Sugar in the Morning Read Online Free Page B

there. There’s modern and modern, that’s what I says ! ”
    “ There is indeed!” I agreed, and was rewarded by her large, warm smile. She hugged herself gleefully and hovered in the doorway waiting for Wilfred to bring up my suitcase. Every now and then she bellowed down the stairs to hurry things up, but as nothing happened at all I supposed that they had all got used to her shouted comments and were able to ignore them more or less completely.
    “I come here with the mistress,” she volunteered after a while. “She’m dead now. Pretty a little creature as ever you clapped eyes on! I sure loved that one.” She shrugged. “I’se still here on account o’ her. Couldn’t leave her boys with anyone strange. But we sure did , miss her! Miss ’Milla, that one was the pick of this bunch. I’se telling you and I’se know it for a fact!”
    Fortunately, before I could leap to the defence of my side of the family, Wilfred appeared with my luggage. He plonked it down in the doorway, leaning against the wall, saying nothing but just watching me. What a handsome man he was! I feasted my eyes on his fair, square-cut face and his large grey eyes that were almost too feminine to look well on a man.
    “I was thinking, cousin,” he said at last, “that you might like to get out and have a look round our little city?”
    “That would be lovely!” I agreed quickly. The sounds from the street were tantalising and I badly wanted to see for myself all that was going on. I wouldn’t admit to myself that I also wanted to escape from the rather oppressive atmosphere of the house, but I think there was a little of that in my eagerness, too.
    “You’ll need a wrap,” he said. “It’s cool when the sun goes down.”
    To me it was delightfully warm. I pulled a light stol e out of my bulging suitcase and hurried down the stairs, stopping only to make sure that Wilfred was coming behind me. My uncle was standing in the hall and he beamed with pleasure when he saw that we were going out together.
    “That’s the spirit!” he said. “We’re all friends in my house. We always have been and we always will be. Have a good time, the two of you!”
    A fine aroma of mixed spices, chickens and kerosene lamps hung over Charlotte Street that night. In the corner of Independence Square, not far from the house, a steel band was playing. Considering that everyone in it was an amateur who had himself beaten out his own instrument and tuned it with elaborate care, the music sounded sweet and true. The performers swayed back and forth with the rhythm and I was amused to see some of the passers-by begin to dance as they hurried along. Indeed I was sorely tempted to myself.
    “Where are we going?” I asked Wilfred.
    “I don’t know,” he replied indifferently. “Perhaps you’d like to try the oysters? Most tourists go for them in a big way.”
    I was quite willing to try anything. I wanted to look at everything on the way though which made our progress rather slow. I had never been in a place before where everyone came out in the cool of the evening to walk and to look at each other. Nobody was in a hurry to go back to the homes. They stood on corners and gossiped and laughed more than any other people I had ever met.
    “ I’ll take you to the stall of a friend of mine, ” Wilfred said suddenly. “He always manages to get the best ones going.” He grinned, looking very much more relaxed and friendly. “Tell me, Cousin Camilla, do you think you’re going to like Trinidad?”
    “I think it’s lovely!” I said truthfully. “Tell me all about these oysters. Do you ever go and collect them?”
    “ Sometimes. When the mood stirs me that way. They’re tree oysters, did you know that? Ostrea mexicana! It’s easy enough to pick them up in the mangrove swamps on the ebb tide. You find them clinging on to the exposed roots. If you want to know if they’re the real thing you can always look over a stall’s wares and see if the odd