Sugar in the Morning

by Isobel Chace

  There was a short, tense silence. “No,” he said cautiously. “What kind of a party?”

  “I don’t know. Mrs. Longuet left some instructions—But, Daniel, there’s more! There are notes which have been left all over the place. They’re—they’re addressed to Uncle Philip—”

  “Who wrote them?”

  “I don’t know!” I almost sobbed. “I thought—Patience says it isn’t Mrs. Longuet, but it looks like a woman’s handwriting.”

  “I see. Have you thrown it away yet?”

  “No.” My voice quivered ominously. “I haven’t shown them to Uncle Philip either. I thought I’d found the only one, but Patience came across one too, and now Uncle Philip and Cuthbert have gone to the office and I’m afraid they’ll find one there. They were meant to be found! It’s rather horrible.”

  There was another short silence and I wished that I could have known what he was thinking. Was I just fussing about nothing? Was that what he thought?

  “It isn’t anything really to bother about!” I said quickly, too quickly because he must have known that I was anxious. “It’s funny, if you can look at it that way, I suppose.”

  “It doesn’t sound at all amusing to me,” he assured me dryly. “Look, Camilla, I’ll be over straight away. I was coming anyway, but I’ll come earlier still. Tell Patience that I’ll be eating there with you and that I’m hungry. Will you do that?”

  “Y-yes. Yes, of course I will.”

  “I’ll be about ten minutes,” he said. He put down the telephone before I had a chance to argue, and after a minute or so I did likewise, my worries suddenly gone as I realised that in just a few minutes he would be there with me, taking charge of anything that might happen.

  I went downstairs straight away to tell Patience that he was coming. She nodded approvingly and handed over the notes which she had collected from the various rooms downstairs. They were all written in the same flowing, feminine hand.

  “Tell me, why couldn’t this be Mrs. Longuet’s writing?” I asked her.

  “I’se seen it,” she said immediately. “Honey, hers is a crabbed little hand.”

  “There was a man on the telephone who said she’d made arrangements for some kind of party to welcome us,” I told her. “He didn’t sound as friendly as he might have done, though.”

  Patience went pale, giving her the curious grey look that black people have when they are either frightened or ill. “My, my, Miss ’Milla, an what sort of a party did he mean?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “But there was trouble here with my uncle once before, wasn’t there?”

  Patience gave a tight little nod to her head, her eyes huge and wild. “I’se heard tell—” she began. “What time will Mr. Daniel be here?” she ended abruptly.

  “Any moment now,” I said. Our shared relief grew into something almost tangible. ‘He said he’d be ten minutes,” I added.

  Restless, I went to the front porch and stood there for a while looking at the waving fields of sugar which surrounded the house. They were burning off the rubbish on the field nearest the garden and I could see my uncle standing proudly on the edge of the blackened canes, already directing operations with a waving hand and a curious bonhomie that was supposed to hide the nervousness he was feeling. In another hour it would be dark, I thought, and he and Cuthbert would come back to the house, pretending to themselves that they had done the same thing every day for the last year. He couldn’t possibly have found one of those notes, or he would have come inside sooner, seeking the comfort of the family.

  The fires were growing, but I knew that someone was looking after them. Tomorrow, I supposed, they would cut the cane and deliver it to Daniel’s processing plant and refinery. I looked at it harder, trying to convince myself that the crop was mine, that it belonged to me, but it was still too foreign to anything I had ever owned before. It was so much larger and altogether quite inconceivable. It was frightening too, for we would need our neighbours and if they didn’t accept us what would we do then?

  Daniel’s car turned into the drive a few minutes later. He stopped it fairly near the gate and got out, looking about him and sniffing the wind. I saw him run over to the fence that divided the burning field from the garden and heard him shout to my uncle: “Get that fire under control!”

  My uncle flapped an idle hand. “Hullo, son,” he greeted Daniel happily.

  “Get that fire under control!” Daniel roared at him. “You’ll have it all going up in a minute!”

  I ran down the drive towards them, my heart in my mouth. It must have been my imagination, but I could distinctly smell petrol now. Daniel turned and saw me coming.

  “Camilla, go back to the house!” he pleaded.

  But I couldn’t leave him. The field was suddenly full of people, ugly-looking people with fiery torches blazing and cans of petrol in their hands, and they weren’t just stopping with the one field. Already they were being directed from one to the other, whether they were ready or not.

  “Is this the welcoming party?” I asked Daniel grimly.

  “Could be.”

  “But how could she?” I cried out. “Whatever happened before, surely it didn’t deserve this?”

  Daniel gave me a push back in the direction of the house. “Go home, Camilla,” he said again. “This isn’t for you!”

  But it was! Standing on the edge of the field and watching the wanton waste that was being inflicted all about me, I knew that these were my fields. It was my sugar and my life, and how dared they do this to me?

  I ran to the nearest man and tried to stop him spraying the petrol over the sugar. “Do you work for me?” I asked him angrily.

  He hesitated for a second and I grabbed the can from him. We fought over it silently for a few seconds and the warm fluid ran over our hands and arms.

  “Let go, miss,” he pleaded. “There are loose sparks everywhere!”

  “I know! And just who is paying you to do this?”

  “I’ve worked for the Longuets for a few years,” he admitted sourly.

  “I thought so!” I shouted. “I thought so! And what do you plan to do now? Follow them to America?” The man hesitated again, and in that instant he was lost. I wrested the can of petrol away from him and stood in the middle of the field, daring anyone to throw any more over the fire. The men fell back, deflected if only for a moment from their first purpose. And into that moment of hesitation strode Daniel.

  “This is Camilla Ironside, the new owner of the estate,” he announced, in ringing tones that reached to every corner of the burning field. “Some of you will be working for her—”

  “An Ironside?”

  “Would you rather be unemployed!” Daniel snapped back.

  “I’ve worked Longuet sugar—”

  “And now it’s Ironside sugar!” Uncle Philip screamed in anguish. The men turned and looked at him. They left Daniel and I where we were standing and advanced towards him, looking very ugly indeed.

  “It is my land and my sugar!” I said clearly. I drew myself up, glad of my height and that I could look down on most of them, which gave me a natural advantage that could hardly be beaten. “What have you against me that you burn my property and insult my relatives with ancient feuds fought by other men? The Longuets are gone. Will they feed your families? Will they heal the burns you’ll get if you throw any more petrol about on my land?”

  The men retreated from my uncle and stood, sheepishly looking at the ruined field. I had won! I knew I had won! But then a female voice came from the back of the crowd. “Cowards! You’ve been paid once! Burn the sugar!”

  The men surged forward and knocked me off balance.

  I fell awkwardly and a spark from the fire fell on my dress. In seconds it was alight and flaring about me. I panicked and ran first this way and then that, but it was Daniel who caught me and who wrapped me in his coat, stifling the flames before they could do any real damage, other than scare me out of my wits.

  The men we
re scared too. They were afraid of being recognised and of having to pay for the damage they had wrought. They were frightened too of how badly hurt I was and whether that too would be laid at their door. I was conscious of a great deal of shouting, and the woman’s voice, acid with fury, demanding that they didn’t give up. I heard Daniel’s voice too, calm and restraining, and I began to giggle. He looked at me with concern and I giggled again.

  “King Darius said to the lions:—

  Bite Daniel. Bite Daniel.

  Bite him. Bite him. Bite him,” I quoted apologetically.

  He grinned. “Grrrrr!” he finished for me, and we laughed together.

  The crowd had begun to fade away. My knees felt weak and I sat down hastily before I fell down, feeling suddenly sick and aware of the pain that the flames had caused on my naked skin. I was not badly burned, but badly enough for it to be sore and for my skin to feel tight and peculiar.

  Daniel squatted down beside me and gathered me into his arms. “You were magnificent, darling,” he said. “You were:

  —as fine as a melon in the cornfield,

  Gliding and lovely as a ship upon the sea.

  And he covered my face with his kisses.

  Patience anointed my hands and arms with a paste that she said would take all the sting out of the very superficial bums I had received. I sat at the table in the kitchen while she did so, with Daniel watching every movement like a jealous lover as yet unsure of his rights.

  “Relax, Daniel,” I told him. “The damage isn’t too bad, is it? And the Longuets have gone anyway. They’ve done their worst, so things must get better from now on, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Where are these notes you received?”

  Patience shook her head at me. “Are you worriting Mr. Daniel with those? Mebbe it’s as well at that!”

  Daniel stared down at the notes, his face grim and unyielding. “Don’t worry about them,” he said at last. “I’ll cope with them.”

  “What will you do?” I asked, anxious lest he should do anything to hurt himself by helping me.

  “I’ll get on the telephone to the person concerned and see that they stop,” he said simply.

  He would have done it then and there, but at that moment my uncle and Cuthbert came in, their faces still black with smoke and weariness, after setting a guard around the estate in case there was any further trouble.

  “Oh, it’s you!” Uncle Philip greeted Daniel gruffly. “I suppose we should thank you for your help.”

  “Not at all!” Daniel retorted pleasantly. He turned to me and grinned. “It’s my land and my sugar!” he mocked me. “Do you really feel like that?”

  I blushed. “I never thought I’d feel anything at all for a few canes of sugar—” I began, abashed by the look in his eyes.

  “There’s nothing like it!” Uncle Philip said with a sigh. “To smell it again is sheer heaven. To work in the fields on Ironside land again is a dream come true!” I felt mean then that I had said it was mine. I should have said it was ours, that it was Ironside land, for that is what it was. I gave my cousin an apologetic look and he smiled at me.

  “It was one in the eye for Pamela!” he grinned. Daniel frowned at him, but it was too late. Once launched, nothing could stop Cuthbert from what he had to say. “Did you hear her?” he demanded from the room at large. “Did you just hear her? Wilfred will be lucky if he can turn her into a human being—”

  “Cuthbert!” I broke in hastily.

  It was too late. His eye had caught the notes in Daniel s eye and he snatched them from him, his amusement turning to disgust. “Good lord, did she have to write these too?”

  “I thought she was in Port-of-Spain,” I said uneasily.

  “I hoped she was,” Daniel agreed. “But she must have come back for this. She wanted to go on working at the refinery, but of course that’s impossible now—”

  I was aghast. How could he speak so calmly about the girl he loved, the girl he had invited to his family home, the girl who had always, until this minute, seemed to be so suitable for him in every way?

  “But, Daniel, you can’t sack her!” I said.

  He took the notes back from Cuthbert. “She’ll go back to the States with her parents,” he said flatly. “They wanted a holiday by themselves for a few weeks, but the sooner she goes the better.”

  “Wilfred won’t thank you for that!” Cuthbert chimed in.

  “But you can’t, Daniel!” I said again. “It’s only what she’s always heard about the Ironsides. You can’t blame her for that!”

  “I can and I do,” he retorted simply. “I’ll go and telephone her now.”

  He went while Patience finished putting the paste over my arms. Uncle Philip and Cuthbert looked at one another and winked. “We’d better go and wash, Cuthbert muttered.

  “That’s right!” Patience said sternly. “The two of you aren’t fit to sit down at table! And as for you, Miss ’Milla, you can set yoursel’ in the sittin’ room, while I gets this meal started!”

  She pushed us all out of the kitchen, deaf to my entreaties to be left alone to suffer.

  “Now, Miss ’Milla, none of that! You do as you’re told! Mr. Daniel will be there soon enough to talk to you.”

  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to talk to Daniel. I didn’t know what he would have to say and I was strangely nervous that it wouldn’t be at all what I wanted to hear. Daniel quoting poetry in the middle of a burning field was quite different from Daniel, grimly angry, returning from talking to Pamela whom he loved. He could kiss me out there amidst the smoke and the ruined sugar, but here in what was still the Longuet sitting room, he would probably hate me because I wasn’t Pamela and because, unwittingly, I had caused all this trouble.

  But when he came he didn’t look as though he hated me at all. He looked quite as nervous as I felt, and I noticed that the fire had singed his beard on one side, giving him a quaint lopsided look.

  “D-did you get her?” I broke into the silence desperately.

  He nodded. “Oh yes!” he said. “There’ll be no more trouble from that source!”

  “Then it doesn’t matter if she goes or stays, does it?”

  He walked across the room and stood absolutely still beside me. “It matters to me,” he said. “I’m not prepared to have her near you. Can’t you understand that, Camilla? I can’t bear to have any more trouble come to you through Pamela or anyone else!”

  I shrugged. “My shoulders are broad,” I said.

  He smiled. I could feel the tension leaving him and his usual good humour returned bringing the laughter to his eyes.

  “Darling,” he said, “I can’t think why I’ve waited so long! I wanted everything to be exactly right. I wanted the people here to accept you for yourself first. The Ironside story was dead and buried and should have mouldered in the earth long ago. It would have done if the Longuets hadn’t kept it alive! But I knew they had only to see you and they would know that you were something different, someone special—and not only to me! Camilla, it all went wrong—”

  I reached up and laid a finger across his mouth. It was an intimate action that I wouldn’t have dared a few minutes ago, but now he had given me the courage to tell him my side of it.

  “It all went right!” I whispered. “My uncle is back on the land he loves. Wilfred can try for Pamela if he wants to, and Cuthbert is happy to be here with his father—”

  “And you?” Daniel put in, smiling.

  “And I’m happy to be here with you,” I said bravely.

  “Darling!” he said warmly. “I wish I’d made better arrangements, all the same. I made Pamela leave here—I even said she could stay at the house in Port-of-Spain so that she wouldn’t be here when you came, but she must have come down today when she heard you were coming.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” I insisted.

  His arms went about me and I winced as he touched my raw skin. He was immediately concerned and repentant. “It doe
sn’t matter!” he repeated in a funny, tight voice. “You might have been burnt to a crisp!”

  “But I wasn’t!” I said stoutly. I laughed up at him. “Daniel, would you mind very much kissing me again here in the Longuets’ sitting room—”

  I didn’t have time to finish. He held me tight in the most satisfactory way and kissed me, gently at first, on the lips. And then, as he forgot my injuries, anywhere he could reach.

  “When are you going to marry me?” he asked.

  I backed away from him, laughing. “I think it had better be rather soon!” I gasped. “I—you—oh, you know what I mean!”

  He laughed again, a great hearty laugh such as I hadn’t heard all day.

  “I know exactly!” he agreed. And he kissed me again.

  Cuthbert was quicker than his father at cleaning up for dinner, and he walked into the sitting-room just as we were arguing as to which one of us loved the other the most as an excuse for talking at all. It was the sound of the voice we wanted to hear, and words were quite unnecessary at that moment. It was enough to clasp hands and know that we were loved.

  “Wilfred was about right,” Cuthbert said. “He said you’d hand the estate to Daniel on a plate!

  Uncle Philip was just in time to hear the end of his son’s remark. He went quite white, but his expression remained dignified and sad.

  “He said she’d lay it at his feet!” he contradicted Cuthbert, his voice breaking a little.

  Daniel grinned at him. “But it’s Ironside land!” he smiled. “I don’t want it. I want Camilla Ironside, not her few acres of land!”

  “You’ll have to manage it for me, Uncle Philip,” I put in. “I want to go and live with Daniel, not here on my own!”

  The three men laughed and I laughed with them. We were still laughing when Patience called us to go into the dining-room to eat.

  “My, my,” she said, “it’s been a crazy day and that’s a fact! Mr. Daniel, Miss ’Milla, how’s soon is we gettin’ out of this house?”

  Daniel kissed her on the cheek. “Are you coming to work for the Hendrycks again?” he asked her.