The Lorimer Legacy (15 page)

Lydia was as merry as ever, although no prettier. Even in England, neatly dressed in the smocked blouses and
skirts of their student days or in the grander gowns of her social life, she had never been handsome. But now in addition she had become too thin, and the faded cotton dress she wore would have been dowdy even if it were not stretched so tightly by the state of her pregnancy. None of this, however, made the slightest difference to her good humour.

That day and the next there was a good deal for Margaret to inspect. Ralph showed his sister with particular pride the fine stone chapel, built on a platform of rock which stood up within the valley. It had been constructed since his arrival and under his guidance, he told her, to replace the mean wooden structure which he had found there. The stone had been cut from their own ground to a plan which terraced the steeper parts of the village and provided a sewage channel for the whole.

Lydia was equally anxious to show off her dispensary. Margaret sat there quietly for an hour to see how the morning surgery went. She realized that she would need to learn about some of the local herbs which Lydia used to treat rashes or stomach upsets, but there would be plenty of time for that.

It was Lydia, too, who in the cool of late afternoon proposed a walk round Pastor's Vineyard.

‘Do you grow grapes here?' asked Margaret in surprise.

‘Not a single bunch,' laughed Lydia. ‘But the land is managed by the pastor, and the pastor every Sunday reminds his people that they must go forth and labour in the vineyard. The name has come naturally. Most of the congregation, I imagine, would not recognize a real vineyard if they saw one.'

It was a longer tour than Margaret had expected, even though they did no more than look across the extensive fields from the path which ran through their centre. There were pastures in which white cattle grazed, and groves of
orange and grapefruit trees. Banana plants stretched in long lines, their heads drooping with the weight of the crop and their huge leaves tattered by wind and rain to resemble the fronds of palms. A smaller area had been dug for the cultivation of squash and callaloo and other vegetables equally unfamiliar to Margaret.

Lydia was still laughing as she explained. ‘Your brother has become a farmer, although he doesn't realize it,' she said. ‘He believes in all sincerity that I am the one who cares for the bodies of his people, while he looks after their souls. But he can't help organizing them to their own advantage. All this land was once part of an estate -the Bristow plantation – which had been wholly abandoned after the emancipation of the slaves. It was a form of neglect which can be seen all over the island. The plantations became unprofitable as soon as the slaves had to be paid for the first time; the owners went back to England, and the overseers they left behind had no incentive to manage the land well The old plantation house here is still called Bristow Great House, but it's completely derelict. When Ralph first saw the plantation, it had reverted to jungle – but as you see, it's as well ordered now as it can ever have been.'

The name of Bristow Great House was a familiar one to Margaret. She knew that it had been built by a member of the Lorimer family many years earlier; he had called it after the ancient name of his home city, Bristol. It was curious, she thought, that Ralph had never mentioned it in his letters, and more curious still that it should have come under his control at all. He was, after all, only a younger son – and his decision to become a missionary had been taken after his father's death. Margaret would have liked to interrupt her friend with questions, but Lydia was still describing the situation with affectionate enthusiasm.

‘Tidiness and planning for the future don't come naturally to most of our congregation,' she said. ‘They've learned that in such a lush land they need only push a stick into the ground and it will root and grow. But you can imagine that such a carefree attitude doesn't suit Ralph's temperament. He believes in efficient management. The food is distributed amongst his people, and the profit spent to their benefit, but he is the one who decides what shall be grown and who sells the surplus. Sometimes I tease him that he's as hard a task-master as any of the old-time plantation-owners. They lashed their slaves with whips, while he goads them on with the hope of heaven and the fear of hell. He should have been a businessman, like his father and brother. He pretends not to be, but at heart he's a true Lorimer.'

‘I hope this doesn't disturb you, Lydia.' Margaret knew that she herself was largely responsible for her friend's marriage. Years ago, when she had invited Lydia to stay with her at a time of crisis in Ralph's life, she had been well aware of the likely consequence of the invitation. Everything had turned out then as expected – but Lydia must have believed herself to be marrying a missionary, not a farmer or a businessman.

‘To tell you the truth, Margaret, I'm not as concerned as Ralph about either heaven or hell. I don't tell him so, and every Sunday I go twice to chapel and teach in Sunday School as well, but I can't bring myself to share his faith as devoutly as I ought. There are parts of the Bible that I know cannot be literally true, but Ralph insists that everything written in it must be taken as fact. I don't even think that the people understand half that he tells them. But they shout out phrases from the Bible and it seems to make them happy and altogether I'm sure it does more good than harm. Because of the food from the farm they're as healthy, I dare say, as any other group of
people in Jamaica. And with the money from the cash crops, Ralph has built a school and employs a teacher. He's promised me a hospital as the next project. The community is entirely self-supporting. What he's doing must surely be good when the results are so beneficial. You mustn't tell him that I sometimes laugh a little, because I admire him all the time.'

‘And love him too, I hope.'

‘That goes without saying.' Lydia took her friend's hand and they turned back towards the valley. From the moment when Margaret had first read the letter in which Ralph asked her to come, she had felt an indefinable uneasiness. But now she saw that Ralph and Lydia had created a way of life for themselves which brought them personal happiness as well as satisfaction in the work which they did for others. There was no cause for anxiety.

The secret lives of children are foreign territory to their parents, but an outsider often finds it easier to cross the frontier. In the first excitement of her arrival Margaret had had eyes only for her brother and her friend, but on Saturday she set herself to make friends with her niece and nephew.

Kate and Brinsley had spent only two brief furloughs in England since they were born but, although their aunt was almost a stranger, a sympathy sprang up between them immediately. At their last meeting, Kate had been a sturdy, tomboyish little girl, and the intervening years had made no change in her independence of spirit nor in the unladylike definiteness of her firm movements and long strides. Her tawny hair was tied with bedraggled
ribbons into two thick bunches, but only to keep it out of her eyes – every detail of her appearance proclaimed the fact that she did not care what impression she made on anyone who saw her. The whole family, as a matter of fact, was shabbily dressed. Margaret was freer of vanity herself than most women, but even she thought it a shame that a young girl should be allowed to grow up without at least a standard of neatness to observe, and resolved to spend some time during her visit with a needle and thread, mending old clothes and perhaps even making new ones. It was too soon in the visit now, however, to criticize. Instead, joining the two children on the verandah, she asked the fourteen-year-old girl what she was studying so intently in her notebooks.

‘Some of the Valley people don't come to Mother for help when they're ill,' Kate told her. ‘They have their own medicines and poultices to clean a wound or draw off a fever. They don't like to tell Mother their recipes, but they tell me. And sometimes they let me watch when they change the poultices, so that I can see whether the mixture works or not. I've been making some notes, to see which recipes appear to be the most successful.'

‘Does your mother mind having such competition on her doorstep?' asked Margaret.

‘I asked her once,' Kate said. ‘And she just laughed. She told me that some people who fall ill get better even if a doctor never comes near them. And some will die, however good the doctor, because they are too old or too weak or because the illness is without a remedy. There will be a good many, of course, who are truly cured by the care or the medicine which a doctor gives them. But there are always a few, she says, who recover – if they
do
recover – mainly because of their own certainty that they will. So the remedy prescribed by a qualified doctor might not do them any good if they had no faith in it. But if
they believe that a potion smuggled in by Old Emmy on the night of the new moon has a special power to cure them, then they'll be cured.'

‘You're learning the secrets of our profession very young,' said Margaret, laughing in her turn. ‘And do your studies confirm what your mother told you?'

‘I think some of the old formulas work in an ordinary way,' Kate told her earnestly. ‘I mean, if Old Emmy binds strips of papaya fruit over an infected wound, you can see that the infection is being drawn out. She's using the same sort of medicine that Mother does, although she may have different ingredients. But then there was a woman who went nearly mad after she had a baby. She kept banging her head against walls and trees, and gabbling in a way that didn't make sense. That time Old Emmy smeared a green ointment on the soles of the woman's feet. It smelt foul, but I can't think of anything in it that could really have done any good. But the woman fell asleep within an hour, and when she woke up she was well again. So yes, I do think that Mother's right about the importance of faith. It's the other medicines that I'm trying to study carefully, so that I can find out which of the ingredients is the one that works.'

‘I can see you're going to be a pharmacist when you grow up,' said Margaret, and was taken aback by the indignation in the girl's eyes.

‘But I'm going to be a doctor, of course!'

‘Yes, of course.' Margaret's voice was apologetic, but her smile was full of sympathy. The certainty with which Kate expressed her ambition reminded her of her own frustrations at the same age, and the excitement with which she had seen one barrier after another fall before her determination to succeed. ‘And you, Brinsley?' she asked, turning to her nephew.

‘I'm to be sent to school in England next year,' said
Brinsley, an energetic twelve-year-old whose eyes sparkled with liveliness. Margaret had already noticed that he had inherited not only his father's yellow hair but also the careless gaiety which had characterized Ralph in the schoolboy days before guilt drove him to religion. It was obvious that Ralph adored his only surviving son – but at the same time seemed to feel a continual need to curb the boy's high spirits. Margaret herself found Brinsley's light-heartedness delightful, but perhaps her brother saw in it only a reminder of his own sinful youth, from which he had been at such pains to escape. At any rate, he had already told his sister that it was time for Brinsley to be subjected to greater discipline than was possible in a community which had spoiled him from birth.

‘Are you looking forward to that?' she asked.

‘I wouldn't look forward to it at all if it were to offer nothing but the diet of Latin irregular verbs which my father suggests,' said Brinsley, making a face at the grammar which lay unopened beside him. ‘But Mother has told me something about his own schooldays – how when she first knew him his enthusiasm was only for cricket. That's a more interesting prospect.'

‘You don't play cricket here, I imagine.' The houses of the Hope Valley community were built on the two steep slopes of a gorge formed by the stream which divided them; and in addition to that, the land descended sharply from the mountains to the flat coastal plains which formed the plantations; there was no room for a cricket pitch there. As for the estate which Ralph had taken over, Margaret's tour of inspection suggested that every possible inch of land had been brought under cultivation, with nothing wasted on frivolities.

‘Don't I just, though?' said Brinsley. He looked at his aunt with mischief in his eyes. ‘Would you like to see,
Aunt Margaret? But if you come, you mustn't tell anyone.'

‘I'd love to see.' Margaret was amused as well as curious. She fetched her hat and they set out together, leaving Kate to study her notes. Brinsley led the way at first along the same path which Lydia had taken towards Pastor's Vineyard; but after a little while, looking anxiously at his aunt's clothes as though to gauge whether she would be willing to risk spoiling them, he came to a halt beside a row of palm trees. These – in marked contrast to the rest of the tidy estate – were almost strangled by a variety of vines and creepers which had wound their way up towards the sky and then dangled down to root in the ground again. The curtain of vegetation appeared to be impenetrable, but Brinsley took hold of a huge golden-veined leaf and tugged at it, raising a flap of greenery which had been cut to provide a doorway.

‘This way,' he said, and Margaret bent low to go through. As she straightened herself on the further side of the tangled screen, she looked round in surprise. She was standing in a garden. It was unkempt and overgrown, but there could be no possible doubt that these grounds had been laid out for pleasure rather than for profit. The steep fall of the land had been tamed into terraces, hedged with poinsettia and hibiscus: the stone steps which joined them were flanked with ornamental urns, cracked now but still imposing. Specimen trees, bright with blossom, were scattered over what had undoubtedly once been a lawn, although now the broad-leaved crab grass which had carpeted it was almost invisible beneath a smothering of weeds.