HF - 05 - Sunset (59 page)

'We'll avoid townships,' Alan decided.

'Will they ever be normal again ?'

'Everyone forgets,' he said. 'In time.'

At the first rise they reined to look back at the smoke pall.

The death of a city. Her city, Meg realized. Her home. How she had always loved coming back to Kingston.

The desolation reached into the mountains. In fact it seemed to increase to suggest that the tremor had begun there, and thence found its way down to the sea. Some places she was unable to recognize. A cliff face which had always been a landmark had dissolved into two, and they picked their way through a sudden ravine. Trees were either down or bent at amazing angles, their roots still clinging precariously to the upturned earth. Streams were running where no water had ever run before, and other streams were dry. And now they were out of town the whole afternoon was covered by a deathly hush, as if Nature herself was shocked into silence. And at sunset she came to Hilltop.

There had been no fire, she could see no drifting smoke, and in the rapidly gathering gloom any flames would have been easy to discover. But then, she remembered, the earthquake had happened at half past three in the afternoon, when no one would have been cooking, and there were no electric cables out here to come swinging down and carry death and destruction in their wake.

Thus the scene looked almost peaceful. There had been a labourers' village; there was now a scattered accumulation of debris. There had been a staff town; there was now a grotesque litter of white-painted timbers, some pointing crazily skywards, others lying about like a collapsed house of cards. There had been a church; two walls and the roof had fallen, but the other two still stood, a mute testimony to man's rightful fear of the Unknown which had so rapidly and efficiently destroyed his handiwork.

She pushed hair from her forehead, heard Alan catch his breath as he reined beside her.

There had been a grandstand. Quite remarkably the four main uprights still stood, but the tiered seats, and the staircases, had slid away from their supports, and arrived together by the winning post in a cluster of cane and timber.

There had been banana groves; now there were acres and acres of flattened trees, and no doubt, she thought, of scattered fruit. She wondered if, beyond the fruit groves, there was still a rushing river, shaded by cedars, or if they too had disappeared, together with the water where she had bathed, and where her life had first begun to have meaning.

Her breath caught in her throat. Because there had also been a factory, with a chimney. Hilltop chimney had been one of the most famous landmarks in all Jamaica. While Hilltop chimney stood, Father had always said, Hilltop will be Hilton land. Now it lay as rubbled stone, pointing up the slope towards the house.

Because there had also been a House.

She kicked her tired horse in the ribs, cantered down the slope, lost sight of the buildings as she dipped into the valley. It would be quite dark before she got there. She wanted it to be dark before she got there.

Alan drew alongside. 'Meg,' he said. 'It can be rebuilt. There is nothing that cannot be rebuilt.'

She galloped away from him, reached the pasture. Amazingly, there were still sheep, gathered together in plaintive groups, looking at her with determined patience, wondering no doubt what new catastrophe was about to overtake them. And there were chickens, released from their run by the collapsing walls, roaming the shattered plantation in terrified freedom, squawking and flapping their wings.

Halfway up the slope she drew rein. Because Hilltop had also contained people. And now she could hear a rumble of sound, an angry groaning, like a gigantic animal in pain.

She kicked her horse, rode past the cemetery, and checked again. For wailing through the darkness, rising above the mutter which filled the evening, she heard the voice of Oriole Paterson.

'Oriole,' she shouted, once again riding forward, to pause in horror. On the far side of the slope there were people, her people, hundreds of them. And in front of them, crawling away from the mob, there was Oriole. Her mouth was open
and
she was shouting, but her words were incoherent and tears streamed down her face. Her clothes were torn and dishevelled, and her hair flowed in the breeze. Her body was cut and bruised, stained with mud and blood. Nothing quite so unlike Oriole had ever been imaginable, Meg thought.

And as she watched another stone flew through the air, to strike her cousin in the back, send her sprawling again. And now the gigantic
mutter
began to make itself audible.

'White woman.'

'Bitch woman.'

'Jumbi!’

'Woman, we goin' bust you ass.' 'Woman
...'

Another volley of stones and mud flew through the air, striking Oriole and making her fall with a moan of terror and pain. One of the flying clods of earth struck Meg on the shoulder as she urged her horse forward.

'Stop it,' she shouted. 'Stop it, do you hear?'

Behind her Alan drew the revolver from his belt and fired a shot in the air, and that checked the crowd.

'Eh-eh, but it is Miss Meg,' someone shouted.

'Man, is Miss Meg, You ain' seeing that?'

They clustered around her. 'Man, Mistress Meg, this place done.'

'Man, Mistress Meg, some of them boys done kill.' 'Man, Mistress Meg, the earth just open so.' 'Man, Mistress Meg, is
she
doin'.' 'Man, Mistress Meg, all our troubles begun the day that woman come here.' 'Man, Mistress Meg, we goin' stone she and stone she
...'
'Man, Mistress Meg
...'

'Be quiet,' Meg shouted. 'You should be ashamed of yourselves. An earthquake is an act of God. Not of a human being. It happened. It has happened before. It may well happen again. You should just be grateful that you are still alive.'

They gazed at her, muttering, but there would be no more violence. She was sure of that.

'Go down to the village,' she said. 'See what you can save from your homes. I will be down to see you in a little while. Go home.'

They edged away from her, casting fearful glances at Oriole, who had collapsed altogether on the ground, hugging the earth in her terror.

'Go home,' Meg said again, and dismounted. 'Oriole,' she said. 'Oriole. What happened ?'

Oriole rose to her knees, gazed around herself with an almost childlike curiosity.

Alan also dismounted. 'What happened here, Mrs Paterson?'

Her head jerked, and she stared at him. 'I was in the kitchen when it happened,' she muttered. 'It just collapsed. Everything collapsed. Then there was silence. I crawled out of the rubble, and there was nothing. I just sat there. And then the people came. They shouted at me.' She clasped his hand. 'They threw things at me. And when I ran, they ran behind me, and threw things at me. An hour. Two hours. They ran behind me, throwing things at me.'

"They've gone now, Oriole,' Meg said. "They were just frightened.'

Oriole stared at her. 'Meg,' she whispered. 'Oh, my God, Meg. But you're dead. They're all dead. All the Hiltons are dead. The Great House is dead. The factory is dead. The Plantation is dead. Oh, God have mercy on me. They are all dead.'

Meg gripped her cousin's shoulder, shook it to and fro. 'I am not dead,' she shouted. 'I am not dead.'

Oriole screamed, a sound of purest terror, pulled herself away, scrambled to her feet, and ran towards the cemetery. Amazingly, the earthquake had passed the cemetery by. The tamarind trees still stood, the white palings gleamed in the darkness, the gravestones had stayed upright. 'Dead,' she shrieked. 'Dead.'

Alan helped Meg up. 'She's lost her senses.'

'And when she hears that Billy
is
dead
...'

'Aye, well, it's difficult to feel sorry for her.'

Meg walked towards the Great House. It seemed the main force of the tremor had run right underneath the building, for the massive stone cellars upon which it had been erected, which had been at once a foundation and a refuge where the inmates could take shelter from hurricane wind or marauding buccaneers or rampaging revolting slaves, had been split, as if with a gigantic axe. Hilltop Great House had simply collapsed into the resulting chasm. The outer walls still stood, but the roof was gone, crashing down on top of the bedrooms, on top of her bed - she could see one of the uprights protruding through the rubble, with even a shred of torn mosquito netting still clinging to it - crashing in turn on top of the collapsing staircases, crashing in turn into the hall and sucking down the inner walls of the dining room and the drawing room.

She stood at the foot of the steps, where her father
and
her grandfather and all the Hiltons before them had each morning held their daily meeting with their staff before setting the machinery of the plantation into motion. The steps had fallen before the verandah, which itself sagged back into the rubble behind it.

'Meg.' Alan had also dismounted. 'Be careful, Meg.'

She was already clambering over the rubble, even in the gloom able to pick out the overturned billiards table, the grand piano from which all the keys had sprung like an army of musical ants, to lie around the instrum
ent which had been their home, li
ke so many tiny dead bodies.

She slipped, and jarred her back, and still sitting, on what she realized had been one of the great iron-bound doors, she stared
at
Marguerite Hilton. The canvas had been torn from its frame, or the frame had been torn from the canvas, with the result that her face was somewhat bent and the wide, arrogant mouth appeared to be smiling. Oh, my God, she bought.
They
are all in there
as well, all destroyed, all re
duced to meaningless rubble. As Marguerite had been, in her own prime. No wonder she was smiling.

She di
scovered she was weeping, great
silent tears which rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto her torn blouse. Alan knelt beside her, put his arm round her shoulders, and she leaned against him. All gone, she thought. All gone. Everything Hilton gone.

'Meg,' Alan said. 'We'll start tomorrow, rebuilding Hilltop. I'll get the men from my ship, and we'll
...'

‘
We
goin' rebuild Hilltop, Captain,' Washington said. 'I goin' get them boys workin', and we goin'...'

'Washington,' Meg cried. 'Oh, Washington. What
happened!'

'With Mistress Oriole?' Washington scratched his head. "Them boys did be too angry with she, Miss Meg. Is not only the quake. Is how she did treat you this time, is how
...'
He sighed. 'But they didn't mean to kill she, Miss. You got for understand that. If they had mean to kill she, she would be dead.'

Which was true enough, Meg supposed.

Them boys only want for to keep Hilltop for you, Miss Meg,' Washington explained. '
Hilltop is our home, and you is
our mistress, and so we goin' start rebuildin' this house.'

'No,' she said.

'But Meg
...'
Alan protested.

'It will cost a fortune to rebuild Hilltop.'

'But surely there will be government aid
...'

'Not enough,' Meg said. 'Never enough. Besides
...'
Her turn to sigh. 'It is finished. Oriole is right there. The Hiltons are dead.'

'Meg
...'
His voice was uneasy.

'Oh,
‘
am not mad, Alan. But it is a fact, isn't it? The Hiltons were dead long before the earthquake. Perhaps they died with Great-Grandfather. I think we have only been going through the motions, ever since. And now the plantation itself is destroyed
...
do you really
want
to see it rebuilt?'

_‘

'I'm concerned with what
you
want, Meg. Then there's Richard and Aline
...'

'There is money in the bank,' she said. 'Enough to complete their schooling, at the least.'

'And what do
you
want to do, Meg?'

She took Washington's hands. 'I was never a Hilton,' she said.
‘I
was never a real successor to Marguerite and Susan, to Suzanne and Cartarette. I only tried to act the part, and suffered for it. But I'll be a Hilton now, Alan. We have more to do than prop up old buildings. I have my people to see to, to see them settled, to tell them they can split the plantation into smallholdings. Would you help me do that, Washington ? Will you be able to farm this land?'

'Well, I mus' be able to do that, Miss Meg, if you want me.' He grinned at her. 'Them boys goin' be too happy to have Hilltop for their own. But Miss Meg
...'

'Meg,' Alan said. 'By the terms of your father's will
...'

'I can never sell Hilltop, Alan. I know that. But I'm not selling it, am
I?
I'm abandoning it to Washington. Richard will agree. Believe me. He'll be grateful that he won't have to carry the burden of being a Hilton of Hilltop. And when we are finished here, we'll see if we can help in
any
way with the rebuilding of Kingston.' She squeezed his arm. 'You once said we only took from Jamaica. I'd like to give something back, just for once.'