Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave

by Antonia Fraser

  “Instead of merely my ex-wife. No, Coralie, don’t protest. I could kill her for what she’s doing.” Jemima felt quite chilled by the extent of the violence in Greg Harrison’s voice: he did not altogether sound as if he was joking on the subject of killing the former Mrs. Harrison. “Come, Joseph, we’ll see about that fish of yours. Come on, Coralie.” He strode off, unsmiling, accompanied by Joseph (who did smile). Coralie however tagged behind. She asked Jemima if there was anything she could do for her. Her manner was still shy but in her brother’s absence a great deal more positively friendly. Jemima also had the impression quite strongly that Coralie Harrison wanted to communicate something to her, something she did not necessarily want her brother to hear.

  “I could perhaps interpret, explain—” Coralie stopped. Jemima said nothing. “Certain things,” went on Coralie with emphasis. “There are so many layers in a place like this. Just because it’s small … An outsider doesn’t always understand—”

  “And I’m the outsider? Of course I am.” Jemima had started to sketch the tomb for future reference, something for which she had a minor but useful talent. She forbore to observe truthfully if platitudinously that an outsider could also sometimes see local matters rather more clearly than those involved; she wanted to know what else Coralie Harrison had to say. Would she explain for example Greg’s quite blatant dislike of his former wife?

  But an impatient cry from her brother now in the car beside Joseph meant that Coralie for the time being had nothing more to add. She fled down the path. Jemima was left to ponder with renewed interest on her forthcoming visit to Miss Isabella Archer of Archer Plantation House. It was a visit which would include, she took it, a meeting with Miss Archer’s companion who, like her employer, was currently dwelling in comfort there.

  Comfort! Even from a distance, later that day, the square, low-built mansion had a comfortable air. More than that, it conveyed an impression of gracious and old-fashioned tranquillity. As Jemima drove her own rented sawn-off Mini up the long avenue of palm trees—much taller than those in the churchyard—she could fancy she was driving back in time to the days of Governor Archer, his copious banquets, parties and balk, all served by black slaves. For a moment the appearance of a young woman on the steps, with coffee-coloured skin and short black curly hair, did not disillusion her. However, unlike the maids in Jemima’s own hotel who wore a pastiche of bygone servants’ costumes at dinner—brightly coloured dresses to the ankle, white muslin aprons and turbans—this girl was wearing an up-to-the-minute scarlet halter top and cutaway shorts revealing most of her smooth brown legs. Old Sir Valentine, in public at any rate, would definitely not have approved.

  Tina Archer: for so she introduced herself. It did not surprise Jemima Shore one bit to discover that Tina Archer—formerly Harrison—was easy to get on with. Anyone who abandoned the hostile and graceless Greg Harrison was already ahead in Jemima’s book. But with Tina Archer chatting away at her side, so chic, even trendy in her appearance, the revelation of the interior of the house was in fact far more of a shock to her than it would otherwise have been. There was nothing, nothing at all of the slightest modernity about it. Dust and cobwebs were not literally there, perhaps, but in every other way, in its gloom (so different from her own brightly painted hotel!), its heavy wooden furniture (where were the light cane chairs so suitable to the climate?), above all in its desolation, Archer Plantation House reminded her of poor Miss Havisham’s time-warp home in Great Expectations.

  And still worse, there was an atmosphere of sadness hanging over the whole interior. Or perhaps it was mere loneliness, a kind of sombre sterile grandeur which you felt must stretch back centuries. All this was in violent contrast to the sunshine still brilliant in the late afternoon, the bushes of rioting brightly coloured tropical flowers outside. None of this had Jemima expected. Information garnered in London had led her to form quite a different picture of Archer Plantation House, something far more like her original impression of antique mellow grace, as she drove down the avenue of palm trees.

  It was just as Jemima was adapting to this surprise that she discovered the figure of Miss Archer herself to be equally astonishing. That is to say, having adjusted rapidly from free and easy Tina to the mouldering sombre house, she now had to adjust with equal rapidity all over again. For on first inspection, the old lady—known by Jemima to be at least 80—quickly banished all thoughts of Miss Havisham. Here was no aged abandoned bride, forlorn in the decaying wedding-dress of fifty years before.

  Miss Izzy Archer was wearing a coolie straw hat, rather similar to Jemima’s own, but apparently tied under her chin with a duster, a white loose man’s shirt and faded blue jeans cut off at the knee. On her feet were a pair of what looked like a child’s brown sandals. From the look of her she had either just taken a shower wearing all this or had been swimming. For Miss Izzy was dripping wet, making large pools on the rich carpet and dark polished boards of the formal drawing-room, all dark red brocade and swagged fringed curtains, where she had received Jemima. It was possible to see this even in the filtered light seeping through the heavy brown shutters which shut out the view of the sea.

  “Oh, don’t fuss so, Tina dear,” exclaimed Miss Izzy impatiently (although Tina had in fact said nothing). “What do a few drops of water matter? Stains? What stains?” (Tina still had not spoken.) “Let the government put it right when the time comes.” Although Tina Archer continued to be silent, gazing amiably, even cheerfully, at her employer, nevertheless in some way she stiffened, froze in her polite listening attitude. Instinctively Jemima knew that she was in some way put out or upset.

  “Now, don’t be silly, Tina, don’t take on, dear,” rattled on the old lady, now shaking herself free of water like a small but stout dog. “You know what I mean. If you don’t, who does, since half the time I don’t know what I mean, let alone what I say? You can put it all right one day; is that better? After all, you’ll have plenty of money to do it. You can afford a few new covers and carpets.” So saying, Miss Izzy, taking Jemima by the hand and attended by the still silent Tina, led the way to the furthest dark red sofa. Looking remarkably wet from top to toe, she sat down firmly right in the middle of it.

  It was in this way that Jemima Shore first realized that Archer Plantation House would not necessarily pass to the newly independent government of Bow Island on its owner’s death. Miss Izzy, if she had her way, was intending to leave it all, house and fortune, to Tina. Among other things, this meant that Jemima was no longer making a programme about a house destined shortly to be a national museum. Which was very much part of the arrangement which had brought her to the island and had incidentally secured the friendly cooperation of that same new government. Was all this new? How new? Did the new government know? If the will had been signed, they must know …

  “I’ve signed the will this morning, dear,” Miss Archer pronounced triumphantly; she had an uncanny ability to answer unspoken questions. “Then I went swimming to celebrate. I always celebrate things with a good swim. So much more healthy than rum—or champagne. Although there’s still plenty of that in the cellar.” She paused. “So there you are, aren’t you, dear. Or there you will be. Here you will be. Thompson says there’ll be trouble of course. What can you expect these days? Everything is trouble since independence—not that I’m against independence. Far from it. But everything new brings new trouble here, in addition to all the old troubles, so that the troubles get more and more. On Bow Island no troubles ever go away. Why is that?” But Miss Izzy did not stop for an answer.

  “No, I’m all for independence and I shall tell you all about that, my dear”—she turned to Jemima and put one damp hand on her sleeve—“on your programme. I’m being a Bo’lander born and bred, you know.” It was true that Miss Izzy, unlike Tina for example, spoke with the peculiar, slightly sing-song intonation of the islanders: not unattractive to Jemima’s ears.

  “I was born in this very house eighty-two years ago in April,” went on Mis
s Izzy. “You shall come to my birthday party—I was born during a hurricane! A good start! But my mother died in childbirth, you know, they should never have got in that new-fangled doctor, just because he came from England, a total fool he was, I remember him well. They should have had a good Bo’lander midwife, old Eloise from Sugar Horse Bay knew everything about having babies, then my mother wouldn’t have died, my father would have had sons—”

  Miss Izzy was drifting away into a host of reminiscences; while these were supposed to be what Jemima had come to hear, her thoughts were actually racing off in quite a different direction. Trouble? What trouble? Where did Greg Harrison for example stand in all this—Greg Harrison who wanted Miss Izzy to be left: to “die in peace?” Greg Harrison who had been married to Tina and was no longer. And what of Tina Archer, now an heiress to a fortune?

  Above all, why was this forthright old lady intending to leave everything to her companion? For one thing, Jemima did not know how seriously to treat the matter of Tina’s surname. Joseph Archer had laughed off the whole subject of Sir Valentine’s innumerable descendants. But perhaps Tina Archer was in some special way connected to Miss Izzy. Looking at the beautiful coffee-coloured Tina, Jemima thought she might be the product of some rather more recent union between a rakish Archer and a Bo’lander maiden; more recent than the seventeenth century, that is.

  Her attention was wrenched back to Miss Izzy’s reminiscing monologue by the mention of the Archer Tomb.

  “You’ve seen the grave? You saw it this morning. Tina there has discovered that it’s all a fraud. A great big lie, lying under the sun—yes, Tina dear, you once said that. Sir Valentine Archer, my great, great, great”—an infinite number of greats followed before Miss Izzy finally pronounced the word grandfather, but Jemima had to admit that she did seem to be counting. “He had a great big lie perpetuated on his tombstone.”

  “What Miss Izzy means, you know—” This was the first time Tina Archer had spoken since they entered the darkened drawing-room; she was still standing while Jemima and Miss Izzy sat. Perhaps there had been some wisdom in her silence. For Miss Izzy immediately interrupted her.

  “Don’t tell me what I mean, child,” rapped out the old lady; her tone was imperious rather than indulgent, Tina might for a moment have been a plantation worker two hundred years earlier than an independent-minded girl in the late twentieth century. “It’s the inscription which is a lie. She wasn’t his only wife.” Miss Izzy quoted: “ ‘His only wife, Isabella, daughter of Randal Oxford, gentleman.’ ” The very inscription should have warned us. Tina wants to see justice done to poor little Lucie Anne and so do I. Independence indeed! I’ve been independent all my life and I’m certainly not stopping now. Tell me, Miss Shore, you’re a clever young woman from television; you know the answer to this question. Why do you bother to contradict something unless it’s true all along? That’s the way you work all the time in television, don’t you?”

  Jemima was wondering just how to answer this question diplomatically without necessarily traducing her profession when Tina Archer firmly, and this time successfully, took over from her employer.

  “I read history at university in the UK, Jemima. Genealogical research is my speciality. I was helping Miss Izzy put her papers in order for the museum—or what was to be the museum. Then the request came for your programme. I began to dig a little deeper. That’s how I found the marriage certificate. Old Sir Valentine did marry his young Carib mistress, known as Lucie Anne. Late in life: long after his first wife died. That’s Lucie Anne who was the mother of his two youngest children. He was getting old and for some reason he decided to marry her: the Church, maybe. In its way this has always been a God-fearing island; perhaps Lucie Anne, who was very young and very beautiful, put pressure on the old man via the Church. At any rate these last two children, of all the hundreds he sired, would have been legitimate.”

  “And so?” questioned Jemima in her most encouraging manner.

  “I’m descended from Lucie Anne—and Sir Valentine of course.” Tina returned sweet smile for smile. “I’ve traced that too from the church records, baptisms, marriages and so forth. Again not too difficult, given the strength of the Church here. Not too difficult for an expert, at all events. Oh, I’ve got all sorts of blood, like most of us round here, including a Spanish grandmother and maybe some French blood too. But the Archer descent is perfectly straightforward and clear.”

  Tina seemed aware that Jemima Shore was gazing at her with new respect; did she however understand the actual tenor of Jemima’s thoughts? “This is a formidable person,” Jemima was reflecting. “Charming, yes, but formidable. And ruthless. Yes, maybe that too on occasion.” Jemima was also, to be frank, wondering just how she was going to present this sudden change of angle in her programme on Megalith Television. On the one hand it might now be seen as a romantic rags-to-riches story, the discovery of the lost heiress. On the other hand, just supposing Tina Archer was not so much an heiress as an adventuress? In that case what would Megalith—what did Jemima Shore—make of a bright young woman putting across a load of false history on an innocent old lady? In those circumstances she could understand how the man by the sunny grave might display his contempt for Tina Archer.

  “I met Greg Harrison by the Archer Tomb this morning.” Jemima threw the comment in deliberately to gauge Tina’s reaction. “Your ex-husband, I take it?”

  “Of course he’s her ex-husband.” It was Miss Izzy who chose to answer. “That no-good. Gregory Harrison has been a no-good since the day he was born. And that sister of his. Drifters. Not one job between them. Sailing. Fishing. As if the world owed them a living.”

  “Half-sister. Coralie is his half-sister. And she works in a hotel boutique.” Tina spoke perfectly equably but once again Jemima guessed that she was in some way put out. “Greg is the no-good in that family.” For all her calm, there was a hint of suppressed anger in her references to her former husband; with what bitterness that marriage must have ended.

  “No-good the pair of them. You’re well out of that marriage, Tina dear,” exclaimed Miss Izzy. Once again Tina, following her elaborate explanation of her own place in Archer history, relapsed into silence. “And do sit down, child. You’re standing there like some kind of housekeeper. And where is Hazel anyway? It’s nearly half-past five. It’ll begin to get dark soon. We might go down to the terrace and watch the sun sink. Where is Hazel, and Henry too? He ought to be bringing up some punch. Now the Archer Plantation punch, Miss Shore—wait till you taste it, one secret ingredient—my father always said—”

  Miss Izzy was happily returning to the past.

  “I’ll get the punch. Didn’t you say Hazel could have the day off? Her sister is getting married over at Tamarind Creek. Henry has taken her.”

  “Then where’s the boy? Where’s what’s-his-name? Little Joseph.” The old lady was beginning to sound quite petulant.

  “There isn’t a boy any longer,” explained Tina patiently. “Just Hazel and Henry. And as for Joseph—well, little Joseph Archer is quite grown up now, isn’t he?”

  “Of course he is! I didn’t mean that Joseph. He came to see me the other day. Wasn’t there another boy called Joseph? Perhaps that was before the war. My father had a stable boy—”

  “I’ll get the rum punch.” Tina vanished swiftly and gracefully.

  “Pretty creature!” murmured Miss Izzy after her. “Archer blood. It always shows. They do say the best-looking Bo’landers are still called Archer.” But when Tina returned the old lady’s mood had changed again.

  “I’m cold and damp,” she declared. “I might get a chill sitting here. And soon I’m going to be all alone in the house. I hate being left alone. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve hated being alone, everyone knows little Miss Isabella mustn’t be left alone. Tina, you have to stay to dinner. Miss Shore, you have to stay too. It’s so lonely here by the sea. What happens if someone breaks in? Don’t frown. Plenty of bad people about. That’s one thing
which hasn’t got better since independence. Hazel was telling me about that robbery—”

  “Of course I’m staying,” replied Tina easily. “I’ve arranged it with Hazel.” Jemima was wondering guiltily if she too ought to stay. But it was the night of her hotel’s regular party on the beach: barbecue followed by dancing to a steel band. Jemima, who loved to dance in the northern hemisphere, was longing equally to try out the southern experience. Dancing under the stars by the sea sounded idyllic. Did Miss Izzy really need extra company?

  Her eyes met those of Tina Archer across the old lady’s straw-hatted head. Tina shook her head slightly. Her lips framed the words: “No need.” After a sip of the famous rum punch—whatever the secret ingredient, it was the strongest she had yet tasted on the island—Jemima was able to make her escape. In any case the punch was having a manifestly relaxing effect on Miss Izzy herself; she became rapidly quite tipsy. Jemima wondered how long she would actually stay awake. The next time they met must be in the freshness of a morning.

  Jemima drove away just as the enormous red sun was rushing down below the horizon. The beat of the waves from the shore pursued her. Actually Archer Plantation House was set in quite a lonely position on its own spit of land at the end of its own long avenue; she could hardly blame Miss Izzy for not wanting to be abandoned there. Jemima listened to the sound of the waves until the very different noise of the steel band in the next village along the shore took over. That noise transferred Jemima Shored thoughts temporarily from recent events at Archer Plantation House to the prospect of her evening ahead. One way or another, for a brief space of time, she stopped thinking altogether about Miss Isabella Archer.

  That was because the beach party was at first exactly what Jemima had expected: relaxed, good-natured and noisy. She found her cares gradually floating away as she danced and danced again, with a series of partners, English, American and Bo’lander, to the beat of the steel band. That rum punch of Miss Izzy’s—with its secret ingredient—must have been lethal because its effects seemed to stay with her for hours. She decided she did not even need the generous profferings of the hotel mixture (a good deal weaker than Miss Izzy’s beneath its lavish surface scattering of nutmeg). Others however decided that the hotel rum punch was exactly what they did need. All in all it was already a very good party long before the sliver of the new moon became visible as it rose over the now black waters of the Caribbean. Jemima, temporarily alone, tilted back her head as she stood by the lapping waves at the edge of the beach and fixed the moon in her sights.