The Sugar Planter's Daughter

by Sharon Maas

  Emily’s mother, Mrs Stewart, once my sycophantic admirer, anxious to win my company for her daughter (and perhaps my hand for her son), had turned her coat and been at the forefront of white society’s drive to cast me out. She had been furious when Andrew married Eliza, of course, and had blamed it all on me.

  Somehow, she had heard of the party Andrew and his friends had been invited to, the party George had attended and at which Andrew and Eliza had met. It had been something of a scandal at the time, and of course it was all my fault.

  Andrew and Eliza, too, had become outcasts; but later on, their children had proved to be a ragged path back to family peace. Eliza, light-skinned as she was, would find reluctant acceptance in white society. It helped that she had a winning personality, quick intelligence and genuine charm. She would make it, as I never would. While a coloured woman marrying a white man could rise into acceptance, it did not work the other way round. I had lowered myself to an irredeemable level in marrying George. Too low, in Emily’s mother’s eyes, to be her daughter’s friend. Yes, we laughed and joked about it, but it hurt all the same. It hurt as did the rift in my own family.

  ‘So are you still not speaking to Yoyo?’ Emily asked one day.

  I shook my head sadly. ‘It’s not that I’m not speaking to her. It’s that I never see her. It’s she who’s keeping away from me. I would meet her in a wink – but how can I go to Promised Land with all the children, if George refuses to go? I can’t drag five children, including two babies and a wild five-year-old, up there. They would all fall – or jump – off the ferry the moment my back was turned.’

  ‘I still don’t understand. Why does George refuse to go? Does Yoyo still reject him, even now?’

  I shrugged in frustration.

  ‘It’s ridiculous, if you ask me. Yes, Yoyo rejected George at first, but then it seemed that she was making an effort to get to know him. But you know Yoyo – she can be quite rude when she wants to be, and that’s what happened. When I was in Venezuela they had some kind of a falling-out. He won’t tell me exactly what she said, and Mama – who was there – is quite vague about the whole thing. All she says is that Yoyo was rather condescending and insulting towards George and me. I suppose he took offence. But I think he should forgive and forget. Yoyo is just the way she is. We have to accept her with all her faults. She’s still my sister, and I love her.’

  ‘Can’t your mother help, somehow?’

  ‘Mama has said she will stay out of our affairs, and she’s right to. Yoyo seems to harbour some kind of jealousy towards me and Mama doesn’t want to appear to take sides.’

  ‘It seems such a pity. You know, don’t you, that Yoyo’s in town right now?’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘Yes. My mother saw her at the Georgetown Club last night. She was there with that dreadful friend of hers – the McInnes girl.’

  ‘Margaret Smythe-Collingsworth. Yes, they would be together.’

  ‘Why don’t you try to bring about a reconciliation? Try to meet her and talk to her about things?’

  I sighed. ‘I have tried. So many times. I’ve written to her and begged her to apologise to George for whatever it is she said, but she won’t. The effort has to come from her, but she’s too proud to make that effort, and George – well, George has his pride too. Until she sincerely apologises he won’t forgive. I just wish I knew what happened, what she said.’

  ‘Winnie, darling, you must bring them together. Somehow. It’s not good to let a stupid quarrel seethe underground for years and years. It’s unhealthy. You must do something. And now’s your chance.’

  I sighed again. I was so weary, and this tiresome family rift only added to my burden.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I must,’ I replied. ‘And I suppose it is.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Emily after a short silence.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You know it’s Andrew’s thirtieth birthday next week, and we’re having a big party for him – Eliza and I are organising it, and you and George are invited, of course.’

  ‘We’re not coming – I’ve told you so. What about the children?’

  George and I never went to parties any more. With five rambunctious boys and a little girl on the way a party was the last thing on my mind, and of course George wouldn’t go anywhere without me. I always gave ‘the children’ as my excuse not to attend these social affairs, but in all honesty, it was lack of interest.

  But Emily only waved her hand in dismissal. ‘Oh, the children! Your mother-in-law can take care of them for one night, and you can get one of the neighbourhood girls to help. You need to get out more without the children, Winnie. Really you must. Anyway, you and George will come to the party, and I’ll invite Yoyo as well. Then she and George will be forced to at least be polite to each other. The rest will follow. Mark my words.’

  ‘If George knows she’ll be there he won’t go.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have to know, does he? If you don’t tell him he won’t.’

  I hesitated. Much as I longed for the family rift to be bridged, I wasn’t sure if manipulating a meeting was the right path to follow. George was so adamant about not speaking to Yoyo – would he appreciate being manoeuvred into a meeting? Was it fair? Shouldn’t I wait, and allow time to heal whatever quarrel they had with each other? Was I being a busybody, like Emma in my favourite Jane Austen novel? George was such an easy-going, good-natured fellow – it felt underhand to be plotting him into a situation he had tried so hard to avoid. These things could so easily go wrong – what if there was a huge flare-up between the two of them? With Yoyo, it was entirely possible. Her volatile nature needed only a tiny spark to explode.

  ‘It’s not a good idea,’ I said finally. ‘I want no part of it – not in this underhand way. I mean, I long for them to reconcile, and maybe I’ll try to meet Yoyo while she’s here, and talk to her again. Try to broker some kind of peace. But not like this – not with a trick.’

  Emily’s face fell. ‘What a pity. All right then. I promise I won’t invite Yoyo. But I do want you and George to come. You will, won’t you? Just this once.’

  I hesitated. I really didn’t want to…

  ‘Come on, Winnie. You can’t hide away all your life just because you have children! You’re young. It will be a change for you.’

  …but perhaps I should. Perhaps I needed to go out a little more, meet people. It wasn’t as if this would be one of those stiff, snobbish English affairs: Emily and Andrew had friends of all races and colours, and her party would be a lovely escape from the domesticity I had locked myself into. Once, I had loved dances and dresses – why not, just this once? Aunty Dolly could easily whip up a beautiful new frock for me, one that could accommodate my swelling belly. A spark of excitement shot through my body, and I looked up and smiled at Emily.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘We’ll come.’

  25

  Ruth

  Last week I found my old diary. The one I started when I first met Archie, and continued through all the happy years of our romance, and through the terrible years when everything fell apart. Right up to the moment that Archie discovered it, discovered my betrayal of him, and sent me away.

  Somebody seems to have removed it from Archie’s desk and hidden it at the back of Winnie’s bookshelf, and that ‘someone’ can only be Winnie herself. That means she must have read it. I blush at the thought. Then Winnie knows! To her credit, she has never spoken a word of the matter to me. What a shock it must have been. But she has always been fond of Jim, so I expect she accepted it eventually. She must have wondered at least a little, though, about my presence here at Promised Land. She must have wondered whether, since my return, Jim and I

  Well, we haven’t. That part of our lives is over. It was wild and passionate and necessary while it lasted – we both buried our troubles in the illusion of a Great Love – but that is decidedly over. It was over even before my return to BG. Jim had a new young family, and I had the plantation to sort out,
and two daughters to make amends with.

  With Winnie, that has already happened. When she summoned me back from exile, her cry for help was a shaft of light plunged into the darkness I had escaped into. It was so easy, finally! The darkness had been a huge black cloud hanging over my true spirit, and Winnie’s telegram burst it open, like an abscess. I returned to the chaos waiting for me here, and for the most part it has all gone well. Winnie’s growing family gives me great joy – though I wish she would recover from this Gabriella Rose obsession. She has five fine boys and another on the way. Yes, of course this one too will be a boy, but I can’t tell her that. She will love him as she loves the others, and no harm done. She enjoys being a mother, and I enjoy being a grandmother, and a mother-in-law. George is a fine man, and he is working hard for his family.

  It is Yoyo I worry about. Reading between the lines of that old diary, I realise how much I failed her as a mother. How little I was there for her, pawning her off on Nanny for so many years of her childhood, so that she was closer to Nanny than to me. It’s true that Yoyo’s nature was not as compatible with mine as was Winnie’s; and I know now that she felt that I loved Winnie more. That is far from true. I love my children the same, just in different ways. Kathleen was always independent, and she sailed off to marry in England and she is happy there, closer to Archie’s brother’s family than she ever was to her own. I love her, but I let her go, as she wanted.

  Winnie and I have always been close, apart from during the years of my Darkness. How she must have suffered! But she has forgiven me and those wounds have healed. Reading my diary must have helped her to understand, and so, in spite of my embarrassment, I am glad she knows.

  Yoyo is the one to worry about. She is the one to watch. I must find a way back to her heart. There are shadows hiding within it, and she is nurturing those shadows. The shadows have grown darker over the years, and I worry.

  Christmas, five years ago. I remember it so clearly. George was with us, and the Smythe-Collingsworths, and Yoyo was behaving atrociously, flirting openly with George, teasing him, trying to engage with him, provoking him deliberately – the very man she had only a year previously ostracised, rebuked, reviled. A married man. Her brother-in-law! After dinner I pulled her aside and tried to find out what her game was, but she would have none of it.

  ‘I have a headache, Mama. I am going to bed.’ And off she went. George looked relieved, but the next morning he was gone, and Yoyo was in a foul mood.

  I had my suspicions, but no proof.

  Later I discussed it with Jim. Jim and George had always been good friends: father and son, almost. I managed to find out that George had turned up at Jim’s house late that night, spent Christmas Day there and gone home the following day. More, Jim would not tell me, though it was plain that he knew more; that George had confided in him.

  My suspicions deepened, but I decided to let things rest and stay out of it. It was not my business, after all. Yoyo and George are adults and must know what they are doing. Yoyo can be a predator when she wants to be, but George seems capable of looking out for himself. And he loves Winnie above all else, and would never hurt her. In that I take my comfort.

  Yoyo is a different story. She acts without thinking of who might get hurt – and she would hurt her sister without a second thought. She harbours such dark thoughts about Winnie! Once, when I again defended Winnie against an unjust accusation on Yoyo’s part, she flew into a rage:

  ‘You always preferred Winnie! Your darling little girl! Your favourite: goody-goody Winnie!’

  It shocked me, frankly, but when I tried to argue her face hardened and she refused to speak.

  I believe that Yoyo is carrying a deep wound in her heart; and that I am to blame. She was so small when my troubles with Archie started. And yes, I neglected her, and she turned to Nanny, and when I saw her growing closer to Nanny than she was to me I was glad of it! Instead of reassuring her, loving her, holding her, winning her back, I was glad she had found an anchor and I left her in Nanny’s capable hands, too wrapped up in myself and my own problems to rescue my daughter’s heart. And now we are all paying the price. Yoyo’s pain has turned into something vicious, a thorn in her heart that now and then turns into a dagger that she will thrust at anyone who crosses her.

  George crossed her that Christmas Eve so long ago. I am sure of it. She has seen neither him nor Winnie for five years; it’s not by accident, either. George will not go back to Promised Land, Winnie tells me, and Yoyo, though she goes to Georgetown several times a year, has not made the effort to visit them. Not even at the births of their children. Does that not tell me everything? I am afraid even to put it into words, but Yoyo does not forgive or forget.

  Whatever happened that Christmas Eve, it seems to be the night that Yoyo changed. She had been hard even before that, but after that night she became – well, heartless. Yoyo always had a basic kindness towards the labourers – a result of her love for Nanny – but that now turned into an indifference to their welfare. Jim and I had been working on several projects for the labourers: a health centre, a primary school, an old-folks care system. Yoyo had been grudgingly in favour – that is, agreeing in principle but holding back the money – before Christmas. Afterwards, though, she put her foot down and quashed it all. She quarrelled constantly with Jim, telling him he must drive the coolies harder. Jim had cut their work hours when he took over from McInnes; now, Yoyo said, he must once more insist on work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with only a short break for lunch, seven days a week. Pregnant women, who had previously been given four months off before birth and one after, must now work right up to confinement and return three days after. Older workers, allowed to retire at the age of sixty under Jim, must now work until they fell. And so on. Jim is fighting a losing battle.

  ‘If you don’t like it you can go!’ she screamed at him, and Jim, dear Jim, only replied, mildly, ‘Happy workers work better, Yoyo. That is one thing you must learn.’

  But she flounced off, and that was the end of that. Jim would have gone voluntarily; he did not need Yoyo’s tantrums, and he did not need the job, being a man of independent means. But he was the only buffer between the workers and her. If he went who would come after? Another McInnes, or worse? He reluctantly complied with her new rules, did as she said, and stayed.

  I feared that Yoyo was turning into her father. Archie: a good man turned bad.

  As I write these words Yoyo is in Georgetown, staying with her friend Margaret. Margaret is McInnes’s daughter, and I have never liked her. She has a sly streak to her, a false smile. But she and Yoyo have always been best friends, and Yoyo’s trips to Georgetown are becoming longer and longer. It gives us breathing space at Promised Land, to be sure – it’s like a holiday when she is gone – but sometimes I wonder what she is up to. Her marriage to Clarence seems to have broken down completely – Clarence, the putative heir of the estate, has re-established himself as the rake he was before coming to BG, drinking, running after dark-skinned maidens, peppering the estate with half-breed urchins. But he is here to stay, and under the terms of the agreement stay he must.

  (But I mustn’t complain. Clarence is very musical, and he has had his old cello shipped from England. Thus I now have someone to play duets with of an evening. This is heaven, and makes up for many a drunken silliness.)

  Yoyo has sent a message from Georgetown to say that she will be staying another week. She and Margaret have been invited to a dinner party. I am glad. It means an extra week of easier breathing.

  26

  George

  I have found just the property, but I’m not telling her yet; it will be a surprise. It is a large plot of land on Lamaha Street, near the train station. It has several old fruit trees growing on it: mango, and genip, and guava; and the rest of the yard is a bit of a jungle. It has a small one-bedroom house on it, which won’t be of any use to us – but the house is in good condition, and we can add to it, make it big enough to fit us all. I am beyond excited, jumpi
ng for joy within, but I can’t speak of it yet – I need to make sure it can really be ours before I get her hopes up only to dash them again. I have reached an agreement with the owner as to price. A little above our budget but we can do it. Tomorrow I have an appointment with the bank manager, and I pray with all my might. I have been saving so rigorously over the past five years… I worry only that he might think I am overstepping my boundaries. Cummingsburg is a high step up from Albouystown. This house will place us firmly in the domain of coloured middle class. The bank manager, being white, might not approve.

  Oh joy! The loan has been approved! The conversation went something like this:

  Him: Mr Quint, your name seems familiar, somehow. Have we met before?

  Me: No sir. Not as far as I can recall.

  There are, after all, very few occasions on which someone like me meets someone like him. We live in different worlds, different universes. I can count the white men I have ever spoken to on one hand, and Uncle Jim is one of them.

  Him: But that name, that name – George Quint. I know I’ve heard it before.

  My blood froze. I knew where he had heard that name before. Seven years ago, before the trial of Winnie’s father, my face and my name were splashed all over the newspapers. Me, carrying a sign screaming for Justice – Justice, against a white man! White society rallied for their own, and I was the enemy… I knew then that I could say goodbye to the loan, to the house, to our future. I remained silent. I was not going to remind him. Let him remember on his own. Why should I aid and abet the crashing of all my dreams?