She leaned against the balustrade, inhaling the fresh air, while he put her glass in her hand. Only after she had drunk did she open her eyes. ‘I adore dancing,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
She gazed at him, then turned away, and looked down the drive to the labourers’ village, where a great fire burned, and where they could hear the rattle of the drums and the shouts of the dancers; the peons too were celebrating, and Don Arnaldo had decreed that on this special night their rum should be free. ‘So do they,’ she remarked. ‘I sometimes wonder if I have Negro blood in me.’
Her shoulders were bare, and still gleamed with sweat. Standing immediately behind her, he could inhale the scent of her hair; indeed, as it had started to come down with the exhilaration of the dancing, it blew in strands across his face as a faint breeze rose — her perfume was mingled with sweat, and was the more earthily erotic for that. And he could still feel the satin of her flesh beneath his fingers, flesh that was only an inch away from him now.
‘You have Cuban blood,’ he said.
She turned her head, leaning backwards as she did so, which carried her back against his chest. ‘You can understand that?’
‘Of course.’
She turned, and was in his arms. His hands found the warm dampness of her naked shoulders and brought her tightly against him, as her hands gripped his arms, the nails almost biting through his sodden jacket to reach his flesh in turn. And her mouth sought his. She is drunk, he thought, as their tongues touched and their breaths mingled. And I am being irresponsibly caddish, in taking advantage of her condition. But is not all fair in love and war? I desire her, I want her, to make her mine, to honour and to cherish and to love, for the rest of my life and hers. There can be no sin in that, in obtaining that objective, whatever the means employed.
Her head moved back. She was not so drunk she could not feel him against her. ‘I think we should return inside,’ she said.
‘Christina … ’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I am not going to marry you.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘Tell me why. At the very least you owe me that.’
‘I owe you nothing,’ she said. ‘Except an apology, for just now.’
‘It is I should apologise to you. But Christina, I love you. God, how I love you. I do not think I can live without you.’
She stared at him. ‘Then take me,’ she said. ‘Now, down in those bushes over there. I will neither fight you nor cry out. I will be yours. Take me.’
He could not believe his ears. ‘You … but … ’
‘I will be your mistress, if you desire it so badly.’
‘But not my wife.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I cannot be your wife. And you are too honourable to take me as a mistress, are you not, Joe McGann? Therefore it would be better if we did not dance again this evening.’ She walked away from him, back into the crowded room.
*
‘So peaceful, so quiet,’ Toni remarked, sitting on the upstairs balcony in a rocking chair, and looking out over the fields; it was quite early in the morning, and there were still gangs of peons making their way towards their appointed labour for the day, while their wives hung out the washing in the village, and their children scampered to and fro, accompanied by their dogs — but they were all too far away for any of the noise to disturb the tranquillity of the plantation house, where the only sound was the whisper of the maids’ brooms, and the distant thuds of one of the gardeners chopping wood. ‘It is hard to believe that only a week ago this place was like something out of … I don’t know what.’
‘Dante’s Inferno,’Christina suggested. She sat beside her sister-in-law, also with a sewing bag on her lap, but she was actually stitching her embroidery.
‘What’s that?’ Toni asked.
‘A book. Which depicted hell, amongst other things.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I didn’t mean that,’ Toni protested. ‘Obrigar could never be hell.’ She paused, anxiously. ‘Could it?’
‘Hell is not a place,’ Christina remarked. ‘Hell is people.’
The somewhat un-Christian sentiment gave Toni cause for thought. She was actually finding her sister-in-law a very unusual companion, and a provocative one, far more so since the wedding than she observed before. This could be just because she was getting to know her so much better, as they spent much of every day in each other’s company, but Toni was sure it also stemmed from the wedding, and something that had happened during the reception.
Between her and Joe? Certainly she had observed that the next morning Joe had been quite brusque with almost everyone, and when it had been time for him to say goodbye, he had done no more than shake Christina’s hand, briefly, while she had gazed at him with a most peculiar expression on her face.
It was something Toni intended to get to the bottom of, but she felt she should proceed carefully, and let their intimacy grow before she probed too deeply. So she merely changed the subject, partly. ‘Do we have parties like that often?’ she asked.
‘Not often.’
‘Oh.’ She found that disappointing, although she recognised the enormous amount of work and expense that must have gone into her wedding. ‘How often do we go into Santiago?’
‘Very seldom,’ Christina told her.
‘Oh,’ Toni said again.
‘My father does not feel welcome in Santiago,’ Christina said.
‘Why is that?’
‘Perhaps he will explain it to you, one day.’ Suddenly she put down her sewing, and stood up.
Toni raised her head, and looked at her husband flogging his horse up the drive. ‘He must have forgotten his watch,’ she said facetiously, as he had only left the house an hour earlier.
Christina gave her a glance that almost froze her blood, then went inside and down the stairs. After a moment Toni followed her, but remained standing at the top of the great staircase, looking down at the hallway beneath, as Rafael stamped into the house, dust flicking from his boots. ‘Father,’ he called. ‘Father!’ Don Arnaldo came out of his study.
‘There has been a message,’ Rafael told him. ‘When?’
‘Tonight. It will be a big shipment.’ Arnaldo snapped his fingers. ‘It is coming closer. I feel it in my bones. I will make the arrangements. Does Jack know?’
Rafael nodded.
‘Good. Then you continue with your work.’ Rafael nodded again, turned, and looked at his sister, who in turn looked up the stairs. Husband and wife stared at each other, and Arnaldo came forward, from beneath the gallery, also to look upward.
‘Will you tell me what is happening?’ Toni asked, her voice quiet, even if her brain seemed to have been seized in a vice.
Rafael looked at his father.
‘You will have to,’ Arnaldo said. ‘She had to know, some time. And she is your wife.’ Rafael licked his lips, and came up the stairs. ‘Come on to the verandah,’ he said.
Toni hesitated, glanced at Christina, then followed him. In the week of their marriage, they had achieved a very complete intimacy. But it had been an intimacy of the body, of physical sensation and physical pleasure. She had not sought an immediate intimacy of the mind, presuming that would come with time, and happy that it should be some time. Now it was suddenly essential, and the necessity was frightening. ‘You are running guns,’ she said.
Rafael sat down in the chair his sister had just vacated, stretched out his booted legs. ‘Yes.’
‘You are in league with those bandits in the hills. ’
‘General Garcia and my father support the same cause, yes,’ Rafael said carefully. ‘The sacred cause of Cuban independence from Spain.’
‘And you supply this General Garcia with weapons.’
‘We pay for the guns, and they are delivered to one of the beaches just south of the plantation. We bring them ashore, and bury them in pre-selected places. Garcia is informed when a shipment has arrived, and collects them as soon as it is safe for him to do so.’
‘And if Lumbrera discov
ers what you are doing, he will hang you.’
‘He will never discover,’ Rafael asserted. ‘Until the guns are actually used against him. Then it will be too late.’
‘But you and your father lied to Pa and Joe,’ she said.
‘We did not tell them the truth. There are some secrets which cannot be shared. Besides, we doubted they would understand, even if your forefathers undoubtedly did the same thing to secure their independence from the British. Also, we feared that if they knew the truth they would not allow you to marry me.’
‘Then you lied to me as well,’ Toni said, standing before him.
‘When did I do that, my darling? Have I ever made any secret of where my feelings, my sympathies, lie? I thought you shared them.’ Toni frowned. Because, the sense of outrage at having been deceived apart, she did sympathise. If she knew nothing of the true difficulties of existing under Spanish rule, she could yet hate a man like Lumbrera, and all he stood for. And besides … ‘Jack … Mr Lisle … is he in this with you?’
‘Everyone on the plantation is in it with us,’ Rafael said. ‘But Jack is our general, yes.’
‘Your general?’ She could not believe her ears.
‘Indeed. He was appointed by General Garcia, and his appointment has been confirmed by General Gomez, who is the commander-in-chief of our army in exile, and by Josef Marti, who is the president of our government in exile.’
‘Marti? Not that poet man?’
‘Of course. He is a close friend of my father’s.’
‘Good Lord,’ she said. But her brain was spinning at the thought of Jack, a general? Of a revolutionary army!
‘What will happen, eventually?’ she asked.
‘Eventually. Well, Marti and Gomez are working very hard organising all of our people in exile into an army for the invasion of Cuba. There are many thousands of Cuban exiles, either in the United States or in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who are waiting for the opportunity to strike at the Spanish rule here, and those who cannot fight are aiding the cause with money. Obviously they, we, are hopeful of obtaining American support as well … but if that does not happen, then we must proceed alone. The moment we are ready.’
‘And you will all be killed,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘Not this time. This time we will be fully prepared to take on the Spanish. And beat them, too.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘I know it.’
‘They are regular soldiers, with cannon. And machine guns.’
‘We will have cannon and machine guns. And they are nothing. You have heard the story of the murder of Jack Lisle’s father, and those others they took from the Virginias. Their shooting was so bad … ’
‘I heard the story,’ she said, ‘and that happened more than twenty years ago.’ She turned away from him to look out over the plantation. As she had remarked only an hour ago, the most tranquil scene in the world. Which in reality hid a pulsing revolutionary movement.
If the idea appalled her, it yet made her blood tingle. Yet she had to remain angry, because of his deceit. ‘I still think it would have been more honest for you to tell me this before we were married,’ she said.
He got up to stand behind her, put his arms round her waist and bring her against him. ‘I was too afraid of losing you, my darling.’
‘Because you thought I would not support you. If I would not, would you have wanted me as your wife, anyway?’
‘I did want you as my wife, anyway. I do now. And now I have placed myself, my family, my future, our future, the lives of everyone on this plantation, entirely in your hands.’ She turned in his arms. As a patriot, he really was a very heroic man, she supposed. Very noble. And very loving. He deserved the support of a much more loving wife than she. ‘I will never betray you, or your cause,’ she said.
He kissed her. ‘That I knew. And this time we will triumph, I know it. And you will share in our triumph.’
He held her close and could not look into her eyes. For which she was grateful. She could not have him guess that it was not him alone she would never betray.
*
That night she shared the anxiety of Carlotta and Christina, and could not resist probing their feelings. Because they had been equally deceitful, and therefore equally bold and uncompromising, in the way they had smiled and greeted their enemies … General Blanco! … at the reception, knowing all the while that they would one day, one day soon, be locked in mortal combat with them.
‘I suppose it is something we have lived with for all of our lives,’ Carlotta said. ‘I knew Arnaldo was a patriot before I married him. As did my father. Thus I quarrelled with my family, and left, before the revolution even started. I will confess that I was so grateful when Antonio, my father-in-law, decided to have Arnaldo operate as his agent in England while the war was on. But it was bad for Arnaldo. He has felt ever since that he played a cowardly role. When the war was over, he was determined to take up the fight, and I could never have refused him. My own father had died in the fighting, at the head of his volunteer regiment, for Spain. My family have never spoken to me since. Well, my mother too is now dead. Arnaldo, the cause, is all I have left.’
Toni stared at her. She had been going to say, something like, but don’t you know he is going to be killed? And probably Rafael as well? And Jack Lisle? Now she didn’t know how to.
But perhaps Carlotta understood what was going through her mind. ‘I will admit I am terrified,’ she said. ‘More on nights like this than any other. I wonder if it can possibly be worth such risks. But then I think, if it is going to happen, then the sooner it happens the better, while we are still young enough, and strong enough, to bear it, and so every rifle which comes ashore brings that day sooner.’ She leaned across to pat Toni’s hand. ‘I know that perhaps you are angry that you were not told of our involvement before marrying Rafael. Believe me, I would never have permitted it had I not been certain that the revolution can never touch you. You are an American citizen. The worst that can befall you is that you will be asked to return to the United States.’
Once again Toni was lost for words. The worst that can happen to me, she wanted to shout, is to lose my husband. Or the life of the man I love. Not necessarily the same thing. Which was perhaps why she made no reply at all.
It was indeed apparently a large shipment of arms; the men did not return until after midnight. But this time it had gone off without the slightest hitch, and there was no visit from Lumbrera; the gun runners had been warned, and showed no lights.
Two hundred good rifles, and five hundred rounds of ammunition for each gun,’ Lisle told them triumphantly. ‘We will soon have the whole army equipped.’
Toni gazed at him with shining eyes, seeing him in an entirely new light, even more complimentary than as an overseer, or a man with a mission of vengeance. The general! In command of the plantation, when it came to a fight. Therefore he must be a man of enormous talent and ability, talent and ability recognised by Don Arnaldo, and this General Gomez, and the man Marti. She wished she could congratulate him, had to content herself with confiding to Christina, ‘I simply had no idea he was that important.’
‘He is important to the revolution,’ Christina replied. ‘Supposing that ever happens. Not to anything else.’
One of her enigmatically sour remarks, to which Toni was getting used. But now she had also to become used to belonging to an enormous conspiracy. It was a totally strange mixture of excitement and apprehension. Her life had hitherto been lived in total security. As she had told Rafael, nothing had ever happened on Long Island, and if her earliest and most famous ancestor had undoubtedly been every bit as much of a revolutionary as any of the Diazes', that was history.
Her initial reaction was to do as Christina had done, and withdraw from the world outside. Christina in some ways reminded her of a military nun. For all the smiling charm she had put forward at the wedding had been an act, she now realised. Christina was bracing herself for t
he enormous explosion which she knew would one day take place, and she was not prepared to resume living, or perhaps even start living, until that had happened. Which accounted for much of her character.
With such a point of view, unlike her parents, and again diametrically opposed to her smiling welcome, she utterly condemned Rafael for marrying at all, much less an American. She and her family were involved in the revolution because they had been born to such involvement. Someone like Jack Lisle also had a personal stake in what was happening. But she thought it criminal to have involved a total outsider — although Toni also suspected there was a strange element of jealousy involved … she was muscling in on their revolution.
‘But I am so glad he did marry me,’ she argued, and she was not lying. ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Besides, as your mother says, I am in no danger, not even Lumbrera would ever dare touch me.’
Christina made no reply to that. Toni had actually meant to reassure her. Now she could not decide whether her sister-in-law disagreed with her sanguine point of view, or was reflecting that such immunity would not extend to herself or her mother.
*
The real difficulty lay in communicating with her own family. She dared not of course confide in them, both because that would be betraying the Diazes, and because she simply could not imagine their reaction, although she suspected the noise of the explosion would be heard all the way down in Cuba. So she filled her letters with commonplaces, desperately trying to convince them that she was settling into a routine of being a typically happy housewife, and that she was indeed, wildly happy. This in fact was no lie. Rafael remained a perfect lover — more perfect than ever as she now shared his one secret — who satisfied her every physical need, while for her emotional outlets there was the sheer excitement of belonging to such a time, and place. Of knowing that the man she wanted above all others to hold her in his arms was working to the same end, and of seeing him almost every day, and feeling his excitement, too, for no one could doubt that the increased shipments of arms meant that the great day was coming closer.
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