The Sugar Planter's Daughter (5 page)

T
he next day
when I came home I found Winnie had been busy in a different way. Again, the house was filled with the aroma of cooking – but today it was a sweet, ambrosial fragrance, something like heaven. Again I followed the scent into the kitchen and there I saw it: a cloth like a hammock hanging from the rafter, bulging at the bottom; beneath it a large pot into which an amber liquid dripped. Winnie's back was to me, but she must have sensed my presence because she swung round as I stood in the doorway.

‘George!' she cried, and pointed to the cloth. ‘Guava jelly! My first batch! And the second batch is nearly finished!'

She stepped away from the stove and I saw another pot on the fire.

I smiled at her and opened my arms, and she rushed in.

‘You've been busy!' I said.

‘Oh, yes! Ma and I went out to the backyard to pick some guavas – George, you have my favourite variety, the white ones! And then I told her how much I loved guava jelly, and she told me she'd show me how to make it so we went to Bourda Market again and bought a whole bag of guavas – mostly the white ones – we got them much cheaper because we bought up Pansy's whole stock – Pansy is the name of the market lady – and then we came home and Ma showed me how to make the jelly.'

‘Wonderful!' I said. ‘I love guava jelly! But where's Ma?'

‘She went to visit her friend Parvati,' said Winnie. ‘She'll be back soon. They're cooking together and Ma will bring some dinner back – they seem to have some sort of an arrangement.' Indeed they did. Ma kept chickens and Parvati grew vegetables, and they had an exchange agreement – so that there would be no leftover chicken going to waste, Ma and Parvati would cook for two households and share, chicken one day and cook-up rice with vegetables the next, or fish-and-vegetable stew. Parvati's husband worked on the wharf at Stabroek Market and got free fish from a friend. This is how the people of Albouystown, the poor of Georgetown, survived. We all helped one another when and where we could.

As it happened, Pa came home before Ma. Pa's job, at the post office in Cummingsburg, was quite a long way across town and he had to walk as he did not have a bicycle. He mumbled a hello as he entered, and plonked himself down on the Berbice chair in the gallery.

‘Where's Ma?' he asked, echoing my own question, but he didn't wait for an answer. He pulled a copy of the
Argosy
out of his satchel and opened it. That was Pa all over: not a sociable man. He didn't like to talk, so his job, in the back room of the post office, suited him well. I don't think he had exchanged more than three words with his new daughter-in-law. It wasn't rudeness – he just didn't know what to say to people. There are people who can chat about anything for hours on end – Pa wasn't one of them. He was just as taciturn to his two sons-in-law. He preferred stamps to people; and books, and newspapers.

Winnie had returned to her guava jelly; now she was pouring the steaming-hot boiled guava from its pot into another, which was lined with a muslin cloth.

‘Let me help you,' I said, and held the cloth steady so that it didn't slip into the pot. Winnie scraped out the last drops of boiled guava from the pot, and then she took the cloth from my hands and knotted the ends together, after which she carefully, with both hands, lifted the bulging bag of fruit out of the pot. She looked at me.

‘I've cut the string already, George – hand it to me, will you?'

Indeed, there on the tabletop lay a length of string all ready to tie the bag with, which she did just below the knot. I was impressed by how quickly and efficiently she did this – as if she had been making guava jelly all her life. In fact, I asked her: ‘Have you made guava jelly before?'

She laughed. ‘No, of course not! We girls at Promised Land were kept out of the kitchen. This is my first time.'

‘Well, you look as if you've been doing it all your life.'

She laughed again. ‘I was thinking, George – we're going to have so many jars of guava jelly after this, we could sell the extra jars in the shop!'

We had a family shop in Albouystown, which Ma had managed until recently and where we, the children, had all helped out now and again. Just last year, though, my sister Magda's husband John had taken over the running of the shop. It sold everything, in small quantities, from soap and matches and various other provisions – and maybe, in the future, guava jelly.

‘That way I won't be a burden on you,' said Winnie.

‘You're not a burden,' I said, ‘you're my wife.'

‘Still – I'm an extra mouth to feed. This way I can contribute.'

And I knew that was exactly what she would do. My Winnie was the most resourceful white woman I had ever met. Not that I knew many white women – in fact, only two, Winnie and her sister Yoyo – but I had always heard that they were lazy and self-indulgent and only liked to be served. Ma had told me so many stories about the white ladies she had once worked for, all in the run-up to my wedding, trying to dissuade me from an inappropriate alliance. I was happy to see Winnie proving her wrong. But that was Winnie all over. She had taught herself Morse code and learned it so well that she'd been the fastest telegraph operator in Barbados when she was exiled there last year. I was so proud of her.

Watching her now, as she tied the bundle of guava jelly to the rafter, I knew, for the first time, really, that just as she had taught herself Morse code and how to pluck a chicken and how to make guava jelly, Winnie would learn how to live in Albouystown.

‘
S
o Mama
, it's just me and you now, running the estate.'

It was the day after the wedding; Mama and I had spent the night in the Park Hotel, and then Poole drove us to Promised Land. Tom, the new houseboy, came down to fetch our bags and Mama and I walked up the stairs, she before me. She had not been long in the colony, and was still getting used to it all after her time in Europe.

Mama, of course, had never felt at home here: not on the plantation, not in the colony. Her real home is among the snow-capped mountains of Austria. She tried to make a marriage and failed; her deep melancholia drove her back to Salzburg. Now here she is again, at her second attempt; this time as a mother more than as a wife. It is just us: two women, now that Winnie has gone. We both know that Clarence is just a figurehead; in fact we all know that, Clarence included.

‘We can do it,' Mama said that day. ‘You're young, but I'm so impressed, Yoyo, with your business sense.'

‘You can thank Miss Yorke for that!' I said.

Winnie and I had both attended Miss Yorke's Institute for Womanly Arts. Business, of course, did not count as a Womanly Art, but I had been able to live there while attending classes in economics, accounting and business at Government College. I was the only girl in the whole place.

It turned out that I had a certain skill for accounting; I enjoy looking over the books and making sure the figures are in order. What I don't like is dealing with people. Mr McInnes in particular.

How can I, a girl of only seventeen, control a man who considers himself the de facto head of operations, now that Papa is removed from us?

‘He leers at me so!' I told Mama later that day, as we sat down on the verandah to relax after the long journey. Miranda, the housegirl, bustled in and set a coffee pot and a plate of ginger biscuits down on the table, curtsied and took her leave. It seemed to me that Miranda had put on a little weight recently – she had been a slim little thing when we first engaged her six months ago, and now her uniform was bulging at the seams.

‘Mr McInnes is at the root of all our problems,' said Mama. ‘I saw it immediately when I first came here as a bride – he had already caught your father in his snare by then. I did try to free him, but you know what your father is like. “Women have no idea,” and all that nonsense. But I know what you mean about the leering. He did it to me too.'

‘It makes me hesitant to confront him. He looks at me as if I were a piece of meat, with no brain whatsoever.'

‘Well, I haven't encountered him yet since I've been back. But we have to replace him. Immediately.'

‘We can't, Mama. I've been looking for a replacement for months. There isn't anyone in BG, and until we can find someone on one of the islands and get him to come over we'll have to put up with him.'

Mama was silent then for a few minutes. She turned her face from me and gazed off into the distance – I thought she had simply accepted my last words and was thinking of something else, when suddenly she said, ‘I know of someone.'

‘You do?'

‘Yes. He might take some persuading, and he hasn't done the work for many years, but he's just the man we need.'

‘But – is he available? Will he want to move here and work for us? What is he doing now? Where is he?'

Mama laughed. ‘He's not far away at all,' she said. ‘And yes, he's available. I'm just not sure if he will care to do the work. But he can. And I can perhaps persuade him.'

‘Who is he, Mama?'

‘His name is James Booker.'

‘James Booker? A Booker? Mama, are you mad?' I cried. The Booker clan and their Booker Brothers Company is the huge conglomerate that owns practically all of British Guiana: almost all of the sugar estates, all of the shipping, and most of the shops. They are our rivals, eager and willing to take us over, an evil spider ready to pounce. How could Mama even
think
of bringing one of them into the fold?

‘You must be mad,' I repeated, calmer now. Mama had raised my hopes only to dash them again; we were back to the beginning.

Mama only chuckled. She took a sip of her coffee before she spoke again. ‘I'm not mad, but they say that
he
is,' she said. ‘You might know him better as Mad Jim.'

My jaw fell open; Mad Jim Booker! Mama must really be out of her mind.

Mad Jim lives on the edge of Promised Land; he owns a big house there, and has a coolie wife, and all the coolies run to him with their troubles. Rumour has it that he is the brains behind all the labourer bother we have been having. That he masterminds the uprisings; that he instigates the protests and strikes that have plagued us the last few years. Mama's suggestion was in fact to put the wolf in charge of the herd! It was preposterous. I said as much. Mama only laughed again.

‘Hear me out,' she said. ‘Jim's good. In his young days he was trained in estate management, so he knows the ropes. He grew up on Estate Prosperity, in the Essequibo – one of the most successful of the Booker estates. He's a renegade, it's true – he had too much empathy for the workers for the company's liking, refused to push them to their limits. But what he is now – as I've heard from Winnie, who knows him well – is a man who the labourers trust. They'll work for him.'

‘But Mama – you can't run an estate on kindness! Mr McInnes is a brute but we can't go in the opposite direction! We need someone moderate – not a nigger-lover.'

The word slipped out before I could check it. I think I was as shocked as Mama. She sprang to her feet and strode towards the door.

‘Never let me ever hear you say that word again in my presence!' she exclaimed, and she was gone.

T
he second part
of my plan for Clarence – my impregnation – is proving rather more difficult than the first. It's said that men who drink rum are more easily excited by the ladies, but rum seems to have the opposite effect on my Clarence. It's rather frustrating. In the four months we have been married we have had only had conjugal relations three times. It's certainly not my fault. Once we are in our chamber I do all I can to charm and seduce him, but he simply flops and sleeps. How will I produce a son at this rate?

I have taken to reducing his rum intake at the evening meal, which is harder than it sounds. Some time ago he took to inviting his friends from the senior staff quarters, Mr McInnes, Mr Hodgkin, Mr Frith and so on, to join him for after-dinner drinks and conversation on the verandah, just as Papa had done in the past, and of course drinks are always served.

What an unpleasant, raucous lot those men are! I do not remember this level of noise when Papa was head of the household. Mr McInnes especially. Winnie and I had always loathed this man and had vowed to dismiss him the moment we had the power to do so, which unfortunately proved to be easier said than done; we can only let him go once we have a replacement, and that is proving more difficult than anticipated. Qualified estate managers simply aren't running around free in British Guiana looking for work.

We will have to look further afield; to the islands of the Caribbean. I sent a telegram to our relatives in Barbados, and they are spreading the word among their acquaintances on other islands; but till we find the right man we are stuck with Mr McInnes, whose main off-plantation strength seems to be telling bawdy jokes and guffawing heartily once he has told them – fuelled, of course, by our rum. Not in my company, of course – he isn't
that
uncouth – but I make a point of listening behind doors and curtains, and tough though I am even I blush at some of the filth coming out of that man's mouth. His daughter Margaret is my best friend and I cannot believe the things he says about her, his own blood! It is almost as if – but no, I cannot possibly harbour such a thought. But I will speak to Margaret about it, or rather, drop hints so as to find out more. Mr McInnes would never have dared to speak this way in Papa's presence! Yes, things are decidedly slipping downhill, and there is little I can do. In the end I am just a girl, hardly more than seventeen. Winnie wasn't much of a help when she was here, as all she could think of was her approaching wedding and the arrival of Mama.

But then Mama came, Winnie got married and everything changed.