The Daughters of Eden Trilogy Read online

  ‘But I still don’t understand,’ said Madeleine. ‘Why won’t Jocelyn see him? Surely he of all people must have guessed why Cameron did it?’

  ‘Oh, undoubtedly.’

  ‘Then why?’

  Mrs Herapath spread her tapered fingers. ‘Disgrace is disgrace, my dear. Discharge with ignominy. Incarceration. Scarcely the sort of career which Jocelyn had planned for him.’

  ‘But – Cameron did it to protect him. I can’t believe that even Jocelyn—’

  ‘Believe it, my dear. There’s granite in that old man.’

  And perhaps, Madeleine reflected, Cameron had been right in what he had told her at the Burying-place. Some people need outrage in their lives. It helps them screen out what they’re too afraid to confront.

  And it was certainly true that no-one on the Northside seemed to want to remember Ainsley and Rose. Even Cameron himself didn’t like to talk of them. She thought of his taut face at the Burying-place when she had questioned him.

  And Mrs Herapath, despite professing to have adored Rose, had expunged all trace of her from her cluttered, picture-lined little drawing-room. Earlier that afternoon she had told Madeleine that she’d destroyed all her photographs of Rose. She had been so angry, she said. So angry and so let down.

  It reminded Madeleine of Cousin Lettice burning her mother’s photographs in the grate at Cairngowrie House; and Jocelyn overturning his son’s gravestone. It was as if they all believed that by destroying the image or the graven word, they could somehow erase the person.

  She glanced down at the folder on her lap. Strange. She had expected to feel the old, familiar anger towards her parents. After all, here was yet another life which they had managed to wreck. Instead, she felt only pity and dismay.

  ‘I suppose’, she said, ‘none of this would have happened if Ainsley hadn’t married Clemency. But from what she’s told me, he wasn’t in love with her. Or she with him. So why did they marry? Why did they marry if they weren’t in love?’

  Mrs Herapath gave a bark of laughter. ‘My dear! What an astonishingly naïve question.’

  Madeleine flushed.

  ‘And remember, Ainsley wasn’t even twenty. I’m rather afraid that poor dear Jocelyn practically forced him into it.’

  ‘Forced him? I – didn’t know that.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ She shrugged. ‘But you mustn’t blame the old man. He genuinely believed that he was acting for the best. As indeed he was.’

  ‘But why should he want his son to marry a Traherne? He detests the Trahernes.’

  ‘Well of course he does. We all do. But they’re still vastly preferable to the Durrants.’

  ‘The D— I don’t understand.’

  ‘Why, my dear, if it hadn’t been for that marriage to Clemency, Ainsley and Rose would have eloped.’

  ‘Eloped? But – I thought the affair with Rose began after he married Clemency.’

  ‘Good heavens no! Ainsley and Rose had been in love since they were children.’

  At that moment there was a knock at the door, and Etheline came in with fresh hot water and scones.

  In a daze, Madeleine watched Mrs Herapath briskly fielding the refreshments, thanking the helper, and waiting for her to leave, all with that suspenseful air which people assume when they’re keen to go on with a choice piece of gossip.

  She offered Madeleine the plate of scones, then helped herself to another. ‘Eighteen sixty-six,’ she said, reaching for the butter dish. ‘That’s when they met. Of course, they’d met before. Dozens of times. But that was the first time they actually saw one another, if you know what I mean. Fever Hill great house. Boxing Day Masquerade.’

  ‘You – were there?’

  ‘Oh, everyone was there. It may be difficult to credit now, but in those days, Jocelyn was really rather sociable.’ She stopped buttering her scone, and looked back into the past. ‘Ainsley arrived late, as I recall. Caused quite a stir in his costume. Banquo’s ghost. Completely white. Immensely striking. And there in the ballroom was Rose as some sort of – signorina, I believe. I dare say it was simply got up, with just a few scraps from her grandmother’s clothes-press, for they never had any money to speak of. But she did look enchanting.’ She shook her head. ‘They must have been – what, sixteen? So terribly young.’

  On the bookshelf, the ormolu clock struck half-past five. Out in the square, a street-seller went past, touting her wares. ‘Ripe pear gwine past! Ripe pear! Ripe pear!’

  Mrs Herapath’s gaze returned to the portrait of Hector. ‘I must say, I did feel rather sorry for them,’ she said. ‘You know what it’s like when one falls in love for the first time. It’s as if there’s a current simply pulling one along. One can’t escape it. One can’t swim against it. All one can do is follow it, and hope that one doesn’t drown.’

  Madeleine made no reply. With great care she placed her teacup on the side table at her elbow. ‘But if they were so much in love,’ she said at last, ‘why didn’t Jocelyn let them marry?’

  Mrs Herapath’s dreamy expression vanished. ‘A Durrant? Two hundred years of dissolution and crimes passionnels and goodness knows what else besides? Oh no, my dear. That would never have done.’

  ‘But – from what I’ve heard, there’s no family on the Northside that hasn’t had its share of that sort of thing. Including the Monroes.’

  ‘Well, the odd indiscretion, of course. But the trouble with the Durrants was that they always went too far.’

  It was Madeleine’s turn to look back into the past. She remembered her father saying something similar to her mother during one of their passionate arguments.

  She turned back to Mrs Herapath. ‘Did you ever correspond with Rose? I mean, after she went to England?’

  Mrs Herapath looked outraged. ‘Good heavens, no!’

  ‘But I thought she was your friend.’

  ‘She was. But she forfeited all that when she ran off with Ainsley.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  Mrs Herapath moved the sugar basin a fraction to the right, then moved it back again. ‘She knew the rules, Madeleine. But she didn’t respect them. That was always her mistake. It would have been perfectly possible for her to have carried on seeing him after he married Clemency, so long as they’d been discreet. Happens all the time. No-one causes a to-do about it – because no-one is forced to know. But Rose couldn’t do that. Oh, no. She had to run off with him. She had to make it impossibe for us all to ignore.’

  So that was her crime, thought Madeleine. It wasn’t that she broke the rules, but that she broke them in such a way that it was impossible to ignore.

  It struck her as strange that Mrs Herapath should have reserved all her opprobrium for Rose. It was as if in such affairs the man were merely the passive victim, and only the woman was guilty.

  For the first time in a decade, she felt sorry for her mother. It seemed a terrible punishment, to be cut off for ever from everyone she had known, and exiled from this lush, ruined, bewitchingly beautiful island where she had spent her whole life. After Jamaica, Cairngowrie House must have seemed so bleak.

  She watched Mrs Herapath buttering another scone with some ferocity. ‘You still miss her,’ she said.

  ‘I do not,’ snapped Mrs Herapath.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘It’s just such a shame’, Mrs Herapath burst out, ‘that the whole wretched muddle had to whiplash onto Cameron. Confounded waste. Attractive boy like that.’ She plucked a crumb from her lap and frowned at it. ‘You want to be careful about that, my dear.’

  Madeleine was startled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This sudden interest in transcripts and whatnot. I’m not at all sure that it will do.’

  She felt herself colouring. ‘You were the one who suggested I should learn more about the family.’

  ‘This isn’t what I meant.’

  ‘Yes it is. He’s family, isn’t he? I don’t see the harm.’

  ‘That,’ said Mrs He
rapath, ‘is rather my point.’

  Nineteenth of July

  Evie has found out where my shadow is. In return for my silver crucifix that Cousin L gave me when I was confirmed, she went and asked a great many black people (not Grace of course), and finally learned that my shadow is in the hothouse – where I can’t go. I had suspected it was there, for the hothouse is full of duppies, as it was once the slave hospital.

  Victory has offered to go and fetch it for me. He said it would be safer if he went, as I might not be able to keep the duppies at bay. I think that is SO brave, but of course I said no. Victory is only six; it wouldn’t be fair. Besides, he wouldn’t know which shadow is mine.

  Despite what Evie says, I bet I CAN get to the hothouse on my own. I can move about quite well now on my crutches, and I wouldn’t have to go all the way up the rise, for Victory says there is a path that goes around it, if one knows where to look. That would be much easier. And for protection, I have the little charm which Grace made for me, and Victory has brought some extra rosemary, which I’ve put in a glass of water by my bed. But I wish I had my crucifix as well.

  The best time to go will be extremely early in the morning, when nobody has woken up, and the duppies are still asleep. The morning after the Trahernes’ ball will be the best, for then everyone will stay in bed until very late.

  Out on the lawns Remus barked twice, and then fell silent.

  Sophie stopped writing and drew back the mosquito curtain. She turned down the lamp, and moonlight streamed through the broken louvres. The lawns were bleached to silver. The duppy tree was a pillar of darkness, with great outstretched arms.

  Sophie listened for a long time, but Remus didn’t bark again. All she could hear were the crickets and the distant hoot of Patoo, and the slow creak of the floorboards as Great-Aunt May walked the upper gallery.

  Sophie wondered if she would have the courage to brave the hothouse on her own. That afternoon, when she was talking it over with Victory, it hadn’t seemed too daunting. But here in the dark, it seemed impossible.

  As she was pondering that, a sharp cry echoed through the sleeping house. I can’t! I can’t!

  Sophie caught her breath. She pulled the sheets up to her mouth and waited. But the cry didn’t come again.

  Someone had been having a nightmare. She couldn’t tell who it was, except that it had been the voice of a grown-up. A grown-up having a nightmare. A terrifying thought. She had never imagined that grown-ups could be so scared.

  ‘I can’t! I can’t!’

  Sinclair collapsed beside his wife and rolled onto his back, shuddering and staring up into the darkness. After a while he drew a deep breath. ‘This cannot go on,’ he said.

  His wife raised herself on her elbow to look at him. Her face was grave, but he knew that inside she was laughing at him. Why was she forever laughing at him?

  He sat up and poured himself a glass of water from the decanter on the bedside table. The chloral made it bitter, but he drained it with a grateful shudder.

  In the glow from the nightlight his wife had an unwholesome beauty, and he felt again the deep, dirty pull in his loins. He wanted her, but whenever he tried to take her, he couldn’t. His flesh wilted. His skin prickled with dread.

  It was all her fault. Sometimes when he was alone, he would take one of her camisoles from the dressing-room and press it to his face. And always beneath the milky scent of her skin he would catch that faint, impure sweetness: the smell of blood. It didn’t matter how many baths she took. He would always detect it now.

  Why was God punishing him? Why had this affliction struck him, an innocent man?

  He had been so hopeful when they had first married. Surely, he had reasoned, the dying sister must be the only one afflicted, and his wife almost pure – or at least, pure enough to bear his child?

  Beside him, his wife lay back on the pillows. ‘You should try to get some sleep,’ she said, her voice falsely gentle.

  ‘What an original idea,’ he snapped.

  She ignored that. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘if you stopped taking the chloral for a while—’

  ‘If I require medical advice,’ he said, ‘I shall consult Dr Pritchard.’ He turned on his side so that he wouldn’t have to look at her.

  ‘Goodnight, Sinclair,’ she said.

  He did not reply.

  Long after she had fallen asleep, he lay watching the ethereal glimmer of the nightlight through the gauze. It looked so pure. So spiritual. Small wonder that his wife detested it. She said it disturbed her to have a jar of fireflies slowly dying through the night.

  He gazed into the soft, pulsing light, and waited for the chloral to carry him away.

  He awoke drenched in sweat, and throbbing with a desire so strong that it hurt.

  It was nearly dawn. The fireflies were dead. He lay on his back, wondering what to do. This was becoming unbearable.

  At length he slid out of bed and crept to the dressing-room, moving softly so as not to alert his wife. He needed to be alone. He needed to pray. He needed to get away from his wife.

  He crossed the lawns and began to climb the rise. The sky was lightening in the east when he reached the top, and below him Fever Hill still slumbered in a light morning haze. He took a deep draught of cool, fresh air, and some of the tension within him began to subside.

  This is what matters, he told himself as he looked out over his inheritance. Not some female sullying your bed. But this.

  Below him lay the great house, and beyond it the New Works and Clairmont Hill, and the ruins of the Old Works, and the cane-pieces of Alice Grove all the way to the road. To the west lay the cane-fields of Glen Marnoch and the Queen of Spains Valley and the distant works at Caledon. To the south-west lay the hill-pastures of Corner Pen and the treetops of Providence, and to the south-east, the lush young cane of Bellevue and Greendale and Bamboo Walk, stretching all the way to the Martha Brae. To the edge of Eden.

  Eden. As always, the thought of his brother brought an upsurge of bitterness.

  The injustice of it. He, Sinclair, was the beautiful one; the godly one deserving of praise. And yet simply because he had been born a few years later, none of that mattered. Despite court-martial, incarceration and disgrace, people respected his brother more than they did him. Men measured their actions against his. Women sought his protection and regard. Even now, Clemency missed him, May feared him, and Jocelyn loved him the more. And why? Simply because he was the elder.

  A gust of wind cooled his face. He shut his eyes. Calm yourself. Calm. Cain killed Abel and was cast out, and Seth the third son of Adam found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and from his loins all men descended.

  You shall come into your inheritance.

  He pictured that day just as he had as a boy, when Great-Aunt May had first read him the story of Cain and Abel and Seth. He would be riding a white horse up the carriageway, and people would be lining up to honour him. His brother would be destitute and friendless, and Sinclair would lean down and extend the hand of charity. Perhaps.

  Already the sun was burning off the mist, and the birds were beginning to stir. But he wasn’t ready to go back yet. He couldn’t face the same torture all over again. Wanting her, and being repelled by her; feeling her sapping his strength, depriving him of his manhood.

  He turned and set off down the other side of the hill.

  He walked without seeing, but after a while a stink of rottenness brought him back to his surroundings, and he saw that he had reached the ruins of the old slave hospital. He was standing in a dank, shadowy little dell, where broadleaf trees and ironwoods blotted out the sky. Thick cords of strangler fig trailed over the tumbled cut-stone walls. The rasp of crickets rose and fell like the swell of a dirty sea.

  Before him stood the windowless cell where the less viable slaves had been sequestered. Its bulletwood door still hung firm on its hinges.

  Once, when he was eight, he had trapped his brother inside that cell. The aim had been to frighten him, b
ut it had failed. Cameron had become so angry that when his shouts had drawn a garden boy and he was freed, Sinclair had had to run all the way to Great-Aunt May for protection. And it had been Cameron she had asked Jocelyn to thrash, as punishment for frightening his younger brother.

  As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he noticed a plant growing on the threshold of the cell. Its great glossy leaves were speckled with sickly grey, like some loathsome disease. That, he thought, is what the blacks call dumb-cane; because a few drops of its milky juice on the tongue of a recalcitrant slave caused hours of choking agony.

  Once again he felt the dark, dirty tug at his loins. It was as if the evil thing were calling out to him.

  No-one crosses this threshold, it whispered. Even the blacks don’t venture in, for fear of their filthy heathen spirits. But you need not be afraid, for you are a white man. You could penetrate this darkness. And here you could ease the intolerable pressure building inside you.

  He felt the sweat break out on his forehead. His breath came fast and shallow. You could do it, he thought. And no-one would ever know.

  Perhaps. But God would know. And God, as Great-Aunt May used to tell him, has a special Eye for what is done in the dark.

  He turned and ran. He crashed through the undergrowth: raising clouds of midges, startling ground doves, and tearing his clothes. He didn’t stop until he was back at the top of the rise.

  ‘What am I to do?’ he whispered to the empty sky. ‘Why did You give me that woman and then deny me a son? How am I to come into my inheritance? Help me! For I am innocent!’

  But no answer came.

  He looked down at the great house, and felt a sudden horror at what his life had become. Soon he must go back down there and bathe and shave and dress, and sit at breakfast opposite that mocking, disobedient creature whom he had the misfortune to call his wife.