by Nunn, Judy
Kate was fascinated. The fact that her great-grandmother had been an eclectic reader as well as an avid one came as no particular surprise, but the condition of the books did. Some were admittedly more worn than others, but considering their age, most were in a pristine state. She checked the publication dates and discovered that many were much later editions than she would have expected. Some had been published in the 1930s and even the late 1940s, when her great-grandmother would have been elderly.
Again, Kate found the fact touching. Big Jim had obviously gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to import French editions for his wife throughout their marriage. Yet Ellie was bilingual. She could just as easily have read the English translations that were readily available in Australia. Big Jim’s gesture seemed to Kate an act of genuine love.
There were two books that did show definite wear and tear, however, one an English edition, the other French. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris were decidedly dilapidated. Old favourites perhaps? Kate opened the flyleaf of both. Inside was inscribed Elianne Desmarais. Old favourites, indeed, she thought. Ellie must have brought them with her from the New Hebrides. No doubt they symbolised the dual cultures she’d inherited from her English mother and French father.
There were no more books as such left in the trunk, but sitting in the bottom was further material that looked like business accounts. They were ledgers, at least a dozen of them. She lifted one out and opened it, expecting to see some form of book-keeping, but the ledger’s columns, normally reserved for figures, were ignored. The page was instead covered in the written word, and the written word was French. She squinted in the gloom. She could just make out a date at the top. 10 juillet 1895
Kate took the ledger outside into the sunlight. She sat on the front step and read the first paragraph slowly, translating as she went.
Today there was such excitement. Our steam locomotive engine, which Jim acquired from the government, has finally arrived. It is a Neilson A10 locomotive, or so he informs me. Apparently the government has moved on to more sophisticated models. I have never seen Jim so enthused. He says it will change our lives and I am quite sure it will, but for my part I find it a rather messy thing, belching steam as it does, and noisy too. I shall miss the Clydesdales hauling the trucks along the tracks, such beautiful creatures. But of course we must move with these modern times . . .
Grandmother Ellie’s diaries, Kate thought. Oh my God, the ledgers are Grandmother Ellie’s diaries. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother. She would translate them for her, read them out loud, and Hilda would hear Grandmother Ellie’s voice, she’d hear the voice of the young Ellie about whom she’d always fantasised.
Kate was thrilled by the prospect. This would give a reality to her mother’s preoccupation with the past. No longer would Hilda Durham need to disappear into her fantasy world: she could experience the real thing.
She returned to the trunk, gathered up all the ledgers and brought them outside. The diaries would need to be sorted through for they were obviously not in sequential order.
Spreading them out on the front steps, she checked the dates – where she could find them for many entries were undated – then she placed the ledgers in sequence and looked at her watch. It was a good hour or so before lunch would be served at The Big House. She couldn’t resist.
13 avril 1888
Once again Kate read slowly, translating each word with care.
I write this in the empty ledgers that Jim is happy to supply. He thinks that my scribbling will keep me happy, distract me from the loneliness of my surrounds, and I can only pray that he proves right. My scribbles will of course remain in French. There is no one in the household acquainted with the language and I intend to be honest. I must. Otherwise this exercise will be fruitless. Only truth can provide the escape I need . . .
CHAPTER THREE
My father sold me to James Durham. Papa denies this of course, but I know it to be true. I openly accused him . . .
‘Don’t be ridiculous, child.’ André Desmarais scoffed at his daughter’s accusation. In fact he did more than scoff, he threw back his huge bearded head and laughed out loud. ‘What a fanciful creature you are, ma petite. James Durham loves you. He’s loved you from the moment he first met you, he told me so. He’s simply been waiting for you to come of age. And he’s a wealthy man – he will make a great match, you couldn’t do better for yourself.’
‘I am to interpret that as a denial, I presume?’
‘Of course you are.’ In the light of her coldness, André realised he could not afford to be glib. ‘Now you listen to me, Elianne, I am agreeing to this marriage for your own good. James Durham can offer you a life of privilege in Australia, a life no prospective suitor from around these parts could provide. It is your future I am thinking of. Why otherwise would I deprive myself of my only child? With your mother now gone who will look after me in my declining years?’
‘A noble sacrifice indeed, Papa,’ her tone remained icy. ‘So no money is changing hands?’
‘Not one sou, I swear it.’
Elianne knew better than to push the matter any further; her father would continue to deny a transaction was taking place, and perhaps he wasn’t even lying. Perhaps no money was changing hands, at least not in the physical sense. But she wondered just how much of the considerable financial debt he owed James Durham might be dropped upon his agreement to her marriage.
‘Very well,’ she said with a disdainful shrug, ‘if you are happy for your daughter to wed such a man, who am I to disobey your wishes? I don’t care either way personally, but I warn you, you are the one who will bear the shame.’
For all her disdain, Elianne did care, but she was not about to share the fact with her father. The truth was she found James Durham attractive, despite her aversion to his rumoured background. Furthermore, his offer of marriage held definite appeal, for since the death of her beloved mother, Beatrice, life on the coconut plantation had become intolerable. These days, her father kept open house for his raucous drunken gambling companions, rough men employed by the Compagnie Calédonienne des Nouvelle Hébrides to oversee the company’s extensive interests in the islands. The men would invariably stay overnight, and no longer were they accommodated in the nearby guesthouse as they had been in Beatrice’s time, if indeed they’d been invited at all. Rather, they would stay in the main house. A comfortable sprawling bungalow, the main house had a number of guest rooms, and Elianne was forced to endure the men’s company at close quarters. She detested the way they ogled her. But she detested far more the way her father allowed it. Her father actually appeared proud that his friends lusted after his daughter.
Elianne detested everything about her father, whom she considered the vilest of ingrates. The reason André Desmarais’s copra plantation had thrived in previous years had been due to the financial acumen of his astute English wife and the expertise of his hard-working French overseer, both of whose efforts had been not only unappreciated, but barely even recognised. And now, since Beatrice’s death, the ever-loyal Michel Salet was faced with an ongoing battle to prevent his employer, whom he also considered his friend, gambling away the last of the company’s profits. Elianne knew her father to be a liar, a hypocrite and a thief, and much as she would miss her friends on the plantation and in the small township of Port Vila, James Durham and Australia offered a welcome escape.
‘It is you who will suffer the humiliation of having married your daughter off to a blackbirder, Papa,’ she continued, ‘and you know the contempt with which such men are held in society these days, not only in Vila, but –’
‘James Durham is hardly a blackbirder,’ André interrupted testily, offended by the term, as she’d intended he should be. ‘James Durham is a wealthy plantation owner who has recently built his own sugar mill! Good God, child, a man in his position does not kidnap and enslave island workers! He employs indentured labour through government-appointed agents as the law
dictates.’
‘But he was a blackbirder, wasn’t he, Papa?’ Determined to have the last word, Elianne continued to needle her father, experiencing a perverse form of pleasure in his annoyance. ‘I believe that’s how he came by his fortune, is it not? Some years ago as a young man –?’
‘He would need to have been a very young man indeed, Elianne.’ Once again André interrupted his daughter, but this time in a patronising fashion. ‘Considering he is not yet thirty years of age. His wealth, as you very well know, comes directly from his moneyed English family, who financed his interests in the colonies.’
‘Yes, so he has told me,’ she replied sceptically, ‘but I have heard other stories. Pavi Salet says that not so very many years ago the islanders feared James Durham. Many accept employment from him now, I know, but he was not always respectable, Papa, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’ve heard that as a very young man he was ruthless and brutal and that the islanders lived in fear of him. They called him “Big Jim”.’
‘Well of course they called him Big Jim, you stupid child,’ André exploded. Her needling was successfully pushing him towards the limits of his patience. ‘He’s a big man and they’re simple-minded blacks, what else would you expect them to call him?!’
‘Pavi was twelve years old when his uncle and others of his family were taken from Ambrym,’ Elianne continued, unfazed by her father’s outburst. ‘Pavi himself was here at the plantation when it happened, but he told me that upon a trip home with his mother, his aunties had sworn it was Big Jim who led the raid on the village.’
‘That’s enough, Elianne!’ The angry light in her father’s eyes warned her she’d gone too far. ‘You’re speaking of the man you’re about to marry. I will not have you quote to me the lies you’ve heard from an ignorant savage.’
But André had in turn angered his daughter.
‘That ignorant savage, as you call him, Papa, happens to be the son of your good friend, Michel Salet, who –’
‘Who married a savage,’ André snarled, ‘which makes him a black-lover, and his son a savage just like his mother.’
For the first time in their exchange, Elianne found herself at a loss for words. Her father and his friends often spoke in a derogatory manner of the islanders, which she found offensive, for there were many loyal, hard-working natives employed at the plantation. Over the years, though, she had become inured to the bigotry that surrounded her. Now, upon hearing Pavi referred to in such a way, she was shocked.
‘Pavi is my best friend,’ she said after a pause, her expression bewildered, her tone disbelieving. ‘We grew up together. We shared the same tutor.’
‘Your mother’s idea.’ André nodded, thankful that he’d made an impact and finally gained her attention. ‘Beatrice and Michel were always as thick as thieves. I gave in to her whim and allowed the two of you to be tutored together, but I should never have let it happen. You can’t let cross-breeds mix with whites like that; it simply doesn’t work.’
She was looking at him oddly: it was clear she didn’t understand. ‘You’re seventeen years old, ma petite,’ he explained, ‘you cannot mingle with the blacks the way you did as a child. They’re an inferior race, you must understand that,’ he smiled as if to soften the blow, ‘even one who is the son of a Frenchman.’
‘A Frenchman who is your friend,’ she said, still with an air of bewilderment.
‘That is so,’ he agreed, ‘but friendship does not alter the fact that his son is black.’
André had never once considered Michel Salet his friend. He’d employed the man because of his expertise in the production of copra, and he’d allowed the semblance of a friendship to develop, but how could one claim as a friend a man who’d married a black? Michel had debased himself. Sleeping with native women was perfectly acceptable, even keeping a black mistress was not frowned upon, but one did not marry them and raise their children as white.
‘I have nothing against Pavi,’ he assured her. ‘My God, the boy has such a way with horses I don’t know what I’d do without him. He knows his place, what’s more. Despite his education, he’s made no attempt to rise above his station and of even greater importance he’s chosen to marry one of his own kind.’ André’s smile was magnanimous. ‘I hope he and Mela find great happiness in their union.’ André Desmarais very much approved of young Pavi’s engagement to his housemaid. It would prevent further cross-breeding.
Interpreting his daughter’s silence as submission, and relieved their argument was over, he kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘Just think, Elianne, you will be eighteen in the New Year. In little more than one month, ma petite, you will be eighteen, and then you will be married. Just think of that. How your life will change.’
‘Yes, Papa, it will.’ Now more than ever, Elianne longed for that change.
Upon leaving her father, she went directly to her room, where she donned a practical straw bonnet, tying the ribbon securely beneath her chin. She relied solely upon bonnets for protection from the sun, preferring to walk without the impediment of a parasol. Then exchanging her light satin slippers for her walking boots, she set off to find Pavi.
She checked the stables first. Pavi’s natural way with animals had seen him recently promoted to stable manager and as such he was indispensable to her father. He wasn’t there, however, so she set off through the plantation, knowing where he was most likely to be.
As she strode along one of the many avenues that led through the endless rows of coconut trees, the heavy cotton fabric of her ankle-length skirt swished busily against the undergrowth. For practical purposes she eschewed the bustle, which remained the fashion of the day, but the neatly nipped-in waist of her skirt and the fullness of her petticoats only served to accentuate the elegance of her figure.
She kept up a comfortable pace; she enjoyed walking. High above her, the leaves of the palms billowed like green explosions against the clearest of blue skies, but she knew that the weather might well become unpredictable. The day was blisteringly hot and still now, but this was December and a tropical storm could sweep in with little warning.
The processing area, towards the western perimeter of the plantation, was a twenty-minute walk from the house, and as she stepped out from the trees and into the clearing she saw Pavi at the drying racks. He was working alongside his father as she’d expected he would be. A number of native workers were squatting on the ground preparing the coconuts, some clearing away the husk, others cleaving the nuts in half on chopping blocks and draining them of their liquid. Michel and Pavi were spreading the halved coconuts out on the racks, meat side up, to dry in the sun, while beneath the structure nearby several other workers were tending the kilns. For the drying process, which was essential in the production of copra, Michel Salet chose to employ a mixture of both methods, invariably achieving the perfect balance.
Father and son greeted her upon approach, and a number of the workers gave her a wave.
‘Bonjour mam’selle,’ some said, or, ‘‘allo missy,’ in the local Pidgin English. Elianne was popular with the workers.
‘Are we safe with the weather, Michel?’ she asked, gesturing at the coconuts laid out on the racks.
‘Yes, quite safe,’ he assured her, ‘until tomorrow afternoon I would say. We will transfer them to the kilns then, just to be sure.’ Among his many other talents, Michel Salet was a walking barometer.
‘May I borrow your son for half an hour?’
‘Of course you may, Elianne.’ Michel smiled and turned to his son. ‘Take your time, Pavi, we have plenty of workers.’
‘Thank you, Papa.’
Pavi, who had been working bare-chested, donned his shirt as a measure of respect for Elianne and they set off through the trees. Like many of mixed race, he was a good-looking young man, olive-skinned and fine-featured.
They walked for ten minutes through the rows of coconut palms to the edge of the plantation, where they emerged from the trees into a rocky clearing. Here the land sloped down t
o the valley, and in the distance beyond the lush tropical vegetation was the blue of the sea. It was a favourite place of theirs.
They sat on the rocks and looked out at the view. They hadn’t spoken as they’d walked: there’d been no need. They were comfortable with silence. Sometimes they would gaze at the view without saying a word, other times they would ignore its beauty altogether and talk non-stop. The two were very much at ease in each other’s company.
Today though was a day for talking, and it was Elianne who broke the silence. She couldn’t wait to tell him her news. ‘You’re not the only one about to be married, Pavi,’ she said.
Pavi stared at her in surprise. He’d not known that Elianne was being courted. He had courted Mela for a whole eight months before they’d announced their betrothal. They’d been just seventeen. Now eighteen and lovers, they both yearned to be wed so that their trysts need no longer be conducted in secret.
‘You’re to be married,’ he said, ‘really?’
‘Yes, really,’ she said.
She launched into her story, his eyes growing wider and wider with surprise as she recounted the exchange that had occurred between her and her father.
‘You declared James Durham a blackbirder,’ Pavi winced comically, ‘that was perhaps not a wise thing to do.’
‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘I hope I haven’t caused trouble for you, telling Papa about your aunties and Big Jim.’
Pavi shrugged. ‘He’ll just think it’s the gossip of silly black women.’ Although Elianne had omitted any mention of her father’s comments about ‘ignorant savages’ Pavi was fully aware of André Desmarais’s contempt for the islanders.
