Cane Music

by Joyce Dingwell

  “Her—” Roslyn, annoyed with him, had started to walk again, but, arrested now, she turned back.

  “Ah,” Marcus pounced with satisfaction, “I thought it was that. You really believed that the name that Belinda gave me belonged to me, didn’t you?”

  “Fath-er? Yes—yes, of course I did. After all, you never denied it.”

  “Would any man deny a child that?”

  “She—she’s not your daughter?” she said faintly.

  “You fool, of course she isn’t. Do I look the kind of person to conceal a child, a beautiful kid like Belinda, in my pocket?”

  “I don’t know,” said Roslyn. “I don’t know anything at all about you.”

  “Nor ever tried to know.”

  “That’s so,” she admitted.

  “Then know this, that if Belinda was mine, she would be mine. Mine, do you hear? And with no interfering girl standing between, a girl whose relationship I didn’t know and could only suppose, but now I’m told is—flimsy. All right, Roslyn Young, explain that.”

  “You have some explaining to do yourself,” she retorted. “You let me think, you led me to believe—”

  “No,” he refused, “the child alone did that. She did it because she needed to, she needed to belong.”

  “She belonged to me!”

  “Let me finish, please. She needed to belong paternally. Poor little scrap, she wanted a father.”

  “Even you,” said Roslyn angrily. “Tell me, Mr. Moreno, what actually are you to Belinda? You just spoke of her real father.”

  “My brother Mark,” Marcus nodded.

  “Mark?”

  “Marco, Marcus, Mark—I told you before, we all received the same name in a different form after the first patriarch. Our own father had his particular variety.”

  “Your own father? Then wasn’t old Marco—”

  “Marco was our uncle. He and our father were brothers, but Marco, though much senior, never married. Being the firstborn he inherited Clementine, but our father did equally well, or even better, further north. I’ll take you one day.”—How often, Roslyn thought, had she heard that?

  “So you allowed Belinda to call Marco Molly, not Grandfather?”

  “He wasn’t her grandfather, even though she inherits.”

  “But how?”

  “Old Marco took over my younger brother Mark. Italian-descended families sometimes do that. Because one is not naturally blessed there’s no reason why one shouldn’t be blessed. Though I’m afraid the blessing—” Marcus bit his lip.

  “You didn’t like your brother?”

  “I loved him. We all loved him. Only we didn’t like his wife.”

  “Nanette.”

  “Yes, Nanette.” Marcus was silent a moment. “She was no good, Roslyn,” he resumed presently. “Marco, being an old man, didn’t see it like I did ... or perhaps age had given him a tolerance that I didn’t have.”

  “You mean that monthly allowance?”

  “Yes.”

  “But surely you would have wanted a child provided for?”

  “Whose child?” he retorted boldly.

  “Is that the way you thought?”

  “You would have, too, had you been up here.”

  “But you’re certain now?”

  Yes. I think I knew the moment I first saw her, and I knew positively one day when I glanced up and you were looking at the three of us. But wait, Roslyn, this is all too one-sided. We’ll have some facts now from you. Facts,” he warned, “not fiction.”

  “It will sound like fiction,” she warned him back.

  “All the same, give me the unembroidered story.”

  Roslyn did. She told the mixed-up history of her mother s second marriage to Dudley, of Dudley’s marriage on her mother’s death to Nanette, of the child Nanette had brought with her—

  “Belinda,” she finished. “She was only a baby. I loved her at once.”

  “Presumably, knowing Nanette, you took her over.”

  “Yes, I did.” Roslyn wondered if her love for Belinda was making sense. She looked flinchingly at Marcus, and he smiled back.

  “Mark died before the baby was born.” He had taken up the story now. “My young brother had never been quite robust, and Nanette was no help. I came down to live at Clementine, my own parents were dead, and old Marco was too old to carry on. I put a manager in my own place. Nanette left as soon as the child was born. I did make an offer, but she held back—not maternally, I’m sure of it, but in the hope of a future bigger return. Then she remarried. Then the accident happened. Then it all began.” Marcus spread his big hands.

  “You saw through my ‘Ness’ subterfuge?”

  “At once. But I knew you must be connected somewhere, and the only connection I could think of was Nanette—and my God, I couldn’t accept that!” He hit his left palm with his hard right fist. “Had I known ... had I known I can tell you I wouldn’t have waited this long.”

  “For what?” asked Roslyn.

  “For everything, you young fool. For what’s going to happen now.”

  “What is going to happen?”

  “Well, first of all this.” Without any warning Marcus moved over the grass to her and took her up in his arms. He held her there a tight moment, then he kissed her, a hard kiss that seemed to bite right into her. She was gasping for breath when he released her and stepped back.

  “What were we up to?” he asked.

  “I said ‘What is going to happen?’ ”

  “And I told you: This.” Stepping over again, he kissed her again.

  And Roslyn knew she had never, never been kissed before.

  “After that the usual,” he shrugged. “Up here they go for weddings with all the trappings. Come to think of it, so do I.”

  “Marcus, explain yourself!” she begged.

  “I love you. I loved you from the first moment you lied to me, and I loved you with every lie after that. But you were Nanette’s sister, I thought.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Oh, I know that now, but it was the nearest I could get in the conundrum. This girl, I thought, this damned girl must be Nanette’s sister—only someone of blood relationship could know a love for a child like that.”

  “You were wrong,” she told him.

  “Yes, I was wrong, and I could kick myself for the time I’ve wasted, but I think it’s going to be all the sweeter now. We’ll have to live at Clementine for some years. And why not? My own canefields are in excellent hands. But unless you feel contrarily, Roslyn, we’ll stay there until Belinda grows up, marries in her turn, and takes over. Then we’ll move, you and I—and our sons.”

  “Sons?” she queried.

  “Son, then. But there must be a Marco, Mark, Marcus ” he reminded her with a laugh.

  “You’re going too fast,” she complained. “Also there’s something you’ve left out.”

  “Yes, and I’ve been waiting for that.”

  “You knew, then?”

  “Of course. It’s your love for me, isn’t it, and how do I know you have it? Well, I don’t, Roslyn Young, but frankly it doesn’t matter, because if I haven’t that love now, I will next year. There’s always another crop of sugar. Now stop that!”

  For Roslyn was beating angrily at him with her fists, angry at his self-assurance. “How do you know?” she cried. “How could you know? It could be Chris it could be Carl...”

  “It’s Marcus. This Marcus. Don’t you think I’ve seen it each time you’ve turned your glance away? I love you. I said so. And though you haven’t said so, you love me. Roslyn, we’ve wasted weeks. Don’t let’s waste time now.”

  No, thought Roslyn, don’t let us waste time now. The wind rustling across the small plateau brought as well as the sound of leaves from the trees in the valley, a song of cane from the fields, and though the leaves sang sweetly the cane—

  “Down there, down the hill is the little Moreno acre,” said Marcus, “where Marco and Mark lie listening to it all. I’ll sh
ow you some time.”

  “Now?”

  “No, not now. We’ll take Belinda. Show her Mark’s spot. Tell her he’s Dad.”

  “Yes, but I think you’ll still be Fath-er.”

  “If you are Moth-er, that will do me. Though I have more ambitions than that.”

  “Than what?”

  “Than a readymade family, Roslyn, so you may as well know it. But we’re going too fast again. Up here we like all the procedure, not only the wedding bells, we like the kiss, the vow, the ‘I love you’ from both sides. I’ve said mine. How about you?”

  That music came again. Cane music. Cane song mixed with turning leaves, with distant sea. But mostly cane. The tall shining grasses moving in the warm sun saying: “I love you, dear.”

  “Thank you, Roslyn,” Marcus was whispering in Roslyn’s ear.

  “But I never said it, the cane said it. Listen.”

  They stood there listening. And the cane sighed again. “I love you. I love you, dear.”