My Friend Cousin Emmie Read online

  ‘You think it is a good idea, Sashie – Mount Melody as a hotel?’

  ‘My dear, it can’t miss! Isobel is going to need a little capital at the start – a lot of the Denholm money is tied up in various things in the States and she can’t get at it – so if Twice and you have a pound or two to invest, don’t hesitate. Don and I are going in with our spare fiver.’

  ‘You two really got in on the ground floor of the tourist boom in this island,’ I told him.

  ‘And you and Twice were almost our first guests, my sweet. You brought us luck. But for that, I should probably have wrung your foster-daughter’s neck by now.’

  ‘You are one of the few people she likes, Sashie, as I told you. Do try to be patient with her. I know it’s difficult.’

  ‘Very,’ Sashie agreed and we both looked out of the window again.

  Dee had moved to another tree, but she might as well have stayed where she was, for she was again picking at the trunk, her gloomy eyes fixed on the gay crowd splashing about in the shallow water beyond the silver sand.

  ‘Crop starts at Paradise on Tuesday,’ I told Sashie, ‘and Roddy is starting work at the factory. If you hear rumours of murder up there you will know that I have probably gone for Dee with a cutlass.’

  At six in the morning of the following Tuesday the siren at the factory blew a prolonged ululating blast that echoed across the valley basin of Paradise, penetrated to every precipitous valley in the surrounding hills and told the inhabitants of every shack on the highest mountains round about that the 1952 Crop had begun. The swing-over from Out-of-Crop to In-Crop had a peculiar drama of its own, for the field labour, who, in the main, spent the Out-of-Crop months in the high hills tilling their own few acres of land to raise maize and yams, now descended in their hundreds to the valley, their savagely sharp cutlasses balanced on their shoulders, to cut the cane. These cutters were the young and strong men and women – the men would cut, the women would pile the cut cane into heaps and place on each the family tally-mark of a mysteriously tide cane blade – but they were followed by grandmothers, who would cook the family dinner, and by grandfathers, who would still cut a little cane between sleeps in the sun, and by little children, who were too young to be left at home. From all points of the compass they came, converging on the factory at the centre of the valley which was the pulsing heart of their lives and sustenance, and they came with a gaiety, the young and strong with speed in their ugly loping walk, the children with the grandfathers on donkey-back and the grandmothers also perched on donkeys between the big panniers that contained the cooking pots and the enamel plates. And the donkeys went pad-padding by on their neat little hooves, their heads nod-nodding and shaking the gaudy sprays of bougainvillaea that had been put into their bridle bands to celebrate this start of another Crop.

  The whole great valley came to noisy pulsing life in the course of a few hours. For the last day or two, we who lived there had been conscious of a stir of power from the factory, a noise akin to that of an orchestra tuning up, as the boilers were fired, steam raised and one piece of machinery after another given a final turn-over, and on the day before the whistle blew we had heard a different note come in, a deeper diapason, when a few tons of cane were put through the crashing mills so that their pressures could be finally adjusted; but after the blast on the siren, the orchestra was in full volume, from the high yet musical shrill of the fiddles as steam at pressure screamed into the evaporating vessels to the deep organ note of the crushing mills themselves, as they gaped for and then groaned as they pulverised and swallowed the tough fibrous tons of cane and sent the juice in a tinkling river along the troughs to the tanks. And against this great orchestral background the men and women sang and shouted in the fields, the grandmothers crooned beside the cooking fires, the children called to one another and laughed as they played, and the tractors, with their long trains of cane carts, each carrying a five-ton bundle tied with chains, kept up a steady percussion beat of diesel engines as they plied to and fro from fields to factory.

  I had seen all this before, but it still had for me all the freshness and excitement that belongs to any great act of creation, the freshness and excitement that is permanent in a great work of art, the wonder and joy that used to recur for me with every spring and harvest when I was a child, the wonder and joy that is in every Easter morning for the true believer.

  I had taken a chair out to the upper veranda outside my bedroom early in the morning and was sitting there with my sewing in my lap when Dee came out to join me.

  ‘Why are you sitting up here?’ she asked.

  ‘Watching Crop start. Isn’t it terribly exciting! Do look at that donkey in the hat with the pink roses!’

  Dee looked out across the broad valley. ‘I thought they would have a machine for cutting the sugar cane, like they have for wheat at home, only bigger, you know.’

  I suddenly felt very flat and began to do my embroidery. ‘I believe they have them in the States and Cuba and places,’ I said, ‘but they have never introduced them here yet. They might cause a revolution – like the spinning jenny in the cotton industry at home last century. Mechanical harvesters would put a lot of people out of work.’

  ‘It’s got to happen some day surely,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes, I suppose so. Some day.’

  An old grandmother, her white frizzy hair tied up in a bright bandana, went past on her donkey, the pots and pans clashing about her, and she called: ‘Mawnin’, Missis!’

  ‘Good morning!’ I called back and said to Dee: ‘But the mechanical harvesters won’t wish me good morning as they pass.’

  ‘Miss Jan, you are childish!’ she said. ‘When shall I be able to go round the factory?’

  ‘Certainly not today. Probably not till next week. The first few days are always tricky until the plant settles down.’

  ‘Oh, well, I think I’ll run down to St Jago Bay.’

  ‘Do that,’ I said and she went away.

  Glad to be rid of her, I dropped the sewing into my lap and looked out over the valley again, but the music and the gaiety had gone out of it. Dee was right, of course. One day – a day not very distant – the mechanical harvesters would come; there would be no more donkeys with bougainvillaea in their bridles, and it was as well to face it – I did not want to be here in this island when that happened. It was only certain days in the year, such as this start of Crop and Christmas with Madame’s dinner-party, that made life in the island bearable for me, and all these things would die away. Most people nowadays celebrated Christmas in the luxury hotels in the Bay; and on most plantations, already, Crop did not begin with bougainvillaea-bedecked donkeys but with an argument about cane-loaders’ wages and the like. To go through trouble and misery day by day with anyone, you have to love that person deeply and I recognised the fact that I did not love this island enough to go with it through the troubles and misery of its economic and political future.

  Another family party on three donkeys passed by and again I called good morning and waved to the children, and behind me a voice said: ‘Exhilarating, isn’t it?’

  I turned to see Roddy in shorts and open-necked shirt standing in the bedroom doorway behind me.

  ‘I didn’t see you arrive,’ I said. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘I came up the drive, but you were too busy looking out over the valley so I just came up. I don’t blame you. This is the best Paradise has to offer.’

  ‘Haul a chair out of there and sit down.’

  ‘This is all right,’ he said and sat down on the veranda floor.

  ‘I thought you were starting work at the factory today?’

  ‘I’ve got a day’s grace. Dad doesn’t want to be bothered with me today, which suits everybody. I’d rather be here today where I can see what goes on than be shut in the power-house. I love the start of Crop. I’ve loved it ever since I was a kid.’

  ‘Has it changed much, Roddy?’ I asked. ‘I think it is immensely thrilling.’

&n
bsp; ‘It’s less thrilling than it used to be – the tractors, you know. All the haulage used to be by teams of mules and oxen, all decked up with flowers, and some of them would bolt and others wouldn’t move at all, and it was all terrific.’

  ‘Like going to the coal boat at home when I was a kid. There was a horse called Pearl that sat down on the pier with her cart once and smashed it to matchwood.’

  We watched another family go past, and Roddy said: ‘Has Dee gone down to the Peak?’

  ‘She said the Bay,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know whether she meant the Peak or not.’

  ‘Oh, definitely the Peak. She has a bit of a thing for de Marnay.’

  ‘I know she likes Sashie.’

  ‘I’d be inclined to use a stronger word. I may be wrong. Dee has odd tastes. Jim Maxwell and Bill Taylor and that lot have it that de Marnay is a queer, but I’m not sure he really is – he gives me the feeling that he is masquerading.’

  I looked down at Roddy’s dark head and tanned face, which was turned away from me as he looked out across the valley, and I had a sudden feeling that a very acute intelligence was at work behind this swashbuckling façade of his. He had come too close for comfort to the truth about Sashie de Marnay, anyhow, and I said: ‘But surely to masquerade in that way argues a form of what you call queerness in itself? Like those men that dress up as women?’

  ‘That’s true. Isn’t he by way of being a buddy of yours?’

  ‘Yes. I am very fond of Sashie. He is very intelligent and sympathetic.’

  ‘A lot of homosexuals are like that,’ Roddy said, and suddenly he turned to look at me with a flashing smile. ‘But they don’t have the appeal for types like me that they might have for a woman.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ I smiled back at him and I thought how strange it was that Dee had said he was not ‘sexy and things’, for in my eyes the most immediately noticeable thing about Roddy was his masculinity and virility. These things were even more marked in him than they were in Don Candlesham, the island Casanova, for in Don’s case the first thing to strike one was the perfection of the physical structure and the emanation of sex came second.

  After lunch, for which Dee did not return, I came up to the top veranda again and sat thinking of what Roddy had said and felt that it might explain Sashie’s ill-temper about Dee of the Saturday before. Sashie, as a rule, was waspish, mischievous or satirical about humanity in general, but he was seldom sufficiently moved by or involved with anyone for his temper to be affected. If, however, as Roddy had implied, Dee had fallen in love with him, I felt it probable that Sashie would be acutely embarrassed, for I thought that a large part of the reason for his affected masquerade was that it might help him to avoid sex entanglements. If Dee had formed an attachment to him, she was headed, I knew with sure foreboding, for real unhappiness; but Dee being what she was, I did not feel that I could advise her, warn her or help her in any way.

  She did not arrive home until nearly dinner-time when Twice was upstairs changing, and as soon as she came into the house I saw that she was sunk in gloom.

  ‘What is the matter, Dee?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She began to pick at the sash of her dress, her face as ugly and heavy as lead, and then: ‘I’m not going back to that Peak Hotel! They’re horrible! All three of them – that Don and Sashie and Isobel – just horrible!’

  ‘Why? What happened? What did they do?’

  ‘Nothing. People can be horrible without doing anything. They just don’t want me – that’s all.’

  ‘Dee, I really think you imagine things.’

  ‘No, I don’t! I hate them. I hate them all!’

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing happened outside. It was inside me it happened. You wouldn’t understand. Nobody wants me!’

  ‘Dee, I can’t bear to have you miserable like this. If you don’t go to the Peak, where all the young people go, it is going to be so dull for you now that Crop has started and Roddy is working and everything. Dee, are you tired of being here? Would you like to go back to England?’

  ‘Oh—’ Her eyes became round, she stared at me for a moment and then went flying out of the room and upstairs, and I heard the door of her room slam shut.

  It seems almost unnecessary to record that, no more than thirty seconds later, Twice arrived in the drawing-room, naked except for a pair of drill slacks, his blue eyes blazing.

  ‘What have you done to Dee?’ he snapped at me.

  ‘Go and ask her!’ I snapped back and marched out of the room and up to my own bedroom.

  It was not very long before Twice came barging in there next.

  ‘What’s all this about you sending her back to England?’

  It would be tedious to record all the explanation and the argument that ensued and which culminated with us all in Dee’s bedroom, where she lay on the bed, her face bloated with tears, sobbing while I assured her insincerely that the last thing I wanted was that she should go back to England, that Guinea corner would be miserable without her, that Twice and I would miss her dreadfully from our lives, and that I, when Twice went away round the islands, would pine with loneliness all by myself. In the end, she became calm, asked Twice if he would carry a tray upstairs for her so that the servants would not know she had been crying, and apologised for making a scene. ‘. . . but it was just that I felt that nobody wants me.’

  Feeling that I was being socially blackmailed almost beyond bearing and also feeling exhausted, I left her and came downstairs.

  Later, when Twice came down, I said to him: ‘The awful thing is that it is true that nobody wants her – she makes them so that they don’t want her.’

  Twice sat down, frowning. ‘I thought she had settled down. Of course, I’ve been busy since we got back, what with getting ready for Crop and the festive season and all, but she seemed to be all right.’

  I sighed. ‘She will come round, I suppose. The longer I live, the more convinced I become that affluence and leisure are the joint curses of humanity. If she had her living to earn she couldn’t afford all this nonsense. Did you get out of her what happened at the Peak today?’

  ‘No. Nothing except the they-don’t-want-me thing.’

  ‘The only person who can handle her is Roddy Maclean and you have to go and take him for your ruddy power-house!’ I said.

  ‘I have no hand in putting Roddy Maclean in the power-house,’ Twice said angrily. ‘I’d rather see that power-house without him in it.’

  ‘Twice, what have you against Roddy?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t trust him.’

  ‘You sound exactly like Cousin Emmie,’ I told him snappishly.

  The next afternoon, although he could ill spare the time, Twice took Dee on her promised trip round the factory and she came home with him about six in the evening, very gay and bright and with what seemed to me to be an amazing grasp of the workings of the complex plant. It was difficult to believe that the young woman who sat at dinner discussing so intelligently the working of the evaporators was the same person who, the day before, had wailed like a child the words: ‘Nobody wants me!’ When dinner was over, she went off to the club to play badminton, and I said something of this to Twice and he said: ‘I know. She has more grasp of the real nature of the turbines in that power-house after half an hour in there than Roddy Maclean will ever have.’

  ‘It seems to me, though,’ I said, ‘that Roddy has a grasp of something more important than turbines. He is one of the happiest people I have ever seen. I wish he could teach Dee something of his own design for living. Not that I am complaining about Dee really, because I thought of a thing today.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have complained that she caused destruction between you and me with all those rows on the ship and everything, but that isn’t true. She has made you and me more aware of one another. I had begun to take you for granted a bit, I think, and I had nearly forgotten what a nice sort of bloke you are until I saw you being s
o good to Dee.’

  Twice grinned at me. ‘Something similar has crossed my own mind,’ he said. ‘I was thinking in bed last night that the great thing about you is that one knows exactly where one is, whether it is in heaven or the dog-house, because you make no bones about telling one and it is a great deal to be thankful for. Another thing I was thinking about, or hoping rather, was that you are not going to have too bad a time with Dee while I am away.’

  ‘I have been thinking about that too and making all sorts of resolutions, Twice. I will do my very best, but if she has gone off home to England in a huff by the time you come back, will you try to believe that it truly isn’t my fault?’

  ‘After last night’s how-d’ye-do, I’ll believe you every time, but you know, Janet, when she told me you had told her to go back to England I don’t think she meant to be destructive between you and me as you call it.’

  ‘Darling, I don’t think she means to tell lies either, for that is what happened last night. That was a real whopper she told you that first time you went in to see her, but she didn’t see it like that. It is that she sees everything from her own dismal point of view – the minute I said the word England she decided I wanted to send her home and I truly believe that is the last place she wants to go. In a way, she makes me think of Cousin Emmie. She never sees anything either except from her own dismal point of view.’

  6

  ‘Love and Obliqueness’

  WATCHED day and night by its staff, the factory behaved like a model industrial plant for the first week of Crop. There is a semi-medical term which is ‘nurse’s sleep’ to describe the restful doze that a nurse can fall into without ever losing consciousness of her patient and his needs, and there ought also to be a semi-engineering term ‘engineer’s sleep’ to describe the sort of rest taken by Twice and Rob Maclean during the first week of a Paradise Crop. Guinea Corner was about three-quarters of a mile as the crow flies to the south-west of the factory, and Olympus, the Macleans’ house, about the same distance to the north-west, and the night breeze in the early months of the year at Paradise blows from the east. Every note of the sugar-processing symphony was carried to the two houses and in through the mosquito mesh on the bedroom windows. To such as myself the sound was just a massive hum that was soothing until broken momentarily by the day-shift siren at six in the morning, but for Rob and Twice it analysed itself down into single notes, so that at bed-time Twice would say: ‘They’ve got that molasses pump speeded up again, damn them!’ and in the middle of the night, more than half asleep, he would turn over and I would hear him mutter: ‘That brake on Number Three basket is a bit rough.’