Page 17 of The Summer Country

Robert breathed in sharply through his nose. “Another one of Father’s follies. Taking a Redleg from the charity school!”

That wasn’t entirely fair. True, their father had taken a boy from the charity school, one of the poor whites who lived in the section of the island known as “Scotland” for its inhospitable terrain, but it wasn’t pure charity. “Father said that the head of the St. Philip vestry told him that the man had the best mind for numbers he’d ever seen.”

“He’s a Redleg,” repeated Robert, as though Charles were very slow. “Do you know that even the slaves give them alms? They’re utterly shiftless.”

“Perhaps that’s because they’ve lacked the opportunity to be otherwise.”

“You sound like Father.” It was not meant as a compliment.

The two brothers stared at each other, the air between them thick with tension. Charles held his tongue, resisting the urge to snap back. Robert was just trying to provoke him, that was all. He felt slighted, and rightly. But that didn’t mean Charles was going to tarnish their father’s memory. Not when he agreed with him.

At long last, Robert said, as though he too were trying to curb his tongue, “Would you beggar us on a principle, Charles? The man was living in a cave. What does he know about the workings of a place such as this?”

“More than I, I imagine,” said Charles quietly. They both knew it.

“But you’re a Peverill. You belong here.” The words came out gruffly. Charles could sense how much it cost Robert. He believed it, Robert. He believed the feudal myth, that they were somehow bound to the land, they in it and it in them.

But Charles didn’t, and he wouldn’t lie. “I could be a hundred Peverills and still as little use. Does blood count for more than experience? Lineage won’t make our ledgers tally.”

Robert made an impatient gesture. “Devil take it, Charles, there are customs, traditions—you can’t reduce Peverills to numbers on a page!”

“I don’t intend to—but you can’t deny there’s something to be said for numbers.” Striving for a conciliatory tone, Charles said, “I’m seeing Fenty in an hour. If he’s as incompetent as you claim, we’ll find another bookkeeper. Would you like to come with me?”

For a long moment, Robert stared at him, as though trying to work something out. Then he gave his golden head an abrupt shake. “Some of us have work to do. I should have been in the east field an hour ago.” Pointedly, he added, “An overseer is only as good as the estate manager.”

He strode away, boots echoing on the planks of the floor. Charles was left sitting alone at the great dining room table, surrounded by a king’s feast of uneaten food, one bread roll torn to crumbs—and a note secured with a red wax seal.

As Charles rose slowly from his seat, he realized, in his indignation about the bookkeeper, Robert had avoided any discussion of his intentions toward the heiress next door.

Vaguely, Charles thought it might solve two problems to send Robert to ride with Miss Beckles. But first, he had a bookkeeper to meet.

The bookkeeper’s house was only a short walk from the great house, but it might have been in another country.

Once Charles passed the lime hedge that marked the boundaries of the great house, the carefully cultivated oasis of mango, tamarind, and frangipani gave way to a more workmanlike world of sheds, outbuildings, and close-cut grass, the sounds of industry and the rustle of the cane louder than they had been before.

The overseer’s house was closest, a white-walled building with a veranda that gave it claims to elegance. Some way past that sat the bookkeeper’s house, a simple two-story block, roughly built of the local stone.

Although, Charles imagined, to a man raised in one of the tumbledown shacks in St. Andrew, this must seem like luxury indeed. He had, he realized, neglected to ask if the new bookkeeper had a family. Their last bookkeeper had. Two nearly grown girls, or at least they had seemed quite old to him then. He had no idea what had become of them, although he did know, from his father’s letters, that the bookkeeper had succumbed to drink and been let go.

The sunlight was making Charles’s head ache again. Or maybe it was this constant shifting between what was and what wasn’t, nineteen years gone with only his father’s letters in the between. Charles kept seeing the shadows of buildings and people that were no longer there, hearing the laughter of children long since grown.

The daughters, he vaguely remembered, used to feed him cake. There had been washing on a line behind the house.

Washing and daughters were gone now, as was the cake. Instead there was a man standing outside the bookkeeper’s house, managing to give an impression of impatience even though he was standing utterly still.

“Mr. Davenant?” The bookkeeper doffed his hat, revealing hair once red, burnt by the sun into shades of orange and straw, roughly cut and clubbed back with a black ribbon. “I’ve the books ready for your inspection.”

The man was of only medium height, but wiry, with an air of command that ill-fitted his station. Charles found himself following the man through the green-painted front door, feeling, obscurely, that he was being done a favor.

They passed through a sitting room, furnished in a Spartan fashion with leavings from the great house—chairs with upholstery faded by the sun, framed maps on the wall—and into a small office crowded with ledgers. Ledgers in various stages of decrepitude were stacked one atop the other on the shelves that lined one wall. Others, more recent, were piled on a table in the middle of the room.

“Sir,” said Fenty. The syllable seemed to sit uncomfortably on his lips. He indicated the room’s one chair, a straight-backed affair with a cane seat that looked more suited to penance than comfort.

Charles took it. “So,” he said, wishing he had any idea of how to go on. “You have accounts for me?”

Not just accounts. His accounts had accounts. It was, Charles thought, a bit like the time a mechanically minded friend, after a few too many bottles of port, had decided it would be entertaining to take apart Charles’s watch to show him how it worked. All of those tiny gears were fascinating, no doubt, but Charles remembered the disorienting sense of seeing something familiar reduced to incomprehensible components, and wanting, more than anything, for it just to be put back together again.

Seed, supplies, stock. They grew more than sugar. Charles had known that, he supposed, but here it was in black and white, so many acres of Guinea corn, of sweet potatoes, of yams. There were trees to be planted and felled, turned into wheels and barrels and wagons. Cows and pigs and horses. Sugar, in all its forms. Sugar planted, sugar sold, sugar turned to rum.