The Austin Clarke Library by Austin Clarke

Author:Austin Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2010-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

Now, in this underground tunnel, where Sargeant and Mary-Mathilda are still walking, these thoughts which are now pressing upon her consciousness and her conscience, slides of her life, make her sad and very angry. But in her mind, now having to think about the act that she “had perpetrated,” as Sir G would say, she knows the reason why . . .

She can feel the difference in the sound of her footsteps, in this section of the underground tunnel; and there is more hollowness in the sound of her footsteps, and this makes her feel that the tunnel is approaching the cellar of her house.

She walks with the hoe, putting it down a few inches ahead of each stride, step after step, just as she had seen the Vicar walk with his umbrella.

Sargeant walks slowly behind her.

At the sound of his sneezing, she emerges from her reverie.

“I have told you things you didn’t know existed before. And these things are things that will remain right here,” she says.

“You told me things, yes,” he says.

“The things I have told you, am about to tell you, I want you to forget, and have them remain here, in this underground passage.”

“You could trust me, Mary-Mathilda.”

“Okay, then. But did I tell you that Ma’s name was Eunomia Irene?”

“Close to one o’ the Bellfeels girls,” he says.

“I asked Ma the origin of Eunomia.

“‘How come you have this name?’

“And she told me that her Mother, my gran, saw it written-down somewhere, and liked it, and gave it to her, when she was christened. In Sin-Davids Anglican Church. And her second name, Irene, I don’t know what that means, either. A hundred women in this Village name Irene. My guess is that the English must-have-bring it here. But don’t you think Eunomia is a very nice name; and then, Irene?”

“Pretty like the Bellfeels daughters.”

“Ma never knew who her father is. In those days, on the Plantation, women didn’t pay much attention to thrildren bearing the names of the father—if the fathers were known, at all—excepting if the father was living under the same roof with the mother, and the child, which was rare.

“No. Ma didn’t know who her father was. Could be anybody. He could be dead, anyhow, before she born. That was Plantation life.

“She knew mine. But she never told me. She never told me who. She just drop hints. Always hints.

“‘Well, girl, it could be that he is your father!’

“Or ‘What I would be doing with a ugly man like that for?’

“Or yet-again, ‘I haven’t told you a thing, hear? Not one thing. You hear those lawless bitches in Miss Greaves Shop, talking; with nothing more better to do than telling you that the overseer at the Plantation is your father? What right would I be doing with a Plantation overseer, fathering the only child I give-birth to? And if that was the case, why you and me still living in this blasted hovel, whilst your father living in luxuries, in the third-biggest house ’pon

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