Chapter Ten

It rained all night. I fell asleep to the rattle on the roof and woke up to the very same rattle. A deep melancholy descended into my being and took root. Everything seemed so hopeless, so unfinished, so impossible. Everything in my life fed into the misery that engulfed me. The coolies, the discovery of Papa’s secret cruelty, Mama’s absence – and then, yes, George.

The moment of Truth that had overcome me in the Post Office – that exquisite moment when I had known to the depths of my being that I loved George Theodore Quint. That I would love him forever. That sense of communion that had lent me wings, had vanished completely. It all now seemed only like the hysterical imagination of a silly, overwrought girl. It had only been an illusion. That last meeting with him had told me all I wanted to know. The black despair that had crept over my spirit intermittently in my days of trust and hope and confidence had finally seeped through my being and taken possession of it. It was as if the sheer joy of love had gouged a hole into my soul, which was now filled with a dark, heavy sludge from which I could not escape.

The darkness gnawed at me from the inside; I stood at my window and gazed out northwards, at the huge sheets of water gushing from above as if from an inexhaustible source. I had managed to push him from my mind for a short while, but now it was back, the longing, the yearning. Oh, for just a glimpse of that lost joy!

My yearning was that of the watchman waiting for dawn, my emptiness that of the landlocked seaman far from the ocean. I visualised eyes that melted deep into my own; I heard a rich deep voice that spoke of conductor-wires but resonated with – but no. There was a word I dared not say even to myself. A thing that forced its way up through smothering layers of dark, like a rosebud covered in earth and bearing upwards to the light, its petals pushing outwards as they unfold. Something tight and closed within my soul swelling with an indomitable force. I would not, could not name it again. Love was an illusion, a delusion, a figment of an overwrought imagination. Pure emotion, unstable, as a house built on sand, transient, and ultimately false. I had fallen into a trap that day in the post office. Imagined things that did not exist. In me surged an ocean of unreleased tears. George was no more. I must banish him from my mind, banish all hope and allow darkness to settle in my mind.

Somewhere out there was a village and a post office and a young man whose eyes spoke louder than words. It was that silent voice I yearned to hear, not the roar of rain; I yearned to feel again what I had once felt, but the moment had come and gone and it would never return. It had been a dream. Unreal. Lost forever.

Papa drove off into the rain soon after breakfast. He returned just before lunch, his humour entirely restored.

‘Everything’s fine,’ he announced. ‘I’ve taken care of it. I spoke to Chief Inspector Armstrong and he agrees that the whole matter has been atrociously exaggerated – a man has a right to defend himself, his castle and his family. All charges have been dropped. No need to worry.’

Mildred placed a bowl of steaming hot potatoes on the table and Papa slid several on to his plate, cut them open and drowned them in gravy.

‘Nevertheless,’ he continued, ‘I want you girls to be careful. The coolies are getting restless – not just here, but up and down the Courantyne, and in Demerara. Ours wasn’t the only plantation where they rioted that day – imagine! Dieu Merci and Glasgow had troubles too, and even as far up as Skeldon, but not as serious as ours. It was almost as if there was some sort of conspiracy – but hardly possible, considering the distances involved. And in Demerara there have been strikes. These coolies will never understand. If we were to give in to their ridiculous demands …’ He stopped mid-sentence.

‘Then what, Papa?’

‘Then the entire sugar industry would break down. The plantations would fold. It would be over. BG would collapse. But – that’s not for you girls to worry about. We planters are taking care of it. They don’t call us sugar kings for nothing. Government supports us. Great Britain supports us. That’s all you need to know. But – that’s enough. Remember the rule – no business at the table. So what have you girls been up to while I was away?’

‘Papa, what are their demands?’ I had not forgotten the logies. Why was everyone telling us not to worry, not get involved? Not only Papa, but Gopal too, who just like Papa had told us – warned us – not to worry. Both sides were telling us to keep away; it was beginning to bother me that there was a huge situation brewing away right on our doorstep and we weren’t allowed to think about it. Thinking about it was what I needed to do.

‘Winnie, I said, don’t worry about it. It doesn’t concern you. You don’t need to know these things. It’s a complicated situation and nothing for young women to worry about. There’s all that beautiful silk I brought for you. That will give you enough to think about – a perfect occupation for a rainy day. Think about what dresses you’ll have made. Now we have the car I can have Miss Whatever’s-her-name brought up from New Amsterdam and back in a morning. I want to see you looking beautiful – there’ll be a big party at the Georgetown Club once the rains are over, and I want you two to be the most beautiful girls there. It’s a good thing women are still women here in BG – none of this suffragette nonsense. A plague of harridans is the last thing we need.’

Yoyo and I let him talk on for the rest of the meal. Eventually, he and Miss Wright entered into some conversation about the situation in Europe – it seemed there was trouble brewing there too, and Papa had brought back a stack of newspapers from Georgetown. Miss Wright was eager for his opinion, which he gave as pompously as ever. I felt as if I had awakened from a dream; that my kind, sweet, perfect dream Papa had turned into this stranger whose every word made me want to curl up in embarrassment or anguish or even revulsion. In that dream I had been blind to the faults of my beloved father; faults that in any other person would have been as glaring as if they had been wearing horns and carrying a pitchfork.

 Could I still love Papa, with all these faults? After all, he was still my father. And he loved me; there was no doubt about that. Papa was a family man; we were everything to him, and he let us know it without reservation. How could I detest someone who loved me? Was it possible to love the person, but detest their personality? How did that work? Did George have faults I would detest, if only I were not too blind to see them? Did Mama love Papa in spite of his faults? Had she seen them as clearly as I now did? Was it those faults that drove her away, rather than the reasons Yoyo and I had surmised?

So many questions. So few answers. And so much rain.

The rain came down and the floods came up. The kokers opened and closed. The water on the land rose and fell. The ditches and canals overflowed. The roads were awash with water, emerging from the floods only when the kokers opened. From the sky, water poured down. It plunged and plummeted, sometimes in a perpendicular rush like a one-drop waterfall, sometimes, when the winds were high and fierce, slanted and biting, a vicious horde of silver mosquitoes. It seemed there would be no end to it; that there was an inexhaustible ocean in the sky filling all of the universe; that heaven’s sluice-gates had opened and all there would be was water till the end of our days. That the ocean up there was trying to drown the earth, and here were we in this mansion, trapped in a dry bubble while around us the ocean on earth filled up. But then the kokers opened and the water sank but more water came from above. Water, water, water.

Papa went off to work each day in his car – how he loved that car! – but I had no idea what work could be done in a solid downpour that never let up for more than a few minutes at a time. 

Rain. Days of it. A solid week of rain. I watched it, listened to it, smelt it, and breathed it. Even our dry spaces were damp, the air moist and warm, sticky with vapour; but sometimes cool, so that I drew my shawl around my shoulders and pulled it close and shivered. My hair and my clothes hung limp as I paced the floor, wandered up and down stairs, stood at windows staring out into the rain, curled up in armchairs with books whose pages were soft and tired, soaked with humidity. I tried playing the violin, but the roar from outside drowned out the sound and I gave up.

Was it my imagination; that this was the heaviest rain we had had in my memory? Or did it only appear that way because of my longing to escape it? Because it so mirrored my soul, the melancholy that flooded me.

And in my misery a crack appeared and I remembered the logies, and I knew that for all my gloom and all my misery, here in my white wooden mansion, I was still high and dry and privileged beyond measure. Guilt flooded through me, soul-destroying guilt, and I wept. I wept for those out there in the rain and the mud, for the weightlessness of my own complaints, for my helplessness in the face of true suffering. I wept for my doomed love; how trivial it seemed in the light of that comparison! And I walked out into the rain and stood there weeping, allowing it to soak me down to the skin in a feeble, foolish and pathetic attempt at solidarity.

As for Yoyo: every morning Papa sent the motor car to the senior staff quarters to fetch Maggie McInnes, and Maggie would spend the rest of the day with us, learning with us in the mornings and playing with Yoyo in the afternoons, retuning home only in the evening. She and Yoyo found enough to occupy themselves through all the rain. They played games: Chinese Checkers, and Ludo, and huddled together giggling and chatting, unconcerned with the weather.

As a distraction, I had only my books. But I soon finished all the books. I had a pile to be returned to the library and exchanged for new ones, and I would have to wait for a long enough pause in the rain to venture out. It did not take longer than twenty minutes to walk from the gate, north up the road, and through the senior staff compound to the library. I had already made my way through most of the novels there, for it was a small library; however, it was constantly replenished by books donated by staff members. I had not been back for several weeks, and I hoped to find a few that would lure me into faraway worlds, allowing me to escape, if only for a few hours a day, the melancholic vacuum of my real life.

Finally, one morning, during the lessons, the rain gradually diminished to a light shower, then to a sprinkling, and then, after lunch, it stopped completely and the layer of clouds covering the sky thinned out to a glowing white veil bearing the promise of sunshine – a thing we had not seen now for almost two weeks.

I quickly changed into an outdoor skirt and blouse, and put the five or six books to be returned into a cotton bag. I went out the back door, through the kitchen porch, stopping only to pull on a pair of wellington boots, for the road, though drained, was wet and full of puddles. Breathing in the sweet damp air, I set off buoyed by a sense of freedom, freedom from the cloying tedium of the house.

But hardly five minutes past the gate my footsteps faltered and my heart gave a deep lurch and my breath stood still. I had rounded the corner and turned north and I saw him immediately – cycling towards me – sailing nearer by the second. I stopped altogether. My feet refused to walk. I could not breathe. My heart hammered and my thoughts stopped.

I could only watch in stillness as he drew nearer. His gaze, fixed on me, was a magnetic thread that pulled him closer, closer, closer until he was right there in front of me. His leg swung over the bicycle saddle and he sprang to the ground before me. There he stood, and our eyes locked. I held my breath and swallowed the lump in my throat. I wanted to say something, anything, a greeting, his name. Nothing came. He too was silent. And yet we spoke; oh, how we spoke! I could read his eyes like a book. They had been so cold and blank that last day in the post office, yet now they spilled over with feeling, saturated with that thing I could not name; they melted me with their eloquence. The lump rose in my throat again and I swallowed. I tried to speak but only a croak emerged.

The sky darkened and growled. We both looked upwards. Shadowy clouds had gathered and now huddled into an angry dark shroud thick with rain. A deafening crack like a whiplash rent the air, and thunder grumbled. The softness in George’s eyes turned to concern, and finally the spell broke and he spoke.

‘Rain gon’ fall in a minute,’ he said. ‘You have a raincoat?’

I shook my head.

‘You better go back home,’ he said. ‘You gon’ get soaked.’

I shook my head again. The thought of returning to the house to be cooped up again for however many weeks it would rain when it started again was unbearable. Now I was out I would continue to the library. I would get wet. So what!

‘I’m going to the library!’ I said, and my voice was a croak. ‘In the senior staff quarters – it won’t take long. I’ve got some books …’ I patted the bag hanging over my shoulder.

‘Then take my raincoat. I don’ wear it anyway. I don’ mind getting’ wet. You can’t let the books get wet!’

Still speaking he opened one of his saddlebags and removed a roll of material; it turned out to be a big midnight-blue mackintosh. He placed his bicycle on its stand, shook the mac open, and stepped towards me with it, holding it up by the shoulders. Truly, I hadn’t thought about the books; and they indeed would get wet if I continued through the rain; and so I allowed him to dress me in his mackintosh. He held it up as I pushed one arm then the other into the sleeves; then he buttoned it up the front, and raised the hood so my head was covered. He never once touched my body while doing all this; but all the while his eyes clung to mine and mine to his. Neither of us spoke as he dressed me.

Lightning flashed. The heavens broke and a waterfall gushed over us. We stood still, barely a foot apart. Not moving, not speaking, not reacting to the rain. He was soaked through within a moment; he seemed not to care. He only gazed at me through the rain.

And then he spoke, at last, and said the word.

‘Miss Winnie – oh. I love you so much. I just love you so much. I can’t stop thinking of you. I just love you so much …’

And then his hands were on my cheeks, cupping my face, and he was leaning forward, tilting my head up by the chin, drawing my face closer, kissing me, kissing my forehead and my cheeks, my nose, my chin, my closed eyelids, and at last, my lips. The slanting rain beating my cheek from the north was hard and cold and harsh, but his lips were soft and warm and sweet. Then he drew away and looked at me through the rain. His face was blurred and wet and I knew not if it was from rain or tears, because his face was a crumpled mask of abject misery.

‘I just love you so much! I’m sorry!’

He turned away then, away from me, and wheeled his bicycle off its stand and jumped on to it and rode away from me through the rain. I stood watching him ride away, into the water. He never looked back. And then I turned and continued on my way to the library.

I no longer walked. I ran, I danced. I twirled and skipped through the rain. I laughed, I sang, I yelled, I flung out my arms to the rain and the sky and the sodden earth; I grew wings; I flew, I sailed, I whirled and waltzed all the way to the senior staff compound. A puzzled guard opened the gate and I danced past him in a twirling, prancing, laughing, waving, rain-sodden gambol, a foal let out to play. He must have thought me mad; and mad I was. Mad with an ecstasy too huge to hold; mad with a sweet euphoria bubbling up through my being, a rush of golden splendour. The guard shook his head and smiled to himself as if to say, these white people!

On I spun, dancing through the compound. The rain still fell in a steady cascade, lighter now after the first rush yet still enough to keep people indoors, and so I arrived at the library out of breath, grinning from ear to ear, without any further human encounters, and only one animal: Rummy, the librarian’s dog who usually waited patiently on the bottom step, ran out from beneath the house and greeted me with her usual overflowing joy. Elation exuding from every pore of my body, I stooped down and patted her soggy fur. It wasn’t enough. I flung my arms around her, cuddled her and laughed with her and she, enjoying such unabashed ardour, whined and wagged her tail and licked the rain from my face. I hugged her one last time, laughed goodbye, and ran up the stairs to the library.

The library wasn’t really a full-time library. It was a private venture of Miss Hull, one of the European primary school teachers, whose passion was literature. It had started with her extensive private collection, which she lent out to the book-starved members of the senior staff compound. The demand was so heavy that this casual lending needed to be administered; that is, book borrowers needed to be monitored, and the lent books tracked. The books were duly indexed, classified, and given a room of their own in Miss Hull’s home; borrowers had to become library members, and were allowed access three days a week for two hours. In these two hours Miss Hull acted as honorary librarian. Books reached her from many sources; they were donated to her by senior staff members, and sometimes there were library book exchanges between other plantations. We would never run out of new books.

Still grinning from ear to ear, I opened the front door and burst into Miss Hull’s gallery – her door was never locked – and water sloughed off of me onto her polished floor.

‘Oops!’ I cried, and exited again. On the sheltered porch I removed George’s mackintosh, laid it across the railing, took off the wellingtons, and re-entered the house. Miss Hull, drawn by the opening and closing of doors and my cry, now entered the gallery herself. Seeing me, she rushed up.

‘My dear Winnie! What on earth! Why, you’re soaking wet!’

I had not noticed; how could I have, in the oblivion of ecstasy? In my reckless cavorting the hood from the mackintosh had fallen from my head and my hair was wet, and so was the hem of my skirt, all the way up to my knees, for I had skipped and danced through puddles without thought or care. Water had trickled past the mackintosh’s collar as well, down my neck and wetting my blouse thoroughly. It had even eased in through the tops of my wellingtons; my stockings were soaked. What did I care!

But Miss Hull cared. She bustled away and returned with a towel and went about briskly rubbing down my hair while muttering comforting things like tut-tut and silly girl and come, dear! The towel was not enough. She ushered me into her own bedroom and made me change into clothes of her own: a skirt that was far too wide and long, which she rolled at the waist so that I would not tread on the hem, and a blouse that was far too loose at the front, Miss Hull being rather big-bosomed. She dried my feet and eased them into thick, hand-knitted woolly socks, the kind no one ever wore in BG.

That done, she took a second look at my face. She frowned, and her lips puckered. ‘Whatever were you thinking, my dear, to come here through the downpour? And why on earth are you smirking like a Cheshire cat?’

‘Oh, Miss Hull, I’m just so happy!’ I replied, and added, ‘I love the rain, don’t you?’

And then I hugged her.

Unaccustomed to being hugged by her ex-pupils, and nonplussed by my out-of-character exuberance, she could only purse her lips some more, mutter a few more silly girls and pull away. She picked up my wet clothes from the floor and laid them over a clothes horse; and then she picked up the bag that had been slung over my shoulder.

‘Oh! Oh look!’ she cried. ‘These books are wet! They’re quite sodden! Oh, Winnie, really! You might take better care of our precious books! Oh, how careless of you! Oh, what a shame! They’re ruined!’

I took them from her hands. ‘No,’ I said. ‘See? Only the top one got wet, and it’s only a few drops. It’s just a bit moist, that’s all; it will dry. Just lay it in the sun for a while. It’s only water, not tar or anything.’

‘What sun? I haven’t seen the sun for weeks. Oh Winnie, this is just so tiring of you. Whatever were you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t,’ I admitted. ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Hull. Truly I am. I’m afraid I got carried away a little.’

‘By the rain? I never knew the rain could have such an effect on you. Are you sure that’s the reason?’ She peered into my face as if looking for some hidden source of foolishness. My cheeks turned hot.

‘You’re blushing, my dear; I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. However, I won’t pry. What you young people get up to in your spare time is your own business and that of your parents, not mine. It’s such a pity about that book, however. Mr Dickens would be horrified at the way you treat his precious words. Haven’t I always taught you all to treat books with very special care? Oh dear, oh dear. And even of it dries out, it will be warped.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated, truly sorry now. ‘If it does end up warped, Papa will replace it.’

‘That’s the trouble with you planter children,’ said Miss Hull in her sternest teacher voice. ‘Spoilt silly. “Papa will replace it”, indeed. That’s exactly the reason you take no care in the first place. If you had to pay for damaged goods with your own hard-earned money you would think twice before cavorting through the rain with my library books! Now, I suppose you want to borrow some more, so run along and choose a few, and please take better care next time! No running around in the rain with them! And in fact I’m not going to send you home until this weather lets up. If it doesn’t let up I’ll order a coach. Now run along, chop-chop.’

Half an hour later I had chosen my books and the rain had diminished to a light drizzle. Miss Hull packed my damp clothes into a dry bag, wrapped up the books carefully and placed them in another, waterproof bag, and placed an umbrella in my hand as I left the house.

‘You can return it next time you come – I’ve got another one,’ she said as I pulled on my wellingtons. ‘Now take care, my dear!’

I said goodbye and left the house. Over the porch railing lay George’s mackintosh. I picked it up and lay it lovingly over my left arm. I raised the umbrella over my head and walked down the stairs. Rummy jumped up at me, wetting my skirt with her paws, but I had no hands free to return her greeting so I only smiled at her and said ‘good girl’.

Actually, I was thinking of the mackintosh. One fine day I would return it to George. I could hardly wait.

Mama’s Diary: Norfolk, 1890

Liebes Tagebuch,

I keep resolving to write to you more often but everything gets in the way and holds me back. Kathleen grows bigger by the day, and fills me with delight – if not for her I would surely be pining away, I miss Archie so much. I have an excellent nursemaid for her, who loves her almost as much as I do – well, that is an exaggeration, but she is such a devoted nurse and I am grateful for her loving care. She is almost a friend. But I can’t let the family know. I am sometimes shocked and appalled by the way the servants are treated in this household. It is as if they are mere chattels. It is so un-Christian! It seems to me that I, though born Jewish, have a far more Christian heart than my in-laws. For instance, one of the maids, a slight, fearful girl younger even than I am, tripped on the carpet and fell, and in falling she dropped the vase of flowers she was carrying and it broke, and water splashed all over the floor, wetting the carpet. Her head hit the corner of a table and she had a cut on her forehead. We were all there as witnesses. But instead of showing concern for her injury, Lady Cox shouted at her for her clumsiness, and informed her that the price of the broken vase will be taken off her wages! And the servants earn so little to begin with! I could not bear it – I was so embarrassed, mortified by her arrogance and cruelty. The poor little maid.

I managed to slip away once the maid had cleaned up and I went in search of her. I found her and ensured she was well looked after, and spoke a few words of sympathy. She was crying, and I longed to take her in my arms, but that of course would not do.

I did take her hand and squeeze it, to let her know that I at least cared. She is human, just as we are, and it is not her fault she is born into lowly circumstances, just as it is not our accomplishment that caused us to be born into more advantageous conditions. As a new Christian I have taken the teachings of Our Lord to heart and does He not say we should treat each other with love and kindness? I just do not understand it. If this is the English upper class – well, I do not want to be a part of it.

I almost forgot to mention that Archie has arrived safely in the colony of British Guiana – for at last I have memorized the name of my new home! – and seems to have settled in nicely. I cannot wait to join him, but we must wait till Kathleen is a little bit bigger and stronger. Thank goodness, my nursemaid – Elsa is her name – will be travelling with us.

I look forward to it, and am no longer frightened by the Atlantic Crossing. I have found faith, as Archie instructed me, and now look forward to joining him at our new home across the seas. What an adventure it will be!

I do feel homesick sometimes. I miss the mountains, the snow in winter, the cobbled streets of Salzburg; the music, the concerts, the opera, the balls. Occasionally, we do go to stay in the town house in London but it just isn’t the same. Most of all, I miss my language. Though I am now fluent – but very far from perfect! – in English, I miss conversing in German. How glad I am to be able to write to you, Liebes Tagebuch. I would surely forget my own language otherwise.