‘Well that’s nice to ’ear,’ Amos said grumpily.
‘However, the suffrage movement is being constantly provoked into more extreme action through the government’s implacability. As ever, we should look to the Ancient Greeks for guidance. They understood democracy to mean “administration in the hands of the many, not the few”, and “equal justice, to all alike, in their private disputes”. I quote Pericles, of course.’
Miss Cargill possessed a naturally smug expression – solemn, a little purse-lipped, calmly self-satisfied – which she now adopted, having finished her point, and Amos felt rather than saw the warning in his wife’s eyes. She needn’t have worried; he had no particular appetite for a scene. In any case, Maya piped up with a question, which did more than Amos could have done to puncture the moment.
‘So, were Ancient Greek women allowed to vote, Miss Cargill?’
The governess looked at her charge. ‘Well done, Maya, for asking such an interesting question,’ she said in a bright voice.
‘And?’ said Amos.
‘Well, no, as I’m sure you’re aware, Mr Sykes, Athenian democracy did not extend to women.’
Amos picked up his newspaper again. He smirked as he did so. On the facing seat Norah opened one eye. ‘Might we be having that picnic, missus? Sure, I can’t sleep sound on an empty stomach.’
The MacLeods had travelled by train too, south-west to Bristol’s Temple Meads station, from where a hansom cab took them through teeming city streets to the docks at Avonmouth.
Angus could barely contain his excitement; the world, to date, had been a small place, with Netherwood, Ardington and Barnsley forming the three points of a very familiar triangle. Here, though, were tugs, boats and ships crowding the dark, oily waters of the harbour and rough men staggering with crates down creaking gangplanks, making towering piles of them on the wharf. Eve held his hand very tight. A small boy might be knocked into that water and nobody would even hear the splash. For the first time she felt the stirrings of fear at this undertaking. The smells were appalling: oil, salt, smoke, fish, rotting fruit. And the dockers called to each other using words she didn’t recognise, in an accent she’d never heard. There were folk who considered a colliery the closest thing on earth to hell, but Eve knew already that she’d take a pit over this heaving, stinking, watery mayhem. She glanced across at Daniel, but he was turned away from her, scanning the vast warehouses, looking for Whittam & Co. In any case, she thought, she couldn’t tell him that she thought she might not want this. It was all far too late for that. It had taken all her persuasive energy to win him round to this plan; she would look an utter fool if she changed her mind now.
‘There it is,’ said Daniel, pointing out the bold, painted fascia of Silas’s company, and now they could see it, it was impossible to understand how it could have been missed, so fine was the sign and so relatively close to them. Then Silas was walking towards them, striding along the wharf with a beaming smile and a patrician air. He held out his arms in general welcome but Eve was anchored on one side by Angus and Daniel on the other, so she just smiled at her brother, a little wanly, and he let his arms drop, since no one seemed inclined to run into them.
‘Well here you all are,’ he said. ‘And I have to say, you look a little stunned.’
‘Landlubbers,’ said Daniel. ‘Fish out of water, if you’ll forgive the pun.’
Silas laughed in the way that Daniel had forgotten but now remembered: a short, derisory snigger, which always seemed to be inspired more by pity than amusement. ‘Evie, darling girl – beautiful as ever,’ Silas said. ‘And Angus, you’re a little one, aren’t you? The image of your father, but in miniature.’
Angus, abashed and confused, looked at his boots. This Uncle Silas of his was a bit of a puzzle: warmish words and a wide smile, but eyes that flicked away as soon as he’d spoken, as if he didn’t much care about an answer. Silas hardly ever came to Netherwood these days, content to leave the running of his Yorkshire colliery to the managers he had installed there when he bought it, so Angus tended to forget him between visits. The little boy felt shy; he drew closer into his mother’s skirt and, feeling this, she put an arm around his shoulders and kept him tight against her side as they followed Silas through the crush and into the most extraordinary place any of them had ever seen.
‘Voilà,’ he said, laughing at their expressions. ‘The secret to eternal wealth.’
It was a cavernous room, filled floor to ceiling with bananas. They hung in hands of ten or twelve from iron hooks attached at close intervals to wooden poles, which were each some forty feet high. Thousands of bananas, ranging in colour from a hard, unappealing green to soft, edible yellow. Men in overalls patrolled the aisles and there were ladders on retractable wheels, placed at intervals through the room. Silas reached out and plucked a banana from the nearest bunch, opened it, and handed it to Angus, who took it not because he wanted it but because he didn’t know how to say no. He’d tried banana before, in his pa’s hothouse at Netherwood Hall, and he didn’t like the way the flesh turned to slop in his mouth. When Silas turned his back to lead them through the warehouse, Daniel took the banana from Angus and stuffed it in his pocket, and they shared a small smile of complicity.
‘So,’ Silas said, striding on ahead and up a spiral staircase, ‘Jamaica awaits, and I know you’re going to adore it, Evie. There’s work to be done, but there’ll be plenty of time for relaxation too. I think my letter explained the essential problem, but we can talk about the nuts and bolts en route.’
‘Seth’s letter,’ Eve said.
‘Say again?’ Silas glanced back at her.
‘Seth’s letter. Seth wrote to me.’
She couldn’t see his face now, because they were single file on the stairs, and he had turned away again to continue the climb. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said smoothly. ‘Dear boy – he’s longing to see you. So, the Cassiopeia sails at three, and you’ll find your trunks are in your cabin. I’ll be sailing with you, of course.’ He spun on his heels, forcing everyone to stop, and he smiled down at Eve. ‘Three weeks at sea for the two of us,’ he said. ‘What a treat.’
Eve took Angus by the hand and raised his arm, waggling it to remind Silas of the boy’s existence. ‘Three of us, you mean,’ she said with a reproving smile, and Silas frowned a little, as if he didn’t quite follow. Then, ‘Ah yes,’ he said, and marched on up the stairs to his office, where tea and scones awaited on a silver tray.
Bringing up the rear, Daniel considered the extent to which he disliked and mistrusted his brother-in-law; very considerably, he concluded. And yet, the two individuals most precious to him on God’s earth were about to be placed in Silas Whittam’s care. If there had been a time in Daniel’s life when he had felt more wretched, he couldn’t now remember it. He should never have capitulated, should never have consented to the trip, although the reality was that he’d caved in because she was set on going, with or without his say so. She missed Seth, he knew that, and understood it. But also, she was stubborn about Silas. There was a doggedness about her love for her brother: an implacable loyalty founded in shared poverty twenty years ago. There was no competing with that. Silas was lodged in her heart, and no attempt to shift him ended well. As he followed them into the office, Daniel’s fists were clenched in two tight balls; fear and frustration raged in his breast. He fought hard to disguise his feelings, however; it seemed a poor thing, to send off your loved ones under a cloud.
He watched the Cassiopeia sail. There were others on the dockside, family and friends of passengers, waving cheerful handkerchiefs and calling out messages of farewell. In their midst, Daniel stood and waved too, but fiercely, desperately, already aching with loss. They had held on to each other on the ship, Angus wedged between them with his arms round his pa’s hips, and Daniel had breathed her in. Then he had released Eve and stooped to pick up Angus, covering his hot face with kisses and telling him, over and over again, that he would be right here on the dock, in this harb
our, when they came home in three months’ time. He had had to leave then, and he still didn’t know by what impulse he had got himself down the gangplank, because every part of him wanted to stay with them there on deck; or, better, bring them back with him to the harbourside.
The liner heaved into life surprisingly quickly, considering its noble bulk. It carved a confident path through the water, heading out into the Bristol Channel. Very soon – too soon – Eve and Angus were tiny, indistinct figures at the rail, but they didn’t move, and neither did Daniel, until there was nothing at all to be seen. Silas stayed away from the goodbyes. At the top of the gangplank, as they boarded the ship, Daniel had gripped his arm, holding him back for a brief moment.
‘If they come to harm, I shall hold you responsible, and call you to account,’ he had said. ‘They are in your care. Return them to me, or you’ll rue the day we ever met.’
Shocked by Daniel’s intensity, Silas had wrenched his arm free and rubbed it resentfully. ‘Calm yourself, man,’ he had said. ‘They’re not sailing to war.’
Now, staring at the place where his wife and child had been, Daniel forced himself to turn and walk away from the docks. Inwardly he cursed himself for antagonising Silas at that moment of departure, in case it should, in some small but significant way, compromise the safety of Eve and Angus. He wanted to roar with the pain of their leaving, but he didn’t wish to be taken for a madman on this crowded wharf. Instead, he told himself that each passing day would bring them closer: that now their dreaded departure was accomplished, their return must, by dint of logic, be ever more imminent. It was a comfort of sorts, although for days afterwards he was periodically afflicted with bouts of raw panic and a sense that something irreplaceable had been mislaid, or forgotten, or lost for ever.
PART TWO
Chapter 21
Seth would have liked to have been down at the harbour when the Cassiopeia sailed in. He had thought about the moment for some weeks before his mam’s arrival: had thought, even, about what he might wear. He had never given much consideration to clothes back in Netherwood, but these days he was proud of his garments. Uncle Silas, with half an eye to his own reputation, kept his nephew well dressed, ordering lightweight linen suits and debonair flannels from his own tailor in Savile Row, and Seth, a few months short of seventeen, felt older and wiser in them. He could picture himself on the wharf, a calm, still point in the mêlée, his flannels pressed, his shirt fresh, his panama at just the right angle, greeting his mam and little Angus with the urbane manner of a man of the world: charming, composed, entirely at ease in the utter strangeness of Port Antonio.
However, it was not to be. He had woken on the day of their arrival to a foul smell – sulphurous and unmistakable. He had followed his nose to the first-floor bathrooms, where two lavatories had spilled effluent on to the black-and-white tiled floor, and two others were brim-full of the same. Neither Scotty nor Maxwell were anywhere to be found – they were both skilled at evasion – so Seth had waded in with a rubber plunger and a box of caustic soda, and waged valiant battle for the best part of the morning. When Eve and Angus were shepherded through the door by Silas later that day Seth had been forced to greet them in damp, soiled overalls, and it was plain from the way everyone recoiled that the smell of the drains and their contents lingered around him. It hadn’t been the reunion he had envisaged; not at all.
‘Good God man, don’t think much of that new cologne,’ Silas had said with a snigger, and Seth, mortified, had turned a shade of beetroot so entirely familiar and beloved to Eve that she had rushed to him in spite of the stink, and hugged him as if he were a child.
‘You’ve grown!’ she had said, keeping hold of him but stepping back. ‘Look at you, taller than I am now, and t’spitting image of your dad.’
‘Especially in those filthy overalls,’ Silas had said. ‘Sixty-four new arrivals are following us up from the harbour, and we have a besmirched handyman front of house.’ He smiled, though Seth knew he wasn’t amused. ‘Off you pop. Sluice off the smell of the privies. We’ll be in the bar.’
Eve had smiled and said, ‘See you soon, sweetheart.’ Seth, feeling like a twelve-year-old, had sloped away to his quarters while Silas showed Eve the residents’ lounge, the dining room, the shady veranda, the bar. Occasionally, from his room, Seth could hear his mam exclaiming with pleasure at the unusual beauty and elegance of the place, and it made him feel sullen and resentful, that he had no part in these first delighted impressions. Also, no one had thanked him for unblocking the drains.
Later, scrubbed clean and sweet smelling, clad in a casual linen two-piece and a soft cotton shirt, his dignity took the first steps on the road to recovery. New arrivals drank fruit punch and fresh lemonade in the bar, and Seth made his way through them towards Eve, stopping here and there to exchange the sort of small talk that he knew he must practise. He felt her eyes on him as he moved among the guests, and because of this he made rather more than he might have done of each new encounter: overdoing it slightly, like a ham actor playing an urbane party host. Seth had his father’s features – vivid blue eyes, soft brown hair with the same unruly cowlick, ears that jutted out like wing nuts, a tendency to scowl even when he was perfectly happy – and they were the sort of looks that no one ever coveted for themselves. But there’s more to a man than his face and, just as Arthur Williams had done, Seth now presented a pleasing whole to the world, in the way he carried himself, the things he said, the careful way he listened to what people had to say. The Jamaican sun had given his naturally pale complexion a honeyed glow. He looked well, and he knew this.
Now and again he glanced across the room at his mam as if to say, I’ll be with you just as soon as I can, and each time she smiled at him with evident pride. It was odd to see her here at the Whittam: odd, and a little unsettling, like witnessing a friendly apparition. She was beautiful, his mam, and he was glad of it now. In this room full of fashionable English folk she would not be found lacking. It worried him a little that her Yorkshire accent was undiminished, though he could hardly have expected otherwise. His own accent was more neutral these days, the result of a concerted effort to sound less like himself. Only rarely did he drop an aitch. He hoped he wouldn’t lapse under his mam’s influence. And he must remember to call her mother. Uncle Silas had made it clear that while mam was all very well in the kitchen of Ravenscliffe, it was unprofessional in the context of the Whittam Hotel. Seth had agreed, although he wasn’t absolutely sure that it could be managed.
He reached Eve’s side and she gave him her lovely smile, which made him entirely glad that she had come.
‘Look at you,’ she said.
He glanced down, as if to remind himself what he looked like.
‘You’re taller now than your dad was,’ she went on. ‘You’ve shot up.’
‘Everything does in Jamaica,’ he said, and she laughed fondly, filled with pleasure at seeing him, her first boy, her first born. Already she felt an ease between them that was new, and she supposed it must have emerged from the distance between them: that and, she hoped, some personal contentment. When Silas had offered to take him on at Whittam & Co. – out of the blue, with his usual certainty of success – Eve had baulked at the idea. Seth had been in his second year at a college for young men in Sheffield, a quietly conscientious student, cleverer than any of them had realised. An academic life seemed to beckon; Cambridge had been mentioned. But Seth had very often chosen whichever path seemed least appealing to his mother, and he had done so again, accepting his uncle’s offer with alacrity, turning his back on his books. Yet, thought Eve, here he was in Port Antonio, as comfortable in his own skin as she had ever seen him.
‘It’s so beautiful, Seth,’ she said now. ‘I’ve many a time tried to think what it might be like, but I didn’t have enough imagination for it. It’s so … so…’
‘Lush, verdant, tropical,’ said Silas, slipping into place beside her and laying claim with the palm of his hand in the small of her back.
‘Fertile, hot, wet, green, pink, purple, blue. It’s everything you could possibly imagine, then more so.’
‘When I first came I thought I’d landed in paradise,’ Seth said. Eve noticed the alteration in the way he spoke: more like Silas, less like her. Perhaps this was a good thing, she thought.
‘A paradise within reach of sinners,’ said Silas. ‘Well – sinners who can pay their passage on my ships. Do you like your room?’
She was billeted in the hotel, of course, the better to accomplish her mission.
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘I shall feel like a princess under them muslin swags.’
‘Mosquito nets,’ said Silas. ‘Close them, won’t you? Make sure there are no gaps, or they’ll eat you alive.’
Across the room a man whose pallid, newly arrived complexion bore a sheen of perspiration said, ‘I say, boy!’ in exasperated, carrying tones and Silas, ever alert to imminent discord, hurried over to nip it in the bud. A lanky Jamaican porter seemed to be the source of the problem; he leaned against the wall, picking his teeth and feigning deafness, and Eve watched as Silas spoke first to the guest and then to the porter, whose expression remained a study in boredom. He flicked his brown eyes in Eve’s direction and grinned in a louche manner; she looked away quickly. Seth said: ‘You see, this is what happens.’
‘What?’
‘The Jamaicans won’t lift a finger if they’re not spoken to nicely.’
‘Well, and do we blame them?’
‘We pay them to fetch and carry,’ Seth said, not answering her question. ‘We shouldn’t be required to stand on ceremony.’
‘Is that you talking, or Uncle Silas?’
He ignored her again. ‘But they don’t like it. They don’t have the temperament. They look at us and see white slave masters.’
‘I ’ope they don’t see a slave master in me. I shan’t get on very well in that kitchen if that’s t’case.’
Eden Falls Page 17