The House on Hummingbird Island Page 16

  67

  Ypres

  August 1916

  Dear Idie,

  Grancat said once that war puts everything in perspective, and now I have so much time on my hands to think, I know that he was right. I’ve been thinking so much of you and of how we treated you, and I am ashamed that I could once have written in the Idie book, ‘I DIE IS NOT ONE OF US’; that so petty a difference could once have meant so much. I’ve been thinking too of how you were sent so very far away, so young and so very much on your own. I asked Grancat before I left for France why it was that he let you go. He said it was for your good, or that was what he thought then. He was silent awhile and then said, ‘Some things are easier when you’re young. You see it takes experience and the passing of the years before we’re able to tell what will be a turning point in life and what won’t. I only hope Idie didn’t understand what a turning point leaving Pomeroy would be. They say children don’t have the wisdom to tell what’s in the ordinary sort of run of things and what’s outside of them. I hope that was the case when Idie left, Myles, I hope that was the case, because it’s all I have in my defence, God help me.’

  That evening by the fire when I thought he was dozing he suddenly turned and said, ‘Never look back, Myles, never look back.’ But he’d been looking back. I know that because he must’ve been thinking about you all along.

  There was head and heart – somewhere – in what he did to you, though I’m sure you couldn’t see it then. I think Grancat thought sending you away was giving you your best chance in life, people and society being what they are. Did he ever tell you that? I shouldn’t think he did. He’s always been economical with words. Only the dogs, in his opinion, require any great amount of converse.

  Have things turned out all right? I do hope they have and that you forgive us all for what we did to you. I will write again soon.

  All love, Myles

  PS As soon as the war’s over I’ll come and visit. All attempts to educate me will be over and I’ll have a penny or two of my own.

  PPS Benedict’s been transferred to the British West Indies Regiment in Egypt. He’s a bit put out about that as he thinks its rather infra dig to fight alongside the colonials. It’s a funny thing though, isn’t it, to think that there might be some of your lot alongside him. How unexpected life is.

  68

  Mayella handed Idie an envelope. Idie saw the precise, careful hand she’d last seen so many years ago when she was just a child. Grancat’s hand. Oh God.

  Idie’s trembling fingers slowly unwrapped the tissue paper from around a photograph. On the reverse was written:

  Ypres

  For Idie

  Are your suns always gold and your leaves always green? I will visit your equatorial idyll and dine with mongooses . . .

  Then the sniper had found his mark.

  Idie turned the photograph over.

  Myles, in the uniform of the Scots Guards, the thistle and the wreath he’d so wanted on his cap. The sunshiny hair, the rain-shiny eyes, the freckles still on his clear face, Myles, the attic room they’d shared, the long summer evenings, the dark winter nights, his hand clutching the brown velvet of the curtains, Myles who put wishes on stars, Myles who kept a list of all the things he knew about Idie, Myles of the pirates and picaroons, Myles of the blackberry stains and undone laces, Myles whose tears were so round because his heart was so much bigger than everyone else’s.

  Myles, dead.

  Idie lifted her head and saw the leaves so unlikely-round and green that Myles might have drawn them. She clasped the paper in her hands and howled, with the brief short howl of an animal whose throat is cut.

  69

  Bathsheba

  September 1916

  Dear Austin,

  Once I told you I was surprised that you wanted to be my friend because no one else would be. I didn’t know then quite how surprised I should have been because then I knew nothing. Now I know so much that nothing can ever hurt me again, and if you never do anything else for me, promise me one thing only:

  THAT YOU’LL NEVER GO TO WAR.

  From Idie

  On the envelope she wrote:

  For Austin Hayne

  DO NOT PUT IN THE DUNGEON

  70

  Austin sat a little awkwardly on the balustrade. Through the window Idie watched him carefully. He didn’t swing his legs nor whistle. He’d not come for a long while, this boy who’d once been her friend.

  ‘Not him too . . .’ she breathed. ‘Not him, please, not him . . .’

  She saw folded and sticking out from his trouser pocket a piece of paper and wondered if it was the note she’d written.

  ‘Missus! Where you? Master Austin has come.’

  Idie shrank back against the curtains as Mayella came into the hall.

  ‘Miss Idie. You come with me. Master Austin here.’

  Mayella took Idie by the hand and led her out.

  ‘Idie,’ said Austin gently.

  Mayella led Idie to a chair but Idie didn’t sit. As Mayella left, Austin went to her and tried to take her hand.

  ‘Listen Idie—’

  ‘Why should I listen now when once you could have told me something, something about someone that was so important to me, and you never did?’

  Austin was silent. He bowed his head and said eventually, ‘Look, Idie, I never spoke because – well – what could I have said? There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t only have made things harder for you, nothing that could help you.’

  ‘Go, Austin. Go away.’

  ‘No. Don’t send me away, because I’ve something I must tell you, something you must hear only from me.’

  Idie stepped back towards the door. ‘No.’ She clapped her hands over her ears.

  ‘Idie, hear me out. Idie, I’ve enlisted—’

  ‘No!’ she yelped as if scalded, snatching her hands now over her eyes. ‘No, no, Austin, not you too. Not now – now – Myles – Myles died, Myles, Austin, did you know that?’

  Through all the empty space that was inside her, pain howled and gusted. She bent her head and her hands scraped the skin of her face.

  He came close to her and placed a hand on her shoulder,

  ‘I leave tomorrow, on the same ship as Sampson.’

  Idie shook herself free and walked into the hall. Her back turned, she said in a level, dead sort of voice, ‘Go. If that is what you want, go.’

  Austin followed her into the hall and said from the foot of the stairs, ‘Look forward, Idie; no good ever came of looking back. Live your own life, and live it the way you want it.’

  71

  ‘Come, mistress.’

  Mayella’s dress today was of white broderie, her hair freshly braided and ribboned. She led Idie to the wardrobe. ‘You’re coming with us. Reuben and Clement are going to take us all, me and Phibbah and Miss Celia and –’ she hesitated – ‘Enoch he come too. It’s not good for you to stay so much in the house. Sampson and Master Austin both are sailing today.’

  There was a new dress in the wardrobe, and when Idie went downstairs in it Celia was there and she smiled shyly at Idie. Idie went to her and hugged her, and when she drew back she saw that Celia’s eyes were filled with tears.

  An immense crowd was gathered in the harbour. The BWIR marched along the waterfront and people stretched their arms out to them. Idie watched them pass, saw their shining eyes and smooth young faces and shrank back, numb with horror at what might lie ahead for them.

  Celia started and Idie turned and saw.

  ‘Quarterly,’ she breathed, ‘enlisted.’

  Idie saw the trembling in Celia’s hands and the tears in old Enoch’s eyes and she went and stood between them and took each by the hand and stayed with them.

  The bands played and the flags flapped and Sampson passed by, tall and smiling, head turned as he searched the sea of faces for Mayella. Mayella saw him and waved, her eyes shining with pride. Idie watched Sampson pass by and started with fear for the boy
who was so good and gentle. Panic stricken, she searched the ranks of men for Austin, but it was Mayella who saw him first.

  ‘Is Massa Austin there; he very handsome, mistress.’

  Idie started with shock to see him in full uniform. She saw then that he was strong and tall and fine, and when he marched past he turned his face a fraction to her, and Idie saw then that the boy she had known was gone and in his place stood a man who would never again go about with mongooses in his pockets.

  The sun sank and streamed across the water, the ship sailed out and the band played and people waved and there were tears in the eyes of all that were there.

  Taking Gypsy’s cold dry hand in her own, Idie turned for home.

  72

  There was a letter on the hall table.

  Bissett

  22nd September 1916

  Dear Idie,

  I took a risk and came back to say goodbye.

  Mother says do go to her if ever you need anything. She’s not at all a usual kind of person and you’ll be all right with her. She’s working at Boscobelle. It’s a special sort of hospital. Some of the first men have already returned – the lot who went to Africa in 1915. The ones whose nerves have been fractured by the shelling and the noise are housed and cared for at Boscobelle.

  Father sails with me. I see now, only too late, that you didn’t know that, did you?

  He is chaplain to my regiment. You see, I could never have let him go and not gone myself. How could I not have gone, when he is going? How could I not when he is sixty and I am seventeen? My first duty is to him, and besides, I couldn’t make anything better for you by staying.

  You are a spiky, porcupiny kind of person and I know you won’t write, but I, at least, will miss you, and you, at least, might. Wish me luck.

  Love Austin

  73

  Idie folded the letter carefully and that night she took Tommy from the bathtub and walked down to the beach and watched him follow the stream of the moon, flip-flopping on his paddles down the sand to the sea.

  She remembered the tiny beetle-sized turtle that Austin had brought to Bathsheba and put in her bathtub. She remembered Myles who was dead, Benedict in the desert, Sampson and Austin bound for Egypt. She thought of the boy who’d once filled Bathsheba with monkeys and toucans and knew that he had changed, that the girl she’d been was also changing. Shadows had gathered and massed in her, and her spirit at seventeen was the ghost of what it had been at twelve. She was as if stripped bare, the last strands of childhood finally falling from her.

  A wave ruffled over the sand and carried Tommy away on a flurry of moonlit surf. Watching him go, silent tears slid down Idie’s cheeks for the sadness of all the things that change.

  PART V

  March 1917

  74

  1917 was the year of the alphabet and of knitting. There were newspapers that came all too often and letters that came only too infrequently. Neither the police nor the postal service were operating; the people of the island were restless and discontented.

  In the mornings Idie rode about the fields with Clement, learning the nooks and crannies of the place. In the afternoons she stayed with the women in the kitchen, Celia at her new sewing machine, Mayella knitting, Phibbah writing in her exercise book. Gypsy rope-danced in the bougainvillea, Baronet wandered about the hall and Homer looked down on all the inferior species in the garden from the balustrade, and it could seem that nothing at Bathsheba had changed. But when the palms were shaken by a breeze it was as if they’d some news to tell, as if their torpor had been ruffled by the roar of distant guns.

  Idie raised her eyes to the kitchen window and scowled. Homer had acquired a new skill. He’d begun to whistle and he favoured Austin’s rowdiest sort of tune and the sound of it jarred on Idie’s nerves.

  ‘G, H, I, J,’ said Idie, her mind still on Homer’s annoying new habit.

  Gypsy made jabs at her page with her pencil and Mayella said, ‘Oh Lord, even that monkey is faster than me.’

  ‘K, L, M, N.’

  Reuben came to the door and waited, hesitant to enter the women’s domain.

  ‘Miss Mayella . . .’

  Mayella saw the envelope in his hand, the words ‘ON ACTIVE SERVICE’ and the ring of the Army Post Office, leapt to her feet and snatched it from him. Idie saw Austin’s handwriting and started at it.

  Mayella tore at the envelope, lips trembling, pulled out the letter and looked at all the words on it.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Mayella’s face quivered, like the surface of a stream. Deep-eyed and picturesque indignation formed on her face. She looked from Idie to Phibbah and back again.

  ‘What Sampson do that for? What he want write so many words for?’

  Phibbah rose, waving her arms about, and shooed Reuben from the room with squawking cockerel sounds.

  Reuben grinned. ‘All right, Grandma, I goin’ now.’

  Idie picked up the letter and read to Mayella.

  Jordan

  April 1917

  Dear Miss Mayella,

  I am in Machine Gun Crew number 162. We all West Indians and men from Guyana from the Bahamas also and we are working with the Australians. We are always digging or marching. We march across Sinai desert and see no enemy all the way. At Gaza many men were killed by the Turks and many men sick of the malaria. It’s mighty hot, hotter than home. Your father here too, but not in the 162 crew. He’s a lance corporal now. I have bit of trouble from a white officer but is nothing to worry for.

  Miss Mayella, you keeping well? And the mistress? She well? And young Reuben? Does Reuben look after the mistress’s horse good?

  Write to me soon, and I will ask someone here read your letter to me. Master Austin write this letter. I tell him what to write and he write it all down. Maybe the mistress read it to you.

  Is a fine place there, Miss Mayella, back home. Now I seen all the other bits of the world, I know you, Miss Mayella Mayley, be in the best bit of it all.

  Sampson Sealy

  Phibbah looked with concern and affection on Mayella – whose lips were trembling and whose eyes were deep with moonshine – who loved Phibbah’s own grandson so.

  ‘Oh my Lord, my own father a corporal – and what does that mean?’ demanded Mayella. ‘And Sampson –’ she took the letter from Idie and squinted at it in disgust – ‘Is so, I going to learn to write quick and tell him there is no reason to be putting them words on paper. If he only stay here, there no need to write them when he’s by my side to speak them.’

  She snatched up her pencil crossly and formed a determined, triumphant sort of A.

  75

  ‘Sampson gets money from the army, all the men from here get land by the Rio Grande, we’ll buy a house maybe one day together, me and Sampson. The government is giving the soldiers land for cattle when they come back, land and money,’ said Mayella one afternoon.

  Idie looked up, stricken, but Mayella bent her head and pouted in mock annoyance at the letters she was to copy.

  As Idie tried to accommodate the idea of Mayella one day leaving, the door opened abruptly and Austin’s mother Edith walked in, brisk and small and bright-eyed. She yanked off her hat, revealing white hair cut in such jagged layers that it might have been done with garden shears. With an air of incontrovertible authority and the volume of a gong, she said, ‘I have it on good account that you are not faint of heart. Idie Grace, are you faint of heart?’

  Idie had not yet formulated an answer when Edith said, ‘No, I don’t think you are. Well, get your hat.’ She stared at Idie and mused as though thinking aloud, ‘Marvellous. Most poetic. One couldn’t make her up, could one? I must use her.’ Edith turned to the door. ‘No time to waste, we’re doing the afternoon shift.’

  Idie stared at her. Most poetic? She told Austin my mother was a poem, Idie thought. So she thinks we are alike. She thinks I will one day end the way my mother did. Idie shrank inwardly from Edith, who had known her mother. I do not want to talk about these things. I
do not want to know more than I know already.

  ‘Of course, certain things won’t do at all.’ Edith was looking about the room, and Idie too looked about the little kitchen, at the knitting on the table, at Phibbah and her pipe, at Celia, at Gypsy, wondering which particular element of it all would not do. She concluded it was the fact of the small monkey at the table, pencil in hand and the alphabet written out for her.

  ‘Get your hat, girl, chop-chop,’ said Edith, and Idie did as she was bid and selected a straw hat from the array of them behind the kitchen door, placed it on her head and tilted her chin at Edith to tell her that she didn’t care that certain things would not do. Gypsy sprang to Idie’s side and selected a hat for herself. She tended to favour the yellow one, possibly on account of it being the same colour as bananas.

  Edith paid no attention to the monkey in the yellow that clambered into the trap and sat beside her. Daisy trotted away and poor Baronet whinnied that Daisy should be leaving so soon.

  ‘Number one,’ said Edith, ‘I shall bring Celia my Vogue patterns. She’s got a good hand but a poor eye. She needs direction, direction’s the thing. Number two, poetry. For the women. No good copying out dull old prose when learning to write. No, no, no, poetry’s the thing. Number three, most important, I’m under instruction to take you, Idie Grace, in hand.’

  Idie wondered if all Austin’s relatives made lists and took people in hand with no warning and at unexpected hours. Idie thought that Edith was as strange and unconventional a person as she’d ever met but perhaps all poets went about giving robust instructions to comparative strangers without drawing breath while at the same time driving traps without the use of any reins at all.