Roscoe backed away, into deeper water, and floated on his back. He watched Eve and Angus over the top of his toes, which poked up out of the water.
‘Would he like to come in?’ he asked.
‘He can’t swim,’ Eve replied.
‘And he never will, if he stays on the bank.’
Eve laughed at the boy’s reasoning. He spoke as his mother did: carefully, with rounded vowels.
‘Well, perhaps a paddle, if you’d like to, Angus?’
Angus nodded solemnly and dropped the remaining bread roll. Off came the shoes and socks, the shorts and the Russian shirt, until he stood on the shingle shore of the pool in his baggy undergarments, looking pale and exposed alongside Roscoe, who had come out to hold his hand and help him into the water. Eve was standing now, the better to plunge in after him if he sank like a stone, but Roscoe kept a tight hold and took him no further than knee-deep, then sat down on the rocky bottom and put Angus in his lap so that the water swelled and washed around their chests as if they were taking a bath.
‘Mam!’ Angus shouted. ‘It’s warm!’ He smacked the water with his palms and made sun-filled droplets, which danced up and then down again, all around them. Roscoe turned so that they were facing Eve, and she could enjoy the delight in her little boy’s face. Roscoe was laughing too, bouncing up and down a little to make Angus squeal, and this was how Ruby found them all when she came down to the pool to collect her son: all three of them laughing in the early sunshine as if they were the best of friends.
R
oscoe saw her first and his smile faded into uncertainty, which alerted Eve to the new presence. She turned, and there was Ruby, standing a few paces away from the water’s edge looking as if she’d been sucking a lemon.
‘Good morning lady, look at me,’ sang Angus, who saw in Ruby merely a new and welcome person to admire his exploits.
Ruby, whose heart was too kind to rebuff a child, said, ‘What a clever boy you are,’ and managed a smile, although she was evidently displeased. Roscoe, knowing this, adjusted Angus so that the smaller boy was once again standing and then stood up too, all the while keeping hold of his charge. Angus gazed up at him with adoring eyes.
‘There are mosquitoes by the water at this time of day,’ Ruby said.
‘Oh dear, yes, I never thought of that,’ Eve said. She looked about her anxiously.
‘And Pity-Me-Likls,’ Ruby said. ‘They’ll be in his clothes by now.’
Eve looked blank.
‘Red ants,’ said Ruby with a hint of satisfaction. ‘Their bite can be nastier than the mosquito, although at least they don’t carry disease.’
Roscoe began to feel cross with his mother, who he could see was trying her best to be unkind. He knew who Eve MacLeod was, of course, knew she was Mr Silas’s sister and here to boss everyone about. But she was very pretty, and seemed very kind, and in Roscoe’s world there were few enough interesting newcomers: why shun them when they chanced along? This was his view, and he demonstrated it now by scooping Angus up and backing further into the water until the child, to his obvious delight, was submerged up to his shoulders.
‘They can’t bite him now,’ he said to his mother reasonably, and then, to Eve, he added, ‘Give his clothes a good shake, Mrs MacLeod, then put them with mine on the rock.’ He indicated the spot with his head because both his arms were around Angus’s chest.
‘Time to go, Roscoe,’ said Ruby.
‘Is it?’ His voice was full of doubt and Ruby, who felt a stirring of shame at her own bad manners – which were, after all, in such stark contrast to the gracious courtesy of her boy – conceded with a small gesture of her arm that, in fact, it wasn’t.
‘Five more minutes, then,’ she said, then looked at the ground and wondered how slowly the time would pass with the sister of Silas Whittam standing awkwardly beside her.
‘’e’s a grand lad,’ Eve said in a voice full of warmth. Ruby looked at her, and Eve smiled. ‘Such a credit to you. ’ow old is ’e?’
‘Roscoe is eight, soon to be nine.’
There was a small silence, until Ruby’s conscience stirred her into doing the right thing. ‘And your boy? How old is he?’
‘He was three in April.’
‘Tall, for his age.’
‘Mmm, well, his pa’s tall. Your Roscoe’s a fine-looking boy, too.’
Again, silence. Ruby gave a tight smile and turned away. Eve, puzzled, went on, ‘’e looks a lot like you. Folk say Angus looks like me an’ all, but you can never see it in your own bairns, can you?’
Ruby turned her head slowly and Eve noticed her long and lovely neck. ‘Forgive me,’ Ruby said, ‘but I don’t know what you’re saying. Are you speaking the king’s English?’
This made Eve laugh out loud. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I was just saying, you can’t see a resemblance to other people in your own child. They’re just themselves, aren’t they?’
‘They are,’ Ruby said, inviting no further discussion on the subject.
For a while the two women watched the boys in the water. Angus had his plump arms around Roscoe’s neck, while the older boy swam in wide circles on his back. ‘Kick your legs, Angus,’ he was saying. ‘Don’t make me do all the work.’
‘This water’s so blue,’ Eve said, and felt immediately foolish. ‘I mean, we ’ave a pond on Netherwood Common, but it’s always grey, even in t’sun.’
‘Grey water,’ Ruby said, as if she couldn’t imagine such a thing.
‘Where are we?’ Eve said. ‘What is this place?’
‘Eden Falls.’
‘Eden Falls,’ Eve repeated. ‘Eden Falls. That’s beautiful. You’re fortunate, to call this ’ome. Home, I mean,’ she added helpfully.
Ruby turned her cat’s eyes on Eve and stared for a moment, and the effect was unsettling. ‘Fortunate in what way?’ she said.
‘Well,’ Eve said uncertainly, ‘to live in such a beautiful place, I mean.’
Ruby nodded slowly. She didn’t reply, yet she looked as if she might have a great deal to say on the matter.
‘I suppose it’s ’ard work, mind, wi’ my brother breathing down your neck.’
‘I don’t allow him close enough to breathe down my neck,’ Ruby said coldly.
‘Oh, no, it’s just a saying. I mean, Silas can be a bit of a slave-driver.’
Again, Ruby looked stony. Eve reddened.
‘I’m sorry. Everything I say seems to be wrong.’
She sounded humble, regretful. Ruby relented, just a little.
‘It’s better not to speak of slaves in any context,’ she said. ‘Some people, I suspect, rue the day that emancipation freed our people.’ Your brother for one, she thought.
‘Your English is quite perfect,’ Eve said. ‘You put me to shame.’
This was the best possible thing Eve could have said to Ruby: the only compliment on which she placed any real value.
‘Thank you, Mrs MacLeod.’
‘Will you call me Eve? I really would rather you did.’
Ruby nodded her assent. ‘And I am Ruby,’ she said, holding out a hand.
In the water, Roscoe tipped his head back and smiled at the sky.
They walked together back up the tunnel of trees and on to the road, Roscoe cantering on ahead with Angus riding piggyback. The little boy was clearly besotted. He clung on fiercely, as if he might have to fight for the right to stay put.
‘This is nice for ’im, to ’ave t’company of another child,’ Eve said. The tension had eased, though Ruby still seemed taut and cautious, ready to bolt if she had to. ‘’e misses ’is sisters.’
‘Roscoe loves little children,’ Ruby said.
‘Is ’e your only one?’
‘He is.’
Her manner of speaking invited no further comment on the subject. Ahead, Roscoe jogged Angus on his back, so that when the little boy laughed it came out in jumpy little gurgles, which made him laugh more. Eve was glad of the noise.
‘I thought I might help you, today, in t’kitchen,’ she said.
‘I see,’ said Ruby.
‘I mean, you’re overburdened, and I think that’s part of t’problem.’
Ruby said nothing. She walked on in her stately fashion, back straight, head erect. She was barefoot, Eve noticed, and yet she didn’t flinch or hobble as Eve would have done if she were on this stony lane without shoes. She wore a green and yellow print frock, loose and casual, and her wiry black hair was held back from her face by a scarf of the same fabric. The green was the green of the forest, and the yellow the yellow of the sun.
‘Duck
à l’orange
,’ Eve said.
Nothing.
‘With fondant potatoes and wilted greens. ’ave you cooked this before?’
Ruby stopped walking. ‘I have.’ Her voice, while not exactly hostile, wasn’t exactly friendly either. ‘I have cooked everything your brother has asked me to cook. I have wrapped long fillets of beef in that impossible substance you call puff pastry; I have placed chef’s hats on the bony limbs of lamb cutlets; I have roasted great lumps of something called venison, which, quite frankly, is not a cut of meat that lends itself to roasting. I have pushed minced pork up the posteriors of English chickens, and plucked and trussed small birds that here in Jamaica we would prize for their song, not for their flesh. I have filleted and cooked fish that do not swim in our seas, but which have travelled across the Atlantic in blocks of ice. Here we cook fish on the day it is caught; we grill our fish whole and pick the flesh off the bones with our fingers. You, however, demand that the bones remain in the kitchen so that the fish may be eaten with a flat, silver knife. This creates work for the cook, and if people have to wait too long for their dinner they may blame their own picky-picky habits and customs. I have learned the language of your cooking with the help of Mrs Isabella Beeton, but I admit I have not yet mastered all of the techniques I need for the delicacies you English seem to demand. It is a lamentable situation, and a trying one.’
‘Right,’ Eve said. ‘So, ’ave you quite finished?’
‘I have.’
‘You’re obviously very upset. It’s impossible to cook well when you’re agitated, and I’m sure I can ’elp. Help, that is.’
‘What is impossible, Mrs Eve, is to cook well for hitey-titey English ladies and gentlemen who, if they ever had any manners, left them on the boat that carried them here.’
Angus, from some distance ahead, shouted, ‘Come on, slowcoaches!’ His face was flushed with sunshine and excitement. Eve waved at him and smiled, and the women began to walk again, though there was room for two people in the space between them.
‘I don’t understand,’ Eve said. ‘It shouldn’t matter to you what their manners are like. You’re a cook: you should take pride in what you make and send up t’very best dishes you can manage. That venison we ate on my first night was like boot leather just because it was too long in t’oven. And I’m Eve, not Mrs Eve.’
‘You are Silas Whittam’s sister, that’s indisputable,’ Ruby said. Her voice was cold again.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you are rude and peremptory, and you put yourself above me.’
Eve stopped again and all but stamped her foot. ‘I most certainly do not,’ she said. ‘You and I are equals, and if you knew where I’d started you’d think twice before jumping to conclusions. But I’ll tell you this for nowt, I wouldn’t give t’food you serve to Percy Medlicott’s pig.’
Ruby scowled. ‘Who is Percy Medlicott?’ she said.
Eve flapped her hand in exasperation. ‘That’s neither ’ere nor there. A pig’s a pig, whoever owns it.’
‘Indeed,’ said Ruby. She fell silent, wondering what Eve MacLeod could mean when she said ‘if you knew where I’d started’. It was impossible to imagine anything but affluence for a Whittam. Ships, houses, hotel: could a man acquire these things from a bad beginning? She pondered this, and Eve shot her a sideways glance, thinking Ruby was smarting from the grave insult to her kitchencraft. Best to air these feelings, though, Eve thought. Best to start as she meant to go on: boldly and with authority. She was surprised, then, when Ruby spoke.
‘Has your brother known poverty?’ she asked. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’
Eve laughed. ‘Silas and I came from penury, Ruby. We’ve dined on boiled potato peelings, ’e and I, and drunk t’water we cooked them in for warmth.’
Ruby cast a swift, sceptical look in Eve’s direction.
‘It’s true. I escaped t’slums by marrying a miner, and Silas stowed away on a ship. I didn’t see him for sixteen years, and when ’e turned up ’e was a rich man. I’m cutting a long story short, but that’s it, in a nutshell.’
They turned off the lane and walked up to the fine iron gates of the Whittam Hotel. It was too early still for Roscoe to go to school, and he was waiting for them with Angus attached, limpet-like, to one of his legs. Thus hampered, he held open the gate for his mother and Eve.
‘I’ve told him I’ll teach him to swim,’ Roscoe said as they passed through. ‘All boys should know how.’
‘Thank you, Roscoe,’ Eve replied. She ruffled his hair with one hand, and it felt soft and still damp from the pool. ‘You’re a real little gentleman.’
‘You must not promise things you cannot fulfil,’ Ruby said.
‘But I can teach him how to swim.’
‘Like a fish,’ Angus said, and made elaborate swimming motions with his arms. Roscoe, freed, surreptitiously rubbed and shook out his leg, as if from a cramp. Eve felt she was becoming fonder of him by the second.
‘Only if Mrs Eve is willing to bring Angus to the lagoon. You mustn’t assume that she will.’
Oh, thought Eve, Ruby Donaldson could be very vexing.
‘Eve. Not Mrs Eve. Of course I will, Roscoe. Angus will love that. And where better to learn to swim than paradise?’
Everyone beamed but Ruby, who walked on up the path.
In the kitchen, Ruby took out the tin of bammy cakes from the larder and dropped eight of them into a bowl of coconut milk. Eve watched her. She fished them out, shook them, then smeared an iron pan with oil and put the cakes in the pan, and the pan on the hob.
‘What are they?’ Eve said, her curiosity getting the better of her irritation.
‘Bammies,’ Ruby said, as if it were perfectly obvious. She flipped them with a fish slice and the uncooked sides sizzled fiercely in the pan. The smell, after their early start and big adventure, was heady, intoxicating. Angus clutched his stomach and emitted a small, pitiful moan.