The Secret Life of Winnie Cox Read online

  By now the doubts were tumbling through my mind. This was all a big mistake. A huge mistake! But it was too late now; no going back. I was on my way. The stationmaster’s whistle pierced the babble of muted noise in the carriage, followed by a gasp of steam from the engine and a series of jerks and squeals and clanks, metal scraping on metal. Faces at the open windows, raised voices, hands reaching in as relatives said their last goodbyes. Slowly, creakingly, we juddered into movement. Straining like an old man whose joints refuse to comply, puffing as if out of breath, the train crept through the outskirts of Rosignol. As the last houses gave way to open fields, we gathered momentum. The train’s whistle screeched joyously, and losing its last restraints, the engine huffed and puffed and plunged forward, our carriage rattled along behind it, swaying and rumbling and throwing me alternately against the fat woman and the wall. I gazed through the window, seeing nothing. My vision was blurred by unshed tears. I held my breath in the effort not to cry. All my pluck, all my confidence seemed washed away in a flood of memories: of Papa, Mama, childhood joys, Promised Land, waving cane, big skies, home. Goodbye to all that! I buried my face in my palms and shook with a dry sob as it truly dawned on me what I had done.

  ‘Here, Miss,’ said the fat woman. ‘A kerchief for you. It’s clean!’ She waved a piece of off-white cloth at me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and took it, blew my nose and handed it back.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said, and smiled at me. I managed to smile back. ‘You goin’ to Georgetown?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I saw you on the steamer. Is a long way for a young girl like you to be travellin’ alone. You goin’ to join family?’

  Tears rushed to my eyes and spilled out. It was the word family that did it. I had no family now. Unless, unless I truly got out and turned back. Gave up. Like the coward that I was. The woman’s voice interrupted the torrent of self-incriminations.

  ‘Darlin’, don’ cry! Come sweetheart, what’s the matter? Tell Auntie!’

  The voice was so warm, so soothing, I looked at her and through my tears I actually saw her for the first time. Up to now, she had been just a fat darkie woman who took up more than her fair share of space on the much too narrow wooden railway seat. Now I saw all the things that had escaped me through the shroud of self-concern that closed me in. She wore a faded blue skirt stretched tight over her thighs and coming apart at the hem, and a similarly washed-out floral blouse with a collar edged in lace, strained tight over an enormous bosom. Like me, she had removed her bonnet, and it lay across her knees, a miserable brown thing that looked like a hen’s carcass. But her pitiful attire faded into insignificance beside the deep concern that rang through that voice and now, as I looked up and met her gaze, shone in her eyes. Her clothes may have been dull and drained of life but not the eyes that met mine above the smooth plumpness of her cheeks, they shone like black diamonds, and in them was a spirit so acute, so sharp, it startled me right out of the spiral of self-abasement.

  My fingers fumbled with the cloth she had given me, twisting and untwisting it. I found I could not speak, for a lump in my throat converted the sound I tried to make into a croak. I bowed my head and more tears came. I dabbed them away. Finally, the words came out.

  ‘I don’t know what to do! I don’t know where to go! I don’t know anything!’

  She laughed then, a cascade of gurgles that came right up from her belly so that her bosom shook like jelly.

  ‘Chile! Which of we really know what to do an’ who we is or anyt’ing at all! We think we does know but we don’t know nothin’. Nobody know anything. We just do what we got to do. So what you got to do?’

  ‘I want to go to Georgetown but I don’t know where to go when I get there because I planned this journey all wrong and it will be too late when I get there and I just don’t know!’

  ‘Jus’ a minute. Start at the beginning. First of all tell me where is home. New Amsterdam?’

  I shook my head in misery. ‘No. Much further away. Promised Land Plantation, up the coast.’

  ‘So your family live there?’

  I nodded, miserably.

  ‘You daddy does work on the plantation, then.’ It was a statement rather than a question, but I corrected her.

  ‘No, he owns it. He owns it and I hate that he owns it and that’s why I have to leave.’

  Now it was her turn to be startled – she even drew away from me. ‘You daddy own the plantation? Promised Land? Oh Lordy! An me thinkin’ you was some pore-white girl!’

  I knew what she meant – the daughter of one of the lesser employees on the plantation, a man from England or Scotland who had come here to better his lot only to find himself and his family on the lowest rung of the highest strata.

  I shook my head. She was silent for a while, perhaps gathering her thoughts as she reconsidered her attitude towards me, for when she spoke again it was with far more formality.

  ‘But what you doin’ in a third-class carriage, Miss, and all alone?’

  The words ‘all alone’ were enough to make my face crumple as I fought back another torrent of tears. Maybe that’s what melted her because all of a sudden she was all tenderness and comfort again.

  If we had been standing she would surely have hugged me; as it was, she took both my hands in her huge ones and pulled me gently sideways so that I sat side-ways on the seat, and, looking earnestly into my eyes, said, ‘So you is a rich girl in trouble. I think you better tell Auntie Dolly everything.’

  To hear those words, suffused with kindness, was all I needed.

  ‘You see,’ I began, ‘I met this young man …’

  I told her everything. Telling the truth for the first time in days was more healing than a bowl of steaming chicken soup. ‘So,’ I finished off, my voice breaking, ‘I’m going to Town to find George … but … but I won’t get there till late and I won’t able to find him … and, and it’s such a nightmare! Do you … do you know of a cheap hotel where I could stay tonight, because we usually stay at the Park, and maybe I can charge it to Papa’s account, but I look so scruffy they would turn me away and I don’t know where to go and what to DO!’

  The last word was a wail: drawn-out and desperate, containing all the hopelessness and helplessness, all the yearning and the aching of a child caught up in a self-made plight too huge for her to handle.

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Auntie Dolly after a while. ‘Lemme get this straight. All you know about this young man is he name and where he work.’

  I nodded. My face must have looked as miserable as I felt for she squeezed my hands – which she had been holding all this time – and crooned, ‘Oh Lord, have mercy upon this chile. Dear Lord have mercy.’

  She let go of my hands then and flopped back into her seat. She sighed audibly. She picked up her bonnet and began to fan herself with it. Indeed, it was hotter than ever, as was usual in the hours past midday. Even the breeze fluttering in through the open window was hot – hot and dusty, and blowing my hair out of the careful coif Nora had created that morning.

  All of a sudden Auntie Dolly turned back to me.

  ‘I know what you should do,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get off at the next station and go back home. The train will pass back in about two hours. Go back home. Forget this Georgie-boy. You never thought about it? How it goin’ to work out – you a white girl an’ all?’

  ‘But … but …’ And then I flopped back into my seat and began to cry in earnest. Because I saw that she was right and what she said was true. There was no question – I had to go back.

  It was a full-blown disaster. How could I have ever thought it would work, me running away to Georgetown with such a badly drawn-up plan? What would I do once I got there? Once I had met George and told him I loved him? What then? I knew we couldn’t marry – not yet – and sooner or later Papa would come and set the police on my track and find me and drag me home in disgrace and that would be the end of it. I just hadn’t thought that
far ahead. That’s what comes from being a mollycoddled little princess who never had to think for herself. Idiot. I couldn’t do it. This great plan of mine – a failure. I had to get out. Get out at the next station. Get back home. Get into the next train travelling east to Rosignol, take the steamer back to New Amsterdam. Walk to the Stewarts. No one at home would ever know the truth. It was over. I’d never see George again.

  Auntie Dolly had fallen asleep, her head thrown back against the wall of the train. I shouldn’t have told her my story. That was stupid. Yet it had done me good to talk. It had helped to calm me down, to put things into perspective, to dry my tears. So what if it had put her to sleep with boredom. I could see clearly now. The adventure was over.

  The train creaked into a station and drew to a juddering halt. I tied on my bonnet, got up, and stood on tiptoe to lift my suitcase down from the luggage rack. Auntie Dolly turned to me. Her hands flapped in the air as she shooed me away as if I were a nasty smell.

  ‘What you waitin’ for? Go. The train gon’ start up again in a minute.’

  But I didn’t go. I just stood there staring at her. New passengers left the train, easing themselves down the crowded aisle, and new ones boarded. It was high time for me to leave. But I didn’t. I placed my suitcase back on the rack, sat down next to her, and untied my bonnet.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said to her, calmly and firmly. ‘I can’t go home. I have to see George. I have to talk to him. It can’t end like this.’

  On the platform, the stationmaster’s whistle screeched and the engine belched steam; the train trembled and huffed and juddered into creaking movement, and I was still on it. And I would stay on it, all the way to Georgetown.

  ‘I’m going to George,’ I repeated. ‘To Georgetown. To George. I have to see this through. I can’t give up.

  Auntie Dolly almost exploded at the words.

  ‘You crazy lil’ girl! You lost you mind or what? You know what, you can’t! You can’t do this! You white people! You think whatever you want you can get! All you gon’ do is bring down trouble on George head! Crazy, crazy, crazy!’

  On and on went the tirade. Her voice grew louder, angrier. People peered, and turned to stare, to smirk. What a scene! But it was of no use. With every word of reproach I only grew more and more determined. I would not give up so easily! I would find a way! I had to speak to George, and I would find him. Somehow. So I simply smiled politely at Auntie Dolly as she raged. And finally she was spent. She threw herself back against the seat, pulled another handkerchief out of her bosom, wiped her face with it, and fanned herself with her bonnet.

  When she had finished speaking, I said, quietly and firmly, ‘You see, I love him.’

  She glared at me. ‘You don’t know what love is. You much too young.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I know.’

  She fell silent then, closed her eyes and I thought she was asleep. But after a long while she spoke again.

  ‘Very well. I gon’ help you.’

  ‘Help me? Really? How?’

  ‘Take you to me house for the night and go with you in the morning to the Post Office. Help you find he.’

  ‘Auntie Dolly! Really! That would be so – so wonderful of you! Thank you!’

  She muttered grumpily. ‘What else I gon’ do? Let you go to Georgetown all on you own, a stranger, a young white girl, and walk the streets lookin’ for a place to stay? At evenin’ time? You know what would happen to you? I can’t let you do that.’

  ‘Thank you! Thank you so much!’ I grabbed her hand and kissed it. She pulled it away with a snort.

  ‘Don’t thank me. Thank the Lord. I say a prayer and that is what he tell me to do. I don’t know if is right to help you. Maybe is wrong. Maybe is right. What do I know? Only the good Lord know what is right an’ wrong so I did pray to he and he did say I got to help.’

  ‘I’m so grateful. I’m sure I would have found a hotel or something, or maybe friends of my father’s to put me up, but this is much better! Much!’

  ‘Well of course if you Daddy got friends in one of them big mansions in Main Street you welcome to go there! I only got a small-small house in Kitty. It not going to be good enough for the likes of you …’

  ‘Oh, Auntie Dolly, that’s not what I meant at all! I’d love to come to your house!’

  She looked me up and down and seemed satisfied that I was sincere.

  ‘Very well. So you can spend the night at me place in Kitty, and tomorrow I gon’ go with you to town, an’ we gon’ to find this George together. But only on one condition.’

  ‘A condition? What condition?’

  ‘I only gon’ help if you promise me to go back home after that, Sunday morning, and not to run away again. So you see George and tell him what you want to tell him. And see what he says. And then go back home and wait.’

  ‘Wait – for what?’

  ‘Till you get old enough to know you mind better. Wait to see if the love hold out. Five years at least. You much too young to face the troubles now.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You’ll do that?’

  I nodded.

  Auntie Dolly frowned sternly as she looked at me, trying, it seemed, to probe into the depths of my mind, to extract that promise that was the price of her help.

  Of course, she couldn’t see my hands, which I had subtly slipped behind my back. She couldn’t see the crossed fingers. Back to Promised Land, that sullied paradise? Back to Papa? Never! By promising to help find George, Auntie Dolly had also restored my confidence in our future together, my faith in a love so strong it would sustain us through thick and through thin. How could I go home and wait for five years? Five years! That was an eternity!

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  She was not satisfied.

  ‘Say it!’ she insisted. ‘Say it out loud. Say I promise to go home and not run away again.’

  This time I hesitated. But then I said it. ‘I promise to go home and not run away again.’

  I pressed my crossed fingers tightly together. It felt terrible to lie to Auntie Dolly, she who had only just relieved me of a terrible burden of falsehoods. But actually, only half of it was a lie, wasn’t it – the part about going home. Because if I didn’t go home, I could not run away again.

  ‘Good girl!’ she said, and patted me on the thigh.

  After that she fell asleep, her head lolling to one side. I too was exhausted – putting your burdens on someone else’s shoulders must be almost as exhausting as being the one so burdened, but for me the exhaustion came more as a kind of nervous restlessness: I could not sleep. If there had been enough space I would have walked up and down the aisle of the crowded carriage. As it was I stayed seated and gazed out of the window, wide awake.

  By now we were halfway to Georgetown. The train rattled on in a pleasantly clanking rhythm, swaying merrily along in beat to the steam, and stopping every now and then at rural stations for passengers to get on and off. At every stop women strolled past the window calling out their wares: pine-tart, bananas, small bunches of genips, bread-and-fish.

  I counted out some coins and bought a bread-and-fish. It was a slice of fried fish in a tennis roll with a sliver of tomato. Eating helped calm my nerves. I was thirsty, too, and bought a water coconut which a vendor passed through the window, its top sliced off. I put my mouth around the hole, tipped back my head, and drank. Delicious!

  My hunger stilled and thirst quenched, a new sense of adventure crept through my being. Of anticipation – a sense of living in the moment not knowing what the future might bring, but trusting it would be good. Auntie Dolly’s offer of help had brought order into the chaos that had gathered momentum since the morning. I took a deep breath. Here I was on a Demerara train hurtling towards a great big question mark, and yet I felt the strength to face whatever might be waiting round the next corner. And tomorrow, if all went well, I would see George. At the mere thought of his name warmth and joy and courage welled up in me. I saw his face in my m
ind’s eyes and felt the rain on my cheeks, heard his voice, the tremble of emotion in it: ‘I love you so much.’

  The countryside rolled by. Flooded fields of emerald green paddies with coolie women bent double in the water, weeding. Miles and miles of cane, not yet at its full height. Fishing villages with black nets spread over the bare ground and fishing boats upside-down beside the seawall. The seawall itself – that long brick structure stretching from Georgetown to Rosignol as a barricade against the ocean. Papa had told us that the coastal plain was six feet below sea level and the Dutch had built this wall as a protection; that it was Dutch expertise that had made these lowlands fit for farming; that most of the plantations along the coast had once been in Dutch hands, hence some of the names: Beterverwagting, Niewkerie, Uitgtveldt. And French names, like Non Pareil, La Bonne Intention and Mon Repos, and of course our own neighbour, Dieu Merci, because the French too had been part of our colonial past; but mostly English names, names that sometimes reflected the spirit that had brought these pioneers here: Adventure. Land of Canaan. Promised Land.

  The train rolled metallically along the rails in a clattering, comforting rhythm into which my own heartbeat settled. The wind, cool and salty from the ocean, swept in through the open window, brushed my cheeks, whipped my hair against my cheeks. I yawned, and closed my eyes.

  Mama’s Diary: Plantation Promised Land, British Guiana, 1897

  Liebes Tagebuch,

  I can’t believe that this time, not months but years have passed by since I last wrote to you! I may have neglected you by touch, but never in my mind. You are the one I talk to in the stillness of the night, as I cannot talk to Archie, my daughters are too young, and I have not a single friend here. I fight against a certain despondency. Writing to you takes a distinct effort to lift myself out of that sense of being buried under a great weight. I shall try to do it more often. But I cannot promise. Sometimes the effort is just too great.