Rooted In Dishonour. Anne Mather
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‘I’ve told you. This woman he’s planning to marry is English. What will she care about the island? And if she is marrying Papa for his money, how can she spend it here? The shops in Ste Germaine don’t sell the kind of things she will want to buy.’
Raoul thrust back his chair and got abruptly to his feet, thrusting his thumbs broodingly into the back of his pants. He stood at the verandah rail, staring towards the shadowed line of the reef, watching the sun as it climbed above the mountains turning the surf to gold. This was his island, he thought fiercely, as much his as Willard Petrie’s. How dared the other man put in jeopardy the one thing he had ever really cared about?
He was aware of Barbara watching him, aware of her eyes upon him. He knew her motives were less pure than his own. All he wanted was freedom—to oversee the plantation, to care for the black people who worked for him, to live here, in his house, within sight and sound of the ocean. Perhaps his ambitions were narrow, perhaps the production from the cane fields was not enough to warrant his dedication; but he had seen enough of that other world when Willard sent him to school and subsequently university in England. He wanted no part of that rat-race society, and he had assumed when Willard retired …
Fool, he thought to himself now, fool! He should have known better than to trust a man like Willard. Hadn’t he had sufficient proof of his untrustworthiness in the past?
Barbara rose to her feet, too, and came to stand beside him at the rail. She put her hand on his arm, her fingers curling confidingly round the firm flesh, but his arm remained still and unyielding.
‘Raoul,’ she said softly, ‘don’t get upset. It need never happen. You know what Papa is like. You know how quickly he tires of people. All we need to do is show him that this—this woman is not suitable, would never fit in here …’
Raoul looked down at her. ‘If what you say is true, she may never need to,’ he pointed out dispassionately.
Barbara moved a little closer so that her rounded bare arms brushed his chest. ‘They’re not married yet.’
He made no reaction to her nearness, but said flatly: ‘When do they arrive?’
‘At the beginning of next week. They leave London on Monday morning and fly direct to St Lucia. They’re planning to stay there overnight, and come on here on Tuesday morning.’
‘Tuesday morning.’ He nodded. ‘And how is your father? Does he say he’s well?’
Barbara released him impatiently. ‘He says he’s never felt better. Can you believe it? A man of his age! And only four weeks since he had his attack!’
Raoul turned back to face the house, resting his hips on the rail. ‘Love conquers all, as they say!’ he quoted harshly.
Barbara snorted frustratedly. ‘Well? What do you think?’
He shook his head. ‘I think it’s getting late. I think it’s time I left for the mill.’
‘Damn you, Raoul!’
‘All right.’ He straightened, not pretending he didn’t understand her agitation. ‘I can’t say I’m happy about it. But I don’t see what we can do.’
Barbara seethed, ‘There must be something!’
Raoul shrugged. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll think about it.’
She looked at him anxiously. ‘You will?’
‘I’ve said so, haven’t I?’
She licked her lips again. ‘Will you come to dinner tonight?’
Raoul’s mouth turned down. ‘I think not.’
‘Why not?’ Barbara was furiously disappointed. For once she had been sure he would agree.
‘I don’t think your father would approve,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘Dining with the hired help! No, I don’t think he’d like that at all.’
Barbara’s lips trembled with anger. ‘That’s just an excuse, and you know it.’
The green eyes were bland. ‘Don’t push it, Sister Barbara. You run along now while I go and earn some more bread for the rich lady’s table.’
Her fists clenched, but she left him descending the steps with a recklessness that was almost her undoing. She righted herself and stalked off into the trees that formed a more than adequate barrier between Raoul’s dwelling and the imposing grounds of the big house, her skirt a flame of brightness among the green foliage.
The sun was gaining in heat as Raoul left the bungalow and climbed behind the wheel of the dusty Landrover that provided his only means of transport. The island, known by the imaginative name of Sans Souci, boasted few cars, the majority of its inhabitants contenting themselves with mule-drawn carts or bicycles, or simply walking. But it was some fourteen miles in length and a good five miles wide at its greatest extremities, and Raoul needed the Landrover to supervise the plantation. Pushing his blue cotton hat to the back of his head, he swung the vehicle round and headed up the rough road towards the town.
The harbour of Ste Germaine was the only part of the coastline accessible by sea. Some two hundred years previously a French privateer conveniently blasted a hole in the reef, making the island accessible to bigger craft than the canoes originally used by the Carib Indians, and its strategic position made it for a time a bone of contention between the English and the French. That the Caribs murdered both indiscriminately made little difference to the eventual scheme of things. The Caribs themselves were finally wiped out, and the small town that bordered the harbour still revealed its Anglo-French influence, and its native market managed to attract a few visitors from the yachts and chartered vessels cruising in the area. But in spite of its colourwashed houses, its shops and stores overflowing with native crafts, and the profusive beauty of flowering shrubs and creepers, Ste Germaine had no hotels, and Willard Petrie had kept it that way. Owner, governor, politician—he managed to maintain Sans Souci in the way it had existed for over two hundred years, and his family could trace their roots back to those first early settlers. Not that one enquired too deeply into anyone’s antecedents in the area, and Petrie himself forbade any discussion of a certain quadroon serving maid who had lived in the big house during the early years of the nineteenth century.
The Petrie plantation stretched from one end of the island to the other. It was primarily given over to the growing of sugar cane, and each of the adult male workers was given half an acre of land on which to grow their own crops, and although Raoul knew that much of this land was unused or bartered over, it pleased Petrie to think that he was a good and generous employer. Living conditions were less easy to monitor, but at least there was a decent hospital in Ste Germaine, and a school for the younger inhabitants. Apart from the Petries and Raoul himself, there was only one other white family on the island—Jacques Marin ran the hospital, and his wife, Susie, was his assistant. They had two children—a boy, Claude, who was fourteen, and away at school in Martinique, and a girl, Annette, who was only six, and was taught by an American girl, Diane Fawcett. The rest of the population was a mixture of off-whites and coloureds, with a fair smattering of Chinese and Indians in the town, except Isabel Signy who ran the school, and whom no one would dare to categorise.
The Petrie sugar mill stood on the outskirts of the town. Raoul parked the Landrover near the warehouses which would soon house the cut sugar cane before its injection into the milling process, and walked into the small office where his second-in-command, André Pecarès, was solidly working his way through a pile of invoices. He looked up with a smile as Raoul entered, but Raoul returned his greeting only absently before flinging himself into the worn leather armchair behind his desk.
André finished entering the invoice he was working on, and then got up to cross to where a pot of coffee was simmering over a gas burner. He was a man in his early thirties, only about five years older than Raoul himself, but unlike his employer his skin revealed a darker cast. Yet for all that, he could pass for white, and Raoul had often speculated about which of Petrie’s ancestors had been responsible for that particular branch of his family.