Sunset

by Christopher Nicole

  Sunset

  Christopher Nicole

  CORGI BOOKS

  A DIVISION OFTRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS LTD

  ■

  SUNSET

  A CORGI BOOK 0 552 11022 1

  Originally published in Great Britain by Cassell & Co Ltd

  PRINTING HISTORY Cassell edition published 1978 Corgi edition published 1979

  Copyright © 1978 by Christopher Nicole

  Conditions of sale

  1. This book is sold subject to the condition that

  it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,

  be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  2. This book is sold subject to the Standard Conditions

  of Sale of Net Books and may not be re-sold in the U.K.

  below the net price fixed by the publishers for the book.

  Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd, Century House, 61-63 UxbridgeRoad, Ealing, London, W5 5SA

  Made and printed in Great Britain by

  C. Nicholls & Company Ltd

  The Philips Park Press, Manchester

  The strange life of the second Meg Hilton, as tempestuously beautiful as her famous predecessor, but whose fate it was to preside over the end of the Hilton West Indian empire

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE GIRL CHILD

  'HURRY man, hurry.' Priscilla dealt Percy a blow on the shoulder which sent him staggering across the kitchen. 'You ain't know this is a matter for haste? Is the Old Master's very order.'

  Priscilla was a very large Negress; she made two of her husband. Percy rubbed his shoulder and picked himself up from the straight chair onto which he had collapsed. He reached for the door, pulled it open, and stumbled onto the back porch.

  But today he did not resent her violence. Today she had cause. Percy stood at the top of the stairs, and seemed to swell; his gaunt face became animated, his even gaunter body - he wore only a white shirt and white short pants, no shoes - seemed to grow. This was a memorable morning, and he was the bearer of the news.

  'You standing there the day?' Priscilla demanded.

  Percy ran down the steps, surveyed the street which led between the bungalows of the white compound. It was just dawn; the sun had not yet soared above the Blue Mountains which made a backbone to Jamaica, and the air remained cool, and slightly damp. Plantation Hilltop was coming to life; he could hear the murmur from all around him. And yet, here in the white village he could not for the moment see anyone.

  He hurried up the street, and paused in delight. Miriam, Field Manager McAvoy's housemaid, was beating a rug on the front steps.

  'Hey, woman,' Percy bawled, 'you ain’t hear? The Mistress does have a child. You ain't hear?'

  'Well, what is that.' Miriam dropped the rug and ran inside to break the news to her mistress, herself still feeding a baby boy. The McAvoy dog, a large animal of indeterminate breed, began to bark.

  Percy cackled happily to himself and ran on. And there was more pleasure to come. At the gate he paused, to discover his next victim. The white compound was half-way up the hill, midway between the labourers' village and the Great House, and on a parallel with the factory. But the factory was nearly a mile away, from here seeming to consist entirely of the immense chimney pointing at the sky like a giant finger. Hilltop chimney was a famous landmark. Some said it was an unnecessary eyesore, now that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the majority of planters had recognized the profitability of sharing a common factory, to lessen their overheads and to keep the machinery in almost continual use, instead of sitting idle for the larger part of each year. Of course, in the great days, Hilltop sugar alone would have been sufficient for any factory. But now that a third of the acreage was given over to bananas ... Percy clicked his tongue in disgust.

  Which grew as he watched the labourers, men and women, leaving their houses for the trek into the fields. It was thirty-six years since Emancipation, but Percy could remember the twenties as clearly as if they had been yesterday. Those had been the days. The slaves had proceeded in an orderly fashion, not laughing and joking amongst themselves. They had all been black, too, not only a half of them, while the rest were those damned coolies from India. Percy could not blame the Indians. They had been shipped here as indentured labour because of the very fact that so many of the slaves refused to work after being set free. But Indians, cutting Hilltop's cane! Old Master Robert must be turning in his grave. Although come to think of it, maybe that accounted for a lot of Old Master Richard's unhappiness as well.

  And at least, he reflected, as he climbed the hill towards the Great House and the group of white men seated round the trestle table erected on the grass at the foot of the front stairs, Hilltop was still Hilltop. Times might be hard, and, from all the gossip, might be going to get harder; Young Master Richard had defied his father in his decision to turn, at least partly, to bananas, because cane was fetching so poor a price, and he might have chased behind his wife into an early grave - from drink, they said, and Percy knew; but the plantation had not been abandoned, as had so many, or allowed to gravitate into the hands of London merchants, to be managed by an attorney interested only in completing his 'tour' before returning to the fog and rain of England. Hilltop was Hilton land, as it had been for two hundred years, all but, and as it would be, God willing, for two hundred more, at the least. And what the Hiltons owned, they inhabited, and managed for themselves.

  He stood at a respectful distance from the white men, and waited. The map of the plantation as usual was spread on the table, its edges flicking in the dawn breeze, while the book-keepers drank their morning coffee and listened to the orders for the day. It was tradition that this was done every morning, whether or not the mistress of the plantation was in labour, just as it was tradition that it was held in front of the Great House, even if the Young Master no longer lived up there. Mistress Janet had refused. 'That great mausoleum?' she had demanded. 'Give me a modern bungalow in the compound.'

  But the main reason, as Percy and every other servant knew, was that Mistress Janet had never got on with Old Master Richard. In fact, Young Master Anthony had married without his grandfather's consent, and although the quarrel had been patched up, Mistress Janet would never sleep under the same roof as her grandfather-in-law. Perhaps when the old man died. It could not be long delayed now.

  Anthony Hilton looked up. He was clearly a Hilton, at once tall and fine-boned, with delicate features delightfully distorted by the flaring nostrils, and only diminished by the perpetual frown, which sat between his grey eyes. Still only twenty-four years old, he found the business of managing Hilltop, into which he had been so prematurely pitched by his father's death, a wearying matter, especially when it meant continual opposition to his grandfather. But now the severity of the face was lightened by an expression of almost boyish alarm and excitement as he saw Percy. 'Yes? Quick, man.'

  'Is done, Mister Tony. Is done. I hear the crying and all.'

  'Great news,' shouted Harry McAvoy, the Field Manager. 'Oh, the old man will be happy about this.'

  'Congratulations, sir,' cried the younger overseers, crowding round to shake Tony's hand.

  'Yes, I ...' Tony Hilton seemed to freeze, as did his overseers. The morning was suddenly lost in a deep, venomous rumble, commencing in the mountains which overshadowed the plantation, seeming to seep down through the canefields and under the earth.

  Percy's knees knocked together, and he turned, as the white men turned, to gaze at the chimney. Earth tremors were not uncommon on Hilltop; but so long as the chimney stood, there could be
no danger.

  The chimney remained, pointing at the sky.

  But the labourers had ceased their march to the fields, were breaking up into little groups, running across the sheep pasture towards the Great House.

  'Get to them, Harry,' Tony Hilton shouted. 'Paul, head them off. Tell them it was only a tremor. There have been tremors before. Tell them it was nothing.' He drew his arm across his forehead. 'I must get over to Janet. Percy, you'll go upstairs and inform Mister Richard about the birth. Tell him I'll come as soon as I can.'

  'Yes, sir, Mister Tony.' Percy also wiped sweat from his face as he climbed the stairs slowly. Partly it was relief that the tremor had been only a tremor - because there had been a real earthquake, once, back in 1692, when the entire city of Port Royal had just disappeared - and partly because he did not like entering this house any more than did Mistress Janet. The Great House was the domain of Absolom, who had inherited the post from his father, Absolom, and who brooked no casual visitors. But he smiled, as he stood in the doorway this morning, a perfect mountain of a black man, arms folded over his white mess jacket with its brass buttons; he also wore white duck trousers but, like Percy, his feet were bare. The birth happen?'

  'Yes, sir, Mister Absolom. But you didn't feel that shake ?' Percy reached the verandah, and hesitated there, twisting his fingers together.

  'Of course I goin' feel that shake,' Absolom said. 'But it only a shake. And there got for be shake, when a Hilton does be born. Now tell me about he, and I going tell the Master.'

  'Mister Tony say I got for tell he myself,' Percy insisted.

  Absolom looked him up and down, perhaps debating whether to pitch him back down the steps, Percy thought; he began to sweat. Then the butler shrugged. 'Well, come, nuh.'

  He turned, opened the great mahogany front doors, still bound in iron as a reminder of when they had been intended to keep out revolting slaves - and with reason, Percy thought, when you remembered them rebellious niggers down in Morant Bay, only five years gone - and led the way into the hall. The Great House might nowadays be only the residence of a senile widower, but Absolom kept it, with the aid of his half-dozen maids, as clean and as spick and span as when Cartarette Hilton had entertained here on a scale which had left all Jamaica breathless. The parquet flooring of the hall was sufficiently polished to reflect a face, and clean enough to eat from; there was no dust on the crystal chandeliers hanging above their heads, and the row of Hiltons who looked down from their frames on the walls might have been painted yesterday. To the right, through the great arch, Percy could see that the withdrawing room, which stretched sixty feet to the back of the house, was in no less perfect condition, every brass ornament on every brass tray on every mahogany incidental table polished to perfection, the green baize of the billiard table no less than the green baize of the card table no less than the cherry wood of the grand piano all as lush as if fitted into place but yesterday, just as through the other archway to his left, the silver and crystal on the huge mahogany sideboard, and the polished mahogany of the dining table, which could sit sixty people without discomfort, and often had in Cartarette's day, gleamed at him and almost made his eyes water. It occurred to Percy, not for the first time, that part of Mistress Janet's refusal to live in this house was caused by a fear that she might not be able to play the hostess on the required scale.

  But Absolom was already mounting the great staircase towards the gallery. There were only two floors in Hilltop Great House, if one omitted the cellars on which the building was placed, and above the men was now the sloping shingled roof, with its four great skylights through which the morning sunlight was already beginning to drift. Absolom led the way round the gallery, while Percy glanced nervously to his left, down the stairwell and into the hall; he had never been up here in his life.

  Absolom knocked on a closed door, and opened it without waiting for an answer. 'Mister Richard?' he asked in hardly more than a whisper. 'You awake, Mister Richard?'

  Percy found himself trembling. It was not merely that this man was the owner of Hilltop, and for all his eighty-five years still given to bouts of irascibility. It was also that he was a living legend, because of his disfigured face, because of the military reputation he had gained when fighting by the side of the even more legendary Henri Christophe to secure Haitian independence, and most of all because of the manner in which he had returned to Jamaica, a white man determined to fight for black freedom. A white man who had succeeded. Percy thought he had made a mistake there. At least the slaves had seldom starved.

  'What is it, Absolom ?' The voice from the bed was still firm.

  'Is Percy, Mister Richard.'

  'Percy?' Richard Hilton heaved himself up on his elbow, peered at the two black men. 'Your mistress is delivered ?'

  Percy stood on one leg and then the other. 'Yes, sir, Mister Richard.'

  'Thank God.' Richard Hilton lay back with a sigh. 'We shall call him Christopher. Aye. This plantation, this country, needs another Kit Hilton, by God.' He raised himself on his elbow again. 'It is a boy?'

  Percy stared at the huge, gaunt, distorted face in horror. No one knew for sure how Richard Hilton had received the blow which had altered his features; suffice that it was difficult to imagine any man surviving such an injury, much less living for sixty years afterwards.

  'Well?' Richard demanded.

  'I ... I ain't knowing that, Mister Richard,' Percy confessed, trembling.

  'For God's sake ...' Richard Hilton's head half turned. ‘Why are they ringing the bell ?'

  For now the tolling of the chapel bell cut across the morning. The two butlers looked at each other.

  'Well, sir, I ain't knowing,' Absolom admitted. 'But I will find out.' He turned to the door, listened to the feet on the stairs. 'But it is Mister Tony.'

  The two black men stood respectfully to attention as Anthony Hilton entered the room.

  'Tony.' Richard Hilton heaved himself into a sitting position. 'Congratulations, boy.'

  'Congratulations ?' Tony's voice was bitter.

  'It is what we have all prayed for,' Richard said. 'But this foolish chap does not know whether it is a boy or a girl. A boy, is it? We shall call him Kit.' 'It is a girl, Grandfather.'

  'A girl ? Ah, well, can't be helped. Then she shall be called Marguerite. If we cannot have a Kit, then we must have a Meg, eh? One was as good as the other. Oh, yes. Anyway ...' He gave a short chuckle. 'There'll be others.'

  'No, Grandfather.' Tony Hilton's voice was terrible to hear. 'There will be no others. Can you not hear the bell? Janet is dead.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE INHERITANCE

  'THANK you, children. That will be all for today.' Helen McAvoy stood up, closing her book as she did so. She was a tall, spare woman; the streaks of grey in her tightly coiled hair, and the absence of colour in her sallow cheeks, made her look several years older than her thirty-seven years. But that was a common enough fate for an Englishwoman who had spent her adult life in the Jamaica heat.

  'Good afternoon, Mrs McAvoy.' Margaret Hilton led the procession, not only because, at fourteen, she was the oldest girl in the little school, but because of her name. Her father owned this building, as he owned this plantation. Her schoolmates were the children of his employees.

  Yet, Helen McAvoy thought as her features relaxed into a half smile, one would never have known it. Oh, the girl was pretty enough, already possessing the Hilton height, and more important, those fine, exquisitely carved features, those wide-set grey eyes, that pointed chin. She already possessed, also, the attributes of a woman, too much so, in Helen's opinion. But then, her mother had been far too busty. And undoubtedly Margaret would one day be beautiful, were she ever given the chance. But who would give her the chance ? Her complexion was more brown than pink and white, and was overlaid with a smothering of freckles. And beauty required good clothes. Margaret's white cotton gown was crushed and stained where the other children's were at least pressed; her boots were scuffed and dirty,
and the stockings above were full of holes. Helen shuddered to think of the possible condition of her drawers.

  She sighed. Even more than clothes, beauty demanded breeding. Margaret Hilton should be at some school for young ladies in England, or at the least plans should now be being made to send her to Paris or Switzerland for a season. At the very least, she should be taken in hand and convinced that hair needed to be brushed, especially hair like hers, which was splendidly long, reaching the middle of her back, and possessed a glowing brown colour which suggested it was coated in new varnish, but which at present resembled a tangled forest vine; or that fingernails needed to be trimmed and kept clean. Either task she would have been happy to undertake herself, lacking a daughter of her own. But Anthony Hilton would permit no one to interfere with his domestic arrangements, such as they were.

  'Good afternoon, Meg,' she said. 'You'll give my regards to your father.'

  She said this every day, although she saw Anthony Hilton almost every day as well; her husband was Hilltop's Field Manager.

  Margaret crammed her straw hat on her head, stepped outside, blinking in the glare; at five o'clock the sun was just beginning its sudden droop towards the hills; there was not a breath of air.

  She waited at the top of the steps; the schoolroom was Helen McAvoy's own living room, in the centre of the white compound. The Simmonds girls came out, gave her half a curtsy, and scampered down the stairs to run home. They were twelve and eleven. Then Jimmy Pilling, who was only eight, blushing as he saw her waiting there, before also scampering for his home.

  Alan McAvoy was last. And he was Helen's son, he needn't have come out at all, and only did so because he knew Margaret would be waiting for him. Almost a year older, he was no taller, and not as strongly built; his dark hair was lank. His features were rounded, and surprisingly soft; the charm extended to the wide mouth and the gentle brown eyes. But unlike her, his shirt and pants were neatly pressed and clean, however threadbare they might be, as his boots were polished, although he had managed to get his braces twisted.