Prospero's Daughter (12 page)

Mumsford stopped her. There were probably dishes she had not washed or floors she had not swept. He had the same problem with servants in his house. Always finding ways to avoid work. He did not need to hear her excuse. He had already filed his report. As far as he was concerned there was nothing she had to say that would convince him that the English girl was in love with a colored boy. He had more or less come to the conclusion that the boy had not raped her, but that did not mean he was prepared to accept that he was in love with her or she with him. Yet there was the question of intent. If Carlos had attempted to assault Virginia, it was a crime, and it would be his duty to investigate. Ariana, he thought, could be useful. She could shed some light on why, if Carlos had not raped his daughter, Gardner had been so cruel.

Ariana, however, did not come to talk to him about Carlos and Virginia, as she had said she would. It was
her
story she wanted him to know.

“I hate him.” That was the first of many things she said that shocked Mumsford that morning. Had he not seen her bat her eyes coyly at Gardner? Had he not heard them whispering like lovers? An act, Gardner claimed it was, but if it were, it seemed to Mumsford it had been rehearsed so often that it had become real for them now.

“He take advantage of me.”

She was an adult, almost twenty years old. Her relationship with Gardner was her own private affair. Mumsford told her so.

“I was nine. Is okay if I was nine years old?”

She wore white this time, the cotton fabric as thin as the yellow dress she was wearing when he met her at Gardner’s house.
Was she
naked under it?
Shame forced him to look away when that thought reached his conscious mind, and when he turned back again he saw it was an illusion. There were no traces of nipples puncturing her bodice, no curves outlining her backside, only dark shadows shifting beneath the folds of her dress.

The men in the station must have made his same mistake. They pivoted on their chairs and stared when she passed, and, like him, in seconds they lowered their heads, ashamed. She seemed a child, a wisp of a thing, a virgin in that white, her hair tumbling freely down her back, her eyes stretched wide and round in girlish trepidation. The place had to be frightening to her with its rank odor of sweat, men in khaki police uniforms, their wood batons propped against their desks, metallic ceiling fans beating the heavy air.

Mumsford had asked the matron to be present when he questioned her. He ushered them into his office and closed the door. Immediately, the matron pounced on her. “Did you forget your slip, miss?” She was a stocky woman. She wore her hair pulled tightly in a bun at the back of her head, and it gave her an aspect of severity that belied her title. Like the other officers, she was in uniform, though unlike them her baton—her beating stick, Mumsford had heard a prisoner call it—was attached to her belt. “Did you?” she asked Ariana.

Ariana touched the hem of her dress. Fearing that she was about to lift it, Mumsford said quickly, “No. That won’t be necessary.”

She let go of the hem. “I don’t have on a slip,” she said, “but I wearing bra and panties. They black.”

The matron glared at her, her lips tight with disapproval. “Didn’t your mother teach you to wear a slip when you go out?”

Mumsford did not wait for Ariana’s answer. He pointed to an arm-less cane-backed chair and told her to sit. “What’s this you have to tell me?” He decided to get straight to the point, to her reason for coming to see him. He was ready for the lies he knew she would tell him, but that was when Ariana said, beginning at a place he could not have imagined: “I hate him.”

“No,” he said now, feeling a weariness that dragged his body even farther down on the leather chair he had pulled out from behind his desk. “It’s not okay if you were nine years old.”

“I ’fraid to tell my mother when he start touching me,” she said.

From the corner of his eye Mumsford could see the matron chewing her bottom lip. How her expression had changed! Moments before she was glaring angrily at Ariana. Now concern was spread across her face. Not quite a French Creole, Mumsford had thought when he first met her. Her skin was too brown, her nose too flat, but her hair was straight, honey-colored with streaks of gold. French Creole, but with more than the usual helping of Creole.

“He touched you?” She came closer to Ariana. Mumsford put his finger to his lips and with a nod of his head, he warned her to be silent.
When trouble comes, they close ranks. But it was his job, not hers, to question
Ariana.
“What do you mean he touched you?” he asked Ariana, not giving her a chance to respond to the matron.

“I was only nine when Prospero start to interfere with me,” she said.

“Dr. Peter Gardner,” Mumsford explained to the matron when her eyebrows shot up.

“Carlos tell me to call him Prospero,” Ariana said.

“Dr. Gardner,” Mumsford tried to correct her.

“Prospero,” Ariana said as if he had not spoken. “He do a little bit at first. He don’t do everything. But he start for real when Miss Virginia turn woman.”

“Turn woman?”

“When she have her period.”

Mumsford brought his chair closer to his desk. He shuffled the papers in front of him. He could feel sweat oozing from his pores.
What
if she were telling the truth?
“Why were you afraid to tell your mother?” He kept his tone light, but he dared not look at her.

“She used to work for Miss Sylvia.”

“Miss Sylvia?”

“Carlos mother.”

The hag? The blue-eyed hag? The blue-eyed hag was dead.
“I believe she was long gone and buried when Dr. Gardner came to the island. Or did Dr. Gardner begin doing whatever it is you claim he was doing even before he came to the island?” Mumsford asked sarcastically. He picked up a sheet of paper and fluttered it noisily in her direction.

“Before he came?” Ariana wrinkled her forehead, confused.

“What,” he asked, his voice straining with exaggerated patience, “does Sylvia Codrington have to do with what you are telling us now about Dr. Gardner?”

“She hated me,” Ariana said.

“And why was that, Ariana?” He was not interested in her answer. He did not care whether Sylvia Codrington had liked or disliked Ariana or what reasons she could have had for feeling one way or the other, but he preferred this turn in the alarming tale she was telling. Better to question her about Sylvia Codrington than to let her go on with her devastating accusations against Gardner.

“Why were you afraid to tell your mother if Miss Sylvia was dead?” he asked, balancing his pen between his fingers. His notebook lay open on the desk, but he had not written anything on it.

“When I was a child,” she said, “she catch me wearing her clothes. She say she tell my mother.”

“Her clothes?” the matron scoffed. “That is nothing, girl.”

Mumsford saw a red flag immediately. He had warned the matron, but she was ignoring him. He had to be careful even if she had sworn to uphold the law.

“All little children like to dress up in grown-up people’s clothes. Isn’t that so, Inspector?” The matron looked expectantly at him.

Mumsford held his tongue though he was tempted to point out the difference: It was not simply a matter of a little girl in grown-ups’ clothes. It was a little colored girl in a white woman’s clothes, a woman who was her mother’s employer.

“She put it down in a letter,” Ariana said.

“You must tell us who,” Mumsford said. He tried to catch the matron’s eye, but she had turned her head away from him. “You must be clear when you speak, Ariana, or we won’t understand you. Who put what down in a letter?”

“Miss Sylvia put it down in a letter,” she said.

“That you wore her clothes?” the matron asked.

Mumsford glared at her, but it was clear to him that she was not about to let him silence her.

“Is not only the clothes,” Ariana said. “She find out.”

“She found out what?” the matron asked.

“I take her diamond earrings.”

“You took her earrings?”

“They was shining. She show me one day. She put it under the light and I saw the colors. Like the rainbow. Then she wear them for me in the night. She turn this way and that. The moon was shining, but I think nothing shine brighter than the diamonds on her ears. No matter how she turn, they bright. I only want to try them,” Ariana said. She looked up at the matron.

“And did you put them on?”

“That’s all I want to do at first when I went in her bureau and took them out. But I like them. I like the way they shine on my ears, too, and I wanted to keep them for myself. I was small, you see, not big like I am now. I didn’t think about what she do to me if I keep them, so I keep them.”

“You stole Miss Sylvia’s diamond earrings?” Accusation only, not a shred of sympathy, was in Mumsford’s voice.

“She was a child,” the matron said to him. He frowned, disapproving.

“I didn’t plan to steal it,” Ariana said.

“But that is what you did,” Mumsford barked.

“Did Miss Sylvia know you took her earrings?” the matron asked.

“She find out. She say she tell my mother and then she tell the police. They lock me up, she say.”

“You can’t lock up a child,” the matron said.

“She say they lock up me and my mother.”

“Nonsense,” the matron said. “She only wanted to frighten you so you wouldn’t touch her things again.”

“She write it down in a letter and she hide the letter. She say if she catch me touching her earrings again, she give the letter to the police. When my mother die, Prospero find Miss Sylvia letter.”

“And what did he do?” Mumsford asked this question, though he didn’t want to, though ice was collecting in the pit of his stomach.

“In the night when everybody sleeping, he come on top of me with his thing. He say if I tell anybody he touch me, he show the police the letter. Even lunchtime he make me come in his room and Miss Virginia and Carlos think is message he giving me. And when my mother still living is true is message he giving me. He telling me what to cook and how he like me to cook it. He treat me nice, nice, nice. He pretend he watching out for me and he like me. I believe him. Then my mother die. He bring me in his bed after that.”

“Why didn’t you leave?” Mumsford’s voice was hoarse. “Dr. Gardner has been in Chacachacare for twelve years. You must have had chances to leave.”

“And is twelve years he use me.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“They lock me up, Prospero say. For stealing Miss Sylvia diamonds. Every day he promise he tear up Miss Sylvia letter if I do what he say. He not only mean sleep with him. He want me to spy on Carlos when he go in his garden and Carlos alone with his daughter. He tell me if I tell him everything, he free me. I do all he ask. I don’t grumble. I don’t make mistakes. I don’t lie. I tell him everything I see. And I ask him when, when will he tear up the letter. He get angry. He say, ‘Every month I have to remind you how I save you from what Miss Sylvia was going to do to you. You always forgetting.’ But he didn’t save me. He do worse than what Miss Sylvia do. I can’t leave. I must cook his food, I must serve him, I must do his bidding. I must spy on Carlos and Miss Virginia. I must open my legs for him even if I hate him. I must fuck him.”

Ordinarily Mumsford would have ordered her out of his office. Ordinarily he would have demanded that she apologize. There was a certain decorum he required, and she had transgressed it. No subordinate of his dared use such language in his presence. But his world had begun a tumble downward and he needed to restore it.

“I heard you, Ariana. In Dr. Gardner’s house. You asked him if he loved you.”

“I think if he love me, then he free me. He tear up the letter.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “That’s why I treat him good. Why you think I come late? He want me again and I let him have me.”

Two hours. She was two hours late.

“I know you blame me, but is not my fault I late.”

What could he have done to her in two hours?
When the picture formed in his head, Mumsford had to avert his eyes from hers.

“Is only because he tired, he let me go.”

He had to find a way to defend the Englishman. “It seemed to me you wanted his affection,” he began.

“I pretend,” she said.

An act, a performance, Gardner had said so himself. “That is not what I saw,” Mumsford said.

“I don’t mean it when I ask him if he love me. I don’t care, but he always answer, ‘Yes. Dearly,’ as if he love me. Still he don’t free me. When I beg, he say in a year. If I good to him, in a year he free me. But a year pass and still he keep me in his bed. He still hold the letter. So I tell on him. When he lock up Carlos, I write the police. I say he lie. Carlos never do nothing to Miss Virginia. I see them kissing.”

Mumsford pressed his body over his desk. “But that was a lie, wasn’t it, Ariana?”

“No. I don’t lie.”

“Just the way you don’t lie when you tell Dr. Gardner you love him, right?”

“No. I lie when I tell Prospero I love him, but I tell the truth about Carlos and Miss Virginia. He kiss her, but she kiss him back. Is the truth. I don’t tell him and I don’t tell nobody before I write the letter. I know what he do if I tell him or tell anybody.”

“Do?”

“To Carlos, if he find out. He tell me he want to marry off his daughter to a rich American man. The American man come. I see him. Carlos see him, too. That’s why Carlos propose.”

“Propose?”

“That’s why Carlos tell him he want to have children with Miss Virginia. But Prospero lie. Carlos never do nothing to Miss Virginia. He love her. He never hurt her.”

Mumsford had to stop her. The matron had heard too much. He could not trust her. “That’s enough, Ariana,” he said. “No more lies.”

“I not lying.”

“Why now?” The matron had been so quiet that Mumsford was startled when she spoke. “Why are you telling this story now?”