Never Call It Love (31 page)

Her
husband opened the cabin door. "It is arranged. Marquette will ask Duval
to call upon us at the inn this afternoon."

"Is
my appearance all right?"

He
looked at her face, shadowed by the leghorn hat. A wide green ribbon the same
shade as her gown ran beneath her chin from one side of the wide brim to the
other, holding the hat in place. "You don't need my opinion. I am sure
your mirror has already told you you look lovely."

She
said, still worried, "I am afraid my complexion... Perhaps I should have
stayed on the shady side of the deck."

"I
like your face when it's that sun-warmed color." He always had, from the
moment he saw her.

When
they emerged onto the deck, they found that the ship, now tied up at the wharf
next to an American merchantman, was deserted. Captain Marquette and Colin,
seated in an open public carriage, waited on the dock below. As the carriage,
drawn by two aged gray horses, rattled over the wharf planking, Captain
Marquette
said, "I regret, madame, that I must take you along what is called Rue du
Port, or Harbor Street. Although most unsavory, it is the only approach to the
town from the wharf."

Elizabeth
said demurely. "Thank you for warning me. I shall keep my gaze fixed
straight ahead."

She
did not, of course. Her eyes, shadowed by the hat brim, shot glances right and
left as the carriage moved past small blue or pink or yellow houses, most of
them scabrous with peeling paint, where women of every shade from white to coal
black sat invitingly at windows or in doorways. From the shadowy recesses of an
open-fronted café came the wheeze of a concertina and the sound of drunken
shouting. Along the sidewalk moved French soldiers from the fort and merchant
seamen from those ships tied up at the wharf. Some seemed fairly sober. Others
tacked wildly from one side of the sidewalk to the other, like vessels beaten
by conflicting winds. She wondered if any of those men were off pirate vessels.
All of the merchant ships in the harbor had flown either the French
fleur-de-lis or the red-and-white-striped flag, with its white stars set in a
circle on a blue field, of the rebellious American colonies. But that, of
course, proved nothing. No pirate ship would enter a port flying its
death's-head insignia.

Glancing
to her left, Elizabeth saw someone she recognized, the shy young sailor who had
brought her all her meals her first few days aboard ship. Moving down the
sidewalk with a half-empty rum bottle in one hand and the other arm around a
pretty mulatto girl, he did not look in the least shy now. Elizabeth said,
before she could check herself, "Captain, isn't that Richard from your
ship? Why, he can't be more than seventeen."

"He
is not yet sixteen. Boys grow up fast at sea. But do not be alarmed, madame.
The... er, feminine inhabitants of Harbor Street never invade the respectable
part
of town, nor do off-duty soldiers and merchant sailors, unless they are
completely sober. To do so would bring instant arrest."

The
carriage entered the limestone-paved square. Along the sidewalks, shadowed by
second-floor balconies, moved a motley crowd—soldiers in groups, white men and
women in European dress, and black women, graceful as Greek caryatids,
balancing bundles on their white-turbaned heads. On the far side of the square
the carriage stopped before a three-story pink building with tall jalousied
doors on the ground floor and lacy wrought-iron balconies above. This, Captain
Marquette explained, was the combined coffeehouse and inn.

"I
will find Armand Duval now, and tell him you would like to see him as soon as
possible."

The
accommodations to which the inn's proprietor showed them—a sitting room and
bedroom for Patrick and Elizabeth, and a single room across the corridor for
Colin—looked clean and comfortable, although not luxurious. Carpets of woven
straw covered the floors. The bedsteads and even the washstand were of
white-painted iron. In the tropics, the innkeeper explained, where only
constant vigilance could keep wood-boring insects at bay, it was wise to use
metal wherever possible.

Elizabeth
had just finished unpacking when Armand Duval arrived. He was a man of about
forty-five, with a once-husky body now gone to fat, and a yellowish tinge to
the whites of his eyes. He declined Patrick's offer of brandy. Obviously he
feared that the weakness for liquor that had ruined his business might now
interfere with his disposal of it.

Elizabeth
sat silently by while the two Irishmen and the Frenchman discussed the
distillery. It was not her husband but her usually self-effacing brother-in-law
who took the lead.

Colin
asked, "How many vats for cooking sugarcane do you have, Mr. Duval?"

"Three,
and two vats for distilling rum."

"Do
you employ molasses or fresh cane juice?"

"I
use the fresh juice. So does every other distiller on St.-Denis."

"I
see. And how many gallons of rum have you produced in your best year?"

Duval
hesitated momentarily, puffy hands tightening on the knees of his fawn-colored
breeches. "Oh, around six thousand"

Colin's
dark brows lifted. He repeated, with a smile, "Six?"

The
Frenchman's face flushed. "Forgive me. I meant to say almost five
thousand."

Colin
said smoothly, "Yes, that is about the maximum output I would expect for a
distillery of that size."

Elizabeth
felt surprised and impressed by her quiet brother-in-law's shrewd
knowledgeability. It was indeed fortunate for her and Patrick, she reflected,
that he had chosen to come with them. Then she saw Colin look at Patrick, as if
stepping aside to allow his brother to start the bargaining.

Patrick
asked, "What is your price, Mr. Duval?"

The
distiller named a sum in French louis. Not even trying to translate the figure
into pounds, Elizabeth looked at Colin and saw him nod. He said to his brother,
"It sounds fair. Of course, we must see the distillery first, and we can't
do that today."

Elizabeth
understood why. The light streaming in at the jalousied windows had already
taken on the reddish tint of late afternoon. And aboard ship she had learned
that in these latitudes, once the sun had set, darkness descended swiftly.

"But
you could see my house yet today. You will need
someplace to live."
Elizabeth noticed that his hands, resting on the knees of his none-too-clean
breeches, trembled visibly. "The house is sound, although a bit rundown.
And you can have it very cheaply. I want to sell everything, including my
carriage and pair, my saddle horse, and the pony and small gig my wife and
daughters sometimes use."

Patrick
said, "Elizabeth?"

She
nodded. "I would like to see the house."

At
the curb outside the inn, two bay horses stood between the shafts of a carriage
badly in need of polishing. With Monsieur Duval handling the reins, they left
the square by a road opposite the one by which they had entered it. On either
side, separated from the road by low plaster walls and surrounded by luxurious
tangles of palmettos and scarlet hibiscus, were houses of one or two stories.
They belonged, Duval told them, to small-plantation owners and the town's
shopkeepers. "The few large-plantation owners, of course, live in fine big
villas in the island's interior." The resigned melancholy in his voice
told Elizabeth that once, before his addiction made the dream impossible, he
had hoped that one day he would live in such a villa.

Abruptly
the stretch of houses gave way to jungle, with tree branches meeting above the
road, so that the carriage moved through a murky twilight Interlaced among the
trees—many of them West Indian mahogany, Duval said—were vines as thick as a
man's waist. Beyond the first line of trees, grotesquely beaked parrots and
brightly colored smaller birds flashed through the dim light.

The
stretch of jungle gave way to more dwellings. Then Duval stopped before a white
one-story house. "Madame Duval will be expecting us. I told her I might
bring you back with me." As they went up the flagstoned walk bordered by a
tangle of dwarf palms, hibiscus bushes, and trees with large leaves as lustrous
as English holly, Elizabeth
noticed that the plaster facade of the house, while
in need of whitewash, at least was not peeling away in patches.

Madame
Duval opened the door to them. A thin, blondish woman, she had the sort of
expression—martyred, and yet tinged with a certain smug moral superiority— that
Elizabeth had seen before in the faces of women married to drunkards. From
somewhere beyond her came the shrill voices of quarrelling children.

Madame
Duval showed them over the house. As her husband had said, it indeed was
rundown. White plaster walls in the long hall were dingy. In the parlor,
mahogany and red plush furniture, more suitable to a French middle-class house
than to the tropics, looked shabby. In the dining room, where two girls of
about nine and eleven stopped squabbling long enough to drop curtsies to the
visitors, the blue plush rug bore food stains and the glass chimney of a wall
lamp was cracked.

The
two bedrooms, furnished with iron bedsteads and washstands and straw rugs, were
pleasant enough, and the larger one had French doors opening onto a roofed
terrace. Nevertheless, Elizabeth caught an appalled look on Patrick's face. It
was not just the shabbiness that oppressed him, she felt sure, but the smallness.
At Stanford Hall, almost this entire house could have fitted into the space
between the massive front doors and the foot of the twin staircases. Never
mind, she thought. If he could forget Ireland and that cause of his, perhaps
someday they would build a spacious villa back in the hills.

They
ended the inspection tour with the kitchen. Although supper's roast fowl
sputtered on the fireplace spit, unwashed dishes from some previous meal still
littered a bare table. "All is most difficult," Madame Duval explained,
"now that one has no servants. And even when one could afford servants,
they were lazy and useless. Oh, life on St.-Denis has not been easy for me,
madame, what
with indolent blacks, and snobbish whites looking down their noses just because
my husband..."

She
broke off, as if suddenly aware that such discouraging talk might jeopardize
the sale of the distillery. "But to you, madame," she went on
swiftly, "the French people here will behave charmingly. Plainly your
husband does... does not share my husband's weakness. As for servants, surely
they will work for a chatelaine of such competent appearance as yourself."

Although
she was not sure she found it flattering to be told she looked
"competent," Elizabeth murmured a thank you. Then she turned and looked
out the kitchen's rear window. Beyond it, a garden stretched away to a stable
and carriage house. The garden was just a tangle of vines and overgrown
shrubbery now, but once the vegetation was trimmed, and the gravel walks
raked...

So
close that she flinched backward with a cry, a large brown insect flew past her
face and landed on that littered table.
"Ma foi!"
Madame Duval
said with Gallic despair. "No matter how one strives for the cleanliness,
one cannot rid oneself of those
sales b
êtes."

Elizabeth
thought, grimly confident: We will see about that.

Three
days later Patrick bought both the distillery and the house. Two days later the
Duvals sailed for France, and the following day Elizabeth, aided by Jules and
Jeanne Burgos, a mulatto freedman and his wife, set about making the house
livable. Each morning, Patrick
and Colin, in the carriage that had belonged to the
Duvals, deposited her at the house, where she stayed until they stopped for her
on their way back to the inn.

After
the long idle weeks aboard ship, Elizabeth delighted in using her energy and
ingenuity. Walls were whitewashed, floors and windows and cupboards scrubbed.
She sold the plush rugs and heavy furniture to a dealer in secondhand articles,
and replaced them with inexpensive but clean straw rugs, and white wicker
chairs and settees of the sort she had seen in the inn's parlor.

Exactly
three weeks after its purchase, she and Patrick moved into the house. Colin was
not with them. Because the house was so small, he had said from the first that
he would prefer to stay on at the inn.

One
morning less than a week later, she rode with Patrick and Colin along
jungle-walled roads to the distillery. As they turned into the clearing in
which the long, low shed stood, she exclaimed, "Why, about half the
shingles on that roof look new!"

"So
they are," Patrick said. "What's more, to get the task finished as
quickly as possible, Colin and I helped nail them in place." He laughed.
"The blacks looked dumbfounded. Apparently they had never seen white men
working with their hands before."

He
helped Elizabeth to the ground. Circling one end of the long, one-story
building, she and the Stanford men mounted two steps to a wooden platform. On
one side of it a small, clear stream ran down the gentle slope, to disappear
into a wooden culvert beneath the road. On the other side, a wide doorway in
the shed revealed bare-to-the-waist blacks, stirring the contents of the big
copper vats above roaring charcoal fires. As she shrank back from the heat and
the sickeningly sweet smell of boiling sugar, Patrick said with a smile,
"Not exactly like the scent of a new-mown Irish meadow, is it? Come, we'll
look into the
distillery. You'll find that more pleasant, especially since it isn't in
operation yet."