A View of the Empire at Sunset Page 2

  Later that evening, after the regular whine of his breathing suggested that he had finally succumbed to sleep, she eased out of her narrow bed and made her way into the living room, where she poured a large glass of red wine. She sat back on the dimpled leather sofa and cradled the wine in both hands. No doubt her husband had convinced himself that after a relaxing trip to the Sussex coast he might look forward to a marked improvement in her behaviour. This was precisely the kind of phrase that Leslie loved to use. “Marked improvement.” The truth is, Leslie should have been a prep school master or a man of the cloth like his father. She took another sip of wine and then slipped the letter out of its envelope and began to reread it. To her mind, as a young man her brother had carried on with an admirable streak of rebelliousness, although there were those who expected better from the privileged child of a colonial doctor. Sadly, his subsequent career failures in Canada, and more recently in Australia, had evidently left him a reduced man. Having received the surprising news from his sister that she intended to return home for a short visit, he was now asking her to help him repair some of the damage he had caused in his youth, but he was framing his request as though he bore little real responsibility for his earlier actions. She took yet another sip of red wine and replaced Owen’s letter in its envelope.

  3

  Rivers and Mountains

  Last night, after she had finished the red wine and then discovered where Leslie had hidden the bottle of whisky, she clumsily knocked over an empty glass and watched as it spiraled to the floor and smashed. Almost immediately her glum-looking husband appeared in the doorway in his belted dressing gown, and as she knelt and began to gather up the pieces, he gazed down at her with a strange combination of poorly disguised exasperation and forgiveness. His intrinsic kindness annoyed her, and she rose unsteadily to her feet and told him that when they returned from the West Indies he should forget about the idea of using what remained of his father’s money and moving into a more spacious Chelsea flat. Going their separate ways might well be a better option. Leslie said nothing and stared blankly at her before slowly turning and trudging back in the direction of the bedroom. She was actually offering her husband a chance to unshackle himself from the past eight years, but the stubborn man seemed incapable of accepting the fact that his wife was, and always would be, beyond his control. Over the years she often asked herself what on earth would have happened to him if she had not entered his life. Has he ever considered this? They both know that he has neither the resources, nor is he cut from the right cloth, to have ever contemplated joining a gentlemen’s club where he might while away the hours and pretend to prefer the civilized company of other men as a substitute for his failure to establish a satisfactory relationship with the opposite sex. Without her he would, she imagines, most likely have already drifted into a single room somewhere on the Pentonville Road and be attempting to eke out a bachelor existence on the fringes of so-called literary London. Instead, the poor man has a wife whose looks have long since fled the scene, and who no longer merits a second glance. It is clear that she is a woman who is utterly incapable of helping her husband achieve any form of social or professional elevation, so why on earth can’t he accept how things are? After all, he is still handsome enough to attract another woman, but sadly, timid Leslie will most likely never find anybody else, for it is simply not in his nature to extend himself when confronted with the tyranny of female charm. He did so with her, but she can see in his sometimes dejected eyes that he now understands this to have been a mistake, for, as was the case with his first wife, he has absolutely no notion of how to bring a woman to heel.

  It is now late afternoon and she is curled up on the sofa drinking tea and watching her husband, who sits sullenly at the small dining table with a plate of bread and cheese before him. He is indulging his habit of stuffing oversized portions of bread into his mouth which take an eternity for him to swallow. He occasionally glances in her direction in the hope that some contact might force her to speak, but she says nothing, and so he breaks the gloomy silence and addresses her with resignation. “You’re slipping away from me, aren’t you?” The weak light filtering through the bay window is picking out the lines on his face and causing the grey strands in his hair to periodically sparkle. She looks at a visibly distressed Leslie and thinks back to their original appointment at his cramped office. Initially she had hoped she might encounter a mature man whose confidence was born of years of experience, and who possessed a deep rumbling laugh and exuded a leathery smell of cologne on salty skin, but when she took up a seat on the other side of this man’s desk she looked closely into his eyes and searched in vain for any sign of authority. Unfortunately, long before the end of their first meeting it was clear that this prudent man was certainly not the savior she was hoping for, but what choice did she have?

  He pushes the plate away and leans back in the chair. “Are you truly determined to leave me, Gwen?” She smiles, but says nothing, and then reminds herself that it has always been so much easier for them to talk about plans as opposed to feelings. My dear Leslie, you have now purchased the tickets for our transatlantic voyage, so let us just go to the West Indies. I will show you the public gardens by the library where I used to sit as a girl and stare out at the sea and try to imagine the world beyond my island. But, of course, I had no real conception of what lay beyond the horizon. I will show you rays of sunlight filtering through clouds, and ribbons of water falling from palm fronds and grooving trenches into the earth. We two can lie in a hollow and witness the shimmer of late-afternoon heat making corrugated iron of the air, and listen to a nearby stream trickling noisily over smooth stones, and watch a puff of wind grow hurriedly into a sudden squall and begin to playfully bend the trees. I will show you the rivers and the mountains, and come evening, as the New World day convulses towards dusk, I will share with you a spectacular elevated view of the empire at sunset. Perhaps, my husband, if I show you the West Indies, then you will finally come to understand that I am not of your world, and maybe then you will appreciate the indignity I feel at not only having to live among you people but possibly die among you, too. I am so sorry. Truly I am, for I have no yearning to cause you hurt. Her husband continues to look at her and he waits patiently for an answer to his question, and so she offers him one that she knows will be received with skepticism. “No, Leslie, I am not determined to leave you.” She pauses and tries to discover a second, and more comforting, half to the sentence, but words elude her.

  4

  Sister Mary

  Sister Mary’s voice and mannerisms were gentle and pleasant, while those of the other nuns were harsh and unforgiving. If a girl arrived late, Sister Mary would encourage her to take a seat and ask for an explanation only at break, after everyone had left the schoolroom. Should a child find herself the object of teasing or laughter, the young nun would rescue the situation by turning on one of the persecutors and quietly asking her a question designed to still her tongue. At Christmas the class presented Sister Mary with a floral bouquet, which was a mishmash of individual flowers collected by each pupil and clumsily tied together with a purple ribbon. Sister Mary picked up the limp bunch from her desk and cradled it in her arms as one might a newborn child. The young nun then buried her face in the scent, but she could see that her teacher did so only in order that her tears would not be visible to the girls. After Christmas, Sister Mary let them down by not returning to the school. Initially, it was unclear why a rather fierce replacement was teaching their class, but being the daughter of the medical officer she knew that their teacher was ill. However, after three weeks—during which time they were not offered any explanation—she took it upon herself to raise her hand and ask after Sister Mary. In a firm and clearly irritated voice, the new nun announced that Sister Mary was not well, and it was unlikely that she would be resuming her duties at the school, and a collective sigh of disappointment filled the small classroom.

  The following Sunday afternoon she and her frie
nd Gussie de Freitas set out on a short, private adventure up into the hills behind Roseau. A month ago on New Year’s Day, her father had travelled up to the Flambeau Plantation to visit Sister Mary, but when her father returned, he failed to mention the young nun, although he had plenty to say about the unhygienic condition of the Great House. Apparently the old widow who lived on the now-neglected estate still maintained the ground floor of the property and Sister Mary had taken a room there. She overheard her father telling her mother that he had recommended to the young nun that she urgently find alternative accommodation, but the stubborn girl claimed to be content where she was. On a sweltering Sunday afternoon that was particularly heavy with the unapologetic lassitude of the Sabbath, she watched transfixed as Gussie laboured up the three stone steps and knocked loudly at the door to the dilapidated Great House, whose once proud fluted pillars were now rotten with age, while what little paint remained upon them was blistered and peeling. It was the old lady herself who opened up, and she appeared before the pair of them squinting painfully into the bright light. Gussie made polite inquiry after Sister Mary, but having carefully scrutinized her unexpected visitors, the old lady motioned with her heavily veined hand that they should remain where they stood, and she then disappeared into the house.

  * * *

  On their way back into Roseau the two girls stopped by the river and sat together on a steep grassy bank that was fenced in by wild clusters of ridged bamboo that flared skywards. She looked on as Gussie tossed small stones into the water, and it was her friend who found the first words.

  “Sister Mary didn’t look like Sister Mary.”

  The old lady had escorted them across the full breadth of a large room that was full of sheeted furniture, and she was terrified, for she was sure that cockroaches and centipedes were most likely hiding beneath these flimsy shrouds. Thereafter, they were ushered into a bedroom where Sister Mary lay propped up among a collection of pillows, but the heat was suffocatingly intense and felt as though it had been trapped in the room for many days and nights. The young nun’s eyes appeared to have sunk into her head, and her two arms—which lay lifeless on top of the sheets—were smooth and twisted like thin willow branches. The old lady dabbed gently at Sister Mary’s lips with a moist cloth, but this didn’t appear to help relieve the young woman’s distress. Sister Mary could no longer make any words with her mouth.

  Climbing to her feet, she turned her back to the river and addressed Gussie.

  “Let’s not tell anybody about Sister Mary. We should forget that we ever went there.”

  Gussie continued to pitch small stones into the river, but eventually she looked up.

  “Alright,” she said. “We never went there.”

  She continued to stand, but a vast distance suddenly seemed to have opened up between herself and Gussie, and she didn’t possess the words to explain the strange sadness of the feelings that were now coursing through her small body. For the remainder of the afternoon, the two friends lingered by the riverbank and listened to the unhappy repetition of birds plaintively calling out to each other.

  Towards the end of the Easter holidays she sat with her father on the veranda and watched as he closed his newspaper. When her mother came out to say “Good night,” her father announced that the Irish nun that he had been treating for the past year had just left this world at the tender age of twenty-four. He began to shake his head, but refused to face his daughter, and then he muttered that for some time now it had been clear to him that nothing could be done for the poor nun. He sighed and returned to his newspaper. She understood that as a nine-year-old girl she was too young for a full explanation, but if only her father could have found a way to extend himself a little further in her direction and share with her what he was truly thinking, this would have helped. Poor Sister Mary. They had brought her flowers and shown her loyalty. Devotion, even. But her father chose not to offer any explanation to his daughter as to why the young nun had decided to forsake them in this way, and for what remained of the Easter holidays she felt betrayed by both Sister Mary and her father.

  5

  Francine

  Every Sunday morning she would stand by the window and watch as the Negro made his slow way up the street towards the house with his young daughter in tow. Francine would be clutching her father’s hand, but as they moved closer, the girl would suddenly break free and run expectantly in the direction of the iron gate that led into the yard and shout for her friend, “Gwennie!” Her mother was usually in the kitchen instructing Josephine the cook, who would be busily preparing Sunday lunch. Drying her hands on a towel, her mother would step out into the yard, where her daughter would now be waiting. Her mother would cast her ten-year-old child a quick knowing glance, while trying to disguise the fact that her mind was once again contracting into judgment and disapproval.

  Francine was generally out of breath, and her eager eyes betrayed her excitement as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her sturdy father would come up behind her in his sober church clothes and, sporting a black hat with a particularly wide brim and placing a gentle hand on his child’s shoulder, the Negro would remind his daughter to work hard in the kitchen and not cause Mrs. Williams any bother, but her mother would always assure the man that Francine was never any trouble whatsoever. Satisfied that everything was in order, the Negro would touch his hat and then set about his yard work. Francine had an uncomplicated roster of tasks to perform in the kitchen, but as soon as they were done, she frequently seemed to have an idea of what the two of them ought to do, be it a quick sprint down to the river to pick a batch of wildflowers or a fierce determination that they should engage in a search for a particular bird or lizard that had recently captured her imagination. Everything with Francine was an adventure, and although she occasionally felt obliged to throw up an objection to her friend’s suggestions based on either the weather or the sheer impracticality of the plan, she would invariably have nothing to offer in its place, and so she inevitably capitulated to Francine’s schemes.

  One week they might amuse themselves by crawling around the empty marketplace on all fours playing “zoo”; the following week Francine might suggest a sandy spot by the bayfront that would be perfect for them to once again play castaway and native, with Francine always assuming the role of the tragically helpless castaway. She sang songs with Francine, the words of which she seldom fully understood, and her friend taught her how to dance with a freedom below her waist that she intuitively understood to be unseemly. However, all of this took place beyond her mother’s eyes, and although the two girls were often tired and dirty by the time they returned to the house, her mother always greeted them with two glasses of juice and allowed them to sit together on the veranda and eat sandwiches, while Francine’s father squatted near the gate and ate from a small package that he normally carried tucked beneath his arm. Once the girls had finished, it was her mother who took it upon herself to come and clear their things, and it was understood that this was the signal for Francine to get to her feet and rejoin her father. Mother and daughter watched as the Negro girl made her reluctant way to the gate, and then, together with her father, her friend began to slowly amble her way back down the street.

  During the hottest weeks of the summer her mother decided to pack her off to be with her great-aunt at the family’s Geneva estate, but she missed Francine. On the Sunday after she returned from the cool of the mountains she saw her friend cantering up the street with a scrap of mongrel on a long piece of string and the girl’s father making no attempt to keep pace with his child. She began to laugh gleefully at Francine’s latest gesture of willful eccentricity, and then she glanced up and noticed the look of antipathy on her mother’s face. She already knew that her mother was filled with hostility towards Negroes, and clearly disapproved of any extended period of exposure to their presence, but she was now beginning to realize that her mother’s irrational fear of Negroes was yet another example of the increasingly unbridgeable
gap of understanding that was opening up between them. Luckily, her friend appeared to be oblivious to her mother’s discomfort, and by the time Francine had shown her how to feed the puppy pieces of jackfruit, and let her cradle the whelp in her arms, she was convinced that she too wanted one. Her memories of the few weeks that she had spent at the family estate, and the books that she had read, and the long solitary walks that she had taken in the rainforest wondering when her breasts might appear and if anybody might be interested in them, all quickly disappeared from her mind. Later that same day, after Francine and her father had departed, she announced to her mother that she too would like a puppy on a long piece of string, but her mother avoided her gaze and pretended that she hadn’t heard her daughter’s voice.

  The following week Francine slipped her hand from that of her father and ran up the street and knocked at the iron gate to the yard. Her mother rose imperiously to her feet and instructed her embittered daughter to remain where she was in the tranquility of the living room with her book spread open on her knees. Sunlight slanted through the jalousies and cast an oddly striped pattern across the floor, and she listened as her mother stepped out into the yard. Before the Negro girl could ask for her friend, Mrs. Williams’s sugar-coated voice made it clear that Gwendolen was resting. Furthermore, it was simply too hot for her daughter to be out in the sun. Her mother suggested that on such a particularly scorching morning it might well be more comfortable for Francine if she went straight to work in the kitchen, thereby securing some shelter from the heat. Francine’s father arrived at his daughter’s side and immediately detected a new register in his employer’s voice, one which his child was not yet attuned to. He took hold of his girl’s arm and thanked Mrs. Williams for her thoughtfulness. Francine would spend her last day as an employee working in the relative coolness of the kitchen with the other household servants.