Читать книгу Local Customs - Audrey Thomas - Страница 17

WHEN HE WAS VERY ILL just after we landed, he called out a name in his delirium, at least I thought it was a name. “George,” I said, “you were calling out last night and the night before: ‘Ekosua! Ekosua!’ What does that mean? Is Ekosua a name?”

“No, not at all. It’s a local curse word.”

I didn’t believe him so I asked Brodie. “Is Ekosua a name?”

“Why do you ask?” He looked quite uncomfortable.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve heard it, more than once; I wasn’t quite sure whether it was a name or a command, or what.”

“It’s a name, a female name. If you were born on a Monday then one of your names will be Ekosua. A boy would be Quashie.”

“Hmmm. So did Robinson Crusoe call his Negro servant Friday because that was the day of the week on which he was discovered, or did Friday tell him his name was ‘Friday’?”

“He would have said ‘Kofi’ or some variant of Kofi, if the island was near Africa, but I don’t think it was.”

“I have a copy with me; I’ll look it up. It was my favourite book when I was a child.”

“And mine as well.”

And so we chatted on and I diverted him from my enquiry about the name Ekosua. George’s country wife, Ekosua — Monday’s child.

Weeks went by and he didn’t answer my letters. Sometimes I felt as though I had conjured him up and then “poof,” my phantom lover disappeared. I wrote and wrote to him, nearly every day now. George was a gentleman and a gentleman did not behave in this fashion. (A little voice said “Letty, you let him get away.”) Finally I wrote to Whittington. I was terrified the scandalous rumours about me had reached George even up there in the Highlands. No one knew, of course, about our engagement, so there would be no public humiliation, but I would know and that knowledge would kill me. I confided in my closest friend, I had to. I told her I would kill myself if this marriage didn’t come off and I meant it. I knew Maria would tell someone in confidence who would tell someone else in confidence and so it would travel through London. Another broken engagement. “Poor Letty,” said with a smile and a simper. “Or maybe she made the whole thing up?”