The Sugar Planter's Daughter (30 page)

‘
P
apa
, Papa, Papa! Grace has started to walk!'

‘Come and see, Papa! She took two steps and then she fell and then she stood up again and Mama held her hand and she walked like that and then Mama let go and she walked right across the room!'

‘And now she can't stop walking, Papa! She's walking
everywhere!'

There's nothing for a father like coming home – your very own home, built to the blueprint of your loftiest dreams – to a gaggle of excited boys all jumping up around you, each trying to grab your hands as if you had six instead of two, their shrill voices an incomprehensible tangle as they pull you up the front stairs to your own home. Their cries are the sweetest music to my ears – sweeter by far than anything I can sing myself. But then I walk through the front door and there she is, my queen. She folds me into her arms – every single day – and smiles at me and I am the happiest man on earth.

But that particular day – oh, it was a day of celebration! We had all been a little concerned about Grace's failure to start walking at the required time – all the boys had learned to walk around their first birthday, but Grace had taken her time. The twins Rudolph and Percy, born six months after Grace, could both walk steadily by now, but our Grace preferred to gambol about on all fours. I always said it was because the older boys – and of course Winnie and I – spoiled her, carried her around too much, paid her far too much attention. Yes, our Grace was undeniably the star of our household. The boys adored her, and as for Winnie…

‘I told you so!' she said now. ‘I told you that some children need more time. Now you'll see – she'll be running and jumping and riding ponies in no time!'

And then, there they were, my youngest children, clamouring for me in the drawing room: Rudolph and Percy stumbling towards me on their stubby legs, and Grace, my darling Grace, sitting on the floor and reaching her fat little arms out for me. I gathered them, all three, into my arms at once. Yes: I was the happiest man on earth.

W
hy do
I get this feeling that, in spite of appearances, all is not well? The past year has been such a delight. The moment Grace entered this family it was as if a halo of light descended on them all; a blessing. Yes, all had been going smoothly up to that moment, as I wrote in my last entry, almost two years ago, when Grace fell into the family; yet still, there was a sense of trying, trying hard, to overcome the shadows of the past. The sins of the father. All the good George did – it was to atone. Guilt was the driving force of his every effort, forgiveness the driving force of Winnie's responses. It worked, indeed; and then Grace came into their lives and with her sunshine, dispelling the last tendrils of darkness.

Despite her rocky first days in this world, Grace was a sunny child. She smiled early, and at everyone, and everyone smiled back. She was one of
those
babies: so irresistibly pretty strangers would stop and coo, and smile stupidly, and ask her name, and sometimes even to hold her. And Winnie was generous, grateful for the praise, eager to share her joy.

Grace's very skin glows with sunshine; sapodilla brown, they call that colour in BG, after the sweetest fruit that grows in this clime, dull brown on the outside, succulently golden on the inside. She was bald when she first entered the world, but her hair has now started to grow in soft black curls. Winnie gathers it up to the top of her head and decorates it with a little bow. If she was quick on all fours, she is even quicker on two feet and now she is everywhere, up and down and all around. Her older brothers adore her, watch over her, play with her, talk to her, entertain her, protect her. And even her younger brothers seem to be under her spell; the twins, born six months after Grace, willingly cede to her their right as the youngest to the most attention.

Grace might have grown up a brat with all this coddling; but she hasn't. Sunshine is her very nature. Pretty children, even at a very young age, can be manipulative and demanding – not so this child. It is as if all Winnie's accumulated hopes and dreams over the years have gathered into a single flow of blessings and entered Grace's soul.

I have been living with them in Georgetown ever since the house was completed. Frankly, I no longer saw the point of living with Yoyo at Promised Land. Yoyo's streak of self-critique and self-improvement ended soon after Grace's birth, and she reverted to type.

If Grace's birth has brought joy to Winnie's family, it brought disaster to Yoyo's. Hardly a month later Clarence, staggering home from some party or other, fell into an irrigation canal and drowned.

Yoyo undertook the requisite mourning, but I had the distinct feeling that Clarence's death came as rather a relief to her. The fact that he was the official estate owner-in-waiting, while knowing not one whit about the sugar business, had always irked her; now she spoke of an official instatement of herself as head of operations, and wrote Archie a long letter to that effect.

In the meantime she dismissed Jim, having recruited a new estate manager, a Mr Geoffrey Burton. Burton is a formidable chief. Jim's way of offering perks for better worker performance is not his style; quite the opposite. He punishes. Female labourers are now required to work through their entire pregnancies, and return to work one day after birth – Jim had given them the last few months of pregnancy off, as well as a month after birth. The sick are required to work unless they are practically carrying their head under their arm in the fields. Retirement age has been entirely abolished: now, a man or woman must work until they drop. No days off. An earlier start and a later end to the day. That is Burton's style.

Burton is American. He is from Louisiana, where he is the youngest son of a large and prosperous sugar estate owner – he knows the business, grew up with a sugar spoon in his mouth, like Yoyo. He came to BG hoping to research the sugar industry here and, I learned, to investigate the possibility of growing tobacco. He and Yoyo have reserved a fallow piece of land at the back of the estate and are experimenting with tobacco, and there are plans to develop the Essequibo lands for that purpose. Archie would have a fit if he were here.

Burton is single, and quite handsome, and it soon became clear to me what was going on between him and Yoyo. She makes no secret of it; I assume that, once again, she is trying for a son. I suppose she intends to marry Burton but is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak; calculating as ever. She is so set on having a son! Such things never end well; we saw that the last time she tried. But of course my opinion is of no consequence to Yoyo. As ever, she does what she wants. I dread to think what will happen if she marries Burton. He is not at all the type she can wrap round her finger; he is no Clarence. My guess is that he is just as calculating as she, and is playing a waiting game with her.

When Jim left so did I. So much pleasanter it is too, living with George and Winnie in their new home. From the first, George wanted it big, and big it is, with the drawing room occupying almost the entire ground floor and a lovely kitchen at the back, with stairs leading down into the backyard, which Winnie has left wild and wonderful for the boys; fruit trees to climb, a treehouse, a swing – everything a child could desire. The boys go fishing in the roadside rainwater gutters outside the house. They collect tadpoles and watch them grow. They ride their bicycles everywhere, and have made Waterloo Street, the quieter road round the corner, their own private bike-yard. They have a dog and are teaching him tricks.

A
s for me
: I am busier than ever. I am giving violin lessons to neighbourhood children, and so is Winnie. Having taught Humphrey the instrument, she realised that she has a talent for teaching, and so has taken on two students, who she sees together once a week. She will have to give that up soon, though, when the new baby arrives. I have two classes, one of five for wealthier children whose parents pay, and another class of six for children of poor parents; this is free. I do enjoy it. I have been asked by the headmistress of Bishops' High School if I would like a job as music teacher there, and I am considering it.

George has been promoted once again. He was so happy to abandon his postman's uniform, and go to work in a shirt and tie! Now he never leaves the house without his new uniform – such a dapper fellow he is! He now has a motor-car, although he uses it rarely – he still goes to work on his trusty bicycle. And he has taught Winnie to drive – she does need a car to ferry the boys around town while George is at work, as she refuses to hire a chauffeur.

Last week we all went to the Botanic Gardens in the car – I don't know how we all fitted in, but we did, one practically on top of the other. There's a little zoo there, and the boys were fascinated by the caged wild animals. A real jaguar! Gordon stood watching it pacing for ages. I felt sad for it, though. Wild animals should be free. And there was a harpy eagle and all sorts of horrible snakes. When we had finished we went to see the manatee, in the pond outside the zoo. At first there was nothing to be seen, just a silvery-brown stretch of water reflecting the trees surrounding it. But the boys knew what to do. They picked grass and threw it on to the water and whistled, and slowly, slowly, ripples appeared and then the big black snout of the manatee as it rose from the depths and devoured the grass. The boys screamed and pointed and jumped up and down, and I looked at them and marvelled at their beauty and their joy.

On Saturdays the family packs itself into the car and George drives them to special places up the coast and down the Demerara. On Sundays, they all go for a walk to the Sea Wall, and occasionally I go with them. We walk along the Promenade greeting other families. We go down to the beach and the boys play cricket in their Sunday best. We walk towards the mouth of the Demerara and out along the jutting promontory of the groyne, watching the ships come in and go out, and we talk of far-off lands, and I tell them about Europe, England and Austria and particularly Salzburg, and they are eager to see the world out there. Gordon says he will fly an aeroplane one day, into the backlands of this wild country, to places no one has ever been before.

It is all so perfect. Perhaps it is too perfect. Perhaps this very perfection is the cause of my unease. A sense of foreboding, almost.

‘
S
o
, whose turn is it to push the pram?'

‘Mine!' yelled Gordon and Charley together.

‘You will have to take it in turns, then. Gordon first, then Charley. Humph, are you all right carrying Grace?'

‘Of course!' said my eldest son. I expected nothing less; of all the boys, Humphrey was the quietest, but the most dependable, the most trustworthy, the most likely to complete a boring task without complaint. Not that carrying Grace to the Sea Wall was boring; but, at just over two, she was getting too heavy for the younger boys. I have heard that there are sitting-prams for toddlers on sale in England now; I shall send for one. Her little legs are strong, but not strong enough for walks like the one to the Sea Wall – a long way for her as yet. A little push-pram so she can sit and look around when she is tired would be ideal.

We gathered the boys and the pram – Freddy was just two months old – and off we went, George and I and our little horde, on our Sunday outing to the promenade. We were well organised, as ever. First walked whoever was pushing the pram – Gordon today – with Freddy. Then came whoever
wasn't
pushing the pram, Charley for now, hand in hand with both Leo and Will, one on either side. Then came Humph, carrying Grace. George and I brought up the rear, each of us carrying a twin. Passers-by coming down from the wall invariably smiled and greeted us as they walked by, men raising their hats and women waving at Grace, who always waved back. Since we occupied the entire pavement, they would kindly move on to the street itself to pass us, as did those coming up behind, who were moving faster than we were. We took our time. We were in no hurry. Sunday is a day of leisure, after all.

Eight boys. Each of them unique – one of a kind. Each of them precious. It is hard to imagine, now, that I had felt disappointment over four of them – Gordon, Charley, Will and Leo – just because they weren't girls. How silly of me! I could not bear to think now about the possibility of any one of those four not having been born, or having been a girl instead. They were just what the family needed, and their place in the collective was inviolable. I must have been in some kind of delirium – for years! It took a terrible tragedy to wake me up.

And then came Grace. And the twins and Freddy, who complete us. And I do mean that. I won't refer to them as accidents, but they were surprises, and George and I both agree that eight boys and one daughter are enough. There are ways and means of not having children, and
not
having children is our new aim. From now on we will enjoy what we have, stopping just short of ten. Nine is a good number.

So off we went, crossing the street to the pavement – Humphrey, as usual, walking carefully out to the middle of the street, raising his hand to stop the oncoming traffic – and then to the corner, and up Camp Road to the Sea Wall. The Quints of All Boys Town – that's what the older boys still called us all, even though we had long left Albouystown. We left when Grace joined the family; but we seemed still rooted there.

Ma and Pa once again live in their old quarters, having rented out the annexe we built so many years ago. We visit them regularly, and the boys are always delighted to meet again their old friends and convince them that no, we are not now among the high and mighty. We go back every Saturday evening, because that's the evening that George gives his concerts in the church hall. They are invariably packed. George's singing voice has matured along with him and now it holds a deep resonance that always moves listeners to tears. He does not speak much. George has become as steady as an oak. Together we hold this family together, wild though the boys can be.

Sadly, only one of my children – Will – seems so far to have inherited George's musical talent. I do not count Mama and myself among the talented. Yes, we are good – but our talent is
acquired,
whereas George is a natural, as is Will. But music is a vital part of our lives, and we make it every evening. Music, I feel, is the glue that holds us together. Our hearts beat as one when we sing together, and now that Mama has joined us and brought the piano down from Promised Land – well, we are now as good as a choir! The Quint Family Choir – perhaps that should be our next sobriquet. But we will wait till the younger children are old enough to find their own voices. Who knows – perhaps one of them will be a natural, too, like George!

But I ramble. I was about to recount this one Sunday, shortly after Grace's second birthday; a perfectly normal Sunday excursion to the promenade, except for what happened once we got there.

Who did we run into, but Yoyo!

I had not seen her since long before Grace's birth. Once we had reached a truce, it seemed we no longer cared to meet. George and I certainly never return to Promised Land – which in a way saddens me. I would love for the boys, and now Grace, to see where and how I grew up; to know that vast Corentyne sky, and the endless fields of green, sugar cane fronds waving gently in the fresh sea air. To breathe in the intoxicating, unforgettable smell of burnt sugar, to feel the thrill of the seasons of sugar. It is a special place, and their birthright. But we never even speak of making such a trip. Perhaps, deep inside, we both know why.

When Yoyo gave Grace to us, of course; that would have been the time for a thorough reconciliation. Grace is the greatest present of all time, and makes up for all the mistakes of the past. If she were the result – this perfect child – surely one could no longer speak of a
mistake
.
Grace
had
to come. There could not be a world without Grace. If Grace had not been born the world would have had a vacuum, a dark hole where she should be. A ridiculous notion, I know, but that's how essential she felt.

Grace's existence has softened me even more towards Yoyo; I wrote her a letter soon after the birth, but she never replied. George worried for a while, saying that we needed an official adoption, but I pooh-poohed that notion. I don't want to deal with lawyers and officialdom. I feel that doing so would put a pall on the miracle of Grace. I love the notion of
trust
.
Trust between humans, I feel, is perhaps the highest virtue of all. I trust Yoyo. I am grateful to her. This gift she has given us – well, it has erased all hard feelings. Though I have no urge to meet her, I have forgiven her.

In retrospect, though, after this outing, I have a strange feeling in my belly. So does George.