stars – Page 2 – three good words

Ariane helped her mother set the table, dress the salad, and make sure the roast chicken and other delectables were as Father Claireborne liked them. Unlike other Englishmen, or so Mrs Bellamy said, Father Claireborne had a taste for good food and knew to give high praise when a meal was done well. Today the Father had a guest however, so Mrs Bellamy was agitated and curt with her commands. Once all the platters and bowls were brought up to Father Claireborne’s private office where the meal was to be taken, Mrs. Bellamy returned in calmer spirits, ready to feed the rest of the house.

John Mallory, the gardener, came in right then. He was tall and dark as night, with eyes so white they almost shone in his face. John took care they had enough potatoes, parsnips, pumpkins and cabbages in the garden, and saw to it that the lemons and oranges grew well. That way Mrs Bellamy could make her famous lemonade whenever she wished, and order ice in time for the wonderful sorbet she always made on Father Claireborne’s birthday.

Grey-haired Bertram Mahoney walked in after John, calling out ‘Hurry up lads, they’re not going to wait.’ Bert who liked to talk of his home in that faraway place, Ireland, where there was ‘real weather’ and rain fell sideways. His blue eyes grew dreamy then, as he sat back and puffed on his pipe, talking about The King’s Arms where it seemed men only went to drink and brawl and misbehave themselves. Mrs Bellamy did not approve of tales of The King’s Arms, which was one reason why Bert enjoyed telling them. He was always teasing Ariane’s mother like that, and Father Claireborne never stopped him, but then Bert and Father Claireborne had known each other for very many years. Once Father Claireborne was appointed at Port Augustine, Bert followed a year later, ‘ready to settle’ as he said. Since he was very good with wood and glass, he made sure the house and church remained in order, never mind if it was ‘an ungodly Protestant place’, Bert still prayed to the Holy Mother Mary.

Standing in the kitchen door, Bert called, ‘Come on, lads, what are you waiting for?’ again, and finally young Mel and Wesley came in, quietly, removing their caps just like John and Bert. They were five and six years younger than Ariane, and did everything Bert told them, learning all they could from the Irishman, and John as well, for ‘a man should know his way around the garden,’ as Father Claireborne said. Mel and Wesley’s past was one of those terrible histories you found so frequently on the islands. Bert had ‘bought them off a man in Antigua’ three years before, he had had to sail down on business. Bert never said more about Mel and Wesley, and the two boys hardly ever talked anyway. They were brothers, and stayed together at all times, sharing a room and a bed in the small house Bert called his own. Ariane had seen it herself when she once brought Bert a book Father Claireborne wanted him to have. She had asked Bert why the boys didn’t have their own beds and Bert shrugged, ‘They didn’t want them. Plain refused.’ Then he added, ‘I wager they don’t want to get separated again.’

From what Bert hinted on if he did talk about Antigua, there had been more brothers and sisters, and a mother, but Ariane still did not know what happened to them. Bert did not offer to tell, and she did not know how to ask. She knew of Antigua, she had heard the stories, she knew which islands were nightmares, which colonies further north were utter hell. She knew in whispers and tales told in secret, she knew in the bulletines Father Claireborne sometimes read and made him gloomy for a whole day. Now at nearly seventeen, the Mississippi had become a place of terror for Ariane, the delta synonymous to Hell, pockets of hell fire littered all across the Spanish Main, Antigua being one of them, so she did not know how to ask Bert about what happened there. It was enough to see how quiet the two boys were, standing together now, Mel with his eyes to the floor, and Wesley alert, watching everything carefully. Both would not say one word through the entire meal, but Ariane had come to accept it. They ate well at least, and Bert made sure they stayed healthy and clean. Ariane knew John and her mother made sure to know where they were at all times, and Father Claireborne took care they learnt their alphabet and their sums. It was, Ariane felt, the best one could do after all that happened to them.

They were free now though, at least they were given that mercy. They were now equal to all other Freemen in Port Augustine. Like Father Claireborne, Bert was a staunch believer that no man should own another, though where Father Claireborne saw such ownership as a deep sin against the Lord on High, Bert was far less religious. As he told Ariane once, ‘No one on this blessed earth owns anything, lass. We just stay for a while and then move on. Anyone trying to tell you anything else and I swear on me own mother’s grave they’re trying to sell you something. Don’t ever trust a word they say.’ Bert never said who ‘they’ were, but from how Bert always talked about them, ‘they’ sounded very powerful and very dangerous. He did give Mel and Wesley a last name though, Callaghan. Apparently it would throw a man Bert knew into all kinds of torment to know that ‘two little Negroes were carrying his perfect name.’ Every time Bert said that, he grinned wide right after and sighed satisfied as if he accomplished something.

John, Bert, Mel and Wesley greeted Ariane and Mrs Bellamy with silent nods before they sat down at the large kitchen table, Bert saying happily, ‘That smells wonderful, Mrs Bellamy, what’ll you surprise us with today.’ Mrs Bellamy told Bert to stop trying to flatter her with such insincerity, and their usual banter began. John sat by in silence and listened with a faint smile, while Ariane poured out water for Mel and Wesley, Mel who was tracing the grain of the heavy oak table. It was a massive thing where everyone reconvened in the evenings, even Father Claireborne, who said it made little sense to sit in solitude up in his office when there was such merriment and joy in the kitchen.

If John was in the proper mood, he would take out his guitar, a beautiful instrument he was gifted by his former Master’s wife when he became a Freeman. She was a duke’s daughter who knew how to play by a Spanish artisan at her father’s court, and so had taught John since he was a child. Once anyone heard John play, they knew why the high lady took such time to teach him. Ariane could spend whole evenings just listening to John play on his guitar. When she closed her eyes, it was as if an angel was playing, yet it was John, John who was as dark as night, John Mallory who was actually Juan de Majorca, ‘John from the large island’ as he once explained, John Mallory whose English still had that Spanish accent, which was why he never spoke when Officer Turlington was near. John who was dark as night and played like an angel sent down from on High to make them remember that there really was Someone watching.

They would sing the songs they knew when John began to play, Ariane showing her skill and Mrs Bellamy sometimes singing the beautiful French ones she remembered, never mind how melancholy they were. Father Claireborne himself knew quite a few, joyous songs of praise, and slow, sombre songs of longing, not to mention Bert who had many more songs than he was allowed to sing by Father Claireborne and Mrs Bellamy. They were apparently not for children’s ears, never mind how Bert started grinning.

It was such things as these that made Father Claireborne very unlike other Fathers Ariane had heard of and knew. Ariane always felt that his house was truly a house of God, for in it all souls present, man, woman and child, were at peace. There was joy, there was laughter, there was song, and they all had good clothes to wear and enough food to eat. It was, Ariane knew, the best of fortune to know such a house as one’s home, and to have it’s master be such a man as Father Claireborne. The Father was a stout man with dark hair still thick and full about his head, he had a hearty laugh and a handsome smile, though he could look like God himself come down to take furious vengeance when he was thunderous, but that did not happen often. Mostly when someone scavenged his herb garden again where he was still trying his hand at strawberries.

Ariane liked Father Claireborne very well, as did everyone in Port Augustine, and it was good that he would still have many years to pray for the parish, for despite the grey at his temples, Father Claireborne was hardly past forty. It was he who had taken Ariane’s mother out of the desperate situation of widowhood when Ariane was but two years, and installed her as his cook when he was appointed to Port Augustine. Some thought his choice immoral if not outright sacrilegious, but since Mrs. Bellamy was a widow and had shown herself to be good Christian woman with an unshakable Christian faith, those who would talk evil soon hushed their mouths. Now no one in the small town questioned that the holy man and his cook lived under the same roof, with John, Bert, Mel and Wesley as their constant helpers.