by Sharon Maas
There was, of course, more, far more in the diary. Shocking things. Mama had had a love affair! Edward John was not Papa’s son, but the son of this secret lover! Perhaps, for that reason, I should understand him for sending her away – but he could have sent her to Georgetown, couldn’t he? Set her up in a house in town, so that at least we could have seen her from time to time? But no – he had to send her back to Salzburg, to the other side of the world!
I could not blame Mama for her infidelity. I understood it. Reading of her anguish, I could comprehend her finding solace in the arms of another. Solace, and even healing – but it was not to be. Edward John died, and that was the beginning of the end, for us all.
That night, I hid the diary under my pillow. The next day, if I could, I would go to Uncle Jim and discuss it all with him. Oh! I had even forgotten the telegram! I had to pass that information to Uncle Jim as well! But most of all – I needed to talk it all over, before I left for Georgetown. I couldn’t wait – the secrets revealed by the diary were too much for me to digest on my own. Yes – tomorrow I would see Uncle Jim.
But tomorrow had other surprises in store for me. Tomorrow held the final falling of the axe.
Mama’s Diary, Plantation Promised Land, 1910
Liebes Tagebuch,
Many years have passed without me writing to you. I no longer even talk to you in thought. I am lost. Completely lost in the darkness. I don’t even know if I love my daughters any more. I cannot find even the smallest spark of love for them, for God. The darkness has won. Not even music, my last refuge, can save me. My husband is a monster. I have married a monster. There is no escape. I am trapped in a cage. What can I do, where can I go? Just today, some little tendril of faith caught hold of me and I thought of you, dear Diary, and thus I am trying again. Yet I sit here with the pen in my hand and the words do not come.
Edward John’s death was the final straw. Though many years have passed there is no recovering from my grief. Mourning has made everything so much worse. I reach out to you in my thoughts but you are absent. All that I find is a black thick vacuum. I am lost in this pit of darkness and if ever …
Chapter Twenty-Three
We were at dinner when the beginning of the end came. Miss Wright had returned from Barbados that day, and I had found no opportunity to visit Uncle Jim with my news. She had brought presents for us from our uncle and aunt in Barbados, and I’d been obliged to stay at home all day, unpacking them and making the appropriate sounds of gratitude. The six-o’clock bee had just launched into its screeching song; Papa and Miss Wright were, as usual, discussing the critical situation in Europe. I was dissecting a leg of chicken and absent-mindedly wondering who had plucked it.
Shouts outside the window stopped us all short in word and thought.
‘Mr Cox!’ someone called. ‘Mr Cox!’
‘That’s Mr McInnes!’ Papa sprang to his feet and reached the window in three long strides. By this time Mr McInnes had leaped up the stairs and was banging on the front door. Mrs Norton opened it. Mr McInnes burst in. His face was a bright and sweaty red, glowing in the lamp-light. He tore off his riding helmet. His eyes were wild, bulging out of their sockets; they scoured the room, and paused for a moment to rest on me; did I detect a shudder of sheer revulsion in that moment? But no, it was my imagination. Mr McInnes lunged towards Papa.
‘Mr Cox – we have to talk. It’s important.’ His speech was clipped, breathless. I stared at the two of them as they hurried towards the library. They vanished into its seclusion and the door slammed shut.
A second later I was on my feet, lunging after them.
‘Winnie! Stop! Where are you going? Come back!’ I ignored Miss Wright’s cry. I rushed out into the veranda and crouched beneath the open library window. Mr McInnes spoke loudly, unrestrainedly, and I could hear every word. I didn’t need to hear much anyway, for the news was short and to the point, and really, only a few words stood out: Jim Booker. Coolies. March. Fire. The factory. Your daughter Winifred.
‘Damn!’ cried Papa. ‘You can’t mean it!’
‘Every word! We have to stop it – now! They’re at Mr Booker’s place now.’
‘Let’s go.’
I sprang to my feet and ran back into the dining room, colliding with Yoyo on the way. She had rushed to follow me, apparently, and was still spluttering at me to come back to the table.
‘No!’ is all I said, and rushed forward, only to collide, this time, with Papa.
He grabbed my arm.
‘You! You, young lady! Is it true? Are you friends with that, that scoundrel, that rascal Booker?’
A wave of relief swept through me. If all he knew was that I was ‘friends’ with Uncle Jim, then little harm had been done. It was the drums I worried about; my spying; George. Those were the real secrets.
‘Papa, I …’
‘I’ll deal with you later.’ He flung me away, so that I almost fell to the floor. Papa lunged towards the gun cabinet, in a corner of the dining room. He fumbled for his bunch of keys, unlocked the cabinet, removed a pistol and a holster. He lashed the holster around his shoulder and pushed the pistol into it.
‘Papa! No! Don’t! Please!’
‘Winnie! Stay away! Do you hear me?’
He glared at me with such fury I would have turned to ash had I not myself been in the throes of an agitation powerful enough to overwhelm that flame of wrath and consume it.
‘Papa, no, please, just listen!’
I was being foolish, and I knew it. Why should he listen to me, and what did I have to tell him that would make him change his mind? But I was not in my right mind. All I knew was that Papa could not go out there with a gun. I grabbed his arm. He tried to fling me away again, but I clung to him, crying out to him to stop, to stay.
Yoyo and Miss Wright screamed my name. Miss Wright tried to pry my hand from Papa’s arm. I shook her off.
‘Please, Papa, don’t shoot anyone! Please! Listen to me! Just listen!’
I began to pound his chest with my free hand. Miss Wright tried to grab me but I pushed her away. Papa tried to fight me off, but I wouldn’t let him. We struggled for a little while, I clinging to him like a monkey, begging him to listen; he trying his best to toss me away as if I were no more than an insect. Suddenly he managed to twist his arm free, and with the same movement grab hold of me again. He bent my arm backwards behind my back and marched me forward.
‘Very well, young lady, if that’s what you want, I’ll listen. I’ll not be held up by you a moment longer. You come along and on the way there you can explain whatever nonsense you think you have to say.’
The motor car was parked under the house. Papa pushed me into the back seat before striding to the front to crank up the motor. Mr McInnes got into the passenger seat. The engine coughed once, twice, three times, shuddered and sprang into life. Papa climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. His jaw was clenched, his gaze almost crazed as it brushed over me. Hunched over the steering wheel as if hugging it to his chest, he slowly drove forward on to the drive, turned towards the gate. The two watchmen opened both wings of the gate as we approached.
The car picked up speed once we had left the compound. Its headlamps flung a widening funnel of light over the road, framed on either side by the blackened stumps of the scorched cane fields. Tendrils of smoke gavetestimony to the last burning of the trash. The grumble of the grinding factory in the background was louder even than the motor’s hum; all night long it rumbled away, Papa’s precious factory, converting the cane into the brown gold of Demerara sugar. Mr Smedley’s bride price.
‘Very well. Explain yourself, young lady. I’m all ears.’
I leaned forward, resting my arms on the back of the front seat. ‘Papa, you’ve got to understand. All the Indians want is fair treatment. Just give them better pay, and better houses, and clean water and sanitation. Let them live like humans and not like animals, Papa! That’s all they want, truly! They mean no harm. All they want is huma
ne treatment.’
‘My word. Such big words. Humane Treatment, indeed. And you think you know what that is, do you? You, a girl hardly more than a child? ‘
‘Yes I do, Papa. And I’m not a child any more. I know what’s going on here. I know how the Indians live and it’s disgraceful! It’s cruel! It’s …’
Papa interrupted with a roar.
‘And that’s why the bloody coolies are marching off to set fire to the factory, is it? For Humane Treatment? That’s why they’re going to burn down their own bloody livelihood, is it?’
My heart was thumping so loudly I could hear it. I wanted to scream at Papa but kept my voice calm.
‘No, Papa,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s not what they’re going to do. They’re going to occupy the factory. That’s all. Occupy it. Take possession of it, halt the grinding, and not let you in until you agree to their demands.’
‘Ah! You know that, do you? What a clever girl, up to her neck in coolie intrigues! And would you mind telling me how you know all this?’
Of course not. That was my secret. Our secret. The Revolution’s secret. He would never know. About the messages pounded out all along the Courantyne Coast these last few nights. Night after night. Occupy, Occupy, Occupy. From Albion right up to Skeldon, the entire seaboard. Rose Hall. Belvedere. Hog Style. Comartry. Brighton. Good Banana Land. Gibraltar. Bachelor’s Adventure. Whim. Dieu Merci and of course, bang in the middle of it all, Promised Land. The biggest protest there had ever been and the most damaging to the industry. The protest that would bring the Courantyne Sugar Kings to their knees. No, he’d never know how I knew.
‘I just know, that’s all.’
‘It’s that damn Jim Booker. He’s been corrupting you too, has he? Putting all that communist nonsense about worker’s rights into your head? Oh, I know. Mr McInnes told me everything. We have our sources too, not only you.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Little traitor. Despicable little traitor. I’ll deal with you later. In the meantime, you’ll see what happens to insubordinate coolies.’
‘Papa – please. I beg you. Just – just talk to them. Just be reasonable. Maybe – maybe you can reach a peaceful settlement – if only – if only you’d …’
‘Be quiet, you!’ Papa turned to look at me as he bellowed the words. Never in all my life had I seen such rage. I wanted to curl up and die, withered down to nothing. Yet still I found the breath to continue.
‘Papa – just don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot anyone.’ Tears gathered in the sockets of my eyes, spilled out and ran down my cheeks.
‘Crying for a pack of bloody coolies. My own daughter. As if I haven’t got enough trouble on my hands – now a bloody traitor of a daughter.’
‘I just want …’
‘Quiet!’ It was itself a gunshot of a command, cutting off what I was about to say. ‘Not one more word! I’ve heard enough!’
It was useless. I slumped down into my seat, all my energy spent. I had done what I could. I knew now that the night would roll ahead as if in the throes of some mighty fate and that the end result would only be disaster. I turned away from Papa, faced the blackness of night outside the open window. The breeze that dried my cheeks and whipped my hair out of its molly was warm and smelled of smoke. Smoke and calamity. A great deep sorrow welled up in my chest and more tears swelled in my eyes and I blinked them away but still they came and I did not bother to stop them. I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve. The night was close and suffocating. I wanted to cry out to Papa to stop the car so I could get out and run away, run back home, away from whatever was about to happen because I knew with the sharpness of true instinct that it was going to be bad. Stop the car, I want to get out, I cried to Papa, but only in my mind. I was too paralyzed to say a word.
Just before the village, the car turned off into the lane that led to Uncle Jim’s house. It did not take long before the headlamps caught the golden glow of fire, a bush burning in midair, moved towards us. Papa pulled at the handle to change gear and the car slowed down. It came to a stop, though the motor continued to hum; an animal in lurking position, ready to pounce. The fire too stopped moving. The headlamps now held the scene in perfect clarity in their glow. A crowd of people, men, Indians, across the width of the road and how many more behind them, we could not tell but for the fire, for many of them held torches aloft, and it was those flickering flames we had seen. They marched forward, towards us.
‘Black devils!’ mumbled Papa.
He set the car in motion again. It crept forward now, like a cat creeping up on a mouse. A mouse paralysed, held in an unearthly ban, caught in the glare of the headlamps. Dark skin, burning flames, here and there the glint of a cutlass. The horde of Indians too crept forward, towards us. The very atmosphere was charged with such menace my breath, my heart, the very world seemed to slow to a standstill.
About five yards from the crowd Papa stopped the car again. He opened his door and got out. Mr McInnes got out as well, from the passenger’s seat. I stayed crouched in the back, watching, unable to move. The Indians stopped too. At the head of the crowd stood Bhim, a torch held high, legs apart, his hair as ever falling over his forehead and almost covering his eyes, one hand held high and holding the burning torch.
Papa strode forward, towards Bhim. Bhim scowled, and turned to the man beside him, said something I could not hear. He signalled with his free hand, and marched forward toward Papa. The mass of Indians surged forward behind him. A cry went up; many cries. Too many to understand the words they shouted. I only saw fists punching the air, the glint of blades, torches held aloft.
A shot cracked the night. Bhim’s eyes opened wide in horror and realization. Then he slowly sank first to his knees before falling to the ground.
‘No! No! No!’ I screamed, but no-one heard. I collapsed into the back seat of the car, and darkness overwhelmed me.
Chapter Twenty- Four
Papa packed us off to Georgetown the very next day, Yoyo and I in the care of Miss Wright. Yoyo, who that whole week had been canvassing in vain for just such an outcome, was ecstatic. I was too numb with horror to feel any other emotion not even joy at my eminent reunion with George.
Yoyo had taken the news of Bhim’s death with little more than a shrug.
‘What do they expect?’ she’d said the night before. ‘The coolies have been acting up for years now; sooner or later it had to come to a head. There had to be a death. It’s just a pity it had to happen on Promised Land.’
I was beyond consolation. ‘But you don’t understand!’ I cried. ‘Papa murdered him! Shot him in cold blood!’
‘That’s not what Papa said,’ Yoyo replied coldly, for indeed, in Papa’s rushed summary of the ‘misadventure’, as he called it, Bhim had wielded a cutlass and had been about to attack.
I shook my head in protest. ‘No! No, it didn’t happen like that! I saw, it Yoyo, I saw it! All Bhim had was a torch.’
‘How on earth do you know the names of these people? They’re nothing but a pack of hooligans. Rioting is not the way to implement change.’
‘They weren’t rioting! They were going to occupy the factory, that’s all. Yoyo, have you forgotten? What happened back then, when Papa whipped that fellow? You know what he’s capable of. Don’t you care any more?’
‘Of course I care; isn’t that why I’m going to marry Clarence? But change has to come from above, Winnie. You can’t have the coolies behaving this way, trying to twist our arms into doing what they want. We’re in charge and the change has to come voluntarily: from us.’
I wasn’t about to discuss politics with Yoyo. ‘The police will be here again.’
‘And Papa will get off again. It was clearly self-defence this time. Quite clearly. They won’t be able to charge him with anything. Just wait and see.’
And for her that was that.
Now, on the train down to Georgetown, she was chattering with Miss Wright as if nothing at all had happened. Miss Wright was unusually reticent
; there was a line across her brow, which told me she was not quite as unconcerned as Yoyo, but nevertheless she made a good effort to keep up her side of the conversation. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps her worry was only self-concern, and not anything to do with our present trouble at all. After all, she’d be out of a job once Yoyo and I were in Georgetown. Where would she go next? But she had known this day would one day come. Perhaps she had made enquiries for a new job as governess in Barbados. As for me, I was too distraught for speech. Every now and then, a surge of emotion overtook me, and I burst into tears; Yoyo and Miss Wright seemed to think I was worried about Papa, for Miss Wright kept trying to assuage my distress with words to the effect that Papa would be fine, that he had everything under control, and such nonsense. I did nothing to persuade her otherwise.
Bhim, dead. Brave, fiery, intelligent Bhim! Though he had never overcome his mistrust of me I had grown to admire and even like him over time. Besides, he was George’s friend – that much I had uncovered – and I would probably have to be the one to tell George of his death. Unless news of the uprising and murder had reached Georgetown ahead of me. Unless someone had sent a telegram … but there was no telegraph office in New Amsterdam, much less in Promised Land. I’d be among the first bringing the news to the capital.
Bhim, dead! What would happen now? If only I could talk to Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim would know. Uncle Jim would provide true comfort and good sense. Bhim’s mother! I knew her quite well. She was, after all, Aunt Bhoomie’s sister. She had been at Uncle Jim’s a few times when I’d been there. A good woman. So proud of her youngest son. And now, what? I wept for Bhim, his mother, and the disaster that had broken upon us.