The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Author:Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2007-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

SHE SAT OUT ON the veranda now. Karl had already gone in to bed, and she knew he was waiting for her. It was a lovely night, he’d said, and it was. The scent of jasmine came and went with the breeze; the sea was calm. He’d looked at her as if he saw the whole fragrant night in her face, and he’d kissed her. “I’ll come soon,” she had promised.

There was a light out there in the sea. She saw it every night and knew it was Navy Island. During the day, the island was barely visible from the veranda, but every night it showed itself as this starry light on the water. She thought of Errol all the time. How could she not? May was the very image of him.

Since that time in New York when Errol had telephoned, Ida and Karl had avoided talking about him. It was awkward now that they were back, especially since Ida knew that Karl visited Navy Island. He was careful never to say he was going to see Errol; instead he would say, “I’ve got some business over on Navy Island today,” and Ida would try to look as if she weren’t interested, as if it didn’t matter to her. She knew Karl had invested in a film Errol was making in Cuba, and she had a notion about some financial or legal matter Karl was helping him with. She imagined that when they were together, the two men avoided talking about her, pretending that the whole affair with Ida hadn’t happened. Karl would require that evasion from Errol, just as he required it from her and from himself too.

Ida thought of Karl waiting for her. Go in to your husband. She knew she should be grateful to him. What a muddle. She felt as if she kept making one mistake after another. Are you a mongoose or a girl? she could hear Madda Oni asking her. Choices. Had she chosen badly? Should she have stayed in Jamaica with her daughter and never have gone to New York? Stayed at Plumbago Road and been content with little? She hadn’t wanted that.

And marrying Karl? Was that what she’d wanted? She had been so determined not to be his mistress that she hadn’t properly considered what it would mean to be his wife. He was good to her. She was a baroness. There was splendor around her. But not within her. She felt as bewildered as May.

All the avoided thoughts came together now like a cloud in her brain. To be a sorry unwed mother or the well-cared-for wife of a man whom she admired but didn’t love—had those been her only choices? It was exhausting to constantly fall short of loving someone you shared your life with. Now, letting her eyes rest on the dark water ahead of her, she realized she’d been trying to live with the destruction of her most earnest hope.

She and May belonged on that island. She knew it; her daughter felt it.

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