Hy Brasil

by Margaret Elphinstone

  ‘I’m fine. That’s nice you’re coming to tea. So’s Lucy.’

  ‘Ah.’ Colombo looked inscrutable. ‘She’s not at Ravnscar just now?’

  ‘Were you going to look for her? They’ll have gone back to Lyonsness by now. Her and Sidony, that is.’

  Colombo drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and frowned at the road ahead. `Jed, I’m going up to Ravnscar. Will you come with me?’

  ‘Now? There’s nobody in, I tell you.’

  ‘Good. Follow me up. We need to talk.’

  The Land Rover had gone, but the conservatory was open. Colombo took the back door key from under the mat and unlocked the door within the door. Jared followed him into the kitchen. Ginger and Simpkin appeared, and wound themselves around their legs, miaowing pathetically. ‘All right,’ said Jared, picking up Simpkin. ‘She’ll be back tonight.’

  He sat down opposite Colombo at the round table in the window, absentmindedly stroking the cat. Doves cooed softly outside the open window.

  ‘Three things,’ said Colombo. ‘First of all, Per told me you know about those letters – I mean – about Jack Honeyman – you know now what happened to your father.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jared stonily. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jared’s hand was still, and Simpkin butted it with his head. ‘Well, that’s nice of you.’

  ‘I’m very sorry that it happened. A lot more sorry than I know how to say. I’m sorry I agreed not to tell you about it,’ pursued Colombo doggedly. ‘Perhaps I did wrong. I’m glad you know. If you’re angry, I can understand why.’

  Jared stroked the cat and looked out of the window. Colombo watched him, and waited. Presently Jared met his eyes. ‘All right. I’m not angry now.’

  ‘Thank you. Second thing.’ It was Colombo’s turn to pause. ‘This is difficult, but I need to ask you. What were you doing when Hook fell from the rock?’

  This time Jared held his gaze. ‘All right.’ He sighed. ‘I’d just caught sight of him. I didn’t know he’d be there. I hadn’t thought what I’d do. I mean, I’m not living in a revenge tragedy, but I guess I was feeling pretty churned up. I’d only known for a few hours. I might have gone for him. I’d never have reached him. The peelers would have stopped me. The place was crawling with them, I knew that, but I wasn’t thinking, not right then. But Sidony grabbed my arm and I was trying to push her off. But I was still looking at him, all the time.’ Jared spread his hands open on the table, and the affronted cat leapt off his knee. ‘Colombo, I saw him fall.’

  ‘So did I.’ Colombo looked out of the window. ‘Thanks. I’m glad you told me that.’

  ‘Colombo …’

  ‘Leave it there.’ Colombo met Jared’s questioning gaze, and held it. ‘Leave it. Third thing. Have you any idea what’s happened to Baskerville?’

  ‘Happened to him? Why, don’t you know where he is?’

  Colombo described how he’d spent the morning. ‘And then I went to Ogg’s Cove and drove up to the Pele Centre. This is what I found: Baskerville’s jeep is parked at the turning place where the tarmac ends.’

  He watched Jared register the significance of that. It only took a moment. ‘He’s gone down the hidden road!’

  ‘So you do know? I thought you would. If only you’d been there, you could have shown me the way, I suppose.’

  ‘I know where the door is. I never found out a way to open it.’

  ‘But you did grow up in Ogg’s Cove. Jed, how much do you know about the Pirate Kings?’

  ‘Not a lot. We always knew when they were in the caverns, because they used to park their cars in the old quarry where the Pele Centre is now. I know where the secret entrance is, because Pat and I once followed them, but we never got in because it’s barred and locked. I was scared too. Nicky told me they put curses on you with dead men’s bones. And I can remember Pappa saying that secret societies were not only bloody daft but downright dangerous as well. Even when I was a kid I found it all pretty distasteful.’

  ‘You know the other way in though, through the cellars here?’

  ‘I know the way down to the door, if I can still remember it. I only went in once. I didn’t like it at all. That was – what? – fifteen years ago.’

  ‘Will you come down now?’

  Jared stared at him. ‘Now? You think he’ll still be down there? It must have taken you all of two hours to drive round from Ogg’s Cove, unless you came by the back track. You’d have been quicker to walk. Christ, man, what are you saying?’

  ‘I haven’t got a four-by-four, and I needed the car in case I had to hunt you down in Lyonsness. I came round the mountain, and I left Ogg’s Cove just before two. What I’m saying is I came here to have a look. I’m saying I’d like it a lot better if you came with me.’

  After the flight of steps down from the wine cellar neither of them remembered the way exactly. Twice they had to retrace their steps, rewinding the string as they went. They both recognised the big cavern. Jared pointed out the small passage opposite. ‘Down there. But we’re nearly at the end of the string.’ He picked up a stone that might well have been placed there for the purpose, and held the loose end down with it. ‘It’s OK. I’m fairly sure the path doesn’t fork again.’

  Colombo said nothing, but kept close at Jared’s heels. The passage was high, but very narrow. ‘Do you think there’s a weight restriction on membership?’ asked Jared, as he squeezed past a projecting corner of rock.

  Colombo didn’t smile. Pale and silent, he followed Jared, who was holding the torch, as closely as he could. It wasn’t far before the way was barred by a solid, iron-studded door. There was a wider space just in front of it. Jared squeezed back against the wall, so they could stand side by side. Even so, they were almost touching. In the torchlight the spidery writing, though faded, was quite legible. Jared shone the torch.

  Look thou not on beauty’s charming –

  Sit thou still when kings are arming –

  Taste not when the wine-cup glistens –

  Speak not when the people listens –

  Stop thine ear against the singer –

  From the red gold keep thy finger –

  Vacant heart and hand and eye –

  Easy live and quiet die.

  ‘I hate that!’ said Jared violently. ‘No wonder I hated the place. I’d forgotten it was here.’

  ‘Well, you can’t deny there’s a certain truth to it. But perhaps this is hardly the moment for literary criticism.’ Colombo’s voice belied the insouciance of his words. He cleared his throat.

  ‘All right?’ Jared shone the torch on him for a moment. ‘I’m going to open the door.’

  Colombo nodded, and stood back.

  Jared turned the handle, and pushed. He tried the other way. He pushed harder, and shook the door. It was wedged solid, and didn’t even rattle. He handed Colombo the torch and used both hands to turn the handle back again. Then he shoved with all his weight. The door didn’t move. He let go, and looked at the door. ‘There’s no lock.’

  ‘No.’ Colombo cleared his throat again. ‘There are bolts,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I remember seeing them when I came before.’

  ‘Bolts?’ Jared looked at the blank face of the door. ‘You mean …’

  ‘On the inside. Yes.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Jared shook the door again. ‘And there’s no other way in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And he’s definitely been gone since Saturday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ Jared took the torch out of Colombo’s hand, and shone it round the door frame. There was no gap at all. Door and frame fitted as tightly as if they were all one piece of wood. ‘Oh my God. You’d need dynamite to break that down.’

  ‘Not here,’ said Colombo shakily. ‘You couldn’t use explosives here. We’re right under Ravnscar, and the whole hill’s hollow.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Jared again, and tried the handle once mor
e. ‘You try.’

  He stood back. Colombo grimly turned the handle, shook and pushed, turned the handle again, threw his shoulder against the door. Jared added his weight as well, then he stood back.

  ‘It’s no good, Colombo. Leave it. It’s no good.’

  Colombo glared at the door, out of breath and panting. Suddenly he hurled himself against it, hammering on it with his bare fists, oblivious of the iron studs. ‘Baskerville! Mr Baskerville!’ His shouts echoed and multiplied between the narrow walls.

  ‘Stop it! Man, stop that!’ Jared wrenched him away. ‘You’ll mash yourself to pieces. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

  Colombo shook his head, and leaned back against the scribbled writing, trembling. ‘I should have known. I should have thought on Saturday. God have mercy, I should have known.’

  ‘No.’ Jared held out his hand. ‘Come away. You can’t do more. Come away.’

  ‘You go. I’ll follow.’

  ‘No, I’ll wait.’

  ‘There’s something I want to do.’

  ‘I know.’ Jared smiled wryly. ‘“And my ending is Despair Unless I be reliev’d by prayer.” Far be it from me to mock at you. But I’m not leaving you down here in the dark, man. It’s the diving, you see, we’re trained not to. I won’t get in your way.’

  He put down the torch so that it lay shining on the door, turned his back politely, and gazed into the dark. He couldn’t help catching the words that were whispered against the locked door behind him, even though they were not quite what he had expected: ‘No man may deliver his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him; but God hath delivered his soul from the place of hell, and he shall receive him. Be thou not afraid …’

  The rest was inaudible.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sidony Redruth: Ile de l’Espoir. August 14th,

  Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title).

  IT WAS YEARS since I’d had rock. Sweet, sticky, and cellophane- wrapped, it reminded me of summer holidays when I was young. This particular sample was greenish-blue on the outside, with greenish-blue letters going right through: Hy Brasil 12.8.97. It tasted fairly disgusting, but it was all part of the festivities, besides which Lucy had bought it for me, so I sucked away without being pernickity about it.

  We sat at the top of the fifteen-foot-high stone wall above the harbour, which had once been part of the Portuguese defences. The old fort had long gone, and instead there was a small flat park containing a couple of Victorian cannon and some grave-shaped beds planted with begonias, salvias and alyssum in lurid geometric arrangements. We had a prime view of Water Street as it skirted the harbour front. It was lucky Lucy had insisted we get here early. The crowd behind us was already five or six deep, even though this was a less popular viewpoint than the courtyard outside Government House, the roof of the Cathedral, the steps of the lawcourts, the High Street pavement or the public park. Here we’d only catch the procession at the end of its route, before it wound back up the hill to St Brendan’s Cathedral, where it dominates the skyline to the south.

  We couldn’t see anything yet, but we’d been hearing the music from different parts of town ever since we’d got here. The town band had started at the market cross, processed up to Government House, and, to judge by the sound, had tagged on to the end of the main procession coming down Cathedral Street and into High Street where it joins Fraternity Street. The pipe band had begun somewhere in the vicinity of St Martin’s, woven an in-and-out course through the top part of the town, and emerged from round the back of the lawcourts, where it became absorbed into the general medley. The massed choirs had started from the Cathedral, and as far as we could hear they’d taken the broad straight path down Cathedral Street, left into Water Street and along the seafront to the harbour. It was hard to get it all clear, because there was a small orchestra playing Purcell’s ‘Tune and Air for trumpet and orchestra’, under a wooden cupola in the park just behind us. A few elderly people were sitting around in striped deckchairs, eating picnics out of paper bags, just as if there were nothing else going on at all.

  By a miracle the whole procession, when it did finally heave into sight at the far end of Water Street, was marching to the same rhythm. The tunes were all different, but there was an underlying beat that all seemed to share: a steady thump thump thump, beating a time which every pedestrian in town couldn’t help but mark, however independent-minded they might wish to appear.

  And now we could see them coming. St Brendan came first. He stood stiffly in his wooden shrine like a guard in a sentry box. That was my first thought, when I saw the rigid little figure swaying along above the heads of the crowd. When he came a bit closer he was more like a cuckoo in a clock: not in shape, obviously, but in his unexpected air of benign domesticity. He wore a blue sea-cloak, and his right hand was raised in benediction. He was touchingly disproportionate: his white hand was at least as large as his chest, and under the blue cloak there was hardly room for any legs to speak of. It was his smile I liked. It reminded me of the archaic smile on the oldest Greek statues, in the way that his painted lips turned up very slightly at the corners. Or maybe he was more like the smiling Buddha, whose face I first saw behind a glass case in the British Museum when I was ten. I thought even then that this was a kinder image than that of the tortured god I’d grown up with. The Dalai Lama’s smile impressed me for the same reason, when I saw it on television a year or two back. It seemed to me to be a more considered response than despair or indignation.

  I hadn’t expected St Brendan to have such an effect on me. He wasn’t a great work of art; I knew that. When I went round the Cathedral, the first week I was in Hy Brasil, the verger said no one was sure of his history, but he’d always been here. When I’d seen him up there in his usual place behind the High Altar, he’d struck me as being more like the figurehead on a sailing ship than an artifice of eternity from the golden smithies of the Emperor, a bit too crude for a Diocesan See in fact.

  The Bishop with a posse of less-exalted clergy walked directly behind the saint, and after them came the Episcopalian archdeacon and a flock of non-conformist dignitaries got up like crows. Next came a bevy of choirboys in red cassocks and frilled surplices. They were singing Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’. The trebles swept past like a flock of nightingales, and on came the altos, the tenors and the basses. The wall I was sitting on seemed to vibrate to their resounding notes. Then came the Mayor of St Brandons with the Corporation at his heels, heralded by a bald and sweating official carrying a mace. They were followed by the band, playing Sousa’s ‘Stars and Stripes For Ever’. They’d just got to the part with the piccolo when they came past us. After the band came the University of the Hesperides, represented by a bunch of embarrassed-looking academics in gowns and hoods who were doing their best not to keep time with the band, and failing. The students who followed them were in a state of frank hilarity, shooting off ticker tape and fountains of fizzy cider into the crowd. After them came the schools: St Brandons Academy, the City High School, St Martin’s Elementary, Back Lane Elementary. Each school had a band of its own. I liked Back Lane band best. They had six drums, a whole load of cymbals, tambourines and castanets, and some straggling kindergarteners with triangles. Not one of them seemed in the least inhibited by what the rest of the band was doing.

  After the schools came the Chamber of Commerce, who were on the whole more portly than the Mayor and Corporation, succeeded by a phalanx of lean and hungry coastguards in green uniforms. Then came a motley collection of banners: the Fishermen’s Guild, the Hesperides Cider Factory, the Farmers of Hy Brasil, Hy Brasil Telecommunications, St Brandons’ Civic Society, the Hy Brasil Rural Women’s Institutes, the St Brandons First Scout and Guide Troops, and finally a float bearing St Martin’s Nursery School disguised as pirates on a schooner.

  Next came the 227 bus. It was full of people, but, peering in as well as we could through the steamed-up windows, we could see no cohering factor. They were just a bunch of stray people
of both genders, and of varying age, colour, taste in clothing and political allegiance. We could be sure of the latter, because they were all waving different coloured flags from the open ventilators. The bus was covered with streamers, and a bunch of gas balloons dipped and bobbed from the driver’s window. It was closely followed by the pipe band, which was playing ‘Flower of Scotland’.

  The last organised element in the procession was the Pirate Kings. They had a red banner with a skull and crossed bones embroidered on it, and the legend, Vince aut Submerge. I looked at them with interest, but apart from the lack of women, they were as nondescript a bunch of characters as you’d expect to see if you got into a country bus on market day. I was startled to see both Peterkin and the landlord of the Red Herring among the motley crew.

  After that the procession turned into a crowd. But such a crowd! They had music of their own: guitars, pipes, fiddles, drums, tin whistles. For the first time in my life I saw what was meant by dancing in the street. At home it just doesn’t happen. They danced, and they marched, and in among them cars crawled through, hooting, decorated with ticker tape and balloons and slogans.

  Lucy and I counted the blue-and-green banners, as against the orange and the pink. There were more blue-and-green than either of the others, but not more than both the pink and orange put together. Names were shouted, and met by whistles, cheers or cat-calls. One name, and I don’t think this was our imagination, seemed to dominate.

  ‘Pereira!’ ‘Pereira!’ ‘Ishmael Pereira!’

  But it wasn’t a clear-cut thing, not by any means. Sometimes a whole section of the passing crowd would be orange, or pink, and then any stray blue-and-green banners were met with jeers and rotten apples. Some of the cars that came through were decked in pink on one side, and in blue-and-green on the other.

  I nudged Lucy. ‘What the hell does that signify?’

  She looked. ‘Simple. One car in the family, and at least two voters. Some people can agree to differ.’