The Sugar Planter's Daughter Read online

  He said nothing and I know he was not listening. He had hardened his heart against her.

  ‘George, she’s my sister! I love her. I want you to love her too – or at least, be friendly towards her, when she is making such an effort. I insist – they’re coming, and I want you to be at home and agreeable to both.’

  George again did not respond. He stood up, glass in hand, and walked out of the gallery. I would even say he stamped his feet a little while walking, like a petulant child. I sighed, and got up to follow him. But Ma, who had been sitting silently in her rocking chair all this time, grabbed my hand as I swept past. The gallery was so narrow – there was hardly room for the three of us to sit at ease. Pa was already in bed.

  I looked down at Ma.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Don’t nag him about that girl.’

  ‘About Yoyo? But she’s my sister. I don’t understand why he’s so disagreeable towards her. And he refuses to talk about it!’

  ‘That girl is trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Ma! I know she isn’t the friendliest person; I know she’s a little bit snobbish, and she may have slighted you when she was here. But you must make allowances. She has never been in a cottage like this before, never set foot in Albouystown. She has never hobnobbed with our kind before. She’

  ‘Your mama also never knew people like we before. But she was all gracious and kind when she was here, and did not look down she nose at we.’

  ‘Yes, but Yoyo’

  ‘Yoyo think she better than we. She got malice in she heart.’

  ‘Malice? Oh Ma, what a horrible thing to say! I agree that Yoyo can be chilly and dismissive of others at times but she isn’t malicious. You are doing her wrong. I promise that in her heart she’s a good person, and would never do anyone any deliberate wrong. I know her!’

  Ma sighed, and let go of my hand. ‘Winnie, you is too simple-hearted. You think everyone is like you. Is not true. One day you gon’ see into the hearts of people and you gon’ see the nasty things brewing there.’

  That hurt me. Simple-hearted! As if that was all I was, after what I had been through! I had seen the evil nestling in my own father’s heart, and had wrestled with my conscience, and won – how could she dismiss me as simple? And to be so suspicious about my Yoyo…

  ‘You have no right to call my sister nasty, Ma.’ I said it with as much dignity as I could. ‘Yes, I do prefer to see the good in others. And what of it? I thought you were a Christian – going to church and praying for others. Yet you say such things. Is it because she is white? Well, remember how you were suspicious of me at first? How your suspicions meant you formed an undeserved bad opinion of me? Just because I am white? Well, this is exactly the same. Yoyo is my sister. I know it’s your house and if you don’t want her to come here I will let her know and I will meet her elsewhere. But I’

  ‘Let she come. I don’t care. All I sayin’ is, watch she like an eagle. Now go an’ make up wit’ George. Is not good for husban’ an’ wife to go to bed on a quarrel.’

  I stood for a moment, looking down at her as she gently rocked in the chair, eyes closed now, humming gently to herself as if she had completely dismissed our conversation. I wanted to continue it, to convince her that she was wrong. But I thought the better of it. I could smell the sweet-acrid scent of the mosquito coil George had lit in our room, and I was anxious, as Ma had said, to make up with him. She was so right about not going to bed on a quarrel. What did it matter what she thought of Yoyo? In time she would change her opinion, as would George. I had to give them time. Yoyo would show them her true colours, all in her own time.

  ‘George!’ I called. ‘I’m coming.’ And I almost ran from the gallery, and plunged through the doorway and into his waiting arms.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured into my hair. ‘Of course your sister can come tomorrow. I’ll be friendly to her. I promise.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ I said. ‘I was so horrible to you. I’m a horrible person.’

  ‘You, horrible!’ George’s voice held a smile. ‘You’re too decent for your own good, Winnie. Your goodness shines in your eyes. But you need to be wary in this world.’

  ‘I know, George, I know. I am a bit naïve, sometimes. But I know Yoyo. I’m the closest person to her and I want us to be friends again. Give her a chance. Please! Isn’t that what you preach? To see the best in everyone? To learn to love? Why not practise with Yoyo?’

  ‘I will. I promise.’

  And so we closed the day in peace and harmony.

  And he kept his promise. When Yoyo and Mama came the next day my George was the perfect host. He greeted them both warmly, and I was happy to see how amiable Yoyo had become. Her initial hostility towards him had vanished completely, and it was so rewarding to see that she now appreciated his qualities: his warmth, his kindness, his charm. And she responded in kind.

  ‘You will miss Winnie when she has gone to Venezuela,’ she said. ‘You must come to Promised Land whenever you want. It is your home too.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said George, ‘I will not be able to come very often. It’s such a long journey – a day trip there, and a day trip back. I work six days a week and it is not easy to get a day off.’

  ‘Well then, I will have to come to Georgetown more often,’ Yoyo replied. She turned to me.

  ‘Margaret is expecting her first child soon. You and she should get together. You can perhaps offer her some advice – it’s time, Winnie, that you found your way back into society. You have been punished enough.’

  Hearing such words from Yoyo was sheer music. My heart leapt in joy – but at the fact that she spoke them at all, not at the words themselves. For I had no intention of finding my way back into society. Marriage to George and life in Albouystown had altered me so much that I knew I could never again be a part of that world, with its affectations and vanities and its snobbishness. I had never much liked Margaret McInnes, and I doubted I would like Margaret Smythe-Collingsworth, much less make friends with her. I had become a different person in a matter of months, at home in my new surroundings and voluntarily isolated from the values I was reared with.

  So who am I, exactly? Well, I am a work under construction, like a building whose blueprint is not quite finished in the architect’s eye. A wife, a mother, in the first instance, those roles which provided me with the fountain of love that would form the foundation of the woman I would one day become. But they are just that – roles. Roles that every day teach me more about myself, my strengths, my weaknesses; roles that will help me to find my feet in the world I have adopted. And even Humphrey’s problems, serious though they are, provide an opportunity for me to be strong, and decisive; it is as if skin after skin, layer after layer of the old me falls away even as the new me emerges from the dead skin of the old.

  Kitty, Eliza and Tilly have become my firm friends, even though since Humphrey’s birth I see somewhat less of them. I like them, and enjoy their company, but, as George explained, as members of the in-between layer of society, wedged between the dark-skinned labouring class and the ruling upper class, they firmly strive upwards, and I can’t get rid of the sense that at least part of their friendship is rooted more in where I come from than in who I am. They are all three single, and I can easily pick up their hints. They are hoping I might have access to some eligible white bachelors.

  It is dispiriting, how much the colour of one’s skin, the quality of one’s hair, the thickness of lips and hair determines one’s place in this society. The girls, as I think of them, speak quite openly of it. Eliza, for instance, spoke disparagingly of a young man who raised his hat to her after church.

  ‘With his Negro features, who does he think he is?’ she sneered.

  ‘He’s not very dark, though,’ said Kitty. ‘And quite handsome. And he has a good job at the Hand-in-Hand Insurance Company.’

  But Eliza shook her head. ‘No. Not for me.’ She turned to me. ‘Winnie, dear – I’m thinking of throwing a big party
for my twenty-first birthday. Don’t you know some nice young men from the plantation – you know, from the senior staff, I mean – who might like to come?’

  All three of them looked eagerly at me, and I knew at once that this one thing had been the reason for today’s gathering. Eliza had asked me round for afternoon tea – not unusual in itself, but I had been surprised to see not only my other two friends but Eliza’s mother and her aunt, hovering at the tea table and offering me a variety of cakes and pastries, wearing smiles that did not reach their eyes.

  ‘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.

  21

  Yoyo

  Running 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.