Strange Music (21 page)

I have taken Dr. Barry under my protection and will not have him chastised, yet I find annoyance grips me. Henrietta believes one hundred and twenty-five pounds to be a moderate charge. Though I may be unreasonable, I think otherwise, because of the number of months Dr. Barry has taken to send the pecuniary part of my obligations to him. I also have the druggist's bill to pay – fifty pounds. With all these expenses my finances will hardly bear the rent at this house.

Surprisingly good news has come in light of this – and when I least expected it – although the income isn't reliable – the last sheets from my publisher showed a significant increase in my poetry sales.

Autumn is close at hand. Corn heads have been cut, the wind wails terribly by the crumbling casement, and despite my protestations, visits from my able and most kind physician, Dr. Barry, have become still briefer and less frequent.

Dr. Barry, who has attended to me almost every day for above a year, attended at my best estate and never left me longer than a day, was taken dreadfully ill and is confined to his bed with rheumatic and nervous fever.

Dr. Barry is again too sick to visit.

Yet my medical examinations are necessary.
I
am particularly unwell tonight as a consequence of the moist, heavy and changeable state of the atmosphere and, for some days recently, have suffered from old symptoms – oppression on the chest and expectoration. It now seems my condition is bronchial.

My yearning to return to London only increases as September progresses. September – the one month in which I tend, nay
intended
, to flee the peculiar position in which I find myself. I continue to confute the view held by my old friend, Mr. Boyd, ‘
that women never improve
' – a most dreadful theory – although I conversely belong to that pitiful order of weak women who cannot command their bodies with their souls at every moment, and who sink down in hysterical disorder when they ought to act and resist.
Heart and will are great things, but after all I, like everyone else, carry a barrowful of clay about me, and I must carry it a little carefully if I mean to keep to the path
.

I was always of a determined and, if thwarted, violent disposition
. Come storms or sunshine I
must
have Dr. Barry visit me, and
only
Dr. Barry.

I have decided we are to up and move from this house to save the princely sum of seventeen pounds a year. I have paid the current rent, one hundred and eighty pounds a year, from my own pocket.

Bro has found a more than suitable property, 1, Beacon Terrace, which we may take initially for six months. Bro vows that we will all prefer our new home; it is more sheltered than this from violent westerly winds. My bedroom-to-be is well situated, opening on to the drawing-room, so there are no cold passages or stairs to pass up and down.

Many pettish words pass between Bro and me daily. I wonder whether he experiences this slow death too, or whether it is only I who encounters a sense of drowning after a long slow summer of deck-chairs and parasols.

The morning sun's milky brightness streams through the windows on to Bro's face. He has adopted a strangely rigid stance; hands in pockets, a dishevelled copy of
The Times
poking from under one arm. The sun's glare across his countenance appears bothersome; he is poised in the limelight as though debating what to do.

‘Trippy has told Arabel that she will
never
come and visit whilst I am in Torquay,' I say to him, ‘and I am sure she never will.' Bro raises his eyebrows and says nothing. ‘Henrietta believes Trippy's
better heart
will not permit her to keep this resolution. But Trippy has the fiercest temper and can be quite a dragon.'

‘Trippy's emotions, like Papa's, are deeply rooted in the West Indies,' Bro eventually replies, falling into an armchair.

‘Last night, after an additional evening prayer, I caught Papa talking to himself.
Again
.'

Bro shakes open
The Times
. Pages rustle and quiver as he flits from one to the next, his eyes scanning the print under the guise of reading. ‘Yes,' he says, ‘I recently caught Papa saying under his breath, “But there are too many Barretts, too many
called
Barrett. All we related? God! What could be worse!” I am certain Papa was referring to the traces of slaves' blood I think he fears are in our lineage.'

‘Does Sam truly have an African mistress? Is that why Papa hardly mentions him? Does he fear Sam will bring more misfortune and brown-skinned offspring?'

Bro emits a feeble sigh and folds the newspaper into an untidy mess. ‘Even at a young age you should have deduced from Trippy's stories that a conflict between the body and soul of things exists on our estates.'

‘But, Bro, is there no flexibility in Papa's governance, particularly this area of peculiarity: that none of us form close relationships with members of the opposite sex – unless, it would seem, they are members of our immediate family?'

‘Papa's theories are hypocritical. The Barrett family can't be held up as an example of purity. With our illegitimate cousins in Jamaica we amount to a multitude as numerous as the tribes of Israel.'

This morning, opening my eyes from morning prayers upon Papa's bowed head, a hostility within burgeoned forth such as I have never felt towards him before. I feel no escape from the countless columns of his moral principles, and it seems a new darkness shapes his beliefs, and that this too will fall upon us. ‘Should we never produce children, and remain spinsters and bachelors until the end of our years? No – I cannot believe
that
! What if you were to marry Alexandra Earle?' I pause, and avert my eyes from Bro. ‘What if she were to bear you children? You might have to choose whether to continue your acquaintance with Alexandra. Arabel suggested an engagement might be imminent.'

Head angled down Bro drums his fingers on his knee – a taut frayed rope is about to snap – I fear I ventured too far. Bro glances up sourly. ‘If you were determined to return to Wimpole Street for the summer you should have done so.'

I am glad it pleases Papa that I intend staying unmarried.
I
shall
never
marry. He can march up and down all he pleases. Being of an intolerably exclusive disposition never have I even wished for marriage and am sure I never will, unless I meet a poet who truly inspires my mind and work and of whom I am worthy.

May God ever bless you! – Pray don't throw away more anxious thoughts upon me. If I had any really
bad
symptoms, I wd. call in another physician. As it is do let me enjoy the luxury of being obstinate – perverse as Mr. Kenyon calls it.

Dear kind Dr. Barry is no more. A second relapse followed fast upon the first, and you could scarcely have read what I wrote in hope and gladness before all lay reversed, and by a startling decree of God, the physician was taken and the patient
left
– and left of course deeply affected and shaken. He was a young man . . . a young wife & child, & baby unborn . . .

The same Dr. Barry who forbade me to write.
Anything
. Even poetry! How miserably depressed I am left. Bummy and Crow say, ‘Ba, you must pull yourself together,' insisting that it is not my fault he died. Yet I blame myself completely. How can I not?

Dr. Barry, rising from his own sickbed in concern for me, ventured out on a night foul as this, braving cruel torrents of rain to examine the condition of my chest: because of this his second child will never know its father. Although we had thought Dr. Barry would recover, it was an inflammation of the bowels that superseded the fever and weakened his body beyond repair.

How we Barretts are cursed, for this is a curse if ever there was one. Bro first heard the dreadful news on the first of October, just two hours after Dr. Barry's death. That afternoon I watched the flags of all the vessels in the bay hoisted down to half-mast. One very elderly woman, Bro said this morning, walked five miles every day during Dr. Barry's illness to inquire after him. Locally, he was surely a well-liked man.

Crushing waves of grief roll into each other, becoming one great ocean of woe. My new doctor, Dr. Scully, said the storm is almost passed and I am better. But a sea around me rages. I believe I am dying.

Each time I wake, day or night, my eyes fall on the chalk drawing gazing down on my bed, which Papa has given me. The result, he agreed, is very realistic. He said, when he stood back to admire the gift, that he believed it to be the quality of light on the skin that makes the representation near perfect. Certainly, it is the most impressive portrait of Papa I have seen. Pastel colours blended by the artist's fingers create a smooth three-dimensional effect yet, even viewed from this distance, the features appear quite sharp.

Chapter Eight

Trouble rests on him battered wooden bench beneath shady mango trees. He have a sort of watchfulness; it makes me uneasy. Stooped over with tiredness, him body wears no shirt; he never wore no shirt nowhere, just osnaburg trousers. He also wears spotted green-and-blue neck-cloth tied in a bow beneath him chin. Strangely, a pink silken strip's pulled tight, turban-like, over him head, crushing hair.

‘Pretty pretty hat,' Big Robert say, strolling by.

Sylvia's perched beside Eleanor on charred verandah steps with rough edges caved in from fire burns; one tread's half collapsed. Sylvia say, ‘Trouble, crazy crazy.'

Trouble pays no heed. Like he cyaan hear. He spits out grass seeds he holds in him mouth, treads dry leaves into sandy dirt.

But Big Robert say, ‘Im look nice nice.'

Trouble-Too-Much glances at Big Robert fretfully, him crinkled topknot of hair poking up tall proud as old cockerel's comb at dawn – though Trouble's comb's black, not red.

Eleanor's whisper say, ‘Trouble's hat wos made fram buckra woman's underwear, one pantaloon leg torn off wen buckra woman lost its ribbons, so she give it to Trouble's mama and pa. Dat's all dey leave Trouble-Too-Much afta dem dead.'

Having rested fe a spell, Trouble sets back to work. Already he sweat through many nights until dawn abeng-blow, humping on him hunched back wattle hurdles woven from saplings. Stacking wattle hurdles, rebuilding Eleanor's shack with pure hate and envy fe what he'll never have, never be, Trouble-Too-Much wrenches silk hat down tightly over ears, so it looks like him ears must smart and cuss. Like he can hide bad feelings inside him head inside pink bloomer leg. Like it's him been ruined and raped and forced into wrong. Or Trouble-Too-Much's powerful arms build shack up with what? Hope? Love? Black jealousy? Sameway like overseer envies Mister Sam, Trouble-Too-Much builds Eleanor's shack with torments we suffer.

Trouble-Too-Much's suffered too much from sick horror of this place. Me mind takes me days back to when a boy came out from behind Eleanor's half-built shack, behind him red sun sank into golden-blue sea of dusk. ‘Trouble-Too-Much ere?' messenger boy shouted, walking through shack village.

Trouble, waving to him, stepped down from Eleanor's verandah, bare chest and trousers smattered with sawdust. ‘Trouble-Too-Much ere aright,' he called back.

Messenger boy said, ‘Me need to talk wid yu quiet somewhere.'

Trouble climbed verandah steps, disappeared with messenger boy through doorway into shack's darkness.

A long time later, when hoppers shriek in knife-edge grass, their cries mean, coarse, brittle, and stark light falls from moon's full whiteness, led by messenger boy Trouble-Too-Much shambled from Eleanor's shack. He moved weak-kneed to verandah rail he'd been crafting from wood, and spoke into night air in a sorry sorry voice. ‘Me mama an pa ded, an-a year pass an nobody care to tell me?' Open moonlight washed him heaving shoulders silver; him body sagged with defeat, though him eyes seemed to fail to believe what he'd just said. ‘Dem owe a-lickle money,' he said, ‘an fe dat dem starve, fe no work offered to dem by any buckra at any place.' We field-hands grouped on verandah steps, thinking, we owe a-lickle money too, fe rent fe provision ground and we shack.

This make good reason fe Trouble's anger?

After final abeng-blow, shack yards fill up with First Gang. All have empty faces. Painful, pink and angry dusk glow comes. Trouble-Too-Much battles in him heart and head, strutting about too hasty hasty; puffing, panting, pretending like he cyaan care less.

Moving tirelessly fast, in spotted bow tie and pink silken hat as each evening passes, all dawn, all dusk time, like old crazy cockerel that keeps up crowing, Trouble's eyes watch narrowly like he plans to kill somebody – every smile he gives adds to him act – like he cyaan cut and weave wattle; cyaan plaster and whitewash with lime dug from riverbanks, where soft limestone rises, like Isaac and me did; cyaan scythe long summer grasses fe thatching over hardwood beams fast enough to keep off what's tracking him.