Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave Read Free Page A

nevertheless in some way she stiffened, froze in her polite listening attitude. Instinctively Jemima knew that she was in some way put out or upset.
    “Now, don’t be silly, Tina, don’t take on, dear,” rattled on the old lady, now shaking herself free of water like a small but stout dog. “You know what I mean. If you don’t, who does, since half the time I don’t know what I mean, let alone what I say? You can put it all right one day; is that better? After all, you’ll have plenty of money to do it. You can afford a few new covers and carpets.” So saying, Miss Izzy, taking Jemima by the hand and attended by the still silent Tina, led the way to the furthest dark red sofa. Looking remarkably wet from top to toe, she sat down firmly right in the middle of it.
    It was in this way that Jemima Shore first realized that Archer Plantation House would not necessarily pass to the newly independent government of Bow Island on its owner’s death. Miss Izzy, if she had her way, was intending to leave it all, house and fortune, to Tina. Among other things, this meant that Jemima was no longer making a programme about a house destined shortly to be a national museum. Which was very much part of the arrangementwhich had brought her to the island and had incidentally secured the friendly cooperation of that same new government. Was all this new? How new? Did the new government know? If the will had been signed, they must know …
    “I’ve signed the will this morning, dear,” Miss Archer pronounced triumphantly; she had an uncanny ability to answer unspoken questions. “Then I went swimming to celebrate. I always celebrate things with a good swim. So much more healthy than rum—or champagne. Although there’s still plenty of
that
in the cellar.” She paused. “So there you are, aren’t you, dear. Or there you will be. Here you will be. Thompson says there’ll be trouble of course. What can you expect these days? Everything is trouble since independence—not that I’m against independence. Far from it. But everything new brings new trouble here, in addition to all the old troubles, so that the troubles get more and more. On Bow Island no troubles ever go away. Why is that?” But Miss Izzy did not stop for an answer.
    “No, I’m all for independence and I shall tell you all about that, my dear”—she turned to Jemima and put one damp hand on her sleeve—“on your programme. I’m being a Bo’lander born and bred, you know.” It was true that Miss Izzy, unlike Tina for example, spoke with the peculiar, slightly sing-song intonation of the islanders: not unattractive to Jemima’s ears.
    “I was born in this very house eighty-two years ago in April,” went on Miss Izzy. “You shall come to my birthday party—I was born during a hurricane! A good start! But my mother died in childbirth, you know, they should never have got in that new-fangled doctor, just because he came from England, a total fool he was, I remember him well. They should have had a good Bo’lander midwife, old Eloise from Sugar Horse Bay knew everything about havingbabies, then my mother wouldn’t have died, my father would have had sons—”
    Miss Izzy was drifting away into a host of reminiscences; while these were supposed to be what Jemima had come to hear, her thoughts were actually racing off in quite a different direction. Trouble? What trouble? Where did Greg Harrison for example stand in all this—Greg Harrison who wanted Miss Izzy to be left: to “die in peace?” Greg Harrison who had been married to Tina and was no longer. And what of Tina Archer, now an heiress to a fortune?
    Above all, why was this forthright old lady intending to leave everything to her companion? For one thing, Jemima did not know how seriously to treat the matter of Tina’s surname. Joseph Archer had laughed off the whole subject of Sir Valentine’s innumerable descendants. But perhaps Tina Archer was in some special way connected to Miss Izzy.