by Jane Arbor
Within closer earshot of the noise she halted, staring. The crowd was composed entirely of women and toddler children, their gaudy dresses and head-kerchiefs making a veritable kaleidoscope of colour on the move. At the door of the boucan stood Winston Fortune, gesticulating and arguing as he did his best to quell the amazon horde.
Hope moved nearer, near enough to ask what was the matter of a woman who was bobbing and peering over the shoulders of her taller neighbours.
She turned. ‘Matter?’ she echoed. ‘Man Fortune, he won’t pay us bonus wages, that matter enough,’ she said.
Hope looked at the crowd, remembering the proportion of women workers for whom she made out wage-slips from the payroll, and wondered how it had swelled so suddenly without her knowledge. ‘Mr. Fortune won’t pay you your money?’ she questioned. ‘Why not?’
A shrug. ‘He say, not our money. Wait for men. He say, same every feast-day, and we say he know why. ’Cos men get hands on bonus first, don’t give wives their share. We get pay-packet first, we take it. But Man Fortune, he won’t hand out, not without men here. Not fair.’
Hope began to see light and she sympathised, but obviously she couldn’t take sides. If Winston Fortune had the same experience every feast-day eve, she supposed he knew how to cope with it. But curious to learn the rights of the affair, she began to thrust her way through the crowd towards him.
It was not a wise move. For all her gentle ‘Excuse-me’ touches on arms or backs, it seemed that the mood of the crowd resented her intrusion. She was shouldered and buffeted and the ranks closed in on her, and not only upon her but upon the innocent small targets of the shuffling feet—the children who tagged on to individual skirts amid a forest of them, in danger of being crushed underfoot.
She pushed to more purpose. ‘Look out!’ she yelled to a near-giantess, whose own foulard head-scarf had been knocked awry. ‘You nearly trod on that babe,’ Hope accused, and at that moment found herself on her knees, one arm round the tiny’s legs, her other hand in sharp agony beneath a heavy sabot-like shoe.
She managed to scramble to her, feet, shaking her aching fingers and feeling suddenly sick. Someone took over the child, presumably the mother, for she heard it being comforted in Creole—‘Pov Mamay’—and the giantess being roundly blamed in the same language. Then Winston Fortune pushed his way down into the crowd, just as Hope felt a firm hand at her back and Craig was there, cool and authoritative without his having uttered a word.
The clamour died to a murmur and the crowd spread itself more comfortably. Looking about him, Craig chided in a more bantering tone than Hope had ever heard him use, ‘Ladies, ladies! Why do we have this bef duva effort every feast-day, when you know you can’t win?’
This was greeted by a self-conscious chuckle or two and by one reply. ‘Bonus belong us. Not man’s,’ someone said.
‘Man has worked to earn bonus as well as pay,’ Craig pointed out in the same simple idiom. ‘Give you your share every week; don’t tell me you not clever enough to coax bonus too!’
At this the chuckles became open guffaws, but the lone complainer came back with, ‘Come Jour de l’An, Mardi Gras, Toussaints, he keep bonus, buy rum.’
‘And you, madame, never take a little rum yourself, hm?’ riposted Craig in a flash, and amid the now totally good-humoured laughter, turned to Winston Fortune at his side.
‘The usual—in the canteen,’ he said to him, and to the women, ‘Coffee for all, ladies—you know where, and Mr. Fortune will attend to you, as usual.’
Whatever this cryptic promise conveyed, the crowd broke up at once and streamed away in the direction of the canteen. With a huge shrug Winston Fortune returned to the boucan, leaving Craig and Hope standing alone.
He put out his own hand for the one she was nursing. ‘Let me see,’ he said. She felt her wrist tremble with nervous shock as she showed him the torn, bleeding knuckles of her right hand, two of its nails already turning black.
His touch was very gentle. ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘We must deal with that soonest.’
‘When I get home, I’ll bathe it in disinfectant and ask Barbara to bandage my fingers,’ she promised.
He looked up into her face, ‘You’ll do nothing of the kind if it involves your riding your machine. You’re shocked, and a stiff tot of brandy will take care of that. Come and get into the car. I’ll take you back to my place and clean you up before I drive you home.’
On the way it occurred to Hope that he could have driven her straight to the bungalow and have asked Barbara for brandy if he thought she needed it. And as if he read her thoughts, he said, ‘It’s a shade early for disturbing Barbara, and on principle I don’t keep alcohol in the office. You weren’t expecting that scene just now?’
‘No. Nor that, when you arrived, you did seem almost to expect it. What did you mean when you said, “Why do we have this”—something I didn’t understand—“every feast-day” and a few of the women laughed?’
He laughed shortly too. ‘Ah, they understood the rest well enough. Bef duva ka-bwe glo net—patois for “The early bird gets the worm.” They know that they don’t get the worm—in other words the bonus, before their men claim it, but they always try it on, all the same.’
‘You mean they’ve staged that mobbing of the boucan before?’
‘Every time, and with the same result. Fortune coaxes them into the canteen, orders them coffee, dispenses a small gratuity to each of them, locks them in and only lets them out after the men have been paid.’
‘A gratuity?’ Hope puzzled. ‘You give them money?’
‘Of their own, to spend as they please.’
‘But where does that appear on the pay-sheets?’
Craig’s swift glance at her was oblique. ‘Ever the scrupulous accountant! But don’t worry. It doesn’t have to. Our women workers are paid in the same way as the men, but these wives’ sweeteners come from the privy purse.’
Hope thought that out. Then she asked boldly, ‘From yours?’
‘Where else? It’s well worth it, since it serves to keep the peace—’ As he spoke he was stopping the car and waiting for the approach of an old man with a face creased like a last year’s pippin, tramping with the aid of a shoulder-high staff, who chuckled and replied smartly when Craig leaned out to speak to him in patois.
Craig drove on. ‘That’s Eli Caracas, our oldest employee,’ he told Hope. ‘I told him the wives were on the warpath again, and he snorted and said, “More fools, the men, for marrying them. I done fine all life without”. Which is true,’ Craig added. ‘He lives alone on the estate; he doesn’t know himself how old he is, but he never misses a day’s work, though he hasn’t too much stamina now.’
He drove under the porte-cochere and showed her into the living-room of his single-storey quarters in the courtyard of the Great House. He hooked a chair towards her, inviting her to sit down. Though she understood he had a daily help, she did not seem in evidence, and he himself fetched a bowl of disinfected hot water, adding lint and bandages from another journey, and brandy in a decanter from a cupboard.
At his orders Hope soaked her injured hand in the bowl, while taking sips of the brandy from a glass in the other.
‘Like it?’ Craig asked casually.
She grimaced. ‘It’s warming, and it’s better than whisky, which I hate. I’m beginning to like rum, as you drink it here, long, with lots of fruit juices and ice.’
‘Well, tell yourself the brandy is only medicinal,’ he advised. ‘Show me that hand now.’ He took it from the bowl, and laid it on the towel where again she could not control its violent trembling from wrist to fingertips. He looked up at her.
‘What’s the matter? Are you afraid I’m going to hurt you?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘What then?’
She knew that it was at the expectation of his touch which she had guessed he would make gentle, but would be as coolly clinical as a doctor’s. Her hand intimately in his meant nothing to h
im, and it mustn’t to her. She made a painful fist of her fingers. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Just shock.’
‘Which is what the brandy was supposed to be in aid of. But as long as you don’t suspect me of having lured you here in order to “take advantage” as the saying goes—’
‘Of course not!’ she denied hotly.
‘In fact, nothing further from your thoughts.’ Unfolding her fingers, he nodded at her blackened fingernails; ‘You may be going to shed those,’ he said, and when she agreed ruefully, he added, ‘Found anything else to like about Madenina besides our rum punches?’
‘Yes, a lot,’ she told him.
He was dressing and bandaging each knuckle separately. ‘What?’
‘Well, I like my work here, and of course the climate—’
‘Your cousin was badly disillusioned about that.’
‘She expected too much.’ Hope continued her list. ‘And the people, and the different foods, and the gorgeous fruit. And the peace.’
‘Hm, quite a detailed package—all in separate compartments. You don’t, as most people would, make a cliché of it all—call it “the romance of the tropics” and let that say it all for them. Or doesn’t your catalogue add up to anything as heady as romance? How do you find our men, for instance?’
‘I’ve met very few of them.’
‘Not? You don’t seem to have lacked for them when you came to the Club.’
Lest that should lead to a mention of Luke Donat, Hope went on quickly, ‘And Barbara doesn’t entertain very much.’
‘Not enough for you?’
‘Quite enough for me. I’m very happy there,’ she told him firmly, and as he had finished his work on her hand, she stood up. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘It’s marvellously comfortable now.’
‘Good. But bathe it every day and get Barbara to renew the dressings.’
She flexed the fingers of her left hand. ‘I may have to type with this one for a few days,’ she warned.
‘No problem. I can dictate to one of the juniors for the time being.’
He followed her out, but as he was about to put her into the car, Victoire de Faye was coming towards them from the house, and he waited for her.
Her glance at Hope was one of slightly critical enquiry. ‘I wanted to see you,’ she told Craig. ‘But it looks as if, supposing I’d come a little earlier, I might have been interrupting something.’
‘Nothing at all but a session in First Aid,’ he replied evenly. ‘Hope had a fall and I’ve been bandaging her fingers which she tore pretty badly.’
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry,’ Victoire said in conventional concern. ‘But don’t you keep a First Aid cabinet at the office? You should.’
‘So we do, but as I judged Hope could use a stimulant, I brought her here for cleaning up.’
‘And for stimulation. I see.’ The emphasis implied exactly the contrary. ‘And now?’
‘I’m driving her home. Why did you want to see me?’
‘About the Friole merger. I have just heard from Emmanuel Friole that you have turned it down!’
Craig was opening the car door for Hope. ‘That’s so,’ he agreed.
‘You had no right!’ Victoire flashed.
‘I’ve only just clinched it. I had Hope make an abstract of the figures they furnished, and decided against—’
‘Without consulting me?’
‘I consulted you weeks ago—in late November,’ he reminded her. ‘I did nothing in haste, but I went ahead. Joining Belle Rose to a plantation like Friole might set everything going for them, but it could do nothing for us that we can’t do better alone...’
‘So you claim you have the right to say!’ she raged. ‘But what am I on my own estate? A mere figurehead? A puppet, dancing to your pull on the string? No more than that, hm?’
Craig said, ‘You know exactly where you stand in regard to the estate, and if you wanted to argue the Friole issue, I’d have talked it out with you at the time. But now it’s too late. They’ll already be looking elsewhere for help with their affairs, which is all they wanted from us. Meanwhile, you’re fully at liberty to see the records which decided me. I’ll have a copy of all the data sent over to you.’
Victoire made a gesture of distaste. ‘You know very well that figures mean nothing at all to me. I’d rather trust my intuition and my flair, as most women do.’ Then, as if she regretted her outburst in front of Hope, whom it had badly embarrassed, she said in a more conciliatory tone, ‘And so—l’affaire Friole beyond recall? Very well. But there are one or two other things I’d like to take up with you—when, of course, you feel free to attend to them.’
‘Matters—such as?’
‘Eli Caracas, for one. He is nothing but a parasite about the place. You must pay him off.’
Craig took his seat in this car. ‘I’ll do nothing of the kind,’ he said.
‘Are you defying me?’ Victoire asked.
‘In this instance, yes.’
‘But he is occupying an estate cabin which should go to a younger man. A married one, who would be worth his pay. So if you are stubborn enough to keep Eli on, he must move in with someone else, that’s all.’
Craig said, ‘No. Eli has been on the estate since he came as a lad in your father-in-law’s time. When Roland began on the worker’s quarters, he put Eli into the first to be completed—the one-room affair he has still—and will keep, while I remain manager.’
Victoire subjected him to a cold stare, her eyes hard.
‘And you accuse me of making rights of my privileges! Who is presuming on his privileges now, may I ask?’
‘The cases are very different. I happen to have certain rights, as you very well know,’ he said. What else did you want to say to me?’
‘It can wait. Don’t let me delay your errand of mercy any longer, please.’ As Victoire turned on her heel Craig, apparently impervious to her gibes, said ‘I’ll call at the house when I come back. Would Crispin like to come along for the ride?’
‘Thank you, but Crispin has gone to the beach with his governess,’ Victoire said loftily as she walked away.
Craig’s only reference to the sharp exchange was to ask Hope to put the Friole papers on his desk on Monday. She, meanwhile, was thinking that she began to understand why Barbara had said that as an employer, he had no problems with his workers. Both this afternoon’s happenings—his quixotic generosity to their wives and his championship of old Eli—showed he had a rapport with them which must make for their loyalty to hi. Today he had shown himself in contradiction of the perfectionist she knew, and she found she was wondering what measure of his tolerance she could expect if she ever seriously failed him.
She remembered his edged criticism of her over Luke Donat—a lashing which she thought made too much of her ‘crime’. So did he keep his personal dealings in so many watertight compartments—one for his sympathy with his dependants, another for his impatience of ineptitude, another for his scorn of hearts-worn-upon sleeves, another for the tender understanding which for some reason he had lately withdrawn from Barbara? And did he ever allow any leakage from one compartment to another? Did he ever appear to be close and approachable, while remaining as remote as always? Just now, for instance, while his gentle care of her hand had only been that of a solicitous doctor’s, his questions to her could have tempted her to believe in a curiosity about her which almost certainly he did not feel. No, there had been no leak of tenderness in her direction. The distance between them had not been cut.
The early evening shadows had begun to lengthen. Sundown was not yet, but was not far off. High above the horizon lay a long purple-black bank of cloud, its parallel lower edge as straight as if made by a ruler. Below it hung the crimson ball of the sun against the lemon-gold of a completely clear sky. Where trees grew along the roadside their upper branches made a filigree pattern against the backcloth of the sky, obscuring the view of the sinking sun until a break in the treeline laid the whole scene open again�
�cloud, sun, lemon sky, and the horizon lying in wait for the sun.
At one such point on the road Craig halted the car. ‘Have you seen the green ray at sundown yet?’ he asked.
Hope shook her head. ‘I’ve never been so lucky,’ she said.
‘Then take your chance now.’
She sat forward eagerly. ‘Could it happen this evening, do you think?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. But it has the makings of a sunset which might show it.’
‘I do hope so! D’you think—if I stare and stare?’
‘But not directly into the sun. Keep your eyes fixed on the point where it touches the horizon. You’ll see nothing until the last tip of the rim is about to disappear. And then—green ray, or no green ray, according to your fate.’
‘I’ll watch.’ He had not sat forward when she did, but she was conscious of his eyes upon her as he asked, ‘What makes you so anxious to boast of having seen it?’
She remained face to the sun, not looking at him. ‘Because Barbara says you can’t count yourself as belonging here until you have seen it.’
‘And that’s your ambition? To belong in Madenina?’
‘To—pretend I do, while I’m here. Of course I can’t really.’
‘You never know.’ His tone was casual, lazy. ‘Once over the green ray hurdle, you might take out naturalisation papers. Or we might marry you to a Madeninan-born. Either course would work it for you.’
She took time out from the sun to glance round at him and away again. ‘You don’t think I mean it, and perhaps I don’t—as a permanency. But I think I’m in danger of being a little bewitched with the island. Or, if you would rather have it in a cliché, with “the romance of the tropics.” ’
‘Throwing my words into my face? But they went home, did they? You admit to falling a victim, even though a reluctant one?’
‘I haven’t said I’m reluctant—’