The House on Hummingbird Island Read online

  When Idie could get a word in edgeways she asked, rather meekly, ‘Where’re we going?’

  ‘Boscobelle Hospital, afternoon shift. This week I’ll be collecting you every day at two and dropping you off at eight.’

  While Edith took a notebook from her bag and busied herself with what seemed to be another list, Daisy, without any instruction at all, followed the white road that curved through high, shimmering cane. A man was hobbling towards them, hatless and meandering, in the violent sun.

  With barely a glance up from her notebook Edith said, ‘Oh, do stop there, Daisy, just by that fellow.’ And Daisy did as she was bid. His home-made crutch was bound with rope and he was singing and praying, drifts of sense, of nonsense and of prayer, all colliding with one another like songbirds into window panes.

  ‘Your name?’ asked Edith.

  ‘He who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved . . .’

  ‘Here, you are in need of a hat.’ She placed her own rather unusual confection firmly on his bare head. ‘Now tell me your name.’

  ‘He who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved . . .’

  ‘Oh dear, poor fellow. We’ll send someone up for him. Oh dear, how will this little island cope?’

  Idie didn’t answer as Edith seemed to be conversing only with Daisy, who heaved a sad sigh by way of answer and trotted on. Edith took up her list again. As they crossed the spiny ridge of the island the wild glitter and flash of the east coast came into view. On the outskirts of Boscobelle a group of men stood beside placards advertising the Caribbean League. Edith pulled up and peered closely at them.

  THE BLACK MAN WILL GOVERN

  HIMSELF IN THE WEST INDIES. IF

  NECESSARY FORCE & BLOODSHED

  WILL BE USED TO ATTAIN THAT OBJECT

  Once Edith had managed to read the words she said loudly, ‘Force and bloodshed. Can’t blame them, I’m afraid. Of course they want higher wages.’ She turned to Idie. ‘Another strike coming – I hope you’ve enough of everything?’

  A young man on crutches put aside his placard and raised his hat.

  ‘Good day, Mrs Hayne.’

  ‘Ah, Errol,’ Edith said to him, then turned to Idie and said loudly, ‘Errol’s feet were amputated, clean off, the pair of them.’

  Idie was deeply shocked. She stared resolutely at Errol’s head, but Errol simply nodded and said, ‘Is so.’

  ‘He was one of the first lot to come home. The ship was diverted to Nova Scotia and they got frostbite – no blankets on the ship – a hundred of them lost all sorts of bits of themselves. There’s nothing for these men, they’re destitute, no pension, nothing.’

  ‘Is so,’ said Errol again, with no trace of self-pity.

  Idie, flooded with sudden anger, said through her teeth, ‘That would never happen if women ruled the world. Women don’t wage wars and they never forget about blankets.’

  Edith turned sharply to Idie and looked at her all over, top to toe. ‘Quite so, quite so. You are most advanced, most advanced.’

  Edith had communicated somehow to Daisy that they were to move off again, and Daisy did as she should. They drew up outside a huge stone building surrounded by a handsome garden.

  Edith marched Idie across the lawn into an empty high-ceilinged hall, saying, ‘Work alongside me till you know the ropes.’

  A soft wind blew from one end of the place to the other. From behind closed doors and from upstairs came screams, song, prayer, moans and whimpers, all confused in a continuous incoherent stream.

  Idie paused.

  A refuge for the insane.

  Is this where I will end my days? And am I to work here until then?

  ‘Come along. No time to waste,’ said Edith, and Idie braced herself and followed and together they moved from room to room, leading patients out into the garden, walking with them among the trees or settling them in chairs. Some were noisy, some violent or scared, wounded or maimed, but the mind of each and every one had unravelled.

  Edith cajoled a man into a rattan chaise she’d placed in the speckled shade of a mango tree.

  ‘Abraham was among the first to go out. He volunteered in 1915. The government made no provision for the wounded, none at all. There’s nothing for Abraham now, he’s destitute.’ Edith was as flat and matter of fact as though Abraham were not there. Abraham himself was entirely silent, as though he’d been once so astonished that he’d fallen permanently into shock and would never talk again.

  Idie, standing by, placed Abraham’s prayer book in his hand and spread a blanket over his legs. Abraham’s fingers scratched at the pages of it, and Idie turned away from Abraham, whose eyes would never see again, whose fingers could never find the page they sought.

  ‘Not a bad place at all for a troubled mind, is it?’ said Edith, looking towards a skirt of flowers around the foot of a tree fern. ‘A garden’s the thing, and a view of the sea. Green and blue.’

  ‘But Abraham can’t see the green and blue,’ said Idie, turning away and looking out through the flame trees towards the flashing turquoise sea. She thought of Benedict and of Sampson, and wondered if Edith thought of her husband and her son.

  ‘Oh yes, Abraham, you can, can’t you? And you can hear them in your ears, feel them in your veins; they are quieting as a psalm, the green and the blue, are they not, Abraham?’ Edith plucked a flower and handed it to him. ‘Blue bougainvillea, Abraham. It is as a balsam to you, is it not?’

  A man wandered alone about the lawn, an odd rhythmic twitch to his shoulder, as if he were forever adjusting the position of a rifle on his back. He fell suddenly to the ground and cowered in the centre of the lawn, his arms about his head, whimpering.

  ‘Oh dear. There’s Virgil,’ commented Edith. ‘Poor Virgil, the screaming shells, he’ll carry them forever in his ears – it was the noise, you see, that cracked his sense. He’s only oddments of memory left and they come and they go like birds.’

  Gypsy, delighted by Virgil’s antics, plucked a posy of flowers and took it to him curled aloft in her tail. She soon became a pet of all the men. Their song and nonsense enchanted her and there was no end of men to give flowers or fruit to; no end of attention and affection in return. And Idie thought, Gypsy, at least, will love me still, when my time comes, when my own mind unravels.

  76

  ‘The drawing room,’ Edith said one morning as they drove through the gates of Bathsheba.

  Idie looked up and wondered at this most recent of Edith’s many mysterious pronouncements. For all Idie knew, all poetesses were moved to cryptic utterances at unexpected moments, and this time Idie decided to ignore Edith, but Edith insisted.

  ‘Do you never go in there?’ Without waiting for an answer she went on, ‘No, no, I didn’t think you did, and that’s as well because when you do you’ll find you’ve no curtains in there. Yesterday it was the library curtains and today it’s the drawing-room curtains. Celia will strip your house naked.’

  Idie looked at the yellow-and-white sprig print of her dress and giggled, ‘Well, I’ve no need for curtains and things.’

  ‘It was clever, you know, to get Celia sewing, very clever. Everyone’s a better person for a sense of purpose and, yes, that reminds me, Vogue patterns. Vogue patterns for grown-ups, because, after all, you might one day grow up.’

  ‘I’ve no ambition to grow up,’ said Idie. ‘I’ve done quite enough of it already and I find the benefits of it debatable.’

  Edith looked at the young woman dressed in drawing-room curtains, at the monkey beside her, and raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Quite right. No point to growing up at all. Nevertheless you might one day find it’s just happened to you without any volition of your own.’

  Idie darkened to think of the unavoidability of any further growing up.

  ‘Most poetic, of course you know, to hold on to your innocence while others rush to throw it off. Nonetheless, the misty layers of that childhood, like the skins of an onion, will fall away whether you like it or not.’r />
  Quite so, thought Idie. So many have already fallen away that there is nothing left of me.

  ‘Austin took a leap away from you without you noticing, didn’t he? The journey towards adulthood comes in fits and starts, and he somehow leaped ahead of you.’

  At that Edith bent her head and busied herself over notes in her book: 1. Vogue Patterns.

  They reached Carriacou and, without any kind of instruction from Edith, Daisy drew up outside the post office.

  ‘Read it to me,’ instructed Edith, handing a postcard to Idie.

  Idie took it and looked up, hesitating.

  ‘I’ve not got my reading glasses,’ said Edith, looking into the middle distance. ‘Besides, I’ve not the courage. You read it.’

  Daisy set off and Idie read aloud:

  Southampton

  June 1917

  Dear Mother,

  Filthy cold here but the people lined the streets to meet us and stared and cheered, amazed at the colour of our hair and skin. The English don’t appear to have even heard of such a place as the West Indies and had no idea we are part of the Empire.

  Our men are very surprised for England is the country whose anthems we sing, whose history we’ve learned and whose flag we have come to serve under. I will write again when I have more time.

  Love Austin

  77

  Idie heard news of Austin only by reading his letters to Edith. In September 1917 a letter came from Egypt.

  Dear Mother,

  We’re in Jordan, mainly on fatigues, which is a bore, but there’s lots of hanging about so I can write a little more now.

  The men enjoyed the training here and had a chance of some fighting at Umbrella Hill and they’ve proved to the world that the men of the West Indies are as soldierly as any other. But now the BWIR are back on fatigues as usual. What’s worse is that the War Office doesn’t want us armed even though our duties are often in the line of fire. Dammit, it’s not a native battalion – the men volunteered, but they’re not being treated as a regular fighting unit, they’re being treated as a native unit as if they weren’t suitable for the front line, and made to dig water pipes and trenches, do road mending and construction.

  It would be a fine thing if you, with your fierce sense of justice, were here, Mother, to knock some sense into some of the officers. My men aren’t even allowed to play cricket. I would dearly love to give them a game – they watch so eagerly as the white men play. They’ve been cheerful and uncomplaining, but now there’s a bit of discontent because they just want to fight. Yesterday there was some trouble. The men were stacking shells alongside the railway line again. They came under fire – infantry fire – but of course they themselves couldn’t fight back – one of them was a fellow called Nelson – do you remember him? He’s Mayella’s father, from Bathsheba –

  Idie looked up at Edith. Mayella’s father –

  a stern, quiet chap who works the docks at Georgetown – he was amongst them. He survived but the men either side of him fell. A young chap called Sampson, who s always looking out for Nelson, went to his officer and remonstrated with him, begging that they be able to defend themselves against enemy, fire, but the officer tried to strike him. So you see, the senior officers who are seconded to us from the English regiments don’t understand the men from home at all and can be high-handed with them.

  Nelson, Sampson, Austin, all in Egypt. Nelson who’d stood at the door of Pomeroy and been turned away by Silent for the colour of his skin, Nelson who’d taken a small baby all the way to England for the sake of an estate that was not his, then returned twelve years later to fetch her back again. Nelson, Nelson, who stopped to talk to horses in the rain, Nelson, father of Mayella and of Clement, of all in all eight fine daughters and five fine sons, had gone from this tiny faraway island to fight for the motherland and not been issued with a gun because of the colour of his skin.

  Idie braced herself and read on:

  Egypt is a strangely beautiful place. There’s something heroic and dashing about the quality of the fighting here – it’s hand-to-hand combat and charges with bayonets. You’ve at least got a chance here, not like Flanders; here it’s man against man and the best man wins. I only hope my men will get another chance to fight. I’m glad to have seen the Promised Land, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, but none of it is as lovely as home.

  Do send some books – and binoculars if you can spare them. Send them to the camp at Kantara as we’ll be there soon and I’ll pick them up on leave. Oh – and do please send jam. Army jam is lousy. In fact all the food, if it comes at all, is lousy.

  Are you keeping well? Does your poetry improve at all, Mother, for Father’s sermons don’t, though he’s much loved by the men here. Anyway, poetry and sermons both are improved by brevity. Do you hear anything of Idie Grace? Is she well? Do send news of her for I know she’ll not write to me.

  All love, Austin

  ‘Heroic and dashing. Hand-to-hand combat and charges with bayonets,’ snorted Edith in disgust. ‘Toerag. No jam for him and certainly no binoculars.’

  Idie said fiercely, ‘He’s right. You must recruit a regiment of women and go to Kantara and tell the English officers how to look after the men from here.’

  78

  One day in February Idie received a letter from Benedict.

  British West Indies Regiment

  Cairo

  10th October 1917

  Dear Idie,

  I’m rather put out on account of one of the chaps in my regiment knowing you – fellow called Austin – seems a reasonable enough type – but really, Idie, you can’t go about with that sort. What has become of you?

  The heat is a strain on the nerves, and your colonials should be better suited to it than we, but they’re falling like flies, ninety per cent of them down with malaria.

  Chaps here from your neck of the woods, they’re not really up on the rules, any of them. Had to give one or two of them a bit of a talking-to the other day. Must be difficult living among those sorts, though I expect there are some better types there too.

  There’re regimental games tomorrow – camel racing and all kinds of fun. Still I’ll be glad when it’s all over and I can get back to jolly old London and dances and clubs, though you can have a bit of a laugh in Cairo, all sorts of bars and things there.

  I hear your sugar planters are making a fortune because of the shortage of sugar so I see things have turned out all right for you. Perhaps I’ll pay you a visit once all this is over.

  Did you know I’ve had another promotion?

  Love Benedict

  Idie wondered about regimental games, London dances and Cairo bars. Benedict might come and visit. She looked across the lawn to the long, low white house, the veranda with its trailing vines, the calabash and the moonflower trees and thought how Benedict would love it all. She wondered about the West Indians being so ill with malaria and wondered too that they were not up on the rules and thought then that Benedict would help them and soon love the men from here; he was Grancat’s son and would know how to look after his men.

  79

  Once again Edith handed Idie an envelope from Austin and Idie read it to her.

  Kantara

  Egypt

  15th November 1917

  Mother,

  No jam, no binoculars and we’re still stuck just stacking shells. They want to make us a native regiment so they don’t have to give us the pay increase – everyone else gets 1/6d now. I’ve written to appeal as there’ll be trouble otherwise. The men are making the same sacrifice other regiments make and that has to be recognized, regardless of race. The temperatures are growing high among the men though they seemed to enjoy the Cairo bars and now at last they’re allowed to play cricket, which helps. We’ve won seventeen out of the twenty matches we’ve played at the Alexandria Cricket Club. Our star player is Sampson, from Bathsheba (the one I wrote about in my last letter), though you’d never believe it from the look of him.

  Mother, I
cannot imagine you make a kind nurse. Go easy on your poor patients – don’t be all vim and bicarbonate. You’ve not been out here, you can never understand what they’ve seen.

  It’s not all beer and skittles in this corner of the world, you know, so do please send the jam and binoculars.

  Love Austin

  PS If you send the jam, I won’t say anything horrid about your poetry again.

  80

  ‘I’ve a letter to read today,’ Idie said, her voice shaking, because this was a letter from Austin and it was the first she herself had received from him.

  Edith looked at Idie, sort of long and quiet and sideways, and said, ‘You don’t have to read it to me, you know.’

  Idie wondered at that but answered brightly, unfolding the letter, ‘Oh, I do. You share yours with me.’

  Kantara

  20th December 1917

  Dear Idie

  I’m forced to beg you to send me some jam because Mother’s taken um and won’t send me any of hers.

  Edith chuckled.

  Do ask Phibbah, that pipe-smoking sphinx in your kitchen, to make some of her guava jam. You can send it to me at Kantara – we’ll be stuck here for a while.

  Your second cousin once removed, Benedict Grace, and I are in the same regiment. I think you know that – though he doesn’t think much of being placed with us lot.

  I want you to read the next bit of this letter to Mayella. At last we had another bit of fighting and the men were armed and given a chance to show again what they can do.

  In the Jordan Valley we climbed 4,000 feet and walked fifteen miles, with no water and no rations, and then had to go straight up and raid the Turk trenches. Nelson and his men went in as calm as if they were on parade and never faltered even under heavy fire. I was standing with the major. We watched the men advance at point of bayonet into a hail of artillery fire as if they were simply walking through a rain shower, and the major said, ‘My God, Hayne, don’t they know what shells are?’