in learning to drive the plantation car and by her cautious acceptance of his offer to teach her. Her skill behind the wheel led to her employment as the official plantation driver. But during the driving lessons Duncan would stroke the back of her head as May, powerless to stop him, gripped the wheel in revulsion. He would put his hand on her knee as she worked the pedals at her feet. He would appear through the high stalks of sugarcane when she was out talking to one of the women in the fields and offer to walk her home, or he would think of a reason to accompany her on her weekly trips to the bank and the post office in nearby Speightstown. May became practised at avoiding him but she knew that however much she tried to protect herself, one day he would succeed in crossing the final boundary. In the end it had been Sam’s persistent pursuit of his naval ambitions that had opened up the opportunity for escape and freedom.
In the very early days of January 1936, May and Sam Thomas stepped off the ship, up onto the high Liverpool quayside at Albert Dock. May shivered beneath the inadequacy of her thin, cotton coat. The pale blue, summer-flimsy material had been perfectly suited to the warm climate back home, wrapped around her narrow shoulders by her mother before she had pulled her daughter close to her and kissed her goodbye. But May had been quite unprepared for this feeling of real English coldness. Not only was her skin cold to the touch, but she felt as if her blood had stopped pumping round her body altogether.
From the warmth of her bed in Mrs. Cage’s house, May thought back over the past few weeks. At home the brightness of the overhead sun could dazzle with a light that filtered scarlet through closed eyelids. But on that first day in Liverpool, the greyness of the early morning had given her the illusion that nighttime was already falling. The sky hung so low that it appeared to be collapsing onto the Pier Head.
Sam knew his way around the dock from his previous trips to Liverpool. He had tucked his sister’s right hand into that of his own glove and, joined together in that manner, they walked along the vast quayside. The grey water, until so recently their exclusive landscape, had vanished behind the frosty sea mist that rose above the huge harbour walls. The walkway was thick with people, almost all men, all travelling in different directions. The level of noise was nearly as hard to tolerate as the freezing air. Men pushed carts so precariously laden with vegetables and fruit that the weight caused the carts to weave uncontrollably from side to side. Warehouse workers rode bicycles with huge trailers packed with cardboard boxes hooked behind them, and the occasional private car nudged its way through the crush, granted special permission to draw up at the water’s edge only because of the importance of the human cargo it had come to collect. May pulled at Sam’s sleeve to stop. A beautifully kept dark blue Rolls-Royce was parked up against the harbour wall. The plantation car that she loved for the freedom and independence it gave her had been one of the hardest things to leave behind.
Glad to be on land for a few days before the return journey, Sam’s sailor friends were full of good humour, telling the sort of jokes generally too risky to tell in the presence of a woman. They had accepted May as one of them, warming to her on the voyage partly for her brave-spiritedness in the rough seas but also for her unusual and delicate beauty. The ration of rum distributed on arrival in port had induced a friendly boisterousness towards her that bore no resemblance to the threatening, drunken silences that had accompanied Duncan’s lingering looks.
A couple of the crew offered to help carry their few pieces of luggage and the little group made their way along the bustling fog-draped pier, to the nearby Pier Head bus station. The timetable for the Crosville Motor Services to London was pinned onto the waiting-room wall and a gas fire was sputtering in one corner, doing its best to warm the cramped space. The room began to fill up with people blowing air into their hands. When the squat green and cream bus drew up outside, just visible through the smeary condensation of the