This seemed vague enough not to cause Ruby any immediate consternation. She didn’t like to think of Eve gone at all; somehow Eve stood between herself and Silas Whittam and made her feel stronger. And Angus; the thought of him made her catch her breath. He was the sort of lovable, trusting child whose friendship was a gift. No: she knew they didn’t belong here, but she didn’t want them to go.
A clatter at the back door heralded the arrival of Roscoe, accompanied by his little shadow.
‘Roscoe said we can swim,’ Angus said. ‘Can we, Ruby?’
‘Please,’ Roscoe said, in a reprimanding voice that made Angus scowl, although he repeated the word dutifully enough. Ruby felt a jab of concern that the child was seeking her permission rather than his mother’s, and she looked across at Eve, who was, in turn, looking at the boys, from one to the other.
‘Mam?’ said Angus, redressing the balance. ‘Please can we?’ His childish lisp was endearing, and it wasn’t too much to ask, but Eve didn’t answer. She only turned and looked back at Ruby with an expression that the other woman understood at once.
‘Certainly,’ Ruby said to Angus, and then to Roscoe she added, ‘but be back before five.’ He grinned at her by way of assurance, slung his satchel into the scullery and took a banana from the hook by the larder, then said, ‘Race you,’ and ran out of the door. Angus flew out after him with a howl of indignation, leaving Ruby and Eve alone again. They were held still for a moment by a heavy, significant silence, and then Ruby said, ‘You remembered.’
Eve nodded slowly. ‘Strangest thing. I saw Roscoe, and thought there was something of Silas in ’is face, and then I recalled that night when you talked about it all. It’s like remembering a dream.’
‘It was quite a night,’ Ruby said, a little tightly.
‘I think, if I didn’t already know, I wouldn’t see any resemblance at all. I see you in Roscoe, usually.’
‘Well, he’s my life’s work,’ Ruby said and tried to smile, although she felt tense, and sad, as if everything now would be different, and none the better for that. All Roscoe’s life she had hidden the identity of his daddy. She believed it to be right that Eve should know the truth but even so, she couldn’t see a happy outcome.
Behind her, the sweet smell of caramelised scallions began to spoil, so she turned at once to shove them around in the skillet and stop them from blackening. There was some small comfort in this everyday activity. She took the pan off the heat and flaked the salted cod into it, breaking up the firm white flesh between her fingers and thumbs. Her heart raced, although she didn’t precisely know why, and beneath her feet the ground seemed unfirm, like the deck of a boat in a heavy swell. Eve said nothing, but Ruby could feel her eyes upon her – at least, she thought she could, but when she turned Eve seemed to be looking inward, at her own private thoughts.
‘That woman,’ she said now. ‘Justine.’
Ruby waited.
‘Is she carrying Silas’s child?’
She hadn’t been sworn to secrecy, so Ruby said, ‘Yes.’
‘Does ’e ’ave others?’
This was a question so obvious that Ruby was astonished she had never asked it herself. ‘I suppose he might do, yes.’ She thought of all the long-limbed young women who harvested his fruit and carried it on their heads down the track to the Rio Grande. She thought of their strong, slender arms and the softness of their breasts and bellies beneath the gaudy cloth of their dresses. It was inevitable, she thought now, that one or other of them would have been plucked from the ranks like ripe fruit, to be enjoyed by their employer. He was greedy. He had no restraint. Who knew how many offspring he had sired?
‘Ruby, I’m so sorry. I feel ashamed.’
‘Not on my account, I hope.’
‘No, no, of Silas, of t’way ’e carries on.’
Ruby shrugged, and Eve thought how much the gesture reminded her of Anna, which in turn made her long for her friend.
‘Mr Mention,’ Ruby said, ‘that’s all he is, checking off his conquests with notches in a stick. He likes Jamaican girls.’
‘And Justine – do you think ’e likes ’er?’
‘For now, I think he probably does. In his way, that is.’
‘Ruby, when we talked, the night I fell ill, did you tell me you loved Silas?’
Ruby said, ‘Once, a long, long time ago, I thought I loved him, yes.’
‘And now?’
‘I hate him. Many people do. I don’t want people to know he’s Roscoe’s daddy. Especially, I don’t want Roscoe to know, although I think that’s a vain hope, because he’ll probably tell the boy himself one of these days.’
Eve sighed, a long, despairing sigh that touched Ruby’s heart because she could see how different these siblings were, and how difficult it must be for Eve to hear these truths. Ruby thought for a moment, searching for something good to say, and then, ‘He’s morally lax, Eve, and he’s selfish and arrogant. But he isn’t absolutely wicked.’ Eve looked at her with gratitude, for trying to be kind.
W
hen Seth had first come to Jamaica he had found its beauty oppressive. The abundance of colour and the crushing, endless march of foliage had seemed too much, and certainly most unlike Bristol. But then, Bristol had seemed exotic compared to Netherwood. The Avon Gorge had made him gasp the first time he saw it: the towering limestone cliffs and the depth and breadth of the Avon were as dramatic a natural landscape as he had ever seen. Also the lively, filthy, crowded docks where the seagulls – massive birds, Seth thought: cruel beaks and talons, and mocking, wheeling cries – filled the skies when the cargo steamers came in, dropping like feathered rocks to steal what they could from the decks. It was all as foreign to Seth as another country, and indeed he had felt as if he spoke a different language from the clerks he worked with, whose Somerset burr was as odd to his ear as his Barnsley tyke was to them.
But Jamaica had stunned him. Something like claustrophobia came upon him the first time he walked from the hotel to the waterfalls, which were only accessible through a tunnel of vivid, dripping green. He remembered looking closely at the construction and feeling repelled by the vines and the creepers that had knotted themselves into and among the leaves to make a woven roof and walls that would surely, ultimately, strangle anything tender, anything soft. It had reminded Seth of the tangle of briars around Sleeping Beauty’s castle: sinister and defensive. He would have liked to take a machete to it, or a sword, just as the prince did.
He had only been once to Eden Falls, and that was because of the tunnel. It annoyed him that his mam loved the falls so much that she’d named the hotel after them, and that Roscoe Donaldson took Angus there most days and had taught him to swim. Seth couldn’t swim. There was a large pond on Netherwood Common where he pretended to swim, so no one knew he couldn’t. He knew where the shallower parts were and stuck to those. That, or he sat on the edge saying no, he didn’t fancy a swim today – and that was always a plausible stance, because it was a mucky hole where sometimes people drowned unwanted puppies and kittens in tied sacks. He should probably have learned here, in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea: how to begin such a thing, though, at the great age of almost seventeen? He could hardly ask Roscoe for help.
These thoughts streamed through his mind and darkened his expression as he sat on the terrace of the hotel, listening to the sounds of the jungle. The solitaire bird, hidden somewhere in the tree canopy, had set up its plaintive whistle, which was supposed to be hauntingly melodic but Seth thought sounded more like a metal gate with a chronic squeak.
‘Spot of oil, lad, that’s what you need,’ he said to the bird, and jumped when Hugh Oliver said, ‘Beg pardon?’
Seth blushed and said, ‘I was talking to myself.’ Hugh smiled, then sat down next to him in a seat that swung, very gently, as it took his weight. Seth’s admiration for Hugh was unbounded. He had a way of dealing with life that Seth longed to emulate: an equable approach to disruption or disorder. Seth had never seen him lose his temper – that is, never in the way that Uncle Silas did, making cruel verbal parries, shouting down even the most timorous of counter-arguments. When Silas tried this approach with Hugh, he would employ a quiet, steely smile to throw him off kilter and then walk away until tempers had cooled. Seth had seen it many a time – had tried the smile in front of a mirror – but he couldn’t pull it off. He looked merely simple, not steely. If Seth found the courage to confide, Hugh would probably help him achieve the same sangfroid, or something approaching it, because he was a kind man, and generous too. For all these reasons, Seth admired him, but especially he admired his good looks. Hugh was a Bristolian of very unexceptional parentage, but somewhere along the line of his ancestry, an English seafarer had bred with an African slave. This was the legend, at any rate, and certainly Hugh had never attempted any other explanation for his glossy dark curls, his wide-set dark brown eyes and his skin colour, which seemed unremarkable – pale, even – here in Port Antonio, but so markedly exotic in Bristol and Netherwood.
‘I saw Eliza and Ellen,’ Hugh said now. ‘They said to say hello.’
Seth looked surprised, as if this were unlikely. ‘Did they? Are they all right?’
‘In fine fettle, both of them. Eliza’s been to Paris, you know, to see the ballet.’
Seth raised an eyebrow to show his manly disdain for such pastimes. ‘How’s business at Dreaton Main?’ he said, as if, to him, coal production was the thing.
Hugh didn’t mock, as Silas might have done. ‘Very good. They mine a quality grade of coal from those seams. What we don’t use ourselves fetches an excellent price at the Exchange.’
Seth nodded, pleased to be taken seriously. ‘How long will you stay this time?’ he asked.
‘Not sure, now. Theoretically, your uncle should be heading back to Bristol, leaving me here, but he seems adamant that he should stay, at least until your mother books her passage home.’
‘I suppose she’ll be keen to go sooner rather than later?’
‘She is, yes. Certainly her family – your family – are keen to clap eyes on her after the scare they’ve had.’
Seth said, ‘Uncle Silas blamed me for that, but it was his fault.’
‘It’s water under the bridge,’ Hugh said. ‘The telegram should be with them by now.’
Seth eyed him covertly, wondering if he should press for some small acknowledgement of the injustice, but Hugh was gazing at the middle distance with a rapt expression. ‘Look at that,’ he said, pointing ahead. ‘Fireflies.’ There were scores of them, their tiny phosphorescent lights blazing in the dark crevices of the lawn.
‘You can see why they were thought to be fairies, in the olden days,’ Seth said, more beguiled than he wanted to let on.
‘You can,’ Hugh replied. ‘They’re magical.’
‘It’s the females, attracting a mate. Once she’s mated she turns her light out, lays an egg and dies.’
‘Sad story,’ Hugh said. ‘Still, at least they shine while they’re alive. That’s more than most of us can say.’
He smiled at Seth, who smiled uneasily back and wondered if he meant something by that, and if so, what.
The atmosphere in Silas’s office was thick with resentment and recrimination. His handsome face was surly, and he looked at his sister with an entirely new, but entirely heartfelt, dislike.
‘You’re a sanctimonious bitch,’ he said. ‘Holier than thou, the worst kind of critic.’
Eve, reeling from his anger, tried her best not to show it.
‘All I said was you should do right by Justine. What does she ’ave, if you forsake ’er?’
‘Forsake her? Forsake her? Listen to yourself! She’s a slave girl from Martinique – she hasn’t set her sights on the white master, I can assure you of that.’
‘
You
listen to
yourself
! In case you ’adn’t realised, slavery was abolished last century, Silas, and while you might be Justine’s employer, you are most definitely
not
a white master. She’s a beautiful woman who’s carrying your bairn.’
‘So what? She’s not the first.’
Appalled at his shamelessness, she was momentarily silenced. He slid his eyes away from hers and spun his chair so that he faced the window, then he stood up and, plunging his hands into the pockets of his trousers, stared moodily out into the garden at nothing. His mind, apart from the obvious annoyance caused by his sister’s moralising, was largely untroubled. Nothing had changed, except that she knew the truth about Ruby Donaldson and had guessed the truth about Justine. Well, he said to himself again, so what? So bloody what? He was the same man he had ever been and would ever be. His life was his own and would never – God willing – resemble Evie’s. She had done well, granted, but she had settled for relatively little in the end. He was disappointed in her.
‘You want to know your problem?’ Eve said. He turned round, and shook his head.
‘Not especially,’ he said. ‘Not from you.’
She told him anyway: ‘You ’aven’t grown up. You’re still a child, grabbing what you can, running from responsibility. Look at you, nothing but t’best from your collar to your boots, but you’re still that stowaway boy in rags underneath it all.’
‘Oh, very profound.’ He looked at her with derision. ‘Do you charge for your wise counsel?’
‘Silas,’ she said, and it was an appeal to the brother she had once thought she knew. For a moment she thought, too, that he might respond, but instead he walked slowly, casually, towards the door of the office and held it open for her with a gracious flourish of his free arm.
‘Time you were on your way,’ he said. ‘You bore me with your small-minded concerns.’
She stood and folded her arms so that she might stop the trembling that threatened to betray her. ‘What ’appened to you, Silas? When did you become so cold?’
‘To you? Just this evening, when you presumed to meddle in my private affairs. Prior to that you were one of my favourites, but I will not be judged by you or by anyone. Now, what is it they say where you come from? Ah yes’ – here, he mimicked Eve’s accent – ‘sling your ’ook.’
‘We come from t’same place, you and I. And everyone judges you, except, perhaps, Justine. Is that why you keep ’er close? Because she’s too spineless to make demands? Is that why you shunned Ruby, eight years ago – because she
did
make demands?’