The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (88 page)

Madeleine nodded, and they walked on in strained silence.

What happened that night.
What an anodyne way of putting it. Sophie’s spirits plunged. How could she put it like that, when she could still summon up the feel of his back beneath her hands. The clean, sharp smell of his skin. The heat of his mouth.

Suddenly she was alarmingly close to tears. She snapped off a rose and started pulling it to pieces. ‘How could you not tell me?’ she said harshly. ‘How could you let me come back without warning me that he was here?’

Madeleine’s face contracted. ‘We thought you already knew.’

‘What? What gave you that idea?’

‘For heaven’s sake, Sophie, you’d just sold him Fever Hill!’

‘But I didn’t know it was him. I had no idea.’

‘And we had no idea that you were selling it.’ She opened her parasol with a snap and walked a few paces, and then turned back. Her mouth was set, her eyes glittering with angry tears. ‘I cannot
imagine
why you took it into your head to sell it. And I cannot imagine why you didn’t tell us first.’

‘Because you’d have tried to stop me.’

‘Well of course we would!’

‘Madeleine, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. But you still should have warned me about Ben.’

‘No,’ said Madeleine, raising her hand as if to ward off an attack. ‘No. We won’t talk about him any more.’

‘But Madeleine—’

‘I
can’t
,’ said her sister, rounding on her. ‘I just – can’t. It’s differ-ent for you, Sophie, you’ve been away, you’ve been out of it. But for me nothing’s changed. Can’t you understand? Nothing’s changed.’

Sophie looked at her sister’s beautiful, agonized face, and wondered how she could ever have hoped that things might be different between them. ‘Of course,’ she said gently. ‘I understand. Nothing’s changed.’

So now I have my answer, she thought as she watched Madeleine walking swiftly away to find her daughter. She hasn’t forgiven me. She may not even know it herself, but it’s true. She hasn’t forgiven me. And she probably never will.

Picking hops in Kent is Ben’s best thing ever. At least it was till Kate went away.

Every September, him and Jack and Kate used to make the long walk down south, to save on the train fare. But this year it’s only Ben. He’s never been by hisself before, and it feels a bit rum. But he promised Kate he’d go, so he’s got no choice. Besides, he’s nearly ten, and it’s not like he don’t know the way.

Just thinking about Kate gives him a pain in the chest. He’s hardly seen her since she left, as her and Jeb live miles away in Southwark, just off the Jamaica Road. Ben can only manage the odd half-hour of a Sunday, if he can slip away without letting on to Pa.

So Kent, now. It takes him two days of padding the hoof to get there, and of course he goes to the same farm they always do, Farmer Rumbelow’s, couple of miles west of Leigh. He teams up with this old bloke name of Roger, and Roger does the pole-pulling while Ben does the picking. So there’s Roger hooking down these long trailing branches, and here’s Ben ripping off the hops till he can’t hardly feel his arms. They’re not so quick as the big men, and they can’t keep going as long as the sodding families, but who cares? They do all right.

And when you get the hang of it, it’s topper. All them clean yellow hops against the clean blue sky, and the flowery smell and the floaty gold dust. Then when the whistle goes, you stand by your bin and wait for the measurers to come round. The cold creeps up and your padders go numb, but soon it’s time for grub, and at Farmer Rumbelow’s it’s bang-up, cos they fill your tin right to the top.

Him and Roger manage about seven bushels a day, which is a shilling between them, split sevenpence for Ben and fivepence for Roger, cos Ben done most of the work. So after tuppence each for food and a kip in the barn, they’re doing all right. In fact they’re in clover.

And it’s topper in Kent. One lunch-time, in the next-door field, Ben saw a couple of horses playing. He never knew horses could play, but these ones did: kicking up their hooves and giving each other little play-bites on the neck, and galloping about for no reason – or maybe just cos they was happy. Watching them play was the best thing ever. Or it would of been, if Kate was here to see it too.

So now the hops are picked and Roger’s taken hisself off down some town called Somerset to see what’s what, and Ben’s off home again. Loads of rhino in his pocket, but he still pads the hoof all the way back to London. Well, it’s half a crown for the train, and that’s just chucking it away for no reason, isn’t it?

It’s cold, and there’s a fog: one of them thick yellow jobs that clogs your throat and stings your eyes like lime. Ben’s been beating the streets for a day and a half and he’s all in, so he goes into this coffee-house and asks for a penny mix, but the skivvy just looks at him.

Don’t she even know what a penny mix is? ‘That’s a ha’porth of tea,’ he snaps, ‘and a ha’porth of sugar, and a Woodbine. All right?’

So finally he gets his penny mix, and he’s sat there nursing his tea and getting the feeling back in his padders, and looking about to see what’s what. And sure enough, this bloke gets up, leaving half a faggot on his plate. Makes a nice little supper, that does.

‘A penny a day is all you need,’ he tells the pretend-Kate in his head. ‘You get yourself a penny mix and make it last, and then you just watch and wait. You’ll never credit what people leave on their plates. Just a penny a day, and you can eat like a king.’

Then all of a sudden it comes so strong upon him that he nearly cries out. Here he is talking to a pretend-Kate, cos the real one’s not here.

Slippers Place where she lives is miles out of his way, but he goes there just the same. Only she’s out. The missis in the next-door room tells him she’s got a job down a manufactory making umbrella covers, and won’t be back for hours. So he tells her to tell Kate that Ben come by, and starts off home.

It’s well dark by the time he gets to Shelton Street, and he’s all in, and the pain in his chest is worse. He didn’t know it down at Slippers Place, but he was counting on seeing Kate.

Pa’s not home thank Christ, but Lil’s there, getting ready to go out, and Robbie jumps up from his corner with a big gappy grin. ‘Ben!’

‘Well who’d you think it was?’ laughs Ben, giving him a cuff round the ear.

‘All right, Ben?’ goes Lil, putting on her hat. She’s thinner than when he left, and her cough’s no better.

‘All right, Lil,’ he goes.

‘How much d’you make, then?’

He does a low bow. ‘Fifteen shillings and sixpence, my lady.’

‘Well if I was you I’d stash it, or he’ll have it off you in a trice.’ They both know she means the old man.

‘So how’s he been, then?’ goes Ben.

‘I dunno. I make sure I’m out of here before he gets back.’ She stops for a minute and shoots him a look. ‘He’s been on and on about Kate. He’d make me tell where she is if I hung around. And I mean it about that rhino, Ben. Stash it, or he’ll knock you about and nick the lot.’

‘He’ll knock me about anyway,’ goes Ben. And he’s not worried about the rhino: he’s already stashed ten bob in his special place behind the chimneypot, and just kept five and six in his pocket, so Pa will get something off him, and not boil over.

He gives Lil two bob as a present, then says to Robbie, ‘Here, Rob, I got you something.’ He reaches into his pocket and brings out a straw doll he clicked off a window sill in Kent. ‘It’s got spiky hair like yours, but this is gold and yours is red.’

‘Gold,’ breathes Robbie, taking the doll in delicate fingers.

Ben grins. ‘Not real gold, you daft little bugger.’

But Robbie’s not listening. He carries his treasure back to his corner and introduces it to the wall.

Well at least he’s talking to something, thinks Ben. He turns back to Lil. ‘So you seen Kate, then?’

She shrugs. ‘Off and on.’

‘She all right?’

She darts a glance at Robbie, then leans down close to Ben. ‘She’s in the family way.’

‘Bugger.’

‘Quite,’ goes Lil. ‘Just don’t tell Pa.’

‘Course not.’

‘I mean it, Ben. Keep it dark. He’s still funny about her. Look, I got to go. Just don’t tell him where she is, all right?’

Ben’s narked. ‘What d’you take me for, a idiot?’

She bares her yellow teeth in a grin. ‘Keep your shirt on, Ben.’

After she’s gone, everything’s dark and quiet. Ben curls up on the shakedown by the window, and after a bit Robbie comes over and snuggles against him like a skinny little kitten. Ben shuts his eyes and sets to thinking about the horses playing in the field.

Everything’s starting to get well fuzzy, when all of a sudden he’s yanked awake.

‘Where is she?’ yells Pa, shaking him like a rat.

The big face is so close that Ben can see the coal-dust ground down deep in the little pits. The breath stinks like a hot drain. The green eyes are swimming in red. He’s well basted. Ben should of cut the lucky while he had the chance. ‘Where’s who?’ he mumbles, pretending to be half asleep.

But Pa’s not fooled. He gives Ben a shake that nearly yanks his arm from the socket. ‘You
know
who, you fucking little sewer rat!
Kate!
Now you want me to bash your head in, or you want to tell me where she is!’

Ben opened his eyes and stared at the sunlight on the rafters. He lay watching the golden light on the golden wood while the dream slowly faded and his heartbeat returned to normal.

He heard the maidservant tiptoe in and set down the tray, then murmur, ‘Mornin, Master Ben,’ and tiptoe out again. He got up and pulled on his dressing-gown and went out onto the balcony.

When he’d bought Fever Hill, the first thing he did was to open out the galleries and let in the light. No more shadows, even if it did mean letting in the heat. He never minded heat. And now he had a clear view of the grounds, and the rust-red carriageway sweeping down between the tall royal palms; past the New Works at the foot of Clairmont Hill, and the old slave village on the other side, and the ruins of the Old Works beyond it; and on through the shimmering cane-pieces of Alice Grove, to the distant gatehouses that marked the northern edge of the estate. Beyond that he could just glimpse the rolling acres of Parnassus, and the grey-blue glitter of the sea.

Strange to think that this upper gallery on which he stood had once been the domain of Great-Aunt May. Here she’d sat in her straight-backed mahogany chair, watching all that went on: the nemesis of servants and field-hands alike. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw her. Can someone haunt you even before they’re dead?

He pushed the idea aside. He didn’t want to think about ghosts. He leaned over the balustrade and took a deep breath, and waited for the sea breeze to blow away the last dark shreds of the dream.

A month ago, it would have knocked him sideways. But now at last he was beginning to understand. Evie used to say that when a duppy has a message, it sometimes ‘dreams to’ a person. And to begin with, he’d thought that Kate was dreaming to him. Now he believed otherwise. He’d realized that he only ever dreamed of the old days when he’d been thinking of Sophie. In some way, the dreams were connected with her.

The first ones had come when he was concluding the purchase of Fever Hill. And then again, when he’d seen her in Kingston. They were connected in some way. But how? After all, he had loved Kate – he loved her still – and he didn’t love Sophie. Not any more.

She was so utterly changed. In the old days she’d talked the hind leg off a donkey, particularly when she was nervous. But that day in the hotel garden she’d hardly said a word. It was as if all the spirit had leached out of her, leaving just this wan, submissive, frightened little thing.

That day in the hotel garden. Whenever he thought of it he winced. He’d laid it on far too thick. Especially the accent.
You’re looking remarkably well . . . You must be parched . . . I fancy you’re going to have to administer a sharp rebuke to that sister of yours
. . . God Almighty, he’d sounded like bloody Austen.

The old Sophie would have noticed that in a trice. She would have given him no quarter; she never did. The new Sophie had just sat there staring at him. Incredible to think that he’d loved her once.

But what did she have to do with Kate?

He ran his thumb along his bottom lip. Only one way to find out, he thought suddenly. Stop skulking at Fever Hill, and meet them all head-on. The Lawes. The Trahernes. Sophie Monroe. Meet them all head-on, and then have done with it.

He went back inside and poured himself a cup of tea, then lit a cigar.

Best china tea in a porcelain cup, he thought, and a fine Havana cigar. Not exactly a penny mix, but near enough.

That was almost enough to make him smile.

The early morning sun played prettily on Evie’s blue and green chintz counterpane, and on the hat and gloves and parasol laid out in careful readiness.

Even though it was a Saturday, she’d been up for hours, for she always gave herself plenty of time to get ready when her sweetheart took her out. Saturday was their day. Sometimes he managed to slip away on weekdays too, but Saturday was reserved for them. Which was why she’d had to do some fancy rearranging when Ben swooped down last week and carried her off to Constant Spring.

She smiled at the recollection. Lord God, if those two ever met, how the fur would fly!

That was the thing about Ben. He might look different from the way he had seven years before, he might dress and talk differently too; but underneath he was just the same. And you never knew what he might do.