Hannie Richards

by Hilary Bailey

  Hannie wore a floral dress, wide straw hat and sunglasses. Over her shoulder hung a white canvas bag. The only item distinguishing her from a normal tourist was a pair of strong but flexible purple suede boots, lacing well above the ankle, into which she had changed in the boat. If caught, she hoped the colour of the boots and the fancy style would make it look less as if she had planned an expedition where she might have to do tough walking in the vicinity of creatures which could bite and sting.

  She had carefully established, among the others on her tour, the character of a nervous, divorced woman whose husband had recently gone off with his personal assistant. She wore dark glasses a lot and carried several jars of capsules in her bag. These she took piously, with the air of someone receiving the sacrament, not a difficult bit of acting for the daughter of Mrs Edwards. She hoped that hiring a boat and disappearing at dawn for Beauregard would be considered a stupid impulse she’d followed because she was so disturbed. Not that the boatman could believe that; she’d had to show her competence round the harbour before he’d let her have his boat.

  She sat down under a tree, in the sand, and stared quietly out to sea. Theoretically, craftily composed letters should have ensured that one of the Fevriers arrived at the beach every morning to see if she’d landed. If the messages had gone wrong she’d have to go and find them. In the meanwhile, half an hour in this lovely spot, studying the pink of the clumps of coral studding the sand, hearing the cries of the birds wheeling through the blue sky and the faint sounds of the breeze in the palm trees, would not come amiss.

  She had been three days on St Colombe now. It was hot, depressing and built on black, volcanic soil. The evil-hued beaches made children cry and their parents vow to expose the travel agents who had put misleading pictures in their brochures. The town, also named St Colombe, was, underneath its top-dressing of hotels, bars and ornamental gardens, a tired French colonial city, gone to seed. The streets were dusty, the verandaed buildings unpainted, the back end of town was too close to the centre, so the shacks, the chickens scratching, the thin, Black barefoot children, the heavy women with buckets and bundles, the discouraged men, were painfully obvious to tourists venturing only a short distance from their hotels. And over everything loomed the heavily wooded mountain, la Veuve Colombe, the Widow of Colombe. There’s something sinister about a volcano, however extinct, thought Hannie, so no wonder it was cheaper to get a package tour to St Colombe than some of the other Caribbean islands. No wonder she was pleased to be sitting here on the beach at Beauregard.

  Now there were voices speaking gently behind her, not far away. Then, at the edge of a clump of trees nearby, two figures appeared. Hannie stood up, left the beach and went to where they stood on a narrow path leading through the trees.

  She recognized Angelina Fevrier by her height and build. She had the same candid eyes as her sister, although she looked older. The man beside her was a little shorter, his face heavily lined by years, Hannie guessed, of very hard work.

  He said, ‘Good morning,’ but spoke with an accent, a little like French, which she could hardly understand at first.

  Angelina said, ‘Better go now, before the sun gets strong. We live only about a mile from here.’ Hannie walked behind her, with Angelina’s father at the back, up the track between sparse trees and scrub.

  ‘I’m Regius,’ said Angelina’s father. ‘Hannie,’ she told him, her eyes on Angelina’s strong bare feet hitting the track. She wondered if life on Beauregard was not so paradisal. Maybe people would prefer an owner who violated their peace by building a hotel, putting in a generator and piped water, and running in supplies of Coca-Cola and steak. She said as much to Angelina as they went. Angelina replied, ‘I don’t know. We thought about that. On St Colombe they got jobs at the hotels and taking the tourists out in the boats. They got electricity but they have to live off the visitors. Here we got poverty and our land. Which is best?’

  ‘Pity that has to be the choice,’ Hannie replied.

  ‘But those men came back—four of them,’ Angelina said.

  Hannie, having difficulty in keeping up with her in the mounting heat, said, ‘What! When? What did they do?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ she said. ‘Late on in the day. They landed in a boat. I was putting water on the plants. It’s dry; the rain’s late this year. Father was in the house looking after Mother. They came up to me and said they had to see her. I went inside, and Father told me to tell them she was too sick. The biggest one said I had to tell her Mrs Julie Corrington heard she had a letter which was useless but Mrs Corrington wanted to have it to protect the good name of the family. They said to say Mrs Corrington would give five hundred dollars for the letter. Then they hung around for a bit and went away—said they’d be back for an answer soon.’

  ‘Then what?’ asked Hannie.

  ‘Then they said wooden houses burn well, then they left,’ Angelina reported impassively.

  Hannie stopped. ‘Look,’ she said urgently. ‘You’d better come back to St Colombe in the boat. It’s dangerous here.’

  From behind Regius said, ‘My wife is near death. I don’t want to move her and I’m not going to leave her. I’ve told Angelina to go—’

  ‘I can hold them off,’ Angelina said. ‘I’m staying here. And are you telling me for sure it would be safer on St Colombe? I don’t know.’

  Whatever holiday mood Hannie had conjured up on the boat on the sparkling sea had evaporated quickly. Now they reached a big half-acre clearing. Crops grew in rows. Near the one-storey wooden house with its corrugated roof stood a stone-walled sty from which Hannie heard the sound of a sow and her screeching piglets. A stream ran beside the house and behind the rows of plants, where the trees began, were two tethered goats. Big flowers grew up the sides of the house.

  Inside were three rooms. The one they entered first had an old-fashioned kitchen range, a highly polished mahogany table and matching chairs, a heavy sideboard and a neat dresser with a big blue and white dinner service—plates, cups, saucers and tureens—arranged on it. There was a battery radio, and on the walls and sideboard, pictures and photographs. Hannie saw the picture Sarah Fevrier had in London showing the couple, old Sarah and Regius Fevrier, and their four children.

  ‘Best if you see Mrs Fevrier now,’ Regius said as they stood there. ‘She has to have her medicine soon—that makes her tired.’

  The old woman, who was, Hannie realized, not very old, (sixty-four, she later learnt), lay in a big wooden bed under a white coverlet. Hannie and Regius walked quietly up to it and looked down. She was very thin and grey in the face. She seemed to be asleep. Then she opened her eyes, saying in a weak voice, ‘I’m glad you came. Regius must give you the letter, and you must take it to England quickly. I want my Sarah’s children to have this island. If Mrs Corrington gets it she will take it all, even this—’ She paused, exhausted, then whispered, ‘This is our land—we have looked after it.’

  Hannie said, ‘Yes—don’t worry. I’ll take the letter to England.’ And Regius said, ‘Come away, now. Come away.’

  ‘Give it to her, Regius,’ said the woman. But he had already opened the drawer in the small polished table beside the big bed. Holding the letter in his hand he walked from the room, saying, ‘I’ll give it to her, Sarah. Sleep now. I’ll bring the medicine in just a little while.’ In the doorway Hannie turned to look back at Sarah. Her eyes were open. Hannie said, ‘I’ll do my best, Mrs Fevrier.’ Sarah’s mouth moved, but Hannie heard nothing. She went out and shut the door.

  In the other room Angelina poured dark fragrant coffee while Hannie read the letter. It was dark in the room, but she could read easily. Edmund Corrington’s writing was clear and the ink he had used was black. The envelope had a stamp on it and the postmark read St Colombe, June 2nd 1981. So far, so good, Hannie thought, checking the signatures at the bottom of the second page of the letter. Percy Squires and Hugh Metcalfe had both signed their names and added the date. Then she began to read:

 
My dear Sarah,

  It’s a long, long time since I have been able to communicate with you or the children. You can’t know how much I regret this, but I’m afraid it has been necessary because my wife has always been very upset by the thought of you and what happened between us, although I, God knows, have never regretted any of it for an instant. I sincerely hope that you feel the same although I know you have the right to resent me, after what I did and, alas, what I didn’t do. I should probably have married you, dear Sarah, and to hell with what the others would have said. But what’s done is done, worse luck, and all I can say is if I’ve hurt you I’m sorry. At least Regius is a good man and if I’ve hurt you, I think I’ve hurt myself more. The last forty years have been agony to me. All I’ve been able to do is preserve your home from intrusion, and even that hasn’t been easy, believe me. And now, Sarah, I’m ill. I think I might be dying. All the Corringtons die young. So I believe that however much I’ve missed you, and the dear little girls, I must now do something sensible for you because once I’ve gone the family will own the island and do what they like with it. I’ve decided to make a will leaving the whole place to you. This will be properly witnessed by the two gentlemen who are in the house with me at this moment, and then one of them will take it for me to Mr Corneille. Pay attention to all this, Sarah—don’t go off into one of your dreams—because it’s vitally important you understand everything. I may never get the chance to write to you again, or see you. All I can do is look after you. What you have to do, if you ever hear of my death, is this; go to Mr Corneille on St Colombe, with this letter, and ask him to execute the will. Then the island will be yours. Don’t listen to anything anyone says to you about this, whoever they are, just take the letter to Mr Corneille. This, dear Sarah, is all I can do for you after all these years so please do as I ask. Remember, the island is yours. And now, they are waiting for the letter so goodbye, my dear Sarah, and remember me well, as I do you.

  Hannie put the letter down on the table, studying the superscription, ‘With all my love, Edmund,’ and the two signatures beneath. After a while she said, ‘Yes—yes, I see. But I’m afraid we need the will. Apart from anything else there could be a later one. Or maybe the Corringtons could produce something fraudulent—we need that will.’ She looked at the two silent Fevriers, father and daughter, and said, half-apologetically, ‘There it is—we must have it. Where is it?’

  Angelina said, into the silence, ‘I told Sarah we should have it. The problem is old Corneille, the lawyer, died. It’s his son now. Not an honest man. I asked, but he said he’d never seen it. Never found it when his father died.’

  ‘He could have destroyed it then,’ suggested Hannie.

  Angelina shook her head. ‘People like that don’t dare take that last step,’ she said. ‘And when I talked to him I could tell there was something wrong—he had that will in that room while I talked to him, I know it. He won’t have it there now, though, that piece of paper will be hidden away. That was the worst day’s work we ever done,’ she added, ‘when we told him we still had that letter. Then those men began to haunt us and Sarah. Now we can’t move in case we make it all worse for us.’

  Already Hannie, in the dusky room, surrounded by old, heavy pieces of furniture, was sensing the strength of the forces ranged against the Fevriers. She stood up, putting the letter in the envelope, saying, ‘I’d better leave quickly. I’ll try to get into Corneille’s office and find that will.’

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ Regius told her.

  ‘I don’t like to leave the job half done,’ she said. ‘That way I get no satisfaction and no profit. How can I get a message to you here without anyone knowing?’

  ‘My brother, young Regius, knows you’re in St Colombe. He may have seen you by now, but he can’t go near you in case he gets spotted. He’ll find a way,’ Angelina said with some certainty.

  Regius was putting some medicine in a glass for his wife as Hannie and Angelina set off down the track, back to the boat. Hannie told her what she was planning to do with the letter and said, ‘I wish you’d all get in the boat and come with me.’

  Angelina told her, ‘We can hold those men off for a little longer, pretending we’re going to sell them that letter.’

  Hannie, speeding the boat over sparkling sea, looked back at the fringe of white shore and trees of the beautiful little island and reflected how vulnerable the Fevriers were and how fast she must act now.

  In the late afternoon she returned the boat, deliberately bungling her approach across the harbour and telling a story of having landed on an island she thought might have been Beauregard, or a smaller island farther on, where she had fallen asleep, then got lost on the way back. The owner of the boat seemed to accept her story, but she was not sure he really believed her.

  She walked back to her hotel and took careful note of Corneille’s office, a wooden building with peeling white paint and a good collection of loungers in T-shirts hanging about on the veranda outside. The sight of them with their hand-rolled cigarettes and beer cans was not encouraging. A respectable lawyer, the kind who would be trustworthy about wills, would have cleared them off the premises. Hannie hoped Corneille did not employ any of them as guards—they looked nasty. But as she walked back to her hotel, which was in the next bay, about a mile from the town, she wondered who else was involved in the plot to do the Fevriers out of their island. The Corringtons sounded like people who had once been rich Caribbean landowners but were now going downhill. Their lawyer’s office had a small-town, disreputable air. Yet someone had quickly organized watchers in London as soon as they found out Sarah Fevrier was about to die and had been asking about Corrington’s will. And the watchers were white men, in a big car—it began to look like more than a local job, as if somebody efficient, with money to spend, had joined in with the Corringtons. As it was, it didn’t seem likely the will was still in Corneille’s office—unless he was hanging on to it in order to stay in the game. She’d have to be quick, she realized, not just because the Fevriers were in danger but because on a small island people soon find out who you are and what you’re up to. Her surprise value would soon wear off.

  ‘Enjoy your trip?’ enquired the receptionist as she collected her key, which confirmed her fears, since she had told no one about her trip.

  Hannie shook her head. ‘My husband used to take me out in a motor boat, but on my own I was confused. I wish I hadn’t gone.’

  As she got in the lift, she could feel his eyes on her back. She wasn’t even sure the character she had invented was convincing. Whatever marks slavery and oppression left behind, one of them was alertness to body language and facial expression. Even if her dejected air and inoffensive ways were deceiving her white companions, she might be betraying herself to the black people on St Colombe.

  Nevertheless, she went into the bar, sat down with a couple from Essex, awarding herself a vodka, a couple of her tablets and five minutes’ talk of the kind which goes, ‘Sometimes the people you trust the most are the ones who let you down the most in the end.’ Then she declared she had a headache and told them she would miss dinner, deciding to rest rather than spend any more time on her persona.

  At midnight she put on a dark shirt and trousers and, carrying a black shoulder bag, climbed from her veranda on the first floor out to the vine which grew up from the ground below. She dropped down. To her right she could see lights and people sitting out at tables with their drinks. Inside the hotel the disco was going full blast. As she moved quietly towards the corner of the building she found three men under a tree, smoking. They must have heard the rustle of the vine and the soft thump as she dropped to the ground, but they only said ‘Evenin’ as she walked past. She returned the greeting, hoping that vine-clambering was a regular occurrence among the guests at the hotel.

  The road was dark and silent. There were trees on one side and the sea lay below on the other. She walked for perhaps ten minutes until the road began to move upwards in the direction of a big, w
hite building which overlooked the harbour of St Colombe. Approaching, she heard the sound of reggae, not the crude rhythms the hotel calypso band served up to the guests, but more complex and sophisticated. As she heard a phrase repeated, she realized she was hearing live music. Then the sound stopped and two big doors opened at the top of the hill. In the light thrown outside she saw two long lean figures, arms round each other, stagger out, laughing. She watched them reel about and fall down in the grass of the hillside, out of sight. The face of one gleamed in the darkness, the other didn’t.

  A big figure appeared in the doorway shouting, ‘Come back here—we going to be here all night.’ Other voices started calling, ‘Come back, man. We got to get on—’ and then one of the fallen men got up and wandered back inside. Hannie, meanwhile, started walking again. She had gone past the white house when she looked back. On the hillside a figure stood watching her, presumably that of the second man for she saw a white face. She was alarmed. White people here usually meant authority; authority was what she didn’t need. But as she turned away, she thought she saw him give her a thumbs-up sign. Reaching the hot, deserted main street she reflected that here was yet another person who knew about her midnight walk into town.

  Turning off the main street, she walked down the passageway between the wooden walls of Corneille’s office and the shabby shop next door. She found herself in a dried-up yard, about a hundred metres long. Tired creepers hung on a fence. She walked round an old bucket and the inside of a TV to get to the back door. Somewhere a dog started barking furiously. She was relieved to hear a chain rattling as the animal evidently hurled itself to and fro, unable to get free. The door was bolted top and bottom from the inside, but a small window next to the door had a simple catch, which she lifted, as a second dog joined in with the first. As she stepped through the window, she heard more dogs, then the enraged shout of an owner. She stood inside for a little while, until the noise died down. The beam of her torch, which she shone down towards the floor, showed scurrying cockroaches, the bottom of a fridge, a cooker, a bag of vegetable peelings spilling on the tiles.