Chapter Sixteen

‘Miss Winnie! Miss Winnie, wake up! We done get there! Kitty! We got to get out!’

‘What?’ I shook my head to dispel the sleep and it took a good few seconds before I could recall where I was and catch up with real life. The train had stopped. All around there was bustle and noise, voices raised and people pushing down the aisle. Auntie Dolly was on her feet, reaching up into the luggage rack. She pulled my suitcase down and dropped it to the ground at my feet, reached up again for her own luggage. I rose slowly to my feet on weak and wobbly legs, adjusted my hair and pushed my blouse back into my waistband.

‘Girl, we int got time for that sorta thing. Come, let we go – before the train drive off an’ we still standin’ here – hurry, hurry – push you way through!’

I grabbed my suitcase and did as she said, pushing my way into the line of humanity creeping down the aisle to the carriage door.

‘Excuse me,’ I mumbled as I edged myself in. ‘Excuse me, please.’

A man stood still to let me in, but not without a look of blatant astonishment which at first I did not understand. Auntie Dolly soon cleared up that bewilderment.

‘Eh-eh!’ she said, in voice high with sarcasm. ‘You never see a white girl in you life before? Lemme in behind she before she get lost.’ And she pushed in behind me.

I edged forward and reached the door, where I stepped out onto the platform. It was bustling with people: people waiting impatiently to board the train, people waving and calling as they waited for their relatives, people with bags and bundles rushing to and fro – sheer pandemonium. Auntie Dolly got out behind me, hoisted a large cloth bundle on to her head, and, taking hold of my elbow, guided me towards the simple station building made of wood painted white and edged with green. A large sign read Kitty Village. I had seen that sign so many times when we stopped here on the way to Georgetown; it was the sign that said we were just one stop away from the capital. I had never, though, left the train here before. Why should I? Archie Cox’s family had no business in Kitty, a darkie village on the outskirts of Georgetown.

That a Cox had no business here was made abundantly clear as we walked out into the street beyond the station. Just like the man on the train, everyone stared; eyebrows raised in astonishment, heads turned, children giggled and pointed. Auntie Dolly pursed her lips and, still clasping my elbow, pushed me onto the pavement and nudged me forward. Her other hand was raised to steady the bundle precariously balanced on her head.

‘Is what all-you staring at? We is some animal in a zoo? You never see white skin in you life?’ So she called out to the various onlookers, forcing them to look away. Auntie Dolly sucked her teeth.

‘Them people stupidly bad. Them in’t got no manners. Don’t worry, girl, Auntie Dolly gon’ take care of you. Come, this way, this way, cross the street! Mind that donkey cart! Hey, driver! Watch where you goin’! Keep you eye on the road! Is a girl I got here, not a circus clown! That suitcase not too heavy for you? Why not put it on you head, like me?’

We stopped then; she carefully set her bundle on the ground and helped me lift my suitcase to my head. It had indeed become too heavy for one hand, and my fingers hurt. Together we steadied it on my head, and I held on with both hands.

‘Good, good. Now come this way. Is not too far. Jus’a few blocks down. Don’t bother with them people, let them stare. They only ignorant. Come dear, you got it good? Walk straight and you gon’ find it easy. Chin up! Head high! Hold on tight!’

Auntie Dolly set a brisk pace. We walked along a cracked pavement, so narrow that I stepped back and let her lead. We crossed several streets, passed the market closed down for the day, and plunged ever deeper into the heart of Kitty. The streets themselves held little traffic; just the occasional dray cart or donkey cart loaded with wooden planks, or plantains, or coconuts. People still turned to stare. We must have indeed been a strange sight, a fat darkie with an even fatter cloth-bundle on her head, followed by a dishevelled white girl with a suitcase on her head hurrying to keep up. I really couldn’t blame them for looking and, well, wondering. But the closer we got to home the more belligerent Auntie Dolly became in her scolding, shouting at them from across the road, calling them out by name, even stopping at garden-gates to holler at some poor lad peering at us from the safety of his own home:

‘Get you stinkin’ eyes off a we, yes, is you I talkin’ to Errol Johnson! Go home an’ mine you own business or I gon’ come roun’ an whip you backside!’

‘You, Daisy! Is what you tink you lookin’ at! Get you little rass back in you house or I gon’ come roun’ an’ quarrel wit’ you Mammy this very evenin’, you tink I don’t know ‘bout you an’ that boy from de wharf?’

She bellowed at them with the wrath of God. Her swearing was worse than a cane cutter’s at harvest time, but I was used to their curses and so I kept my head straight ahead and walked on, trying hard, sometimes, not to smile:

‘Bertie Williams, you backside gon’ turn so raw by the time I finish wid you it gon be worse than if red-ants did eat you down to de bone! You gon’ be sittin’ in a pan a coconut oil for a week! You never see a white girl in you life before?  You Mammy din’ teach you no manners?’

We left the commercial section of the village with its quaint little shops – a haberdashers, an ironmonger, a baker, not to mention the closing-down fruit-and-vegetable stalls of the market – and walked down a street lined on both sides by little houses on stilts. Children played in the yards and on the stairs to the front doors. They resembled the village houses at Promised Land, and once again I felt that old sense of shame – that in these houses smaller than our lounge entire families lived, while we Coxes rattled around in our sprawling mansion. I supposed it wasn’t my fault; I didn’t choose to be born into that family, after all. But still. I felt that shame.

I was weary, and lagged behind. Auntie Dolly would have none of it. She stopped, turned around and now I was the object of her bellowing:

‘Move those legs! You think you is out on the plantation with a crowd a servants runnin’ behind you? Move you li’l white backside!’

No darkie had ever spoken, no shouted, to me in that tone ever before. It had always been simpering, grovelling obeisance, demanded by Papa, accepted by me. I had taken it for granted, taken it, in fact, as natural law, the way things had to be and ought to be, and now involuntarily a heat-wave of indignation rose to my head; I must have turned scarlet, as her next words indicated:

‘My my, I see you really got red blood runnin’ in you veins; I did tink’ with you people it was gold!’ She cackled with laughter but her voice turned mild. ‘We nearly there. Only five more minutes.’

It was actually more like fifteen, but eventually we turned into a yet narrower road with a potholed tarmac enclosed between grassy verges badly in need of a trim. There was no pavement here, but also little traffic; only a donkey-cart laden high with cut grass plodding towards us. We edged past, then Auntie Dolly waited for me and I walked on beside her. The houses here were smaller still, but set farther back from the road. As ever, gutters ran along both sides of the road. A group of half-naked boys sat on one of the bridges, exclaiming excitedly as one of them lowered a fishing-net into the water. A couple of guppies swam in a jar beside them. The boys looked up to stare in silence – at me, not at Auntie Dolly – as we passed, but she, this time, reprimanded them with only an impatient gesture. A cow, so skinny you could almost count her ribs, grazed by the wayside. Eventually, Aunt Dolly turned on to one of the bridges and opened a rusty creaking gate.

‘Me house,’ she said simply and with a modicum of pride. ‘Bought and paid for by the sweat of me own brow.’

A bell attached to the gate jangled as we entered the yard. Immediately a host of ragged children swarmed around her, jumping up at her and pulling on her arms, and calling her grandma. She, smiling fondly, admonished them mildly.

‘Jack, Molly, Winston – where you-all manners? You don’t see we got a visitor?’

They all turned around then and stared at me in silence. This vexed Auntie Dolly.

‘Is where you-all think you is, in the zoo? Where you manners? I will have you know that this is Miss Winnie Cox from Plantation Promised Land and she will be our guest tonight.’

And then they all came forward, one by one, holding out their little hands and shaking mine and saying ‘good evening’; the little girls held out their skirts as they curtsied and the little boys bowed slightly. Aunt Dolly nodded sternly and led me up the rickety front staircase and the jabbering children trailed behind.

The front door stood open; we entered. It was the first time I had even been in a darkie house, discounting the staff cottages in our compound at Promised Land. To say it was tiny would be an exaggeration. The front gallery was little more than a strip of space lined with windows. At its far end, in pride of place, stood a Singer sewing machine. Neat little piles of fabric lay on the machine itself, on a small table next to it, and on the floor. A half-finished cotton dress, its hem, armholes and neck lined with pins, hung on a coat-hanger on a cord suspended across the room. A group of cane chairs was squashed into the remaining space in the room.

Before us, extending into the house itself, was another narrow room, in which stood a long wooden dining table alongside the right wall, with several wooden chairs and stools pushed up against it. On the wall to our left, two half-open doors. Beyond the table, another door opened into what was obviously the kitchen, for the smell of something mysteriously spicy and deliciously inviting emerged from its innards. I realised that I was ravenous.

‘Mummy, is you?’ called a female voice from that source of mouth-watering delight, and a younger woman bearing a strong resemblance to Auntie Dolly though far less corpulent emerged, a cooking ladle in one hand. ‘Them Winston too hard-ears – I send he to Mr Godfrey and …’ She stopped mid-sentence. She had seen me.

‘Is who that?’

‘Is a girl I meet ‘pon the train. Don’t stare like that. Is a nice girl. She got a bit a trouble so I bring she home. She gon’ spend the night. She hungry bad. Miss Winnie, this is me daughter Myrtle. Myrtle, this is Miss Winnie Cox.’

Myrtle ignored the formal introduction. She glared at her mother.

‘Eh-eh! Since when is a hotel fuh white people!’

‘Is a nice girl, a good girl, Myrtle. Don’t be rude. Is I invite she. She need help.’

Myrtle stood now arms akimbo, staring at me. I trembled under her wrath.

‘An’ where pray this Miss Princess gon’ sleep? In the four-poster bed or in the hammock in the bottom house?’

‘Don’t be like that, Myrtle. I sorry for she. I gon’ give she me bed, an I gon’ sleep with you’all in de big bed. Is plenty a room for one more. Winston could sleep on the floor.’

Winston, a boy of about nine, had something to say about that. All the children – five in all, aged from about three up to him, had been giggling and shuffling behind us up to now, obviously intrigued by the drama.

‘I not gon’ sleep ‘pon no floor!’ cried this Winston. ‘You not gon’ make me sleep ‘pon no floor!’

‘You shut you mouth, boy! You eye pass me or what! You gon’ sleep where I tell you to sleep! We got a guest for the night an’ we got to offer she a bed!’

‘But Granny …’

‘You hard-ears? You in’t hear what I say? Now, Myrtle, get back in de kitchen an’ finish the dinner an’ remember to cook for one extra – two a-we hungry bad. Miss Winnie, come lemme show you where you gon’ sleep. Here. Your room. I gon’ put clean sheets on the bed and you gon’ sleep like on roses.’

While speaking she pushed open the first of the two bedroom doors. I entered behind her. The room was as small as to be expected – about as big as our bathroom at Promised Land. There was a narrow bed pushed into a corner and a single wardrobe occupying another corner. There was a cord spanned across the room from which hung various garments on coat-hangers: dresses, shirts, blouses, trousers. The rest of the floor space was filled with piles of folded fabric, as in the front room. A heavy pair of black scissors lay on top of one of the piles. It was not hard to guess Auntie Dolly’s profession with all this evidence, and, in fact, throwing the bundle she had brought onto the bed, she declared proudly:

‘I’s a seamstress!’ She opened the bundle and more fabric spilled out: brilliantly coloured parcels of cotton, tied up with string and each with a piece of paper pinned to it.

‘Orders from New Amsterdam!’ she said. ‘Me son does live there – a stevedore. He does get plenty orders for me. He wife an’ all she friends. They like to have a seamstress from the City. We know more ‘bout fashion than them New Amsterdam seamstresses.’

I nodded. I had not spoken a word since we had left the train. I was too dazed to properly register what was going on, much less react appropriately and politely to events, to act as a guest should act. My throat was parched, and my head throbbed. My stomach growled.

Auntie Dolly may have heard it, for she said, ‘Put down you suitcase in here’ – for I still clutched it in my right hand – ‘and then let we have some food. You must be thirsty – Marlene, run an’ get she a glass a water.’

A little girl ran off and returned with the glass, which I drank gratefully. I even managed a smile and a faint thank you. Marlene stared up at me with huge black eyes. She was about seven or eight, a waif of a girl with shiny black skin and hair pulled back from her scalp into several small plaits, each one tied with a scrap of red ribbon. Perhaps encouraged by my smile, she reached up and touched the tendril of my hair that dangled over my shoulder.

‘Is so soft!’ she exclaimed, twirling it between her fingers. All the children – till now gathered in the doorway staring in silence – scrambled forward exclaiming about ‘white-people-hair’ and wanting to feel, and would have without Auntie Dolly’s boisterous intervention.

‘Shoo! Scram you chirren! You ‘int got no manners? Since when you does go about touchin’ people hair? Myrtle, food ready yet?’

This last called out on her way out of the room. I followed, as did the children. Auntie Dolly led me down to the yard where she showed me the water vat and a dripping tap where I washed my face and hands. We returned upstairs. Myrtle, with Marlene’s help, had laid the table. Auntie Dolly pointed to a chair. I sat down and ate. I had never in my life eaten with such gusto. Never in my life had food tasted so delicious.

The rest of the waning day, the night, and the following morning passed as in a dream. After a visit to the lavatory – a ramshackle hut in the backyard – I went to bed and fell asleep to the sound of a violent argument between Auntie Dolly and Myrtle, an argument that started in the dining room where I could hear every word, as the rooms had no ceiling. Eventually they withdrew to the kitchen and the row grew more muted. Vaguely, disinterestedly I took note of Myrtle’s aggrieved voice haranguing her mother for harbouring white people in her house, and Auntie Dolly murmuring stoically back on my behalf.  I fell asleep to the muted hubbub of their spat.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a backdrop of sound: frogs croaking from the yard, and a dog barking in the distance, followed by a return volley of barks from nearer at hand. In the next room somebody snored. The room was filled with a half-light from the swelling moon outside the open window. A mosquito net enclosed me like a ghostly tent. Mosquitoes swirled around both inside and out of it, as it had several holes and was little more than a nod to convention, and their buzz seemed the loudest sound of all, and the most annoying. But louder than all of these scattered noises were my thoughts. They descended on me like a swarm of locusts. Yesterday, passing events had taken over my life and I had moved from one adventure to the next almost in a daze, my internal life an emotional roller-coaster that kept any semblance of serious reflection at bay. Now, in the semi-silence of night, I allowed thoughts to come, to parade before me and deliver their conflicting messages.

Only one thing was certain: I had plunged into a world so entirely different to my own I might as well have been on a different continent.

So this was how darkies lived.

I had no idea.

George was a darkie. He would live like this too, no doubt. This was my future. A cramped room and a mosquito net full of holes and a latrine and rain-water vat in the yard. Somewhere inside me a little voice was calling: Are you completely out of your mind?

Mama’s Diary Plantation Promised Land, British Guiana, 1899

Liebes Tagebuch,

The girls are growing; no longer babies but children, each with her own distinct personality! Kathleen is very English, quite a prim and proper little lady, and a little vain, I’m afraid. She is now seven.

Winnie is five, and takes after me: she loves music and dance! She already plays the piano very skilfully for her age, and is eager to learn the violin, so I have written to Father to ask him to send a child-sized instrument for her. I so look forward to teaching her! She is also perfectly bi-lingual, unlike Kathleen, who refuses to speak a word of German.

Johanna, though only three, is turning out to be quite a wild little thing. She is such fun! We call her Yoyo, as that is what she calls herself, and it suits her – she is just like a yoyo, bouncing up and down with energy, with her moods; a tantrum one minute, the next, bubbling over with some new enthusiasm, and the tantrum forgotten!

What a little trio we have! Archie adores them all, though he has longed for a son ever since I was expecting Winnie. He says it’s not that he loves the girls less; it’s just that we do need a boy to inherit the plantation, to learn the ropes, as it were, from a young age. It seems there are some business troubles – the Bookers company which dominate this country is threatening to do us harm. Sometimes I do wonder about these matters but I must leave that to Archie. He probably knows best. I do wonder, though.

I am no longer pining away with loneliness. It is as if I have turned a corner, found my strength. In not giving in to those feelings of despondency, I have grown into my true personality and now I really am the backbone of this family. I recognise Archie’s weaknesses, though he does not do so himself. He truly thinks himself the master here, not recognizing that he is just like a creeper, limp and weak without its support. And that is me. I am slowly but surely easing him out of the grasp of Mr McInnes. Not an easy task, but I will do it. I have to, for my own sanity.

I have to say, dearest diary, that you have helped me through all this. I talk to you all the time. I tell you everything, even if I don’t actually write it down. I speak to you in my thoughts, as if you are a living friend. I know you are there, somewhere, listening, and holding my metaphorical hand. You are my lifeline! So there’s no need to feel neglected. You are my constant companion! The twin sister I never had! You know it, don’t you? You are always listening! Always reading!