parents live in Hampshire?”
    “Well, Father’s medical practice is in London, and we have a home in Hyde Park Gate. But it was bombed in October 1940, during the Blitz, and we couldn’t live there again until I was about 10 or so. Father couldn’t get a license for the building materials right after the war. But finally he was able to have it all put right. Mother and Father still live there. They spend long weekends in Hampshire during the summer.”
    Mark looked down at Spanish rock and pointed to the bronze impression. “This must be the bronze cover?”
    “Yes,” I said. The impression showed a crude R and a P, with a cross and the year 1543. “This fellow in Portugal thinks the R and the P stand for the King of Portugal, and that the sailor who carved it was claiming the island for his King.”
    We turned away from the rock, went as close to the edge of the cliff as I was willing to go, and looked down into the impossibly clear, blue water, with waves blasting against the rocks.
    It was getting on to dusk. We walked back to the sandy track toward the MG, and Mark took my hand in his as we were walking. Once we reached the roadster, he said, “You’d better tell me again how to get to your home, because I’m lost.”
    I pointed him back onto South Road. He made the turn into our lane and pulled over in front of Midpoint. He jumped out and opened the door for me.
    “Fiona?”
    “Yes, Mark?”
    “We had talked about a picnic, before the rain came. Are you still willing to stand me for a picnic? Perhaps tomorrow?”
    “Yes. At Gibbs Hill.