The Sugar Planter's Daughter

by Sharon Maas

  Eight boys. Each of them unique – one of a kind. Each of them precious. It is hard to imagine, now, that I had felt disappointment over four of them – Gordon, Charley, Will and Leo – just because they weren’t girls. How silly of me! I could not bear to think now about the possibility of any one of those four not having been born, or having been a girl instead. They were just what the family needed, and their place in the collective was inviolable. I must have been in some kind of delirium – for years! It took a terrible tragedy to wake me up.

  And then came Grace. And the twins and Freddy, who complete us. And I do mean that. I won’t refer to them as accidents, but they were surprises, and George and I both agree that eight boys and one daughter are enough. There are ways and means of not having children, and not having children is our new aim. From now on we will enjoy what we have, stopping just short of ten. Nine is a good number.

  So off we went, crossing the street to the pavement – Humphrey, as usual, walking carefully out to the middle of the street, raising his hand to stop the oncoming traffic – and then to the corner, and up Camp Road to the Sea Wall. The Quints of All Boys Town – that’s what the older boys still called us all, even though we had long left Albouystown. We left when Grace joined the family; but we seemed still rooted there.

  Ma and Pa once again live in their old quarters, having rented out the annexe we built so many years ago. We visit them regularly, and the boys are always delighted to meet again their old friends and convince them that no, we are not now among the high and mighty. We go back every Saturday evening, because that’s the evening that George gives his concerts in the church hall. They are invariably packed. George’s singing voice has matured along with him and now it holds a deep resonance that always moves listeners to tears. He does not speak much. George has become as steady as an oak. Together we hold this family together, wild though the boys can be.

  Sadly, only one of my children – Will – seems so far to have inherited George’s musical talent. I do not count Mama and myself among the talented. Yes, we are good – but our talent is acquired, whereas George is a natural, as is Will. But music is a vital part of our lives, and we make it every evening. Music, I feel, is the glue that holds us together. Our hearts beat as one when we sing together, and now that Mama has joined us and brought the piano down from Promised Land – well, we are now as good as a choir! The Quint Family Choir – perhaps that should be our next sobriquet. But we will wait till the younger children are old enough to find their own voices. Who knows – perhaps one of them will be a natural, too, like George!

  But I ramble. I was about to recount this one Sunday, shortly after Grace’s second birthday; a perfectly normal Sunday excursion to the promenade, except for what happened once we got there.

  Who did we run into, but Yoyo!

  I had not seen her since long before Grace’s birth. Once we had reached a truce, it seemed we no longer cared to meet. George and I certainly never return to Promised Land – which in a way saddens me. I would love for the boys, and now Grace, to see where and how I grew up; to know that vast Corentyne sky, and the endless fields of green, sugar cane fronds waving gently in the fresh sea air. To breathe in the intoxicating, unforgettable smell of burnt sugar, to feel the thrill of the seasons of sugar. It is a special place, and their birthright. But we never even speak of making such a trip. Perhaps, deep inside, we both know why.

  When Yoyo gave Grace to us, of course; that would have been the time for a thorough reconciliation. Grace is the greatest present of all time, and makes up for all the mistakes of the past. If she were the result – this perfect child – surely one could no longer speak of a mistake. Grace had to come. There could not be a world without Grace. If Grace had not been born the world would have had a vacuum, a dark hole where she should be. A ridiculous notion, I know, but that’s how essential she felt.

  Grace’s existence has softened me even more towards Yoyo; I wrote her a letter soon after the birth, but she never replied. George worried for a while, saying that we needed an official adoption, but I pooh-poohed that notion. I don’t want to deal with lawyers and officialdom. I feel that doing so would put a pall on the miracle of Grace. I love the notion of trust. Trust between humans, I feel, is perhaps the highest virtue of all. I trust Yoyo. I am grateful to her. This gift she has given us – well, it has erased all hard feelings. Though I have no urge to meet her, I have forgiven her.

  In retrospect, though, after this outing, I have a strange feeling in my belly. So does George.

  41

  George

  When I saw Yoyo walking towards us, arm in arm with a tall, blond, sunburnt gentleman, my heart skipped a beat.

  It wasn’t a good beat.

  She was smiling, and not in a good way. She looked up at her companion, back at us, back at him; they exchanged a few words. And then they were in front of us.

  Winnie, bless her heart, was as naïve as ever. Ever grateful to Yoyo for the gift of Grace, Winnie had conceived the ridiculous idea that Yoyo would want to know and to see how Grace was developing. She had sent her photos. I tried to stop her but she wouldn’t hear of it; she just said, ‘Oh George! Find some generosity in your heart!’

  Winnie in her innocence did not understand one thing: the wounds of the past were deep, and though forgiven, and on the surface healed, I knew how easily the scar could tear. And even the tiniest opening – well, we could do without it.

  But this was not to be a tiny opening. Somehow I could sense that. Had had that feeling all along, perhaps from the moment Grace was placed into my hands that Easter Sunday two years ago. And whenever Winnie said we must trust Yoyo, something at the back of my mind screamed no, I don’t.

  She approached us boldly, smiling. Glancing at Winnie, I saw that she was smiling too, but I know my Winnie and I thought that she was nervous. There was something predatory in Yoyo’s smile and Winnie, despite all good intentions, must have felt it. Winnie is naïve, yes, but also extraordinarily sensitive. And sometimes that sensitivity overrides her inborn ability to see the good in others, and to trust. In this case, I felt that flicker of anxiety within her, and squeezed her hand.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said under my breath.

  ‘How lovely to see you, Winnie!’ gushed Yoyo. Turning to me, she said, ‘And you too, George. How are you? A family day, I see!’ She spread her arms to include the boys, scattered around the promenade. ‘May I introduce my fiancé. Mr Geoffrey Burton.’

  Mr Burton shook our hands and nodded, smiling with his lips but not his eyes. His handshake was stiff, and too firm. It crushed my hand.

  Yoyo’s gaze turned downwards. Grace was walking before us, pulling along Duckie, her yellow wooden duck on wheels; it was her favourite toy. Yoyo fixed her eyes on Grace. I was watching her features like a hawk and I noticed the moment of transformation. The moment the darkness in Yoyo’s soul fled, to be replaced with a deep, sweet tenderness. Love. I witnessed that moment. Grace had once again unwittingly worked her magic.

  I reached out in that moment and gathered Grace protectively into my arms, picking up Duckie with my free hand. She protested and struggled.

  ‘Walk! Walk with Duckie!’ she said, and I handed Duckie to her, but it wasn’t enough. ‘Walk! I want walk! Put down!’

  But I held her tight.

  Yoyo’s eyes remained fixed on Grace, still wriggling in my arms.

  ‘Shush, Grace, I’ll put you down in a moment,’ I said.

  ‘Grace, look! Here’s a nice aunty wanting to say hello!’ said Winnie then, and my heart sank. I longed to be able to say to her, ‘Beware, Winnie, beware. Be on your guard! Sharks in the water!’

  But Grace heard Winnie’s words and turned round and met Yoyo’s gaze. She stopped struggling. What did she see in those devouring eyes? What did she feel? Even I, a witness to it all, could feel their power, their hunger, their thirst. Yoyo drank Grace in, pulled her in like a magnet, silenced her, stilled her. I could not see Grace’s face but I c
ould imagine those huge dark eyes gazing unerringly back at Yoyo, puzzled, perhaps – who was this lady stranger, why is she looking at me like that – but unable to resist.

  At last, Winnie woke up to what was happening and acted.

  ‘Come, Grace, come to Mummy!’ she said, reaching out for her daughter. But Yoyo was faster. She reached inside her handbag and removed a little stuffed dog, which she handed to Grace.

  ‘Woof-woof!’ said Grace, and Yoyo smiled in delight. She held out her arms. ‘Do you want to come to Aunty Yoyo?’ she said. Did I detect mockery in that word Aunty, or am I imagining it in retrospect? I cannot tell. I only know it was bad. Because Grace held out her chubby arms to Yoyo and instead of obeying her real mother, Winnie, she almost leapt into Yoyo’s arms. Yoyo chuckled in triumph.

  ‘Oh, she likes me!’ she said, and there was definitely mockery in those words.

  By this time Winnie had finally sensed the malevolence in Yoyo’s actions. Why, after all, had she been carrying a little toy in her bag? Yes, she had Georgetown friends who were parents, and she probably gave them presents. But if so, why would the toy be in her bag? What was she doing on the promenade on a Sunday afternoon? Georgetown was small and everyone knew everyone else’s business. That we come here every Sunday is common knowledge.

  This was planned, and it wasn’t a good thing. Yoyo was stretching out feelers towards Grace. Feelers, warm to our golden child, cold to us.

  The usual empty small talk followed. Winnie asked Yoyo when she was getting married. Yoyo smiled and said, mysteriously, ‘soon.’ Mr Burton said that he would be returning to his parents’ home in Louisiana that week, to ‘tie up some loose ends’.

  ‘After that,’ he said, ‘we’ll see. We’re in no hurry.’

  Yoyo handed Grace back to Winnie. She wore an odd expression on her face.

  The conversation, stilted as it was, ran out, and the two of them said their goodbyes. After Yoyo and Mr Burton had gone, Winnie and I looked at each other.

  ‘George – what was that about?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. But I don’t like it.’

  A few days later Winnie telephoned me at work, a thing I had asked her to do only in dire emergencies. Her voice was shrill with panic.

  ‘George, George, come home! Please come home as soon as you can! She wants Grace back!’

  42

  Ruth

  The lawyer’s letter was short, and dripped with honey. It thanked Winnie and George effusively for their willingness to foster Yoyo’s daughter Mary during her mother’s illness. Yoyo, it claimed, had now recovered sufficiently to care for her daughter, and was naturally most eager to do so. Winnie and George were requested to deliver the child to Margaret Smythe-Collingsworth’s home by Friday at 4 p.m. Since it was likely that an affectionate relationship had developed between foster-parents and child, Yoyo was more than willing to negotiate a visitation schedule, whereby either Winnie or George (one at a time, please!) would be welcome to visit Mary at Promised Land occasionally. A sentence confirming Yoyo’s deep gratitude for the service rendered.

  There was one sentence containing a veiled threat. Should the child not be delivered as requested Yoyo would have no option but to seek a judicial order.

  And that was it.

  I held a weeping Winnie in my arms as we waited for George to arrive.

  ‘I should have listened to him. I’m such a fool! Why did I trust her? We should have adopted her properly when she was a baby. I’m a fool, Mama, the biggest fool on earth!’

  I rubbed her back and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. She was correct. She had acted foolishly, and all in the name of trust. Sometimes Winnie was too kind for her own good, and this was one of those times. Trust Yoyo? Speaking as her own mother, I would rather trust a snake. I had always advised against trusting Yoyo, as had George. But Winnie had insisted that trust was the foundation of all that was meaningful between humans. She wanted to trust her sister. She needed to.

  And now this.

  George burst through the door.

  ‘Show me the letter!’

  Winnie waved it in his direction, her face buried in my shoulder. George grabbed it, scanned it and bounded to the phone.

  ‘Who’re you calling?’

  ‘Who do you think? Andrew Stewart, of course. Best lawyer in Georgetown.’

  But as it turned out, not even Andrew could save Grace from Yoyo’s claws. Winnie and George did not have a leg to stand on. Not even the fact that George was Grace’s biological father helped; Clarence’s name as the child’s father was on the birth certificate – a copy of which was enclosed in the lawyer’s letter – and that, it seemed, sufficed. Biology did not count.

  But everyone can see that Clarence is not the father!’ fumed George. ‘Just look at her! Everyone knows that we…’ He glanced at Winnie and left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Andrew, who had rushed over the moment he finished work. We were all sitting in the gallery discussing the way forward. Winnie, thank goodness, had managed to calm herself. Grace herself was out in the backyard with the boys. ‘Clarence was the legal father, as Yoyo’s husband. He didn’t contest fatherhood, so there’s nothing we can do.’

  ‘But we have raised her for two years!’ Winnie wailed. ‘Surely that counts for something!’

  ‘As foster-parents. Foster-parents know that they are not the real parents and must sooner or later return the child. That’s what fostering means.’

  ‘But she gave Grace to us! Gave, not lent! Mama knows – Mama is the one who tried to persuade Yoyo to keep her!’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I didn’t like the idea from the start. I begged Yoyo to reconsider, to wait a few days. But Yoyo insisted. “Give her to George,” she said.’

  ‘It’s your word against hers,’ said Andrew. ‘Yoyo will argue that “give her to George” meant a temporary arrangement. And since nothing is in writing’

  ‘But we have a witness! Nurse Prema was there – she heard everything. She saw that Yoyo rejected the child.’

  ‘That was then. The fact of the birth certificate remains. I cannot argue against that. There’s nothing I can do, unfortunately.’

  ‘I’m not handing her over. I’m not.’

  And Winnie didn’t. It was a declaration of war, and Yoyo responded swiftly with a slash of the sword: early on Saturday morning, someone knocked on the front door.

  Humphrey ran to open it and called out: ‘Ma, it’s the police!’

  We were sitting at the breakfast table; immediately, all the adults leapt to their feet. We hurried towards the front door. Humphrey had already let them in: two police officers, one with a paper in his hand. He looked at George.

  ‘Court order, sir. We have come to collect the child Mary Smedley-Cox.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have her!’ cried Winnie. She turned on her heel and rushed back to the dining table, where she scooped Grace from her high-chair and ran towards the back door.

  The next minutes were dreadful, among the worst of my entire life. The staid and thickset policemen proved more agile than they looked. They ran in pursuit of Winnie and cornered her. One of them held her, gently but firmly, and while she writhed and struggled the other pried a shrieking Grace from her clasped arms.

  Winnie screamed. George yelled. The boys all cried out their protest; Gordon flung himself against the officer who was gradually winning the fight for Grace and pummelled his back. Will climbed the back of the other officer as if he were a tree. The other boys hopped and yelled and screamed. Even the baby, Freddy, in his downstairs cot next to the table, wailed in terror. As for me – I was the only one not screaming, the only one trying, at least, although failing, to remove the boys from the commotion. I managed to grab the twins, one with each hand, and took them into the kitchen. This was not a thing they should be witnessing. I closed the door and went back for Will and Leo. By this time Grace was in the officer’s arms and he was heading for the do
or with his colleague, Winnie behind him screaming and tearing at his clothes. All in vain.

  George, finally, was the one to admit defeat. He pulled Winnie back, held her in his arms, where she broke down in the most heart-rending sobs I have ever heard. Worse than at the loss of Gabriella Rose. Worse than my own sobs at the loss of Edward John.

  The boys said nothing; they only stared. I shepherded them away. George simply held Winnie and let her cry, stroking her back.

  The last thing I heard as I herded the boys into the kitchen was Winnie’s anguished cry: ‘I hate her! Oh, I hate her! I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her, I’ll kill her!’

  43

  George

  How we all got through that week, I’ll never know. Grace’s absence left a space in our family that immediately filled with a grief so sharp it was almost as if she had died. The more sensitive boys – Humphrey and Will – cried openly every hour or so, while the others palpably held back their tears, trying to be manly, and ended up as stiff ghosts of themselves. Even the twins seemed to feel, if not understand, the tragedy, crying twice as much as usual. Freddy, who hardly ever cried, now did so constantly. Winnie, of course, was the worst affected. She went through the motions of her duties, an empty robot, her tears dried but her soul atrophied. She who had run this household as if she had eight arms and kept it going like clockwork suddenly complained of exhaustion, and retired to bed each day after lunch (this I learned from a concerned Mama). She who literally wouldn’t hurt a fly – I had never seen her with a fly-swat in her hand – and never raised a finger against our children, slapped Gordon for one of his many little transgressions; the first time ever, shocking everyone.