DâAngerâs. The sugar beets of Peterborough and Bury St Edmunds have long since taken over from the sugar canes of Guyana and the West Indies.
âMy fatherâ, says Frieda Haxby Palmer, addressing David DâAnger with a dangerous glint, âused to plough the beet fields, while yours was at Harvard. Weâre New Sugar, your family is Old Sugar, David. Not that much money came down to us from it, or not that
we
ever saw. Who owns British Sugar pic these days, Cedric? Iâm sure you would know, wouldnât you?â
Cedric Summerson, who does know, and suspects that she also knows, decides to pretend he has not heard the question. (British Sugar, you may wish to learn, became the British Sugar Corporation in 1936, when Friedaâs father, Ernie Haxby, was a young man: it became British Sugar pic in 1982, was then taken over by Beresford International, and in 1991 was swallowed up by Associated British Foods pic, a thriving conglomerate which also owns Allied Bakeries, Burtonâs Biscuits, Twinings Tea, Ryvita and Jacksons of Piccadilly. Nathan Herz knows he ought to know this, but he has become confused with the brand names of Tate &Â Lyleâwho are they? Are they a competitor? And arenât they British too?)
Getting no answer from either Cedric or Nathan, Frieda continues. âIt would be hard to say, David, wouldnât it, which of our forebears might have expected to do better? If youâd been veiled by ignorance, which society would
you
have chosen to be born into? Eighteenth-century England or eighteenth-century Guyana? How would
you
have calculated the odds?â
(Only Gogo picks up the significance of this question, for only goodwife Gogo, at this point, is familiar with its philosophic terminology, with the concept of the Veil. Daniel and Rosemary are later to remember it all too well.)
David smiles, demurs, indicates that the conversation is becoming esoteric, is excluding Friedaâs other guests. Clearly they have been over this ground before.
âThe DâAngersâ, pursues Frieda, âonce owned plantations. They worked their way up. They owned a valley full of eagles and they exported Demerara. Isnât that right, David?â
âThatâs how the story went when I was a boy,â says David.
âSugar and rum and coffee,â teases Frieda. âThousands and thousands of pounds of the stuff. While we lived on whalegut and turnip.â Her audience grows restless. All this talk of food does not make them hungry, but it does make them nervous. What is she playing at? Is it a game? They cannot have been asked round simply for a discussion. Surely there will be dinner? They have been asked for a meal, but there is little sign of one, though there is perhaps a faint smell of cooking somewhere in the recesses of the house, a stale and not wholly appetizing odour of, is it, onion? Or is onion waiting in from some passing teenagerâs polystyrene walk-about pack? They cannot have been asked round for a drink, for water is not a drink. Nor could anyone in her right mind ask even her own family to come all the way to the Romley borders just for a drink.
Is
she, they wonder, in her right mind?
She seems to be, for when she judges that they have suffered enough, she makes a move. âIâd better go and see to the cooking,â she says, disclaiming any help as she heaves herself stoutly to her sandalled feet. âNo, donât come yet. Iâll call you when Iâm ready. Iâve got something really special for you. Iâve had to go a long way to get this meal together, I can tell you.â She smiles at David, with a horrible favour. âAnd donât worry, David, I have remembered that you donât eat meat.â
Daniel later claims that it was at this moment that it flashed across his mind that she had some trick in storeâcow heels, pigsâ trotters, stewed babyâsomething of the sort. But he did
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