Sunset

by Christopher Nicole

  'Race you to the Grandstand,' Margaret said, and ran down the steps. She held her straw hat on her head with one hand, gathered her skirt in the other, and scampered up the street, past her father's bungalow, out the gate, and then over the meadow, scattering first of all the chickens who had their run close to the compound, and raising inquiring glances from the sheep who browsed on the gentle slope leading up to the Great House. There was a furious barking, and Hannibal, the Hilton's hound, leapt the fence surrounding the compound to join in the chase. Meg did not look behind her. She knew Alan would be following. There were no other children on the plantation of their own age, and so they were forced to be inseparable companions; Kingston might be only twenty-odd miles away, through the mountains, but visits to Kingston cost money.

  Now she panted, and stumbled in a hole and nearly twisted her ankle. Hannibal passed her with a joyous explosion of sound. And now she heard Alan behind her, also panting, but moving far more easily. Well, he didn't have a skirt wrapping itself round his ankles. But now she could see the racecourse. At least, that was what Father called it. It was actually a large area of wild long grass and thorny bushes, from the middle of which the rotting structure of the Grandstand pushed itself up like some long-forgotten relic of a previous civilization, which, indeed, it was. Once upon a time, in the great days, the Hiltons had here matched their own horses against the best in Jamaica, and fortunes had changed hands in a single afternoon. Margaret wrinkled her nose as she approached; what exactly was a fortune? she wondered.

  'Got you.' Alan threw both arms around her waist and brought her to the ground. He had, of course, waited until they were out of sight of the compound, or of anyone else.

  And so, exhausted as she was, she twisted in his arms, closing her hands on his shoulders and endeavouring to push him off, careful not to use her nails or her teeth. He liked to wrestle, and she was willing to go along with him, because he was her friend. She panted, and gasped, and flicked hair and sweat from her eyes, and tried to get up a leg to interpose a knee between them, because he was working his body up and down, pressing her as if intent on crushing the life out of her, his cheek bumping against hers while he gasped for breath. And his hands had somehow become trapped between their bodies, against her chest. They always did that, and left her bubbies - as Prudence called them - feeling at once tender and aware.

  And now Hannibal, not to be left out, came back to lick her face.

  'Pax,' she gasped, and lay still. Alan's weight seemed to envelop her. But amazingly, as always happened, although he also was now quiet, his body still seemed to move against her groin, as if there was a gigantic pulse down there, but one which rather worked its way slowly over her flesh. 'I can't breathe.'

  He slid off her, lay on his stomach beside her. Now she could see his face, only inches away from her, cheeks pink and eyes momentarily dilated.

  She pushed Hannibal away. 'You won,' she said. 'You always win.'

  He heaved himself to his knees, looked down on her. How serious his face was, when he looked at her. It was quite disturbing.

  'Race you to the top,' she said, and rolled away from him, gaining her knees and then her feet, running into the paddock and reaching for the old wooden stairs. Now she had to be careful, because the Grandstand was more than a hundred years old, and however good the wood had originally been, it was now nearly all rotten.

  'Got you,' he said again, and seized her ankle. She wished he wouldn't do that Wrestling was all very well, but legs, well, legs were different. Besides, he was holding on to her calf, and therefore her drawers, and he could very well pull them right down. She had no idea what she would do then; he was underneath.

  'Oh, let me go,' she said, kicking down with such force that he did let her go, and she was able to clamber up to the first level, an empty expanse of sagging wood, although once it must have supported row after row of comfortable cane chairs.

  Hannibal, unable to climb, began to bark.

  'Meg.' Alan crawled behind her, and there was such anxiety in his voice she stopped to look at him.

  'Meg,' he said again, and sat down, feet dangling over the edge, holding on to her wrist now.

  She pulled a face and sat beside him. 'What on earth is the matter?'

  Once again he peered at her, while his tongue slowly came out and circled his lips, and most remarkably, his face turned quite crimson. 'Have you ever stopped to think that one day all this is going to be yours ?'

  She stared at him, frowning. The words had come out in a terrible rush, and she was sure he hadn't meant to say anything like that. 'All what?'

  'Well... the plantation. Hilltop. There's one in Antigua too, isn't there?'

  Meg shrugged. 'There's the land.' Green Grove had been abandoned long before she was born, because the blacks would not work regular hours after they had been emancipated, and because the price of sugar had sunk so disastrously low that it had no longer been economic to grow it

  'Well, Hilltop, certainly.'

  'I'll sell it,' she decided.

  'Sell it?' Alan was aghast.

  'Well, for Heaven's sake,' she said. 'It doesn't earn anything much. Your dad only stays on because he's that loyal. Mr Simmonds and the others are only here because they wouldn't get any employment anywhere else. The blacks wouldn't care whether we were here or not. And the East Indians, ugh. They give me the willies.'

  'Bananas,' Alan said. 'What about the bananas?'

  'I don't like bananas.'

  'But without them, we'd, well, you'd really be in trouble.'

  'So who wants to make a living out of growing bananas?' she asked, and got up. 'I'm going home.'

  He didn't move, remained sitting at the top of the steps, looking after her. And this evening she didn't feel like looking back and waving. Something had happened to their relationship, quite without warning, quite without her knowing what it was.

  But now she wished he had said what he had meant to say, instead of going off about the plantation.

  She went home by way of the cemetery, Hannibal trotting at her heels. To reach the graves, surrounded by a white fence and shaded by tall tamarind trees, she had to climb the shallow hill until she was almost in the shadow of the Great House. The cemetery was a place of refuge whenever she felt in the dumps, which was often enough. Here she was sure to be alone, because none of the blacks would visit the graves once the sun began to set. Dusk was a time for jumbis, especially where dead people were involved. Because jumbis were merely dead people themselves, walking about? Meg had never been quite sure about that. But dusk was also the time for the drums. Sometimes. She could hear them this evening, a low, distant throbbing. The noise came from the mountains, beyond the limits of the plantation. She rather enjoyed the rhythmical hum, but the black people were afraid of it, and so, she suspected, were most of the white people as well. Yet no one would tell her why.

  She clasped her hands behind her back, stared at the weathered stones. Richard Hilton, born 1785, died 1871. Great-Grandfather had died the year after she had been born. He had been a legend in his own lifetime, at once because of his military prowess and because of his disfigured face. And he had named her, so Prudence said. Janet Hilton, bora 1850, died 1870. Poor Mama had never had the chance to name her. Papa hated her for that.

  She sighed, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Robert Hilton, born 1740, died 1810. The great Hilton, the man who had ruled this plantation, and Green Grove, at the apex of the plantocracy, whose word had been law, who had lived on a scale and with an omnipotent disregard for manners or conventions which even a king might find it hard to equal. How amazing that Great-Grandfather, who had died after she had been bora, had known Robert, had actually inherited the plantations from him.

  But she had been named after the truly great Hiltons, the founders of the family wealth. Their stones were next to each other. Christopher Hilton, born 1651, died 1722. Marguerite Hilton, born 1652, died 1690. Marguerite Hilton's grave was empty; her bones had mouldered to
dust on an island off Green Grove in Antigua, destroyed by the leprosy she had contracted when still a young and beautiful woman. It was perhaps because of that Kit had left Antigua, while retaining the property there, and founded Hilltop, and truly set the family fortune to growing. And he had erected this stone to the memory of the most famous - or was it infamous - of all the Hilton women. Certainly the strongest. So Great-Grandfather had decided she should bear the same name, even if with a more English form of spelling. A twisted sense of humour? The plantation had been in hardly better condition when old Richard had died. He must have known that the first Meg Hilton would have rolled in her grave, had she possessed one, at the thought that the Hiltons should have been brought so low. That all of Jamaica should have been brought so low. That all of the West Indies, that magnificent empire which her own Warners had founded, should have been brought so low.

  Meg turned away, closed the little gate behind her, stared at the Great House. The shutters were in place, the front door was closed and barred. Papa had decreed that the day

  Great-Grandfather had died, according to the servants. The Great House was to be left to rot, like the Grandstand. Father had no desire to play the great planter; he worked as hard as any overseer. But how she longed to get inside, for just a look. It could be done. There was a loose shutter at the back; she could hear it banging in the gentle breeze which drifted down from the mountains, sweeping across the huge amphitheatre that Kit Hilton had called, with that peculiarly Irish sense of humour he had apparently possessed, Hilltop. It was all a matter of courage. Because she could still remember the day, two years ago now, when she and Alan had tried to break through one of the shutters, and had been caught by old Percy. Percy had told Papa, and Papa had whipped them both. Alan had had to take down his breeches, and she had had to hoist her skirts over her shoulders, although Papa had at least left her drawers in place. The humiliation had been far worse than the pain, although the pain had been considerable. And she had been afraid to look at Alan's bare, red-striped backside, something she had often regretted since.

  So then, why not risk it again, with Alan, on the chance of being caught? Except that she suspected now Papa would not make him take down his breeches.

  Because they were older. And because, this afternoon, something had happened, and she did not know what it was.

  She banged the compound gate behind her, climbed the steps to the porch outside the kitchen, Hannibal panting obediently at her side. Prudence was seated in her rocking chair, smoking a cigar and stirring her pepper pot. It really was her pepper pot, although she generously served it to her master and his daughter from time to time. Prudence was an enormous black woman. She stood nearly six feet without shoes, she never wore shoes, and she weighed eighteen stone. Her cotton house-gown bulged in every direction, and the white turban on her head seemed almost like a crown. She hummed, and breathed alcohol; her rum bottle was on the table, half empty. Meg could not remember Prudence without a rum bottle at her elbow.

  Opposite her, on the other side of the table, Percy picked shrimps. Percy was very old; even he did not know how old he was, but his hair was white and he could remember when he had been a slave, and that was going back fifty years, just as he could remember the famous day Meg had been born when the earth had shaken and everyone had been afraid the chimney would come down. Yet the chimney still sat erect, as did Percy, and there was no spare flesh on his bones. He also hummed to himself. Prudence was his second woman, and she was less than half his age. His first, Priscilla, had died ten years before.

  'Can I have a shrimp?' She took off her hat and waited, holding it in front of her like a shield.

  'Is your dinner,' Percy said severely. 'How you going have it now?'

  'Ah, give the chil' a shrimp,' Prudence said, and Percy dutifully held one out.

  Meg nibbled, felt her saliva start. She adored shrimps, even raw. She sat on the other straight chair, worked her bottom on the straw. She felt at ease. Prudence and Percy were her real friends. Perhaps her only friends now. But perhaps she was seeing more into what had happened than was really there.

  'Prudence,' she said. 'Do you and Percy ever wrestle?'

  Prudence gave a cackle of laughter. 'Wrestle? Him? I would bust he ass too quick.'

  'Woman, you stupid,' Percy commented. ‘You ain't understanding what the chil' is saying?'

  Prudence laughed some more. 'If you meaning does he put a lovin' on me, chil', well, that is what he is there for, nuh ? Is a fact he ain' much good for nothing else.'

  Here was a subject Meg had always shied away from in the past. It was too embarrassing. But tonight she had to know. 'What does he do ?'

  Prudence stopped laughing, and frowned instead, then looked at her husband.

  'Well, is a fac' she got for know some time,' Percy remarked, 'She growing. You ain' seeing that? Soon she going got bubbies like you.'

  'Not like me,' Prudence declared. 'Nobody got bubbies like me.'

  'I have,' Meg insisted. 'Not like you. But I have them.'

  'Show me,' Prudence commanded.

  Meg glanced at Percy, and felt her cheeks burn. But they were only black people, and Prudence had been her nurse since she could remember. She got up and walked round the table, and Prudence gave her breasts a gentle rub, then cupped them through the thin material. Meg was aware of a most remarkable sensation, which seemed to begin at her nipples, suddenly hard, and then find its way through her chest and down her belly right into her legs.

  'But she does, in truth,' Prudence commented.

  'Let me have a feel,' Percy said.

  ‘Ah, hush up your mouth,' Prudence said. 'Next thing you going get gaol. You can' go touching up no white girl. Least of all the mistress. But is a fac', chil', them white boys going wan' to put a lovin' on you soon enough if you keep growing like this. You wan' for watch that.'

  'Why should I?' Meg demanded. 'Didn't you say I was right for a woman when I first passed blood ?'

  'Well, is a fac' you can' be no woman without it. But you only fourteen, chil'. And your skin is white. You got for watch it.'

  Meg licked her lips. 'I will. I promise. But I can't if I don't know what to watch. Can I?'

  Prudence picked up her pot again. 'They going come at you with the rod high, that is what they going do. Any man comin' at you with he rod high you got for say, get away, savin' you puts ring on me finger. That is what you going say.'

  'What does a rod look like?'

  'Well, for God's sake, chil', you going recognize it quick enough, when the time does come.'

  'Does Percy have a rod?’

  It was Percy's turn to guffaw. 'I must have a rod, Miss Meg. How else I going run at she?'

  'Show me. Please.' Her heart pounded.

  Percy gazed at her for a moment, then put down the shrimp he was attacking.

  'You jus' sit there,' Prudence said. 'But you is one wicked old man. And she is a wicked chil'. You hear me, Miss Meg? You wanting a box on the ears, eh? Christ, if the master was to come in and hear. You go off, now. You go off. I goin' call you when it is your supper.'

  Meg's supper consisted of boiled shrimps and peas and rice. She ate alone, because Papa was busy. She could not remember when he was not busy. Just as she could not remember when last he had actually taken her in his arms and given her a hug. After all but fifteen years, he still blamed her for taking his Janet away.

  She ate with a spoon, because Prudence could not see the point in adding to the washing up. She shovelled food into her mouth, masticated noisily, picked out forgotten bits of shell with her fingers, and listened to the silence of the Jamaican evening, broken only by the buzz of insects trying to get through the mosquito screen, and the barking of Rufus, the McAvoy's dog, to which Hannibal occasionally uttered a brief reply. Hannibal knew who was the more important pet. As he and Rufus always fought, Rufus was kept locked up; Hannibal belonged to the Hiltons. But above even the barking of the dogs was the distant hum of the drum.

  Ala
n was just across the street, no doubt eating his dinner, but with his mother and father - the McAvoys were believers in the family life. Would he be thinking of her? He certainly should be, having rubbed himself against her this afternoon, with his rod pressed against her belly. Because it must have been his rod. If it wasn't, he must have had a very big pencil in his pocket, and surely the pencil would have stopped moving when he did.

  What would it look like? What would it feel like? What ... she stopped eating, staring morosely at the empty wall; Father was no believer in paintings. According to Prudence, when that happened, she should be all ... well, excited. She knew what that meant now. It must mean to feel as she had felt when Prudence had felt her breasts. But she had not been the least excited when Alan had rubbed himself against her. Suppose she never felt excited? She was so miserable she felt her eyes fill with tears.

  'Now what is the matter with you?' Prudence had been watching through the open pantry door. 'You are one worthless chil'. Drink up your milk.'

  'It's horrible,' Meg complained. 'It's thin as water and full of skin.'

  'Yeah, well them cow ain' eating the right grass, that is the trouble. But you got for drink it, chil', if you wan' bubbies like these. Here. You can squeeze them.'

  She was making amends for not letting Percy show his rod. But Meg loved squeezing Prudence's breasts. They were so huge, and soft, and seemed to overflow from her fingers. And Prudence's bodice was loose. She pushed her hand inside and felt the brown nipple rising against her palm.

  'Oh, but you is worthless.' Prudence removed herself. 'Now go say goodnight to your Daddy, and then straight up to bed.'

  Meg sighed, and got up. She was feeling excited again. The fact was, Alan had been just too rough. There it was. He had hurt her instead of stroking her. That was no way to go about exciting a girl.

  She knocked on the study door, waited for a moment, then pushed it in. Papa sat at his desk as usual, surrounded by ledgers and papers as usual, by accounts and by returns and by orders and by estimates. 'What is it?' he asked, without turning his head.