Marianna

by Nancy Buckingham

  Smiling at him through a mist of tears, she said, ‘I am having bread baked at the quinta for tonight, Eduardo, a whole loaf each for everyone. Make sure there is plenty of agua pe for them to drink.’

  ‘Sim, senhora. They are good people. They labour hard and uncomplaining all through the year. They earn the right to make merry a little at vintage time.’

  It was a long speech for Eduardo.

  Chapter 14

  In the hushed atmosphere of Marianna’s office a fly buzzed and bumped against the window panes as though it were tipsy. Even she herself, accustomed from earliest childhood to the sweet, heady aroma of Madeira wine, was conscious of a special languor this afternoon. The fumes of the tumultuously fermenting new mosto seemed to penetrate into every crevice and corner of the wine lodge. Seated at the big roll top desk of vinhatico wood which had served her father, and his father before him, she shook herself awake and rechecked the tally of yesterday’s deliveries by the borracheiros.

  At a tap on the door Marianna called a languid ‘Entre!’, and Roderigo Gomez sidled in apologetically. He was a short and balding old man, quiet and slow in his movements. Once her father’s store clerk, Roderigo had been almost destitute when she returned to the island, reduced to hawking bundles of oven-kindling from door to door. Marianna had felt obliged to reinstate him at once, even though his wages were a strain on her purse in those first troubled years.

  ‘With your permission, Dona Marianna, there is a gentleman to see you.’

  ‘Who is it, Roderigo?’

  ‘A stranger, senhora.’ He held up a visiting card and squinted at it over the rims of his steel spectacles. ‘Senhor Joao Carreiro, it says.’

  Marianna took the card from him and pondered. The printed address was Georgetown in British Guiana, but overwritten in ink was that of a quinta at Monte, the resort village in the heights above Funchal.

  ‘Shall I send him away, senhora? suggested Roderigo hopefully, disliking anything that interrupted the ordered routine of life.

  ‘Certainly not. Bring the gentleman in and I’ll see what it is he wants.’

  Muttering to himself, Roderigo withdrew, and was back again in a moment. Like a major-domo at a ball, he announced formally, ‘His Excellency Senhor Dom Joao Carreiro.’

  The dark-bearded man shown into the room was well-built and of upright bearing, and Marianna placed him at around forty. He wore a pale grey, short-jacketed lounge suit and carried in his hand a panama hat and a malacca walking cane. For a moment he hesitated in the shadows of the threshold, looking at her; then as he came forward, the light from the window fell slanting across his face.

  Marianna recognized him instantly, and the waves of shock echoed and re-echoed through her body. Stunned, speechless, she waved Roderigo away.

  Jacinto said, when the old man had taken himself off, ‘So you knew me at once.’

  ‘Of course! But ... but how? Oh God ... is it really you, Jacinto? Is this true?’

  ‘Yes, it is true.’ He took another step forward, stopped again. He cleared his throat. ‘Marianna, you look wonderful — exactly as I have always pictured you in my mind.’

  Somehow that loosed her tongue and she said on a harsh, bitter note, ‘I wonder how often in all these years you have spared me a thought?’

  ‘How often?’ She had not remembered the dense darkness of his eyes, the way they could turn molten with reproach. ‘Only every day, querida. Every hour of every day,’

  ‘Then why....?’ Marianna choked back the accusation. What did questions and answers matter when her burning need was to go to him, to feel his arms about her? She said with cool formality, ‘You had better sit down.’

  But Jacinto remained standing, watching her, searching her face, gauging her inner thoughts. Marianna could not hold his gaze and she turned away, moving to the window and staring blindly at the inner courtyard where a couple of long-bloused trabalhadores were trundling casks from a storeroom.

  ‘My mother told me that you received the message I sent,’ he said at length, when the silence had grown. ‘You knew that I made a safe escape from England.’

  She spun about. ‘You have seen your parents?’

  ‘Yesterday. Until then I was unaware that you were here, Marianna. I had no idea that you had ever returned to this island.’

  So he had not come to Madeira for her, to seek her out. After all these years it was a mere stroke of chance that brought them face to face.

  ‘Querida,’ he said softly, ‘must we be like strangers?’

  ‘What else are we?’ she demanded. ‘Almost eighteen years, Jacinto, without a word. What else are we now but two strangers?’

  ‘Should I have got in touch with you?’ he asked, shaking his head in bewilderment. ‘If I had known that you were here in Madeira ... perhaps. But to my knowledge you were still in England, the widow of William Penfold, the mother of his posthumously-born child. I dared not try to communicate with you again, Marianna, and risk destroying the whole fabric of your life.’

  ‘You knew about Dick?’ she cried, on a gasp of breath.

  He nodded, ‘I read the announcement of your son’s birth in an English newspaper.’ Then, seeing her incomprehension, Jacinto went on, ‘I had better explain what happened to me after we parted that evening in London.’

  Marianna listened, dazed, while he told her how the bosun of the sailing barque Algarve had smuggled him aboard as unofficial crew; how twenty-eight days out of London they had made landfall at Georgetown, The money she had provided was almost exhausted before at last he found work, labouring at a sugar plantation on the banks of the Demarara River, using the false identity he had assumed.

  ‘But all that time I was in an agony to discover how you were faring,’ he said. ‘I learned that the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society in the city possessed a reading room, and with the help of my employer I was allowed access. As often as I could, I went along to scour the English newspapers — they were always several weeks behindhand, of course — and I read about the search for the unknown assailant of Mr William Penfold. And soon my name appeared in the reports as a man the police wanted to question. But never any hint that you were under suspicion, Marianna. Eventually, I read that you had given birth to a child, eight months after your husband’s tragic death. I knew then, querida, that it would be wrong of me to expect you to come and share the insecurity of my life in exile, wicked of me to risk bringing disaster down upon you and your baby son. I had to abandon all hope that we should ever be together again.’

  Marianna asked quickly, her hands clenched together, ‘How much has your mother told you about me? What of my son ... what did she say about him?’

  ‘That he is a fine, strong lad, a credit to your upbringing in the difficult circumstances with which you’ve had to contend.’ Jacinto smiled at her sadly. ‘The child must have been a great consolation to you, my dearest.’

  Searching his dark eyes, Marianna could see no trace of a question there, no hint of any realization that Dick might be his son. So his mother had kept her beliefs to herself. Perhaps Rosaria no longer wanted any claim to Dick for a grandson now that Jacinto himself was back.

  ‘Yes, Dick is a fine boy,’ she agreed huskily.

  Jacinto’s glance flickered away from her before he spoke again, giving Marianna forewarning that what he was about to impart would distress her. Yet even so, she was totally unprepared for the shock of his announcement.

  ‘I have a daughter,’ he said. ‘Lucia. She is just sixteen.’

  It felt like utter betrayal! As Marianna stared at him, speechless, he continued, ‘My wife is here with me, and Lucia, too.’ Then he read in her face the pain she could not keep hidden, and hurried on, ‘Let me explain, Marianna.’

  ‘There is nothing to explain. You were free to marry, if you wished.’

  ‘But it was not for love,’ he insisted.

  She said coldly, ‘It is dishonourable to speak thus of your wife to ... to another woman.’

&nb
sp; ‘To me you are not another woman, querida, you know that. You are a part of me, a part of my heart and soul. You are the only woman I have ever loved or ever could love.’

  ‘And so you married someone else! If not for love, then for what, I wonder? Her money?’ She threw the bitter words at him wildly, intending to hurt. That she had succeeded in this was shown by the angry spark in his eyes and the defiant thrust of his chin.

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk!’ he flung back at her.

  Marianna’s arrogance crumpled in an instant, and shaming tears filled her eyes.

  ‘Forgive me, querida, I did not mean to say that.’ He came to stand beside her, laying a hand on her sleeve. ‘Let me tell you about Catarina, so that you will understand.’

  Marianna nodded wordlessly, and Jacinto began, ‘She was the daughter of the man for whom I worked. Senhor Almeida liked to talk to me sometimes, because I spoke Portuguese and he himself was of Portuguese descent, from Brazil. Soon he made me an overseer, and then, because his health was failing and I was quick with figures, he asked me to keep his account books and pay out the men’s wages for him.’

  As she listened to Jacinto, a picture took shape in her mind of the harsh conditions on the sugar plantations, the brutally hard labour of cane cutting in steamy tropical heat. There had been a tiny office, just a rough wooden shack, and he had been permitted to sleep there on a palliasse, a luxury to him after the overcrowded dormitory hutment where the other men, flotsam of a dozen different races, would swig crude rum and brawl for half the night. A friendship had developed between Jacinto and his middle-aged, widowed employer, quickly blossoming into mutual trust. Jacinto found himself confiding something of his story, and it fell on sympathetic ears. Before long, Senhor Almeida was telling Jacinto of his fears regarding the future of his one and only child, a gentle, convent-educated girl of barely seventeen.

  ‘He knew, you see, that he was a dying man. He had been given at most another year to live. What would be his daughter’s fate when he was dead and gone? The plantation was only just paying its way by then against the competition of the cheaper beet sugar grown in Europe, and would hardly bring her an adequate income. The girl was so young and knew so little of the harsh world that she would be easy prey to any determined adventurer.’

  Moved by compassion, Jacinto had promised to do whatever lay within his power to see that Catarina was not imposed upon and that the sugar plantation continued to earn her a sufficiency. But that was not what Senhor Almeida had in mind.

  ‘He told me,’ Jacinto went on, ‘that Catarina looked upon me with favour, and that if I were to ask for her hand in marriage it would be granted with his blessing. He trusted me, he said, and he would die happy if Catarina were in my care.’ Jacinto’s eyes were grave as he met Marianna’s. ‘I reminded the senhor that he knew enough of my background to understand that I would never abandon hope of being reunited with you, querida. But as the weeks went by he constantly returned to the subject, pressing me to reconsider my decision. Then came the day when I read in the London Morning Post of the birth of your child, and I knew that I must keep out of your life forever. It was that which decided me to agree to Senhor Almeida’s proposition. Catarina accepted my hand, and her father was overjoyed. He died two months after we were married.’

  Marianna said huskily, ‘And your wife, does she know the circumstances that took you to Guiana?’

  ‘No, her father begged me not to tell her. He said it would only distress poor Catarina to no purpose. And now, of course, it is unthinkable to cause her even greater suffering than she already has to endure.’

  ‘Suffering?’

  His fingers went to the scar on his temple in the gesture Marianna remembered so well. ‘Catarina is desperately ill,’ he said. ‘This wretched consumption.’

  ‘I see! And you have brought her to Madeira in the hope that the climate here will effect a cure?’

  ‘Alas, the disease is too far advanced for any possibility of that. But I am hoping there will be a certain easement for her. On the doctor’s advice I took her to live on the Demarara coast where the climate is less extreme, but even there the heat becomes oppressive in August and September. I could not bear to see the suffering it caused her, so I appointed my overseer to take temporary charge and brought her to Madeira.’

  ‘Does she realize that this was your birthplace?’

  ‘No, she thinks I am from the Portuguese mainland. That was my original story, you see, before I confided in her father.’

  ‘So you plan to return to Guiana when the weather there improves?’

  ‘Catarina will never go back,5 he said sombrely. ‘I believe she herself appreciates that she will end her days in Madeira.’

  Marianna was silent for a moment. ‘And you, Jacinto?’

  He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘It was my intention to return, I have the plantation there, and for my daughter it is home. But now that I find you here in Madeira, querida, I am uncertain if I can bring myself to leave.’

  ‘It is not seemly to talk in this way,’ she protested unhappily, ‘not when your wife is lying so ill.’

  Jacinto’s eyes flashed in reproach. ‘But to speak in any other way would be dishonest. A cheap evasion! I love you, Marianna, as deeply as I have always loved you. And you love me.’

  Her throat was tensed. ‘You ... you take a lot for granted.’

  ‘But it is true. Why pretend with one another, my dearest, when we both know that it is true?’

  The silence pulsing between them was broken by a commotion outside the room, hurrying footsteps and a cheery shout. The office door burst open and Dick came bounding in. He stopped short when he saw that someone was with his mother, Jacinto had moved back from her hastily, but not before Dick had noted their proximity.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he remarked with cold politeness. ‘I did not know that you were engaged, mama.’

  Marianna said breathlessly, ‘This is my son, Dick, Senhor...’ She had to glance furtively at the visiting card still clutched in her fingers, for she had forgotten Jacinto’s assumed name. ‘... Senhor Carreiro.’

  ‘Good afternoon, young man. I am delighted to meet you,’ said Jacinto, holding out his hand. Half-fearfully, half-hopefully, Marianna watched his face for a sign of recognition, for the sudden dawning in his mind that this boy he was meeting for the first time could be the fruit of his loins. But there was nothing.

  ‘Dom Joao is from Guiana, Dick,’ she went on uneasily. ‘He has come to see me about... on a matter of business.’

  ‘I see!’ Moodily, Dick slung the wicker satchel he carried on to a chair. He showed no inclination to leave.

  Making conversation, Marianna explained to Jacinto that, in preparation for going to Oxford University in a couple of years’ time, her son was receiving tuition from a former Oxford professor of English who had settled in Madeira on account of his health. ‘Professor Melhuish instructs a group of half a dozen lads at his own house. It works very well.’

  ‘I’m sure that it does. My own education, Dick, was of a rather less formal nature.’

  Marianna felt colour mount to her cheeks. She knew that she must terminate this interview as quickly as possible. But first she wanted to lay the foundation for another meeting with Jacinto.

  She said nervously, ‘Dom Joao is here in Madeira with his wife and daughter, Dick. Unfortunately Senhora Carreiro is an invalid, but I wonder...’ She glanced at Jacinto, begging him to follow her lead. ‘Would it perhaps interest your daughter to have a conducted tour of the wine lodge?’

  ‘What a kind thought, Dona Marianna. I am sure that Lucia would be delighted.’

  They fixed it for the very next afternoon, and Jacinto took his leave. The moment he had gone, Dick demanded, ‘What the devil did that fellow want with you, mama?’

  ‘I told you, it was a business matter.’

  ‘That may be so! But I saw the way the two of you were standing close together, gazing into each other’s eyes.’<
br />
  ‘How dare you speak to your mother like that,’ she blazed. Then, seeing his angry young face crumple, she added, still firmly but on a gentler note, ‘You misinterpreted the situation, Dick.’

  ‘And do I also misinterpret the situation regarding those other two men?’ he asked bitterly. ‘That Senhor Dom Carlos Rapazotte and Dottore da Silva?’

  Marianna sighed. ‘I wonder if you have the smallest conception of what it has been like for me, a woman on her own, to rebuild your grandfather’s wine business from virtually nothing.’

  ‘You must have done it from choice, mama. You could have remained in England. You had a perfect right to continue living in my father’s houses.’

  ‘That is true,’ Marianna acknowledged quietly. ‘But it would not have been a happy life, Dick, for either of us.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. England must be a wonderful place to live. It’s the very heart of the British Empire.’

  ‘You’ll have your chance to go there in due course. But at the time of your birth ... well, let us say that I was not made to feel welcome by Ralph Penfold. In fact, I did not feel truly welcome in England at any time.’ Choosing her words with care, she went on, ‘It is often the case, you know, when a widower with children takes a second wife. And for me the situation was made especially difficult because I was even younger than my husband’s son and daughter by his first marriage. After ... after I became a widow, Ralph was responsible for administering my income, because he was his father’s heir. It meant that I was entirely dependent on Ralph’s goodwill — something which had always been markedly lacking. Believe me, Dick, Ralph himself was greatly relieved when I made the decision to leave England and return to Madeira. And for my own part, I have never once regretted it. But I couldn’t have succeeded here without the help of men in positions of influence like Senhor Rapazotte and Dottore da Silva. Their friendship has been invaluable to me.’