Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  It was eerie walking through the town. There were people standing in the square in little groups, talking and watching. I think I was the only stranger. They’d put a police barrier on the Dorrado road, and were only letting through the people who belonged. Jared said they’d recognised Colombo’s car coming from St Brandons and waved them through. They’d let the Pereiras and myself through as well because Anna’s parents live in Dorrado. I think Ishmael would have persuaded them anyway if there’d been any difficulty. Later Ishmael had gone off with Allardyce, a taciturn man who looks as if he’s spent his entire adult life being toasted in a desert. He seems to be running the Pele Centre now.

  The bar of the Red Herring was packed with locals. We sat in the garden instead and watched the clouds of steam rising from where the lava met the sea. They must be nearly a hundred feet high, Jared said, to be visible over the curve of the land between. We were still totting up what we could afford to eat when Ernest came out to speak to us. He shook Jared by the hand hard and lengthily, and Jared said, ‘Colombo told me what you did. Thank you.’

  ‘We won’t mention that here,’ said Ernest.

  ‘You’ll be full tonight?’

  ‘The devil’s in it that I’m not. I was expecting a bus-load of foreign journalists, but they’re not letting anyone into the country. All flights to Hy Brasil cancelled except for natives wanting to get home. I thought this morning we’d have a full house, but it’s no go.’

  ‘Good. I mean, that’s tough on you; what a shame. Ernest, I don’t have any money on me, but I can pay later. You could have us instead of the journalists. How about that?’

  I wondered whether to protest that I hadn’t been consulted, but with Ernest offering us lobster, on the house, which he’d bought in for the expected journalists, I felt it would be churlish to make a fuss. Also, it was an incredible scoop for the book. I’d be the only foreigner in Dorrado tonight. Ernest said they were still on red alert for possible evacuation. The eruption seemed to have settled since the morning into the contained flow we’d been looking at. But once the fountains stopped jetting, we could expect an increased stream of lava. The fluidity of the lava was reassuring in one way, as it reduced the possibility of gas exploding inside the mountain, but in another way it meant that the flow could move fast and spread far. The talk from the bar was a steady hum, like telegraph wires, not loud at all, but low and anxious. Around the fountain in the square, there were still those tight knots of people standing about in a curious tense idleness, even though it was six o’clock and everyone should be indoors having tea. Even the children weren’t playing. They were circling restively around the adults, their eyes fixed on the sooty plume rising from the hidden summit of Mount Brasil. It felt like the beginning of a war. Even the clouds of steam along the coast looked like the billows of gunfire in the picture of Waterloo that hangs over the mantelpiece in my grandfather’s study in Clifton.

  It gave me the unsettling feeling in my stomach that comes just before an exam. It wasn’t just the volcano; it was my feelings too. I was sad, even though I’d found Jared again, because it was different from how I’d thought it would be. The time we’d missed when he was taken away from Despair had gone, and would never happen now. He hadn’t been away for very long. When I think of my grandfather, who was a prisoner-of-war for five years, what happened to Jared was nothing. There are things in history that I can’t justly imagine. All I know from my own experience is that unexpected things had changed. While he was gone I’d thought I’d known him better than I really had, and now he was back I was shocked by how strange he was to me. It was only now that I remembered how little time we’d actually spent together. All that evening we were beginning again, quite tentatively. The only thing I was sure about was that I did want to begin again. Begin whatever it was: I didn’t have an answer to that.

  As I struggled with my lobster I also thought about Knossos, and Pompeii, and Herculaneum, and Stong, and St Pierre, and all the unsuspecting communities that had been swept out of history, each in one single unimaginable moment. Several people today had reassured me yet again that this wasn’t a Pelean sort of eruption, but perhaps I’m naturally more nervous than I like to think. I was glad when a bottle of white wine appeared; I had no recollection of ordering it but it made me feel better. I began to feel light-headed and rather decadent, more like a sightseer from Nero’s palace watching Rome burn than a victim of Vesuvius. Jared, engaged with his lobster, had no spare attention for conversation. If this were Imperial Rome, I thought, he’d have to be a barbarian from Gaul; I couldn’t fit him in any other way. I could see Colombo, for example, in a toga, and Lucy would be quite at home in many ways. Even Jared wouldn’t have to be an uncivilised barbarian. I thought about the Roman poets, and tried to remember where they came from. Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

  I was disorientated by the strange mixture of delight and instability, comfort and uncertainty. The bathroom at the Red Herring is palatial. It has a black-and-white mosaic floor with a huge cast-iron tubin the middle of it with claw feet and big brass taps. When I turned on the hot tap, boiling water and a cloud of steam came out and I jumped back for fear of being scalded in the face. The water was stained red and smelled of sulphur. Jared said all the hot water in Dorrado comes directly from a cistern on the mountain. ‘It must be going berserk up there,’ he said. But that didn’t stop us from having a deep and most luxurious bath. ‘You don’t think it’ll suddenly blow up?’ I asked him. ‘Ignited by Pears soap?’ he replied. ‘I doubt it.’

  We took the main bedroom that faces west across the bay. I never saw such a sunset before in all my life. The sky was aflame, and the sea reflected back the red and gold as bright as glass. The sun, swollen to twice the size it should be, was blood-red behind streaks of smoke like scribbled charcoal. It slid down the horizon as if it were dropping into a sea of fire and we’d come to the end of the world. As dusk fell we began to see a red glow in the sky to the right, like the neon lights of a phantom city. I knew what it reminded me of, and when I told Jared he was able to say it by heart: ‘he took not away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people’.

  ‘I never read it as a threat before,’ I said.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ said Jared. ‘Not even with all those commandments right next to it? I think I always saw it as an imposition.’

  Imposed or not, it was magnificent, somehow orchestral: I had to remind myself that it was in reality quite silent. A cool salt-laden breeze drifted in from the sea through the open window, and mingled with the stench of sulphur. I sniffed it and was terrified. ‘The wind’s changing, Jared!’ He said no, it was only because it was evening, and that was how it was meant to be.

  We drew the curtains right back and opened the windows wide so we could watch. There were at least eight pillows on the bed. I remembered from last time the inimitable smell of the clean laundry at the Red Herring. The sulphur hadn’t been able to drown it. We heaped the pillows up and curled ourselves up in the hollow of them, while we watched the colours intensify, and the red sun sink towards the sea. The light that came in through the window was red too. It touched us where we lay and flushed my skin pink. It turned Jared honey-coloured, and all the hairs on his body shone as if he’d been dipped in gold.

  We had so much to talk about. We didn’t try to say it all at once, but now and then one of us would think of something, and we’d say what it was out loud, and then we’d go on from there for a bit until we drifted away into other things. I was happy that it really mattered to him that yesterday – was it only yesterday? – I’d climbed the volcano. He seemed to think that was even cleverer than capturing Olly West, though that pleased him too. He said he was glad I’d seen the volcano the way he’d known it, because it would never be like that again. I was right: that spur of lava was the place he’d climbed down. He explained that being frightened had been part of the point, which didn’t make much sense to me, but he said he never f
elt like that now. Gradually I began to understand better what had changed in him since we were on Despair. It wasn’t just that he was thinner, or paler, or that he’d let his beard grow. It wasn’t just that he’d been hit and mauled about and there were still bruises all over his body. It was more, I realised, that he’d faced the possibility that the life he’d known was over, maybe for ever. When he said that, I was aware of what I still had to say to him, and I knew, without feeling nervous about it any longer, that by morning I would have told him. But before morning there was all the time in the world, and it wasn’t the moment yet.

  The sun touched the sea at last. Yellow flames licked across the horizon. A red road shot across the water, straight from the drowning sun to the bay below the window. At first the sea seemed to dip away from the sun as if it were scorched, but a moment later it was the sun that was vanishing, and the sea was swallowing it voraciously. As the sun disappeared the night came in. Only the glow from the mountain on our right kept on growing, but it didn’t shine in to where we lay, so we could only feel each other in the darkness. In the world I come from it seems that reality always has to be disappointing in the end. But I reckon the moments that can’t last are also real.

  We fell asleep without covering ourselves up, so when I woke up again it was still night, and I was cold. The red glow in the sky had spread itself right to the horizon while no one was looking. It no longer seemed gorgeous, but dull and sinister. I sat up and groped for the covers. Jared didn’t stir. I found the duvet and tucked it round both of us. It felt cold. I huddled up against Jared. He was warm and relaxed as a baby, apparently dead to the world. I shifted him so I was comfortable, and his breathing never even altered.

  Before it was morning he woke me. It was just getting light. After a while we were talking again, not wanting to go back to sleep, and that was when he mentioned how when he was in prison he’d thought a good deal about his father. I realised that the time had come.

  ‘Jared.’ I was lying half on top of him, looking down into his face. ‘I have to tell you about that. I know what happened to your father.’

  At first he just looked puzzled. ‘You know? But how could you? You’re a stranger here. You couldn’t possibly.’ I shook my head. He was beginning to believe me, I think, because he looked suddenly wary, half-frightened even. ‘What do you mean, you know?’

  I told him. I explained how Ishmael had guessed that the violent reaction to Jared’s raid on the Pele Centre was not only about smuggling, but also connected with Jared’s discovery of Nicky’s treasures. I skipped over everything to do with the drugs, because Colombo had told him all of that already. I said how Ishmael was looking for something else, that would explain both Baskerville’s concern with Nicky’s goblet, and why this had to do with Jared. I told him what Anna had told me: that Ishmael had an idea what he was looking for, but he hadn’t realised until he found it exactly what it would be.

  I described to Jared, as precisely as I could remember, the three letters I had read, who wrote them, and what they said.

  He turned over without a word, and lay on his front with his face hidden. I began to be scared of what I’d done. Perhaps he was angry with me. I didn’t suppose that I could offer him any comfort. What could I have said? I was, as he’d pointed out, a stranger. I hoped he was glad that I was there. He didn’t make a sound. But after a bit I knew that he was crying because I could feel it through my hand on his back. Cautiously I stroked his hair. I was getting used to the feel of it now: very straight and thick, but surprisingly soft as well. He didn’t react, so I went on doing it, hoping that he didn’t mind. I waited, and looked out of the window. It was light, but the mist was down. Only the smell of sulphur told me the mountain was still on fire.

  He turned over at last, and sat up. I watched him gaze out at the mist, not asking for anything. There was a blinded look about him, though, that it wrenched my heart to see. In the end what he did say wasn’t what I’d been expecting. ‘And Colombo knew?’

  ‘Colombo?’ I couldn’t think what the connection was. ‘Yes, Colombo knew. He was there when Ishmael found the letters.’

  ‘Colombo knew when I talked to him last night.’ It was a statement this time. He didn’t look at me. ‘Ishmael knew, when he came to the prison. And Nicky knew. Nicky knew all the time he was at Ferdy’s Landing. And Lemuel knew, long before that, when he used to come and see my mother.’

  I got it then. ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Ishmael didn’t know until after he saw you in the prison. But yes, Colombo knows. And Nicky Hawkins knew.’

  ‘Oh.’ He didn’t say anything else for a long time, but just stared out of the window with that stunned look which made me remember how the coastguard hit him in the face after they’d handcuffed him, back on Despair. The mist was slowly lifting. I could see the jagged outline of Tegid Voel like an etching on a slate. ‘Who told you to tell me?’ He sounded like a weary stranger.

  ‘Nobody.’ I was indignant, which instantly drove away my uncertainty. ‘I didn’t need to be told! I knew myself because Anna let me read the photocopies. But she never told me what I should do! I could decide that for myself!’ I wondered whether to go on, and decided it was better to get the whole thing out and done with. ‘Ishmael doesn’t know that Anna showed me the copies. She didn’t tell him.’

  He just went on looking into the mist. It was growing lighter. I had almost opened my mouth to speak again, when he said, ‘What made you decide to tell me?’

  ‘What?’ It seemed such a ridiculous question. ‘How could I not tell you? It wasn’t a case of “decide”! I didn’t know I’d be the one, not till I saw you yesterday. You didn’t say anything, and after a bit I realised you still didn’t know. So I knew it was going to have to be me that told you. Maybe that’s fair enough. I didn’t get you out of prison. I didn’t know how to save you. Your friends did that. I wouldn’t have had any idea what to do. So maybe it’s fair I say what they couldn’t.’

  He brushed his hand across his eyes. ‘I would have told them if I were in their position.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t not. But people vary.’

  I don’t know what I did right, but in the end he did start talking to me. What he said didn’t fill in the gaps in the story I’d heard so much as change it altogether. It was his mother, not his father, that he told me about. It dawned on me that this had been the unsaid thing: by now quite a lot of people had told me stories about Jack Honeyman. Every one of Jared’s friends seemed to be concerned in some way with what had happened to Jared’s father. I’d thought, just a few minutes ago, that Jared was crying because of his father, and it’s true: in part he was. But it was only when he gave me his version that I appreciated that Josie Honeyman had been anyone more than a name, and that it had been unjust of me to have no image of her in my mind at all. It was only now I finally took on board the simple fact that Jared and his mother had been together, just themselves, for ten years. She brought him up. I began to understand that whoever had done anything to make things worse for her, it would be very hard for him to forgive.

  He made me wish for the first time that she wasn’t dead. I’d never previously thought of her as being anything else; in my mind I’d made her insubstantial in some way, already doomed from the beginning. Maybe it’s as unfair to have to die of cancer at fifty-one as to be shot for a traitor at forty-eight. It’s a less newsworthy way to lose out, that’s all. She was tough. I hadn’t realised that. She wasn’t anybody’s victim. She was soft-spoken, he said, and people who didn’t listen to her thought she was quiet, and didn’t hear the irony, but, said Jared, it was no joke getting the sharp end of her tongue; he’d never been able to argue with her, but if it wasn’t coming at you, it had to be funny. The worse things got, the more caustic the wit she’d come back with. When he was small she could make him giggle himself into hiccups, however angry he’d been, and even when he was older, and people who knew nothing about them were always accusing his mother of not being
able to control him, she could always turn his point of view around on him and make him laugh. That was how she dealt with what life threw at her. You couldn’t take yourself too seriously. Cynical, maybe, but never defeated, never dull. I think she must have been pretty formidable.

  There was one thing that gave her away. She’d never go out in the morning until the postman had come. Every day her anxiety was palpable, hoping, dreading and permanently waiting for the letter that never came. When she couldn’t get up to fetch the letters out of the box any more she’d always want to know at once what had come, every day, right up until the day she died. It was the last thing she ever asked him, had he checked the post? He’d caught the habit off her, and even now he says he can’t collect his mail in Lyonsness without that same twinge of apprehension, the unlaid ghost of a hope that was once real. That’s why he hates waiting for letters. He said when he saw the envelope that came this spring from the Mayda Trust, about the Cortes, he felt sick, and it was a couple of hours before he could bring himself to open it. I suppose there’s no one in the world who’s what you’d call completely normal, once you start to know about them.

  I’ve almost never stayed in bed all morning. My mother won’t have that sort of thing. When we were in our teens she’d give us till about half past nine, and then she’d knock on our doors every five minutes and keep saying what a lovely day it was outside, or didn’t we have any homework? A more successful tactic was to start cooking bacon and let the smell waft up the stairs. I felt embarrassed about appearing downstairs at the Red Herring just before they closed the bar lunches, but in fact there was no one about except a spotty youth I hadn’t seen before, who turned out to be Colombo’s eldest nephew. The wind hadn’t changed, he said, but in the night the fountains had died down, and now a great sea of lava was spreading southwards. It had reached the first of the terraced orchards. Jared told me the Dorrado terraces are thought to be the oldest in Hy Brasil. It was here that the prized Dorrado apple variety was first bred. It’s small and red and sweet, with slightly pinkish flesh, a bit like Beauty of Bath. It was horrible to think of those delicate, perfectly pruned trees being consumed by fire and sulphur.