HF - 05 - Sunset (41 page)

She sometimes considered, when s
he could not prevent herself th
inking - rare moments of lucidity, when her body stopped trembling and her teeth stopped chattering - how odd were the ways of the human mind. When she had been thrown down here, she had been worried about things like indignity, and privacy. Now the half-crazed beasts to either side were her companions. They liked to watch her get up from her pile of straw, and stretch her legs. Why, she could not imagine. The billowing flesh, the throbbing muscles which had been her glory no longer existed; there were traces of grey in her hair. But she was a woman, and if she smelt, if she had not changed her gown for over a year - supposing such a scrap of nauseating material could still be considered a gown - she was still woman, white woman. She was still attractive, to them.

To Jaime most of all. He was at the bars now, with the lump of black bread and the cup of water which he had secured for her. There were no rations, in this gaol, for prisoners. There was a ration
issue,
and the strongest took what they could. So thank God for Jaime. Even three years in this hell of despair had not dwindled
those
muscles, dim
inished that spirit.

He was the son of a Spanish
Creole
and a Negro mother so far as she could understand, and he reminded her of Cleave. Not really. But his skin was black, and he had a fine physique; and he pos
ses
sed, above all, that unique mixture of utter gentleness, unhibited humour, and savage anger, which was a West Indian Negro's birthright. When first he had put his arms through the bars, having destroyed, with ruthless energy, all those who would rival him at his game, she had supposed herself about to die with terror. She had still been in agony, her flesh had still been raw, and Jaime possessed long arms; a three-foot-wide cell was not sufficient entirely to escape those fingers.

Until she had realized he sought to reassure, not to harm. Now she went to him, leaning against the bars, taking the bread and water from his fingers - she would not feed stuff like this to Bully as a punishment on Hilltop, but oh, God, Bully and Hilltop were not to be thought of -while his hands stroked her shoulders and her breasts, fingered her hair. She was his woman. Had they not been separated by the bars, she would have belonged to him utterly, and been happy to do so. He brought her food, he kept her alive, and in return asked for nothing more than to touch her flesh.

She nibbled carefully; her teeth were loose. And the saliva, starting into her mouth, was painful. And with the food, the lurking despair, compounded of so many things: the death of Alan - because he must have been killed, in that lonely jungle skirmish, else surely he would have appeared, an avenging angel, to take her from this place - her years of success, of determined overlordship of all she encountered, her children, her warm bed, her clothes hanging waiting in a scented cupboard, and above all her plantation. They were there. And she was here. And there was nothing she could do.

Because of her own arrogant stupidity. Save enjoy the touch of Jaime's fingers, as he smiled at her through the bars.

Sometimes they sang. The majority of the prisoners were either Negroes or of Negro descent, and they found a relief from their misery in the mournful cadences of the spirituals they had learned from the missionaries. At other times the tempos grew more vehement, as their anger bubbled over at the inhumanity to which they were subjected, and as their memories reached back to more primeval ancestors. Then the entire prison shook, and the clanging of the bell summoned the guards, and hoses were turned on the cells, through which jets of water were pumped from the bay. The jets themselves were a blessing; they brought a sensation of cleanliness. Meg would strip off her tattered gown and cling to the bars as best she could, while the water scorched her body, and the male prisoners cheered.

But afterwards, when the floor of the cells had turned to liquid mud, and the damp spread, she would lie on her sodden straw and shiver, and pray that the water need never come again.

But more often the prison merely hummed with the sound of a hundred voices in muted conversation. The men were herded some ten to a cell, and their voices were all around her constantly, occasionally rising in anger, occasionally, and far harder to bear, swelling into a wail of maddened anguish. But for the most part confined to that endless murmur. She felt she knew them all intimately. But she knew none of them, save for the ten next door, and of those, only Jaime was really a face. The white lady, as he called her, was his possession. No one was allowed to forget that.

The others she never actually saw, save as she passed their cells on her daily outing, and then they were a blur of faces. For she was exercised by herself, allowed to walk round and round the barbed-wire-enclosed yard, for ten magnificent minutes in every day. She was not alone, of course. Apart from the guards who stood in the centre and watched her, her exercise period always attracted a gaggle of soldiers, who would stand on the far side of the wire and stare at her, and shout remarks which she had no doubt were obscene, but which she could not understand and could therefore ignore.

Sometimes the commandant himself stood there, with one or two of his officers, watching her. She could not understand in the first place if they were satisfied she was a
guerrilla
, why she had not been hanged - several unhappy men, and more than one woman, were hanged at least every week. On the other hand, if they accepted the fact that she was not a
guerrilla
, why did they not let her go, or at least permit her to see the British consul in Havana? They could hardly suppose the mere fact of keeping her alive would make her feel like forgiving them. Life, in her circumstances, was infinitely inferior to the peace of death.

Perhaps, she thought, they still sought information from her. Yet, when they had splashed water on her face on that dreadful tortured morning, and she had awakened to a world of screaming agony, and she had given them Alan's name, and nothing else, and merely screamed over and over again that she knew no more, they had taken her down from the rope and put her in the cell. Then she had assumed they accepted that she knew nothing.

But the mystery of her survival, at least as her captors interpreted the word 'survival', was no greater than the mystery of others. Jaime, for example. Apparently he had been taken with arms in his hands, yet he had not been hanged. It was difficult to understand what he said, as she spoke little Spanish and he spoke no English, but he did have a theory as to their continued life. So far as she could make out, it involved 'the others'. Although who the others were she could not decide.

But most probable of all, they were being reserved for some final catastrophe, she thought; at various times groups of the men were taken out of the gaol and marched away under heavy armed escort, and were never seen again. That day would be the ultimate. The end of Meg Hilton of Hilltop. Why had such an omnipotent, confident creature ever existed? That surely was a childhood dream.

The true Meg Hilton, if that was her name, was this shambling, shivering animal, who existed in the warmth of Jaime's affection, and lived for the sound of the song, or the sound of the muted voices. They alone reminded her she was a part of the human race. They alone mattered. So the morning she awoke to silence was the most terrifying she had known since the ship's officer had turned away from her on the deck of the pinnace, and left her to his men.

She sat up, clawing hair from her face. Yet it was not silent. Only the cells were silent. There was noise, all around them, a scurrying and a whispering; from the town which lay beyond the fort an occasional shouted command. And the whisper was punctuated, in the still farther distance, by deep-throated explosions.

Meg ran to the bars, found that every bar was occupied by a staring silent face. Jaime was next to hers, as usual.
'Americanos'
he said.

She gaped at him.

'Americano'
he said again.
'Soldanos. Americano'

Oh, my God, she thought. Why was she not overjoyed? How could she be overjoyed ? Even supposing it was not a dream. Why should the American soldiers be coming? This was Cuba. She could not understand it. But supposing it were true, they would be white men. She did not think she could stand that. The thought was unbearable.

One of the prisoners uttered a shout, a baying cry. The others listened to it for a moment, and then copied it, and also began shouting. Meg fled from the door to the back of her cell, crouched on the straw. She expected the hoses, she expected worse, for this was a paean of vengeful rage, not even a voodoo celebration. Surely the guards would hurry to quieten this cacophony, which rose and rose and rose until the entire cell-block seemed to be swaying to the chant.

But the guards did not come, and slowly it dawned on her that the guards were not coming. That there were no guards left to come. The Spanish had evacuated the town, leaving their prisoners behind them.

To starve, or to be rescued by the Americans ? She did not know which she would find easier to accept. She could only he in the corner of her cell, surrounded by the shrieking voices, until even the voices were overlaid by the tramp of marching feet, and she sat up to stare into the compound, and to watch the gates swing wide, as the men entered, wearing khaki uniforms, with slouch hats which rose into a peculiar crown, and gaiters, and armed and confident with their victory. And their faces were white.

She stared at them as they flooded the compound, releasing the prisoners, although a squad stood by with levelled rifles and bayonets in case of a riot. They came to her door almost last, turned keys in the rusted lock, forced it open, and stared at her. She crouched against the wall, knees drawn up, breasts hugged in her hands.

'By all that's holy,' one of them said. 'A white woman. Hey, sarge. You remember that rumour? Lookie hear.'

Other men, other faces. And then other uniforms. She tried to shut her ears; she did not wish to hear what they had to say. But then a man was kneeling by her, touching her shoulder, and she had to open her eyes again. 'Go away,' she whispered. 'Leave me alone.'

'You're safe, ma'am,' the officer said. 'Believe me. And when we catch a hold of those devils
...
but right now you're safe.'

'Go away,' she begged. 'Leave me alone.'

He looked over his shoulder, perhaps at a superior.

'Poor girl,' said the second man. 'She has malaria, for a start, and I shouldn't wonder if she's half out of her mind. Locked up in here with these devils, and for so long.' He also knelt, an elderly man with kindly grey eyes. 'You come along with us, miss,' he said. 'We're going to take you home, after we've got you feeling yourself again. Think of that, miss. Home.'

Home. She sat on the transom of the tender which nosed its way into the dock, gazed at the crowd. Waiting for her. Oh, no doubt about that. When the American doctors had discovered who she actually was, they had become quite excited. The world had supposed her dead. And when she had begged them not to let anyone know that she was alive, until she was again well and strong, they had whispered amongst themselves. And decided to do what was best. What
they
thought was best. The world had supposed her dead. She remembered the legend of Great-Grandfather's Richard, General Warner. The world had supposed him dead too, lost in a hurricane off Haiti. And when he had eventually returned to Jamaica, the world had been reluctant to accept the fact that he was again alive, had pointed to his changed personality, his disfigured face, and cried
impostor.

But Richard Hilton had not only returned with a disfigured face. He had retur
ned as a veteran of Henri Chris
tophe's wars, a famous general, a man of iron. He had taken all Jamaica, and bent it to his will. Richard Hilton.

Her name was Margaret. Once she had been proud of that. After all, the first Marguerite Hilton had been raped by a black man, so the story went, during a slave revolt. But
she
had been raped by twelve men. And then she had been caged like an animal, for upwards of a year, her self respect, her confidence, torn into shreds before her very eyes. And worst of all those things, she had been forced to sit astride the burning rope while men and women and children had jeered at her. No one could know of those things, and see her as Meg Hilton. No one
must
know of those things.

But she knew of them. She was not even sure she wanted to see her own children again.

The boat came into the dock, and she stood up. Her clothes had been given her by sympathetic American ladies, in the base camp outside Havana. They were ill-fitting and they were dowdy. Her hat was a small straw one, and she wore a white blouse and a blue skirt. And she discovered her hands were tightly clenched. She was always discovering this, nowadays, and having to force the fingers apart.

'Mrs Hilton?'

The officer waited for her, hand outstretched. She unclenched her fingers, took his, looked up.

'Meg. Oh, my darling Meg.' Billy, reaching for her. A Billy who had changed, slightly, and yet very perceptibly; his suit was new, his cravat was bright, his face was pinker than she recalled. And yet, that was not the change. It was deeper than that, in the increased squareness of his shoulders, the confidence in his demeanour. 'Meg.' He drew her to the dock, held her in his arms. The crowd actually applauded.