They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people
did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never
approved of my mother, "because she pretty like pretty self" Christophine
said.
She was my father's second wife, far too young for him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl. When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where we lived was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past. (My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed--all belonged to the past.)
Another day I heard her talking to Mr Luttrell, our neighbour and her only friend. "Of course they have their own misfortunes. Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was passed. Some will wait for a long time."
How could she know that Mr Luttrell would be the first who grew tired of waiting? One calm evening he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always. No agent came from England to look after his property--Nelson's Rest is was called--and strangers from Spanish Town rode up to gossip and discuss the tragedy.
"Live at Nelson's Rest? Not for love or money. An unlucky place."
Mr Luttrell's house was left empty, shutters banging in the wind. Soon the black people said it was haunted, they wouldn't go near it. And no one came near us.
I got used to a solitary life, but my mother still planned and hoped--perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass.
She still rode about every morning not caring that the black people stood about in groups to jeer at her, especially after her riding clothes grew shabby (they notice clothes, they know about money).
Then one day, very early, I saw her horse lying down under the frangipani tree. I went up to him but he was not sick, he was dead and his eyes were black with flies. I ran away and did not speak of it for I thought if I told no one it might not be true. But later that day, Godfrey found him, he had been poisoned. "now we are marooned," my mother said, "now what will become of us?"
Return to Rag and Gossip