The Secret Life of Winnie Cox Read online

  I am not made of the stuff of heroes. I am drawn to things of beauty: flowers and art and music. But if one thing was clear now it was this: we had to do something. It’s one thing to live in a happy world of sweet song and dance, blithely oblivious of any nasty shadow that the world might be casting on others; quite another to know the ugly truth and turn away. We had to do something. But what? And how? What could we do, young as we were? The only way was through Papa, and there our differences came to light.

  Yoyo believed in confrontation. She thought we should hold Papa responsible for the eyesore on his own property, demand an explanation, and jointly discuss with him the ways and means of its removal.

  I disagreed. ‘We must give Papa the benefit of the doubt!’ I told her firmly, speaking with all the authority granted by my seniority. Yoyo well knew how her impulsive, unconsidered responses to life’s little hurdles sometimes caught her up in unfortunate nets of discord; it was always I who freed her. Calmness trumps agitation any day. And so now she listened as I explained how I thought we should approach this problem.

  ‘Papa is not responsible for the living conditions of the coolies,’ I told her confidently. ‘You can’t expect him to push his nose into every little detail of plantation management! He has supervisors for these things. There’s Mr McInnes. Now, there’s a nasty piece of work! I can quite imagine him being perfectly indifferent to the well-being of our coolies.’

  Mr McInnes was the estate manager, Papa’s second-in-command. A hard, mean, cruel man. I could easily see him as responsible for this atrocity, and hiding it from Papa.

  ‘And what about the head foreman? What’s his name now?’

  ‘Mr Howarth …’ said Yoyo. It seemed to be the beginning of a sentence, but before she could continue I did.

  ‘Papa is the plantation owner, at the head of the whole operation. He doesn’t concern himself with the little day-to-day practical details of how it’s run, or how the workers live. Other men do that, and report to him. That’s why it’s up to us to tell him what we have discovered. I am sure he’ll be just as shocked as we are.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right.’ I felt rather than saw Yoyo nodding in agreement, and breathed out in relief. My worst nightmare was that she would burst into unwarranted accusations that would anger him, put his back up, and force him into a position of resistance which he could hardly retreat from without losing face. Yoyo and Papa were so alike in that way. Once hardened into a particular standpoint they would defend it simply for the sake of defence, even if it was obvious to others they were wrong. I was fortunate to have caught Yoyo before she had fixed her opinion regarding our manner of approach.

  That decided, we moved onto more pleasant ruminations. We thought of what we would do once Papa was made aware of the deplorable living conditions of our coolies, and the changes that would subsequently be made. Our vision was of a field on the back dam, donated by us for the creation of a coolie village, where each family would have a pretty little white cottage, not unlike the staff housing in our own compound. Little wooden cottages on stilts, with marigolds and hibiscus in the front gardens and small plots for provisions at the back. Coolies loved to grow vegetables. They loved gardening. They loved cows.

  ‘We could erect a cowshed for them,’ Yoyo said, and I thrilled at the thought.

  ‘And give them cows,’ I said. ‘And then we’ll buy milk from them. It will give them a new source of income!’

  ‘Chickens!’ cried Yoyo.

  ‘Eggs!’ said I.

  The house servants kept a chicken run in their own compound at the back fence, and when we were small we had enjoyed running up there every day to collect fresh eggs for the family breakfast. We had loved feeding the hens, and of course the little chicks were adorable.

  ‘A school!’

  ‘A surgery! With its own doctor!’

  ‘Nurses and midwives!’

  On we dreamt, creating the most perfect community of coolies BG had ever known. Plantation Promised Land would be a lamp of goodwill and charity in the entire colony, a living example to other plantations. This would be the crowning glory of our benevolence, for it meant transforming a little hell into a little heaven. The coolie village we planned would be a place where all our labourers would live lives very much like our own, only on a smaller scale; if we were the Sugar Kings then they were our subjects, and it was our responsibility to ensure their contentment and gratitude. I remembered with a shudder the hostile eyes that had stared at us as we walked through the logies, that sank rather than meet our own eyes. The sullen faces, the silent covert watching. In our dreams and plans those eyes would be friendly and grateful, those faces smiling; voices would call to us in good cheer as we passed, hands would wave, flowers would be pressed into our hands, strewn at our feet. It was all settled. Those atrocious logies would be razed to the ground, and every last splinter of them burnt. We would all watch, and cheer. Yoyo and I would be saviours, heroes. Our coolies would adore us.

  ‘And then,’ said Yoyo, with a giggle, ‘Then I’ll marry Clarence Smedley!’

  ‘You! No you won’t! Bags I Clarence! Because I’m the elder!’

  ‘Oh, but I’ll flirt with him and steal him from you! Mark my words!’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’

  Yoyo giggled. ‘I bet he’s got a paunch! Like Mr Watkins – he’s old too – thirty!’

  ‘No – he’ll be wearing a pince-nez. “My dear Miss Cox,” he’ll say to me, “would you do me the honour of accepting my wrinkled hand in marriage?”’

  ‘No, he’ll say it to me. “Oh, Mr Smedley,” I’ll say, “indeed I will; but I do wonder about a certain lady of ill-repute; I trust you did not bring her in your trunk?”’

  We both spluttered with laughter; it was our only means, right now, of dealing with the further menace of Clarence Smedley.

  We hugged and kissed, and settled for the night.

  ‘Good night, Yoyo.’

  ‘Good night, Winnie.’

  Papa always rose at dawn and never joined us for breakfast; he took his lunch in the senior staff compound along with all the managers, and so we would not see him all day. On this occasion, it was completely to our advantage. It would give us time to carefully plan our benevolent assault during the evening meal: the words we would use, who would speak when, and so on. Papa loved us; he would listen.

  We rose to the gleeful chirping of a kiskadee on the mango tree outside, and the morning sun slanting in through the slats of the Demerara windows of the corner room we shared. To the front, on the north side, the sash window stood open and a cool morning breeze swept in and out; away in the distance the Atlantic glimmered grey and silver.

  Some people might call the view from our window monotonous. This was the season of growing cane. Already, some of the canes were over six feet high and at full maturity could grow to up to twelve, towering high above you if you walked the roads between the fields. From up here, as far as the eye could see, was a vast, flat sea of vivid green – a shining emerald expanse stretching out to the east, west and south horizons. Stroked by the strong breeze wafting in from the Atlantic, it rippled and swayed as if brushed by an invisible hand. The northern view was different, for that horizon was indeed of the ocean, a glittering silver stripe in the distance.

  The vista was not entirely unbroken; the red roofs of the European quarters were still visible above the cane, but still, the greenness seemed as solid as if painted on to the earth. And above the green, the blue of the sky. Oh, the vastness of the Courantyne sky! Perhaps it was the flatness of the cane fields that made that sky so big – an endless sapphire blue as deep as it was wide, sometimes empty of clouds, sometimes dotted with balls of white fluff that fled across it as if chased by wind-dragons. Sometimes cumulous clouds gathered on the horizon and crept forward to cover the sky; sometimes those clouds grew dark and heavy and seemed so low you could touch them, and then they would break: and the rainy season is a chapter in itself.

  There are on
ly two seasons in BG: the rainy and the dry. But on a plantation there are many more. Plantation seasons are dictated by the rhythm of sugar, and we knew each season by the sights, sounds and smells of the sugar cycle, field by field. Full growth, when all would be green as the cane stretched up to its full height. The burning of the trash, when the field would be set alight and the green would be consumed by flames and all around us the ocean would be of fire and smoke and the air smelled of scalded, syrupy, smoky cane-juice, almost intoxicating in its pungency. Then the harvest: swarms of half-naked coolies wielding cutlasses, shouting and swearing as they slashed their way through the fields, felling those giant scorched denuded canes. The loading of the punts; the cane-cutters, their bodies, now smudged black with soot, ash and cane-juice, bent low with the weight of the bundles on their backs. The loaded punts, pulled along the canals by mules, several of them chained together, on the way to the factory. Grinding season, when the factory over at Dieu Merci would groan and chug day and night like a monster waiting in the wings to devour us all. The harvested fields ugly as hell must be, disfigured by endless miles of hacked off stumps black from the burning. Then the flood-fallowing, when the young green shoots, the ratoons, would grow out from fields now glistening with water, and the coolie women bent low in the water as they weeded; or else, every few years, the planting of new canes.

  It was magnificent. It was breathtaking. It was romantic. It was my life, my world. It was all I knew; sugar was in my blood. I had never questioned it. Until now.

  Yoyo and I floated down to breakfast smiling, almost singing. Miss Wright was already at the table, and noticed at once our spirited mood.

  ‘You girls look very gay today,’ she said, smiling herself. We were both most fond of Miss Wright; we regarded her as a member of the family, rather than an employee.

  ‘Yes!’ said Yoyo, eyes gleaming. ‘We’ve got big future plans. Haven’t we, Winnie?’

  We looked at each other in secret complicity and laughed in unison.

  ‘Well, they must be grand plans indeed! Do let me into the secret!’

  ‘We will, and very soon!’ I said.

  Mildred appeared behind me and poured my coffee. I added sugar – brown crumbling Demerara sugar, from our very own cane – and milk. The milk was made from powder: Cow & Gate. Soon, I thought, we would have our own fresh milk; Promised Land would earn its name, not just for us, the planter family, but for our coolies too. They would live as well as did our darkies.

  I wondered fleetingly about the two varieties of humans who lived on our land and worked under our jurisdiction: the darkies in the house and garden compound, and the coolies in the cane-fields. What were they doing here? How did they get here? I knew that coolies came originally from India and darkies originally from Africa; I knew that both Africa and India were part of the great British Empire, that Empire upon which the sun never set, of which father was so proud. There was a globe in our schoolroom, and we could both easily find Africa and India on it; the colonies, including British Guiana, were all pink. But how far was BG from Africa, and even more so, from India! BG, a little pink splodge perched precariously on the north-eastern shoulder of South America, conspicuous amid the expanse of dark green that formed the rest of the continent. India, on the other side of the globe! I would have to ask Miss Wright.

  Mildred’s ebony hand shook as she poured Yoyo’s coffee and it spilled all over the table.

  ‘Wah! Ah too sarry, Missy Winnie!’ She tried to mop it up with her apron. The coffee ran across the polished surface of the dining table and dripped over the edge – I pushed away my chair and stood up.

  ‘Nora!’ cried Mildred to the kitchen girl. ‘Fetch a cloth! Quick time! An’ a mop!’

  Nora ran in from the kitchen with mop and cloth; she and Mildred soaked up the coffee, Mildred apologising all the while: ‘Sarry, Missy, sarry, ah too sarry’.

  ‘It’s all right, Mildred,’ I said soothingly. ‘I didn’t get any on my clothes and look, it’s all gone.’

  Indeed, it had. Mildred and Nora bustled out to the kitchen and Mildred bustled in again with a platter loaded with warm bakes, puffed and golden and smelling delicious. But even before she reached the table something happened – I don’t know what – and the platter tumbled to the ground and the bakes bounced away across the polished floor.

  Mildred spluttered further apologies and Nora, alerted by the noise, rushed back out and both scrambled around picking up bakes and replacing them on the platter; bakes, which of course, could no longer be eaten.

  ‘We gon’ make more, Missy, Cooky gon’ make more quick time!’ promised Mildred.

  Miss Wright was frowning. ‘You’re very clumsy today, Mildred!’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Miss, ah sarry, a too sarry – is jus’ – is dem coolie-man outside de gate, ah frighten bad!’

  ‘What coolies? What are you frightened of?’

  ‘Dem coolie-man, Miss. Outside de gate. You ‘en see dem yet? Massa done gone out to dem, tryin’ to calm dem down.’

  Miss Wright half rose from her chair, dropping her table napkin on the table. Yoyo and I stared at each other. Mildred seemed pleased to have an excuse to distract us from the spilled bakes, and continued in great excitement.

  ‘Outside de gate! Missy! If yuh go to de window yuh gon’ see! A tousan’ a dem, shoutin’ an’ screamin’ an’ wavin’ cutlass an’ t’ing!’

  We all three ran to the north window of the dining room. It was wide open, but due to the curved shape of the driveway we could not see through to the gate. We could hear, though, the commotion coming from beyond the curve. The three of us ran up the stairs and into Father’s bedroom, which had the best north view over the treetops towards the ocean. And there we saw everything.

  The double wrought-iron gates to our compound were closed. Before it, on the inside, stood Papa, along with several of the male darkies, our yard boys. On the outside, stood a swarm of coolies. Hundreds of them. A seething mass of half-naked brown flesh, arms waving, gesticulating. Even from here, we could see some of the foremost faces behind the gate, faces distorted by anger; mouths open, shouting; we could hear the shouts, feel the rage. Some of those waving arms ended in waving sticks, slashing the air.

  Miss Wright gasped. ‘Oh my good Lord!’ she cried. ‘It’s a riot!’

  My heart lurched and I too cried out! ‘Papa!’

  Yoyo simply turned and ran, leaping down the stairs. I swung around and ran behind her. Miss Wright came last.

  Papa didn’t see us coming. His back was turned to us: he wore his work clothes now, khaki short trousers, khaki short-sleeved shirt, khaki knee socks, white pith helmet. He stood arms akimbo at the gate, gazing outward, unaware of our approach. Not until we were right beside him, to his right and left at the gate, did he notice our presence and even then it was only to swing around and shout at us to ‘Go away!’

  We did not go away. Yoyo shouted back: ‘Papa, Papa, tell us, what are they doing here? What’s going on? Why are they all so angry?’

  The rage engulfed us like a tidal wave swept in by the ocean: a terrible roaring beast that would have dashed us to pieces were it not for the protection of the gate; and even that protection seemed fragile, for brown hands grasped the iron staves and curlicues, rattling, pushing, pulling. On the other side, brown men screaming: words I could not decipher for the rage that filled them, for the hatred that hurled them. Some of the hands reached through the staves and snatched at air, fingers grasping; one touched a curl of mine and I stepped back as if slapped.

  Papa was shouting back but most of his words were drowned in the tumult; but then he leaned towards me, grasped my arm and screamed into my ear.

  ‘Winnie, I command you to take Yoyo back to the house! This is nothing for you girls!’

  I tried to obey; I rushed over to Yoyo and grabbed her hand but by this time she was pulling at his arm and shouting at Papa, and she shook me off as she would a fly. I grabbed her by the waist, and pulled, and this time she came a
way. Papa turned back to the mob and cried some indecipherable words: as ineffectual as shouting at a hurricane to calm it. By this time some of the hands reaching through the gates held sticks in them, bludgeons that swiped randomly and dangerously close to Papa, who took a step back. Behind the gate, brown men were climbing on the shoulders of other brown men; now the rampaging beast was two tiered, battering the gate, attempting to climb it.

  On our side, the darkies did nothing, said nothing, only watched, knowing themselves safe behind the gate: they might be outnumbered, but the raging mob was caged. Most of the darkies were armed with wooden staves or cutlasses; they stood there almost smiling, as if enjoying the show. Now, though, some of them leapt forward and battered at the coolies attempting to breach the gate, pushing at them with the staves so that they fell backwards, or hammering at the hands on the gate’s upper bars.

  Behind the gate, the uproar’s discord was settling into a steady rhythm, and at last formed words. A drum-beat, threatening and dark, pulsating with fury: No More Massa. No More Massa. No More Massa.

  So this was it – the rumoured protest movement, Massa Day Done. Try as he would to keep it from our ears, Papa, the Master, could not keep us entirely in the dark. We both knew that the coolie labourers were agitating to be rid of us. But never had that agitation reached our gates. How could the Master’s day be done? We were Sugar! If we were gone – then what?

  Yoyo and I stood watching, hand in hand, paralyzed with fear. At least I was; perhaps Yoyo’s temporary paralysis was bewilderment rather than fear. Miss Wright had run with us to the gate, but stayed at a safe distance when we rushed up to Papa. Now, she stepped up behind us and placed a hand on each of our shoulders, drawing us back even more.

  ‘Come, girls,’ she said soothingly. ‘Let’s go back inside.’

  We both wriggled free, and turned to face her.