Secret Harbor Read Free Page B

aloud.
    She was calling to the island as if it could feel for her in her troubles and help her.
     
    A long time later Grania slowly undressed and got into bed.
    There had been no sound in the house while she was looking out into the night, and she thought that if her father had come unsteadily up to bed she would have heard his footsteps on the stairs.
    But she did not worry about him as she had done so often since he had come back into her life.
    Instead she could only think of herself, and even as her eyes closed in sleep she was praying with an intensity that involved her whole body and soul for help.
    Grania awoke startled by a noise that she sensed rather than heard.
    Then as she came back to consciousness and listened, she heard it again and for a moment thought that somebody was at her bedroom door, and was afraid of who it might be.
    Then she realised the sound had come from outside, and again there was a low whistle, followed by the sound of her name.
    Still only half-awake Grania got out of bed and went to the window which she had left open and uncurtained.
    She looked out and there below her she saw Abe.
    He was her father’s servant. He had come with him to England and she had known him all her life.
    It was Abe who had managed their house for her mother, found the servants they could afford and trained them besides keeping them in order.
    It was Abe who had first taken her out in a boat when she came to the Island and she had helped him bring back the lobsters which they caught in their own bay, and searched for the oysters which her father preferred to any other sea-food.
    It was Abe who had taken her riding on a small pony when she was too small to walk round the plantation to watch the slaves working amongst the bananas, the nutmegs and the cocoa beans.
    It was Abe who would go with her to St. George when she wanted to buy something in the shops, or merely to watch the big ships come in to unload their cargo and pick up passengers travelling to other islands.
    “I do not know what we should do without Abe,” her mother said almost every day of her childhood.
    When they had left for London without him, Grania often felt her mother missed Abe as much as she did.
    “We ought to have brought him with us,” she said, but her mother had shaken her head.
    “Abe belongs to Grenada and is part of the island,” she said. “What is more, your father could not manage without him.”
    After she had sent for her father and he arrived in England too late to say goodbye to her mother before she died, Abe had come with him.
    Grania had been so pleased to see Abe that she almost flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.
    She had only stopped herself at the last moment because she realised how much it would embarrass Abe. But the sight of his smiling coffee-coloured face had made Grania feel home-sick for Grenada in a way she had not felt all the time she had been in London.
    Leaning out of the window now Grania asked:
    “What is it, Abe?”
    “I mus’ talk with you, Lady.”
    He now called her “Lady”, though when she was a child he had said “Little Lady”, and there was something in the way he spoke which told Grania it was important.
    “I will come down,” she said, then hesitated.
    Abe knew what she was thinking.
    “Quite safe, Lady,” he said, “Master not hear.”
    Grania knew without further explanation why the Earl would not hear, and without saying any more she put on a dressing-gown which was lying unpacked on top of her trunk and a pair of soft slipp e rs.
    Then cautiously, making as little noise as possible, she unlocked her bedroom door.
    Whatever Abe might say, she was afraid not of seeing her father but their host.
    The candles on the stairs were still alight but guttering low as she came down, and reaching the hall she entered the room which she knew looked out onto the garden below her bedroom.
    She went to the window which opened onto the verandah and as she lifted the catch Abe came