The House on Hummingbird Island Read online

  Things stirred outside. There were startled bird shrieks, shrill and metallic.

  The frog song poured in through the window, only it wasn’t song, it was a million million whispers, a million million deafening whispers from the birds to the frogs and the frogs to the birds.

  She is mad, she is mad. These things run in the blood, you know, they said to one another, and their whispers joined the laughter of the moon, and the scent of the trumpet flowers and they swelled together as if to fill the room and erupt the walls of it, and in Idie’s head all the puzzle pieces that had lain about disordered rose all at once, twirling like confetti and turning their dark undersides to her.

  The vines were creeping, inch by inch, into the room. Even if she closed her eyes tight she knew they were still there, twining themselves around the head of the bed, clinging to her hair, tangling their tendrils around her and thrusting their jeering trumpet mouths in her face.

  Burning and shivering by turns, Idie clung shaking to her pillow and to Millicent, who squirmed and protested at the ferocity of her grip.

  54

  The heat grew in Idie’s body and the thick fog of fever swelled in her brain. The vines flapped and rattled. Black clouds banked up. The wind rose sharply and seemed to blow from all sides of the compass at once. The doors and windows creaked and the air grew sulphurous. The palmate devil hands of the breadfruit tree clawed the watery sky. A damp chill rose in wreaths from below the window and curled upward, carrying with it the sinister scent of the trumpet flowers.

  A procession of goblins slid in and out of Idie’s tremulous consciousness: grinning gravestones and rummy men, a face clear as water and slippery as glass, the simple sister of the mad mother, a pair of sewing scissors in her hand.

  With no warning the sky roared and split. Thunder burst and cracked as if to blow the world apart. Rain fell in solid sheets and the fever in Idie raged.

  Morning came finally, grey and late and sluggish, and pushed the rain aside. Mayella came in with the tea tray.

  ‘Where is Carlisle?’ asked Idie.

  ‘He gone. No one seen him.’ Mayella turned her attention to the floor and tutted at it. ‘Roaches . . . come in when it rains. Plenty rain in the night, plenty roaches in the mornin’.’

  ‘Roaches?’

  ‘Big fat roaches. All over de place.’ She gave a gesture that encompassed the entire room and bed and furnishings as though the roaches might be in the cupboard and in all places, but Idie was built now of solid darkness and no longer cared about such things. The roaches could creep and crawl through all the cracks and crevices of her house. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered any more. Nothing meant anything now.

  Mayella tutted now at the window. ‘That jumby tree is maybe stopping your sleep. Too many duppies in him. I going to tell Enoch to plant overlook peas in all the corners.’

  ‘Overlook peas?’ asked Idie weakly.

  ‘Oh yes, the overlook pea stops the evil eye.’

  Grancat was right: if you lived in wet and boggy places you knew as fact that there were fairies, and if you lived in hot and sticky places, you knew as fact there was an evil eye and that therefore you must have overlook peas.

  ‘Where is Celia?’ asked Idie.

  ‘No one seen her, and no one seen Carlisle.’

  ‘Did anyone report him?’

  ‘No. He is your father’s family, Miss Idie, and he is Enoch’s son. That why.’

  Idie turned away.

  ‘The Crockets?’ she asked. ‘And Delilah?’

  ‘They was all in Phibbah’s rooms. Celia she put them there. The pigeon is here with you. The mongoose is here with you. The monkey is thinking she ill with fever and she thinking she must have a big soft bed with four posts to it of her own. The toucans are on the trolley now. The horse is in the hall. Sampson is looking after them all like they his own children.’

  Idie reached a hand out to Millicent and knew it was good to have a parakeet and a mongoose in your room, but perhaps, to be on the safe side, one needed an overlook pea as well.

  In the late afternoon Mayella came again. She lit a candle, then went to the window. ‘I close the window. That stop the duppies coming in.’

  Idie, with a little fear, thought of the night that was coming again and heard herself ask, ‘Are there duppies in your house?’

  Mayella beamed. ‘Oh no, certainly no, thank the Lord, my house has no duppies. The dragon’s blood bush, that stop them.’

  The dragon’s blood bush was a new item to Idie, but it was the duppies in her own head that she must fight to keep away.

  ‘Why do the duppies come?’

  ‘They come only when a coffin is not closed, if you’re not buried proper in a church.’

  An unclosed coffin . . . That was Mother’s coffin. Mother was not buried in a church because she killed herself. She killed herself because she was mad and haunted and I am haunted too.

  ‘Don’t leave me . . .’ Idie whispered.

  ‘It’s all right, mistress – me and Phibbah stay in the house with you tonight.’

  55

  Pomeroy

  North Devon

  November 1915

  Dear Idie,

  Everything is rationed, but we still have our hens and don’t have to eat powdered eggs like everyone else. Do you remember the house cow, Clover? She’s getting old and doesn’t make creamy milk any more. Stables has signed up with a machine-gun regiment and Silent says he’d go too if only he were younger and Stew grumbles all the time that it’s hard to find anyone to help in the house. As soon as I’m seventeen, which is not very long, I’m going to sign up, because there is nothing wrong with my feet at all.

  Love Myles

  PS The clues you sent for the Idie Book don’t add up to anything but I think you shoudn’t find any more clues because they might not be good.

  ‘My mother was mad, Myles,’ whispered Idie. ‘She killed herself. It runs in the blood, madness. I haven’t told you that, Myles, because that is a thing I can barely say to myself, let alone commit to paper.’

  56

  In the dark nights that followed the storm, there were no stars, no moon. Mayella and Phibbah took turns at Idie’s side. For a fortnight her body burned like a furnace. The doctor came again, once, perhaps twice. Gypsy brought Idie wet flannels from time to time, and from time to time Homer said, ‘Water for the mistress.’

  On the fifteenth morning, when Mayella came, Idie asked, ‘Why did they send Nelson to Pomeroy for me?’

  ‘Gladstone work here a long, long time and he love this place. He saw Carlisle grow greedy and he saw Carlisle mean to make trouble. First your father died and then your mother, and when she die, that when my granfer send my father to fetch you back.’

  ‘Tell me what he knew about my mother. Tell me everything, Mayella, everything.’ But when Idie turned to her she found Mayella had slipped from the room.

  Idie crept down the stairs to the dining room. Clutching her notebook she stood before the portrait of her grandfather Arnold and looked up into his sad eyes, and saw then that he was looking towards the gatehouse where Honey had then lived with Enoch. Honey. Idie pulled up the sleeve of her nightdress and stared as if mesmerized at the bare skin of her arm. She lifted her other hand and touched it to her skin gently. She stared down and then stretched out both her arms and looked at them wonderingly, turning her palms first uppermost then downward.

  ‘I never knew –’

  She dropped her arms suddenly and turned to her father and saw for the first time that Cecil’s skin was so much darker than her own, and how his eyes were black and troubled. Did you know what was happening to my mother, that it ran the blood, that it would happen to me? She howled and tore at the book in her hands, page after page ripped till all the pieces of it were shredded and she was blind with tears. She collapsed sobbing to the floor, the shredded papers all about her.

  Somewhere there were alarmed calls. Shouts rang through all the empty spaces of the house
.

  ‘The missus! Where the missus?’

  The voices came again, nearer, and now there was another voice among them.

  ‘Get me a blanket, cold water.’

  The same voice came again, whispering, ‘Why did no one tell me? Why did you not call for me?’

  Idie clasped her hands over her eyes because of all the lamps and lanterns. ‘Fasten the shutters,’ she instructed. ‘Put out the lights. Put out the voices in my head.’ She tore at her hair, and banged her fists against her forehead. ‘It – it was always here – here – here – always in me – in my blood, in my veins . . . waiting.’

  A blanket was placed around her shoulders.

  ‘How long’s she been like this?’ Austin whispered to Mayella, and Idie looked his way with wild, unseeing eyes.

  ‘They sent me away from Pomeroy. I wanted rainshine eyes and sunshine hair, I wanted to stay there, to be like them . . .’

  Austin put an arm around her shoulders and whispered, ‘It’s rather good you’re not.’

  ‘She – sent me away when I was small . . .’ Idie’s fingers clawed at the blanket. ‘She put me on a boat . . . she was mad and cruel. There was no church burial – haunted, my house is haunted because of her, and she gave it to Carlisle – they sent for me again – and brought me here but it is not mine – and one day I will leave, and where will I go then? . . . Carlisle and my mother’s watery sister will live here – the trumpet flowers told me that when they crept into my bed and put their taste in my mouth, their smell in my veins.’

  ‘Get the doctor back, Mayella,’ said Austin. ‘Send Reuben for him, quick.’

  Idie clawed at the blanket and clutched it up to her chin. ‘Poison,’ she whispered. ‘They’re trying to poison me. I am scared of the light, scared of the moon when she grins and laughs – and scared that the stars will fall –’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Austin whispered. ‘It will be all right.’

  57

  After a week or more the rain stopped suddenly, as if turned off by a tap. The mildewing books on the shelf by Idie’s bed gave off a damp earthy smell that mingled with the wet of the vines. The fierce, long fever was ebbing, the heat running out of her veins, leaving only fears and shadows inside her.

  The door opened and a current of air came through, brisk as a dash of icy water. A cool hand was placed on her forehead, her hand turned over and the pulse of her wrist counted.

  ‘The fever’s dropped. She’s overwrought, no more than that, nothing more sinister. She’ll return slowly to herself in due course.’ The doctor put his things back in his bag.

  Then Austin spoke and Idie was surprised that he was there. ‘Stay with her, Mayella, don’t leave her side.’

  The door shut and Mayella bathed Idie’s forehead. Idie asked weakly, ‘Baronet?’

  ‘Sampson groom the horse in the house, feed the horse in the house, make the horse fine and shining.’

  ‘Bring Enoch to me, Mayella.’

  Enoch came and stood in the doorway, a little anxious. Idie looked for a minute at the man whose wife was her own grandmother. His hat had grown still more dilapidated, tufts of it sticking up now at all angles and fraying as though a bouquet of flowers had sprouted there. Idie smiled, thinking it was good to have someone about the place out of whose head flowers grew. She pushed the sheets aside and rose and went to him.

  ‘Enoch –’ she asked gently – ‘Enoch, Honey was your wife?’

  Enoch smiled broadly and removed the fragile hat and said, still beaming, ‘Yes, mistress, Honey my wife.’ He beamed again. ‘She were a beautiful woman.’

  ‘She was my grandmother.’

  He smiled again and chuckled. ‘She love me but also she love de master, your grandfather, Master Arnold, an’ Master Arnold he love her, because all the world loved Honey. Yes, mistress, is so, for she were pretty like the sun, an’ pretty like the night.’

  Idie smiled and took his hand and held it in both her own.

  58

  The next day Mayella bathed Idie from head to toe and led her to the wardrobe. Austin had sent note that he was coming to see how Millicent was, and Idie thought how like a boy it was to say he was coming not to see her who’d been so ill, but to find out how a mongoose had been faring all this while on a soft and downy pillow.

  ‘The doctor tried to move them out of the room, the mongoose and the pigeon. And that little mongoose she only small as a mango –’ Mayella bared her own pretty teeth and snarled – ‘but she got sharp teeth and she go like so and then the pigeon he fix the eye like so on the doctor, and the feathers on the pigeon’s head, they tremble like all the wrath of heaven is in him and like the Day of Judgement is come and then the white doctor he step quick-quick to the door. Oh yes, they like two angels, the mongoose and the pigeon.’

  ‘PARAKEET,’ said Idie.

  Mayella then said she’d get the egg for the mongoose, banana bread for the pigeon and lemonade for Massa Austin because Phibbah in the kitchen was too busy waiting for the Second Coming to put the cake on the plate. Mayella buttoned Idie’s dress and placed Homer on Idie’s shoulder, Millicent in Idie’s straw basket.

  ‘Baronet,’ breathed Idie, leaning over the balustrade. She went to him and rested her head against his cheek, and then she felt a little cold nose nuzzling about her knee and looked down to see Delilah there, her eyes deep and full of sorrow.

  ‘Aunt Celia?’ asked Idie, noticing then that there were no cut flowers on the hall table.

  ‘Miss Celia she not here. No one seen her,’ commented Mayella, ‘and that Delilah she cryin’ all mornin’ and walking in circles roun’ Miss Celia’s chair.’

  For a moment Idie was withdrawn and lost in thought. Celia is my mother’s sister. Whatever she may have done or want to do, it is my duty to look after her.

  ‘Come, missus,’ said Mayella. ‘Master Austin is waiting on the terrace.’

  At the door she said, ‘Master Austin, the missus still not herself. You stay ten minutes only.’

  ‘Mayella,’ answered Austin, ‘your mistress is prickly as a porcupine and is sure to drive me away long before ten minutes is up.’

  Idie walked slowly out and stood before him, her head high, her heart numb, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

  He was once my friend, she thought. But now he knows what is coming, what I will be. Now he knows what is in my blood . . .

  ‘Why did you come?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I came. Why would I not come, Idie?’

  She whispered, ‘I am a bad lot.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ he answered airily, smiling at her.

  But Idie was overwrought and burst out, ‘You knew all along, didn’t you? Knew everything and never said – all those times we spent together and you never said –’

  ‘Knew what? What did I know?’

  She clutched his arms and shook him, saying, ‘You never said. Never told me anything.’

  She swayed and fell to the ground then, and Austin called for Mayella and for the doctor.

  While he held her, he whispered, ‘Told you what, Idie? Who’ve you been listening to? I told you all you needed to know.’

  59

  The next afternoon, Idie began to teach both Mayella and Phibbah to read and write. There was a space in her now, a crater in her centre like a grave, but she would do some good while she was here, while she could. They were upstairs in the loggia where the breeze was brisk and cool.

  ‘D, E, F,’ said Idie.

  Phibbah’s concentration was fierce, her bony hand gripping her pencil like a vulture’s claw clutching a tiny mouse, her letters swift and precise.

  Idie found it hard to keep Mayella’s mind on the matter in hand, for she was distracted and absent. She watched the girl’s brow crease, her hand hesitate halfway through a C. Gypsy sat beside Mayella, with her cheek and own paper, making a mark on her paper if ever Mayella did on hers.

  Mayella slammed the pencil on the table and looked up, eyes brimming
. ‘How do I think about this, mistress, when my head is so full of worry? When Sampson is going to go in two months from today?’

  ‘Sampson?’ breathed Idie, stricken. ‘Not Sampson?’

  There were footsteps in the corridor and Idie turned. Sampson and Enoch walked together towards the loggia. Behind them was Sampson’s brother, Reuben. Sampson was self-conscious in khaki uniform which stood about him like a cardboard casing meant for someone else entirely.

  Phibbah rose squawking from the table and she ran at him and tore at the buttons of his tunic, and reaching as she did only up to his collar, she beat him about his chest.

  ‘Grandma, I am going; there’s nothing you can do,’ he said gently, taking her hands from him and turning to Idie. He smiled, shyly, proudly, as he spoke. ‘Mistress.’

  ‘Not you, Sampson . . .’ whispered Idie.

  Sampson turned the black peaked cap around in his hands, fingering the badge, the Tudor crown and ship of Columbus in full sail proper, its laurel-and-palm wreath.

  ‘Is in maybe six month from now that I will go,’ he said.

  Mayella looked at him, the tears shining in her eyes.

  ‘Mistress, I am going to miss this place, the horse and all,’ said Sampson, and Idie was put in mind of Stables and she reflected that it was a sign of good character to work with horses. Perhaps the horses made the man good, not the man the horses.

  ‘I bring Reuben here.’ Reuben stepped out from behind Sampson, too shy to raise his face to Idie. ‘He’s a good boy, my brother. He will stay till I come back, take good care of everything.’

  ‘I know,’ said Idie, smiling at Reuben, ‘but I’ll miss you, Sampson.’

  Sampson shuffled a bit and said, ‘I bring Enoch also. He wants to talk.’ Enoch stepped forward and raised the ancient hat from his head.