Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  Ishmael said, ‘Of course, the welfare of the country is the most important thing to both of us. That’s why we both welcome the breaking of this pernicious drug ring. We’re both dedicated to preserving the peace, and to taking positive steps to build up the economy. It’s understandable, but regrettable, that the government arrested the wrong suspect. The least embarrassing tactic now will be to release him with an official apology. That can be done immediately. There’s no need to complicate the issue.’ He swept the letters off the desk, and put them back in their envelope. ‘This is sensitive material. Perhaps too sensitive even for the government’s private archive. I’m quite willing to relieve you of it, and we need not mention it again. I certainly won’t discuss it with anyone else.’

  Hook gave him a swift look. ‘You swear to that, do you, Pereira?’

  ‘If you like. But first it’s only fair to tell you that there are other witnesses who have copies of these documents, and who know as much as I do. It’s not good policy to place too much responsibility on one man. They too will agree to remain silent.’

  ‘And naturally you won’t tell me who they are.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Very wise. But it’s hard to trust to a proxy oath, when you don’t know your principal.’

  ‘I’m not sure that you have a vast choice in the matter, sir. But I’m willing to swear that so long as Jared Honeyman has his freedom, no citizen of Hy Brasil will refer again to these documents during your lifetime.’

  ‘Ah, so there’s the sting in the tail! You’ll publish them when I’m dead?’

  ‘I’ll never publish them, sir. I swear to that.’

  ‘And I’ll never be rid of you again, either, will I, Pereira?’ He gave Ishmael another swift glance. ‘Do you know what fear is?’

  ‘Of course. What man doesn’t?’

  ‘You surprise me. Tell me one thing, since we’re conversing here so frankly. I’d be interested to know if you’re using Honeyman to acquire power for yourself, or your own power to acquire Honeyman?’

  ‘Neither. Power isn’t mine to possess. I want to see things done justly. I hope I’d be as fair to a stranger as to a friend. Naturally when a friend is unjustly treated I feel it more. As I see it, it’s simply a matter of knowing who your neighbour is.’

  ‘A remarkably cryptic reply, Pereira. But I see hope in it, since it appears to admit your President on equal terms to your scheme of justice.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be justice if I didn’t.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sidony Redruth. Ravnscar Castle. July 30th.

  Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title).

  TODAY I CLIMBED Mount Brasil.

  I’d known from the day I arrived in this country that this is something I would do. What I could not have known was how I would feel about it, and why. Before I left England, my future life in Hy Brasil was a total blank. I’d read what I could find about the place, but I had not the first notion what it would actually be like. That was why I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. I wasn’t dreading it either. I had no feelings one way or the other. The only thing I was sure about was that I was glad of the break from what seemed then to be my real life. It was like walking into a book, or into a dream. Once I was in it, it seemed to be all there was, and it was everything I’d left behind that became unreal.

  When I set out to climb the mountain I didn’t tell anybody where I was going. I was afraid because of the earthquake warnings. I need to clarify that: earthquakes and volcanoes had not the power to bother me, in my present mood, so much as the fear that someone might be cross with me, and tell me off. I knew it was irresponsible to climb an unknown and precipitous mountain all on my own. It would have been bad even if it hadn’t been an active volcano which might erupt at any minute. I would have been warned off even if there hadn’t been three significant earthquakes along the fault line in the last two months, all within thirty miles of the crater. My insurance specifically ruled out mountaineering, not that I intended any serious climbing, but no one could argue that Brasil wasn’t a mountain. I was selfish and irresponsible and not keeping the rules. I knew this, and I felt accordingly guilty, as I deserved to do. But I went.

  As soon as I’d started on the steep and narrow way I felt better. I’d parked, at six o’clock in the morning, in the lay-by off the Lyonsness/St Brandons road where I’d so often passed the signpost that said simply ‘Mount Brasil summit 7 miles, 7098 feet. Monte Brasil 11.2 quilometros; altura 2163 metros’. That gave me a start of nearly two thousand feet, this being the highest point on the road. It was an ideal day for walking, sunny with a small wind. I climbed laboriously through the terraces. The apples were ripening red and yellow on the trees, and the wild flowers fading. Sometimes I’d find what seemed like a path, with dried-out footsteps or goat prints, and then it would fade away, and there’d be another dry-stone wall built into the mountainside. I’d weave to and fro across the hillside, looking for ways round, and then I’d give up, and scramble cautiously up the terrace walls, doing my best not to dislodge the stones. Even in the cool of the morning it was hard work. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and trickled down between my breasts under my shirt.

  I came to the end of the terraces, and passed a row of white beehives on a sunny slope. I stopped just beyond them to look at the map. The path from the lay-by was marked as a clear dotted line. Well, it had been as clear as that, for the first fifty yards. I looked at my watch and then east. The sun was half the length of my thumb over the horizon, and still east enough to be north of where St Brandons lay to the south-east. I’d never walked in a country where a compass didn’t work before. It was more disconcerting than I’d expected. But the weather couldn’t be better, and it was forecast to stay that way. I folded the map, which hadn’t told me anything I didn’t know already, and put it away. Then I took a deep breath, and struck out in a straight line up and west through steep woods of birch and aspen, mixed up with tree heathers as tall as I was, all in flower now with the bees buzzing over them. Hy Brasil has its very own species of tree heather, Erica hybrasiliensis. It pleased me to assume that this was it, though to be honest I wasn’t at all sure.

  Everything up here was damp from the cloud that had only lifted that morning, and the grass under my feet was lush and green. Presently there were no more trees, only tough grasses and bog myrtle, which gave off a sweet-sharp scent as I pushed my way through it. Above my walking boots my bare legs were soon scratched and flecked with drops of blood. Where there were outcrops of basalt I scrambled on to the rock and walked over that. Soon there was more rock and less scrub, then even more rock, and after a while the myrtle was gone and the short grass only came in patches. It was like walking over a huge rounded pavement with giant cracks in it. Presently I stopped for a drink of water. I ate some chocolate and an orange. I’d done two hours.

  When I’d eaten I lay on my back and watched the thin herring-bone clouds far above. They were hardly moving. I thought about not being allowed to visit the prison. I don’t think they can refuse to let people have visitors in England, but I don’t really know. He has a window. I asked Ishmael that, and he said yes. All you can see from the window is the sky. I lay there and thought maybe he’s seeing this same blue sky, and the small high clouds so far above the earth they don’t even feel the wind up there. But if he can see them, it’ll only be a little square, not the whole arch of heaven like it is from here. Presently I got up and went on. The air was sweet and clear, like a draught of chilled wine.

  The wind grew keener. I stopped and put my jersey on. There was no more grass. Between the smooth billows of rock there were loose stones, and clumps of moss. And flowers. I hadn’t expected flowers where there was no grass, but there were small pink saxifrages and alpine lady’s mantle, and a little white flower I didn’t know. They looked very fragile among the loose stones. I trod between them carefully. Presently I saw steam rising, like vapours from a dragon’s nest. Soon there were trickles of steam everywhe
re. I came right up to one, and there was a perfectly round pool, rust red, rimmed by ferns and mosses, with water bubbling up from the bottom. It smelt like matches. Cautiously I dipped my finger. Hot. I took it out fast, and walked on, sucking my scalded fingertip.

  The earth under my feet turned red and grainy. There was nothing growing now. The rocks were a shambles, flung everywhere like the blast from an explosion. It was hard to pick my way. I passed more hot springs, reeking of sulphur. The steam caught in my hair and turned to beads of water which dripped down my forehead into my eyes. The great boulders made me feel very small, like a mouse scurrying through the rubble of a devastated city. I sat by a hot spring to eat my lunch. The sound of water, flowing away in a steamy stream, sounded cheerfully normal, so I could almost make believe this was an ordinary stream in a benign and English countryside. I could think that, just so long as I listened, and felt the sun on my skin, and didn’t let myself look round.

  I climbed slowly on, until I came to the bottom of a jagged lava outcrop, where I needed my hands to pull myself up. When I’d struggled to the top I looked back. I was above the hot springs. I could see now what I couldn’t before, how the springs curved across the face of the mountain in a continuous ring of steam and sulphur. I hadn’t realised how close together they were until I was through.

  My feet were getting warm. As soon as I noticed I bent down and touched the rock on which I stood. It was hot. I thought for a moment that I might turn back. I’d never stood on hot rock before. Then I remembered Colombo telling me, not long after I arrived, how when you walked on Mount Brasil you felt the heat coming through your boots. So it was quite normal. I looked at my watch. Four hours. It couldn’t be much further. I nearly got out the map again, but I knew by heart what it said. Without a compass it had nothing more to tell me.

  Climbing up among the loose rocks, I began to feel a bit frightened. The smell of sulphur was getting stronger, and there were no firm footholds. I’d broken every rule in the book, coming up here by myself and not telling anybody. I don’t know if it was guilt, the sulphur, or the altitude, but I felt breathless, and I had an odd notion that I wasn’t judging things properly. Yet at the same time everything seemed twice as clear as usual: the shapes of the rocks, the clump and slither of my boots as I searched for footholds, even my hands searching for holds looked more alive, almost as if they weren’t part of me at all. The conviction grew on me that it would be sensible to turn back. I reached a false summit, and looked at the waste of rock behind me, and the foreshortened waste ahead, and I thought seriously about turning. But it really couldn’t be far now. When I set off upward again, almost without willing it, I was suddenly quite certain what I was going to do. I intended to make it. I was still scared, but not undecided any more. I felt serene.

  In the end the crater came as a surprise. Another difficult scramble, another false summit – but it wasn’t. I’d reached the edge. The mountain fell away below me. I was looking down into a great bowl-shaped hollow. The rocks were stained yellow with sulphur, and tails of steam rose and escaped, with a faint hissing like a thousand spouting kettles. The ground under my boots was so hot I had to keep shifting from foot to foot. The bottom of the crater was red and gravelly, and quite dry. It looked frighteningly empty.

  He’d come up here, all by himself, the same as I had, and when he’d reached the crater he’d climbed down into it. He’d been thirteen. I’d been eleven. Probably the very same day that Jared had climbed into the volcano, and Nicky Hawkins had shot Cosmo Ashton and thrown himself over a cliff, I’d been in the vicarage garden with Arthur, playing, as we usually did, that we were in danger. Nothing would have induced me, now, to do what Jared had done. Even so, I raked the rim of the crater with my eyes, and tried to work out where one could possibly start. About forty-five degrees from where I stood there was an edge of lava that looked fairly solid. Maybe one could get enough grip on those toothed edges. But if the rock came loose, or broke …I looked down into the cauldron at my feet and shuddered. I wondered how far down he’d got. Out of the wind, with the sun beating down on steaming rock, it must have been terribly hot in that enclosed symmetrical space. From the bottom the sky must be a round circle of blue far above. It would be like climbing right out of the world, to go down there. I acknowledged that I would never, ever, under any circumstances, have done it.

  I noticed something else close to the top of the lava spur. I wished I’d brought the binoculars after all instead of leaving them in the Land Rover because they were so heavy. I’m always doing that, but I can see more than most people with the naked eye anyway. I screwed up my eyes against the sun, and made out a cylindrical shape with something sticking out at the top. It must be one of the monitoring stations from the Pele Centre, wedged on to a ledge a little way below the lip of the crater, just as Peterkin had described. I began to walk slowly along the edge, looking down into that hot empty space all the time. Presently I found another monitor, outside the crater this time, so that I was able to walk right up to it. It looked absurdly makeshift, but when I examined it I realised that it was half embedded in a solid concrete foundation, and where it was exposed every join had been carefully soldered. It must be completely weathertight. It was just what Peterkin had said: an oil drum with a plastic pipe sticking out of the top, which must have the radio mast inside it, and a miniature solar panel. It seemed odd to think there was a computer in there busy doing calculations.

  I’d been so awestruck by the crater that it was only now I began to pay attention to the view. Standing on the eastern lip, I could see right across the foothills and plains to St Brandons. A smudgy haze hung over it, but otherwise the coastline from Lyonsness to the far south was sharp as a knife edge. The southern islands were lost in mist, but Despair was clear and flat as if it had been cut out of cardboard. It was a little different from the shape I knew so well from Ravnscar. The southern aspect of Mount Prosper seemed like quite a different mountain from the one I knew. Instead of the steep scarps and plunging woodland of its seaward side, it curved up from the watershed in a long supple ridge, a bit like the view of a horse’s neck when you’re in the saddle. From where I stood I could see the pass quite clearly. The metalled road over to Ogg’s Cove glinted in the sun. It was the highest pass in Hy Brasil, at over four thousand feet. I’d only gone over it once, the first day I went to Ogg’s Cove, before I’d found the back track that led from Ferdy’s Landing over the north-west shoulder of the mountain. I stared at Mount Prosper for a long time, learning it, and then I turned east again. I spent a long time tracing the roads, and the places I knew, some because I’d been there and some from reading the map.

  I couldn’t see the west coast from here. I’d have to walk round to the south side of the crater to get any view further round. I started to do just that, but after a while I began to realise that the distance round the lip of the crater was much further than it looked. It was slow going, over hot gravel and lava boulders, and it might take me an hour or more to circumnavigate the whole thing. I stood looking south towards Dorrado, and wondering what to do. I could hear a sound like a distant sewing machine, and a moment later I saw a helicopter buzzing across the flank of the mountain that snaked down towards Dorrado bay. It disappeared behind the ridge, but a few minutes later it came back again, hovering over the sunlit slopes like a wasp over a honey jar. I looked at my watch. Ten past three. I wasn’t going to have time to walk right round the crater. I turned back, scrambling along the lip until I reached the place where I’d come up, and set off down. It was a tough haul back, over rocks, past the hot springs, down through stones and scrub, into the trees, down through the terraces.

  By the time I reached the Land Rover it was half past six. Twelve-and-a-half hours. My legs were shaking with exhaustion, worn out by the endless thud, thud of the long trek downhil. I leaned on the metal door and shut my eyes, too tired at first even to get my boots off. I’d pushed myself to my limits, further than I’d expected, but no one need ever
know. I’d been wicked, gone to the very summit of where I shouldn’t, and got away with it. No one could be angry with me now. I reckoned there was only one person I’d ever feel like telling. The thought surprised me, and I quickly added to it: of course, if the subject came up, I’d also tell Arthur. Feeling strangely disloyal, I bent stiffly to unlace my boots.

  Ravnscar Castle. August 1st

  If it hadn’t been for what happened the evening before, I’d never have attempted it. I’d only have known Mount Brasil as a tourist, safely shepherded along the correct route, if there is such a thing, by some experienced person who’d make sure I did it the right way. In retrospect I’m glad it didn’t happen like that, but if Lucy hadn’t shaken me to the core, the way she did, I’d never have gone up there on my own, and I’d never have known what I’d missed. All the time I was climbing I kept going over and over what she’d told me. When I finally reached Ravnscar as dusk was falling, I’d accepted it, because there wasn’t really any choice. I realised I didn’t want to lose her.

  I’d got back from Ferdy’s Landing late on Wednesday afternoon. Lucy was in the garden, so wouldn’t have heard the phone if anyone had rung. I’d half hoped there’d be a message from Colombo. Ishmael still wasn’t back when I’d left the Landing, and I was desperate to hear what had happened. I couldn’t tell Lucy about the Pele Centre yet, but there were some things I was at liberty to ask. When she did come in, her mind was on the supper; she gave me an onion to chop, more as a sop to my pride than because she needed my help. I can tell Lucy thinks I can’t cook.

  I thought for a minute, then I put the onion down and turned to face her. ‘Lucy. I found out something today. About Jared.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lucy looked round, knife in hand. ‘You mean … nothing about drugs?’