“What does it matter who?”
Her Obeah woman had put hallucinations into her head. Or perhaps, I thought, the worst has happened and she has become her mother. She reached for me then, her face suddenly softening. “You will give me a baby,” she whispered, “and you will not disappear.” Her lips were on my surprised mouth, her tongue inside. I felt the heat of her, but I could not rise to her need. When instead I tried to comfort her, her hands pummeled me and she bit me, screaming my worthlessness at me until I turned from her and left.
Later, sleepless, I walked out of the house and into the moonless night, cursing myself, and my father, and all that had brought me to that wretched place.
*
After that night, it seemed that Bertha grew worse by the day. She often had hallucinations—some were garbled and full of fantasy; others were clear. She imagined my brother or my father in the room with her; she imagined a house full of babies; she even imagined she had killed her father and mine. And then she took to cutting herself, and Molly and I had to be ever watchful to keep sharp objects from her reach.
I needed to get away. Far away. I needed new vistas, other persons surrounding me, other thoughts than those crowding my head in the night. I sent a quick message to Whitledge and packed a small valise and made my excuses to Jonas, barely able to look him in the face as I did so, for I had come to wonder if everyone—all of Jamaican society, except me—had known of Bertha’s proclivities. I had been an egotistical fool: it was not a contest for Bertha’s hand that I had won; it was the contest for her bed, and perhaps I had not won even that.
I rose early, just at dawn, and even though it was chilly and the early-morning air still damp, I was determined to leave at once. The day promised to be fine, the sky that pure Jamaican blue that one almost never sees in England, and the air full of the raucous birdsongs I had become used to. As I started out, I felt a kind of freedom, a release. In the previous few weeks I had felt tied down to Bertha in a way that I had not felt when we first married. I had not before then seen her darker side, did not know the terrors that haunted her. I had once thought that a child of her own might make a difference, but now I knew I could not wish a mother like her on any innocent being. She frightened me, not only because I wondered how life could go on as it had before, but also because I had begun to wonder what demons lay inside me—inside anyone—only waiting to be awakened.
I reached Arcadia late in the afternoon. I had expected the great house there to be similar to the one at Valley View, but in fact it was noticeably smaller, set beautifully on a small rise, the road to it lined by a handsome avenue of tamarinds. Whitledge, warned no doubt by some sharp-eyed pickaninny, was on the veranda, waving as I approached.
“Rochester!” he shouted, as if I were some long-lost cousin, rather than a shipboard acquaintance. After our warm greeting, he offered me a tour of the house—an unusual gesture, since most estate owners kept their homes quite private, except for the public rooms where a dinner or a ball might be held. But I accepted gladly.
Arcadia was an architectural gem. Valley View, it was clear, had been built by a man with a practical and mathematical bent, reflected in its stolid, square shape, in the symmetry of its windows, and in its expansive rooms. But in Arcadia alcoves and curves abounded, ceiling heights changed from room to room, doors led into unexpected spaces. Bertha would have loved its surprises and mysteries. Had she seen it in the first days of our marriage, she would have flung her arms around my neck and insisted, “Fairfax, we must build a house just like this! Just exactly like this!” I would have done it for her too, back when I was still under her spell.
Whitledge was rightly proud of it. “My father and I designed it together when I was a child. Its building, I have to say, was a result of a tragedy. There was an uprising of the negroes and the house and most of the fields were burned. None of us was harmed, but my mother never recovered. She refused to set foot in the damaged house, where all her belongings smelled of smoke; she could not bear the memories of those fearful days.
“So we moved in with my grandparents, and my father had the building totally destroyed, the ground leveled off and put into gardens, and he settled on this new location, where he built a house designed for my mother. She never lived in it, though. She died before it was completed.” He paused then, and said, “Have I told you I’m to be married soon?”
Of course he had not told me; we had not conversed since we parted in Spanish Town months before. She was a delight, he enthused, a girl he had known from childhood; her parents had been great friends of his own. It had always been assumed that they would marry, and now he and his Elizabeth were to wed in less than a month. He hoped my wife and I would be able to come; he was quite anxious to meet the woman who had captured my heart. I smiled and said it would be a pleasure, while wondering what excuse I could make when the time came, and thanked God that Whitledge had not heard gossip regarding Bertha.
A couple of days later, at a neighborhood ball, I had an opportunity to meet the bride herself. She was not at all what I had expected, I will confess. Whitledge was a handsome young man and I expected Elizabeth to be a beauty—but while she had an attractive figure, her face was quite plain, with a nose too small for her broad forehead. Still, she had a bright smile and was pleasant indeed to talk with. I danced a reel or two with her and found her to be an engaging conversationalist. I could imagine with envy the quiet, contented nights she and Whitledge might spend together.
After four days, I took my leave to return to Valley View. Whitledge was eager for me to visit again as soon as possible, and I wished with all my heart that I could return the invitation, but things were far too uncertain at Valley View. As I began my ride home that afternoon, I reflected that I had not had so many days of pure enjoyment and much-needed relaxation since my visit with Carrot so many years before.
*