by Isobel Chace
“But who is that in your car?” Mrs. Longuet rattled on, hushing her voice to a whisper. “Shouldn’t we ask her to come in?”
It was Daniel who went out and got the waiting Patience and it was Daniel who introduced her to the Longuet maids and made sure that she was comfortable. Meanwhile Mrs. Longuet went on talking. She spoke of her first coming to Trinidad with her husband, of their buying of the estate, and she laced the whole with endless reminiscences of the doings and sayings of Pamela.
“It was a shame to tie a girl like her down to these parts, but we always knew she would do well for herself. What’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh, as the saying is. Well, anyway, you know what I mean. Pamela has been gently reared and always given the best, so it’s natural that she should expect the best, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so,” I said inadequately.
“I knew you’d agree!” Mrs. Longuet purred. “Now tell me all about yourself. I’ve heard you’re related to Philip Ironside?”
“I’m his niece,” I said flatly.
“You poor dear! It must be dreadful for you!” she sympathised. “Pamela knows his two boys, of course. I mean even though it was all so dreadful one couldn’t very well avoid them, could one? But I hear they’ve all gone downhill very badly. I’ve even,” she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’ve even heard that they’re not always scrupulously clean!”
I swallowed down my laughter and concentrated on my very real feeling of outrage that she should talk about my family in that way. “I believe they bathe fairly often,” I managed to say in a fairly normal tone of voice.”
I met Daniel’s eyes as he came back into the room and he must have seen the storm signals in mine, for his lips quivered visibly. “What are you talking about?” he asked carefully.
“I was telling this nice child all about those horrible relatives of hers!” Mrs. Longuet told him. “Of course in a place the size of Trinidad one can’t well ignore them, I know. It must be such a problem for the poor girl!”
“Miss Ironside is living with her uncle,” Daniel announced baldly.
Mrs. Longuet was reduced to silence. She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes growing rounder and rounder with shock. “Does she know?” she asked hollowly of Daniel.
“Know what?” I demanded.
Daniel looked embarrassed. “Nothing very much. There was a bit of talk years ago when your uncle sold up. I rather thought you might have been told about it.”
“I was,” I agreed bleakly. “I was warned by you before I had even met you properly. Aaron told me what I suppose is more or less the truth, but gossip is something else again. I should have thought you’d have been above gossiping about other people!” I added stormily.
Mrs. Longuet edged forward in her chair. “But, my dear, you can’t possibly know the whole of it! Not possibly. Did you know—”
“Not now, Mrs. Longuet!” Daniel interrupted her forcibly.
“Yes, now,” I contradicted him flatly. “I want to know exactly what’s being said.”
“It isn’t so much what’s being said now,” my hostess assured me, only too willing to indulge in a good spicy gossip. “It was what was done then!”
“Mrs. Longuet—” Daniel edged in helplessly.
“No, no, she wants to be told!” Mrs. Longuet insisted. “It was Philip’s fault, of course, one can’t blame the boys for it, though they didn’t do anything about it when they might have done. They weren’t as young as all that! Philip had owned his estate for a good many years then, and a rotten, run-down place it was. The rest of us who grow sugar hereabouts didn’t like his sugar going to the same factory as our crop. He did nothing about the weeds and the diseases in his cane. Absolutely nothing! So you see it wasn’t surprising that he grated on us rather. But then there was the scandal. He began to sack all his people. I suppose he was short of money, but really, that was hardly the way to come about, was it? The Hendrycks’ place took on most of his employees. It was terrible for them. They had no money—nothing! But Philip was simply furious that anyone else should take on his men. He set fire to the Hendrycks’ estate—and with the cane only half grown—and he tried to get all the workers to go out on strike. It was a dreadful time for everyone!” Mrs. Longuet’s eyes snapped eagerly. It might have been dreadful for most people, I thought, feeling slightly sick, but there was no doubt that she had enjoyed every minute of the dispute. I could imagine her throwing up her hands in simulated horror while she dug out the details of what was going on from everyone who came to her door. My eyes sought Daniel’s for reassurance. He looked unbearably sad.
“It wasn’t all Philip’s fault,” he said with authority. “We all knew that. Nevertheless, it was rather a relief when he decided to sell.”
I bit my lip. “Was your aunt still alive?” I asked, though what had brought her into my mind I did not know.
“Yes, she was,” Daniel said, surprised. “It was because she asked us to that my family bought Philip out.”
“I see,” I said quietly.
“No, you don’t see at all!” he exclaimed. “Things got on top of him, that was all. It’s easy to make a great big story of it, but it was only a case of a man who was unable to take advantage of modern methods. He thought more labour was better than using modern science. He wasn’t alone in that!” he added bitterly. “It’s the whole story of the sugar industry in the West Indies. A relic of the curse of slavery, you might say.”
But Mrs. Longuet wouldn’t have it. “Daniel has always excused him,” she said austerely. “But those of us who suffered from your uncle’s actions find it difficult to be quite so generous. Thank God there’s no chance of his coming back here to plague us all over again.”
“But there’s every chance,” I said smoothly.
Daniel rose in a desperate effort to stop me, but I knew it had to be said. “When I’ve bought the estate, my uncle will manage it for me. I thought that that had been clearly understood.”
Mrs. Longuet went first bright red and then ashen pale. “Did Pamela know this?” she hissed at Daniel.
Daniel nodded. “Your husband knows too,” he added soothingly.
“Then why wasn’t I told?”
Daniel shrugged. “You’re moving to New York,” he reminded her. “Why should you care?”
“I—I—” She gained control of herself with difficulty and smiled without amusement. “Philip and I never got along very well,” she said primly. “I don’t like to think of him living in this house.”
Daniel shook his head. “I shouldn’t dwell on it,” he said briskly. “Aaron Glover and I are going to oversee the place. Which reminds me, Camilla had better see the estate before it gets dark. As your husband isn’t home yet, perhaps you’d like me to show her over? We shan’t be long.”
He almost physically manhandled me through the door and I knew that he was really angry as I had not seen him before. He was angry with me too, rather than with Mrs. Longuet, and I thought that that was unfair.
I was just a little afraid of him, though, when he turned and faced me in the driveway outside.
“Did you have to? Don’t you know that she can stop the sale going through?”
“What if she can?” I said sulkily. “I’m not afraid of her—or her evil tongue, come to that!”
He gave me an impatient look. “I could shake you,” he said suddenly.
“But it’s all so petty,” I objected, sounding a great deal more confident than I felt. “And I refuse to compromise because people feel they can say anything they please about my family and get away with it!
“Petty!” he shouted at me. “Petty! I’ll tell you how petty it was. It meant that I never saw my aunt again until she was dying. It meant that she spent her dying days in disgrace. And it meant a row that nearly finished the whole family. People took sides. People I thought my friends refused to speak to me because my aunt was Philip’s wife. I’m not going to have that kind of thing happening again. I
s that understood? You’re coming down here and you are going to buy this estate and we’re going to be friends! Philip, Wilfred, Cuthbert, Aaron, you and I are going to run this place in harmony if it kills us. Do you understand that?”
I nodded. His hands on my shoulders bit into my flesh, but it never occurred to me to protest. I had never seen a man go off like a geyser like this and I was more astonished than anything else that he should feel so deeply about it. It had all happened so very long ago. Then quite suddenly he bent his head and his lips were on mine and he was kissing me and, worse still, I was kissing him back as though my very life depended on it. I didn’t even hear the car creeping up the drive, nor the doors slamming as the occupants got out. Pamela’s shocked face swam into my line of vision and I heard myself giggle.
“Do you have to?” she said with dainty disapproval. “I mean, do you have to out here?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I mean—well, really!” she protested. “What are you doing?”
Daniel had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “I was giving Camilla a lesson in harmonious relations,” he said with a quaint dignity that tore at my heart-strings. “Why not? We’re cousins of a sort,” he added. “Kissing cousins!”
“Don’t be disgusting!” Pamela said quite mildly, though her eyes filled with impotent rage. “One day someone will misunderstand your motives, Daniel, and then where will you be?”
“Where indeed?” he agreed meekly.
“That’s enough, Pamela!” the older man who was with Pamela said sharply. I had barely noticed his presence before, but now I really looked at him for the first time. He was very stooped and tanned a rich dark brown by the sun. In contrast his white hair gave him a handsome air. His expression was that of a tired, saddened man, with a network of laughter lines around his eyes that were etched deep into his skin and were quite white in contrast to the brown tan of his face.
“Mr. Longuet?” I asked him shyly, more embarrassed now than I had been before when I could still feel the power of Daniel’s lips on mine and that had been enough for me.
“That’s right,” he said briskly. “I presume you are Camilla Ironside?”
I nodded, blushing before his sharp eyes, and we shook hands gravely.
“I hope my wife made you properly welcome,” he said formally. “I suppose Daniel was just coming to show you the estate?”
“Yes.” I could not for the life of me have said more. I was too intent on watching Daniel and Pamela, both rigid with rage, as they sized each other up. They’re in love, I thought dismally. I turned my back on them. “Perhaps you’d like to show me round now you’re here?” I said to Mr. Longuet.
“No, I’ll leave that to Daniel. He knows the place quite as well as I do, and you will have matters to discuss between you as to how to run things and so on. No, Pamela and I will go inside and get some drinks laid on for when you get back. Have you had anything to eat since you arrived?”
I shook my head, but he already seemed to have lost interest and had turned away to his daughter, taking her firmly into the house.
“A nice pickle you’ve got us into!” I glared at Daniel. “Did you have to?”
He grinned. “I rather enjoyed it.” He tried to look contrite but succeeded only in laughing. “You don’t have to worry about the old man,” he told me. “He’s more broad-minded than his wife!”
“That isn’t the point,” I said bitterly. “How do you think I like looking like a girl who enjoys that sort of thing?”
He took me by the hand and led me down the drive. “Didn’t you?” he asked me mischievously.
Our conversation was reduced to a strained silence. How dared he? I wondered. How dared he? But of course I was normal and healthy, and I had enjoyed it. What I had disliked was Pamela’s prying eyes and knowing that she had every right to be displeased. “I think you ought to tell her that it won’t happen again,” I said at last in such subdued tones that he had to duck his head to catch what I said.
He gave me a look of deliberate astonishment.
“Mrs. Longuet?” he asked.
“No, Pamela,” I said crossly.
“Oh, I see. I’ll think about it. But tell me, how are we going to guarantee that it won’t happen again?”
“Of course it won’t!” I said stoutly.
He smiled, not at all put out. “It might not, but then supposing it did? We might find it bigger than both of us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” I snapped.
“I prefer to call it realistic,” he answered. He looked as easy and as relaxed as ever. I wondered, impatient with myself, why I had ever allowed him to kiss me. It wasn’t as if—I pulled myself up sharply. Such thoughts were dangerous. It would be very much better if I concentrated on the business in hand and gave all my attention to the production of sugar. But it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t easy at all when I was so conscious of him standing beside me, the width of his shoulders and the comical twist to his mouth, and, most of all, the dark, secret look in his eyes that I had glimpsed the meaning of and wanted to know again even if he did belong to Pamela, even if I had no right to want it, even if he had only been trying to teach me a lesson that had somehow misfired and had set our whole beings alight.
“They haven’t got their own factory on this estate,” Daniel said, and he sounded distant and very formal. “They use mine. I’ll show it to you some other time. It’s much smaller than the refinery, of course—really a kind of boiling house where the cane is crushed, separated from its juice and where the juice is boiled into sugar and molasses and syrup in various stages.”
“And from there the raw sugar goes to the refinery?” I suggested.
He nodded. “More or less. Some of it’s shipped abroad to refineries there. But here it’s only grown and cut. The Longuets didn’t want to do more than that. They ran the place pretty well as an extension of mine.”
“I suppose that’s how it’s going to be run in the future?” I began mutinously.
“Why not?” he said.
“Why not, indeed?” I echoed. Because I didn’t want it run that way! Because it was going to be mine, and not his and I wanted to do things in my own way, even if I made mistakes. It was mine money, wasn’t it, that was buying the place? Surely I ought to have some say in its management and what went on there?
“It won’t be as bad as you think,” he said. “Where do you want to begin our tour?”
I pointed vaguely at a collection of buildings. What did it matter where we began? I didn’t care if I never saw another cane of sugar ever again! “Shall we begin there?” I said indifferently.
I was surprised to discover that there was a very active office that went with the estate. Every worker who had ever worked there, no matter how short the time, was card-indexed so that one could pick out the good workers from the bad at a glance and could see too how much or little each man was paid. Their pay seemed abominably low to me, but I remembered that money went further here than in England, and that those who were unemployed were far worse off than those who worked.
The office itself was small and attractive. Mr. Longuet had kept it going, preferring that kind of work to being out and about in the hot fields. Those he had left mostly to his foreman, visiting them only when he had had to.
“Do you think you could manage this side of things?” Daniel asked me, as I explored the typewriter and reassured myself that the filing system had been kept up to date.
“I should think so,” I grunted. I had found a map which gave the yield per acre of each of the fields that the estate owned and I was busy studying it.
“You’ll need far more irrigation on this side,” Daniel remarked, pointing at the map. “Possibly some drainage on the far side. The soil is a bit heavy over there. Mr. Longuet could never be persuaded that it would be worth while, but it would put up the yield quite a bit.”
“Oh,” I said blankly. Despite myself, I was beginning to get interested in the fascinating graphs that covered th
e walls of the office and I could see that if I was going to have a real say in the estate there was an awful lot that I would have to learn first.
We went from the office to look at the houses where the regular workers lived. A small boy, singing at the top of his voice the latest calypso from the wireless, greeted us at the gate. He rolled his eyes when he saw Daniel, but he never even paused in his song. He was wearing a single garment that came a little below his waist, but this didn’t perturb him in the slightest, and he followed us round, belting out the same words again and again until we left.
The houses were grouped round a central area and were each equipped with running water and a small garden. They were small and the lack of privacy inside them must have been almost unbearable, but they were all beautifully clean and the gardens were full of colour and exotic vegetables which the Trinidadians took as a matter of course.
In the centre of the houses was a small medical clinic which was visited regularly by a nurse and every so often by the doctor as well. It looked to me to be adequately equipped, and Daniel told me that the standards of medicine were pretty high considering how far we were from any main hospital where most of the medical talent gravitated naturally enough. A small queue of pregnant women, some Indian and some Negro in origin, watched with curiosity as we looked round the small verandahed house that served as the clinic. Daniel called them over and told them who I was, whereupon they all burst into wide, happy smiles and greeted me warmly in the slow rounded accents that everyone slipped into after a while in Trinidad.
Beyond the houses was the sugar. It stretched in straight lines for as far as one could see in every direction. Somewhere in the midst of all that sugar lay the boundary between the Hendrycks’ estate and this one, but from here one could see no sign of any border, only the sugar waving back and forth in the wind with a gentle rustle that sang in the warm, sweet-smelling air.
