He’d bought Fever Hill in order to get her back. He saw that now. He’d bought it because she’d lived here once; because she loved it. Perhaps that was why he’d fallen in love with it too. What happened to you, Ben? Inside, something’s gone.
Was she right? Was that why Isaac had left, and Austen? Ah, but what was the good of wondering? What was the point?
Slowly he got to his feet, and started back up the path.
He’d crested the hill and was wading through the long grass towards the Burying-place when a flash of white caught his eye. He stopped. His mouth went dry. Below him, sitting on the bench beneath the poinciana tree, was a ghost.
She was dressed in vaporous white, in the fashion of twenty years before. A high-necked blouse with leg of mutton sleeves, a bell-shaped skirt cinched in at the waist, and a beribboned straw bonnet. What little he could see of her face was a waxen yellow.
Then she turned and smiled at him, and he glimpsed an escaping lock of dyed grey hair, and breathed again.
‘Hello, dear,’ she said calmly. ‘I was wondering when we’d bump into each other.’
He took off his hat and went down towards her. ‘Hello, Miss Clemmy.’
‘I hope you don’t mind my coming unannounced? But your letter did say that I might visit at any time.’
‘I meant it,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you, Miss Clemmy.’ He meant that too. He didn’t want to be alone any more.
He’d only met her once before, and that had been years ago when he was a boy, and she’d summoned him to Fever Hill on an errand. At the time he’d thought her mad and slightly pitiful. But she’d treated him with the instinctive courtesy with which she treated everyone, and he’d never forgotten.
She patted the bench beside her and asked if he’d care to sit down. She sounded as cheery as if she were at a tea party; not communing with the spirit of her infant son.
Ben hesitated. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be alone with Elliot?’
She smiled. ‘You know, he’s not actually down here. He’s up in heaven. This is just the place I come to, because it’s nice and quiet, and so much easier to get his attention.’
Ben couldn’t think of anything to say to that. So he tossed his hat in the grass and sat down.
Miss Clemmy folded her pale hands in her lap, and watched a yellow butterfly sunning itself on a large barrel tomb at the far end of the Burying-place.
Ben said, ‘You’re looking very well, Miss Clemmy.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said, still watching the butterfly. ‘I’ve been busy, and I fancy it agrees with me. So much to do, what with looking after Belle – strange child – and of course, dear Madeleine.’
‘How is she? Madeleine, I mean?’
Her pretty young-old face contracted. ‘She misses her sister dreadfully. But they’re both too proud to make amends. Or perhaps too frightened of what would happen if it didn’t work. I don’t know. But I do know that nothing will be right until it’s sorted out.’
Ben made no reply.
‘Madeleine’s down in Falmouth,’ Miss Clemmy went on with a smile. ‘She’s spending the day with the Mordenners. I’m going down to join her after I finish here, and dear little Belle’s going along for tea, on her pony! She absolutely pestered Maddy to let her.’
Ben broke off a grass stem and turned it in his fingers. ‘Would you – would you send Madeleine my regards?’
Miss Clemmy’s china-blue eyes became troubled. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear, but I don’t think that would be wise. You see, she associates you with such painful memories.’
He bit back his disappointment. ‘Of course. I understand.’
She patted his knee, as if to make him feel better. ‘Now then,’ she said brightly. ‘I hear that you’ve brought out your brother and sisters to be with you. I call that very nice.’
She made it sound like a jolly sort of picnic, and he had to smile.
‘And where shall you put the mausoleum?’ she asked.
‘To tell the truth, Miss Clemmy, I don’t think I’ll build it.’
‘But why? I’d heard that the plans are all drawn up.’
‘They are. And on paper it seemed like a good idea. But it’s not for them. It’s too grand.’ He looked about him at the simple barrel tombs dreaming away the decades in the long grass. ‘Maybe the Monroes got it right after all,’ he said, indicating the big barrel tomb where the butterfly was still sunning itself. ‘Maybe I’ll build something like that instead.’
‘Oh, don’t copy that one,’ said Miss Clemmy with startling energy. ‘That’s old Alasdair’s tomb. That wouldn’t do at all.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, he was a dreadful old man. Perfectly dreadful. Died of apoplexy just after they freed the slaves. His servants hated him so much that they built that tomb especially for him. Walls two feet thick, and special cement made with ashes from his own great house, and a few other things which it doesn’t do to mention.’
He glanced at her in surprise. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Why, because it was Grace’s mother, old Semanthe, who helped them build it. The aim was to keep him inside, you see. To stop him walking.’
Ben considered that. ‘Did it work?’
‘Oh, heavens, yes. Jamaicans know a thing or two about ghosts.’
Watching the butterfly lift off from the tomb, Ben thought how odd it was – how odd but how universal – that people attributed such importance to a corpse. Most people probably paid lip service to the idea that once the spirit had departed, what was left was merely ‘clay’. But it wasn’t. Semanthe McFarlane had gone to enormous lengths to keep old Alasdair’s corpse from walking. And he, Ben, had gone to endless trouble to find what remained of his brother and sisters and bring them out. For what? To set them free? To have them with him? To atone for the crime of being alive, while they were dead?
He turned to Miss Clemmy, and asked if she believed in ghosts.
‘Why of course, dear. Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know. I never used to. When my brother Jack was killed down at the docks, I remember thinking, Well that’s that, then. Like a lamp going out. It was the same when Lil got the con.’ He coloured. ‘Sorry, I mean consumption.’
Miss Clemmy smiled and nodded, and waited for him to go on.
‘But then a few years ago, Evie saw something. Something I can’t explain. Since then, I haven’t known what to believe.’
Miss Clemmy was shaking her head. ‘That poor child. She was always seeing things. Absolutely hated it. Used to come to me in tears.’
It was Ben’s turn to smile. ‘Did you give her ginger bonbons?’
She looked delighted. ‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ She studied his face. ‘You were such a fierce little boy. And you cared so deeply about Madeleine and Sophie.’
Ben did not reply. He threw away the grass stem and reached for another, and began stripping off the bracts.
A cling-cling – perhaps the one from the hot-house ruins – alighted on the tomb of Alasdair Monroe, and extended a glossy blue-black wing and began to preen.
Miss Clemmy lightly touched Ben’s shoulder. ‘Who is Kate?’
Ben opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. He shook his head.
‘It’s just that I saw you at the old hot-house,’ she said. ‘I always come that way, from the Eden Road – it’s so much less intrusive than coming up by the house – and as I was passing, you were saying sorry to Kate.’
Ben reached for his hat and turned it in his hands. Then he tossed it back into the grass. ‘Kate was my older sister,’ he said.
‘Ah. And why were you saying sorry?’
He had never told anyone about it. Not even Sophie. But there was something about Miss Clemmy’s gentle directness which made one feel that one could say almost anything.
So he told her. About his father, and the day Kate left, and about Pa forcing him to choose between her or Robbie. ‘So I told him where she was,’ he said simply. ‘I thought
she’d be able to look after herself better than Robbie.’
‘And – were you right about that?’
‘No. I couldn’t have been more wrong.’
She waited for him to go on.
‘You see, I’d forgotten that she was in the family way. I’d forgotten about the blackstick. That’s a kind of lead, Miss Clemmy. The girls buy it and roll it into pills, to get rid of – well, to get them out of trouble.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Clemmy, and folded her hands neatly in her lap.
‘It turned out that she’d taken too much, and it had made her sick. Really bad. Cramps and that. So when Pa – my father – when he caught up with her, she was too weak to protect herself.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I thought Jeb would be around to look after her, but he wasn’t, he was out somewhere. She was alone when Pa found her.’
‘What happened then?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She was dead when I got there. Lying in the gutter with one side of her face smashed in.’ He cleared his throat. ‘She’d gone through the window. I supposed he must have thrown her out. Or she fell. I don’t know. When I got there he was in the gutter, holding her in his arms. He was crying his heart out.’ He paused. ‘Funny, that. I never remembered it till now.’
Miss Clemmy made a clucking sound which was both wholly inadequate and extremely comforting.
‘I made the wrong choice,’ he said, frowning down at his hands. ‘I should’ve found a way to save them both. To save Robbie and Kate, both.’
‘But how could you have done that? You were only a child.’
‘I could’ve taken him on. Not just cowered against the wall and told him where she was. If I’d taken him on, Robbie could’ve got away. Then it wouldn’t have mattered what he did.’
‘But surely – surely then your father would have killed you instead.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I mean. I made the wrong choice.’
The cling-cling spread its wings and lifted off from the tomb of Alasdair Monroe, and headed north.
It flew over Fever Hill great house, and over the cane-pieces of Alice Grove. It crossed the Fever Hill Road and flew west into Parnassus Estate. But as it was passing over the cane-pieces of Waytes Valley, something glittering caught its eye. It swept down – then abruptly swerved up again. What from the sky had looked like a seductive, glowing thing was in fact a lighted match in human hands. With an indignant squawk the cling-cling headed east, towards the stables at Parnassus.
Back in Waytes Valley, a breeze from the sea ruffled the uncut cane, and the flame crackled and spat as the hands put it to a cluster of dry leaves.
This year, the weather had been perfect, with good strong rains in October, then a couple of hot, dry months to bring up the sugar. But while some planters had started taking off the crop before Christmas, at Parnassus things had been slower, and much of the cane remained uncut. It was even rumoured that Master Cornelius might have trouble paying his field-hands.
The breeze fanned the flames higher. A hand fed more dry leaves to the fire. The leaves blackened and curled and smoked. Sparks flew upwards.
The wind carried the sparks inland. They flurried south, into the dry, rustling, uncut cane.
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘When there’s a duppy around,’ Quaco had told Belle as he helped her up onto Muffin, ‘you get a sudden hot wind in you face, and a sweet-sweet smell. That’s when you got to run quick-time and throw lot, lotta salt. But you know all this, Missy Belle. Why you wanting to hear it over again?’
‘Just to make sure,’ she’d told him.
But he was right, she did know it already. She knew that duppies live in ruins and burying-places, but mostly in silk-cotton trees. She knew that on moon-full, all the duppy trees in Trelawny remove from their own place, and go up to the forest to reason with each other. All except the great duppy tree on Overlook Hill. The other trees come to him.
It wasn’t going to be moon-full tonight, which was good. Besides, darkness was hours away, for it was still only tea-time. At least, it was tea-time in the outside world. But here in the forest on Overlook Hill, it was half dark. And there was a horrible listening stillness which made her catch her breath.
It shouldn’t be so quiet in a forest. There should be birdsong, and the buzz and hum of insects. But the small creatures knew to keep away from the glade of the great duppy tree. All Belle could hear was her own breathing; and a leaf dropping from the canopy and softly striking the undergrowth.
She raised her head and gazed into the upside-down world of the duppy tree. The great outstretched limbs blotted out the sky: wide enough to accommodate a whole nest of duppies. Ropes of purple thunbergia hung down about her, and the tortured cords of strangler fig. Ghostly Spanish moss clogged the fingers of the branches, and vicious green spikes of wild pine, and scarlet orchids like vengeful darts of flame.
She swayed. The duppy tree leaned closer. On the enormous buttressed trunk she saw the black, sunken pits where nails had been hammered in. Quaco said that when somebody got sick bad, it was because the obeah-man had stolen their shadow and nailed it to the tree. She wondered if the shadows were still here, wriggling on the nails.
Her heart began to pound. She wondered if the duppies were here too, watching her. Was Fraser among them? Was he one of the rare good duppies, the kind Quaco called a ‘good death’? Would he protect her because she was a relative? Or was he the other kind of duppy, who threw rockstones and put hand on people?
She felt in her pocket for the rosemary and the bag of salt. She wished she’d brought Muffin along instead of leaving her tied up at the crossroads so that she wouldn’t get scared. She wished she could run away. But she had an offering to make.
Her hands were slippery with sweat as she slid the satchel off her shoulder and took out the bottle of proof rum she’d bought from a higgler near Bethlehem. That had only been a couple of hours ago, but it felt like days.
She had slipped away from Quaco just as she’d planned. They’d set off for town after lunch, and stopped halfway at the village of Prospect for a cool-drink. It had been easy to persuade Quaco to take a little nap. Then she was off.
The quickest route to Overlook Hill would have been straight up the Eden Road, across Romilly Bridge, then down to the crossroads and turn right. But she couldn’t go that way for fear of bumping into Papa. So instead she’d turned east through Greendale Wood, crossed Greendale Bridge, and then looped south-west through Bethlehem, keeping to the cane-tracks so as to avoid passing too near the Maputah works or home. She’d been proud of herself for finding her way, and when she’d stopped at Tom Gully to give Muffin a drink, it had felt like an adventure. But all that seemed a world away now.
She cast a doubtful glance at the bottle of rum in her hand. What was she doing here? How dare she ask the duppy tree for help? And how did one make an offering, anyway? Should she pour the whole bottle onto the roots? Or just leave it uncorked, so that the duppy tree could have it when it liked?
She decided to compromise by pouring half onto the roots, then propping the bottle against the trunk. She did it all with the greatest of care. If you knock against a duppy tree, it might get vexed, and put hand on you. How does a tree ‘put hand on you’? She didn’t like to think.
When the half-full bottle was resting securely in a fold of the trunk, she took her list of requests from the satchel and unfolded it. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt sick.
‘This is my list,’ she said. Her voice sounded horribly loud in the stillness, and she could feel the duppy tree leaning closer to listen. She didn’t dare look up from the page. ‘Mamma and Papa to be happier and never quarrel again,’ she mumbled. ‘Sugar prices to go up or treasure to be found, so that Papa will not have to work so hard. Aunt Sophie to come for a visit and make up with Mamma.’ She cleared her throat. ‘That’s the end of my list.’
She wondered if she should say any more. It seemed presumptuous to say ‘thank you’ when she didn
’t know if the duppy tree intended to help. But it would be awful to appear ungrateful. ‘Thank you, great duppy tree,’ she said, and gave a respectful bow. Then she folded the list and tucked it behind the half-full bottle of rum.
The stillness was deeper than ever. All she could hear was her own breathing, and the fall of another leaf in the undergrowth. Then another one brushed her hand. Glancing down, she saw that it wasn’t a leaf at all, but a large black flake of ash.
Puzzled, she looked up.
The duppy tree was dripping with black ash. Big black flakes, some as long as her forefinger, rocking silently down through the canopy, and coming to rest with a soft pattering on the ferns and creepers of the forest floor.
For one terrible moment she thought this must be some kind of sign that the duppy tree was angry with her. Then one of the flakes of ash brushed her face, and she smelt the bitter tang of burnt sugar. Cane-ash, she thought in a rush of relief. It’s just someone setting a cane-fire, silly. Just a normal, everyday cane-fire to burn away the trash and make it easier to take off the crop.
And yet – there was still something a little odd about it. For one thing, it was too early in the day for setting a cane-fire. For another, who was doing it, and where? Papa hadn’t said anything about setting a fire. And Fever Hill wasn’t due to start taking off the crop for another couple of weeks; Papa had mentioned that at breakfast.
And she needed to know where the fire was, because it would affect her route back to Falmouth. She’d been planning to nip back to collect Muffin, and then avoid home altogether by sneaking west around the bottom of Overlook Hill, and then crossing the river at Stony Gap. From there she could follow the Martha Brae round on its opposite bank – which was actually trespassing on Fever Hill land, but no-one would mind – and then cut east through the Bellevue cane-pieces and out onto the Eden Road somewhere north of Romilly. She might even reach the Mordenners’ without Mamma finding out where she’d been.
But the trouble with that plan was that if Papa was setting a fire in one of the Orange Grove cane-pieces on this side of the river, then he’d be bound to see her, and she’d be most horribly told off.
The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 78
