Caribee

by Christopher Nicole

  And here was some beauty, too. No doubt it was already present, in his mind, but then, he could tell by the expressions of the men around him, and even of the Caribs, that this was not the whole of it. She gloried in a head of the most marvellous auburn hair, winch possessed a peculiar sheen to it, even in the afternoon sunlight. Below, the skin was very lightly dusted with freckles, entirely lacking the muddy quality of the other girls. Nor were her features vacantly rounded, as theirs, but rather aquiline, with a straight nose set between two wide grey eyes, and a matching mouth which sat well above a pointed chin. There was nobility, even hauteur, in the way she gazed at the beach, allowed herself to take in the Caribs, with interest but not fear, and then to dwell with the utmost contempt on the group of eager white men. Only when she saw Rebecca did her expression change, but for a moment, before resuming her normal reserve.

  She was tall; when she stood up she matched any of the sailors, and slender, but yet obviously a full grown woman; she wore no more than a shift, winch the breeze flattened against breast and belly, gathered around thigh and buttock. And she had all the instincts of a lady, for when she stepped down on to the beach, and a playful gust threatened to lift her skirt, she held it firm with her hand where her predecessors had cared nothing for their exposed legs.

  'Over here,' Jefferson said.

  The mate gestured the girl in the direction of the others. He seemed to prefer not to touch her, at this moment. Still holding the skirt of her shift she crossed the sand towards them.

  'By God,' Jarring said. 'Now there is a woman. When do we draw lots, Captain Warner?'

  The girl stopped, and her gaze, hitherto studying the sand, came up. 'Ye lay a finger on me and I'll take out both your eyes,' she said, quietly, and yet very distinctly. The brogue was there, and yet hidden beneath a veneer of education.

  'You seer" Jefferson pointed out. 'She's incorrigible.'

  ‘I do not think so,' Rebecca said softly, and stepped forward. 'These girls were sent out here less as wives than as servants, were they not? And am I not, as wife of the Governor, entitled to a servant for my house?'

  'But....' Jarring began, to be silenced by a look from Ashton.

  'You are, Rebecca,' said the sailing master. ‘I think that is an entirely suitable suggestion. And indeed, given the time to settle herself, and to understand that we are gentlemen and not louts, Mr Jarring, she may well prove a good wife to one of us yet.'

  'Providing we can wait that long,' Jarring said in disgust, and turned his attention to the other girls.

  'What is your name?' Rebecca asked. The two women were of almost the same height.

  The girl stared at her, and flushed. 'My name is Susan Deardon,' she said. 'And I'd know what ye want of me. I’ll not be sold off like a cow.'

  That shall not happen, Susan, I promise you,' Rebecca said. 'Now, firstly, I want your trust. That way we may become friends, and life may take on a more pleasant aspect.'

  With the coming of July, Ashton, Berwicke and Edward fell to watching the sky. But it remained clear. There was increased rain, and occasionally they could see the heavy dark clouds forming on the horizon, but always they dispersed before the wind, without assailing the island. Yarico was confident. 'Hurricane, no,' she pronounced, and would fall to playing with his body, as she invariably did whenever they were alone.

  He lay on his back, in the forest adjoining Brimstone Hill, their usual meeting place as it had been the first. His clasped hands were beneath his head, and he looked down on her glossy black hair as she fingered and stroked, kissed and caressed. She never tired of him, after more than a year, delighted it seemed equally in arousing him and then in reducing him to flaccid impotence. He was her toy, her plaything, and she loved him. This was the disturbing factor. He marvelled that she had not yet become pregnant. Three of the Irish girls already had swelling bellies, and there seemed little doubt that there would be others before very long; Father anticipated the arrival of the priest with more anxiety than he worried about the shipment of his crop, for he could not convince himself that the civil ceremonies he had performed had any significance before God.

  What would happen should Yarico also give birth did not bear consideration. Because try as he might Edward could discover no similar feeling within himself. He admitted to an endlessly muddled series of emotions. He loved her physical loving—and yet could not help but imagine how much more marvellous would it be should it be done to and by a white girl. This was Susan's effect on him. She had even managed to replace Mama in his midnight dreams. Not that she ever paid any attention to him. She paid little attention to anyone. Father and Mama allowed her to take her meals with themselves and the children, and in many ways treated her as a daughter, yet they were seldom rewarded with a smile and when two of the Irishmen had got drunk and fought, and Father, reluctantly, had ordered them to be flogged for causing a riot, her eyes had smouldered as she had watched the punishment

  Edward blamed her not a whit. To be torn from home and family, merely on account of birth and religion, seemed unjust. And the sight of her, the smell of her, for she was most remarkably clean about her person, and the very presence of her, kept him in a state of constant excitement, from which again Yarico benefited, still without seeking to discover whence it arose, without, perhaps, ever suspecting that it had a source other than herself.

  He sat up, suddenly decided. Yarico moved her head, to gaze at him, eyes watchful.

  ‘I must go,' he said. ‘I have remembered....' he reached for his breeches, dragged them on. ‘I must go.'

  Yarico stared at him. He bent over her, kissed her gently on the forehead.

  Tomorrow?' she asked.

  He hesitated. 'Perhaps. I must go.' He ran away from her, over the brow of the hill and down the winding path. Great beads of sweat rolled down his neck, flew from his face. Relief, certainly. She was choking him, slowly, incessantly, with her love. Love? Savage Indians could not love. That girl had torn a man to pieces with her teeth. He must never forget that. He could never forget that. He was her conquest. Her prisoner, she had thought. He would indeed have been her prisoner, had she had the wit to become pregnant. Father would have seen to that, rather than antagonize Tegramoud. But now he had escaped.

  And there was the sweat of anticipation, too. Because it was Sunday, many of the colonists were asleep. Others were gathered by the water's edge, smoking and talking. The Irish labourers, with the frenetic energy peculiar to themselves, were farther up the beach, playing a remarkable game in which they armed themselves with palm fronds, carefully trimmed of excess leaves so that only the hard, curved spine remained to provide a four foot long club, with which they chased a dried husk to and fro, as often whacking each other on the shins as gaining their objective. A truly strange people.

  It needed no more than caution to approach the village from the rear, through the tobacco field, past the seed beds and the sheds erected for the drying and curing of the crop, for Father had come to the conclusion that he would save by doing this here, and more, produce a distinctive brand of tobacco. Too much was lost by rot on the way home.

  He stood in the little yard behind the Governor's house, and watched his sister building castles in the sand. She was six years old, and remained a total stranger to him, a small, dark, earnest child, with unutterably deep eyes and a perpetually dribbling nose, who spoke little and cried less, seemed wrapped up within herself in the possession of some vast secret.

  Sitting on the little step which led to the back door of the hut was Susan Deardon. Her feet were bare, as usual, and her legs drawn up beneath her. Her magnificent hair was loose and fluttered in the afternoon breeze. She looked half asleep, but her eyes followed the child. Christ, how he sweated. But this was all to the good. Father and Mama must have taken a walk along the beach, perhaps to visit Tegramond.

  He stepped round the building, and her head moved. 'Ye're a strange one, Master Edward,' she said. 'What brings ye creeping through the grass like a thief?'


  He cursed the flush he could feel burning his cheeks. 'What makes you sit here by yourself, when everyone else is enjoying themselves?'

  'Enjoying themselves? Is that what they're at?' Her shoulder rose and fell. ‘I'm to watch Miss Sarah.'

  'And I came to watch you,' he said boldly.

  Her head half turned. There was no change in her expression. But she moved her legs, stretching them in front of her, and arranged her skirt across her ankles. She wore one of Mama's old gowns, pulled in to fit her slender waist, but refused to attempt shoes. And what need, in such a climate and with such beautiful feet.

  'Because there's nothing I'd rather do,' Edward said, and sat beside her. Now his sister also watched him, briefly, before returning to her game in the sand. 'Why don't you admit it?" he asked. 'This place is not half so bad as you'd anticipated. You've food to eat, and water or wine to drink. You've as pleasant a climate as anyone could dream of....'

  'And I'm owned by pleasant people,' she said.

  "You're not owned by anyone, Susan.'

  'Of course ye're right, Master Edward. I'm just borrowed. Do ye know how old I am? Eighteen. So when your mother is finished with me, I’ll be twenty-eight. Mistress Warner's castoff.'

  'You could end that tomorrow.' The saliva drained from his mouth to leave his throat parched.

  At last she looked at him. 'Marry one of them thickheaded louts? Then I would be entering slavery.'

  ‘I was thinking that there are gentlemen on this island.'

  It occurred to him that he had never really seen her before. She had been a face, exposed by its very circumstances, but strong enough to protect the brain within; a body, well concealed beneath her clothes; bare feet which but promised the beauty that would exist in the rest of her. And the hair. It was the hair which filled his dreams. Would the hair on her belly be that glorious? But now the mask was splitting, from sheer surprise. Her reserve had, after all, been no more than loneliness. And suddenly she looked less an untouchable beauty than a frightened young girl.

  Then it was closing again, shutting herself away behind the cool grey of her eyes. 'Ye've a mind to mock me, Master Edward.'

  She was again staring at Sarah.

  'No,' he said. 'Believe me, Susan.'

  His hand started to move across the step, towards hers, and then slipped back again. Christ curse him for a coward, but he was afraid of her.

  'Then ye're a fool,' she said. 'Or a dreamer. Ye know nothing of me. Ye've never touched my flesh.'

  'A dreamer,' he said. 'Not a fool, Susan. Would the reality be so different to the dream?’

  Her head turned, so quickly she took him by surprise. 'There's the girl,' she muttered.

  'She'll not understand.' But he was incapable of movement.

  Not Susan. She placed her hands on his cheeks and kissed him on the mouth. She all but sucked the tongue from his throat. And here was no Indian smell. Here was fresh beauty. And breasts. His hands came up, to close on them, to feel the nipples right through the cloth, to feel the surging flesh beneath. Mama had breasts like these. Oh, Christ in Heaven.

  Her hands were on his chest. 'God, I have wanted,' she whispered. 'And you. If it's my tits ye're after, Master Edward, they're yours. Just don't mock me.'

  'No,' he said. ‘I'm sorry. I have wanted, you. Since you stepped ashore. I fell in love with you then, Susan.'

  She tossed her head, straightened her shift. 'Every man on the Island did that. Even the savages.'

  'And have you yielded to any of them?"

  'Christ,' she muttered. To that?'

  'Listen,' He seized her hands. He could do that, now, and as they lay flaccid, his own rested on her lap. On her thighs, and everything that lay beneath the gown. So, was he about to lie? He could not tell. He knew now that he did not love Yarico, that he would never love Yarico. He knew now that he would dream of that day in his mother's bedroom until he died. But at least that dream now possessed red hair, rather than brown. ‘I love you, Susan,' he said. ‘I want you. But all of you. I want you to marry me.'

  She was gazing at him, and he was no longer afraid of her eyes. ‘I'm a bastard,' she said. 'My father was a big man. Oh, he was a big man. My mother was a whore. But she was his whore. Life was good, until your English came. They burned Daddy's castle. They hanged him. They laid Ma on her back until she died of exhaustion, and they went on laying her after that. I'm no virgin, Edward Warner. They got me too, but I didn't die, so I was right for slavery.'

  Christ, how he hated. Them. Them. Out there in the world. But this world was no more than twenty miles long by ten wide, if that.

  ‘I'm no virgin, either,' he said.

  'Ye're sixteen.'

  ‘I'll be seventeen in a month. I'm a man grown. ‘Ive had to be, Susan. I'll care for us. I'll build us a house, back there. I'll give you sons. And one day this colony will be mine.'

  Now he was afraid again. There was a quality hi her eyes which seemed to say, liar, liar, liar, you want these tits and this belly. You want to own these legs, because you have never seen legs to equal them. But she was wrong there. And if a man could not possess his mother, well, then surely he could love this magnificent creature.

  'Then ye'd best act the part,' she said, softly.

  Footsteps, coming through the house. Edward hastily stood up, on one side of the step, and Susan followed his example, on the other. Rebecca came through first, Tom at her shoulder. 'Sarah.' She stooped and scooped the girl into her arms. 'You've been good?'

  'Oh, yes, Mama. Edward was with me.'

  'Mooning about the plantation on a Sunday afternoon?' Tom demanded. ' Tis not like you, boy. Where is Philip?’

  ‘I have no idea, Father.

  'Susan?"

  'He ... he wandered off.' Her cheeks were flushed and now she bit her hp. It was difficult to suppose anyone on this island opposing that bluffly domineering manner. But Edward reminded himself that he had seen his father just as nervous and uncertain as this girl.

  'Careless,' Tom said. 'You'll do better in future, Susan.'

  'The boy is growing, Mr Warner,' she said, quietly.

  He stopped in surprise, and glanced from her to his wife.

  'Why, that's true enough,' Rebecca agreed. 'And the men are on the beach.'

  'Aye,' Tom said. 'But you'll remember your place, girl. Now and always.'

  Edward sucked breath into his nostrils, felt his heart pounding, and for the second time this afternoon cursed the heat in his cheeks. 'Not always, Father. I would like to speak with you.'

  Now Tom was frowning, and looking from boy to girl. "You'll take Sarah inside, Rebecca.'

  Her turn to hesitate. But she knew better than to increase his simmering anger. She gave Edward a warning glance, and closed the door behind her.

  'Yes?" Tom inquired.

  ‘I would take a wife, sir,' Edward said. 'Susan.' Tom looked at the girl. 'Your doing?’

  There's no other man on the island I'd rather wed, Mr Warner. If that is what ye mean.'

  'Slut,' he snapped, and swung the back of his hand. It caught her across the mouth and stretched her on the sand, legs kicking and skirt flying.

  'Sir,' Edward said. 'You have no right.'

  Susan sat up, straightened her skirt, and only then wiped the trickle of blood from her lips.

  'No right?' Tom shouted. 'She's that fortunate I do not take the skin from her arse. And you, by God, look at you, sixteen years old, and you'd take a wife, would you?’

  Edward refused to lower his gaze. 'You made me a man, sir, before I was twelve. You've a thriving colony now. Have you no wish for a grandson?’

  'By God,' Tom said. 'What have you been doing, then? Crawling around the Carib village hoping to thrust your weapon into some cannibal?' He continued without giving Edward the time to consider a reply. 'No. They'd not have you. They like men, not boys. And she....' his arm outflung. 'Do you think she cares a damn for you? She seeks to be free. Aye, she'd laugh in your face the moment the words were sp
oken. Get from my sight, boy. Mention this to me again and I'll flog you both round the camp, so help me God. Now take to the woods, and do not return before supper time.' He seized Susan by the hair as she would have risen. 'Not you, girl. You'll spend the rest of this day on your knees, here in this yard. And you'll pray that I forget this afternoon's work.'

  The anger bubbled inside him, curling his fingers into fists, causing him to rip the branches from trees and slowly strip them to the bark. Once, even, he caught a lizard, and hurled it from him with all his strength, listening to its passage through the bushes with tumultuous glee. Anger, against whom? Father? Or self? He was a coward. There was a fact. He had crumpled like a leaf in the hand. What would she think of him now?

  But he hated Father, too. For treating him as a child. Why, if he wished, he could take Father as he had taken that lizard, and ... if he wished. If he had the courage, to oppose not only Tom Warner, but the King's Lieutenant, Governor of the Caribee Isles. There was a dream.

  And Susan. Desire clouded up his body, turned his legs to lead, left his brain a limp rag. Susan, all of that tall, straight white-skinned beauty, all of that proud face, all of the promise which had surged beneath the shift, all of that abundant fire-red hair, had been granted to him. For the space of a few short seconds.

  It could be his, forever. To take that would be to reject all else. But what else was there worth having, where that was absent? Especially where all that would be there, all the time, perhaps, in time, belonging to someone else. In a very little time. Of course Father would now seek to force her into marriage with one of the colonists. Then would life truly become unbearable.

  His decision was made. He was so happy he felt like bursting into song. And then grew serious again. A time for planning. But it all seemed very simple. Once the decision was made, it all fell into place.

  He returned to the village at dusk, as instructed, in time for supper. They sat around the table as usual, Father at the head, Mama at the foot, Edward and Sarah on one side, Philip and Susan on the other. Father's bad temper had disappeared, as it usually did, and he was, again as usual, determined to make it up to all. He talked and joked. His conversation played around their heads like a sea breeze. Unsuccessfully. Mama was quiet, the children inquisitive. 'You looked so funny, kneeling in the yard, Sue,' Philip said. 'Why were you kneeling there all afternoon?'