The House on Hummingbird Island Read online

  That what I heard, here where I sitting and writing this, that what she said. Then when you were gone, she like a child, and Carlisle he make her sign the paper that he want and at sundown that day Lily go to swim, same as always, to Black Water Creek, but she never come back because the moon was full and the water high and angry. Later she was found and buried in that creek and no one know to this day if it were her intention to leave this earth that night.

  The things Carlisle say to you are not true. She was never wrong in the head. She seeing things, but they were visions from the henbane, the same one that grow once below your window. The henbane, the devil’s trumpet they call it here, is in the seeds of the flower. That seed make the mind see things. Carlisle he collect the seed and give it to your mother, and later to yourself also.

  Idie remembered the flowers that stalked dreams in the time of her fever, her nights, and she felt the heat rise in her blood.

  It was the devil’s trumpet turned your mother’s mind and killed her.

  Miss Grace. I write here from the Oxford Dictionary. It say that henbane give

  INTOXICATION

  DELIRIUM

  AMNESIA

  PHOBIA

  MYDRIASIS

  I do not know what these words mean, but they dangerous things and I certain she were all of them because she were not herself. Celia like a mirror – there no badness in her, but she scared and she do only what someone tell her she must do. Carlisle he all pretty-pretty with poor Miss Celia and tell her that this place will be for them, for he and she together. God is my witness, I heard him say so and I see her smile and nod and cry.

  I see all this and I hear all this with my own ears and eyes but I have no way of telling till now. You have your father’s kindness and your mother’s beauty and that why sometimes poor Celia see you and she scared like she seen a duppy, for you so like your mother it sometimes like Lily is here with us once more.

  God bless you, Mistress Grace. I know your mother smiling now. She look down and see the woman her baby is become.

  Idie didn’t know how it was that her head was in the stars but her feet were still on the cool tiles. She looked out through the fustic trees and her heart was singing, because the way was clear and open to her now.

  Phibbah had written more, but Idie put down the book and walked alone along the narrow path she’d never taken, a path that led between cannes de riviere and balisiers to Black Water Creek. The air was soft and the water clear and deep. On a sloping bit of land, overlooking the water, stood a pair of crosses, shoulder to shoulder, all overgrown with spathes and a tangled spray of cattleyas.

  She sat awhile looking at the winged petals of the cattleya that were a soft deep pink, and at the engraving on the white cross, picked out in gold:

  Cecil Grace

  Forever in the heart of Lily.

  And on the other, plainer:

  Lily Grace

  A curious peace settled over Idie and she stayed there a long while, still and calm, and a green-and-amethyst hummingbird came and put his long bill into the open part of the cattleya that was deepest pink, and the purr of its wings fanned her cheek and fluttered the sheets of Phibbah’s book.

  Later Idie turned and watched the silver sea break on the beach. As it came and went it gathered up her fear and hurt and washed them away as writing on sand.

  Idie stayed there till the purple night fell from the sky like a stage curtain, till the stars brightened and the moon rose and cast her light, like the touch of a cool hand, on Idie’s forehead.

  97

  It was with a light heart that, some hours later, Idie took up reading again from Phibbah’s book.

  Gladstone was like only one that know, except myself, that your mother write that will. Gladstone never did wrong in his life except sign that will, but he never knew what was in the will that he signed because he could not read or write. And your mother she was the mistress and Gladstone only the foreman and she telling him to sign and Gladstone he ashamed to say he could not read, and that why he sign the will.

  I the only one that saw it all so there was no one to tell what happened because I cannot speak.

  When Gladstone die then Carlisle see at last he can present the will for now there is no one to tell that he, Carlisle, forced your mother to sign that will and that he, Carlisle, forced poor Gladstone to make a mark on a thing he could not read. Carlisle see now the house can be his and he have no need of Celia and he tell her, here in this kitchen, that all this house and land would be for him only, not for her. Then when you ill like your mother was, Celia understand then that the bush of henbane is the evil in the house and she go somehow to the police and tell them of the will and she come back and go to the bush of henbane and she trying to pull it with her bare hands. Enoch he find her there by the henbane and he help her, and in the end they kill the thing and that why you were never sick again.

  Those two things, the henbane and going to the police, are the only things poor Miss Celia did in all her life that she was not told to do by someone else.

  That is all I have to tell.

  It is all true, the Lord be my witness.

  I, Phibbah, write this for the lawyer men.

  This day, 10th May 1919.

  98

  Mayella and Reuben came into the kitchen and stood there holding hands, and neither could find their tongue so Idie began to giggle.

  Then Reuben took Mayella’s hand and said to Phibbah, ‘We getting married, Grandma.’

  And the old woman rose up waving her arms about and there were shining tears on her riven cheeks and Reuben said, ‘Now you stop that, Grandma, or I gon’ cry too.’

  Idie pulled the white cloth from Celia’s sewing table and wrapped Mayella in it head to toe and said, ‘The Indies will never see a prettier bride.’

  Mayella beamed.

  ‘Till you marry, mistress . . .’ she said, adding shyly, ‘Master Austin come one day for you maybe.’

  ‘He doesn’t care for me,’ said Idie, turning away.

  99

  Outside the little Baptist chapel, Idie, Homer aloft on her shoulder, waited for Numbers. He told Idie that Lancelot had died of grief, that Grancat lay in the Pomeroy churchyard, buried between the wife he’d loved and the dog he’d loved. He mentioned too, by the by, that Carlisle had been brought home in irons and jailed for his part in the mutiny at Taranto. Idie handed Phibbah’s book to Numbers.

  Phibbah waited at the door to the chapel, her turban higher, her robe brighter than ever before and she had more bangles about her wrists than Idie had ever seen in one go, though she’d removed the pipe from her mouth for the occasion.

  When Mayella came, she was with Nelson, all her seven sisters and five brothers following, and the dress Celia had made for her was as glorious as the foam of a wave.

  Mayella paused beside Idie and stroked Homer’s beak and said, ‘One day you marry, mistress, and on that day all the hummingbirds they be about your head like the company of heaven, and the pigeon on your shoulder and the mongoose and the monkey about your neck, and the horse at your side . . .’

  ‘No one’ll have her.’

  Idie turned.

  ‘Idie’s wayward and spiny and no one’ll have her.’ Austin smiled and held out his arm to lead Idie into the chapel.

  Mayella Mayley married Reuben Sealy that day and the singing swelled the walls and raised the rafters of the tiny Baptist chapel.

  100

  Idie returned late. The Idie Book was where she’d left it on the veranda table, a pencil beside it, and the moon so low and bright that Idie could read by the light of it. She picked up the book and looked at the new page she’d begun.

  THE ONLY THINGS THAT MATTER

  1. My mother did not take her own life.

  2. She was not mad.

  3. She loved my father, and my father loved her.

  4. She loved me too but sent me away to keep me safe.

  5. Grancat also sent me away to keep me safe, be
cause the world is not kind if you are not the same as everyone else.

  6. Celia is my mother’s sister and I will look after her as my mother would have wished.

  7. Sampson Sealy’s name will one day be on that cenotaph because Austin will make sure that this is so.

  8. My mother loved this place and planted every tree and flower.

  9. Let it be written across the sky in fire that I will never leave it.

  She took up the pencil, wondering about number 10, because if you made lists it was more satisfactory to finish on a round number.

  She looked at the old calabash tree and thought how she was as deeply rooted at Bathsheba as he, that she loved its glittering rainshine, its blossomy shade and its iridescent nights.

  She looked up to the spangled sky and felt so light and clear that she might float up and go cartwheeling from star to star, streamers for her tail, comets in her slipstream, go cartwheeling on and on, all the way to morning.

  The wind stirred and started a soft, cool hum about the veranda. It danced lightly through the leaves of the fustic trees her mother had planted and it carried on its song the scent of the candle flowers.

  Homer whistled, and not even his whistling could break the spell for it rose and melted into the breeze and became part of the song of the breeze that skipped through the leaves.

  Idie turned to tap his beak. Only it was not Homer whistling, but Austin, and he was behind her, reading over her shoulder from the Idie Book, and then Homer started whistling too, and it was good he’d done so much practising for he was perfectly in tune with Austin.

  Austin read on and Idie waited, breathing in the scent of candle flowers and honeysuckle till he took the pencil from her and wrote:

  10. It is written in fire, Idie wayward Grace, between the stars, across the moon and all along a rainbow, that

  I LOVE YOU.

  Everything was as it had been, the calabash was in his place, the stars in theirs, the tree frogs in the fustic trees, Gypsy in the rafters, Baronet in the hall; everything was as it had been and as it should be. Only the song of the breeze had dropped and somehow everything was still and suspended for a moment or two till Homer, whose conversation seemed to have developed a little, said, ‘IDIE’S WAYWARD AND SPINY AND NO ONE’LL HAVE HER.’

  Austin took Idie’s hands and said, ‘Idie Grace, I give all of me to you if you will have me.’

  The wind took up its hymn once more, but now the sound it wound about Idie’s heart had something new in it, something clear and shining, and Idie knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  AUTHOR NOTE

  Hummingbird is not a real island, only a distillation of memories of different islands. Nor is the Grace family based on any real family, nor Bathsheba on any real house – and neither are place names, though taken from various islands, meant to be read as real places.

  However, the flora and fauna described, as well as the historical facts, are particular to the islands of the West Indies and for these I am indebted to, among many, many others, the following books:

  The West Indies and the Spanish Main by Anthony Trollope

  At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies by Charles Kingsley

  Six Months in the West Indies by Henry Nelson Coleridge

  A naturalist’s sojourn in Jamaica by Philip Henry Gosse and Richard Hill

  Two Years in the French West Indies by Lafcadio Hearn

  West Indian Summer by James Pope-Hennessy

  Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire by Andrea Stuart

  The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker

  Jamaica’s Part in the Great War by Frank Cundall

  Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War by Richard Smith

  THE BRITISH WEST INDIES REGIMENT

  In October 1915 King George V appealed for recruits from the Empire. A new British West Indies Regiment would be formed and accepted into the military fraternity on equal terms with men from the Motherland. On Sunday 31 October the King’s Appeal was read in all the churches of all the British West Indies. Men were urged to volunteer, brothers ‘to know each other as brother without thinking of race, nationality, colour, class, or complexion . . . to join hands and hearts together’.

  Men of the West Indies left their islands willingly and with optimism, pride and enthusiasm. They hoped to serve their King and hoped also that the war would bring opportunity for racial equality. In addition many were driven by fear that German dominion would bring a return to slavery. The optimism with which they left was, however, soon to be squashed by a mighty military apparatus designed to perpetuate the social structure of empire. The men of the sunny British West Indies who volunteered to fight for the King they regarded as their own, for the country they regarded as the Motherland, found a chilly reception in England.

  There were no firm guidelines regarding their recruitment, the difficulty being whether war officials should or should not accept ‘men of colour’. A stream of edicts, inconsistent, ambiguous and contradictory, was issued. The Manual of Military Law of 1914 stated that ‘any Negro or person of colour’ was an alien and could not hold a rank higher than NCO, but also stated that a serving black man was ‘entitled to all the privileges of a natural-born British subject’. In May 1915 the War Office stated that West Indian volunteers would be accepted if their transport costs were met by their own governments and if, on arrival, they enlisted as infantry men only for the duration of the war. In October 1915 the Colonial Office and the War Office agreed terms for men of the BWIR with pay set at standard British Army rate. In February 1918 a telegram was sent to the War Office stating that since blacks could not be recruited to white battalions, they must go to ‘native units’. In June 1918 this policy was overturned and black volunteers of the USA, Canada and the UK were recruited directly to regular British units on standard British rations and standard British pay. However, in response to a query from the Colonial Office it was later clarified that this policy did not, in fact, include the men of the Indies: ‘It was not, and is not, the intention of the Army Council to accept for units of the British Army natives of unmixed blood from the colonies . . .’

  What all this meant in practice was that some black volunteers were accepted and some were not, according to who was recruiting, his personal preference and which particular instruction he had come across. Those who did manage to enlist, once trained and transported out, found that they were to be utilized only for routine manual labour rather than the front-line fighting for which they longed.

  Because the BWIR was now to be demarcated as ‘native’ troops, they were deployed as labour units on fatigues, loading and unloading the kit of white regiments. The BWIR first battalion was utilized for guard duties (the guarding of Turkish prisoners in Palestine), the second deployed on lines of communication in West and East Africa. The first, second and fifth battalions in Egypt did play some much-praised front-line roles, but for the main part, during 1916 and 1917, the majority of the BWIR unloaded shells from supply trains, relayed them from park to dump to ammunition column, built roads, constructed railways, mixed concrete or dug trenches.

  Bitterly disappointed, often they found themselves in the firing line yet not allowed to handle a weapon nor fire a shot in anger themselves. They were regularly in exposed and dangerous positions, subject to shellfire and infantry attack, and regularly suffered casualties, yet were without weapons for self-defence.

  The refusal to deploy black West Indian volunteers on the front line caused a slump in their morale. Their pent-up desire to feel that they were actually striking the enemy was exacerbated by official blunders, unequal pay, poor medical treatment and racial discrimination. The men of the BWIR were, in general, excluded from the games, cricket matches and other facilities enjoyed by the regular British soldier. The substandard native hospitals designated for West Indian soldiers and ‘native’ labourers recruited from South Africa, China, Fiji and Egypt were unheated and the food poor, while German prisoners
were kept in comparative luxury.

  Furthermore, the BWIR, now officially designated a ‘native’ unit, was excluded from the general pay increase and War Bonus of Army Order 1 of 1918, despite the fact that the BWIR had been specially granted the same pay as other British Army infantry units. Unsurprisingly, many men of the BWIR returned radicalized by ill-treatment and discrimination, and their anger and sense of injustice fuelled the emergent nationalist movements in the islands that were already bent on social, political and economic reform.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sam Angus grew up in Spain. She studied Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, taught A-level English for a while, designed clothes for a while longer and is now a novelist. She lives between London and Exmoor with an improvident quantity of children, horses and dogs.

  ‘He’ll always be true, faithful and brave, even to the last beat of his heart.’

  It’s 1917. In the trenches of France, miles from home, Stanley is a boy fighting a man’s war. He is a dog handler, whose dog must be so loyal that he will cross no-man’s-land alone under heavy fire to return to Stanley’s side, carrying a message that could save countless lives. But this journey is fraught with danger, and only the bravest will survive.

  As the fighting escalates and Stanley experiences the true horror of war, he comes to realize that the loyalty of his dog is the only thing he can rely on . . .

  Also by Sam Angus

  Soldier Dog

  A Horse Called Hero

  Captain

  First published 2016 by Macmillan Children’s Books