The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Page 16

  Black people don’t care for Chinamen or Coolies, and they look down on those who are blacker than they. Evie is a lovely caramel colour, and once she called Victory (who is darker) a dutty nigga, and Grace walloped her. Grace herself is the colour of mahogany. She is scary, but I like her laugh and that she smokes a pipe, and I think she is an extremely good mother.

  Evie is twelve, and the PRETTIEST little girl I ever saw. Her hair is always in dozens of tiny plaits which are shiny with castor oil. Unfortunately, Maddy won’t let me try the same thing myself.

  Evie can carry anything on her head, and wears a little charm-bag round her neck to keep away duppies, and she has three names: Evie, McFarlane, and her born-day name, which she isn’t telling me. I think she was impressed when I told her that I never knew my mother, and about snow.

  Evie is my friend, although not like Ben and Robbie, whom I miss extremely, particularly as they never came to say goodbye. I miss Aunt Letitia, too.

  I only got to know Evie a few weeks ago, when Maddy started paying her a quattie an hour to sit with me. Her brother Victory is six, and has curly eyelashes. Maddy says he has a crush on me. He has very white teeth, and he showed me how to make a chewstick out of a twig from a special bush, so that my teeth will be as white as his.

  Evie and Victory live with Grace down in the ruined slave village by the Old Works that got burnt. Nobody else will live there because of the duppies, but they don’t bother Grace because her family were slaves just like the duppies, and also because she is a witch.

  I need to know more about slaves. My gazetteer calls slavery an evil legacy, but Sinclair says that is quite wrong. He says that the Baptists have greatly exaggerated how bad it was, and that the slaves were too expensive to mistreat, and that no-one would ill-treat a four-legged mule, so why would one ill-treat a two-legged one? He says that the blacks were better off as slaves.

  Evie also knows a lot about this, for her grandmother was a slave, and when her great-grandmother was six she was given to Uncle Jocelyn’s mother-in-law as a wedding present!!! According to my gazetteer, the slaves were freed sixty years ago, and the first of August is now a holiday called Free Come, when the black people sing hymns and hold tea meetings. It seems to me that they would only celebrate being freed if they preferred not being slaves.

  Daphne says slavery is long gone and you must let it be, but that some people can’t manage that, like Grace.

  I don’t think Grace cares for white people, but I hope that she likes me. She knows black magic, which is called obeah, and white magic, which is called myalism. Mostly she does good magic, I think.

  This morning she returned a handkerchief which Maddy had dropped on the steps. Grace said that one mustn’t leave things lying around, even in one’s own yard, because they could be stolen, and used to catch a person’s shadow.

  I asked Evie about this and she explained that Grace didn’t mean the normal sort of shadow, but a different one, inside the person, that only a witch can see.

  Evie says that when a person gets sick, it’s because someone has stolen their shadow and nailed it to a duppy tree. After that, the only way to get better again is to catch the shadow and put it back inside the person.

  She says that someone must have stolen my shadow, which is why I am so ill.

  But Evie doesn’t know everything. It isn’t as if she is a witch, like Grace. Besides, why would someone steal my shadow?

  Twenty-seventh of March – After luncheon

  Last night I saw someone at the duppy tree. They were hunched and creeping, and the dogs didn’t bark. It wasn’t Clemency.

  After that I didn’t sleep, in case it was a duppy. I heard Great-Aunt May pacing in the upper gallery, and also an owl, which Jamaicans call Patoo, and are afraid of.

  I need to tell Maddy, but I can’t. More and more it feels as if she is far away, even when she is reading to me, or making Pablo Grey have arguments. And at times she looks so oddly at Uncle Jocelyn and Clemency and Sinclair.

  Clemency says Maddy is like any newly wed lady who is hoping for a child. And to be sure, when I asked Maddy, she said she is hoping for a child, as it would be such a relief for her and Sinclair. But she didn’t sound happy about it.

  Sophie put down her pen and listened to the crickets’ afternoon rasp.

  Around her the house lay dreaming in the heat. Maddy was downstairs in the darkroom, Uncle Jocelyn in his library, Great-Aunt May and Clemency were resting in their rooms, and Sinclair was writing in his study. Evie and Victory were still at school.

  Since the wedding, Maddy had changed. She didn’t talk as much, and she took two or three baths a day, as if she never felt clean. But when Sophie asked, she said she was fine, and it had been worth it, hadn’t it, now that Sophie was getting so much better?

  Perhaps Maddy found the secrecy tiresome. It must be hard, always having to remember that not even Sinclair must know that their parents came from Jamaica, or that their father’s name was Falkirk. Sophie found it hard too, although she had grown up with secrets, for Cousin Lettice had always forbidden them to mention their parents to anyone.

  Then it occurred to her that perhaps Maddy had secrets from her too. The thought made her skin prickle. They never had secrets from each other.

  Very late

  Everyone is asleep, and in the moonlight the lawns are almost as bright as day, although the light is blue. The crickets are singing but they sound different, and the duppy tree is still there. So far, no-one has visited it tonight.

  I don’t think Evie can be right about my shadow. I don’t see how someone could have taken it and nailed it to a duppy tree, because I became ill before we came to Jamaica, and there are no duppy trees in England.

  Next week, if Dr Pritchard lets me, I shall make my first visit to Falmouth. If Sinclair doesn’t come with us, I shall ask Maddy what she thinks about all this. Also, Mrs Herapath was an obeah-woman in a previous life, so if I get the chance, I shall ask her too.

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the morning of the visit to Falmouth, Madeleine awoke before dawn, to find that her monthly courses had begun.

  Oh no, she thought as the familiar ache took hold. No, no.

  Once again she would have to tell Sinclair that she would not be giving him a son. That their uneasy peace was ended, and they would have to do that again.

  He slept beside her curled in a ball, with his fists clenched beneath his chin. Even in sleep he was not at peace; and since the episode of the egg, he had taken to dosing himself with a sleeping-draught every night. She wondered what dreams he had; what shadows haunted the creases of his mind.

  She lay back on the pillows and tried to doze. She dreamed that the mosquito curtain was collapsing on top of her. She lay watching the billowing whiteness sinking softly, softly towards her. And as she watched, a red stain began slowly to appear in the white. At first it was no more than little blotches far apart, like blotting paper soaking up ink; but gradually it coalesced into a larger stain. A scarlet butterfly.

  She awoke with a start.

  What was happening? Why that dream again?

  She drew aside the gauze and slipped out of bed and crept to the dressing-room. She needed to be by herself, if only for ten minutes in the darkroom.

  ‘Are you sure this means you are not with child?’ Sinclair had demanded the last time her courses had arrived.

  She was sure. A vague recollection from Dr Philpott had been confirmed by discreet enquiry of a startlingly frank Clemency.

  But Sinclair had remained suspicious. ‘I’ve never heard of a woman bleeding like this. Every month? That cannot be natural. There must be something wrong with you.’

  She didn’t think there was. But on the other hand, she didn’t know why she bled every month, either. Lettice used to call it a reminder of the Original Sin. She used to say that as Madeleine already had sin in her blood, it was only to be expected that she should manifest it early, at the shamefully young age of thirteen. But beyond tha
t, Lettice hadn’t been any the wiser as to why it occurred.

  Once, Madeleine had suggested to Sinclair that they should ask Dr Pritchard.

  ‘Ask him what?’ he had snapped. ‘Why my wife is unclean?’

  Unclean, unclean.

  The word rang in her ears as she finished dressing and slipped out into the gallery in her stockinged feet. She let herself out onto the steps and paused to put on her shoes. The light was grey, but the air already warm with the promise of the day to follow. Out on the lawns, the pea doves were cooing their melancholy refrain. What-am-I-to-doo? What-am-I-to-doo?

  She went down the steps to the undercroft, opened the darkroom door and took a deep, reassuring breath of the familiar chemical smell.

  Unlike the main floors of Fever Hill, the undercroft was built of thick blocks of the local cut-stone. The floor was rough-cut coral, the rafters of bulletwood, the door of mahogany dashed with sand to keep out the termites. It was rougher than the upper floors, but more genuine. And it was her place. Nothing could reach her here. Not Sinclair, not Great-Aunt May. Not those nagging dreams about her mother.

  She lit the kerosene lamp, and shadows flared. Faces leapt from the prints pegged up on the line to dry.

  Sophie and Pablo Grey (‘I know it’s babyish, but he’s more of a mascot, really . . .’)

  Jocelyn in the library with his books and his great framed map of the Northside, and his daguerreotype of Kitty.

  Clemency, luminous in cloudy white, with Evie standing shyly at her side.

  A stark, unforgiving profile of Great-Aunt May.

  Madeleine walked slowly down the line, choosing prints to show to Mrs Herapath that afternoon. As she was shuffling them into a pile, there was a scratch at the door, and Remus the mastiff put in his nose. He was too well behaved to intrude any further, but a moment later she heard the familiar tap of Jocelyn’s cane across the flags.

  When she emerged blinking in the light, the old man turned his head and saw her, and made a tolerable job of appearing surprised. They had an unspoken convention that he would never disturb her in her sanctuary, but would simply make his presence known if he happened to pass by on one of his walks, just in case she cared to exchange a few words.

  ‘Rather early for you,’ he remarked.

  ‘And for you,’ she replied.

  ‘Curse of the old. Four hours’ sleep. That’s my lot these days.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep either. So I thought I’d choose some prints to show Mrs Herapath.’

  ‘Ah yes. The long-awaited expedition to town.’

  She bit back a smile. ‘Sophie will be gone all afternoon. How shall you bear the peace and quiet?’

  The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘I can scarcely imagine. May I see what you’ve chosen?’

  She held them out.

  He took his spectacles from his breast pocket and scrutinized each print with a careful frown. Then he gave them back to her, shaking his head in baffled admiration. ‘’Straordinary. You’ve caught Clemency to the life. And the way you’ve included the little pickney – very fine. Very apt.’

  ‘Wherever Clemency goes, a child usually appears.’

  ‘To be sure. But you were the one who brought it out.’

  Remus put his muzzle under the old man’s hand and gave it an impatient nudge.

  ‘Yes, yes, my dog, to be sure.’ He glanced at Madeleine from under his brows. ‘He wants his breakfast. Shall I see you later? For morning tea?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll be up soon.’

  She watched him go: a tall, unbending figure in old-fashioned frock coat and narrow grey trousers. Impenetrably courteous and impenetrably withdrawn – as if, after all the loved ones he had lost in his long life, nothing could really reach him now.

  It still surprised her that she liked Jocelyn. Sometimes she had to remind herself who he was: not just a proud, lonely old gentleman who admired her and was wary of Sophie, but the grandfather who had dusted off his hands and forgotten them.

  At first she had tried to be angry with him. It hadn’t worked. Your parents wrecked lives, the officer in the snow had said. And here at Fever Hill she was living among the wreckage. Jocelyn hadn’t asked for his family to be torn apart. And he had responded to what had happened in the only way he knew. By denying it.

  But how strange that he could look kindly on a photograph of the illegitimate Evie, while wanting nothing to do with his own grandchildren.

  There were so many questions that she wanted to ask him. Did you mourn your son at all? Why isn’t he buried with the rest of the family, at the Burying-place? Do you ever think of your grandchildren in England? Do you ever think of us?

  She went back into the darkroom and shut the door and leaned against it. But for once, it didn’t give her the sanctuary she needed. She felt tired and edgy and afraid. Afraid of what? Was it the monthly indisposition, or something else? What was happening to her?

  When she’d first arrived at Fever Hill, the past had been easy to ignore, for she’d been caught up in the exhausting business of concealment. The enquiries about her ‘people’; her education; how she had met Sinclair; whom she had known in London.

  But those had soon subsided as she ceased to be the newcomer and became part of the family, and then she’d had more time to think and to look about her. To notice the baleful Monroe serpent on the Wedgwood dinner service, and the huge, smoke-blackened oil painting of Strathnaw in Jocelyn’s library. That was when she had begun to dream of her mother and Cairngowrie House for the first time in years.

  But Cairngowrie House, she had told herself fiercely, has nothing to do with you any more. This is your life now. You are a normal married woman living with your normal husband in the house of your normal father-in-law.

  She looked down at the prints in her hand. In the steady glow of the lamp she caught a trace of her mother in Sophie’s wilful mouth. Her father gazed out through Jocelyn’s hooded eyes.

  Go away, she told them silently. I don’t want you. I never wanted you. Why can’t you leave me alone?

  But not even her sanctuary was safe any more. They had followed her in.

  She had given Sinclair the bad news just after luncheon, when he had withdrawn to his study to work on his monograph.

  He had looked at her steadily, then suggested that she might care to have a bed made up on the gallery until she was clean again. It wasn’t a choice but a command, and they had parted with polite ill will.

  She went to their bedroom, intending to lie down until it was cool enough to start for town. But as soon as she shut the door behind her, she knew that she had to get out.

  She hated their room. She hated the high mahogany walls that felt like a coffin, and the huge old armoire of blackened walnut with the door that swung open at night. And most of all, she hated the oxblood hangings on the enormous bed, with the Monroe serpent woven into the damask. Great-Aunt May had unearthed them from some ancient press, and they still smelt faintly of mildew and long confinement in the dark.

  She couldn’t stay here a minute longer. She rang for Jessie and told her to lay out her afternoon gown and her dust-coat. She would risk universal disapproval and go to see Mrs Herapath now, in the blazing sun.

  For once, luck was on her side. By the time she and Sophie were ready to leave, Sinclair was closeted in the library with Jocelyn, and Great-Aunt May had gone upstairs to rest. The only people about were Clemency, who had taken an opiate for her spinal irritation and barely understood that they were leaving, and Doshey the groom, who brought round the trap and helped install Sophie on the seat with a sleepy lack of curiosity.

  The royal palms lining the carriageway gave little shade, and as they started off the heat was like a wall. The cane-pieces lay stunned beneath the onslaught: shaven and ugly now that croptime was over, and dotted with muck-spreading gangs and brilliant white egrets, and meandering Indian cattle.

  Already Madeleine could feel the sweat collecting beneath her corset. She felt earthy and indeli
cate. Muliebrous, to use Lettice’s favourite word, which she had employed with grim disdain whenever she encountered a particularly buxom female. Once, Madeleine had looked the word up in the dictionary. Muliebrous: the condition of being a woman. It sounded like a disease.

  Sophie was unusually quiet on the drive, but for once Madeleine didn’t try to talk her out of it. She had too much to think about.

  Five days, she thought. Six at the most. Then I’ll be ‘clean’, and we’ll have to do it again.

  Four times in as many months, and each time as messy and humiliating as the wedding night.

  The wedding night. Whenever she thought of it her spirits sank.

  Neither of them had known what to expect, and in their different ways they had both been profoundly shocked. Not by the act itself, but by the blood.

  Sinclair had been terrified. ‘Blood’, he had whispered, his face grey with shock, his lips taut with disgust. He had retreated to an armchair and drawn up his legs beneath his nightshirt, like a small boy after a nightmare. Nothing she had said could persuade him back to bed.

  It had been different for her. One look at those scarlet blotches on the sheets and she had been a child again, staring at her mother’s body in the crimson butterfly. She had felt again the yawning disbelief, the bewilderment of loss.

  The following month they had tried again. This time there was no blood, but by then the damage had been done. Sinclair couldn’t forget that scarlet stain any more than she could, and he couldn’t forgive. She was unclean. She had tricked him into marrying her, and then cheated him of the son who was rightfully his.

  Unclean, unclean.

  The pony-trap swept across the Martha Brae, and the faded Georgian elegance of Falmouth rose into view. The little town was still slumbering away the afternoon. Goats picked their way through the refuse in the gutters. A trio of pickneys played cricket with a green mango and a bamboo bat. A john crow hitched itself off a fence and flew away.

  They were passing the parish church of St Peter’s when Sophie turned her head and gave the ancient silk-cotton tree in the churchyard a dark stare. ‘I didn’t think they’d allow one so near the church,’ she said.