To the Islands Read Online Free PDF Page B

the doorway. ‘You both went everywhere with me once,’ Heriot said, coming beside him.
    ‘Yes, brother.’
    ‘You grew up too quickly, Stephen. Do you know how old you are?’
    ‘No, brother.’
    ‘Twenty-two. I remember when you were born. I was your godfather. And the little girl’s. And my wife was your godmother. She thought you were handsomer than any baby she’d seen.’
    ‘Yes, brother?’
    ‘But she died soon, she didn’t see the little girl.’
    They were walking down the road, in the shadow of baobabs, both silent-footed on the soft dust. The village was still, only blue smoke moved now and then upwards from behind mud-brick houses and into the sky, the huge sky.
    ‘Brother,’ Stephen said, ‘that little girl, she—’
    ‘She’s dead. I know. I won’t talk about her any more.’
    Leaning against a tree farther down the road a man, a black man in a scarlet shirt, waited. ‘Does he want you or me?’ Heriot asked.
    ‘He want me, brother.’
    Uneasy, Heriot thought, always uneasy. What is he afraid of now, why is he always afraid? ‘Who is it? Justin?’
    ‘No, brother.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘That—Rex, brother.’
    They had stopped, were standing looking towards the long-legged man down the road, Heriot so still that Stephen grew desperate, would have liked never to have taken the brown tide home to his country where Heriot was. ‘Brother—’ he said.
    Heriot turned on him savagely and seized his arms. ‘Who brought him here?’
    ‘Brother Terry—’
    ‘Who told Brother Terry he belonged here? You did. Didn’t you?’
    ‘Brother, I—’
    ‘Who did you steal for?’
    ‘I di’n’t steal for nobody.’
    ‘Oh yes you did,’ Heriot said quietly. ‘Rex told you. Didn’t he, Stephen? Rex is your
djuari
, isn’t he? Your devil-devil, you do what he tells you.’
    With Heriot’s veined eyes boring into his, Heriot’s thumbs boring into his flesh, the dark man weakened, dropped his calm, and became a frightened boy, begging: ‘Brother—’
    ‘You ought never to have seen him again, you ought to have hated him for what he did to Esther. Oh, I’m not afraid to say her name, I’ll say it again, Esther, Esther, Esther, and hope her spirit comes back to curse you for a bad brother. Rex killed Esther, you know that.’
    ‘No, no, brother—’
    ‘He killed her. In spite of everything I could do. And God knows I tried hard enough to stop it, tried to send him away, tried to talk her into sense. But there wasn’t anything I could do, was there?’ demanded Heriot, suddenly pleading. ‘Not when she was pregnant. I couldn’t stop it then. And he took her away, and she died. From neglect and hunger and his beatings. I know that, I know it from a white man. And yet you, Stephen, her own brother, you do what he tells you, you follow him round—’
    ‘He my brother,’ Stephen protested shakily.
    ‘The man who killed your sister. And will ruin you yet. I hear more than you think, Stephen. I’ve heard Rex talking about the wicked white man and the smart black man, and how to talk to the white man and how to get money from him without working. But Rex isn’t clever enough for that, and nor are you. You’ll end up in a filthy camp, like Rex, like Esther. Stephen,’ said Heriot, with grief in his voice, ‘don’t forget Esther.’
    Down the road the tall man came forward from the tree and stood watching them, trying to hear some words of the dispute which was indubitably about himself.
    ‘Brother, I go now,’ Stephen murmured.
    ‘Yes, go,’ Heriot said remotely. ‘I’ll talk to Rex.’
    He stepped forward down the road to the bright-shirted man. The sun stung his eyes bitterly, but he no longer felt old, only angry and grieved, and very strong. The man’s face, looking towards him, was bearded, and both beard and hair had been trimmed with moderate care. As he was tall and had features fairly fine for one of his race, and as there was arrogance in every line of his lean body,