Mustique Island, page 15
“She is a child!” she’d yelled at the university boys. They’d come to a halt at the road obstruction with apprehensive concern. “I have a mind to call the police and report you as perverts!”
The cheeky young driver dared to counter: “All respect, miss, but how do you know how old she is?”
Willy May marched over to Hilly and took the handlebars of her bike. “Because she’s my daughter and she has just lost privileges. All of them. No bike. No television. No cinema. No vinyl records. No parties. No friends. Nothing. You are grounded forever,” she’d growled. “Get in the car, Hilly, and roll down your darn skirt!”
Hilly had been mortified and stunned. Her mother had ripped the bike from her hands and shoved the front wheel into the trunk. The back tire hung out over the bumper.
“I don’t want to hear a word from you. Don’t even try or I may do something violent,” she’d said inside the car.
Her hands were trembling on the steering wheel and Hilly had obeyed for fear that her mother would make good on her threats. She’d expected her disapproval but thought it worth the price to prove that she could make her own choices. She hadn’t expected such a reaction.
This felt like the same thing. Except she was an adult woman now.
Willy May turned to Colin. “If the authorities found these, do you know what they’d do? They’d ransack this whole island. There would be a reckoning for all of us, Colin.”
Biffo picked up a pill and examined it between his fingers. “Flush them down the loo if you want. No need to get so emotional.”
“Emotional?” Willy May bared her teeth in a strained smile. “Get your people out of my house. Stay away from my girl or I swear to God, I’ll report you to Interpol myself.”
At the mention of Interpol, Biffo smashed the end of his cigar into the teak table. A burnt ember flittered to the floor.
Silence curtained them.
After an endless minute, during which not even Colin dared a word, Biffo finally spoke. “It’s been swell, but I think it’s time we go.”
“Well . . . ,” Colin murmured, just loud enough to be heard, “perhaps with Christmas coming . . .”
“Have my men’s things sent down from Firefly. We won’t trouble you any further.”
Hilly followed her mother on shaky legs. She had done this. Those were her pills, and she hadn’t taken responsibility. The lasting impression of her would be that of a wrongful accuser. She and her mother were yoked as one.
“Pack up, boys,” said Biffo. “We’re leaving in the morning.”
What Willy May had bottled in front of the men, she let loose on the drive home. “Hoodlum trash! Common thieves! Con artists!”
Hilly remained silent. She went straight to her room and stayed there the rest of the night. No more pills to hold her steady. She was scared to be found with them and scared to be without.
Willy May went to bed early. Another migraine on the way. Hilly was silently grateful. She couldn’t face her. She crept down to the kitchen for something to quell the nausea growing inside but the cold corn soup in the fridge turned her stomach further. So, she went back to bed empty and slept in fits of cramps, sweat, and anxiety.
Then, in the violet shade of morning, someone rapped on the door. Her vision blurred. Her stomach cartwheeled. She thought she might vomit if she moved too fast.
“I’m sleeping,” she groaned, thinking it her mother; but then, she heard the singsong of his voice, lilting upward.
“Galatea? It’s me, Al?”
She pulled her head from the pillow and saw that her nose had bled a little. She sniffed, touched the tip of it lightly, and wondered if she should be worried. She was chilled despite the warm temperature. Pulling on a robe, she carefully stood to answer.
She held the door ajar, and he leaned in but didn’t push it.
“The ferry is going to be here soon. I came to explain.”
Him explain? They were her pills.
“We’ve been here too long. It doesn’t look good for the boss to be away from London—a vacation is one thing. Hiding is another.”
“But aren’t you hiding?”
“As much as you, oui.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He double blinked at her.
“I’ve seen you taking the pills.”
She shook her head. She’d been so careful. She only took them when she was alone. He couldn’t have known unless he’d been spying. She pulled the robe collar up around her throat, feeling exposed and vulnerable. She didn’t know Al, and she hadn’t known Guy either. Not really. She only knew what the men chose to tell her and what she wanted to believe.
“You don’t want your mother to know. Biffo understands. We’ll keep your secret if you keep your mother quiet.”
It felt like a threat. Blackmail of a sort. Intimidation at the least.
Fool me once, she thought, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
“I’ll make sure Mum doesn’t say anything.” She began to close the door. She wanted him out, gone, forgotten.
“Good. Here.” He pushed a plastic baggy of tablets through the opening. “Dexies, right?”
She should refuse. She should hold her ground. She should use this episode to come clean. But her hands were shaking and the long day ahead hadn’t even begun yet. So, she took them.
From the pool deck, she watched Biffo, Al, and the rest board the ferry down below on Britannia Bay. It departed the dock and grew smaller and smaller until it was a black splotch on the horizon.
“It’s for the best,” said Willy May. She’d come out to the pool with her morning coffee. “He wasn’t good for you.”
Hilly didn’t face her—couldn’t.
The sky flashed chartreuse as the sun rose. A trick of the eye. A trick of Mustique. She was dizzy. Bile bubbled in her throat. She put a hand to her mouth, holding it in long enough to reach the ferns.
Willy May followed close, pulled strands of hair from her lips, and rubbed her back.
“Hilly, honey,” she soothed, “is there something you want to tell me?”
“I’m not . . . ,” she began but lifted her head too fast and nearly toppled over.
It came in sharp sobriety. Guy. Her first and only lover. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d menstruated. It had been two or three months, maybe longer. Before she came to Mustique. Her cycles had always been irregular. She put a protective hand to the swell of her belly and behind her, Willy May sighed.
Part 3
Joanne
Chapter 16
Handle with Care
May 1973
Joanne had been amid her freshman year music theory exams at Dartington College of Arts when her residence hall director said she had a call from Willy May. It was 10:00 p.m.
“Hilly is having a baby. Can you come to Mustique?”
Her mother had forgotten the time difference. Not that it mattered. Life was lived on Willy May’s clock.
Joanne stood in the dorm hall cradling the clunky pay phone. The mouthpiece smelled of cigarettes and boozy tears. Girls passed by in their quilted robes and Velcro curlers, readying for bed, and chattering fretfully about exams. Joanne had an eight o’clock test the next morning and still had to finish composing her final music project.
What else could she say but “Okay . . . as soon as school’s finished.”
Truth be told, she’d felt slighted when her mother launched out into the wider world; her father went on to another; her big sister, Hilly, jetted off to fame; and Joanne, always the good girl, was left behind. Nobody asked her to come with them. They’d simply gone.
It was easier to be angry with family for leaving than to feel their absence. Grandmother Michael had been the only one who remained steadfast. That must be love, she told herself. In accepting college tuition, she’d contracted herself to do her grandmother’s bidding. She would inevitably be asked to play something on the piano at every dinner party, charity concert, and afternoon tea her grandmother attended—entertain old friends, all of whom had a bachelor son, nephew, or cousin that would be a perfect match for such a girl. She overheard her grandmother telling them that Joanne was the only respectable thing that came out of Harry’s marriage to the American and that she was determined to see her granddaughter properly educated before she was wed. She wanted better for Joanne. A suitable match and nothing less.
“What should I tell Granny?” she asked her mother.
Willy May exhaled into the receiver. The sound traveled across the miles and wires in a rush of static.
“Don’t tell her anything. It’s family business. She’s made it clear that I’m not part of her family, so she’s not part of our family. I’ll send you a plane ticket.”
“Okay.”
Joanne wasn’t easily flustered. Her sister always said she took after her father in that regard. The Michaels were coolheaded, while her mother was hot-tempered. Between her British father and Texan mother, the choice was to face the chill or the fire. There was little temperate ground between. Hilly had been her refuge.
She’d once known everything about her elder sister—knew that when she genuinely smiled, her nose crinkled like a cat’s; the cadence of her breathing in deepest sleep; the ocean-deep shade of her eyes after she’d been crying; the differing tones of her voice when she was happy or sad, confident or afraid. But since Hilly had left home, the thread between them felt cut. Hilly had taken a stage name: Galatea. Joanne didn’t know that person.
She hung up the phone, mulling over the magnitude of the news. Hilly was having a baby. She let that thought crescendo and decrescendo in her mind while standing perfectly still. She was not shocked that this thunderbolt had come from Hilly. All Joanne’s life, her sister had made it her mission to defy convention. This was another case in point.
Joanne had never personally known a single, unwed mother, and not knowing things was one of her biggest pet peeves. A true catch-22. While she hated not knowing, sometimes the knowing was worse. Like now, she was cross with her mother for not telling her sooner about Hilly’s baby but grateful that she hadn’t, because how was she supposed to think about anything else?
She returned to her music composition final. She needed a coda to finish. She tapped her pencil to the meter. Usually, she could hear the piano notes in her mind and feel the keys under her fingertips. She couldn’t this time. She was busy imagining how quiet it must be inside a womb and wondering if babies heard music in heartbeats.
She couldn’t comprehend how this had happened. I mean, she knew the mechanics of how it happened. She meant figuratively speaking. It was a modern era. Women had options.
Joanne hadn’t batted an eyelash when she told her GP that she was sexually active. She wasn’t brazen. She simply felt it medically responsible to be honest with her doctor. He’d suggested the birth control pill, and she’d been on it ever since. There were other preventatives, too. While her grandmother and mother spoke in metaphors when it came to sex (Granny: It’s the most holy union between husband and wife; Mum: It’s how a flower and a bee make honey), her sister had been the one to bring home a Playboy magazine so they could finally get clear answers. She knew!
So maybe Hilly wanted a baby.
She put down her pencil and tried that thought a beat. A whole new, unknown person was growing this very minute.
She checked the time: quarter to midnight. She wasn’t getting anything accomplished. She turned off her lamp, wound the metal crank of her clock, and set the narrow arms for an early alarm. She’d get up when the music was fresh in her mind and thoughts of her sister had been put to rest.
As soon as exams finished, Joanne was on her way to Mustique. Willy May booked the airplane ticket and wired money for the boat ferries plus cargo charges. She’d asked Joanne to bring the last remaining box of her things from a storage locker near the Gloucester marina.
First, however, Joanne had taken the train north to Cheltenham to drop off her dorm belongings. Grandmother Michael was already on holiday in Scotland, avoiding the summer heat. She’d left a note with the groundskeeper inviting Joanne up to the cottage on Loch Lomond. Joanne sent her reply the day she left: Sorry, Gran, I’m to Mum’s on Mustique. I’ll see you when I return. Love, Joanne. By the time the letter reached Scotland, Joanne would be thousands of miles away, and there’d be nothing to be done.
She set out on the southbound train from Cheltenham to Gloucester; collected her mother’s belongings and carted them, plus her luggage, the hundred kilometers back north to Birmingham airport. Naturally, Willy May hadn’t thought of the topographical yo-yo of the errand.
Joanne was piqued until she opened the box. Inside was a record player and LPs of the Beatles, Nat King Cole, the Supremes, and more, alongside her childhood “Story and Songs” soundtracks. The glossy images of her favorite melodies made her go weak with nostalgia. Peter and the Wolf, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty . . . It was through these that she first fell in love with music.
When she and Hilly were young, her mother had ordered the fairy-tale records from the United States, seemingly a place of perpetual song and sunshine based on the items that arrived from there: packages of oranges, candies that whizzed and popped on your tongue, rainbow-colored T-shirts, glossy books, and vinyl records with tempos that made her heart skip in rhythm.
As the story went, they first knew of her musical affinity when four-year-old Joanne tapped her spoon against her dish to the rhythm of Verna Felton’s “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo.” Recognizing her natural aptitude, Grandmother Michael insisted that Willy May allow her to advance in formal music training. Granny was the one to put a proper instrument in her hands and the rest, as they say, was history.
Joanne hadn’t thought of those early songs in years and seeing them again left her awash with nostalgic glee. She retaped the box and wrote Handle with Care in fat black marker before checking it as plane cargo. With her parents, she’d sailed nearly every sea on the globe and flown in commercial jets a handful of times, but this was her first solo voyage. That changed everything.
The Clipper Class ticket couldn’t have been more precious if it were made of solid gold. Her pleather seat might as well have been nubuck. Her welcoming washcloth was luxurious as a hot mineral spring. She barely slept the entire flight between feasting (spring chicken, mushroom caps, baby onions, and lardons braised in a red wine sauce), endless cups of Nescafé, and a wide-screen showing of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Joanne was still humming “Pure Imagination” when she landed in Trinidad to begin the multi-ferry hop to Mustique.
The ferry captain had invited Joanne to sit in his covered helm when he heard she was Willy May’s youngest daughter. But it’d been such a beautiful day that she’d kindly told him she preferred the outdoors. The light was different here than at home. It pirouetted on the waves. The sound of the sea was distinct, too, like a piccolo versus an oboe. The sail from St. Vincent to Mustique played like a symphony across the horizon.
Her mother waved as the ferry came into dock. “Ahoy there!”
The Texas twang was like jingle bells and brought on a similar cheer. Joanne’s heart lifted.
“Welcome to Mustique! Let me look at you.” She put both hands on her shoulders and narrowed her eyes against the overhead sun. “You’ve filled out pretty as pie since the last I saw you.”
Joanne hadn’t felt like she’d changed much in the hour by hour, day by day, but when she added it up into a lump sum, she supposed she had. The last she saw her mother was during her orientation week at Dartington. Willy May had briefly returned to England. Hilly had been on the set of The Devils. So, for one of the first times in Joanne’s memory, they were a duet instead a trio.
The two went to Cheltenham’s Corner Curry restaurant and ordered braised lamb shanks with masala to share. Joanne told Willy May about the college courses she’d signed up to take and her dismay with Paul McCartney’s band Wings. They talked of Hilly in Hollywood, the summer crickets, the constellations shining down, and stayed away from hard topics—past and future—afraid that the arrow forward or back might puncture the magic of the moment. The Corner Curry had turned off its lamps. Its sitar strings stilled. Karahis were taken off the flames. But they remained. The hours seemed weighted by a sustaining pedal. Their two notes vibrated freely and resonated long after.
The masala sauce had splattered on the blouse she’d been wearing. A whole note of bright red, indelible as blood. It was still there. She hadn’t tried to wash it out. The stain would be palpable proof of this memory, and the unspoken promise that no matter how much time or distance passed, her mother and she would find each other.
“I missed you, Mum.”
Willy May cupped her cheek. “I missed you, too, Josie girl.” She gestured toward a golf cart parked on the beach. “Your chariot awaits.”
At the cart, she hefted the box of records into the back seat. “Thanks for bringing these. We’ve only had the radio and I wanted some real music around the house. We don’t have a piano, but I’m working on it.”
It warmed Joanne. Growing up, she’d cut out catalog pictures of instruments she’d seen at her music teacher’s house. She taped them to the wall on her side of the shared bedroom with Hilly and practiced playing each on an empty milk bottle: blowing across the top for the woodwinds, knocking the side with a spoon for the percussions, strumming sideways for the strings, holding it up like a trumpet for the brass. She had the whole orchestra in her imagination. At the center of her vision board was the grand piano.
When she was eight years old, Grandmother Michael asked what she wished Saint Nicholas should bring her that year. She’d said a grand piano and lessons to play it. When they attended the annual Michaels’ Christmas supper, beside the cranberry-strung spruce was the piano, dark and shiny as the Bristol Channel at night. Joanne had been ecstatic even while her mother had frowned for reasons that she never did understand.
