Return to Paradise by Erica Brown & Erica Brown

Author:Erica Brown & Erica Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2018-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Samson and Abigail, with Desdemona wedged between them, looked up at the high walls of the place Aggie Beven had told them would give them food and a roof over their heads. Everything they owned had been destroyed in the fire at the boarding house.

They’d stayed on Aggie’s boat for two weeks, traversing the canals and locks along the Avon and Kennet Canal, all the way to a town called Reading and back.

Although silent for most of the journey, engrossed in her own thoughts, Aggie had appreciated their help and, although she hadn’t complained about sharing her meagre food, Samson couldn’t bring himself to encroach on her generosity any longer. Besides that, the accommodation was smaller than the old slave huts in Barbados where you could at least lie full-length on the floor. The narrowboat cabin measured only eight by eight, a tight squeeze for five people.

During the journey, he and Hamlet had slept out under a canvas sheet on the roof, leaving the women to share the cabin. They’d supplemented Aggie’s endless pots of tea, fried bread and fatty bacon with a few rabbits, wild ducks, pheasants and even a wandering chicken snatched from the water meadows along the way. Urged on by Aggie and supplied with a large enamel jug, they had also milked the cows that had watched lazily as they’d drifted by on the Lizzie Jane. He was a proud man and couldn’t bear to put Aggie to any inconvenience, yet he felt that was exactly what he was doing. He’d told her they would leave, and because they had no money with which to pay rent, she told them of the only place that could take them in.

‘But t’aint a nice place,’ she’s said, her pipe juggling worriedly at the corner of her mouth.

‘Can’t be any worse than some of the places I seen,’ Samson had replied. It would do for now, he thought: somewhere to lay their heads until he got the lay of the land. Then he would look for Aunt Blanche.

‘Let the boy stay. I could do with some help on this old tub, and he looks big enough to shift for himself. Ain’t that right, Harry?’

‘Hamlet,’ his son had said with a grin and a shake of his head. ‘My name’s Hamlet.’

‘What sort of name’s that?’

‘Shakespeare,’ Hamlet had said with a grin.

‘Too posh for the likes of me. Harry will do,’ she’d said, turning her back and tapping out the bowl of her pipe on the cabin roof.

It had been a terrible wrench, but Samson was sure he’d made the right decision.

‘I’m frightened,’ whispered Abigail now, her eyes big and round as she looked up at the high walls, then at the dirty, desperate people gathered around them.

Desdemona began to cry. Samson attempted to comfort her, his heart full of foreboding and wishing that he’d never left Barbados. Perhaps he should have gone to another island instead of coming here. It was cold, unfriendly and so far he’d had little chance to try and find his aunt, or cousin or whatever she was.

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