The House on Hummingbird Island Page 19

  Numbers looked straight at her. ‘He is. He’ll come soon. He said to tell you he’d be along in a day or two.’

  ‘A day or two?’ asked Idie quietly.

  Numbers nodded, then he said, ‘You very much want to see him, don’t you?’

  All the years of pent-up longing for Pomeroy and all it meant to her burst from her and then she answered, ‘How could I not? It’s been seven years . . .’

  Numbers waited a minute or two, then said, ‘He’s not well. He won’t say so, but he’s not. The army never knew, you see. The chest problem, he hid it from them, and the desert, being so dry, was dangerous for him . . . In any case, he’s not himself.’

  Idie nodded. She knew indeed what war could do to a man’s mind, for she knew the screams of Virgil and of Abraham and all the men at Boscobelle.

  Numbers looked out across the lawn and rubbed his temple, then turned back to Idie. ‘Gladstone –’

  Idie nodded sadly.

  ‘I’m sorry. That must have been a difficult time. Gladstone gone and Sampson too.’ Idie bent her head and Numbers waited. After a while he said, ‘We’re most impressed, Mr Pugsley and I, most impressed, with the bookkeeping, the accounts, the crops, the yields . . .’

  ‘We were lucky,’ said Idie simply. ‘We had sugar when the world needed it.’

  He looked straight at her, silent awhile, then nodded and said, ‘His Lordship was right, of course, about you. He always said you’d be equal to whatever you were given in life . . .’

  ‘How is he? Tell me –’ she asked in a flat, quiet voice.

  ‘It’s hard in England for the large estates, Miss Grace, and there’re harder times ahead. Many won’t survive; many have gone already. His Lordship, well, the fight went out of him when you left.’

  ‘I DIDN’T LEAVE,’ Idie burst out. All the sorrow in her, all the anger and the fear, flared in a sudden blaze. ‘All of you LEFT me. Grancat sent me away when I was only twelve, and then you left me, and then Treble left me, and no one ever came to see me till now. And people talked and stared and whispered, but none of you had the courage to tell me anything. ANYTHING.’

  Numbers looked her in the face, unflinching, and there was a deep sadness in his eyes as he asked quietly, ‘And now, Miss Grace, knowing what you know, do you wish we’d told you?’

  Idie bowed her head and struggled with herself awhile. After a moment or two of silence, she whispered simply, ‘No.’

  When she’d regained her calm, she met his eyes and said quietly, ‘Thank you. Thank you for the years that not knowing gave me. It was kinder that I knew nothing.’

  The breeze sighed through the trees and the sun dipped further and spilled orange and pink over the land and the sea, and the tea Mayella had brought out for Numbers remained untouched. He rose slowly, as though his bones suddenly ached more than they once had.

  ‘With regard to the matter of Carlisle Quarterly, we’ll have to wait until he returns. It is, you know, entirely possible that your mother wrote a will in his favour.’

  Idie interrupted, nodding, and said, ‘No matter, but do tell Benedict to come soon, that I long to see him.’ She turned to the serving table and added with a sad smile, ‘See, I’ve your old hat and glasses still. I kept them there, there where I could see them as a reminder to me not to be so horrid. You see, there were times when I missed you.’

  Numbers bent his head. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes as if there were suddenly dust in them.

  85

  For three days Idie’s new dress hung from the handle of the cupboard door. On the fourth day she placed it inside the cupboard. Edith came that morning and this time Idie didn’t make the excuse that a visitor was coming, but went with her to Boscobelle.

  Edith, sprightly and wry, saw Idie was subdued and watched her closely. At the end of the day as they returned to Bathsheba Edith remarked, a little drily, ‘You’ve a visitor.’

  Idie saw the sleeping figure on the chaise and mouthed, ‘Benedict.’

  She leaped from the trap and ran calling to him.

  He opened one eye slowly, then the next and looked at her. He wore uniform, was tall and broad, big and bearish now almost as Grancat, fair as he’d always been, only there was stubble now on his chin, perhaps two days’ worth.

  Idie stood in her white uniform before him and he gazed at her, bleary. Gradually, as he came fully to his senses, a smile formed on his lips and he rose and opened his arms wide. Idie hesitated, looking at him, seeing Grancat there before her almost for they were so similar in shape and size and gesture.

  ‘Little Idie?’ said Benedict, and Idie smiled because it was all now as it once had been, she the small and tiresome girl, he the older boy, mildly amused, mildly irked.

  ‘Benedict,’ she breathed, but the impulse to run to him was checked by his leisurely survey of the young woman he’d last seen as a girl of twelve. ‘When did you come?’ she asked. ‘And how did you get here? I wish I’d known. I wouldn’t have gone out if I’d known you were coming.’ As Idie raced on she never heard the gravel churn beneath the trap as Edith left, never noticed Gypsy huddled in a corner, knees to her chest, like a schoolgirl at assembly. ‘Did Mayella bring you some tea?’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Benedict, arch. ‘And yes, in fact, a sweet, dark-eyed person did come out but was quite foul to me.’

  ‘I see you’re quite at home nevertheless,’ responded Idie, smiling.

  ‘But then a white witch glided past and took pity on me and brought me tea and cake. It was rather good, in fact, that cake, but, oh, by the way, I’ve asked her to put those birds somewhere else.’

  Idie wondered if Benedict had seen the sun fowl in the dining room and felt guiltily grateful that Millicent was in her basket and the Jack monkey rehoused in the stables. ‘A gentleman can’t kip in an aviary. Idie, you’re grown quite savage; you’re every bit as unpresentable as they say.’

  Gypsy crept up and curled her tail about Idie’s waist. Idie wriggled a little and tried to unwind Gypsy’s tail, but Benedict grinned and said, ‘You got the better of Treble, didn’t you?’

  ‘It wasn’t me, in fact; it was the rum,’ said Idie.

  ‘Ah yes, Grancat always said she could drink even Pomeroy out of gin,’ answered Benedict, and they looked at each other and suddenly all the things they’d shared, all the things of their childhood – the trees and turrets of Pomeroy, Stew and Stables and all the things they’d known and loved – lay shining there between them bright as tears.

  Benedict turned and looked about across the lawn and into the trees. ‘I never realized then, really, what was happening, how far away you were going. It must’ve been a bit rough on you – was it?’

  ‘When you’re small you don’t question things, you just do what grown-ups tell you to.’ Then Idie added, with a mischievous smile on her lips, ‘More or less you do.’ She took his hand and said, ‘Come, I’ll show you everything . . .’

  Benedict stretched. ‘It’s damnably hot –’

  ‘Would you like to rest?’

  ‘Idie, I do NOT need a nurse,’ he interrupted sharply. Then he eyed her uniform, grinning, and said, ‘No, I was just long at lunch, that’s all.’

  Idie flung herself down again and leaned forward and cupped her hands around her chin. ‘Tell me everything. Pomeroy – is it all just the same?’

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s all as it was and more so. God knows how we’ll manage now.’ A sadness blew over his face like a sharp squall and seemed to take him away from her for a second or two. There was a fluttering in his fingers, and Idie wanted to hold his hands to still them. ‘It’ll all be different now, Idie; the world is changing, those big places, so many staff . . .’

  Idie thought about Myles and hoped Benedict might speak of him.

  ‘You know, Idie, it’ll be the same everywhere. There’ll be difficult times ahead.’

  He rose and she watched him, anxious, admiring, proud, seeing Grancat in his gesture as h
e lifted a sherry decanter from the drinks trolley. Idie took it from him and poured, thinking it was strange Mayella had not come to serve the drinks.

  ‘I’ll have a lie-down before changing for dinner,’ Benedict said.

  Idie wondered whether she too should change for dinner, since he seemed to think dinner dress was necessary.

  Benedict indicated to the hall and to a small green trunk that stood there in the centre. ‘We found it in his room, marked for you. You see, I think he knew – even before he left – he’d never come back. I heard that often out there, men saying they knew, just knew that they were going to die.’ He paused, about to say more, but then looked down and turned and went inside.

  When Idie opened the box she found all the tiny playthings of their childhood: a special smooth and magic stone fished from the river, her crown and his arrows, a story she’d once written him, the fleur-de-lis playing cards. She lifted the battered pack and held it in her hands, remembering the feel of the nursery carpet on bare knees, the games of Pelmanism. The knave of hearts had been lost then, would still be missing now. Tears fogged her eyes and she was submerged by a tidal wave of memories, tumbled, turned over and inside out in the surf of times gone by.

  She put both hands in that chest, searching blindly for what she knew was there. Tentatively she fingered the cover of the book, and, wiping her eyes, opened it and in it saw Myles’s careful rounded letters. She saw them and remembered too the roundness of his tears and in his tears saw all the depth and goodness of his heart.

  1. Idie is not the same as us.

  2. But she has the same name [GRACE].

  3. Grancat is mine and Benedict’s father but not Idie’s.

  4. Someone just gave Idie to Grancat, like a kind of parcel.

  5. Then [later, when Idie was bigger] a letter came telling Grancat she had to go back to where she came from at the start.

  6. Grancat says it’s because she is a lady of property now. We don’t know if that’s good or not.

  7. Grancat says that Blood is THICKER than Water. We don’t know what that means, but the result of it is that Idie has to go to a small and faraway place called Hummingbird Island.

  8. It is in the WEST INDIES and they are dangerous and only Treble will go to them because she is greedy for the money. You have to pay someone a good deal to go to them because they are awash with brigands and bandits.

  9. Idie won’t ever come back because the Indies are so far away.

  After these first childish entries came, in tidier, joined-up writing, the facts noted over the years from Idie’s letters. Beneath those, more recently, he’d written:

  How I missed you then, miss you still, dear Idie Grace. Pomeroy, March 1916.

  Idie closed it, bowed her head, lifted the book to her temple and whispered, ‘I never told you the other things, Myles, because I couldn’t. My mother was insane; that is why I was brought to Pomeroy. Babies are taken away from the insane. I was never able to tell you that, and neither can I say those words to anyone. These things run in the blood and one day I will go the same way as she. Benedict is here, Myles; you never came but he is here, and I promise you that I will look after him till he is well enough to return safely to Pomeroy.’

  86

  Before the ceremony for the unveiling of the cenotaph, all of the grand sorts of people of the island came up to Benedict and greeted him, and Idie wondered that he should know so many. He told her it was because he was an officer, and would one day be an earl, and she’d never known before that such things should make so great a difference.

  ‘Come, Idie, take your place in the world today,’ Benedict said, smiling and half teasing. ‘Sit with me.’

  Idie hesitated, but he took her arm and led her away from Celia out of the crowds and up on to the dais.

  People spoke to her there when they’d never done so before, and she stood at his side among bishops and dignitaries and before ten thousand people.

  The governor began to talk:

  Our memorial is wrought by island hands from island stone. Let it stand for those who fell.

  Idie looked out on the crowd which packed the square and the roof and tree of every building facing the square. She felt the breeze on her bare arms and saw that everything was splendid and shining. She was proud of Benedict and his uniform and his medal, and when she looked at him she saw Grancat in his height and bearing and it was as if she were back at Pomeroy and all the years between now and then wiped out.

  The world is girdled with the graves of sons of the Empire. In Flanders and France, Italy and Macedonia, the Dardanelles, Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, East Africa, West Africa, they lie dead. From all the tiny islands and all the golden links that bind the chain of Empire, these men went and these men fell that the Empire might stand.

  The Royal Engineers, the Royal Garrison Artillery and all the men of the British West Indies Regiment stood about the stone and with them stood a troop of Boy Scouts, and Idie remembered with a stab of pain another day she’d come to this same square and seen a dear friend there who’d turned away from her and gone to war. Some from Bathsheba were in the crowd, but Mayella had not come, nor Reuben, nor Clement. That Sampson’s name would never be engraved on that cenotaph tarnished the shine of the day.

  With full military pomp and panoply the cenotaph was unveiled. At its base were marked the names of those ‘who came not home’.

  Slowly and amidst absolute silence, the Governor read a list of names and each name rang through the air, but the name of smiling Sampson Sealy was not among them for he had been found guilty of insubordination and incitement to mutiny.

  Sampson Sealy, Idie said in her heart. Sampson Sealy of Bathsheba. He too, that your Empire might stand, came not home.

  Benedict clutched her shoulder and Idie saw that he was strange and sweating and she took his arm. She led him from the platform and he followed meekly.

  87

  Next day, when Benedict seemed recovered, they rode together along a path Austin had once shown her, through the mangroves and the palms. When they reached the cane fields, Benedict looked out across them and said, ‘They were once owned jointly, you know, Pomeroy and Bathsheba, by our many-times-great-grandfathers. When things were at their height for us Graces.’

  Idie said nothing and Benedict said, ‘It could be the same again one day.’

  No, Benedict, she answered inwardly, thinking of what ran in her blood. But somehow still the sunlight reached then the darkest parts of her and they rode on together and butterflies kissed her skin and made her heart light and it was as if she’d been lifted from an abyss.

  88

  Celia placed an envelope beside Idie’s coffee cup. Idie glanced at Benedict, then turned aside and read:

  Homeward bound

  Dear Idie,

  Strange and remarkable creature, do you hold court still under a calabash tree? Is there lemonade still and coconut cake at Bathsheba? Do herds of moons hang from your trees and monkeys from your rafters?

  Keep them there till I return, and always.

  Austin

  Idie slipped the letter into a pocket and did not think about Austin because Benedict was here and she must organize the picnic and the horses and her dress for the evening.

  89

  Idie pinned some white flowers in her dark hair and turned a little to see her reflection in the glass of the wardrobe. She stroked Millicent a little sadly and placed her in her basket. Benedict was right: you couldn’t go up on to platforms and stand beside governors if you had a mongoose in your pocket. She thought briefly of Homer, who had been stationed with the Crockets in the loggia because Benedict complained of his whistling and that he had only one tune.

  Idie placed a necklace around her neck. ‘It was my mother’s,’ Benedict had said when he’d given it to her.

  Idie had thought of Pomeroy and the distress of the large estates and answered shyly, ‘They are the Pomeroy diamonds and they will be for your wife.’

 
‘Quite right.’ He smiled and added, ‘They should be sold to pay for the roof. But Grancat said they must be yours. He wanted you to have them, Idie, so there they are.’

  Now she fastened the diamonds and looked at herself, not quite liking to think how she was wearing a half-acre roof about her neck.

  Benedict stood at the foot of the stairs, a Sherry Cobbler in his hand. The string of diamonds about Idie’s neck flashed red in the setting sun and he smiled and said, ‘You scrub up all right.’

  Idie’s hand went to the cold hard stones and she paused, then rushed on down the stairs.

  ‘Must you be such a whirlwind?’ Benedict asked, laconic and amused. ‘Ladies don’t run.’

  ‘They do sometimes,’ said Idie, a little defensive, then, to herself, I must remember not to run – no mongooses and no running.

  ‘Yes, perhaps they do, sometimes, but only if a fine young man is waiting to take them to a dance at the best house in town.’

  Idie collected her cape from the chair in the hall. She saw Celia there with Delilah, beside the chair. Celia started then as she sometimes did, as if Idie were a ghost, then held out her hand to Idie’s hair and face, and that made Idie smile to think that she was so like her own mother that Celia should start at the sight of her.

  ‘Thank you, Celia, for the dress,’ Idie said gently. ‘Thank you.’

  She stepped towards the door. There, on the balustrade, beside the water that fell in a glittering stream from the gutter, swinging his legs and chewing cane, was Austin.

  Idie faltered.

  Austin rose, slowly, his eyes on Idie, on her dress and on her face, then on the diamonds about her neck. Idie looked back at Austin, searching in the man who stood before her for the boy who wore red shirts and whistled.