Lofty tossed him the ball and it landed in his palm with a soft, satisfying slap, but when he turned to walk away from the wicket he saw Eliza Williams streaming across the field towards him, her face full of anguish. He dropped the ball and went to her; she barrelled into his arms, sobbing and fighting for breath.
‘Eliza, sweet’eart, what is it?’
He was truly alarmed. Eliza was sunshine and laughter: always had been.
‘I need Anna,’ she said, through juddering breaths. ‘Will you take me to Anna?’
‘Now then,’ he said, holding her tight, kissing the top of her head. ‘Calm yourself, then tell me what’s up.’ He smiled at her. She looked up at him, helpless, hopeless, and he knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t be as bad as she thought.
‘It’s Mam,’ Eliza said. ‘I think she’s dead.’
He could get no sense out of her, so he took her back to Ravenscliffe, where a telegram had arrived earlier that day. Daniel was in the kitchen, and when he looked up at Amos and Eliza his expression was twisted with grief and fury. The telegram lay on the table, and he pushed it towards Amos. He picked it up and read:
EVIE ILL STOP YELLOW FEVER STOP GRAVELY CONCERNED STOP SILAS
Amos looked at Eliza and said, ‘She’s not dead then, Eliza. She’s badly, but she’s still with us.’
‘I want Anna,’ Eliza said. She sounded younger than her fourteen years, and the tears still poured silently down her face.
‘She could be dead though, couldn’t she?’ Daniel’s voice was cold and hard in the warm kitchen. ‘Since that was sent she could have died. And if she has, I shall wring that bastard’s neck.’
Eliza wailed.
‘Where’s Ellen?’ Amos asked. He felt entirely out of his depth.
‘Outside, up a tree,’ Eliza said. ‘Will you take me to Anna?’ She turned pleading eyes on him, and he could understand this at least: Daniel had turned inwards in his rage and anxiety, and the child needed a woman’s comfort. He placed a hand on her head. ‘Anna’s in London, pet. As soon as she’s back I’ll bring ’er to you.’
Daniel brought his fist down hard on the table. ‘I should have stopped her going,’ he said in a strangulated growl. ‘I should have forbidden it. He’s a self-serving bastard, and my wife and son are at his mercy. Oh God!’ He laid his head on the table. ‘My boy,’ he moaned. ‘My wee boy.’
Eliza patted his shoulder ineffectually, then let her hand rest there. She looked like a small, inept guardian angel, and was the very image of suffering. Just lately she had come home from Paris, bubbling with excitement, brim-full of joy. Now she was a terrified child trying to be brave. Amos’s heart went out to her. He smiled and she attempted a watery smile in return.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘your mam’s sick, but she’s a strong woman and I’d put good money on ’er pulling through. There’s nowt to be gained from weepin’ and wailin’ for summat that ’asn’t ’appened.’
‘I should’ve kept her here,’ Daniel said.
‘You couldn’t,’ said Amos. ‘Eve’s like my Anna: she knows ’er own mind. She went to Jamaica for Seth as much as for Silas, and we’ve all read ’er letters. She called it paradise. She likes it out there. Mark my words, she’ll pull through this.’
Eliza’s expression brightened as she drank in the words of reassurance. This was what the child needed, thought Amos, not drama and unwarranted grief.
‘Nip outside and fetch Ellen down,’ Amos said. ‘We’ll all share a pot o’ tea and some o’ Lilly’s baking. Does Lilly bake?’
Eliza nodded. ‘Buns,’ she said. ‘They’re not nice though. They’re not like my mam’s.’ Her lip began to wobble again, but she left the room through the back door to coax Ellen out of her tree. Swiftly, Amos sat down opposite Daniel.
‘Frame thi’sen, Daniel MacLeod,’ he said, and not gently. ‘Can’t you see what you’re doing to that bairn?’
Daniel looked at him, stunned.
‘Eliza needs you to be strong. She’s terrified, and it’s your doing.’
‘If Eve dies—’
‘Aye, we know: you’ll throttle ’im, and if I get to ’im first you’ll find you don’t ’ave to. But Eve’s not dead, so you mun stop acting like she is and start showin’ these bairns ’ow to go on.’
Daniel looked bleak. ‘I feel so damned helpless,’ he said. ‘And I feel certain I’m going to lose her.’
Amos reached across the table and placed a steadying hand on Daniel’s arm. He understood what it was to love Eve Williams because he had once done so himself, fervently. Water under the bridge, he thought, and Anna had all of his heart now. But still, he understood.
Outside, on the lower slope of the common, Eliza climbed Ellen’s tree and sat beside her on a long, wide bough. She put an arm round her sister’s shoulders and said, ‘Amos’s come. It’s better in there now. Kettle’s on.’
They stayed put in the elm, though, each taking some comfort from the closeness of the other. Ellen sucked her thumb. Eliza thought about happiness and how, now it had slipped away, it was impossible to remember the feeling or to imagine it ever coming to her again.
T
he speed of Eve’s decline shocked everyone. She couldn’t stay at the hotel, so she was moved to Silas’s house. Shaken into tenderness by the severity of her illness, and riven with guilt for assuming she would conquer it, Silas wrapped her in the sheet she lay under and carried her to his car, placing her on the back seat as if she were made of spun sugar. Angus howled, but was held back by Seth. The little boy hammered at Seth’s hands and screamed infant curses at his uncle, demanding that he bring back his mam, but Silas paid him no attention and Seth was firm. Eve knew nothing of any of it. She was drifting between unconsciousness and semi-consciousness and her yellow-tinged skin burned with fever. If her eyes flickered open she seemed to know no one, even her sons. She was lost to a different world and Silas, more than anyone, was terrified; he believed she would never come back.
There was a doctor in Spanish Town, rumoured to be experienced in cases such as these, and though he had been sent for he had yet to appear. Ruby said, What did everyone expect? He lived way over on the wrong side of the Blue Mountains, and unless he had the power of flight it would be days before he came, if he came at all. Anyway, she said, Eve didn’t need leeches and dubious science. While they waited for the doctor, Ruby had been nursing Eve with the herbal infusions she swore by, cloudy and bitter smelling, dispensed in five daily doses. When Eve was moved Ruby moved too, ministering to her still, bringing feverfew, cowfoot and bitter bush leaves, and calabash syrup in a stoneware jar. She still had her work in the hotel kitchen, so during her absences Justine was briefed to keep vigil, a task she seemed preternaturally suited to as she sat placid and silent at the bedside.
Ruby would have preferred that Eve be moved to her own little house, but Batista told her not to invite sickness into her home, and anyway, Silas would have none of it. Swamped by a desperate devotion, his heart heavy with grief, he tried to assuage his own suffering by lavishing every comfort on Eve. He had her settled into a large room on the first floor, where the double jalousie windows were swagged on the inside with white linen to diffuse the light. The sheets on her bed were of cool, smooth Egyptian cotton, and an additional ceiling fan was fitted to stir the thick, Caribbean air into something approaching a refreshing breeze. She was to have everything she needed: that was his instruction.
The day after Eve went to Sugar Hill, Ruby came at first light, driven there by Scotty in the trap. The big house was silent, but Henri slid from the shadows and directed her upstairs, and when she pushed open the door of Eve’s room Silas and Justine were both in there. They stood several feet apart, but something about they way they stared – Silas at Ruby, Justine at her feet – suggested collusion, a shared secret, and when Silas left the room Ruby said bluntly, ‘Is that his baby you’re carrying?’
Justine nodded. Ruby shook her head, as if she pitied the other woman her plight, but Justine placed a protective hand on her swollen belly.
‘Masser is good,’ she said. ‘Is kind.’
Ruby looked away. She felt a jolt of absurd hurt that when her own pregnancy had been discovered by Silas the goodness and kindness had ended, not begun. On the bed, Eve moaned and Ruby, grateful for the diversion, went to her side. Eve’s eyes were open, and Ruby murmured hello, though there was no response. She sat down on the mattress and said to Justine, ‘Come, help me lift her.’ Justine did as she was asked, propping Eve up with one strong arm so that Ruby could offer her sips of vervine tea. Later, she held a strange-smelling poultice to Eve’s brow, brushing Justine’s hand away when she offered to take over. At length she stood, turned Eve’s pillow, shook out and smoothed her sheet, and made to leave. Justine, watchful, silent, ventured a smile, but Ruby found she couldn’t return it, though she didn’t entirely understand why. Instead she said, curtly, ‘I shall come back as soon as I’m able,’ and left the room. Justine lowered her eyes but her face was serene. She was still seated at the bedside, and she lifted up Eve’s hand and let it rest in the coolness of her own palm.
Silas was waiting for Ruby at the bottom of the stairs. He watched her descend, but not with his usual sneer: rather, he looked vulnerable, ragged with anxiety, and his voice was laced with uncertainty.
‘Do you think she’ll live?’ he said. ‘I can’t rid myself of the certainty that she won’t.’
‘We don’t know the answer to that, do we?’ Ruby said.
‘Then you do think she’ll die.’ His voice was bleak.
‘That is not what I said. Many people survive yellow fever.’
‘She should’ve shaken it off by now, though. Why hasn’t she shaken it off?’
‘She has a bad dose. We have to watch her closely.’ She felt no sympathy for Silas in his evident distress. For Eve, however, she was gravely concerned.
‘I’ve telegraphed her family, in Yorkshire.’
Ruby tutted, much displeased. ‘Have you? Spreading the misery seems an unhelpful course of action. What can they possibly do, besides worry desperately?’
‘Better that than wire them out of the blue with the worst possible news.’
‘Cho! Enough,’ she said, and walked towards the open door. She could see Scotty waiting on the trap, with his back to the house.
‘Ruby!’
Silas lunged and grabbed at her arm, and she spun round. ‘Do not touch me,’ she said with quiet force.
‘I don’t think you understand,’ Silas said. ‘I can’t bear the thought that I might lose her.’ Tears welled in his eyes and he left them there, to fall onto his cheeks. Ruby saw that he was in real distress, and wondered if this was the first time Silas Whittam had shed tears.
‘I will do all I can,’ Ruby said. ‘But I’ll do it for her, and for her little boy. Not for you.’
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Stay with her. I’ll put another woman in the kitchen.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘The very last thing your sister would want is for the hotel kitchen to go to rack and ruin once again. I’ve given her something to calm her and to cool the fever. She’ll sleep for a few hours. In any case, she has Justine – as, I gather, do you.’ Ruby turned again and he didn’t try to stop her, but followed her to the steps of the house and watched her spring up beside Scotty, who snapped the reins and made the mule move off at a lick along the drive to the lane.
Edna trotted peaceably down the sharp incline of Sugar Hill, past cotton trees whose fluffed branches lined and filled the lane, so that for this short leg of the journey the trap was in complete shade. Ruby sighed and rubbed her eyes with balled fists, like a child, and Scotty sucked his teeth.
‘What?’ said Ruby, putting down her hands and looking at him sideways.
‘You dog tired, nuh?’
‘A little weary. Not for the first time, however, and not for the last.’
Scotty nodded, and held his tongue. Privately, he thought Ruby Donaldson put herself out too much for people who weren’t worth the trouble.
‘How are the boys?’
‘Pickneys fine.’
‘I was worried Angus would cry when he woke and found himself in a new place, but I thought it best that he should rest so I had to leave him sleeping, to get up here and back again in time for—’
Scotty held up a hand, a flat palm against her rush of words.‘Ever’ting cook an curry,’ he said. ‘An-goose happy as a snapper, him splashin’ at Eden Falls.’
‘Oh lordy, that’s where I must go then,’ Ruby said. She yawned widely, forgetting to cover her mouth. ‘I’d thought to go home first and make a little breakfast.’
‘Roscoe done thought a that,’ Scotty said, and he laughed and would tell her no more, only whistled through his teeth and let Edna lead them to the narrow path to the falls, where Ruby climbed down.
‘No need to wait Scotty, I’m sure you have a good deal to do,’ she said, with the haughtiness that never quite left her. In reply he winked at her, then lingered to watch Ruby’s sweet backside as she swished through the grass, unconsciously alluring. It was a kind of sport for Scotty and for Maxwell, catching a glimpse of Ruby from behind, without her knowledge. Now he fell solemn at the beauty of it.
When she reached the water Angus and Roscoe were squatting on the bank like little bush piccaninnies, cooking crayfish on a small fire. They had on baggy shorts, but their torsos were bare. Angus poked experimentally at the orange embers, watching the sparks, while Roscoe used two sticks to pick up the crayfish and turn them. They were utterly absorbed, but in the way that children had of rarely being startled, they didn’t jump when she spoke, but merely turned to her and smiled.
‘Look Ruby, Roscoe catched janga,’ Angus said.
‘Caught,’ Ruby said. ‘Crayfish.’ She gave Roscoe a look.
He shrugged. ‘Janga, crayfish, same thing and one as tasty as the other,’ he said, risking cheekiness, full of confidence in his role of guru and guide.
She let it pass but said, ‘Crayfish, nevertheless,’ then she pointed to the soft heap of cakes, damp and warm on a tin plate, and added, ‘and bammies?’
‘And this.’ Angus said, pointing to a jug of lemon syrup. He’d been charged with the task of carrying it himself, all the way from Roscoe’s house to Eden Falls. The top of the jug was covered with another tin plate, to keep out the ants.