Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  But Penelope said that it was true. We met her at the wicket gate which led from the water meadows on to a small path that took us by a short cut to the cattle track. Already we could smell the burning vegetation, as if someone were having a huge autumn bonfire. Penny was coming back down. ‘My dears,’ she said when she saw us, and held out a hand to each of us. ‘So you’re free again, my poor boy. I kept telling Jim I was sure you’d never done anything dishonourable, and now he has to admit I was right. That dreadful Olly West – and then trying to lay the blame on Lucy too – so ungentlemanly. I always told Jim it was a mistake to have anything to do with him. But it never does any good to interfere.’

  Jared looked at his feet and mumbled something inaudible, so I asked Penelope about the lava. She said she’d seen enough, and she was going home. ‘You see, sweetheart, I’ve lived here all my life. People go away more and more, flitting about all over the place. I haven’t done that. I’ve seen what’s happening, and now I know that nothing will ever be the same again. I don’t need to stand and watch it happen.’

  She said she had to go and attend to her horses, who’d been agitated ever since the eruption started. ‘They always know,’ she said. She didn’t repeat her invitation to come and look over the stables, though I think she might have done if I’d been alone.

  Before we’d reached the end of the sunken cattle track we could hear the fire as well as smell it. The trees that covered the southern flank of the mountain were all in flames up above us, less than a mile away. Thick black smoke billowed into the clean air, and the trees cracked and spat as the flames consumed them. When we came out of the orchards we could see dark figures up there on the hillside, beating out the flames that crept forward over the grass. To the east the fire was almost at the top terrace of apple trees, though where we stood the orchards were still protected by a long spur of rock that divided the farmlands from the open hill. We climbed up on to it, and saw a crowd of people already standing there. There were no children today, and the crowd wasn’t scattered over the hill, but gathered in a tight line on the basalt ridge that snaked west among the terraces almost to the bay.

  There was a new lava river right at our feet, just a step away, about ten feet below the rock on which we stood. It was silver in the centre, with flashes of ruby in its folds, and a border of blood-red. It creaked and sighed as it moved. I could feel the heat from it. It must have been a hundred yards wide at least. Untouched grass lay beyond, where we’d walked yesterday, but there was no way of reaching the open hillside now. A mile to the west the head of the flow was moving towards the coast, in a direct line to the abandoned slipway of the whaling station. It was uncanny, like watching the deliberate advance of an unhuman army, or a huge headless beast that grew and widened as it went. In front of it was the green land, and then it came, and the land was gone, thousands of years of shaping and growing, just gone for ever. It seemed horrible enough to me, and it wasn’t mine. I looked at the faces round me. Silent, intent, serious faces, not saying anything at all. There was nothing anyone could say. This was their land, but there was nothing that anyone could do.

  Part of me refused to let it be real, as if we could wake up tomorrow and everything would be back where it belonged. Because I seemed to be in a dream, I recognised figures in the crowd without surprise, almost without reaction. There was Colombo, about thirty yards uphill from us, his hands in his pockets and his camera with the lens still open slung around his neck. There was Baskerville standing next to him, glooming over the flowing furnace at their feet. There were Ishmael and dried-up Allardyce, both on a high outcrop that overlooked what had been yesterday a bright river flowing through a mossy gorge. Between us and them I saw the President, standing with arms folded, his eyes fixed on the distant plume of black ashes that rose from the mountain and spread across the western sky. Right next to him I saw Nesta Kirwan, her hair tucked up in a black beret, kneeling on the rock with her camera at her feet. She must be changing the film. A little way behind them, half hidden among the apple trees on the untouched side of the ridge, I saw Ernest with Maeve and the harbour master. They weren’t speaking, they were looking up at the President where he stood outlined on the little ridge.

  I turned to Jared to tell him Colombo was here. But Jared was standing rigid, his eyes on Hook, tense as a cat about to spring. I’m such a fool, such a single-minded fool: it was only at that moment, I swear it, that I realised the implications of what I’d done. I’d been thinking about the past, and what he felt. I’d never considered the future, or what he’d do. My body seemed to stop; I turned cold inside. I’d set this going, and now it was happening, right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t stop it. It would wipe out everything: this moment just unfolding could never be unmade, and I’d done it.

  I unfroze just as he did. I think he’d have gone straight for the President, fifteen yards up from us with the red river just behind. He’d have thrown himself on Hook, and might have hurled both of them over the edge, only I clutched his arm in both hands and hung on with all the strength I had. ‘No, Jared! No!’ Faces turned. I didn’t even know I’d screamed. There was a small crack like a balloon bursting. I heard another scream, not mine. Someone was screaming, fifteen yards away. I was fighting Jared. He forced my hands off his arm with his left hand. I grabbed back on. He wrenched my arm round behind my back and I cried out. Then suddenly he stopped.

  Everything went slow. I raised my head. I saw them all, a circle of statues, transfixed around the place where the President was not.

  The screaming hadn’t stopped. I saw where it came from. Nesta Kirwan. She still knelt, alone on the rock, her hands pressed against her cheeks. Suddenly she jumped up, facing them all. ‘You shot him! You shot him! You’ve shot him!’ Her beret had fallen off. She covered her face with her hands, and fell to her knees again, sobbing wildly.

  Someone jumped from the outcrop above, ran down the rock, and scooped her into his arms. It was Colombo. Her face was hidden against his shoulder. Her white hands gripped his sleeve. She was still screaming.

  There were people moving over the rock. Men giving orders, making the crowd move back. They weren’t in uniform, but there was nothing hidden about their function now that it was too late. The crowd lapped at the edge of the rock. They gazed aghast at the glistening surface of that fiery river. Opaque, viscous, beyond consciousness, it told nothing. No one spoke. There was nothing to say. I saw Ishmael turn his back on the flowing lava, and look searchingly over the crowd. His gaze rested on us for a moment. Jared was standing rooted to the spot, with my two hands still gripping his right arm. Ishmael met his eyes, held them for a moment, and passed on.

  Jared took one deep, shuddering breath, and looked down at me. ‘Did I hurt you?’ He looked dazed, as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was saying.

  ‘Me? I’m all right.’ As soon as I’d said it I found I wasn’t. My legs were shaking. I loosed my hold on his arm. I could feel my lips trembling. I made myself stop. I wasn’t the one who should cry. It wasn’t my country; I had no right to make a fuss. Maybe that was a foolish thing to think, but all the same I thought it.

  Then Nesta’s voice rang out, high-pitched and shrill. ‘He was shot! He was! I saw it! I saw him shot! I know! I saw!’

  She was facing them again, Colombo at her back. Ishmael was up there next to her. So was Baskerville. And there was Ernest, and all the others, down on the grass below.

  Ishmael said, not shouting but so that everyone could hear. ‘There was no shot. He fell. God help him, he fell.’

  ‘He was shot! He was shot! I saw him shot!’

  She was screaming again. I couldn’t bear it. I turned my back, and made my way blindly back into the shelter of the apple trees. I just wanted to get away, out of earshot, away from the terrible lava and the screams. I was crying, so I could hardly see as I stumbled through the orchards. Unripe windfalls crunched under my feet, the little red apples of Dorrado. There was a terrace and a six-foot drop. I sat on the wal
l to jump down, but found I couldn’t go on. Instead I sat there shivering. I didn’t hear Jared follow me, but he came, and sat on the wall beside me. We didn’t move or say anything for a long time. At last he said, `I think I’d better take you home.’

  ‘Home?’ I must have been in shock, or I’d have been more rational. ‘How can I go home? It’s thousands of miles away, and there aren’t even any aeroplanes!’ The very thought set me weeping again.

  He was patient, which is more than I might have been. ‘Then will I take you to Despair?’

  I might have gone on being pathetic, only it flashed in upon me that he was as shocked as I was. The one thing he wanted to do now was to get back to his island. The longing I’d picked up on wasn’t mine but his. I felt it clearly, and for that second I saw Despair through his eyes, as a place where one might be content, not a way out of the world so much as the right place to be in it. Not for ever, because nothing is, but for now sufficient. It made sense to me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. We’ll go back to Despair.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE COUNTRY WAS in turmoil, and nowhere had the agitation been greater than in the editor’s office at The Hesperides Times. An erupting volcano was a simple matter by comparison, especially now that the crater had ceased to spew black clouds of ash, and the lava flow had slowed down and started to solidify barely a mile north of Dorrado. The Times had vociferously demanded a twenty-four-hour watch from the Pele Centre, and it seemed that the government had fallen over backwards to comply. Fifteen students and five professors from the University were putting in regular shifts under the aegis of the new director, George Allardyce. The Times had chosen to present this as a major victory won by media pressure, and since no one was in a position to contradict them the story stood unchallenged. Tidesman had graphically represented the dangers of corruption in an essential national monitoring service, and in the same issue two full-time jobs for qualified geophysicists appeared in the Situations Vacant column. There had already been enquiries from more than half-a-dozen countries, and the Times had been quick to claim the credit, even though most of the letters were responding to the advertisement in Science, not the column in The Hesperides Times.

  With politics the editorial board was on much more uncertain ground. Without any official communiqués from Government House they were at a loss; or rather, since official communiqués arrived, with different signatures on them, every half hour or so, they were at a loss which ones to choose. Who knew what the new line to take would be? Colombo had said acidly at yesterday’s meeting that this might be the moment to create one. Newspapers, he had said, can make governments; they don’t necessarily have to wait on them. ‘The choice is ours,’ he’d insisted, which made them all look anxiously over their shoulders, as if hoping that he was addressing somebody else. ‘We owe it to ourselves and to the country to take it. Isn’t that what we’re here for? If it isn’t, I suggest we all go quietly home and wait for the coastguards to come in the night and get us.’

  His contribution had been less than popular. Saturday’s paper, it seemed, was to be a black-bordered edition devoted to non-controversial eulogies of the late President. If Tidesman ventured to suggest anything awkward at this stage, Colombo was told, Tidesman might be the first casualty of the new order, whatever that might be. Colombo, in a state of impotent fury, had stormed out of the office to keep his appointment for coffee with Ishmael at Caliban’s Fast Food Diner. He’d returned in a much more amenable mood, and this morning he was perfectly willing to devote Tidesman’s energies to the production of a seemly epitaph.

  The screen was blue and blank under its heading, ‘Document 1’. What could one possibly say? Colombo clicked back to the main directory. ‘TIDESMAN’. The last file on the alphabetical list had been keyed in six days ago: ‘volcano’. An attenuated version of it had gone into The Hesperides Times: Saturday August 2nd, 1997 under STOP PRESS. He’d finished it by 2 a.m. on the Friday night, and it had made the second edition. It was the third occasion in the two-hundred-year history of The Hesperides Times that there’d even been a second edition. By the time he’d got back from Dorrado on Friday it had been too late to change Tidesman, which had been printed just as he’d left it on that memorable Thursday evening, before going home, as he’d thought, to a relaxing evening with a pipe and his brother-in-law’s best homegrown. He’d been pleased with that piece. There was the file heading in the directory now: OllyW.

  He clicked on ‘volcano’. It was a pity the complete version would never be printed. He skimmed through it. In retrospect the best passage was the quotation. Fair enough; one didn’t expect to compete with one of the most observant witnesses who ever lived. That was why he’d looked up Pliny in the first place, and very apposite he’d found it. Colombo had been in a foul mood when he wrote the piece, but sometimes it seemed that this was a prerequisite for doing his best work. It was unfortunate: he didn’t want to have to believe that he only wrote well when life was more than usually angst-filled. Naturally he’d been relieved that the worst eruption of Mount Brasil for two hundred and four years was probably going to spare his town and his family. But after that first day at Dorrado he’d driven back, furious and alone, at a speed which could well have been death to anything coming the other way. Luckily, with Dorrado facing a night that might be its apocalypse, nothing had.

  He’d gone to Dorrado to work, of course, but he hadn’t bargained for Lucy going off with Penelope Hook almost as soon as they’d arrived, and he certainly hadn’t expected, when he’d turned up there in the evening to take her home, to be told that she’d accepted a lift back to St Brandons three hours earlier, that she’d drive herself home from there, and that she’d left a message saying she knew he’d be busy for a while, so there was no need for him to contact her. He’d been aware of her mounting frustration on the drive over, because with Jared in the back of the car she hadn’t been able to go on telling him what she thought of him. It had been vaguely soothing to have Jed around, after Lucy had abandoned him, but then Colombo had climbed up the rocks to take a photo, and the next thing he knew he’d looked down and there was Jed being passionately embraced by Sidony Redruth with half of Dorrado looking on. This uninhibited behaviour from a girl who’d amused him from the day he met her by epitomising all the absurdities of British reserve, had left him wondering, a little resentfully, what it was that Jed had known how to do to bring it about. It wasn’t that Colombo had ever wished that Sidony would treat him the same way; it would perhaps be pleasant if somebody did.

  And now it was Thursday, and Tidesman had to come up with an appropriate obituary for a dead President. It would be a lot easier if Tidesman were not emotionally involved. In one way it was just as well Lucy had retreated to her fastness, because Colombo had been needed, as he had never in his life expected to be, elsewhere. But it made writing about Jim extraordinarily hard. He couldn’t see the logic of that, but there it was. He clicked back to ‘Document 1’. Nothing. There was the screen, like his mind, blue and blank. In desperation he picked up his Pliny, which was still sitting on the desk, and opened it at the marker.

  ‘Petis, ut tibi avunculi mei exitum scribam … Your request that I would send you an account of my uncle’s end, so that you may transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity …’ There was the clue, perhaps: the answer was to be Roman about it … ‘For notwithstanding he perished … in the destruction of a most beautiful region, and by a misfortune memorable enough to promise him a kind of immortality …’ Which is why Jim’s death had stayed in the world’s headlines for the last five days, thought Colombo; it fits everybody’s myth too damn well. It’s also why this assignment is so impossible if you happened to know the fellow ‘… notwithstanding he has himself composed many and lasting works …’ The base thought crossed Colombo’s mind that he could just paraphrase the lot. After all, who read Pliny? ‘… Happy I esteem those whom Providence has gifted with the ability either to do things worthy of being written, o
r to write in a manner worthy of being read …’ Baskerville did. Baskerville would smell the faintest whiff of plagiarism from forty miles away. He wouldn’t let Tidesman get away with that. Damn him.

  Colombo put the book down, and pulled the telephone towards him. For the sixth time that morning he dialled the same number. He listened to the ringing tone for a full half-minute, and imagined the phone in the kitchen at Ravnscar echoing on and on under the barrel vaulting. For all he knew someone might be standing there, waiting for it to stop. He slammed down the receiver. Immediately it started ringing.

  ‘Colombo? Per Pedersen here. I’m sorry to disturb you while you’re at your work. It must be a busy week for you.’

  ‘It’s no bother.’

  ‘It’s good of you to say so. Well now, I was wondering if you had any idea where Mr Baskerville might be?’

  ‘Baskerville? I’ve not seen him since – since Saturday. Do you want him?’

  ‘I do not. But I’m a little worried about it, because Jared’s been here. He’s just borrowed my bike and he’s gone along to Ferdy’s Landing. I’m hoping Ishmael will have a talk with him. Colombo, did you know what was in those letters that Ishmael took away from the Pele Centre?’

  Colombo hesitated for a moment, then he said. ‘Yes, I knew. Did Ishmael tell you?’

  ‘No, he did not. Jared told me just now. When he saw that this was news to me, he was, I would say, very much affected. I did say I wasn’t surprised, because I’ve always been sure that if Jack had been alive he’d have written to Josie. He wasn’t the kind of man who could have left her in such doubt. So, as I told Jed, I wasn’t surprised, but there were other aspects to the matter that did surprise me.’