Strange Music (11 page)

Dr. Barry says today is the day I am to go out on the sea.

I experience a rush of energy – oh, to be out on the sea with no walls, simply breezes; no ceiling but the blue imposing sky; no hard floors.

‘Am
I
to sail the yacht?' I ask Bro.

‘We'll see,' Bro replies.

Bella Donna
is at the end of a short jetty, the sails wrapped about the mast. Beside her, an aged barefoot sailor. His trousers, patched with sail cloth, emit the strong odour of sun-dried seaweed and stale salt-fish. The skin on his face resembles old wet leather. He speaks a language unknown to me. No doubt he is at home on the bare and empty water's reach.

‘You must be the boatswain. Payment, in lieu of your mackerel catch, comes when the ladies are safely back. Understand?' Bro says to him. The old boatswain doesn't look like he understood.

‘Poor old beast,' Bummy murmurs. ‘Won't you join us?' she asks Bro.

‘No'. He hesitates, glances along the jetty. ‘Tomorrow?'

Crow unburdens herself of the blankets, pillows and feather eiderdowns, and they tumble onto thick sodden ropes coiled, hideously, in the bottom of the boat. She reaches a hand up to mine. I can only nod thanks. I am near to fainting on the cushioning when Bro says I must stand up to let Bummy in then sit down. This rocking sensation is abysmal. I find this place abhorrent and sourly dislike the low unharmonious lap of water against the blue clinker sides. I wish I was back on dry land, and as far from the sea as Hope End was.
Places are ideas that can madden or kill
.

‘Can you move?'

‘No,' I say.

‘No, can
you
move?' Bro asks the boatswain. The old man is searching the stern for the baler which, it transpires, I am seated upon; he then glares at Bro.

My past seems to rise from the seabed, to the pitching tossing surface. Memories of girlhood: I am looking out across the Hope End gardens at rain melting snow; a hollowness inside me stares out too. I am searching through books for life's answers, a feeling fizzes up like bubbles from an ocean bed; I miss the sensual pleasure of movement. Of feeling free. Aching with dispiritedness. It is that piercing pain of being worthless. I am searching through books for life's answers . . .

Leaning over the side of the boat, my face is broken into a thousand pieces; and, as the reflections floating on the gloomy surface diverge and diffuse into fragments that stare up at me, my life seems to be drifting far and rapidly.

First we row out, then, before I know it, the boom is lowered. We women struggle ineffectually with the sheets and cloth. A fresh wind plays with my ringlets. The patched sails are hoisted. We are a jolly party of three in the boat: Bummy, Crow and me.

The boatswain has shipped the oars. His hands are gnarled and scarred from rope cuts and sunburn. A cormorant circles the hull. Afternoon sunlight glints across the waves. Slanting its wings the bird dives – a black arrow driving at full speed after the flight of fish. It surfaces unexpectedly far from the boat, flapping wildly, gulping a large bulge down a thin throat set, impossibly, at right angles.

The hull skims through waves. The sea seems flattened. Torquay is a thin line. Storms roll in from the sea.

Sailing into the wind is reminiscent of galloping Moses on gusty days across the Malvern Hills. Wind gusts buffeted so strongly one could barely breathe. Moses angled into squalls, the wind blowing itself into a fury. I see a mistress in early girlhood who enjoyed riding best of all . . .
galloping 'til the trees raced past her and clouds were shot over her head like horizontal arrows from a giant's bow . . . leaping over ditches – feeling the live creature beneath her swerve and bound with its own force
. And, with her hair splaying, she lets the reins fall slack. Moses gains speed in a sudden spurt, launching over a brook. Sky and hills, a boundless sea.

Watching the hull rising and falling, I feel flushed and warm inside. I am almost venturesome for a long sea-voyage. With the boatswain holding the main sheet taut and steadying my hand on the tiller – I am sailing! As the boat leans more heavily the water lures me. Quite unexpectedly I fall in love. I do love the sea. Waves are liquid passion. The sea is
visible poetry
.

The boatswain says, ‘Rain comin.' Unmoved, he stares ahead. The sky is wild. Above the chop of waves an elevated dark jagged dome appears, thrashed by spuming foaming breakers. I watch black wings of clouds unfold against the sky. The boatswain swoops down on me, the tiller shudders under my grip; the rudder resists shoving weighty water around.

‘Good steering, by Jove!' Bummy shouts. ‘That rock, I see it clearly now.'

And, as the sky grows darker, for the swarthy bank of cloud rolls nearer, I turn my head quickly. This makes me giddy. The boatswain says not a word.

From the water Torquay is a long green line backed by deep blue hills. It is like viewing the bay through a telescope; houses reside snugly folded into dales. I can make out people on the steep rises up cliffs, between buildings and on winding paths; paths which look the same as those I thought nothing of scrambling up six years ago when scaling the slopes to Ruby Cottage . . .
the view is grand, extensive, and beautiful beyond description
. But the five-mile journey to the Boyds' was problematic, with the toll to pay to pass through two turnpikes. Oh, but the scenery was glorious.
Such a
sea
of land; the sunshine throwing its light; & the clouds, their shadows, upon it! Sublime sight . . . I looked on each side of the elevated place where I sat. Herefordshire all hill & wood – undulating & broken ground! – Worcestershire throwing out a grand, unbroken extent . . . One prospect attracting the eye, by picturesqueness: the other the mind, by sublimity. My mind seemed spread north, south, east & west over the surface of those extended lands: and, to gather it up again into its usual compass, was an effort
. But I was full of energy then.
Dashing up hills; rolling presto, prestissimo down
.

Mr. Boyd and I had corresponded for nearly a year before our first meeting. Papa would not permit me to visit Mr. Boyd before he had visited me, because that ‘wouldn't do'. But I was lucky enough to pass him one morning on my way to the Trants' and a meeting was arranged. As luck would have it though, when the day arrived, the pony pulling the wheelbarrow, our three-wheeled carriage, bolted downhill, throwing Arabel and me from our vehicle, which promptly overturned. So I was badly shocked when introduced to this pleasantly attractive man, tallish and yet like a boy, with a slight figure. I remember his fair features; his skin almost bleached of colour; his expression, placid. He is completely blind. His eyes lack even the slightest hint of life, and any promise of ever having sight! Hugh Stuart Boyd. I am not as cold as he, & if our friendship seemed strained it was because of this:
I am not of a cold nature, & cannot bear to be treated coldly. When cold water is thrown upon a hot iron, the iron hisses
. So I would boil over for hours in near hysterics after my long visits amounted, at most, to my reading Greek aloud to him. How often did I wail
O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul
.

Bummy leans over the yacht's side, suddenly horribly sick. Fluctuating with now gentle breezes are waves of a nauseous stench, as the long white trail sinks. Bummy questioned my visits, she could see through a post.

She decided Boyd ungentlemanly and disgusting – because I was goose enough to say I'd spent an evening alone with him. She had an evident aversion to my friendship and everything and anybody connected with him, which lighted me up into a passion. I must have been twenty-five when I wrote of him excessively in my diary . . .
the mention of Mr. Boyd's name at a dinner party amongst a crowd of people whom I cared nothing about was like Robinson Crusoe's detection of a man's footprint in the sand
. But my diary was not to be shown to anyone. How many entries Mr. Boyd has I dare not think. I remember once writing . . .
I wish I had half the regard which I retain for him impressed on this paper that I might erase it thus
****. But I could not! In truth I longed for love, exceeding love; a love which after dear Mama died I would never find again. Poor health, as many a Shakespearean character demonstrates, comes from unrequited love.

Did Mr. Boyd ever feel
anything
for me? My feelings for him now are tarnished.

On land the boatswain moves awkwardly, like a wounded animal. ‘Poor beast,' I echo Bummy in a muffled voice. Bro says he was worried we had been caught in the throes of a storm and would never again be seen. He scolds the boatswain. For a weird moment the breath of life deserts me. Resting in the bottom of the boat, I am shattered, broken. I fear it is Bro who will leave, never to return. This madness – a deep, deep woe, the crippling agony of sorrow; of grief – departs as quickly as it came as Bro helps me from the boat. He carries me to the chair and wheels me back to Beacon Terrace, and I see the fear for what it was. Absolute madness.

Chapter Five

‘Run! Run!' Lickle Phoebe's yelling. ‘Run! Run!' she keeps up yelling. Smooth as palm oil she's running over hillside sloping down to shack village.
Fuuuuffuu-ffuu
abeng sounds. Dusk glow's a-coming.

‘Roof! De roof!' Phoebe bawls.

Sun's dying on a string of sweat-glistening backs stumbling all over cane-piece track, passing distant mountain ridges, bush, wild creeper-strung forests, blue far-reaching sea. We cane-workers walk tired, too tired to even raise we heads to familiar smells moving on evening breeze – pigs, chickens, shit, sugar, sweat, drifting and mixing and swelling with fire-smoke from somewhere, and a strong sickly scent of flowers rising up in falling rain.

But sour smoke stings me nostril, and me get a funny feeling, hearing Phoebe's bawl grow louder though she runs further away.

‘Fiah-smoke!' Phoebe's bawling. Past trash-house she body flits, thin, shadow-like, fast-moving where oil-lamps light sand in yellow-brown strips, screaming, ‘Guinea grass gawn fram de roof!'

Smoke turns sky a dusky mule grey. Steamy jets snort from boiler-house and suddenly we all running, cutting narrow lanes twisting between shacks, hearts thumping, dreading galloping hollering militiamen, bounding, baying dogs.

Eleanor shrieks, ‘Me shack! Me shack!' at fleeing shadows.

Reaching Eleanor's yard me stop. Old Simeon's mule starts up braying. Smoky fog curls from Eleanor's open-mouthed shack – me sleeping place since Isaac's gone.

Streaming sweat, breathing hard, ‘Oo yu did see?' Windsor ask him little sister, Phoebe.

‘No,' say Lickle Phoebe. ‘Me cyaan say oo me did see.'

Windsor's eyes roll back in him head. ‘W'appen den? Duppy set shack on fiah?'

Lickle Phoebe's turned mute. She stares at she brother with dulled eyes. Rain patters keenly – a sad answer – falling into we stunned silence of shock.

Dashing forward, Eleanor flings a skin bottle of drinking water at shack roof. A small sheet of water opens up, singed wattle walls sizzle and seethe. Another bottle of water catches shack with a wet slap, rushing down shack's wattle body.

Panting, Big Robert plods up all floppy-bellied from drinking first cane juice. Caught in shock, ‘Where yu hab to sleep?' he say. ‘W'appen? Where Eleanor, Phoebe, Sheba sleep now?'

Windsor shouts at Robert, ‘Best ting yu cun do's shut yu mouth.'

Big Robert stands by Eleanor's doorway, nodding, taking stock. Then he grabs Eleanor's bottle and hastily thrusts it on dusty yard dirt. Making off he runs to milking shack, picks biggest skin buckets in shack doorway, takes off running again, heading fe millstream. Kneeling at stream bank he ducks, dunking buckets once, twice. Soon he's running back, shooting great bucketfuls of water into dusk-darkened sky. Journey after journey Big Robert makes, running like some wild thing until Eleanor's shack's soaked.

‘E'll empty millstream,' Windsor say, and all we laugh guilty, shifting into a huddled body. Water crashes against once bunch-grass thatched beams, water beads mix with rain spraying from dark red-hot sky, giving shack a dripping skin.

Me close into a ring with Sylvia, Windsor and Lickle Phoebe; heads jerked forward, hunched shoulder rubbing hunched shoulder; voices, a low rumble in night's gathering darkness.

‘Where Mister Sam?' me ask.

Lickle Phoebe's words dash out, ‘Yu tink e to blame?'

‘Some say e ride to Spanish Town,' Sylvia say.

‘No,' say Uncle Ned gruffly, ‘e stay at Greenwood.' Sylvia, Uncle Ned and me try to wrap we arms round Eleanor but Eleanor breaks free and turns towards village edge, a grey shape melting into tall grass heads. Sickness settles deep in me belly as dusk settles on tall grasses Eleanor's become part of.