Tangled Passion (6 page)

“Bloody impossible!” Longstands swore, the words barely squeezing through his clenched teeth. If Nathan exposed the contents of the diary, his whole life would be ruined. Not only would he lose the plantation and all the goodies that came with running it but Suzanne’s father would go to any length to make sure he never got another job in the whole of England—not as much as a garbage disposal job. The man was a heavyweight in the political, financial, and economic sectors of England and Suzanne was his only child. He was responsible for Longstands’s career leaping from being an ordinary sergeant in the army to a captain, in a short period of time and then when there were opportunities in the West Indies, he’d asked Longstands if he was interested. In fact, Suzanne’s father was single-handedly responsible for Longstands’s wealth and high status in England; the mere mention of the man’s name opened any door for Longstands. Even the King’s door had once opened for Longstands and Lord Bernard Shillingford was behind it. His Lordship was a good man but his daughter was so spoilt and overbearing that he was willing to basically pay any man to marry her though he still loved her dearly. So when Longstands demonstrated genuine love for Suzanne, Lord Bernard was willing to move mountains for him. In fact, so far he had even gone as far as parting seas in addition to moving mountains for Longstands.

“No!” Longstands half shouted, exhaling hard. There was no way that diary was going to be made public; if Lord Bernard learnt of Longstands’s relationship with a slave girl and the possible existence of another child, he would literally extinguish Longstands.

He remembered the very first day he’d written in that diary, it was a new one —a virgin diary just like the slave girl he described in it and at the end of the day he had taken both the virginity of the slave girl and the diary. The diary contained a daily log of his secret relationship with the slave girl while he was running a plantation in St. Lucia, a different island.

After three years of bouncing from one island to the other, packing and unpacking and then repacking, Massa Longstands couldn’t find his diary and became convinced that he must have lost the diary on one of the islands. Never in his wildest imagination did it cross his mind that it might have fallen into the hands of anyone he knew. How it somehow managed to get into the hands of his own son and that the young man was now using it to blackmail him into doing something he’d have otherwise frowned upon, was something he’d already had bouts of diarrhoea trying to figure out.

“I would not hesitate to expose the diary to the whole of England, and mother of course, if you try to stop me.” Nathan’s words came back to him over and over again as if they were coming out of the walls and everything else in the room. The picture of Nathan’s face as he said those words also stuck in Longstands’s mind—cold, calm, and yet forceful. Getting out of the corner into which he’d been squeezed by his son without knocking anything down was something Longstands had spent the entire afternoon trying to figure out. One thing was certain; he could not risk the diary being exposed. Since Nathan was not one to make idle threats; something he’d made very clear from childhood—proving times without number that he’d do whatever he set his mind to do irrespective of what it took, Longstands was not about to give the young man the slightest chance to prove his seriousness.

While Longstands’s son leaned heavily on him from one side, his wife squeezed in on him from the other, leaving him standing on the border of insanity. Suzanne, just like her son, was not one to mess with; from childhood, she’d always gotten whatever she wanted. Being the only child of a filthy rich and powerful man and having lost her mother at an early age, she was spoilt to a stomach-churning point and grew up expecting the world to give her anything she demanded. The only difference was that as she grew older she was more willing to sacrifice anything to get whatever she wanted.

She was determined to make sure the union between Nathan and Ashana never took place and was willing to go to any extent and employ any weapon and strategy within her reach, to ensure she got her way. Suzanne’s only problem; one that she’d already found a way around, was that she was afraid to stand up to her son like she’d do with Longstands. Nathan was just as stubborn as she was and she had no power in the Fort to carry out her wish as she pleased, as long as her son wasn’t in agreement. Besides, there had been an incident back in England, which she feared Nathan must have seen, but was pretending not to have. She wasn’t sure and didn’t know how to be certain of what Nathan saw or didn’t see on that night. She’d just noticed that after that night the boy’s attitude toward her had changed but she still couldn’t say if it was because he was now a man and wanted to prove that he was grown up or if it was simply her guilt haunted her; making her see things that really weren’t there.

Suzanne’s only way to get to Nathan was through her husband; the boy loved and feared his father and listened to whatever the man said. So it was easier for Suzanne to put pressure on Longstands, who had no choice but to agree with whatever she said. Longstands would in turn put pressure on Nathan but for some reason the boy seemed to have also lost all fear and respect for his father and had for the first time ever, flatly and blatantly disregarded his father’s instructions.

“What a mess!” Longstands uttered, mentally exhausted and finally realizing the complexity of the web in which he was caught. It was his seventh walk around his quarters trying to clear his clogged head. He wanted to scream, he wanted to hit something and he was close to jumping off a cliff just trying to figure out how in the world the diary got into the hands of his son. After two additional walks around the Fort, Longstands arrived at a possibility; two years ago he had visited England, his contract running a plantation in St Lucia had come to an end and he was to begin a new contract in Jamaica. But before heading to Jamaica, he’d decided to visit his hometown in England.

He’d packed three bags in total; two were meant for his trip to England and the third one he intended to leave back in St Lucia, planning to pick it up when he returned there, before heading to the Island of Jamaica to begin his new contract. The diary was in the third bag that was supposed to stay in St Lucia.

“Grab the two bags against the table,” Longstands recollected saying to Antoine, one of his favourite house slaves. There was no way of telling which of the bags Antoine brought him at the time as all the bags looked alike, which was the reason Longstands had clearly separated them. He’d placed the bags that were going with him to England by the dining table and the one that was staying back; he had placed by the chair.

“No, Antoine,” Longstands remembered saying when Antoine met him by the horse carriage with three bags. “Which of the bags was against the dining table?”

Antoine pointed at two of the three bags already in the carriage.

“OK, return the other one to my bedroom.”

Antoine nodded, bowed, picked up the other bag and returned to the house. The mistake remained uncovered even in England because Longstands never went into the bags; he had no reasons to; Suzanne had gone out and bought him new things. From underwear to shaving blades, clothes and shoes as well as a toothbrush, she bought everything new the moment he arrived England.

“I don’t want any of those slave-smelling clothes on you while you are here,” she’d told him as she handed him a set of new suits, shoes, and boxers. Longstands remained in England for twelve months; six months longer than he had originally planned. When he eventually returned to St Lucia, Antoine and the third bag had been evacuated by the new occupant of his former house, which led him to the conclusion that the diary was lost forever. It was not until the fateful day when his son walked into his room and handed him a page from the diary, opening the door to a ton of memory, that Massa Longstands realized that the diary was alive and well, only in the wrong hands.

There were two things in the diary that troubled Longstands the most—whilst still in St Lucia; he had slowly fallen in love with Shanika—the slave girl with whom he was in a secret relationship and he had fully documented his feelings in the diary. Secondly and most troubling was the fact that Shanika had eventually gotten pregnant and this he had also documented in the diary. His relationship with Shanika was something that begun out of curiosity; it meant nothing initially and wasn’t supposed to go anywhere. But when he woke up one day and realized that he had fallen in love with the slave girl, he was both surprised and scared. Although he kept the relationship secret all the time it was something he never regretted—she had made him feel better than any woman had ever done and he couldn’t help but love her more each day that passed.

It was impossible to be sad or heavy around Shanika, she knew how to lift your spirits and make you laugh, even in the saddest moment. She was also smart and her simple and humble opinions in matters that Longstands didn’t expect her to know anything about, most times turned out to be the best option. Only six months into their relationship, she was fluent in the English language, engaging in conversations that were both complex and constructive with Longstands. There really wasn’t anything not to love about Shanika and it was almost impossible to find a flaw in her—Longstands was content with her and missed her every minute he was away from her.

But as the end of his contract in St Lucia drew closer and the time to travel to England approached, Longstands became very worried for Shanika. She was pregnant and it would be the first time that they’d be separated in a year. He’d already postponed his trip to England twice, simply unable to leave Shanika, but he’d run out of excuses to give Suzanne for a third postponement and had yet to find a way to ensure that Shanika was safe for the time he was going to be away.

Longstands had a few friends but none of them knew about his relationship with Shanika and he couldn’t trust any of them enough to tell them about the pregnancy. Mr. Blanchard was one of his closest friends and it had crossed Longstands’s mind several times to lie to Blanchard about the situation—after all he only needed a safe place for Shanika to stay until he returned from England. If he told Blanchard that Shanika was one of his very good slaves that had gotten impregnated by another slave and begged him to let her stay in his quarters until he returned, he was sure that neither Blanchards nor his wife would have a problem with it. Longstands’s only dilemma was that even though Shanika wasn’t exhibiting any signs of pregnancy, she was actually due in four months; some sixty days before he was due back from England.

If he was still in England when Shanika gave birth as would most likely be the case, it would take Blanchards only a few minutes to realize that he had lied and that the child was actually his. The rumour would travel across the Atlantic and knock on his door in England…and his wife Suzanne would of course be there to answer the door.

After very long consideration, Mr Longstands decided that the best option was to send Shanika to an island where slavery had been abolished; he knew about boatmen who smuggled slaves to the island.

“I want her to be safe, very safe—absolutely safe,” Longstands said, trying to explain the level of safety he wanted for Shanika as he discussed it with the boatmen in the shadows.

“Don’t worry sir,” the first man said with a Portuguese-saturated accent.

“We do it already, many times, this not the first,” the second man added, struggling with his English. Longstands was reluctant and fearful but his choices were limited. As much as the men sounded experienced and capable, their demeanour wasn’t as convincing.

“I have to go to England, so what if you get your balance when I return?” Longstands said, looking for a way to quell the suspicion in his belly and to make sure the boatmen returned to him. He simply needed some kind of assurance that Shanika would be transported safely to her destination and that the boatmen wouldn’t play any games. The stories of the heinous acts of boatmen were limitless; some of them collected life savings from slaves to take them across to the island where slavery was already abolished but never showed up on the appointed day. Others were worse; they took money from the slaves only to force them overboard in the middle of the high seas—Longstands was very worried for Ashana.

“Oh no no no, we don’t do business like that.” It was the first man; he spoke seriously and from the way he spoke, Longstands knew right away that he wasn’t up for any form of negotiations.

He watched the two men hold a brief consultation and then the second man spoke again; “Man trust me, friend you have to trust us, we do good business all time everywhere, all islands and your friend do many many business with us all the time.”

“As a matter of fact I do trust you,” Longstands lied. “I know you and your activities in this island, especially when I am employing you and paying you double your normal fee to take my girl to Haiti and get her settled in.” Longstands’s tone was different and his demeanour suddenly changed to a combat-ready one. “When I return from England I want proof that she is fine—I will pay for this of course but if there are any kind of stories or I smell any rat, I will hunt you down and destroy you, your families, and your business for good,” he threatened.

“Sir,” the second man began a little more gently; Longstands’s threat had anchored in their hearts and registered on their faces. “We have good reputations, everybody do good business with us again and again. Don’t worry we know how to arrange everything, we do what you ask now already before and we can do again. And you can ask your friend about us,” he suggested with a cautious smile.

“OK, let’s get it going,” Longstands said–he didn’t have enough time and he had no choice but to trust the roguish-looking Portuguese boatmen recommended to him by his wayward friend, Thomas.

Later that night, as they sat on his bamboo bed, each temporarily distracted and lost in their thoughts of the issue at hand, Longstands struggled with the best way to tell Shanika about the agreement he had reached with the Portuguese transporters. After a brief moment of silence that had Shanika very puzzled, Longstands opened his mouth. “I have something to tell you Shanika.” he said.