by Sharon Maas
I married him soon after my father’s trial; a small, inconspicuous wedding. I married him for two reasons:
One: So that I could take over management of the estate. Even as a sixteen-year-old I correctly assessed him as weak of character, and easy for a woman to control.
Two: to produce sons.
Promised Land must remain stable and strong far into the future, and the only way is to raise young men whose hearts and blood are wedded to the plantation – young men with sugar in the blood, young men whose hearts would race at the pungent smell of the burning of the trash, young men who can walk through the towering canes and know: this is my home. I will protect it with my last breath.
I don’t care much for babies and young children but I suppose you can’t have young men without them. Anyway, there are servants to deal with that problem.
And so, after my wedding all my energies went towards, firstly, training Clarence to know that I was the power behind the throne and, secondly, him impregnating me as soon as possible.
The first of those goals came easily enough; with my striking looks and even more striking character I soon held him in the palm of my hand. He is a foppish fellow, completely unsuited to plantation life; that he is here at all was the result of negotiations between Papa, or rather, Papa’s solicitor in London, and Clarence’s father Lord Smedley, who was anxious to see him removed from the dissolute life he was leading in London. So Clarence was imported to the colony by Papa, a surrogate son. He was supposed to invest in our struggling plantation, inherit it and marry one of the daughters, and as the elder sister remaining (our eldest, Kathleen, had left us for England years before), Winnie was the allotted one. But she rejected his advances, and so he turned to me. I was still only sixteen at the time, and needed Papa’s permission, which he readily gave. After all, Clarence was now to manage the plantation, and we needed him firmly attached to the family by way of marriage.
Clarence, of course, was rejected by his own father, who got rid of him by sending him to us with a small fortune. He was a spoilt lounge lizard with a penchant for loose women, drink and gambling. Easy enough to braid into my hair; I needed him only for the position and the sons to come. And so Clarence was installed as heir to Plantation Promised Land, and in return invested the much-needed money for a sugar processing factory. Thrown into the deal, a Cox daughter as his wife – me. In this way Lord Smedley was able to wash his hands of this troublesome stain on the family name, and we got – well, we got Clarence.
He had – and still has – no knowledge of plantation business and no inclination to learn, whereas I have been absorbing the spirit of sugar and the rhythm of its seasons all my life. Learning the business side of it was easy for anyone with a quick brain, even a female. We didn’t really need a Clarence, since I was there – but Papa had never heard of a woman running an estate, and we needed the money, so I suppose it was a good bargain, and we were the winners.
Ha! That, you see, is how a woman wins. Clarence is my marionette. And with my hat I showed them all who holds the reins in this disgraced family. What with Mama’s abandonment of us, followed by Papa’s prison sentence, followed by this farce of a wedding, with Winnie cut off without a penny to her name – well, the Cox family was mired in scandal. Now, I’ve never cared what people think, never cared about my reputation – I’ll do as I please. But I plan to show them all, those who point fingers at us. I have a plan, a long-term plan. My wedding to Clarence – even before Winnie’s wedding to George came about – is a part of that plan, and the hat was a symbol of it.
3
Winnie
Georgetown, August 1912
* * *
I took George with me to the harbour to meet Mama. He was reluctant to go.
‘It’s your mother,’ he objected. ‘Why would you drag me along on such a momentous occasion? She will want to see you alone, or you and Yoyo!’
‘But you are part of me now,’ I said. ‘And Mama must know that from the start. I can’t wait for her to meet you!’ And as usual with George, I got my way. I was beginning to feel guilty about that, actually. I wasn’t naturally the bossy type; quite the contrary. So why was I so bossy towards George? Was there a residue of racial superiority in me, an unconscious sense of mastery? One that overcame even my sense of feminine deference to the male; and in him, vice versa? I would have to be careful in future. George was so very sensitive. I did not want to ride roughshod over him. But on this I did insist: he must come with me to greet Mama off the ship. It will be the last time, I swore to myself. Soon we will be married and after that I will be soft and yielding, and he will be the man, strong and in charge. That’s the way it should be.
‘There she is,’ I cried, pointing. I grabbed George’s hand and pushed my way through the crowd, dragging him behind me. Yes, there was Mama, crossing the gangplank! She had hardly changed a bit! So lovely! She wore a travelling suit of tweed – rather unsuitable for our climate – and a hat and was just unfurling a parasol as I saw her, and she looked so smart. I pushed myself to the front of the waiting crowd, George in tow, and the moment Mama touched firm ground I flung myself at her.
‘Mama, Mama! How I’ve missed you! Welcome home!’
Mama’s arms opened wide and closed round me, and we stood there in silence for a long moment. I was sobbing with relief and gladness. How I had worried these last few weeks! I have a tremendous fear of the Atlantic crossing. The ocean is so wide, so deep! I had nightmares of Mama in a little boat tossed on the waves and sinking down into the ocean depths. Papa always used to scoff at these fears, and Miss Wright, our governess, too: ocean travel is safe, they would tell me; few ships sink. Yet still, the terror of the ocean and its power never left me. And only recently the greatest ship that was ever built, the Titanic, supposed to be unsinkable, had sunk! Proving that I was right to fear the ocean. One thing is sure: I shall never make that voyage. You will never find me boarding a ship bound for Europe.
Eventually Mama and I drew apart and looked into each other’s faces. I knew my cheeks were wet with tears, and so were Mama’s; but now she laughed and kissed me on both cheeks and then on the tip of my nose, exactly the way she always used to when I was a child. She had not changed.
‘Winnie! My darling Winnie!’ she said, and then she looked around, behind me.
‘Where’s Yoyo?’ she said.
‘At Promised Land,’ I said. ‘She’s waiting for you there. But Mama, this is George – my fiancé!’
And I grabbed his hand again and pulled him forward. He was holding his hat clasped to his stomach with his left hand, and I let go of his right so that he could greet Mama.
Mama frowned, and hesitated ever so slightly before taking his hand.
‘This is – George?’
‘Yes, Mama. We have been waiting for your arrival – we shall be married next week!’
Mama looked George up and down, still frowning, not taking his hand. The moment hung in space. I could tell by George’s expression that he was wilting inside – he still harboured this unfounded fear that all white people looked down at him. But I knew Mama wasn’t like that. I had not told her George was black because I knew she would not care. And in the next moment she proved me right. Her lips spread in a wonderful smile and she extended her hand and said, ‘I’m delighted to meet you, George!’
Poole, our chauffeur, dropped George off outside his home in Albouystown. This was the house which was to be my home when we married. Seeing it, I understood at once why he had been so reluctant to bring me home. He was ashamed. It was just a one-storey cottage, and it would be small for the four of us. But I was used to one-storey cottages; it was no smaller than Aunty Dolly’s. When I was a silly girl of sixteen I had run away from home to be with George, but fortunately Aunty Dolly had plucked me from my fluffy dreams, taken me into her home, talked sense into me and forced me to grow up. I adored her.
Now, I squeezed George’s hand and smiled at him before he got out of the car, to show hi
m I wasn’t shocked. But his eyes told me he was ashamed all the same.
Just as he had been ashamed to introduce me to his parents. But I had insisted, and at last I had met them, just last Sunday. His mother was a thin, ramrod-backed lady, and she greeted me unsmilingly, with a mixture of shyness and hauteur. His father was just as thin; tall and loose-limbed, just like George, and elegant in his black suit and bow tie. We met on the promenade, and walked up and down conversing while the brass band played in the roundhouse. A stilted, disjointed conversation, led by me; I asked questions, the answers to which I already knew:
‘Where do you work, Mr Quint?’
‘At the post office, ma’am.’
‘Oh! So, just like George!’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘How many children do you have, Mrs Quint?’
‘Just the three, ma’am.’
‘George, and…?’
‘Two daughters, ma’am.’
‘Do they live at home?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘I do like your hat, Mrs Quint. It’s very pretty.’
‘Thank you. ma’am.’
And so on. The ma’am would have to go; I would talk to George about it later.
And now, in the car, conversation between Mama and George was almost a repeat, and just as stilted. It was as if George had understood nothing:
‘So George, where do you work?’
‘At the post office, ma’am.’
‘How many brothers and sisters do you have?’
‘Just two sisters, ma’am.’
It was like a reflex, this deference to white skin; ingrained misplaced politeness, and it would have to stop.
Once George had left the car the atmosphere changed between Mama and me. She sighed deeply and removed her hat, reached for my hand and squeezed it. We gazed at each other.
‘Oh Winnie!’ she said, and those two words concealed a universe of emotion: regret, and relief, and pain, and joy, and wonder, and a thousand unanswered questions.
‘Mama!’ I sighed back.
‘He seems like a very nice fellow,’ she said. She spoke in German now, which had always been ‘our’ language, and I fell easily into the swing of it.
‘He’s wonderful, Mama; just a bit shy right now but once you get to know him you’ll love him.’
‘And you love him, I assume.’
‘Oh, yes, Mama! So much! I do love him; we love each other.’
‘It’s not going to be easy, dear. But you must know that by now.’
‘Yes, Mama – I know. We both know. But we have made that decision and we will walk through it together.’
‘And you will go to live with him – in that house?’
Her eyebrows rose as she asked the question, and I could sense the unspoken doubt. Could I, raised in a fairytale palace in a Promised Land, accommodate myself to such a lowly dwelling?
‘Mama – please don’t worry. I know exactly what I’m doing. You’ll see. Let’s talk about something else.’
She smiled and relaxed, but then a new kind of concern slid into her eyes.
‘How’s your father?’
‘Oh, Mama! You don’t know, do you? No, you can’t know. He’s gone! Back to England! His ship must have passed yours on the Atlantic!’
‘Gone? How can that be? I thought he was in—’
‘Prison. Yes, of course. But the first thing he did was put in a petition with the Governor for extradition to England. And it was granted within a few days. He couldn’t be in prison here, you see; he would be the only white man, and he feared they would kill him, or worse. The Governor agreed. The prison here is appalling, of course, and there are often riots. The men sleep in communal rooms.’
Mama smiled. ‘How the mighty have fallen!’
‘Yes. It has been a hard lesson for Papa. But you see, he is now gone. So you won’t meet him. Are you very disappointed?’
Mama thought for a moment, then she said: ‘Yes – no. I had indeed been planning my conversation with him – all the way over I had been planning it, so it is a bit disappointing that I can’t speak my mind to him at last. But on the other hand, it’s a relief.’
‘Mama, you can write him all you want to say.’
‘Oh, darling! I can’t write in English! You should know that! And he does not know enough German.’
‘I can write it for you, if you like.’
‘We shall see.’ She squeezed my hand then, and we were silent for a while.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ I said, but the only thing left to talk about was Yoyo, and that subject would be no easier than the subject of George or Papa or Uncle Jim. Mama had returned to British Guiana to a hopelessly tangled bundle of wool; it would be ages before she could even begin to sort out the separate strands of complications and understand their causes and know how to respond.
But now we were heading up the coast to our family plantation at Promised Land, and Yoyo, so Yoyo was the most pressing complication right now. So it was Yoyo, and Promised Land, that we spoke of next. So much had transpired during the almost three years of Mama’s absence. I gave her an encapsulated history of the events – for to date the only information she had was through telegrams – and by the time we reached Mahaica I was ready to tell her of our present-day problems. New problems, ones I had not envisaged that day when Papa was convicted.
‘When Yoyo and I first discovered what was going on, we were united in our goals – we wanted a new Promised Land, one that would be fair to the workers, give them proper housing and care. Oh, Mama, the dreams we dreamt, as young girls! I know they were probably unrealistic – we thought of buying cows for them and then buying the milk from those cows, and chickens, and eggs and so on! Silly girlish dreams, no doubt, but they showed our good intentions. But since Yoyo has become the de facto manager of the plantation – well, Mama, it seems that they are right, the people who say that power corrupts. We are in opposition now. She no longer puts the workers first.’
‘Perhaps putting the workers first is not the correct premise for running a business,’ Mama said, and I suppose she was right.
‘It’s all so complicated,’ she said then, ‘and I’m tired. I was so excited, I did not sleep at all last night.’
She laid her head back against the leather upholstery and closed her eyes.
‘You’ll be uncomfortable like that,’ I said. ‘Why not lie down and put your head on my lap, and sleep? We have a few more hours to go – we’ll arrive at dusk.’
She opened her eyes and smiled at me, squeezed my hand and removed her hat. She lay down on the seat with her head on my lap, sighed and closed her eyes again, and only a moment later she was fast asleep. I looked down at her fondly, and stroked the hair away from her face, gently, as if she were my child. The hair at her temple was turning grey. She was far too young to go grey! And it did not match her face, which seemed hardly changed in spite of all the trouble she had been through.
A new beginning, I thought. Mama is back! And I am to marry George! Two of my greatest wishes had been granted. I should be grateful. But Papa was on his way to prison in England, and the trouble at Promised Land would not go away. And Yoyo and I were divided. That was the worst of it all. There was nothing I could do about Papa: we would all have to live with that reality. But Yoyo, and Promised Land! I had been so sure, after the trial, that we could start to put things right on the plantation. Who would have thought that Yoyo would drift to the other side?
We had left Georgetown far behind by now, and were well on our way to the Corantyne and Promised Land. Acres of coconut trees swept past the window, and fishing villages, with tiny houses on rickety stilts, and little Indian children, some naked, who ran out to shout and wave at the car. They did not see many motor-cars, so we were decidedly a novelty. I waved back at them. The next time I make this trip, I resolved, I will buy sweets and distribute them.
Children! I smiled to myself. Soon, very soon, George and I will have our own.
/> I wanted many. A whole cricket team: lots of delightful girls and boys. I smiled to myself and then drifted off to sleep, leaning against the car door, my shawl bundled into a pillow.
We both awoke when we reached the ferry, and Mama and I straightened our clothes and hair and stepped out of the car to stretch our legs. The Berbice River is not as wide as the Demerara, but the water is just as brown – like the Atlantic. Our governess, Miss Wright, had told us that it was brown due to the waters of the Amazon River, several miles down the coast in Brazil, which poured thousands of gallons of muddy water into the Atlantic every hour. That’s why our water is not as clear and blue as the Caribbean Sea, though we are so near.
4
George
The first day of our married life, I got up early, as usual, to go to work. Winnie rose with me.
‘George,’ she said, ‘What am I to do today?’
I was nonplussed. What a strange question!
‘Whatever you like, my love!’ I said, and drew her into my arms, and kissed her a thousand times on her cheeks. She giggled, but then pulled away.
‘No, but really. You are off to work, and I am alone here with your parents… What shall I do?’
‘Well, you can talk to them. Get to know them. Ma will be cleaning the house and shopping and cooking – you can help her if you like.’
I immediately realised my mistake. I was talking to my wife as if she were one of us – a girl from Albouystown. I had forgotten that she was white, and white people don’t clean or cook. I had to put that right immediately.