The Sugar Planter's Daughter

by Sharon Maas

  I smiled; I beamed at Winnie, so that she should have no inkling of my resentment. I even smiled at George, openly, for the first time.

  But of course, behind the happy smile, I was devastated. Until, finally, the realisation dawned on me: Winnie’s son would be a half-caste, and thus could never take over the plantation. And, of course, the baby might even be a daughter. The first was a certainty, the second a hope. I could not allow Winnie to have sons, when I couldn’t produce them. That would be the ultimate slap in my face.

  But their child would definitely be coloured. Papa would never allow a coloured heir to take possession of Promised Land. But how much say did Papa have in the matter now he was in prison? What about Clarence? Clarence’s rights? If Winnie produced a male heir before Clarence and I did, would Clarence be deposed? I could not let that happen. I frowned in concentration. I really should have taken more interest in the contracts Papa and Clarence had drawn up, but I had not looked into the details. I would have to make sure that under no circumstances could a son of Winnie and George be instated as heir. Perhaps I could persuade Papa to disinherit Winnie and her issue completely. I would write him immediately – we should have thought of this long ago, at the time of her wedding. How negligent of us! And tomorrow I would have to go through the papers, just to make sure. How typical of Winnie to come from behind and upset the apple cart. Although I supposed it was to be expected. I could well imagine that she and George would breed like rabbits – it’s said that coloured men are extremely potent. In contrast to my Clarence.

  I caught Clarence’s eye, and held it. I tried to put as much accusation as I could into that glance, and he flinched – he understood my displeasure all too well. I made sure my stare was as icy as could be – with some luck that would goad him into trying harder. I had to conceive a son! Many sons! How could Clarence fail me in this one essential matter, when in all other matters he bowed entirely to my will? I could not understand it.

  They were all still chatting about babies. Clarence managed to pull his gaze away from mine and turn his attention to the general conversation – an act of subtle insurrection for which I would have to chide him later on. He even spoke a word or two, something about being an uncle and looking forward to cricket, or some such thing. I couldn’t say a word; I let the chatter pass over my head. I was far too busy calculating. Perhaps I, too, could conceive in the next few days – I had heard that there were days in the month particularly conducive to conception, but I didn’t know the details. Perhaps Mildred, my lady’s maid, would know, or could find out – her sister was a midwife in the village. And perhaps – I went back to the comforting thought – Winnie’s child would be a girl. If Clarence tried harder he could still fulfil his duty.

  Thankfully, the talk once again turned to music, and again George was left out of the conversation, as was I.

  In the midst of all this chatter my gaze somehow met George’s, and read the boredom there.

  I winked.

  I couldn’t help it. It happened quite spontaneously – a substitute for a yawn, perhaps, or a need to express my ennui.

  George immediately looked away – but he blushed.

  You might very well say that a person of George’s dark hue cannot blush. But he did.

  His facial skin turned a distinct shade darker. I had embarrassed him.

  I liked the idea. I smiled to myself. What fun!

  George of course had impeccable manners – doubtless he had picked them up from Winnie, who had surely coached him in the way to behave in an Englishman’s house. He had done quite well in the use of cutlery (apart from that business with the soup spoon), following her lead, and he never spoke unless spoken to. He was humble, as behoved someone of his station who had risen in life, and courteous. I had caught him out, read his thoughts, seen his inner lack of comprehension and displayed my acknowledgement of our mutual discontent. And that, of course, was what embarrassed him. I had caught him out in a discourtesy towards his hosts. Never mind that I was the hostess – I had caught him out.

  It amused me no end.

  I realised right then that here was an opportunity. George was like a little house-pet – it would be amusing to tease him a little. I spoke up.

  ‘Mama, why don’t you and Winnie entertain us a little? The piano is still in the music room, you know, and Winnie, you can play your violin.’

  Winnie had not taken her precious instrument with her to Albouystown. She said there was no room for it there. I could not imagine how small her home must be, that it lacked room for a thing as small as a violin case!

  ‘Oh – but the piano is doubtless out of tune, if no one has played it for all these years. And in this climate!’

  Mama once had filled the house with music, but since her return had not played so much as a scale. There had been talk of bringing in a piano-tuner from Georgetown, but she had not in the end acted on it.

  ‘And I am out of tune!’ Winnie laughed. ‘I haven’t touched my violin for at least a year.’

  ‘A travesty!’ I cried, now full of enthusiasm. ‘Mama, never mind if the piano is slightly out of tune – no one will hear it but you.’

  ‘And Winnie, and Clarence.’

  ‘It would be fun, Mama,’ said Winnie.

  ‘I’d love to hear you play,’ said Clarence, ‘and I’ll make allowances, if a few notes are off-key – I do miss music, out here in the wilderness.’

  And so we all coaxed Mama into compliance, and we all stood up from the table and moved to the music room, which was at the back of the house, the south side, protected from sun and damp. For once, I thought, I will be amused by music.

  George, Clarence and I took our seats on three of the stiff-backed chairs in the music room. I don’t know why Papa never bothered to furnish this room with more comfortable seating accommodation; a few comfortable Berbice chairs would have been nice, allowing the bored listener to subtly fall asleep while pretending to be soaking in the music with closed eyes; Berbice chairs are wonderful for that. Well, the place was virtually mine now, and that was one thing I could do. Mama wouldn’t try to intervene, seeing as she would always rather be a performer than a listener.

  It was a large room with a colourful carpet covering the honey-coloured floorboards. When we were children the servants would roll back the carpets and Mama and Papa would dance to music while Mama sang – Viennese waltzes that would have us girls clapping and jumping up and joining in, with genuine glee. Mama was so gay, back then. So full of verve. What happened? Something did. Winnie, I suspected, knew more than I did, close as she was to Mama.

  Now, the carpet stayed on the floor and we the audience of three took our seats. Mama lifted the cover of the piano and gently ran her fingers over the keys before pressing a few and tilting her head, leaning forward the better to listen.

  ‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘It needs tuning. I don’t know if I can bear’

  ‘Oh, Mama!’ I interrupted, ‘do go on! Just once, for old times’ sake.’

  Winnie, meanwhile, had opened her violin case and removed the instrument, and was stroking its smooth surface with infinite tenderness. Really, you’d think her violin were her baby; it would be interesting to see if she would hold a real baby with such tenderness. She tightened the strings of her bow, adjusted the keys of the violin, played a few notes, tightened, listened, stroked and, finally, satisfied, she looked up at Mama with glowing eyes.

  ‘I’m ready!’ she said, ‘what shall we play?’

  ‘What about…’ Well, I don’t remember what Mama suggested; it’s all the same to me, but Winnie nodded and they played.

  I can’t say if they were good or not; I have no ear for music. I watched them for a while, then turned my eyes to George, who was listening with rapt attention. The boredom he had exhibited during the musical conversation had vanished; he now seemed genuinely captivated by the music. His eyes were fixed on Winnie, who stood with her violin under her chin and her bow arm swinging as she played, swaying, moving
to the music, her eyes lowered, her body fully one with the body of sound emerging from her instrument.

  I was seated just opposite him, and so it was possible to observe him while pretending to watch Winnie, as both were in my natural view. I did not at all like what I saw.

  Most of the English population of British Guiana, not just myself, had of course been violently against this match. Winnie, everyone agreed, had disgraced our entire side by stooping so low, and as for George, he was obviously a social climber; having seen an opportunity to better himself, he grasped it with both hands. It was all about climbing the hierarchy – and, in the end, money. Winnie, besotted as she was, could not see that, but everyone else did.

  Now, watching him watch her, I was not so sure.

  I had never pretended to be anything other than an old potato where romance is concerned. I didn’t believe in marrying for love; surely marriage was a contract undertaken to join two people for their mutual benefit, and to produce children. As for love at first sight, as Winnie had talked about this evening – what rubbish! I had always scoffed at the love stories Winnie devoured, Jane Austen and others of her ilk, and as for love poetry and love songs – well, they left me cold. Papa used to say I had a heart of stone, unusually for a girl emerging into womanhood. But I simply did not see the point.

  Now, though, as I observed George, an unpleasant feeling overtook me.

  What was that, shining in his eyes, if not love? That rapt attention, that sense of him drinking her in, absorbing her as she played; as if, in watching her, her soul became his, music and all. As if, through his eyes, her very being entered him – such softness, such happiness, such love!

  One thing was certain: Clarence, my husband, had never looked at me that way. I had never expected him to. He never would, I was sure.

  A great sadness enveloped me. Had I been wrong? Was there such a thing as love, and was it as precious as they said? Was it something vital, essential to one’s internal well-being – and had I lacked it all my life, without even knowing?

  For right now, watching George watch Winnie, I felt that lack.

  A great yawning emptiness opened within me. A vacuum; a yearning for something I could not have; something I wanted without knowing I wanted it, caught up as I was in so many other, lesser, wants. All my ambitions, all my plans, all my striving for the top, crumbled in the face of what I saw in George’s face. Crumbled into dust. I felt empty, forlorn, small – feelings I had never known in all my life, for I was a girl who had always known what she wanted and almost always got it. A girl with not a fingertip of doubt in her soul. Strong, they said, and cocksure. That was Johanna Penelope Cox through and through. Admired and applauded. But right now, she was nothing.

  I could even put a name on that unpleasant feeling. It all narrowed down to one thing, one word, one emotion.

  Jealousy.

  While George sat absorbed by Winnie and her music, I sat absorbed in self-recognition, something previously alien to my nature. If a lovely woman, a woman celebrated for her great outstanding beauty and charm, had sat to regard herself in her boudoir mirror and saw nothing but an ugly old hag, she could not have been more shocked than I was at that moment.

  I did not even notice when the music stopped.

  ‘Why, Yoyo, you’re crying! I’ve never seen you moved by music before!’ That was Mama, of course, snapping me out of my spell.

  14

  Winnie

  ‘Yoyo seems to have warmed towards you,’ I said to George on our way home. ‘I’m so glad. I couldn’t bear her enmity. She was almost rude to you at the wedding, but tonight she even spoke a few words to you, and not unkindly. I knew you’d win her over, George!’

  Though of course, Yoyo had known George right from the beginning; we met him together, at the post office, and she had liked him well enough then; it was more the fact that I had decided to marry him that had aroused her ire. But now, no doubt she had accepted that he was indeed a member of our family, and that wasn’t going to change. She seemed truly delighted at the prospect of becoming an aunt. This baby, I thought to myself, will heal all wounds.

  I missed my sister, and the closeness we had once enjoyed. Choosing George above my family had been a heart-wrenching decision, but now at last the broken bridges could be repaired, and this tiny creature growing within me would fuse us all into one again. We would be real sisters. I was even growing fonder of Clarence – I felt I had to make an effort to like him, since I wanted Yoyo to like George. I do believe that at heart every person is likeable – one must only strive to find the common spark that binds us all, that basic thread of humanity, and love that rather than be distracted by unpleasant qualities. And so I tried, and indeed much of my dislike put itself to rest. I would never exactly love Clarence, but I was growing to somewhat like him. The fact that he was musical helped. Music does bring people together; but more than music, the baby. Our baby. Our first!

  George seemed to think that he, personally, was piecing that baby together inside my body. He was the proudest father-to-be who ever walked the earth, and he was going to be the best father in the world – I could tell! I never thought I could love him more than I had before, but now our love seemed to grow by the day, by the hour, almost. There is no limit to love, I discovered; there is just a limit to the obstructions we place before it, and the more those obstructions melt, the more love spreads, and the more it spreads, the more those obstructions melt. It’s a self-propagating phenomenon.

  This love, now, was so different to the euphoric swings that catapulted me into the stars when I first fell for George as a young and naïve girl: it was deep, rather than high, rooted rather than free-floating in the heavenly spheres, silent rather than shouting for joy. A touch of his glance, or of his fingers, was enough to pull me into it. His eyes could speak and, I’m sure, so did mine. It was a melting away of the hard-bound selves that we were, into a common Self that was greater than the sum of its two parts. Our single secret Self.

  At first, nothing changed at home. I made my rounds as usual, collecting ripe guavas and peppers, mangoes and limes from our suppliers, and a farmer continued to deposit a cartful of mature coconuts in our yard at regular intervals. I continued to make my jelly, my pepper sauce, my lime pickles and mango chutney, my coconut oil. More and more shops agreed to sell my concoctions; the shop owners, sceptical at first, turned enthusiastic. Even in Stabroek Market, also called Big Market, I was able to win over a few shopkeepers. My products sold!

  I kept the profit in a Cow & Gate tin in the wardrobe. We could use it, one day, soon enough.

  ‘By the time the baby is born,’ I told George, ‘we will have enough to extend the house – add a room at the back!’

  ‘A room for each child!’ George said, pulling me close.

  I giggled. ‘How many shall we have?’

  ‘As many as God gives us,’ he said. ‘A house teeming with boys and girls! I can’t wait to meet them all!’

  ‘Well, let’s start with one,’ I said.

  ‘What shall we call him, or her?’

  ‘If it’s a girl I’d like to name her after my mother – Ruth.’

  ‘And a boy after my father, Theodore.’

  ‘But your sister’s son is Theodore!’ I objected. ‘We can’t have two Theodore cousins – it would be so confusing!’

  ‘One could be Theodore and the other Theo?’

  ‘No,’ I said decisively. ‘I want him to have his very own name, not share one with a cousin. We can’t call him Archibald – Father and I have too much strife between us. Besides, I’d like to leave Archibald for Yoyo’s son, when she has one. She and Papa were very close – I’m sure she’d like to honour him in that way.’ I thought for a while. ‘We could call him after my maternal grandfather, Johannes – but that’s too German. What’s your grandfather’s name?’

  ‘Humphrey,’ said George.

  ‘Shall we call him Humphrey, then?’

  ‘Yes! Humphrey for a boy, Ruth for a
girl. I hope she’s a girl. Both my sisters have had boys – we need a girl in the family.’

  ‘Well – we’ll find out in November. I don’t care, as long as the baby is healthy.’ I took a deep breath and reached for him. ‘Oh, George – I can hardly believe it. You and I, parents!’

  My pregnancy proceeded with no complications. I went to see a Dr van Sertima, supposed to be the best doctor for confinement and birth in the colony. We could afford it – we had my Cow & Gate savings, which was what I called my profit, growing in the wardrobe. Dr van Sertima said I had the perfect body for childbearing; that all was in order; that I would have perfect children, and many of them.

  A month before I was due to give birth, we added a little room to the back of the house, and an indoor bathroom and lavatory. The extension could only be accessed through the kitchen, and it gave the cottage a rather odd layout, but it was exciting to prepare for a new family member, and nobody cared about the layout. Ma and Pa, it was decided, would move into the new room, George and I would move into their old bedroom and our room would be for the baby. We considered ourselves privileged – not many new parents in Albouystown had such a large dwelling as ours! Most families lived four or five to a room. Yes, we were privileged, and we knew it, and we counted our blessings – and the Cow& Gate money.

  By this time my belly was bursting out of my clothes, and I had long ceased to do my rounds buying fruit and selling jars. Instead I employed a young boy to go from house to house buying the necessary supplies. Demand was growing, week by week. Now shopkeepers in Bourda Market, Stabroek Market and even in the affluent Downtown were placing the jars of jelly and sauce and bottles of oil on their counters; even William Fogarty’s, where the English shopped. My friend Kitty MacGonigal helped by taking the finished products to market., and promised to help even more once the baby was born.