Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘You can cry if you like,’ said Jared. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t want to cry now.’

  ‘You’d rather I told you about Lucy?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said, and waited.

  ‘I’m younger than she is,’ he said at last. ‘I was only thirteen when it happened. But what I know isn’t just gossip. I was up there quite a bit. My mother used to work there.’

  ‘At Ravnscar?’ This was a new piece to fit in.

  ‘Yes. After my father was gone my mother got a job there. Cleaning. I was nine when she started. In the holidays she used to take me up there with her. We used to go by bike: an hour to get up there in the morning and ten minutes downhill to get home. We used to take the back track, past where the Pele Centre is now. Old Morgan was alive then. I was scared of him to start with, but one day he caught me reading Hakluyt’s Voyages in his library in the Great Hall. I thought he’d be angry, but he wasn’t. He talked to me and after that he said I could go in there whenever I liked and read what I wanted, but I was never to take anything away. It was a bargain. We each kept to it until he died. But after that it was just Mrs Lock – she was caretaker after the old man died and Lucy went away – and she didn’t believe me when she found me back there after the funeral. She said if she caught me again where I had no business to be she’d call in the peelers. She would have, too. And by that time I’d been in trouble already. Borrowing boats without leave. It was only borrowing, Sidony, apart from the petrol; I’ll admit the petrol. It was just I needed to have a boat, and we had no money. I didn’t feel good about stealing, but there are worse things. Henty says so, in a book called Hold Fast for England. The captain says that the worst thing is to be a liar, and he wouldn’t keep any young officer on his ship who told a lie. ‘Upon my word,’ he says, ‘I would rather a boy were a thief than a liar.’ That comforted me a lot, as I’d never felt any great need to tell lies. But Mrs Lock made it pretty clear to me I was no good, and I never went near the place again until I came home last year, and Lucy and I got to be friends again.

  ‘But when everything happened my mother was actually in the house. I wasn’t. I was supposed to be at school in Lyonsness, but I wasn’t there either. Oddly enough I was up on the volcano. It was the same day I climbed down into the crater, just by myself. I used to do things like that around then. Crazy things, daring myself how far I could go. I’d probably have killed myself one way or another, only when I turned fourteen Ishmael came from St Brandons to live at Ferdy’s Landing. He and Anna were living in a caravan while they built the house. That was when he bought the boat I’ve got now, just before Rachel was born. I was upset at first about them taking over the place, but they were kind to me. Very kind, you could say, because if you want the honest truth I pinched Ishmael’s boat one night, and he caught me coming back. I thought he was going to hit me and I just went for him. He could have mashed me to pulp one-handed, but he didn’t. The end of it was he hired me to crew for him, and after that things got better. But it’s Lucy you wanted to hear about, not me.’

  ‘I’m interested in all of it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you about Lucy. Maybe she’d mind, but I know she could trust you even if she did mind. You know Penny Hawkins?’

  ‘Yes, Colombo took me to see her. I thought I might have seen her this weekend, being in Dorrado.’

  ‘No one sees Penny at the weekend. That’s when Jim comes home.’

  ‘Jim?’

  ‘The President to you.’ I glanced at him in surprise. He sounded so bitter; I wondered if it was just because of not getting a grant for the Cortes or if there was something else. ‘Oh, our Jim mingles with the peasantry all right, but not on weekends. That’s his time off. You’d never guess he was a Dorrado man, would you? But he is; that’s why he can afford to ignore everybody on the west coast. Ignores his wife too, except at weekends. I don’t know why she stands it.’

  ‘Maybe she loves him.’

  ‘And yet Penelope Hawkins isn’t a fool. Anyway, you weren’t asking me about Jim. Penelope had a cousin, Lem Hawkins, who lived at Ferdy’s Landing. His son was Nicky Hawkins. No one’s told you about him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It must have been strange to be Lucy. She lived alone with her father up at Ravnscar. I don’t suppose he took much notice of her. There were housekeepers, not always the same one, but I remember them all the same way: ugly and fierce. I was scared of Ravnscar when I was a little chap. Lucy went to school in Ogg’s Cove with the rest of us. When I started school Lucy was the oldest girl and Nicky was the oldest boy. They used to bully us little ones. Our house was nearly a mile from the school. I was only five when I started, but I had my own bike and my Pappa taught me to ride it so I could go to school. But Nicky was mad at me for that – he was twelve and he hadn’t got a bike – and every day he and Lucy used to throw my bike in the nettles. I never told anyone – you know how you don’t when you’re small – but I was always all over nettle stings. When I get stung now I always think of Nicky Hawkins. But later on everything changed, and I saw quite a different side of him. Back then he and Lucy always stuck together. There’s not many left of the old landowning families now – the original Pirate Kings. Most of them went down when the Brits took over, all but the Morgans up at Ravnscar, and the Hawkinses dwindling away at Ferdy’s Landing.

  ‘Lem Hawkins was a friend of my father’s. Later my mother told me that after my father was gone Lem gave her money. We had nothing, you see, because they confiscated Pappa’s business, and he’d put everything into that, so I guess we needed help, but Lem was going bankrupt himself. He used to come sometimes after I was in bed and talk to my mother. About my father, I suppose.

  ‘Anyway, Nicky’s mother left his father and took Nicky away with her out of Hy Brasil. Lucy went to Lyonsness High and after that it was OK at school. I can remember the day Nicky Hawkins came back to Ogg’s Cove. His father was away by then, and the house was all boarded up. Nicky was seventeen. He came off the boat, went straight to Gunn and Selkirk and got the keys out of them, and moved back into Ferdy’s Landing. It must have been just the next day or so I was over there – I used to fish off the rocks up there – and there was smoke coming out of the chimney and the boards taken off the windows. I spied around a bit, and there was Nicky dragging all the furniture and cushions and stuff out into the sun and spreading them to air. I wasn’t sure it was him. He looked grown up to me – thin and dark with long hair that fell over his eyes – not at all what I remembered. I wouldn’t have let him see me, but then Olly West came round and was talking to him, and so I came out from under the trees and joined them. I doubt if Nicky was pleased to find a ten-year-old hanging about, but he learned pretty soon that I was useful. He used to pay me shillings to wash his dishes and chop kindling; I even used to cook for him, mostly baked beans or egg and chips. I was only a little chap but I’d had a much more practical education already than he ever had. I needed the money, and also I was interested. I could remember Nicky being just another kid at school, and now he was living in his own house all by himself like a boy in a book. I don’t think he was ever nice to me – he used to call me Friday and that made me furious – but I was fascinated by him. So I used to hang about.

  ‘So did Lucy. She was pretty circumspect at first. Nicky wasn’t exactly hospitable – not a word in his cheek for anyone who happened to call on him. Of course folk started happening by just so soon as the news got about, but they weren’t asked in. The one who was a real menace was Olly West. Always coming by with tins of spam and trying to make Nicky talk. I was there when he said Nick could always confide in him. Nicky was stripped to the waist, splitting logs, at the time, and the way he cleaved those pine trunks I’d have run a mile if I thought any of his feelings were directed at me. But Olly wouldn’t notice a nuance if it sliced him through the brain. It was me that suggested booby traps, and we did some of that. I don’t think Olly thought it was anything but an act of God, but he laid off his d
aily visits after a while and I think Nicky was grateful to me.

  ‘But Lucy … I’d have seen her off too, if I’d been told, and I wouldn’t have asked for my shilling either. I didn’t think we needed any girls. But Nicky wasn’t me, and he wasn’t ten years old. We’d been sweeping the chimney, I remember. It had a starling’s nest in it. I was in the kitchen afterwards sweeping up the soot and the doorway darkened and in came Nick with Lucy and he said, “Put the kettle on, Jed. We’ve got company.” And as soon as Lucy could see after the bright sun outside she said, “Christ, Nick. This place is filthy!” I was scunnered but he just smiled that secret smile of his, with his long hair falling over his face and hiding his eyes, and said to me I’d better wash out the mugs in hot water. Well, I didn’t, but she stayed and had tea all the same, and after that there wasn’t any peace. At least, that’s not fair. It wasn’t that she made trouble, it was just that she changed everything.

  ‘It wasn’t just the shillings.’ Jared threw down the bits of moss he’d been absentmindedly pulling apart, and spread his hands wide. ‘The thing was I adored him. The fantasy I was living in came, ironically enough, out of the library at Ravnscar. The old man was gently escorting me through all his boyhood favourites: Ballantyne, Farnoll, Henty, Kipling. Not ideal mental equipment for a poor post-colonial boy from a dysfunctional family, but there it was, and there was Nick. I thought Nick was the hero of my very own adventure story come real. I was in my private, temporary heaven, with a supply of shillings thrown in, when along came Lucy.

  ‘If I’d had any arsenic I guess I might have put it in the tea. As it was, I just waited on them, like the little mermaid. The summer went by and I used to make the tea and light the fire and go fishing off the rocks for Nicky, and on the whole I was happy. And then one morning – it was very hot; I can remember I was just wearing my grey shorts and a straw hat, but I had a new leather belt with a knife in it that I’d just got for my eleventh birthday – I came over from Ogg’s Cove with the milk for Nicky, and I couldn’t open the door. It was barred on the inside. I banged and there wasn’t any answer. So I left the churn on the step, and I climbed in the window. The kitchen had got much cleaner since Lucy was around. It was quite tidy now, but there was nobody in it. So I stood at the bottom of the stairs and called out “Nicky!” It was dim up there, with the curtains still drawn on the landing, and then I heard voices. I could hear Lucy up there with him. Nicky came at last and leaned over the bannisters. He looked very brown in the dim light. “I’ve brought the milk,” I said. He asked how I got in, and I told him. “Well, then, you can just get the hell out of here the same way,” he said. “And if you find a door locked on you, it means keep out. So get that.”

  ‘I’d like to say I never went back. But I did. I got used to Lucy being there too. At least, I suppose I did. Anyway, they got used enough to me. They didn’t try to pretend she wasn’t sleeping there, but Nicky made me swear an oath on his grandfather’s Bible that I’d never tell. Come to think of it,’ said Jared, suddenly turning to look at me. ‘This is the first time I ever have.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters now,’ I said.

  He touched my hand briefly. ‘No, I don’t think it does. In fact, even then it began to matter less. School started again, and the following year I was at Lyonsness. Nicky lived at Ferdy’s Landing for two years. I still used to visit him a lot, but I didn’t want his money any more. I could get more mowing the lawn up at Ravnscar. I saw Lucy around up there, of course, but she never mentioned Nicky to me. I knew she was still going to Ferdy’s Landing though. I knew most things that went on in Ogg’s Cove.

  ‘Then this American guy came to Hy Brasil. Cosmo Ashton. Lucy met him at some party at Government House. He’d made his money in oil, in Texas, and he was living in the Bahamas. He’d started setting up marinas there as an investment, and he had this notion he was going to develop Dorrado as a high-class marina for yachts crossing the Atlantic. He had surveyors out there too, to see if Dorrado harbour could be developed as a deep-water facility for cruise liners. Oh, he had all sorts of plans. Anyway, he used to come to Ravnscar. He was a big, fair, soft sort of a man; I didn’t like him. He smelt of money. He used to come up in his Porsche and take Lucy out. I don’t know where they went. Kidd’s Hotel, probably. Iwouldn’t eat an unpeeled banana out of that kitchen myself, but Idon’t suppose Cosmo knew anything about that. Old Morgan was failing fast by this time. He was still alive, but shaky on his pins, and thin as a skeleton. His face was all bones and staring eyes. He still used to recommend books to me: The Mutiny on the Bounty, Cook’s Voyages. That was the last one. By the time I’d got to Hawaii old Francis Morgan was dead.

  ‘But Morgan was still dying back then, and Cosmo was coming to the house. I think Cosmo fancied himself Master of Ravnscar, an oil baron disguised as Pirate King, and Ravnscar could certainly have used his money. I don’t know what old Morgan thought about it. He must have considered what might happen to Lucy when he was gone. Nicky’s father was a bankrupt. Officially Ferdy’s Landing should have been sold, I suppose, but I don’t think anyone ever offered for it. Nicky would never have left quietly if they had. But there was Nicky, nineteen years old and on the beach, apparently living on nothing in Ogg’s Cove. And there was Cosmo, working for a big company, rolling in money up to his white neck. And there was Lucy, nineteen years old and as beautiful as her mother had been, as least that’s what my mamma used to say, and totally incapable as far as anyone knew of earning tuppence.

  ‘She was very quiet, always, but Idon’t think Lucy was ever shy. She used to laugh a lot, but she wouldn’t share the joke. She’d put her hand over her face and laugh without telling anyone why, and people used to find that disconcerting. They were right too; she probably was laughing at them. I think she must have seen Cosmo for what he was. But Lucy was always terribly practical. She likes money, you know. It may seem odd to you, knowing that house, but when we were little Lucy never had any money either. I once pinched a threepenny bit off her. She never knew it was me – and for God’s sake don’t tell her now – but you’d think she’d had her grave robbed, the way she went on about it. It was meant to be for our school charities’ collection, but she wasn’t going to put it in there any more than I was. Also, she wanted to go to America. She told me so, one day when we were in the kitchen at Ravnscar. I was having my tea break and she was waiting for Cosmo. She was wearing make-up, I remember, and a tight black jumper and a very short black skirt and leather boots. I wanted to remind her about Nicky and Ferdy’s Landing, but of course I didn’t say a word. Would she have listened to me if I had? I doubt it, but I’ve wondered about it a bit more often than I’d like.

  ‘Well anyway, that’s more or less the end of the story.’

  ‘Jared! You can’t stop there!’

  ‘I’m not going to, but the next bit’s rough. I wasn’t there, I told you. I was up on the volcano. She’d agreed to marry Cosmo. The night before the announcement appeared in the Times she spent at Ferdy’s Landing with Nicky, but obviously she didn’t tell him what she’d done. He must have read it later the same day when he went over to Ogg’s Cove for his groceries. Lucy and Cosmo were up at Ravnscar. Nicky came up to Ravnscar. He had a shotgun. Did I tell you that? He burst into the Great Hall. Lucy was there, and her father, and Cosmo. Nicky shot Cosmo dead.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Lucy tried to hold him, but he pushed her away, and ran. Out of the front door and on to the cliff path. And he threw himself over the cliff.’

  ‘You mean he was killed?’

  ‘Of course he was killed. And that’s it. You asked me about Lucy,’ said Jared savagely. ‘Well, now I’ve told you. That’s it.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I found I was shivering, on the verge of tears. ‘Oh no! Jared, that’s terrible. It’s appalling, tragic.’

  ‘No.’ He seemed determined to be hurtful. ‘Not tragic, melodramatic. Because that’s how you like to see it. But you’re not reading a book now. You only see it
that way, anyway, because it was at Ravnscar. If the same thing had happened at the back of Water Street on a Friday night you’d just call it sordid.’

  ‘But it happened! Oh Jared!’

  ‘Well, even if it is a tragedy it isn’t yours, and it’s all over now. You don’t need to take on.’

  I thought about a thirteen-year-old boy climbing down by himself into the crater of an active volcano, and made an effort to pull myself together. ‘Shall we walk on?’ I said to him.

  I was in the act of standing up. There was a grinding noise, like giant mill-wheels. The rock moved. I was flung sideways, and fell down hard. The basalt was rough under my palms. My hands were sticky. When I looked there was blood. I struggled to my knees. Something huge crashed into the sea behind me. Water smacked against the cliffs; there was a long slithering sound of soil and stones and rushing water. I dared not move. The waves against the cliffs were much too loud, as if some monstrous thing had surfaced and the island itself was being sucked into its wake. But the rock under me stayed still. Something warm touched my back. ‘Sidony?’

  ‘Oh!’ But I wouldn’t lie there whimpering in front of him. I made myself sit up very slowly. There were smears of blood on my grazed knees. I looked up the mountain and there was a strip like a scar split open less than a mile away. I remembered the seaquake that had made headlines in the Times only a couple of weeks ago, and how I’d been fool enough to feel sorry that I’d missed it. I’d never felt so unsafe in my life as I was feeling now. ‘Oh!’ I pressed my hands to my cheeks and one of them came away with a smear of blood on it. It was silly but I couldn’t stop shaking. We sat on the rock and he put his arm around me, and I leaned against him and shut my eyes until I felt a bit better.‘I’m sorry.’