Page 83 of The Summer Country

“Surely that’s a matter for my grandmother?”

“She said I could have them.” It wasn’t entirely untrue. She had certainly implied Emily could have them. Emily had accepted the invitation to Beckles on the strength of that offer. “You know how busy she is. She just hasn’t got around to it yet.”

George looked unconvinced.

Through the trees, Emily could see the glint of sun on glass. “You’ve been lovely showing me about Beckles, but that only goes so far. I won’t know what the scope of Peverills should be—could be—until I see what Peverills once was.”

“There’s truth in that,” admitted George reluctantly. “Although I’m not sure how much you’ll benefit from that. According to my grandmother, my uncle made a hash of running the place. He had unusual notions.”

“Unusual notions?”

“Er, tenant farms and that sort of thing.”

“That hardly sounds unusual to me,” said Emily.

“Perhaps not in England. But in Barbados, fifty years ago . . . that sort of thing wasn’t done. And for a reason. It was a financial disaster.”

“It wouldn’t need to be, would it?” asked Emily. “Managed properly, there are all sorts of possibilities. Have you heard of Brook Farm?”

“No, I’m afraid I haven’t. What do they grow?”

“Hearts and souls, primarily,” said Emily cheerfully. “It’s a community in Massachusetts of thinkers and farmers.” Or had been. Belatedly, she remembered it had failed a few years before. Her father, who had correspondents there, had been terribly disappointed.

“Well . . . Americans,” said George, as though that explained that. “The conditions in the northern parts of the United States are quite different, as I understand it. Sugar isn’t the sort of crop that responds well to smallholding.”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about breaking up the estate. But if everyone who worked the estate had shares in it, and received back commensurate with what they put in . . .” George was trying to behave himself but looked deeply skeptical. “You see why I need the ledgers? I don’t know the slightest thing about the exigencies of sugar production. Perhaps seeing it all in ink, as it were, will cure me of utopian notions.”

“I should think living with Grandmother would do that,” said George. They trotted sedately into the stable yard. George dismounted, then held out a hand to help Emily. “All right. I’ll see what I can do about those ledgers.”

When Emily went upstairs, there was hot water waiting for her, but no Katy. She had, she realized uncomfortably, become accustomed to the strange alchemy by which water was available for washing, food for eating, clothes for wearing, ink for writing, before she ever knew she needed it. Over two months at Beckles, she had grown to take these things for granted, and the people who provided them.

In the place of Katy was Mrs. Davenant’s own maid Queenie, the lace on her cap a sign of her elevated office. If her pride was hurt at being sent to see to a guest, she didn’t show it, only undid the buttons of Emily’s habit, helping her out of the damp and clinging wool.

“Does Katy have a daughter?” Emily asked, emerging gasping from a faceful of hot water.

Queenie efficiently stripped Emily of her soiled shift. “Katy has four children.” She produced a clean chemise, smelling of sunshine and soap. “Three girls, one boy.”

“Oh,” said Emily. She stood still as Queenie tied the tapes of her petticoat around her waist, raising her arms as an apple-green cotton day dress was lowered over her head. “Four children.”

She thought of the late nights Katy waited to undress her for bed, the early mornings when Katy was there to direct her toilette.

Queenie sat Emily down, brushing out Emily’s sweat-damp hair with smooth, even strokes. “My grandbabies,” she said.

“You’re Katy’s mother?” Emily turned her head to look and found her head being gently but firmly pushed back into place.

“Grandmother,” Queenie corrected her. “My daughter was maid to Miss Julia, Master Edward’s wife. Someday Katy will be maid to Mr. George’s wife.”

With neat movements, she sleeked Emily’s hair into two loops, one on either side of her head.

“I see. How nice. You don’t look much like Katy,” she said, in an attempt to exonerate herself and to avoid thinking of what it meant that she’d been given the maid designated for Mr. George’s future wife.

“She takes after her father,” said Queenie, securing an enamel comb over each loop. “He’s head joiner.”

Aristocracy of sorts, Emily gathered. She felt like the lowest sort of crawling creature for never having realized the family relationships inside the house. No fraternizing with the servants, that was Aunt Millicent’s rule, but Emily had always prided herself on asking anyway, being aware of who had a sister in service or a cousin in the poorhouse or a little brother in want of a trade.

She ought to have asked. Why hadn’t she asked?

It was Beckles, she decided. Her mother had written about the moral rot of slavery, sinking into the soul one luxury at a time, and Emily could feel her own soul in the balance, a decaying thing tricked out in lace and gold bangles.