Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  "I'll be hiring a headman tomorrow," Lyle said.

  "You've found one you can trust? So soon?"

  "Not I. Desmond is sending three or four good men around, and I'm to pick the one I feel best with. He assured me they'll all be trustworthy and hard working. When we've got a headman, we can let it be known in Mango Gut that there's work going on again and start bushing the fields."

  "Bushing?"

  "Weeding," said the head between them. "All the fields are full of grass and weeds, Mom. The tracks, too. Everything's gone wild. Ruinate, they call it here."

  Alison was silent until the car passed the turnoff to Cambridge Hill at Eleven Mile. Then with a frown she said, "Lyle, isn't that the road to Glencoe? I'm sure I remember—"

  "It is, but there was a hard rain last night. Roddy and I thought it best to go by way of the Bay."

  "Oh." Silence again.

  Morant Bay, Alison thought. The funerals. Suddenly she had a sharp mental picture of the little church that Freeland and Pam had attended and from which they had been buried. And of their interment at the little Morant Bay cemetery at the junction of the coast road and the road that ran up through Seaforth and Trinity Ville to Rainy Ridge.

  The sun had shone as brightly for Free's funeral as it did today. But Pam, poor Pam, had been laid to rest with a nasty cold drizzle falling on the handful of people assembled there: Lyle, herself, the Reids, and the few caring friends the Elliots had acquired since their move from Kingston to the Parish of St. Thomas. And a few from Kingston, where Freeland had worked at Barclay's before becoming a coffee grower.

  As clearly as though it were happening now, this very minute, she saw the little old lady from Trinity Ville step from under a huge black umbrella held by Desmond Reid and place a single white rose, from her own garden, on Pam's casket as it was lowered. Old Mrs. Tulloch, scarcely bigger than a minute, who had lived through and vividly remembered so much of Jamaica's dramatic history.

  I'd like to have her for a friend.

  They were talked out, it seemed. Not the kids, of course; Roddy had settled back between the twins and all three were talking at once again. All but she and Lyle. Smiling at him, she reached out to lay her left hand briefly on his knee, and he removed his right hand from the wheel to cover it for a second. The Austin continued its eastward journey through Yallahs, past the Salt Ponds and White Horses, to Morant Bay. And, of course, to the cemetery she had been thinking about.

  Yes, there had been a hard rain. Some of the headstones, including those of Lyle's sister and her husband, appeared to have risen from a swamp. Alison found herself staring as Lyle made the turn; then she shut her eyes. Not that she had ever been close to Pam and Freeland. Actually, she had scarcely known them. But what if something happened to Lyle or the children or herself in this place? Would this sad little cemetery in Morant Bay, on the island of Jamaica in the West Indies, be their last resting place, too?

  Oh, God.

  "Remember this, hon?" After what must have been fifteen minutes or more, she came out of her trance to hear Lyle talking to her. "Remember Seaforth? The market we stopped at with the Reids?"

  Yes, she remembered Seaforth, for of course they had stayed at Glencoe when they came for the funerals and had traveled this road to the Bay. It was the largest town, wasn't it, between the Bay and the plantation? Not large, but the largest. Rows of shops on both sides of the road, a big open marketplace where on certain days higglers sold all kinds of fruits and vegetables and one could buy fresh-killed meat in the meat section. No doubt she would be shopping here, as well as in the Bay's stores. Would she ever become used to pointingto a side of beef or pork hanging from a hook, and telling the butcher what piece she wanted, and having him hack it off with a machete and hand it to her wrapped in newspaper?

  "And this is Trinity Ville, of course," Lyle said a little later. "Look. Isn't that old Mrs. What's-her-name coming out of the shop there?" She was looking the wrong way so he pointed. "There on the right?"

  "Lyle, stop!"

  "What?"

  She suddenly felt it was important. Perhaps the most important thing that had happened to her all day. "Stop! I want to say hello to her!"

  He was a good man; he indulged her whims always and never called her silly. Pulling the car over to the right-side gutter, he even shut off the engine before putting his head out the open window and calling to the white-rose woman. With the steering wheel on the right side of the car—and that was something else she would have to get used to—he was closer to Mrs. Tulloch than she was.

  Mrs. Tulloch—what was her first name, anyway? —stopped short when hailed, thrust her head forward to peer at the car, then let out a whoop. Yes, a whoop. People up and down the sidewalk stopped to look. Then she actually ran to the car and put her head and one hand into it. Not to greet Lyle, but to lean across him and clutch at Alison's outthrust hand.

  "Alison Bennett! And Lyle!" Her gaze swept across the three in back, whom she had never met. "And the children? Well, hi, all of you! Desmond told me you were coming to live at Glencoe! Oh, I'm glad! I'm glad!"

  Now, suddenly, so was Alison. "Kim," she said, as though she had been using the name always. "Oh, it's good to see you again!"

  "I'm coming up to visit." This amazing woman, eighty years old, actually still drove a car. "When can I? Tomorrow?"

  Alison looked at her husband. He frowned. Tomorrow he was to interview some men for the position of headman, she remembered.

  But he was still the beloved husband who tolerated her whims. "Tomorrow would be just fine, Kim," he said. "Come and spend the day, why don't you? We'd love it."

  He meant it, too. Alison could tell.

  Suddenly her fears fell away and the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, looming all around them now, seemed ever so much friendlier. And when they reached Glencoe some forty minutes later after stopping at the coffee works to speak to Desmond Reid, she was even able to smile asshe walked into the two-hundred-year-old Great House with its moss-covered wooden roof that was "about done for."

  4

  Leora was the first out of bed the next morning. Eager to fill the day with adventure, she tossed her pajamas aside, donned the shirt and jeans she had laid out the night before, and hurried along the hall to the big front room. The drawing room, her mother called it. Whatever that was.

  Unlockingthe double front doors was a major operation; they must have been designed for a medieval castle, she decided. Pull down the top bolts, lift up the bottom ones, turn the big old handmade key in the middle. It was worth the trouble, though, to be able to step out onto that wonderfully long veranda and go to the railing and stand there watching the village of Mango Gut take shape below in the morningmist. With a river shimmering in the valley, and mountainsall around, too.

  How in the world could Mother and Dad sleep, knowing they had only to open their bedroom door and step out onto the veranda to see all this?

  She heard footsteps. Someone was climbing the steep path through what had been the vegetable garden when Aunt Pam and Uncle Freeland were alive. The slope was all weeds and brush now, and anyway, there was a big flat area beyond the garage that was much more suitable for vegetables. She leaned over the rail to see the visitor better.

  "Good morning, Ima!"

  Imogene Bailey looked up, startled, then let her homely face explode into that marvelous smile she had, showing her gums and a whole mouthful of large teeth. "Well, good morning to you! You is up early, Miss Lee." She was going to be their housekeeper, Mother had decided after talking to her last evening, and after the scrumptious meal Ima had prepared to welcome them all to Glencoe. First an outrageously delicious pumpkin soup, then a really tender chicken cooked with gungo peas and other local vegetables, then a sweet potato pudding with an ice cream made from soursop. I'm going to learn a lot about cooking from that lady, Lee promised herself.

  So this morning Ima would be moving into the servants' cottage at the end of the yard, and would no longer have to walk up f
rom Mango Gut every morning and go home every night. Carrying an old cheap suitcase that was obviously pretty heavy, she waved with her free hand and trudged on.

  She's nice, Lee thought. I'm glad she's staying.

  A door near the end of the veranda opened and Mother put her head out. "Oh, it's you, Lee. I wondered who was talking out here." The master bedroom she and Dad shared was the only one with access to the veranda. All the others—five of them—opened off a central hall. Imagine a house with six bedrooms! Back in Rhode Island the two boys had had to share a room. Here each had his own, just as she did. And at the end of the hall was a large room that contained four schoolroom-type desks and chairs, and on one wall a blackboard, and on the other walls, shelves. Dad and Roddy had already put some books on the shelves —the ones Mother had sent down in the footlockers—and Mother would be adding others. Dad said the room had actually been used as a schoolroom by some former owner of Glencoe who'd had a whole bunch of kids. Mother said it would do just fine again. "Not right away of course. But when summer vacation is over back home."

  "Vacations aren't the same here," Dad had reminded her. "Jamaican schools use the English system."

  "Well, we can look into that later, Lyle. Right now the children have earned a summer vacation, and I'm not ready to begin teaching just yet, anyway."

  Ima had disappeared into the brown wooden cottage at the end of the yard. Still in the bedroom doorway, Mother said, "What are you doing up so early, Lee? Shouldn't you be getting more of a rest after all we did yesterday?" Leave it to her to worry about dumb things like that, but of course she meant well.

  "Mother, who wants to rest? I want to do things!"

  "Oh."

  "Is it all right if I walk around?"

  "I guess so. What time is it?"

  Lee looked at the watch on her wrist. "Twenty past six."

  "Well . . . don't go too far."

  "I won't." Though I'd like to, Lee thought. What I'd really like to do is walk down to Mango Gut and see what it looks like. It was only a small mountain village, Dad had said last night: maybe seventy little peasant houses, each with a yard. She could see some of their zinc roofs right now, shining in the mist down there. You could drive to it but not from here. All there wasfrom here was the footpath the people would use when they began coming up to work on the plantation.

  Going to the end of the long veranda, she went down the steps to the Great House yard, then up the curving driveway to the road. The road ended here at the top of the drive; anyone driving this far had to be coming to Glencoe. On the other side of it wasa big meadow, part of the Glencoe property, which seemed to be the only nearly flat place in the whole neighborhood. Last night Dad had said that if they decided to stay here, they ought to think about building a house there someday. Not in the meadow itself, but on a knoll at the far end of it.

  "It makes sense," he'd said. "The coffee fields are all on that side of the road. All the tracks begin there. We could cut a driveway to the house and build a warehouse on the flat, put in a power plant to solve the problems Free and Pam always had with the electricity."

  Glencoe and Osburn Hall had been one estate before Uncle Freeland and Aunt Pam came into the picture, Dad had explained. When part of it was sold to Uncle Freeland, he'd agreed that the coffee works could continue to take water from the river and they agreed to supply the Great House with electricity from the turbine at the factory. The Great House could also have water from the gutter that supplied the turbine. The trouble was, that old gutter was an open one, more than half a mile long, and sometimes a hard rain filled it with leaves, and the leaves clogged the turbine blades or something, and someone at the coffee works had to clean the thing out. Which could be pretty inconvenient at the Great House if it happened on a holiday or at night when there was no one at the coffee works to do that.

  Lee walked in through the meadow gate and followed a footpath, with no idea where it might lead her. It led to the knoll Dad had mentioned and she stopped there to look around.

  A house here would be nice, she thought. But she had better get back to the one they had now, or Mother would start worrying.

  Imogene Bailey was in the Great House kitchen when she got back. "Me did forget to ask you mother what time she would want breakfast," Ima said. "Does you know, Miss Lee?"

  "I can go and find out."

  "And you could ask, too, please, what them would like for breakfast. Mr. Bennett and Mr. Roddy, them did mostly want only orange juice and toast, but maybe you others is different."

  It took only a few minutes to obtain the information needed, and in half an hour the family Bennett was assembled at the big mahogany table in the Great House dining room. Dad said he thought the table must have been shipped out from England, along with the handsome old four-poster beds. "The old timers did that, you know. Some of the original families even had pianos sent out from home. Now, of course, you can get good furniture right here, made on the island."

  "Who built this house?" Cliff asked. "Does anyone know?"

  "A man named Shepherd, who came here with his wife from Scotland. Most of these Blue Mountain coffee estates were started by Scots." Dad stopped his coffee cup just short of his mouth and sat there looking as though he enjoyed responding to such questions. "Some of Glencoe's former owners are buried here," he added.

  "Explain something to me, please," Alison said. "The coffee works property is called Osburn Hall, but it has no Great House, only coffee fields and the works or factory, and that was built by its present owners. They live in Kingston, don't they?"

  Lyle nodded. "Jarvis and Leonard Osburn. Yes."

  "Where did the former owners live? When it was an estate like this one, I mean."

  "Right here. When the Osburn brothers sold this house and part of the acreage to Freeland, they had to give the part they kept another name, so they called it Osburn Hall. There couldn't be two Glencoes, and the name Glencoe went with this house. As I understand it, the brothers hadn't the capital to bring this part of the property up to its full potential and expected Freeland to do that and of course sell them his crop, as the smaller growers in the area do."

  Cliff said eagerly, "And some of the old owners are buried here, Dad? Gee! Where?"

  "A little cemetery on the slope below the house here. It's badly overgrown now, full of a wickedly thorny scrub the people call wait-a-bit. Someday we might think about cleaning it out."

  The talk went on all through breakfast. "We're doing more talking than eating," Mother remarked once. "I suppose it's natural, with so many problems to solve."

  "We can solve them, Al," Lyle said quietly.

  "Oh, I'm not complaining. It's only that we were in such a comfortable groove back home, and now everything . . . I'm sorry. Don't pay any attention to me. I guess I'm just a little scared."

  She was not too scared, though, to eat a good breakfast and tell Ima, who served it, that it was delicious. And to instruct Lee and Cliff to help Ima carry the dishes down to the kitchen. And to add, with a thoughtful frown, "Lyle, I wonder if there isn't some way we can have some kind of kitchen upstairs, to save all the running up and down. I'm going to scout around and put my mind to work on it."

  "Why not?" Dad said, looking pleased.

  Breakfast over, Lyle pushed his chair back and stood up. "Those men should be here any time now, I suppose. I'll just wait out on the veranda for them." And have a smoke, he silently added. He didn't like to smoke around the twins. It set them a bad example, Al insisted, and of course she was right. Unhappily, Roddy had palled around with high-school kids who smoked, and had already acquired the habit.

  Maybe someday he and his son would break the stupid habit together, with Al cheering on the sidelines.

  Strolling onto the veranda, he took from his shirt pocket the pack of Albanys he had bought at the shop in Llandewey, and then put it back. At the foot of the veranda steps were three men.

  "Well, good morning!"

  All three lifted their hands to
nonexistenthat brims. "Mornin', Busha."

  "Mornin', squire."

  "Mornin', Mr. Bennett."

  Howlong had they been out here? All through breakfast? The two who had addressed him as "Busha" and "Mr. Bennett" were in their twenties, he guessed, and wore white shirts, dark pants and jackets as if they were goingto church or to some sort of country village political meeting. The other, at least fifty years old, wore a simple work outfit of faded khaki.

  How should he handle this, now? Talk to them one at a time?

  Rubbing his chin and trying hard to look thoughtful, he said, "Thank you for coming. Thank you all, even though, as you know, I'm hiring only one man today—a headman." There would be plenty of other work for the two not chosen, he added. Then he said, "Suppose I talk to you one at a time while the others wait there by the garage. You, friend"—indicating the older one—"would you like to come first?"

  "All right, squire." That one climbed the steps and followed him to chairs at the other end of the veranda, past the open front doors and the closed door of his and Al's bedroom. He saw a movement at a bedroom window and guessed that Al, alerted by the talk, was there peeking out to see what the men looked like.

  Seating himself in a wide-armed wooden chair, he motioned the man in khaki to another and said, "I'm sure I ought to know you—all three of you, in fact—but I haven't been here long enough to know anyone, really, and Mr. Reid didn't tell me who he would be sending. I'm sorry."

  "Me name Emmanuel Traill, squire, with two 'l's. Folks mostly call I Manny."

  "Then I'd better call you that, too. How old are you, Manny?"

  "Fifty-one, squire."

  "Have you worked here at Glencoe before?"

  Emmanuel Traill nodded. "For Mr. Elliot. But not for him missus after him dead. Him did have a new headman from Kingston then, and when some of we did discover him cheating, we did quit."

  "What did you do then?"

  "Me work for Busha Reid when him in need of extra help, and farm a piece of land me rent up in the bush. He still doing that, squire."