Sugar in the Morning (8 page)

“People talk anywhere,” I said in defeated tones. Truth to tell, I hadn’t heard any talk at all. I had just known that Daniel was hardly likely to be fancy free,
waiting for one of the despised Ironsides to fall in love with him. Of
course
he had plans for his own future and who else would it be but the rich, the charming and the hard-working Miss Pamela Longuet who would attract his attention as a suitable partner?

“How long will it take to buy?” I asked abruptly.

Mr. Glover spread his fingers thoughtfully. “Nothing gets done during Carnival. But I’ll get on with it, don’t you worry. I’ll call you as soon as we need your signature. Otherwise you can safely leave everything with me. Okay?”

I rose and shook hands with him. “Okay,” I agreed. I summoned up a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Glover. Thank you very much.”

To my surprise he looked embarrassed. “ ’Tweren’t nothing!” he muttered. “And call me Aaron, do. Everybody round here does. Mr. Glover makes me think you’re talking to my father!”

I laughed. “All right, Aaron. My name is Camilla.”

“I know!” he laughed. “A pretty name it is too.” Walking home past the shops I saw that Woolworths had broken out in a rash of plastic masks and paper costumes that told their own story of how near we were to Carnival time. Small boys, hidden by the hideous caricatured faces of famous people, dashed back and forth in the crowded street, exploding rockets that sounded like gunfire amidst squeals of delight. The sun was hot and there was not a single cloud in the sky. I felt very alone and foreign and I longed for the cool green fields of England and the iron grey of the English sea.

The Ironsides were rejoicing. I felt apart from them as I watched them, drinking rum, laughing loudly and singing the occasional saucy calypso, none of which were ever finished. They drank rum in the typical
Trinidad manner, in a long cool drink called Planters Punch. As far as I was concerned the accent should have been on the last word, for it had a kick that could blow your head off! It was made with the juice of half a lime, two ounces of Demerara, a teaspoonful of grenadine and a generous dash of Angostura bitters. To this concoction was added ice and soda water and then, beware, it slid down as easily as an iced fruit drink, to backfire later if one’s head was not as hard as iron.

I didn’t really much like the taste of rum. Heavily disguised, or served hot with lemon, I found it just palatable, but to me it remained ‘Demon Drink’ rather than a solace and if anything else was offered I invariably chose that because it tasted nicer.

Now, while my family rejoiced, I struggled with my pride as to how I was going to climb down and ask Daniel if I could visit his refinery after all. This problem was not one I could shelve for very much longer. Aaron had already obtained a verbal agreement on the sale of the Longuet estate which, while my family rejoiced, made my spirits sink even further. In the end I decided that rather than face Daniel at all, I would write to Pamela Longuet thus happily bypassing Daniel, and would get her to invite me to look both at her family
’
s estate and the sugar refinery. I must admit I was rather pleased with this solution. I turned it over and over m my mind and could find no flaw in it. So, to the accompaniment of Wilfred singing to some yellow bird in a banana tree, I sat down and composed a cool, elegant letter in my best handwriting and posted it there and then before I had time to have any second thoughts
about it.

The answer was not long in coming. Miss Longuet was delighted that I wanted to visit her. She suggested that I should take a bus from Port-of-Spain down to the south of the Island where she would meet me. More, she would be charmed if I would stay the night as she understood it was I who was actually buying the sugar estate from her parents.

My family were less delighted at the idea of my going on such a mission by myself.

“I’ll come along and keep an eye on you,” Wilfred offered lazily.

“And why you?” Cuthbert demanded. “Have you been the one who has been showing her round the island? She prefers my company, don’t you, Camilla?”

“I don’t want either of you!” I exclaimed impatiently. “If I take anyone it will be Patience.”

“Patience?” they gasped.

“Why not?” I asked flatly. The idea was beginning to grow on me. It would be nice to have Patience’s salty good humour on the long bus journey and she wouldn’t be in the least afraid of Pamela’s parents with their money, and pretty, affable ways.

“Well, if you
must
,”
my cousins said at last, but it was plain they found me completely barmy even to contemplate taking Patience on such a trip. Patience herself was pleased to be going, however. She sorted my clothes with a fierce eye for what would and what would not be appropriate for such a visit.

“We be back for Carnival, Miss ’Milla, no? I’se not likin’ to play mas’ away from home.’

“Of course we’ll be back,” I assured her without interest. “You don’t mind coming with me, do you, Patience
?
”

She stood with her arms akimbo, her great face beaming with pleasure. “I’se say not! Jest like ole times, Miss ’Milla! Jest like ole times!”

Patience was a tower of strength during the journey. It was she who bought our tickets for the bus while I stood and waited for her, in a welter of noise and excitement.

“One thousand dollars
has
to be won!” screamed the wireless. “Buy your tickets here for the Tobago State Lottery. One thousand dollars
must
be won
this week
!” The tannoy system of the bus company chimed in with various messages for passengers and attendants alike. Occasionally someone burst into song as they brushed the tickets away from the pavement, or tried to earn a little bit extra by carrying a richer man’s suitcase on to the bus.

“Come
on,
Miss ’Milla! We cain’t be standin’ here all day!” Patience hauled me on to the bus after her ample form and seated me on one of the seats while she saw to putting the luggage away. “Don’t you move one inch, Miss’
Milla, you’se hearin’
me?”

“Not one inch!” I agreed mildly.

A Negro couple came and sat in front of me. They were very young and I suspected very recently married. The young bride peeped at me at intervals through her enormous brown eyes and shyly smiled when she found that my interest was equal to her own. “Ain’t you got no car?” she asked at last, just as Patience struggled back to take her seat beside me.

“No, she ain’t!” Patience snapped back. “You’se be a sight better mindin’ you’se own business, I’se tellin’ you!”

“It’s all right, Patience,” I said quickly. “We’re already friends.”

But the big woman’s glowering look made the young bride shyer than ever and she spent the rest of the journey whispering sweet nothings to her husband and pointedly ignoring everyone else on the bus.

Behind us someone was listening to a cricket commentary on their transistor radio, a never-ending stream of words that was broken only for the Death Announcements that seemed to be as important a part of death in Trinidad as black crepe had been in Victorian England.
It must have been quite a good radio because I could hear every word despite the fact that we were hurtling along the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway at a speed that showed that when they said it was an express bus they me
a
nt exactly that.

From the American war-built Highway we turned on to the more recent Princess Margaret Highway that led straight down to the south of the Island. We passed the Caroni Swamp, some ten thousand acres of swampland and mangroves, where the scarlet ibis held regal court in their sanctuary and built impractical, flimsy nests in the mangrove trees in which they hoped to bring up their young.

The flat countryside sped past. Houses stood on stilts amidst the palm groves and banana trees. Red and white Hindu prayer flags were mounted on poles and looked like knights’ lances from the Middle Ages, adorned by their ladies’ favours. Fields which were often used as rice-paddies in the wet weather were now growing vegetables with equal vigour. I saw some muddy water buffalo grazing by the roadside with some shabby sheep and goats and overhead some egrets flew, disturbed from their usual lordly stroll behind the field animals. A number of people had slung home-made hammocks between the trees that surrounded their houses and were now fast asleep in them, sheltering from the midday heat after their early start at work. And then at last there was the sugar, planted in endless rows, green and mauve feathery leaves blowing gently in the wind. It might have been a rather monotonous scene, but I found myself entranced by it all and delighted in the subtle colouring of the crop and the way the long leaves ro
ll
ed in waves away from the wind much like the waves of the sea.

San Fernando was a more hilly place than Port-of-
S
pain. We slowed down a little at the outskirts, to my
relief, and then rushed on into the centre of the town, pulling up outside the bus depot. Patience hurried out of the bus, a set look on her face, intent on retrieving our luggage, while I stretched my cramped limbs and took my first look round. I couldn’t see Pamela anywhere, but I wasn’t too worried by her absence. She would turn up in time, I thought, and meanwhile there was plenty to see. I shouldn’t have minded if we had been kept waiting for hours just to have an opportunity to watch the passers-by, the Negroes, the Hindus and Moslems who had been imported at one time to save the sugar industry when the notorious slave trade came to an end, the Chinese and those of European ancestry, a happy mixture of laughing, singing people who were all of them beautiful by any standard in their confident love of life and freedom of movement.

“Well, long legs, so you came?”

My mouth went dry as I turned my head quickly to see if it was indeed Daniel. “What are you doing here?” I asked faintly.

He grinned. “Meeting you, what else? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested,” I said.

“Now I wonder what gave you that idea?” he said thoughtfully. “Most men are flattered when someone takes their advice, you know. And that’s what you
’
re doing, isn’t it?”

I lifted my head proudly. “I was under the impression I was following Mr. Glover’s advice,” I told him.

His eyebrows rose in easy mockery. “Have you come
a
lone?” he asked.

I shook my head and pointed out Patience in the crowd that was still fighting to retrieve their baggage from the back of the bus. At the same moment Patience saw him and, leaving our luggage to its fate, she positively ran across the depot, her big arms flailing the air in front of her.

“Mr. Dan, sir!” she cried out. “Mr. Dan, it’s never
you! Why, if I’se known you’se was here
—
!” Tears
poured down her cheeks and she brushed them away impatiently. “Mr. Dan, sir!”

Daniel submitted to her embrace, warmly kissing her on the cheek much as he would have done a favourite aunt.

“Hullo, Patience,” he greeted her. “How are you?”

“I’se fine! But I’se worked out working for Ironsides. I’se Hendrycks woman, jest like always!” She broke into a comfortable laugh and he laughed with her, slapping her on the back and laughing all over again, while I looked on with fascinated disapproval. How could the Ironsides ever win if they employed traitors in their own household? I sniffed, but they only looked at me and burst out laughing all over again.

“You should see your face!” Daniel roared at me. “Come on and help me get the luggage!”

CHAPTER SIX

D
aniel
drove us straight to the refinery in his Mustang. Patience sat in the back, whooping with pleasure as we went round every
corner
, while I sat in
a grim silence in the front.

“Cheer up, long legs,” Daniel s
ai
d after a bit with a
sl
y
smile. “I’m very pleased to see you!”

“I wish you would not refer to me by that ridiculous term!” I grunted. “Weren’t you ever taught not to
make personal remarks?”

He laughed delightedly.
“
Touché
!
But you have such lovely legs that I thought you wouldn’t mind
.”

“Well I do,” I said, swallowing madly at a lump that had somehow formed in my throat “I know I
’
m far too tall for most men, but that doesn
’
t mean I want to be
reminded of it all the time.
”

He managed to look both repentant and amused at the same time and said casually: “You
’
re not too
tall
for me
.
” There was no answer to that, so I relapsed bac
k into silence
. But
I
was excited by the sights
and
so
unds of the town despite myself and I quickly forgot my grievance as we travelled along the spacious tree-lined streets, pas
t the roasting
cobs of co
rn, and the hot
roti
-
makers with their anxious Indian owners slapping the thin dough with wooden spatulas before dropping them,
sizzling onto
griddle-topped charcoal fires. The smells that came from the stalls were delicious. The spice-filled air drifted past my nostrils and made me aware of how hungry I w
as
. I began to hope that they meant to feed us at the refinery, but I didn’t like to ask because I didn’t know what arrangements Pamela had made for us.

T
he refinery was some way out of the town. It was surrounded by small experimental fields where scientists were trying out the different types of cane under varying conditions. Cane grows best, Daniel told me, in a slightly acid soil, providing that the water supply is both sufficient and constant. It grows, when the conditions are right, very fast indeed. On an average the growth rate is between half and three-quarters of an inch every day, but a fall in the soil moisture through a lack of proper irrigation or some calamity can mean that the growth is slowed to about a tenth of that much. The experimental patches were visited every other day by the scientists and were solemnly measured. In that way the various canes were categorised as being suitable for this or that soil. Nothing, it seemed, was left to chance on the Hendrycks’ estates.

“We’ll be cutting in the spring in most of our fields,” he said, pointing out one or two endless fields of what appeared to me to be fully-grown canes. “We plant in the fall of one year and cut some fourteen to sixteen months later in most of
o
ur fields. Some of yours allow for cutting every twelvemonth, I believe.”

It was all very strange to me. I tried to think of myself as an owner whose living depended on the crop that was all around me, but I failed entirely. Camilla Ironside wasn’t that kind of a girl! It was as simple as that.

We
walked
past
the giant silos
where
the
raw sugar was
stored and
went inside the
office
block
that was the nerve centre of the whole industry. At the end of the corridor I saw a door with Daniel’s name on it inscribed in gold, but he ignored his own office and took us instead into the room next door where Pamela was waiting for us. She held out her face for his kiss as a matter of course and then greeted
u
s with the same pretty smile that I remembered so well from our meeting at the Blue Basin and at the airport.

“How glad I am you could come!” she gushed. “Is this your maid? Will she wait for you here?”

I looked at Patience who had already settled herself on a chair, a colourful magazine in her hand that she had picked up from somewhere. “I wait,” she said agreeably. “I wait here.”

Pamela nodded agreeably. “Daniel will come with us,” she said brightly to me. “He knows much more about all the processes than I do.” She giggled easily. “To tell you the truth I’ve never been able to get wildly excited about anything mechanical!”

Daniel however took his duties as guide very seriously. He insisted that I should see everything whether I understood the process or not.

“It’s important that the growers should know what we’re about here,” he said solemnly. “This is the only refinery on the Island. The rest of the raw sugar has to be shipped out to various centres in other parts of the world. But it’s obviously better if we can finish the whole product here in Trinidad. It brings more money into the economy and it provides more employment.”

I tried to look interested as we watched the first process known as affination. The sugar was brought from the bottom of the silos on conveyor belts. To it was added raw syrup, produced from a previous load of sugar, and the resulting mixture of crystals and syrup is called magma. That much I could understand. I watched it being taken away to the centrifugal machines where it was rotated at up to twelve hundred revolutions a minute. The centrifugal force drove the mixture through a mesh in the outer casing which caught the sugar in a great wall of crystals. Hot water is squirted on to wash the sugar which falls into a great trough below the machine. More hot water is added and the syrup which has been thus spun and washed is divided into two groups, the larger amount to be boiled in a vacuum pan to recover its sugar content, the rest being kept back to help make the next lot of magma.

“Makes you hot just to look at it, doesn’t it?” Pamela sighed. She was bored and she looked it. She had none of Daniel’s fervour for the complicated process that resulted in the sugar crystals that appeared on her table. She had been brought up on sugar and was heartily sick of the sound of it. You could tell that by just looking at her.

“Why do you work here?” I asked her curiously.

She blushed faintly. “It suits me,” she answered with a pretty shrug of the shoulders. “I shan’t soon. There are other things to do in Trinidad besides make sugar!”

I looked at Daniel’s eager face and felt sorry for her, much to my own surprise. Daniel was wrapped up in sugar and his wife could hardly escape the backwash of his enthusiasm. The words of a pop song I had heard some years before in London kept buzzing around in my head
:
Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at half-past three. Sugar, sugar, sugar, that’s what you are to me!
It could very well have been Daniel’s motto.

“The next process,” he said as if to prove my point, “is called carbonatation. The syrup we have just seen is strained and then it comes here.” He walked with a bouncy step towards where the sugar was just beginning the next process. “Look,” he admonished me. ‘You can see better from here.”

He explained carefully exactly what was happening as the mixture was treated with lime and carbon dioxide gas. Next it was filtered again, after which centrifugal pumps conveyed the liquid to large tanks in which it is passed through a number of cisterns filled with charcoal.

“Why charcoal?” I asked, now completely bewildered.

Daniel fell on the question. “Charcoal has been found to be the best substance for absorbing any impurities
and colouring matter which is still in the sugar.” His eyes snapped with excitement. “As a matter of fact it’s rather interesting,” he said apologetically, aware that Pamela’s attention had long since strayed irrevocably from the point at hand. “You see, charcoal gets tired after a few days. We can tell because the liquid begins to be faintly discoloured when it emerges from the cisterns. We have to shut the cisterns off then, clean out the sugar and remove the charcoal to the kilns where it’s burnt clean again. We use the same charcoal over and over again for as long as four years!”

I stared down at the liquid that was coming out of the cisterns, rather hoping that I would be able to see a noticeable change in it, but I couldn’t. It was as colourless as water.

The next stage was to crystallise this liquid. The boiling of the sugar was the most complex and specialised process of the lot. It was done in vacuum pans in which were set glass windows so that one could see the whole process. The pansman can control the size of the crystal and it depends on his skill that the crystallising process is done at an even rate. After that the massecuite, as the sugar is now called, goes through yet another series of centrifugal machines where the syrup is thrown off. Syrup from the first and second spinnings goes through the charcoal again to produce more sugar, but the later spinnings were more discoloured and so were used for making golden syrup and the soft, moist coloured sugars.

There was little more that could happen to it after that, beyond being dried in the granulators, which turned out to be large rotating drums that dropped the grains through a wire mesh into vibrating sieves. I must say I enjoyed seeing the cube sugar being moulded into large slabs, spun in the centrifugal machines, dried in ovens and then, best of all, chopped into cubes by a guillotine that crunched its way through the hard sugar in the most satisfactory manner. Daniel dipped his hand in and retrieved me a lump of still-warm sugar for me to eat.

“Sugar for the sweet!” he said with a smile.

I tasted it and found it unbearably sweet, much sweeter than any sugar I remembered having tasted before. I noticed that Pamela put her lump firmly in her pocket and began to saunter to the door. Our visit, I gathered, had ended. We had seen all we were going to of the refinery for that day.

Pamela led us firmly back to her office. “Would you like to wash?” she asked me. “I’ll have some coffee made and that will revive us a bit.” She had her own wash place that led off from her office, dolled up in pink and white. I thought she had probably chosen the colour scheme herself, for it reflected very adequately her own pretty, plump personality. She stood making a face at me while I washed my hands. “Daniel is a bit of a freak, making you look over the place!” she said suddenly. “Who wants to know?”

“I suppose he thinks I ought to know something about it,” I answered uncertainly.

“I think he just can’t resist going round the place himself,” she confided. “It’s bad enough having to deal with all the office side, but the heat in there always reduces me to a frazzle.”

A frazzle was not how I would have chose
n
to describe her. She looked completely cool, even her dress had fewer wrinkles in its ironed perfection than mine did, and she wasn’t really the soignee, immaculate type to have achieved that effect by art.

“Coffee will certainly be very welcome,” I said firmly, secret
l
y hoping that there would be something to eat as well.

“I suppose it will,” Pamela agreed without interest.
“I’d love to take you straight home, but of course I can’t leave here until the working day is done. Do you
mind?”

“Perhaps I could help you?” I suggested, dismayed by the prospect of doing nothing all afternoon.

“Yes, I expect you could,” Pamela said thoughtfully. “But what about your maid?”

“Patience?” I was annoyed that I had forgotten all about her. “I really don’t know,” I admitted. “Perhaps Daniel will have some suggestion.”

“Well, he might do,” Pamela agreed with a twist to the lips,” but I don’t think we can shower
all
our problems on him, do you?”

“What do you mean?” I retorted.

“Oh,” she said, “perhaps I’ve got it all wrong, but isn’t he going to run your estate when you
buy it from my parents? A trustee of something? Isn’t that what he’s going to be called?”

“He will have a say in the management,” I said stiffly. “But he certainly won’t be running it. My uncle will be doing that, with the help of my two cousins.”

Pamela laughed without amusement. ‘You surely don’t expect me to believe that!” she snorted.
“
Oh,
really!”

“Well, believe it or not, that’s what’s going to happen,” I replied as calmly as I could. “Shall we go and get that coffee?”

Patience and Daniel were swapping reminiscences when we went back into the office. Patience was in full flight about some incident involving Daniel and his aunt and sheer happiness radiated out of her.

“You’se was a pickle and thatsa fact!” she laughed at him.

“I wasn’t too bad really, was I?” he humoured her.

“You was bad!” she waved her finger at him. “But you wasn’t all bad like some others!”

“
Well, that
’
s something!” he laughed. He looked up and saw us and beckoned me to a chair by his side.

“
She can sit here,” Pamela said quickly, pulling out the chair behind the second desk in the room. “She’s offered to help me this afternoon anyhow.”

Daniel stood up and brushed down his elegant trousers.
“
That isn’t why she came,” he said pleasantly enough. “I shall drive her and Patience to the estate to meet your parents. There are various things which we shall want to discuss together and then I can telephone the results to Aaron tonight.”