Prospero's Daughter (5 page)

“Dr. Gardner’s house, one presumes,” he said to the boatman, and allowed himself a faint smile. But the boatman said no, it was not Dr. Gardner’s house. It was the real doctor’s house.

“Real?”

“The doctor who see about the lepers.”

Disappointment brought the stiffness back in Mumsford’s jaw.

Misinterpreting the change in Mumsford’s face, the boatman added quickly, “Maybe you see him another day. He don’t always be here. He come to the island now and then to give the lepers they medicine. If you want to see him, maybe you come another time.”

Mumsford bit his lip. The house was still as a grave. As they drew nearer, it seemed all but abandoned. The pretty pink that had caught his eyes was in fact rust. The entire galvanized roof, apparently neglected for years in the sun and rain, was stained with it. In parts the rust had turned bright orange, in some places a pale pink. Close up he saw that the ivory ripples below the roof were wood slats that were spotted and scraped, in need of fresh paint. The whitewash on the concrete walls on the bottom floor was recent but it barely camouflaged the places where the concrete had begun to crumble. The wooden shutters and doors were closed. Here and there Mumsford could make out where a shutter was broken, a slat dangled from a nail. Weeds and thin patches of high grass sprouted between the dirt and stones near the concrete pillars that held up the house. The only sign of life, if it could be called a sign of life, was a brown burlap hammock on the veranda swinging listlessly in the slight breeze. Someone had strung one end to a nail on the wall of the house and the other to one of the four unpainted wood poles that supported the rusty galvanized roof covering the veranda. But there was nothing, no other trace, not a piece of clothing, not a piece of paper, not a kitchen utensil, to indicate the existence of that someone.

He was in the Land of the Dead. There were no rivers, no ponds, no freshwater anywhere on the island, the commissioner had told him. No water except what one chanced to collect when it rained.

“And the lepers?” A chill ran up his spine.

“Not to worry. They never come here. They on the other side. ’Rond the bend. They can’t see you from this side.”

“And Dr. Gardner?” It was an effort to keep his fear from affecting his voice.

“Up yonder,” the boatman said, pointing to the distance beyond the doctor’s house. “Way behind there.”

All Mumsford could see was a thick nest of trees and interlocking branches. His eyebrows converged.

“It have a road,” the boatman said sympathetically. “You get there easy.”

But no road was in sight when the boatman steered the boat to the low stone wall that separated the doctor’s house from the sea, and once on land, on the pebbled dirt yard that bordered the doctor’s house (for there was no beach), what the boatman led him to was not a road but a dirt track, bounded on either side by bushes thinned out by the sun and entwined with vines whose brown stems were as thick as rope. Stiff dried branches stuck out across the dirt track and poked his legs.

“You lucky is the dry season,” the boatman said, “or you need cutlass to pass here. The bush thick when it rain.”

Mumsford asked him about snakes. In the dry season they crawled close to houses looking for water.

“Only horsewhip,” the boatman said.

“Horsewhip? Is it poisonous?”

“We does call it horsewhip because . . .”

Lines of sweat were trickling down Mumsford’s forehead into his eyes. He lost his patience. “For God’s sake, man.” He swiped his hand across his eyes. “I don’t want to know
why
you call it horsewhip. I want to know
if
it is poisonous. Can you answer that simple question?”

“Everybody from England does want to know,” the boatman said defensively.

“
I
want to know if it is poisonous. Can you tell me that? ” Mumsford had moved to the middle of the dirt track, far from the edge of the bushes, and was examining the area around him.

“Is a thin, thin, green snake. Like a whip. Just sting you when it whip you. It don’t kill.”

Not poisonous.
But Mumsford had no chance to savor his relief. Just when he felt the tension ease from his shoulders, the boatman reached between his belt and the waistband of his shorts and pulled out his machete.

“What?” Mumsford drew in his breath.

“Iguana,” he said, peering into the bushes. “They big like little dragon here.”

For Mumsford the trip on foot to Dr. Gardner’s house was a nightmare. His heart raced, beads of sweat collected dust on his top lip and down the sides of his bright red cheeks. He clutched his briefcase close to his chest.

“Carry that for you?” the boatman offered.

But for Mumsford the briefcase was a lifeline. It was England in a world shot backward to the heart of darkness.

Then suddenly it all changed. Then suddenly, at the end of the path where the bushes had grown wild, though now, in the dry season, were almost leafless and brown, was a meadow, a field of green stretching before him. And at the end of the field of green was a blaze of color, and behind it a white house with eaves and alcoves and large baskets of luscious green ferns hanging from the ceiling to the railings on a glorious porch.

“Dr. Gardner.” The boatman stopped. He waved his machete in the direction of the house. “Is here he live. I come back for you here. In an hour.”

It was frightening, too, all that green. Never had he seen such green, never on any lawn he knew, never even in England. For it was not simply green, it was brilliantly green. Plastic, artificially, brilliantly green. As he walked along the paved path that led to the house, he saw that the flowers, too, were brilliantly colorful, artificially colorful. But what made him suck in his breath was not the brilliance, the artificiality of color, but the variety, not of plants, but of the colors on a single plant. There, along the front of the house, were rose plants, and on each plant were flowers of every hue, and bougainvillea (yes, he was sure; he leaned in close to be sure), their petals splashed with polka dots, blue upon pink, violet on orange, yellow on red, the petals on some opened out flat like lilies.

THREE

"THE MIRACLES of the latest research in botany,” Dr. Gardner “said and satisfied Mumsford with his logical explanation for the shapes and colors. “I’ve been experimenting.” He had an answer, too, for the plastic-green lawn. “A special fertilizer, and I have a reservoir. I store water in the rainy season and pump it into my garden. I’ve built a generator in the back. We can take a look when we’re done here.”

They were already well inside the house when Mumsford asked his questions about the lawn and the flowers, and only because he was prompted, only because Dr. Gardner said to him, “What do you think about my lawn and my flowers?” Yet as he had walked toward the house no other questions had consumed him more, no other questions had been on the tip of his tongue causing him to lose memory temporarily of his only reason for coming. The green of the grass, the texture, the shapes and colors of the flowers, disturbed him but thrilled him, too. He wanted to know how the Englishman had done it. But when the Englishman appeared, the thrill he had felt subsided and his head spun with confusion and disappointment.

Dr. Gardner had met him on the porch. He had come through the front door tucking a white shirt down the back of his tan cotton pants. He was a tall, thin, wiry man with tiny nuggets of steel blue for eyes and skin tough like leather, burnt to a deep olive brown. His hair fell down in scraggly locks to his shoulders. It was a dark reddish color but the ends were light, bleached by the sun.

“It’s Mumsford, isn’t it?” he asked and he held out his hand. “I mean it’s not Mumford, or Munford, is it?”

“Yes, yes, it is Mumsford.”

He shoved the rest of his shirt down the front of his pants, pulled a blue elastic band off his wrist, and tied back his hair. “Servants,” he said. “Ariana told me an Inspector Munford was here to see me, but I knew she had made a mistake.”

Ariana.

Before Gardner appeared, Mumsford had knocked on the door, and when there was no answer he had peered through the window. He was certain he had seen a naked woman dashing across the drawing room. He had caught a glimpse of her back before she disappeared through another door. A tumble of wild black curls swished across her bare bottom, back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.

“Ariana,” Dr. Gardner called out. “Ariana!”

Perhaps it was another woman.

“Come, come, Inspector,” Dr. Gardner urged him. “Don’t stand there in the sun. Come inside. It’s nicer inside.”

She reappeared hovering behind him. The same tumble of hair. Ariana.

“Don’t stand in the doorway.” Dr. Gardner pushed her aside. “Make way, make way.”

Ariana, Dr. Gardner’s servant. Ariana, naked in Dr. Gardner’s drawing
room. Ariana who should not be questioned in the presence of Dr. Gardner.
Images collided in Mumsford’s head: the naked woman, the man tucking in his shirt.
Did he know she had written a letter to the commissioner?

Dr. Gardner led him into the drawing room. “Drinks for the inspector,” he said as he brushed past Ariana.

Mumsford kept his eyes focused on the room in front of him, too embarrassed to look back at her.

“Bit of a shock, isn’t it, young man?” Gardner was speaking to him.

Yes, but more than a bit of a shock.

“One never gets quite used to it.” Gardner chuckled. “I mean, after the blistering heat outside.”

The muscles on Mumsford’s face tightened.

“Relax, old man.” Gardner gave him a friendly tap on his back. “It’s only air-conditioning.”

It wasn’t that he had not felt the difference the instant he entered the room. Suddenly he could breathe, suddenly the pores on his neck and face contracted pleasantly, and his undershirt, seconds ago damp, sticking uncomfortably to his back, was a cool compress soothing his blistering skin. But it was a sensation he experienced almost unconsciously. His conscious self was preoccupied with sorting out the shock: the certainty that it was Ariana he had seen. He was not wrong about the hair, the lithe body, the liquid flow of brown skin. He was not wrong about the loose shirttails hanging out of Dr. Gardner’s pants, which were unbelted and, he could swear, unbuttoned at the waist.

“So what do you think?” Dr. Gardner’s voice penetrated his brain and Mumsford pulled himself together.

“I didn’t think the technology had been advanced for domestic use,” he said.

Gardner grinned. “Not for everybody, my man.”

She was still standing there, waiting, he supposed, for Dr. Gardner’s order. Dr. Gardner had not said what kind of drinks. Perhaps she was waiting to know exactly what he wanted her to bring.

“But it has advanced, it has advanced,” Dr. Gardner was saying, taking no notice of Ariana.

This was not his business, Mumsford reminded himself. He was not here to discuss her or her dealings with Gardner.

“And my lawn? What do you think about my lawn and my flowers?” Dr. Gardner came closer to him. So Mumsford asked and Gardner replied, “The miracles of the latest research in botany. I’m a scientist, Inspector.”

How logical was his answer, how simple. He was a scientist; he was experimenting with shapes and colors. Mumsford managed a smile. “And all this?” He cast his eyes around the room.

“For my Virginia,” Dr. Gardner said. “A little of England for her.”

Yes, that was what his subconscious mind had registered:
England.
He fixed his back resolutely toward her so he could not see her.
England.
There were no wicker and bamboo here, no couches covered in fabric with overlaying patterns of coconut fronds and bright red hibiscus. His eyes took in more: proper English armchairs, proper English love seats. Dr. Gardner had not been snared, as some of his compatriots on the island had, into succumbing to the foolish romantic notion of local color. In the drawing room where he stood, the chairs were upholstered in English fabrics, refined damasks in English floral patterns: sprays of pink, white, and red roses extending off long, leafy green stems against a pale yellow background. The drapes on the windows matched the yellow of the damask. On the mahogany cocktail table that separated the love seats were picture books of English gardens and a bronze sculpture of Don Quixote on his horse. He looked down to the rug on the floor.

“Persian,” Dr. Gardner said before he could inquire. “An original. Handwoven, not one of those modern machine-made imitations.”

No straw mats, either, on the wood floors.

One wall was completely lined with books. Mumsford could not read all the titles, but he was sure they were by English writers. Shakespeare—the name stood out—and then there were others: Milton, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, names he had learned in grammar school. England’s heroes, her geniuses. Racial pride flared through him like a brush fire. Whatever distaste he felt for Gardner when the image of his unbuttoned pants flashed across his brain was replaced now with genuine admiration. Here was an Englishman indeed.

“Sit. Sit.” Dr. Gardner pointed to an armchair. “Give me your hat and baton.”

Mumsford relinquished them with a slight bow, clicking his heels in military fashion. Gardner laughed and laid his hand lightly on his shoulder. “For heaven’s sake, at ease, young man. Don’t be so stuffy. Make yourself comfortable.”

Mumsford blushed. He had not intended the bow and the click, but he was overtaken by an enormous sense of relief. After the bugs, the scorching sun, the stifling scent of sweaty bodies, vegetation that was too green in the wet season, too brown in the dry, but always haphazard, always out of control, he was overjoyed to be in a room that reaffirmed a world he had been taught was his, a world of order and civility, though he did not know it personally, except from pictures his teachers had shown him and in the books he had read in school that reassured him of his heritage.

“I haven’t seen anything like this, sir,” he said. “Not in Trinidad.”

Dr. Gardner was pleased. “It’s all for my daughter,” he said. “So she’ll know. She was three, you understand, when we left.”

Mumsford put his briefcase on the floor next to the armchair, drew his fingers down the front seams of his pants, and sat down. “It must have been difficult for you, sir,” he said.

“Difficult?” Gardner fastened his eyes on Mumsford.

“What with a three-year-old, sir.”

“My daughter, Inspector, is that for which I live.”

His words sounded strange to Mumsford’s ears, melodramatic, theatrical, but he nodded his head sympathetically. After twelve years in the Land of the Dead, it was to be expected. A man could be excused under those conditions for being melodramatic.

“Quite. Quite,” he said. “And that is understandable, sir.”

But Gardner was not finished. “I have done nothing,” he said, continuing to keep his eyes on Mumsford, “but in care of her.”

Strange words again, but it was clear that Gardner meant exactly what he said. The intensity of emotion in his eyes made Mumsford uncomfortable and he looked away.
He did nothing except for her? In care of
her?
Still, Mumsford managed to say, “You must love your daughter, sir.”

“Immeasurably.”

When Mumsford looked up, he saw that Gardner’s eyes were misty. “I mean it is admirable, sir,” he said, feeling obliged to say something more. “All you have done here.” He extended his arm in a sweeping gesture across the room. “This room, this house. The furniture.”

The praise seemed to snap Gardner out of the sudden morose mood that had come over him. He turned his head, following the arc of Mumsford’s arm, and his lips curved upward in a self-satisfied smile. “I did my best,” he said.

“You should be congratulated, sir.”

“Music?”

Mumsford’s face flushed with pleasure and then he remembered he was on assignment for the commissioner. “If you please, sir, when we are done, sir.”

“Oh, I don’t mean calypso,” Gardner said, assuming there could be no other explanation for Mumsford’s discomfort. “Our music. Mozart’s concerto for oboe and strings. Do you know it? The concerto for oboe and strings?”

Mumsford did not know it. It was not his music; his music was not classical music. His music was popular music. He listened to Tommy Steele, Billy Fury, Cliff Richard. He liked Kenny Weathers and the Emotions, but he lied. It felt good to be in the company of a cultured Englishman, to be considered cultured himself. He was not in a hurry. He had time to ask his questions. “Haven’t heard it in a long time, sir,” he said.

“Then I will play it for you.” Gardner walked toward the console on the other side of the room.

“I’d like that, sir.”

“We have our own world here, you know, Mumsford.” Gardner picked up the record and balanced it between his open palms.

“In spite of the lepers, sir?” Mumsford asked, for it seemed miraculous to him that Gardner should have made a paradise here, in the Land of the Dead.

“The lepers take care of themselves.” Gardner put the record in the record player, raised the arm, and placed the needle carefully in the first groove. “Close your eyes, Mumsford. Listen. Be transported. England.”

He had dismissed his question about the lepers, but Mumsford did not mind. When the music poured out, encasing him in a warm cocoon, he, too, did not want to talk about lepers, he, too, did not want to spoil the moment by raising the specter of deformed flesh. He closed his eyes, as Gardner urged him to do, and let the music take him back across the Atlantic.

But Gardner allowed him only minutes before he pulled him back. “Now you will understand my distress better, Inspector,” he said.

Mumsford opened his eyes to see Gardner conducting, his arm rising and falling rhythmically through the air. “Now that you are here,” he said, still conducting the concerto with an imaginary baton, “you will know why I insisted that the commissioner send an Englishman, not a native.”

“I do, sir,” Mumsford said.

Gardner dropped his arm. “I wanted you to see for yourself. To understand the circumstances. My outrage. The depth of this insult to my person,” he said. He lowered the volume on the record player.

Mumsford sat up. “To your person, sir?” he asked. The music was barely audible now and he was no longer in a cocoon.

“To the person of all honorable Englishmen, Inspector. To the person of my daughter.” He closed the console and recrossed the room. “When you meet her, Inspector, you will find she will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her.” He hummed a few bars of the concerto and sat down on the armchair next to Mumsford’s. “A piece of England for my daughter,” he said.

He meant Mozart, and at the very least Mumsford knew that Mozart was not English, but it did not matter. He understood.

“Before you get the boy, I will show you my orchids and the rest of my garden.”

Yes, Mumsford thought, he could get the boy when he was done, after he had taken Gardner’s deposition. But Gardner did not wait for his response. “Ariana!” he shouted.

She was still there. She had not left the room. Gardner need not have raised his voice. She stood near the back door, twirling a strand of her long hair between her fingers.

“Ariana, the drinks!” She dropped her hand and swung it behind her back. It was the only acknowledgment she gave that she had heard him.

Mumsford had not been unaware of her presence. From time to time, in spite of his pleasure over the furniture, the crispness in the air, the reassuring music, his eyes had strayed in her direction. A will-o’-the-wisp, he had thought. They flitted over the marshes on hot summer nights. A speck of light too fleeting to be brilliant.

Ethereal.
That was the word he had been searching for, yet it was a word that was inconsonant with her deep brown skin, her black wavy hair. Consonant, though, with her slight frame, her small bones, her long arms that dangled from their sockets, her long legs, her bare feet, her long, long hair, her huge eyes, which one noticed next, or first, if one saw her from the front and not from the back. They were round and bright, and made the rest of her face—her satiny smooth cheeks, her flat nose, her tiny mouth—seem inconsequential. She was probably Indian, though something about the curls in her hair and the flattish nose bridge told him that perhaps there was an African parent or grandparent. Doogla. That was what she was. It was the name the native people gave to such mixtures. Yes, she was a doogla.