Eden Falls (12 page)

But then the speakers took to the platform, and they were clever. Their rhetoric was well honed, their styles of communication practised and artful. Christabel Pankhurst was all animation, a vigorous speaker: brilliant and daring, active and lively. Her mother Emmeline was quieter by far, and less physical; she stood very still as she spoke, only occasionally reaching her hands out to the audience in a beseeching gesture. Henrietta was bold. And she was funny. She banged the same drum as the Pankhursts, but did it with an underlying humour, so that when the hecklers tried to throw her off course she was always ready for them, never caught out. Rather, she seemed to relish the interruption, striking like a cobra at her foe, though her venom was cloaked in comedy and courtesy.

‘Do you wish you were a man, madam?’

This was a fellow with a brolly and bowler hat, who looked as though he’d dropped by on his way home from the bank. Disapproval twisted his features and he called his question from a spot near the door, as if for a quick getaway when things turned ugly.

Henrietta, interrupted mid-flow, looked in his direction and said, ‘Forgive me, sir, what was that you said?’ so that the crowd turned their heads too, and the man in the bowler had the floor. He rose to the moment and raised his voice.

‘I said, madam, do you wish you were a man?’

‘Yes, sir, sometimes I wish I were a man,’ Henrietta said. ‘Do you?’

There was temporary uproar. Amos, caught in the act of laughing, said, ‘All right, she’s good,’ and Anna kissed him on the cheek for being generous. If they’d left then all would have been well; better than well. But they stayed, and by the time they left Caxton Hall there was barely a shred of goodwill between them.

Henrietta’s theme was the urgent need for increased action. Passive protest was useless, she said. No gains would be made waiting for the eternally disappointing Mr Asquith to do the right thing. It was essential to keep the WPSU in the public eye, to be ever more inventive and daring in the strategies they employed.

‘Our commitment to this cause cannot be called into question,’ she said. ‘Yes, we have been dogged; yes, we have been consistent; but what have we ever done to truly shock the establishment out of its complacency?’

At this Amos laughed, and quite loudly; heads turned towards him and Henrietta, some distance away from him but blessed – or cursed – with a preternatural sense for a dissenting presence, immediately homed in on him and said, ‘You are amused by us, sir? If you find comedy in rank injustice, do you go through life with a permanently happy countenance?’

Amos felt Anna’s hand on his arm: a tight, restraining pressure. But his head boiled with anger – startling, how very quickly this happened – and he moved forwards through the crowd, his eyes fixed on the haughty countenance of the tall young woman centre stage. Then he stopped and spoke in a voice that dripped with bitterness and contempt. It was his MP’s voice, his House of Commons voice: polished and potentially devastating.

‘You speak to me of injustice? You lecture this audience on the complacency of the establishment? And outside in Caxton Street, a liveried chauffeur waits to whisk you to a house – one of your houses, I should add – that was built on the profits from the ceaseless labour of underpaid, underprivileged, underrepresented miners. You are the establishment,
Your Ladyship
. Look to yourself, if you wish to address injustice and complacency.’

All around him the crowd was quiet, stilled by a collective awareness of being witnesses to a momentous drama. Henrietta, recognising, now, her opponent, said, ‘Ah, the honourable member for Ardington,’ in a collected manner, which belied the fact that her heart pounded and her throat had begun to constrict. Amos had had the advantage of a surprise attack, but she stood her ground, literally and figuratively. ‘Mr Sykes,’ she said, wearily patient, ‘on this platform, we do not attempt to address all injustice. We are modest in our aims, and seek only the right to have our say in the electoral process of this country.’

‘Indeed. With all the many privileges you already ’ave, you’d like to add one more.’ Amos sneered as he spoke. He made no attempt to disguise his distaste.

Henrietta faced him like a latter-day Boadicea, all internal fire and fury; it was as well, thought Amos, that she didn’t hold a spear, because there would surely then be bloodshed. He returned her glare, and it held all the loathing that, for decades, he had felt for her family: the Hoylands of Netherwood, coal millionaires who had never needed to get their own hands dirty, let alone risk their lives. Amos himself, man and boy, had toiled in their pits and mined the coal that kept this young woman in ermine and diamonds. Now here she stood, demanding the vote. Well, if it were up to him, she could bloody whistle for it.

‘What are you afraid of, Mr Sykes? That the women of Ardington might vote you out of office?’ She sounded shrill and disparaging: a little of the control had left her voice. For all her articulacy and quick wit, Amos was simply more practised in gladiatorial debate. He had her on the run; he felt it.

‘My only real concern is that parasites like you and your ilk continue to leech the lifeblood from the working classes. I’m not against women having the vote. I’m against women like you demanding it when there are still working men who’re not entitled to an opinion on polling day.’

On the platform, Christabel Pankhurst stepped forwards and whispered something to Henrietta, who cast a final, filthy look in Amos’s direction then stepped back, leaving Christabel to pick up her abandoned theme and carry it through to conclusion. She strove valiantly to reclaim the moral high ground, but Amos had beaten her to it and, in any case, the gentlemen of the press, who surged out of the hall behind him, had their own clear idea about what the story for tomorrow’s morning editions would be.

Amos gave the journalists short shrift – ‘My position is t’Labour Party’s position, and those views have already been widely aired’ – then waited outside for Anna, who took her time. When she did appear, she was with Henrietta. Amos stared at the pair of them, walking together out of Caxton Hall like bosom pals. Perhaps they would part company before they reached him, he thought. But no.

‘Mr Sykes,’ Henrietta said, extending a gloved hand, which he took, but without enthusiasm. ‘Thank you for coming this evening, and I’m sorry we led each other into so public a disagreement.’ Her face wore a gracious smile, and he felt like a churl by comparison. Still, he thought, no Swiss finishing school for the likes of me, so what does she expect?

‘Don’t be sorry. I’m not,’ he said. ‘Those things needed saying, and I can’t speak for you, but I feel better for it.’

‘Amos,’ Anna said. That was all, but it was filled with meaning. He didn’t catch her eye, but looked steadily at Henrietta and said, ‘I shall never be able to hear you speak of injustice without bile rising in my throat. This is just the way it is; the way I am.’

‘There are many forms of injustice, Mr Sykes. I can’t address them all at once, and neither can you. May we at least part on friendly terms?’

He laughed. ‘We’re natural foes, you and I. Prefer to keep it that way, if it’s all t’same to you.’

‘Very well,’ said Henrietta. She turned to Anna, who had stepped away from Amos, putting a little distance between them. ‘Sylvia sends her good wishes, and asked me to thank you. She’ll need the canvas a day or two before the exhibition, if that’s possible?’

‘Of course,’ Anna said. ‘Tell her, it’ll be my pleasure.’

Henrietta nodded silently at Amos, and said a warm goodbye to Anna. They watched her go.

‘What was that about?’ Amos said. ‘What canvas?’

‘You,’ she said, ‘are a pig.’

He stared.

‘A pig and a bigot. I am embarrassed for you and by you.’

He bridled at this. ‘I speak my mind, that’s all. You should know that by now.’ He did, truly, feel wronged by his wife. He’d said nothing to Henrietta Hoyland that he wouldn’t say again, given the chance. ‘Come on,’ he said, softening, holding out a hand. ‘I never meant to fall out with you an’ all.’

She folded her arms. A cold, insidious rain had started to fall; these were poor conditions for a stand-off. Behind them, the yellow Daimler slid by, slowly enough for Henrietta to say, as she passed, ‘Can I offer you a lift back to Bedford Square?’

As Amos said no, Anna said yes. The motorcar drew to a halt and she got in, without even a glance of farewell. Amos turned up his coat collar and began to walk towards home. The rain, needle-sharp where it found bare skin, fell from a dark cloud that seemed to hang over him alone.

T
here were still bargains to be had in Jamaica, for someone with vision. Silas had tried to talk Hugh Oliver into buying a property here, but his second-in-command lacked an adventurous spirit, or rather, a speculative one. Hugh’s interest in property began and ended in Bristol; his money was safe there, he believed. He didn’t trust Jamaica. He’d once been forced to sit out a hurricane, and had seen an entire house and its contents lifted and carried through the air. At least when he returned to his Clifton townhouse, he knew it would still be there, anchored to the earth by its foundations.

In any case, since Silas had a house and a hotel on the island, there was always somewhere for Hugh to stay. Unlike the boss, who had never yet spent a night at the Whittam, Hugh preferred to lodge at the hotel. He was possessed of greater natural charm and sociability than Silas; guests – even dissatisfied ones – seemed drawn to him. Also, Silas’s house, though beautiful, was isolated: the jungle, and its creatures, felt too close. Hugh liked an establishment with a well-stocked bar and the likelihood of company. He liked to know that the people around him outnumbered the lizards.

When Silas had bought the plantation fifteen years ago, the house that had stood at the heart of it was all but derelict. The agent who’d shown him the property seemed to be trying to talk Silas out of the sale and himself out of the commission: you’d need a small fortune to restore it, he said; that, and a failsafe plan for the future. Silas, as it happened, came with both.

He sat now on the veranda of his own great house, and it was immaculate: white-painted, pristine. The jalousies were new this year, and the porch furniture too; oiled teak, with white and green cushions. It had replaced the cane pieces with which Silas had grown bored, and which now stood, incongruously chic, on the rudimentary wooden platform outside the low bungalow where Justine and Henri lived. His housekeeper and handyman had come as a pair – a matching set, Silas said – from Martinique: refugees, in 1902, fleeing the destruction of St Pierre, a city swollen with people and swallowed whole by the eruption of Mount Pelée. People always said there were just two survivors of the disaster, but Justine and Henri knew this to be untrue, for they were not the only ones who had walked away almost unharmed from the fringes of the devastation. Their provenance – their strange patois, their Catholic ways, their manner of dress – set them apart from the locals, and kept them tight-knit, bound together by shared differences and the memories of shared horror. They had not been a couple in Martinique; indeed, they had been strangers, flung together only by fate and the urgency of their escape. But now, in Jamaica, they were inseparable, though as brother and sister, not husband and wife. Silas had found them on the wharf in Port Antonio and something in their faces showed a predisposition to servility, easily recognisable here, where it was such a rare commodity. He had brought them home and kept them to himself, teaching them what he required from them and no more. Their gratitude, and their self-imposed isolation, kept them loyal. As far as Silas knew, they spoke only to each other, and to him, though the latter only when it was unavoidable. The day he gave them the cane furniture, Justine had looked at the floor and bobbed a curtsey, and Henri had said, ‘Mercy, Masser,’ which was his version of a French thank you; at least, Silas assumed so.

Where once there had been acres of sugar cane, there now were banana plants, but Silas’s house was still called Sugar Hill, the name given to it a hundred and fifty years ago, when it was first built. He liked it: liked the sense of history and continuity, and also the hint of a hidden meaning – Sugar Hill, where life is sweet. Like most growers on the island, he cultivated Gros Michel bananas: they were vigorous and thick-skinned, a little like himself. They grew well, travelled well, sold well, and he could ask nothing more of them. So far, the hurricane season had come and gone fourteen times and left his banana plants in the earth, to which he attributed his own lucky streak rather than the blessing of the Lord. It was a long time since Silas had prayed for anything. Look to your own resources, was his philosophy. Or, put another way, every man for himself. In any case, he knew planters whose entire crops had been obliterated by winds, and who had been back in business two seasons later, so obliging was the crop, so fertile the soil.

He had his feet up and his eyes closed, but he was thinking, not sleeping. Hugh had written to him from Bristol, suggesting, not for the first time, that they bail out of the hospitality trade, and concentrate on what they did best. The American-run Mountain Spring Hotel, which was owned by the mighty United Exotic Fruits, had made another offer.

‘They want the Whittam, Silas. They’d take it lock, stock and barrel, and the price they offer is excellent,’ Hugh had written. ‘Enough, in fact, to build another ship for the fleet and increase our banana export capacity in a controlled and profitable manner. The figures speak for themselves. Let’s not fall victim to that old, colonial trap of believing that an Englishman should never admit defeat.’

‘Masser?’

Justine stood before him, and she spoke tentatively, almost fearfully, as if he was convalescing from a long illness, there on the porch. He opened one eye. Her sad face was fixed on him, waiting for an answer. She would never simply state her business. He closed the eye again, then said, ‘Mmm?’

‘Masser, dayj’nay ready.’

‘Well I’m not, quite,’ he said. ‘Leave it on the table, under a cover. I’ll take some punch first.’