Prospero's Daughter (27 page)

She cupped her hand under my chin and gently raised my head. “But you,” she said, “must be the loveliest flower in your father’s garden. Surely your father must have told you so.”

Father would have been afraid. Father kept his secret locked up tight in the daylight. In the daylight he could pretend he was my father, but he took no risks. He was careful not to let his eyes linger, to stray to places on my body where he could be betrayed. One look, one wrong glance in the daylight could unsettle him, loosen the tight hold he kept on his incestuous longings.

“Wanting in refinement, but lovely.” She fingered the collar of my dress. “Not much time to have a dress made for you,” she sighed.

It was my best dress. It was pink. Pink looked good on me, Carlos said.

“I can wear this dress,” I said.

She continued to inspect me, her eyes traveling up and down my body, from my head to my toes. “Perhaps something in blue to match your pretty eyes. Mr. Haynes and his son will be here for supper tomorrow. You must look your best.”

“I like this dress,” I said.

She patted my cheeks. “No need to be ashamed, my dear. I can’t expect you to find a seamstress among the lepers.”

I made a feeble attempt to protest, but she grasped my hand firmly. “Come. Enough of this chatter. You must be exhausted. Jane! Jane!” She called out to Jane again and turned back to me. “Rest. I know you must have had to wake up early.” When Jane reappeared, she instructed her to take me to my room. “I’ll come for you at lunchtime,” she said.

By lunchtime, she was even more solicitous. By lunchtime, Inspector Mumsford had telephoned.

She entered my room without knocking. I was lying on my back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to fight off the intense feeling of powerlessness that was closing in on me. In my letter to Carlos I had urged him not to lose hope, but what did I have to offer him? Tomorrow, and Father would have his way. Perhaps a rare orchid would not be temptation enough for Alfred and his father, but Father’s plan to dispose of me was already in motion. He had put me in good hands, Mrs. Burton said. Her hands. And if not Alfred, I knew there would be another.

I sat up the moment I heard the doorknob turn. She came toward me in fast little steps, her hand clasped to her mouth. “You poor girl. You poor, poor girl.” Her cheeks quivered. “Did he hurt you? Did that savage hurt you?”

I knew right away that Father had contacted the police. “No. No.” I locked my legs together and smoothed the folds of my skirt over my knees, determined to hide my fear from her.

“You can tell me. I understand these things. I’m a woman.” She stood over me, her face grief-stricken.

“He did not hurt me,” I said.

“You poor girl,” she said again.

The fluttering began again in my chest and rose to my neck. “What did Father tell the police?” I asked her.

“Inspector Mumsford is investigating.”

“He didn’t do anything,” I said.

“Your father wants us to keep this quiet. You’re lucky. Inspector Mumsford is an Englishman.”

I shifted my legs over the edge of the bed. “Carlos did nothing to me,” I said.

“He’s a savage,” she said.

“He’s my friend,” I said.

“Friend?” she snorted. “A servant.”

“He was always kind to me.”

“They get ideas when you are kind to them. They take advantage.”

“He did not hurt me.” But she was not listening to me.

“Your father said he caught him in time. He said he prevented him . . .” She sat down on the chair next to the bed and put her fist in her mouth. “You don’t know what this can do to your reputation.” She stifled a cry. “This is a small place. People gossip. You give them a little and they make hay with it.”

“What is Inspector Mumsford going to do to Carlos?” I asked, the fluttering in my neck and chest galloping now.

“It’s your reputation I’m thinking of, not this Carlos. We have to be discreet. I’ll say you are sick. I’ll tell Mr. Haynes you’re sick. I’ll say you caught a cold coming over on the boat. I’ll postpone the party.”

“What did the inspector say?” I needed to know. I wanted to be prepared.

“What he didn’t say, but what I am going to say to you, is that you must not,
must not.
” She wagged her finger in my face. “You must not repeat to anyone that that boy, that servant, was your friend. People will read something into that. You must not give them anything.”

“He’s innocent.”

She stood up and her sad breasts swished from side to side above her waistline. “You were on that island too long, little miss,” she said.

“You don’t understand.”

“It is you and your father who don’t understand. Well, your father understands now.”

“Carlos didn’t do anything,” I said.

“I told him he was wrong to let that monster live in your house. But he insisted he was a good boy, a fast learner. He was not like ordinary boys. He was intelligent. But he was a
colored
boy. I reminded your father of that fact.”

“Nothing happened,” I said.

“Your father did his best, but a girl needs to be brought up by a woman, a woman who can teach her the ways of the world. You’ll be ruined if any of this gets out. Just the suggestion that he could have, that he might have, is enough to damage your reputation.”

I tried to defend Carlos again but she stopped me. “You think you know these people, but you’re wrong.” She sank back into the chair and her body folded like an accordion, her neck into her collarbone, her breasts grazing the top of her belly. “Your father was too good to that boy, too generous. These people are never grateful. They are the most ungrateful creatures.”

“Carlos is not like that,” I said.

Color came into her pale face. “You don’t know what he’s like. You don’t know anything about them. Do you know what is going on here? Independence, that’s what. They want independence. After we’ve done so much for them.”

Done so much for them?
I could hear Carlos striking back: “You got rich from our sweat. We planted sugarcane and cocoa for you. Now you’re taking our oil.”

“The ingratitude! They want to be free from us. Bush! That’s what this place was like. A jungle! We made it what it is, and now it’s decent, now a decent person can live here, they want us to give it to them. Yes, Virginia.” She held up her hands to stop me again. “I can tell you about these people. They want to destroy us. If we let a thing like this leak out, they will destroy you. I’ll say you’re sick. We’ll put off Alfred’s visit until Inspector Mumsford has this under control.”

For the rest of the day and the next day, and the day after that until late in the afternoon, when Inspector Mumsford finally arrived, Mrs. Burton lectured me on the ingratitude of the natives and on the burdens resting on the shoulders of English people in the colonies. “We Englishwomen bear a particular responsibility,” she told me. “They look up to us. We have to set an example. We are their guides as to what is proper and what is not. We can’t fraternize with them. Look where fraternizing has got you.”

It did not matter how many times I said to her that Carlos had done nothing wrong. She brushed me away. She said I did not know
them
as she knew
them.
I had been fooled. They are cunning. Sly, she said. Malicious. I had allowed Carlos to trick me into becoming too friendly with him. “If you had not fraternized with him, he wouldn’t have dared. You can’t fraternize with these people. It goes to their heads. And now they want independence.”

Her lectures to me switched back and forth from her disapproval of the Independence Movement that Carlos had praised so much to me to her disapproval of my behavior toward Carlos and then to her fear of my ruin. “Thank God,” she said, “your father stopped him in time. Coming into your room when you were sleeping!”

In my room when I was sleeping! How clever Father had been.

“Whether a woman is ruined by force, or whether she gives herself freely to be ruined, or whether, like in your case,” she lowered her voice, “there is a suggestion that she could have been ruined, her life is over. No man of any distinction would marry her.”

I wanted to tell her that my knot was unbroken, my jewel was still in my dower. Father had used Ariana to protect my jewel, and Ariana had saved me from Father.

We were having tea when Inspector Mumsford rang the doorbell. At four o’clock, Mrs. Burton insisted I put on a proper dress and sit with her in the drawing room while Jane served us scones and jam, and poured tea from a china pot through a tiny silver strainer.

Mrs. Burton had not lost the English habit of tea in the afternoons. “One must not yield to the bush,” she said to me.

My father had lost the habit of tea in the afternoons, but he had not yielded to the bush. The bush had yielded to my father.

The proper dress Mrs. Burton wanted me to wear was the white blouse and navy skirt that Father had made me pack. He had thrown out the bright prints and florals I had put in my suitcase. I needed to wear something more understated in Trinidad, he said. Something
English.
“I’ve left you to yourself too long,” he told me, not a trace of irony darkening his voice.

Jane answered the doorbell and came back with the news that Inspector Mumsford was here to see Miss Virginia. Mrs. Burton motioned to me to stay where I was, and, sending Jane back to the kitchen, she went to the door alone. I strained my ears to hear what she and the inspector were saying, but I could make out very little. I heard Inspector Mumsford mention Carlos’s name, and then
investigation,
and soon afterward Mrs. Burton clapped her hands and Jane came running toward her.

“We are not to be disturbed. Do you understand, Jane?” She was approaching the drawing room and I could hear her clearly now. “We’ll be in here. Keep the door closed. Bring some tea and scones for the inspector and then remain in the kitchen, out of the way.”

Inspector Mumsford said something to Mrs. Burton and her voice rose to a petulant wail. “And why not, Inspector?” There were murmurings from the inspector and then Mrs. Burton said loudly and irritably, “Bring a fresh pot of tea for the inspector, Jane. A cup and saucer and a clean plate. And clear my dishes. Hurry up!”

When she was gone, the inspector clicked his heels at the doorway of the drawing room and introduced himself. “Inspector Mumsford,” he said. “Here on an investigation.”

I was surprised he was so young. I expected him to be my father’s age, someone who had spent years in the English colonies, a man with formed opinions about “natives,” not likely to be sympathetic, but his face was smooth and pink, the hair thick on his head and on his mustache. I felt hopeful. Perhaps he would understand. Perhaps he would believe me. I invited him into the room and pointed to a chair, but he remained standing. “After you, miss,” he said.

He waited until I sat down, and then, flipping up the back panel of his belted khaki jacket, he took the chair next to me. Carefully he pinched the creases in his pants and then as carefully, with his hands resting lightly on his thighs, crossed one leg over the other at his knees. Some of my hope drained away as I watched him sit with so much ceremony. Young, but an English officer, I thought.

While Jane moved about the room, he made light conversation with me about the weather: how little rain we had been having this year; how it seemed hotter than last year; how, in spite of it all, Mrs. Burton managed to keep her drawing room cool.

“She draws the blinds at midday,” I said, trying hard to match his tone though my heart was sinking.

“Your father’s house is cooler, of course,” he said.

“Yes. We have air-conditioning.”

All the time we spoke, he was following Jane’s movements while she removed Mrs. Burton’s cup and saucer from the cocktail table between us to the tea trolley in the back of the room.

“I can pour your tea for you, sir.” Jane paused before him. “Do you want milk and sugar, sir?”

The inspector turned to me. “What about you, miss?”

I said I had had my tea. “Then just tea for me. Milk, no sugar.”

“A scone, sir?”

“No scone.”

When she left the room and he seemed sure she was out of earshot, he put down the cup of tea she had given him, and informed me, his tone officious now, that he had been to Chacachacare and had brought Carlos back with him to Trinidad.

My lips felt dry and I moistened them with my tongue. Was he in jail? I asked. Oh, no, he said. He had taken him to the monks at Mount St. Benedict until the inquiry. The monks have a boarding school for boys there, he said.

“A reformatory?”

“Oh, nothing of the kind, miss. A school, not a reformatory. Carlos, I mean Mr. Codrington, will be well taken care of.”

“Is he still in pain?”

He seemed surprised by my question. “You saw him, Miss Gardner?”

“No, not myself,” I said. “Ariana told me.”

“They are only mosquito bites,” he said, not unkindly. His eyes softened, but I could have imagined this; I wanted so much to trust him. “They will heal.”

They will heal, but he had su fered. Father had made him su fer.

He fished into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook and pen. “I have to take a statement from you. Then we’ll decide what to do with him.”

I took a deep breath. “Father made it all up,” I said. Slowly I let the air out of my lungs. He was on the point of opening his notebook when I said this.

“Made it up?” He seemed uncertain whether he had heard me correctly.

“What he told you about Carlos. He made it up.”

“Why would he do a thing like that, Miss Gardner?” He looked at me directly.

“Carlos is my friend,” I said, not backing down.

“Your father said he tried to be more than your friend.”

“He would never hurt me,” I said.

“Your father said he wanted to.”

“He didn’t,” I said.

He placed the notebook on the table and picked up his cup. Holding the saucer in one hand and the cup in the other, he eyed me above the steam rising from the tea. “It is my understanding, Miss Gardner,” he said, “that Mr. Codrington expressed a desire to hurt you.” He spoke slowly and I had the distinct impression he was choosing each word carefully. The effort stiffened his lips, and his mustache cast a dark shadow over his mouth.