There were few traces of her father’s occupancy; a bootjack in the corner, a few books, a worn, shabby armchair, a heavy mahogany wigstand on a table. Even the bootjack, wigstand and books had been left there by some previous Mallam. That hurried flight of her father had allowed for little in the way of baggage.
Wilted muslin drooped from the tester of a huge mahogany bed with posts like carved and polished trees. An enormous armoire, topheavy with its great pediment, stood against the wall. She opened it and her father’s clothes still hung there, redolent of tobacco and perfumed hair powder. There were three suits of white linen, like the clothes Grappit had adopted; only a dark broadcloth coat and a maroon velvet suit, laced at the cuffs, reminded Amity of her father.
There was water in a china pitcher, which was cracked around the handle. She dressed in a thin, pink muslin, shaking out its wrinkles and thinking of Simon, telling her to pack thin frocks.
Of course, oh yes of course, the capture of Savannah and the defeat of the rebel forces was a victory—but she hated Grappit’s gloating eyes when he told her of it.
Simon hadn’t run; he was not of a breed which ran in the face of danger. And he hadn’t been killed; he hadn’t stopped a British bayonet or British gunpowder. Not Simon!
The Continental Army defending Savannah had clearly been forced to retreat. Then where? To the defense of Charlestown, which Simon had said was the object of the British attack upon Savannah?
She realized suddenly that she had been standing for a long time before the mirror, lost in thought, her face troubled and rather pale in the misty reflection. The inner walls of the house were made of stone, too, and muffled sound. She might have been alone in the strange house, alone in a strange world.
She roused herself, brushed her hair and as she did so the tropical night outside the windows began to come alive. Small night creatures murmured and buzzed and croaked with an increasing throb as if the jungle had come alive, too, and threatened to take back to itself the lands that man had dared to take from it.
China tapped at the door and opened it. “Amity, what’s all that noise outside?”
“Insects, I suppose—frogs—birds.”
“Birds go to sleep at night. I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. Are you ready for dinner?”
“I don’t like the house either. I’m afraid.”
“Afraid?” Amity’s heart jerked. “Of what?”
“Well—I thought he’d be alive—” China sighed and skittered off in one of her irrelevant flights. “Of course, it isn’t as if I weren’t still young. And if I say so myself, not disagreeable to look at.”
It wasn’t so irrelevant after all. “You’re very beautiful and young. You’ll marry again and—”
“Why, Amity!” China’s baby-blue eyes flared open in indignation. “How can you speak of marriage? So soon. Why—why I’m a widow for only—how long did Uncle Grappit say?”
“Six months.”
“Well, there. You see? It’s not fitting to talk about getting another husband.”
“China, you may be obliged to—to assert your authority, you know.”
“The Grappits? Yes, but, dear me, how can I?”
“Well—for one thing, you might stop calling them Aunt and Uncle. Aunt Grappit’s your sister-in-law—he’s her husband—”
“But they’re so much older than I am!” China wailed and peered at her pretty face in the mirror with swift anxiety. What she saw there seemed to reassure her. She gave a quick touch to her hair and added, “It seems disrespectful. Uncle Grappit acts as if he’s my guardian.”
“You’re not afraid of him!”
“But I am. And Aunt Grappit—she just gives me one look and—la, I don’t even know their Christian names!” She gave Amity a sharp look and crowed, “And neither do you!”
She giggled and Amity, caught fairly, laughed, too. “Wait—her name is Florrie, I’m sure—”
“Florrie! Her!” China went into fresh giggles.
“Well, I suppose it’s really Florence. Father always called him just Grappit—I think his name is Guy.”
“Guy! Florrie! No, I vow I can’t. But you’re quite right. You’ll have to do something. They’ll try to take over the estate. I thought of that, right away. Yes, you must get rid of them just as soon as you can. Come now. We’d better go to dinner before Aunt Grappit sends for us.”
Clearly the notion that Grappit might already have murdered twice to get his hands on Mallam property had not entered China’s scatterbrained and pretty head. It was just as well, especially since almost certainly it was an unjust and a fallacious notion. What was certain was there was to be a struggle with Grappit, sooner or later.
Dinner was a hot, heavy and uncomfortable meal. The candles dripped and smoked and added to the heat. The servants blundered, dropped and spilled, and Aunt Grappit began to breathe heavily and shoot them glances which boded no good. Grappit talked politics and thanked his lucky stars and theirs that they were out of America and rebellion and in a British colony where they could live peaceably, with law and order. Again Amity unexpectedly bristled at that.
Aunt Grappit downed three glasses of wine with no visible effect and even Grappit made an occasion of taking wine and a faint glow came into his usually bloodless cheeks. Neville contrived to look cool and fashionable in a sky-blue velvet coat, with lace at his throat and wrists, but all three men had yielded a little to the climate and none of them wore wigs.
They had tea all together in the big hall, the lounge, and Aunt Grappit poured it with every appearance of taking her proper place as hostess. China observed that and pouted. The shrill drone from outside filled every gap in the, by then, labored conversation. Neville brought Amity’s teacup and sat beside her. Grappit at last said that the travelers should retire and that neither Amity nor China was to have any cares. “I am the head of the family,” he said. “I look upon you, Amity, as my daughter. And I might say you too, China, seem like a daughter to me. You are so young, my dear, and so like a lovely child that I can’t let you trouble your pretty head with any affairs of property or business.”
China wriggled yet seemed not ill pleased with the compliment which came with remarkable glibness from Grappit’s pale lips. He went on smoothly, “You need have no cares at all. I consider myself your guardian.”
It had come too soon; Amity was too tired and drained to make a move, yet she knew she had to speak promptly.
“Thank you, Uncle Grappit, but neither of us requires a guardian. China is my father’s widow. I am a married woman and—”
“Well speak of that later. Now, Niece, my dear China, we’ll say good night.”
China, looking a little frightened, tugged at her arm. “Come, Amity—”
It was not the time, not yet, for a conclusive contest with Uncle Grappit. She went with China.
But China followed her into her room. “Amity, what do you know of your father’s will? I’ve got to know. This talk of guardians!”
“Well, unless he changed it, he left his estate to me. That was before he married you.”
China’s face became a bright, angry pink. Amity said hastily, “But he knew that I would see to you and Jamey. I promise you I will.”
“It wasn’t fair!”
“I’ll make it fair.”
“I guessed it! When he went away and he made all that long speech about how you were to take care of me and Jamey! I guessed it but—why, I even sent Charles to Lawyer Benfit to ask him how the will stood but Lawyer Benfit wouldn’t tell him. It’s too vexatious!” There were angry tears in China’s eyes. “That’s the reason—I mean that’s one of the reasons I was determined to come to Jamaica and see that—that he gave me and Jamey our fair share of his estate—I mean, willed it to us in case anything happened. He should have changed it as soon as he married me! He always put things off, especially anything disagreeable.”
There was unfortunately some truth in that. James Mallam had been content with
his easy life as a gentleman planter, his low-lying fields of rice, his horses, his books, his neighbors, his family.
A vine outside the open window rustled and crackled suddenly and so near that both Amity and China heard it above the drone of the insects.
“What’s that?” China cried.
Amity went to the window but there was only a deep and quiet band of shadow below. “A bird,” she said. “Nothing—” She turned back to China. “He may have written a new will after he came here. We’ll find out.”
“No! I’ll lay you anything you like that he didn’t! Oh,” China wailed, “if you’d only marry Charles then—then there wouldn’t be any trouble about money—it would all be in the family—”
“There’ll be no trouble. And I’m already married.”
“A very foolish marriage!” China snapped and left.
Amity had left a candle burning, which was a mistake, for one of the jalousies had swung open and a cloud of insects swarmed around the light Only then she knew that someone had been in the room while she was at dinner.
6
THE SIGNS OF THAT visit were very slight. A footstool was moved closer to the big chair. There was a kind of indentation in the cushion of the chair as if someone had sat there, calmly, for some time. She was suddenly but perfectly sure that when she had left the room the jalousied window had been closed. There was nothing valuable in her room except the little roll of gold which Simon had given her and her mother’s miniature.
She opened the trunk. The roll of gold was still there. Her mother’s miniature was still in her gay and charming etui; she set it on the dressing table and the black-haired woman, painted delicately on ivory, seemed to smile at her.
There was nothing in the room anyone might wish to see—unless there was something which had belonged to her father.
His will! He had taken a copy with him to Jamaica; she had packed it herself. But after his death surely someone had gone through his papers. Certainly Grappit had had time to ransack the room.
She searched though and found on a table a few papers in her father’s clear handwriting, the lines as straight as if they had been ruled. She glanced through them, her heart aching. There were notes, apparently for a pamphlet he had thought of writing concerning rice planting, bits of translations from the Greek—Marcus Aurelius, to her surprise, for that stern and stoic philosopher could have roused no true response in her father’s luxury-loving heart. It had obviously exasperated her father who took pride in his Latin but was out of his depth in Greek and had written an indignant note on a margin: “Why meditate in Greek? Wasn’t his native tongue good enough?”
Amity smiled and smiled again when she found the third volume of The Story of Clarissa Harlowe on the table, with another vigorous marginal comment: “Twaddle.” She must inquire about the will. Actually, though, it was not of great importance. She and China and Jamey were his only heirs. Certainly some maid had entered the room, opened the jalousie, forgotten to close it. No harm was done. She went to sleep, thinking of Simon. He was alive, somewhere in America. He seemed, though, very far away.
Dawn in Jamaica comes early. Even the birds are aware of the precious cool hours before the heat of the day descends. It was barely light when some strange half-heard sound, like a hunting horn but off-key, awoke her. A myna bird gave its peculiar, melodious cry over and over outside the windows. Amity, half roused, listened to it, drifted back to sleep and rose at last, late. By then the birds were silent; the heat was stifling and humid.
Grappit had ridden out early to the canefields. Neville had accompanied him. “Poor boy,” Aunt Grappit said. “But then, that is a planter’s life.” The implication was that the sooner Neville accustomed himself to the life of a Jamaican planter, the better. Amity said nothing.
Jamey was playing in the care of the maid who had taken prompt and cheerful charge of him the night before; Amity heard their voices and found them in a grassy, hedged and shaded plot outside the back door from the lounge. She wondered where Hester was.
Charles had disappeared, too; China didn’t know where he had gone—strolling around the place, she thought, and flung more dresses into the arms of a maid. “Be sure the iron is not too hot. Understand me?”
“Oh, yes, lady.”
The maid who brought her breakfast obviously understood, for she nodded cheerfully. It was not so easy to understand the oddly slurred speech of the native Jamaicans with its unexpected rhythm and emphasis.
Before unpacking her own trunk, Amity went out to the veranda. In the sunlight the full beauty of Mallam Penn lay before her. The first Mallam to emigrate to Jamaica and settle at Mallam Penn had chosen well. She wondered vaguely who that first Mallam was; other than that he must have been a remote relative of her father’s and of Simon’s, she didn’t know and it didn’t matter, but he had done well. The entire plantation was snuggled down in a green and lovely valley among blue-tinted mountains which reared abruptly on three sides. Yet the land itself was high, too. It was obviously fertile land; great canefields stretched out behind and at both sides of the house, until they seemed almost to touch the mountains themselves. There was a long strip of forest densely entangled in vines, which went back as far as Amity could see, into another deep but narrow valley.
The view, though, from the veranda was breathtaking in its beauty, for the valley opened there, so widely that far below, across the massed greens of trees and tangled shrubbery, there was visible a great reach of the sea. It was so blue and clear that it was as if all the blues of the world were distilled into a new color, a blue Amity had never seen nor dreamed of, that belonged to another world.
There were no clouds; the sky was only a lighter, thinner blue than the sea. Far off there was the slow white curl of waves. It was a scene of beauty. It was also, in its immensity, in the dense tropical foliage, the enormous vine-hung trees, with their announcement of hidden depths of jungle, a little frightening.
She wondered suddenly how near was the closest town or village; how far away was the closest, neighboring penn. It was, of course, not even a day’s journey to Kingston; Spanish Town must be fairly near Kingston. Grappit had spoken of the doctor, the clergyman, a nearby town called Punt Town. So civilization was somewhere within reach.
She went back to her room, unpacked, made room in the great armoire for her own few dresses and was summoned to a hot and heavy second breakfast, which Madam Grappit said was the custom in Jamaica. It was far too heavy a meal, more like dinner than luncheon or breakfast: platters of chicken, ham, soup, went back in their silver dishes to the cookhouse, behind the great house. (“They call it the great house,” Aunt Grappit said, cracking nuts with her strong teeth. “Every plantation house here is called the great house. Heaven knows why!”)
China partook heartily as she always did, belying her frail and delicate appearance. Neville, Grappit and Charles did not appear at all. After second breakfast, Aunt Grappit told them, it was the custom to rest through the heat of the day.
“La, Aunt,” China said, “I vow the heat is monstrous oppressive,” wiped a trace of turtle soup from her pretty mouth and, yawning, went away.
Late in the afternoon Amity had a talk with Charles. Unable to endure the stillness in the house she had gone out and strolled down the driveway, with its neat layer of tiny shells. Coming back she met Charles.
He had not only discarded his neat and fashionable wig, so his black hair was drawn smoothly back and clubbed, he had also discarded his coat and long embroidered waistcoat. He mopped his forehead with a full, white cambric sleeve and smiled. “You look very thoughtful.”
She could count on Charles’ help. “I want to talk to you, Charles.”
He glanced up at the house, with all its open windows. “Shall we walk down to the gate?”
It was nearing sunset. The sky was crimson and purple, the shadows under the great trees were already blue.
“Well?” Charles said.
“Charles, my father willed all his
property to me.”
Charles waited a moment. Then he said, “I surmised that. Now you wish to claim it.”
“It should be fairly divided. China and Jamey should have their rights.”
“I expected—if I was right in my surmise—that you would feel like that. But what about Simon Mallam?”
“He will see it as I do.”
“The British courts may not recognize the claims of the wife of a rebel.”
“I don’t like that word,” she said with sudden sharpness.
“You’re not turning rebel, yourself, Amity?”
“No! But the men you call rebels are honest men—”
“Spare me. They are traitors and rebels.”
She swallowed hard. “That isn’t what I want to talk to you about. I want to establish China and Jamey’s claims to Mallam Penn. And I want to get rid of Uncle Grappit before he can make himself their—and my guardian.”
“It’s customary to put business affairs into the bands of a man, an older member of the family.”
They had reached the gate. The sea, far below them, was still alight with lemon and old colors. “Not Uncle Grappit,” she said. “Besides—”
“Besides he may have murdered two men.”
“No! I’ve thought about that. I can’t believe it.”
He waited a moment. Finally he said, “Even if we did believe it, even if we had evidence, there is, as I said, nothing we can do about it. But simply because this thought has occurred to both of us, I advise you, if I may, to go carefully.”
“He’s determined to have himself appointed guardian or—or trustee or something. I’ll not have it.”
“That is clearly his motive in coming to Jamaica so hurriedly. He believed that your father was dead but he had to make sure. Of course, his trip here is an admission that he’s given up any claim on the American property. At least until the war is over. The courts there would give a Loyalist’s claims short shrift. So he headed for Jamaica. It may ease your mind to reflect that if he murdered those two men his prompt sailing for Jamaica rather nullifies the motive that suggested itself.”
Enemy in the House Page 6
