The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (20 page)

I thought Maddy was looking tired tonight. She said she doesn’t understand Sinclair, and neither do I. He doesn’t like to touch me because of my illness, and I don’t care about that, but I cannot forgive that he never compliments Maddy. She looked BEAUTIFUL in her amber evening gown, and Uncle Jocelyn said so too, so it wasn’t just me.

Fourteenth

I can see across the lawn to the duppy tree, but after what Evie told me this afternoon, I wish I couldn’t. The English name for it is a silk-cotton tree, but in Jamaican it is called a duppy tree. It is tall and wide like an oak, with creepers hanging down, and spiky wild pines clinging to the branches. In the dark they look like giant spiders.

Evie says that on nights with no moon, all the duppy trees for miles around transport themselves to the deep woods to hold secret conference together. Tonight I woke myself up, to check that our duppy tree was still in place.

Sixteenth

For the first time I have had breakfast with the family! I ADORE Jamaican food. My favourite fruits are mangoes, naseberries, tamarinds and cocoanuts, which Evie calls jelly-fruit. For breakfast I like green banana porridge with muscovado sugar, and fried plantain (which resembles banana and is MAGNIFICENT), and johnny cakes (scones), and bammies, which are made of something called cassava. But this morning I had avocado pear on toast. Uncle Jocelyn calls it midshipman’s butter, and has it every single day. I thought it tasted soapy, but extremely nutritious.

Seventeenth – After tea

What a day! I have just had my first walk on the lawns with my new crutches!!!! I was very wobbly and it only lasted five minutes, but I did get a look at the outside of Fever Hill. (I was asleep when we first arrived.)

The house faces north towards the sea, and has two storeys with galleries all the way round, and a great flight of marble steps down to the carriage-drive. I was surprised to see that on the outside the louvres are peeling, and eaten by termites. It makes the house look ruined, and boarded up.

The ground floor where we live is up the main steps, with the undercroft underneath, where Maddy has her darkroom. In the middle is the huge empty ballroom, and to the east is the dining-room (which is never used), the breakfast-room where the family has its meals, then the morning-room, drawing-room and Uncle Jocelyn’s library. That is at the back, with a view of the hills, and has books from
floor to ceiling
– but I’m not allowed in, as Uncle Jocelyn doesn’t care for children. Behind the stairs are the strongroom, cloakroom and the downstairs bathroom, and then on the west side, Clemency’s rooms, then mine, and finally Maddy and Sinclair’s bedroom and dressing-room, and Sinclair’s study.

Upstairs are Uncle Jocelyn’s rooms and that of his wife Kitty, who died after they were married just a year. From the upper gallery I am told that one can see the sea, but that is Great-Aunt May’s domain.

Through my gap in the louvres I have a good view of the garden, although it is just brown lawns. Clemency says there was once a Rose Walk and an aviary, but when Kitty died Uncle Jocelyn had them all destroyed. Sometimes at night, Clemency goes down onto the lawns, if she hears her baby crying in Hell.

My view looks south-west towards the hills, like Uncle Jocelyn’s library. Beyond the lawns I can see the duppy tree, and behind it there is a rise, for our house isn’t quite at the
top
of the hill, but about two-thirds up. On the other side of the rise I understand there is the Burying-place, which has all the family graves. Maddy went there when we first arrived, but returned perplexed. I don’t know why.

I
wish
I could see the Burying-place, for it is the one place at Fever Hill that Sinclair’s wicked brother Cameron is allowed to visit. He goes there once a month, but never comes near the house. Uncle Jocelyn used to think the world of him until he did something unspeakable, and got sent to prison. They haven’t spoken since. Clemency misses Cameron dreadfully, but Sinclair says it is a great trial to have such a brother. I wonder if Cameron was wrongly accused, like the Count of Monte Cristo.

Somewhere beyond the Burying-place there is a ruined ‘hothouse’, which is Jamaican for slave hospital. Evie says it is a
very
bad place, and she wouldn’t go there at night for anything, because of the duppies.

A duppy is an evil ghost which appears when someone dies. Evie says that no matter how nice a person was when they were alive, when they die their duppy is always horrid. I asked Evie if I will become a duppy, but she said she didn’t know. I don’t want to become a duppy and be nasty to Maddy.

Evie says that beyond the hothouse there are cane-fields and cattle pastures all the way to the hills, and on the edge of the estate there is an old hunting lodge called Providence. Beyond that is the Cockpit Country, a terrible place where runaway slaves used to hide, and their descendants still live there. It has no roads, rivers or streams: just ravines and sink-holes, where they used to leave disobedient slaves to die of thirst. White people don’t go into the Cockpits any more.

Twentieth of March

I asked Sinclair if white people become duppies, and he became greatly vexed. He said only blacks believe in such nonsense, for they have no moral faculties. Uncle Jocelyn said that black people’s magic doesn’t work on white people, but Maddy said that she doesn’t know enough to say one way or the other, which I think is SO clever and so right.

Uncle Jocelyn is seventy-three, extremely tall, lean and stiff. He has a silver moustache and bushy eyebrows, and his eyes are silvery too. He reads all the time, and calls England ‘home’, although he hasn’t been there since he was a boy. He likes Maddy, and sometimes comes out to the gallery to hear her read aloud. I don’t know what she thinks of him.

He keeps a polo-stick by his bed to deal with croaker lizards, which can be noisy at night. I want a polo-stick too, but when I asked him, he said no. He always says no to me and walks away. Maddy says he ‘flees’. But I am sewing a pen-wiper for him, and I hope that some day he will allow me in his library.

Great-Aunt May is seventy-six and wears grey kid gloves, for she doesn’t care to touch people. Great-Aunt May is in fact Uncle Jocelyn’s aunt, the youngest child of his grandfather Alasdair (who died of apoplexy after they freed the slaves). Uncle Jocelyn never calls her ‘Aunt’, but only ‘May’. Everyone else in the family calls her ‘Great-Aunt May’. She is narrow and straight and has angry eyes, and wears tight grey gowns and high heels, but she never slips. She often sits in the upper gallery where she watches what goes on, and she used to be a Beauty, but she never married. She doesn’t like me. Once she said That Child must have a backboard, and Maddy said that’s the last thing she needs, and Great-Aunt May was vexed. Sinclair was too.

Clemency is my FAVOURITE person (apart from Maddy!!!). She is forty-three but still pretty, although she dyed her hair grey when her baby died. She expected her hair to turn grey on its own because she was so grief-stricken, and when it didn’t, she dyed it. It is a great shame that she has no other children, for she would have been an extremely good mother.

Clemency is the widow of Uncle Jocelyn’s only son, Ainsley. He did something bad, like Cameron Lawe, and no-one mentions him either. Clemency told me she can hardly remember Ainsley, and that she only married him because her brother, Cornelius Traherne, told her to. Clemency always does what she is told. I think that irritates Maddy.

Clemency is frequently unwell, and a great expert on medicines. Her favourites are tincture of henbane, and Dr Hay’s Ginger Lozenges for Purifying the Blood. She always wears white in mourning for the baby, and when she laughs she doesn’t make a sound. She is scared of everyone (except me), and Sinclair says she is an hysteric. But I do not think that can be right. Clemency isn’t mad. She has just spent too much time in the dark.

She sleeps with a cat on her bed and basins of water on the floor to guard against centipedes. Once the cat fell in a basin and I heard it sneeze. Clemency takes henbane to make her sleep, and when she forgets, she hears her baby crying in Hell, and walks in the garden. Sometimes she goes all the way to the hothouse, and Grace fetches her back and tucks her in.

Clemency is planning a Journey, which is extremely secret. She has
only
told me, which is why I must hide this Journal!! I asked where she will go on the Journey, and she said, Why, dear, to Hell, to be with my baby. I asked why the baby is in Hell, and she said that when he was born he had to be baptized quickly, for he would soon die. Clemency wanted to send for the Reverend Fitch who is closest, but Great-Aunt May said no, he is practically a Baptist, it must be the Reverend Grant. But the Reverend Grant arrived too late, so the baby died and went to Hell. Clemency blames herself. The only reason she hasn’t gone on her Journey yet is that she doesn’t want to inconvenience Uncle Jocelyn.

She spends her days preparing for the Journey. Occasionally when there is no-one about she has a dress rehearsal, but mostly she just prepares by cutting out items from the
Gleaner
about sunhats and sleeping-powders, and so on. She lets me paste these into her extract book, and never minds if I put them in crooked by mistake.

Yesterday I asked her about dead people, and she showed me the funeral photograph of her baby. Uncle Jocelyn arranged for Mrs Herapath to take it on the day the baby died, and Clemency is
eternally grateful
to him for that, as she was too distracted to think of it herself.

So now I know what dead people look like.

Twenty-fifth of March

Black people are healthier than white people, and have more fun. They wear more comfortable clothes, go about in the sun, sing a lot, and swim in the river – so clearly they are not afraid of alligators. They do all the work and have no money, except for a few who are teachers, vicars, policemen and banana farmers.

Black ladies do not need husbands in order to have babies. For example, Grace who does the laundry has never had a husband. Sinclair says she is an ‘abhorrence’, but Great-Aunt May keeps her on because the other helpers are scared of her, which makes them easier to manage. Grace has never told anyone who is the father of Evie and Victory. They don’t even know themselves.

Black people don’t care for Chinamen or Coolies, and they look down on those who are blacker than they. Evie is a lovely caramel colour, and once she called Victory (who is darker) a dutty nigga, and Grace walloped her. Grace herself is the colour of mahogany. She is scary, but I like her laugh and that she smokes a pipe, and I think she is an extremely good mother.

Evie is twelve, and the PRETTIEST little girl I ever saw. Her hair is always in dozens of tiny plaits which are shiny with castor oil. Unfortunately, Maddy won’t let me try the same thing myself.

Evie can carry anything on her head, and wears a little charm-bag round her neck to keep away duppies, and she has three names: Evie, McFarlane, and her born-day name, which she isn’t telling me. I think she was impressed when I told her that I never knew my mother, and about snow.

Evie is my friend, although not like Ben and Robbie, whom I miss
extremely
, particularly as they never came to say goodbye. I miss Aunt Letitia, too.

I only got to know Evie a few weeks ago, when Maddy started paying her a quattie an hour to sit with me. Her brother Victory is six, and has curly eyelashes. Maddy says he has a crush on me. He has very white teeth, and he showed me how to make a chewstick out of a twig from a special bush, so that my teeth will be as white as his.

Evie and Victory live with Grace down in the ruined slave village by the Old Works that got burnt. Nobody else will live there because of the duppies, but they don’t bother Grace because her family were slaves just like the duppies, and also because she is a witch.

I need to know more about slaves. My gazetteer calls slavery an evil legacy, but Sinclair says that is quite wrong. He says that the Baptists have greatly exaggerated how bad it was, and that the slaves were too
expensive
to mistreat, and that no-one would ill-treat a four-legged mule, so why would one ill-treat a two-legged one? He says that the blacks were better off as slaves.

Evie also knows a lot about this, for her grandmother was a slave, and when her great-grandmother was six she was given to Uncle Jocelyn’s mother-in-law as a wedding present!!! According to my gazetteer, the slaves were freed sixty years ago, and the first of August is now a holiday called Free Come, when the black people sing hymns and hold tea meetings. It seems to me that they would only celebrate being freed if they preferred not being slaves.

Daphne says slavery is long gone and you must let it be, but that some people can’t manage that, like Grace.

I don’t think Grace cares for white people, but I hope that she likes me. She knows black magic, which is called obeah, and white magic, which is called myalism. Mostly she does good magic, I think.

This morning she returned a handkerchief which Maddy had dropped on the steps. Grace said that one mustn’t leave things lying around, even in one’s own yard, because they could be stolen, and used to catch a person’s shadow.

I asked Evie about this and she explained that Grace didn’t mean the normal sort of shadow, but a different one,
inside
the person, that only a witch can see.