The Moon Always Rising

by Alice C. Early

  THE

  MOON

  ALWAYS

  RISING

  Copyright © 2020 Alice C. Early

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2020

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-683-1 pbk

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-684-8 ebk

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019914837

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  Map of Nevis by Laurie Miller

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Alice C. Early is represented by April Eberhardt, Libra Nova LLC, dba April Eberhardt Literary, april@aprileberhardt.com; 415-309-0279

  Excerpt from “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright ©1943 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and by permission of The Dylan Thomas Trust.

  Excerpt from “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas, from The Poems of Dylan Thomas, copyright ©1945 by The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and by permission of The Dylan Thomas Trust.

  Excerpts from “Ruins of a Great House” and “Islands” from The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 by Derek Walcott, selected by Glyn Maxwell. Copyright © 2014 by Derek Walcott. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and by Faber and Faber Ltd.

  For Larry

  and

  in loving memory of Tom and Virginia

  EPIGRAPH

  Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

  Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand.

  In the moon that is always rising,

  Nor that riding to sleep

  I should hear him fly with the high fields

  And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

  Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

  Time held me green and dying

  Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

  —Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I have had the good fortune to visit Nevis annually since 1996. In addition to providing inspiration for The Moon Always Rising, Nevis granted me space and tranquility to write and edit much of this book. I grew to know and love the island, always recognizing how limited my visitor’s grasp of its true heart might be.

  My plot and character development were in baby stages when the events of 9/11 emptied the skies and changed our psyches forever. As I found it emotionally and intellectually impossible to set the book after 2000, I chose the Nevis of 1999–2000, when the “new” airport, island road project, and other major changes were in progress. Hurricane Lenny, which figures importantly in my story, devastated the Four Seasons Resort in November 1999. Damaged, rebuilt, and redecorated more than once since then, the Resort barely resembles that cluster of gingerbread cottages and simple wharf of the late ’90s. While Jack’s house is a complete fabrication, I’ve otherwise stayed true to Nevis geography and place names. In the twenty-first century, erosion, storms, and development have changed or eliminated some of the landmarks I mention. You can still get a Killer Bee at Sunshine’s beach bar, but it’s more of an establishment now, versus the brightly painted shack of yore. Through all these changes, Nevis retains its allure and rootedness. The setting in The Moon Always Rising is so enveloping as to be almost a character, and many human characters are inspired by people I have known there. To be respectful of the island’s history, people, and culture, I intentionally created in Els Gordon a protagonist who is by definition an outsider. This story is told exclusively from her point of view, with all the shortcomings of perception and understanding that creates. The Nevis I’ve depicted is, I hope, the Nevis that struggles and prevails, joyously if not always harmoniously.

  CONTENTS

  Part One (Nevis, West Indies)

  Part Two (Scottish Highlands)

  Part Three (Nevis, West Indies)

  Part Four (Scottish Highlands)

  Part Five (Nevis, West Indies)

  Part Six (Nevis, West Indies)

  part one

  CHAPTER 1

  Nevis, West Indies

  November 1999

  The seven-seater plane roared over the Caribbean toward the green cone of the island where Els Gordon would serve out the sentence handed down by her boss: a week’s holiday that chagrined her like a toddler’s time-out. “If you don’t get a grip before you come back . . .,” the wanker had said. He hadn’t specified the consequences.

  The plane fishtailed low over a deserted beach rimmed with jungle before rattling to its landing.

  Steam-room heat assaulted Els when she crossed the yielding tarmac, a jolt after the icy drizzle she’d left at Heathrow.

  The immigration officer perused her form. “You neglected to state the purpose of your visit.”

  As neither business nor pleasure covered it, she stared at him too long before saying, “Penance?”

  He regarded her, unamused, then checked the “pleasure” box. He peeled back the Scottish national flag cover she’d put on her passport, revealing its Westminster-issued European Union burgundy. After examining pages with entry stamps from the US, Asia, and South America, he found an empty spot and clacked down his stamp.

  A cabbie hurried her to his taxi van in time to beat a dust devil that swirled across the construction zone, engulfing the terminal. Turning the van toward the ball of afternoon sun, he swept his arm to take in the scalped land and heavy machinery. “New airport gon’ accommodate jets. Change fortunes for all a’ we.”

  “Mind what you wish for,” Els said.

  “Even when we reach the twenty-first century, Nevis goin’ always be Queen of the Caribees.” He patted his chest. “And I am this little island’s best ambassador. You want my special tour?”

  “All I want is a cold drink and a hot bath,” she said, already wondering how she’d survive a week in this tiny place.

  When they crested Hurricane Hill, the sea spreading out before her was a wash of undulating sparkles. The brightness was invasive; she felt nature was strutting, taunting her.

  “You here for the doctor meeting by the Resort?”

  “Na, on my own,” she said, recoiling from the thought that she might be walking into a convention of men as arrogant as the investment banking colleagues she’d left behind.

  Just beyond the boundary sign for the Parish of St. Thomas Lowland, dung-splattered sheep milling in the road halted the van’s progress in front of a cinder block wall. Higher up the hill, Els glimpsed a house nestled into the slope. Unlike the pastel concrete dwellings they’d passed, it looked ancient, a survivor with proportions that charmed her. Its weathered shingles and native stone wa
lls stood in counterpoint to the riot of color poking through the garden’s devastation. Plywood blindfolded its windows. An estate agent’s sign dangled from the padlocked gate.

  The cabbie snuck a peek at the house, waved his arm out the window, and yelled at the sheep.

  “I’m in no hurry,” Els said. “For once.”

  “Got to move on, miss.” He leaned on the horn and whispered, “Lord, ley we pass now.”

  With the ewes bleating encouragement, the babies huddled enough to clear a path. The cabbie drove away so swiftly he nearly clipped a straggling lamb. Els twisted in her seat for another look, but they’d rounded a turn and the house had disappeared.

  “So, Mr. Ambassador,” she said, “what’s the story behind that place?”

  He gripped the wheel and said nothing. A bit farther on, he slowed for a hairpin curve, tipped his head toward a seawall, and said, “Jack, he gone. But he ain’t left yet.”

  “Jack’s the owner?”

  “Foh twenty years, mebbe.” He tuned the radio to a preacher’s oration and didn’t speak again, leaving Els to ponder why this Jack would surrender such a treasure to rot and strangling vegetation, and why no buyer had jumped to save it.

  She’d always told herself that love and attention could coax anything abandoned back to life.

  The cabbie drove down the Resort’s allée of palm trees and up to the Great House entrance. After handing Els’s luggage to the porter, he whipped out a card reading, “Sparrow’s Custom Tours. See the Nevis beyond the Beach and the Peak.”

  “The real Nevis,” she said.

  “Sparrow show you the sights, tell you the legends,” he said. “Real, you gotta find on you own.”

  Needing no assistance pulling her small wheelie or finding her room, Els felt ridiculous tagging along behind Anthony, the porter dispatched with great ceremony by the front desk, who took the long way in order to point out the beach, pool, and dining pavilion. The paths meandered between plants that seemed to reach for her, their foliage in shades of green, burgundy, and purple, as if Gauguin had created the scene. When Anthony greeted two uniformed women and they replied in incomprehensible patois, Els felt an old stab of otherness.

  “Welcome to Hibiscus Villa,” Anthony said, and waved her inside. She eyed the romantic mahogany plantation bed and thought what a narrow, solitary dent she would make.

  “What’s this, the honeymoon suite?” she said. She felt as spiky as the arrangement of protea on the coffee table.

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  She pressed a tip into Anthony’s hand hoping to curtail his narration of the suite’s amenities. He instructed her to enjoy her stay and backed out the door.

  Alone with only the whir of the ceiling fan and pulse of the surf, she was rooted in the middle of the floor, unaware of how long she’d stood there when a discreet knock brought her back to the present. The young woman at the door with the name tag “Alaneesha” wheeled in a cart bearing a bottle of champagne in a sweating ice bucket and a frangipani blossom floating in a small bowl.

  “Compliments of the management?” Els asked.

  Alaneesha handed her a card that read, “Find someone to share this with. Loosen up and come back a new woman.” It was signed “Coxe.” Els wondered if “this” meant the champagne, the bed, or both. It was just like Coxe to assume anything could be righted by a good fuck, preferably while drunk. Fury sent a flush to her face, and she fanned herself with the card.

  Alaneesha peered at her. “Ma’am, you okay?”

  “Jet lag,” Els said.

  After Alaneesha slipped out the door, Els flung the card at the champagne and watched it sink into the ice bath. The frangipani’s aggressive scent filled the room.

  Mind what you wish for, Els chided herself. Festive champagne was hardly the cold drink she’d had in mind, and a hot bath, at the moment, might make her explode. She peeled off her sweat-dampened clothing, stepped into the shower, and stood under a cool stream until she felt rinsed if not cleansed. Wrapped in a huge towel, she went out to her terrace and shielded her eyes against the low sun, which made a couple strolling the beach hand in hand look dipped in toffee.

  Over the past year, icy anger had frozen her grief into her bones, but recently the marrow seemed overwhelmed by the effort of this compression and had begun emitting a kind of fog, like dry ice vapors, that displaced the air in her lungs and slowed her brain. It was as if those noxious vapors were wreathing her words, further sharpening her already lacerating tongue. She’d begun messing up at work enough to give the ever-circling hyenas in her department a whiff of vulnerability.

  Coxe had flashed his fake-compassion smile when he’d said, “I strongly recommend you take this opportunity to just get over, well, whatever it is.” She’d imagined driving the Montblanc fountain pen he so fancied straight into his jugular. As if a few days of Caribbean frolic could erase all that had brought her to this point.

  CHAPTER 2

  Though she packed instinctively for business travel, she’d puzzled over what to bring on this junket, feeling naked without the armor of her suits. She pulled on a body-hugging coral dress with a low décolletage; the color amped up her copper hair and milky skin. After touching up the circles under her eyes, applying mascara and power lipstick, and dabbing on rose-scented toilet water, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Her gray eyes stared back, defiant.

  In the bar, name-tagged surgeons attempted the limbo to recorded music while their colleagues cheered them on. Els took a deep draft of her double Laphroaig, neat, splash of water. The scotch delivered welcome heat to her throat, her belly. When she caught a man farther up the bar ogling her, she locked eyes with him until she saw his flare of recognition. He said something to the bobbed woman next to him and walked over.

  “Eleanor Gordon,” he said. “Paul Salustrio. Goldman, New York.”

  Els held out her hand.

  “Has it been two years already?” he said. “Where’ve you been hiding yourself since that ZarCom deal?”

  While they shook hands, his eyes, a brown so dark that all expression drowned in them, were fixed on her cleavage.

  “Mostly on a plane,” she said.

  “I was in London last month. Still trying to close that petro transaction we sparred about back then. Your boss brought a sharp young VP to the meeting. What’s his name, Burgess?” He shook his head. “Watch your back with that one. He implied you were having some personal trouble.” He gave her the investment banker size-up, part admiration, part domination. “You’ve lost weight.”

  For almost a year now, she’d been unable to sleep and uninterested in food; she’d compensated by burying herself in work. Though she’d dropped half a stone from her already lean frame, she often felt three times that was draped across her shoulders.

  The woman joined them and slipped her arm through Salustrio’s.

  “Marlena,” he said, “meet Ms. Gordon from Simon Coxe’s team at Standard Heb. Or should I introduce you as Lady Eleanor?”

  “Els will do,” she said.

  Marlena did not extend her hand.

  “What brings you to paradise?” Salustrio asked.

  “Coxe bought a week here at some charity auction with no intention of using it,” she said. “Made a big show of sending me here as a birthday getaway.”

  “Alone?”

  “My man couldn’t make it.”

  That she was turning thirty-three was but a convenient cover. This birthday would arrive just before the dreaded first anniversary of a loss that had forced a question she couldn’t answer: Who would she be now, since nothing she’d planned was going to happen?

  She finished her drink and ordered a refill. “What pried you away?”

  “The yacht had a week available,” Salustrio said. “So, when’s this birthday?”

  “Tomorrow.” When the bartender delivered her scotch, she dragged over a bowl of nuts.

  “The mahi-mahi is fabulous,” Marlena said.

  �
�I was planning on eating a few of these nuts,” Els said, “getting a little squiffed, and calling it a night.”

  Laughter erupted from the limbo crowd, one of whom had collapsed on the dance floor and had to be pulled to his feet.

  “Look,” Salustrio said, “how about a little celebration sail tomorrow?”

  “You know I promised Louisa her first mani-pedi,” Marlena said. She fluffed her hair and said to Els, “We agreed we’d spend our last day in the Resort, but he can never get enough yo-ho-ho.”

  “I’m no fan of boats,” Els said.

  “This isn’t just any boat,” Salustrio said.

  “Humor him,” Marlena said. “If he’s ashore, he’ll drive me and the girls crazy. I’ll have the hotel send out some lunch.”

  Salustrio patted Marlena’s hand. “Be on the dock at nine thirty,” he said to Els. “Look for the zodiac from Iguana, probably a big Jamaican guy at the helm. She’s the huge white ketch, likely flying a tanbark mizzen.” He signaled for his check.

  Els swallowed more scotch, thinking how self-important guys were suckers for jargon. Coxe would squirm when he found out that she’d gone yachting with his archrival. She raised her glass. “Cheers, then, to yo-ho-ho.”

  The man steering the rubber dinghy had blue-black skin and wore a crocheted hat stuffed with hair that resembled an enormous muffin. He was tall and sinewy, and his reflective sunglasses and silence gave him a sinister air. The sailboat was anchored beyond the rest of the craft. With its hull looming over them, the helmsman shouted a few unintelligible words and a blond sailor descended the ladder and stepped into the dinghy.

  When Els stood up, the dinghy lurched on a wave and the sailor caught her hand and guided it to the ladder. “Welcome aboard Iguana, Ms. Gordon,” he said. His accent was American. “I’m Captain Ingraham. Known to all as Liz. You’ve already met Jason, our first mate.”