Eden Burning (15 page)

“I don’t go to Da Cunha’s. I can’t afford it, either.”

“Guess not!” Porter chuckled again. He struck a match, lit his pipe, and lounged back. “So! Dr. Mebane got you what you wanted, I see.”

“Yes. I appreciate it.”

“Aside from that, what do you think of him?”

The blunt question was discomfiting. “Well, I’ve known
him since I was thirteen. I was always welcome in their house. I was from Sweet Apple, you know; my mother had a little store there, still has; Dr. Mebane was very kind to me—”

“Of course he was! Look at yourself! Your color, I mean. Has he invited you to join the country club?”

“Yes. I’m not going to, though.”

“My daughter couldn’t join his club. She’s too dark.”

There was a silence. The man’s sense of injury was palpable. And Patrick said gently, “Perhaps she doesn’t want to, anyway.”

“The funny thing is, she would love it. Just as she would love to buy the stuff on Da Cunha’s shelves. But that’s natural. Women always want things. I myself couldn’t care less.” He tipped forward and knocked his pipe out on the porch railing. “It all stems from the white man and his concubines! These light-brown people like to think about how they’ve descended from the aristocracy of Europe. They don’t want to remember Africa. A seat in the legislature, a collar and tie, being invited to a reception at Government House—that’s all it took to buy them off. And the British Colonial Office has done just that!”

“Surely—” Patrick began, but Porter was not to be stopped.

“Do you know how many of these so-called upper-class browns owned slaves themselves? They were cruel masters, most of them, as cruel as the whites. They had learned well, let me tell you. Why, even as recently as the nineteen twenties—Listen. I remember there was a white man, an Englishman who came out here with a company that was to put streetlights downtown, a socialist he was, serious red-haired fellow; he went around making friends among the blacks here, the working class; made a few speeches, harmless enough. One night a gang beat him up. After that, they got rid of him, shipped him back to England, and who do you think applauded, who was behind it?”

“The planters, naturally?”

“Of course, the planters, the powerful families, men like old Virgil Francis. But never think the Mebanes and their kind didn’t go right along. They’ve got their little vested interests, too, and the lower wages are, the more stays in their pockets.”

Patrick said doubtfully, “But this is nineteen fifty-nine. People think differently now. I know that Nicholas Mebane isn’t like his father, if his father is altogether what you say he is.”

Porter stared at him a moment. “I hope you’re right. I don’t know. I get heated up. I’m not very tactful, am I?”

“Not very.” Patrick laughed. Porter’s vehemence was interesting, anyway.

“I shoot my mouth off. I’m self-educated. I read everything. Father Baker helped me. He’s a man, a real man.”

“Even though he’s white?”

“Even though he’s white. He thinks a good deal of you, by the way. He tells me—”

“I’d rather hear about you. About the early unions. I know almost nothing about them.”

Porter looked pleased. He cleared his throat. “It’s a long story. But in a nutshell, this is it. We had small unions as far back as the eighteen nineties, mostly in the construction trades. They didn’t get far then because picketing was against the law. Also, a union could be sued for damages resulting from a strike. It took a world war, the first, and then a world depression to change things. You’re too young to recall the bloodshed in the thirties. Strikes and riots from Trinidad to St. Lucia, from coal bearers to sugar workers. Slow, slow progress. But it’s only the labor movement that’s put another meal on the table, remember that.”

The man’s voice swayed Patrick, drew pictures in his mind. Sweet Apple, years ago, and the eight-year-olds working in the cane. Gully now, the children walking shoeless in the rain, bringing a lunch of lard on bread to school.

“But,” he said, “when federation comes, economic progress
will come with it. You condemn Dr. Mebane—and I do understand some of what you mean—but still, it is men like him who are bringing this great change about. With the end of colonial rule will come wider social justice. It’s bound to come.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps. Oh, I don’t want you to think I’m an embittered man, prejudiced against people because they have more money than I have or their skin is lighter than mine—I wouldn’t be talking like this to you if that were the case, now would I? But what I fear is this: We’ll get our political independence only to have a new class step into the Englishman’s shoes, and the workman will be no better off. Or not much.”

The gate clanged. Against the glare of five o’clock sunlight Patrick could see only a tall, thin figure, obviously female, coming up the walk.

“Got the soapbox out again, Pa? I could hear you halfway to the corner.”

“Come in out of the dazzle, it hurts my eyes. This is Patrick Courzon, a friend of Father Baker’s. My daughter Dezzy. I told you, she hates being called Dezzy. She likes to be called Désirée.”

“Why not? It’s my name.”

The girl set her packages down on the table.

“What have you got there, now?” Porter wanted to know.

“Dishes. A set of Spode.”

“Good God! You hand them back all your wages on gewgaws!” It was a reproach, but a tender one.

“We needed dishes. The old ones are a disgrace. And these are seconds. You’d never know the difference, though.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t!”

She reached into the box and held up a cup. “There! Isn’t that a lovely pattern?”

Patrick was not looking at the cup. He was looking at the pleasure in her face, the most beautiful he had ever seen. It was a classic face with narrow, sculptured lips, large, round-lidded
eyes, and a thin, patrician nose—all of these cast in ebony. She wore a red blouse and a white skirt. She had a silver chain on her wrist. Something profound and powerful stirred in Patrick’s chest. Afterwards he thought it must have been fear that she would vanish as easily and quickly as she had appeared.

In those few seconds he was changed.

She addressed him. “Has my father been bending your ear?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I’ve been enjoying myself.” A stilted answer, schoolmasterish and dull, when he was capable of doing so much better! Her beauty had quenched his flow, silenced his wit.

Porter asked, “Why don’t you invite Mr. Courzon to supper?”

“Patrick. Please, my name is Patrick.”

“Patrick, then. You’re invited,” said Désirée. “I’ll have it ready in half an hour.”

The table, at one end of the front room, had been set with the new dishes. Hibiscus flowers, cerise and yellow, floated in a crystal bowl. He saw that the bowl was very fine.

Clarence Porter followed Patrick’s gaze. “Another Da Cunha special. Out of place in this house.”

“Beauty is never out of place,” Désirée said.

Patrick ate silently, while a pleasant banter crossed and recrossed the table. The girl got up to fetch the next course. From where he sat he could see into the large, clean kitchen. He watched her moving about, watched as she lifted her hair and twisted it into a coil on top of her head. That long, straight hair, heavy as rope—from where had she got it? From some Arab traders wandering south and west into Africa two centuries ago? Or from some Spanish buccaneer who had wandered into the slave cabins on this very island?

“It gets so hot on my neck,” she complained, with a little petulant sigh.

“Désirée is part Indian,” Clarence Porter said, as though
he had read Patrick’s mind. “My wife’s great-grandmother was a pure Carib, off the reservation.”

This time the father had given her the name that belonged to her. The name had a caressing sound, apart from its meaning. If you didn’t know the meaning of
desire,
those syllables alone would tell you.

“And what do you think of the land settlement they are pressing for on St. Vincent?” Porter asked.

“Pa, don’t!” Désirée turned to Patrick. “My father is too serious. Sometimes I simply have to close my ears.”

Porter was amused. “All right, I’ll be quiet.”

“Too much heavy talk,” she said. “Taste the ice cream. Look out at the evening.”

Patrick followed her gesture. The sun was an orange ball, tipped on the long, even line where the sky met the sea. Covetown lay in cobalt shadow.

“How wonderful it is!” she said softly.

Her perfume smelled like sugar. Flowers and sugar.

“The time is today,” she said, as if to herself.

Patrick looked up at her then. “You know, you’re right,” he said.

Too much heavy talk. Everything has grown too heavy. Ever since I was six years old, when Maman sent me off to school, it’s been a competition. Work. Strive. Be earnest. But what of laughter? It’s true. The time is today.

   His courtship was short. He needed only a few weeks to learn what he wanted to know about her.

He took her to dinner at a place he couldn’t afford, Cade’s Hotel at the end of Wharf Street. It was a fine, square stone house with a high-walled garden and, if one didn’t count boarding houses, the only place on the island where travelers could stay. In a quiet dining room, dominated by a loud tall clock and gilt-framed portraits of the royal family, one dined alongside English tourists and traveling salesmen on expense
accounts. Locals, the whites and the near-whites, came occasionally for a change from their clubs.

Désirée had never been inside. Her pleasure was infectious.

“Look at that, Patrick, will you!”

“That” was a colored print of Queen Victoria at Balmoral, a scene replete with enormous yardages of plaid, fuzzy little dogs and a view of cold, foggy mountains.

“Scotland,” he said. “I’ve been there.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, I would like to see it! I would like to see everything, anything. I’ve never been anywhere. Only once to Martinique and once to Barbados.”

So, over drinks, he retold his English years as best he could, bringing color and drama to the telling, enjoying her attention. With a flourish of expertise he ordered the dinner: calalu soup and crab farci.

“I’ve never had crab cooked this way,” she said.

“It’s the French style. These are land crabs. They’re fed for a few days on pepper leaves. Then they’re baked.”

“How do you know so much about cooking?”

“I don’t. I only happen to know about a few French dishes because my mother is from Martinique and she’s a wonderful cook.”

Désirée was silent for a moment. Then, hesitating, she inquired, “Your mother—she came to Martinique from France?”

“No, she was born there and so were her people before her.” And aware that this was not the answer that the girl was seeking, he said quietly, “What you’re really asking is whether my mother is colored or white.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right. My mother is dark, quite dark.”

“As dark as I am?”

“No. Nor as beautiful, either.”

He thought he saw her frown. Her face was lowered and he couldn’t be sure.

“Is there anything wrong, Désirée?”

She raised her head. “You understand, I—we—don’t go to places like this. Without you, I wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t put us out, but they would make us so unwelcome that we wouldn’t want to come.”

“Of course, I understand.”

An ant, crawling up the side of the water bowl in which the sugar bowl had been set, fell struggling into the water. Patrick shoved the whole contrivance to the other side of the table.

He laughed. “Look, it’s not so fancy—you needn’t be overawed. For me, in fact, the ants remind me of home.”

She laughed, too. “You make me feel good.”

“I don’t think
you
need anybody to make you feel good. It’s the other way around when I’m with you.”

“Is it? Then I’m glad.”

“You’re a glad person.”

“Well, I am most of the time. Or I try to be. The trouble with me is, I want things so badly.”

“What things, for instance?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just a vague kind of wanting inside.” She made a fist at the hollow of her throat. “When I see something beautiful … The Da Cunha brothers have pictures in their houses. There was one I loved, a ruined building, all columns and moonlight, you could feel you were there. Rome, Mr. Da Cunha said. He gave me a print of it for Christmas. I have it in my room.”

The simple, childish recital touched him, reminding him of himself at age fourteen or so, reminding him, too, of the “blank slates” on which from Monday through Friday he struggled to write something that might inspire and endure.

“Désirée,” he said softly. “I’ll always call you that.” Then realizing the implication of that “always,” he added, “I’m going to know you for a long, long time.”

In the evening they walked, carrying their shoes, on the long beach beyond the harbor. Between the ocean and the pine hills lay the salt pond, rose pink in the faltering light.

“This one has been here since the time of the Caribs,” Patrick said.

“What makes it pink?”

“The algae. Red algae.”

“You know so much. You know everything.”

He glanced at her. For a second it flashed through his mind that such praise might be a mere feminine trick, the flattery that is supposed to ensnare a man; but no, her honesty was total. The quick-talking girl with the tossing hair who had subdued him at first meeting was, under the surface of a touching worldliness, only a naïve and tender child. And he knew that he had won her.

A pair of black-necked stilts came running through the shallow water.

“Hush,” she said. “Watch them.”

But he was watching her. In the still, unmoving air, her perfume was strong again: sugar and flowers. He touched her arm.

“Come,” he said.

In a pine hollow, perfectly hidden, dark and soft, they lay down. He removed her white blouse and skirt. How many women had he known? As many as any man his age and as many varieties: the eager and lustful, the indifferently accommodating, those who had to be coaxed or pretended that they had. This one was different.

It was her first time. He felt an excess of tenderness on discovery, but no guilt or remorse, because he knew himself; knew, as his hands thrust the heavy hair from her shoulders, smoothed her firm breasts and long thighs, that he would never leave her. And he felt as they lay there together, both of them too overcome or perhaps too shy as yet for words, that she knew it, too.