I turned my head.
She was pointing at a large clump of brain coral. It was the most prominent object on the sideboard. It loomed there like a mountain, greyish and convoluted and pitted, surrounded by the glassware—large flasks and mugs and jugs and decanters and tumblers.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘A worm moved in that coral.’
‘A worm?’
‘A worm of decay. A maggot.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Another sign of death—at least, so the superstitious would say.’ She gave a brief, nervous laugh. ‘Only an illusion created by a stray sun-beam, of course, my boy. But it gave me a start. In my present mood, everything seems significant. Every commonplace phenomenon holds in it the indication of either life or death.’
I put down my knife and fork. ‘Now, look here,’ I said, ‘let’s get this clear, Mrs. Scaife. Why this reference to death? Are you expecting anyone in here to die?’
I saw her hand tremble, saw her eyes grow shifty, but in an instant she had regained control of herself. She smiled and shrugged. ‘We must always be expecting someone to die. No, no! Please don’t explode. I’m speaking evasively on purpose to tease you. I do like to have my little fun sometimes, you know.’ She shook her head and hurried on: ‘No, I can’t say honestly I’m expecting any deaths in this house—unless, of course, they are deaths that occur by accident. Ah, yes, if you mean it that way, then I may tell you that I am always expecting someone in here to fall and hurt himself fatally—or take poison unwittingly in his food. There’s the housemaid, for instance—Malverne. She’s an eccentric girl—in various ways. Rather embarrassing ways, as you may discover before long. And she’s dyspeptic. Suffers from giddy spells. I’m always warning her to be careful when going home in the evening. The path down to Martin’s Bay is very steep at certain points. If she were to be attacked by a giddy spell one evening and fell . . .’ She shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished. Then she smiled at me—with genuine good humour, and with an irony which seemed to denote her complete awareness of what I was thinking about her.
‘Has she approached you at any time?’
‘Approached me? What do you mean?’
She shrugged and sighed. ‘Never mind, never mind.’
‘But I’m interested. Do you mean she—ah—well, you know what I mean!’ I felt the blood in my face.
She chuckled teasingly. ‘You’re blushing. Very well. Since you’re curious. She’s something of a problem-girl. Sexually. She doesn’t look it, I know, but it’s there under her innocent mien.’
Fidgeting, I asked: ‘What precise form does it take?’
‘I think the term generally used is—exhibitionist. But let’s not go into that now. I can see you’re embarrassed in spite of your curiosity.’
I didn’t press the matter, and after a silence she said: ‘If you go upstairs and look on my book-shelf—I’m not telling you to do so, mind!—you’ll find there a volume that might shock you. It would tell you many astounding and horrifying things. It’s not a printed book. It’s a loose-leaf manuscript enclosed within the covers of a book. When I came in last night and found you staring at my book-shelf I was a little alarmed. But there, there! I’m a talkative old woman. My tongue will get me into serious trouble before long.’
I said nothing.
Around us the house seemed to vibrate in the unceasing drone of the wind outside. Now and then a window in the sitting-room would rattle faintly like a voice sounding in the throat of a dying person.
Presently Mrs. Scaife broke the silence that had come upon us. She began to talk about her kitchen garden. The weather was very dry at present, and her celery was suffering. And her poor eddoes looked quite yellowish. But the lettuce was doing well. Suddenly she sighed and said: ‘But what do a few plants matter? Human life is much more important. But what does life mean? And what is death? Even you, my boy, don’t realise that robust and vital as you may feel yourself to be, the mark of death is strong on your cheek.’
4
When I asked her for an explanation of this remark she smiled and murmured sententiously: ‘To some of us it is given to see, my boy. Others must be blind. But we have to go for our walk, haven’t we? I mustn’t keep you here with my baffling remarks. Let me go upstairs and get ready.’
A few minutes later as we set out in a southerly direction along the main motor road, she told me that going for a walk was nothing out of the ordinary for her. Perhaps two or three times a week she would take Walter and Patrick and stroll down to Martin’s Bay or to Bathsheba. Or she might go in the opposite direction, as we were doing now, and get as far as the old windmill near Horse Hill. Morning, she said, was always her time for walking. She never went out in the afternoon or evening.
‘So I take it, last night’s outing was due to sheer whim?’ I spoke in an indulgent voice.
‘No, it was no whim. I think I told you I went out because I wanted to avoid being in the house when the phone rang. I’m a mystifying person, Mr. Woodsley. I can see you’re curious and intrigued. Well, never mind. Who doesn’t like a mystery? Be frank now, my boy. Doesn’t it add spice to your stay at Eltonsbrody, these queer antics I’ve begun to indulge in?’
‘Am I to understand that your queer antics are being performed to provide me with entertainment?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It’s simply that you’re fortunate to have arrived here at this particular time. But let’s not go into the matter any further. I’m interested in you, Mr. Woodsley—very interested. And I have an idea that before we part company you’ll be a far more enlightened young man in the strangeness of this world.’
She halted and pointed down at Martin’s Bay. Down there, she told me, in a tiny shingled cottage, she had been born sixty-odd years ago. Down there, too, she went on, was the Well Pit where boats were sometimes sucked down with the men in them. It was a deep crevasse in the rocks no more than ten yards wide but of a depth that had never been fathomed. The sea boiled over the spot continuously, and during the day you could see the water there, dark blue-green. A dark blue-green patch amid the rest of greenish water, edged with foam and a few jutting rocks. That was your only way of knowing the spot from a distance in daytime, though the fisherfolk of Martin’s Bay, not to mention herself, could tell where it was even at midnight. Yes, she herself could go down this rugged hillside to Martin’s Bay at any time, in the dark, and lead me to the spot, tell me in what direction to swim to reach the deathly whirlpool. It was not far from the beach. A short, brisk swim—and then down, down, down, never to come up.
I listened to her, making no comment, but missing nothing. Those rocks down there, she said, were part of her bone-frame. The salt air was in her breath—and the wind with its smell of iodine, and, sometimes, of fish. Her girlhood days in Martin’s Bay had left a stamp on her that would never be erased, no matter if she lived to ninety or a hundred. The education she had garnered in the elementary village school, and then the greater wealth of learning that she had devoured during the two years that Doctor Scaife had courted her and helped her to become acquainted with books and the affairs of the world outside this small island, the knowledge of men and their vileness that she had drunk in during her early married years, all that—yes, even that could not crush out the deep mark of those days when, as an ignorant but alert and imaginative girl, she would stand on the beach at night and watch her father and brothers wading out amid the rocks with lighted torches to catch lobsters and crabs and cuttlefish.
We had got now far past the canefields that stretched southward from the grounds of Eltonsbrody. She turned off the main road into a track that descended into a gully. Soon, however, we were ascending again along a more well-defined path that meandered through coarse, drought-afflicted grass.
A few minutes later we came out upon another highway, and going down-hill now and in a north-easterly direction, we soon came within sight of the cemetery she had mentioned the night before
. This cemetery, she explained, was owned by a group of white planter-families of the district. Only members of their own families and very close friends were buried here.
‘But,’ she went on, pride in her voice, ‘it is here Michael was buried. He was the first negro, and the only one, to be buried on this land, Mr. Woodsley—and I can assure you, neither Mitchell nor I asked permission for this privilege. Of their own free wills the heads of the four families sent and requested that the doctor be buried on their land here. Oh, yes. They respected Michael—loved and respected him. Both white and black. I don’t think there was a man more beloved in this island. That he should have been laid to rest in this select and reserved little cemetery is no surprise. It was his due.’ She spoke with emotion, with a deep earnestness and pride.
The descent into the cemetery was sharp and steep. When we got to the bottom of the declivity she paused and said: ‘We need go no further. Here is Michael’s tomb.’
It was one of three on the outskirts of the little cemetery—a simple, ungarnished tomb of concrete, painted white. Every six months, she informed me, she had it painted anew. The inscription engraved on it was, also, very simple:
DOCTOR MICHAEL SCAIFE
Born 9th December, 1885
Died 12th January, 1950
A MAN
‘Yes, Mr. Woodsley. A man. In every sense, a man. One of the best men that ever lived.’
The wind rustled softly amidst the grass around the tombs. It was the only sound in the stillness. A dryish, limestone smell and a vague dankness pervaded the air.
Suddenly a sound other than that of the wind in the grass began to obtrude. It seemed to be a low moaning. I saw Mrs. Scaife’s head come up, alert and eager. Her body grew tensed, and her hands clenched slowly.
The inclination to glance about came upon me. Then I felt like an utter fool. My silly fancy again magnifying things and making everything appear weird! It was the drone of a motor. On the road above us, laden with canes, a lorry came into view. For an instant it seemed about to plunge down upon us, then it swung round the sharp bend and disappeared beyond a canefield to the northeast of the cemetery where the road dipped steeply towards Martin’s Bay.
I noticed that Mrs. Scaife’s eyes were gleaming in a peculiar way. She looked at me and murmured: ‘I wonder if the same thought passed through your mind as passed through mine, my boy?’
I felt myself shuddering. It was like the night before when, standing near me with that photograph-album, she had asked me if I were puzzled. In her voice was that same note of something prophetic, of something sympathetic, as though, perhaps, I were an accomplice of hers in some terrible deed she had done or were about to do.
I said curtly: ‘I’m quite sure not. Nothing passed through my mind. Nothing at all.’
She smiled. ‘It’s no use pretending, Mr. Woodsley. You know as well as I do that the figure of Death hovered over our shoulders for one tiny instant. We both of us wondered whether that lorry was going to plunge down into this gully and crush us to death—you and me. You a young man and me an old woman. In a split, horrible second we both saw ourselves being dashed violently into the concrete-work of this tomb and mingling with the remains of my husband.’ She smiled at me with the most disarming geniality conceivable. ‘Now, admit it. Didn’t you in your fancy hear our groans and shrieks? Didn’t you see the driver of that lorry hurtling through the smashed windscreen, a bruised and pulpy mass of flesh and blood and bones? Didn’t you envisage the tangle of ruined metal and canes scattered among these tombs and our dying bodies writhing in the midst of it all? Didn’t you hear in your fancy our groans and moanings and our anguished gasping screams as perhaps some piece of sharp metal jutted deeper into our entrails? Isn’t that what went through your mind in a flash?’
I snapped: ‘It’s my impression that you possess an extraordinarily morbid outlook, Mrs. Scaife. I might even say diseased.’
She chuckled—innocuously and benevolently. ‘Please don’t say such things to me, Mr. Woodsley. Remember my age, my boy.’
‘Shall we be going back?’
As we ascended to the road, she said that she had often warned Mitchell about this bend. It was an awkward bend. ‘I’m always dreading that one day some car or lorry will come hurtling down into the cemetery. I suppose it is a morbid thing to think—but it’s perfectly feasible, isn’t it?’ She glanced at me. ‘Isn’t it, Mr. Woodsley?’
I made no reply.
We had hardly proceeded fifty yards along the road on our way back when we heard the grass rustling fiercely to the right of us.
It was Bayley, the yard-boy from Eltonsbrody. He came rushing up the incline, and seemed to have emerged from the canefields to the north-west of the depression we had traversed on our way to the cemetery.
Mrs. Scaife halted and frowned. ‘What’s the matter with the boy?’ she murmured. ‘What’s chasing you, Bayley?’ she asked as he came scrambling up to the road. ‘Have you seen a ghost?’
He was out of breath.
‘Miss Dahlia, Malverne send me to call you home quick, mistress. Soon after you left de house de telephone ring upstairs, Miss Dahlia. Mr. Mitchell call up. He ring up to say dat Master Gregory, he jest dead, mistress!’
5
She nodded and murmured: ‘Very well, Bayley. Thank you.’
She did not grow pale. She showed no signs of dismay or sorrow. So unconcernedly did she take the news that both the boy and I stared at her in a wondering silence.
She was staring in the direction of the cemetery with a quiet musing air.
Bayley stammered: ‘Miss Dahlia, you—you hear de message; mistress? Master Gregory—he dead. So Mr. Mitchell ring up to say, mistress.’
‘Yes. I heard you, Bayley. Master Gregory took ill the day before yesterday with pneumonia. They’ve been trying everything—all the new drugs. But since last night I knew he would die. Now, run back to the house. Go on. Run off.’
Bayley mumbled something inaudible, gave her a curious glance, then ran off.
I said tentatively: ‘Well, I hardly know what to say. By all the codes of politeness, I should be offering you my sympathy—’
‘No, no! Please don’t,’ she interrupted me quickly. ‘I understand your feelings, but please refrain from being conventional. I’m not bowed down with sorrow, as you can see, my boy.’
‘Oh, I can see that all right.’
‘In a way, I am highly delighted—I’m overwhelmed with joy. I can hardly contain myself!’ Her voice trailed off into a quavering murmur on the last two words. I noticed one of her hands fumbling at her skirt, and it trembled.
‘I know you must think me insane, Mr. Woodsley. But I’m not. I’m an unusual person, that’s all. I so wish I could explain—but perhaps if I attempted to it would make matters worse. You’d probably think me even more insane than you do now.’ She paced off agitatedly, then halted and looked at me, and there was something appealing in her manner. She clasped her hands together and the look she gave me now contained anxiety as well as supplication. She approached me in two quick paces and said: ‘Mr. Woodsley, I do hope you won’t leave Eltonsbrody immediately. You’ll remain for another week or so, won’t you? I do so want someone like you in the house during the next few days. It’s going to be a trying time for me, and your presence will help to give me confidence and companionship and—and—oh, will you please stay for another week or two?’
‘Well, I’d intended going back to Bridgetown in a day or two. I only planned to spend a week in this part of the island—’
‘Please!’
‘Very well, very well, Mrs. Scaife. I’ll stay on. But I’d be glad to know what’s the trouble. Why are you upset? Surely I’m entitled to some kind of explanation—’
‘By all means, my boy. You shall have one—but please give me a little time to collect myself. Something important has happened, and I’m unnerved. I must warn you that you may witness some strange little incidents during the next few days, but don’t be alar
med. Try to be tolerant—as tolerant as my dear Michael used to be.’
‘Would he have understood your being overjoyed at the death of your grandson—your grandson who, you’ve told me more than once, is the only interest you have in life?’
She glanced at me sharply, as though I had touched on something vital—something she had perhaps imagined I had overlooked. But she betrayed no sign of alarm. She wagged her finger at me. ‘Ah! I can see you’re trying to trap me into committing myself. Yes, I’m sure Michael would have understood even this. You see, my boy, I’m overwhelmed with a terrible satisfaction and happiness, but I’m also horrified and depressed.’ She turned away her face, and her hands kept clenching and unclenching about the folds of her skirt.
On the way back to the house, I listened to her without interruption as she told me in a quiet voice about her grandson, her face grave now, and sorrowful with a sorrow that seemed sincere.
She said that she had seen nothing of Mitchell for about three months before, and more than a year after, his marriage to the Portuguese girl. It was not until Gregory was seven months old that they had met accidentally. He and his Teresa, with the baby, had come down to Bathsheba for a month’s holiday, and while taking one of her morning walks, said Mrs. Scaife, she had met them on the main highway not far from St. Aidan’s church. She had been quite polite to Teresa—even cordial—but nothing more. She simply could not tolerate Portuguese. Suppose I would scold her for being narrow and prejudiced, but there it was! We all had to have our little oddities. Anyway, she was telling me. Yes, from the instant her eyes had alighted on Gregory that morning she had known that her heart would be lost to him forever. She had made Mitchell promise that he would bring the little fellow to see her often. Mitchell had promised, but he had not kept his word. Took offence, of course, because she had omitted to include Teresa in the invitation. Yes, it must have stung him. However, when Gregory was about a year old, his grandmother had decided that it was time to take action.
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