Award-winning writer Caryl Phillips presents a beautiful, heart-breaking novel of the life of Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea
In the heart of London’s Bloomsbury, Gwendolen – not yet truly famous as the writer ‘Jean Rhys’ – is presented with the opportunity she has been waiting for. Her husband has received an unexpected inheritance; she can, at last, return to the island of her childhood.
For Gwendolen, Dominica is a place of freedom and beauty, far away from the lonely nights and failed dreams of England. But this visit home compels her to reflect on the events of her past, and on what they may mean for her future.
Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, including the novels Crossing the River (shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1993) and A Distant Shore (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2004). Phillips has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN Open Book Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 1992 and one of the Granta Best of Young British Writers 1993. He has also written for television, radio, theatre and film.
ALSO BY CARYL PHILLIPS
Fiction
The Lost Child
In the Falling Snow
Dancing in the Dark
A Distant Shore
The Nature of Blood
Crossing the River
Cambridge
Higher Ground
A State of Independence
The Final Passage
Non-fiction
Colour Me English
Foreigners
A New World Order
The Atlantic Sound
The European Tribe
For Lucien and Andre
The bleak afternoon had been made all the more dispiriting by having to overhear Leslie on the telephone busying himself with his attempts to make arrangements for their potential sea voyage. Finally, her husband sat down heavily in the armchair and began to annoy her by continually seeking reassurance that the recent misunderstanding between them was now resolved. After sharing a life together for nearly eight years, her husband still seems incapable of admitting that things between them have never been quite right. He has, as he promised her he would, attempted to provide her with a stable financial environment that might compensate for her difficult down-at-heel years on the Continent, but his efforts in this department have been an unquestionable failure. Keen to please her in other respects, he has tried to demand little of her in the way of an explanation of both her past and her present, and she has certainly never pressed him about his own history, but as a consequence, she often feels as though they barely know each other and she wonders if the decent thing to do would be to release this man from what he once referred to as “occasionally boorish behaviour.”
She is standing in deep shadow to the side of the bay window in their lacklustre Bloomsbury living room and staring out at the leafless oak trees that decorate the iron-gated square. Then, recognizing that she has temporarily forsaken her husband, she turns towards him and smiles weakly, and Leslie’s nervous face lights up with relief.
Eventually her tired husband empties his pipe and slowly rises from the armchair. He slips on his jacket and overcoat and cheerily announces that he is stepping out for a twilight stroll. She hears the front door rattle shut and then looks down into the lamplit street and watches him striding away from the house, and this is her prompt to pick up the small stool and carry it through into the bedroom. Having carefully eased the shabby suitcase from its hiding place on top of the narrow wardrobe, she places it lengthwise on the bed and opens it in a manner that causes the dusty object to unexpectedly resemble a book. Only now (as she tries to ignore the freckles of age that are beginning to pepper the backs of her hands) does it occur to her that there are two problems. First, she is unsure of just how long Leslie imagines they might tarry in the West Indies; second, she doesn’t own anything that will be even vaguely suitable once they reach their tropical destination. In England she has come to understand that a nice bright shawl and a decent pair of shoes will typically suffice to fool most people, but back home eyes are more discerning and she will be held to higher standards. Once she returns to the West Indies, she has no desire to make an exhibition of herself.
She sits wearily on the edge of the bed and tries hard to reconcile herself to the fact that a woman who has journeyed even a short distance beyond the age of forty no longer has any right to expect admiring glances, but she continues to find it difficult to abandon all hope. Of course, money would help to ease the embarrassment of the spectacle she presents, but any mention of the thorny subject tends to plunge Leslie into a monosyllabic mood. Last night, however, her husband surprised her with talk of an unforeseen windfall and the possibility of a voyage to the West Indies. She stands and opens both the top and the bottom drawers of the dresser and confronts the reality of her situation; it is true, there is not a single article of clothing that merits serious consideration for the upcoming journey, for, having been washed and ironed too frequently, all of her clothes are shiny and hideous in appearance. Having closed the drawers to the dresser, she shuts the empty suitcase and turns the key in the tiny lock. Leslie’s frustrating telephone calls have led her to believe that it might well be weeks before her husband secures confirmation of their passage, for apparently winter is the most popular season in which to set sail for the region. This being the case, there is still time for her to broach the idea of a shopping expedition, but not quite yet, for betraying either enthusiasm or anxiety has never played any part in the detached manner in which she generally likes to conduct herself with her overly sensitive husband.
Last Saturday night there was no need for Leslie to burst into The Rose and Crown and embarrass her in front of everyone. He took her firmly by the arm and ordered her to be quiet, and then topped his performance by apologizing to the stupid landlord for her behaviour. (“I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid there’s a little bit of a drink problem.”) But what she was saying was correct: unless somebody woke up and took notice, this new chancellor, Herr Hitler, would soon be tramping his muddy boots all over the map of Europe. It wasn’t as though anybody in the pub disagreed with her, but at some point the landlord must have telephoned her husband, for suddenly Leslie made his entrance and began to coax her towards the door, all the while urging her, with an impatient sharpness, to please moderate her behaviour. When she started to shout, he barked at her in a firm whisper, telling her to either hold her tongue or keep it down. “You seem to be unaware of the ill nature of the emotions you arouse.” She snatched her arm away and smartened up her dress with the palm of her hands, then she reminded him that the only reason she had come out for a quiet drink to begin with was to get away from his miserable presence, which was creating a foul atmosphere in their rooms. Once they were out on the pavement, and safely beyond the hearing of those in the pub, Leslie stared at her with a strangely distracted look on his face before raising his tone and beginning to affect a modulation that the poor man clearly hoped might come across as authoritative. “Why, Gwen, do you insist on leaving your good sense in glass after glass of wine? I’m afraid I simply don’t understand you.”
All day Sunday she refused to talk to him, although he tried desperately to be pleasant. He asked her to please try and understand why he had been forced to remove her from the pub. “Dearest, it was a bad business. You were talking loudly to yourself, and the patrons were simply ignoring you.” But what rot, they were not ignoring her, they were asking if she was actually in sympathy with this Herr Hitler, which they must have known was a stupid question. “Of course I’m not,” she said. “I speak French, not German. Why would I want to begin the process of acquiring another bloody language?” By late Monday afternoon she had decided to allow things between herself and Leslie to thaw a little, for she could sense that her demure husband was troubled by a letter he had received in the morning’s post. She tied on a headscarf and, without a trace of bitterness, asked if there was anything he would like her to pick up, as she intended to venture out to the shops. A newspaper, perhaps? Her husband smiled and shook his head. “No, thank you, Gwendolen. I’ll just listen to the evening news on the wireless.” When she returned, he poured them both a glass of sherry and then looked up and wondered if she might consider discontinuing her two-night exile on the sofa. Before she had time to frame a response, he pressed on and shared with her today’s surprising revelation regarding an unexpected legacy from his late father, the Reverend Tilden Smith. He held the solicitor’s embossed stationery in both hands as though it were some kind of offering and suggested that now that he appeared to be “in funds” it might make sense to think about renting a nicer place, perhaps in Chelsea. Meanwhile, he wondered if she would be amenable to his treating them both to a voyage to the West Indies, for he understood how desperately she wished once again to see her birthplace. He paused, his brow wrinkled in perplexity as though unsure how his suggestion might be received, but she said nothing and so he felt obliged to continue. He informed her that he had some inkling of how much it might mean to her to reacquaint herself with her island. Was a West Indian sea voyage something she might consider?
The short note had evidently been typed on an old machine with keys that were misaligned, and then folded into an envelope and addressed with a painstakingly precise hand. It was difficult to read all of the words, for the imprint of some of the letters created only an indistinct smudge and the number of brief handwritten emendations suggested that her brother was most likely mortified by the limitations of the instrument, whose ribbon was also in need of replacement. Owen had written to her “in the hope that she might find it in her heart to forgive his recent silence,” and he explained that he had been suffering some difficulties with his health. He had, however, been pleased to receive her communication with the exciting news of her impending voyage, and he now wished to broach a matter of some delicacy. Straightaway, he wanted to stress that it was not his intention to press for repayment of the five-pound note he had sent to her earlier in the year, but he once again asked that she never mention the offering in the presence of his wife. Clearly her sister-in-law’s sentiment that she was little more than a pretentious dilettante remained unchanged, and she fully understood her brother’s dread. After all, he was unemployed and struggling to support Dorothy and their six-year-old son, so the revelation that he had given money to his self-indulgent sister would most likely strike a body blow to his marriage.
The letter had arrived with the second post, and she had sat huddled in the armchair and read the three concise paragraphs by the light of the dim bulb in the metal standard lamp. She then placed the single sheet of paper on the low table in front of her and made her way across the room, where she filled the kettle and proceeded to boil some water for tea. Having made a particularly strong cup, she returned to the armchair and reread the letter, once again noting the perturbed but scrupulously polite tone in which it was written. And then she read it once more. Her brother had recently returned from Australia with yet another failed business venture to his name, and she worried greatly about his state of mind. In fact, her childhood memories of the free-spirited older brother she so admired were now in danger of being permanently obscured by the words of this frightened, guilt-stricken man who was writing to her from some unfashionable suburb south of London.
That evening her husband returned from having spent the greater part of the day visiting various West End travel agencies. He sat and threaded his hands together before informing her that because most vessels were already overbooked and the shipping lines were operating a sparse midwinter schedule, it was now clear that they would have to wait until February to undertake their voyage. The good news was, however, that he had gone ahead and purchased their tickets. In the meantime, he wondered if they might perhaps seize the opportunity provided by the delay and take advantage of the unseasonably mild weather by embarking upon a weekend-long excursion to the Sussex coast. Doing so, they would be able to temporarily escape London and take in some of the English countryside, but he spoke to her as though he were tendering the glories of pastoral England as some kind of gift. All those cows lolling around, she thought, and idle sheep, and silly little bushy fences. A gift would be the chance to see her thirteen-year-old daughter in Holland and once again try to forge some kind of relationship with the girl. Or perhaps Maryvonne could come and visit with them in London? Why spend this sudden influx of money on Sussex when she longed to see her somewhat truculent child? She looked across at Leslie, his eyes now closed and his head thrown back onto the antimacassar as though listening to his favourite Brahms or Handel on the wireless, and she wanted to tell him that his beloved English countryside held no interest for her, but she decided to be generous and leave the exhausted man in peace.
Later that evening, after the regular whine of his breathing suggested that he had finally succumbed to sleep, she eased out of her narrow bed and made her way into the living room, where she poured a large glass of red wine. She sat back on the dimpled leather sofa and cradled the wine in both hands. No doubt her husband had convinced himself that after a relaxing trip to the Sussex coast he might look forward to a marked improvement in her behaviour. This was precisely the kind of phrase that Leslie loved to use. “Marked improvement.” The truth is, Leslie should have been a prep school master or a man of the cloth like his father. She took another sip of wine and then slipped the letter out of its envelope and began to reread it. To her mind, as a young man her brother had carried on with an admirable streak of rebelliousness, although there were those who expected better from the privileged child of a colonial doctor. Sadly, his subsequent career failures in Canada, and more recently in Australia, had evidently left him a reduced man. Having received the surprising news from his sister that she intended to return home for a short visit, he was now asking her to help him repair some of the damage he had caused in his youth, but he was framing his request as though he bore little real responsibility for his earlier actions. She took yet another sip of red wine and replaced Owen’s letter in its envelope.
Last night, after she had finished the red wine and then discovered where Leslie had hidden the bottle of whisky, she clumsily knocked over an empty glass and watched as it spiraled to the floor and smashed. Almost immediately her glum-looking husband appeared in the doorway in his belted dressing gown, and as she knelt and began to gather up the pieces, he gazed down at her with a strange combination of poorly disguised exasperation and forgiveness. His intrinsic kindness annoyed her, and she rose unsteadily to her feet and told him that when they returned from the West Indies he should forget about the idea of using what remained of his father’s money and moving into a more spacious Chelsea flat. Going their separate ways might well be a better option. Leslie said nothing and stared blankly at her before slowly turning and trudging back in the direction of the bedroom. She was actually offering her husband a chance to unshackle himself from the past eight years, but the stubborn man seemed incapable of accepting the fact that his wife was, and always would be, beyond his control. Over the years she often asked herself what on earth would have happened to him if she had not entered his life. Has he ever considered this? They both know that he has neither the resources, nor is he cut from the right cloth, to have ever contemplated joining a gentlemen’s club where he might while away the hours and pretend to prefer the civilized company of other men as a substitute for his failure to establish a satisfactory relationship with the opposite sex. Without her he would, she imagines, most likely have already drifted into a single room somewhere on the Pentonville Road and be attempting to eke out a bachelor existence on the fringes of so-called literary London. Instead, the poor man has a wife whose looks have long since fled the scene, and who no longer merits a second glance. It is clear that she is a woman who is utterly incapable of helping her husband achieve any form of social or professional elevation, so why on earth can’t he accept how things are? After all, he is still handsome enough to attract another woman, but sadly, timid Leslie will most likely never find anybody else, for it is simply not in his nature to extend himself when confronted with the tyranny of female charm. He did so with her, but she can see in his sometimes dejected eyes that he now understands this to have been a mistake, for, as was the case with his first wife, he has absolutely no notion of how to bring a woman to heel.
It is now late afternoon and she is curled up on the sofa drinking tea and watching her husband, who sits sullenly at the small dining table with a plate of bread and cheese before him. He is indulging his habit of stuffing oversized portions of bread into his mouth which take an eternity for him to swallow. He occasionally glances in her direction in the hope that some contact might force her to speak, but she says nothing, and so he breaks the gloomy silence and addresses her with resignation. “You’re slipping away from me, aren’t you?” The weak light filtering through the bay window is picking out the lines on his face and causing the grey strands in his hair to periodically sparkle. She looks at a visibly distressed Leslie and thinks back to their original appointment at his cramped office. Initially she had hoped she might encounter a mature man whose confidence was born of years of experience, and who possessed a deep rumbling laugh and exuded a leathery smell of cologne on salty skin, but when she took up a seat on the other side of this man’s desk she looked closely into his eyes and searched in vain for any sign of authority. Unfortunately, long before the end of their first meeting it was clear that this prudent man was certainly not the savior she was hoping for, but what choice did she have?
He pushes the plate away and leans back in the chair. “Are you truly determined to leave me, Gwen?” She smiles, but says nothing, and then reminds herself that it has always been so much easier for them to talk about plans as opposed to feelings. My dear Leslie, you have now purchased the tickets for our transatlantic voyage, so let us just go to the West Indies. I will show you the public gardens by the library where I used to sit as a girl and stare out at the sea and try to imagine the world beyond my island. But, of course, I had no real conception of what lay beyond the horizon. I will show you rays of sunlight filtering through clouds, and ribbons of water falling from palm fronds and grooving trenches into the earth. We two can lie in a hollow and witness the shimmer of late-afternoon heat making corrugated iron of the air, and listen to a nearby stream trickling noisily over smooth stones, and watch a puff of wind grow hurriedly into a sudden squall and begin to playfully bend the trees. I will show you the rivers and the mountains, and come evening, as the New World day convulses towards dusk, I will share with you a spectacular elevated view of the empire at sunset. Perhaps, my husband, if I show you the West Indies, then you will finally come to understand that I am not of your world, and maybe then you will appreciate the indignity I feel at not only having to live among you people but possibly die among you, too. I am so sorry. Truly I am, for I have no yearning to cause you hurt. Her husband continues to look at her and he waits patiently for an answer to his question, and so she offers him one that she knows will be received with skepticism. “No, Leslie, I am not determined to leave you.” She pauses and tries to discover a second, and more comforting, half to the sentence, but words elude her.
Sister Mary’s voice and mannerisms were gentle and pleasant, while those of the other nuns were harsh and unforgiving. If a girl arrived late, Sister Mary would encourage her to take a seat and ask for an explanation only at break, after everyone had left the schoolroom. Should a child find herself the object of teasing or laughter, the young nun would rescue the situation by turning on one of the persecutors and quietly asking her a question designed to still her tongue. At Christmas the class presented Sister Mary with a floral bouquet, which was a mishmash of individual flowers collected by each pupil and clumsily tied together with a purple ribbon. Sister Mary picked up the limp bunch from her desk and cradled it in her arms as one might a newborn child. The young nun then buried her face in the scent, but she could see that her teacher did so only in order that her tears would not be visible to the girls. After Christmas, Sister Mary let them down by not returning to the school. Initially, it was unclear why a rather fierce replacement was teaching their class, but being the daughter of the medical officer she knew that their teacher was ill. However, after three weeks—during which time they were not offered any explanation—she took it upon herself to raise her hand and ask after Sister Mary. In a firm and clearly irritated voice, the new nun announced that Sister Mary was not well, and it was unlikely that she would be resuming her duties at the school, and a collective sigh of disappointment filled the small classroom.
The following Sunday afternoon she and her friend Gussie de Freitas set out on a short, private adventure up into the hills behind Roseau. A month ago on New Year’s Day, her father had travelled up to the Flambeau Plantation to visit Sister Mary, but when her father returned, he failed to mention the young nun, although he had plenty to say about the unhygienic condition of the Great House. Apparently the old widow who lived on the now-neglected estate still maintained the ground floor of the property and Sister Mary had taken a room there. She overheard her father telling her mother that he had recommended to the young nun that she urgently find alternative accommodation, but the stubborn girl claimed to be content where she was. On a sweltering Sunday afternoon that was particularly heavy with the unapologetic lassitude of the Sabbath, she watched transfixed as Gussie laboured up the three stone steps and knocked loudly at the door to the dilapidated Great House, whose once proud fluted pillars were now rotten with age, while what little paint remained upon them was blistered and peeling. It was the old lady herself who opened up, and she appeared before the pair of them squinting painfully into the bright light. Gussie made polite inquiry after Sister Mary, but having carefully scrutinized her unexpected visitors, the old lady motioned with her heavily veined hand that they should remain where they stood, and she then disappeared into the house.
On their way back into Roseau the two girls stopped by the river and sat together on a steep grassy bank that was fenced in by wild clusters of ridged bamboo that flared skywards. She looked on as Gussie tossed small stones into the water, and it was her friend who found the first words.
“Sister Mary didn’t look like Sister Mary.”
The old lady had escorted them across the full breadth of a large room that was full of sheeted furniture, and she was terrified, for she was sure that cockroaches and centipedes were most likely hiding beneath these flimsy shrouds. Thereafter, they were ushered into a bedroom where Sister Mary lay propped up among a collection of pillows, but the heat was suffocatingly intense and felt as though it had been trapped in the room for many days and nights. The young nun’s eyes appeared to have sunk into her head, and her two arms—which lay lifeless on top of the sheets—were smooth and twisted like thin willow branches. The old lady dabbed gently at Sister Mary’s lips with a moist cloth, but this didn’t appear to help relieve the young woman’s distress. Sister Mary could no longer make any words with her mouth.
Climbing to her feet, she turned her back to the river and addressed Gussie.
“Let’s not tell anybody about Sister Mary. We should forget that we ever went there.”
Gussie continued to pitch small stones into the river, but eventually she looked up.
“Alright,” she said. “We never went there.”
She continued to stand, but a vast distance suddenly seemed to have opened up between herself and Gussie, and she didn’t possess the words to explain the strange sadness of the feelings that were now coursing through her small body. For the remainder of the afternoon, the two friends lingered by the riverbank and listened to the unhappy repetition of birds plaintively calling out to each other.
Towards the end of the Easter holidays she sat with her father on the veranda and watched as he closed his newspaper. When her mother came out to say “Good night,” her father announced that the Irish nun that he had been treating for the past year had just left this world at the tender age of twenty-four. He began to shake his head, but refused to face his daughter, and then he muttered that for some time now it had been clear to him that nothing could be done for the poor nun. He sighed and returned to his newspaper. She understood that as a nine-year-old girl she was too young for a full explanation, but if only her father could have found a way to extend himself a little further in her direction and share with her what he was truly thinking, this would have helped. Poor Sister Mary. They had brought her flowers and shown her loyalty. Devotion, even. But her father chose not to offer any explanation to his daughter as to why the young nun had decided to forsake them in this way, and for what remained of the Easter holidays she felt betrayed by both Sister Mary and her father.
Every Sunday morning she would stand by the window and watch as the Negro made his slow way up the street towards the house with his young daughter in tow. Francine would be clutching her father’s hand, but as they moved closer, the girl would suddenly break free and run expectantly in the direction of the iron gate that led into the yard and shout for her friend, “Gwennie!” Her mother was usually in the kitchen instructing Josephine the cook, who would be busily preparing Sunday lunch. Drying her hands on a towel, her mother would step out into the yard, where her daughter would now be waiting. Her mother would cast her ten-year-old child a quick knowing glance, while trying to disguise the fact that her mind was once again contracting into judgment and disapproval.
Francine was generally out of breath, and her eager eyes betrayed her excitement as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her sturdy father would come up behind her in his sober church clothes and, sporting a black hat with a particularly wide brim and placing a gentle hand on his child’s shoulder, the Negro would remind his daughter to work hard in the kitchen and not cause Mrs. Williams any bother, but her mother would always assure the man that Francine was never any trouble whatsoever. Satisfied that everything was in order, the Negro would touch his hat and then set about his yard work. Francine had an uncomplicated roster of tasks to perform in the kitchen, but as soon as they were done, she frequently seemed to have an idea of what the two of them ought to do, be it a quick sprint down to the river to pick a batch of wildflowers or a fierce determination that they should engage in a search for a particular bird or lizard that had recently captured her imagination. Everything with Francine was an adventure, and although she occasionally felt obliged to throw up an objection to her friend’s suggestions based on either the weather or the sheer impracticality of the plan, she would invariably have nothing to offer in its place, and so she inevitably capitulated to Francine’s schemes.
One week they might amuse themselves by crawling around the empty marketplace on all fours playing “zoo”; the following week Francine might suggest a sandy spot by the bayfront that would be perfect for them to once again play castaway and native, with Francine always assuming the role of the tragically helpless castaway. She sang songs with Francine, the words of which she seldom fully understood, and her friend taught her how to dance with a freedom below her waist that she intuitively understood to be unseemly. However, all of this took place beyond her mother’s eyes, and although the two girls were often tired and dirty by the time they returned to the house, her mother always greeted them with two glasses of juice and allowed them to sit together on the veranda and eat sandwiches, while Francine’s father squatted near the gate and ate from a small package that he normally carried tucked beneath his arm. Once the girls had finished, it was her mother who took it upon herself to come and clear their things, and it was understood that this was the signal for Francine to get to her feet and rejoin her father. Mother and daughter watched as the Negro girl made her reluctant way to the gate, and then, together with her father, her friend began to slowly amble her way back down the street.
During the hottest weeks of the summer her mother decided to pack her off to be with her great-aunt at the family’s Geneva estate, but she missed Francine. On the Sunday after she returned from the cool of the mountains she saw her friend cantering up the street with a scrap of mongrel on a long piece of string and the girl’s father making no attempt to keep pace with his child. She began to laugh gleefully at Francine’s latest gesture of willful eccentricity, and then she glanced up and noticed the look of antipathy on her mother’s face. She already knew that her mother was filled with hostility towards Negroes, and clearly disapproved of any extended period of exposure to their presence, but she was now beginning to realize that her mother’s irrational fear of Negroes was yet another example of the increasingly unbridgeable gap of understanding that was opening up between them. Luckily, her friend appeared to be oblivious to her mother’s discomfort, and by the time Francine had shown her how to feed the puppy pieces of jackfruit, and let her cradle the whelp in her arms, she was convinced that she too wanted one. Her memories of the few weeks that she had spent at the family estate, and the books that she had read, and the long solitary walks that she had taken in the rainforest wondering when her breasts might appear and if anybody might be interested in them, all quickly disappeared from her mind. Later that same day, after Francine and her father had departed, she announced to her mother that she too would like a puppy on a long piece of string, but her mother avoided her gaze and pretended that she hadn’t heard her daughter’s voice.
The following week Francine slipped her hand from that of her father and ran up the street and knocked at the iron gate to the yard. Her mother rose imperiously to her feet and instructed her embittered daughter to remain where she was in the tranquility of the living room with her book spread open on her knees. Sunlight slanted through the jalousies and cast an oddly striped pattern across the floor, and she listened as her mother stepped out into the yard. Before the Negro girl could ask for her friend, Mrs. Williams’s sugar-coated voice made it clear that Gwendolen was resting. Furthermore, it was simply too hot for her daughter to be out in the sun. Her mother suggested that on such a particularly scorching morning it might well be more comfortable for Francine if she went straight to work in the kitchen, thereby securing some shelter from the heat. Francine’s father arrived at his daughter’s side and immediately detected a new register in his employer’s voice, one which his child was not yet attuned to. He took hold of his girl’s arm and thanked Mrs. Williams for her thought-fulness. Francine would spend her last day as an employee working in the relative coolness of the kitchen with the other house hold servants.
She peers down at the washerwoman standing in the yard beneath the huge mango tree and decides that if necessary she will stay up in the branches all night. Miss Ann points at her. “You think I can’t see you up there, hiding like a damn monkey.” The woman puts both hands on her hips and continues to look up at the raggedy head of the great tree, which casts a heavy shadow across the whole yard. “Child, you can play big woman with your mother, but you don’t fool any of we. Why you can’t behave your backside and come down? You too damn willful.” Eventually Miss Ann gives up and sits on a stool next to Josephine the cook, and the two servants begin to laugh.
Whenever people suggested to her mother that girls were more trouble than boys, her mother always expressed surprise. After all, her first child, Edward, had gone off to study medicine and seemed disinclined to communicate with anybody, while Owen’s waywardness continued to embarrass the family. It was Owen who kept her mother awake at nights, for the second son seemed determined to do whatever he pleased without any regard for the consequences. He was habitually absent without explanation, and when he did show his face, one could be sure that complications, almost invariably connected to local Negresses, would soon follow him in through the door. The girls were easier; the eldest, Minna, had been sent to live with relatives in the Bahamas, which left just herself and her younger sister, Brenda, who besported herself as an obedient angel. These days, however, it was her own stubborn eleven-year-old behaviour that was making her mother fretful and causing her to wonder if perhaps there was, in fact, some truth to the belief that girls were more trouble than boys.
On the day the island learned that the Empress had died, her mother decided that she would hold a small tea party on the veranda for her group of ladies. The men had hurried off to Government House to mingle on the manicured lawn and raise their glasses and begin to make plans for a more official event, but it seemed important to her mother that the formally gloved ladies of the island mark the passing of Queen Victoria with an impromptu gathering of their own. To this end, her mother had asked Miss Ann, the washerwoman, to lay out Sunday-best dresses for Gwendolen and Brenda on their beds, and she instructed the woman to thereafter join Josephine in the kitchen and set about preparing tea and cakes for no more than a dozen guests. As she sat on the edge of her bed and watched a skittish Brenda eagerly changing into her dress, she decided there was no reason for her to take part in this ridiculous afternoon tea. She tossed her clean dress to one side, and then marched purposefully downstairs and out into the yard, where she saw the rangy cook scraping yams while crouched unsteadily on her three-legged stool.
“Child, why you looking so vex?”
The question surprised her, for she was trying hard to appear as though she didn’t have a care in the world. Josephine scratched her squat nose and then hitched up her shapeless sackcloth dress and laughed at her.
“I already tell you if you want to survive in this world you mustn’t let people read what you thinking. Now change your face.”
She looked at the barefoot woman, who she feared was some kind of obeah woman, and then she began to scurry away, for Josephine had from time to time tormented her with cockroaches and spiders and centipedes, all of which she knew terrified the young mistress.
“You just wait a minute.”
Josephine put her provisions down on the ground and stood up. “Look at me and straighten up your mouth.” She stopped and turned to face the cook. “Good, now your mouth is fixed I want you to look yonder with your eyes, and don’t blink. That is how your face must be when you talk with people, you hear? Make your eyes dead like so.”
She did as Josephine suggested.
“Good. That is good. Everything is in the eyes.”
Her frustrated mother stood in the doorway to the bedroom and shouted at Brenda and demanded that she go and bring her sister inside, but Brenda began to cry. Feeling as though she might at any moment burst with anger, her mother passed quickly downstairs and out into the yard and approached the cook, who, having repositioned herself on her stool, spoke without looking up.
“Mistress, I believe the child just gone up in the mango tree.”
Knowing that her ladies would be arriving imminently, her mother strode across the yard to the foot of the tree, flapping a garden hat to fan herself.
“Gwendolen, I insist you come down here this instant.”
Miss Ann returned from the bakery with a basketful of goods, and she entered the yard and began to talk rapidly with the cook, but her mother had no idea what the two Negresses were saying. Then a still-sobbing Brenda appeared, and conscientiously holding the hem of her dress clear of the dirt, she joined her mother, and together they craned back their necks and squinted up into the bushy underbelly of the tree.
“For heaven’s sake,” continued her mother, “the Empress has died. Show some respect.”
She ignored her mother and looked at the red rust on the roofs which, from this height, she could see leafing their way downhill towards Mr. Bell’s pier, where an old launch had been moored for the greater part of the day. As she stared out towards the horizon, she knew that soon she would be able to witness the final defiant ignition of the sun as it slid into the sea and flashed its farewell for the day. This was her town, and from her perch in the mango tree she could see the full extent of the capital and she couldn’t understand why anybody would want to board a ship and leave such a place. Then, confident that nobody could see her, she rubbed a hand across her chest and once again made sure she was finally budding. It wouldn’t be too long now, and she imagined that her mother’s anxieties about her would only increase once she began to secure the attention of men. Suddenly a fruit plummeted with a heavy thud from an overladen branch into the yard below. She looked directly down through the branches and could see that her mother was beginning to appear foolish, for her eleven-year-old daughter was hidden away out of sight, and to any onlooker it would appear as though her mother had taken leave of her senses and was addressing a mango tree.
“Please, you must come down here where I can talk properly with you, or your father shall hear about this.” Brenda gently touched her mother’s arm. “Young lady, do you hear me?”
Dusk fell at the same time each evening, and it did so swiftly, as though an expert finger and thumb were snuffing out a candle. Thereafter, a theatre of noise established itself as the air was filled with a discordant fracas of cicadas and frogs. She listened attentively, while, to both sides of her, bats began to swoop and whistle around the mango tree. She could hear the low hum and clatter of the ladies taking tea on the veranda, and she could see the agitated shadow of her mother fluttering about and trying to steer the evening along a course that might be considered both solemn and convivial. She knew her mother would be assuring them all that although they had suffered a great loss, there would indeed be a new beginning. Her father, on the other hand, would be standing under one of the great saman trees in the garden of Government House and accepting yet another glass of whisky from a silver tray borne by one of the liveried Negroes who had been trained to serve. Her father’s mind would be unruffled by what he would regard as sentimental tosh about the