The Sugar Planter's Daughter (15 page)

‘I hardly ever see them any more,' I said. ‘Some of them moved to England, and the others – well, we don't move in the same circles. They have jobs now – a few of them in town, but'

‘That's
exactly
the kind of fellow we mean,' said Tilly in excitement. ‘Well educated, and working in management in businesses around town. Young single men! There is a positive dearth of such young men in our circles.'

‘Surely you know of a few?' Eliza pleaded. ‘All you need to do is ask. The worst they can do is refuse.'

‘I haven't kept in touch,' I argued. ‘I don't even know where they are working. I'm not really a part of that society any more.'

‘But you can find out!' said Eliza. ‘Surely you can! You must know their names, and you can ask your sister, and'

‘Oh Winnie, please do try!' Tilly joined in. ‘We are all getting on in years and it's so hard to find a suitable husband in this colony. Please try!'

‘Please!'

How could I refuse? ‘Well,' I conceded, ‘I suppose I could make investigations – my old friend Emily is living in Kingston and she might know'

‘Yes! Yes! Just ask her – and of course she can come too, if she wants to Oh!'

Tilly jumped and cried out in pain and I realised what was going on. Eliza had kicked her under the table. Eliza clearly didn't want any English young ladies invited to her party. I smiled. I understood exactly.

‘I'll go and see Emily in the next few days,' I promised. What harm could it do?

‘And you'll come too, won't you? To the party? Surely you will?'

I thought about it. Since Humphrey's birth, and the concern about his foot, I had felt little inclination to attend parties, and George and I had declined all invitations from our friends –
his
friends, really – in Albouystown, or else George had gone alone. This was different, though. These were
my
friends,
my
invitation, and that nuance suddenly felt important.

Yes, I knew very well that in
this
particular stratum of Georgetown society I was something of a status-symbol friend. That much I had learned of the intricacies of the town's racial hierarchy, the complexity of which I had been completely oblivious to while basking in the fool's paradise of the white upper class. The coloured middle class was upwardly striving, ambitious, and even more colour-discerning, unlikely though that may seem, than the former. But I did, though, feel that Kitty, Tilly and Eliza liked me for myself as well, that their concern for me and interest in my life was genuine. The invitation to a ‘young man from the plantation' might be calculated; the invitation to me, though, was from the heart. And I wanted to go. What fun, to leave little Humphrey with Ma for just one evening and meet some new people of my own age! And there was a way, I thought, to use the opportunity to make a silent statement.

‘George and I would love to come,' I said.

I
had not seen
my old friend Emily Stewart since long before my marriage. In fact, I realized, not since before Papa's trial. Since then I had caused so much scandal, so much upheaval, I could not even begin to guess at how she felt about me. She had not contacted me, not sent a Christmas card. But then, neither had I. She had not been invited to the small ceremony of my wedding, as it had been just close family, and there had been no public announcement of Humphrey's birth in the newspapers – I was, after all, no longer society. She had probably forgotten me entirely, having her own life and her own events to care about. I had heard of her wedding through Yoyo, and I knew she lived in Kingston. Having a postman as a husband has its advantages – it was easy to find out the address of the Whittington family, because even though George did not deliver in Kingston, he knew who did. That information acquired, I sent her a little note asking if I might drop by, and the following day I received the reply – yes, of course!

Thus it was that a few days later I stepped out of a coach right before Emily's house in Parade Street, Humphrey bundled in my arms. I entered through the gate, which released a volley of bell chimes, and a moment later Emily appeared at the open window, cooing and calling and waving.

I climbed the stairs to the front door, which opened even before I reached the landing. There she stood in the doorway, arms open to receive me. The once slim, slight Emily had gained weight since I'd last seen her, and her freckled face was now round, her body soft and chubby. But when she clasped me to her in an effusion of joy I realised that her bulk was more than fat, for she was not all soft.

‘Emily!' I cried. ‘You're going to have a baby!'

‘I am. And I'm so excited! And this is your little one! I heard you'd had a little boy – oh, he's so sweet! Let me hold him – what's his name?'

I passed Humphrey to her as I entered the house, and removed my bonnet, which I hung on the hatstand near the door. I told her his name, and she ushered me into the gallery, cooing to Humphrey and chattering with me all at the same time.

‘I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again! Do you know, I don't have a single friend in Georgetown – everyone has married and gone to live on some plantation or other in New Amsterdam. I'm frightfully lonely – Andrew is a dear of course but a girl needs lady friends, doesn't she, and a brother doesn't quite cut it. How can a man ever understand our trials and tribulations!' She giggled, but then turned suddenly serious, perhaps as the last words she had spoken took root.

‘Oh! Oh dear Winnie, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to rub your nose in it. You have had an appalling time of it, haven't you? People can be nasty – but you know I have always defended you, always! And your troubles haven't stopped, have they? I've heard about poor little Humphrey and his foot. How devastating for you!'

‘No!' I interrupted at once. ‘It's not devastating at all. I love him just the same and to me he's perfect.'

‘But – a cripple, Winnie. It can't be easy.'

Red-hot lava rose up in me and must have coloured my face.

‘He's not a cripple, Emily, and if you call him that I must leave at once.'

‘Oh, Winnie, I'm so sorry, please forgive me! Come, sit down and tell me everything. Mildred will bring tea and cakes. There you go. I'm so sorry, and he's so sweet. Now tell me all about him.'

I immediately forgave her, of course, and very soon we were immersed in the kind of conversation I assume all young mothers and mothers-to-be engage in all over the world and have done in all the ages past. It was extremely edifying. I was so glad I had found Emily again.

Eventually, however, a change of subject was called for and I brought the conversation round to the purpose of my visit.

‘So,' I said. ‘What has become of everyone? Where did they all end up? You must tell me all the gossip!'

Emily gladly complied. She told me all the gossip. And that is how Emily's brother Andrew, and his friends Stanley Grieves and John Eccles, single white young men living and working in Georgetown, came to be invited to Eliza Woodcock's twenty-first birthday party. One, hopefully, for each of my coloured friends.

R
unning
a sugar plantation is not as easy as I thought, especially with uncooperative advisers. Those would be my mother and her right hand, Mad Jim Booker. In actual fact, we all know that he is not mad, simply eccentric. Eccentric meaning that he had the temerity to marry first an African woman – who died in a fire – and then an Indian, and produce not one but
two
litters of half-breed children. The first lot, of course, were by now grown up and going about their adult lives. The second batch was small but growing – a toddler, a baby and a third one on the way. So though he is not technically mad, he has his own version of madness – why would a white man, a Booker no less, possessing all the usual attributes of the privileged class, choose to live this way? Isn't it a form of madness to voluntarily lower oneself? And so I continue to call him Mad Jim – though always only to myself or to those who understand. Never to Mama.

Mama and Mad Jim were hand-in-glove from the start. From the beginning they made it known that our very first project would be the razing of the labourer huts – the logies – and the building of adequate accommodation for our coolies. Now, in principle I was not opposed to such a measure. After all, as a young girl I too had been appalled by the squalid conditions in which the coolies lived, and in fact Winnie and I had been naïve enough to think that we could cajole Papa into making improvements. Now that I am an adult and a businesswoman I can appreciate Papa's arguments. It was all about money, Papa said, and now I saw that for myself.

I keep the account books. I had learned accounting at business school in Georgetown – the only girl in a class of fifteen – and I have always been good with figures anyway. Papa used to say that women should concern themselves only with the serious business of winning a suitable husband, running a household and raising well-behaved children. I believe in my heart that it is possible to fulfil all these duties and yet still be good at sums, but my hands are well and truly tied. I have, certainly, acquired the said husband and I run the household like clockwork; and if I am not yet raising the required children and the sums fail to add up it is hardly my fault. But I am good at sums, and I could clearly see that a plantation is not a charity.

Building what my mother called ‘suitable accommodation' had been costly, and I feared there would be no return on it, apart from happier coolies. But the happiness of coolies is not the aim of a sugar plantation. That is what Winnie and I failed to understand as girls. We had no inkling of the notion of profit. Now I understand.

How could we pour a small fortune into the building of what would essentially be a village, row upon row of cottages with suitable plumbing and drainage and paved roads, and still expect to balance the books?

‘We are not a charity!' I cried when Mama presented me with the blueprint she and Mad Jim had come up with.

‘In time it will work out to our advantage,' she replied calmly. ‘Happy labourers will be more productive. You will see. Trust Jim.'

But I could no more trust Mad Jim than I could trust one of the invisible
baccoos
said to haunt the logies. If it weren't for Mad Jim, the disaster that ended with Papa in prison would probably never have happened. But I won't go into that now. What's done is done, and we cannot go back in time. Yet I hold Mad Jim responsible, and I do not like him, and will never trust him. He does not have our best interests at heart, but only those of the coolies.

Mama and I finally arrived at a compromise. We built the new village on the back-dam, but instead of cottages we built rows of attached shacks, ranges, each spacious enough to house a family and each with a small kitchen area, with outdoor lavatories and bathing rooms for groups of homes. That would have to do, and that was the situation at the time when Winnie went off to Venezuela.

And to my surprise, Mama and Mad Jim seem to be right, for the time being. Production is up. Better workers are undoubtedly better for business; but can it be true that happier coolies make better workers? The figures seem to be telling me exactly that.

W
ith the plantation
running so smoothly, I found I had more time for playful fantasies, and they included George. The last time I had seen him – the day before Mama and I returned to the plantation – he had been decidedly more affable towards me than in the past. I think that my teasing of him had terrified the poor boy, and during that visit I made a concerted effort to be kind. And he too was not just polite. It was almost as if he had made up his mind to turn over a new leaf. I put this down to the fact that he was finally being honest with himself regarding his relationship with me. His blanket rejection of me had not been honest – it was a defence. Now, he was quite changed, and to my delight he even initiated a conversation on one of my visits to town.

‘Are you enjoying being the mistress of Promised Land?' he asked me. Not a particularly insightful question to ask, and such ambiguous vocabulary, but since Winnie was present I supposed our talk would have to run along established lines. George, Winnie and I were enjoying a walk on the Sea Wall promenade; Mama had volunteered to look after Humphrey for Winnie and it was good to get away and take an afternoon stroll in the invigorating sea breeze.

‘Indeed!' I said. ‘I am discovering that a woman can fulfil many roles at once, and enjoy them all.'

‘Oh, that's so true!' said Winnie, inserting herself unasked into the conversation. ‘I'm discovering just how much I can do and I really love it!'

‘How nice,' I said to her, and turned back to George. ‘Though I hope to soon follow Winnie's example and be a mother, I do find there are certain advantages to
not
having a child. More time to oneself, for instance. More freedom to pursue one's own interests, and friendships, without the burden of a baby to look after. The plantation is almost running itself these days, and I am certainly enjoying my leisure time!'

There! Those words, coupled with the languid look I passed him, should be hint enough. The attraction that came from him was so visceral I could almost touch it, cut it with a knife. I was almost afraid that Winnie would notice, but of course she was far too innocent-minded to pick up such a subtle intimation. And walking on the other side of George, of course she could not see my face, read my eyes. George, though, regarding me as I spoke, could. However, Winnie was quick to interrupt yet again.

‘Oh, but little Humph isn't a burden! He is a joy! I love every moment with him, and I would not exchange him for buckets-full of leisure!'

Oh, the smug little prig! I should have known she'd say something like that, just to put me in my place. How could I ever find a retort to that? I did my best, however.

‘Well, motherhood is no doubt a joy still to come to me, but in the meantime I am certainly enjoying my life as it is. Especially when I am in Georgetown.'

Just at that moment a strong gust of wind swept the promenade and blew away my bonnet. I had deliberately left the ribbons untied as I thought it looked more charming that way, but I had forgotten about the breeze. George immediately ran after it and recovered it. I thanked him.

‘I'll have to be careful I don't blow away myself!' I added. ‘But George can hold on to me, can't you? Won't you offer your sister-in-law an elbow?'

Not waiting for an answer, I hooked my left arm round his elbow. That might have been just a bit too forward; embarrassment flickered for a moment in George's eyes. But Winnie was her usual unsuspecting and unworldly self, and said, ‘He can hold on to us both!' and she grabbed his other arm, and so we strolled on for a while in silence, George between us. A few people threw us curious looks – a black man between two white ladies was a very unusual spectacle in BG – but I have never worried about what people say or think. I care only for my own plans and desires.

The silence gave my mind the space to concoct a new plan. It was fairly simple, and so I went on to express it.

‘So, Winnie, I take it that you will be leaving for Venezuela in September? For half a year, or longer?'

‘Unfortunately, yes,' she replied. ‘We don't know how long it will take as yet – that will depend on how well Humphrey's little bones respond to the treatment.'

‘So you will be gone for Christmas! What a shame! Or will you come back for the celebration?'

Everything depended now on her response. But I need not have worried.

‘No,' she said. ‘Much as I'd love to, it's not worth interrupting the treatment for the time it will take me to come here and return. I will spend Christmas in Venezuela.'

‘Then, George, you must come to Promised Land and celebrate with us! Yes, I insist!'

‘Oh, Yoyo, how kind of you. That's a wonderful idea. George, you must go! You will have two days of holiday anyway – Christmas Day and Boxing Day – and added to the Sunday, perhaps you can take a day or two of unpaid leave, and make a real holiday of it all.'

George was silent for a while, and then he said, ‘If I do take unpaid leave I would rather join you in Venezuela.'

‘Oh!' said Winnie, and reddened as she considered this tempting option. I suppose George
had
to say that, to deflect any suspicion she might have, but it was a risk. Suppose she accepted his proposition? But then she spoke, and relief flooded me.

‘No, George,' she said. ‘You would have to take almost a week off just to account for travelling to and from Caracas. That's too much. Just two days off to visit the family is far more reasonable. We must be sensible. Not that I wouldn't love you to come – but I'll sacrifice that joy. We shall have so many more Christmases together – let's not worry about this one.'

And so it was decided. I looked up at George in triumph, but his face was turned away, towards his wife. I suppose that after such a noble self-sacrificing speech he had to show his appreciation. How droll, the way she played right into our hands!