The Secret Life of Winnie Cox

by Sharon Maas

  ‘While my brother Dr Night represents the sugar workers up and down the coast,’ said George, ‘I am here to speak for the dock workers, the factory workers, Georgetowners. You can all, every one of you, come to me with your troubles; any time of day or night. I am yours.’

  Yours, he had said. The proverbial penny finally dropped. And at last I knew George, knew the secret side of him that had till now been veiled from me, because I would not see it, ensconced as I was in my sweet little bubble of privilege. I saw, now, what drove George, and it was not love for me, no matter how much he loved me – and I knew he did, but I also knew that that love would always, must always, come second behind this other, greater, more serious love. Young as he was, George had a Calling, and this was it. His voice vibrated with it. In that voice was a greatness, a grandeur, a mission. This was the real George. I could not divert him away from that. This was why, back in Promised Land, he had seemed so ambivalent. It was not through lack of love for me, or cowardice, but through the knowledge of how deeply, how incorrigibly, our paths fell apart from each other. We were on two sides of a wall. My choice was to give him up, or join him on the other side of that wall.

  ‘Brothers and sisters, I’d like to finish off with a song,’ he said then, and a muted cheer went up – it seemed the crowd knew what that meant. George bent over and someone handed him an instrument, a banjo. He held it to his chest, plucked a few strings. Someone held a megaphone to his lips, and he began:

  I believe, the darkest night will turn to day,

  I believe, that we below, will find a way,

  Every time I take a breath I know our prayers will see us through, will make us free, there will be joy, for me and you,

  I believe, I believe …

  * * *

  By the time George had finished the three verses of his song I was in tears, rivers of tears, silent tears that flowed unhindered, the tangible melting of every last frozen piece of my soul. His voice was exquisite. Deep and true and resonating with such warmth and strength it caused my whole being to sing too, to be caught up with his and sing with him, if silently. George was musical! Why had I not guessed that before! As the final chords of his song died away a deep sadness replaced the jubilation that had swept me into a private heaven. I wiped away my tears. My childish dreams crashed to the ground, I felt lost, abandoned.

  But I had to see him. I would see him, speak to him. He had to know – know what I now knew.

  George was speaking again. ‘I’m afraid I must leave you now; enjoy the rest of the evening,’ he said. ‘Brother K and Boatman have important things to say.’ He placed the strap of the banjo over his head, pushed the instrument around to his back, stepped down from the box and handed on the megaphone, and to a storm of applause stepped through the seated crowd back towards the sea wall. This was my chance. I leapt to my feet. Startled, Myrtle pulled at my skirt but I snatched it away and stumbled more than ran towards George.

  He and I arrived at the wall simultaneously.

  ‘George!’ I cried, and lifted my veil. He stared. ‘Winnie!’ he said. ‘What on earth …’ ‘George,’ I repeated, ‘You were wonderful! Marvellous! And George, I want you to know, you’re right, about everything, and I believe you and understand. I truly understand. I won’t stand in your way. I’m with you!’

  ‘Winnie, you can’t …’ he began but he stopped and turned, his features frozen as if listening intensely. From faraway down the beach, the muted sound of Brother K speaking. But that wasn’t it. I listened too, and then I heard it. The unmistakable clatter of horses’ hooves, far away yet, down the Sea Wall road.

  But even before that thought had registered, George had grabbed my arm and was running, dragging me along with him. ‘Run, Winnie, run!’ he cried, letting go of me, and I lifted my skirts and ran as fast as I could behind him. He was heading towards a group of fishing boats moored on the beach about thirty yards away from where we stood. We arrived, and before I could even gather my breath he lifted me into his arms and heaved me up and over the side of one of the boats. He too was breathless, and his words came in gasped groups: ‘Winnie, you’re just the most exasperating, the most stubborn, headstrong – I don’t have words! What made you do this? Come here?’

  ‘I love you!’ I bleated.

  ‘Love! I don’t care! Winnie, there’s no time for love. Children are starving! This is serious!’

  ‘I know! That’s what I wanted to …’

  ‘No time to discuss now. Get down. Hide under that seat. Keep your head down and be quiet. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  George, mild, sweet-natured George, was a different man tonight: strong, commanding, in charge. I ducked down, crawled into the space under one of the boat’s seats as George ran off.

  But not for long. I couldn’t resist: cautiously I emerged again and peeped over the edge of the boat. George was a black shadow racing towards the crowd. He reached the edge of the seated group, stopped. He seemed to be shouting something, and gesticulating, shooing the people away. Immediately the people sprang to their feet and began running, some to the west towards Georgetown, some eastwards. Scattering, fleeing, dissolving into the night. By this time, the mounted police – for that was what the clattering hooves had been – had arrived, jumped from their horses, and policemen were swarming over the wall, racing behind the scattering hordes, calling out ‘Halt! Come back!’ One policeman fired shots into the air, but no one stopped. A few policemen raced after the fleeing shadows, but they were too late, too far behind.

  Only George did not flee. They caught him. Both arms held by two officers, he walked back towards the Wall. There they stopped, and, it seemed, interviewed him. I saw him clearly. He appeared so calm. I could even see that he was smiling. At one point he twisted around to retrieve the banjo, held it up, and even, plucked a few strings. How courteous, how confident he looked, standing straight and tall, chatting with the policemen as if just minutes ago he had not taken part in an obviously forbidden political rally! My heart swelled with pride. He was so young, and yet already a leader. A great leader.

  But all his words seemed to have no effect, for a minute later the handcuffs came out and George was being led away. As I cautiously watched from the rim of the boat, a hard lump rose to my throat. Was this my fault? Was I, through that irrepressible ardour that seemed to always run away with me, somehow, responsible for the trouble George was in? And though reason told me no, that I had nothing to do with George’s arrest, I knew without a doubt that the guilt I now felt was visceral, instinctive, based on far more than tonight’s events. It was a collective guilt, and it would follow me for the rest of my days. When all was quiet I made my way back to Auntie Dolly’s. I could not tell if Myrtle was back yet, and I did not check to see. I threw myself, clothed as I was, onto the bed, buried my head in the pillow, and sobbed.

  That was the night when everything within me shifted, rearranged itself. When I finally grasped what my life was about, which course it had to take. Life could never be the same. I grasped the thing that George had hinted at, that Uncle Jim had warned me of, that Auntie Dolly had spelled out to me in crystal clear letters. The wall between me and George was so high it was insurmountable. Not even the greatest love could cross that barrier.

  The next day I returned to Promised Land without incident. I travelled First Class at Auntie Dolly’s insistence, caught the steamer, and arrived at Emily Stewart’s house just in time to be picked up by Poole. I stepped into the motor car and back into my old life.

  Mama’s Diary: Plantation Promised Land, British Guiana, 1902

  Liebes Tagebuch,

  From bad to worse. I have taken now to exploring the plantation and I have seen the evil with my own eyes. I have seen those dreadful logies. I have seen even worse. I followed my husband into the fields, on foot. He could not see me coming as the canes were high, above my head, and he did not look back.

  There is a place, not too far into the fields, a clearing with a
few coconut trees, breaking the monotony of the flat endless fields. I heard a commotion there and I crept up on them, hidden by the canes. I saw it all. A man, a coolie, stripped naked, tied to the trunk of a tree. My husband, my Archie, whip in hand, lashing and lashing and lashing. The man’s back was striped with bloody welts, and still my husband lashed on. I could not watch for more than a few seconds. I turned and ran, coward that I am, and once I had gone a little way I stopped to vomit, and then I threw myself to the earth and wept.

  Chapter Twenty

  Back at Promised Land no one noticed a thing. Perhaps I was an excellent actress – me, who Papa had always accused of ‘wearing her heart on her sleeve’. Perhaps we were all too wrapped up in our own little worlds to notice any change in each other. As for me – I worried about George. Was he in prison? If so, on what charge? Had he lost his job? Or had they let him go in time? I worried for days, waiting for my chance to get news. At last, that chance came: one day when Miss Wright was away and Yoyo was out riding with Maggie I seized the moment: grabbed my bicycle and sailed down the road to Uncle Jim’s.

  There was a gathering of workers under the house, a meeting of some kind. One of them, a young, bare-chested Indian, stood talking to others sitting on the ground, gesticulating. He looked familiar. From the gate I could not hear what he was saying, but I could tell he was agitated. No-one had seen me yet. Then the dogs stormed the gate barking and they all turned around to stare and the speaker fell silent. Uncle Jim, who had been sitting on a bench carving a piece of wood, walked over to hush the dogs and to open the gate, and even as I walked in, all the Indians stood up and walked out. And as they passed by me each one threw me a look of such hostility I wanted to sink into the ground.

  I recognised the speaker: it was the man called Bhim who had harangued George that day at the post office. And now I realised one more thing: it was the very man Papa had whipped. His bare back was marred by scars, black stripes where Papa’s whip had slashed it. No wonder he was hostile towards me! I flushed with guilt. It was as if I, personally, had delivered those welts.

  Uncle Jim had already received news. George was fine. He had been released from police custody early on Monday morning with no charges. He had been late for work and reprimanded, but otherwise his life was back to normal.

  ‘So now you see,’ said Uncle Jim, ‘why I wouldn’t let you call him a coward.’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. I felt two inches tall. ‘I understand … you must have thought me so silly and arrogant!’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, and patted me on the shoulder. ‘Just young.’

  In the following months I wrote to George as frequently as I could. I poured out my heart to him. I exposed myself completely. ‘I’m sorry,’ I wrote in my first letter. ‘What a silly little girl I must have appeared to you! I didn’t understand, George, and my only excuse is that I’ve lived under my father’s protection and influence all my life and I could never even begin to feel what life is like on the other side. It was a life of ignorance, and I am ashamed of it.

  ‘It’s that ignorance that drove me to run away to Georgetown – I blush now at the very thought of what I did, how ridiculous, how childish! And yet so much took place in that short time – so much! My eyes were opened, finally, George. Forgive me! I do love you, but in just a few days I have grown up and grown into a new understanding – one that will give me the patience and the endurance to survive my life on Promised Land, as well as prepare for whatever the future holds in store for me. You have changed my life around, George. My love for you has reached a deeper, more solid foundation. I have become a woman.’

  I signed the letter Winnie X. How could I be a Cox, now that I knew what that name meant? Now that I knew the cruelty, the oppression, and the tyranny associated with that name? No, it had to be reduced to X. X was the real me, the real Winnie. Besides, George too, had a secret life. The real George was Theo X: we already shared a surname! Besides – X was a kiss – just one.

  I brought the letter to Uncle Jim, and let him read it; it was important that he, too understand the change in me. He nodded, folded it, nodded at me in approval, and replaced it in its envelope. ‘I’ll make sure he gets it,’ he said.

  Ten days later, I collected a reply from George.

  ‘Winnie, I do love you, and I’m glad you see now the hurdles in our way. It’s more, far more than the fact of our disparate worlds: you saw what I am doing in Georgetown. You saw that I am bound up in something I cannot turn my back on. Can our love overcome this? Can it last? Is it strong enough? Everything in my heart screams yes; yet the reality of my role, and yours, screams no. That you now understand speaks volumes, and I am glad; had you remained that innocent, naïve and reckless girl I knew from the plantation we would not have had a chance. All I can say is this: write to me, Winnie! Let me know you through your words. If I cannot see you, hold you, at least I can meet you in the freedom of mind, reach out to you in spirit, and feel your response between the lines of your letters. I don’t know where this will take us; I only know I cannot let you go. Not yet. Just one thing I beg of you: destroy my letters once you have read them.’

  And that is what I did. More letters came; I read them at Uncle Jim’s, and immediately burned them, and I watched the flames devour each one while the flame in my own heart grew stronger and steadier. I lived for George’s letters, and I lived to reply to them. I lived for this back and forth in which we poured out our hearts to each other in a way we had never done in speech, for we had never had the chance, the time. Paper is patient, they say, and on paper I bared my soul to George. I told him of my happy childhood, of my closeness to mama, of my music and my ultimate disillusion, the crashing down of the idyll. George’s letters, too, were long; he told me of his family, of his childhood in Georgetown, and finally of his Calling. George had a gift for words, both spoken and written, and on paper used them with the same eloquence that had won me on the Kitty foreshore. He signed his letters George X. That X was our secret code, our lives joined. Those letters kept me alive.

  Yet how I languished in isolation on Promised Land! How I longed to actively move my life forward! So when the chance came to pull some weight of my own – why, I jumped at it.It happened a few weeks later. Uncle Jim and I were sitting, as we had at my first visit, in the gallery. All the windows fronting the room were wide open, so it was as if we sat in the open air, but the high trees outside the windows kept the sun out and the breeze sweeping through held a fragrance of some sweet blossom. Aunt Bhoomie – for that’s what I called her later, once I got to know her and understood that her silence was one of intimacy, not of distance – brought out a tray on which stood two long glasses of passion-fruit juice. I took one and looked up at her, smiling in gratitude. With Aunt Bhoomie words seemed superfluous; she emitted a sense of comforting self-sufficiency that made me feel I had known her forever, that all that had to be said had been said. I sipped at the juice and turned to Uncle Jim.

  ‘Five years! Five whole years. It is as if I have to hold my breath for this time. The suffering is almost unbearable,’ I complained. ‘This endless waiting, hiding my true self away, playing a role in my own home.’ When he did not reply, I muttered on.

  ‘Pah!’ he said. ‘You really call that suffering? Unbearable suffering? Really?’

  I pulled myself together immediately. ‘No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it’s unbearable. I can bear it. I will bear it.’

  ‘I’m on your side, Winnie. Bhoomie too. I understand: you’re impatient an’ frustrated. But you got to learn to wait.’ He chuckled. Aunt Bhoomie drifted back to the kitchen.

  ‘Five years seems like eternity when you’re young,’ he said. ‘When you get ol’ like me is quick like this.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘An’ you goin’ be a changed person at the end.’

  ‘But I don’t want to change!’ I cried. ‘I can’t love him any more than I do now!.’

  ‘Pah!’ Uncle Jim scoffed. ‘At your age, nobody knows what love is
. Love changes, and grows. Who knows. You might find someone else.’

  ‘I won’t! I know I won’t!’

  ‘Give someone other boy a chance, Winnie. Don’t shut down all the doors. What ‘bout them young men in the senior staff compound?’

  For the August holidays had broken. The August Holidays! Year after year we sisters had looked forward to those weeks with the excitement of children waiting for Christmas. The August Holidays meant days and evenings spent in the senior staff compound, where all our friends were finally back from school: one or two from their boarding schools in England, some from their boarding houses in Georgetown, some, like Emily Stewart, from their term-time homes in New Amsterdam. In the past these were days of fun and laughter. We had the freedom of the compound all to ourselves; deep friendships formed one year, only to dissolve over the months of separation, and new alliances formed the next year. We girls met boys; always under the well-chaperoned auspices of each others’ parents, of course, yet still, we fell in and out of love, exchanged knowing glances, giggled and tittered and wondered who we would marry. .

  Not so that August. That August, Emily Stewart appointed herself my very best friend, and I let it happen. It was a protection. Emily alone knew of my excursion to Georgetown, and of course she longed to know the details. I told her only that it was unsuccessful; that my love was impossible, and that I must forget him. But our shared secret drew us together, and frankly I enjoyed having one friend on earth of my age and my background who knew even a little of my heart. Emily knew why I was indifferent to the flirting approaches of some of the more eligible boys. She knew why I acted shyer than ever before. She took me under her wing, and I was glad to be there. I longed to confess fully to her; but some instinct held me back.