by Isobel Chace
“Yes, I know, Patience,” I said kindly as I could. “But I want to think about what I am going to do about it.”
Her great smile broke across her face. “You surely mean that, Miss ’Milla? You surely mean that?”
I looked her straight in the eyes. “Yes, I mean that,” I said.
But when she was gone, a lot of my confidence went with her. What could I do about the great pile of bills except pay them? I supposed that that was why they had been given to me and I couldn’t help admiring the impudence of my uncle, even while I resented his methods. I lay there, staring resentfully at them, trying to make up my mind whether I would look at them before or after I had eaten. In the end I decided to enjoy my breakfast first and resolutely put them out of my mind while I sipped at the delicious dark chocolate Patience had prepared and ate the tropical fruit salad that she had thought was the best way of beginning the day. She was right too! The touch of passion fruit gave a sharp flavour to the rest of the fruit which was quite delightful. When I had done, I put the tray from me, down at the foot of the bed, and picked up the pile of bills again with a sinking heart.
They were mostly household bills. There were the taxes which were due on the house, a grocer’s account, and several bills from a local tailor who had apparently just finished turning out suits for the whole family. The only nice thing about them was the strange, exotic names of everyone concerned. The grocer was an Indian, I presumed, but what the tailor could possibly be was beyond me. He had a long unpronounceable name that might have been Greek or Turkish, or anything at all for that matter. The sums involved added up to a quite considerable amount.
I put them carefully on the dressing-table and tried to dismiss them from my mind as I put my clothes on. It was already quite hot, and although I had known that it would be, I was still surprised that it should be so. How different from the sleet and fitful winter sunshine I had left behind in England.
When I went downstairs the house appeared to be deserted. I carried my tray into the kitchen and washed up the few dishes in the antiquated sink that I found in one corner of the large, inconvenient room. With a little thought and money, I thought, the whole house could be transformed and turned into something quite delightful, but, judging by the bills upstairs, it would not be spent by any of my relations. The house would be as it had always been, Victorian, overcrowded with furniture and extraordinarily inconvenient.
As I came out of the kitchen the front door opened, giving me such a fright that I stood in the hall, hardly daring to breathe until I could see who it was. It was Daniel Hendrycks.
“Hullo,” he greeted me. “All alone?”
I nodded. “Do you always just walk in?” I countered hotly, suddenly aware that the backs of my hands were tingling with sheer fright.
“Yes, of course. I always have!” he grinned. “How are you getting along with your relatives in the sun?”
I gave him a decidedly sulky look. Thank goodness, I thought, he didn’t know about the bills upstairs. He was bound to have found something disapproving to say about them and I didn’t need that right then. I didn’t need to be reminded of my relations at all!
“I gather they’re your relatives, too,” I said waspishly.
He looked surprised. “Well! They didn’t lose much time in telling you that, did they? My aunt was one in a million, did they tell you that, too?”
“Patience did,” I admitted, repentant of having brought the subject up in the first place. He had probably been very fond of his aunt.
He grinned. “Ah yes! I’d forgotten the redoubtable Patience for the moment,” he said. “She’ll look after you—if you let her. She’s quite a person, is Patience.”
“She’s very kind,” I agreed carefully.
He gave me an impatient look which nevertheless seemed to take in everything about me and made me doubly conscious of my awkward height and the well-washed look of my dress.
“Oh well,” he said, “I didn’t come to quarrel. I came to take you walking in the Savannah, to show you around a bit. Where’s everybody else?”
I drew myself up. “Working, I suppose,” I said grandly. “Most people have special hours when they earn their living, you know,” I added.
“But not your cousins!” he insisted caustically.
“Our cousins! I said sweetly, to annoy him, because I thought he might well be right about Wilfred and Cuthbert working regular hours. He did know them, after all, whereas I knew next to nothing about them or what they did.
“If you like,” he grunted. “Are you coming?”
For a moment I longed to turn him down flat, to throw his invitation back in his face because I had things to do on my own and didn’t have to depend on him to show me all the local sights. I would have given anything for one of my cousins to have come in at that moment, but nobody disturbed the stillness of the house and when it came to it I couldn’t deny myself the prospect of seeing something of the city, no matter how patronising the man who was going to show it to me. “Will—will I need a coat?” I asked him.
He laughed. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he knew exactly what I had been thinking and was amused by my defensive attitude. “You won’t need anything,” he told me. “All you have to bring is yourself!”
I licked my lips hastily, glad that I had at least taken care when I had put on my make-up. “All right,” I said, “I’m ready.”
He held open the door and followed me out into the street “Cheer up, it may be quite enjoyable!” he teased me. “And just think, you need never come out with me again if it’s not!”
I smiled apologetically, aware that I was being ungracious but not at all sure how to get over it. He had the most unsettling effect on me, and I didn’t enjoy being unsettled! The only good thing about it was that at least I didn’t have to look down at him while I was being unsettled. He was a good three inches taller than I, and it was unusual for me to look up to anyone.
Downtown Port-of-Spain was exceedingly hot. By the time we had walked the length of the street I, at least, was hot and sticky. Daniel Hendrycks was better acclimatised, but even he seemed to droop slightly. “How about taking the car?” he suggested finally.
“Is it far?” I asked him.
“Far enough.” He seemed amused that he had forgotten that I hadn’t the slightest idea where we were going. He had said the Savannah which sounded fantastic and rather romantic, but exactly what it was I hadn’t the slightest idea.
It turned out to be the Queen’s Park Savannah, where the cooling trade winds played, reducing the heat to bearable proportions so that I could catch my breath and get used to the idea that January in the tropics was just as hot as any other time of the year. Daniel said the park had once been a sugar plantation called Paradise, but that after the disastrous fire in 1808, the then Governor had cut down the sugar canes and transformed the place so that the poorer citizens would have somewhere to pasture their cattle.
To my mind it is one of the loveliest stretches of parkland in the world. It is functional, too, for there are sports facilities, cricket pitches and even stables where young boys exercise the local race-horses. All around the park are the green hills broken by the occasional road that reveals the dull red earth that must be full of iron and all the other things necessary for growing sugar.
But most of all it is the trees which I remember for their loveliness. I had never before seen giant trees that covered themselves in fantastic blossoms like a well-bred bush in an English garden. There were African tulip trees, and some exotic things that Daniel told me were known as flame-of-the-forest for obvious reasons, as their blossoms resemble fiercely burning wood in colour so that the whole tree looks as if it is ablaze, especially if the sun happens to light up a particular tree as it moves across the sky.
“Well?” Daniel asked me.
“Well indeed!” I said warmly. “I had no idea that Trinidad was as beautiful as this!”
“Hadn’t you?” he laughed. “And think of
all the people you’ve sent here through that travel office of yours.”
I smiled, thinking of the office with affection. “It was the next best thing to going places myself,” I admitted shyly. “One never knew what kind of journey some eccentric would want. I rather enjoyed working out their flight plan and so on. I often wondered what happened to them afterwards.”
“You knew what happened to me,” he reminded me abruptly.
“But that didn’t happen often. Besides,” I added, “it was your own fault. You insisted on having only half an hour to make the connection. I told you it wasn’t enough.”
“Did you?” He lost interest in the conversation, stretching himself out on the grass. With the sun in his eyes as he looked up at me, he looked a dangerous individual and I bit my lip as I sat down quickly beside him, determined to take an interest in the Savannah rather than in memories of the past. As I sat on the grass it seemed to cringe away from me and I was astonished to find that the lightest touch had this effect on it, curling its leaves into pins. Daniel poked at a blade with one of his long, tanned fingers.
“Ti Marie, Ti Marie,
Close your eye,
The Governor is passing by.”
After a few minutes the grass opened up again, like some dead thing come alive again.
“How strange,” I muttered.
“Have you never seen our shame plant before?” Daniel inquired lazily. “It reminds me of you. It’s one of the reasons I brought you here.”
I was put out. It wasn’t that I had thought he had brought me here for the pleasure of my society exactly, but I had thought it might have been something more than a sense of duty to a stranger on his island. I was hurt, because he made me seem as prickly and as ungrateful for his attentions as the grass that pretended death and decay at his lightest touch.
“And what were the other reasons?” I asked, more put out than ever because I knew I sounded as hurt as I felt.
“I want to know how you are getting along with our cousins,” he said drily.
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business!” I snapped back.
“There you go again,” he said lazily.
“But it isn’t your business!” I insisted.
“And if I choose to make it my business?”
“Oh, don’t be silly!” I said crossly because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I came here of my own choice, you know. I wanted to come and I came. It’s very kind of Uncle Philip to have me. Have you thought of that?”
He pulled his hat down over his face so that I couldn’t see his eyes any longer. “Constantly,” he drawled.
“Well then?” I exclaimed with triumph.
“I’m waiting for the catch,” he said quietly. “There has to be one. You forget, I’ve known Uncle Philip for more than twenty years.”
“There isn’t any catch!” I said bravely.
He waited in silence for me to change my mind and I was a little afraid that I would begin to tell him about the bills if I wasn’t careful, so I lay back beside him and watched the grass curl up away from me, determined that it would be safer to say nothing at all. If he didn’t have to talk, then I didn’t have to either. I wasn’t one of those women who have to prattle on all day whenever someone is handy to listen to them.
“Why does there have to be a catch?” I said at last.
He chuckled. “Because an Ironside is involved. There are special barbs on their hooks for the unwary and the innocent, and as you seem to have swallowed the bait whole, I’m waiting for the play to be over and for the gaff to come out.”
I flushed. “I think you’re perfectly horrible!” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I won’t listen to you a moment longer!”
I got to my feet with a rush and walked away from him, not bothering to notice where I was going, but only anxious to escape his condescending manner. An unwary innocent indeed! Didn’t he realise that I was an Ironside, too? And Ironsides were not notably lacking in will-power and guile. I could manage very nicely on my own without his help, even if it meant telling nobody about the bills—ever!
There was a smell of overpowering sickly sweetness and I stopped short to find out what it was. It was the strangest tree that I had ever seen, and I gazed at it with increasing astonishment. Then a memory of something I had read somewhere came back to me. Of course, I thought, this was the cannonball tree. There was no doubt about it. The trunk looked rather like a maypole with all the ropes intertwined and at the end of each a cluster of browny red blossoms, sticky to the touch and about four inches across, with peculiar folded stamens like the legs of a daddy-long-legs. The cannon-balls themselves, which gave the tree its name, hung from the tree at the end of long strings. Some of the biggest must have been quite eight inches in diameter and those which had fallen and lay in clusters at the base of the tree looked exactly like those piles of old cannonballs that grace the gun terraces of ancient castles all over Europe. The cloying smell caught in the back of my throat, but I could imagine that some people might find it pleasing.
“Where are you planning to run to?” Daniel’s voice asked me. He still looked completely relaxed, though he must have walked quite fast to catch up with me as I had hurried away from him.
“I don’t care!” I stormed at him. “I don’t care where I go! Only I won’t listen to your horrible insinuations about my family any longer!”
He sighed. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Just leave my family alone!” I said desperately.
He hesitated. “All right,” he said at last. “If that’s what you really want.” He smiled and the laughter came back into his eyes. “Does that mean leaving Miss Camilla Ironside alone, too?” he asked quite humbly.
I didn’t know what to answer. If I said that it didn’t he might interpret it any way at all, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted that, but neither did I want him to ignore my existence as if I wasn’t there at all.
“It depends,” I stammered.
He laughed out loud and I knew that he had seen my quandary as clearly as I had myself. I blushed and then held out my hand to him in silence. He took it and shook hands with me as gravely as two small boys after their first quarrel.
“My, but you’re a tetchy girl!” he marvelled. He lapsed into the Trinidad idiom and added: And I’se tellin’ you, Miss ’Milla, and I’se reason for knowin’!”
It was companionable after that walking together in the sunshine. Other people had come out to the park now, schoolboys to practise their running and young Negro stable lads in bright silk shirts to exercise the horses, sharing some of their charges’ hard, rhythmic beauty. Daniel bought me an ice-cream from an early vendor and told me that in the evenings stalls came out there in their hundreds serving anything and everything from chicken and chips to the oysters Wilfred had bought for me yesterday in Charlotte Street.
To my surprise I discovered that it was nearly lunchtime when we went back to the car. Daniel’s car was a brand new Mustang and its distinctive lines shone with polished splendour by the side of the road. The seats were burning hot and I had to pull my short skirt down as far as possible to prevent my legs having to come in contact with it.
“Mmm,” Daniel muttered as he got into the seat beside me. “You look a lot less peaky than you did this morning. Good.”
“I did not look peaky!” I protested.
“Suffering from shock was my diagnosis,” he said flatly.
“Well, you startled me, coming in like that, without a sound or a by your leave!”
He didn’t believe me, but he let the subject rest. The car sprang into life and we roared down the road and back into Port-of-Spain. It was lovely to feel the wind in my face and to smell the hot smell of curry as we passed some Indian houses and the sweet fragrance of the bushes in the gardens laden down with blooms and butterflies seeking to get at their sweetness.
“What are you going to do with yourself while you’re here?” he asked me as
we nosed our way into Charlotte Street.
“I don’t know,” I said lazily. “It’s rather nice doing nothing for a short while.” I grinned at him saucily. I might decide to do nothing for evermore!
He shrugged his shoulders. “You might feel like that now, but if you change your mind, give me a buzz.”
My eyebrows shot upwards. “And what will you do about it?” I asked.
“Give you a job,” he assured me seriously. “Why not? I know you’re capable and I have quite a number of irons in the fire. It won’t be entirely nepotism, you know. You’ll have to work damned hard.”
“It won’t be nepotism at all,” I said flatly. “I’m nothing to do with you!”
He looked amused. “You forget that we’re cousins, rather distant cousins and by marriage, but nevertheless cousins.” A smile broke across his face. “Kissing cousins?” he suggested audaciously.
“Certainly not!” I jumped. I flung open the door of the car almost before we had stopped and slammed it shut behind me.
He laughed and let in the clutch and the car moved a few inches forward. “Give my offer some thought,” he bade me urgently. “You might be glad of it.
“Never!” I retorted grandly. I hadn’t come to Trinidad to work, and certainly not to work for him!
He gave me a cheerful wave of the hand and drew out into the traffic with an experienced twist to the wheel. He drove as confidently and with the same masterful air as he did everything else. He was too good to be true and how glad I was that I didn’t much like him. Life was so much simpler when he didn’t figure in it too much, of that I was quite sure. And yet I stood on the edge of the pavement and watched him go and he had quite disappeared when I went into the house expecting to find it as deserted as it had been when I had gone out, but my cousins were waiting for me in the hall. Cuthbert had been peering out through the glass door to see who had brought me home. Wilfred, apparently more indifferent, was seated at the bottom of the stairs reading a newspaper.
