The House on Hummingbird Island Read online

  ‘Missus, I’ll bring you pawpaw, soursop, pineapple, eggs, fried banana,’ interjected Mayella.

  ‘She’ll not have the banana,’ said Miss Treble, tight-lipped, ‘on any account.’ Treble had taken an exception to bananas on account of what she called their vulgarity.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Idie at exactly the same time. She smiled sweetly at Mayella. ‘I’ll have all of that, outside, in the company of my improper imagination and of Homer.’ Homer. She turned to the veranda, saw the fishing net again and stopped, a sudden feeling of dread taking hold of her.

  ‘Homer!’

  She tore out. ‘Where is he? Where’s Homer?’

  Mayella came running, Treble too, though less fast because of the tightness of another inappropriate pink confection.

  ‘Where is he? What’ve you done with him?’ Idie asked wildly.

  Mayella glanced at Celia, who stood in the centre of the hall, an empty china vase in hand.

  Idie turned. ‘WHERE is he?’

  Celia’s mouth opened uncertainly. As Celia hesitated, anger and fear surfaced in Idie as a blinding rush of rage and she went close to her and stamped her foot. Celia recoiled and the vase smashed on the wooden boards. Niece and aunt stood, face to face, the white shards between them on the floor.

  ‘He told me to put the bird in the stables,’ Celia whispered.

  ‘WHO? Who told you to?’

  ‘He – he doesn’t like the parrot,’ Celia whispered hesitantly.

  ‘His name is Homer and he is a PARAKEET and I would like to know EXACTLY who it is that doesn’t like him.’

  Celia, barely audible, whispered, ‘Carlisle.’

  ‘I see. The butler is scared of parakeets, so YOU moved him. And how exactly did you move him? Is this how?’ Idie brandished the net.

  ‘He told me to. He gave it to me to use,’ Celia breathed, cowering.

  ‘Carlisle is a butler, and he is not in charge of Homer. I am,’ said Idie through her teeth. ‘Homer and Baronet are MINE and you will not so much as touch them, for they are all I have.’ Her voice had grown in strength and volume as she voiced what before she’d only dimly recognized.

  Celia was shaken and wounded for there were tears starting in her eyes. Mayella went to her and took her arm and led her gently from the room, and Idie bit her lip, for after all Celia was her mother’s sister.

  10

  Mayella placed a tray on the veranda table. She saw the large English horse loosely tethered to the hibiscus hedge, and the parakeet perched on the back of Idie’s chair, and her eyes narrowed.

  ‘Must I feed the horse and the pigeon too? And where’s that pigeon gon’ live now?’

  ‘PARAKEET.’

  Two of Homer’s crest feathers were broken and that made him look a little piratical, but on top of that he was uppity about being trapped by a net, being stabled with a horse and possibly too on account of being called a pigeon. Mayella set out mango and pawpaw and avocado on the table.

  ‘Phibbah is just sitting in the kitchen waiting for the Day of Judgement, and it’s only me that cooks and cleans. I must feed the mistress, the horse, the pigeon—’

  ‘PARAKEET.’

  Homer withdrew his head from his wing and inspected the food set out for his mistress.

  ‘Homer will live in the house from now on,’ said Idie firmly, picking up a fork.

  ‘The pigeon?’ Mayella’s eyes widened,

  ‘Um-hmmm,’ said Idie, spearing a piece of pawpaw with her fork. ‘The PARAKEET stays IN THE HOUSE, where I can see him.’ She popped the fruit in her mouth.

  Mayella hesitated, then her eyes twinkled as some mischief quite visibly sailed into her head.

  ‘Carlisle doesn’t like pigeons nor any other bird.’

  ‘EXACTLY,’ said Idie.

  ‘Nor the duppies, they don’t like pigeons.’

  Idie was not quite sure whether Mayella was teasing.

  ‘There are NO SUCH THINGS,’ she said firmly, though secretly she conceded that an English ghost wouldn’t be that keen either on the presence of large sulphur-crested parakeet in his dominion. Delighted by the new taste of pawpaw, she decided to try the mango and pronged a piece.

  ‘You all big, brave words, mistress, but I see the big dark rings around your eyes and I know the duppies been flying about your head all night.’

  Idie rolled the slippery sweet mango around in her mouth, trying to look as though she’d eaten mango every day of her life. ‘Oh,’ she said, falsely bright and casual, ‘and what exactly do duppies do?’

  Mayella smiled knowingly as she poured Idie’s hot chocolate, but said nothing.

  ‘Gladstone is your grandfather?’ asked Idie, changing tack.

  ‘Oh yes. He worked here since he was eight years old. Nelson – he on the boat with you – he is my father. I got seven sisters also and five brothers and all they work here. Only my father, he works in the docks.’

  ‘I see,’ said Idie, who had discovered that this was definitely a most useful kind of phrase to have up one’s sleeve when one didn’t in fact see anything at all. She decided that Mayella was a SAFE person because her father was Nelson, and Nelson knew why fishes glowed at night and that was probably an indicator of integrity, but it was a pity that Nelson no longer worked at Bathsheba, and Idie wondered why he’d left.

  ‘Mayella, please tell Quarterly, when he MAKES AN APPEARANCE, that I would like the shutters to be open from morning until night. From daybreak to day end.’

  ‘Oh Lord, the pigeon inside the house and the shutters open. But Miss Celia like the shutters shut for they was always shut,’ Mayella muttered to herself.

  ‘Mayella, why is my aunt here?’

  ‘Why she here?’ Mayella paused. ‘Miss Celia is here because she is simple as a moon, slippery as glass and the thoughts in her head are like water – any man can give them the colour he wants. That’s why she here.’

  Idie wondered if Mayella was in fact so very clever that she’d once decided to speak only in riddles and stuck to them ever after. Mayella returned to the kitchen and Idie told Homer, ‘Celia is too strange to make any sense and Mayella is too clever to make any sense and no one here is like anyone anywhere else at all.’

  ‘YOUR EXCELLENCY,’ said Homer, dipping his head in agreement.

  ‘You must develop your conversation. I need someone sensible to talk to,’ Idie told him.

  Homer gripped a piece of Idie’s pawpaw with his claw so Idie said, ‘AND you must not eat any more of my breakfast, because if you do I’ll turn you into a feather cushion.’

  11

  There was no sign of Treble. Mayella appeared to be busy clanking pots and pans against each other in the kitchen and Homer was still in high dudgeon about his missing feathers and also now about all the inferior small and tweeting sorts of birds he’d seen about the garden, so Idie left him to sulk and wandered down the veranda stairs to Baronet. She plucked a red hibiscus from his mouth and lay her head against his cheek, wishing Myles or Benedict were there because it was no fun exploring on your own. She whispered to Baronet that she wouldn’t take him swimming today because she wasn’t quite sure how to get to somewhere you could swim. ‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ she told him, ‘when I’ve got my bearings.’

  She thought sadly how long ago it seemed that she’d stood, suited and booted, in the hall at Pomeroy and asked, ‘But when’ll I come back?’

  The grown-ups had glanced at one another.

  ‘When will you come?’ she’d asked, looking at Grancat.

  Into the uneasy silence, Myles interjected, ‘No one can visit because the South Seas are awash with brigands and bandits and pirates and primates.’

  ‘Am I taking Baronet?’

  ‘Yes, Baronet goes with you.’

  ‘He won’t like it because there’s no grass and nothing grows there but sugar,’ Myles had said, jealous that Idie was to take Baronet with her.

  ‘Baronet goes with Idie,’ Grancat growled, murmuring after, ‘Poor chap.’
Though it was not his son to whom he referred, but Baronet, poor chap, to be cast across a stormy sea and left to reside thereafter in some infernal, grass-less outer firmament.

  ‘It’s hellish hot. You’ll melt like wax . . .’ continued Myles.

  ‘There’ll be monkeys and mongooses,’ Idie had answered.

  ‘Mongooses are rats.’

  She’d turned back to Grancat and asked, ‘Why do I have to go?’

  And he’d answered, ‘You’re a lady of property now.’

  Idie was silent because she still didn’t know what a lady of property was.

  ‘It’s because you don’t belong here,’ said Myles.

  ‘Don’t I?’ she’d asked. ‘Don’t I belong here?’

  Grancat had waited a moment, then said carefully, ‘Blood is thicker than water, child.’

  What he’d meant by that she’d no idea then and still didn’t. She thought about blood and water now, her head still against Baronet’s cheek, her hand idly scratching his neck, and tears came to her eyes. She didn’t belong at Pomeroy, but did she belong here where no one seemed to want her? Only briefly assailed by doubt, her spirit rallied and she told herself, I DO, I do belong here and mongooses aren’t rats and I haven’t melted, nor have I seen a single pirate.

  On the veranda, Idie settled herself down in a businesslike sort of way, put Homer on her lap, instructed him to be companionable, picked up her pen and pulled her book from her pocket and wrote:

  I haven’t discovered anything because everything has been hidden or taken away.

  She sucked her pen a little and tried to remember if there was something else to write.

  ‘Hello! . . . Hello there!’

  Idie turned, surprised. She closed the book and slipped it between the cushion and the seat of her chair. She squinted, suspicious, at the figure making his way across the lawn. Older than Myles, she thought, assessing his age. He was taller, sort of better joined together than Myles, and had the dark, brown kind of skin that you don’t have to hide from the sun. He wore the short shorts of an English prep-school boy, but looked as if he lived always outdoors and had never been in a schoolroom in his life. Idie watched him through narrowed eyes because his mother might’ve sent him to pry so that she could gossip, except that he had a battered hat and a breezy sort of way of walking, all of which made Idie think that then again he probably didn’t have a gossipy sort of mother.

  ‘DING DONG,’ said Homer.

  Idie scowled and hissed, ‘Do not embarrass me.’

  The boy bounded lightly up the steps and said, in the lilting intonation of the place, ‘Are you Idie?’

  ‘DING DONG,’ said Homer again.

  ‘Idie Grace,’ Idie said tautly.

  ‘Mother sent me, said to say was there anything you needed?’

  He did have a prying, whispering mother. Idie darkened. She scowled at the floor and drew a line in the dust with her toe.

  ‘Austin, Austin Hayne,’ he said, extending his hand.

  She scowled more fiercely at the floor and clenched her hands. Recent encounters, she told herself, have, after all, taught me to be wary of people. Not everyone is as good as Benedict and Myles and Grancat. The boy withdrew his hand. He waited a moment or two, then leaped up on to the balustrade, and Idie was surprised at that for visitors to Pomeroy didn’t go about leaping up on things. But it would be fun to do that too and she felt annoyed that her dress wasn’t right at all for leaping and that she was anchored to the spot by the large and uppity parakeet on her lap. She tugged at a loose thread of her hem and eyed the boy’s red shirt and battered hat. The thread came clean out and left a line of holes about her knees.

  ‘DO NOT EMBARRASS ME,’ squawked Homer.

  The boy laughed a sudden hooting laugh. Idie stared at the floor because her cheeks were burning on account of Homer’s lack of sensitivity to delicate situations. Austin stopped laughing and began to swing his legs to and fro and look around.

  Mayella came out. ‘How-day, Master Austin. You like some tea maybe?’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said Austin brightly. ‘I’ll just take some of that honey you’ve got there.’

  He dipped his finger in the honey and licked it, and Idie, who was still cross about being pinned to her chair by a wrong sort of dress and an out-of-sorts parakeet, said, in a high, chin-out kind of way, ‘We have bacon and egg and kedgeree at home.’

  Austin raised his brows and seemed amused. ‘Oh well, this is your home now, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, and I hate it.’

  Austin was silent for a while. Then he took up whistling a rowdy sort of tune and stuck his finger in Idie’s honey again and on top of all that he hopped back up on to the balustrade and crouched there. Idie watched him surreptitiously. Mayella moved about the terrace inconsequentially with a broom, a little dab here, a little dab there, and Idie wished she’d go away.

  Austin slowly rose to his feet and stood, very still, arms outstretched on the balustrade, like a tightrope walker. Curious, Idie watched him out of the corner of her eye and wondered if boys who stood on balustrades and ate honey from their fingers could in fact also have gossipy sorts of mothers.

  Something brilliant as a fragment of fire drew close to Austin, and Idie heard the purring of wings and caught her breath – a hummingbird, its body tiny as a bumblebee and green as moss. It hovered above Austin’s hand and then alighted on his little finger and the two of them were face to face, as if talking. The tiny green bird moved from one finger to another, its claws not wide enough even to span the littlest of them. Idie lifted Homer and put him on the back of her chair, thinking it would be nice to stand on a balustrade and let a hummingbird drink honey from her finger. She took some honey and crept towards Austin.

  ‘Keep very still,’ Austin whispered, ‘and stay close to me. They like red, you see. You have to wear red to be friends with a hummingbird.’

  Celia appeared with another vase, set it down on the table in a fussy, nervous sort of way, then moved down the stairs into the garden. She seemed to do nothing but dream of sweethearts and flowers and slide about the place with vases, thought Idie, annoyed and then doubly annoyed because the hummingbird flew off and was gone.

  Austin sighed and licked the remainder of honey from his finger and jumped down, and Idie licked the honey off hers too.

  ‘We live next door,’ Austin said.

  ‘Where next door?’ asked Idie.

  ‘Well, what goes for next door round here. At Bissett.’

  ‘I see,’ said Idie, pretending to know and wondering at the same time where she could find a red dress so she could be friends with a hummingbird.

  Austin whistled and looked at Homer, then at the large English horse who chomped freely at the hibiscus, and he stopped whistling and said, grinning, ‘I say, isn’t there anyone in charge of you?’

  Idie was silent because she had just enough worldly wisdom to understand that children were supposed to have someone in charge of them and that her own governess was not really what Grancat would call fit-for-purpose. It was bad enough to have been given away by your mother and to be sent around the world like a lost penny without, on top of all that, having to make do with a not-fit-for-purpose governess. In any case, Idie still couldn’t be certain that this boy wouldn’t tell tales, and then the people who cared about such things would whisper, so she remained silent.

  ‘There’s a pool high up in the gully, almost in the clouds, and it’s deep and turquoise and a waterfall runs into it. Shall I take you there?’

  Idie would very much like to see a pool high up in the clouds, with a waterfall tumbling into it, but she couldn’t shed the ashamed, scratchy bits of herself, so what she said was, ‘No, I hate it all and everything here.’

  Austin’s eyes rested awhile on her. ‘Oh well,’ he said eventually, ‘I think it’s wonderful. There’re rocks and waterfalls and deep swimming places . . . oh well, hey-ho . . .’

  Idie thought that was sweet and funny, becaus
e Grancat always said hey-ho too, at just such moments.

  Austin went to the steps.

  ‘YOUR EXCELLENCY,’ said Homer, dipping his head. Homer, it appeared, was prone to announcing arrivals and departures.

  Austin raised his hat to Homer and said, ‘The resident sulphur-crested parakeet is more civil than the new mistress of Bathsheba.’

  Idie instantly regretted being so prickly with Austin, because anyone that said hey-ho and knew that Homer was a sulphur-crested parakeet, just like that off the top of his head, was probably worth his salt. But there was no going back now so she said, ‘No, he’s not. He’s a very uppity sort of creature.’

  Austin leaped over the hibiscus hedge and landed lightly on the grass.

  ‘Hey-ho . . . oh well, I shan’t trouble to come back.’

  He ran across the lawn, taking leaps from time to time and batting his heels together as if he didn’t give a fig what the mistress of Bathsheba did or said. Idie watched him. He knew about pools in gullies and waterfalls and sulphur-crested parakeets and now he’d gone there was no one except Mayella who spoke in riddles and Celia who was sly and strange and Treble who was not fit-for-purpose.

  After a while Idie took her notebook from beneath the cushion and wrote:

  Mother’s garden is very beautiful. The sun rains through the leaves and makes flapping sorts of light shadows on the ground.

  Then because she had nothing else to write she put it in her pocket and went into the house, determined to find some clues.

  12

  She paused in the hall.

  There was no sign of Celia, but the shutters were all closed so Idie stomped from one to another flinging them open, five in all, two in front, three at the back. The breeze hummed swiftly through the house and, satisfied, Idie paused to consider her next move. Mayella was in the drawing room, dancing, her broom clasped to her bosom like a beau. Treble was in the kitchen, enquiring with loud suspicion as to the laundry provisions in the establishment. Idie peered through the kitchen door in the hope of glimpsing Phibbah, whom she had down in her head as a Mysterious and Magnificent kind of person as well as definitely a sphinx, but Phibbah was nowhere to be seen.