tormenting papa did slap, shake, and rouse him to stop this foolish yearning and go about his day.
The overseer even surrendered his book to her—the one with the pictures of Scotch Land. July found it abandoned outside the door of her dwelling. And upon the pages where he had pointed so delightedly at her papa’s house lay three pink periwinkles, compressed thin as gauze, within its leaves.
Then, one evening after sundown when all the shadows were gone, July was walking back from the garden after collecting up the windblown pods from the tamarind tree when she heard a palm bush panting. ‘Miss July,’ was called with urgency. She turned to find her eye bedazzled by a candle lantern held high and swinging. She knew it was him, but strained to see his face as it danced in and out of shadow. He held out his hand in front of him, his fingers splayed with insisting, ‘Please stay quite still, Miss July, quite still.’ July parted her lips to speak but he commanded, ‘Please, do not speak.’
As she slowly lowered her arms to her sides, the handful of tamarinds she had collected scattered on to the floor. She planted her feet to stand as still as she might. Lifting her chin she stared into the lantern light. His hand upon the lantern held it so tight that the knuckles upon his fingers shone white as hens’ eggs. And although his face was lost to shadow, his gaze was so keen upon her that she felt it like a fingertip stroking.
It traced a line that brushed over her forehead, caressed her nose, touched the bulge of her lips and stroked her throat, before resting its phantom pressure upon her breasts. Then Robert Goodwin whispered, ‘This is wrong, I know this is wrong but I cannot help myself.’
Throwing the lantern to one side, he suddenly stepped forward to seize July about the waist. He was hot as the bread oven. July was puzzling whether to push him from her or close his embrace, when he threw her away. She stumbled. As she righted herself to stand before him she thought to shout, ‘Careful, me nearly did fall,’ but the sound of him weeping stilled her. She lifted her hand to find his face in the dark. His cheek beneath her touch was damp. At the feel of her fingertips upon him, the overseer placed his hand over hers. ‘It is against everything,’ he said, ‘But, Miss July, you must know that I have come to love you. I love you.’ And he softly kissed her palm before pulling away from her to vanish within the dark.
Yet it was to be a few weeks before July encountered Robert Goodwin again. Seated at the far corner of the veranda where a breeze occasionally blew the sultry still air with a little cooling, July was mending her missus’s undergarments—the ones where the rats had eaten out all the sweaty parts—when the overseer came from out the house and saw her.
July, thinking that the overseer would only stare upon her, for it was daylight and morning, lifted her eyes to gaze up at him, but continued to stitch the nasty garments. It was when his quizzical expression changed into a broad smile of recognition and he commenced to walk towards where she sat, that she, in astonishment at his approach, dropped the needlework over the rail of the veranda. He was soon upon her. He pulled her to her feet, then looked quickly around himself for somewhere to hide her, like she were some stolen booty, before steering her down the veranda steps and around the corner to shelter within the secrecy of a large clump of bamboo.
As they stood concealed together he lifted her face to meet his by placing both his hands upon her cheeks. ‘Look at me, Miss July. Look at me,’ he said. At once July began to pull away from his grip for the urgency within his tone startled her. But he held her face firm. ‘Listen to me, listen to me,’ he carried on, until the shock within her expression began to reach him. He let her go.
Blinking to look softer, smiling to look calmer, he stepped back and raised his hands to show he meant no harm to her. But his boyish excitement soon overcame him again when he said, ‘I have made a plan which I have just this minute set into action,’ and he squeezed her face once