Prospero's Daughter (29 page)

“I’ll walk in front of you and clear the way,” Carlos said.

“What about snakes?” the inspector asked. “The last boatman who took me here said there were snakes.”

Carlos grinned. “He was trying to frighten you. I’ve seen a snake here only once and it was a thin, green one we call the horsewhip snake. It’s harmless.”

The inspector mumbled something about lizards, and Carlos put him at ease again. “They scatter when they hear us,” he said. Then, just as we got close to the house, something—I thought it was a giant iguana—scampered through the bushes and the inspector jumped in horror to the middle of the path.

“It’s gone,” Carlos said, calming him down.

The inspector turned to me, his lips ashen. “How do you manage it, Miss Gardner?”

I gave him the only answer that was true for me. “I live here, Inspector. This is home for me.”

Before he knocked on the front door of the house, the inspector warned Carlos to hold his tongue. “Leave the talking to me, Codrington,” he said. “I’ll deal with Dr. Gardner.” His words were harsher than his tone and I thought he spoke more out of concern for Carlos than to make the point that he was in charge.

But Father was not there. The inspector knocked on the door a couple more times and then tried the knob. It gave in easily.

“He must have known we were coming to have left the door unlocked,” the inspector said.

“If he knew we were coming, he would want to be here,” Carlos said.

The inspector frowned.

“He’d want to tell us his lies,” Carlos said.

The inspector glared at him. “No point adding fuel to the fire, Codrington,” he said.

I, too, was surprised by Carlos’s tone, that he would speak in this manner about my father to an English inspector. But something was different about Carlos. The times I caught a glimpse of him in the boat, it seemed to me that there was a hardness in his eyes I had not seen before. I had attributed the stiffness around his jaw to his determination to confront my father, to force him to acknowledge his innocence, but now I was beginning to wonder if he had not come for more than that, if he did not have another purpose for being here with the inspector.

We searched the entire house. We looked in every room, in the garden, and in the greenhouse but Father was nowhere to be found.

“I’ll wait here for him in the drawing room,” the inspector said. “The air-conditioning is on. He wouldn’t have left it on if he hadn’t intended to return soon. We’ll hear what he has to say when he comes.”

Carlos was behind him. “Perhaps he won’t be back before night-fall,” he said.

The inspector swiveled around. “You say that as though you know where he is, Codrington,” he said gruffly.

“I do, Inspector,” Carlos said.

“And where is that? I am not going to the leper colony, if that is where you mean.”

I could tell that the inspector was irritated and I rushed quickly to intervene. I did not want the inspector angry with Carlos. I wanted him on our side when we faced Father. “Would you like something to drink, Inspector?” I asked him.

He fanned himself with his pith helmet. It was cool in the drawing room, but the red blotches on his cheeks had not subsided, and there was a string of tiny bumps on the back of his neck.

“Water, if you don’t mind.”

“I can get you something stronger,” I said.

“Oh no, miss. Not on duty, miss. But perhaps Mr. Codrington?”

“I never touch alcohol,” Carlos said.

The inspector seemed surprised. “Never touch it?”

“Never,” Carlos said.

“Would you like some water, too?” I asked Carlos.

“Thanks. I’m thirsty.”

“But Dr. Gardner told me . . .” The inspector was not done.

“I served him. I bought the berries for him,” Carlos said, “but he fermented them himself in secret. He hid his drink from me.”

“Never?” the inspector asked again.

“I never tasted it. I never wanted it,” Carlos said.

“Then why did he tell me . . . ?”

“That I drink? To make you think the worst of me,” Carlos said.

The inspector sat down and stroked his mustache. I left the room to get the water and when I returned, he was saying softly to Carlos, “We’ll see about that when he comes, Codrington. We’ll see if he doesn’t make
me
think the worst of
him.
”

Weeks later, the inspector confessed to me that my father himself had planted doubts in his mind. I listened in shame as he told me that the very first day he met him, my father raised his suspicions with his indecent talk about virgin knots, spoilt meat, fire i’ th’ blood. Not suspicions of his abuse of me, to be sure. Suspicions of a sick mind that had transferred to Carlos his lascivious longings for a woman.

I took courage now from the sympathy he extended to Carlos, his seeming willingness to consider his side of the tale my father had poured in his ears. I felt that if I said more, if my father caused me to say more, to accuse him of more than the lies he invented about Carlos, the inspector would defend me, he would support me.

“You don’t have to keep standing, Codrington.” The inspector took the glass I offered him. “There’s a comfortable armchair over there. Sit.”

But Carlos was not ready, as I was, to trust the inspector, and he remained standing. “When we were in his bedroom,” he said, “I noticed that Dr. Gardner’s cloak and cane were missing. I didn’t see his book on his desk.”

“I suppose he took his cloak and cane with him wherever he went,” the inspector said drily.

I handed Carlos the other glass I had brought. “Virginia knows about his cane and his cloak,” Carlos said. He twirled the glass around in his hand. “She’s seen him with his book.”

Sometimes when Father worked in his garden, he wore his velvet cloak with stars on it. He took his cane, too, the one with the metal top engraved with men with human torsos and hips and legs of a horse. I had seen him reading from his red leather-bound book. I asked him about the cloak, the cane, and the book. He said they came from England. They were his father’s. He told me not to touch them.

“They belonged to my grandfather,” I said to the inspector. “Father’s father.”

“Dr. Gardner makes magic with them,” Carlos said.

“Poppycock!” The inspector drained his glass and put it down on the side table next to him.

“He takes them with him when he goes to the lighthouse,” Carlos said.

“Nonsense!” the inspector said.

“I’ve gone with him. I’ve seen him.” Carlos bent his glass to his lips and swallowed.

The inspector faced me. “Do you know anything about this, Miss Gardner?”

“She never went,” Carlos said. “She’s never seen him at the lighthouse.”

“Humph!” the inspector sneered dismissively.

“It’s going to storm tonight,” Carlos said. “You heard what the boatman said. Dr. Gardner likes to go to the lighthouse when it’s about to storm.”

I knew that was true. Father often went to the lighthouse before a storm.

“I’m certain that’s where he is,” Carlos said.

“Certain?” The inspector raised his eyebrows.

“I can take you there.” Carlos drank the rest of his water and handed me the empty glass. “That is, if you want to find him,” he said.

“Of course I want to find him,” the inspector said stiffly.

“You’ll need to change your clothes,” Carlos said. “You can’t go like that. With shorts.”

“I’ll go as I am,” the inspector said.

“You’ll need to cover your legs and your arms.” Carlos ran his eyes over the inspector’s uniform. “They could get scratched. You have to go through the bush to get to the lighthouse.”

The inspector flicked away an invisible speck on his collar, and Carlos, thinking perhaps as I did that he was attempting to camouflage his nervousness, said, not unkindly, “It won’t be too bad. Dr. Gardner has probably already cleared the way.”

“It’s not a matter of the way being cleared, Codrington. He may not be there.”

But Carlos was not about to let him off so lightly. “He’s there,” he said. “If you go, you can see him do his magic.”

“Magic!” the inspector snorted.

“Don’t be afraid. He won’t do anything to you, I’m sure,” Carlos said.

“I’m not afraid,” the inspector shot back. “I’ll go, if you’re so certain.”

“I’m certain,” Carlos said.

“But I won’t have another word about magic,” the inspector said.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Dr. Gardner said you were intelligent. I’m surprised you’d say such nonsense. I suppose the next thing you’d want to tell me is that he uses black magic. What is it you call it? Obeah? Yes, obeah.”

“I didn’t say obeah.”

“He’s an Englishman, for God’s sake.”

“I said magic. Did you see his orchids? His bougainvillea? Have you ever seen such colors?”

“Dr. Gardner is a scientist. He does not need magic.”

“Nobody else has grass like his. He hardly ever waters it.”

“Scientists are making discoveries every day,” the inspector said. But he did not look as confident as his words implied. He ran his finger around the collar of his jacket and asked me for more water.

I was about to leave the room to get it for him when Carlos stopped me. “Wait,” he said. He turned back to the inspector. “Ask Virginia.”

“Ask her what?”

Carlos was looking steadily at me. “You remember, don’t you, Virginia? You remember when he burned my mother’s bed?”

“I don’t understand. What’s this about your mother’s bed?” the inspector said.

“Tell him, Virginia,” Carlos said.

I was a child. I did not see. Father made Ariana keep me inside.

“You remember how it smelled, don’t you, Virginia?”

For weeks after Father had cleared the spot, months after it was covered again with grass, the pungent odor of burning wood lingered in the house. Father said he was burning old furniture. We were getting something better, he said. I wanted to believe him. And years later we did get something better: couches, chairs, tables, and other pieces of the furniture Mrs. Burton ordered for us.

“You heard him chanting.” Carlos came closer to me.

My head spun. I clamped my hand over my forehead and breathed in deeply.

Carlos brought his mouth to my ear and began to chant softly. Not words I could recognize. They were not English words he chanted. Made-up words, unintelligible words, and yet oddly familiar words. They coursed through the twists and bends in the canal of my ear, poking at the rock I had laid over a memory.

“Don’t you remember?”

I was afraid, but not of Carlos. I was afraid of the memory that was leaking through the crevices in the rock, surfacing.

“What is it you are doing, Codrington?” the inspector barked.

Carlos’s breath was warm and moist on my skin. He was chanting again, in a whisper now, his voice soft, gentle in my ear. “Try, Virginia.”

The inspector got up. “What’s that noise you are making, Codrington?” He fluttered his baton in Carlos’s direction. “Move away from her. At once, Codrington!”

“Try to remember, Virginia,” Carlos whispered again.

And then the rock became dislodged, and riding on the smoke that had slipped through my bedroom shutters, I heard my father’s voice: an eerie, frightening chant that curled around the edges of my room and settled in the corners.

I had hidden under the bed; I had covered my ears.

I must have covered my ears when I remembered, for Carlos’s hands were on my arms and he was lowering them to my sides. “Tell the inspector, Virginia.”

It was true: the chanting, the magic, the fire.

“Tell him, Virginia.”

I was in the grip of a whirlwind of emotions. “He’s told you the truth,” I heard myself say.

“What? What truth?” The inspector was near me.

“Father burned the bed.”

“What bed?”

“His mother’s bed.”

The inspector reached for my hand. “Come, Miss Gardner. Sit down.”

I stepped away from him.

“Please sit, miss,” the inspector said again. “We’ll wait here for your father.”

“No.” I wanted to see Father. I wanted to look in his eyes. I wanted to ask him about the fire. About that night. About his lies.

“He won’t be back tonight,” Carlos said to the inspector. “If you want to speak to him today, you have to go to the lighthouse.”

The inspector raised his hands over his face and drew them slowly downward over his eyes and nose. He looked tired. Ready to surrender.

“I want to go with you,” I said.

“I can’t let you do that, miss,” the inspector said.

“If we are going, we must leave now,” Carlos said.

“She’ll have to stay here,” the inspector said.

“No,” I said. “I must go. I need to go.” Father would admit what he had done to me.

“She’ll be safe,” Carlos said. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

The inspector pressed his fingers into his chin and closed his eyes.

“I’ll get you a pair of my pants,” Carlos said. “And an old shirt. You can wear them over your uniform.”

The inspector shook his head. “I won’t need your clothes,” he said.

“They’ll protect you from the razor grass,” Carlos said.

The inspector opened his eyes. “Stop.” He held up his hand. “No more. We’ll drive.”

“Drive? Drive in what?”

“We’ll take the lighthouse jeep.”

It turned out that the maritime division of the Ministry of Works and Transportation kept a jeep on the island. I had never seen it and if Father had, he had never mentioned it.

“They hide it in the bushes,” the inspector said. “So the lepers can’t take it.”

I would have laughed out loud if there were space in my heart for levity. Why would the lepers take the jeep? Where would they go? They couldn’t cross the sea in a jeep! But the memory Carlos had awakened consumed me, and I could not force my lips to stretch into a smile.
Had I so totally forgotten that day Father burned the bed?

Loving Father required forgetting. It required erasing from my consciousness all the things that had caused icicles to enclose my heart: the acrid smell of smoke, the ugly crackle of the bed frame burning; Father dancing around the flower beds with his cloak and cane and book; Father shouting orders to Ariana; Father making Carlos work under the burning sun and denying him a place at our table; Father insisting that I was superior to Ariana and Carlos. Carlos saying to me, but to me alone, that the house was his. I had erased all these, for I could not love my father otherwise. I could not face these truths and have the father I wanted.
Needed.