They stayed one night and two days at Ashdown Manor, then Anna left William with the cleaning and finishing and returned to Bedford Square. Marcia de Lisle had clasped Anna’s hands and breathed effusive thanks, promising to sing her praises far and wide. ‘Not too far, not too wide,’ Anna had said, alarmed. At this rate, she said to William, she would have to hire everyone at the Slade.
She let herself into the house, took off her coat and hat in the quiet front hall and hung them on the empty stand. It was odd, being here alone: the small noises – the tock of the grandfather clock, the clip of her heels on the tiles – were hollow-sounding and amplified. All the post that she hadn’t had time to look at when she first got to London was heaped on the hall table, and there was a new batch on the floor. She picked it up and added it to the pile, which she carried through to the sitting room. There she sat in Amos’s armchair, to see if she could discover why he was so attached to it. Herself, she would have everyone sit anywhere, just as she would as happily sleep on the right-hand side of the bed as the left. Amos, though, was a man of dogged habits, and he was encouraged in them by Maya, who liked to plump up his cushions and declare his chair ready whenever he walked in from work. It was a decent-enough wing chair, but nothing out of the ordinary, Anna decided. However, she stayed where she was and began to shuffle through the envelopes, looking for somewhere to begin. All the letters for Amos she collected in a separate pile to take with her back to Ardington. All those for Anna Sykes Interiors she placed on her lap, not yet in the mood to contemplate more work. And then she saw Eve’s left-sloping handwriting, in blue ink, on an envelope scuffed and scarred by its long voyage from Jamaica, and she let everything else fall to the floor.
She tore at the seal with a pounding heart. For no very good reason she felt certain that the letter contained bad news, and she wondered if Daniel’s concerns, irrational though they had seemed, had perhaps stolen into her own consciousness, so that where she had previously imagined Eve in an adventure lit with permanent sunshine, now some indefinable darkness played at the fringes of the picture.
‘My dearest Anna, she read, ‘Well, the Whittam is now the Eden Falls Hotel, I’ve learned how to make curry goat with rice and peas (though the peas are not peas, but kidney beans) and Angus is learning how to swim…’
Anna smiled, and breathed a long sigh of relief. She read on:
I wish you were here with us, in this remarkable place. Jamaica is so beautiful, Anna! The colours are so vivid, and the weather extreme. The midday heat hits you like the slam of air when you open the door of the top oven on the range. The rain, when it comes, soaks you as thoroughly as if you stood in a water butt under a downspout. The winds – I’m told – can lift a building off a hill, and carry it away through the skies. All being well, we’ll be home before the hurricane season, because if a house can be swept off I’m fairly certain an Angus can be too! It’s hard enough to keep an eye on him, without fretting about the wind whisking him away too.
Now Anna shifted in the chair, and curled her legs beneath her like a contented cat. She could hear Eve’s voice, as clearly as if she were in the room.
At the hotel, it’s all go. Silas isn’t happy, because I’ve made him change the name to the Eden Falls Hotel, and he likes to see Whittam written on the things he owns. But with the help of the Jamaican staff I’m turning this place into a Jamaican hotel, rather than an English hotel in Jamaica. Heaven knows what our guests are going to make of it when the transformation is complete. Ruby – you’d like her; she’s the cook here, and finally I can call her a friend – says we should ply them with rum from the moment they arrive, and I believe she may have a point. Or perhaps Ruby and I should have the rum, and then we shan’t care what the guests think!
Ruby, thought Anna: who are you? She looked up from the letter, and tamped down a small flash of childish envy that Eve’s adventure was being shared with a friend other than herself. She looked down at the letter again. There were three more pages of writing paper, and both sides of each were filled. She shivered with anticipated pleasure and gratitude, and then she dived back in.
T
he first guests to arrive at the Eden Falls Hotel had of course booked to stay at the Whittam, so they all had to be briefed by Eve in the charabanc on the way from the port. She had explained to them, brightly and with no suggestion of apology, that they were privileged to be on the brink of a new adventure at this English-owned hotel, which aimed to celebrate all things Jamaican. Their comfort would remain paramount, but many things would be unfamiliar. The staff, the food, the decor – all would reflect the vibrancy and colour of this tropical island.
‘If the staff seem a little informal,’ Eve had told them, ‘it’s only because it’s their way. If you’re looking for a starchy doorman, you’ll be disappointed. If you snap your fingers at a waitress, she’ll probably ignore you. But a smile and a “please” will get you everything you wish for. There’s no formal English service at dinner because it’s not t’Jamaican way. But I think – in fact, I know – that what you’ll find at t’Eden Falls Hotel is something far more memorable, and entirely unique.’
Still, when they arrived and the guests stepped down from the running board of the bus, they looked about with trepidation, as if they’d been told there were savages with poison-tipped spears. There was something inherently and comfortably English about the name Whittam; something familiar and dependable and, after all, it was also the name on the liner that had carried them over the sea. Eden Falls, on the other hand … perhaps it alluded to man’s expulsion from paradise, said one gentleman, quietly, to his wife, who blushed at the suggestion of sin.
But their qualms evaporated in the Jamaican sun and their inhibitions, met with exuberance, were quickly vanquished. Rather than an indifferent version of their own gracious homes, the Eden Falls Hotel presented them with something quite different. There was Scotty on the top terrace, in a clean shirt and shorts, playing the guests into the hotel with jangling riffs on his old banjo, accompanied by Wendell shaking a dried calabash filled with seeds. Jamaican punch came out on rattan trays, in glasses half filled with crushed ice. The cold of it, chased by the heady warmth of the rum, made people gasp and smile. Little plates of sweetmeats, unimaginably exotic to the English palate, were passed around the gathering: guava doasie, tamarind balls, coconut drops. They were roughly made, in the country style, and heaped in bowls in bountiful quantities, so that they begged to be tasted and sighed over, and tried again, then washed down with more head-cooling, belly-warming punch.
Laughter bubbled and brewed and floated out through the jalousies and into the hot, damp air. The staff, some of them new, drawn by the promise of a different ethos, still moved languidly about their business, but they smiled as they went and nodded at the guests; the atmosphere was of harmony, not mutiny. The Constables and the Gainsboroughs were still on the walls, and poppies and peonies still bowed their heads sullenly in the borders, but it was early days: one step at a time.
Eve watched from a distance. There were two new girls, Precious and Patience, circulating with icy pitchers of punch. They were summer leavers from Port Antonio School, the memory of scripture lessons still ringing in their ears, and they carried the rum punch reverently and poured it with infinite care. They wore name badges to discourage anyone from calling them ‘girl’. Everyone had badges now, first names only, and it had become a game among some of the new wide-eyed guests, to lean tipsily forwards and read aloud what they saw.
‘Rrrrrrruby,’ said a tall, foppish man with a blond fringe, who peered at her badge through a monocle. ‘Jolly good name for a gem of a woman, ha!’ Pleased with his flattery, he rocked on his heels and looked around, hoping vaguely for praise.
‘Yes, sir,’ Ruby said. ‘It is. Tamarind ball?’
It sounded a little like a threat, and he hastily declined. Ruby crossed the room to Eve and said, ‘These badges encourage the gentlemen to take liberties.’
‘Do they?’
‘They encourage them to be too familiar.’ Ruby puffed out her chest and gave a creditable imitation of her admirer: ‘Jolly good name for a gem of a woman.’
‘Oh, well,’ Eve said, smiling. ‘That sounds ’armless enough. Quite nice, even.’
‘One thing can lead to another.’
‘Ruby,’ said Eve, ‘I think you’re looking for things to complain about.’
Ruby considered this, and thought it might be true. She had fallen into the habit of finding fault, and perhaps, in the absence of real grievances, she was inventing false ones. Already Eve had managed a miracle; there were callaloo fritters and jerk chicken on the menu of Silas Whittam’s hotel. Callaloo fritters, jerk chicken, turtle stew, boiled crabs, curry goat, fried plantain … all the food of Ruby’s childhood, cooked as her own mother had cooked it, in the duchy pot and over a flame, and even – this truly was remarkable – over a smouldering pit of pimento wood in the garden. The dining-room tables were decorated with small vases of poinciana and jacaranda flowers, and where there had once been starched white linen on the tables there were now humble tablecloths of printed cotton, bought for a song from Musgrave Market.
Ruby said, ‘Perhaps so.’ She studied Eve’s face for a moment and said, ‘You look weary.’
‘I am,’ Eve replied. ‘I could lie down right now and sleep.’
‘You should rest. I can manage tonight’s dinner.’
Eve laughed. ‘I should say you can. You could do it all blindfolded. You don’t need me any more.’
Ruby regarded her, as if weighing things up. ‘Need, perhaps not. But I do prefer it when you’re in the kitchen.’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘You’re most welcome.’
They both laughed, but Eve had blue shadows under her eyes and Ruby felt a twist of concern. Life at the hotel had taken a sharp turn for the better, but they’d been run ragged to achieve it. When the new name went up, each letter picked out in green on a board painted as blue as the Caribbean Sea, Ruby had felt a rush of fierce gratitude to Eve that she hadn’t expressed, except in her smile. But she knew what they owed her, for showing Silas Whittam how to honour the island he seemed to think he owned. It struck Ruby that Eve would be going, perhaps sooner than planned. You don’t need me any more, she’d said, and Ruby found it pained her to think of Eve and Angus gone from Jamaica.
‘But still plenty to do,’ she said now, thinking only of herself and feeling immediately guilty.
‘Oh aye, more than enough,’ Eve said gamely, but she pressed her left temple and closed her eyes on what she knew were the beginnings of a pounding headache.
‘I have feverfew in the larder,’ Ruby said, ‘and lemongrass tea. Come.’ She put an arm around Eve’s shoulder and steered her towards the kitchen stairs. Eve allowed herself to be led. Really, she was done in, she thought; half past two in the afternoon and all she longed for was to sink into sleep.
Silas made himself scarce, on the pretext that this was Eve’s show and so she should be allowed to bask in the glory. Really, though, he was feeling sour and a little mutinous, like a pirate captain who found his crew making a better fist of the ship’s business than he had. He felt detached, surplus to requirements, usurped by his sister in status and acumen, and bested, entirely, in the battle to win the cooperation of the Jamaican staff. To avoid having to examine these uncomfortable feelings he drove to Port Antonio, and, alone at a bar in a dusty street off the market place, steadily drank himself into a simpler state of mind.
The problem was, he explained to himself with rum-induced insight, Evie had overstepped the brief. What he had wanted, what he had brought her here for, was to make the hotel work on his terms. The Whittam Hotel – a fine name, if ever there was one – was meant to be a gracious home from home in the tropics for visitors from England. Embraced by the familiar, they were supposed to sink gratefully into the ease and comfort of an English country house. They were not intended to be picking the bones out of red snappers with their fingers and trying to make themselves heard above Scotty’s island music.
He banged his tumbler twice, sharply, on the bar, and held it out to the barman, who looked at him with distaste but took the glass and refilled it with rum. He knew Silas well: a dogheart who didn’t need the help of liquor to turn nasty. But Silas took the glass without looking up and kept his mouth shut, except to pour more rum down his throat. When he slid down from the bar stool it was almost six o’clock; he’d been drinking since two. He steadied himself before setting off towards the door, which, when he reached it, seemed to shift each time he went for the handle, sliding from left to right, eluding him. The barman watched, coolly amused. Silas, with a grunt of concentrated exertion, lunged again and this time hit the mark, thrusting open the door and exiting the shadowy interior sideways and in a rush, as if he’d just been thrown out.
The light, after four hours in comforting gloom, was brutal. He screwed up his eyes against it and cast about for his car, the whereabouts of which he had forgotten. But it was close, just a short way up the street, and he weaved towards it gratefully and clambered in with a sigh of profound relief. For a few moments he sat there, holding the steering wheel and puzzling over his lack of progress, until a passing man said, ‘’im can’t move till ’im cranked, mon.’ Silas turned his head, which was unaccountably heavy, and slowly focused on the man, who spoke again, but this time it was to another passer-by, a woman, who laughed, and stood by the car, preparing to be entertained.
‘You wan’ me crank de ’andle?’ the man said, and his voice, to Silas, seemed to be coming through a conch. It swelled and echoed, like a voice in a dream.
‘You wan’ me crank de ’andle?’ he said again, only louder. The woman laughed once more and looked about her, encouraging others to stop and watch the show.
‘It Mr Mention, from de Whittam,’ someone said. A chicken, one of a small flock free ranging in the dirt, flapped up and sat experimentally on the bonnet of the car. It eyed Silas beadily, without fear, and a goat, tethered to a post, watched him with mean yellow eyes. This, thought Silas through the fug of rum, was the real Jamaica: primitive and bestial, and too damned hot. He took off his hat and flapped it at the chicken, which merely settled into a more comfortable squat on the sun-warmed metal.