by Sharon Maas
And when the background work was done, Dorothea opened her writer’s mouth and the truth poured out. Women’s Rights, Dorothea wrote, were every bit as important as the struggle for Independence. A country could never be free as long as its women were not; women were the backbone of society and if they were kept down, society could never learn to walk, much less run. And with Dorothea there to champion them publicly, with her literary tongue ready to lash anyone who dared doubt, a host of ready-formed groups crawled out into the light. Women on the Move, for equal pay for equal work. Women Against Violence, seeking justice for the perpetrators of domestic abuse, and help for the victims. Women Against Repression, consisting of East Indian women rebelling against forced marriage. It was a revolution within a revolution, and Dorothea was in the vanguard. She was the patron saint of WOM, WAV and WAR.
* * *
‘Missing in Action, Presumed Killed.’ There were the words, in black and white. Ma Quint’s fingers crushed the telegram into her palm and an anguished cry escaped her lips as she collapsed … into Dorothea’s arms. Dorothea let her gently down to the floor and held the older woman’s head in her lap as she, too, cross-legged on the carpet, read the telegram. Just to make sure.
But in a way she had known something was wrong. There had been that empty, gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. Freddy’s letters had always been sporadic, but never more than three months apart. The last came over six months ago. But it was not just that. Dorothea felt a sense of dread. As if she knew, just knew, that Freddie was… but no, she couldn’t even think the word. It couldn’t be. Even to think it was to lose faith. As she as she had faith, as long as she hoped, as long as she didn’t give him up …
These last five years Dorothea had lived from letter to letter and news story to news story. Working as she did for the Daily Argosy she got the war reports as they came in, before the general public. She had followed the action and the death toll, the victories and the defeats, as avidly as any man. Her heart, linked to Freddy through the mystery of prayer, had been with him throughout. And then – silence. No word from him, no flutter in her heart to tell her that he was alive and awake and listening for her. Just echoes of her own hopes.
The Quint house had turned eerily silent after the boys had left; it seemed so empty, though there were still five of them: the parents, Pa, Humphrey, and Dorothea. Leo’s wife and one other hastily-married daughter-in-law both lived with their own parents, and as none of them had ever been as close to Ma Quint as Dorothea she, in fact, became a de facto daughter, and a sister to Humphrey.
Poor Humphrey. Left behind as unfit for the rigours of war, he was in danger of being the object of pity and even derision, and Dorothea felt protective towards him. And so she showered him with attention and small kindnesses. She learned that it was just as well he had not been called up, for his was a tender and sensitive soul, and as he opened towards her, sharing the poetry and prose he so loved with her, she learned that within him was a different quality of strength, one that was directed inward instead of outward, less obvious to the eye but there nevertheless. It was Humphrey, more so even that Ma Quint, who had taught her how to cling to a tender yet indestructible thread of faith within, when everything she held dear in life was taken from her.
Both she and Ma Quint had taken refuge in their faith. Dorothea had prayed and prayed until her heart seemed to bleed. Had it all been for nothing? Had God not heard her prayers? Had He abandoned Freddy, left him to … she could not even think the word. She felt deserted, lost. For Ma Quint, of course, it was worse, much worse. She had seven sons over there, seven loves to pray for. For Ma Quint, there would be no reprieve until all her boys returned from war safe and sound. Or not. Now, grief and dread flung a garland around them both and drew them closer to each other.
Ma Quint stirred now, moaned, and sat up. They looked into each other’s empty-but-full eyes, laid their arms around each other and, there on the floor, sobbed out their heartbreak.
* * *
Dorothea was not one for useless self-indulgence. She turned her back on grieving now, just as back then when Freddy had gone off to war. She had to keep her mind off Freddy. She had not cried since the day she’d waved goodbye to him from Georgetown’s wharf, watching his ship grow smaller and smaller till it was but a dot on the horizon, and finally gone. Then she had dried her tears, walked away and plunged into her work. But now:
‘Missing in Action, Presumed Killed.’
The tears, she found, had not dried up at all. They had gathered in an ocean deep under the surface of her soul. The telegram was a swift arrow, piercing the membrane that held that ocean in. Now it burst open. And yet ... somewhere inside her a voice cried out: he’s not dead! He can’t be! I’d know it if he were!
Dorothea flung herself even deeper into her work. It was her way of forgetting, her way of distraction. No cause was too small for her to champion. Dorothea Quint was a name known even in the deepest pockets of British Guiana’s rainforest. It was known in the Savannahs along the Brazilian border, cut away from the capital by a million acres of jungle. It was known in the Amerindian settlements up and down the mangrove-lined creeks where no newspaper, not even a radio signal, ever arrived. The name was carried by word of mouth, whispered among the women as they grated cassava and padded barefoot along soft black paths through the Bush, bent low with their loads of coconuts and plantains strapped to their backs. It was known by the East Indian women in the villages in the flooded rice fields on the East Coast, by the African women in the shantytowns of the capital. ‘Dorothea Q’, they called her now.
In a society strictly segregated by class and colour, Dorothea Q was not like any other woman of her rank. A British Guianese woman’s main goal was to find a husband higher-ranking and lighter-skinned than herself; Dorothea was not looking for a husband. Women’s minds revolved around beautifying themselves to make them prey for such eligible bachelors; if they were touched by the tarbrush, by lightening their skin and straightening their hair through the magic of a fledgling beauty industry, and highlighting the curves of their bodies through fashionable clothes. Dorothea cared neither for her face, nor her hair, nor her clothes. She wore a series of simple cotton dresses all of the same cut, faded by the sun and frequent washings, their gathered skirts hanging limp around her hips. For Dorothea, the body was merely a vehicle needing no more than basic upkeep and fuel to keep it going, necessary for her work.
One of the biggest changes from the well-brought up English pastor’s daughter was her speech. No more the clipped, enunciated English drummed into her by her father and strictly watched over by her would-be-white mother, such that not a single ‘h’ slipped through the net and not one syllable was lost; the English that had won her the reputation of being a snob back in the days. Now, Dorothea spoke like the natives, a sing-song Creolese that revelled in the bastardization of suffixes and the misplacement of pronouns and the maltreatment of verbs. ‘I’m not going anywhere’ became ‘Me in’t goin’ nowhere’; ‘What are you thinking?’ would be ‘Is wha yuh t’inkin’?’ She was one of them, ‘them’ being the low-born, the blighted, the descendants of slaves and indentured servants, the black and the mahogany and the crinkle-haired. Dorothea made a point of it.
In fact, Dorothea could put on any accent she wanted. She could ‘talk white’ as well as her father, and ‘talk pretentious white’ like her mother. She could ‘talk Coolie’ like an East Indian, peppering her speech with ‘ow, beti!’, and talk ‘Indian English’, spicing her speech with gerunds. The first time she mimicked an Indian – mocking the pompous Minister of Trade and Industry with whom she had locked horns that morning – Ma Quint and the rest of the family doubled up in laughter. So she continued to mock. ‘I am not agreeing with this ridiculous notion of Indian ladies entering the male workplace,’ she mimicked, bobbing her head from side to side. ‘An Indian lady’s place is in the service of her husband. In the kitchen among the pots and pans. The pots and pans are her best frien
ds. Ladies are of a very fragile disposition and their greatest joy is in being Mother. Mother is God.’
‘You should go on stage!’ Ma Quint laughed, wiping the tears from her eyes, and that is exactly what Dorothea did. She joined an amateur theatre group at the Playhouse and now and then they put on a play; and always Dorothea got the comic roles, whether male or female. Invariably, she brought down the house. She delivered deadpan lines that had her audience roaring with laughter, without so much as a twitching lip. Acting was her only hobby, her only form of relaxation. Everything else was work. She never smiled. Certainly never at her own comic turns.
Women worshipped her; men feared her, for her tongue was as sharp as a razor; yet she wrapped them around her little finger with her caustic charm and disarmed them with feminine wit.
People called her beautiful; but hers was not the soft, graceful beauty of the minx, curling itself around men’s hearts and loins in order to melt and seduce. Hers was the beauty of a queen or even a goddess, fearless and indifferent to the affections it might win, or lose. She held her chin high, which combined with a gaze that met its mark straight on, and the swift, confident swing of her stride, made her look arrogant. And arrogant she may have been, but only on the surface. And as life continued after that terrible telegram, arrogance became the mask behind which she hid a crumbling heart; the scaffolding with which she held herself upright in the knowledge that Freddy was gone.
And yet – was he really gone? Without a body ever found, how could anyone be really sure? Certainly, Ma Quint did not believe it.
‘He is alive; I know it! A mother knows these things!’ she said, from the moment she recovered from the first shock of the telegram, and that was her standard reply to the condolences immediately following the news, and to any reference to Freddy in the past tense thereafter.
As for Dorothea: she took refuge in rationality. It was the only way to keep going. She would believe the worst, and keep going. So she forced herself to believe that Freddy was dead until information to the contrary told her otherwise. That was the only sensible attitude.
Sometimes, though, her heart seemed to cut loose from the earth of reason to swing up to the sky, joining Freddy wherever he might be. Whenever she heard the melancholy strains of a mouth-organ she started, and looked up – was it him? She suffered from insomnia most nights, and on such occasions she took to riding her bicycle to the Sea Wall where she would walk for miles in the moonlight or the starlight, the Atlantic wind whipping at her skirt and moulding it to her legs as she walked; and there she would look up at the vastness of space and the twinkling of stars and he would be there, all around her, a knowledge and a being as strong and as near as God. And she would call to him, and he would answer.
* * *
Years passed; the war ended. With the exception of Howard, killed in Singapore, the other Quint brothers all returned from war, safe and sound. The surviving Quint brothers were now all married, except Humphrey. They had all moved out of the big higgledy-piggledy house, established their own households and were busy building careers, families, and, in some cases, already emigrating. Each one was different, and each had lived up professionally to the nickname given him in his youth: ‘The Businessman’, ‘The Revolutionary’, ‘The Mechanic’, ‘The Artist’.
Humphrey had always been ‘The Philosopher’, the quiet one, and so he remained; withdrawn, even-tempered, sweet-natured, happiest when buried in his books and his stamp-albums. Many an evening Dorothea sought his company for the solace it gave her. Humphrey helped her wind down after a hard day’s work, becoming the brother she’d never had. Humphrey was the only man – apart from Pa Quint – with whom she did not wage war.
She liked to visit Pa with Humphrey. Pa’s Annex was like a little mid-air island set among the trees behind the house. It had windows along all four sides so the breeze whipped through, except for the one corner with his desk and the two wooden chairs, one for Pa, one for Humphrey.
Pa kept his best stamps not in albums but in biscuit tins. One stamp, he kept in a tin all of its own. He showed the stamp to Dorothea. It was smudged and faded and not in the least impressive, but Pa let her look at it through a magnifying glass.
‘See those letters there?’ he said. ‘T.A.Q. Theodore Anthony Quint. My father! One day, the Post Office ran out of stamps so the Postmaster General had a batch printed by local printers. But they were badly done, easily forged. So he tell the postal workers to sign them wit’ they own initials before selling. Grandpa was one-a them workers. He save this stamp as a souvenir, and give it to me.’
‘There’s only one other stamp like this left in the world,’ Humphrey told her. ‘And nobody knows about this one. The other one is considered the rarest; it went to auction recently and achieved a small fortune. We prefer to keep this in the family. The only other person who knows about it is Matt. He wants to buy it, but we won’t sell.’
‘What makes a stamp so valuable?’ Dorothea asked.
‘Rarity,’ Humphrey answered. ‘These were one cent stamps, for newspaper wrappings. People don’t save them. They look so cheap, not worth collecting. But this one – I love it!’
Pa replaced the lid on the biscuit tin. ‘Pah! You can have it. It’s all yours. When I dead and gone the family going to throw out everything in here, all these ol’ man tings.’ He waved around the room. ‘If you want this stamp, you better take it now.’
‘Can I have that in writing? That you have given it to me? I can quickly draw up a document.’
Dorothea wrinkled her nose. Humphrey, the lawyer, could get a bit pedantic at times. Why did he want it in writing, that his grandfather was giving him this silly scrap of paper? She asked him later.
‘Because,’ Humphrey said, ‘There are many of us brothers, and human nature is greedy. This stamp is worth a lot of money on the market. Not that I would ever sell it; for me, it’s the sentimental value. I just want to own it, to look at it, to imagine my grandfather initialling it with his own hand. It’s family history. If you loved stamps, you’d understand. But I need it to be official, that Pa gave it to me. I don’t want anyone challenging my ownership.’
‘But who would ever do that?’
The answer was immediate. ‘Leo. ‘The Businessman.’ Even as a child he turned everything he could to money. Last year, when William had his first successful exhibition, you know what Leo did? He went to the storeroom and found all of Will’s old paintings and sold them. Made a small fortune. And kept the money. That’s why Leo and William fell out. So I want it official, that this stamp is mine.’
Humphrey smiled at her. ‘And you’re my witness.’
Pa died a week later. As he had predicted, all his old-man things were thrown out. Humphrey claimed the stamp collection. No one else wanted it. The rest of what he left was split six ways among the six surviving brothers. And Humphrey moved into the Annex.
* * *
The greatest changes, though, in the intervening years, had taken place in the colony itself. British Guiana was slowly stumbling towards Independence. From the midst of the most oppressed sector of society, the East Indian sugar labourers, had arisen a saviour: Cheddi Jagan, a man of the people, charismatic, outspoken, and passionate. He had studied dentistry in the USA and returned with an American wife, Janet, a woman of substance and every bit as zealous as Cheddi himself.
Cheddi and Janet let their voices be heard, and people listened; the country, in particular the hordes of downtrodden sugar workers, rose up in protest, demanding human working conditions and the end to imperialism. Cheddi and Janet founded the People’s Progressive Party, a multi-party, multi-ethnic, multi-class, party supported by labourers and intellectuals. The PPP joined forces with the country’s second party, People’s National Congress.
Elections were coming up in a year or two; with Cheddi as the country’s leader, Dorothea was sure, British Guiana would win independence from Great Britain. She could hardly contain her excitement. She herself had joined the PPP and r
isen up the ranks; now, she threw herself into the struggle for Freedom. Independence! That was the dream, and Dorothea dreamt it day and night. Cheddi was a man of the people; his wife a living example and inspiration to her; yes, women could be leaders, could make their voices heard, could put an end to oppression. Dorothea found a political home, and applied herself to change. The country would change, and she, Dorothea, would help change it.
* * *
One evening, when Dorothea was sitting with Humphrey, she noticed that he was unusually nervous. He’d read her a rather good poem by a local poet, published in the Argosy, and Dorothea was talking – she regretted the fact that Guianese talent was never promoted in the schools; it was always English poets.
‘All the characters in all the books we read are English, white-skinned,’ she said. ‘And they all eatin’ strawberries an’ cream and scones. Why not Guianese children, eatin’ mango and pineapple? We need more local writers!’
But Humphrey wasn’t listening. She could tell. His eyes, usually steady and fixed on her, were jumpy today, and he kept rubbing his nose and sniffing, though he didn’t have a cold.
‘What’s wrong, Humph?’
‘Ah … nothing.’ He linked his fingers and cracked them.
‘Ouch! Don’t do that! It makes my skin crawl!’
‘Sorry!’
‘Humphrey, don’t tell me nothing’s wrong because is not true. Tell me right now what bothering you.’
Humphrey began to stutter; he always did when emotionally disturbed.
‘I-I-I …’ he started again. ‘I wanted t-t-t-to ask – ask you if, if, if …’
Dorothea had a strong premonition of what was to come. And she was right – the next words came rushing out.