of her well-dressed head. Then he managed to repeat the words, ‘The book,’ before all his breath and most of his sense left him.
At once he began looking around himself as if searching for someone to rescue him. So awkward did he become that he could no longer regard July’s face, and speak. As his mouth opened to say, ‘Are you . . . are you . . . ?’ he examined his bare feet. As he attempted to begin once more, with a little more clarity, ‘Miss July, are you . . . ?’ he sought to catch sight of the mockingbirds within the tree. And as he gulped to say finally, ‘Are you alone?’ it was his wringing hands that held his attention. When July answered with a gay, ‘Yes’, come, the man nearly swooned.
Suddenly he turned to walk into the house saying, ‘I have it somewhere in here. It may take me a little while to . . .’ before turning to gaze once more upon July. His barefoot stride continued only after he bit his lip to summon his fortitude.
July followed him through that door, very close behind.
‘You have plenty book on Scotch Land, massa?’ she asked as she strolled around his small withdrawing room. She stopped to look upon a side cupboard on which rested a draggletailed posy of pink periwinkles within a blue vase. And by its side was a miniature portrait within a metal frame, no bigger than a missus locket that was worn about the neck. The picture showed a severe-looking white man with bushy whiskers staring back upon her. July leaned in close to view the fine details—there was a cross at his neck and a ring upon his hand, but she saw no more for she straightened again when the overseer said, ‘No, I just have this one. It was given to me by my last employer. I do not now recall why. But it has pictures of that country. Scotland. Ahh, here it is.’
He took the book from the bookcase with very slow care—inching it out only a little piece at a time. July soon realised that he was fretting that a suddenly awakened cockroach might fall from it. She held her hand to her mouth so he did not witness her amusement. ‘Yes, this is the one,’ he said. And he took the book over to his desk to lay it out upon it.
‘Do you know where your father was from?’ he enquired.
‘Me father?’ July asked as she walked across the room to stand so very close behind him.
‘Yes, you said your father was a Scotch man.’
‘Oh, me papa,’ July said. She could see her breath fluttering the curling black hair at the back of his neck as she spoke those puffing words.
‘Yes, your papa.’
‘Yes, me papa be a Scotch man.’
‘Well, let us see what we have in here,’ he said.
He flicked quickly through the book and as July leaned in closer to look over his shoulder her breast, by chance, pressed against his arm. For a brief moment he stalled in his browsing but then carried on. He stopped at a drawing of a castle.
July, moving closer, squeezed her body up against his as she pointed at the picture saying, ‘Be that where me papa live?’
His voice stammered as he responded, ‘I . . . I . . . I doubt it as that is a castle.’
The little laugh he gave to follow these words rubbed her further against him. ‘There are many castles in Scotland, but I doubt that any are home to overseers from the West Indies.’ And as he turned to look at her, his lips nearly stroked her cheek.
He immediately began to rifle through the pages again in a businesslike manner. Most of this book was not pictures but dense black printed words. But there came a sketch of a small house with some sheep about it. ‘This is probably more the thing,’ Robert said, lifting the book a little so July might see it more clearly. July ran a finger along the roof and up over the chimney saying, ‘This be me papa house?’
‘Well, not actually this house . . . but . . . but,’ Robert was now staring intently upon July as she perused the picture.
‘And what be these?’ she asked, pointing at the sheep.
‘They are sheep,’ he said.
And July, who did not know these woolly creatures, turned her face full on to his to ask, ‘What be sheep?’