The sun broke through as they climbed the rise to the Crag with its view of the Munro. She sat on the ledge gazing over the countryside, as she and Mallo had done countless times, hoping for a glimpse of an eagle. Ajax stretched out and was soon asleep. A family of fallow deer browsed close by, and the buck raised his wide rack and sniffed in her direction. “Go on,” she said, waving her arms, “or you’ll end up on Mr. Vodka’s wall.” The buck wheeled and led his bounding entourage into the pines.
On the way back, she ushered Ajax into the family cemetery and they walked the lines of ancestors until they reached the new graves. Ajax lay down on the patch of earth in front of her father’s just-erected stone. Harald Ian Gordon, April 5, 1940 – November 19, 1999. Next came Hannah Ailean Burton, September 22, 1945 – February 17, 1999. At rest between Mallo and Harald, her greatest loves.
In front of Burtie’s stone, the new grass met the old in a neat rectangle. The wind moaned in the pines. Els pulled her hands into her parka cuffs and thought how hard Burtie had struggled to be the surrogate mother she didn’t want.
As she had done just before leaving Cairnoch at the end of every visit since Mallo’s funeral, she stood at the foot of his grave. Malcolm Connell Burton, May 26, 1965 – November 17, 1998. He will raise you up on eagle’s wings. The flowers she’d moved to Mallo’s grave after Harald’s funeral had frozen. She tossed them over the fence and called, “Time to go, AJ.” The dog let out a whining howl. She’d never imagined being barred from this place that was so alive with the spirits of her forebears, who nurtured her with their courage and ferocity. The last of the line, she would not be joining the others here. Who would she be now, separated from this soil, this rugged land? She gazed at the line of graves—her grandfather the Big Laird, grandmother Beatrice, Harald, Burtie, Mallo—and said a silent farewell.
A shipper’s van sat under the portico, its doors agape, a stack of blankets at the ready. The agent and two burly men stood at the door with Mary, who looked disinclined to admit them. Els hurried up and led them into the Great Hall. It was full of everything she couldn’t bear Mr. Vodka to touch.
Ajax hovered so annoyingly that Els took him to the kitchen. She stroked his ears, and he poked his cold nose against her neck. “Don’t ye worry, AJ,” she said. “Ye canna come wi’ me, laddie. Ye’d never manage the trip and the quarantine. Robby McLaren will give ye a good home.” She settled him into his bed and returned to the Great Hall.
After instructing the men to pack everything rowed up on the floor, she said, “Three more things: the case clock in the next room, my bed, and Grandmother’s portrait over your head. Mary will get you a ladder.”
“Surely ye’ll be taking the one of Sir Harald too,” Mary said.
Els looked at the portrait of her father, now devoid of the black ribbon. Since his funeral, she and Timmons had worked to exhaustion to settle the mess he’d left behind. He’d lost her home, and perhaps her mother. “Let the Russian have it,” she said.
“Where are we sending all this, miss?” the agent asked.
“To a dot in the ocean.”
part five
CHAPTER 17
Nevis, West Indies
December 23, 1999
As the Carib Breeze churned across The Narrows toward Nevis, Els stood alone on the open deck and clasped Liz’s blue bead, now on an antique silver chain, hoping whatever powers it contained would bless her adventure. The wind smelled of salt and caramel, sweet and burnt. Except for the Resort’s grounds, the shore before her was a nearly unbroken stretch of bush—wild, impenetrable—meeting the shallow beach.
In Charlestown harbor, the ferry passed astern of Iguana, locked up, Christmas wreaths in her rigging. The idea of her surviving the hurricane unscathed gave Els a jolt of relief tinged with something akin to hope.
Towers of shrink-wrapped cargo turned the damaged wharf into an obstacle course, and she was grateful for a porter’s help in shifting her luggage to the Jeep, which was parked near the Ginnery as Lauretta had promised. The creased bonnet and round headlampsgave the car such a quizzical expression that Els decided not to repair the dents and that the vehicle begged for a name. Wilma.
Before entering the harbor road along the battered seawall, she stopped and watched Iguana tug at her mooring line. In her business travel, the reality of a place seldom penetrated her shield of meetings, hired cars, and posh hotels. The foreignness of this place was exciting, but her otherness and naïveté rang a warning bell. She knew by name only a handful of people who called Nevis home. She wondered if any of them, or anyone at all, would become her friend.
Jack’s had a new rolling gate and cattle guard, and one of the drive’s royal palms had sprouted opposite branches holding golf ball–sized fruits, red on one, green on the other, as if it had decked itself out to welcome her for Christmas. The fallen trees were gone, and the newly mown grass baking in the sun reminded her of haying season. With its polished windows reflecting the afternoon sun, the house appeared larger, more gracious. Lauretta had arranged outdoor furniture on the gallery. Nevis Pottery urns spilling pale blue flowers flanked the door.
A stroll through the rooms reassured her that their quirkiness remained intact, though they were tidy and bright with tropical fabrics now. She set about unpacking and arranging the few personal treasures she’d carried in her luggage. She placed her portrait of Mallo on the bedside table and the triangle-folded Saltire and bothy’s tin cup on the study desk next to Jack’s shaving mug and a piece of brain coral.
Crunching gravel and a slamming car door announced Lauretta’s arrival in the court. At her call of, “Inside?” Els went to the gallery. She found Lauretta leaning against a gleaming white Lexus sedan.
“Where else would I be?” Els asked, suspecting her renovation had paid for the car.
“Hollerin’ ‘inside’s’ the Nevisian way of knocking,” Lauretta said, “but from farther away, to respect people’s privacy when they don’t have normal doors.” She hugged her yellow pad to her chest. “For only two weeks since you got title, are we making progress on this sow’s ear, or what?” She looked particularly pixieish today, her ginger frizz held back in butterfly clips.
“Enough for me to stay here,” Els said.
“Only if you plan to shower in the rain like a dumb chicken,” Lauretta said. She climbed up the steps, and Els ushered her into the lounge. “The water permit got all twisted up—don’t get me started—and there won’t be any new hookups until after New Year’s. The stonemason hasn’t fixed the crack in the cistern yet. You’re dry for at least two weeks. The new fridge won’t arrive ’til then, either. If you hadn’t rushed back, holiday coming and all, I’d have had time to get a lot more ready.”
“I cleared out my London flat,” Els said. “I needed a roof over my head.”
Lauretta flipped the wall switch. The ceiling fan rotated. “You’ve got current and a working cooker. Only two of the big four necessities of civilization.”
“Then I’m canceling the hotel,” Els said.
Lauretta cocked an eyebrow.
“I made it through the hurricane wi’ a lot less, didn’t I? Look, I slept out on the moors all the time as a kid, sometimes in the snow.” A memory stabbed her: warm dogs, shooting stars, falling asleep with Mallo to the voices of men telling tales. “The new mattress will be luxury enough.”
“Top of the line,” Lauretta said. “So you won’t feel any peas.” She walked to the window. “There’s a flush privy and lavatory with its own cistern by that outbuilding that had its roof tore off. Stella insisted on scrubbing it, even though I told her you’d never use it. Don’t even think about drinking that water unless you want bugs in your belly.”
Els looked out at the shell of the chattel house she’d imagined as a painting studio and guest room once the roof was replaced. “Where can I get water?”
“Tourists buy bottled. People without their own cisterns like Jack’s or government water use the public cisterns. There’s on
e at the Westbury Road.”
“Is it potable?”
“It’s pure mountain rainwater, but you’d better boil it until your belly gets used to it.”
“Then all I need are jugs.”
Lauretta stared at her. “Jiminy. Well, Lady Eleanor, maybe neither of us is what people think.” Amusement glinted in her pale brown eyes. “Welcome home.” She dropped two envelopes on the refectory table. “Time you signed up properly with the postal service. And you’ll want to paint your own name on Jack’s mailbox.”
Els stopped herself from commenting that Jack hadn’t actually left yet and instead said, “What little mail I’ll get can come ‘Care of Jack’ for now.”
Lauretta gave a resigned shrug, her standard reply whenever Els mentioned Jack or his effects. “Tony sent some of your citizenship papers,” she said. “And he said don’t drive anymore until you get a local license.”
“Surely my UK permit will do for a few days.”
“Park in town somewhere and walk to the main police station as if you just arrived on the ferry,” Lauretta said. “Don’t let them see you drive up. One lady cop in the Newcastle station is strict enough to slap you with a summons. Go today or you might be grounded until after Boxing Day.”
The concept that the island might shut down for days hadn’t occurred to Els. “I’d no plans to go anywhere,” she said, looking away. She’d no plans, period; the aimlessness that had felt so liberating now rang hollow.
Lauretta touched her arm. “I can’t cook worth a damn, and Tony loves a crowd on holidays,” she said. “We go to Hermitage for their Christmas Eve pig roast and then into town to hang out with everyone and his brother. Come along.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Els said.
“We’ve got a nice outdoor shower you can use any time,” Lauretta said. She drew a crude map on her yellow pad with X’s marking the public cistern and her own house. “Good thing I left Jack’s old beer cooler in the storeroom,” she said. “Oualie sells ice.” She ripped off the map and handed it to Els. “I thought we’d discuss some of the stuff on my list, but you look jet-lagged all to hell.”
Before leaving, Lauretta slipped her an invoice. Els was glad to be alone when she opened it. Payment would wipe out most of her remaining savings, and the work was far from finished.
She parked Wilma near the port and wandered among vendors selling from tables in front of flooded-out shops. The wilting sun and the scents of barbecue, open drains, diesel, and roasted peanuts assaulted her. In the courthouse square a man played Christmas songs on a steel pan; his calypso “Frosty the Snowman” tormented her mind for the rest of the afternoon.
The only person in the police station, a young man in droop-ass shorts and a camo T-shirt who she hoped was an officer, said he couldn’t help her about the license. “You needed to stop by this morning,” he said. “Now you must wait until Tuesday. Where you staying?”
“I bought Jack Griggs’s place.”
He looked at her for longer than she wanted to be scrutinized by any policeman. “I trust we’ll have no more trouble up there, then,” he said.
In a sparsely stocked grocery, she selected a pricy bottle of cognac for Tony and Lauretta and examined with revulsion the freezer cases of cow heels, chicken claws, and boxed chicken parts that looked as if they’d been thawed and refrozen several times. She lugged back to Wilma several jugs of water, bits and bobs of British and American packaged food, a child’s watercolor set, and two sundresses from a tourist shop because she couldn’t decide between them.
Fear of the constabulary was unknown to her, and she was relieved when she’d slid safely by the police station at Cotton Ground. Farther on, she spotted the public tap at Westbury, a concrete bunker covered with graffiti, only because a skinny boy was filling a bucket there. By the time she’d bought ice at Oualie and returned to the house, the papaya-colored sun was throwing palm shadows across the garden.
She settled into the study’s creaky desk chair and opened the envelope from Timmons. Besides documents about the estate, it contained a letter with Italian stamps addressed in her mother’s handwriting, dated ten days after Els had written from Cairnoch.
Mia cara Eleanora,
It is many years I do not expect to have your letter, but I am glad to receive it. I am in horror that your father kept you from me even more than I knew.
If you desire to visit Ischia, I will be happy to meet the woman you have become. It is not possible to make up for this time. We will be as strangers. Only our blood connects us. Even if we never meet, I wish to know about these silent years and to end them. If you are a mother yourself by now, perhaps you can understand my hunger for knowing.
I fear that you will be disappointed. I am sorry that I have not been the mother you want.
Con tanto affetto,
Instead of signing her name, her mother had drawn a tiny white gardenia with a red tear, just like the signatures on the birthday paintings.
Els read the letter over three times. Her elation at receiving it faded as she searched in the formal language for the loving mother she’d always imagined.
In Jack’s desk she found a greeting card with a drawing of a palm tree on the front. She wrote Dear Mum, then stopped to stare out the window. A sadness—familiar, but more raw than before—washed through her at the thought of what her mother couldn’t or wouldn’t ever be. Unable to decide what to write, she pushed the note aside, folded her mother’s letter into its envelope, and pinned it in the center of Jack’s bulletin board.
After the sunset, the sky turned a yellow-washed gray that faded over the next hour. Els poured dark rum into a jam jar and sipped it as she ambled through the grounds in the bluing light. The garden cleanup had revealed the foundations of a stone outbuilding, its entry facing the sea. She stepped beneath its arch of magenta bougainvillea and into an intimate walled garden furnished with a metal café table and two chairs. Orchids, bromeliads, and ferns sprouted from crevices in the walls. A tangle of periwinkle, the source of Jack’s spirit-banning nosegay, filled one corner. A passionflower vine twined among the bougainvillea, its flowers appearing to glow in the low light, marvelous in their complexity. She sat and savored her rum and listened to the sounds of evening swelling from the ghaut.
In the gloaming, she climbed the slope to the privy, pried open the door, and pulled the cord to light a bare bulb. There was a loud plop. A huge toad stared at her from the toilet bowl, its slitted amber eyes holding a malevolent gleam.
“Get out,” she cried.
The toad curled its four-fingered front feet over the lip of the bowl.
She went looking for a stick, but when she returned the toad had disappeared. She hurried back to the kitchen, locked the door behind her, and put the privy pot back in the storeroom so she wouldn’t encounter any creatures worse than mice during the night. She bolted down the rest of her rum.
She wrapped herself in her favorite shawl, a persimmon pashmina from Hong Kong, hoping to ward off the mosquitoes, and went to the gallery. Light from the lounge spilled down the steps and melted into the darkness in the court. She squared her shoulders, touched her bead necklace, and breathed in the perfumes of the place. She would be the proud protector of this ancient structure, these majestic trees. The weight of stewardship—a frisson of excitement mixed with apprehension—settled over her, but inside was again that glimmer of joy.
CHAPTER 18
Tony parked near the ruins of the Bath Hotel and the three of them strolled into Charlestown, where a boom box blared reggae from the courthouse steps and colored lights twinkled in the balcony railings. Nevisian families and tourists clogged all the side streets and squares.
The Hermitage pig had been succulent and Els had sampled every dish, including souse; only later had Lauretta told her with a smirk that it was stuffed pig’s head. She’d also overdone it on the rum punch, and her stomach lurched at the aroma of grilling meat from a barbecue stand near the Chinese supermarket.
Lauretta hung on Tony’s arm, her eyes in dubious focus. “What are you looking for?” she asked. “You’re craning around like a nervous hen.”
“A sailor,” Els said.
“How ’bout one of those?” Tony said. A knot of men chanted in German and held up Heineken bottles.
“Not just any sailor,” Els said.
“Picky, picky,” Lauretta said.
In the shadow of a balcony across the street, a black man stood a head taller than his companions. The holiday lights turned their shoulders orange, blue, and green.
“Be right back,” Els said, and crossed the street. At her approach, one of the men shook the tall man’s hand and wished him a prosperous New Year, then melted into the crowd with the others.
“The wooman who is all toughness, but fears the sea,” Jason said. Though he spoke softly, his voice had a penetrating intensity. He was wearing the sunglasses and hair-stuffed hat she remembered from their sail. Against his ebony skin, his pale blue dress shirt glowed as if under black light.
“Merry Christmas to you too,” she said. “Is Liz around?”
He looked at her long enough for her to wonder if he intended to answer. “Scarsdale,” he said. “He father dyin’ soon, mebbe dead already.”
A memory of Harald at Christmas Eve Mass swam into her head. Not trusting her face, she watched a dog sniff at a pool of melting ice cream near her foot, lick it up, and slink away.
Jason looked over her shoulder. “We go collect him by English Harbour Sunday,” he said. “Busy season. Long time before we see Nevis again.”
The Moon Always Rising Page 12