The House on Hummingbird Island

by Sam Angus

  ‘That’s not true, Idie,’ Austin said, stern and a little shocked.

  ‘It is. That’s why she sent me away.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Myles and Benedict say she couldn’t have wanted me because she sent me away.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  Idie bit her lip and turned away.

  ‘Mother says sometimes it’s best not to know everything,’ said Austin gently.

  ‘That’s what they ALL say.’ Idie burst out. ‘All grown-ups say you don’t need to know everything, but it’s not normal for a child not to know things about her mother, is it?’

  Idie waited and Austin whispered, ‘She said to tell you, if you ever asked, that your mother loved you very much.’

  Idie was quiet for a long while. Then she smiled and said, ‘One day I should like to swim through stars and down the path of the moon too.’

  ‘We will.’ Austin dipped his finger into Phibbah’s honey and jumped lightly up on to the balustrade. ‘It is the wrong kind of moment for finding a moon to swim along, but it is the right sort of moment for hummingbirds.’

  Idie climbed up too and they both rose slowly to their feet and held out their hands and waited.

  30

  Later, she wrote in her book:

  Mother was a poem. I’m not sure, but I think it is probably a good thing to be a poem.

  She loved to swim along the stream of the moon and in and out of stars.

  She made houses look like gardens and gardens look like paintings.

  She DID love me.

  That is all I need to know because you don’t need to know everything.

  After a bit of thought she wrote:

  I love this place as my mother loved it and she is in every bit of it, in the stars and in the trees and in the sea.

  Then she closed the book and put it away, for there was nothing more she needed to know.

  From that moment a little flame was inside Idie. Warmth and certainty embroidered themselves about her feet and gave her space to grow. Like a sapling uprooted by a storm, she began to send tentative roots into the dark, damp earth of her new home.

  31

  One evening not long after, Austin came to take Idie to the beach. The frog-song rose from the trees and the stars hurried out, and the sea was smooth as a mirror. Idie and Austin swam out among the flying fish and the fallen stars and Idie thought about her own mother, who liked to swim in the moon river. After a while she turned and lay on her back in the silver stream and looked up into the stars.

  Austin said, ‘Father is worried about your soul. And Mother is worried about your mind.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to worry about my soul or my mind,’ replied Idie.

  ‘Nevertheless, she says your mind may wither away if it is not exercised, but I am under instruction, first of all, to take your soul in hand.’

  ‘How will you go about that?’ asked Idie.

  ‘By taking you to church, where you will have to endure one of Father’s sermons.’

  Idie considered the notion of church. The Pomeroy Graces had not been liable to much church-going. Grancat said that if you ever had need to pray, there was no call whatsoever to do so in a church. It would be a different thing altogether if the darn clergyman would only let the dogs in, he said, his quarrel with churches and clergymen boiling down, in the end, only to the fact of Lancelot being less welcome than Grancat thought properly Christian.

  ‘We’ll go on Easter Day, because Father gives a much shorter sermon then.’

  Idie thought about that and decided that there was another significant upside to church on Easter Sunday and that was the hymns, which were on average significantly more fun than the unreliable sorts of hymns one might get at other times. She thought too that she’d like to meet Austin’s father because he kept crocodiles on his walls and beetles in his drawers. She wasn’t so sure that she’d like to meet Austin’s mother at all, because a bit of her was jealous that he had a mother, but she said, ‘I should like to do that.’

  She ducked and swam further out along the silver stream and the flying fish splittered and plashed above her for as far as you could see.

  32

  ‘How-day this Easter Day?’ asked Mayella, setting down the tray. Idie looked at Mayella with interest because today she’d shed her uniform and emerged from it sweet and bright as a butterfly in a dress that had all the colours of the rainbow in it at once.

  ‘Are you going to church too?’ asked Idie.

  ‘Yes, but me and Gladstone and all the Mayleys, we Baptists. Phibbah and Sampson and Reuben and all the Sealys, they Evangelist.’

  ‘I see,’ said Idie, who had not realized that church-going could have so many variations to it.

  Austin came for Idie with the trap and they drove to Carriacou. Everyone there was making their way, hatted and gloved, to the sleepy little churches that nestled amidst the tamarinds and palms. Idie saw a white-and-green tin shed that she hadn’t noticed on other visits. It was covered with all sorts of notices and admonitions to be or do things or not to be or do other things and had a sign tacked over the door, in hand-painted letters, saying ‘Baptist Chapel’. Mayella was there, standing amidst all her seven sisters and five brothers. Her head was bowed, her prayer book clasped to her chest. A little apart from her stood Sampson, in the Sunday suit that stood about him as if it didn’t know what to do with itself and he watched Mayella shyly.

  ‘Sampson’s in love with Mayella,’ Idie whispered to Austin. ‘And Mayella’s wearing every colour at the same time today specially for him. And being in love is infectious, because Sampson got it from Treble, who is in love with Numbers, and I will have to stop Baronet from falling in love with Daisy—’

  Austin laughed. ‘Oh, you can’t do that. Everyone falls in love with Daisy.’

  St Lucy’s was perched high on a bluff in a cloud of scarlet flame trees. Plaited palm fronds hung from every window and a host of turkeys wandered between the white gravestones. Austin told a bonneted lady in the porch, ‘Miss Grace, of Bathsheba.’

  Idie saw the airy, whitewashed nave, the open windows, the glittering sea beyond and she felt the wind flutter from transept to transept like the breath of God.

  ‘Long time since a mistress come from Bathsheba,’ the lady told Idie, examining her with interest. She handed them hymnals and led them to a pew at the front. A lady in a large sort of gardening hat was sitting there, very upright, like a post that could lead you to an important kind of place. Idie thought it would be awkward being in a front-row pew with the rector’s wife if you didn’t know when to stand up or sit down and were certain to get it wrong. Austin’s mother nodded in a brisk, businesslike sort of way as they joined her.

  ‘Mother, this is Idie Grace,’ whispered Austin.

  Idie looked in astonishment from Austin who was so dark to his mother who was so pale.

  ‘Edith Hayne,’ the lady said in a foghorn sort of voice as though she weren’t in church at all. She stuck out her hand to Idie. ‘It’ll be quite all right, you needn’t worry. I’ve hidden the sermon from him so he can’t find it, and I’ve chosen all the hymns.’

  I need an EXPLANATION, Idie told herself as she shook Edith’s hand. She thought of the rain-shiny eyes and sunshiny hair that ran from generation to generation of Pomeroy Graces, obliterating all interloping genes. She looked again from Austin to Edith and Edith to Austin. Austin grinned quietly. His father processed down the aisle and Idie gawped. His brows were white and bushy and they spread upward and outwards across his forehead like wings and he didn’t look at all like Austin either. Austin smiled quietly again and sang the opening hymn rather loudly and afterwards gave all the right responses and Idie was left puzzled and confused.

  Austin’s father climbed the stairs to a very tall pulpit and stood there, so high above the congregation that he was probably already halfway to heaven, but his sermon rambled and was surely worse than the one Edith had hidden, because it had long pau
ses in it during which he scratched his head and appeared to wait for some new idea to float down to it from the skies.

  All this went on for not very long, because after about ten minutes Edith coughed loudly and lifted her hat three times very high above her head, and Austin’s father stopped suddenly and said, ‘Yes, yes, quite so,’ and launched straight into the Creed.

  When everybody knelt, Idie tried hard to pray but her head was too full of puzzles and she found herself wondering what it was that everyone had found to pray about and then wondering why Austin’s parents were such a different sort of colour to Austin, so she kept staring from them to Austin and back again until he nudged her and whispered, ‘Mother’s so forgetful she never remembered to have a child at all, and then when she remembered that she’d forgotten she went about looking for one and found me somewhere or other.’

  ‘So she isn’t your mother then?’ hissed Idie.

  ‘Of course she is, though I belonged to someone other parents first, but they didn’t need me, so she’s been my mother ever since.’

  ‘Quiet, children. Empty your minds, just pour everything out, like water from a can,’ Edith said rather loudly.

  The service ended and Edith rose impatiently to her feet and shooed them from the pew as if they were a clutch of hens and marched down the aisle saying in her foghorn voice, ‘Why is it, I wonder, that one always feels so hungry after church?’

  33

  One afternoon Austin took Idie to the waterfall. He led her along a narrow sand path between tall trees. Shafts of speckled light streamed down as if from high windows, illuminating every leaf with stained-glass brilliance, and it was like being in the nave of a great county cathedral. Suddenly they found themselves in a clearing, a vertical wall of white limestone ahead. Water gushed from high above, fracturing mid-air into a glittering spray. Green and blue lights played through the leaves. Mosses and ferns and arums and other plants whose names Austin didn’t know grew right to the water’s edge in a tangle of sap greens and yellow greens and green greens. They swam in the cool, soft water, then Idie lay on the white rocks.

  When Austin rejoined her, he grinned to see Gypsy stretched out beside Idie and said, ‘Everyone’s talking about you.’

  ‘Do they say that rainbows run through my windows, that there’re stars on my ceilings and moonshine in my lanterns?’

  Austin was silent awhile, and then he grinned again and said, ‘You are a strange creature living in the strangest of circumstances.’

  Idie thought that was a funny sort of thing to say. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Let me count the ways. First, you live alone in a faraway place with no one at all in charge of you. Second, you are mistress of a large estate. Third, you were sent from one side of the world to the other and back again. Fourth, and most interesting, you measure the world and all things in it according to a yardstick that is entirely your own.’

  ‘Grancat said you must always live life according to your own lights,’ said Idie, a little defensive.

  After a while Austin said, ‘You love him very much, don’t you?’

  Idie bowed and nodded her head, mute because the thought of just how much she missed him could come rushing up into her gullet at any time.

  ‘I’d like to meet Grancat one day, because a grown man who slides down the banisters to breakfast is an unusual kind of adult, even by the standards of the adults in my own family.’

  Idie nodded, but looked away because her tears were brimming.

  ‘Did you ever think it was unkind of him to send you all across the world on your own, all over again?’

  ‘Grancat is not unkind. Ever.’ Idie turned to him and said stoutly, ‘Numbers told me once that Grancat did what, according to his own lights, he felt he had to do. Numbers said too that Grancat lives according to the rules of land and heredity and lineage and that there is no wrong in that.’

  ‘So many big words,’ Austin answered.

  34

  Pomeroy

  North Devon

  July 1913

  Dear Idie,

  Treble says your establishment is most irregular, that you are wayward and beyond remedy and go about with your mongoose in your pocket [ I was behind the curtains in Grancat’s study when I heard that ], but I couldn’t discover any more about you because Grancat interrupted her and called for Silent and told him, ‘Silent, get this darned woman out of my house before she drinks me out of gin.’

  Numbers was there too, and he said Grancat said no, certainly not, because hopefully you’re beyond remedy already.

  ‘Nothing irregular about a mongoose,’ he told Numbers. He says that again often, sort of out of the blue, when you wouldn’t expect it all, and it’s as if he’s always thinking about you.

  You’re awfully lucky to have mongooses sitting up to breakfast, because you can’t get one at all in England.

  Love Myles

  Dear Myles, thought Idie with a pang, picturing him behind the velvet curtains, the Idie Book on his knee, hiding and listening.

  35

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  Idie heard the clink of a glass as Austin helped himself to some lemonade.

  ‘Keep them closed. I have someone very special for you. She’s got long donkey ears and long giraffe legs and her coat is cinnamon and the insides of her ears are white.’

  A small, quivering body was on Idie’s lap.

  ‘Keep your eyes closed.’

  Idie ran her fingers along a curved tremulous spine, a long tremulous limb, a long velvet ear.

  ‘Open,’ commanded Austin. ‘I present you with Delilah.’

  Delilah was all limbs and no body, her legs the length of Idie’s arms, her ears the span of Idie’s hands, her back rounded like a whippet, her nose tiny and black, her face white, her eyes shiny and anxious and filled with longing.

  ‘Delilah’ll ride with you on a horse and sleep on your pillow and devote herself to you till your dying day.’

  Idie stroked the tiny nose and Delilah licked her face, but then Gypsy swung down from the calabash and landed beside Idie’s chair, trembling and licking Delilah’s face and quivering for joy and wrapping her grey tail around Delilah’s waist.

  ‘They hunt Guazipita deer in Jamaica and Guyana and all the places where they live. Father brought her back here, but Mother has drawn the line at a deer in the house.’

  ‘Oh my Lord.’

  Idie and Austin turned to Mayella.

  ‘What now? Oh my Lord, what’s that?’

  ‘Mayella, have you a banana?’ asked Austin.

  Mayella set down a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of coconut cakes. She turned and her voice drifted across the lawn behind her pretty personage like a twisting ribbon. ‘What I going to tell Phibbah? What she going to say when there no more bananas?’

  It was Celia who returned with the banana, and Delilah leaped from Idie’s lap and bounded towards her.

  ‘Peel it and hold it out for her,’ whispered Austin.

  Celia did as she was told, all the while her eyes on Delilah. Idie watched, interested, thinking that this might represent a new development in what she knew of her Aunt Celia’s character. Perhaps Celia can be CONVERTED, she thought. Delilah lifted her little black nose to the banana and bit at it and bit again. A hesitant smile came to Celia’s lips and a soft dreaminess into her eyes. Delilah stepped forward and licked Celia’s hand and gazed up at her and whimpered. Delilah licked her face and Celia clasped the little creature to her and hugged her as though she were a child, and from then on Delilah devoted herself to Celia and followed her about the place wherever she went.

  36

  Bathsheba

  August 1913

  Dear Myles,

  A little deer has come to live at Bathsheba. She was supposed to devote herself to me till her dying day but she has fallen in love with Celia instead and that is good because it is bringing out the SOFT side of Celia and driving a wedge between her and Carlisle because he d
oesn’t like any sort of animals.

  AND I have two toucans. Do you know that toucans are the silliest things you ever saw? You couldn’t even make a toucan up because their claws go backwards and their bills are the colour of postboxes. They don’t really do anything except sit on a drinks trolley and eat bananas all day, but they DO make you smile every time you see them because of being so absurdical-comical. They’re very spoilt and won’t eat any of the things they’re supposed to, like flies or bugs, because their tree was cut down when they were in the nest and Austin’s father saved them. Their faces are violent blue with green frills around and they have white ruffs on their necks and their bills are as long as my arm and can gulp a whole banana in one go. They are called the Crockets – he’s Cricket and she’s Croquet. Homer and Baronet are sulking and in a slough of despond at having to share the house with such vulgar-looking creatures.

  Love Idie

  PS My foreman, Gladstone, is going to take us fishing. If he is not at work or in church he’s always fishing, and he has promised to take us too.

  Feeling rather pleased, Idie folded the letter and placed it in an envelope. Myles would be jealous about the toucans and would definitely come to visit her.

  37

  Idie stepped up into The Word of the Lord, which was Gladstone’s little blue-and-yellow boat. Gypsy clambered in after and Gladstone grinned, and there in the shadow of the manchineel tree, which liked to keep its feet in the green-and-turquoise water, Gladstone’s smile broke over his face like sunlight. ‘I see you’re still making trouble for the housekeeping, Miss Idie.’ He chuckled, looking at Gypsy.

  Austin pushed The Word of the Lord off and jumped in, and Idie watched Gladstone’s old, handsome face as he tugged at the engine cord and felt blessed that she had such a man working at Bathsheba. He is a pillar, she thought to herself. He and Sampson are both pillars.