The Sugar Planter's Daughter by Sharon Maas

Author:Sharon Maas [Maas, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78681-033-5
Publisher: Bookouture

After dinner we all retired to the gallery, where Mavis served us our rum-laced Moonlight Mixes. All the windows were open and the sea breeze swept through, cool and soothing. The choir of night creatures screeched out their cacophonous symphony, and light thrown from the flickering lanterns chased shadows on the walls and the floorboards. It would have been a relaxing end to the day if not for the discomfort Yoyo’s presence made me feel. Yet now she was curiously silent, allowing Margaret Smythe-Collingsworth to take centre stage with various stories of her friends and relations in Georgetown – gossip, for the most part, and I suppose amusing, though not so to me. Her husband and Clarence guffawed now and then, as they knew the persons concerned, and provided some anecdotes of their own. I listened with only half an ear, glad that Yoyo’s attention was no longer on me.

The Christmas weekend stretched before me as a chore to be accomplished. I would have to avoid Yoyo as much as possible, and my thoughts jumped to Uncle Jim. I would certainly visit him, and some of my old friends from the village. I had not seen them since long before the wedding; at the trial, as a matter of fact. I wondered how my friends would react to me; I had after all changed sides to become a part of the Cox family. The sugar kings were generally hated – but of course Winnie was different, and so was her mother.

Uncle Jim, of course, would be the same as ever. I had last seen him at the trial: he had stood on the street with us protestors, holding a placard and chanting with the rest of us. Now he was an estate manager, in a position of authority over the very labourers with whom he had once plotted and marched. How times changed! Uncle Jim may have superficially changed sides, just as I had, but his heart would have stayed firmly anchored in solidarity. Uncle Jim was not a man who whipped with the wind, out only for his own advantage. Of that I could be certain.

I determined to visit him early the next day, and spend as much of the weekend with him as politely possible. Uncle Jim would advise me, as well, on how to deal with Yoyo and her extraordinary behaviour. He knew women better than I did; he was much older and wiser than I was, and been married twice; and he worked with Yoyo day after day and certainly knew her well. Relief flooded through me as I thought about it. Yes, Uncle Jim would help me find my footing in the precarious territory I walked through.

I was glad when, after only about fifteen minutes, Yoyo rose to her feet and placed her glass on the central table.

‘I have rather a bad headache,’ she said. ‘I’m off to bed. I’ll see you all in the morning.’

‘Toodle-oo, darling!’ said Margaret. ‘Hope you feel better tomorrow! It’s

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