The Secret Life of Winnie Cox Page 10

  Now, as I looked into those sparkling bluer-than-blue eyes, I saw no madness but only keen interest; and the moustache that concealed his lips curved upwards in what could only have been a smile.

  He pushed me gently away, still holding my arms in a firm, yet gentle grip. He seemed to search my face as if looking for some secret characteristic; and then he let go, touched his head as if to remove a hat, and said only, in a voice that was deep and gruff and tinted with a Creole melody, ‘Watch where you goin’, Miss Cox!’

  I mumbled a quick apology and a good-day, grabbed my bicycle, and wheeled it to the road where Yoyo stood waiting. I looked back at Mad Jim; he was still looking at me and grinning. Then he touched his hat again, made a slight bow, turned and continued on his way. Yoyo and I rode off.

  Only when we arrived back home did we realize: we had forgotten to buy our sweets.

  Mama’s Diary: Salzburg, 1890

  Liebes Tagebuch,

  Tonight is the night! I am so excited! Tonight, the first Tuesday of the month. Papa will be away from home till midnight, for it’s the night his favourite chamber music quartet plays. He is always there, winter and summer alike; we will have an early dinner, as always, and then off he will go to the Mozart Hall, and I will be alone at last. My bag is already packed – I have hidden it away so that Else, the maid, will suspect nothing. I have also already told Else that I have a headache and I might sleep in late tomorrow morning. That way my absence won’t be discovered till late tomorrow. I have written a note to Father, which I will hide in my bed, under the covers, for Else to find. Hopefully by the time he reads it I will be halfway across Germany!

  Just as Archie, right this minute, is halfway across Germany, on his way to pick me up! He is taking various trains from Paris – but tonight, once he has picked me up, we shall be boarding the Orient Express, back to Paris! How romantic that sounds! I can hardly believe it – Archie and I, on the Orient Express, to Paris! He will come to my house at nine; the coach will wait for him around the corner, and he shall come on foot, and I shall escape and meet him on the street.

  I am beside myself with trepidation. Will all go according to plan? Yes! It must! I will be his tonight! (Though we will wait till Paris for The Main Event – I’m not quite sure what that means, but it’s what Archie said.) We will exchange our marriage vows in Paris – he says we should do it in Notre Dame Cathedral. He seems to have forgotten that I am Jewish. I will have to remind him. And I thought Notre Dame is Catholic, and he isn’t? But it is his God, and he will know what to do. I will have to let him know, though. Perhaps we can find a rabbi in Paris.

  After that we move on to Calais, cross the English Channel, and on to Norfolk, his home.

  He says his parents will be shocked but will get over it once it is all a fait accompli, and once they see how pretty and charming I am. I certainly hope so! And so, Liebes Tagebuch, I say goodbye to you for now. I don’t suppose I will have time to visit you in the next few days – the next time, it will all be over, and I shall be in Norfolk!

  Poor Father. He will be frantic. But he will read the note and know that I have not been kidnapped by bandits, or anything like that. Though no doubt it will appear that way to him.

  I am simply bursting with excitement!!!

  Chapter Six

  This much I know: it is not easy for a Sugar Princess to find a husband. She knows, more by instinct than by explicit instruction, that she may only love a man she is allowed to marry. And she may only marry a man of equal standing, that is to say, a Sugar Prince. Those are the unspoken rules.

  At the time I met George Theodore Quint I was well aware of the paucity of suitable Sugar Princes: most of the plantations along the Courantyne Coast were by now, owned by the Booker Brothers and Company. Booker Brothers ate businesses for breakfast.

  Promised Land must escape the Booker beast. However much we girls were shielded from the realities of the sugar business – that much we knew. That much Papa made sure we knew. Marry we must, but it had to be to a man who could ensure the survival of our family legacy – the plantation, founded by pioneers, that had brought wealth and well-being to the family back home.

  A son – Edward John – would have been raised as the one who would continue this epic fight for independence. A daughter’s duty was to fling the bonds of marriage around a suitable groom: a planter’s son, or, second best, a high-ranking manager from a plantation in similar circumstances, one owned by an absentee landlord. There were now in total only three such plantations: Houston on the East Bank of Demerara, Windsor Castle on the West Coast of Demerara, and Albion further down the Courantyne Coast, belonging to the Campbells, who also owned Ogle Estate on the East Coast Demerara. Unfortunately, the Campbells were absentees. Houston belonged to a Portuguese family, and Papa let us know in no uncertain terms that the Portuguese were beyond the pale. That left only Windsor Castle: owned by a solidly functioning family whose several sons were regularly married off to brides imported from the Motherland.

  I remembered all of this that evening as Yoyo and I sat in the evening air on the veranda. The certainty that had for a few fleeting moments overcome me in the Post Office had faltered, then flown, and as I sat hugging my twilight twizzle I realized with growing alarm that I had lit a fuse that afternoon; that my only option was to stamp on it until it was well and truly dead. Me, marry a darkie Postman! The idea was so ludicrous I had to ask myself if I had gone momentarily mad.

  But no! The cry came from deep inside; it had been no madness, but the very opposite: an insight of such dazzling clarity it seemed that those few minutes in the Post Office were sanity and that my entire state of being before that was the madness.

  And yet: George was so far beneath me socially he could just as well not have been a man, but an animal. Papa may not have ever said so in so many words, but my upbringing to this point had taught me that, and I knew it without telling. Realization descended on me in a curtain of gloom. I could not speak; I did not trust my voice. Silence was my only strength.

  Yoyo broke the silence. ‘Papa must never find out about George, you know!’

  I started – however did Yoyo know? Had it been that obvious? Was Yoyo that observant?

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Well, you know. For us to hob-nob with a darkie, even if George does seem rather well educated, it’s not quite the done thing, is it? I did like him, though; he’s quite unusual – different, somehow, and I even wondered if he was presumptuous, or simply naïve. To talk to us like that, almost as equals! It was quite an adventure, wasn’t it! If Papa saw us he’d explode! To think that we have a darkie friend! Especially after all that has happened in the last few days – all this bother with the coolies! It’s quite clear that Papa has no intention of improving their living conditions and perhaps the only way we can fight back is like this – defying him in our own way. That’s why he must never know.’

  I nodded in the darkness – my secret was safe; she had no idea. I smiled to myself. If even hob-nobbing with a darkie was so very scandalous, what would actually marrying one be!

  The following day was Sunday. As usual, we attended Church in the senior staff compound. Usually after Church one of the managers would invite us all back for lunch, or we would invite a manager and his family back to our home. Yoyo and I would spend the rest of the day with the young people of the compound; it was our day of rest, leisure and pleasure. There was a tennis court in the officer’s compound, and a swimming pool; the latter was cleared of men for two hours each Sunday afternoon so that the ladies could bathe. We all welcomed stripping off our heavy gowns – our lady’s maids, of course, would be there to help with the fastenings, the corsets, and petticoats – and donning our bathing costumes for an hour or two in the deliciously cool water.

  Today was no different, except that Papa was absent; Yoyo and I had Sunday lunch with the Marshalls. Mrs Marshall was the kindest of ladies and envisioned herself as some kind of substitute mot
her, though Yoyo conjectured that behind it all was the wish to see her son – now quite old, in his early twenties and still unmarried, and studying Law in England – engaged to one of us. After lunch, we young people all sat on their veranda playing Chinese Chequers with their two girls, both slightly younger than ourselves, and went for our afternoon bathe.

  During the August holidays, Ladies’ Bathing Time was a jolly occasion. All the teenage boys were back from their schools in Georgetown or England; and their one ambition was to witness the ladies bathing. They would climb onto the roof of the Clubhouse or scramble on each other’s shoulders behind the hibiscus hedge in order to peek at us in our bathing costumes. We would all squeal and scream and hide our half-naked bodies by jumping into the pool where we would all squeal and scream some more and hug each other in mock fear. Everyone would have the appropriate hysterics and the boys would giggle and fall over themselves and the darkie guards would chase them away and the mothers would waggle their fingers and a good time would be had by all. But this was off-season; all the boys were absent, as well as most of the girls our age. There was no squealing or screaming; no hysterics, just a quiet leisurely bathe. I floated on my back, gazing up into the vast Courantyne sky.

  Something had happened. Something so big, so fundamental that I seemed lost and wandering in an alien world; as if the identity I had worn up to that day had been stripped from me, a mere hull discarded as a lizard discards its skin, leaving me exposed and raw, for no new identity had yet grown to replace the one that was lost. The Sugar Princess was no more; I knew not what to say; I could not play my part. I spent that Sunday in a daze. Conversation at lunchtime had seemed vacuous and thin. My attention wandered as I played board games and I lost them all. And now I could only float and gaze up at the endless sky and dream. And I saw there a swarthy face and a loving smile and deep dark eyes like pools into which I longed to fling myself and drown.

  Late Monday morning, Marigold, one of the housemaids, knocked on the schoolroom door and entered when Miss Wright bid her in.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ she stammered. ‘But Police at de door.’

  ‘Police? What do you mean? Who for?’

  ‘Dey sayin’ dey want to speak to de Master, Miss. When I say Master gone Georgetown, dey askin’ fuh you.’

  ‘For me? Dear, dear. There must be some mistake. But I’d better go down. Girls, stay here and finish off that chapter. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve dealt with this.’

  She bustled off, closing the door behind her. Yoyo opened it, and listened; we heard voices at the bottom of the stairs, but could not decipher the words. A few minutes later, Marigold was back. She looked from one of us to the other, eyes wide with fear.

  ‘Miss Johanna, Miss Winifred – police want talk to you too.’

  Yoyo and I went downstairs. In the main hallway stood the two policemen; one of them needed no introduction as the more important one, for he was big and ruddy and seemed about to burst out of his dark blue uniform, and fixed us with steely grey eyes. The other, a thin darkie, cringed in the background. Miss Wright stood to one side wringing her hands and staring at us intensely, shaking her head and mouthing words we could not understand.

  ‘I am Chief Inspector Armstrong,’ said the very important one. ‘I am sorry to interrupt your morning but I have a few questions I need to ask you girls.’

  Miss Wright took a step forward. ‘I’m very sorry but the girls are minors. They may not give statements to the police in the absence of their father.’

  ‘I’m not looking for an official statement,’ said the chief inspector. ‘Just a little conversation – girls, there has been a …’ he cleared his throat, ‘a complaint. Some of your coolies have reported a flogging that took place last Friday. We are here to investigate; we need witnesses to the alleged flogging.’

  ‘The girls may not say a word!’ cried Miss Wright. ‘Girls, do not say a word! There was nothing. You saw nothing. Chief Inspector, this is most irregular. I must ask you to return when Mr Cox is present. I must ask you to leave. How dare you discuss this in full view of the servants!’

  For indeed, the door to the kitchen was open and Mildred, Nora and Shirley stood in the doorway gaping. Marigold, a duster in her hand, looked down from the top staircase landing, and through the open door to Papa’s library, Mrs Norton could be seen hovering near the desk.

  Miss Wright had assumed the position of acting head of house, and filled that role admirably. She and the chief inspector stared each other down. Finally, the chief inspector nodded, acknowledging defeat.

  ‘Very well. I will return in a few days’ time. In the meanwhile, though, I shall be interviewing your servants and other employees …’

  But Miss Wright stood her ground; I have to say she managed to adopt an attitude that held a very fine balance between authority, deference, resolve and appeasement.

  ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, I cannot permit this. I must ask you to leave, and to return for your interviews when the plantation owner has returned from his business in Georgetown. I’m quite sure there is some – misunderstanding. I’m quite sure he will be able to clear things up when he returns – if you know what I mean.’

  Watching them both, it was quite clear to me that Miss Wright knew exactly what she meant, and so did the chief inspector, for immediately his attitude changed; now he was the one seeking appeasement and reconciliation. The last remnants of belligerence melted away under Miss Wright’s stern gaze; his own eyes dropped, he smiled, and said, ‘I understand, Miss Wright. I apologize for my former discourtesy, and you’re perfectly right; it is indeed better to discuss the incident when the master of the house is here. I’ll take my leave now, and return at a more convenient time. Please extend my apologies to Mr Cox – I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation for – for – never mind.’

  He looked around him as he spoke those words and for perhaps the first time became aware of the several pairs of listening ears. Miss Wright took care of that with one unambiguous sweeping gesture of her hand; at once all the doors slammed shut. Marigold disappeared into the kitchen, and Yoyo and I fled up the stairs and huddled together on the upstairs landing, listening.

  The Chief Inspector’s boots stamped across the hall; the front door opened and slammed shut and he was gone, and Miss Wright was coming up the stairs. Yoyo and I stood up to meet her. Guilt was written all over Yoyo’s face, and I can only conjecture the same of my own, for guilt was what I felt: for myself and Miss Wright and most of all, for Papa. Miss Wright ushered us both back into the schoolroom with a no-nonsense, ‘come girls, we need to talk’ manner, though she did not speak a word. Once there, we sat at our desks and she stood before us and explained the situation.

  ‘Girls, this is more serious than we first thought,’ she began. ‘And I need you to promise me sincerely once more: your father must never know that I allowed you to watch from the bedroom window. He must never know, do you understand? That’s the three of us cleared; you two are, anyway, too young to be called to the witness stand without your father’s permission but I am not and since I have already told him a white lie – that I was with you in the schoolroom – I must now maintain that lie or else – or else there will be trouble. There is already trouble. Your father has been accused of flogging. Flogging is against the law. That is the simple situation. The coolies have reported the incident to the police. The overseers deny flogging. It’s the coolies’ word against ours. True, there is the question of wounds – welts on the backs of one of the coolies. Medical examinations and such and such. This could mean trouble for your father. I don’t know what will happen but your father is a clever and rich man and I have no doubt that he will be able to deflect the charge. But there must be no witnesses from this house. The darkies can be relied on not to say a word. I am sure of that. But you girls – you must promise me. You must promise me. Your father does not know that you saw, and he must never know. Otherwise … otherwise …’

  ‘You’ll be in t
rouble,’ finished Yoyo, speaking the words I was already thinking.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Wright. She was humble now, and pleading, knowing that her future was in our hands. ‘You see – your father wants to keep the more unpleasant aspects of the plantation away from you. He means well; he does it out of love. He has told me this quite unequivocally, and on that one day I failed you. I can’t imagine what came over me. I should never have let you go down to the gate; and once we were sent away I should never have taken you to the window. I confess – it was my own curiosity that made me do so. Curiosity that swept away every last vestige of responsibility for you. Now you have seen, and I don’t know what to do. He must never know. Can you promise me this one thing?’

  Yoyo and I looked at each other, nodded in unison, and gave our promise.

  Mama’s Diary: Norfolk, 1890

  Liebes Tagebuch,

  Here I am, in Norfolk, England! It all went according to plan, right up to the moment that Archie brought me to his home. What a grand home it is too! I still feel quite overwhelmed. What a to-do our arrival caused. His parents were torn between being furious with him, and their need to be polite to me – they are so well-mannered, as I assume all English people are, that they could not in any way rebuke me. And so I was escorted to a ladies’ drawing room where I was forced to make polite conversation with his mother, his two sisters, his grandmother, and a maiden aunt! Now THAT was a conversation to behold, considering my knowledge of English is that of a two-year-old child, and theirs of German non-existent! We spent the whole time nodding and smiling and drinking constant cups of tea, poured by a maid in a blue uniform and white frilly apron! I felt as if I were in one of those old English novels.