January 1972
Mustique Island, the Grenadines
The bow of Willy May’s boat, Otrera, cut the waters like a butter knife, winking along the waves. Willy May’s first glimpse of Mustique Island had not been of the palm groves dancing in the breeze or the ivory beach wrapping the three-mile isle like a satin ribbon. Her eyes had been cast down into the deep blue, and she wondered if she had been brought here on a fool’s errand. Her new British friend, Davey from Trinidad, had convinced her to come.
One night while a soca band played a calypso beat and tiki torches lit up the Port of Spain harbor, Davey had turned to her and said, “How about popping by Mustique to say hello next week?”
As if Caribbean islands were everyday homes in an everyday neighborhood.
Davey knew a guy on Mustique—Arne Hasselqvist, a celebrity Swedish architect, who was causing quite the hubbub among those who had the means to own a piece of paradise. But that’s the thing with Shangri-la, only the elite are invited. In Mustique, like most places, money and title were prerequisites.
The sunlight shimmered like a crowning aurora. The closer they came to the shore, the calmer the sea, reflecting a rippled image of Willy May on the glossy surface. The sea spray held her hair’s natural wave in place. She’d worn it in various styles throughout her life but now, at forty-five, it was shoulder length and honey blond with a little help from Clairol. Her cheekbones V’ed prominently, making her look perpetually on the verge of puckering to speak or laugh or blow a kiss—whatever the viewer wanted to believe. And once soft as a cream rose, her skin had been sunbaked to a nut. Sailing had changed her in that way and many others.
It’d taken three years to circle the entire earth, starting in Bristol Channel and moving eastward. The drive to attain the goal had fueled her every moment. But having done so, the thought of another rotation made her tired. So, she’d gone in the opposite direction—west to the Caribbean, for a respite.
Now, as she looked down into the watery mirror, the pouches beneath her eyes stood out. The crow’s-feet at the corners were new, too. She frowned at herself, and then stuck her hand straight through the middle of her face to see beneath the surface.
An inch separated Otrera’s hull from the coral. Mustique was laced in a massive reef. Like porcupine quills, it kept the island safe. There was only one entry: Britannia Bay. Davey had warned her that an attempt to dock at any other location would result in the ship’s grounding.
The island was in an amphidromic point. Tideless, in essence. But if the earth shrugged one way or another, if the balance of water to air hiccupped, ruin was inescapable. Such was life, Willy May knew.
Before her first mate, Ronnel, could secure the boat to the dock piling, two men in blazing-white suits, espadrilles, and straw hats welcomed her to the pier.
“Ahoy, ahoy there!” they greeted in a British clip.
One took off his hat and waved it excitedly, exposing a tanned bald head.
“Welcome to Mustique!” said the other.
Willy May shielded her eyes against the glare.
Otrera kissed the landing and Ronnel knotted the hitch. Willy May would have been more comfortable tying the dock lines and placing the fenders herself but fought the urge. A woman of means would never do that, and first impressions were everything. So, she pushed her shoulders back and pressed her lips together. Old lipstick from the morning pulled dry at the corners. She went without a lot of things as a sea woman but never without color cream on her lips. She’d feel more naked without it than the emperor in his new clothes.
Davey gestured to the slender man with the bald head. “May I introduce the master of ceremonies, Mr. Colin Tennant, heir apparent to Baron Glenconner.”
“Please, just call me Colin.” Colin bowed in Edwardian fashion. “Delightful to have you on our island.”
Oddly charming, thought Willy May. Like a grown-up version of Peter Pan, sprite-like while homely human. Unsure if she was supposed to curtsy in theatrical return, she put her hands on her hips instead.
Colin turned to the man at his side. “This is Hugo, my business partner. We were chums at Eton. Hugo knows everything about everything so if you want to know anything, he’s got the encyclopedia in his noggin.”
Hugo nodded hello.
“I presume you haven’t eaten,” Colin went on. “But even if you have, you can eat again. The heat stokes the metabolism. It’s one of Anne’s biggest complaints—the incessant sweating. But when she’s home in Scotland, her dresses fit like a glove without girdle or tights. Have you seen the new hosiery at Selfridges? Fabulous. I love a costume, don’t you? We put on our own dramatics, you see. I ordered a whole case of different-colored tights, polka dotsand animal prints, during Princess Margaret’s last visit. Naturally, it turned out to be the hottest summer on record, so nobody was in the mood to wear them. We strung them on fishing poles as streamers instead . . .”
He rambled a soliloquy as he led her down the wharf. Over her shoulder, she caught eyes with Davey, who put up both hands as if to say, What’s to be done but go along?
A golf cart parked at the edge of the beach where the sand turned to crabgrass.
“Princess Margaret is building a château—at the southern tip of the island. We gave her the plot as a wedding gift. Better than any of the bric-a-brac usually dispensed at weddings—Waterford vases and Leavers laces,” he singsung. “One never really knows what to do with the stuff. Instead, we offered a piece of the Garden of Eden!”
He gestured for Willy May to sit in the passenger seat, which she did. Her mind whirled on his chatter and the thrill of knowing that the rumors were true: Princess Margaret was a resident.
“Hugo, Davey—hurry up!” Colin called back. “We don’t want our Texas beauty queen wilting in this heat!”
Willy May had won the Limestone County Beauty Contest in 1942, which automatically made her the queen of Central Texas. It came with a twenty-five-dollar prize and a year’s worth of milk from the local dairy sponsor. Her parents, William and Gretchen, were day laborers. Sometimes her mom cleaned houses. Sometimes her dad did carpentry or plumbing. They were a Jack and Jill of all trades and masters of none. The mention of her past made her earlobes sweat. Willy May hadn’t told Colin about her history. But that was the thing with money, it bought you secrets. Yours and other people’s.
Hugo and Davey slid onto the back bench of the golf cart and their foursome took off with a jolt over flattened bamboo and fallen manchineel leaves. A large sign warned: POISONOUS. DO NOT EAT THE SMALL GREEN APPLES. DO NOT STAND UNDER TREES WHEN IT RAINS. AVOID TOUCHING THE FLOWERS AND SAP. AVOID BREATHING POLLEN. TOXIC. LETHAL. AVOID.
Willy May felt a tightness in her chest and realized she was instinctually holding her breath. The men made no mention of the poisonous grove blanketing the island. Was it too late to get back on her boat and sail away? The wheels of the golf cart sprayed sandy dirt as Colin pressed the acceleration and they sped onward.
Behind her on Otrera, two island men collected Willy May’s luggage off the deck while Ronnel tied down the sails. He would sleep in the crew bunk and stay on to keep watch. Part of her was jealous. Otrera had become home since her divorce. She’d created it with her own hands.
Boatbuilding had started as a hobby. On a lark, she and her ex-husband, Harry, had built another vessel named the Stingray. They used it for holidays and annual family sails, going as far as Shanghai. Her daughters, Hilly and Joanne, had been small then. They’d easily fit into one bunk and loved sleeping head to toe, toe to head. They’d been glued at the hip at those tender ages and shared a root attachment that seemed to transcend even her own to them. Willy May found their sisterhood fascinating. She and Harry hadn’t much experience with sibling bonds, both being only children.
Harry’s mother was the daughter of an earl whose pedigree was heavy but bank account light. She married an aging tradesman, Philip Henry Michael Sr., of the vastly successful Michael & Boutler Brewery. Harry was the blue-blooded prince of his household, the sole heir.
As a father, Harry knew little of raising girls. Truth be told, neither did Willy May. But she kept that to herself. She was their mother. Her choices were their choices. Her daughters were part of her, sprung from her deepest hope. She wanted them to experience the world and rise to be part of it. And look how well they’d turned out.
Hilly was a model and actress, and Joanne was studying to become a musician. Willy May was proud of them both. They were artists, the heroes of their own lives.
To onlookers, the cardinal sin in their family had been the divorce. Such a sordid affair. She hadn’t expected Harry to cut her out of everything. Especially when he’d been the unfaithful one. She didn’t deserve to be treated so shoddily. So she’d hired a young, whip-smart attorney. The judge had awarded her far more than she would’ve received had they negotiated the settlement privately. Harry’s response had been ugly. She’d been ugly right back. She took full responsibility for her rancor.
On a practical note, had the Michaels done a better job with the legalities of the brewery, her lawyer wouldn’t have found the loophole entitling her to such a large settlement of the family’s assets. If Harry not been so miserly from the beginning, the whole thing, and possibly his own death, could’ve been avoided. He knew she hadn’t any means of supporting herself but refused to allocate any income toward her well-being in the settlement—so she fought back.
Willy May came to England without formal education and knowing no one, which Harry hadn’t cared about at first. She was a novelty item. When they wed in June 1943, she’d been sixteen. The marriage certificate said she was eighteen, but everyone falsified their age back then. There was a war on.
Royal Air Force pilot Harry Michael had been training at the British Flying Training School in nearby Terrell, Texas.
“This is Willy May Corbel. Our Central Texas beauty queen,” her girlfriend had introduced them at a Saturday night USO dance.
“Enchantée,” Willy May had said.
She’d heard Vivian Leigh use the French word in a newsreel. While she wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, she knew that celebrities said it.
“A pleasure. I’ve met a lot of eminent people, but never a queen,” Harry had replied with an accent dripping of knights and fair maidens.
Afterward, her friend pulled her aside. “He likes you, and he hasn’t looked twice at any girl in Texas. You’d do well to like him back—he’s rich as Croesus!”
She’d thought Harry cute but money made everything golden. Willy May put on her best nymphet act, using all the tricks she’d seen employed by Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, and Betty Grable in the Hollywood films. To her surprise, they worked. Soon enough, she was on her back between the cornrows of old Mr. Brown’s field, husks in her hair, Harry inside her. Tipsy on beer and moonlight, Harry didn’t notice her distant expression. It was not her first time. Months earlier she’d been curious to try it with someone who wouldn’t expect forever from the act. So, she’d given herself to a sweet cowboy on his way to Amarillo with his father’s herd. He was tender and young and she could tell it had been his first time, too.
But still, she let Harry believe that she was a virgin. It was what men wanted to believe. He’d reverently handed her back her blouse, caught on the leafy arms of a nearby cornstalk, and asked if she was okay. She’d demurely buttoned the front and nodded, “Gosh, I hope I don’t get pregnant.” She’d looked up at him from under her lashes. “They say it only takes the once. I guess that’s how love works.”
They didn’t wait to find out. A week later, she and Harry eloped at the Limestone County Courthouse. She thought her parents would be proud of her. Harry was a military officer, the only son of a wealthy British family. They wouldn’t have to worry about her future anymore. But they’d been appalled.
“He’s not even American.” Her mother had balked. “Where will you live?”
“In England.”
That was one of the reasons they’d married quickly, so she told them. Harry had finished flight school and would be returning with his squadron.
“His family has a big house. I think they might even have two! Plenty of room for us.”
Her mother had shaken her head in disbelief. “Our people have been in Texas since the first American flag was stuck in the dirt. Nobody ups and leaves. We can’t—you can’t.”
“She won’t, if she knows what’s good for her,” her father had threatened.
Willy May had already made up her mind but his challenge lit a fire in her belly.
“You’d rather I stay here in Nowhere, Texas, marry some local nobody, have a bunch of going-nowhere babies, and die an old shriveled nobody like all my people before me?”
Her temper lit his. Like father, like daughter.
“We ain’t good enough for you, Miss High and Mighty? Then go on! Good riddance!” He’d ripped down the bedsheet that separated their bedroom side from hers and thrown it at her feet. “I didn’t raise no Judas daughter. If you go, you gone. Don’t let me find a hair of you left.” The door slammed behind him as he marched out of the house.
“Mama?” Willy May asked, as if for some reassurance. “It’s my chance to be somebody. I know you want that for me.”
Her mother had lightly touched the curling leather edge of their family Bible. “‘Put no trust in a neighbor; have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother . . .’ The book of Micah.” She’d wiped a tear that threatened and turned away. “Best get you packed.”
Willy May knew there was no going back. They didn’t ask if she loved Harry. Love was not their way. They’d never even said as much to her. To be honest, she wasn’t sure what love looked, sounded, or felt like. She’d seen it in movies and read about it in books but being admired, complimented, and respected was the closest she’d actually experienced. All of the things she felt for Harry Michael. It must be love, right?
So Willy May put all her eggs in one basket, ready to leave her people for a foreign land with a husband she barely knew, only to discover his family would never fully accept her. When she first arrived in England with a marriage certificate and little else, her mother-in-law had greeted her as if she were a strange insect her son had brought home in his suitcase, and she wasn’t sure whether to pin her to an entomology board or use a swatter.
“What do we have here?” she’d said as way of hello and then, “Oh dear.”
Mother Michael said that having the couple sleep together in Harry’s bedroom across from hers was distasteful. She suggested the newlyweds move into the family’s carriage house and instructed the housemaid to put their luggage there. The carriage house was spacious but a junkyard of sorts, full of antiques that had been rejected for the main house. Her mother-in-law had walked her round the cluttered rooms, explaining the history of each piece of furniture as if it were a privilege to sit on their splinters.
But just because Willy May came from nothing didn’t mean she was content with nothing. She’d nodded, smiled, graciously accepted her mother-in-law’s tutorial on housekeeping, and then didn’t lift a finger to perform it.
Harry was bequeathed his grandmother’s wedding band for his new bride, a simple ring but pure gold. Willy May marveled at its shine under the sun. She swore then that she’d never take it off, and she never had. Divorce and widowhood didn’t change what the ring meant: a new beginning, a precious thing to remember. Her mother didn’t have a wedding band. She’d told people that she donated it for the war efforts but really, she’d never had one. Willy May’s father never could afford it. He said keepsakes didn’t do a living person a lick of good. He’d never been one for sentimental appreciation—of his wife or his only child. They were things of worth so long as they made themselves useful.
In England, however, wives and children had power. They were social embellishments that embodied the future, and Willy May quickly learned that the English were obsessed with cultivating the branches of their family trees.
During the early years of her daughters’ lives, she and Harry had been bonded together by unquestionable, undeniable love. Whatever the holes in their marriage, the girls filled in the gaps. But that’s the thing with love, it wasn’t a concrete material. It needed room to grow. Cemented in place, it died.
Looking back, she saw that’s what happened. Once the girls were older, she and Harry had nothing between them but a partnership of polite white lies. Sometimes through the lonesome lens of night, she caught clear glimpses of their past, and it shamed her. She wondered if something inside her was broken, defective, or at the very least, twisted up. She’d manipulated Harry into marrying her. Had he been a tougher sort, he might’ve left her in Texas, felt a pang of remorse for her perceived lost maidenhood, gone home, and married whoever his mother approved. But like a fish in open water, he thought privilege was pervasive and boundless. It was his fatal flaw. Seeing it, Willy May had seized her opportunity.
From the moment they met, she’d tricked Harry into believing that she was someone she wasn’t. She’d moved into her mother-in-law’s house, put on lipstick, heels, an heirloom ring, and the role of self-assured British housewife; hoping to make up for deception done in service of a greater good, hoping that by being everything Harry expected, he would come to genuinely love her.
She told anyone who asked that her kin were landowners in Texas. Her mother was a lady of the house. Sometimes a lie did good. One could believe and spread that kind. She was sure of it. Eventually the good lies would manifest. That was her thinking. She assumed the spell worked both ways. When others called her “Mrs. Michael,” she’d hoped it would dispense on her the happily-ever-after she longed to achieve. And it did, for a time. Her life in England had been far better than it ever could’ve been in Texas.
So, when she first learned of Harry’s affair with the Viscountess Mary Hailsham, she didn’t know what to do. It hurt her. But confronting his deception would mean confronting her own, going all the way back to her sixteen-year-old desperation to get the hell out of Limestone County.
At the time of the affair’s disclosure, the girls were in primary school. She weighed her options or, rather, she asked herself the question at the crux: What did she hope to accomplish by kicking up a fuss? Divorce at that stage in her life would’ve made her a single, uneducated mother of two with no family, no house, and no income. A one-way ticket back to Nowhere, Texas. That was the opposite of what she wanted. She needed the Michaels, and they needed her as the mother of the family’s heirs, if nothing else. That was worth the emotional sacrifice, she told herself. So, she turned a blind eye to the infidelity and over time, the lies became easier to believe. It meant they could go on living peaceably.
Then Harry went and botched it all up. He got caught. Not by Willy May. He was coming down the steps of the Queens Hotel with Mary Hailsham noodling his arm. His indiscretion was a result of three scotches when he usually only drank beer. Willy May had been on a shopping trip with the girls in London. Harry hadn’t expected to bump into his mother’s oldest friend, Lady Lizzy Fitzpatrick, and three wives of title leaving a charity dinner at the hotel. All members of the same social club. The scandal was a feast for the gossip starved. Everyone pretended to be shocked but hid knowing grins behind their palms. Harry and Mary had been an item since they were schoolchildren. In their minds, Willy May had always been the interloper.
All of English society was staring and talking. The scandal was out. Hilly was turning eighteen and Joanne, sixteen. After nearly thirty years of dutiful marriage, the law was on Willy May’s side, and she saw no reason to stay in the union. They had been young when they met. There had been a war on. It had been another time and place. They’d made a good run of it for three decades . . . two beautiful daughters as evidence. But one could probably argue that it had been over before it had even begun. She’d tried to do right by him. A divorce seemed the kindest action. It meant Harry could do as he pleased with Mary and she was free to do the same.
Less than a month after the civil court proceedings concluded, Harry had a heart attack.
“It was the stress of the divorce . . . that woman killed him,” her mother-in-law had cried at the wake, though it was common knowledge that her own husband, Philip Henry Sr., had died of a stroke at nearly the same age. Heart disease, the doctors said. It was genetic.
Despite the medical truth and Harry’s faithlessness, the social stigma stuck. It was a far better story in whist circles to name Willy May the villainess. Mary Hailsham came from a noble pedigree. All of Cheltenham knew her parents and her grandparents. She was respected. While this Willy May . . . what was her maiden name? No one even knew. They blackballed her.
She couldn’t shop at Premier Supermarket without catching side-eyed glances. So, she’d gone over to the Gloucester shipyard with a blank check and a big idea: Otrera. She’d fallen in love with the sea on her first voyage. It was everything she’d never had in landlocked Texas. The breezes of distant places kissed her, and she could taste the freedom in them. Salty. She set her mind to ace her Skipper Practical and surprised herself at what a good study she turned out to be. She’d never been particularly interested in schoolbooks, smelling of chalk dust and clammy fingers. Learning to sail was different. It was tactile. She learned by doing: tacking, jibbing, steering, adjusting to the give-and-take of the elements. It was a dance between two partners of equal determination: Mother Woman and Mother Nature. It was relational. It was impassioned. It was unconditional acceptance in a way that she hadn’t experienced in her life up to that point. So, when her marriage ended, it felt natural to run to the sea’s embrace.
She hired a construction crew and channeled everything she had into building a boat that was exclusively her own. It was her escape and the only home that carried no condemnation. She launched with a two-person crew.
As long as she kept reaching forward, she kept going. Three years later, she was one of the few women who had successfully sailed around the globe. Mission accomplished, she sat down to write her girls and found herself unable to answer What now? She didn’t know.
On her first night docked in Trinidad, at the end of those three years, she’d awoken panicked. Sweat made the back of her knees stick together painfully when she’d tried to stand from the boat bunk. The taste of soured mango stuck in the back of her throat. The sound of the waves lapped incessantly, thunk-thud, thunk-thud, thunk-thud.
She’d poured herself a glass of water and gone out on the moon-lit deck. The dark horizon went on and on, making her feel small as a speck of stardust. By the time her glass was empty, she was sobbing over things so far removed that it seemed ludicrous. She was missing her girls, remorseful over Harry’s death, regretful of the lost years, lost family, lost dreams . . . so much loss. The problem with wanting to conquer the world was that it kept moving, changing. One had to make a choice: chase it forever or stop, root, and see what grew. She’d tried the former and it’d brought her to this moment of drifting sorrow. It was time to try the latter.
The next day, she’d met Davey through the Trinidadian harbormaster. A British expat and seasoned captain, Davey had just come off a chartered yacht. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
