The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (109 page)

Girls can’t be devils.
Why hadn’t she known that?

‘Because you’re
stupid
,’ she said aloud. Raising her head, she glared at the spreading branches of the duppy tree.

It was only a young one – not nearly as tall or frightening as the ancient silk-cotton on Overlook Hill – but it was hers, and she felt safe in the folds of its buttressed trunk, with the purple-flowered thunbergia and the white star jasmine festooning its branches, and the big green cotton-cutter beetles patrolling its trunk. A little of the rage lifted from her and floated away.

She ran her hand over the rough bark – and something snagged her skin, making her wince.

It was the head of a nail that had been hammered into the trunk. Someone must have been casting spells again. Perhaps one of the McFarlanes, mother or daughter, paid by a smallholder to catch a person’s shadow, or set a love-charm.

The nail had drawn blood. Belle scowled at it. Then she ground her palm onto the rusty iron, to hurt herself some more. That’ll teach you, she told herself. You chose the wrong costume, and because of that Papa lost his inkstand—

‘Oh, I say,’ said a voice behind her. ‘Don’t hurt yourself. Please.’

She spun round. Blinked in astonishment.

It was Lyndon’s father, Mr Traherne. He didn’t often attend Historical Society gatherings, but he’d come to Eden as a favour to her mother, whom he’d always admired.

‘How d’you do, Mr Traherne,’ Belle said politely. She wondered how much he’d heard, and felt herself redden.

He inclined his head in a courtly nod, and went on smoking his cigar. He was sitting on the bench which Papa had built for her last birthday. Belle hadn’t spotted him before, because they’d been on opposite sides of the trunk.

‘Is this your sanctum?’ he asked. ‘If so, I apologize for trespassing.’

Awkwardly, she shook her head.

‘Bad luck about the prize,’ he added, and, to her surprise, he sounded as if he meant it. ‘You looked . . . cast down when they awarded it to Lyndon.’

She was embarrassed, but flattered that he’d noticed. And she liked it that he talked to her as if she were a grown-up.

With her heel she dug at the ground, and her red cloven hoof sank into the softness of rotten leaves. ‘It’s just . . .’ she began, ‘I didn’t know that girls can’t be devils.’

Mr Traherne chuckled. ‘Oh yes they can!’

She wasn’t sure what he meant.

He asked if his cigar smoke troubled her, and she told him no, and that sometimes Papa let her try one of his.

‘Well, I shan’t let you try one of mine,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s far too strong. It would make you unwell.’

She wondered if he meant that Papa’s cigars were weak by comparison – then told herself not to be such a muff. He was only making conversation. ‘When I was little,’ she volunteered, ‘I wanted to be a boy, you know.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you really?’

She nodded. ‘I made everyone call me Bill, and refused to wear frocks or play with dolls. It was after my brother died, and I thought . . . well, that I ought to be a boy. To make up for it to Papa.’

He took that with an understanding nod.

Pressing her lips together, she perched on the end of the bench, arranging her tail carefully beside her.

He offered her his handkerchief to bind up her hand, and she said thank you. In silence they sat side by side, but without any awkwardness, and Belle watched him blowing smoke rings across the river. It was April, and the rains were weeks away, so the Martha Brae was a slow, sludgy olive green that smelt a little off. But Belle was used to it, and Mr Traherne didn’t seem to mind.

She cast him a shy glance. He was very old, at least sixty, and acknowledged by everyone to be the most powerful man on the Northside. But she’d never really noticed him before. It was a relief that he was so old. She’d found that with old men she didn’t imagine what they were like naked. She simply couldn’t.

She reflected that she liked his face. He had strong, almost Roman features, with silver hair and a white moustache, and slightly bulging light blue eyes.

Yes, she thought, a Roman senator. She pictured him walking nobly in the Forum, making laws.

‘You know,’ he remarked with a curl of his red lips, ‘when my son went up to accept the prize, you didn’t merely look cast down. For a moment, you looked as if you wanted to kill him.’

She opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. ‘I’d never have carried it out,’ she mumbled.

He laughed. ‘No attempt to deny it! I like that. You seem rather to enjoy breaking rules.’

Did she? She’d never thought about that before.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said gently. ‘All girls like breaking rules. It’s in their nature.’

Belle frowned. ‘What about boys?’

Again he laughed. ‘Oh, they
make
the rules.’

That didn’t seem at all fair, but she thought it might be rude to say so.

Suddenly Mr Traherne got to his feet. ‘Oh, do look, there’s a yellowsnake!’

‘Ooh, where? Where?’

He gestured with his cigar, then put his hand on her shoulder to shift her a little to the right. ‘Other side of the river, under the heliconia – d’you see?’

‘. . . Oh, yes! I just caught the tail!’ She was elated. It’s good luck to see a yellowsnake, and she hadn’t seen one since the year before last, when her uncle had taken her shooting in the Cockpits.

That had been such a wonderful day. It was just after the twins were born, and she’d been feeling a bit left out, when suddenly her uncle had swept in from Fever Hill, and taken her off riding for the day. They’d taken a packed lunch, and ridden all over the hills, and she’d felt proud to see him sit his horse so well, for Ben Kelly was the best rider in Trelawny, better even than Papa. They’d yelled insults at the john crows till they were weak with laughter, and he’d taught her to jump.

She was thinking of that when she felt Mr Traherne’s hand move slowly down from her shoulder, under the neck of her frock, and onto her breast.

He didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She froze. Couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t breathe.

Keep perfectly still, she told herself. Stare straight ahead. Pretend you haven’t noticed. This is a mistake. His hand has slipped by mistake, and he doesn’t know it yet. If you stay perfectly still, he’ll realize, and take it away. And then we can pretend that it never happened.

She stared straight ahead of her at the great, curved scarlet flowers of the heliconia on the other side of the river.

But they’re not flowers at all, she thought in horror. They’re claws. Blood-red claws for tearing flesh.

A choking smell of rottenness rose from the green water. She felt sick. She swayed. The heavy hand held her back, pressing painfully into her breast.

This is a mistake, she told herself over and over.

She tried to take refuge in the thought; to make it push away what was happening. Mistake, mistake, mistake.

It was stifling inside the bamboo tunnel. The crickets were deafening. The bitter smell of his cigar caught at her throat.

A burst of laughter from the party made her jump.

Slowly he withdrew his hand. ‘I wonder,’ he said calmly, ‘if we were to wait here very quietly, should we see it again? The yellowsnake. What do you think?’

She clasped her hands in front of her to stop them shaking. She tried to say something, but her tongue wouldn’t come unstuck from the roof of her mouth.

From the corner of her eye she saw him toss his cigar in the river. Then he withdrew a silver case from his jacket pocket and opened it, and chose another. ‘You know,’ he went on in the same easy, conversational tone, ‘poor old Lyndon must seem the most awful muff to you, but in fact he’s rather an admirer of yours.’

She tried to swallow. What was he talking about? What did he mean?

He sighed. ‘I suppose I oughtn’t to have told you that. Poor little Lyndon. He’d be mortified if he ever found out.’

She watched him light his cigar. The way he narrowed his eyes against the smoke, and tossed his match into the river. She watched its sure, steady arc.

‘You shall have to be very kind,’ he went on, ‘and promise me that you’ll keep it a secret. Will you do that for me?’

There was a silence.

At last she raised her eyes to his face.

He was looking down at her, smiling as he waited for her to reply. His face looked just as it had before: the light blue eyes crinkled and genial. Until you noticed the pupils, which were blank and black as a goat’s.

But it
must
have been a mistake, she told herself. He simply didn’t realize—

‘So what do you say, hm? Are you going to be a good girl, and keep our secret?’

She looked up into his eyes, and slowly nodded.

‘That’s my clever girl. Now. Let’s go and see if they’ve left us any tea.’

Chapter Two

‘Oh,
do
say you’ll come,’ pleaded Dodo Cornwallis. ‘The Palairets throw wizard bathing parties, and everyone will be there.’

‘That’s why I’m not going,’ said Belle.

Dodo cast her an anxious look. ‘Because of Lyndon Traherne?’

Belle hesitated. ‘Sort of.’

Dodo gave a sympathetic nod. ‘Rotten luck about the prize.’

‘Mm,’ said Belle. ‘Rotten.’

Dodo got up and moved to the balustrade. ‘I do wish you’d change your mind.’

She looked so disappointed that Belle almost relented. ‘It’s just that I don’t feel like swimming,’ she said.

‘I understand,’ Dodo said quickly. ‘And I can quite see why you’d rather stay here. It’s so glorious.’

Belle put aside the photograph album and went to join her new friend. She tried to see the garden through the eyes of a girl from England on her first holiday in the tropics. But she couldn’t. It didn’t look glorious at all.

From where they stood, the double curve of dusty white steps descended into a tangle of tree-ferns, plumbago and ginger lilies, round a hard brown lawn that sloped down to the Martha Brae. Across the river, the Eden Road cut a red slash through the cane-pieces, on its way to Falmouth and the sea. The sun was punishingly hot. The grass was dying before one’s eyes.

What’s glorious about this? thought Belle.

And yet she adored Eden. And she hated feeling like this. But she couldn’t help it. It was two weeks since the Juvenile Ball, and everything felt different. What was wrong with her?

This was her home. She’d been born in this airy, ramshackle old Georgian great house. She’d taken her first steps on this wide verandah, and chased hummingbirds and tried to eat a centipede. But now she felt cut off from it all. Separate. Alone.

Be sensible, she told herself for the hundredth time. Mr Traherne didn’t know what he was
doing
. He can’t have done. It wouldn’t make sense.

She watched the twins toddle round the side of the house and onto the lawn in determined pursuit of Scout, the big bull mastiff. Douglas caught up first, and administered a smack to the huge, wrinkled black head. Scout took it patiently, panting and swinging his tail. Lachlan caught up with Douglas, grabbed the back of his sailor suit, and pulled. Both toddlers tumbled backwards into the grass, and began to howl. Poppy, their nurse, looked on calmly, biting back a smile. Scout attempted to nose Lachlan back onto his feet.

Belle stared at her little brothers and tried to feel something for them, but she could not. She didn’t even feel related to them any more.

And she had lied to Dodo. She adored swimming, and longed to go to the Palairets’ bathing party at Salt River. But she couldn’t risk it. Every time she pictured seeing Mr Traherne again, her stomach turned over.

And yet – she couldn’t stop thinking about him. He had been so
nice
. Talking to her as if she were a grown-up. Using long words and assuming that she’d understand. Listening to her. How could he have made such an appalling mistake?

‘Is this your papa when he was younger?’ said Dodo behind her. She was back on the sofa with the photograph album on her knees.

Reluctantly, Belle went to sit beside her. The photograph album had been her idea. How else did one entertain a girl who was scared of praying mantises, and played with dolls? You could hardly take her into the hills to shoot john crows.

‘“Captain Cameron Anthony Lawe,”’ read Dodo, following Belle’s mother’s careful copperplate with her finger. ‘“Suakin, 1882.” I didn’t know your papa was ever a soldier.’ Dodo’s own father was a lieutenant-colonel in Bengal. ‘Why did he leave the service?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Belle. ‘He was in the Sudan and something awful happened. But it wasn’t really his fault.’

‘Gosh,’ said Dodo. She studied the photograph with placid envy. ‘He’s awfully dashing. My pater’s just fat and bald. At least, he was when I last saw him, and I don’t suppose he’s got any better.’ She turned another page. ‘This is your uncle, isn’t it? I recognize him from that polo match.’ She sighed. ‘He’s an absolute dream.’

Belle frowned. She didn’t like to think of her father or her uncle as being good-looking. They were simply Papa and Ben.

‘Sissy Irving says your uncle used to be a
groom
,’ said Dodo in disbelief. ‘She says he worked for Mr Traherne, and they had a falling-out and he left. But that can’t be right, can it?’

Belle bit her lip. ‘Actually it is.’

Dodo’s blue eyes widened in awe. ‘Gosh,’ she said again. ‘But he’s rich now, isn’t he? I mean, that new house they’re building – I saw it when we went past their estate. How did he get all his money?’

‘I don’t really know,’ said Belle.

Dodo turned another page. ‘You’re so lucky. Your people are absolutely ripping. An aunt who’s so clever that she sits on hospital committees, and a beautiful mamma who does photography. Compared to that, mine are so
dull
.’

‘No they’re not.’

‘Yes they are.
My
aunt just breeds beastly foxhounds. She prefers them to people. My little sister’s too small to be any fun, and my brothers are
horrid
. They gave me my nickname. Dodo, because of my beastly big nose.’