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.
Ruby sat down between the boys. ‘How clever of you,’ she said. The crayfish popped and fizzed over the fire, and their fanned tails began to blacken at the fringes, so Roscoe took the plate from the jug and flipped the shellfish onto it, then he bopped Angus lightly on the head with the singed end of one of the sticks. ‘One more turnabout before breakfast?’ he said. ‘Let the crayfish cool?’
And Ruby watched them s
wim, Roscoe leading, Angus following, like a duckling after its mother. Roscoe kept to the shallows and swam smoothly, with barely a break to the surface of the water, while behind him Angus’s limbs went like the clappers and his face was all motion, laughing and gasping. He was a different child, thought Ruby, to the one yesterday who’d screamed for his mother as she was lifted away from him in a sheet wrapped about her like a shroud: a different child, yet the same. He had forgotten, for the time being, that all was not well. He’d remember soon enough. For now, though, she would leave the magic of Eden Falls to do its work, and she allowed herself to savour the moment: their laughter, the sublime beauty of the lagoon, the salt smell of cooked crayfish and the benediction of the morning sun.
By the time they left the falls a bank of cloud as wide as the horizon had begun to move with stealth and speed across the sky, and the dust and leaves on the lane were whipping against their ankles. Angus walked most of the way, skipping and dancing as if the wind had him in its clutches too, but when Roscoe carried on towards school Ruby picked the little boy up and he curled and clung to her with his hands laced tightly behind her neck and his skinny legs wrapped around her waist. His skin against her own was translucent; on his wrists and at his temples blue veins showed through and this made him seem fragile, though Ruby supposed he was no more so than any other little boy of three. They were almost nose to nose and she studied his face at these close quarters: heart-shaped, like Eve’s, but darker-eyed, and his hair was darker too. Perhaps he took after his daddy in this regard.
‘Where’s my mam?’ Angus said, although he knew.
‘At Sugar Hill, where your uncle lives,’ Ruby said.
‘But I want ’er.’
‘I know you do.’
‘Can I see ’er?’
‘Soon, but not yet.’
He pouted, his young face clouded by thwarted wants; he was about to cry. But then Seth appeared on the terrace above them and called down – pompously, irrelevantly – that there was a severe storm forecast, high winds and heavy rain, and at the same moment the darkening clouds burst and in a matter of seconds Ruby and Angus were drenched by a torrent of warm rain, implausibly heavy, as if a sluice gate had opened high above them.
Angus, thrilled and entirely distracted from his imminent lament, pushed at Ruby until she released him, and then he zigzagged up the garden towards Seth, who hurried inside. Ruby followed, keeping her usual, languid pace, and instead of heading off to the kitchen, she walked into the hotel via the main entrance, expecting that Seth would want news of his mother. But when he saw her at the open door of the office he affected puzzlement and said, ‘What is it, Ruby?’
‘I just came from Sugar Hill, where I’m nursing your mother.’
‘Indeed. Mr Silas will be here soon, thank you.’
She raised her eyebrows. He strived so desperately for dignified authority, but he always looked like a boy in a gentleman’s suit. Angus sat cross-legged in the leather chair and sucked the end of a pen thoughtfully, as if he was writing a letter and found himself stuck for a word. His wet shorts would mark that soft hide seat, thought Ruby; well, let them.
‘I wonder if you quite understand the gravity of the situation,’ she said to Seth.
For a few moments they stared at each other, but Seth was resolute. He was conscious of a dangerous blurring of boundaries caused by his mother’s sudden illness and the speed with which they had all had to act. Ruby’s bush medicine was doubtless soothing as far as it went, but hardly the thing on which they all should now depend; she should not be given the status of a medical practitioner. It was Seth’s duty to restore order, to reassert his position – and hers – in the simple hierarchy, whatever heroics Ruby Donaldson might feel she had performed. This, he was sure, was what his uncle would expect of him. Often enough, Seth had heard him say, ‘Iron fist, my boy; anything less and they’ll run rings round you.’
‘Thank you, Ruby,’ Seth said again. ‘Mr Silas will inform me of developments. For now, your place is in the kitchen.’
She laughed at him, flatly. ‘Have a care,’ she said, turning to leave. ‘Your heart is turning to stone.’
Justine watched Silas until he spun out of sight in his red motorcar. The taste of him was still in her mouth; he had come to her for comfort before he left, unbuttoning his trousers and pushing her gently down onto her knees. She was glad that he wanted her, glad that he needed her; certainly, she wanted and needed him. Her breath came fast and shallow at the thought of him, and she longed already for his return. She pressed her forehead against the pane to cool her thoughts and she saw Henri – poor old Henri, was how she thought of him lately – gallop round the side of the house with a rake and a barrow, running from the sudden downpour. In Jamaica, as in Martinique, rain came not gradually but in a deluge, overwhelming and complete, a veritable flood flung from the heavens; then, as suddenly as it had come, it would stop and the sun would bear down once again on the newly washed world.
From the bedroom window, Justine watched Henri; he had crouched under a cabbage palm, and appeared to be contemplating the rivulets that carved small furrows in the dusty drive. Henri had told her he would leave Sugar Hill when he could. He was lonely without her companionship. Justine understood this, and although she didn’t want him to go, neither could she offer him a reason to stay. Sometimes she imagined a life as Mrs Silas Whittam, in which Henri lived with them in the great house, passing off as her brother – which he was, in spirit and in her heart – and dressed fine and fancy. At other times this happy vision eluded her, refusing to form or slipping out of reach of her mind’s eye, while other, starker futures rose up, uncomfortable and unwelcome.
Behind her, Eve shifted in a sudden spasm of pain and called out sharply, a name that Justine didn’t know. She had turned on to her side, and when Justine went to her, Eve seemed to know her and tried to speak, but instead began to retch violently, her eyes wild with panic and pain. She vomited before Justine was able to fetch a bowl; Justine held back Eve’s hair and wiped her face, and spoke to her in a soft patois that sounded like music. When the convulsions left her and Eve dropped back exhausted on to the pillow a livid trail of blood snaked from the corner of her mouth and down into the hot, wet crevice of her neck.
Justine knelt at the bedside and uttered a few words, an ancient incantation for the spirit of this suffering woman. Then she cleaned Eve’s sleeping face and, without disturbing her unduly, remade the bed with fresh linen, so that when the spirit departed, as Justine now believed it would, the mortal remains would be respectable and Silas would know that she, Justine, had carried out her duties, precisely as instructed.
Chapter 37
Ulrich, who was nineteen, and therefore too young, had proposed marriage to Isabella, who was seventeen, and therefore far too young. He might as well have thrown a hand grenade into the Park Lane drawing room: it could have caused no more alarm to the duchess, and perhaps, even, a little less.
The boy had asked the duke for his permission. Archie, pleased and flattered to be – for once – involved in the matters of the day, had granted it. This fact, among all the others that stacked up to represent the case against, was the one that caused Clarissa so much pain that she took to her room and refused to let Flytton so much as open the curtains, let alone dress her. She wouldn’t come out until the scheme was declared null and void. She would speak to Isabella only when the engagement was broken. She would never speak to Archie again.
Archie knew she was upset, but he hadn’t realised that he had been sent to Coventry because his wife barely spoke to him anyway, and when she did he rarely heard her. Therefore he was not, perhaps, as helpful as he might have been. Ulrich was part of the family now, as far as the duke was concerned. Permission, once granted, could not be withdrawn: a gentleman’s word was his bond. He took Ulrich with him to White’s and put the boy’s name on his account at Davies and Son, so that Uli’s tailoring would be as impeccable as his command of English. After four da
ys of lonely languish in the crepuscular conditions of her rooms, the duchess emerged – dressed, bejewelled, magnificently chilly – to find that Uli had his own Arabian mare in the stables and his own Buick under cover in the courtyard, and that Isabella wore a Hohenzollern diamond, which was, at least, a material confirmation of the connection with the royal line.
‘Extremely distant cousins,’ Clarissa said when Tobias made this very point.
‘Which is more than we are,’ he said. ‘I should imagine Aunt Liese has telegraphed Frau von Hechingen at the schloss to warn her that Uli is marrying down.’
‘Baroness von Hechingen,’ Clarissa corrected, a stickler for correct form.
‘Oh well, there we go, splendid. German nobility, with a line to the kaiser, albeit a circuitous one.’
Clarissa sighed, feelingly. ‘I do miss your father,’ she said.
‘Don’t blame Archie for this, Mama. Izzy would have won Papa’s permission in a heartbeat. She had him in the palm of her hand.’ Still though, he privately thought it a bit rum that Ulrich had gone to the duke. He felt it an unfortunate omission that his own assent hadn’t been sought. But Tobias, unlike his mother, didn’t bruise easily, and in any case it was difficult to imagine a more likeable cove than Ulrich, who certainly seemed to adore Isabella.
‘I just feel…’ said Clarissa, then stopped to press a limp hand to her pale brow. Tobias waited.
‘I just feel,’ she continued, ‘that this is folly. She is so young!’
‘Headstrong,’ Tobias said. ‘Make her wait, perhaps?’
Clarissa brightened. ‘Yes. At least a year, perhaps two.’
‘Well, certainly one, at any rate. We would all suffer frightfully if Izzy was thwarted for longer than that.’
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