Black Cake(33)

Covey had watched her father earlier, as she lifted her head above water behind the rocks where she’d been hiding. There was an opening in the stone where she could come up for air. Where she had let Gibbs kiss her more than once. Where she struggled on her own, grabbing at things that cut and stung, dropping below the water line when the search boat approached. The boat slowed but didn’t enter the hollow. Everyone knew that no one could withstand the surf near the rocks for very long, that their body would be spit out of the space like a clump of uprooted seaweed.

Covey watched her father turn his gaze from the water, then lower his head and walk away. Holding Covey’s wedding dress balled up in his arms, he stopped to look back, then walked, then stopped. When Covey came up for air again, she heard a shout. She saw two men knock her father to the ground, but Bunny’s brother was there to pull them away. They must have been Little Man’s men.

Her father bent down to pick up her dress again. He looked sorry.

Pa.

Well, too late. He had no one to blame but himself. Johnny Lyncook should have thought twice before going to those cockfights, before going into debt, before selling her off like a sack of red peas. Yes, let them all believe that Covey was dead, Pa included. Her father had stolen her destiny from her, and now she was going to steal it back.

Covey started. There was someone in the dark. She held her breath.

“Covey!”

It was Bunny.

Of course!

Bunny was the only person who knew how well Covey knew the cave, except for Gibbs. But Gibbs was too far away now to be of any help.

“Don’t stay until it’s too late. If you change your mind,” Gibbs had said, as Covey clutched at his shirt, weeping, that last day together, “send me a letter, come and find me.” But she couldn’t, not now. She couldn’t even place a long-distance call. She was a fugitive from the law. If she had any chance of getting away, if she wanted to protect the people she cared for, she would have to close the door to everyone and everything she knew.

Bunny was standing over her with a flashlight, which she turned on, then promptly turned off. Dear, dear Bunny, with a towel and dry clothes, with water and food and money from Pearl. Bunny, with the address of someone who could be trusted. Bunny, who loved Covey enough to make sure that she would get away.





London





Covey looked out the bus window. She could see the university coming up. She rang for the stop and stepped outside, her legs quivering. The campus was a sprawling thing of angles and columns and greenery. London could be funny that way. So much stone, then so much life. Covey found a bench across the way and sat down, scanning the crowds of people coming and going. She pulled her cardigan close around her body and watched all those faces, chatting, laughing, frowning. People she might have been, lives she might have led.

There were other brown-skinned people here, people who looked like students and even one who must have been a professor. Gray hair, corduroy jacket, an air of well-being. Still, she was sure, she would have no trouble spotting Gibbs. He would be taller and darker than most. And he would recognize Covey, she was sure of it, even with her ponytail cut off, even with her curls tucked under a hat, its brim pulled low. She let herself imagine that Gibbs would sense that she was here, that he would have felt her arrival like a current breaking over a reef, that he would be walking straight toward this bench where she sat, her heart hammering under her sweater.

Covey’s arrival in England already seemed years ago, though it had only been the previous autumn. She recalled the dark ribbon of water that had separated her from the ship as she counted down the minutes to her escape from the island. She’d kept glancing over her shoulder as she followed the crowd of passengers up the ramp, but she needn’t have worried. Everyone back home thought she was dead. They would never think to look for her here, on the far side of the island, on a ship that was bound for London and Liverpool.

The British Nationality Act 1948 granted citizens of the Commonwealth free entry into Britain. Covey had just turned eighteen in the fall of 1965 and was traveling under her mother’s surname as a nanny to the children of someone who knew someone who knew Pearl. A family with the means to ensure a smooth transfer for Coventina Brown, despite the newer legislation that was now limiting migration from the islands.

In exchange for passage and forged documents, Covey had promised to work for her employer for at least one year. The family who had taken her on were not aware of the risks involved. They only thought they were helping the young relative of a friend of a friend to gain new opportunities overseas. And they were wealthy enough and light-skinned enough to be spared close questioning by the authorities. But Pearl’s contact in the capital had reminded Covey of the danger of being caught, and of her responsibility to those who had gone out of their way to help her.

“Is not a hundred percent conventional what we doing for you, you know,” Pearl’s contact had said. Covey only knew her as Miss Eunice. She never did learn her full name, only that she was a midwife with a knowledge of traditional remedies who was consulted by women from all over the island on “questions of a female nature.”

Miss Eunice reminded Covey that there were laws against forgery. There were laws against traveling under an assumed identity. There were laws against helping a murder suspect to escape. Trying to find Gibbs, trying to contact Pearl or Bunny, even socializing with the wrong people on the cruise ship, any one of these things could get her into trouble, along with anyone who had tried to help her or who had ever cared for her.