Jemima decided it was time for action. Neatly sidestepping Greg Harrison, she marched firmly toward the Archer Tomb. There lay the carved couple. She read: “Sacred to the memory of Sir Valentine Archer, first Governor of this island, and his only wife, Isabella, daughter of Randal Oxford, gentleman.” She was reminded briefly of her favorite Philip Larkin poem about the Arundel Monument, beginning, “The Earl and Countess lie in stone—” and ending, “All that remains of us is love.”
But that couple lay a thousand miles away in the cloistered cool of Chichester Cathedral. Here the hot tropical sun burnt down on her naked head. She found she had taken off her large straw hat as a token of respect and quickly clapped it back on again. Here, too, in contrast to the very English-looking stone church with pointed Gothic windows beyond, there were palm trees among the graves instead of yews, their slender trunks bending like giraffes’ necks in the breeze. She had once romantically laid white roses on the Arundel Monument. It was as the memory of the gesture returned to her that she spied the heap of bright pink and orange hibiscus blos-soms lying on the stone before her. A shadow fell across it.
“Tina puts them there.” Greg Harrison had followed her. “Every day she can manage it. Most days. Then she tells Miss Izzy what she’s done. Touching, isn’t it?” But he did not make it sound as if he found it especially touching. In fact, there was so much bitterness, even malevolence, in his voice that for a moment, standing as she was in the sunny graveyard, Jemima felt quite chilled. “Or is it revolting?” he added, the malevolence now quite naked.
“Greg,” murmured Coralie Harrison faintly, as if in protest.
“Tina?” Jemima said. “That’s Miss Archer’s — Miss Izzy’s — companion. We’ve corresponded. For the moment I can’t remember her other name.”
“She’s known as Tina Archer these days, I think you’ll find. When she wrote to you, she probably signed the letter Tina Harrison.”
Harrison looked at Jemima sardonically but she had genuinely forgotten the surname of the companion — it was, after all, not a particularly uncommon one.
They were interrupted by a loud hail from the road. Jemima saw a young black man at the wheel of one of the convenient roofless minis everyone seemed to drive around Bow Island. He stood up and started to shout something.
“Greg! Cora! You coming on to—” She missed the rest of it — something about a boat and a fish. Coralie Harrison looked suddenly radiant, and for a moment even Greg Harrison actually looked properly pleased.
He waved back. “Hey, Joseph. Come and say hello to Miss Jemima Shore of BBC Television!”
“Megalith Television,” Jemima interrupted, but in vain. Harrison continued:
“You heard, Joseph. She’s making a program about Miss Izzy.”
The man leapt gracefully out of the car and approached up the palm-lined path. Jemima saw that he, too, was extremely tall. And like the vast majority of the Bo’landers she had so far met, he had the air of being a natural athlete. Whatever the genetic mix in the past of Carib and African and other people that had produced them, the Bo’landers were certainly wonderful-looking. He kissed Coralie on both cheeks and patted her brother on the back.
“Miss Shore, meet Joseph—” but even before Greg Harrison had pronounced the surname, his mischievous expression had warned Jemima what it was likely to be “—Joseph Archer. Undoubtedly one of the ten thousand descendants of the philoprogenitive old gentleman at whose tomb you are so raptly gazing.” All that remains of us is love indeed, thought Jemima irreverently as she shook Joseph Archer’s hand — with all due respect to Philip Larkin, it seemed that a good deal more remained of Sir Valentine than that.
“Oh, you 11 find we’re all called Archer round here,” murmured Joseph pleasantly. Unlike Greg Harrison, he appeared to be genuinely welcoming. “As for Sir Val-en-tine”—he pronounced it syllable by syllable like the calypso—“don’t pay too much attention to the stories. Otherwise, how come we’re not all living in that fine old Archer Plantation House?”
“Instead of merely my ex-wife. No, Coralie, don’t protest. I could kill her for what she’s doing.” Again Jemima felt a chill at the extent of the violence in Greg Harrison’s voice. “Come, Joseph, we’ll see about that fish of yours. Come on, Coralie.” He strode off, unsmiling, accompanied by Joseph, who did smile. Coralie, however, stopped to ask Jemima if there was anything she could do for her. Her manner was still shy but in her brother’s absence a great deal more friendly.
Jemima also had the strong impression that Coralie Harrison wanted to communicate something to her, something she did not necessarily want her brother to hear.
“I could perhaps interpret, explain—” Coralie stopped. Jemima said nothing. “Certain things,” went on Coralie. “There are so many layers in a place like this. Just because it’s small, an outsider doesn’t always understand—”
“And I’m the outsider? Of course I am.” Jemima had started to sketch the tomb for future reference, something for which she had a minor but useful talent. She forbore to observe truthfully, if platitudinously, that an outsider could also sometimes see local matters rather more clearly than those involved — she wanted to know what else Coralie had to say. Would she explain, for example, Greg’s quite blatant dislike of his former wife?
But an impatient cry from her brother now in the car beside Joseph meant that Coralie for the time being had nothing more to add. She fled down the path and Jemima was left to ponder with renewed interest on her forthcoming visit to Isabella Archer of Archer Plantation House. It was a visit which would include, she took it, a meeting with Miss Archer’s companion, who, like her employer, was currently dwelling in comfort there.
Comfort! Even from a distance, later that day, the square, lowbuilt mansion had a comfortable air. More than that, it conveyed an impression of gracious and old-fashioned tranquillity. As Jemima drove her own rented Mini up the long avenue of palm trees — much taller than those in the churchyard — she could fancy she was driving back in time to the days of Governor Archer, his copious banquets, parties, and balls, all served by black slaves.
At that moment, a young woman with coffee-colored skin and short black curly hair appeared on the steps. Unlike the maids in Jemima’s hotel who wore a pastiche of bygone servants’ costume at dinner — brightly colored dresses to the ankle, white-muslin aprons, and turbans — this girl was wearing an up-to-the-minute scarlet halter-top and cutaway shorts revealing most of her smooth brown legs. Tina Archer: for so she introduced herself.
It did not surprise Jemima Shore one bit to discover that Tina Archer — formerly Harrison — was easy to get on with. Anyone who left the hostile and graceless Greg Harrison was already ahead in Jemima’s book. But with Tina Archer chatting away at her side, so chic and even trendy in her appearance, the revelation of the interior of the house was far more of a shock to her than it would otherwise have been. There was nothing, nothing at all, of the slightest modernity about it. Dust and cobwebs were not literally there perhaps, but they were suggested in its gloom, its heavy wooden furniture — where were the light cane chairs so suitable to the climate? — and above all in its desolation. Archer Plantation House reminded her of poor Miss Havisham’s time-warp home in Great Expectations. And still worse, there was an atmosphere of sadness hanging over the whole interior. Or perhaps it was mere loneliness, a kind of somber, sterile grandeur you felt must stretch back centuries.
All this was in violent contrast to the sunshine still brilliant in the late afternoon, the rioting bushes of brightly colored tropical flowers outside. None of it had Jemima expected. Information garnered in London had led her to form quite a different picture of Archer Plantation House, something far more like her original impression, as she drove down the avenue of palm trees, of antique mellow grace.