‘You don’t say.’
‘So why do they have hair like that?’
‘Gawd, I don’t know! Ask Sol next time you see him. Second thoughts, I am joking, Barb, do not ask Sol that when you see him.’
‘My dad says they have that hair to stop their heads being damaged when a coconut falls on it.’
‘Well it sounds like your dad talks out of his arse as much as you do, mate. Least we know where you get it from.’
‘All right, keep your hair on!’ Barb bent over and snorted as she laughed. ‘Did you hear what I said? Keep your hair on!’
‘I heard you. And for the record, I think his hair is beautiful. I think he’s beautiful.’ Dot ground her teeth.
‘Blimey. You do, don’t you?’
‘Yep.’ Dot kept her eyes cast downwards.
‘Have I upset you, Dot?’
Dot exhaled. ‘I don’t know. A bit. Yes.’
‘But you and me can talk about anything, can’t we?’
Dot nodded at her best friend. ‘Course we can. I just find it hard, it seems everyone has something negative to say and I just wish… I just wish someone could be pleased for us.’
‘I am pleased for you! Even if other people aren’t. I thought Aunty Audrey was going to choke on her tea when I told her! But I’m not other people; I’m your best mate, always.’
Dot nodded. ‘I know.’
‘But I do think it’s going to be tough, because it’s different. We don’t know any coloured people, Dot and it’s not just cos he’s coloured. It’d be the same if he was normal but from Iceland, people would be interested in what Iceland was like and what it was like living in an igloo and eating nothing but frozen fish.’
Dot looked at her friend and decided there was no point continuing the discussion.
‘You go and have your fag and fresh air, mate; I’ll tidy up a bit.’
‘I don’t think anyone will be nipping outside any time soon, thank you, Miss Simpson.’ Neither girl had heard Miss Blight approach. ‘Can I remind you both that there is a rota for break times and it is not to be deviated from. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Miss Blight.’ The girls spoke in unison.
‘And have you finished the stocktake on the fabric? I am called upon to submit figures.’
‘Yes, Miss Blight.’ Again, both girls answered simultaneously, although this time both had their fingers crossed behind their backs. It was their rule: if your fingers were crossed, lying didn’t count.
As Miss Blight walked away, Barb held two unlit cigarettes in the extended fingers of each hand and pretended to puff them one after the other. Fake smoking while flicking the V was one of her specialities. Dot collapsed in giggles.
With her hair still passing muster at the end of her shift, Dot pulled her headscarf tighter, jumped off the bus and ran up Ropemakers Fields. And there he was, loitering at the end of Narrow Street, looking handsome and happy. Even the sight of him was enough to fill her stomach with a fizz of joy. It didn’t matter that it was raining, nothing did. The two of them laughed at the joy of being reunited.
‘Paolo’s?’ she asked.
‘We could, but my parents are at a function so we have the apartment to ourselves. Why don’t we go back and I’ll make us hot chocolate. We can get out of this rain!’
Dot nodded. ‘Sounds lovely. And on the way you can tell me more about your garden. I’ve been thinking, I’d love a nice garden, y’know. I’d like to grow flowers and all me own veg.’
‘Oh, be careful, once you get the gardening bug it can take you over, become an obsession. You worry for the welfare of all these living things that are entirely dependent on you for their survival!’
‘Oh Gawd, I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of responsibility.’
Sol looked her up and down. ‘I’d say probably not.’
‘Behave!’ She shoved him playfully. ‘I think I’d like to cook what I’d grown. I could do fruit and make jams and crumble; be lovely that, wouldn’t it? I’ve never been much of a cook, it’s kind of me mum’s thing, but I reckon I’d love cooking for you. I’d experiment and you’d have to eat all my disasters!’
Sol smiled at her. It would be lovely.
It felt strange to be in the Merchant’s House without her mum – sneaky and a little bit disloyal. This was her mum’s place of work and there she was, sliding along the wooden floors without her shoes on, while her boyfriend made them hot chocolate in the kitchen where Joan toiled day after day.
Every footstep, creak of door and rattle of window seemed extra loud, as though betraying her illicit visit to an interested ear. Dot entered the grand ballroom in which they had first met and looked up at the ceiling; strange how she had never really noticed the painting until that eventful night. She walked to the middle of the room and lay on the wooden floor. The more she stared, the lower the image came, as though God and the angels were descending to meet her. She felt warmth flood through her body and took this as a sign, a blessing. She felt at peace, happy beyond measure and optimistic about her future.
Dot jumped up, dusted off her dress and sat at the piano stool on its raised platform. She pressed several keys down at once. The loud thrum resonated in her chest and echoed around the room, bouncing off the majestic military men captured in oil and tinkling the crystal droplets of the vast chandelier.
‘There you are!’
‘Here I am.’
‘Okay, budge up.’
Dot scooted along on the wide, shallow stool to make room. Sol placed two mugs of hot chocolate on the silver coasters on top of the piano.
‘I’ll play and you sing. We shall recreate the moment I first saw you.’ Sol cracked his knuckles and flexed his fingers. ‘Ready?’
‘No! God, not ready! I can’t sing, I’m rubbish, really rubbish. Please don’t make me do that.’
‘Clover, everybody can sing.’
‘Not everybody, not me. I sound like a cat in pain, it’s horrible!’
‘When is the last time you sang?’
‘I sing all the time, but only when no one can hear, in the bath and stuff.’
‘Well, just make out you’re in the bath then. Come on! No one is listening, you are all alone…’
His long fingers stroked the keys and the magic notes of Etta James’s classic tune rose up and danced about Dot’s head. She closed her eyes and listened until the whole song had been played through. Sol continued, starting over, and she began to hum.
After a while, it felt perfectly natural to turn the hum into words, so she started to sing.
‘At last
My love has come along…
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
Oh, yeah, at last
The skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you’
With eyes closed, she massacred the beautiful ballad that had provided the background music to the first night they met.
Sol put his fingers in his ears. ‘You’re right! Stop! Enough! You really can’t sing!’
‘Oi!’ Dot made to swipe at him. He caught her wrist mid flight, surprising them both into stillness. Dot could hear the blood pulsing in her ears, felt the irregular flutter of her heart in her chest. It was always this way when he touched her. Her breath came in shallow bursts and her senses were magnified. It was as if time slowed.
‘I think this is it, Clover,’ he whispered, only inches from her face.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that you and I have stumbled upon what most people will spend their whole lives looking for, it means that we will be together. You and me – if that’s what you want.’
‘Blimey, Sol! You have to slow down! You’ve only known me for a little while, it’s a bit fast, isn’t it?’
‘I know, it is and I promise you that I am usually so patient; this is totally out of character for me. Just ask my mum, she’ll tell you! She’s been watc
hing me try and feed a peahen in our garden for what must be years now; every day I call to the hen, offer her a little grain, but she never takes it. I am patient even though she is bad tempered, sneaky and snappy.’
‘She sounds like Mrs Harrison.’
‘Who’s Mrs Harrison?’
Dot shook her head, it didn’t matter. Sol sat still and fixed her with his stare, his expression earnest. ‘It is a little fast, very fast, that I accept, but here are the facts. I’m nearly twenty-two and, assuming I live until I’m eighty-five, this means we have approximately sixty-three years left on this planet together, no more. The idea of having only sixty-three years with you horrifies me, frightens me. Because it’s not enough, not nearly enough.’
He ran his hands over her shoulders.
‘How long would be enough?’ She hardly dared ask.
‘Eternity. I’d settle for eternity.’
Dot bit her bottom lip and felt her heart jump. This was a feeling that she had not known existed.
Sol reached out with trembling fingers and hesitated, trying to calm his breath, which leapt and stuttered in his throat. He stared into her face, trying to fathom the misty-eyed stare. His touch was no more than a fraction away from her milky skin; they both knew what was about to happen, but being forewarned didn’t make it any less daunting. His fingers breached the space between them. Dot ached to feel him against her.
It was done.
An invisible barrier had been broken, a milestone reached, a curiosity satisfied.
Dot raised her head to receive the kiss that was delivered firmly, squarely on her mouth. It was perfect. Sol lingered afterwards for the right amount of time, allowing her to inhale the scent of him and feel the heat of his body against hers.
Slowly, she moved her face forward again, closing in. He grazed her cheek with his fingertips, igniting a jolt from the point of contact to her core. She kissed the pads of his fingers, before taking his palm and placing it against her chest. Sol stood up from the piano and, still holding her hand, he steered her towards the sweeping staircase that led up to his apartment.
‘Supposing your mum and dad are back?’
‘They’ll be hours yet, but I’ll check if you like?’
Dot nodded. Sol opened every door in the spacious flat, while Dot hovered anxiously in the hallway, marvelling at the plush drapes in the tall sash windows and the sumptuous sofas that sat around the enormous marble fireplace. She let her eyes roam over the fancy carpet and the books that probably nobody read, cos they were all ‘inbred and illiterate’… She cringed as she remembered uttering those very words. Had it really been not much more than a month ago?
‘The coast is clear!’ He beckoned her into the inner corridor.
‘Are you sure your mum and dad aren’t coming back soon?’ She didn’t want this to be how she was formally introduced, sneaking in after hours through the back door.
‘They are at a formal dinner, long and boring and far away. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘All the time in the world sounds good!’ She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips; it felt wonderful to be able to kiss him with abandon, out of sight and in these very grand surroundings. Sol put his arm around her waist and guided her towards his bedroom door. The two stumbled and kissed as they made their way along the elegant hallway.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ Sol stroked her cheek.
‘I’m totally sure, I want my first time to be here and I want it to be you.’
‘Me too.’ He held her tightly and pushed open the door.
Dot vaguely took in the detail of the room. The large walnut bed with its gold counterpane and bolster pillows. The fancy swags with matching tie-backs and the heavy brocade wallpaper.
She unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. Standing before him in her silky slip, she didn’t feel exposed in the way that she had expected; instead she felt warm, alive and certain that this was exactly what she wanted.
Sol placed his hands inside her petticoat and tried to find the clasp of her bra. His fingers gripped at the wide elastic and fumbled and twitched against the back of her underwear. He ran his long fingers over the strap, but without success. ‘I can’t find the hook!’
Dot pulled away from him and looked him in the eye. ‘What do you mean, Mr Soldier Boy? I thought you’d been trained. Is my bra hook above the permanent snow line?’
The two young lovers laughed their way towards the bed and landed on the soft mattress in a jumble of arms and legs. Their pace was measured, the two novices finding their way without awkwardness.
Sol whispered into her hair, ‘This is perfect. You are perfect.’
Dot smiled against his skin. For the first time in her life, she felt perfect.
The two dozed for an hour or so. Waking, Dot reached out and took Sol’s hand between both of hers. A feeling of pure joy coursed through her veins and left her trembling. She watched his long fingers interlace with her own, his brown skin against her pale palm.
‘You know, Clover, every choice has a consequence, a price, and you should always ask yourself if it is a price worth paying.’ He spoke while transfixed by their fingers, joined together.
‘I don’t care what the price is, Sol. I will pay anything to be with you. I didn’t know I could be this happy, I didn’t know it was possible for anyone to be this happy!’
‘You are a stubborn little thing, aren’t you?’
‘I may have been told that before!’
‘I’ve been thinking, about when I leave here…’ He waited for her to comment, but she didn’t. ‘I want you to come to St Lucia. I want to take you home with me. I know it’s a long way and I know that it means leaving your family. You don’t have to think about it for a while, but these next few months will fly by and I want everything in place when that time comes. I want you to know that I am committed to you, that this isn’t some holiday fling.’
‘Well I’m glad to hear that!’ She laughed and kissed his cheek.
Dot considered the house she shared with her mum and dad and thought about her commute up West three days a week in the rain to sell material and sewing bits and bobs to people that could afford what she could only dream of. In truth it wasn’t much of a life.
Sol wasn’t finished. ‘I want us to live on the island. I can see exactly how it will be. We will live at the Jasmine House and Patience will help you settle in – once she’s given you a hard time for having snared the most eligible man in the West Indies and not having a title.’ Dot punched him on the arm; he pulled her closer until her head was on his chest. ‘You can spend your days designing clothes and then sewing them from the fabric that I will fetch for you from every corner of the earth. The first shop selling “Clover Originals” should be in the islands, with others to follow in America and then Europe. We will get married, and have a very lavish wedding in the garden, when the flowers are just right and then in a couple of years when our children are tucked up at night, sleeping soundly in the nursery with Patience on her bed in their room, I will sit with you in the garden. It’s my favourite part of the day, when the sun sinks into the ocean and the day has lost its heat, and we shall bask in the warm breeze that blows across the beach from the Caribbean Sea, watching the lights twinkling from Reduit Beach on the curve of the horizon.’
Dot closed her eyes and lay perfectly still, visualising the scene in its every detail. ‘Crickets’ll chirp in perfect time,’ Sol continued, ‘providing our nightsong. There might be the gentle whir of a fan overhead in the great hall or the creak of wood as our rocker lulls us like babies, rocking us back and forth so we have to fight sleep. There is no place like it on earth, Clover!’ She smiled dreamily, not wanting him to stop. ‘Your stomach will be full of warm, peppery callaloo, proper one-pot cooking. We will feast on a bowl of bouillon made from pig snout, green lentils, onions, maybe some peas. Oh, it’s so tasty and filling that you will eat until you can barely move. I will hold your hand
in mine and we’ll sit on the deck and smell the jasmine that will fill the air around us. We will sleep with the shutters thrown wide open and the warm wind will flow over us as I hold you tight in my arms, keeping us cool.’ He squeezed Dot even closer. ‘In the morning we’ll drink fresh pineapple juice and feast on mangoes from our trees. We’ll run barefoot across the spiky grass and down to the beach where we’ll dive into the crystal-clear water and swim all morning, tasting the salt on our tongues and feeling it burn on our skin as we lie under the shade of a palm tree. At lunchtime, we’ll eat fresh fish and drink sweet coconut milk straight from the shell. This is how we shall live, getting older and slower with each passing year, but we won’t care because we will be happy and we will be together. What do you say, Clover? Will you come with me?’
She reached up and touched his face. It sounded perfect. His description filled her with a warmth that drove the sense of foreboding from her bones. She wouldn’t miss the dark mornings, the dirty buses, the rude customers or the cold. She never imagined that there might be a life like that for a girl like her. She swallowed to flush the hard ball of tears that had pooled at the back of her throat. Yes! Yes, she would go with him. Dot wanted to feel the salt water burn on her skin, she wanted to lie in his arms and sleep with the shutters thrown open and the promise of fresh pineapple juice for breakfast. She rolled over until she was cocooned in the white linen sheet and propped herself up on her elbows. Sol ran his fingers through her hair and over her fine, straight nose.
‘Some might think that you were trying to propose to me, Mr Arbuthnott.’
Sol pulled his body free of the blankets and dropped to the floor by the side of the bed. He knelt on one knee and took both her hands inside his. ‘Some might be right…’
Dot’s eyes filled with tears and her heart beat loudly in her chest. This was it.
‘Lady Clover, beautiful woman, I never expected to feel this way. I’ve played music my whole life without really understanding the words, but then you came along and now suddenly they do make sense to me – I found a dream that I could speak to/A dream that I can call my own. In fact everything makes sense to me. Like my whole life has finally come into focus. I love you and I will always love you. There will only be you, always you, for my whole life, and if I can’t have you, then I will grow old a very lonely man, tending my garden and thinking about this moment. So, will you marry me?’
Clover's Child Page 7
