went up to Scotland we were engaged. Informally engaged, with no one to know but ourselves. This was my idea, on the principle of letting the line out a bit now that I felt he was truly hooked. I said that I wanted to be convinced that he was sure before we told the world. Once in Scotland he might change his mind.
“No,” he said, “the only thing that worries me is that I’m not sure you really know what you are getting into. The Castle is not like the castles in your childhood fairytales, and the climate really is deadly. I’m not sure I’m doing right by you to encourage you in this. And you will be the only European lady there, except for the missionary wives; the Wesleyans have begun a regular push toward converting the natives to Christianity. We’ve had missionaries before and certainly services at the Castle, but this is new. Perhaps you can get involved with them?
I doubted that very much, but I just smiled and reminded him that I would have my work. Married or not, my writing would occupy me most of the day.
“Good,” he said, “for most of my day will be occupied as well.”
When a second week went by with no letter from George, I began to worry. Had I been foolish to suggest we keep our engagement a secret, had I, instead of reeling him in, let him off the hook altogether? I told myself that perhaps he was not a letter-writer, some men aren’t, but just a note about the weather, or the journey up, was that so hard to do?
A month went by; my anxiety caused an attack of my old trouble and soon I took to my bed. The hero of Apollonia was not an honourable man. Since all was secret between us, I felt I couldn’t ask Matthew Forster if he had heard anything from the Highlands. Matthew was a tease; it would be too risky.
Finally I wrote to Whittington. After all, surely a brother should support his sister in this crisis? He agreed to write to George and ask what his intentions were.
Shortly after that we were engaged again.
My favourite book when I was a child was Robinson Crusoe. How I admired that man; how clever he was, how brave! I thought it would be great fun to be shipwrecked on a desert island and have to create everything from scratch. I’d have a Friday, of course — a female Friday, seeing as how I was a girl. She would be big and black and strong, very good at chopping wood and doing manual labour. Even as a young girl I knew I was never cut out for manual labour. My hands and feet were meant to be pretty appendages. My ears were the important thing; my ears and my imagination.
My father had been out to Jamaica when he was a young man. I think he hoped for a career in the Royal Navy, but then the uncle who would sponsor him died — or perhaps there was some quarrel — and I think there was a part of him that bitterly regretted it. He was a romantic, and I was my father’s daughter. There was a chief difference, however. He was no good with managing money and I was the opposite. And I had a marketable talent, which was just as well considering his premature death. I don’t blame him for dying — how could I? — but it made my life difficult. One shouldn’t have to write with one eye always on the purse. My brother needed an education; my mother needed help in the care of my sickly sister. There was no one but me, the eldest, to guarantee all this; my uncle did what he could, but he was a curate with a large family — all daughters — and he lived way up in the back of beyond, in Yorkshire.
When I wrote to my mother to tell her that George and I were married (“Captain George Maclean, governor of Cape Coast Castle on the Guinea Coast, a fine man from a good family”) she replied almost at once to say she supposed that would be the end of her subsidy. I was so angry that I almost cut her off, but in the end I couldn’t do it. I never felt that Whittington or my mother were aware of how hard I worked to provide them with their extra money. I never felt any real gratitude from either of them. I suspect, like the rest of the world, they thought I just “tossed off” a poem here or a novel there in between going to dinner parties and soirées. Even some of my so-called friends said, “You’re so prolific, Letty,” and I was, but writing is drudgery, writing is hard work. There were times when my hand seized up with cramp and had to be massaged with creams before I could take up my pen again, and there were nights when my back ached and my head ached and my eyes felt full of grit. And always there was my old trouble, which sometimes kept me in bed for days at a time.
I had been engaged to a fine man, although he and his crowd denied it later on. I broke it off because of malicious gossip about me and another gentleman.
After that I was so ill I truly thought I was going to die. If it hadn’t been for Dr. Thompson and his ministrations I might have slit my wrists just to stop the agony. It is not that I was born sickly, like my sister; in fact I had a good constitution except for this one thing. My “Achilles heel” if you like, only a little farther up.
(And in the evening I was supposed to change from drudge to dazzler, call for the maid to help me with my hair and fastenings. Ellen was a maid-of-all-work, as well as cook, but all-work did not include helping me with my toilette. I was maid as well as Mademoiselle, who struggled with buttons and bows, then pinched my cheeks to make them glow.)
George
I DIDN’T WOO HER; if anything, it was the other way around. Although Africa came into it — oh yes — and the uniform. If I had been a gentleman farmer or a man of business (a man of non-literary business; publishers were a separate breed) I doubt if she would have given me a second look. In her eyes I was a romantic figure. Damned Forster had given her that Apollonia report before she even met me; it was almost as though she conjured me up from that, a different George Maclean from who I really was. Not that I ever pretended to her, never that.
What was I thinking of? She was the last person I should have married — a city woman with city tastes. How on earth would she manage at Cape Coast? And yet, as we walked along together and she took my arm, I felt comforted by her presence. How long had it been since a woman had taken my arm, had pressed my hand, had said, “Tell me all about yourself.” You don’t think you’re lonely out there — or you try to convince yourself that you’re not. But you drink too much or you take a country wife, but that only helps with the carnal side of one’s nature. Even if you speak the language well (which I did) you can’t discuss ideas with such a woman. It’s not that I wasn’t grateful to Ekosua — she was a wonderful nurse when I was ill, bathing my face with lime juice and water, forcing me to drink some horrible concoction which almost instantly brought relief. And the carnal side — well, that was good too. Young girls mature early out there and I’ve been told that the old women, at the appropriate time, take them aside and teach them how to please a man. Can you imagine such a thing happening in England?
I was sorry to send her away — Ekosua — but I knew she would understand. I made sure she was given a generous gift of money. William Topp took care of it for me — or at least I hoped he had. I left the ship in the middle of the night, and went in by canoe just to make sure. I told Letty the next day that I had wanted our apartments fumigated with charcoal and thoroughly swept before she set foot in the Castle. I don’t think she believed me, but she said nothing. (She knew about my “wife” out here — rumours had reached England — but she seemed satisfied when I said that had been over long ago. Not quite the truth, but a necessary half-truth, for the sake of peace.)
Letty wore just a hint of some eau de cologne she had brought back from a holiday in Paris; she used it sparingly but it was always there and when I at last set off for Scotland in the new year she gave me a small handkerchief dabbed with cologne, “to remind you always of your admirer who awaits your return.” I regret to say I left it at the hotel.
Once up at Urquhart I honestly wondered if I hadn’t been bewitched by her, her white hands, her dainty feet, her silky hair, the way she said my name — “George,” in such an intimate way. It is hard to explain, but to a chap who has spent most of his adult life looking at half-naked
