Local Customs

by Audrey Thomas

  Tomorrow, I thought, tomorrow, after the Maclean sails, I will tell her all this. And so I staggered to my solitary bed.

  Letty

  I NEVER USED THE FLANNEL, so highly recommended by that awful woman in Eastbourne, as well as by an acquaintance who had a sister living in India. It remained at the bottom of my trunk. I assume it went back to England with the rest of my clothes. Or was everything sorted out by Mrs. Bailey, this for the missionary society, that for Mrs. Topp, something for herself, perhaps? My pretty dresses, my little shoes, my gloves, my parasol. My stays! They are mad for European dress; would George one day meet a woman coming towards him in my travelling cloak? Another dressed in my corsets? Who got my silver-backed brushes? Perhaps it would all be bundled up and taken to the market (except for what Mrs. Bailey chose to keep). “Bronie Wawu”: a white man has died. A white woman.

  George: I left it to Mrs. Bailey to pack away her things. “Take anything that would be useful to you,” I said.

  Letty: Men do not know how to deal with such things, a dead wife, a dead wife’s clothes. That’s what neighbour women are for, and female relations. They perform so many of the necessary tasks, of life, of death. Mrs. Bailey had to do it all.

  Had I been in London … well, I wasn’t.

  I wonder who did the honours for the missionary wives — Mrs. Topp? The missionary husbands?

  Mr. Freeman was at that last dinner. Before his place I put a large carafe of water and labelled it “Adam’s Ale.” A bit mean? He took it in good humour.

  “Ah, Mrs. Maclean, you know me well!”

  “We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye …”

  Letty

  BRODIE TOLD ME THAT WHEN THE OLD KING died and Victoria was named successor, the talking drums spread the news from one end of Africa to another in less than a day. Amazing.

  What did the drums say about my passing? The governor’s lady/The governor’s lady/The governor’s lady/is dead — da da/dead — da da/dead.

  Mrs. Bailey washed me, tidied my hair, put me in my pretty dress. Then I was wrapped in white linen and placed (not by George) in a simple wooden coffin made of odum wood. There were always coffins available in one of the warehouses. Then carried (not by George) to the side of the grave.

  I was buried that evening within the precincts of the Castle. Mr. Topp read the funeral service.

  The whole of the residents assisted at the solemn ceremony. Except George.

  George

  MRS. BAILEY, RED-FACED AND PANTING, in her hideous wrapper of market cloth: “Mr. Maclean! Mr. Maclean!”

  “Sir … she’s … taken some sort of fit. Come quick.”

  I was feeling the worse for my overindulgence of the night before and resented being burst in upon like this. And I am ashamed to say that I wondered for a minute if this was one of Letty’s hysterical episodes. After all, the ship was about to sail and she could not help but think of home; but there was real terror in Mrs. Bailey’s face, so I called for Isaac to summon Mr. Cobbold and went immediately to Letty’s room.

  The louvres were still shut in her bedroom and there was the lingering smell of a candle recently snuffed out. Why was she writing by candlelight? Was this another of her romantic impulses; had she coaxed some wax to drop upon the letters as though she were composing them at midnight and not at breakfast-time?

  Mrs. Bailey had left her where she had fallen, although pushed along a bit because of the opening of the door. She was still in her dressing-gown, one hand uncurled where the bottle had been. Mrs. Bailey said she had removed it and placed it on the dressing-table.

  Her eyes were wide open, staring, but held so little of life they could have been the eyes of a statue.

  I picked her up in my arms and placed her on the bed. Mrs. Bailey opened the louvres and broad bands of morning sunlight lay across her body. Mr. Cobbold came rushing in and attempted a purgative, but it just ran down the sides of her mouth. In another few minutes she was dead. No sigh, just a slight relaxation of her limbs.

  Letty: He was calling my name, but it sounded like a voice from the bottom of a well:

  Leh-ty Leh-ty

  And then nothing.

  George: I had seen death before — many times; but this was my wife; this was the woman I had brought out here and promised to protect.

  An accidental overdose: that’s what the doctor decided at our hasty inquest. I stated that I had not known hydrocyanic acid was prussic acid; how could I have known? I’m not a chemist.

  “Where is the beaker of water?” I asked, for Letty was very careful with those drops; I’d seen her counting out loud as she measured them into a beaker of water many times.

  Mrs. Bailey did not know. Mr. Cobbold thought he might have used it while attempting to revive her.

  “But where is it?”

  My companions shifted uncomfortably. Someone put a hand on my arm to steady me …

  Isaac and Ibrahim were peering around the door. I shouted at them: “Get back to work, you lazy niggers!” Was sorry about that later and told them so. But now news of Letty’s death would fly around the town in no time. Now the gossip would begin.

  The hand on my arm once again. “Come away, George. For a little while at least.” I allowed myself to be taken to my rooms and a tumbler of rum was set before me.

  It was decided there would be no autopsy. Accidental — or deliberate — it was clear that the drops had killed her. Hadn’t Mrs. Bailey sworn that she found the bottle in Letty’s hand?

  Mrs. Bailey: There was a bottle in her hand. Them drops, I think, but I’m not sure.

  George: Her eyes were wide open, but when I called her name, she did not respond. Mr. Cobbold, having been told about the bottle, which Mrs. Bailey said she had removed from Letty’s hand and placed on the bureau, called for it at once and exclaimed: “Prussic acid! She has taken prussic acid!” And then he turned to me. “Did you know she had this stuff?”

  George: “I knew she took drops, but I had no idea this was prussic acid.

  Mr. Cobbold: Hydrocyanic acid — same thing. My God!

  George: She was still alive, but barely. The doctor tried emetics, tried everything he could think of, but she did not respond. Her weak pulse grew weaker and then she died. There were one or two open letters on her desk, the second one barely begun. “My dear Whittington, if it will not be too dear, could you pl—” She must have been gripped with an intense pain, seized the drops, and, in her distraught state, accidentally taken an overdose. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  Mrs. Bailey: He sat there, holding her dead hand, murmuring over and over, “Oh, Letty, oh, my poor girl.”

  Brodie Cruickshank: An inquest was called that afternoon and the verdict was set down, “Accidental overdose of prussic acid.” Mr. Cobbold decided against an autopsy and George concurred. In the early days after her death I was inclined to agree with the verdict, but later I began to doubt that this was what really happened. It is a fact that she took drops and no doubt that she suffered from intermittent pain and had done most of her life. But she always mixed the drops with water; she said so and George had seen her do it many times. Would she really have been in such distress she’d drink directly from the bottle? And if not, where was the tumbler? She always kept a carafe of distilled water and a tumbler on her dressing table. Were they there? Were they examined? When I quizzed Mrs. Bailey she couldn’t remember. When I asked her why she stopped to take the bottle out of Letty’s hand when time was of the essence, she didn’t know. When I asked if there was the smell of almonds on Letty’s breath she couldn’t say, she never got that close. Yet she was the one who closed her eyes.

  So the verdict of accidental overdose was based solely on the fact that her eyes were dilated. In situations of extreme terror the pupils are also dilated. I think she died of a heart attack; I think something frightened her to death. The night before, when she cried out to me, I should have insisted she tell me what w
as wrong. It wasn’t mere homesickness that troubled her; there was something more.

  Mr. Freeman: Of course I wasn’t invited to sit in on the inquest, even though I was probably the most knowledgeable about poisons. I would have asked to examine the bottle; I would have wanted to compare it with the other bottles in her medical chest. When I heard later that both her personal physician, Dr. Thompson, and the pharmacist who made up her medicines for Africa (the Queen’s pharmacist, no less) insisted they had never prescribed prussic acid, I hoped more questions would be asked. Someone said the label had been altered and “hydrocyanic acid” had been substituted for what it originally said.

  Add to that the fact that we only have Mrs. Bailey’s word that the bottle was found in Mrs. Maclean’s hand and I’m inclined to think she died of something else. Or was killed. It’s not impossible, is it? Not by Captain Maclean; he could have smothered her with a pillow any night he chose. Perhaps the country wife: there were rumours she was back in Cape Coast Town.

  Or suicide: she deliberately poisoned herself. But that would be a great sin. And why would she do that when she had everything to live for? Even without my unfortunate letter, which never intended any harm, I understood from Mr. Topp, who received a letter from Brodie Cruickshank, that the Literary World of London was up in arms. And unfortunately, because of my letter, really just a monthly report that was published in The Watchman, Mr. Maclean was the primary suspect. But there were letters, too, that she had sent to her friends …

  George: Teasing letters. Do you think she would have shown them to me if those remarks were meant in earnest?

  Brodie: As regards the cheerful letters, some said they were just a brave attempt to convince her friends — perhaps even to convince herself — that she was all right.

  Brodie Cruickshank

  I WAS STAYING THE NIGHT AT MR. TOPP’S BUNGALOW and this is where I went after leaving Letty and the Castle. We were having a hasty breakfast the next morning when a negro servant rushed in. We thought he said, “Mr. Maclean is dead,” which was terrible news, but not altogether surprising as he hadn’t been well since his return. But then the servant, catching his breath, said, “No be gubbnor, sah, be missus.”

  I shall never forget the sight of her lying on the bed, hair unbound, in a lacy dressing gown. Her eyes were wide open and completely blank, the pupils much dilated. The doctor was shaking his head as we arrived.

  George Maclean held himself together until after the inquest, then he sank into a chair and wept. I asked him if I should arrange the funeral service and the burial. He nodded and wrung my hand, too overcome to speak.

  The skies opened up just after the service and I stood alone all evening while the soldiers dug her grave. How terrible it was, the flickering torches, the busy workers, the rain coming down. Even with the sound of the rain, I could hear them screwing down the lid of her coffin. I felt I must stand there until the work was done; I owed that to Letitia, who had been so good to me. And I felt guilt, terrible guilt, that I had left her in such distress, had run away. George stayed in his room, poor fellow, too distraught to do anything at all.

  He left for Accra two days later and did not return for a week. Mr. and Mrs. Bailey stayed on for several months.

  Letty: No great fuss for the gubbnor’s lady. No discharge of muskets, no wailing of women, no shaving of heads. I would have liked some extravagant ceremony: no fuss for my wedding, no fuss for my “deading” — I was simply wrapped like a parcel, placed in the coffin, and lowered into the red earth. More earth was thrown on top and then an oiled cloth was placed over the grave until a slab could be put there.

  Brodie: Just as I was turning away — in spite of my heavy cloak I had been soaked to the skin — Thomas Freeman appeared, Bible in hand. He began to cry out in a loud voice, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” Then George, looking like a madman, came rushing down the stairs from his quarters.

  “Get rid of him! For God’s sake send him away!”

  Brodie: I sailed the next day. George shook my hand in a distracted manner, thanked me for all my help. I never heard him mention her name again, except in the letters he sent to defend himself against charges of neglect or even worse. He died of dysentery in 1847. I was one of his executors and he left me fifty pounds.

  He wished to be buried next to his wife and this was done, their coffins almost touching. Hic jacet.

  Letty

  LETTY: WHEN THEY FOUND ME I WAS WEARING my prettiest peignoir, pale, peach-coloured silk with ecru lace at neckline and cuffs. I had not yet done up my hair, but all traces of the night’s weeping had been sponged away. I did not look ugly or contorted in any way. Except that my eyes were open; I could have been sleeping — had the governor’s lady chosen for some bizarre reason to emulate the natives and sleep on the floor?

  Mrs. Bailey was wrong; I wasn’t pregnant; I was poisoned.

  George: There would have been a note, and I swear to you, there was never a harsh word between us. Those letters that her friends dined out on in London, were playfully meant. Otherwise, why would she bring them to me unsealed and laughing, insist that I read them? Her old pain had suddenly returned — that’s the whole story. In her distress, she grabbed the bottle and put it to her lips.

  I have to believe that. I stopped asking myself, “Where was the beaker, where was the carafe of distilled water?”

  I am a very ordinary man, but I fell in love with an extraordinary woman. Yes! I loved her. Not like one of her heroes, perhaps, but the love was there. Do you think she knew that? That I loved her?

  Letty: Do you think he knew — that I was falling in love with him? A little more time, even a few months, would have been nice. Well, I was saved the ghastly voyage home, wasn’t I? And I finished the first of the Scott essays, that’s something.

  I wonder if my daughter, Laura, ever knew that I was her mother? Would William Jerdan have told the family, whoever they are, wherever they are?

  I couldn’t have borne the disgrace, the scandal. And I would have made a terrible mother. Out here, a woman is disgraced if she does not produce at least a gaggle of little ones; she can be cast aside if she doesn’t.

  George had a son — his name is Kwesi; George never knew I knew. Mr. Freeman “accidentally” let it slip. The village is not that far from here, at Agona Junction.

  “Accidentally” let it slip, just as I “accidentally” took an overdose of hydrocyanic acid. As if I would! And if I did, I would have had the decency to leave a note instead of an unfinished letter to my brother: I owed him that, my St. George, my rescuer.

  Mr. Freeman: She was a silly woman. Still, she would be missed.

  Brodie: I shouldn’t have run away from her that night. At the very least I could have returned to the Mess and asked George to see to her.

  Letty: The door opened slowly and a young woman came into my room. She was wearing Adinkra cloth, as though she were in mourning; her head was shaved. I could not really see her face for the lamp was sputtering and about to go out.

  “Who are you? Who let you in here? What do you want?”

  She said nothing, but walked over to the dressing table, picked up my brushes and combs, examined them, put them down. Picked up my unguents and creams. My drops. Everything examined, with her back to me, everything handled and set down.

  “Ekosua?” I whispered. “Are you Ekosua?”

  She turned and smiled, but said nothing.

  “What do you want with me? Why are you tormenting me?”

  She picked up my stays, which were hanging over a screen; she fingered the lace on my peignoir.

  “Do you want that? Take it! Take it! Take whatever you want and then leave me alone.”

  She came to the end of the bed.

  “I want you.”

  And then she left.

  Although my heart was racing and I could barely stand, I felt I must go to George as quickly as possible. George would tell me the truth about Ekosua
and then he would get rid of her.

  But the door wouldn’t open; something was holding it shut from the other side.

  I felt so ill; it was as though I had swallowed a stone. If only I could get to George.

  Someone wanted me dead. Or something. Something steadied my hand, something said, “Take this. Now. It will be better this way.”

  There was some talk of sending me home with the ship, but George said, “No, she is my wife. She will lie here in the Castle and someday I will lie beside her.”

  He cut off a lock of my hair. It was in the back of his watchcase and was taken out and buried with him. The watch was sent to his younger brother, James.

  And still the hyrax screams at night, and still the drummers drum. And still the ghost mothers search for their children calling, “Come. Come. Come. Come. Come.” And still the wind in the palm trees rattles the leaves like bones.

  MR. COBBOLD: “INCAUTIOUSLY ADMINISTERED BY HER OWN HAND.”

  George: I should have thrown that bottle overboard, but when I threatened to do this, she begged me not to: “George, I beg you; I shall die without my drops!”

  I didn’t know they were prussic acid; how could I know?

  Mr. Freeman: Three drops to kill a rabbit; five drops to kill a man.

  Brodie: I think I was a little bit in love with her. She said she felt more than other people. “It’s as though I lack some outer covering that would protect me; this is both my blessing and my curse.”

  Letty: Did George weep? Did Brodie? Did my little girl, wherever she is, give an involuntary shudder and her mother or governess say, “Someone just walked over your grave.”