Serpents in the Sun

by Cave, Hugh

  It stopped now, and Alison picked up the newspaper she had put aside. "There's something else here that might interest you," she said. "You remember how pollster Carl Stone predicted in '76 that Michael Manley would be reelected, and of course was right?"

  "Four years ago. Yes, I remember."

  "Now he's predicting that Michael and the PNP will be defeated."

  "But," Lyle said darkly, "with all those Cubans here for no good reason, he may be wrong this time."

  BOOK NINE

  1985

  In the thirty-five years the Bennetts had occupied Glencoe, the old Great House had been the scene of more than a few memorable affairs. Weddings had taken place there, birthdays had been celebrated; Imogene Bailey's Ninth Night had been held in the yard. This latest gathering, though, was unique. It marked a restoration of the friendship between the Bennetts and the Reids.

  Cliff Bennett and Desmond Reid had already shaken hands at the coffee works. But with Cliff running the plantation, Lyle almost never left the Great House these days, and Alison and Mildred had not met in months. The party was intended to bring together all those concerned, for a celebration.

  The first car to creep cautiously down the steep driveway that rainy Sunday afternoon in October brought Desmond and Mildred Reid. Alison saw it coming and ran down the veranda steps to embrace Mildred in the yard. Both women wept openly. Desmond gave Alison a long hug, too, then climbed the steps alone and with outstretched hands approached Lyle on the veranda. But instead of clasping hands, the two men embraced each other as the women had.

  "It's been too long, Des," Lyle said hoarsely.

  "Too damned long, old friend," Desmond replied. "Thank God it's over."

  The second car to come down the driveway brought Brian Lindo and his wife from Mt. Charles. Glencoe had been selling its coffee to Lindo since the break with Osburn Hall in '63. Now the situation had changed—as, indeed, had so much else in Jamaica.

  The Labour Party had won the 1980 election by what the Gleaner termed a landslide, and after replacing Michael Manley as the island's Prime Minister, Edward Seaga had promptly declared Cuba's ambassador persona non grata. Manley's "democratic socialism" was apparently dead and buried—along with the more than 750 victims of the political violence that had erupted before and during the change of government.

  One of those slain in that violence had been Heather McKenzie's husband, Hopeton Whyte. Another had been Jarvis Osburn, who with his brother Leonard had owned the Osburn Hall coffee works with which Glencoe had originally done business.

  For five years, during which Seaga and the JLP had been re-elected for a second term, Leonard had struggled alone to keep Osburn Hall solvent. But with even the small-farmers' coffee going to Lindo, the effort had been destined to fail even before his brother's death. In July of the present year he had admitted defeat and put the Osburn Hall estate and coffee works up for sale. Brian Lindo had promptly bought it.

  From July to October the old coffee works down the road from Glencoe had been shut down for renovation under Desmond Reid's direction. Now it was open again with Desmond, at seventy-six, still very much in charge and still reminding those at Glencoe of a cowboy in some early Western movie. No longer did Glencoe's coffee, along with that of the local small farmers, have to be hauled across the Yallahs to the factory at Mt. Charles. The current crop was once again being delivered to Desmond.

  There were others at the gathering that Sunday. Dr. Tom Kirk came with his booming voice and a bushier-than-ever beard. Terry Connor, who had quit his forestry job to work with his brother at Jarib Records, arrived with a mysterious package which he handed to Cliff for safekeeping while whispering something in Cliff's ear. And as old times were recalled in lively conversation, the ghosts of others came and went. Feisty Kim Tulloch was certainly present when her fierce love of the island's history was talked about. So was the Bennetts' beloved housekeeper, Ima Bailey, whose more material remains rested in the small cemetery on the slope below the house.

  Lyle and Desmond were inseparable. On the veranda, before dinner, they talked over drinks—Appleton rum for the coffee-works manager, ginger ale for the patriarch of the Bennett clan—as though there had never been a break in their friendship. They discussed the future of a new dwarf coffee Cliff had planted with outstanding success under Caribbean pines in parts of Tennis, where coffee had refused to grow before. They talked about the improvement in Jamaica's tourism now that the present government had sold back to private owners the many hotels seized by its predecessor. After so many years of silence there was no end of things to discuss, for these two had always respected each other's opinions and sought each other's advice.

  Tom Kirk joined in the talk for a time, then went to Alison and put his big hands on her shoulders. "You know something, Al?" he shouted. "That man of yours is ten years younger this evening! By God, it's practically a miracle!"

  "It should have happened long ago," Alison said, with tears in her eyes again. "If only—if only Desmond had refuted the Osburns' charge that we were trying to destroy an old Jamaican institution."

  Kirk looked puzzled. "The Osburns' what?"

  "Their charge in the Gleaner, after we switched to Lindo. Don't you remember it? That we were foreigners who cared only for money? Oh why, when that story appeared, didn't Desmond at least write the paper a letter telling the truth about why we did what we did?"

  Milly Reid was at Alison's elbow when she said this. Very quietly—and reaching unsteadily for Alison's hand as she did so—she said, "Al, he did write them a letter."

  "He did? And they wouldn't print it? Well, I—"

  "I never mailed it."

  The silence seemed to last forever. The two women looked at each other; Kirk's gaze shifted questioningly from one to the other while he slowly rubbed his beard. Then, "You never mailed it?" Alison breathed.

  "I—I was afraid if the paper printed it, Des would lose his job. Oh, Al, I'm so sorry! I was just so scared the Osburns would fire him and we'd have no money coming in." Through her tears, Mildred reached for Alison's hand. "I never told Des. To this day he thinks the paper just ignored his letter. Can you and Lyle ever forgive me?"

  "Let me get this straight," Alison said mechanically. "When the paper printed that piece accusing us of trying to destroy Osburn Hall, Des wrote a letter refuting the charge and gave it to you to mail, but you never mailed it? And he thinks you did? He thinks the Gleaner just didn't print it?"

  Biting her lip, Mildred nodded, then lowered her head and looked at the floor. "I never dared tell him the truth. I was afraid he'd be angry enough to—to do almost anything."

  Tom Kirk left them in still another embrace and returned to the veranda, where Terry Connor was asking Lyle what he thought of conditions in Haiti. "From what we hear in Kingston, things aren't very nice over there," Terry said. "Don't you worry at times?"

  Lyle sighed. "I worry all the time. Then I remind myself that Roddy and Lee aren't children anymore and must know what they're doing. They certainly know more about what's happening there than we do."

  "If I were in their shoes, I'd get out of there," Terry said. "When the Haitians finally feel they've had enough, all hell is likely to break loose."

  Almost from the day of her arrival at Glencoe, when the shopkeeper from Wilson Gap had walked a frightened little girl down the driveway, Luari had helped out in the kitchen. This evening with the help of her daughters and Beryl Mangan she produced a feast to remember. Beginning with a soup of garden vegetables, it continued majestically through a main course of turkey, roast beef and home-cured ham, and ended with an assortment of desserts made with mangoes, guavas, and tamarinds from the Glencoe property. It was, Tom Kirk observed, a little like some of the meals described in that remarkable diary kept in colonial days by the wife of Governor Nugent.

  "If your grand-daughter's Haitian journal turns out to be half as good as the one kept by Lady Nugent," Kirk said to Alison, "it will be something for us to read, I'm sure."<
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  Luari's daughters helped with the serving. Andrea, who would be twenty before the month ended, was the beauty her mother had been at that age. Fourteen-year-old Glenda was an image of the Luari who so solemnly had promised Cliff, at the pools near Three River Mouth, that she would be his wife when Alison said she was old enough.

  There was even another Yum-Yum, though not one whose ancestors had come from Siam.

  It was young Glenda who had found this one. Like Cliff and Lee before them, both girls had received much of their early schooling from Alison in the old Great House schoolroom, then had gone on to the private girls' school attended by Lee and their mother. One weekend while being driven home from school by Leslie Virtue, Glenda had been shocked to see a small kitten tossed out of a car just ahead.

  Screaming at Leslie to stop, she had dashed out and scooped the small, dazed creature into her arms, then stood there in the road shaking her fist at the disappearing car from which it had been thrown. The kitten was black with white paws and yellow eyes. She got back into her car with it and held it on her lap, stroking it and crooning to it in a voice much like her mother's, until it stopped trembling. When it was fully recovered from its fright some ten miles later, it began to purr and continued to do so all the rest of the way to Glencoe.

  Since that day the creature had followed her around the house much the way the original Yum-Yum had followed Alison. Where Luari's younger daughter was, there or somewhere close by could nearly always be found the small black cat with the white feet and yellow eyes.

  This evening, after finding herself underfoot too often, the latest addition to the Bennett clan was apparently convinced that following her mistress to and from the kitchen was impractical. All through the last half of dinner she sat quietly in the curl of her tail, a safe distance from the table, and watched with interest everything that was going on.

  "I've something to show you," Alison said when the big table was partially cleared and coffee served. "Excuse me a second." Rising, she went to a small antique desk across the room and returned with an envelope that had Haitian stamps on it. Again seated, she took from the envelope a photograph in color of her granddaughter Carita with a beaming young man. "This came yesterday, and I thought I'd save it for this evening. It's the first real picture we've had of Carita's friend, and not a soul but me has seen it yet." She handed the photo to Tom Kirk, on her left.

  "Nice looking fellow," Kirk boomed. "How old is Carita now?" "Twenty-five."

  "And what's the lad's name?"

  "Vernon Jansen. She calls him Vern. He works at the U.S. embassy over there."

  With a nod of approval, Kirk passed the photo on.

  There were "oohs" and "ahs" from Luari's girls as they put their heads together over it. Terry Bennett, after frowning at it with more than casual interest, suddenly looked across the table at Luari, perhaps remembering how he had once entertained hopes, himself, of becoming a member of the Bennett clan.

  When the picture reached Lyle he peered at Alison. "Is she serious about this Vern, do you suppose?"

  "It would seem so."

  He shook his head. "I'm not so sure I like it."

  "But he's a fine young man, she says. Listen." Alison slid the letter from its envelope and opened it. "'We've been going together for quite a while now, and I think I love him. He's 27 and has been with the State Department for four years, two of those here in Haiti. His folks still live in Maine where he was born and went to Bowdoin. We're having some wonderful times together.”

  "How long do these State Department fellows stay in one country, I wonder?" Lyle frowned. "Is he likely to be stuck in Haiti for a long time? Because if he is . . .

  "Now Lyle," Mildred Reid said, "just be happy she's found someone she cares for. You can't solve all her problems for her."

  "I just want her out of there," Lyle grumbled. "I want all of our people out of there before Haiti explodes."

  Mildred took the photo from him and passed it to Alison. "And what I want is to hear Luari sing again. Des and I have every one of her records and have played them over and over. And now that we're all here together again, I think it would be just wonderful if she would sing a few songs for us. Will you, Luari? Please?"

  Luari suddenly seemed frightened. "I can't. My voice is gone.”

  They looked at her and saw tears fill her eyes.

  "It's true," she said. "Isn't it, Cliff? The last two times we've been to the studio I just couldn't sing the way I used to. Something was wrong. I sounded . . . well, it just wasn't Solitaire, that's all. Chris said people would think he was trying to cheat them by using someone else."

  "Was this about the time you had laryngitis?" Tom Kirk asked. "The time you lost your voice altogether for a few days?"

  "The first time was. But even when I tried again, later, my singing voice was gone." Luari wiped the tears away with her napkin and shook her head. "All things come to an end, I guess."

  "This one hasn't quite come to an end yet," Cliff said quietly.

  They looked at him.

  He stood up. "Just hold on a minute, all of you. I've got something I was saving to end this great evening with."

  He had put it in his room after Terry Connor handed it to him. Now every gaze was on him as he left the table and disappeared into the hall. When he returned with the wrapped package and handed it to his wife, he glanced at Terry with a smile of thanks.

  Luari tested the shape of it. "A new record?" Carefully she opened it. "Yes, it is." Then when she slid the disk from its jacket and looked at it closely, "It's a new one of mine," she exclaimed. "But I haven't made any!"

  Terry Connor leaned toward her. "You made it a long time ago, without knowing I was recording you. And Chris predicts it's going to be your biggest seller, even though it isn't a studio job."

  "Mother, what's it called?" Andrea demanded.

  Luari looked at the label. "It's called—"

  "No, don't!" Cliff covered the label with his hand, then took the record away. "Let's see if anyone remembers."

  He strode across the drawing room to a record player and placed the disc on the turntable. In a moment the familiar voice of the Caribbean Solitaire filled the room from two concealed speakers.

  "The Ninth Night!" Alison suddenly cried out. "Terry, you recorded her at Ima's Ninth Night!"

  "I just knew it would be something special," Terry said. "And, as you can see, I was right for a change. We dubbed in that low-key background music at the studio, then hung onto it till the time would be right."

  "What's it called?" the singer's younger daughter demanded.

  With a hand on Luari's shoulder, Cliff said softly, "It's called Farewell to a Loved Lady. Then, turning, he looked toward the veranda.

  "Do you suppose Ima might be hearing it right now, along with the rest of us?"

  2

  "So this is a pretty solemn occasion even though, thank heaven, it's informal. What Vern and I want you all to know is that we're going to be married."

  Carita Aldred was the speaker. With Vernon Jansen's arm around her and smiles on both their faces, she addressed the remark to their guests.

  The announcement came as no surprise to those present that November evening in the Aldreds' Pétionville home. Some, including Lee's old school friend, Ginette Beaulieu, had even anticipated a rather more formal statement, from Carita's parents.

  "When's it going to be?" Ginette asked. At forty-seven she was still a dark-eyed beauty, perhaps no longer slim enough to be a Mardi Gras queen but certainly a queen in the eyes of her attorney husband. In the twenty-three years of their marriage, Guy Lamot had never stopped acting as though he owned a candy store. They had no children.

  "Soon, we hope," Carita said. "But we won't set a date until the situation improves here."

  Her sister-by-adoption, Virgilie, said with a shrug, "You may have to wait a long time, then. Things are only getting worse."

  "God knows when it will end," Georges Beaulieu said. The Beaulieus had
been invited for the occasion, and a handful of close friends Carey and Lee had made since moving to Pétionville. Dinner over, family and guests were assembled in the living room. In one corner, by a picture window that provided a spectacular view of the mountains on the far side of the Cul-de-sac Plain, stood a motion-picture camera on a tripod. Carey, now deeply interested in photography, had just finished showing a time-lapse film taken one frame at a time from dawn to dark, that revealed the kaleidoscopic change of colors occurring almost daily in the same mountains. "If only everything in this country were as beautiful," he had remarked sadly. "The trouble is, when you get too close to what from a distance seems so pretty, you see the sores on the donkeys."

  "And on the babies," said Ginette's French mother. Odette had aged more than her husband Georges. She no longer painted. "Oh, I still admire some of our primitive art," she would say. "Especially the work of the old ones, like Obin and Hyppolite. But much of what's being done now is only trash for tourists, don't you think? Or am I too critical?"

  "It hurts her to paint what she sees today," Georges would explain with a shrug. "So why should she paint it?"

  Peering fondly at Carita, Georges said now, "And how is your book coming?"

  "All I need is an ending."

  "What kind of ending, may I ask?"

  "To the horrors, so I can give the readers a glimmer of light after keeping them in darkness for so long."

  "And what have you written about, Carita?" one of the other guests asked.

  "I've tried to cover everything that's happened here under the Duvaliers. The whole terrible story."

  Another guest, a teacher at the College St. Martial, said, "I trust you will write something about the priests who led thousands of people through Port-au-Prince, demanding reforms. And say that Pope John Paul has also spoken out against what is happening here."

  "She's written about that," Virgilie said.