The Shadow and the Peak

by Richard Mason

  There was no change in her expression, and he thought she must have passed out again. But after a while she said in the same slurred, drugged way:

  “It was just after we’d taken off. The engines were cutting. I thought we’d all be killed.”

  “You were lucky,” he said. “It was a miracle.”

  “My life must be charmed,” she said. “That’s the second time.”

  “Your second accident?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him.

  “Oh no,” she said. She saw he was smoking. “Can I have a cigarette?”

  He felt for his packet. The girl smiled faintly and said, “I tried to commit suicide last time. In Mexico. I messed it up.”

  He supposed she was talking nonsense. She was still only semi-conscious. He put down his own cigarette, and took another from the packet and lit it for her. As he held it out, he saw that her eyes had shut again.

  “Do you want it?” he said.

  She didn’t answer. She was breathing heavily. She was probably dreaming that she’d hit herself on the back of the head with an axe. Joe was right, she was pretty. She also had nice legs. He put the cigarette back between his lips and trod out the old one. Then he signalled to the men. They started off on the last lap with the stretchers. He felt about to collapse at any moment with the weight. Then he pretended to himself that the stretcher was really on pneumatic wheels and he was only pushing it along. It was a silly idea, but it seemed to help quite a lot.

  Chapter Two

  “Yes, please, Mr. Lockwood.”

  He opened his eyes and saw Ivy’s chubby black knees beneath the hem of her apron. She was giggling. She always giggled when she spoke, and the giggles suited her fat, comfortable little face.

  “Yes, please, Mr. Lockwood.” She went on repeating this until she was sure he was awake. She was holding a cup of tea.

  He told her to put the cup down on the bedside table.

  “And leave the door open as you go out,” he said. It was necessary to give these precise instructions daily.

  She went off, quivering with merriment. He pulled his hands from under the bedclothes. The blisters were not so bad as he’d expected, and he could even close his fingers over his palms without much pain. He hoisted himself on to his elbow. Ivy had knocked over the elephant with the cup of tea. He stood it up again with the trunk pointing towards the window, and then began to sip his tea, gazing through the door at the view.

  The door opened directly on to the verandah. Without moving from his bed he could see practically the whole of Kingston and the harbour four thousand feet below. At this time of the morning there were usually shreds of mist still hanging over the town, although they were rapidly disappearing in the heat of the sun. Every day at twenty past seven an aircraft from Curaçao came into sight, crawling across the sky like a tiny silver insect. He used to watch it lose height and come in to land on the Palisadoes. The air-port was at the elbow of the reef, which stretched a seven-mile arm across the harbour. He would make himself get out of bed the moment the aircraft came to a standstill in front of a hangar. This morning it was on time. It was evidently no more upset by last night’s crash than a fly by the death of another fly on an adjacent window-pane.

  Before it touched down the view was obscured by John, who came running up the verandah steps. John was nine and the darkest pupil in the school. He looked completely negroid, although he was of mixed blood. He flung himself on to the bed and started pounding Douglas, shouting with laughter “Why aren’t you up, Mr. Lockwood?”

  Douglas said, “Go away, you little brute!”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not in a condition for that sort of thing this morning.” John went on pounding, so he said, “How long can you keep that up without getting tired?”

  “For ever if I want, but I don’t want.” He stopped and sat on the side of the bed. “Mrs. Morgan won’t let us go in and see the two people you rescued—but they’re still all right. I wish I’d gone with you to the smash. How many people were killed?” He was excited, but he evidently didn’t think of the deaths as a tragedy.

  “I don’t know,” Douglas said.

  “Were the bodies all messed up?”

  “They weren’t very pleasant. Now go away, because I’ve got to get up.”

  “What were they like?”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Douglas said.

  “Did you see the pilot’s body?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Robin says he wouldn’t be a pilot, now he’s seen a crash. I wouldn’t mind, though. I wouldn’t mind getting killed like that. It’d be much better than drowning. I’d hate to drown.”

  “Run away before I drown you in my bath.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t do that, even if I stayed”

  “I’d do something just as horrid.”

  “What?”

  Douglas pushed him off the bed with his knees. “Go on, run off,” he said.

  “All right. I’ve got time to go down to my tree-house before breakfast. Do you know what Mr. Morgan’s given me?”

  “No.”

  “A rope.” His brown eyes shone. He had forgotten the crash. He had been craving for a rope as later he might crave for a white skin or a woman. “I’m going to hang it from the trap-door, so that I can pull it up when I’m inside, and only let it down for people I want to come up. I shan’t let it down for Silvia.”

  “Why not?”

  John grinned. “Because she’s a bitch.”

  “What sort of language is that?”

  “I thought we could use any sort of language we liked here.”

  “I wouldn’t let Silvia hear you, or you’ll get a black eye. Now you’d better hurry if you’re going to your tree-house. And don’t gorge too many mangoes in your solitude up there.”

  “They don’t do me any harm, anyhow.”

  He bolted off, and Douglas got up. After he had shaved and dressed he walked up towards the Great House. His bungalow had once been some sort of servant’s cottage and was surrounded by undergrowth, but just above it he came out on the grass slope dotted with junipers. The junipers were festooned with Old Man’s Beard, a fungus which was supposed to be slowly destroying them, but which gave them the enchanting appearance of tinselled Christmas trees. The Great House stood at the top of the slope. It was a massive grey building, only saved from being hideous by its magnificence and maturity, and by the flowering creepers that broke the starkness of its stones. The stones still carried memories of the perspiring Negro slaves who had lifted them into position. Douglas went through the long panelled hall into the dining-room: most of the twenty-five children were still at breakfast, sitting at small tables in groups of four or five. It was the custom for the staff to sit with them at lunch but to take breakfast at a table of their own. The staff table was now empty except for Duffield.

  Duffield wished Douglas quite a cheerful good morning.

  “Must have been a sweat, carrying those stretchers yesterday,” he said. He spoke with a Lancashire accent. He was a small man of about forty. His face gave the impression of hardness because of his rather starved-looking cheeks and the tightness of the skin over his cheek-bones. His sandy hair was closely cropped. If any duty caused him to miss the barber’s weekly visit, he became touchy and disagreeable for the next seven days.

  “I’d have come along to give you a hand,” he said. “Only I didn’t think there was a blighted chance of any survivors”.

  “It was a chance in a million,” Douglas said. “What’s going to happen to that pair upstairs?”

  “They’ll probably go down to the hospital when they’re fit enough for the journey.”

  “I hope that’s soon,” Duffield said. “It’ll upset the children having them here. They’re still excited about the crash. Ruddy noise they’ve been
making this morning. We’re going to have a job getting any work out of them today.”

  “Isn’t it your day off?”

  Duffield shook his head. “Nothing I want to go down to Kingston for. I don’t know what you see in the place. It’s a sweat getting down, and there’s ruddy-all to do when you’re there.”

  “Except sit in the Carib Cinema and keep cool.”

  “If you’re interested in pictures, that is.”

  Duffield hadn’t been down to Kingston once in the six weeks that Duffield had been at the school. Occasionally he admitted that the place held no attraction for him, but more often he would imply that he was only prevented from going down because his presence at the school was indispensable. This was nonsense, but he had come to believe it himself, and never made use of his days off.

  They ate in silence for a bit, and then Duffield said:

  “I hear the latest idea’s to send up ice-cream every day for the children who’ve misbehaved—and twice on Sundays.”

  Douglas recognized this as a joke, not a statement of fact. When Duffield was in a good humour he always made jokes commencing with “I hear that . . .” followed by some improbable fact. They usually reflected his views on Pawley’s so-called progressive education.

  “I wouldn’t mind them having it sent up for us,” Douglas said lightly. He had learnt to avoid being drawn into an argument with Duffield.

  “Catch them doing that”

  At this point Mr. and Mrs. Morgan came into the dining-room. Duffield pretended not to notice them. There had been a feud going on between himself and the Morgans for over a month. It had been started by a remark of Duffield’s, in which he was alleged to have spoken of Morgan as a nigger in front of the children. Duffield now liked the Morgans to think that he simply ignored them, and that their presence made no other difference to his movements or behaviour. He had been ready to leave the table, but he now remained in his seat in case the Morgans should think he was leaving because of their arrival.

  The Morgans came across the room as if they hadn’t noticed. Duffield, said good morning to Douglas and sat down side by side. Morgan was about Duffield’s height, but swarthier and looking better fed. His African blood might have passed unnoticed, at any rate outside Jamaica, except for his tiny black curls which resembled a rather moth-­eaten wig of astrakhan. He taught geography and physical training, but his chief function was running the school farm. The farm covered a few acres on the side of the hill. Practically every crop known to the Jamaican cultivator was grown there, including pineapples, grapefruit, oranges (sweet and sour), limes, papaya, coffee, and about fifty different sorts of vegetables. The only important absentees were sugar and coconuts—there was not enough water for sugar, and coconut-palms wouldn’t yield at a altitude of more than five hundred feet. The farm was the school’s favourite show-piece but one of its least popular pursuits. As farm-work was voluntary Morgan had only managed to persuade two boys and one girl to help him. His energetic propaganda for more recruits was counteracted by Duffield, who assiduously discouraged any inclination towards farming that came to his notice.

  Morgan knew a great deal about agricultural science, and could talk about it inexhaustibly. He had told Douglas the story of Panama Disease at least three times, giving detailed statistics of its devastations to the banana industry. He could also talk inexhaustibly about matters with which he was less well acquainted. If other listeners wearied and disappeared he was happy to carry on talking to his wife. Mrs. Morgan also had a dash of African blood. She was said to be thirty-two, but she looked about forty-five, with a red pock-marked face and an amiable soul hidden in rolls of fat. She thought her husband was a brilliant man who ought to be in politics, and was an excellent wife to him, although her fondness for rum bothered and often humiliated him. He had instituted some system of rationing, but her appearance sometimes gave grounds for suspicion that she had found an even more efficient system for circumventing it. Morgan himself was strictly and evangelically teetotal.

  “As I was saying,” Duffield said across the table to Douglas, “I can’t afford to take my day off today. Too much to do. If you ask me, it’s about time Pawley got some more staff. We’re carrying too much weight on our shoulders.” The “we” gratuitously included Douglas but not the Morgans, who were presumably part of the weight. He wiped his mouth on his napkin a second time, and said, “Well, I reckon I’ll be getting along. I’ve a special maths class first thing.” He left the table and went out.

  Douglas asked Mrs. Morgan about the two survivors of the crash.

  “It’s a real wonder,” Mrs. Morgan said in her Jamaican-­Welsh accent. “It really is. You’d never know what they’ve been through. It’s all I can do to keep the girl in bed. I’ll be glad when the doctor comes up again this morning and talks some sense into her.”

  “The human body’s an amazing thing,” Morgan said didactically. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you yesterday, Lockwood. I’d have liked to study the effects of the crash, and write up a few notes for the Gleaner. But I didn’t know anything about it—I must have been in one of the farm sheds at the time.”

  “There weren’t many effects left to study,” Douglas said.

  “I wish I’d been there, all the same. I’d go over and see it this morning, but the Gleaner will probably be sending up its own reporters.”

  “I’m sure they’d be glad of anything you sent them, too,” Mrs. Morgan said. “You know how highly the editor thinks of you. He told me it was a pity you weren’t a journalist yourself.”

  “I might send them a letter,” Morgan said. “I shan’t write an article, though. I don’t want to profit out of a tragic event like that.”

  “After all, it wasn’t your fault.”

  “That isn’t the point,” Morgan said impatiently. “You understand what I mean, don’t you, Lockwood? I’m only interested in making an analysis of what happened. There may be some important conclusions to be drawn. I don’t now whether it’s struck you, but all the previous crashes in Jamaica have occurred within a few minutes of take-off . . .” He went on to list all the other crashes in Jamaica since the first airfield had been built in nineteen something or other. Douglas couldn’t be bothered to point out that in view of Jamaica’s inconsiderable size, an aircraft that didn’t crash in the first few minutes wouldn’t crash on the island at all. Morgan’s ponderous analyses drove him to exasperated boredom. Shortly he rose from his chair. Morgan went on talking to him, so that out of politeness he had to stand listening for another minute. Then he made his escape, leaving Mrs. Morgan to be enlightened alone by her husband’s catalogue of all possible disasters by which an aircraft might be overtaken in flight.

  The Great House had only been a school for two years. It had been built at the end of the eighteenth century, and according to tradition, which there was no reason to doubt, Nelson himself had often sat in the garden, as a guest of the house, enjoying an aerial view of his fleet in the harbour and receiving signals, with the help of a powerful telescope, from the commanders of his vessels. At that time the building had been the Great House of a wealthy coffee estate, the home of slave-owning Englishmen. The property had prospered for more than another century, until after the First World War. Then the business had fallen into a decline, the factory had been given up, and the English family had departed. The building had later been run as a guest-house, but no roads came within two or three miles and it had been necessary for the guests to ride up on horses and mules. By that time most people who could afford holidays preferred to stay at places where they could run their motor-can right up to the front door. After a few years the guest-house had been abandoned and throughout the Second World War the house had stood except for an old Negro caretaker who had lived in the kitchen. Then Pawley and his wife had taken it for their school. They had bought it for a song, but it had cost them a great deal of money to extend the road. The money had been inherit
ed from Mrs. Pawley’s father, who had made it in sugar, and didn’t seem to matter too them very much except where salaries were concerned, and they were still running the school at a loss. Sometimes Douglas felt that if they were to run it at a profit, Pawley would lose a great deal of satisfaction. There would no longer be the same tangible proof of his selfless love of children.

  Pawley called the school progressive, but the progressiveness had only been dispensed in a timid half-measure. As a teacher, you never quite knew where you stood—at what point your gentle guiding hand should become the stern iron hand of authority. Probably Pawley didn’t know either—but to do him justice he hadn’t much chance of running anything really progressive with the sort of teachers he had to make do with. He had engaged Douglas, and evidently been glad to do so, not only without a personal interview, but knowing that he had never tried to teach a child in his life. The only other applicant for the position, according to the scholastic agency in London, had been a neat little man with a carnation in his buttonhole whose last employer, the headmaster of a boys’ preparatory school, had refused to furnish a reference. Duffield and the Morgans were the survivors of half a dozen teachers who had come and gone during the two years since the school was founded. The shortage of good teachers in Jamaica, as well as Pawley’s nominal salaries, made replacements difficult to find. The shortage of good teachers couldn’t be helped. The salaries might easily have been increased—if not from profits, then from Mrs. Pawley’s ample inheritance. But Pawley justified the present low scale on the grounds that its acceptance was proof of idealism.

  The subjects that Douglas taught were English and French, and he was also in charge of the library. The library was the best room in the Great House. The walls were lined with mahogany shelves, and at one end there was a huge fireplace, built nostalgically in the English country-house style by the first English coffee planter. At the opposite end Douglas had his desk. He sat there when he wasn’t taking a class, available to any of the children who wanted to discuss their work. The children themselves had only two or three classes a day. The rest of the time they spent working by themselves on the assignments which were given them weekly in each subject.