Another kick in the ribs, and this time a groan which might of been him, and another black flower flares in his side.
Happy Christmas, he thinks. He starts to laugh. Once he’s started he can’t stop. He’s heaving and gasping as they’re hitting him. He’s blowing blood-bubbles through his mouth. Happy sodding Christmas.
Did one of them mutter ‘enough’, or did he only hope they did? It’s hard to tell, as things are getting a bit floaty. Sorry, Sophie, he mumbles. It comes out as a choking moan.
Very small and clear, he gets a picture of her inside his head. Only it’s not Sophie as she is now, but when she was a kid, the first time he seen her in the Portland Road.
He grabs hold of the picture and clings on to it. Sophie in her stripy red pinafore and her black stockings, with a black velvet ribbon in her hair, and her gold-tipped eyelashes shadowing her cheek as she shows him her book. ‘It’s Black Beauty,’ she tells him breathlessly, ‘Maddy gave it to me for my birthday and it’s brilliant, I’ve read it twice already.’
Sorry, Sophie, he tells her inside his head. Sorry, love.
That’s his last thought before it goes black.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Apparently he had some kind of accident,’ said Madeleine as they were coming out of church on Christmas Day.
‘What do you mean, an accident?’ demanded Sophie. ‘When?’
Madeleine paused in the aisle to make way for a trio of old ladies who, like the church decorations, were wilting in the heat. It had been a long service, and everyone was eager for luncheon. There was a pervasive smell of Florida water and eau de Cologne, with an undertow of perspiration.
‘When?’ Sophie said again as they moved out onto the porch.
Madeleine opened her sun-umbrella with a snap, and scanned the throng of carriages for Cameron. He never attended services, but sometimes for her sake he collected them from St Peter’s and said a word to the rector, thereby quashing suspicions of outright heathenism. ‘Some time last week,’ said Madeleine, spotting Cameron waiting for them further up the street.
‘Last week? Maddy, how could you not tell me?’
‘Because it isn’t serious. He’s fine.’
‘Then why isn’t he here? Why did Great-Aunt May have to get someone else to drive her to church?’
‘Oh look,’ said Madeleine, ‘there’s Rebecca Traherne. Now remember, you’re going to be ill tomorrow, so don’t appear too healthy.’
They dealt with Rebecca, then Sophie resumed the attack. ‘How did you find out?’ she said as they waited beneath a cassia tree for the crowd on the pavement to thin.
‘How does one find out anything?’ said Madeleine. ‘From the servants, of course.’
Sophie chewed her lip. ‘Just how bad is it?’
‘I told you, he’s fine.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me sooner?’
Madeleine made no reply.
‘Maddy, if you don’t tell me everything, I shall force it out of Poppy, or Braverly, or—’
‘Oh, very well.’ She cast a quick glance about her, then said in a low voice, ‘He was found by a weeding gang a couple of miles out of town, just off the Arethusa Road. He must have fallen from his horse—’
‘Ben? He’s the best rider in Trelawny.’
‘– anyway,’ said Madeleine with a quelling glance, ‘they took him to Prospect because it’s nearest, and one of Grace’s cousins patched him up. Cuts and bruises, a chipped knee bone, and some bruised ribs. So you see, I do care enough to have made enquiries. But that’s all I know.’
Sophie took that in silence. Around them churchgoers chatted in little groups, and carriages departed in a haze of dust. Negro families walked by in starched Sunday best with their shoes in their hands.
Madeleine fiddled with the clasp of her reticule. Plainly she was also worried about Ben; and Sophie guessed that she hadn’t told everything she knew. But there was a stubborn set to her mouth which warned that she could only be pushed so far.
‘Is he still at Prospect?’ Sophie asked.
Madeleine shook her head. ‘I think – I think they took him to Bethlehem.’
Sophie tossed her head in frustration. It would have to be Bethlehem, just when Dr Mallory had closed the clinic for what he grimly called ‘the festivities’.
In silence they started making their way up the street to where Cameron was waiting with the carriage. Fraser sat beside his father, clutching his presents on his lap. When he caught sight of Sophie he leaped to his feet, waving so hard that he would have tumbled out of the carriage if Cameron hadn’t transferred the reins to one hand and gripped a handful of sailor suit with the other.
Just before they got within earshot, Madeleine turned to Sophie and said quickly, ‘Sophie, you can’t go to see him. I need you to promise me that you won’t.’
It was Sophie’s turn to look stubborn.
‘What possible good could it do?’ said Madeleine. ‘Grace and her people can look after him just as well as you could.’
‘But—’
‘Leave him alone, Sophie. Don’t make things worse for him than they already are.’
Sophie stared at her. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Madeleine looked unhappy.
‘Maddy – it was an accident, wasn’t it?’
But by then they were at the carriage, and Fraser was jumping down, brandishing his new red kite, and there was no more time to talk.
On the drive back to Eden, she debated what to do. Ben was in some sort of trouble, and he was hurt. That much she knew. And she was pretty sure that Madeleine wouldn’t tell her any more.
The question was, did he want to see her? After all, he hadn’t met her at Romilly Bridge, nor had she heard from him since. And after his accident – or whatever it was – he hadn’t sent her any kind of message.
In the end, she decided not to do anything – at least, not today. After all, she could hardly saddle her horse and ride off to Bethlehem in the middle of Christmas lunch.
Fortunately, Cameron was preoccupied with crop-time, and Madeleine had her hands full with the children, so neither of them noticed that Sophie hardly said a word. After lunch Cameron rode over to Maputah, and Madeleine calmed the children down with a game of Answerit. Sophie wrote to Rebecca Traherne, excusing herself from tomorrow’s Masquerade, then read the children stories. Then she pleaded a sick headache and went early to bed.
Boxing Day dawned cloudy and cool – ‘bleaky’, as the servants called it – and everyone was subdued and slightly cross. After breakfast Madeleine took the dog cart to fetch Clemency from Fever Hill. Clemency had flatly refused to desert her dead child on Christmas Day, but after much persuasion had consented to come for Boxing Day and stay the night, to help Sophie look after the children while Madeleine and Cameron were at Parnassus. Predictably, Clemency was now repenting her weakness and desperate to cancel the visit, which was why Madeleine asked Sophie to accompany her.
She would have gone anyway, as she needed to question Evie about Ben. But to her dismay, the McFarlanes weren’t at the old slave village. According to Clemency, they were spending Christmas with relations – ‘somewhere’. Clemency couldn’t remember where.
Back at Eden, they ate an elaborate lunch in Clemency’s honour. Then Cameron rode over to the western cane-pieces at Orange Grove, while Madeleine withdrew to bathe and dress for the Masquerade, and Clemency and Sophie kept the children amused. At least Clemency did, by drawing an enormous Christmas tree and helping them colour in the decorations. Sophie pretended to watch, and had second thoughts.
Ben was all alone in the world. She’d never known anyone so alone. He had no family, and no friends except for Evie, who hardly saw him. Grace and her relations looked after him because in the past he’d done them a good turn; but they were motivated by obligation, not affection. He wasn’t one of them. In a country where a man was either a planter or a banana farmer, a Negro or a coloured or a coolie or a Chinaman, Ben was just a poor
white. He didn’t fit in. How would he feel if she didn’t come and see him when he was hurt?
The answer, she reminded herself sternly, was that he probably wouldn’t care one way or the other. After all, he’d been quite happy to let her wait on Romilly Bridge with neither explanation nor apology. Why should he want to see her?
But what if he did?
At five o’clock, Madeleine and Cameron left for Parnassus. They were starting early, as Cameron needed to stop off at the Fever Hill works to talk to the manager.
‘We’ll be back at some unearthly hour around dawn,’ said Madeleine, rolling her eyes. ‘Rebecca always lays on an enormous breakfast, and by then everyone’s so exhausted, they fall on it.’
Already Poppy was getting the children ready for an early bed. Belle was still a little frail after shaking off a slight fever the week before, while Fraser had simply eaten too many sweets. ‘I’ve hidden the rest,’ said Madeleine, drawing Sophie aside, ‘but he’ll work on Clemency, he always does, so I’m counting on you to be strong.’
Did Sophie imagine it, or did her sister give special emphasis to that ‘I’m counting on you’? You can’t go to see him. I need you to promise me that you won’t. Don’t make things worse for him than they already are.
At last the carriage departed in a cloud of dust, and the house settled into peace. It was twenty past five. It would be light for about another two or three hours, and after that there would be a nearly full moon. Plenty of time to ride to Bethlehem and see him. She’d be home by eight. Nine at the latest. And Clemency and Poppy could look after the children.
But would that be fair on Clemency? To leave her alone, and in charge of the house?
And think of the humiliation if she rode all the way there, only to find that he’d already left. Everyone would know why she’d come. She’d be a laughing stock. The love-sick buckra miss, forlornly dogging the footsteps of her reluctant swain.
Clemency came out onto the verandah and perched on the sofa, and gave Sophie one of her wincing smiles. ‘They’re fast asleep,’ she whispered. ‘Exhausted, poor little dears. I must say, I am too.’
Sophie forced a smile. A whole evening with Clemency. She couldn’t do it. She needed to know that Ben was all right. She needed to see for herself.
Quickly, she stood up. ‘D’you know, I think I need some air. Should you mind dreadfully if I take myself off for a ride?’
Clemency’s pretty young-old face lit up with relief. ‘Darling, not at all! In fact, I was just going to ask if you’d mind if I went to my room for a little lie-down, and perhaps a short prayer?’
Sophie felt a twinge of sadness. A short prayer probably meant several hours on her knees, apologizing to Elliot for having deserted him. ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘You do whatever you like, Clemmie. I shall be back in a couple of hours, but don’t worry if I’m late. And don’t wait supper for me.’
Enough agonizing, she told herself briskly as she changed into her riding-skirt and pulled on her boots. For once, stop debating things from every angle, and simply act.
In the looking-glass she gave herself a small, determined smile. She felt better already.
In old times, the slaves had had three days’ holiday a year: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day. They’d made good use of them.
They’d shed their drab osnaburg clothing and dressed up in the brightest prints they could find, with anklets of scarlet john-crow berries and necklaces of blue clay beads, and fearsome cow-horned masks. Then, for those three days, they’d yelled and danced and drummed their way through towns, villages and estates, in a make-believe return to the African homeland they had lost.
The Masquerade at Parnassus was a tidy Anglicized version of the old parade. A sedate Britannia headed the procession, followed by the Montego Bay Coloured Troupe playing patriotic songs. Then came a carnival king and queen in flowing robes and gilt paper crowns, and an entourage of servants in fancy dress and papier mâché masks: the Sailor, the Jockey, the Messenger Boy; and finally a civilized version (in nautical dress) of the traditional ringleader, ‘Johnny Canoe’.
After the procession came a supper, a tableau vivant staged by the Falmouth Horticultural Society, dancing, and finally a breakfast. Such was the Trahernes’ Boxing Day Masquerade. It carried not the faintest echo of that darkest of all Christmases seventy-two years before, when the slaves had begun a rebellion that lasted for months, and destroyed over fifty Northside great houses.
But at Bethlehem, on the edge of the Cockpits, the echoes remained. And the parade was the real thing: a throwback to a darker, wilder past. No-one mentioned ‘Johnny Canoe’. Jonkunoo was king. Jockeys and sailors were nowhere to be seen; in their place were half-naked men in grotesquely horned masks: Devil, Horsehead, Pitchy-Patchy, the Bull – leaping, dancing and yelling to the harsh rhythms of pipe and drum. Europe had given way to Africa; English to half-forgotten snatches of Eboe and Koromantyn; pantomime royalty to witch-doctors and the Mothers of Darkness.
As a child, Sophie had watched Jonkunoo parades with a mixture of excitement and terror, but she’d always had Cameron to huddle against when it got too frightening. Now, as she tied her horse to a tree at the edge of the village, she was sharply aware that she was the only white person there.
A shouting, drumming, dancing crowd thronged the torchlit clearing. She saw faces she recognized, but they looked unfamiliar in the leaping shadows. The drums were loud in her ears. The air was thick with the smell of pimento-wood fires, and jerked hog, and pepperpot and rum. It had been a mistake to come. Ben couldn’t possibly be here.
As she stood uncertainly at the edge of the crowd, the Bull – the Jonkunoo himself – leaped out in front of her. The cow-horned mask thrust into her face, and she caught an alarming glimpse of dark eyes through painted slits, their whites stained yellow with ganja. ‘Jonkunoo!’ he bellowed, then leaped away.
She drew a shaky breath. Ridiculous to be frightened. She knew these people.
As she was pushing her way through the crowd, she saw a pickney she recognized: the schoolboy from Romilly Bridge. ‘No, Missy Sophie,’ he said when she asked if he’d seen the injured buckra man. ‘He went away.’ Where did he go? He shrugged and gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Not far.’ But she could see that he didn’t really know, and was only being polite.
It was as she’d feared. Ben was gone, and all she’d achieved was to make a fool of herself.
Then she caught sight of Evie, and relief washed over her.
The coloured girl was sitting with her mother and the village nanas beneath the breadfruit tree. She was hunched on the ground, and gazing at the procession with unseeing eyes. When she saw Sophie, her lips parted in a little ‘O’ of surprise. She glanced about her, signalled to Sophie to stay where she was, and got up and ran over to her. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said in a hoarse whisper. She looked tired and troubled, and her hand on Sophie’s arm was feverishly hot.
‘Where’s Ben?’ said Sophie.
Evie bit her lip. Then she drew Sophie aside into the comparative privacy of a coffee walk behind the houses.
‘Evie, you’ve got to tell me. He’s not at Great-Aunt May’s, I checked. She sacked him. So—’
‘He’s all right,’ said Evie. ‘Not to fret, Sophie. He’s all right.’
Sophie crossed her arms about her waist and took a few paces between the coffee trees. Suddenly she was alarmingly close to tears. She hadn’t realized until now how worried she’d been. ‘What happened?’
Evie put her hand on Sophie’s back and rubbed it gently up and down. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you must know more than me. Maddy said it was an accident, but—’
‘An accident?’ Evie snorted. ‘No, he had a fight with Master Alex, and then—’
‘Master Alex?’ Sophie looked at her in bemusement. ‘But – you can’t mean that Alexander Traherne managed to beat him up?’
Evie burst out laughing. ‘Course not!’
She wiped her eyes, suddenly much more her usual self. ‘No, they met on the road, and got to argifying – I mean, arguing. Why they were arguing, I don’t know, but then Ben hit him. And the next day, he got set on by some men, and beaten up.’
‘What men?’
Evie shook her head. ‘Strangers from foreign.’
‘Strangers,’ Sophie repeated. Presumably ‘Master Alex’s’ hired thugs. ‘And where is he now?’
‘I don’t know, Sophie. He left yesterday. Got a lift partway with Uncle Eliphalet on his mule, but I don’t know to where.’
‘What direction? North? South?’
‘North-west.’
‘Towards the river?’
‘I think so. But truly, I don’t know.’
I do, thought Sophie.
It was nearly eight o’clock by the time she reached Romilly, and the light was fading. The most direct route from Bethlehem would have been by the river path which followed the Martha Brae all the way to the ruins. But that went straight past the house, and she didn’t want to bump into Clemency or one of the servants. So instead she took the main road that went past Maputah and skirted the edge of the Cockpits, then turned right at the crossroads, and headed down the Eden Road to Romilly. She was lucky. Everyone was either at a Jonkunoo parade, or sleeping it off. The countryside was strangely hushed, for the sea breeze had long since dropped, and the land breeze was only blowing faintly from the hills.
When she reached Romilly it appeared deserted, but she’d been expecting that. She tethered her horse to an ironwood tree and made her way on foot along the river path which led to the innermost ruins of the old slave compound. Giant bamboo turned the path into an airless, shadowy tunnel. A thick carpet of leaves muffled her footsteps.
Ben had set up camp in a roofless, three-walled ruin a few yards from the river. He hadn’t heard her approach. He was in shirtsleeves, sitting on a block of cut-stone beside a small fire, with one leg stuck out in front of him, and a pair of bamboo crutches laid on a blanket on the ground.
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 56
