The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (152 page)

‘Moses is doing wonders at Eden,’ said her mother, cutting across her thoughts. ‘I do wish your father would go and see it. But he still finds every excuse not to.’

‘I know,’ said Belle.

‘I’m worried about him. It’s hit him harder than I would have expected. I’ve never seen him so disheartened.’

‘Perhaps he just needs time.’

Her mother pressed her lips together and nodded. ‘Ben’s been marvellous. Forcing him to help with the relief effort. Dragging him along to see the plans for the new village. You know, until this happened, they were never really easy with one another, but now . . . And of course,’ she added with a curl of her lip, ‘Ben keeps asking him for advice. The other day, your father told him just to think of it as another foal on the way. Apparently that did nothing to reassure.’

Belle gave the expected smile, but inside she felt breathless and shaky.

Her mother picked a dead leaf from the grass and turned it in her fingers. ‘How did you ever manage,’ she said without meeting Belle’s eyes, ‘to take that photograph?’

For a moment, Belle was caught off balance. Then she squared her shoulders and told her mother everything: about keeping watch on Margaret Cornwallis, and following her to her next encounter with Traherne; and waiting for a gust of wind to mask the click of the camera; and making a sudden noise immediately afterwards, to startle him into leaving. And that final talk with Margaret before she left for London – although Belle didn’t go into details about what was said.

‘She was lucky to have you,’ said Mamma. She sounded wistful. ‘When it happened to you, you had no-one.’

‘It wasn’t that I couldn’t talk to you,’ Belle said carefully. ‘It was that I felt – I deserved it. I know it sounds odd, but I felt – tainted. No, not exactly that. As if I’d always been tainted, and he had merely discovered what I was really like.’

Mamma walked on in silence. ‘You know,’ she said at last, ‘when I was a child, and for a long time afterwards – well, until I met your father – I felt the same.’

Belle stared at her. ‘You?’ Her mother had always seemed so assured. So beautiful and accepted and loved.

‘Things happened to me . . . Oh, some day I’ll tell you, but not now. The point is, I know what it’s like to feel dirty and worthless. It can take years to get over. But one does, Belle. One really does. You don’t ever forget it, but in an odd way it becomes a part of you, and it makes you stronger.’

‘I had no idea,’ said Belle.

Her mother gave her a shaky smile. ‘Well. Why would you?’

For a while they walked side by side. Then Mamma said, ‘That good-looking Captain Palairet. Are you going to marry him?’

Belle swallowed. ‘I don’t know. He hasn’t asked me.’

Mamma snorted. ‘You’ve hardly put yourself in his way.’

‘Well, no, but—’

‘I just want to say,’ said Mamma, ‘that if he does, and you say yes, I should be delighted. And I think you ought seriously to consider living in Scotland.’

Belle’s eyes filled. She’d been thinking about that a lot. The pull of Cairngowrie was strong. But to leave all this . . .

‘You wouldn’t really be leaving,’ her mother said gently. ‘Not now that we know each other so much better. Besides, I heartily approve of your living in Scotland.’

‘Why?’ said Belle.

‘No malaria, no earthquakes, and no hurricanes. As a mother, one thinks of these things.’ Before Belle could speak, she added quickly, ‘Oh, look. There’s your father with the dog cart.’

‘Mamma—’

‘We’ll talk more later, Belle. I promise. Now hurry along. You don’t want to keep him waiting.’

Belle put her hand on her shoulder and kissed her cheek.

Mamma blushed. ‘What’s that for?’

‘For being my mother,’ said Belle.

‘So where would you like to go?’ said Papa as he flicked the reins and told the pony to walk on.

‘Down to the road and turn left,’ said Belle.

‘You sound very sure.’

‘I know what I’m after,’ she replied.

‘And you’re still not going to tell me.’

‘Not yet.’

For a while they drove in silence beneath the royal palms. After the hurricane had savaged Parnassus and then Falmouth, it had veered south to strike Eden, but had left Fever Hill largely unscathed, apart from a swath of destruction across the eastern cane-pieces. But if Papa felt the disparity, he did not show it. He had money enough to rebuild. Money wasn’t the problem. It was the will to go on.

‘You ought to see what Moses has achieved with the house,’ said Belle when the silence had gone on long enough.

Her father sighed. ‘Is this some plot of your mother’s?’

She smiled. ‘No. It’s some plot of mine.’

‘Hm. Somehow I don’t find that reassuring.’ He caught her eye and returned her smile, and suddenly she knew that Mamma had told him about Traherne.

She turned back to the road. ‘When did she tell you?’ she said.

‘Just before the funeral.’

Found out, found out.
Her skin prickled. She couldn’t breathe. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I mean, sorry that I couldn’t tell you. I just—’

‘Belle,’ he said gently, ‘there’s nothing to be sorry about.’ Taking the reins in one hand, he put the other arm round her and drew her close. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

For a while they drove in silence, while the pony clip-clopped across the bridge over Tom Spring and past the old aqueduct and the ruined slave village, and Belle leaned against her father and struggled not to cry.

At last he said, ‘What you must have gone through . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I always knew you’d inherited the best of your mother. And believe me, that’s saying something.’

She sniffed. He handed her his handkerchief. ‘But I have to say,’ he added, and his voice hardened, ‘that I’m not as civilized as either you or your mother. It’s just as well the guango tree got him. If not, I’d have ripped his spine out.’

One look at his face told her that he meant it. His jaw was knotted, and his light grey eyes were glassy as he stared at the road.

He’ll be all right, thought Belle. If I can just get him to Eden . . .

They passed between the gatehouses, and turned west into the Fever Hill Road, and after a few hundred yards Belle asked him to stop.

‘Here?’ he said in surprise. There was nothing around them except nursery cane-pieces and a few straggling trees at the edge of the road.

‘Here,’ Belle said firmly.

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see.’

The day after the funeral, Adam put Max in a hired dog cart and drove them both up to Eden.

He’d paid his respects to old Miss Monroe at the church, but hadn’t gone on to the reception at Fever Hill great house because he wanted to see Belle alone, after things had quietened down.

That evening, however, a note had arrived from her mother.

Dear Captain Palairet, I was sorry not to see you at Fever Hill this afternoon. What with all the clearing up, I haven’t had a chance to thank you properly for rescuing my husband and daughter
– which was a blatant untruth, as the day after the ‘rescue’ she’d sent a charming, deeply felt note of thanks with an invitation to dinner, which he’d politely declined –
but we shall all be up at Eden tomorrow afternoon
, she went on,
for a picnic and a look at the renovations – if that’s the right word when one’s practically starting from scratch. Belle will be there, of course. You ought to come. Say around five? Best wishes, Madeleine Lawe
.

No coyness, no beating about the bush. It made him want to know her better.

He and Max arrived as ordered around five, to find Mrs Lawe sitting with her sister on the verandah steps, with the remains of a picnic spread out beside them. The ruins of the garden had, with tropical vigour, already acquired a coating of thunbergia that masked the worst of the scars, and behind them the bones of the new house were just beginning to rise from the undercroft.

‘I’m afraid you’ve just missed my husband,’ Mrs Lawe told Adam with a glint of amusement. ‘He’s gone to the works at Maputah to inspect the repairs. But Belle is round by the stables. Why don’t you go and find her?’

She offered to keep Max, but Adam decided to take him along for moral support. The last time he’d talked to Belle – really talked – had been at Stranraer. Since then, their only contact had been that stilted exchange after the hurricane, and the letter he’d sent back in Flanders without a reply.

He found her at the bottom of the slope leading down to the stables, kneeling in a patch of red earth that had been cleared of debris. She was planting a tree: a slender sapling with large green leaves that stood just a little taller than Max. The twins were standing by with spades and a watering can, looking solemn.

All three glanced up at their arrival, but nobody spoke. Then Belle turned back to her work.

Ah, thought Adam. So she isn’t going to make this easy for me.

‘You hold it upright,’ she told one of the twins, ‘and Douglas, stand back and tell me if it’s straight.’

Douglas took a step backward and screwed up his eyes. ‘It – yes, it’s straight.’

Belle turned to Max. ‘Do you agree?’

Max sucked in his lips. ‘Um. Yes.’

She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Max.’ Pointedly ignoring Adam.

‘What kind of tree is it?’ asked Max, emboldened by the attention.

‘It’s a silk-cotton,’ said Lachlan.

‘We also call them duppy trees,’ put in Douglas.

Both were taller than Max by at least a head, and quite clearly sizing him up.

Daunted, he edged closer to Adam.

Belle came to his rescue. ‘But
this
one,’ she said, ‘is actually a Tree of Life. That’s what my grandmother used to call them. Her name was Rose, and she used to come to Eden when it was a ruin, and meet my grandfather in secret under the Tree of Life that grew on the hill over there.’

‘Is it still there?’ said Max.

‘Not any more,’ said Belle.

‘Is that why you’re planting another one?’

‘Partly,’ she said. ‘But also because the hurricane blew down the old guango tree which used to guard the house from harm.’ She paused, and Adam knew that she was thinking about Traherne. ‘And a house,’ she went on briskly, ‘must always have a guardian tree. Which is why we’ve just planted a new one, and given it an offering of rum and lime juice to start it off.’ She sat back on her heels. ‘Lachlan, Douglas, you must promise to water it and talk to it every single day.’

‘We promise,’ they said.

‘Can we give it a blood sacrifice?’ said Lachlan.

‘Not yet,’ said Belle.

Adam decided that he’d been patient long enough. ‘Douglas, Lachlan,’ he said, ‘I want you to show Max the river, so that I can be alone with your sister.’

Max looked shy, and the boys glanced at Belle for instructions. She was busy brushing the dirt off her hands, so they stayed where they were.

Adam reached into his pocket and brought out a handful of change. ‘Five shillings each. Lachlan, Douglas, Max. Now off you go, at the double.’

They went.

As he watched them go, Adam felt a twinge of guilt at abandoning Max to the twins. But as they disappeared round the side of the house, he heard Max asking if the river had any seals; and when the twins admitted that it did not, and what was a seal, Max started to tell them. He seemed to be learning to hold his own.

After they’d gone, there was a silence which Belle made no attempt to fill. She got to her feet and pushed back her hair behind her ears, and wiped a smudge of dirt off her nose. She was wearing a loose red cotton frock with a square neck and no jewellery or make-up. Adam thought he had never seen her look so beautiful.

He said, ‘It’s taken a while to get to see you alone.’

‘I’ve been busy,’ she replied, crossing her arms.

He put his hands in his pockets. Then he took them out again. ‘How is your papa?’

‘Better, I think.’ She nodded at the tree. ‘He helped me find this, and cleared a space for it himself. It was a way of getting him up here to see the house. Yes, I think he’ll be all right.’

‘He still doesn’t like me,’ said Adam.

‘Oh dear,’ said Belle unfeelingly.

‘It turns out,’ said Adam, ‘that one of my uncles officiated at his court martial.’

Belle laughed.

‘It’s not funny,’ Adam said ruefully.

Again Belle laughed, and he saw that she was just as nervous as he.

‘I know that I hurt you,’ he said. ‘I mean, when I sent back that letter.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘Can you forgive me?’

‘No.’

He threw her an uncertain look to see if she was joking, but her face gave nothing away. She’d definitely decided not to make this easy for him.

‘But you know,’ he said, ‘you hurt me too.’ He hesitated. ‘Then afterwards, in hospital, I couldn’t see anyone. I couldn’t even speak. I didn’t – I didn’t want you to see me like that.’

‘But you can speak now,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

Again he hesitated. ‘I got better.’

She gave him a long look, and he could see that she knew there was more to it than that, and that she intended to find out. But not now.

He said, ‘I know about Traherne.’

She caught her lower lip in her teeth, and the colour rose to her cheeks. ‘I thought you might.’

‘Is he the reason you’ve been avoiding me?’

‘. . . I suppose.’

She was looking down at the duppy tree, struggling to keep her composure. He desperately wanted to take her in his arms.

‘How did you find out?’ she said, still without looking at him.

‘Your Great-Aunt May told me.’

She stared at him. ‘
Great-Aunt May
?’

‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘The point is, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. You’ve got to believe that.’

She swallowed.

He crossed the distance between them and took her in his arms.

‘Mind the duppy tree,’ she said.

He kissed her.

After a moment’s hesitation, she put her hand to the back of his neck and kissed him back.

She smelt of star jasmine and green growing things, and the red earth of Eden. ‘God, I missed you,’ he murmured into her neck. ‘We’re going to get married right away. This week. No arguments.’