The House on Hummingbird Island Read online

  Mayella stepped back against the door, but Idie went close to her and asked again, ‘Was there no portrait of my mother?’

  Mayella put the platter on the sideboard. ‘I been here six month only,’ she said, and fled into the kitchen.

  7

  Idie woke with a jolt. She tossed and turned for a while then looked at the bedside clock and saw that it had stopped and that there was no way of knowing what time it was. She touched the tips of her toes on to the rush matting, crept to the window, pulled up the sash, pushed open the shutters and paused there. The dark outside was softer and more scented than the dark inside. The night was just as it had been when she’d gone to bed, the frog chorus coming and going, the white candle flowers in the trees, the darting fireflies, the moon tired and fallen on its back as if faint with the singing of the night, bats flitting in and out of its light stream, jerky and angular, the stars disordered and dancing, not at all in their proper places. Idie wanted to reach out and tidy the stars and nudge the moon back up into her proper place.

  A bough creaked and bent under the weight of some night creature. The tree frogs sang and the darkness teemed with flitting, darting, diving things. Idie remembered the upholstered still of Pomeroy, the sloping attic walls, the sprig-printed curtains, the pink-striped wallpaper, and thought how sad it was to be sent around the world like a lost penny to a place where there was a secret and no one told you anything and everything was strange and disquieting.

  She thought of her new aunt and that unsettled her some more so she told herself that two sisters were not necessarily alike. My mother was strong and kind and capable and all the things a mother needs to be. That is all I know, even though I’ve come all this way to this house that was once hers, and is now mine. As she stood alone at the window, Idie gathered together all the clues she had about herself. Her arrival in Devon was the stuff of Pomeroy legend: enjoying the pleasurable state of mind induced by six whisky sodas and a bet on a winning outsider at Newmarket, Grancat had been accosted by a stranger on a Paddington platform, a bundle pressed on him.

  ‘Eh, what’s that?’

  ‘Grace. She carries the name of Grace, Your Lordship.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Grace.’

  ‘Good God, man, you’ve already told me that . . . What sort of Grace? Where’s it come from?’

  ‘The Indies, sir.’

  ‘Well, take it back at once.’

  ‘She’s no other relative, only yourself, sir.’

  The earl harrumphed and then, perhaps due to the sweet state of mind induced by whisky sodas, he peered at it, quite as a matter of form, since he didn’t know what to look for in a baby.

  ‘Hmmm, it’s the right colour, but it’s not a Pomeroy Grace, you know, not one of my sorts of Grace . . .’

  ‘There’s only yourself, sir, she could go to.’

  ‘What’s its name?’

  ‘Idie, sir. Idie Grace.’

  The earl roared with sudden glee. ‘Good God, d’you hear that? Idie. Idie – the outsider. My ticket – see, Lady Idie – thirty to one. Five pound to win.’ Grancat clapped the open-mouthed stranger on the back, took up the baby and danced a surprisingly agile pas de basque, and then he, who’d never before handled a baby, tucked her under his arm along with the Racing Post and chuckled all the way back to his West Country estate.

  And there the child lived happily ever after, Idie said to herself, until of course she was sent back again to where she’d started out. And that was when things started to go wrong, because in that place there was a secret and no one would answer any questions there any more than they would at Pomeroy. So the child would have to be secretive too and look in all the corners of the place and listen at doors all over again.

  Idie started. The vine leaves scratched against the shutters and the palms made muffled, whispering sounds. She started again, for there’d been other noises too, from inside, footsteps perhaps in the corridor. Idie tensed and listened.

  Take charge of yourself, Idie Grace, she whispered to herself. All old houses whisper and speak at night.

  She crept back into bed, but for a long time she couldn’t sleep and grew increasingly certain that someone was in the corridor.

  After a long while, her mind turned to the portraits in the dining room. She remembered Celia’s whimper when she’d asked about her mother, and felt a sharp prick of fear: Don’t go looking for ghosts, Nelson had said. There was a secret in the house, and that secret made people afraid and it somehow had to do with her own mother, but Nelson had said that her mother was strong and kind and capable, so why would there be a secret about her? Strong and kind and capable. Idie climbed into bed and said these words over and over in her head like a rosary.

  8

  When she woke, Idie went to the window once more. The garden shimmered with light. Tiny, brilliant birds flitted from tree to tree, piping and fluting. The blue of the sea flashed between the glistening green of the leaves and everything was sparkling and luminous. Idie breathed deeply, feeling the sun on her skin, letting the fears of the night creep back into their shells like snails.

  Beneath the window, beside the ivory trumpet flowers, was a low, feathery sort of tree. Tufted pink blossoms lay recklessly about it and amidst the blossoms sat a yellow-breasted finch. Idie watched him and wished Myles were there to tell her what kind of finch it was. Then she thought that it would be afternoon now at Pomeroy, that the horses would be dozing beneath the turkey oak, Grancat in his chair with the Sporting Life, Lancelot at his feet by the fire, dreaming rabbity dreams. Benedict would be away at Eton, and Myles, well, without Idie, Myles would be idle, perhaps just drawing on a window pane. He never knew quite what to do with himself if Idie wasn’t there. It was she who began all their adventures; she who climbed the trees and explored the roofs and turrets of Pomeroy. She didn’t have to be careful; she didn’t have the breathing problem that dogged the Pomeroy Graces, didn’t have to avoid excitement-inducing activities that triggered the attacks that Myles and Benedict were prone to.

  Idie used to think that if she were to have an attack then she would prove she was the same as them, would be one of them, and at lunchtime once, when all were there to see her, she’d thrown herself to the floor and gasped like a stranded fish. Dr White had come and prodded her and listened to her heart and finally pronounced her, ‘Fit as a flea. A vigorous hybrid.’ ‘Vigorous hybrid,’ Grancat had echoed, chuckling. ‘Quite so, quite so.’ Idie didn’t know what a vigorous hybrid was, but she had been somehow ashamed because Myles and Benedict weren’t vigorous hybrids.

  She looked again at the yellow finch and thought she’d write now to Myles and tell him that in the house that was her own there were yellow-breasted finches and creeks and gullies and hummingbirds. She took a paper and pen from the escritoire and wrote.

  Bathsheba

  23rd May 1912

  Dear Myles,

  My sun is not the same as your sun. Yours is just a faded copy of mine. My house has trees with flowers that open like moons when everything else closes –

  She scrubbed that out. Myles wasn’t interested in flowers. She wrote instead:

  I have a parakeet but he is a bit uppity and doesn’t always talk. He sleeps on the veranda –

  She twisted a strand of hair through her fingers and sucked the pen.

  because there is a strange butler here called Quarterly who is scared of parakeets. He is not at all as nice or obedient as Silent. He has VIEWS OF HIS OWN and I don’t think Silent has any of those, does he?

  These are three things I have discovered for the Idie Book:

  1. Arnold Grace was my grandfather and Cecil Grace was my father, so you see I AM a Grace. You always said I wasn’t but I AM, even if I am not a Pomeroy sort of Grace.

  2. I have an aunt called Celia and she is my mother’s sister. We didn’t know about her, did we?

  3. Mayella, she is the housemaid here, has a father called Nelson, and Nelson was the man that came to Pomero
y with the letter. Do you remember that Silent wouldn’t let him into the house, but Grancat said he must be all right because the horses seemed to like him.

  There’s a finch sitting on my windowsill. He is bright yellow. What kind of finch is that?

  Love Idie

  PS None of the clocks work here, because of the water in the air, so everything is suspended and strange and like being in a story book.

  PPS The frogs sing all night. They live in trees.

  That was the detail that she knew would most annoy Myles and make him wish he were there. Then she thought how it was only after you got to the end of a letter that you realized what should be in the middle of it and added:

  PPPS People play cricket here and Treble says it is just like a little England, so please tell Grancat it is QUITE SAFE to come here.

  Then she took her ‘My Mother’ book from the bedside table and wrote:

  I can’t find any paintings of my mother but I have to do some more EXPLORING.

  There are lots of things that people don’t want to tell me.

  Then she reread the earlier entries and scowled and crossed out ‘I have no living relative’ and wrote instead:

  I have an aunt. She is my mother’s sister. She’s here because she’s here.

  Mayella came in with a tray. She saw the open window and tutted. Idie hid the book in a drawer.

  ‘How-day, Miss Idie? You hungry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Idie was always hungry. Mayella set down the tray of tea and biscuits on the escritoire. Idie took a biscuit and went to the window. The finch flew from the tree to the sill.

  ‘The windows open, then the birds come in, take sugar from the cake, butter from the bread.’ Mayella spoke up-and-downly, like the cooing of a dove.

  Idie crumbled the biscuit on to the peeling paint of the sill. The finch watched and twitched. Idie waited. It hopped up and pecked.

  ‘You feed the birds, that’s why you’re hungry. Open the windows and everything comes inside.’

  Things coming in through windows and doors put Idie in mind of the night. She frowned a little and turned to Mayella and whispered, ‘Does anyone sleep in the house, apart from myself and Miss Treble?’

  Mayella’s enormous eyes grew bigger if possible than they were before. ‘Oh no, nobody sleeps in this house, mistress. Only Phibbah in the—’

  ‘There was –’ Idie interrupted – ‘I heard something—’

  ‘Oh no, nobody wants to sleep in this house.’

  Idie stared at Mayella a little astonished. Mayella’s tone had been solemn and deadpan and didn’t seem to take into account at all the fact that her new young mistress had just slept in the house, almost alone (because you couldn’t really count Treble).

  ‘Only the duppies like this house. They fly in-out, in-out if the windows open.’ Mayella’s eyes were wide and deep and serious.

  ‘Duppies?’ asked Idie, widening her own eyes and trying to make them as big and pretty as Mayella’s and at the same time wanting to make clear that things that flew in and out of windows were of no concern to her.

  ‘Keep the windows closed. That stops them coming in and out, in and out all the time.’

  Idie grew cross and said, ‘I heard a noise in the corridor, footsteps—’

  Mayella interrupted, asking with concern, ‘Miss Idie, the duppies – did they trouble you last night?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Then Idie began to wonder if the house was haunted and duppies were in fact just a local variety of ghost, so she asked, casually, ‘Are there ghosts here?’

  ‘Ghosts? Oh no, no ghosts, only duppies, plenty of duppies.’ Mayella leaned forward and whispered closely, ‘They show their faces in flames and hide in cupboards and . . .’

  Firstly, thought Idie, duppies were definitely nothing more than a tropical species of Fine Old English Ghost. Secondly, the footsteps she’d heard had not belonged to any species of ghost at all.And thirdly, she thought that Mayella was perhaps very clever. Certainly she knew much more than Treble did about everything, and that made Idie wonder where, in fact, her governess was, so she asked, ‘Where’s Miss Treble?’

  Mayella whispered, ‘She slept long because of the punch and then she woke and now she hungry. You dress, Miss Idie. Hurry or the governess will eat all the breakfast.’

  Mayella began to hum to herself and to sway gracefully about the room, tidying things. She went to the door and poked her head around it and went back to Idie and whispered, mischief in her eyes, ‘Miss Celia is coming.’

  ‘Aunt Celia’s coming?’ asked Idie in surprise.

  Mayella smiled a smile most innocent and beatific, then swiftly slipped from the room. Warily Idie watched the door, and soon enough Celia did come through it, silently, and like a cat on the balls of her feet. But for what reason she’d come, Idie couldn’t discern. Without greeting Idie in any way at all, her aunt Celia glided, like moving water, to the centre of the room and looked about.

  ‘Good morning, Aunt Celia,’ said Idie.

  Celia gave no answer. Her eyes flickered to and fro about the room, till they alighted on Idie’s suitcase. She went directly to it and lifted out a dress and held it up.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Aunt Celia. I can do that –’ began Idie, thinking her aunt meant to help with the unpacking. But Celia never looked at Idie. She simply put the dress aside and, as though Idie had not spoken at all, took out another, a grey one trimmed with white lace, and went with it to the armoire. Idie watched, astonished. Catching sight of her own reflection in the mirror of the armoire, Celia paused, then turned a fraction to the right, a fraction to the left. She swayed her hips and watched the folds of her dress oscillate a little to the left, a little to the right. She had a long, graceful figure and the dress moved prettily about her and made her smile at her own reflection. Her hand moved to her collar and toyed with the lace of it and for a second as she gazed at herself she seemed to slide away from the room into a world of dreams, and Idie saw the longing in her and felt sad for Aunt Celia, who was her mother’s sister and who was too old surely to be dreaming of sweethearts.

  Celia placed Idie’s old grey dress right at the back of the armoire as though it were never to be taken out again and next picked out of the suitcase a brown dress with a velvet collar. Idie glanced sideways at Celia’s own short-sleeved rose-and-white-print dress and knew suddenly how heavy her own dresses were, and the sunshiny wonder of the morning was tarnished with her aunt doing strange things in her room and with the thick browny-greyness of her English dresses. All dresses, she realized, should be soft and skimming and have no grey or brown in them. Still, she thought, it was rather odd just to walk into someone else’s bedroom, even if she was your niece, and go through her clothes just like that without a hello or a may-I.

  Celia now picked out a cotton paisley dress with long gathered sleeves. She held it out and said, ‘This one.’

  Too astonished to do otherwise, Idie took the dress and slipped it on. She’d never had a mother to tell her what to wear, and began to feel that it might be rather nice in fact to be told what to put on each morning, because that way you didn’t have to make any choices yourself. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt cross that her dress had long sleeves, but then it occurred to her that it would be easy just to cut them off, so she asked, ‘Where are the scissors, Aunt Celia?’

  ‘No, there are no scissors.’ Celia’s voice was ringing and clear, her face unreadable as a mask, and Idie could make no sense of her at all.

  ‘No scissors?’ she asked, a little arch.

  ‘The scissors are in Georgetown.’

  ‘The scissors are in Georgetown?’

  ‘Yes, the scissors are all in Georgetown.’

  Idie watched Celia carefully and decided that she was UNFATHOMABLE. Mayella was superstitious but she was shrewd too, while Celia was just strange and there was no getting to the bottom of her. Idie thought sadly of Stables and Stew and Silent, who were as dep
endable and sensible people as you could ever hope to find, and a wave of loneliness broke over her. No one here was like anyone she’d ever come across before. Fragile after the disturbing night and the oddness of the morning and beginning to feel it might be a relief to see even Treble, Idie went to the door.

  9

  Idie went slowly down the stairs, her small hand skimming the curved handrail. The light cast dancing patterns through the shutters of the hall and the breeze drifted softly through and Idie thought how sad it was to have a house that was so beautiful but so full of secrets and spirits that no one liked to sleep in it. In the blue-and-white umbrella stand by the entrance stood a fishing net, a black one on a short strong rod, of the kind Benedict used to land salmon, and Idie wondered that she hadn’t noticed it the night before. Treble was waiting at the door to the dining room. After all the loneliness and the fear of the night, Idie was flooded with relief at the sight of anyone from home and she ran to her.

  ‘There’s no China tea in the house, and the girl has not the faintest idea how to make porridge and—’

  Idie interrupted. ‘There were footsteps in the corridor – did you hear them? – in the corridor – a man’s footsteps?’

  An expression of horror dawned on Treble’s face. Her mouth formed a quivering rectangle. ‘No, no, you’re imagining things. I don’t like the cast of your mind, child. You’ve an improper imagination, most improper; it must be stamped out forth­with.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Idie, stepping back, her brief warmth for Treble dissipating. She saw the yellow crumbs of hard-boiled egg that were clinging to some of Treble’s chins and asked in what she thought of as her new grown­up sort of tone, ‘How would you, in fact, go about stamping out my imagination?’