'I suggest you use your powers of deduction.'
I throw a desperate look at the girl, bundled up on the last mule, her mute face striped with tears. 'Have you sold her? She didn't do anything so very bad. I have the bracelet back safe. Maybe she only meant to borrow it.'
My mother sighs. 'I won't stand for thieving or back-answers, and Millie has been guilty of both.'
'But Pa Philippe, and her mother – you can't part her from them—'
Maman draws me aside, her arm like a cage round my back. 'Aimée, I won't stoop to dispute my methods with an impudent and sentimental girl, especially in front of strangers. Go back to your lesson.'
I open my mouth to tell her that Millie didn't steal the bracelet, exactly; that she thought I had promised it to her. But that would call for too much explanation, and what if Maman found out that I've been interrogating the nègres about private family business? I shut my mouth again. I don't look at Millie; I can't bear it. The trader whistles to his mules to start walking. I go back into the house. My head's bursting from the sun; I have to keep my eyes squeezed shut.
'What is it, child?' asks Tante Fanny, when I open the door. Her anger has turned to concern; it must be my face.
'I feel . . . weak.'
'Sit down on this sofa, then. Shall I ring for a glass of wine?'
Next thing I know I'm flat on my back, choking. I feel so sick. I push Tante Fanny's hand away. She stoppers her smelling salts. 'My dear.'
'What . . .'
'You fainted.'
I feel oddly disappointed. I always thought it would be a luxuriant feeling – a surrendering of the spirit – but it turns out that fainting is just a sick sensation, and then you wake up.
'It's very natural,' she says, with the ghost of a smile. 'I believe you have become a woman today.'
I stare down at myself, but my shape hasn't changed.
'Your petticoat's a little stained,' she whispers, showing me the spots – some brown, some fresh scarlet – and suddenly I understand. 'You should go to your room and ask Millie to show you what to do.'
At the mention of Millie I put my hands over my face.
'Where did you get that?' asks Tante Fanny, in a changed voice. She reaches out to touch the bracelet that's slipped out from beneath my sleeve. I flinch. Aimée, where did you get that?'
'It was in a trunk, in the attic,' I confess. 'I know it was Eliza's. Can I ask you, how did she die?' My words astonish me as they spill out.
My aunt's face contorts. I think perhaps she's going to strike me. After a long minute, she says 'We killed her. Your uncle and I.'
My God. So Millie told the truth, and in return I've had her sold, banished from the sight of every face she knows in the world.
'Your cousin died for our pride, for our greed.' Tante Fanny puts her fingers round her throat. 'She was perfect, but we couldn't see it, because of the mote in our eyes.'
What is she talking about?
'You see, Aimée, when my darling daughter was about your age she developed some boutons.'
Pimples? What can pimples have to do with anything?
My aunt's face is a mask of creases. 'They weren't so very bad, but they were the only defect in such a lovely face, they stood out terribly. I was going to take her to the local root-doctor for an ointment, but your Papa happened to know a famous skin specialist in Paris. I think he was glad of the excuse for a trip to his native country. And we knew that nothing in Louisiana could compare to France. So your Papa accompanied us – Eliza and myself and your Oncle Louis – on the long voyage, and he introduced us to this doctor. For eight days' – Tante Fanny's tone has taken on a Biblical timbre – 'the doctor gave the girl injections, and she bore it bravely. We waited for her face to become perfectly clear again – but instead she took a fever. We knew the doctor must have made some terrible mistake with his medicines. When Eliza died—' Here the voice cracks, and Tante Fanny lets out a sort of barking sob. 'Your oncle wanted to kill the doctor; he drew his sword to run him through. But your Papa, the peacemaker, persuaded us that it must have been the cholera or some other contagion. We tried to believe that; we assured each other that we believed it. But when I looked at my lovely daughter in her coffin, at sixteen years old, I knew the truth as if God had spoken in my heart.'
She's weeping so much now, her words are muffled. I wish I had a handkerchief for her.
'I knew that Eliza had died for a handful of pimples. Because in our vanity, our dreadful pride, we couldn't accept the least defect in our daughter. We were ungrateful, and she was taken from us, and all the years since, and all the years ahead allotted to me, will be expiation.'
The bracelet seems to burn me. I've managed to undo the catch. I pull it off, the little gold charms tinkling.
Tante Fanny wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. 'Throw that away. My curse on it, and on all glittering vanities,' she says hoarsely. 'Get rid of it, Aimée, and thank God you'll never be beautiful.'
Her words are like a blow to the ribs. But a moment later I'm glad she said it. It's better to know these things. Who'd want to spend a whole life hankering?
I go out of the room without a word. I can feel the blood welling, sticky on my thighs. But first I must do this. I fetch an old bottle from the kitchen, and a candle stub. I seal up the bracelet in its green translucent tomb, and go to the top of the levee, and throw it as far as I can into the Mississippi.
CORNELIUS JUBB
Peter Robinson
Most of us around these parts had never seen a coloured person until Cornelius Jubb walked into the Nag's Head one fine April evening in 1943, bold as brass and black as Whitby jet.
Ernie the landlord asked him if he had a glass. Glasses being in short supply, most of us brought our own and guarded them with our lives. He shook his head. Ernie's not a bad sort, though, so he dug out a dusty jam jar from under the bar, rinsed it off and filled it with beer. The young man seemed happy enough with the result; he thanked Ernie and paid. After that, he lit a Lucky Strike and just stood there with that gentle, innocent look in his eyes, a look I came to know so well, and one that stayed with him throughout all that was to happen in the following weeks, for all the world as if he might have been waiting for a bus or something, daydreaming about some faraway sweetheart.
Now, most of us up here in Leeds are decent enough folk, and I like to think we measure a man by who he is and what he does. But there's always an exception, isn't there? In our case it was Obediah Clough, who happened to be drinking with his cronies in his usual corner, complaining about the meagre cheese ration. Obediah was too old to go to war again, and he drilled the local Home Guard and helped out with ARP, though air raids had been sporadic since 1941, to say the least.
Obediah swaggered up to the young coloured gentleman with that way he has, chest puffed out, baggy trousers held up with a length of cord, and looked him up and down, an exaggerated expression of curiosity on his blotchy red face. His pals sat in the corner sniggering at his performance. The young man ignored them all and carried on drinking and smoking.
Finally, not used to being ignored for so long, Obediah thrust his face mere inches away from the other man's, which must have been terrible for the poor fellow because Obediah's breath smells worse than a pub toilet at closing time. Give him his due, though, the lad didn't flinch.
'What have we got here, then?' Obediah said, playing it up for his cronies.
Whether because he recognized the question as rhetorical, or because he simply didn't know the answer, the young man made no reply.
'What's your name, then?' Obediah asked.
The man put his glass down, smiled and said, 'My name's Jubb, sir. Lieutenant Cornelius Jubb. I'm very pleased to meet you.' He held out his hand, but Obediah ignored it.
'Jubb?' Obediah's jaw dropped. 'Jubb? But that's a Yorkshire name.'
'It's the name I was given by my parents,' said the man.
'Tha's not a Yorkshireman,' Obediah said, eyes narrowing. 'Tha's having me on.'
'So what're you doing with a Yorkshire name, then?'
Cornelius shrugged. 'Maybe my ancestors came from Yorkshire?'
Cornelius had a twinkle in his eye, and I could tell that he was joking, but it was a dangerous thing to do with Obediah Clough. He didn't take well at all to being the butt of anyone's joke, especially after a few drinks. He looked over to his friends and gestured them to approach. 'Look what we've got here, lads, a black Yorkshireman. He must've come straight from his shift down t'pit, don't you think?'
They laughed nervously and came over.
'And what's that tha's got on thy wrist?' Obediah said, reaching towards some sort of bracelet on the GI's right wrist. He obviously tried to keep it out of sight, hidden under his sleeve, but it had slipped out. 'What is tha, lad?' Obediah went on. 'A bloody Nancy-boy? I've got a young lady might appreciate a present like that.' The young man snatched his arm away before Obediah could grab the bracelet.
'That's mine, sir,' he said, 'and I'd thank you to keep your hands off it.'
'Doesn't tha know there's a price for coming and drinking in here with the likes of us?' Obediah went on. 'And the price is that there bracelet of thine. Give us it here, lad.'
The boy moved a few inches along the bar. 'No, sir,' he said, adopting a defensive stance.
I could tell that things had gone far enough and that Obediah was about to get physical. With a sigh, I got to my feet and walked over to them, putting my hand gently on Obediah's shoulder. He didn't appreciate it, but I'm even bigger than he is, and the last time we tangled he came out with a broken rib and a bloody nose. 'That's enough, Obediah,' I said gently. 'Let the lad enjoy his drink in peace.'
Obediah glared at me, but he knew when he was beaten. 'What's he think he's doing, walking into our pub, bold as you like?' he muttered, but his heart wasn't in it.
'It's a free country, Obediah,' I said. 'Or at least Mr Hitler hadn't won the war last time I checked.'
This drew a gentle titter from some of the drinkers, Obediah's cronies included. You could feel the tension ease. As I said, we're a tolerant lot on the whole. Muttering, Obediah went back to his corner and his pals went with him. I stayed at the bar with the newcomer.
'Sorry about that, lad,' I said. 'He's harmless, really.'
The GI looked at me with those big brown eyes of his and nodded solemnly.
Now that I was closer, I could see that the object Obediah had referred to was some sort of gold chain with tiny trinkets suspended from it, a very unusual thing for a man to be wearing. 'What exactly is that?' I asked, pointing. 'Just out of curiosity.'
He brought his arm up so I could see the chain. 'It's called a charm bracelet,' he said. 'My lucky charm bracelet. I usually try to keep it out of sight.'
Everything on the chain was a perfect miniature of its original: a gold locket, a cross, a monkey, an angel, a golden key, a tiny pair of ballet slippers, a lighthouse, a tiger and a train engine. The craftsmanship was exquisite.
'Where did you get it?' I asked.
'Fishing,' Cornelius said.
'Pardon?'
'Fishing. Caught it fishing in the Mississippi, down by the levee, when I was boy. I decided then and there it would be my lucky charm.'
'It's a beautiful piece of work,' I said. I held out my hand. 'Richard Palmer. Dick to my friends.'
He looked at my outstretched hand with suspicion for a moment, then slowly he smiled and reached out his own, the palm as pink as coral, and shook firmly. 'Pleased to meet you, Mr Palmer,' he said. 'I'm Cornelius Jubb.'
I smiled. 'Yes, I heard.'
He glanced over at Obediah and his cronies, who had lost interest now and become absorbed in a game of dominoes. 'And I don't know where the name came from,' he added.
I guessed that perhaps some Yorkshire plantation owner had given it to one of Cornelius's ancestors, or perhaps it was a contraction of a French name such as Joubliet, but it didn't matter. Jubb he was, in a place where Jubbs belonged. 'You don't sound Southern,' I said, having heard the sort of slow drawl usually associated with Louisiana on the wireless once or twice.
'Grew up there,' Cornelius said. 'Then I went to college in Massachusetts.'
'What are you doing here all by yourself?' I asked. 'Most American soldiers seem to hang around with their mates, in groups.'
Cornelius shrugged. 'I don't know, really. That's not for me. They're all . . . y'know . . . fighting, cussing, drinking and chasing girls.'
'You don't want to chase girls?'
I could have sworn he blushed. 'I was brought up to be a decent man,' he said. 'I'll know when the right girl comes along.' He gestured to the charm bracelet again and smiled. 'And this is for her,' he added.
I could have laughed at the naivety of his statement, but I didn't. Instead, I offered to buy him another drink. He accepted and offered me a Lucky. That was the beginning of what I like to think of as an unlikely friendship, but I have found that war makes the unlikeliest of things possible.
You might be wondering by now why I wasn't at war with the rest of our fine lads. Shirker? Conchie? Not me. I saw enough carnage at Ypres to last me a lifetime, thank you very much, but the fact of the matter is that I'm too old to be a soldier again. After the first war I drifted into the police force and finally rose to the rank of Detective Inspector. Now all the young men have gone off to fight, of course, they need us old codgers to carry the load back home. Just as I was getting ready to spend my twilight days reading all those books I never read when I was younger – Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Trollope. Ah, well, such is life, and it's not a bad job, as jobs go. At least I thought so until events conspired to prove me wrong.
Cornelius, as it turned out, was one of about three hundred coloured persons – or Negroes, as the Yanks called them – in an engineering regiment transferred up from the West Country. During our conversations, mostly in the Nag's Head, but often later at my little terraced back-to-back over carefully measured tots of whisky, no longer readily available, I learned about hot and humid Louisiana summers, the streets, sounds and smells of New Orleans and the nefarious ways of the colour bar and segregation. I had already heard of problems between white and coloured GIs in other parts of the country. Apparently, the American military command wanted to institute the same sort of colour bar they had at home, but we British didn't want that. I had also heard rumours that in some towns and villages a sort of unwritten code had grown up, fostered by whispering campaigns, as regards which pubs were to be frequented by Negroes and which by whites.
I also learned very quickly that Cornelius was a shy young man, a bit of a loner, but no less interesting or intelligent for that. His father was a Baptist minister, and he had wanted his son to go to college and become a schoolteacher, where he might have some positive influence on young men of the future. Though Cornelius had instead followed a natural interest in and flair for the more practical and mechanical aspects of science, he was remarkably well travelled and well read, even if there were great gaps in his education. He had little geography, for example, and knew little beyond the rudiments of American history, yet he spoke French fluently – though not with any accent I'd heard before – and he was well versed in English literature. The latter was because of his mother, he told me. Sadly deceased now, she had read children's stories to him from a very early age and guided him towards the classics when she thought he was old enough.
Cornelius was homesick, of course, a stranger in a strange land, and he missed his daddy and the streets of his hometown. We both had a weakness for modern music, it turned out, and we often managed to find Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman broadcasts on the wireless, even Louis Armstrong if we were lucky, whenever the reception was clear enough. I like to think the music helped him feel a little closer to home.
All in all, I'd say that Cornelius and I became friends as that spring gave way to summe
r. Sometimes we discussed currents events – the 'bouncing bombs' raid on the Eder and Möhne dams in May, for example, which he tried to explain to me in layman's terms (without much success, I might add). We even went to the pictures to see Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush with a couple of broad-minded Land Girls I knew. That raised more than a few eyebrows, though everything was above board. As far as I could tell, Cornelius stayed true to his word about waiting for the right girl to come along. How he knew that he would be so sure when it happened, I don't know. But people say I'm married to my job, which is why my wife left me for a travelling salesman, so how would I know about such things?
One August night, just after the Allies had won the battle for Sicily, the local GIs all got a late pass in honour of Patton's role in the victory. After an evening in the Nag's Head drinking watery beer, Cornelius and I stopped up late, and after he left I was trying to get to sleep, my head spinning a little from a drop too much celebratory whisky, when there came a loud knocking at my door. It was a knocking I wish I had never answered.
Brimley Park was a thick wedge of green separating the terraces of back-to-backs on the east side and the more genteel semi-detached houses on the west. There was nothing else but a few wooden benches and some swings and a slide for the kiddies. Chestnut trees stood on three sides, shielding the heart of the park from view. There used to be metal railings, but the Ministry of Works appropriated them for the war effort a couple of years ago, so now you could make your way in between the trees almost anywhere.
Harry Joseph, who had been dispatched by the beat constable to fetch me, babbled most of the way there and led me through the trees to a patch of grass where PC Nash and a couple of other local men stood guard. It was a sultry night and the whisky only made me sweat more than usual. I hoped they couldn't smell it on me. It was late enough to be pitch dark, despite double summer time, and, of course, the blackout was in force. As we approached, though, I did notice about eighteen inches of light showing through an upper window in one of the semis. They'd better be quick and get their curtains down, I thought, or Obediah Clough and his ARP men would be knocking at their door. The fines for blackout violations were quite steep.
Like a Charm Page 4