The Sugar Planter's Daughter (29 page)

T
he child was born yesterday
, a Good Friday child. I'm not sure of the significance of that but there must be some message. The poor little thing. Nurse Prema has taken her to a wet nurse in the village for the day and will bring her back later, to see if Yoyo has changed her mind. If not, I don't know what I will do.

Before she left, Nurse Prema said to me, ‘Ma'am, I got to register the birth.'

‘Well, then do so!'

‘A lil problem, ma'am, with baby father name.'

‘Ah – what do you do in such – uncertain – cases?'

‘Mother's husband is always official father, ma'am.'

‘Well then. What's the problem? The baby's father is Clarence Smedley.'

‘What is the baby's name, ma'am?'

‘Well, how should I know? Ask the mother.'

‘Mother don't want to name the baby, ma'am.'

‘Well then, let's ask the father. Mr Clarence.'

Clarence had dropped in to meet his latest child, and had been not in the least shocked at her appearance; I suppose he was used to it, having already sired several half-caste children in the village and on the estate. I have this to say for Clarence: whatever his other faults, he has not a bit of racial prejudice.

‘Poor little mite!' he said when he saw his latest daughter. ‘I should like to keep her. I wish we could.'

‘Perhaps Yoyo will come to her senses in a day or two,' I said.

‘It's not possible, though. What with the obvious – er – discrepancies. Paternity and whatnot.'

I was disappointed, though I suppose it was too much to have hoped for. It's one thing Clarence acknowledging a white child as his own – but a dark-skinned one? That was, I suppose, too much to ask.

‘I think it's a good idea, to give her to George and Winnie to raise,' he said. ‘They'll make excellent parents to her.'

I sighed. Neither he nor Yoyo, it seemed, sensed a problem there.

Now, Nurse Prema and I went to see Clarence, who was enjoying an early-morning celebratory drink on the verandah.

‘Nurse Prema is going to register the birth,' I said. ‘She will have to give your name as the father, as Yoyo's legal husband. Unless you object.'

‘Object? Object? Why should I object? Nurse Prema has registered me as father on many a birth certificate. Not true, Nurse Prema?'

‘Yes, sir. But this time…'

Clarence took a sip of his drink, licked his lips and said: ‘One half-blood bastard is as good as the next. Who cares. Father, mother, it's all the same.'

‘We need a name for her,' I said then. ‘Yoyo refuses to name her.'

‘Mary,' he said. ‘Call her Mary, after my mother. A perfectly good English name. Poor little mite. Let me look at her once more.'

Nurse Prema bent over so that Clarence could behold his putative daughter. His eyes turned moist and for a moment I thought he was going to reach out for her. But he didn't.

‘Poor little mite,' he said again. ‘Poor little Mary. Give her to George. He's a better father than I am. Me, I'm just the sire of bastards. Poor little half-blood bastards.'

E
aster Sunday
– my favourite day of the year. Kite-flying day. Of course we all made our way to the Sea Wall. Humphrey and Gordon had made their kites themselves, with just a little help from me. I made Will's kite with just a little help from Will. Winnie made tiny kites for Charley and Leo: frameless paper pentagons in gaudy colours, with tails of twine decorated with raggedy bows; they'd never fly, but the babies loved them. Babies! Charley and Leo would always be our babies, though they were nearly four and nearly three, and growing a bit more each day.

After breakfast we rounded them up, laughing and running after the more rumbustious ones in order to get them out the house and down the road to meet the tram.

‘You are the most boisterous children on earth!' I said. ‘Leo! Come back! Leave that dog alone! Will, no, you can't have Humph's kite. You have your own!'

‘Want big kite!' wailed Leo. Humphrey lifted his kite high above his head.

‘No, it's mine! You got your own!'

‘Winnie! Winnie, where are you? These boys are out of control!'

It was like rounding up a troop of monkeys; the moment one was ready to go the other found some new distraction. Now Gordon had spotted a ripe mango on the neighbour's tree and had slyly removed his slingshot from his trouser pocket and, silently and stealthily, picked up a pebble and taken aim. You needed eyes at the back of your head for that boy. I snatched the slingshot from his hands at the very last moment. Mr Greer was protective of his mangoes; he and Gordon were fighting an ongoing feud.

‘I'm coming!' called Winnie. ‘I forgot to pack the black pudding.'

‘Of course we're boisterous!' said Gordon. ‘We're boys and we live in All Boys Town. We're the boisterous Boys of All Boys Town!'

‘That's good!' shouted Humphrey. ‘The boisterous boys!'

‘Of All Boys Town!' chorused Gordon and Charles.

‘The boisterous boys of All Boys Town, of All Boys Town, of All Boys Town… Pa, you must write a song for us!'

‘Yes, yes, a song about us all! Please, Pa!'

‘I will if you all get into line and stand still and stop being so boisterous right now! Chop chop!'

‘Are you going to chop off our heads if we don't?'

‘I might!'

‘No you won't!'

‘Yes he will! With a carving knife like the lady in ‘Three Blind Mice'!'

‘
Three Blind Mice, Three Blind Mice, see how they run, see how they run, they all ran after the farmer's wife, she cut off their tails with a carving knife…
' sang Charles on cue.

‘Maybe Pa will cut off our tails and not our heads!' cried Gordon.

‘But we don't have – oh!' That was Humph, who often took words a little too literally.

They all burst into laughter. ‘We have front tails!' cried Gordon, and immediately pulled down his trousers to demonstrate. ‘And I need to use mine.' He ran to the fence and began to pass water.

‘Gordon! You don't do that outside! Go to the outhouse!'

‘But we're ready to go – I'm just saving time!' said Gordon, who had already finished and now returned to the group, pulling up his trousers.

‘Pa, I need a wee too!' cried Charley.

‘Me, too!' said Humphrey.

‘I thought you had all gone already?'

‘Yes we did but'

‘Here I am!' called Winnie, bustling down the front stairs with a basket slung over her right arm and a big canvas bag over her shoulder. A picnic for five boys and two adults needed as much organisation as a huge formal dinner party.

‘Ma, Pa's going to cut off all our willies!' cried Charles, who was obviously going to run with that joke all day long.

Finally we managed to herd them out of the front gate and down the road to the tram stop, Humph and Gordon holding hands, Will and Charles behind them refusing to hold hands, Winnie and I at the rear, Leo riding on my back. I held the basket and Winnie carried the bag over her shoulder. She looked pensive, and did not speak. I wondered if she was remembering, as I did, last year at this time: she had been pregnant, and just beginning to show, and looking forward to Gabriella Rose.

‘A year from now,' she had said, ‘our family will be complete. Gabriella Rose will be with us.'

I hoped she was thinking now, as I was, that our family
was
complete. I hoped she was as happy as I was, right at this moment. Yet she looked sad.

But if she had been sad at the start of our trip, by the time we reached the Sea Wall all trace of it had disappeared from her features. It was a beautiful sunny Easter Sunday and it seemed that every single Georgetown child had dragged their parents to the beach, kite in hand. Long before we arrived we could see from the tram window, the boys pointing and exclaiming, the heralds in the sky – spots of bright yellow and red, and green, sailing against the cobalt blue of the sky, swaying in the brisk Atlantic breeze, soaring up to the sun.

My heart soared too as we climbed out of the tram and mounted the wall. We walked along, single file, for about a hundred yards until we came to the promenade, and there we descended on to the beach. The tide was out, and the hard undulating sand reached out seemingly to the horizon.

Despite the morning's chaos we were early, but quite a few families were already there and their kites were the ones we had seen as we approached. But there was still space for the boys to run as they launched their kites, to scamper and scream and hop on one foot and fall over each other. There were kite-fights and kite-bombs and sometimes tears, and as the beach filled with yet more families and Easter Sunday blossomed into fullness I felt happier than I had for a long, long time. I gazed up to watch Gordon's kite, swaying leisurely from side to side in a mass of brilliant speckles. Winnie's hand slipped into mine, and I looked at her and smiled and knew that she, too, was happy. I let go of her hand and placed my arm round her shoulder, and drew her close.

‘Our boys!' said Winnie.

‘Aren't they wonderful?'

‘The best!' she replied. ‘And you know what, George? I just realised: I am a mother of boys. That's just – well, it's everything.'

I pressed her to me. Her head rested on my shoulder. I kissed the top of it.

‘The best mother of boys,' I said.

She looked up at me and smiled mysteriously.

‘What is it?'

She reached across for my other hand, placed it on her tummy.

‘Guess what's brewing in here?'

‘Winnie! No!'

‘Oh, yes! Another one of them!' The smile was in her voice.

‘Oh, Winnie!'

‘We really need that house now, I suppose.'

‘We do. Oh, Winnie!'

Words failed me then, and her too; she simply snuggled into me. The boys were happily at play. Humph had taken little Will under his wing and was helping him to fly his little miniature kite. Leo and Gordon were holding the string to Gordon's soaring kite together, Gordon bending down to Leo's level. Charley had made friends with another little boy and their two kites flew side by side.

Winnie and I both gazed upwards. The symbolism of it all struck me with a great force, taking my breath away and filling me with deep and quiet joy.

‘The risen Christ,' I murmured, ‘I feel Him in my heart. Do you?'

She squeezed my hand. ‘Indeed I do! I remember Easter back at Promised Land. Mama would take us three girls to the church on the estate. But this is better.'

‘Kite-flying is like praying,' I said. ‘We lift up our hearts. Up there they are flying, soaring.'

‘You should write a song about it,' Winnie said. ‘An Easter song. A British Guiana Easter song. About kites. And flying. And soaring hearts. And resurrection.'

‘I will,' I said. ‘as well as a song about the Boisterous Boys of All Boys Town.'

I felt her arm round my waist.

‘We did well, George!'

‘Indeed we did.'

L
ater that day
we returned home, satiated with joy, exhausted, sweaty. Winnie and I bundled the boys out to the bathhouse in the backyard and showered them down, one by one. Soon we would be doing this in our own home in Lamaha Street, the home taking more solid shape in our minds every day. Five bedrooms and a verandah and two inside bathrooms – what a luxury!

We bundled the younger boys into bed and they fell asleep the moment their heads touched the pillows. Someone knocked on the door.

‘I'll get it!' I called to Winnie. I strode to the door and opened it. On the landing stood my mother-in-law. She held a bundle in her arms, which she held out to me.

‘It's your daughter, George. Yoyo doesn't want her. So I brought her here.'

G
eorge had been gone
for a while, so I picked up the tea towel and walked into the hall drying my hands.

‘Who is it –
oh!
'

I stopped in my tracks. George and Mama were standing in front of the still-open door. George held something in his hands; it looked like a bundle of cloth. He gazed at me with huge pleading eyes and held the bundle out to me, saying nothing.

It seemed they were both holding their breath; neither spoke and only the bundle whimpered. Both of them just stared at me, waiting to see what I would do. The bundle wriggled and I looked at the little exposed face. I knew at once. How could I not know? A lump rose in my throat. I stared at that tiny brown face. The little lips parted; a kind of grunt emerged.

I have a visceral, animal instinct when it comes to babies, newborns in particular. I just can't help it. Nothing can hold back this eruption of caring, compassion, love, wonder, tenderness, devotion, awe, all bundled into one, that springs from somewhere in my depths and takes complete control of my thoughts and senses. It melts me completely. Melts me down to the bones. Every single time. I suppose that this is what they call the maternal instinct, but I don't care what it is called; I only know how powerful it is, how when it overtakes you there is nothing you can do against it.

I dropped the tea towel and took the bundle from George, hesitantly holding it against my breast, looking down into that tiny screwed-up face. George said, quietly, ‘It's a girl.'

‘Yoyo doesn't want her,' Mama added. ‘She said I should give her to George.'

‘We don't
have
to, Winnie!' George exclaimed. ‘I'll understand if you – if you…'

‘Oh,
George!
' I could say no more. I turned away so they wouldn't see the tears in my eyes. My capitulation was a private thing, between myself and this little miracle. Just between us two. This warmth that flooded me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, washing through body and mind as if I was nothing
but
that warmth, that intimacy, that knowledge. That unity. It was between her and me, us alone. It wasn't even George's to see. My eyes stung with unshed tears. I couldn't speak because a lump had stuck in my throat. Anyway, there was nothing more to say.