Secret Harbor (2 page)

It would be impossible for her to escape, and she would no longer be herself but entirely subservient to the large, red-faced man waiting to greet them.

“Glad to see you back, Kilkerry!” Roderick Maigrin shouted in a loud, over-hearty voice, clapping the Earl on the back.

Then as he stretched out his hand towards Grania and she saw the expression in his eyes, it was only with a tremendous effort of will that she did not run frantically back towards the ship.

But it was already sailing westwards to round the point of the island before it turned north to reach St. George’s harbour.

Roderick Maigrin led them inside the house to where a servant was already preparing rum punches in long glasses.

There was a gleam in the Earl’s eye as he lifted his glass to his lips.

“I have been waiting for this moment ever since I left England,” he said.

Roderick Maigrin laughed.

“That is what I thought you would say,” he said. “So drink up! There is plenty more where that came from, and I want to drink the health of the lovely girl you have brought back with you.”

He raised his glass as he spoke and Grania thought that his blood-shot eyes leered at her as if he was mentally undressing her.

She hated him so violently that she knew she could not stay in the same room without telling him so.

She made the excuse that she wished to retire to her bedroom, but when a servant told her what time dinner was served she was forced to wash and change and go downstairs, making herself behave as her mother would have expected, with dignity.

As she had anticipated, by this time her father had already had a great deal of drink, and so had their host.

Grania was aware that the rum punches were not only strong, but their action was accumulative.

By the end of the dinner neither man made any pretence of eating; they were only drinking, toasting each other and her, and making it quite clear that she was to be married as soon as the ceremony could be arranged.

What was so insulting to Grania was that Roderick Maigrin had not even paid her the lip-service of asking her to be his wife but had taken it for granted.

She had already learned in London that a daughter was not expected to question the arrangements her parents made on her behalf when it came to marriage.

She wondered at first that her father could think that a coarse, elderly, hard-drinking man like Roderick Maigrin would be a suitable husband for her.

Then what they said to each other and the innuendos in Roderick Maigrin’s remarks made Grania sure that he was paying her father for the privilege of becoming her husband, and her father was well satisfied with the deal.

As course succeeded course she sat at the dining-table not speaking but only listening with horror to the two men who were treating her as if she was a puppet with no feelings, no sensitivity, and certainly with no opinions of her own.

She was to be married whether she liked it or not, and she would become the property of a man she loathed, a property as complete as any of the slaves who only lived and breathed because he allowed them to.

She disliked everything he said and the way he said it.

“Any excitements while I have been away?” her father asked.

“That cursed pirate Will Wilken came in the night, took six of my best pigs and a dozen turkeys, and slit the throat of the boy who tried to stop him.”

“It was brave of the lad not to run away,” the Earl remarked.

“He was a blasted fool, if you ask me, to take on Wilken single-handed,” Roderick Maigrin replied.

“Anything else?”

“There’s another damned pirate, a Frenchman, scudding about, called Beaufort. If I see him, I’ll blow a piece of lead between his eyes.”

Grania was only half listening, and not until the meal had ended and the servants put a number of bottles on the table before they filled up the glasses and left the room did she realise she could escape.

She was quite certain her father, at any rate, was past noticing whether she was there or not, and she thought that Roderick Maigrin drinking with him would find it difficult if he tried to follow her.

She therefore waited until she was sure they had for the moment forgotten her existence, then quickly, without speaking she slipped from the room, closing the door behind her.

Then as she went up the stairs to the only place in which she felt assured of any privacy she wondered what she could do.

Trembling she was frantically trying to think if there was anybody on the island to whom she could go for help.

Then she knew that even if they were prepared to assist her, her father could collect her without their being able to prevent it or even protest.

As she stood on the landing trying to consider what she should do, she heard Roderick Maigrin laugh, and it sounded like the last horror to impinge upon her consciousness, and make her realise how helpless she was.

She felt it was not only the laugh of a man who had drunk too much, but also of a man who was pleased and satisfied with his lot, a man who had got what he desired.

Then, almost as if somebody was explaining it to her in words, Grania knew the answer.

Roderick Maigrin wanted her not only for her looks, and that was obvious from the expression in his eyes, but also because she was her father’s daughter and therefore socially even in the small community that existed on Grenada, of some importance.

It was the reason why, she thought, he had been attracted to her father in the first place, not only because they were neighbours, but because he wanted to be a friend of the man who was received, consulted and respected by the Governor and by everybody else who mattered.

Before she had left the island Grania had begun to understand the social snobberies which existed wherever the British ruled.

But her mother had made it very clear that she disliked Roderick Maigrin not so much because of his breeding, but because of his behaviour.

“That man is coarse and vulgar,” Grania remembered her saying to her father, “and I will not have him here in my house.”

“He is a neighbour,” the Earl had replied lightheartedly, “and we have not so many that we can be choosy.”

“I intend to be what you call ‘choosy’ when it comes to friendship.” the Countess had replied. “We have plenty of other friends when we have time to see them, none of whom wish to be associated with Roderick Maigrin.”

Her father had argued, but her mother had been adamant.

“I do not like him, and I do not trust him,” she said finally, “and what is more, whatever you may say, I believe the stories of the way he
ill-treats
his slaves, so I will not have him here.”

Her mother had her way to the extent that Roderick Maigrin did not come to Secret Harbour, but Grania knew that her father visited him and they met drinking in other parts of the island.

Now her mother was dead and her father had agreed that she should marry a man who was everything she hated and despised, and from whom she shrank in terror.

“What am I to do?”

The question was beating again and again in her head, and when she went into her bedroom and locked her door, she felt as if the very air coming from the open window repeated and repeated it.

She did not light the candles that were waiting for her on her dressing-table, but instead went to look out at a sky encrusted with thousands of stars.

The moonlight was shining on the palm trees as they moved in the wind which still blew faintly from the sea.

It had dropped with the coming of night, but there was always a fresh breeze blowing over the island to take the edge off the heavy, damp heat which at the height of the sun could be almost intolerable.

As she stood there, Grania felt that she could smell the stringent fragrance of nutmegs, the sharpness of cinnamon and the clinging scent of cloves.

Perhaps she was imagining them, but they were so much part of her memories of Grenada that she felt the spices of the island were calling to her and in their own way welcoming her home.

But home to what?

To Roderick Maigrin and the terror she felt she must die rather than endure!

How long she stood at the window she had no idea.

She only knew that for the moment the years in which she had been in England seemed to vanish as if they had never happened and instead she was part of the island as she had been for so many years of her life.

It was not only the magic of the tropical jungle, the giant tree ferns, the liana vines and the cocoa plantations, but it was also the story of her own life.

A world of Caribs, of buccaneers and pirates, of hurricanes and volcanic eruptions, of battles on land and sea between the French and the English.

It was all so familiar that it had become part of herself and indivisible from her, and the education she had received in London peeled away in the warmth of the air.

She was no longer Lady Grania O’Kerry, but instead one with the spirits of Grenada, one with the flowers, the spices, the palm trees and the softly lapping waves of the sea which she could hear far away in the distance.

“
Help me! Help me!” Grania cried aloud.

She was calling to the island as if it could feel for her in her troubles and help her.

A long time later Grania slowly undressed and got into bed.

There had been no sound in the house while she was looking out into the night, and she thought that if her father had come unsteadily up to bed she would have heard his footsteps on the stairs.

But she did not worry about him as she had done so often since he had come back into her life.

Instead she could only think of herself, and even as her eyes closed in sleep she was praying with an intensity that involved her whole body and soul for help.

Grania awoke startled by a noise that she sensed rather than heard.

Then as she came back to consciousness and listened, she heard it again and for a moment thought that somebody was at her bedroom door, and was afraid of who it might be.

Then she realised the sound had come from outside, and again there was a low whistle, followed by the sound of her name.

Still only half-awake Grania got out of bed and went to the window which she had left open and uncurtained.

She looked out and there below her she saw Abe.

He was her father’s servant. He had come with him to England and she had known him all her life.

It was Abe who had managed their house for her mother, found the servants they could afford and trained them besides keeping them in order.

It was Abe who had first taken her out in a boat when she came to the Island and she had helped him bring back the lobsters which they caught in their own bay, and searched for the oysters which her father preferred to any other sea-food.

It was Abe who had taken her riding on a small pony when she was too small to walk round the plantation to watch the slaves working amongst the bananas, the nutmegs and the cocoa beans.

It was Abe who would go with her to St. George when she wanted to buy something in the shops, or merely to watch the big ships come in to unload their cargo and pick up passengers travelling to other islands.

“I do not know what we should do without Abe,” her mother said almost every day of her childhood.

When they had left for London without him, Grania often felt her mother missed Abe as much as she did.

“We ought to have brought him with us,” she said, but her mother had shaken her head.

“Abe belongs to Grenada and is part of the island,” she said. “What is more, your father could not manage without him.”

After she had sent for her father and he arrived in England too late to say goodbye to her mother before she died, Abe had come with him.

Grania had been so pleased to see Abe that she almost flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

She had only stopped herself at the last moment because she realised how much it would embarrass Abe. But the sight of his smiling coffee-coloured face had made Grania feel home-sick for Grenada in a way she had not felt all the time she had been in London.

Leaning out of the window now Grania asked:

“What is it, Abe?”

“I mus’ talk with you, Lady.”

He now called her “Lady”, though when she was a child he had said “Little Lady”, and there was something in the way he spoke which told Grania it was important.

“I will come down,” she said, then hesitated.

Abe knew what she was thinking.

“Quite safe, Lady,” he said, “Master not hear.”

Grania knew without further explanation why the Earl would not hear, and without saying any more she
put on a dressing-gown which was lying unpacked on top of her trunk and a pair of soft slipp
e
rs.

Then cautiously, making as little noise as possible, she unlocked her bedroom door.

Whatever Abe might say, she was afraid not of seeing her father but their host.

The candles on the stairs were still alight but guttering low as she came down, and reaching the hall she entered the room which she knew looked out onto the garden below her bedroom.

She went to the window which opened onto the verandah and as she lifted the catch Abe came up the wooden steps to join her.

“We leave quickly, Lady.”

“Leave? What do you mean?”

“Danger—big danger!”

“What has happened? What are you trying to tell me?” Grania asked.

Before he answered, Abe looked over his shoulder almost as if he was afraid somebody might be listening. Then he said:

“Rebellion start in Grenville ’mong French slaves.”

“A rebellion!” Grania exclaimed.

“Very bad. Kill many English!”

“How do you know this?” Grania asked.

“Some run ’way. Reach here afor’ dark.”

Abe looked over his shoulder again before he said: “Slaves here think they join rebellion.”

Grania did not question that he was telling the truth. There were always rumours of trouble on the islands which were constantly changing hands, of rebellions amongst the communities which favoured the French, or favoured the English, which were not in power.

The only thing which was surprising was that it should happen on Grenada which had been English for twelve years after a comparatively short period when it had been in the hands of the French.

But when she had been sailing in the ship from England the officers had talked incessantly of the
revolution in France and the execution two years ago of Louis XVI.

“It is obvious now that the French slaves on the islands are likely to become restless,” the Captain had said, “and ready to start their own revolutions.”

Now it had happened in Grenada and Grania was frightened.