HF - 05 - Sunset (35 page)

'Ayayay,' she said, suddenly remembering. 'But you knowing who I did see in town yesterday?'

'Now, how am I to know that, Prudence, unless you tell me?'

'Well, is a fact I did be so surprise I did forget all about it,' Prudence confessed. 'But is that Mr McAvoy?'

Meg stared at her in the mirror. 'Harry McAvoy?'

'Oh, no, no, Miss Meg. That little boy you did play with. But he ain' no little boy now. Oh, no, no, no.'

'Alan ?' Meg turned, and Prudence gave an exclamation of alarm as a plait fell down.

'How I going do this, mistress, if you ain't holding still?'

'Alan McAvoy? In Kingston?'

'Is that what I am saying.' Prudence slowly turned Meg round again to face the mirror, resumed her labour.

'I thought he had left the shipping line that trades with Kingston,' Meg said. Now, why was her heart pounding like that? Alan McAvoy? There would be a disaster. But perhaps Meg Hilton did need some emotional involvement after all. Besides Alan . . . there would be passion there, and perhaps ecstasy. She had been too long without ecstasy, save it was self-induced.

'Well, is a fact, he is on he own ship.'

'His own ship ?' Meg started to turn again, and was gently but firmly restrained.

'Oh, it ain' much of a ship, Miss Meg. Just a schooner, trading round the islands, like. Smuggling, more like. That is what them boys saying. But he is the master, and the owner, they saying. He going get catch one time and locked up. Oh, yes. There, now how that looking?'

Meg glanced at herself, got up. 'It looks divine.' Alan McAvoy. 'Where is he staying?'

'Well, he ain' staying nowhere, Miss Meg. I did see he on the dock getting in he dinghy. He sail out the same time.'

'Oh,
Prudence.'
But there was no point in becoming angry with Prudence. 'Do you think he will come back ?'

'Oh, yes, Miss Meg. He is coming to Kingston regularly. I ain' knowing why. He don't do more than take on water.'

Regularly. Alan McAvoy. A smuggler? That didn't sound like the serious boy in her cabin on board the
Wanderer.
But perhaps he would be more worth meeting again, if his point of view had changed. 'Well,' she said. 'It would be amusing to meet him again, after all these years. To show him how Hilltop has changed, perhaps. You must tell me whenever next his ship is in Kingston, Prudence. Remember, now, and be sure you do.'

'Oh, I going do that, Miss Meg. You knowing the master is downstairs?'

Meg glanced at her. A warning? 'Then I should join him.' She added a last drop of perfume behind hei ears. She drenched herself in perfume every evening, a habit she had learned from Oriole, she told herself. She picked up her fan, went outside, descended the stairs, slowly. From above her the evening air drifted through the opened skylights, cooling the house. Lawrence had already lit the candles in the chandeliers, and the hallway glowed; the eyes in the pictures lining the wall seemed to wink at her. Glad to have you in our company, my dear, they seemed to say: Cartarette Hilton. Suzanne Hilton. Georgiana Hilton (who had been torn to pieces by a mob of rebelling slaves). Soon Margaret Hilton would hang amongst them; Jeremy Spender the artist came out every Tuesday morning, and her portrait was almost ready.

She reached the foot, looked first of all to her right, from where the steady clatter of cutlery could be heard. Richard and Aline were eating their supper, superintended by one of the housemaids as Prudence had been dressing the mistress. Meg paused to smile at them, two little dots at the edge of the vast expanse that was the dining table. She would have to do something about school, at least for Richard, some time soon. There was a limit beyond which Marion Simmonds' basic teaching could not go. His name was down for Eton, because all the Hilton men had been to Eton, but she hated the thought of sending him away. Besides, once he was in England he would be within the orbit of Oriole Pater-son. Oriole still sent a card every Christmas, reminding them of her presence, lurking in the wings. Waiting for an opportunity? Oh, yes, she would be waiting for an opportunity to get her hands on a Hilton.

If not this Hilton, Meg thought, entering the withdrawing room, listening to the click of the billiards balls. Billy was fond of billiards. He would play by himself for hours. Tommy Claymond had claimed to do that as well.

Lawrence waited with the tray of iced rum punch. She took two glasses, walked up the room, her heels clicking on the floor. Even for an evening at home she wore a dress of electric blue satin, the bodice cut in a deep decolletage, the sleeves edged with lace, but no jewellery. Her flesh was bare, smoothly tanned. Jewellery could only detract from that splendour. But jewellery also suggested a woman who wished to be inspected, admired, not a woman to be taken to bed. So, did she leave her box locked deliberately to
titilate her husband ? To make him understand what he was missing?

'Good evening, Billy.' She held out the glass.

He pocketed a red, stood straight, drank. 'You look delightful tonight, my darling.'

'Why, thank you.' She sat down. 'You look tired. Been a busy week?'

'Not really. A couple of conveyances. And a divorce.' He glanced at her, and flushed, set the balls up again. And was he waiting too, she wondered? For what? He would never divorce her, no matter what she did. She even, from time to time, allowed him into her bed, for amusement, and certainly for his gratification. And for their mutual security, to bolster the magnet of her money and the position he enjoyed as Master of Hilltop with the magnet of her body, which he still adored. Because, strangely, she no longer wished to be divorced, to be rid of him. He could not be described as a lover, he was hardly a husband, and he was most certainly not a friend. But he provided an element of stability, an anchor, she sometimes thought, as well as a constant spur, to drive her onwards, to be more beautiful, more wealthy, more arrogant, more outrageous, every day. Without Billy, she sometimes thought, she would sink back into quiet domesticity. Without Billy, she might cease to be a Hilton.

So then, what was
he
waiting for ? Because he was waiting. There was no question about that. For her to grow old and decrepit? He would surely get there first. The same applied to the possibility of her dying, and in any event, that would benefit him nothing, as everything would go to Richard.

'I hear Ann Holroyd is very ill,' she remarked.

'Cancer, so John Phillips says.'

'Ah.' Cancer, she thought. There was the one thing could perhaps bring her down prematurely. Because he way waiting.

He replaced the cue in its holder, sat beside her. 'You do look delightful tonight, my darling.' She smiled at him, sipped her
punch. 'That's because it's
Friday, and you have not seen me since Monday. I think that is an ideal arrangement for every marriage, don't you ? That a husband should only see his wife at weekends. That keeps him always anxious.'

'And allows his wife ample time to herself during the week,' Billy said.

'Oh, indeed,' she said. 'A woman needs some time to herself.' She wondered if she was afraid of him. If, for all her victory, her flamboyant display of her victory, time and again, she was afraid of him. A relic, perhaps, of that infamous honeymoon.

The remarkable thing was that, when she felt afraid of him, she almost wanted him.

'But when the husband does come home,' he said, 'then he needs all of her time to himself.'

She smiled at him. 'Why, Billy,' she said. 'A wife is always happy to oblige her husband. But shall we wait until after dinner?'

'Then let's have it.' He snapped his fingers. 'Lawrence, as soon as the children are finished we shall eat. And fetch up a bottle of champagne from the cellar. After all, my dear,' he said, 'your Grandstand is all but finished. We should celebrate.'

He smiled at her, but his eyes were cold. Definitely, he was waiting.

With an embracing
swoosh
of sound, a drumming of hooves lost in a flurry of flying dust and a slither of straining leather, the whole absorbed in a booming roar from the stand and from the paddock, the ponies swept round the last bend and streaked past the winning post.

'Ultimatum,' bayed the crowd. 'Ultimatum.'

'Gad,' cried Roger Piatt. 'Where have you kept him, Billy, where have you kept him, sir? I demand to know.'

'By a length,' shouted Paul Simmonds. 'Did you see it, Bishop? By a length.'

The Bishop settled back in his seat contentedly. He had had inside information, and had backed the Hilltop horse.

'Well,' declared Mrs Mottram. 'Keeping it a secret. They could at least have told Alistair.'

'Absurd,' said Mrs Holroyd. 'Absurd.'

'He was told absolutely certainly that the Rose Hall horse was to win,' Mrs Mottram complained.

'Absurd,' said Mrs Holroyd, fanning herself.

Mrs Mottram glared at her. Was she really dying of cancer? If so she was taking an awfully long time about it. Today she did not even look ill, if one excused her colour, which had lost every trace of pink and was now a gentle golden brown, even in her cheeks.

'He must have lost a fortune,' Mrs Mottram said, and got up. 'I really must go and see how much it was.'

'Absurd,' said Mrs Holroyd. 'Absurd. Absurd that I should be dying, on a sunny afternoon like this, don't you think, Marjorie ? Absurd. But that's what John Phillips says. Absurd.'

Marjorie Mottram sat down again.

Billy gazed at his wife, who was smiling at him. 'Where
did
you keep him, all this while?'

'Tucked away. You should take more interest in the plantation.'

'I would, were I permitted.'

Meg's smile widened, and she rose. She wore pale green, which fluttered in the breeze, with a matching hat, its huge brim dipping over her face to shade her from the glare but also assisting to denote her, like a beacon, on the upper tier of the stand. Today was her triumph. Today she had recreated all the splendour that Robert Hilton had known and loved, the splendour that should always surround the name of Hilton. Today Hilltop lived again, properly, for the first time in a hundred years. And as had happened in Robert's day, her colt, secretly trained, had been the victor.

But there was more to it than that. For all the scandal that surrounded her name, the constant whisper which seemed to
follow her like a shadow, they had come to look, to criticize, if they dared. And they were enjoying themselves. They had had the best afternoon of their lives, with food and drink, (she had served nothing but champagne), and entertainment on a scale not one of them could remember. More important yet, they had been able to look down on the paddock, filled with her labourers, men and women, and know that they too were enjoying themselves, that they, in fact, had
known
they were going to enjoy themselves, long before the horse racing had started. Hilltop was a happy place. The Hiltons had made it so and kept it so. Why, even their scandals had been caused by their determined pursuit of happiness.

She thought she could ask for no greater epitaph.

'Shall we go down? I think Absolom deserves a tip. Certainly some congratulations.'

'Of course.' He held the chair for her, hurried at her side. William Hilton, the Hilton, escorting his beautiful, wealthy, talented, and successful wife. She had spent the entire night in his bed, just to be sure that he was as happy as anyone, this day. And he radiated his power, his possession, his happiness.

While she merely radiated the Hilton. She walked through the boxes, smiling at them, pausing as she saw Ann Holroyd.

'Why, Ann, how very good of you to attend. You are well?'

'I am dying,' Ann Holroyd said. 'Did you not know?'

Meg kept her smile fixed. 'We are all dying, my dear, one way or the other. Do come up to the house and have a cup of tea.'

She reached the top of the stairs, filling her lungs with air, losing it again as she was assaulted by the children.

'We won, Mama,' Richard cried. 'Ultimatum won.'

'We won, Mama,' cried Aline, a determined carbon of her brother.

'Did I not tell you we would?
' Meg descended the stairs,
smiling at her guests, reached the foot, was surrounded by the labourers and their wives, clamouring for her attention. 'We win, mistress.'

'Ayayay, but that is a horse, mistress.' 'Man, mistress, we must be got the best horse in all Jamaica.'

She smiled at them and shook their hands, and a passage was made for her to reach the enclosure, where Ultimatum, still quivering after his run, was being unsaddled.

'Congratulations, Absolom. A superb ride. Your grandfather would have been proud of you.'

The jockey grinned and squeezed her hand. 'Man, Miss Meg, even a big fellow like he would have had an easy ride on this one. He is too good.'

'Give him a rub down.' She turned back into the crowd; the white people had not entered the paddock, but waited by the stairs to follow her up to the Great House, the ceremonial parade Oriole had so often described to her, which always accompanied a Hilltop Race Meeting. 'Why, Prudence,' she said. 'I hope you backed Ultimatum?'