by Erica Brown
Blanche swallowed the urge to point out that the Strong family had sold slaves before abolition, sometimes splitting mothers from children. Nelson Strong intrigued her and, for now, he could say anything and she’d agree with him.
‘There,’ he said at last. ‘The preliminary sketch is done. Present yourself tomorrow, please,’ he said without looking at her.
Blanche rose achingly from the rock. ‘I’m so stiff,’ she said, arching her back as she raised her arms above her head.
She caught him looking at her. Their eyes seemed to lock even when he said, ‘Being an artist’s model is not so easy as people think. Would you like me to rub your back?’
She smiled at him sidelong and turned her back, reaching behind and pulling her hair to one side thus exposing the naked expanse of back above the neckline of her dress.
His breath was warm upon the nape of her neck. His touch was soft, his fingers instinctively seeking and unlocking the tension in her back.
With long, firm strokes, he ran his fingers down her spine, over her shoulder blades and on to her arms.
The rate of his breathing seemed to increase as his palms circled her neck, his fingers tracing patterns up into her hair.
She expected the kiss and prepared for it. When it came it sent a shiver down her spine, which radiated all over her body.
‘I have to go,’ she said, springing away from him.
‘Wait!’ he shouted, and reached out to grab her. But she was already running, her long legs covering the ground as she headed for the trees and the spring of fresh water.
‘Make sure you’re here tomorrow,’ he shouted after her.
Without breaking stride, she waved in acknowledgement.
‘Three hundred and two… no… two hundred and seventy…’
It was no good. She couldn’t possibly concentrate on counting. The blue eyes, the blond hair and the naked, gleaming torso burned in her mind.
Melville – her uncle, who also kept house for Blanche and her mother – was already serving dinner when she got back.
Viola threw her a searching look. ‘Where you been?’
Tossing her hair back over her shoulders, Blanche took her place at the table. ‘Running,’ she answered without looking at her mother.
Viola arched an eyebrow. ‘Who you been running with?’
Blanche laughed. ‘The wind and the sea. They never caught me though.’
When she got to the beach the next evening, Nelson was sitting in front of his easel, his brush making concentrated strokes over a green background around a white space that vaguely resembled a human figure.
‘How many paces tonight?’ he asked her without turning round.
Blanche slowed to a walk. ‘How did you know I count my paces?’
She fancied he was grinning, though she couldn’t see his face. ‘I heard you last night. I do the same when I swim. One hundred strokes out into the bay, and one hundred back in again. It helps you concentrate, don’t you think?’
He turned, his brush balanced between finger and thumb. The striking colour of his eyes took her aback. So did the way he smiled, the whiteness of his teeth against the sun-kissed gleam of his skin. Most white men didn’t like the sun colouring their skin. Obviously Nelson didn’t care.
Tonight he recited poetry while she sat as he wished her to, hair in wild disarray around her bare shoulders, the sleeves of her dress pulled down a little more than they had been the day before. His hand habitually brushed against her bare skin, causing her to notice the difference in colour: his light tan; and hers closer to coffee infused with cream.
Again, on the pretence of massaging her shoulders and back, he kissed the nape of her neck, his hands lulling her into trusting abandonment.
He stroked her cheeks, brushed at the dark mole beneath her right eye, then apologized. ‘It deceives me into believing it a speck of dirt.’
His voice was soft against her ear. She shivered when he stroked it, tracing each fold and curve and finally kissing her lobe, then her cheek, turning her head to face him and kissing her lips.
She was late again that night. Later still the night after and the one after that.
Dinner was missed regularly, and her mother’s looks were becoming more suspicious, her comments more searching.
‘Who is he?’ her mother asked, nearly two weeks after Blanche first encountered Nelson on the beach. Blanche merely laughed and said, ‘The Man in the Moon.’
She got away with it, skipping away to bed and lying there, dreaming of him as she gazed at the moon’s reflection on the glassy sea.
The painting was not proceeding well, mainly because Blanche was spending more time lying in Nelson’s arms on the warm sand than posing on the rock.
It was a matter of time before they slept too long. Frogs clinging to the exposed roots of the nutmeg trees sang their nocturnal chorus. The surf pounded the shore. Blanche and Nelson heard nothing. Ticklish at first, then more vigorous, Blanche felt something pulling her hair.
She tried to raise her head, but something held her down. ‘Get it out!’
Nelson roused himself. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked groggily.
‘Someone’s pulling my hair.’
She tried to rise again. Nelson held her down. ‘Wait!’
She lay flat as he untangled a large crab from her hair.
‘There,’ he said, flinging the creature on to the sand where it promptly righted itself and scuttled off towards the sea.
Blanche sprang to her feet, brushing the sand from her body before pulling her dress back over her head.
‘It’s late,’ she exclaimed, noticing the height of the moon and stars in relation to the sea. She knew every one of those constellations and where they should be in relation to the time. She was late. Very late.
They kissed, for the last time in Barbados as it turned out, but they weren’t to know that, nor the circumstances in which they’d meet again.
‘Goodbye,’ Blanche called before bounding over the stream and along her part of the beach.
‘Goodbye,’ he called after her. ‘I’ll see you—’
The rest of his words were drowned out as a large wave broke fiercely on the shore.
A solitary light burned in the long, low house that Blanche shared with her mother and two old servants who were also relatives.
Stepping softly, Blanche made her way on to the veranda and reached for the door. It squeaked and she cursed her Uncle Melville for not oiling it. Much as she might want to escape any confrontation tonight, she doubted she’d make it and she was right.
Her mother was reading beside the plain funnel of an oil lamp, its blue flame flickering. She looked up when Blanche entered and closed the book.
‘So where you been all this time? And don’t tell me runnin’!’
Blanche considered lying. She’d never wanted to admit Nelson’s existence. She enjoyed having a secret world and another life away from home. But the time had come and there was no reason not to tell the truth.
‘I’m in love,’ she cried and flung her arms around her mother’s neck as she fell to her knees beside her chair.
Viola eyed her knowingly in the dim light and laughed. ‘I should have known, you little minx. So who’s this beau I should have horse-whipped for keepin’ my little girl out so late?’
Blanche smiled up at her. ‘He’s beautiful. I met him rising out of the sea.’
Viola frowned. ‘A merman?’
‘No. A Strong man. Nelson Strong. He’s the son of Sir Emmanuel Strong. Is that respectable enough for you?’ Blanche exclaimed, almost laughing up into her mother’s face.
Her mother’s response was not as expected. A dull, drawn look made her face seem suddenly longer. She pursed her lips and all joy left her eyes.
‘No!’ The word echoed around the room, bounced off the well-polished furniture and seemed to dance around the ceiling.
Blanche flinched. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said, Ma. He’s Nelson Strong. If yo
u can bed Otis Strong, why can’t I bed his nephew?’
It was so fast. Her cheek stung from the swift slap of her mother’s hand. ‘I’m your mother, child! Respect me and respect my wishes. You are not to see that young man again. Do you understand?’
Blanche stared up into her mother’s face, her palm still flat against her throbbing cheek.
‘No, I don’t understand. I’m a Strong too, aren’t I? That’s what everyone says.’
‘Says what?’
‘That Otis is my father. He’s always treated me like a daughter. You said so yourself.’
Viola’s cheeks jiggled as if she were chewing the matter over. ‘That don’t mean that you’re getting involved with the Strongs. It’s best you don’t.’
‘I want to, and I will.’
Viola shook her head. ‘No!’
Blanche’s plans to thwart her mother’s wishes proved futile. She was locked in her room at times, and never let out of sight in others.
‘When can I come out?’ she screamed from the other side of the door.
‘When the time’s right,’ her mother answered.
‘Why?’ she asked time and time again. ‘Why?’
Viola never answered. Blanche felt she was never going to be let out of the house alone again, especially not to run along her beloved beach.
* * *
Nelson gripped the rail of the Lizzy Brady and took a deep breath of salt air. Sailors high in the rigging released more sail, which fell with a crack as they filled with wind. He didn’t flinch when a stray sheet barely missed his head, but kept his eyes fixed on the view.
Bridgetown huddled on the horizon like the colourful wooden bricks he’d played with as a child. He picked up his sketchpad and charcoal, began scraping a few abstract lines, but found he couldn’t concentrate.
A shadow suddenly fell between him and the parting scene.
‘Sorry to be leaving the place, sir?’ asked the ship’s captain, a stout man with huge whiskers named Tucker.
Nelson flung the pad and charcoal down. ‘A fine place.’ He said it through gritted teeth. Creative people hate being interrupted. Of course, he couldn’t expect a simple sea captain to know that, not this one anyway.
Nelson gripped the side rail again, his fingers making movements like a pianist trying to find the right tune. The captain assumed he knew the reason for the young man’s agitation.
‘Hot climes make the blood run hot, sir, especially in women, so I’m told, them of a certain disposition.’
‘Is that so, Captain?’ Nelson snapped. He wanted the man to go away so he could sketch Barbados before it sank beyond the horizon. The passion he needed to involve his imagination or accentuate his insight was presently absent. It was almost as if he’d left it behind on the island with Blanche and her coffee-coloured body.
Sensing Nelson’s reluctance to talk, Captain Tucker nodded courteously before moving away. He considered himself a man of the world and reckoned he knew a lovesick fool when he saw one. Nelson Strong wanted to stay; he could tell that by the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes. A wench was the problem no doubt. He certainly wouldn’t be the first or the last to go home alone with an ache in his heart and an itch in his pants.
Nelson couldn’t settle to sketching. Poetry wasn’t an option either. For the moment, his muse had left him.
Tucking his sketchpad under his arm and throwing his charcoal overboard, he made his way down to his cabin, a cramped but private domain where his muse could be recalled after drinking a little wine, lightly sprinkled with dragon powder.
Chapter Five
On the evening she was finally released from her room, Blanche ran faster to the beach than she’d ever ran before, her counting forgotten and her heart thudding against her ribs.
A warm breeze was blowing in off the sea. In the distance a ship in full sail sat on the horizon, dipping slightly before it finally disappeared.
The beach was deserted. The frogs were silent and only the insects attempted to compete with the pounding of the surf.
‘Where is he?’ Blanche asked her mother when she got back to the house.
‘Gone,’ answered Viola.
She stood querulous and confused. Did that mean gone from Rivermead, perhaps into Bridgetown? For the moment Blanche resisted asking, in case questions about Nelson Strong landed her locked in her room again.
‘I’m going into Bridgetown. Shopping to do. Dinner to prepare,’ said Viola, her words minimal but descriptive enough.
‘That’s nice,’ said Blanche, aching to go into Bridgetown too, but unwilling to arouse suspicion.
‘You can come.’
‘I’ll get my parasol.’ And she tried not to run.
All along the harbourside in Bridgetown, the stench of dried animal excrement, sweating bodies, overipe fruit and fish sizzling on ramshackle braziers, was sweetened with the sticky smell of sugar, and the thicker pungency of fermenting molasses on its way to becoming rum and the remnants to dunder, the cheaper and lethal rum of the islanders.
Melville was playing coachman today, his brownness in stark contrast to his snow-white wig and an old-fashioned jabot of tiered frills falling from a tight band around his neck. A tri-cornered hat worn at a jaunty angle shaded his determined look as he urged the matching greys through the crowd that surged around Viola’s carriage as if she were royalty.
‘Nice dress,’ said a banana-seller, eyeing the empire-style lilac-sprigged muslin Viola was wearing. ‘Did Dodie May make it for you?’
Viola, splendid in a straw bonnet trimmed with silk violets, turned contemptuous eyes on the woman. ‘Certainly not! It’s a Paris fashion. I likes to stay in fashion like they does in Europe. You’rn all ignorant of fashion. Just watch me, and you’ll learn all about it.’
It was a lie. Dodie May had indeed made the dress from a pattern that was now almost twenty years old and falling to pieces.
A grey-whiskered white man, a lone pale face in a sea of cheerful brown, doffed his hat in greeting. ‘If you’re such a follower of fashion, how come you ain’t got your horses’ tails fashionably docked, Lady Viola?’
‘They got to keep the flies off their bits. I wouldn’t like no flies crawling over my private bits. Drive me crazy.’
The carriage stopped again as the crowd pressed more thickly ahead of them. Traders of all sorts took advantage and pressed forward with their wares.
‘Bananas? Fresh guava? Pineapples?’
‘Rum! Sweet dreams for a penny.’
‘Odd jobs, dig the ground, pick the fruit, mend yer front gate.’
Blanche glanced at her mother, saw that her face was glistening and that she looked paler than she normally did. She was about to ask if anything was wrong, when a man dragging a sad-looking sheep behind him stopped the carriage.
‘Fresh mutton, lady? Fresh mutton? You want, lady? You want?’
He grinned boldly, thick lips stretched over yellow teeth. Like anyone who’d worked among the sharp leaves of the sugar cane, his face, body and limbs were covered with scars and he smelled of stale rum.
Viola seemed to recover and began to bargain.
Back to her old self, thought Blanche, and hid behind her parasol. Who cared about food? Who cared about drink? Where was Nelson? Without him, Barbados reverted to what it really was: bustling, bright and brashly commercial. Today was no exception. Many sloops, barques and brigantines were tied at anchor. Small boys swung from the hefty hawsers looped around the drumheads of stout wooden capstans and dropped from there into the water, dripping as they climbed out, only to repeat the exercise over and over again.
Viola was saying, ‘I ain’t paying no three shillings for a scrawny creature like that. Two shillings and no more.’
The man pleaded. ‘Three shillings. I have a family. I must put food on the table.’
‘You got a sheep. Put that on the table ’stead of selling it to me.’ The carriage springs squeaked in protest as Viola settled back in her seat. ‘I tell you
what. You butcher that scrawny creature for me and get it to my place right away and you can have your three shillings.’
‘Three shillings! Yes, lady, right away!’
‘Hell! I didn’t mean that quick,’ gasped Viola.
Blanche came out from behind her parasol.
Sunlight flashed on sharp steel. A swift slash from right to left and blood surged from the sheep’s throat.
Smelling almost metallic in the hot sun, the blood steamed on to the ground, welcomed by screaming seagulls and the furtive licks of carrion dogs that were kicked and stoned for their trouble.
Viola folded her arm across her belly, her face drained of colour. ‘Get going, Melville. I don’t feel too well.’
Blanche opened her mouth to ask what was the matter.
Her mother patted her hand. ‘It’s all right. I’m all right.’
The carriage jolted forward, the mass of humanity dividing like water before the high-stepping hooves.
More ships lined the quay, men seeming no bigger than ants, climbing up masts, along spars, checking ropes and sails, necessary tasks before re-crossing the broad Atlantic. Brown bodies, gleaming with sweat, moved like a many-legged alligator up and down the gangplanks of ships, casks of sugar and rum on their shoulders.
Blanche took her mother at her word, presumed everything was fine and scanned the crowd looking for Nelson.
‘He’s gone back to England,’ her mother said suddenly. Blanche felt her mother’s dark brown eyes on her, perhaps trying to ascertain just how upset she was. ‘I don’t understand—’
‘I went to see Otis. We both felt it was for the best.’
‘1 can’t believe it.’
‘You’ll get over it. There are some good prospects in Barbados, if only you’d just look.’
Blanche thought of the beach, the paintings, the surf beating the shore and the warmth of Nelson’s arms, his lips upon her skin. ‘I don’t want a prospect! I want Nelson.’