Eden Burning (31 page)

“Then you’ll go?” asked Richard. “I can make arrangements?”

“Yes, I’ll go,” Teresa Luther said.

   It was not very much changed. The public market, the cathedral close, the soft-drink stalls and the dusky, gray-green tamarinds were all the same. Raucous radios, more cars and horns, and a storefront movie advertising a cowboy picture, these were different.

And the house was different. They had built a new wing, with guest rooms and a nursery for the coming baby. Marjorie had renewed the house with a fitting and patrician charm that, in a way, resembled herself. It’s not what it was when I lived in it, Tee thought, remembering crumbled plaster.

And she told her daughter-in-law, “It looks like you.”

Marjorie was pleased with the comment. “Not, I hope, the way I look now,” she said, touching her enormous belly, and pleased, Tee saw, with that, too.

Francis wanted them to tour outdoors with him. He walked ahead with his father, Tee following, up the slopes toward the banana groves.

“This is the major source of income,” he explained. “Green gold, Father.”

Richard was fascinated. He had never been in any part of the world like this one.

“The original tree is called the mother. New trunks grow out of the old roots. See this bunch? We call it a stem. See these? We call them hands. You get anywhere from seven to
twelve hands in a cluster. The bananas are called fingers. You get over a hundred fingers to a stem.”

The two men, framed by shaggy leafage, paused on the path, the one still wearing his dark city suit, the other in workman’s khaki. Francis’ hair had lightened and his skin been darkened in the sun; he shone. She wondered what Père would have thought about this young man of his blood. And with that extreme perceptiveness of him which she had always had, she recognized that something new, something vibrant and exciting, had come alive in him.

Richard, interested in finance, wanted to know how the crop was marketed.

“Well, Dad, I have to tell you I’m rather proud of something I’ve been able to do. We used to work on contract, you know, anywhere from one to five years with a big company; you’d give them a weekly estimate of what you’d deliver. Every planter, large or small, was on his own. But now we’ve got a cooperative. I had a hard time convincing people it would be a good thing, but now they admit it is, and we market through the cooperative, which gives us much greater bargaining power, naturally. Also, we help out in other ways, making loans for fertilizers, and disease control, and—there’s a lot more to it, but that’s the general idea, anyway.”

Tee paused, letting the two men climb. Above, where the banana groves stopped and the jungle look over, one could see light playing in the upper branches of the dense acomas. Cathedral light, although one might very well put it the other way, remembering forest shadows in old churches at the place where the apse meets the nave. Mounting farther up the Morne, you would come to where the light, shafting straight as rulers, struck the ground and sifted up again into a mist, knee-deep. Yesterday. Yesterday.

And in the morning of childhood, yellowbirds with legs like two thin twigs came to the sugar bowl on the veranda. Each dark-gray wing bore a white mark, a beauty spot, she used to say. The afternoon drowsed in cicada hum until, at
four, the rain came, leaving its sharp and bitter fragrance on the air….

Returning, Richard and Francis roused her into the present moment and they walked back to the house. Humped Brahman cattle, grazing behind rail fences, raised their cream-colored faces toward the sound of voices, questioning with dark, languid eyes.

“First prize at the agricultural show,” Francis said proudly. “Bananas are only what keep me solvent, you know. All the rest is what I really care about. I’m diversfying, trying to raise the island by its bootstraps. Lionel thinks I’m a fool to take risks and care so much. He’ll probably tell you so. But he believes just in looking out for number one.”

“There’s something to be said for looking out for number one,” Richard observed.

When Francis did not answer, Tee asked, “Don’t you get along with Lionel?”

“We get along all right. Marjorie likes him more than I do, though. They think alike. He’ll be here tonight at dinner.”

“Marjorie said something in her last letter about Lionel’s divorce. She didn’t say why, just said it was ‘civilized.’ What sort of person is his wife? I mean, what was the reason?”

Francis looked away. “I don’t know, really. A marriage fails: it comes down to that, whether there’s one reason or a thousand, doesn’t it? It failed.” He stopped abruptly, then resumed, “I’m worried about Marjorie. The doctor says her pressure’s too high. They may have to take the baby if it doesn’t come soon by itself.” He turned a troubled face toward his parents. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“We’ll do anything we can, you know that,” Richard said.

“And there’s something else. A damned mess, just when you’ve come for your first visit! There’s talk of a strike, a general strike. It could paralyze us. It could get very nasty.” He squinted thoughtfully into the sun. “Still, maybe not. And I really don’t think—in fact I’m sure they won’t bother me
personally. I’ve done so much and they know it. I’ve been on labor’s side since the day I got here. No, I’m sure they won’t bother me.”

   In the dining room, Richard sat opposite Anatole Da Cunha’s painting of Morne Bleue.

“I have to admit it hurt to part with it,” he said, “but it belongs here without question. Oh, he has the touch, hasn’t he? Marvelous, marvelous! You can feel the sun on your skin! You know, I’m disgusted with some of the things the art critics write these days. Such as last week: ‘A face representing a civilization in decline.’ Now what the devil does that mean? Fuzzy personal impressions masquerading as analysis! When all that matters is whether you can feel the sun on your skin.”

Marjorie got to the point. “It must be worth a good deal, mustn’t it, now that Da Cunha’s so old?”

“Oh, definitely. And when he’s dead, the value will really shoot up. You know, Teresa, I should have had him paint you when we were in Paris. I wasn’t thinking.”

The mirror over the sideboard reflected Tee’s face, very white in candlelight and dusk, a face still without lines, still sweetly curved, and yet not young anymore.

“Let’s see,” Lionel remarked, “you were fifteen, weren’t you, when you left? So I must have been not quite three. Yet I always thought I remembered you, I suppose because Mother talked about you so much.” He laughed. “You were a wild girl, she always said.”

“I? Wild?”

“Oh, she only meant bareback riding and running around with animals—dogs and colts and parrots—all the things she never did, I suppose.”

“Parrots!” As always, Richard was enthusiastic over anything new. “You have them wild here, don’t you?”

“They nest way up the Morne toward the rain forest, and you don’t always get to see them, but with luck we might.
I’ve even seen the imperial parrot a couple of times. Sisseron. Amethyst and emerald, a glorious bird. If you’re willing to climb,” Francis offered, “we can go one morning.”

“Oh, I’m willing!” Richard cried.

Tee thought, I should not have come. Her mouth went dry and she laid the fork down, then picked it up again and took some food, something without taste.

He could not possibly be here, could he? Patrick Courzon? The name made a sharp impact on her ear. And even if he were, she would never encounter him! The island was small, but not that small. And so stratified by color and caste into concentric circles which didn’t touch. Surely, though, he was not even here! He would have stayed in England, or gone somewhere else to use his fine education. Not here.

But suppose he were? She tried to picture him: a year older than Francis, half of his blood, of her own blood, each of them alive and breathing at this very instant—now!—on this high, blue day; alike, so alike they must be, by the very law of averages! And still so different.

A maid poured wine for Francis, her thin, pretty arm, red-brown, dusky, stretched parallel to his pale one, making exactly the contrast that that other boy’s would make, one supposed, if ever they should—Impossible! And yet, as fear trembled in Teresa for the thousandth time or more, something else trembled in her, too: pity, profound pity.

The young maid moved about the table, pouring the wine. There was proud grace in the poise of her narrow head; substitute for the blue cotton uniform a sweeping ballgown and you would have a princess, a dark princess. The girl, meeting Tee’s gaze, smiled slightly.

Crazy world, with its strictures and classifications; all those gradations of mankind based on color and money, on legitimacy and class, when all we are is only—what? Protein, minerals, and water, mostly. Sea water. Yes, it’s absurd, all of it, and still I haven’t the courage to challenge it, or even to face it. If I could know what he is like, just quietly, secretly
know, without anyone else’s knowing, without ruining everything, facing rage. Sometimes I think I’ve been brave, but not brave enough. Sometimes I think I died here in this house when I was fifteen, and everything since has been a dream.

There came over her then an engulfing sense of unreality, of time so telescoped that the far past was only yesterday, and yet so long ago that it might never have happened. She gripped the edge of the table.

“Is anything the matter?” Marjorie asked. “You’re feeling all right?”

“I? Just tired after the trip, that’s all.” And Tee smiled, forcing herself away, after long habit, from the ghost of a memory that had been keeping step with her since she was fifteen.

“You’ll rest well tonight. Your room’s in the new wing, very quiet, away from everyone.”

“And you’ll lunch with me tomorrow,” Lionel said. “There’ll be no hostess, but I’ll give you a good lunch. I do all my own entertaining these days, now that I’m without a wife. But then, Kate never was very sociable anyway.”

Richard, seeing that the subject was not taboo, inquired, “What did she do with herself, then?” He enjoyed gossip.

“Oh, good works. She was, and still is, on every blasted committee you can think of for the improvement of this, that, and the other. But to be fair, I shouldn’t make light of it. She believes in what she does, and you have to give credit for that. In other words, she puts her money where her mouth is.”

“She never liked people,” Marjorie remarked.

Lionel contradicted her. “I wouldn’t say that. She likes some of them too much. It all depends on what people you’re talking about.”

“Naturally, I mean our friends, the people we all know,” Marjorie explained to Tee. “I’ve made wonderful friends here. They’ve been a saving grace for me, while Francis was
busy with his bananas and cows and things.” It seemed to Tee that she had bitten the words off.

Richard inquired, “Do you get many visitors from home during the winter?”

“Oh, yes, there are always a few yachts in the harbor. Last year the Crowes, friends of my mother’s, the Standard Steel Crowes, dropped anchor and spent a day with us. And there are always a lot of chartered schooners in season. My cousins come every year and we have a marvelous time. They can’t get over all the land we have and all the servants! They keep telling me you can scarcely find a decent cleaning woman at home anymore. So it’s kind of fun, and I keep busy.”

What does Francis talk about with her? Tee wondered. Marriage was a lifelong conversation, or it wasn’t much of a marriage. And she wondered whether Richard would have noticed. No, he would not have noticed.

“So you’re due any day now,” Lionel said to Marjorie.

“I’m afraid I’m overdue. If the baby doesn’t come in the next day or two, they’ll have to take it.”

Lionel frowned. “If I were you, Francis, I wouldn’t wait that long. I’d take her in to town. You can’t tell what will happen. If the strike comes, they’re liable to block the roads.”

“You really think so?” Francis was doubtful. “I rather think it will be settled quietly. I don’t foresee violence, even if there should be a strike.”

“You told us this afternoon,” Richard reminded him quickly, “that it could be nasty.”

“I meant verbal nastiness. Something unpleasant, not dangerous.”

Lionel shook his head. “I’d feel more secure if Nicholas Mebane were in the country. He’s one Negro with a white man’s common sense. I’ve no love for him, mind you, or for any of them, but I have to admit he seems to be a man with the country’s best interests at heart. However, he’s at some sort of powwow just now, some meeting in Jamaica over
federation or independence or some such. Without him, we could be in for a pack of trouble.”

“These people aren’t violent!” Francis argued. “It’s simply a question of wages, a union affair.”

“No? What happened right here last month?” Marjorie challenged.

“We had a little problem, nothing to do with what we’re talking about. You see,” Francis explained to his parents, “when you run a place like this, you’re almost like the head of a family. Workers come to you with problems, when they want a loan, or have a quarrel with another worker. And it happened that one of the men lost his temper and slashed another with his machete, severing a finger. So I had to settle things down. It was disturbing, of course, but it has no bearing on the strike, none at all.”

“I think it has,” Lionel said. “These people are only one step removed from the savage.”

Richard wanted to know what the unions were demanding.

“More money, naturally,” Lionel answered. “They’ve a long list of grievances, wanting to be paid once a week instead of every other week—”

Richard interrupted. “That seems reasonable enough. Or am I wrong?”

“Very inconvenient and more expensive. Much more bookkeeping.”

“Personally, I think they’re entitled to most of what they’re asking for,” Francis said.

Lionel gave a sigh of exasperation. “Are you willing to raise wages?”

“I’ll compromise. I’ll meet them halfway. I’ve got good people, and if it costs a little more to keep them here in peace, I’ll do it. I’m making a living.”

“You would do better to be thinking of saving money for your own flesh and blood,” Marjorie said quietly.