by Sharon Maas
But I was learning to love Albouystown. It was the residents who made the difference. None of this stiff-upper-lip business that characterised the British upper class. Albouystown folk were down to earth. They showed you what they felt. There was no pretence; they wore their hearts on their sleeves. When they were upset, they cried. When they were angry, they yelled. If they hated you, they showed it. And if they loved you – well, I was beginning to be loved by one or two, and it meant the world to me. It meant acceptance. I was beginning to forget the colour of my own skin, forget any difference. Yet I still had no close friends there. Many of the ladies I thought of as ‘gate friends’, since we only chatted over the garden gate when I came to collect fruit or peppers or tomatoes from their gardens. But a gate friend was good enough for me; after all, I had Kitty, Eliza, Tilly and Emily.
Though most Albouystown residents were of African descent, there were many Indians, too. The Africans came from former slaves from the sugar fields, the Indians from former indentured servants, all of whom had been freed or turned their backs on plantation life. I suppose my reputation as a rebel against plantation conditions went before me and helped to ease my path. But I was eager to know them better; who were these people who came from far away, who sweated and toiled in the broiling sun for a pittance, to make us British rich?
I learned that there were two kinds of Indians, Muslims and Hindus. You could tell by their names: Muslims had names like Khan and Hussein and Ali. Hindus had names like Ram and Persaud and Nataraj. Muslims did not eat pork; Hindus did not eat beef. It was easy to tell a Hindu home, as they would have clusters of tall thin poles at the front fence bearing raggedy red flags. I wondered at the meaning of these flags, and in conversation with a Hindu housewife, Basmattie, I finally found an answer: the flags are dedicated to the gods Hanuman and Shiva and the goddess Lakshmi. They are prepared at a Hindu prayer service called a jhandi.
Basmattie, in her eagerness to explain to me what they meant, arranged for me to be invited me to a jhandi prayer service at a friend’s house. I was most excited at this invitation, for it meant a further step into the heart of my new community, a further opening of my own heart.
I arrived early in the morning, and found all the women of the household cooking in enormous pots in the yard over open fires. Basmattie and her friend were picking flowers and making garlands for the service, and invited me to help; I eagerly did, but my fingers were slow and clumsy and they laughed good-naturedly at my poor attempts at garland-making. They had been learning the art since they were little girls.
Later on the pandit arrived and we all went upstairs. A ceremony followed that I couldn’t quite understand; prayers were chanted in a strange language that I later found out was Sanskrit. Various gods and goddesses were worshipped and the flags blessed in their honour, Hanuman receiving one more than Shiva and Lakshmi. Later, when I asked Basmattie about the many gods of Hinduism, she laughed. ‘We have many gods,’ she said, ‘but only one God, with a capital G, just like you. And our God is the same as your God, and the Muslim Allah. We all pray and worship in different ways; our gods are our pathways to Him. Jesus is your pathway. But we all are going in the same direction: to love and peace.’
This made perfect sense to me, and I nodded.
At the end of the ceremony the pandit gave some teachings in English about right living. ‘What you do is not important,’ he said. ‘No work is more worthwhile than another. It’s not what you do that counts; it’s how you do it. Do your work with right attitude, and it will be of benefit to you, even if it is lowly. Regard your work as service to God, and do it with dedication, no matter what it is. The motions of work are not important: it is the motions of mind that count. Happiness comes not from the pleasure you can abstract from your work or the world, but from the love you pour into your work and the world.’
I found that teaching most helpful for my life in Albouystown, and determined to try to live by it. And in that way I felt folded even closer into the heart and soul of Albouystown, and learned to live my life there. And I determined that my children would learn all about all religions, because all are meandering paths to a single truth. They were all baptised Catholic, but I hoped that they would grow up to understand that every religion is a pathway to God, and only that: a path, and not the whole truth; and that He favours no particular path, but sees only the sincerity with which it is walked.
There were ways not to have more children. Women spoke of such ways, and so did George, even though he was a Catholic and, officially at least, not allowed to inhibit conception.
‘We have enough,’ George said. ‘Let’s stop now.’
He said that after Will, and after Charles, and after Leo. It was I who refused.
‘Gabriella Rose,’ I said. ‘She is next. Her soul is waiting. I know it, I feel it. One more, George. Just one more and then we’ll stop. The next one will be Gabriella Rose.’ But it never was. Until now. But this one, this little being beneath my swelling abdomen – this was she. I knew it with every fibre of my being. This was different. I could actually feel her this time – feel her as a companion, invisible but real, so real, beside me every minute of the day, and in my dreams. This had never been the case with any of the boys. This certainty! This knowing! This was her. I placed my hands on the tight skin of my belly and sighed, and smiled. Just a few months more, my little love. Just a little while longer.
George wanted desperately to get me out of Albouystown. He had worked so hard over the years, and it had paid off: he was now head of the telegraph office, the most senior non-white employee in the entire BG civil service. He had a good salary and, augmented as it was by the profits from Quintessentials, we were doing well financially. But he wasn’t happy. George wanted a house. A lovely big family home in a nice location, to where he could transplant us all.
Most evenings after work he would bundle us all into a hired coach and we would drive to the Sea Wall for an afternoon airing. George would wear his Sunday best, a crisp white shirt and a striped tie. He cut a very dapper figure, straight and tall with me on his arm. Up and down the jetty we would stroll, arm in arm, and watch the children play – Humphrey in charge of the little ones digging in the sand, Gordon and Will playing cricket on the beach – and he would dream. A big yard, he wanted, with trees the boys could climb and a gutter of their own that they could fish in. A two-storey house in the middle of it, with a window-fronted gallery and four bedrooms; a lovely white wooden house with Demerara windows and jalousies painted green. Sometimes he rode up and down the desirable areas on his bicycle, looking for available plots. He scoured the city, sending out feelers for our perfect place. I would laugh at him.
‘George, you seem to think the place is already there, with our name on it. Just waiting for you to turn up and identify it!’
He smiled rather sheepishly.
‘That’s a bit how I feel. I can almost picture it. I want a mansion, Winnie, not a cottage! You deserve the best.’
‘Oh, stuff and nonsense. A ready-made house will do. Gabriella will need a room of her own – so at least four bedrooms. The boys can share two rooms. A kitchen, a bathroom, a gallery and drawing room – what more do we want?’
‘I want it big. As big as the house you grew up in. Why should your children have less than you did?’
‘Oh George! You’re such a snob! As long as I have you and the boys and Gabriella I’d be happy living in a dog kennel! And as for the boys – they are happy here in Albouystown. They have their friends here. Why can’t we buy a bigger house here, if it has to be?’
A bigger home was, in all honesty, my dream too – what mother does not want the most comfortable nest for her family – but I was too busy with my everyday challenges to think much about it. But it was all George thought about. Every extra penny went into the savings account he had opened for that very goal; and within a year, he said, we would have enough to make a deposit on a piece of land on which we would build our future. The very thought of m
oving home gave me a headache.
‘The boys would be happy anywhere,’ George said, ‘and I want the very best for them. The best home and the best education, the best friends, so that they will go far.’
‘You take care of it, then,’ I said wearily. ‘I don’t care.’
I sighed and laid my head on his shoulder, hoping to silence him. I placed his hands on my belly, so that he could feel Gabriella Rose and stop thinking about that imaginary house. This house had haunted him ever since my return from Caracas. This idea that our home had to be as wonderful as Promised Land. It never would be – Promised Land was indeed special, but I had put it behind me for ever when I chose George. But George – he seemed haunted.
I had always thought my children would visit Promised Land, the family seat, frequently, but George adamantly refused to return there, and I could never manage to take them on my own. With each new child the possibility of showing them my old home faded more and more into the realms of the impossible. They would be almost adult before we could possibly make it as a family – and then it would be without George.
Something had happened on George’s last visit to Promised Land. Some quarrel with Yoyo. A bad quarrel, bad enough for him to vow never to speak to her again, never to set foot in her home.
‘But it’s also my old home, George!’ I had pleaded, but he was adamant. No.
‘If you would just tell me what happened! I know that Yoyo can be very obnoxious, but surely there’s a way to forgive her and start again – things were going so nicely between you. If you’d just tell me perhaps I can’
‘Yoyo,’ he said, ‘was insulting towards you. She called you a tame little kitten. You’re anything but a little kitten.’
I only laughed. ‘A kitten! I like that! So I suppose if I’m a kitten she’s a tiger?’
‘Don’t you see how she’s trying to insult you?’
‘Oh, George! Yoyo is always calling me names. She always likes to tease me. It doesn’t matter. If I’m not offended, why should you be on my behalf? I don’t mind.’
‘But I mind! I won’t go back there until she apologises.’
‘Oh, you silly boy! Yoyo will never apologise. She never has, in her whole life, not for anything, even when she was clearly in the wrong. It’s totally beneath her dignity – she won’t. That’s just the way Yoyo is. It doesn’t matter. We have to accept Yoyo just as she is, love her just as she is, with all her little foibles. I don’t care, so why should you?’
‘I won’t speak to anyone who disrespects my wife. It’s a point of honour with me.’
‘No, George, it’s just your pride. And what does the Church say about pride? Isn’t it one of the seven deadly sins?’
‘There’s a difference between pride and dignity. I would feel less of a man if I allowed Yoyo to cast aspersions against you without protest. And since she will never take back her words, I cannot step foot in her house again. I’m sorry, Winnie. I just can’t.’
‘What about turning the other cheek, George? Forgiving those that trespass against us? It’s really very un-Christian of you.’
‘She insulted Humph. She called him a cripple and a half-caste.’
‘Well, the words aren’t very nice but it’s all true in a way. Yoyo doesn’t mince words. She doesn’t have a tactful vein in her body. She speaks her mind – that’s just the way it is.’
I sighed. George was so very stubborn. He didn’t begin to understand Yoyo, wasn’t even trying. There had to be more behind this: I suspected that Yoyo had made some disparaging comment about his race. She can be very blunt, and I’m afraid that she still thinks the white race superior, and sometimes says things to that effect. That would certainly have annoyed George – he’s very sensitive about race – but I could imagine that he didn’t want to tell me.
‘Did she say anything about you, George? Make some racist comment? I know you hate that.’ He didn’t answer, but hung his head, and that’s when I knew.
‘Oh, George! She did, didn’t she? Look, she doesn’t mean it. She loved Nanny, who was Indian. Deep inside she’s got a good heart – really.’
‘Why don’t you go by yourself, if you want to see her so badly?’
‘But I want us to go as a family, George! With the baby! If I go alone it will look as if we have quarrelled and she will certainly ask questions, and then I’ll have to explain that you’re being stubborn, and then she’ll laugh at you and then I’ll be cross with her for insulting you, and then I’ll be cross with you for being cross with her… and then it will all be so complicated. Why can’t everyone just love each other and be nice to each other and forgive and forget? I will never understand it. Truly, never.’
He took my hand. And squeezed it.
‘I’m sorry, darling, I really am. I know I’m being stubborn but…’ He didn’t finish the sentence. He just shook his head and looked infinitely sad. It was so tiresome.
But George remained adamant. He would not tell me, and he would not go. And she would not come. As a result I had not seen Yoyo for five whole years. And I missed her.
In the meantime Kitty, Eliza and Tilly had become my ersatz-sisters. Yes, in the beginning, they had used me as a ladder up Georgetown’s social slopes. But by now it was more than that. With Kitty especially I felt a deep rapport – she had taken over entirely the running of Quintessentials, and she did it well. Profits were better than ever before, and she enjoyed the work. Enjoyed it so much, she said, that she definitely did not want children.
It was Kitty whose life was most dissimilar to mine. She was the only unmarried one of us. Eliza and Tilly were now both well settled: Tilly had married a prosperous up-and-coming businessman named Peter Sawyer, and had a daughter, and Eliza – well, Eliza had married Emily’s brother Andrew, and so had achieved her end in ‘catching’ a white man. Though she didn’t put it as crudely as that: she did love Andrew, and he her; but he was, for her, a trophy, a goal achieved, and her two children could ‘pass for white’, a term I heard many a time.
Kitty had suitors enough but had, up to now, held back. I had always wondered why, but Kitty did not readily speak of personal matters, and I felt it rude to ask. But now the information had come freely, and from her.
She had first let me into her big secret when Gordon was a baby. Kitty still lived with her mother, a widow, who had a big house and garden in Waterloo Street, and I often took the children there in the afternoon to let them play and run. And with them all in tow we would walk up to the Sea Wall and stroll along and let the children play in the sand.
On one of those days, Kitty told me her secret. I had dropped a little hint about her own future children, and she had replied, rather bluntly, ‘No offence, Winnie – you’re doing a marvellous job and I admire you no end – and I love being an aunty to yours. But I couldn’t, and I won’t.’
‘You won’t have children?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But then – you won’t marry?’
‘Oh, maybe I’ll marry one day,’ she said. ‘But it’s going to be hard finding a suitable husband, isn’t it? They all want children. That’s the whole point of marriage, they all seem to think. I do make sure a man who wants to court me is informed right from the start, and they all back away when I tell them. So I don’t let myself fall in love. It’s that simple. Or that hard.’
‘Oh Kitty, I’m so sorry! I hope you’
‘Don’t worry, dear. Perhaps there’s someone for me out there. It’s finding him that is so hard.’
‘I’m sure you will! Someone as nice as you shouldn’t be alone in life.’
‘Well – till then I’ve got Mama and Papa. And you. And Eliza and Tilly. I’m a lucky woman!’
‘And we’re lucky to have you.’
And I was. The isolation I felt in Albouystown evaporated when I was with my friends, and I was beginning to understand that my best efforts to penetrate the barriers made by my race and my class – the fact that it was actually a former class did not count
– would always be in vain. Too deep and bloody were the wounds the white man had cut into the hearts of the slaves and their descendants, too near the surface the anger emanating from those wounds, too ready to explode. They were not ready to forgive my race, and I had no right to demand forgiveness. Even though it was not I who had made those wounds, I represented those who had, and must accept rejection as a stand-in for the truly guilty. I could be as friendly and warm and caring as I wanted, but I could not cross that divide. The best I could hope for was a polite wariness. Even Aunty Dolly, she who had taken pity on me so many years ago and helped me find George when I thought all was lost, would never be a real aunty. Our lives would always be separate.
But these three, Kitty, Eliza and Tilly, the result of irregular relationships between slave-owners and slaves far back in the past, were my friends. They had crossed the divide by dint of blood. Though the wounds of the slave-women once violated, raped, abused must have been as deep as a ravine, they had no doubt loved the children so produced, and so was born that class of cross-breeds, neither one nor the other, striving for upliftment, insecure because of their black blood but ambitious because of their white blood. I longed to argue that all blood is red, but I knew that those arguments were futile. I had been lonely for female friends, and now they were there for me. It was not my task to change them, or educate them, or teach them. I wanted only their friendship.
Emily played on the sidelines of our group. She had been my only friend back when I was Winnie Cox, the sugar planter’s daughter. Emily had been my confidante when I first fell in love with George; Emily had helped me run away. Now, like me, she was a married woman; though her husband, of course, was an acceptable member of English society. Emily and Andrew had never been as snobbish as their parents, and as Eliza’s sister-in-law she sometimes joined us mothers when, occasionally, we brought our children together to play. But she played with fire in maintaining a friendship with me.