Receive Me Falling (19 page)

           
“I hadn’t considered that.”

           
“I will go back to my office and
work up some numbers and possible ways to market the property.
 
I would love to list it.”

           
“My attorney said you come highly
recommended, so that would be fine with me.”

           
During Meg’s tour of the Great
House, she realized that she had not yet been upstairs.
 
Her explorations on the lower level were
keeping her so busy that she hadn’t yet been able to explore the second floor.
  
Meg led Henry up the massive staircase.
 
The rooms were almost empty except for a
great deal of plant and animal life that had settled there.
 
One of the rooms in which they glanced still
had a large, four poster bed with a mildewed mattress, a vanity, and a bureau.

           
“This is unbelievable,” said Meg.
 
“Once this place is restored it will be
magnificent.”

           
“If the buyers don’t tear it down.”

           
“That would be a sin.”

           
At the end of the meeting, Meg stood
on the front porch of the house until Henry was out of sight.
 
The wind was picking up and the sky was
beginning to cloud over, but Meg was anxious to investigate upstairs
alone.
 
She walked back up the staircase
running her hand along the balustrade.
 
Meg’s heart raced as the floorboards creaked under her weight, and
thought that she would not venture upstairs again.
 
She turned down the eastern hall, came to the
room with the bed, and entered.

           
Clouds outside covered the sun and
the room grew dark and shadowed.
 
Meg
opened the drawers of the bureau.
 
They
were empty, and the wood smelled damp and rotten.
 
She walked across the room to the vanity and
gazed at her reflection in the spotted, tarnished mirror.
 

           
Suddenly, Meg noticed a woman’s face
in the mirror behind her.
 
Meg jumped and
turned to face what she thought might be a ghost.
 
Instead, she laughed at herself as she gazed
at a portrait of a woman dressed in wedding clothes.
 
She looked somewhat like the woman in the
picture downstairs, but not exactly the same.

           
Is
this Catherine’s mother?

           
No reference had been in the tax
records to indicate that Cecil had a wife.
 
Perhaps she had died during childbirth or when Catherine was young.
  

           
Meg walked over to the bed.
 
Its yellowish-gray mattress gave off an
unpleasant odor.
 
She looked at the
intricately carved bedposts.
 
They were
cut with flowers and wildlife from top to bottom.
 
The headboard was also carved with large
flowers and trees.
 
While looking at the
bed, something caught Meg’s eye.
 
It was
wedged between the mattress and the headboard.
 
Meg reached over and pulled an old book from the bed.
 
Meg carefully flipped through its pages.
 
Blue ink on crispy yellowed pages.
 
Some pages were ripped out, others smeared,
but most were in tact.

           
April
1809…December 1811…

           
It was a diary.

8

The
morning brought torrential rain and winds.
 
 
Catherine opened her shutters to
see palms bent in the wind, petals ripped off of flowers, and blinding sheets
of rain.
 
Thunder rumbled and vibrated Eden and lightning
crackled with electricity over the island.
 
The pungent smell of saturated earth and vegetation hung in the humidity
of the Great House.
 

           
The roof hung enough over
Catherine’s window to allow her to sit and watch the rain fall.
 
She reclined in silent meditation, watching
the storm.
 
Truthfully, it comforted
Catherine to sit indoors and be still with nothing but the constant downpour to
distract her thoughts.
 
She dressed
slowly, and moved like a phantom through the upstairs rooms of the house,
obtaining different views of the sodden island from each window.
 

           
Upon entering her mother’s chambers,
Catherine moved to the chest of drawers and began looking through her mother’s
old clothing, trying to find items of clothing proper for the slaves to wear.
 
It had never occurred to her until this
moment how bizarre it was for her father to have insisted this room be kept as
a shrine all these years.
 
Moth eaten,
old-fashioned garments were folded and stacked in the musty drawers.
 
Dusty, corroded toiletries still sat at the
old vanity in the same order in which they were placed so many years ago.
 

           
Catherine sat at the vanity and
picked up her mother’s hairbrush.
 
Fine
dusty strands of golden hair still coiled around its bristles.
 
Catherine gazed into the mirror before her,
and over her shoulder was able to see the painting of her mother.
 
The elder Catherine gazed at her daughter
through faded brown eyes.
 
Catherine had
seen the portrait hundreds of times, but had never studied it before this
moment.
 

           
She moved to the wall and placed her
hand upon the canvas in her mother’s lap.
 
Her mother sat straight, beautiful, and serious in her wedding
clothes.
 
Catherine knew that her mother
was reluctant to come to the islands, and was only married a year before Cecil
transported her to this strange place. Cecil spoke little of her, but through
what Catherine could ascertain, her mother spent many hours indoors to keep
away from the intense heat of the sun and the strange dark-skinned slaves.

           
Catherine moved to her mother’s bed
and lay down upon it, thinking with a shiver of the day she cleansed Esther’s
wounds.
 
She ran her hands over the
bedspread and under the feather pillows that had collapsed with years of
neglect.
 
Deep under one of the pillows,
leaning between the edge of the bed and the headboard, Catherine felt the
leather surface of a book.
 
She pulled it
out and turned it over in her hands. Upon opening the book, Catherine saw pages
of small, fine handwriting.

           
Catherine sat up with
excitement.
 
After reading several
passages, she realized that it was her mother’s diary.
 
Catherine could scarcely contain
herself.
 
Cecil surely did not know such
an item was in this room or he would have removed it.
 
Judging by some of the diary entries, Cecil
may not have even known it existed.
 
After hurrying across the room to close the door, Catherine returned to
her mother’s bed and began reading the diary.

       
   
           
           
           
           
           
April
1809

 
          
We
have finally arrived at this Godforsaken Island after two and a half months of
sheer torture.
   
Plagued by illness,
filth, and a serious want of supplies we managed to survive our long voyage
away from my beloved England
to this strange tropical place.
 
My poor
sister-in-law, Elizabeth, nearly died from her seasickness.
 
I nearly died of fright from the profusion of
squalls through which we had to suffer.

       
   
My
first glimpse of Nevis came early during the
morning of our 10th week onboard the ship.
 
A soaring mountain obscured by dense mist loomed over the entire
island.
 
Though the waters were pristine
and the vegetation resembled that of Paradise itself, the ship was docked in a
vulgar and dirty town called Charlestown.
 
I almost kissed the dust of that grimy town,
however, because of my joy at making land.

       
   
I
was thrilled to find such fine accommodations at the Bath Hotel, and wish with
all my heart that we were only spending a holiday here.
 
I would gladly endure such a sea voyage again
to see the shores of England, but Cecil and his brother, William, are quite
intent on settling here.

       
   
           
           
           
           
           
July
1809

       
   
It
is astounding how much has occurred since we arrived at Nevis.
 
We are now living in a hastily constructed
dwelling that I fear will not last a fortnight.
 
Cecil and William work all day and night with fifteen African slaves
re-cultivating the land of an overgrown sugar plantation.
 
Cecil and William are trying to convince
Elizabeth and me that a good sugar crop will provide us with more wealth than
we could ever imagine—enough to return to England after a stay of 10
years.
 

       
   
The
promised riches and the ten year time table are the only reasons Elizabeth and
I agreed to allow Cecil and William to drag us to this place.
 
I shall make marks on a wall counting down
the 3,650 days I am forced to live here.

       
   
           
           
           
           
           
August
1809

       
   
The
heat is unbearable, the winds don’t allow me a moment’s peace, the slaves are
frightening, and it is a scandal how much work I am forced to do each day to
make this hut a home.
 
Cecil assures me
that after the first crop we will be able to buy an entire legion of slaves to
perform all of the house and field work, but I must suffer until then.
  
And I am not overly pleased that we are
using slaves at all.
 
It does seem a bit
cruel to work such beings so hard with no compensation, but Cecil assures me
that they were designed by God to serve.
 
I have begged Cecil to hire at least one white servant to help with the
household duties.
 
I would like for my
household to be run proper and English, but he insists that all plantation
labor will be done by slaves.
 
I do not
know if I will ever become accustomed to living around such savages.

       
   
And
to make matters worse, William has become ill with some dreadful tropical
illness.
 
I only hope it passes soon so
he is able to again assist Cecil.

September 1809

       
   
William
has died!
 
Elizabeth is beside herself, and Cecil now
has yet another burden to bear.
 
I have
tried to persuade him to allow us to return to England, but he is insistent that
we stay here.
 

       
   
I
do secretly know that the political climate in England is not friendly to him, so
he stays here more out of fear than desire.
 
He and several of his cohorts angered some important people, and I
suspect we are in some sort of temporary exile.

       
   
I
can only pray that God will have mercy on us and help us survive these
difficult times.

 
         
           
           
           
           
           
March
1810

       
   
Much
has happened in these few months since our arrival and William’s death.
 
A large and beautiful plantation home has
been built up all around us with the help of the sixty slaves we now own.
 
Elizabeth and I now have much relief with our
own troupe of house slaves.
 
I am
particularly fond of Esther—a quiet, respectful, and mature young woman.
  
She and Mary, an older but hard-working
slave, attend to the household duties of cooking, cleaning, and
laundering.
 
Mary is quite an experienced
cook, and our meals have become nothing short of spectacular!

       
   
I
was taken to the auction when we purchased Esther and Mary, and I must say that
it was an unpleasant scene.
 
The slaves
looked quite humiliated and devastated to be separated from one another, but
Cecil assures me that any slave would be lucky to live under our care.
 

       
   
I
still have not adjusted to the intolerable heat—Elizabeth and I spend most of
our time indoors.
 
I try to stay far away
from any sort of tropical moisture, but that is nearly impossible with the
humidity.
 

       
   
My
life, I must say, is slowly returning to the level of comfort and luxury to
which I am accustomed.
 
I try to be
positive for Cecil, but I still look eagerly forward to the day when I can
return home.
 

Catherine
paused in her reading and rubbed her eyes. She was hungry to continue working
through the diary, but was becoming upset by her mother’s spoiled and haughty
manner, and her attitude toward the slaves.
 
Catherine’s previous ideal of her mother was dissolving with each
passing word from the diary.
 
It was
becoming apparent to Catherine that her mother was a shallow creature concerned
primarily with her own physical and emotional comfort.