Sunset

by Christopher Nicole

  By the fourth day out, however, she began to feel better, assisted by the fact that at last the wind began to drop. By then she was utterly filthy, but once again Bowman came to her help, and arranged a small wooden tub in the centre of her cabin floor, which he filled with hot water. There was only room for her to sit - her legs had to be outside - and it was not until she was actually sitting that she discovered the water was salt. But the bath itself was a luxury, even if she felt sticky afterwards.

  That done she could reappear at meals and on deck, and allow herself to be amazed at the way the sea had changed from green to the magnificent blue she remembered from the Roddam, only sparsely dotted with whitecaps now, while the movement of the ship had settled down to a regular plunge and a steady heave; she could not roll, as Meg remembered the steamship doing, because her sails were full. She found the motion, now she was used to it, much preferable.

  'And we're making great time, Miss Hilton,' Captain Weston said, walking beside her on the quarterdeck. 'Oh, aye, two hundred and fifty miles a day for four days. That's a thousand miles, you'll understand. Why, we're a third of our journey. Nothing like an easterly wind to set a ship on her way.'

  Meg watched Alan, standing by the helmsman, looking from the plunge of the distant bows aloft to the set of the still more distant topsails. He had greeted her most courteously at luncheon. But then, so had all the other officers. And he had had four days to think, and to remember, as had she. And perhaps realize the enormity of what he had done? Or perhaps, far worse, feel disappointed. Certainly she could not remember any great response on her part. Oriole had often enough criticized her for this. 'Oh,' she had said, 'you he there like a sack of coal'.

  But she had never had to do more, with Oriole, or with Cleave. The exploration of her body, the feel of her growing passion beneath their hands, had been enough for them. Perhaps Alan wanted more. Perhaps he needed more. But how even to catch his eye ?

  Yet it had to be done soon; as far as she could calculate, she was within a week of her menstrual period.

  In fact she could not attract his attention at all that afternoon, and retired to her bunk in a fine frenzy of despair. Was he deliberately avoiding her? Not only avoiding her, but even avoiding meeting her eye? He had been disappointed. She had lain like a sack of coal, and he, after two years at sea, visiting strange ports, filled with the most delightful and experienced houris ... what chance did a seventeen-year-old girl stand against such memories?

  She discovered she was both angry and miserable, and cried herself to sleep, to awaken at that soft brushing of the knuckles against her door.

  She left the bed in a single bound, not even properly awake, released the lock, pulled the door in, brought him with it.' It was just after six, she gathered from the huge brass chronometer by the companion ladder, and he was wearing deck clothes.

  'Meg. I had to see you.'

  'Oh, my sweet.' She locked the door. 'But... aren't you on watch? I heard but four bells just now.'

  'These are dog watches,' he explained. 'From four until six in the afternoon and from six until eight the watches are only two hours instead of four. This is the only way we can change our times of duty, or we would have the same watches throughout the voyage.'

  'Oh,' she said, but she didn't really understand. She wasn't sufficiently interested. Alan was here, and that was all that mattered. She led him to the bunk. 'I thought you would never come.'

  'I had heard that you were unwell.'

  'Sea-sick.' She sat down, drew him down beside her, kissed his mouth, his eyes, his ears, his nose, his chin, fumbled at his clothes. 'But I am well again now, and you are here. Nothing else matters.'

  'Meg...' He caught her hands. 'I cannot stay. I dare not'

  'No one saw you come in.'

  'Yet at this hour of the afternoon anyone may come along, or may see me leave.'

  'And does that matter, now?' She undid the buttons of his shirt, and thrust her hand inside to rub the mat of hair on his chest.

  'Matter? My God ...'

  She smiled, and leaned forward to kiss his nipples, and as he was protesting, gave one a little nip. 'Ow.'

  'Nothing matters,' she said. 'Your captain will not put back now. Our next port of call is Jamaica.'

  Once again he caught her hands, forced her upright. 'And what of my career?'

  'Career?'

  'I mean to be a master. I told you that, remember?'

  She laughed, and kissed him on the chin. 'And I remember that you were very angry. Sea captain? Ship's master? Your future lies ashore. Planting Hilltop.'

  'Hilltop? I told you...'

  'When you were angry,' she insisted. 'But now you have no reason. You felt you could never work for me. Well, then, I will work for you. All of Hilltop will work for you. When we are married, Papa will make you his heir, and in time you will own it all.'

  He frowned at her. 'Hilltop?'

  'And Green Grove. There is one small thing. You must change your name to Hilton. There must be a Hilton on Hilltop. It would sound too strange, McAvoy of Hilltop. You do see that?' She paused in sudden alarm, for his frown had deepened.

  'You move too fast for me, Meg.'

  'But... you do love me, Alan ?'

  'More than anything in the world.'

  'And you do want to marry me?'

  'Of course I do. I was going to propose it, now. It occurred to me that if I proposed marriage, although Captain Weston would not permit any familiarity between us, until your father's consent has been given, I would at least be able to walk with you on deck.'

  'Oh, what a magnificent idea,' she cried. 'Then I accept. Now. Yes, yes, yes.' Once again she checked her enthusiasm. He had stopped frowning, but he did not look as happy as he should. 'Do you not like the concept of calling yourself Hilton?'

  '1 have nothing against any name, Meg, if it is what you want. But I'll not return to Hilltop.'

  Her turn to frown, in bewilderment. 'Not return to Hilltop ? Were you so miserable there ?'

  'I think I was,' he said seriously. 'Without understanding why. Or without even being aware of it, perhaps. I always knew something was wrong, and could never decide what it was. Now I know. This ship trades with Cuba, amongst other places. I have been ashore there. The Spaniards may just have freed their slaves, but, my God, conditions are still bad.'

  Meg shook her head. 'You have become far too serious for me, Alan. What has that to do with Hilltop?'

  'I have seen sugar plantations where every canestalk has been planted in human blood, Meg. I have seen men, and women, and even children, reduced to the very shreds of humanity, and indeed murdered at the whim of their masters. And that used to happen, within living memory, on that land which is so sacred to you.'

  'Of course it did,' she cried. 'But we freed our slaves fifty years ago, remember.'

  'Ssssh,' he said. 'Yet is every inch of your soil stained with blood. The very name of Hilton is stained in it. Hilltop is a cursed place, Meg. You can do no more than give it to the black people. And even then you would not be atoning for a tenth of your family's sins.'

  She thrust both hands deep into her hair, in frustration, and in an attempt to control her bubbling temper. 'Of all the concentrated nonsense,' she said. 'I have never heard quite so much balderdash. You must have come under the influence of some of those ghastly missionary people.'

  'I have used my eyes and my ears, nothing more.'

  'Give Hilltop to the blacks? May I remind you that we were in the West Indies before the first black set foot there? We brought them in, my ancestors, to work for us. That's how they got there in the first place.'

  'And they have stayed,' he pointed out. 'And grown, and become a nation, while you ... the plantocracy, after fleecing the islands for every penny they could over two

  hundred years, at the thought that they might not be able to continue living like millionaires went fleeing back to England with what they could salvage. Oh, the Hiltons didn't. But that doesn't make them
any more noble. They haven't gone yet because they had so much in the first place, they took so much in the first place, that they have a way longer to go before they decide to give it up. But they will I promise you they will. Don't shake your head. I remember a girl telling me that the first thing she would do when she inherited Hilltop would be to sell it.'

  'A girl,' she said angrily. ‘It may have escaped your notice that I have now become a woman. But I really wonder if you have managed to become a man. You sound like a boy taking his first look at life. But when you learn a little more about it all you'll realize that some people are put on earth to rule, where the majority are put on earth to be ruled.'

  He stared at her, his frown returning. 'And you honestly believe that the Hiltons were put on earth to rule, until Kingdom Come? No matter what they do, what they think, what they feel?'

  'Yes,' she shouted. 'Yes, I do. And if you don't believe that too, if you don't want to be one of us, then I don't care to speak with you again. Ever.'

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE BRIDE

  'THERE we are, Miss Hilton.' Captain Weston stood at Meg's side, pointing with his telescope. 'A treat for your eyes, I'd reckon.'

  The mountains of Jamaica had actually been in sight the previous evening, distant shadows on the horizon. And the wind had remained fair, so that by dawn they had seemed to loom immediately above the Wanderer as she rounded Morant Point. Now the sun was high in the sky, and reflecting from the rooftops of Kingston itself, as sail was shortened for the passage past the tip of the Palisadoes, over the sunken ruins of Port Royal, Henry Morgan's city of sin, which had disappeared in the earthquake of 1692. She was home. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  'Harrumph,' Captain Weston remarked. 'We'll be putting you ashore first thing. You'd best get your gear together.' He glanced at her, and flushed. 'Speaking figuratively, of course.'

  Her gown was sadly decrepit by now, and the velvet of her jacket was worn thin; only her turban remained reasonably new as she had not worn it on the voyage.

  'That would be very kind of you, Captain,' she said. 'You may be sure that I shall attend to the business of my passage money before anything else.'

  'Ah, that's a little matter,' he said. I am happy to have been of service. And we shall be lying here for a week or so; you'll have time enough. Now, if you'll excuse me.' He bustled away from her side, and she turned from the rail, watched Alan marshalling the boat's crew while orders were given to hand the sails and bring the barquentine up to anchor.

  He had avoided her for the past ten days, as much as was possible in a small vessel. And when they had been forced to encounter each other, at meals and perhaps another three or four times in each day, he had been distantly polite. But how handsome he looked, and how virile, in his tropical kit, for Captain Weston had allowed his officers to doff their jackets and roll their sleeves above the elbow.

  'Are you in charge of seeing me ashore, Mr McAvoy ?' she inquired.

  'I have been so ordered by the captain, miss.'

  'And you would rather remain with your ship ?'

  'There is a deal of work to be done,' he said. 'You'll excuse me?' He hurried off.

  'He is a very keen young man,' remarked Mr Lamb, the first mate. 'Oh, McAvoy will go far, Miss Hilton. You may mark my words.'

  'I shall, Mr Lamb,' Meg promised, and turned back to the rail. So then, what did she think of it all? She had wept herself to sleep that night, after he had stormed out of the cabin. But next morning she had awoken very angry indeed. What right had he to dismiss her ancestors as rogues? Without the Warners and the Hiltons the British West Indies would never have happened at all. And where empires have to be created, blood has to be shed, that others might benefit. That Alan might benefit not less than anyone else.

  So perhaps he held that the very fact of empire was wrong. Where then would Britain have found her greatness?

  Anyway, it had all been so silly. The labourers on Hilltop were happy enough. Certainly happier than anywhere else in Jamaica. The Hiltons had made them so. Alan's arguments had been entirely dialectic, and bore very little relation to reality.

  And what would he have her do? Marry a seaman, and live in a cottage somewhere in England, seeing her husband but once in six months, eking out a miserable existence on his pittance of a pay? She was Margaret Hilton. She could make him wealthy. If he was hell bent on playing the philanthropist she could allow him to do that as well, if he wanted. Perhaps, she had thought in her anger and her misery, Oriole had been right all the while. Men were nothing more than emotional fools.

  So the anger had been replaced by cool disdain. If she must marry a fool, as Oriole had again said, then she would at least marry someone who measured up to her requirements as a man. Alan was a childhood sweetheart, nothing more. Perhaps he deserved to be nothing more. So he had taken her virginity. He had not even realized he was doing that, had supposed he was safe enough, because she had already belonged to another. So she felt, she knew, that she could make him happy. That he could make her happy. Surely he was not the only man in the world about whom that could be said.

  The anchor chain rasped through the hawsepipe, and the ship came to a gentle rest in the pale green waters. Alan mounted the ladder from the waist, touched his cap. 'The boat is ready to ferry you ashore, Miss Hilton.'

  Thank you, sir.' She swung her reticule as she descended the ladder.

  Captain Weston waited at the gangway. 'Miss Hilton, it has been a pleasure having you aboard. Now you get ashore and don't worry about a thing. I'll call. Indeed I will.'

  'And I will be glad to see you, Captain. So will Papa, I have no doubt at all. And I shall never be able to thank you enough for granting me this passage.'

  She climbed down the accommodation ladder to the boat, bobbing on the gentle swell. Already the ship was surrounded by lighters and bumboats, manned by Negroes in broad-brimmed hats, stripped to the waist and ready to dive should any seaman seeking entertainment throw a coin over the side. She was home. The heat settled on her

  neck and shoulders like a physical force; the sun hurt her eyes. She was home.

  Alan sat beside her on the transom, gripped the tiller. 'Give way.'

  The sailors dipped their oars. 'Don't you feel, every time you drop anchor in this place, that you are coming home?' Meg asked.

  'My home is the ship, Miss Hilton.'

  'But you will be coming out to Hilltop, to see your parents ?'

  'No,' he said. ‘I usually let them know I am in Port Royal, and they come into town to see me.'

  'Ah,' she said. 'If you should wish to alter your programme, on this occasion, you would be very welcome.'

  He turned his head to look her in the eyes. 'Would I?'

  'Of course,' she said. 'I can never forget that had it not been for you, I should not have obtained this passage.'

  'Nothing else?'

  So he was sorry for their quarrel, and just did not know how to end it. Well, he deserved his misery. And there was no reason for her to end it, until he put his pride behind him and came to call. ‘I cannot think of one,' she said. ‘I can merely repeat, I am sure my father would be very glad to see you. And you may be sure of my gratitude.'

  'Aye.' He looked away, altered course. 'Ship your oars.'

  The crew obeyed, the boat slipped gently alongside the dock. Alan stood up, stepped ashore. 'Will you give me your hand?'

  Meg allowed herself to be assisted. How good it felt. Just to be on dry land. But the dry land was also Jamaica. She turned her face towards the town, felt the gentle hot breeze drifting down from the Blue Mountains. It would have passed Hilltop on the way. She could almost smell the sheep, and the molasses.

  She could almost hear the drums.

  'Will you be all right now?'

  'Why, of course I shall,' she said. 'But will you not walk me to Mr Reynolds' office? I will have him organize me transport to Hilltop.' 'I have my duties, Miss Hilton.'

  'Well, then, will you not come to ca
ll? With Captain Weston, of course.'

  He hesitated, and flushed. 'Perhaps. If the Captain wishes it. Good day to you, Miss Hilton.'

  'And to you.' Meg turned away from the sea, surveyed the group of black men who had gathered, as they gathered to greet any new arrival.

  'You wanting a coach, miss?' one asked.

  'A horse, miss?'

  'A lodging, miss ?'

  'Man,' said a fourth. 'Why you all ain't hush up your mouth. You can' see this is Mistress Hilton?' Meg's head turned, but she could not identify the speaker. 'Miss Hilton? But what is that?'

  Meg stepped forward, and they parted before her. Their voices lingered on the air.

  'Miss Hilton. But that is a thing, eh, Harry?'

  'Man, she must be come back quick. That is what she must do.'

  She frowned, and then arranged her features in a fixed smile as she walked up the street. No doubt Oriole had been busy, by means of the Transatlantic Telegraph system, spreading all manner of rumours about her. Well, they would just have to be combated. She was Margaret Hilton. She must never forget that. Oriole had taught her that much.

  She hurried up the wooden sidewalk, ignoring the people, some of them white, now, who stopped to stare at her, and exchange whispers. One lady stepped forward.

  'Margaret Hilton, you poor dear child ...'

  'You'll excuse me,' Meg said. Reynolds and Son's sign was in sight. The office was on the upper storey of a draper's shop, and was reached by means of an outside staircase. Meg gazed up it, at the sloping roof, and the flag, flying at half mast. Her frown deepened, and she gathered her crushed skirts and almost ran up the stairs, thrust open the swing jalousies at the top, half fell into the outer office.