The Secret Life of Winnie Cox Page 2

  The silence, and the stench. The stench grew worse and I pulled out a handkerchief and held it against my nose and was just about to call out to Yoyo to insist that we return home as I could not breathe, when the first glimpse of a rooftop rose above the green of the waving cane. Two seconds later we were there, and at last she drew to a halt. I walked Tosca up to stand beside her and we both stared in silence.

  ‘We have to go in there,’ Yoyo said at last, and we looked at each other and I nodded. ‘Nanny’s in there. But …’

  She looked at me in anguish. She did not need to complete her sentence. I nodded again, understanding, and searching for words. I knew where we were. I knew we couldn’t go any further. This was finally, that other world. Up to now we had only played on its outskirts, pretending we knew it, but this was the real thing. These were the logies.

  You couldn’t live on a plantation, in a plantation owner’s household, without occasionally hearing that word and grasping, however vaguely, that the logies were the homes of the coolies. The words would be dropped casually into conversation when Papa had visitors, maybe one of the managers, or a planter from one of the neighbouring estates, Dieu Merci or Roosendaal or Nieuw Haarlem, and they would discus in grim tones the Labourer Problem. Somewhere at the back of my mind I had picked up the knowledge that the coolies lived in logies, but I had had no idea where these logies were or what they looked like. Why, I hardly took note of the coolies themselves.

  The coolies were a part of the landscape. They belonged, quite simply, to the backdrop of life in this grand Kingdom of Sugar. Riding out along the back dam, or even from our bedroom windows, we saw them: half-naked men, their skin dark brown and shiny with sweat, their muscles rippling as they hacked at the cane with their cutlasses or bound the cane into bundles and carried those bundles to the canals and loaded the punts. Coolie women, fully clothed, up to their waists in water, pulled the loaded punts along the canals. Coolies were everywhere, so ubiquitous one never even noticed them, and with the wisdom of hindsight I’m ashamed to make these confessions. Why, I even thought it romantic: coolies at work in the fields, coolies in the trenches. An essential part of the scenery we loved so much, to be taken for granted.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ I said eventually.

  ‘We can’t,’ Yoyo replied. ‘I have to see Nanny. She’s dying, don’t you understand? I have to see her; I have to go in there. We have to go.’

  She was crying openly by now. Yoyo never cried. She had not cried when Mama boarded the ship that would take her away. She had not cried when Edward John died. She had last cried, as far as I remembered, when her beloved dog Frisky died, three years ago. I on the other hand, wore my heart on my sleeve, and cried easily. I cried at a litter of new-born kittens, at music too beautiful to bear, at exquisite poetry, at sad endings of novels. Yoyo never read novels; she considered love-stories soppy and sentimental, a waste of time. She wore a sheath of hard-edged cynicism to protect her from the world, whereas I – I was raw and exposed, my soul laid bare to the elements. But now it was Yoyo who cried, not me.

  ‘Yoyo …’

  She looked at me, and fire burned in her eyes. ‘Nanny lives in there, Winnie. Somewhere. I have to see her before she dies. I have to say goodbye. I …’ Her face crumpled. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. I realised, in many ways, she was still a child. I realised, too, how important it was that she should see Nanny again. I realised I would have to take her in. In there. Into this … this horror before us.

  It was a city set in mud. The houses, if you could call them that, were ramshackle windowless shacks that seemed held together with nothing more than luck. They were made of no recognizable building materials, though here and there a wooden plank was to be seen, or a broken sheet of corrugated iron for a roof. Mostly they were made of coconut palms and rice sacks, pieces of tarpaulin or canvas, crumbling mud bricks: bits and pieces haphazardly fitted together to do no more than provide a rudimentary protection from sun and rain. Two raggedy lines of such shacks stretched away before our eyes along a narrow lane of oozing black slush, and several more such lines lay to our left and right. On either side of the lane ran two ditches, overflowing with some kind of sickening black ooze. Over the entire area hung that abominable stench that had assaulted my nostrils some time back and had now grown so strong as to be unbearable. I still held a handkerchief to my nose; the sight had distracted from the stench for a while, but now I realised just how ghastly it was, a melange of offal and excretion and rotting flesh and various other unidentifiable but equally nauseating odours.

  And the flies. Oh, the flies, swarms of them nestled on the ground. Flies, whirring around the eyes of small children and the sores on dogs’ backs. Perhaps they gorged on stench.

  It was, quite simply, horrendous. To think of Nanny, our beloved Nanny, living within this abomination – it was unbearable. Did Papa know she lived here? Had he sent her away, knowing she would move here? Had he knowingly thrown her into a pigsty?

  By this time word had spread and people, that is, small children, young women with babies and toddlers, old women, and old men, for every able-bodied coolie was working in the canes, had emerged from the nearest shacks and come forward and now stood watching us. Silently. Just stood there, waiting for us to do something. Dogs, too, had gathered, and stood there barking, warning us to keep away, but coming no closer, no doubt wary of our horses and their hooves. The overseers rode horses. Overseers and their horses were dangerous beasts.

  Beside me, Yoyo seemed to wake up. She straightened her back, signalled to one of the women nearest us, and called.

  ‘Come!’

  Come the woman did, but reluctantly, taking time to move away from the little crowd outside her hut and looking around as if to see it was really she who had been addressed. She arrived at our side and Yoyo said, looking down at her, ‘We’re looking for – for …’

  She looked at me, seeking an answer. She could hardly ask for Nanny, but she had never called her anything else. Luckily, I knew Nanny’s name

  ‘Yashoda,’ I said to the woman. ‘We’re looking for Yashoda. Gopal’s grandmother.’

  ‘Gopal?’ she repeated, looking up and shaking her head, ‘plenty people name Gopal. Plenty people name Yashoda.’

  She wore a faded, tattered strip of cloth as a sari. Her thinning hair, grey and shiny with coconut oil, was pulled back behind her neck. It would be gathered into a long plait down her spine in the style of the coolie women.

  ‘Gopal …Gopal the gardener. At Mr Cox’s house, our house. The gardener! His grandmother is Yashoda.’

  I had the feeling the woman knew exactly which Gopal I wanted, and which Yashoda. That she was being deliberately ignorant. To spite us. Because we were who we were. Yoyo must have come to the same conclusion, because she said now, sharply, and more in keeping with her natural character:

  ‘You know which Gopal! His grandmother is Yashoda and she’s dying. Take us to her!’ There was a cutting edge of impatience in Yoyo’s voice. It made me nervous.

  ‘Please!’ I added, but already the wrongness of our demand had become clear to me. I reached over and touched Yoyo’s elbow.

  ‘Yoyo, come, let’s go. This isn’t right,’ I pleaded. She simply nudged me away, not looking away from the woman on the ground, who seemed more hostile than ever. She looked around at the other logie dwellers, looked down, and clenched the ragged skirt of her sari. Finally she raised one skinny arm and gestured vaguely into the settlement.

  ‘Over there,’ she said. ‘But Gopal in’t there now. He workin.’

  ‘It’s Yashoda we want to see,’ said Yoyo. ‘Nanny. It’s her we want to visit. Show us the way.’

  ‘Please,’ I added again.

  What choice did the poor woman have? She hesitated again, then shrugged and walked away with a ‘follow me’ gesture, into the central lane between the rows of huts, and Yoyo urged Pascale on. Off they walked.

  I followed, urging Tosca on, into the mud. Mud, that su
cked at our horses’ hooves and splattered up as we walked by; past those abominable hovels. At several huts, old women and young children came out to stare, and mangy dogs came out to bark, though keeping well away. Swarms of flies rose up at our passing in a restless buzzing cloud, parting to let us through

  Horrified thoughts raced through my mind as we passed by. This could not be happening on our property, under our very noses! And if it was, then Papa must be informed. He could not possibly know! Papa was a gentleman, a decent, caring man. A Christian. He would not allow such loathsomeness to blight our Promised Land. Papa must be brought here, to see for himself; he would be as horrified as we were, and put an end to it. I was eager, almost, to see more, to make a full report, and my initial impulse to whisk Yoyo away turned to gratitude that she had found this place. I needed to know everything, to suppress my own revulsion in the interest of helping these people. I needed to observe it all so as to describe it in detail to Papa.

  The people, for instance. The coolies who emerged from their shacks to stare silently as we passed by, showed none of the deferential nodding of heads and curtseying we were used to when riding through the village; there were none of the polite calls of ‘Good-day Miss!’ and the obsequious smiles of the villagers. The eyes that looked down the moment I sought them – to smile, to greet, to show my solidarity – were neither obsequious nor shy.

  With a start I realized: these people were hostile. And hostility was a thing I had never in all my life encountered. We moved deeper into the – well, what shall I call it – village? Community? No. Slum was more like it; a rural slum plonked bang in the middle of Paradise. And as we progressed, turning right into another identical lane and left again into an even narrower, but similarly stinking, alleyway, the more my worry increased: how could Papa not know about this? And if he knew, then why … I could think no further.

  Looking behind me, I saw that we were being followed by a rag-tag group of old women and young children. The lanes grew ever narrower and muddier the hovels more rudimentary, the glares more hostile. Presently I became aware of a moaning, keening sound, more animal than human. It grew louder as we progressed. Finally, we approached a group of women standing in the lane at the entrance to one of the shacks. The noise came from them; they were swaying and bowing and beating their breasts, clinging to each other, bawling and moaning and howling a most pitiful lament whose meaning was obvious. They wore worn saris that had once been white, and their hair was undone and hanging loose over their shoulders, instead of being plaited neatly down their backs. We needed no explanation. We were too late: Nanny had passed away.

  ‘NO!’ cried Yoyo and swung her leg over Pascale’s back. Oblivious to the mud she plunged forward and right through the group to the opening that stood in as a door. A short, steep flight of dilapidated steps rose up to the door – for the logies were built, like all British Guiana houses, on stilts, albeit short stilts – and there she stopped. A stony-faced woman emerged from the hut’s interior, and arms crossed before her chest, blocked Yoyo’s entrance. Yoyo, weeping, tried to push past; the woman would not let her. The mourners abruptly stopped their moaning, and stared. Yoyo tried again to climb the stairs but the woman held out a hand and pushed her back. She stumbled and almost fell, righted herself, swung around and glared at the women and children gathered around, both mourners and the spectators who had followed us here.

  ‘Go away! Stop staring!’ She made a shooing gesture, and when no one stepped away, looked past them to me.

  ‘Winnie, say something! Talk to her, please! I need to go in there! I need to see Nanny! Even if she’s dead I need to see her!’

  She was crying again by now, weeping with an anguish that shook her from head to foot. She buried her face in her hands and collapsed in a desolate heap on the mud at the bottom of the steps. Only then did the mourners back away a little, as if in deference to genuine grief. At the same time, the spectators drew nearer, the better to take in the unfolding drama. I dismounted, and took up Pascale’s reins – which Yoyo in her haste had simply dropped – and gestured to an older boy to come nearer. I handed him the reins of both ponies and gestured again for him to wait there; though I need not have, for where else would he have gone? I stepped up to the hut. The gathering of mourners parted to let me through. I bent down, clasped Yoyo under her arms, and raised her up. Up she came, limp and sobbing, and clung to me. I patted her on the back and looked pleadingly at the woman in the doorway, presumably Nanny’s daughter or daughter-in-law or granddaughter or niece.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘please let us in. We both loved Nanny – Yashoda. We came to say goodbye.’

  ‘Yashoda dead,’ said the woman unnecessarily.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why we came. Is her body in there? Can you let us see her? Please?’

  The emaciated being scrutinised me as if to divine my secret wicked thoughts. Perhaps she found nothing threatening, for eventually she shrugged and gestured to our feet, first mine then Yoyo’s. I understood at once, and bent down to remove my muddy boots. This much I knew about coolies: they remove their shoes, if they had any at all, before entering a home. I whispered to Yoyo to follow suit – for she stood there numb and speechless – and she too bent over to remove her riding boots. We placed our footwear outside the hut. The woman stepped aside to allow us to pass by. We climbed the steps and bending low, entered. There was no door, of course, only a doorway, a dark hole and a rice-sack curtain tied to one side.

  Inside it was dark for there were no windows. Dark, small, and crowded. We were the only standing occupants; everyone else – all old women, their hair loose and hanging over their shoulders – were sitting on the floor filling every last space, and at their centre was a stretched- out figure lying on the ground. A tiny lamp burned at the figure’s head, and in its glow I made out Nanny’s cold, pale features.

  There is something so final, so chilling about death. There were Nanny’s familiar features, older now, but the same, yet devoid of that vital element that separates the animate from the inanimate. She could have been carved in stone. They had tied a cloth around her jaw, knotted on the crown of her head, presumably to keep it closed. It was just a body. Nothing was in it. Nanny was truly gone. Absent. This cold thing had nothing to do with her.

  I sank to my knees, head bowed; so did Yoyo. It was an involuntary gesture, as if Death itself had pointed to the floor and silently commanded such deference. Outside, the moaning and keening began anew, and now the women sitting cross-legged around the body began to moan and keen and lament as well. ‘Eeeeeeiiiiiiiiiiih!’ they cried and ‘Ooooooooooowwwww!’ they howled.

  Yoyo and I, kneeling near the entrance, sank back to sit on the floor like the women. It was of wooden planks, widely gapped; black, yet, as far as I could tell, clean. My eyes, finally accustomed to the half-light, scanned the rest of the room, beyond and above the heads of the mourners. The family’s meagre possessions were stacked neatly on rudimentary boxes acting as shelves against the walls. Above our heads, a few dented pots and tins (I recognised the empty Cow & Gate powdered milk tins that we threw out regularly) hung on pieces of twine from the ceiling; to collect rainwater, it seemed, from, no doubt, the leaking roof.

  The room itself was smaller than Mama’s dressing room. Now, with the two of us, the five or six women sitting on the floor, as well as Nanny’s body, it was full. A sling made from an old piece of sari-cloth hung from a board in the ceiling; it seemed to contain a lump of something, but now the woman – Nanny’s daughter, or daughter-in-law, or granddaughter – removed the lump and it turned out to be a baby. It started to cry, a thin high wail. She placed it to her breast, pulled away the rags of her sari, and it fell silent.

  We sat there for some time. It was impossible to measure the passing minutes. An incredible sadness descended on me: grief for Nanny; that she should have lived out her last days in such a dreadful place; despair at the conditions in which the coolies lived; helplessness; anger; disgust. Welts
chmerz, Mama would have called this collective gloom. Mama was an expert at the various nuances of misery. I wallowed in this darkness for a while, cocooned by the clamour of moans and wails, and when I could stand it no longer, I squeezed Yoyo’s hand and we rose somewhat shakily to our feet and made silent signs of gratitude and leave-taking to Nanny’s daughter, or daughter-in-law, or granddaughter; we left the hut, put on our boots, reclaimed our ponies, mounted them, and returned the way we had come. The boy who had held the ponies led the way.

  Down those stinking, muddy lanes lined with their ramshackle hovels not even fit for pigs. All the coolies came out to watch us leave. They stood before their miserable dwellings in silence, and stared at us as our horses clip-clopped past them, their hooves making sickly sucking sounds in the sludge. Sullen, empty eyes followed us. Not even the children – the littlest ones pressed against their mother’s skirts as if shrinking from us – uttered a word. Not a baby cried. Dogs barked and snarled, but at a cringing distance from the hooves. Yoyo rode with her head held high, her eyes dry now, but her cheeks more tear-smudged than ever. I looked down.

  At last we left the logies and were once again on the path that led through the cane fields. I would have loved to race home, but the condition of the path made this impossible; we rode single file, Yoyo leading the way. In silence. I could not stand the silence. There was so much to say, and too much to bear. The enormity of what we had seen weighed so heavily upon me I thought I would break under it, but Yoyo stayed stubbornly mute and I – well, words failed me.

  I found my voice when we reached the stables and dismounted and handed our ponies over to the groom. I looked around me.

  ‘Compared to our coolies,’ I said to Yoyo, gesturing all around to indicate the neat, clean stables with the cobbled yard and wooden loose boxes made of best timber, painted white, ‘our ponies live in palaces.’