Sugar in the Morning (3 page)

I found myself laughing back at him, laughing and crying at the same time in a way that made hay of my make-up.

“Oh, Uncle Philip,” I said, “I am glad to be here!”

“Of course you are,” he agreed comfortingly. “Just what we needed too! Camilla, m’dear, my home is yours for as long as you need it
.
”

It should have made me feel at home, but it didn’t. It was all the fault of Daniel Hendrycks! He had sown my path with doubts and now I couldn’t get rid of them!

CHAPTER TWO

The
air was silky and full of strange fragrances when we went out into the streets of Port of Spain. I don’t know what I had expected, but this more than fulfilled all my dreams. We walked down Charlotte Street because my uncle wanted me to savour the atmosphere. There had been a great fire in 1808, he told me, and now the city was built on a wide-streeted grid plan that was easy to master. Charlotte Street had been given its name because at that time Queen Charlotte had been consort to the King of England. It was in Charlotte Street that my uncle lived.

I was puzzled by this. It seemed difficult to believe that anyone grew sugar in the middle of a city, but I was so bemused by the new sensations and sights all around me that I hardly cared. Never had I seen so many truly beautiful people, who walked with a swing and laughed easily and with their whole bodies. They were all colours and kinds, but all shared the same sense of movement and rhythm which showed in their walk and the way they talked. It gave an infectious air of gaiety to the street as the oyster stands turned on their lights and an enormous Negress offered peeled oranges from the refuge of a doorway.

The houses began well, but towards the end of the street they had an air of decayed elegance that looked as th
o
ugh they would soon fall into pieces altogether. Built of wood, they were sadly in need of a coat of paint to enhance the ancient carvings that had been cut deep into the wood.

“That’s home!” Uncle Philip roared as we came
within earshot of his house. “I’ll tell the boys we’re coming.” He proceeded to do just that, bawling the information at the top of his voice. “Wilfred
!
Cuthbert! Come and meet your pretty cousin! Come out, I say!
Where are you?”

The door was flung open and a large woman came out. A Negress, she had her head wrapped up in a large scarlet handkerchief exactly like an American Mammy. Her silk shirt was too small for her and her voluminous cotton skirt could have fitted around her twice over. Her broad grin showed more teeth than I had ever seen on any other human being.

“Tha’s welcome you am!” she boomed. “The boys coming by and by. They’s changing their clothes. Her gigantic arms enfolded me to her broad bosom while her laughter rumbled on. I liked the warm smell of her and the hard muscular feel to her arms.

“I’m Camilla,” I began hesitantly.

“You is!” she agreed. “I’se Patience. Ain’t got no other name, not so’s I remember. Everyone calls me
Patience.”

“She runs the house and things,” my uncle put m helpfully.

“I sure does!”

I wondered what to say. In the end I compromised by grinning broadly back at her, and apparently this was all she wanted, for she disappeared into the house again, yelling for my two cousins.

They spilt out on to the street still pulling on their clean shirts and smoothing down their exuberant hair. They were quite fascinatingly good-looking and they knew it. The elder, whom I judged to be closer to thirty than to twenty, held out his hand to me.
“
Welcome to the family homestead, Cousin Camilla,” he drawled.

“
You’re surely welcome!” echoed the younger brother.

My uncle turned on them furiously. “And what do you suppose she’s going to think of you if you speak that way?” he demanded.

“What should she think?” the elder son returned.

Uncle Philip sighed heavily. “They’ve had no mother to soften their ways,” he apologised. “This is my elder son, Wilfred. Cuthbert is the younger one.”

“If you’re good you can call me Bert,” Cuthbert added in an undertone. I sympathised with him. They were neither of them names that I would have chosen, but I knew they had both recurred in the family from time to time and I supposed that my uncle had more family feeling than I had at first suspected.

“It’s lovely to meet you all
!”
I exclaimed. It was so long since I had had any family that my voice broke, but I caught myself up and managed a smile. “I didn’t know I had such a handsome family
!”

“Nor we that we had such a tall cousin,” Wilfred returned coolly.

“Now, now, boys
!”
my uncle put in warningly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I assured him hastily. “I am tall,
I know, taller than any of you.”

My uncle went into the house and ushered me in beside him. He shook his head at me and smiled, his eyes twinkling in the gloomy hall. “Mebbe you are tall for a lass, but you’re not taller than that Daniel Hendrycks, are you now? But then,” he went on sarcastically, “there’s no one in the whole island that’s taller than he!”

The brothers stiffened at the mention of his name. “Daniel, did you say?” Wilfred drawled. “Now how did you get to know our Daniel?”

I was determined not to take them too seriously. “I booked his passage out here, as a matter of fact,” I said casually. “It was my job, you know.”

“But—” Cuthbert began. His brother cut him off
sharply with a look. “But,” he said again, “you were released from having to toil for a living by your good
fortune. Lucky you!”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It makes a nice change being a lady of leisure,” I agreed. “But I don’t think I’d like it for ever
!”

I began to take in my surroundings with an increasing sense of awe. The heavy Victorian furniture and multitudes of pictures, of the Royal Family, dubious ancestors, and even of film stars, littered the walls wherever I looked. Large, healthy pot plants stood on every window-sill and the tables were all neatly covered with burnt orange coloured squares of cloth, as useless as they were hideous.

“How long have you been living here?” I asked in
hollow tones.

“A few years,” Uncle Philip admitted. “Patience keeps the house going. She likes it the way it is, so we’ve never bothered to change it. Besides, we’re not as
modern
in our ways as you are in England.

“No,” I agreed. “As a matter of fact Victoriana is all the rage now.”

“But you don’t like it?” he prompted me.

“I didn’t say that,” I said.

He laughed. “You didn’t have to. Never mind, my dear, do what you like with the place. I give you a free hand to make any alterations you care to. Is that fair enough?”

I liked him better than ever. “It’s more than generous,” I said gratefully. “I’ll try not to do anything that you don’t like.”

Cuthbert stared at me insolently. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” he muttered. ‘You’re learning fast, sweet cousin.”

I swallowed. I hadn’t understood that it was my money that would pay for all the changes. Perhaps I
had been stupid, I thought with embarrassment. Perhaps now was the time that I should arrange with my uncle how much I should pay for my keep? But when I tried to bring up the matter, he shrugged all such matters to one side.

“We’re not here much, girl. We’ll consider it all when we see how things work out. How’s that?”

“It’s fine,” I said. What else could I say? I would have liked to have known exactly where I stood, but it was a relief to know that they didn’t spend much time in the town house. Obviously they had to look after the sugar for most of their time. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? And the answer to that I knew quite well and it annoyed me all the more. It was all because Mr. Daniel Hendrycks had seen fit to rouse my suspicions about my family. But I wasn’t going to allow his barbs to affect me one bit! Not if I could help it!

Patience offered to show me up the stairs to my room. The stairs were wooden like everything else in the house and years of polishing had turned them black and given them a shine that put my shoes to shame.

“You must be a marvellous housekeeper!” I complimented Patience.

“I is, honey, I is!” she agreed. “Is it the truth that you has money? We could sure do with some in this house. You’se seen how things is with us—”

“I suppose sugar hasn’t been paying very well recently?” I enquired gently, trying not to sound inquisitive.

Patience’s laugh boomed out. “Sugar? My, my, now what put that to come into your head?”

“I don’t know,” I said meekly. “I just thought my uncle had something to do with sugar. Doesn’t he?”

“I s’pose he does. It’s a short season,” she added gloomily. “Need more than a sugar crop to keep our
fires burning. Reckon it was lucky you is come! You’m surely welcome In this house
!”

She threw open a door and sailed into the room she had allotted to my use, well pleased with the preparations she had made. I gasped with surprise when I saw how pleasant and feminine she had made the room. The bed was an ancient iron one, painted white, and covered with a cotton counterpane of the most delicate shades of green, pink and white. There were flowers everywhere, hiding the bareness of the plain wooden furniture. Most of them I had never seen before, but the sheer intensity of colour and scent was exotic and startling to one who had that day left a wintry England.

“Oh, what a lot of trouble you’ve been to!” I exclaimed gratefully.

“’Tweren’t no trouble. You’se welcome. You settle, Miss ’Milla. That Wilfred’ll bring your bags and I unpack your pretties right now. Don’t you bother none!”

It was pleasant to be waited on. It was not an experience that had ever come my way before, but Patience was so delighted to have another woman in the house that she seemed all set to spoil me to death. Her happy chatter went on and on as I explored my new home. I found I had a small bathroom all to myself, with the bath and basin built out of solid marble—relics, I supposed, from more affluent days. The lavatory was china and decorated with large blue roses that might or might not have been hand-painted, but which were certainly dramatically beautiful. Perhaps, I thought, there was something to be said for the Victorian character of the house after all.

“I see you’ve cleared out some of the carpets and coverings from up here,” I said to Patience.

She nodded her enormous head. “Sure have. It ain’t
my business downstairs. I keep them flowers going an all. I polish and I scrub. And there be some right pretty objects down there. There’s modern and modern, that’s what I says
!
”

“
There is indeed!” I agreed, and was rewarded by her large, warm smile. She hugged herself gleefully and hovered in the doorway waiting for Wilfred to bring up my suitcase. Every now and then she bellowed down the stairs to hurry things up, but as nothing happened at all I supposed that they had all got used to her shouted comments and were able to ignore them more or less completely.

“I come here with the mistress,” she volunteered after a while. “She’m dead now. Pretty a little creature as ever you clapped eyes on! I sure loved that one.” She shrugged. “I’se still here on account o’ her. Couldn’t leave her boys with anyone strange. But we sure did , miss her! Miss ’Milla, that one was the pick of this bunch. I’se telling you and I’se know it for a fact!”

Fortunately, before I could leap to the defence of my side of the family, Wilfred appeared with my luggage. He plonked it down in the doorway, leaning against the wall, saying nothing but just watching me. What a handsome man he was! I feasted my eyes on his fair, square-cut face and his large grey eyes that were almost too feminine to look well on a man.

“I was thinking, cousin,” he said at last, “that you might like to get out and have a look round our little city?”

“That would be lovely!” I agreed quickly. The sounds from the street were tantalising and I badly wanted to see for myself all that was going on. I wouldn’t admit to myself that I also wanted to escape from the rather oppressive atmosphere of the house, but I think there was a little of that in my eagerness, too.

“You’ll need a wrap,” he said. “It’s cool when the
sun goes down.”

To me it was delightfully warm. I pulled a light stol
e
out of my
bulging suitcase and hurried down the stairs, stopping only to make sure that Wilfred was coming behind me. My uncle was standing in the hall and he beamed with pleasure when he saw that we
were going out together.

“That’s the spirit!” he said. “We’re all friends in my house. We always have been and we always will be. Have a good time, the two of you!”

A fine aroma of mixed spices, chickens and kerosene lamps hung over Charlotte Street that night. In the corner of Independence Square, not far from the house, a steel band was playing. Considering that everyone in it was an amateur who had himself beaten out his own instrument and tuned it with elaborate care, the music sounded sweet and true. The performers swayed back and forth with the rhythm and I was amused to see some of the passers-by begin to dance as they hurried along. Indeed I was sorely tempted to
myself.

“Where are we going?” I asked Wilfred.

“I don’t know,” he replied indifferently. “Perhaps you’d like to try the oysters? Most tourists go for them
in a big way.”

I was quite willing to try anything. I wanted to look at everything on the way though which made our progress rather slow. I had never been in a place before where everyone came out in the cool of the evening to walk and to look at each other. Nobody was in a hurry to go back to the homes. They stood on corners and gossiped and laughed more than any other people
I had ever met.

“
I’ll take you to the stall of a friend of mine,
”
Wilfred said suddenly. “He always manages to get the best ones going.” He grinned, looking very much more relaxed and friendly. “Tell me, Cousin Camilla, do you think you’re going to like Trinidad?”

“I think it’s lovely!” I said truthfully. “Tell me all about these oysters. Do you ever go and collect them?”