Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

‘Of course.’ Colombo opened the cupboard. ‘Anything to eat? You’re sure? They let you out at one did you say?’ He glanced at the kitchen clock. ‘Where’ve you been all night, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Walking around. It’s a warm night. It was nice to be outside.’

  ‘You’ve been walking around for four hours?’

  ‘Yes. It took a while to get back to the town. The Port road’s a mess still, and there were no lights. By the time I got to the street lights I just felt like going on. Like I say, it’s a nice night, and I needed some exercise. But I’d quite like to go to sleep now.’

  ‘Of course.’ Wide awake now, Colombo looked Jared over for the first time. He looked thinner, the bones in his face more sharply defined, and he was uncharacteristically pale. His freckles had almost gone. He had the remains of a black eye, a big purple bruise turning yellowish. The other eye looked bruised too, but that, Colombo thought, was just exhaustion. His beard had grown enough to make it look as if it was meant to be there. Colombo was aware of a gut reaction that was neither curiosity nor pity. He thought it must be liking. Aloud he said, ‘You’re OK, are you? Undamaged?’

  Jared grinned. ‘Yeah, I guess so. Undamaged.’ He took the cup of tea. ‘Thanks. So, it was a bit of a surprise. They came and woke me up. They didn’t say what for. That shook me a bit. I didn’t know what was going on. They said to have a shower. I was bloody glad of that, though I did just wonder if they might be purifying the sacrifice. I mean, why suddenly make a fellow have a shower in the middle of the night? They even gave me bug dope. Do I smell of it? I thought so. I can smell it myself. So I knew something was up. Then they let me have my things back. It’s quite strange wearing proper clothes, you know, sort of tight and scratchy, but it does make you feel like you’re a human being again. As soon as I’d put them on they just shoved me out the door. And that was that. Do you know why?’

  ‘Yes.’ Colombo’s mind was working fast again. He gave Jared a lucid but succinct account of the whole story that would appear tomorrow morning in The Hesperides Times. He answered all Jared’s questions fully. Luckily Jed was wholly taken up with the drugs angle. He didn’t ask anything about Baskerville’s particular interest, or the possibility of blackmail. When Colombo realised there was no reason at all why the other connection should even occur to him, he began to relax, and became much more animated. When he gave Jed a graphic, if third-hand, account of Sidony’s capture of Olly West, Jared laughed out loud, and the shadow of the prison lifted suddenly. For a moment he looked his old self. Even as he laughed in response Colombo remembered something else. ‘Ssh. Keep your voice down, Jed.’ Jared looked surprised. ‘I’m not on my own tonight. I mean, I’ve got someone sleeping here.’

  ‘Oh?’ Jared glanced towards the kitchen door. ‘Well, I guess you won’t have room for me as well. It’s OK. It’s nearly morning.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You can have the sofa. The sitting room’s empty.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jared took in the implications of this. ‘Oh, look then, you’re not going to want me here too. That’s OK. I’ll be fine. Could you lend me a jersey maybe?’

  It shamed Colombo that he’d had the same thought himself. He said roughly, ‘Quit being so damned self-effacing. You’ll sleep here.’ He stood up. ‘What about tomorrow? What do you want to do?’

  ‘Find Sidony,’ said Jared promptly. ‘And then go home and see if everything’s all right. So I guess I’ll go to Ravnscar first.’

  ‘She’s not at Ravnscar. After they came and got Olly, Ishmael took her back to Ferdy’s Landing. Apparently she said she’d be OK at Ravnscar on her own, but Ishmael talked her into going back with him.’

  ‘On her own? But where’s Lucy?’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Colombo. ‘Well, it seems you’re going to find out soon enough. Lucy’s here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jared glanced at the door again. ‘You know what? I think it might be a good idea if I went. I don’t want to be in anyone’s way.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! You come here straight out of prison and you want me to throw you into the street! Who do you think I am? Shut up, Jed. I’m going to get you some bedding.’

  Lucy sat swirling black coffee round in a big Breton cup. On the table in front of her there were two hot croissants, fresh that morning from the Harbour Bakery. There was butter in a blue dish and a pot of blueberry jam from Finnegan’s, but Lucy hadn’t touched any of it. Colombo went on buttering his croissant, one mouthful at a time, and waited for her to finish what she had to say to him.

  ‘You knew I was in a vulnerable state! You saw how upset I was. And what did you do? You bloody well drugged me. You took your chance on what had happened, and you deliberately got me stoned out of my mind. You pretty much raped me. That’s what it amounts to. I’ll never trust you again. Ever.’

  ‘If you think I raped you I’m surprised you want to go on sitting there drinking my coffee. Anything else?’

  ‘You can’t deny you drugged me! You gave me everything you could think of that would get me out of my head. You got me drunk! You got me stoned! You gave me all that stuff, on purpose!’

  ‘I gave you everything I could think of that would make you feel better.’

  ‘If you think I feel better because you got me into that state and then seduced me …’

  ‘Oh, so it’s not rape any more. That’s good.’

  ‘And then you go off in the middle of the night and tell Jared everything! Jared! What do you think that makes me feel, you telling Jared all about howyou’ve got me into bed at last! What do you think I felt like, having to face him this morning? Jesus, I’d have thought you’d have had more sensitivity than that!’

  ‘I got the impression he was more interested in croissants than he was in you. What would you have had me do? Throw him out at five in the morning?’

  ‘Yes! He could have gone somewhere else! Jed’s got loads of friends! You could have said it wasn’t a good time to come here!’

  ‘Not a good time to be let out of prison, eh? You wanted me to tell Jed that? Suggest he chose a more convenient time?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been a worse time! He’ll tell Sidony. He’ll tell everyone!’

  ‘I doubt it. Would it matter if he did?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to know, ever! As far as I’m concerned it didn’t even happen! I wasn’t in my right mind, and you know it. I’ll forgive you, I suppose, but only if we forget it. It was a terrible mistake. That’s the only way I can ever even see you again. If we forget it ever even happened.’

  ‘It did happen. I can’t possibly forget any of it. And it wasn’t a mistake. We both knew what we were doing.’

  ‘I didn’t! I wasn’t even able to think! You didn’t let me! How could you? You didn’t think about me! You didn’t care! Supposing I’m pregnant! You didn’t think about that either, did you? You wouldn’t even care if you’d done that to me!’

  ‘Yes, I would. I’d care very much.’

  ‘But you didn’t do anything to prevent it!’

  ‘No. I’m afraid I didn’t think of it. At least, when I did it was too late. I’m sorry.’ He met her eyes for a fleeting moment. ‘How likely do you think it is?’

  ‘Now you ask me! Now! I don’t know how you dare! How should I know? Why ever should I …’

  As soon as the phone started ringing he jumped up and answered it, as if he’d rather be doing anything, Lucy thought resentfully, than talking to her.

  ‘Ishmael … yes, yes … No, I haven’t … No, I’m still having breakfast … I know, but I didn’t get much sleep … What? … What? … Where, where? … Not Dorrado? … Not towards Dorrado? … Oh my God … You mean this is it? … It is? … No, no, nothing …’ Colombo glanced out of the window behind him. ‘Not a thing … Nothing … Easterly, I suppose … Jesus, I don’t believe it … I’ll go right over there … You are? Now? … Jesus Christ, I never thought …’

  There was a long pause. Colombo was listening, and Lucy, her attention arrested, st
ared at Colombo as if she could read his face. Suddenly she jumped up and stood beside him, putting her ear to the phone as well. She could just hear Ishmael’s voice ‘… not coming fast. But it’s on the move, there’s no doubt about that. There’s nothing to see here. But we can smell it. I spoke to the President. He agreed to let Allardyce open up the Pele Centre. Allardyce was up there by six. I sent Peterkin up to give him a hand. Allardyce was going on down to Dorrado. I’m meeting him there. I don’t think there’s any danger in the town. But I want to see for myself.’

  ‘I’ll come right over. But wait … Ishmael, Jed’s here. He’s out. He got here at five this morning.’

  ‘Thank the Lord for that. They left it a bit late didn’t they? Is he OK?’

  ‘He’s fine. They released him at one but he decided to take a stroll around the town. He fetched up here at five.’

  ‘Can I speak to him?’

  ‘He’s not here. He went to the swimming pool.’

  ‘The swimming pool?’

  ‘Yes, he said he’d been having fantasies all the time he was in there about lying in the hot springs. So that’s what he’s gone to do. I gave him breakfast, and then he borrowed some soap and shampoo and a towel and a tube of arnica, and off he went. That must have been …’ Colombo glanced at the clock, ‘over an hour ago.’

  ‘To lie in a hot spring? When there’s everything to do today? He has to see Utterson and give his deposition; there’s the apology from Government House – it was like pulling teeth to get that out of them – he needs to pick that up before some bureaucrat thinks better of it; the police in Ogg’s Cove want him as a witness; I’ve got a letter sitting here for him from the National Geographic about his Spanish treasure which’ll probably make him his fortune; there’s his girl here eating her heart out for him and refusing to budge out of earshot of the telephone; Mount Brasil’s spewing out boiling lava; and Jared just decides he’ll go and lie in a hot spring all morning. Is the man crazy? What on earth’s he thinking of?’

  ‘He’s thinking about how he’s feeling, I expect,’ said Colombo.

  ‘Well, get him out of there and bring him to Dorrado. Tell him the mountain’s on fire and see if that moves him.’

  ‘OK. I’ll bring Lucy too.’

  ‘Yes, do that. She’s wanted at Ogg’s Cove police station too.’

  ‘That’ll have to wait. We’re coming to Dorrado.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Sidony Redruth. Ile de l’Espoir. August 3rd.

  Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title).

  RED-HOT LAVA is like spouting blood. I’ve never seen a serious injury, thank God. I know bodies are fragile, and in the end they’ll disappear back to where they came from, but I’ve never had to confront that yet. The earth has always been cool and solid under my feet. I see the marks of the glaciers on our worn-down hills at home, but I’ve never had fully to comprehend that the land won’t endure for ever. But standing on the slopes of Mount Brasil, a mile up from Dorrado, for the first time in my life, I saw.

  This place that I’ve grown to love: it’s not for ever. It’s on the move all the time, either growing or dying, or fluctuating unpredictably between the two. It came out of the sea five million years ago, which isn’t long by the earth’s standards, and one day it will sink back, and be gone. Tomorrow, or five million years from now. No one can be sure.

  This was just a job; I didn’t mean to fall in love with the place. I didn’t mean to set my heart on anything that might not last. I’ve let this country, which wasn’t even mine, entangle me. I’m beguiled. And now I find it promises nothing back, not even that it’ll be here tomorrow.

  I wrote down in my notebook yesterday, as nearly as I could, what the eruption was like:

  Half a mile from where I sit, a curtain of red-hot lava shoots into the air. Fountains of fire rise and fall along the fissure where the earth has cracked open like an over-ripe apricot, its insides bursting out in what seems to me, used as I am now to a soft landscape of blues and greens and greys, like something that should only be on celluloid. The inside of the planet is red and visceral. I suppose I knew that. The line of fire stretches from the Dorrado foothills to the rocks just below the summit of Mount Brasil. The horizon shimmers through the gases that rise from the melted rock. I can feel the heat from here; it’s like facing an autumn bonfire. The place is full of a noise which is neither fire nor river, but something between the two. I inhale sulphur. Oddly enough, I like the smell. It’s acrid but almost sweet, not at all how I imagine the fires of hell. The forecast says this light easterly wind won’t change, but what if it did? There’s a red-black plume coming out of the top of the mountain. It billows up for a thousand feet or more, and then the tail of it drifts west over the sea and dissipates, like the smoke from a gigantic steamer that’s gone over the horizon along with the age it came from. If the wind changes and the plume curls back inland, it will rain brimstone and ashes. Just now the sky over our heads is the fragile blue of blackbirds’ eggs.

  The lava is spilling over from the fountains and trickling slowly down the hill like boiling jam overflowing the pan. It’s rock, it’s liquid, and it’s fire: three incompatible things made one. There’s a foolish part of me that watches it move slowly across the green hillside and the grey basalt outcrops, over the pastures where the small flowers grow – chickweed, milkwort, eyebright and the pink patches of the fading thrift – and just thinks what a terrible mess it’s making. It’s remorseless, like a tank ploughing its way through someone’s garden. It’s an outrage. But nobody is responsible for this.

  Unless I am. I can’t rid myself of the insane notion that somehow this is all my fault. It would be appalling if this lovely land should all be gone, but the worst thing of all, the thing that would make it impossible to bear, would be if I were responsible. Of course I’m not. But I knew I was doing wrong to go up to the top of the volcano by myself. I felt guilty all the time. Forgive us our trespasses. There is nothing I could have possibly caused to happen just by being there yesterday. I didn’t trigger anything; the volcano was going to erupt anyway. Think of all those earthquakes we’ve had ever since I arrived. I’m being crazy, but I wish someone would tell me that the eruption of Mount Brasil was nothing to do with me. They can’t, of course, because I won’t tell anybody now that I was there. As we forgive them that trespass against us. I’m being silly; no one here would blame me in the least even if they knew.

  I wrote all that, read it over, and realised it would never do for a guidebook. It was all about me. I crossed out the final paragraph, stood up, and walked a little further so I could see down into the next fold of the foothills.

  A river of rock, half-a-mile across, was moving slowly down the southern slopes of Mount Brasil. In the middle it was silvery-grey, like mercury, but round the edges it was the colour of red-hot coals. Last time I looked there was a green strip between the lava and the coast; you could still have walked along the path where Jared had taken me. But just in the past hour the strip had vanished, and now the rock was cascading in slow motion over the fifty-foot cliffs along the shore. The sea foamed into clouds of hissing steam that rose like geysers, then melted like flurries of snow falling into a lake. I saw red rock hit the water and go grey, as if the sea were an alchemist’s elixir going backwards, turning fire to stone. Behind the clouds of steam the pall of dust and ashes was still spreading seawards, like the fallout from Genesis Day Three.

  I turned and faced the other way, south towards Dorrado. The sky was blue, the land clean and ordinary. I couldn’t see the town from here, but the derelict whaling station was visible at the mouth of the Dorrado river. There were people scattered across the hills like tourists out for a picnic in a London park, except that they were all looking one way, towards the plume of murky smoke and the inconceivable red flow behind me. I surveyed the crowd to see if I could find Anna and the children. She’d said they might start walking back to Dorrado, and she’d expect me when she saw me.

&n
bsp; I saw Jared. He was walking up the hill, just past where we’d parked the van the day we’d come out here together. He was wearing the same jeans and checked shirt he’d put on the morning we were on Despair, the last time I’d seen him. I jumped up on to the nearest rock and called his name.

  The second time I shouted he heard me. I jumped off the rock, ran downhill, and met him halfway. Then he was in my arms and hugging me and saying things and kissing me in a most un-British fashion, in front of a whole crowd of people. But I didn’t care; I wasn’t even embarrassed any more. I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily be a moral dereliction if a person failed to finish writing a guidebook and just went native instead.

  Probably I should have tried to meet Anna and tell her where I’d gone, even though she’d said not to bother. I should have found Lucy and made sure she was all right. Jared said she was with Colombo, but when I saw Colombo he was busy scrambling over the rocks taking photographs. I should have told someone where I was, a thing which my mother taught me always to do. With an erupting volcano behind me, in a situation where no one had any idea at all what might happen next, it was my duty to make sure no one was worried about me and everyone was happy. But I didn’t. I went back to the Red Herring with Jared. I had just enough money for us to have supper. Jared only had the change from two pounds he’d borrowed from Colombo to get into the swimming pool that morning. The problem about money in Hy Brasil is that it weighs such a lot. I’m always leaving piles of pennies in my bedroom and then wishing I had them with me.

  We walked back to Dorrado along the track we’d driven when Jared first brought me to the back of the mountain. The boggy patches were churned to mud by hoofprints, and when we came down the sunken track through the terraces we had to tread carefully between prolific cow-pats. All the animals had been herded off the hill, so when we reached the water meadows they were crowded. I never heard such a Babel of mooing and baaing, tinkling goat-bells and deep-toned cattle bells. ‘It sounds like the Day of Judgment,‘I said to Jared. He said he thought it was more like Exodus. ‘And that had the advantage of being real,’ he added. ‘The flocks and herds part, anyway.’