by Marie Evelyn
‘You were laughing?’
‘Obviously. What did you think I was doing out there?’ He chuckled again. ‘Arthur – the man behind the bar – overheard your lord and lady putdown so it will be all round the island soon. They’ll probably want to stick your face on the currency.’
It did not seem to take so long to get back to Copper Mill as on the outward journey and before Becky knew it Matthew was parking in front of the house.
‘Thank you for tonight,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind we’ll do it again.’
‘OK,’ she said, ‘unless of course Clara needs me.’
He opened his door to get out and the plaintive soundtrack of hidden little creatures filled the car. Becky got out too and looked around her.
‘It took me a while to work out why those little frogs make that forlorn sound,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’re calling for a companion.’
‘There you go again,’ said Matthew. ‘How do you know that? Most people don’t guess that sound comes from frogs.’
‘But I don’t know what they look like,’ said Becky.
‘One day I’ll find you one and show you. If he sees you maybe his whistling will become more cheerful.’
Becky glanced across at Matthew, no more than a dark silhouette in front of the lights up on the veranda. Had he just paid her a compliment?
He looked up at a fat smudge of white in the sky. ‘Soon be a full moon –’
Was he about to say something romantic?
‘Which means Casino Nights at the hotel.’
She should have known better. ‘What are Casino Nights?’ she said, wondering what gambling had to do with a full moon.
‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, you have the perfect dress for it.’
He laughed mysteriously and let her go ahead of him up the steps to the veranda. They swapped goodnights on the doorstep and Becky headed up to her room. She heard the military drill of the bolts being drawn across the front door and the incongruous tune of the alarm being set.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Matthew told me that you were quite a hit with a lord last night,’ said Clara, before popping one of Cook’s amazing plantain fritters into her mouth. They were having lunch on the veranda where they could survey their work on the garden.
It had been a morning of fairly light pruning. There really was not much left to be done, which was just as well as Clara’s energy had faded after the first hour, leaving her to direct Becky’s activities from the veranda steps.
‘Oh, Lord Fotheringham. We just chatted,’ said Becky, embarrassed. ‘In fact he was asking me about the book. Your book.’
‘Was he?’
‘Yes he was very interested in the subject. Clara,’ Becky hesitated, ‘if you don’t mind me saying, are you scared of starting this – project?’
Clara put her fork down and looked thoughtfully at her plate. ‘Whatever makes you say that?’
‘Well, it’s just that when you’ve planned for years to do something, when it becomes a quest –’ Becky shrugged. ‘People can get scared of actually following it through. Maybe we’ve become defined by our quest and think we’ll lose something of ourselves when we start or maybe we’re scared it won’t turn out like we hoped.’
‘Sounds like you have a quest of your own,’ Matthew said behind her.
Becky turned to see him standing right by her chair though at least wearing more clothes than usual: shorts and a T-shirt. She hadn’t even realised he was in the house but he must have done his infuriating panther-like creeping to appear on the veranda unnoticed.
‘Mr R!’ snapped Clara. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that. Becky has just said something very insightful and I need to consider it without being startled by you appearing like a ghost.’
‘Sorry.’ Matthew grinned. ‘You know I hate shoes.’
‘I shall insist you wear them,’ said Clara, imperiously. ‘Tap-dancing shoes in fact.’ She closed her eyes, presumably to consider Becky’s question.
Matthew pulled up a cane chair and sat down next to Becky. He watched his mother intensely with a look of impatience and hope.
Clara opened her eyes. ‘Do you know, you’re right. I am scared of starting. I’ve been planning it for so long.’
She leaned forward in her chair. ‘The trouble is I don’t know where to begin. I have a file with years of notes in, snippets on different characters, many scraps of paper. They’ll be all over the place, I’m afraid. I know I’ve written the first chapter so that’ll be in there too, though it will probably need rewriting.’
‘I can collate all your material with my notes,’ said Becky. ‘I’ve discovered a few interesting characters associated with this estate. In fact do you remember coming across someone called Sarah Thomas?’
Clara shook her head.
‘Who was she?’ asked Matthew.
‘A servant girl who came off the ship with the exiled rebels. I’m intrigued because she’s the only woman mentioned.’
‘I want to hear more,’ said Matthew.
‘Why don’t we find your notes and then I can type everything up on the computer,’ said Becky, looking at Clara. ‘That will make it easier to arrange all the information into some order.’
‘Computer?’
‘Your laptop, mother,’ said Matthew, with mock weariness. ‘I bought it for you ages ago but I’m guessing you left it in England. Alex is buying another one right now.’
‘Oh, yes, I suppose that would be a good idea.’ Clara looked doubtful. She took a deep breath and winced. ‘Oh dear, I’m suddenly so tired. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do justice to Cook’s fritters.’
Matthew was instantly on his feet. ‘Do you want to go and lie down?’
‘Yes, I think an early siesta. That’s all I need. Thank you, Matthew.’
He stood alongside ready to help her.
‘No I can go by myself.’ Clara scraped back her chair and stood up then placed a hand on her side and grimaced.
Matthew took her arm and this time she did not protest.
‘Becky,’ she said, trying to smile though she was clearly in pain. ‘I’ll have Matthew give you what you need.’
‘Yes, I’ll certainly do that,’ said Matthew ushering his mother indoors.
He did not reappear so Becky finished lunch by herself and took the plates back to the kitchen. She put her empty one and Clara’s barely touched one next to the sink.
‘Was something wrong?’ Cook asked immediately from her seat by the table.
‘Not with the food. It was delicious as always,’ Becky reassured her. ‘But I’m afraid Clara’s not feeling very well. Matthew has taken her up to bed.’
‘I hope it’s nothing serious,’ said Maureen, scraping the leftovers into the bin.
‘I think she’s just tired, that’s all,’ said Becky.
Cook was asleep in her chair in the kitchen and Maureen looked so busy that when Zena arrived with her childminder Becky took her out ‘insect-spotting’ in the garden. High in Becky’s arms, Zena reached out to turn over leaves, shouting ‘bug’ or ‘spider’ with delight when she struck lucky. They both watched entranced as nearby a hummingbird shimmered on the spot, hoovering up a hibiscus. Then Becky realised that Zena was pulling some leaves towards her mouth.
‘No, Zena. Oleander is poisonous.’
‘Now how do you know that? Your father again?’ said Matthew. He was standing on the grass a few feet behind them. Of course Becky hadn’t heard him approach.
‘How do you do that?’ she said crossly. ‘You must have been a ninja in a previous life.’
‘Ninja,’ repeated Zena. ‘Ninja, ninja.’
‘Oh Zena, what a word to pick up,’ said Becky. ‘Can’t you say “hummingbird” or “hibiscus” instead?’
Zena considered this. ‘Ninja,’ she said firmly.
Matthew laughed. ‘So your father really was in Barbados a lot of the time?’
‘Sort of. I think he was on a ship mo
st of the time.’
‘He was in shipping?’
Becky smiled at the thought of her father as a shipping magnate but before she could put Matthew straight a car turned into the drive. Cook’s daughter-in-law got out and waved.
‘Mummy!’ cried Zena.
Becky set her down and watched her run to her mother. ‘Mummy, I saw a ninja.’
‘Did you darling?’
‘I blame you,’ Becky said to Matthew as Cook’s daughter-in-law put Zena in the car and drove away. ‘Anyway, how’s Clara?’
‘Resting. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into pleurisy this time. If she’s sensible she might get away with it. But I have come to lead you to your office. Well, my mother calls it the “morning room”. No idea why; every time I’ve checked in the evening it’s still there.’
‘Have I got a computer?’
‘Yes, Alex has delivered a no-expense-spared laptop. He bought a printer as well but the bad news is we can’t get it to work. It will be a while before he can get back down to Bridgetown to change it. It’s a pain.’
‘No worries,’ said Becky. ‘It will be a while before I have anything ready to print out.’ She looked at the yard. ‘Where’s Alex? I should thank him.’
‘He’s gone off again. He’s showing some architects around a plot I’m buying.’
He led her to a sunny little room overlooking the veranda. It held a fair-sized table, on which lay a laptop and a bulging box file. Neatly stacked next to them were notebooks, pens, a memory stick and a few postcards featuring the Monmouth Hotel. Becky picked these up, confused.
‘It occurred to me you might want to send some and I realised you hadn’t really had a chance to buy any,’ said Matthew.
‘That’s very thoughtful. Thanks.’
He shrugged then became business-like again. ‘Sorry about the printer. If you need hard copies of anything in the next few days, copy them on to the memory stick and we’ll stick it onto my PC and print it out. Just come to the office.’
‘OK.’ Becky assumed he meant the room at the back rather than the veranda.
‘I’ve set you up an account. The password is “monmouth3” – all lower case.’
‘Three? As in the number?’
‘Yes and as in the number of Monmouth hotels I’ll soon have.’ He grinned.
‘And can I access the internet?’
‘All set to go,’ he said. ‘It’s wireless and should connect automatically.’
‘Great. Then I have everything I need.’
‘If you do need anything else, come and find me. I have to go out later but until then I’m –’
Becky had a sudden thought. ‘Hasn’t Clara got friends coming tonight?’
Matthew winced. ‘Right. I’ll ask Renee to ring around and cancel. The trouble is they’ll all want to visit her if I say she’s ill. I might have to station you on the veranda with a shotgun. The moment one of her friends arrives waving a pack of cards and a bottle of sherry, you’re to pop them off.’
Becky shook her head as he walked out of the room. She was still getting used to his sense of humour. She logged on to the laptop and heaved a huge sigh of relief at finally being able to get online. She typed in the URL the librarian had given her for looking up church records in the seventeenth century and went through the laborious process of entering the names of the Monmouth rebels she had noted down. There was the option of Deaths or Marriages; she clicked ‘Deaths’ and winced at some of the dates:
1686 Burial of John Foot
1686 Burial of Henry Dodds
There were further familiar names in the next few years. Many of these men had barely survived the first year or two of their working lives on the plantations, which could suggest they had been severely mistreated. She couldn’t find any mention of Sarah Thomas’s death. Having got off a ship that she’d not (officially) boarded, she seemed to have disappeared.
As the rebels were forbidden to marry Becky did not expect to see any of their names under the Marriages option but she decided to check it anyway. And then Sarah reappeared. Becky discovered that in 1690 Sarah Thomas had married a Randolph Darnley, presumably a son of William Darnley. She could be a grandmother (prefixed with a stack of ‘greats’) to Matthew.
Becky felt goosebumps. She had wondered on which side of her bedroom window Sarah would have stood and now she thought she knew: Sarah Thomas, servant girl, had likely become ‘lady of the manor’. She had moved through the same rooms as Becky moved through. She would have sat on the same veranda surveying the same patch of land in front. She could have sat in the same space where Becky now sat. Hopefully she had had a happy marriage and Randolph Darnley had treated her well. As Becky was absolutely certain a marriage across such a marked social divide would have brought opprobrium raining down on the couple from ‘high society’, it appeared the Darnleys were not your average plantation owners. She had been projecting a few negative thoughts on to William Darnley, but maybe he – and his son Randolph – were more reasonable than she’d previously imagined.
She went back to Deaths, looking for Darnleys: William had died in 1701, Randolph had died in 1730 and Sarah in 1731. As Sarah had been described as a ‘servant girl’ when she got off the Betty with the transported rebels Becky assumed she would have been about sixteen years old. That would put her in her early sixties when she died, which was probably a decent lifespan in those days; certainly she would have fared much better than the men working the land.
Maybe there would be some reference to Sarah under her married name of Darnley in Clara’s notes. Becky took out a wodge of paper from the box file. There were a few photocopies of official documents but most of the pages were handwritten. She decided to start by transferring these to the computer. Clara’s handwriting was a beautiful loopy style – easy to read – when it was in English. However Becky found some notes written in French. Clara would have to translate these when she was feeling better.
Becky had not discovered any more information about Sarah and Randolph by the time Matthew appeared in the doorway. He was wearing pressed trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, an unknotted tie draped round his neck. At least he had shoes on so Becky had some warning of his arrival.
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s fine,’ said Becky. ‘Though I’ll need to print some pages out for Clara to translate. For some reason she’s written quite a bit in French.’
‘Because it’s her first language. Though she only uses it when she’s tired – or cross with me.’ He grinned. ‘I can translate them but it will have to be tomorrow. I’m late meeting Alex.’
‘You’re off to the hotel?’ said Becky, aware the interchange was getting uncomfortably close to a wife waving her husband off to the office.
‘Yes.’
‘Have a good time.’
‘Lord Fotheringham will miss you. It’s his last night.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘I would ask you to come but if you don’t mind –’
‘It’s better if I’m here in case Clara needs me.’
‘Yes. And you shouldn’t be bothered by anyone this evening. Renee’s told my mother’s bridge friends you’ll shoot on sight.’
Unfortunately Becky was going to be bothered that evening. No sooner had she watched Matthew’s car slide out of the yard than the phone rang. Unsure how busy Maureen was, and wanting to prevent the ringing from disturbing Clara, Becky jogged into the hall. She had barely managed a ‘hello’ before an imperious and familiar woman’s voice charged down the phone.
‘Now who’s that?’
‘This is Becky.’
‘Ah yes, Clara’s little helper. Can you get Matthew?’
‘I’m sorry; he’s just gone out. He’s not usually back until quite late.’
‘He’s probably been trying to call me these last couple of weeks. Unfortunately I just had to go to Philadelphia.’ There was a pause. ‘You did tell him I rang, didn’t you?’
‘Not directly. He was busy at the time. I gave the message to
Alex to pass on.’ Becky was not sure if Francesca would know who Alex was but evidently she did because a huff of indignation came down the phone.
‘That idiot. In that case we can guarantee Matthew didn’t get the message.’
‘I’m sure Alex’s not an idiot but he does seem to have a lot on his mind. I don’t know if he passed the message on or not but I could leave a note out for Matthew.’
A disbelieving silence followed. Then Francesca said, ‘I’d like to speak to Clara.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Becky. ‘She’s in bed. She’s not well.’
‘In bed with what? Is it infectious?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Becky. ‘I’m sorry. I must get back to work now.’
The phone was put down at the other end without any goodbye and Becky returned to the morning room, feeling unsettled. Something inside her had cheered at the thought Matthew hadn’t rung Francesca but the other woman’s hunch was probably correct: Alex – with his head full of land purchases and problems with the hotel – had forgotten to pass the message on. It could well be that Matthew would be annoyed when he found out Francesca had rung and no one had bothered to tell him.
Becky continued inputting Clara’s notes. It was only when Maureen brought her a cold coke and, mystified to find Becky working in the dark, turned the light on that Becky realised she’d been too engrossed in the lives she was reading about to notice the sun had packed up for the day.
‘Must be good,’ said Maureen, nodding at the notes.
‘It’s just tragic,’ said Becky. ‘Have you heard of the Redlegs?’
‘Yes,’ said Maureen, quietly and then seemed keen to change the subject. ‘Did I hear the phone earlier? I couldn’t make it on time.’
‘I got it,’ said Becky. ‘Francesca.’
Maureen sucked her teeth and they both looked up as a car swept into the drive, the automatic lights on the veranda welcoming the unexpected visitor.
‘Talk of the devil,’ said Maureen and went to the door.
Becky could hear Maureen talking, firmly and deliberately off-putting, but there was no dissuading this guest. Becky recognised the imperious voice as it rose higher, insistent and insincere. ‘No, I’m afraid I simply have to see poor Clara.’