Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  "We'd better use my station wagon, Eric," Lyle said on the way down the steps. "That car of yours was built for paved roads."

  As far as the village of Richmond Vale, which sprawled along the Banana River, the road was the one that led to the airport and Kingston. But in the Vale, by a weathered stone church that must have been standing for years, an unmarked side road angled up on the left.

  Lyle had never driven this one. He knew it only from his study of a Survey Department map over which he and Roddy had pored for hours, determined to become familiar with the area. "Hey, Dad!" his son had exclaimed on discovering Glencoe on it. "Wait'll I write to the kids back in Rhode Island and tell them our plantation is on the map here!"

  "Back in Rhode Island." Not "back home."

  Now as the station wagon toiled upward in low gear over a ribbon of earth and rocks just barely wide enough for the car, Lyle fought the wheel to avoid ruts so deep that a plunge into one would surely have damaged an axle. Yet on a grade so steep it was imperative to maintain motion; a stop would no doubt have meant spinning tires in a futile attempt to achieve traction again, then backing down and starting over from the bottom. But, thank God, after half a mile or so of that, the road leveled off for a stretch.

  Eric Reckford said, "What do you suppose this woman wants from you, Lyle?"

  "I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know."

  There was one more climb, even steeper than the first but short, before the station wagon reached a second level that was, Lyle guessed, the Gap itself. In front of a primitive roadside shop he stopped. On the shop's veranda was an old man in a rocking chair, smoking a corncob pipe.

  "Hello. We're looking for a Miss Campbell who lives up here. Can you tell us which is her house, please?"

  "You lookin' who?"

  "Miss Venetia Campbell."

  "Oh. Go on a bit more. She in the next house on you left, past the bend. Got an old fence in front, with a gate."

  Though small and old, it was better than some of the houses they had passed. Beds of flowers around trees in the bare-earth yard provided bright touches of color. The trees were breadfruits forty feet high, with rubbery leaves shaped like huge hands. Which prompted Eric Reckford to remark, while walking beneath their high-up, rough-skinned fruit to the door, "These people owe our old friend Captain Bligh a word of thanks, wouldn't you say?"

  "Bligh?"

  "Of the Bounty. He brought the first ones here from Tahiti, you know, after the mutiny. Had to bring them in pots, too; they don't grow from seed."

  Lyle's smile was a safety valve letting out some of the pressure that had built up inside him at the thought of again facing the Campbell woman. Beyond the old wooden house he saw a field now—corn in it, and what appeared to be carrots and perhaps onions or scallions. Then the front door of the house opened almost in his face—there was no veranda—and confronting him wasthe woman he and Eric wished to talk with. Even in a soiled, worn dress of black cotton she was uncommonly attractive.

  "Good evening, Miss Campbell."

  She nodded, saying nothing.

  "You know who I am, of course. This is a friend of mine, a barrister, Mr. Reckford. May we talk with you, please?"

  She did not budge, and the doorway was so narrow that he could not see past her into the dimness of the house, though he sensed movements there. "Talk about what, Mr. Bennett?" The voice was soft enough, but was there a certain wariness in it? Perhaps even a challenge?

  "About your daughter."

  "Luari? Well . . . come in, then. Yes."

  There seemed at first to be no windows in the room into which he stepped; then he saw that there were some, but dark curtains had been drawn to cover them. His eyes adjusted quickly, however. Against the far wall, in a rocking chair like the one on the shop veranda, sat a woman straight out of a Rudyard Kipling story. Old, bundled in a dark purple shawl that hid all but her face, she sat there motionless, gazing at him as though she had wanted for a long time to know what he looked like.

  That face must have been unusually attractive once, as Campbell's was now. In old age, except for the unblinkingeyes with their piercing stare, it was a mass of wrinkles and ridges.

  Could she have been born in India? There was nothing to prevent anyone's coming here from that country, of course. More likely, though, her parents were the ones who had been born there, coming here when Jamaica's slaves were freed and contract labor was imported from India to keep the plantationsalive.

  "This is me grandmother," Venetia Campbell said. "Granny, this is the man Mrs. Elliot did leave the property to, and this other is a barrister. Them want to talk to we about Luari." She moved two small, straight-backed chairs away from the wall. "Please to sit down, Mr. Bennett. And you, sir. Me sorry it so dark in here. Too much light give me grandmother headaches."

  There was a smell in the room, Lyle noted ashe sat. Not an unpleasant one, not an old-age thing emanating from the grandmother . . . ah, yes, it was a blend of spice-scents with curry the most easily identifiable. It came from an open door to the grandmother's right, and so, all at once, did a series of sounds. The room was obviously a kitchen with a door to the back yard, and that had been allowed to bang shut by someone coming in from there. Now a lovely, lilting voice was singing a Jamaican game song for children.

  "We pass the ball and the ball gone round. Jigga Nanny show we how the ball gone round—" Abruptly the singing ended. "Granny, me did bring you some cucumber and the little tomatoes you so fond of! You hear, Granny?"

  "Luari, come," the younger woman called.

  "In a minute, Mummy. Me have to—"

  "Now, please. We have company."

  "Oh. All right, me coming." The child followed her voice through the kitchen doorway into the room where they sat.

  Lyle caught his breath and felt a shock go through him. With that just-right face and that long, black, shining hair and those big, wide-spaced eyes, this was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. Far more beautiful than his own Leora had been at seven, he had to concede. And the similarity of names—Leora, Luari—what an amazing coincidence!

  Even in the small amount of light from the curtained windows he could see that her eyes were the same startling blue as Freeland Elliot's had been. And that her skin was lighter than her mother's. She was, in fact, almost as light-skinned as Eric and he.

  The mother was introducing him. He stood up and offered his hand. "Luari, I'm happy to know you."

  The child returned his gaze with neither smile nor frown; that beautiful face was carefully kept expressionless. "You is the man live at the Great House . . . sir?" The "sir" seemed an afterthought, perhaps added only because of training in good manners.

  "Yes, I am."

  She briefly touched his extended hand, and then turned back to her mother. "Me can go now, Mummy? Please?"

  "If you want to."

  The child returned to the kitchen, and the yard door was again allowed to bang shut. The barrister from Kingston, leaning forward on his chair, said quietly to Venetia Campbell, "Her name is Luari?"

  "Yes. It Indian. She named for Granny's mother."

  "Luari Campbell."

  "Not Campbell, no. She Luari Elliot, because she daddy was Mr. Elliot." In rural Jamaica, Lyle remembered reading, it was the custom to give a child its father's family name whether the parents were married or not.

  Eric sat back on his chair. "That, of course, iswhat we are here to talk to you about. Tell me, please—how did you meet Mr. Elliot?"

  "Me was picking coffee at Glencoe."

  Hearing that, Lyle was annoyed—not with her but with himself. Why hadn't he thought of such a possibility and looked for her name in Freeland's pay books?

  "And?" the barrister pressed.

  "And what, sir?"

  "How did you become friendly with him?"

  "One day when me finish work, him did say, 'Mek I drive you home, Venetia. Me want to take some pictures from up there where you live."

  "Pictures?" />
  "Of Glencoe. You can see some of it from here."

  "Are you saying that when Mr. Elliot drove you home, the two of you became—ah—friends?"

  "That how it did happen. Yes."

  From her rocking chair in the shadows Campbell's grandmother spoke. "That nice man did come here two, three times a month and give we money for food and clothes and bring we presents. Him was truly fond of Venetia. Then Luari was born and him did love her same way."

  Eric said, "You understand, of course, that if Luari is Mr. Elliot's child, Mr. Bennett wants only to do what is right for her."

  The two women gazed at him in silence.

  "But first it must be established that Mr. Elliot was her father. Legally, I mean. Are you prepared, Miss Campbell, to have her tested?"

  Campbell looked at her grandmother but was given only a silent stare. Hesitantly she said, "Is how you mean tested?"

  "By a doctor. People have different types of blood, Miss Campbell, and types are inherited. Mr. Elliot's was what is called Type A, Rh negative, which not too many people have. If your daughter's is also that type, you have a very good chance of being able to prove your claim. If not . . . " He shrugged.

  "What if her have my kind of blood, whatever that is?"

  "Well, it's all a bit hard to explain. Just let me say that a test will be a big help. Should we end up in court, the judge will no doubt insist on one in any case. If it is done now, a lot of time and money will be saved."

  The woman in the rocking chair shook her head. "Venetia, no. You not to do it." Her voice was low but resolute. "Nobody is to take blood from Luari. Nobody."

  "But," Eric protested, "it merely entails—"

  "Granny," Lyle put in, not knowing what else to call her, "it will take only a moment and won't hurt the child in any way. I'll be glad to drive Venetia and her daughter to the Rainy Ridge clinic or, if they wish, the hospital in the Bay."

  "Nobody taking blood from my great-grandchild," the old woman repeated. "If this is all the two of you did come for, me asking you please to go now."

  "Granny," Venetia said, "don't you being kind of foolish? The gentleman did say that if Mr. Elliot was truly the father of Luari, such a test can prove it." She turned to Eric. "That is what you did say, don't it, mister?"

  "It is, Miss Campbell."

  "So why you is against it, Granny? Me can't understand—"

  "Them up to some kind of trick."

  Eric said, "I assure you—" but got no further.

  "No!" The voice was shrill now. "You is not to touch Luari! No, no, no! Now go, please! Go!"

  With a glance at Lyle, the barrister stood up. Lyle rose, too, and offered the younger woman his hand. "Miss Campbell," he said, "perhaps you'll be able to persuade her. Try, please. It is so very important to all of us."

  "Me will try, sir."

  "When may I come for your final answer?"

  "Me will come to you." After shaking hands with Eric as well, she opened the door for them.

  They walked through the breadfruit trees to the station wagon. "Well, Eric, what do you think?" Lyle asked.

  "I'm not sure. Are they lying? Or is the old woman just superstitious, as so many older generation peasants are?"

  "You noticed the youngster's eyes, I'm sure. That incredible blue. Did you know Freeland Elliot?"

  Eric nodded. "His eyes were that color."

  "And the child is almost white. Of course you noticed that."

  "I did."

  "Well—" Lyle started the car and turned it around, then stopped it again to peer through the windshield. "So you know Campbell was right? You can see part of Glencoe from here."

  The barrister shook his head. "These mountains all look alike to me."

  "That old landslide scar—see it there to the right of the far ridge with the tall trees? That's on my property."

  "Let's hope it remains your property," the barrister said as Lyle put the car in motion again.

  Monday morning, when work resumed at Glencoe, new men camelooking for jobs. The more the better, Lyle thought. He was anxious to finish cleaning the fields and get on with other phases of the restoration. Soon, too, the fall rains would begin, and he would be able to fertilize. The coffee trees badly needed a boost if they were to produce anything like an acceptable crop this year.

  How, he wondered, would he get fertilizer out from Kingston? The suppliers there would not deliver out here, Desmond Reid had warned, and asking Desmond to send the Osburn Hall truck to town on such an errand was out of the question. Would that fellow in Rainy Ridge, Noel Peart, go in for it?

  That thought moved a related but dormant one from the back of Lyle's mind to the front. What was it Ima had said yesterday evening about Manny Traill? Full of his visit to the Campbell house in Wilson Gap, he hadn't listened as attentively as perhaps he should have. She had made some remark about Peart's truck and the Rasta Camp on Cambridge Hill. Perhaps he should ask her about it.

  He found her in the master bedroom, making up the big four-poster bed. "Ima, what was it you were telling me yesterday about Manny?"

  She straightened to face him. "That him did go to Cambridge Hill, Mr. Bennett."

  "On Peart's truck, I think you said."

  "Yes, sir. Three people from Rainy Ridge did going to England, and Noel did drive them and them families and friends to the airport. Manny did ride in with them far asCambridge Hill."

  "Is that something I should be concerned about?"

  Lines appeared on Ima's homely-sweet face. "Mr. Bennett, Manny have a younger brother, Ralph, that did join up with the Rastas a few months ago, and him worried. Somebody say Ralph at the Rasta camp, so him did go there."

  "Well," Lyle said, "Manny is back here this morning, doing his job, so I guess nothing too serious happened."

  "But him don't able to bring him brother back, Mr. Bennett. Him say Ralph is doing bad things at the camp, like using ganja and swearing oaths to be a Rasta forever. Poor Manny, him truly sick about it."

  At Glencoe, however, headman Manny Traill performed his duties that day as though nothing had happened.

  The following day, Tuesday, Alison and Lyle went to Kingston with Desmond Reid in the coffee-works truck, as planned. They timed their return well, arriving in the Great House yard a little after four, when workers were passing through on their way home. Several of the men cheerfully unloaded the stove and fridge they had bought, and carried them to the room that was to be converted to an upstairs kitchen. They carried in, too, lumber for cabinets and shelves.

  Then, with a grin, Lyle handed Roddy the promised toy car.

  It was not a car, exactly. Having some idea of what his son might be up to, he had chosen something he thought might be more suitable: a small plastic tank more likely to travel over the uneven attic floor without tipping over.

  "Hey, great!" Roddy exclaimed. "Let's get to it!"

  Desmond Reid had departed. Dinner would not be ready for an hour or so. Lyle, Alison and the twins—and, inevitably now, the newest addition to the family, the Siamese kitten Yum-Yum-followed the star of the act into the hall. There, in anticipation of acquiring the car, Roddy had placed a tall stepladder under one of the trap-doors that provided access to the loft. On the top of the ladder were a ball of twine and three black objects that resembled dominoes without spots.

  Roddy broke off a length of string and tied the three black objects to the tank, one on the front, one on each side. Watching him, Lyle said with a smile, "Magnets, eh? I thought it might be something like that. Where'd you get them?"

  "A box in the garage, Dad. They're kind of like the ones Mom had back in Rhode Island, to hold notes and stuff to the fridge." Again that "back in Rhode Island" instead of "back home."

  Hearing it, Lyle felt some of his anxiety about the Campbell affair dissipate. Roddy, it seemed, now looked upon Glencoe as home. So did Lee, apparently. Alison and Cliff had made no such commitment, of course, but maybe in time . . .

  On the ladder now, Roddy ti
ed one end of the ball of string to the rear of the tank and reached over his head to slide the trap-door open. With Lyle holding the ladder to steady it, he wound up the tank and climbed to the top step. His head and arms disappeared. Then he withdrew his head and, with a long face, looked down. "Leave it to me to forget something. Dad, I need a flashlight."

  "Coming right up." In this old house, where the power from the coffee works turbine was likely to fail at any time, flashlights were never far away. Returning with one, Lyle handed it up.

  With necks craned, all watched in silence—even the cat—as Roddy leaned into the loft again. There was a whirring sound as the tank went into action, followed after some ten seconds by a muffled, tinny clunk and a yell of elation. They sensed, rather than saw, that Roddy was pulling the tank back to him by retrieving the paid-out string. Then, looking down with a grin of triumph, he said, "Here, Dad, catch!"

  An empty condensed-milk can dropped into Lyle's waiting hands.

  "This I have to see," Lyle said. "Can you move over a bit up there?"

  "I think so. Be careful, though." Hangingonto the edge of the openingabove him, Roddy moved his feet. "Mom, you'd better hold the ladder, huh?"

  Alison did so.

  It was not the first time Lyle had seen the Great House attic. Soon after their arrival he and Roddy had investigated the almost nightly racket up there. On that occasion he had seen only a disturbingly large, gloomy area littered with rat droppings and strung with electric wiring old enough to be a probable fire hazard. Nothing was any different now, except for what Roddy was doing.

  Enormously proud of his son, he watched the rewound tank go buzzing between rafters toward a condensed-milk can the flashlight beam had located. As it went, it dragged the string behind it. The rough terrain caused the toy to veer to the left a little near the end of its journey—far enough for the front magnet to miss the target. But the magnet on its right side came close enough. The trapped can clunked against it, and Roddy, chortling, drew the tank and its captive can back to them.

  "We won't get 'em all from here, Dad. But if we use the other trap-doors too, the way Uncle Free must have, it won't take us too long to stop the hockey games. Right?"