Nothing. Just the echo of her own voice in the sudden emptiness of the room. But she was not willing to sit there in silence and watch him leave. She wrapped her arms around him, drew him up against her chest as she sat on the bed, his head slack on her shoulder. Gently she rocked him back and forth, humming to him, a soft tuneless sound, and her tears fell warm on his cheeks.
Chapter 7
Flynn
Flynn watched her. He didn’t help, but his fingers itched to seize a corner of the sheet she was using as a shroud and haul the deadweight of Johnnie Morrell through the trees.
Johnnie, this wasn’t meant to happen.
He spat out the gum he was chewing, turned his back on the dazzling emerald sea that rippled quietly behind him, and sank deeper into the shadows of the palms. It was too hot. Sweat dripped off him, though he was scarcely moving, and he could only guess at what she must be feeling, dragging a dead man.
Under the trees the air was trapped, humid and heavy, unable to find its way out. He saw her pause, but she didn’t look up from the swathed figure at her feet. She dropped to her knees beside it, laid a hand on its broad chest, and remained there for a long moment with her head bowed, before she resumed the man-hauling once more. The sheet kept snagging on roots, snatched at by branches and glistening tendrils of ivy. Her limbs were skinny and looked to him as though they’d snap if he yanked on them, but she moved with quick decisive intent. The light-greenish dress she was wearing today blended with the undergrowth and he had the odd feeling she might disappear if he took his eyes off her, vanish in the dappled mosaic of light and shade.
Johnnie Morrell’s death was a failure. It was a word that didn’t sit easy on his tongue. More than anything right now he wanted to get off this island, where the sand was so fine it scratched at his eyes and crept into his ears, where sandflies sucked out his blood and where natives talked with a lilting singsong accent that invaded his head at night.
He could see where the hole had already been dug in the ground, black and empty. She had wrenched it from the sandy soil with her spade, the muscles of her neck jumping, tense with effort. He watched her drag the body to the brink of the hole and prepare to roll it in. Abruptly he could bear no more. He could not watch Johnnie Morrell take his final dive. The scent of the island itself seemed to rise from the hole and suffocate him.
Flynn moved away on silent feet, back through the trees, avoiding the sunlight. What did it matter if she had to live with a body under the soil only fifty yards from where she slept? Why should he care?
She was nothing to him.
Chapter 8
Ella
Letter writing. Two words that struck gloom into Ella’s heart. It was the part of her job as a diplomat’s wife that she liked least. Once a week Reggie’s male secretary arrived at Bradenham House clutching a box file of letters for her attention and a patient smile.
Today was letter day. She took over the large rosewood dining table and summoned a pot of coffee from Emerald. She then arranged the letters in separate piles over its polished surface, shuffled them around a bit to delay the moment of actually starting work on them, and picked up her fountain pen. The first one she dealt with was a simple plea for more benches for the children in a school. The second one was a more complicated request for her to intervene in a dispute over legal fees that were bankrupting the correspondent. The third one was at least amusing. It came in the form of an invitation to support a small museum celebrating the history of the Bahamas and was written as if from Anne Bonny and Mary Reed, the two most infamous female pirates to roam the Caribbean seas. She marked that one down for further attention and continued with the next.
People saw her as a route to Reggie. She didn’t resent that. Often they had exhausted other avenues—their Member of Parliament or local police—and she was their last resort. She always tried to do what she could for them but refused to pester poor Reggie. His days were full enough already.
After two hours, with the sun struggling against the shutters and the ceiling fan feeling the strain, Ella pushed back her chair, tracked down her sunglasses, and headed outside. Ella loved her garden with its well-watered lawns and its borders filled with the great splashes of vivid color from the cannas and vibrant allamandas. But her favorite was the overarching flame tree which treated her to a display of extravagant flame-scarlet flowers every spring and folded up its delicate leaves at the onset of dusk each night. She loitered contentedly in its deep shade now, a respite from the glare of the sun.
When Ella arrived in the Bahamas eleven years ago she had been all prepared to find something close to the lush tropical vegetation of Malaya, where the dense jungle stalked the fringes of the towns, just waiting for a chance to march in. But she was wrong. Here on New Providence Island the thick forests had been savagely cleared long ago, first for shipbuilding and then for sugarcane, and never replanted. That had saddened her.
The island now had thin soil and was covered mainly with a dry scrubland of ferns, pines, and palms which the locals called the bush. It wasn’t as aggressive or as vigorous as the landscape of Malaya but neither was it as oppressive. It let in the light. Let in the sweet salty air. Allowed you to breathe, and Ella loved it for that. In summer the island grew hot and humid, but most of the year it possessed a balmy climate that beguiled visitors and gave the islanders their easy rhythm of life.
Ella moved purposefully down to the bottom of the garden, where a fence of wire mesh divided off a large section of open ground. She rattled an enamel bowl in her hand, making the sunflower seeds it contained jump, and called out, “Ladies!” Instantly a chattering flock of hens stampeded toward the fence, barging and pecking in a swirl of excitement. Their antics made Ella laugh, especially Josephine, who led the charge, a formidable Rhode Island Red with a penchant for watermelon.
“I don’t know why you bother with those damn chickens,” Reggie complained whenever Ella came in from hosing down their houses or from puffing sweet-smelling louse powder over them.
“I like them.”
“Can’t you just buy eggs instead?”
“I like the hens,” she explained. But Reggie was never going to understand.
A voice behind her startled her.
“Ah, there you are, my dear Ella. I thought I’d find you down here.”
“Tilly, good morning.”
Her friend was wearing an immaculate blouse and skirt in matching buttermilk linen and a hat broad enough to keep the sun off her face at all times. Her nose was slightly pink but Ella suspected that it wasn’t from the sun.
“Everyone is saying how heavenly last night was, my clever darling. A great boost to the funds as well.”
“Our boys certainly know how to party. I hope you had a good time too.”
Tilly pulled a face. “The duke left early. Seemed horribly out of sorts. I didn’t get my dance with him.”
Ella threw a handful of seeds to the hens, causing a minor riot. “Buck up, Tilly, there’s always next time.”
“What are you doing today?”
“Writing letters.”
“Don’t be a silly ass, darling. I want you to come and watch today’s yacht race with me.” She prodded impatiently at the wire fence with a lacy parasol. “Hector is competing.”
“Well, I really should be—”
“You wantin’ somethin’, Mrs. Latcham?”
Emerald’s rich voice boomed out across the lawn and her bosom advanced down the garden path toward them at a fair pace. Clearly Tilly Latcham had managed to sneak down the side of the house, giving a wide berth to the fearsome maid. Ella chuckled.
“It’s all right, Emerald. We’re fine.”
Emerald halted, her bosom still trembling like a truck with its engine idling, and pursed her large ruby lips in disapproval, giving Tilly the stare. She was adept at the stare. It was one of the weapons she used in a white man’s world in whic
h she found herself black and female.
“I spotted you, Mrs. Latcham. You ain’t been announced.”
Tilly waved a hand airily. “No need. I didn’t want to disturb you when you were”—she glanced at the maid’s hands, patchy with flour—“. . . you were doing things.”
“That will be all, thank you, Emerald,” Ella said, tipping the last of the sunflower seeds in front of the scavenging posse.
Emerald rolled her black eyes, and with another well-aimed stare in Tilly’s direction she headed back the way she’d come, her sandals slapping down on the path with a voice of their own.
“Ella, I swear I don’t understand you,” Tilly exclaimed. “Get rid of her, for heaven’s sake.”
Ella watched the broad rear view of her maid in her white uniform, shuffling away toward the house, the sun glistening on her greased curls and throwing her shadow across the lawn. Ella thought about the way Emerald would huddle by the coop all night to nurse a sick hen, recalled the sound of her voice when she launched into a hymn while baking, and she felt again her solid presence at her back when they went delivering eggs in the black shantytowns over the hill.
“No,” she told Tilly firmly, “I’ll not get rid of her.”
“She’s so rude.”
“True.” Ella nodded. “But she’s also loyal. And she worships the ground that Reggie walks on.”
Tilly laughed and looked Ella over with affection.
“How do you live with it, darling?” she asked. “It would drive me mad.”
“Oh, you know me,” Ella answered easily, “I can learn to live with most things.”
Chapter 9
Dodie
Dodie was searching the sand. The midday sun beat down on her back as she paced the beach under a brilliant blue sky, punishing her skin beneath the thin cotton of her dress and scorching her neck each time she bent her head to examine the sand. She was seeking out Mr. Morrell’s footprints.
They were here. Somewhere. Proof beyond doubt that he had once been alive. That he could leave his mark on the world. She didn’t want his shoes or his clothes or his filthy gold coins, all inanimate leavings, all objects that meant nothing and possessed no trace of him. Of him. Of the man he was under his skin. Useless things. No, she wanted . . .
What did she want?
She sat back on her haunches, shielding her eyes with one hand, and shook back her hair as she scoured the graceful curve of white sand that stretched away from her, glistening like sugar spilled from a bowl. An empty beach. Only the eagerness of the turquoise waves as they wriggled up the slope and the bobbing of the noisy sandpipers disturbed the stillness. The palms along the tree line seemed to snooze, lethargic in the breezeless air.
She needed to find Mr. Morrell again. She didn’t want to remember him as the lifeless piece of flesh wrapped in the shroud she had sewn for him, but as the man who had grimly held on to her ankle last night and asked for her help.
Help me.
She had helped him to die.
But now she could not allow herself to bury him with dishonor in a forgotten hole in the ground. She ignored the scrabble of footmarks outside her shack and instead she narrowed her eyes at the fading line of prints that trailed up from the waterline. Large feet in hard-soled shoes belonging to a stranger with a long stride.
“Didn’t you trust me, Mr. Morrell?” she asked. “Not enough, it seems.”
She tracked back to where she had helped him out of the wheelbarrow last night and found several clear footprints still etched into the sand. She placed her own bare foot in one but the imprint was too big to be one of hers. She knelt beside it and carefully brushed the curve of the sole with a finger.
This was him, this is what she sought. It was his strength that had created this form, this mark of Morrell. She crouched down over it greedily, her hand flattened out inside the indentation, sweat dripping from her forehead and leaving speckles on the sand like tears. A moan slipped through her lips.
Chapter 10
Ella
Ella drove. It was safer. Her friend’s pink nose was always a good indicator of her alcohol intake and clearly she had been topping up this morning. Tilly was leaning back in the passenger seat of Ella’s navy-blue Rover and dozed discreetly behind her sunglasses. That suited Ella. She had an errand to run before driving over to the yacht club, which lay on East Bay Street over on the far side of Nassau. She wanted to take a quick look at the school that needed more benches, so she headed west along the coast road and then took a left, winding inland up through the sparsely inhabited interior.
As her car kicked up a trail of dust on the dirt road, she relished the heat-laden air buffeting her cheek through the open window, lifting tendrils of her hair off her neck and flooding the car with the rich scent of wildflowers. Above them the sky arched in the kind of kingfisher blue a child would choose to paint a sky and reminded her of her own dreams when she was young. As a child she had wanted to grow up to be an intrepid explorer in darkest Africa and she had endured her brother’s daily scorn as she taught herself how to use a compass and to take readings from the sun. She had such grand plans. But they came to nothing.
Instead she met Reggie. He was a shooting star, a bright young Member of Parliament, tagged as one to watch. Front-bench material. A different kind of adventure from hacking her way through virgin jungle or wading crocodile-infested swamps, but exciting nonetheless. As the wife of an MP she would be able to do something positive, influence his policies. She could leave a dent in the world that said, Ella Sanford was here.
So what happened?
How did she end up in a backwater like New Providence Island? Right now there was a war on in Europe, tearing countries and lives apart, and part of her hankered after driving an ambulance. Or taking down important radio messages. Delivering packages of secret documents. Anything . . . anything to break the crushing tedium of her life.
She swerved to avoid a rail-thin dog that had chosen to take its nap in the middle of the road in the sun. Tilly opened her eyes but closed them again, and Ella thought she must have a very clear conscience, the way she could fall asleep faster than a lizard. On each side of the road the trees dozed lazily in the heat above an underlay of young palmetto, a fan-shaped palm, whose leaves were used for thatching and weaving. A roadside stall selling yellow melons shot past and the dark-skinned woman behind it waved a hand. Ella waved back.
So what happened? Why wasn’t Reggie in the war cabinet?
Everything changed, that’s what happened.
“I will of course release you from our engagement, Ella,” Reggie had announced stiffly in her mother’s drawing room, “if you wish.”
“No, darling Reggie.” She had walked up to him, taken his face between her hands, and kissed his mouth. “It is not what I wish. Not at all.”
His eyes had filled with tears. In the twenty years that she had spent with him, it was the only time she’d seen her husband cry. He didn’t offer the details and she didn’t ask. They never discussed it again. Some financial misdealing he’d got mixed up in, that was all she knew, but it was bad enough for him to withdraw discreetly from Parliament. Instead he was sidelined into the Colonial Office, shunted out to postings in far-flung corners of the Empire to keep him from being snubbed in decent London drawing rooms. So instead of hacking her way to the source of the Nile, she had hacked her way through cucumber sandwiches and polite conversation year after year.
That’s just the way it was.
* * *
The school, when she found it, was small, only twelve pupils, and ill-equipped. There was a blackboard in the schoolroom but a shortage of slates for the children, some of whom were perched on upturned wooden crates. Ella greeted each child and talked with the black female schoolteacher about the need for books for them to read and chalks for them to write with. Maybe even a few stick pens and inkwells. A noteb
ook and ruler each would make such a difference.
“I’ll see what I can do for you,” Ella promised.
“The School Commission ain’t goin’ to like that I went behind their backs to you, Mrs. Sanford.”
“I expect they’re white and male and like their own rules. But don’t worry.” Ella smiled with respect at the fresh young face of the teacher, who was no more than nineteen or twenty herself. “We won’t tell them.”
The young woman’s eyes were excited. “I appreciate that. Thank you, Mrs. Sanford.”
The children sang “God Save Our Gracious King” to Ella not once but twice, and as she was leaving, the schoolteacher said, “Good-bye, Mrs. Sanford. Do take care in town.”
Ella halted. “Why? What’s happening in town?”
“Nothing much. It’s just some construction workers again.”
“But the pay dispute and all that trouble was settled last year,” Ella pointed out. “Aren’t they being paid enough now?”
“It depends on what you mean by enough, doesn’t it?”
Ella made no comment and climbed into the car. “Wake up, Tilly. We have a race to watch.”
It wasn’t until she was approaching town once more, motoring along West Bay Street with the sea sprawling away to their left in a dazzling patchwork of emerald and midnight blue, that Ella suddenly sat up straight behind the steering wheel. Alert and watchful.
“Tilly, what exactly did she mean when she said, ‘Take care in town’?”
* * *
Downtown Nassau was pretty. No other word for it. Pretty as a picture. All pastel-painted façades and shady canopies to shield shoppers from the inconvenience of sun or rain. Bay Street was the broad tree-lined main thoroughfare of Nassau that ran parallel to the ocean, and Ella was struck yet again by its elegance and its unadulterated prettiness.
Bay Street was where the money was. The Bay Street Boys—that’s what they called them—were the greedy men in cool linen suits who ran this island. They smoked their fat Cuban cigars together in the offices above the rows of stylish shops and sometimes Ella caught sight of them gazing down from their upper windows with self-satisfied smiles. They were the men who controlled the economy and the House of Assembly, they were the lawyers and land agents, accountants and merchants, traders who made fortunes and knew exactly where to go for an official government stamp on their contracts.
The Far Side of the Sun Page 5