Strange Music (18 page)

Divisions within me reigned to such an extent I finished crocheting a shawl. I wished for a while that I were dead. How much I loved and cherished Papa! I must help, I thought. I couldn't tell him face to face because when I tried to voice what I felt it sounded foolish. I lay on the bed and even practised cross stitch, hoping Papa loved me as I loved him.

A lively
pop-thwack!
of a flying cork hits the ceiling below, followed in quick pursuit by the gushing fizz of champagne. Peals of Sam's reckless laughter lance up through the floorboards.

Sam, the hard-drinking fool – it is seldom now that he mentions the estates. Must I live with the monster little Sam has become? As the eldest brother, Bro should rightly set sail for Jamaica. It would be preferable if
Sam
sailed back in place of him. The extent of the discomfort I feel is not measurable – the tension between us is mounting – I sense Sam hides deviant folly and erroneous deeds.

June has kept Sam safely in Torquay for eight days.

After yesterday's party to celebrate Stormie's arrival, Sam said that whilst in London he prevailed on Trippy to present him with my picture, ‘with a few alterations for which Arabella sat'; he added, ‘Trippy succeeded in obtaining a likeness', and I glimpsed the sweet Sam of yesteryear. He told me he will value my portrait as much as a companion if he returns to Jamaica.

This morning he was in fine spirits, and after breakfasting told me a dreadful tale which I think he had considered would gladden my heart.

It seems that before Uncle Samuel died in Jamaica over a year ago he altered his will three times to benefit a black female servant attendant, one Rebecca Laslie, declaring finally that a legacy should be payable to the servant upon his death only if his executors considered her conduct and attention during his illness to have merited such a mark of his approval. Whether Rebecca Laslie
should
or
should not
be bequeathed the grand sum of one hundred Jamaican pounds, Uncle Samuel could not himself decide. Sam, the executor, cannot decide either. He claims that to allow the duties of a devoted servant to go unrewarded in the West Indies will never do. Sam's situation is delicate, he said. He asked me what he should do. If I could assist him in some even small way, I would. He swore rumours of improprieties between this servant and Uncle Samuel will spread like fire across Jamaica if she
does
receive the legacy. Well!

The sky is almost dark. Sam has brought two letters with him from our cousin, Samuel Goodin Barrett in Jamaica, which he now takes the trouble to read. Our cousin is quite recovered from an attack of fever caught, he says, by his own impudence for not changing wet shoes for dry after descending the Blue Mountain peak. With regard to Papa's properties, little or no labour has been obtained. Cane-cutters at Cinnamon Hill have staged a strike for higher pay and the overseer obliged to stop work – this news duly brings unease to Sam's voice as he reads on.

‘Sam! Sam!' Bro calls from the dining-room. ‘We need you here for dinner. Hurry up, by Jove!'

Before I know it, and with the strangest smile, Sam is gone.

A shadow slopes across the landing threatening my doorway. ‘Now Papa has reconsidered Uncle's will,' it says in a thick drunken brawl, chin dropping to chest, the neck too weak to hold up the head, ‘I'm more than certain I'll be granted attorneyship of our Jamaican estates when I return.' I cannot understand the meaning of the words sliding from thin lips into dusky air.

A mask has slipped. The Sam-who-is-no-longer-Sam stands aloof on the threshold of my chamber. Dubiously his head shakes; he appears to be speaking to the chair adjacent to my bed. ‘One Sunday morning, shortly after arriving in Jamaica two years ago, and whilst still becoming acquainted with Papa's estates, I was riding.' Stoop-shouldered, he props his torso against the door-frame, his hand muzzles a yawn. ‘I was riding down Cinnamon Hill plantation path, when I knocked heavily filled market baskets from slaves' heads, thus forcing,
forcing
Negro women to dash about, grovelling on the ground, chasing rolling mangoes all over the place.' Glancing at me he sniggers and, from a small silver twin case, singles out a cigar, lights it, eyes flickering, and exhales a tube of blue smoke into the room. In him I see a selfish, brutal, indulged man.

‘Yes, continue,' I say.

‘Then, showering the slaves with handfuls of silver coins –'

‘As some crude compensation?'

‘– I galloped away!'

Despite the confusion it has brought at a tender time of change on the West Indian estates, Sam now admits Papa
ordered
his return – because of this and other tales, and the latest controversy involving him which he and Papa still refuse to reveal.

Well! Although pity is poor charity I
do
pity poor Papa for Sam's jests, and I am frequently visited by the disquieting notion that West Indian influences may – contrary to Papa's readjustment plan – have corrupted Sam, morally, all the more. Were I to attempt to raise this matter with Papa I am certain he would treat me very cruelly indeed,
but I never was acquainted with a
young
man of any mind or imagination
, except, of course, dear Brozie, and Brozie believes I inhabit such high moral ground that he'll never climb to where I stand.

I am turning over in my mind a question which has haunted me for many a long month: what are the implications of my family's fast-diminishing wealth having been derived from others' suffering? God chose not to grace me with Voltaire's genius, but a likeness to one situation Voltaire and I do share, for ‘It is a dreadful bore to be here, but it is very advantageous' for weighing up such concerns of the mind.

‘Sam,' I inquire, ‘if one man's greed is another man's hunger, who paid the price for our luxuries?'

This time he grins shiftily. Crossing the room with cigar in hand he bows then kisses my forehead good-night.

No amount of denial will erase the painful truth confirmed by Sam's silence.

I let my eyelids fall shut. Hope End rises immense, palatial, from the bosom of the Malvern Hills. Shockingly exotic with its neo-Turkish minarets, domelets and metal spires. Oriental pagoda-like architecture, flamboyant and bizarre, and as eccentric as Papa could design, it attracts much attention; the young Princess Victoria is even surveying the grounds. I can see through the dining-room, with its crimson flock wallpaper, to peacocks strutting on the terrace; the circular-ended drawing-room decorated in the Italian style; the Moorish views hanging in the billiard room; the handsomely stuccoed library; and the views across the parkland which was well stocked with doe and stags until they threatened the Spanish chestnuts, Portuguese laurels and other rarer trees.

All the splendour by which I am surrounded, all Papa has gained, comes from that bitter-sweet substance, sugar.

I have pushed this away, fought it, but like the sinister silk-black salt water stirring beneath the waxing moon, which can seep through the tiniest crack in the underbelly of a boat, or lashing rain that bleeds through a chink in a rotten window-frame, forming a pool on the sill, this fear has leaked into my thoughts.

Guilt pierces like lightning, like a truth; but unlike truth it fills me with shame. No consolations exist. How to be rid of what's past?

How to escape a polluted family? A family of thieves who stole not only money, but lives. Who took from children what wasn't theirs to take; who perpetuated great injustices that sanctioned rebellions. My thoughts become a garden. Too overgrown with no clear path. Prickly, riddled with tunnels leading nowhere. My faith, my belief, is nailed to emptiness. Empty thoughts. Empty words. Empty deeds.

I care little for material possessions and clothes but that last glimpse of Hope End's domes disappearing behind trees was like being cast out of paradise. Our Hope End home in the Malvern Hills
was
paradise. And yet not for the all the earthly wonders would I sit in the sunlight and shade of those hills any more. It would be a travesty to live in such false glory, like the stitching back together of the torn petals of a rose. I would as soon exhume a corpse as do it. Did hope for ever end there?

What strikes me now is that not only my brother Sam, Uncle Samuel and Cousin Richard in Jamaica, but Papa, Mama – all those whom I most dearly love – each brother and sister of mine are implicated in this crime, as well as myself. Our decadence makes me sick. I lie stunned as if by a blow to the head. Why has it taken so long for this realization to form, and for me to confront the facts? Can so thin a body carry such a thick mind?

I have long known that the human race is cruel and unscrupulous. I was only thirteen when I wrote
The Battle of Marathon
. Papa had fifteen copies printed, distributed and circulated. Aware, all those years ago, of the powers of the ruling classes and the way that what is past and present can be manipulated as a political tool, I was a tethered bird, striving to fly beyond a narrow perspective in order to see a greater picture, a more sympathetic view of the world.

This narrow strip on which I have balanced, this journey of a woman's soul, one whose privileges depend upon the suffering of others, seems yet more desolate, yet more bleak.

Freed from a girlhood crisis in faith – I am gladdened for
that
being behind me – I now cannot trust to joy. To me, wisdom lies in recognizing that all the kindness and excellences of this earth must be paid for by grief. I shall always be wary of happiness. Everything has its price.

‘You were crying out loud,' Bro says. Looking down anxiously, he stands over my bed. ‘Was it another bad dream?' He has brought a lighted candle; behind his shadowy head glimmers a pearl-white moon.

‘It was,' I reply. ‘My heart is so full I can barely breathe.' Bro smiles patiently. He comes nearer. His cheeks, though creamy-smooth, are flushed from salt-winds with a rouge which suggests roses bloom beneath the skin. His eyes hold an iridescent yellow, the pupils shine as if tiny stars sparkle within. ‘It was as if I had closed a door on the world and had shut myself up in a room of my own, shut up in darkness. The door was shut and it would not open.'

Sam, the creature I do not know, seats himself on the end of my bed.

Henrietta drifts about in the gloom. ‘Ba's distress,' she murmurs in Sam's ear, ‘is due to an over-stimulated mind. Too many books.'

To Bro I turn a tear-stained face, searching his eyes for an answer. Bro's look is increasingly troubled. I say to him, ‘In God my faith has strengthened.
He
is the saver of souls.
He
is the Supreme Being above, who delivers to man all that is true, all that is good.
He
is the divine grace, the powerful, beautiful, almighty one who teaches the holy principle of love.'

‘Dear Ba,' Bro replies, kneeling at my bedside for evening prayers.

One of my favourite passages from the Holy Scriptures creeps into my mind: ‘
The Lord of peace Himself give you peace always and by all means' – it strikes upon this disquieted earth with such a
foreignness
of heavenly music – surely the ‘variety', the
change,
is to find a silence and a calm
.

‘Papa has not granted Sam attorneyship of Cinnamon Hill,' Henrietta says. She is seated on the window-sill. ‘And Papa has told me that
we
are going
downhill
so fast we shall soon reach the bottom, “the Negroes
won't
work and there is no crop”.'

‘Should he have to return,' I say, ‘Sam had better send Papa better accounts, or he will have us all in Jamaica before long.'

Henrietta's lugubrious eyes avoid mine. I notice her face is swollen from crying. ‘Sam says the heat in Jamaica alone is enough to drive him mad.' She turns to finish her crochet work.

‘He is not the brother I once knew,' I add. ‘He has changed, well . . . dramatically. He was always closer to you, Henrietta, than anyone else in the family.' Feeling Henrietta's pain, tentatively I inquire, ‘Before leaving for London did he spend much time with you, dear?'

‘He is a man of much business,' she replies.

Part of me longs to see Papa's true home, for I know he thinks of Jamaica in that way. To see those majestic stone walls soaked with the sunlit shafts that stream through a lattice of lime-green leaves and drench the flagstones of the back verandah. Cinnamon Hill great house – I wonder why I should feel nostalgia for a world I never knew. I picture a long, low, rambling grey stone building looking out across the face of the ocean. Palms, in silhouette, a burst of dark green. Banana leaves glisten on densely forested slopes hung thickly with creeper ropes. The arching sky is heavy, blue; the heat leaden with the scent of sugar. Bro said the panoramic view from the sundial opposite the steps to the piazza shows the ocean's various shades of indigo through to turquoise, lightening to pale sapphire, blending into the hollow dome of sky. I see plantations of coconut trees, acres of guinea grasses; sugar canes; gardens ornate and exotic; plantain walks; lofty mountains; wells, pastures, ponds, lime kilns; Negro cottages, kitchens, hospitals, still-houses, mills, roads, paths and tracks, all leading to the Caribbean sea. But in regard to slavery – No. No. No. That system was monstrous for those wretched souls. Mahogany-faced Junius objected to accompanying Sam on his first journey to the West Indies because he greatly feared entering even the apprenticeship system. According to Junius it is not yet true that slavery is abolished (and Papa says he wishes to start it up again). Sam says the Jamaican lowlands are infested with biting insects. Papa's cousin, Richard, although he did have one guide, the Lord Our Saviour, had many tales of undesirable practices, as do Sam and Brozie.