The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (91 page)

A hot wave of shame washed over her as she recalled her secret fantasy: that he would realize that he couldn’t marry Sophie, and marry her instead; that he would bring her proudly back to Parnassus and introduce her to his family. And she would turn to his father with a cold smile, and dare him to remember the frightened little girl he’d tried to rape in the cane-piece seven years before.

Lord God, what a fool.

The murmur of voices drifted over to her on the sweet night air. She glanced back to the house, where her mother sat smoking her pipe with Cousin Cecilia and old Nana Josephine. For the first time in years she wanted to join them. She wanted to kick off her shoes and feel the dust between her toes, and just sit and reason awhile. But she couldn’t. What she carried inside her set her apart.

And time was running out. It had been the middle of October when she’d found out that she was carrying. She’d told Alexander three days later, and he’d promised to stand by her. And she had believed him.

At first when she didn’t hear from him, she thought he’d fallen ill. Then after several desperate weeks, the letter arrived.
You have made things confoundedly difficult for me . . . Your timing could hardly be
worse
. . . Are you absolutely sure that it is mine? Pray, pray, pray, do not write again.

Write again? How could he imagine that after such an insult she would ever contact him again? Every night she lay awake screaming at him inside her head. Every morning she got up heavy with tiredness, still silently screaming.

All the lies. The kisses, the caresses, the burning promises. Sophie didn’t mean anything, he had said. It was just a marriage of convenience. It was Evie he loved.

What did it come to in the end? A sweaty embrace and a cheap dinner in an out-of-the-way dining-house. A paper sun-umbrella and a five pound note.

She had the money now, tucked into her bodice; just like that gold chain which his father had once given her, and which she’d lost in the struggle in Bamboo Walk.
His father.
Why hadn’t she realized they were just the same?

A breeze stirred the pimento tree above her head. She pressed her knuckles to her eyes until she saw stars. Lord God, girl! Stop going over what’s past, and
think
! Time’s running out. It’s already the fifteenth of December, and you’re over three months gone. You’ve got to
do
something.

But what?

Get rid of it? But if she got caught she might be thrown in gaol. It would be the end of everything. And if she bore the child, it would still be the end of everything. She could never teach school again; never dream of a respectable marriage to a respectable man. Her life would be over.

She didn’t know what to do. She longed to talk to someone. Ben maybe, or Sophie. Except that Sophie was the last person she could tell.

A noise behind her, and she opened her eyes to see her mother standing by Nana Semanthe’s tomb, looking down at her with her hands on her hips. ‘What’s wrong with you, girl?’ she said quietly.

‘Nothing,’ muttered Evie.

Her mother picked a shred of tobacco from between her teeth. ‘You been back awhile, and hardly said two words. Got some big high thinking going on, and black feelings, too, besides. Not so?’

Evie shook her head.

‘Sweetheart trouble? Sweetheart trouble out in foreign?’

Evie thought for a moment, then nodded.

‘Some sugar-mouth buckra man.’

Evie’s head jerked up. ‘Why you say that, Mother?’

‘Tcha! I not no fool. What the name he got, this man?’

But again Evie shook her head. One thing was certain: her mother must never find out. Grace McFarlane had done some dark things in her time. If she ever learned who’d done this to her daughter, he wouldn’t live long. And then Grace would be hanged for murder. And the Trahernes would have won.

‘Mother,’ she said, swinging her legs off the tomb, ‘don’t worry about me. It’s all over now.’

‘Evie—’

‘I said it’s over. It’s done. Now I’m tired, I’m going to bed.’

The next morning she awoke to a strange new clarity. It wasn’t that she knew what to do; but she felt sure that today she would make her decision. As she lay watching Mr Anancy spinning his web in the rafters, she wondered how such certainty had come about. Had some spirit dreamed to her while she slept?

She put on her town clothes, and told her mother that she was going up to the busha house to see Mr Kelly.

‘What you wanting with him?’ said her mother narrowly. ‘Is he the sweetheart?’

‘Oh, Mother! Of course not!’

‘True to the fact? Bible true?’

‘He’s like a brother to me. You know that.’ And I hope to God, she added silently, that he’ll be like a brother to me now.

But to her dismay, Ben wasn’t at home. ‘I’m afraid he’s out riding,’ said the ugly black man who came out onto the verandah. He was very dark, with a clever, bony face which reminded her uncomfortably of a younger version of her cousin, Danny Tulloch. She took an instant dislike to him.

‘My name’s Isaac Walker,’ he said, smiling as he extended his hand.

She gave him the barest of nods and ignored the hand. ‘Evie McFarlane,’ she muttered. Black as a Congo nigger, she thought contemptuously. Too black, too ugly, and too damned polite. Who the hell does he think he is?

His smile widened as he took in the name. ‘Grace McFarlane’s daughter? I’ve been looking forward to—’

‘Please tell Mr Kelly that I called,’ she said coldly, and turned to go.

‘Are you sure you won’t wait? Or – d’you want me to give him a message?’

She looked him up and down with the disdain which only a beautiful woman can fling at an ugly man. ‘No message. Good day to you, sir.’

She walked down the carriageway in a towering rage. Don’t you start your sugar talk with me, she told Isaac Walker silently. You with your trickified smiles and your lying, sweet-mouth ways.

Now she knew what her mother had been muttering about the night before with Cousin Cecilia and old Nana Josephine. A well-to-do black man up at the busha house – and unmarried! What a fine thing if he made a match with their Evie!

And of course, she told herself, setting her teeth, their Evie isn’t
good
enough for anyone better. Not good enough for a white man with blue eyes and golden curls.

Her anger lasted about a mile and a half. By the time she’d come out into the Fever Hill Road, all that remained was a cold, heavy dread. She realized now that her plan to see Ben had been nothing more than a delaying tactic. Ben couldn’t tell her what to do. She had to decide that for herself.

It was dark by the time she got back to her mother’s place, and the fufu was bubbling on the hearth. ‘You know is past eight o’clock?’ Grace said sharply. ‘Where you been all day?’

‘Out,’ muttered Evie. She tossed her hat in the dust and threw herself onto the step. She was bone-weary, and she could still smell the stink of the bush-doctor’s hut on her clothes. She wondered that her mother didn’t smell it too.

‘Where “out”?’ demanded Grace.

‘Just out. Cousin Moses gave me a lift to Montego Bay, and I did a little shopping.’ Which, in a way, was true.

‘Shopping? Cho! Don’t seem to me that you bought anything.’

‘I didn’t.’ That was a lie. The little brown bottle of physic in her pocket had eaten up over half of Alexander’s five pounds. The rest had gone on a train ticket to Montpelier, and a seat on the mail coach home from Montego Bay.

She’d been travelling all day. All day she had felt people’s eyes on her, and imagined their silent condemnation; even in Montpelier, where nobody knew who she was.

Her mother gave the embers a prod, and came to sit beside her. ‘Evie,’ she began, ‘that sweetheart you got.’

Evie tensed.

‘Now don’t give me no back-answer, girl. Just listen.’ She paused. ‘You know it does no good to tangle-up with that kind a man.’

Evie gave a weary smile. ‘Yes, Mother, I know.’

Grace studied her face. ‘Evie – you got anything to tell?’

Evie met her eyes without blinking. ‘No.’ She was good at the blank eye, and it worked. Grace gave a curt nod, and went back to watching the fire.

Evie sat and watched it too. And it seemed that in the embers she saw again the old bush-doctor’s knowing leer as he’d handed her the physic.

His hut stood on the outskirts of Montpelier. To reach it one passed the gates of the Montpelier Hotel –
the most splendidly appointed hotel in Jamaica
, according to the guidebooks. A year ago in the first flush of their romance, Alexander had promised to take her there. Now all she’d glimpsed as she trudged past was a pair of enormous gates, and an avenue of stately yokewoods sweeping up towards some fairytale palace that she would never see.

The bush-doctor’s hut had smelt of goats and press-oil and ganja. He had liquid yellow eyes and glistening toothless gums, which he bared in a constant grin. ‘Likkle quinine,’ he’d chuckled, tapping a long, sharp fingernail on the bottle, ‘and oil a tansy; oil a parsley, and other things too besides. Mind you drink it down like a good girl-child!’

Oil of tansy and other things too besides
. It sounded harmless, but she didn’t doubt that if she decided to use it, it would work. Such mixtures were secret and hard to come by, but they’d been around for a very long time. She remembered a passage in the journal of Cyrus Wright. Congo Eve miscarried. He suspected her of taking ‘foul potions’ to bring it about.

Beside her, her mother took up a stick and drew a circle in the dust. ‘You know, Evie, you father was a buckra gentleman, too.’

Evie bridled. ‘I know that, Mother. But just because you took up with one doesn’t mean that you can tell me what—’

‘No, that’s not what I intending.’ She tapped the circle with the stick and frowned. ‘I going to tell you a thing, Evie. I didn’t take up with you father. He took up with me.’

Evie shot her a look. ‘What do you mean?’

Grace shrugged. ‘You know what I mean. Years back, I’m setting out for Salt Wash one afternoon. I’m cutting through Pimento Piece, heading over towards Bulletwood, and he’s out riding and he sees me. And he’s too strong for me.’ She opened her hands to take in the rest.

Evie stared at her. Grace had spoken in the everyday tone she might use when talking of a spilt basket of yams. Evie tried to speak but no sound came. She cleared her throat. ‘You mean – he forced you?’

Her mother snorted. ‘Well I sure as hell didn’t ask him,’ she said drily.

Evie licked her lips. In all her musings about her father, it had never occurred to her that he might have forced himself on her mother. Grace McFarlane? The Mother of Darkness? It wasn’t possible.

Her mother crossed out the circle and tossed away the stick. ‘It happens,’ she said flatly. ‘Women need lot, lotta courage to live in this wicked world.’

Evie was shaking her head in bewilderment. ‘But – did you ever tell anyone?’

Her mother snorted.

‘But you could have gone to the magistrates—’

Her mother put back her head and hooted. ‘Merciful peace, girl! You a teacheress, but you witless as a newborn pickney! What anybody coulda done if I did even tell? The man
too strong
! You hearing me? Too strong in every damn way.’

‘But – what did you do?’

She shrugged. ‘Thought about lot, lotta things. Thought about running away to foreign. Or letting the River Missis take care of it. Or going up into the far country and taking bush-medicine to kill it dead inside a me.’ She frowned. ‘To kill you, I meaning to say.’

Evie flinched. Until now she’d only thought of the thing inside her as the most desperate of problems. For the first time she realized it was a child. Would she have the courage – or the wickedness – to do what her own mother could not?

Grace pushed herself off the step and went to squat by the fire. She lifted the lid, and the familiar smell of thyme and callaloo and fragrant hot peppers filled the air. ‘But I’m glad at the way it turned out,’ she said as she stirred the pot. ‘My own self daughter.’

Evie blinked. Her mother never said such things to her.

But why was she saying them now? Was this the sign she’d been waiting for? Were the spirits telling her to throw away the physic and have the child?

‘Mother,’ she said slowly. ‘Why you telling me this now?’

Grace shrugged. ‘You got to hear sometime. Too besides,’ she added with a wry smile, ‘you got sweetheart troubles. So maybe it only fair that I to tell you some of mine.’

‘But why did you never tell me before?’

‘Because it don’t necessary! It all in the past.’

‘Forgive and forget? That’s not like you.’

She sighed. ‘Sometimes you can get vengeance for you own self, Evie. Other times, not. That man – you father – he done a lot, lotta bad things. Vengeance will come to him in the end. But not from me.’

‘Who was he?’ Evie said abruptly.

Grace sighed. ‘Now, Evie. What good—’

‘Tell me.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. I’m a grown woman. I ought to know the name of my own father.’

A long silence. Her mother raised the spoon to her lips and blew off the steam to taste the fufu. Then she tossed in a little more thyme, gave a satisfied nod, and replaced the lid. ‘Well all right, then,’ she said. ‘Maybe you right, maybe it time.’ She got to her feet and took hold of Evie’s wrist. ‘Come.’

She led her through the trees to the tombs at the bottom of the yard. At great-grandmother Leah’s she stopped, and put her daughter’s hand flat on the cold stone. ‘First you got to swear. Swear on great-grandmother Leah that you never will try for to confront him or face him down.’

‘Why not?’ said Evie harshly.

‘You not hearing me, girl? He too
strong
! He do you harm!’

Evie thought for a moment. Then she swore.

Her mother gave a nod. ‘Well, all right. So now I tell. You father. He’s that Cornelius Traherne.’

Evie swayed. Then she leaned over the side of the tomb and began to retch.

The crossroads at the foot of Overlook Hill marks the edge of Eden land. If you stop there with the estate behind you, you have a choice of three ways.