The House on Hummingbird Island

by Sam Angus

  Idie drew a line in her head linking Sampson and Reuben, for their names were the same and their smiles were the same staying sorts of smiles and they were surely brothers.

  ‘Reuben works with Sampson. They do the horses and the blacksmithing,’ Gladstone said.

  ‘Do you have hay and a straw bed for Baronet?’ asked Idie doubtfully.

  ‘Big kus-kus grass bed,’ answered Reuben, beaming. ‘My bed is the same, sweet kus-kus grass.’

  The thought sailed into Idie’s head that she might sleep on a bed of sweet kus-kus grass with Baronet. She felt the watching eyes on her and drew close to Baronet, glancing as she did so back at the circle of faces. She clung to Baronet and whispered, ‘The tree frogs will sing to you all night long, and in the morning we’ll go swimming.’ Her voice wavered, ‘We’ll have fun, I promise.’

  ‘Go on, mistress,’ whispered Gladstone, urging Idie on.

  The large parakeet on her arm, her crumpled governess behind, Idie moved around the forecourt.

  ‘Stedman.’ The man lifted a hand to his head.

  ‘Bailey.’

  Idie walked on, a hesitant smile on her lips, from one to the next. The men dipped their heads briefly, then stared at her, unsmiling and unreadable.

  ‘Skeete.’

  These people had been here always. They knew things about Bathsheba she didn’t.

  ‘Curtis, mistress.’

  ‘Clement Mayley, miss.’

  ‘Clement is my grandson – he works with me in the office and in the fields,’ explained Gladstone, smiling broadly and with pride. Idie drew another line, linking Gladstone and Clement.

  When she reached the foot of the stairs she looked up and saw the long, drooping blooms that hung from the froth of creeper about the veranda. She saw the women, most in pink gingham and white pinnies. At the top, before the door, stood a woman with hair so white and skin so pale that she might have been conjured from trembling moonlight. Idie paused. She breathed a strong, swooning sort of scent that caught and held her there as if captive. She clutched at the stair rail for the scent made her giddy. She saw a bush of ivory flowers at the right of the stairs, their long trumpet throats deeply veined with purple. She turned away from them and caught sight again of the moon woman.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered.

  ‘Miss Celia, mistress,’ said Gladstone, then he urged her on. ‘They’re waiting.’

  Idie took the first step.

  ‘Myrline, miss.’

  ‘Laticia, missus.’

  The women bobbed and withdrew a fraction, reticent but staring.

  Idie hung back and stood on tiptoes and whispered to Gladstone, ‘Do they want me here?’

  ‘It is your home, mistress,’ he answered simply.

  Idie glanced back to the staff lining the forecourt, all their eyes on her, and then to the top of the stairs. She took another step, and another, on upward to the top, the women that stood on either side greeting her.

  ‘Sharissa, missus.’

  Idie turned to the other side. A woman stood there, her face hard and riven as a dry, desert land, a towering arrangement of tangerine and violet on her head, the garment that hung over her gaunt frame black and sulphur and tangerine.

  ‘Phibbah Sealy,’ said Gladstone. ‘Miss Phibbah manages the kitchen.’

  Phibbah chewed on an unlit pipe and stared at Idie through eyes that were knowing but strangely young in her wrinkled face. Idie gazed at her, fascinated by her turban and by the glory of all the colours she chose to put about herself. Phibbah Sealy, Idie decided then, was a sort of sphinx, wise and full of secrets.

  Gladstone whispered, ‘Phibbah cannot speak. She is the grandmother of Reuben and Sampson Sealy. She’s been here fifty years or more.’ Idie drew more lines in her head.

  A girl spoke now and Idie turned.

  ‘I am Mayella Mayley. I been here six months only. I am the kitchen maid and housemaid. And –’ Mayella glanced across the stairs at Phibbah, and said in a rush as though she couldn’t help herself – ‘I’m supposed to help Phibbah with cooking and cleaning, but God be my witness, it’s only me as does everything.’ The words poured from her, an undulating sing-song murmur. There was more affection than malice in them, and Phibbah took no notice, chewing her pipe and staring into the middle distance.

  ‘Mayella is my granddaughter,’ said Gladstone, smiling. Idie drew another line in her head between Gladstone and Mayella, who was perhaps not much older than Idie herself.

  Idie stepped up on to the veranda towards the spectral moonlight woman who stood before the door. Idie stared, wondering if there were any blood in her at all, wondering too what sort of age she was, for she was certainly not young, but neither was she old, for her skin was smooth and unmarked as if life had somehow passed her by.

  ‘Carlisle Quarterly, missus, your butler.’ A man had spoken but Idie’d seen no man there and she jumped a little with fright. In the shadow by the door stood the man called Carlisle Quarterly. There was something curling, something mocking in the way he spoke that Idie didn’t like. If there was no blood in the white woman’s veins, then Carlisle had plenty for two. Quarterly. Idie drew another, more tentative, line between Enoch and his tufted hat and this man, and now the insides of Idie’s head were a spider’s web.

  Idie turned back. The moon woman’s mouth hung open a second or two, as if someone had once told her what to say but she’d now forgotten. Gladstone announced, ‘Miss Celia Rhodes.’

  ‘Idie,’ the woman said eventually, her English vowels ringing like cut glass, and Idie was surprised that so familiar a greeting should be delivered so coldly. Idie stared some more at her. Celia Rhodes’s eyes were strange and yellow and dull with confusion. Those eyes turned now from Idie to Carlisle.

  Idie drew close to Gladstone and stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, ‘Who is she?’

  Gladstone looked at Idie, and hesitated.

  ‘Who is she?’ repeated Idie and Gladstone answered carefully, ‘This is the only place she knows.’

  ‘But what does she do?’

  ‘Do? . . . She’s just here . . .’ said Gladstone.

  A few seconds passed and Celia, who was just here because it was the only place she knew, still blocked the door so Idie stood on tiptoe and hissed in Gladstone’s ear, ‘But who is she and why is she here?’

  Gladstone bent down and murmured, ‘Miss Celia is your aunt, Miss Grace. Did they not tell you that?’

  ‘My aunt?’ Idie was dumbfounded. She glanced sideways at Celia and mouthed, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am sure.’ He smiled. ‘She is the sister of your mother.’

  ‘The sister of my mother?’ repeated Idie, barely audible. My mother’s sister. My mother had a sister and I didn’t know. She turned slowly to face Celia, then, still uncertain, stepped forward, extending her hands.

  ‘Aunt Celia.’

  Celia’s eyes wavered with fear. Idie looked at her, at the lifeless, mask-like skin, colourless lashes, colourless hair. In none of her dreams or imaginings had her own mother had a sister nor ever such a sister as this.

  ‘Aunt Celia –’ she started again, but Celia only stepped back, tremulous and shaking her head as though a ghost stood before her.

  My mother’s sister will not greet me, Idie said inwardly, wounded. She found that she was shaking, but Gladstone took her arm and led her to the door and said, ‘Open the door, Carlisle.’

  Carlisle shot a brief, chilly smile towards Gladstone, then turned from him and said to Idie, ‘The bird stays outside.’

  Idie looked again at Carlisle and paused, taken aback that her butler should speak to her in such a way; doubly taken aback since this came so fast on top of an introduction to an aunt she’d never known she had. She looked at Carlisle and took stock of him. His face was handsome, but had something hard and cruel about the mouth.

  Homer plumped his feathers and billowed in a rather magnificent sort of manner and inspected Carlisle with his customary disdain. I
die felt rather proud of him just then and she gathered her strength and held her shoulders back and stood up tall.

  ‘That’s for the mistress to say,’ said Gladstone gently.

  The only butler Idie’d ever known was Silent, and he’d never seemed to have any view of his own as to what would or wouldn’t happen at Pomeroy. Idie considered the lines of waiting staff and watching eyes behind and said to herself, I will not cross swords with him now in front of his staff because I know that is not right or fair, but the battle lines are drawn. I am drawing them now between myself and Carlisle Quarterly.

  She said aloud and airily so those around could hear, ‘That’s right, the veranda will suit Homer nicely. You can settle him for me, Quarterly.’ She took a step towards Carlisle and held out her arm. Carlisle flinched. Homer fixed his most resolute stare on the man and tilted his head and set his crest rippling. Carlisle stepped back and at that Idie smiled and said breezily, ‘It’s no matter, Quarterly. I see you are afraid so I will settle him myself.’

  She placed Homer on the chair nearest to Carlisle. Homer bustled and plumped himself up and Carlisle took a step towards the front door.

  Aha, fifteen-all, Carlisle Quarterly; the scores are even, thought Idie. Then she remembered all the watching eyes and began to wonder what the correct manner of entering your own home for the first time might be.

  The door swung open and Idie stood very still before it, her insides flapping as if she were suddenly full of moths.

  6

  A hall ran the full width of the house. Tall shuttered windows filtered the moonlight, laying it in slats across the polished floors. Palms and ferny things stood about in plaited baskets, a bowl of cut flowers rested on a bamboo side table. Light pooled from oil lanterns on to gleaming wood, and a flight of stairs curled up from either side to a balustraded landing.

  My house, she told herself in wonder. This is my house.

  On either side of the hall closed doors led to other rooms. Idie stepped slowly across the floor towards a carved mahogany chair. She placed her hand on the arm of it, ran it along the smooth wood and fingered the cane back. She turned and placed her hand on a small pedestal table, the warmth of the wood beneath her fingers solid and real. She looked up to the ceiling and to the landing and then down again to the room and turned slowly round and round again. She breathed deeply, smelling the house like a hound. The air was thick and still as if it had been a long time waiting. She cast about the room as if the house itself, the walls of it and floors of it and worn linen cushions, would tell her something, for there were no photographs, no portraits, only the handsome furniture and lamps and ferns in their baskets.

  Treble arrived, panting a little from the exertion of the five stairs, and settled like a swamp over the nearest chair. She looked up at the cornices and about at the carved mahogany and cane and said, ‘It’s all very good, child, very good.’

  Perhaps the staff were still assembled outside. It would be up to Idie to dismiss them. She turned to the veranda and saw Celia in the doorway, strange and vague as fog. Not much liking the idea of being in the house with Celia even if she was her aunt, Idie went to Mayella and whispered, ‘Where does Celia live?’

  ‘She lives in one house by the stables, Carlisle in the other. Sampson, Clement, Gladstone and I have houses by the sugar works. Miss Phibbah has a room behind the kitchen.’

  ‘I see,’ said Idie, because grown-ups often seemed to say that and she thought it made her sound grown­up and knowing.

  She heard Carlisle outside, saying, ‘Go, Gladstone.’

  ‘He’s got no respect,’ Mayella whispered to Phibbah. ‘Nobody talks to my granfer like that.’

  ‘Why must Gladstone go?’ Idie asked.

  ‘Carlisle don’t like anyone coming in the house.’

  ‘It happens to be my house though and not Carlisle Quarterly’s,’ said Idie tautly. She spun on her heels, marched to the door and said, ‘Quarterly, please tell the staff they may go and you may also go. I will let you know when I have need of you.’

  Carlisle looked at her and waited a second, then in a manner so low as to be mocking, bowed and withdrew.

  Thirty-fifteen, Carlisle Quarterly, Idie said to herself, and then, extending a hand to Gladstone, said in a loud, clear voice that all might hear, ‘Goodnight, Gladstone, and thank you.’

  ‘I will come by, mistress, when you are settled,’ he answered, and she said, ‘You are welcome at any time.’

  Idie went back to the hall, beginning to feel that giving instructions was rather satisfactory and thinking that in fact you didn’t need to be grown-up at all to be in charge.

  ‘Come, Miss Phibbah has the dinner ready,’ said Mayella, smiling at Phibbah and making it clear that Phibbah had in fact in no way contributed to the readiness of dinner.

  ‘I am a little faint,’ said Treble, ‘and will retire to my room. Please send dinner up directly.’

  ‘Faint?’ enquired Mayella, with concern in her voice but amusement in her eyes as she regarded Treble and the straining chair beneath her. ‘A glass of punch is good for that. I bring you up the punch first, then the dinner.’

  ‘Quite so. Punch will be most medicinal,’ said Treble. As she made her laborious way up the stairs, Celia followed Mayella to the dining room, Idie turned slowly around the room wondering where to explore first. She breathed the close, stale air and went to the shutters opposite the door and tugged at them, running from one to another and flinging them open. A soft breeze rippled through the still room and Idie breathed deeply. She gazed out into the spangled sky, where the stars were so low it seemed they might at any moment decide to drift sweetly in through the windows. She looked down at the stippled black and silver sea and shivered at its beauty.

  She turned back to the room and eyed the two closed doors.

  It is your home, Gladstone had said.

  She walked slowly towards the one on the right, reached out and turned the porcelain handle. Moonlight lay in silver stripes across a small and pretty room. On a lacquered desk stood a glass oil lantern and a cut-glass vase of purple orchids. Idie picked up the lantern and went to the far wall. There would be a picture on these walls, or somewhere in the house, of her mother. She stood on tiptoe and held the lantern to the cracked, shining surfaces of the paintings. There were still lifes in oil of fruit and flowers and island landscapes and birds, but no portraits. Idie went to the desk, wondering who had sat at it and thinking because of the orchids that it had been a woman’s desk. Her own mother’s desk. She sat at it, where surely her own mother had sat, and tried the drawers. The first was empty, the second empty, the last too.

  Idie started at a sound from the hall and rose and ran to the door and saw Celia at the windows, closing and bolting the shutters. Idie stood in the doorway watching, and Celia turned her strange, pale eyes to Idie, a hesitant smile on her lips.

  It is my home, Idie told herself. The shutters will be open if I want them so.

  To Celia she said, ‘Aunt Celia, I should like the shutters left open.’

  Celia put her hands to her mouth, whimpered and backed away from the window, cowering.

  Mayella came running from the dining room, and Idie went to her and asked quietly, ‘Why does Aunt Celia not like the shutters open? Why is she afraid?’

  ‘They were always shut.’

  ‘I see,’ said Idie, wondering.

  Mayella went to soothe Celia, and, sighing at the oddness of things here, Idie went to the door through which Mayella had come. She pushed it open. At the far end of a long table, dinner was laid for two: Derbyshire china patterned with ivy leaves, silver a little tarnished by the climate. Idie paused, her heart in her mouth. The walls were lined with portraits, tall high-up canvases, wrinkled and cracked with age. Idie stepped forward, her legs trembling a little. The curtains lifted gently in the breeze, like ghosts waving faint limbs.

  Her fingers clasped the back of each chair as she paused, and the portraits looked down at her as if they
’d been long waiting in this shuttered room. Like the Pomeroy portraits, their poses were self-conscious and careful, a hound or two at their feet, a horse perhaps in the distance or an open book in hand. Most had dates and names: John Grace, 1700; Lavinia Grace, 1700; George Grace, 1780; Ivy Grace, 1785; Arnold, 1870. Arnold’s large, soft eyes stared through a window to the gate house of Bathsheba and he seemed to be sitting in the very same chair above which his portrait hung. He had no wife beside him, for the last portrait was of Cecil Grace, 1900, and there was no wife beside him either.

  Idie stepped closer, trembling. ‘Cecil Grace,’ she breathed, ‘are you my father?’ She looked up and saw eyes that were large and soft, like Arnold’s, but they were sad and faraway and he sat in shadow, so there was almost nothing you could tell of him, of his skin or the colour of his eyes. Where is my mother? Idie asked him silently. Why is she not at your side?

  The flame of a lantern fell, shivering over the polished table. Idie whirled around.

  Aunt Celia.

  Idie’d not heard her footsteps. Perhaps her aunt would always follow her about, drifting behind her like a trail of smoke from room to room.

  ‘Aunt Celia, was Arnold my grandfather?’ Idie demanded.

  Celia nodded.

  ‘Is Cecil my father?’

  Celia nodded, less certainly now.

  ‘Where’s my mother’s portrait?’

  Celia uttered a strange sound, half whimper, half moan.

  Idie paused, then asked more gently, ‘Why is there no picture of her?’

  Celia flinched. Her eyes swam with fear. ‘You don’t know . . . ?’ she whispered.

  Idie shook her head.

  Just then the door from the kitchen opened and Mayella came in and said, ‘Miss Idie, the squash and the guineafowl is ready.’

  What is it that I don’t know? Why will no one tell me anything? Idie asked herself.

  Mayella went to Celia and took her arm and led her through to the kitchen. When she reappeared with a platter, Idie was waiting at the door.

  ‘Mayella, was there no portrait of my mother?’