Release date - 5th September 2017
Book length - 400 pages Publisher - Poolbeg Press Book Depository - www.bookdepository.com Amazon UK - www.amazon.co.uk Amazon US - www.amazon.com I'm delighted to shine a spotlight on THE TIDE BETWEEN US by Olive Collins and I want to thank Olive and Poolbeg Books for providing me with an extract for you all to read. Here is everything you need to know about this novel and don't forget to check out the extract!! ABOUT THE BOOK 1821: After the landlord of Lugdale Estate in Kerry is assassinated, young Art O’Neill’s innocent father is hanged and Art is deported to the cane fields of Jamaica as an indentured servant. On Mangrove Plantation he gradually acclimatises to the exotic country and unfamiliar customs of the African slaves, and achieves a kind of contentment. Then the new heirs to the plantation arrive. His new owner is Colonel Stratford-Rice from Lugdale Estate, the man who hanged his father. Art must overcome his hatred to survive the harsh life of a slave and live to see the eventual emancipation which liberates his coloured children. Eventually he is promised seven gold coins when he finishes his service, but he doubts his master will part with the coins. One hundred years later in Ireland, a skeleton is discovered beneath a fallen tree on the grounds of Lugdale Estate. By its side is a gold coin minted in 1870. Yseult, the owner of the estate, watches as events unfold, fearful of the long-buried truths that may emerge about her family’s past and its links to the slave trade. As the body gives up its secrets, Yseult realises she too can no longer hide. Author Bio: Olive Collins grew up in Thurles, Tipperary, and now lives in Kildare. For the last sixteen years, she has worked in advertising in print media and radio. She has always loved the diversity of books and people. She has travelled extensively and still enjoys exploring other cultures and countries. Her inspiration is the ordinary everyday people who feed her little snippets of their lives. It’s the unsaid and gaps in conversation that she finds most valuable. Her debut novel, The Memory of Music, was an Irish bestseller. For more information: Twitter - twitter.com/olivecollins Facebook - www.facebook.com/olivecollinsauthor READ ON FOR AN EXTRACT ... Prologue 13th January 1991 Yseult kept her back to the man as he relayed the news. The time for decorum and manners had passed – it belonged to a younger woman from a different era. She stared out the window into the dark night. The man spoke hesitatingly. “It was the storm on Tuesday night.” Yseult didn’t turn to face him. It allowed her some strange privacy to absorb the details. “The strongest winds in a decade were recorded,” he continued. In the window she saw their reflections. The man who spoke was a few feet behind her. He was wearing a uniform and, even in the distorted reflection of the window, it was imposing, the right attire to bring sombre news. “We can only assume the tree toppled during the storm ...” his voice trailed off. Yseult remained still as she listened. “When the tree fell it dragged the roots and earth with it.” Yseult moved her eyes from his reflection to her own. Apart from her white hair, she was indistinguishable. She could have been anybody standing in the drawing room, listening to a strange account from a man of the law who was growing uncomfortable with her silence. Yseult remained perfectly still, allowing him to continue and getting some perverse pleasure from his awkwardness. “The bones were beneath the tree.” She imagined the skeleton, the skull, empty eye sockets and teeth, the long bones of the legs and arms entwined with the dirtied clay from the earth. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news ... we need to establish a few facts.” As he spoke he was looking to his left at the portrait of Alfred Stratford-Rice. It was painted almost 300 years ago. “I don’t believe it’s a murder mystery from today or even the last ten years,” he continued. “It all depends on the age of the tree.” “Where is it?” Yseult broke her silence. “The skeleton?” “It’s beneath the tree,” he said as if she had not been listening. Yseult’s voice rose impatiently. “On whose land? My land or my neighbour’s land?” He tilted his head sideways. “I don’t know,” he said as if he was surprised by his lack of information. “I haven’t seen the tree myself.” She saw him quickly glance around the drawing room again. To a visitor, her stately home appeared ostentatious and eloquent. One of the rare estates that remained, it carried tradition and history on its sturdy ancient shoulders. She was not surprised this day had come. She couldn’t help thinking how the grace and elegance had slipped through the crevices of her home long before the gust of wind blew a tree down to reveal a skeleton on a wild patch of her kingdom. PART 1  Chapter 1 1891, Jamaica Long ago I learned to stop questioning my beginnings ... until my youngest son was born. A slave who spends fourteen hours a day working on a sugar plantation has little time for anything apart from servitude. Now I am old, my daily chores are light. I have time to sit on the fringes of the old plantation and gaze at the sun as it sinks into the Caribbean Sea. I notice my friends, the years etched on their faces, and suddenly realise I too am as aged as they are, although few are as old as I am. I notice children, I see how they mimic the adults with their games. They play at cutting sugar cane and then standing straight, flexing their backs as if they too endured the pain of hard labour. I notice resemblances in my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I have a number of children. Some I know and others I was only briefly acquainted with. Some live a short distance from me and others are lost in the barbaric haze of slavery. But one ten-year-old boy in particular has spiralled me into the brutal abyss of recollection. At the sight of his lighter skin and aquatic green eyes in this land of darkies, I am assaulted with memory. I fathered my youngest son Leon sixty-nine years after my own birth, yet I feel he has journeyed with me for my whole life. He has been blessed with better luck than most of my other children. Born in a time when the black man here was liberated, his back is not crisscrossed with scars and his children will bear his name, not that of his owners. He is able to read and write. He is an eager student and hardworking with his chores. He reminds me of myself when I was his age before I was transported across the great seas to serve a master in the cane fields of the Caribbean. There was a time when I was a happy boy immersed in a culture so vastly different to the plantations of Jamaica. Recently I find myself sitting too long in the quagmire of recollection. Faces and smells return. My mother’s features become as vivid as my own in a mirror. In my dreams I see her wide alert eyes and round face framed with dark hair. I see my father and recall the beat of the music he preferred. Last night I dreamed I was sitting with him on the bank of the river fishing. I could see his long lean body stretched out on the grass waiting for the fish to tug the bait. I could feel the wet blades of grass beneath my feet as I returned through the field to our home. On awakening, I called my father’s name and woke disappointed to find my wife standing over me with her hands on her hips. In recent months my wife has noticed my strange mood. “Wat de matter?” she asks in her usual abrupt manner. “Yuh goin’ mad wid dat sadness.” How could I begin to tell her that I was lost in memories of my old home? What became of those I left behind? Did they seek me out? Did they mourn for me for the rest of their lives? We exiled servants learn to fight recall. It is as fierce as our deadly hurricanes, except it kills us more slowly. It drains us of our remaining sanity and eventually takes us into the sea. Yet I defiantly sit in the shade of the redundant cotton trees remembering the months of voyage across the seas. We were two hundred Irish boys and girls, taken from our country to cut sugar cane in the sweltering heat of Jamaica, this exotic little island. My home? My mulatto son’s home? During our six-week voyage we were fed on strange food. I thought the devil had stolen me. It was my captor’s job to deliver me to Satan where I would burn in the fires of hell. Then, when my eyes first saw the beauty of the island, in my childish mind I thought the devil had changed his mind and sent me to God instead. An awed silence descended as we gaped at the exotic splendour before us. It was like a colourful mystical land that burst from the quivering liquidated earth, inviting and magical. If it had been described to me as a boy, they would have called it paradise. The beaches of golden sand in the middle of a clear blue sea, and trees bearing fruit with as many colours as the rainbow. I remember my surprise at how sweet and succulent the watery melons were. The warm sun and trees that stretched to the clouds on long stems astonished me. As I was escorted from the boat, I remember the surprisingly warm sea as it splashed against my legs. It was further validation that God would appear and welcome me through the gates of heaven for all eternity. It was not heaven – however, the fact I believed it might be was a small piece of luck on my side that stopped me from rushing into the ocean to allow the mystic exotic sea quench my terror and take my ghost back to Ireland. It is not yet bright. I walk up the hill and follow a path to a secluded river. I swim in the water and afterwards follow the path, taking the long route home. These past few months I have returned to prayer. The prayers in the Irish language came tumbling back to me. Paidir an Tiarna – The Lord’s Prayer – flowed as if I had been reciting it as Gaeilge my whole life. Quietly I recite a decade of the rosary, still surprised I can recall each line of the prayers in a language I have not spoken in seventy years. The first morning it happened to me, I thought my mind had receded to my childhood. It happened to a man I knew many years ago. Elijah began to play like a child and hoist the seats in his cabin onto the table as if he was loading a boat. He called to the children to raise the anchor. Then he stood gazing solemnly at the wall as if waiting for the boat trip to end. After a while he told the children to drop anchor and he removed the seats from the table. Initially we thought it was the after-effects of too much rum. Then we held him down and checked him for cuts or marks, thinking he might have hit his head. When we found nothing, we kept it quiet, fearing he would be sold to another master who would flog him to death. I say The Lord’s Prayer as Gaeilge for Elijah who abandoned manhood to return to the wild antics of his childhood. I say another prayer for the Irishmen I’ve witnessed arriving on the piers of Jamaica. Some arrived in shackles and others came with the promise of land and a country far removed from the oppression of England. I would watch them step off the great ships after weeks at sea. The men carried one suitcase and wore their temperance medals with pride. Quickly they discarded their Irish clothes and, within a short time, life in Jamaica took the shine from their temperance medals. I return to my cabin and sit outside, waiting for my wife to bring my breakfast. Over the breadfruit trees, I see the roof of the Big House. Blair Stratford-Rice lives there with his third wife. His great house is perched high on the hill overlooking his crumbling plantation. Since the abolition of slavery in Jamaica over fifty years ago, the great plantations and fortunes of the plantocracy have almost gone. Blair Stratford-Rice is not deserving even of the dwindling lands or the slaves he now must pay. I am pleased to say he is afraid of me yet he cannot do anything to hurt me. There was a time when his father could have sold me or strung me up from the hanging tree that adorned every plantation in Jamaica. Now the hanging tree has been felled, the stump a reminder of the sea of change. He is afraid I will turn the remaining workers against him, afraid of the rumour that I killed one of his kind – and those who seek answers only find silence. His fear pleases me but I do not lose sight of the fact that I am now an old man, easily overpowered by a snarling foe who wants retribution. The bad blood that flows between us is almost visible to the naked eye. Our hostility did not begin on this pretty island of Jamaica but many years before in a townland called Mein on the coast of Ireland. Yet for years when Blair Stratford-Rice and I met we slotted into a charade of master and servant, each disguising his fear and loathing of the other man. Only yesterday I and my wife chanced to meet him by the empty slave cabins in the bleakest part of his estate. The rotting wood and overgrowth is a reminder of what they had and what they lost. The monsoon rain tumbled down, adding to the desolation of the area. He was riding his black mare and he demanded to know how I chanced to buy the land on which the old cabins stood. “I thought James Inglott was the buyer – I only learned this morning it is you who bought it,” he said, clearly annoyed I had got a third party to buy the four acres. I waved my hand at the rotting wood. “Master, it was my good fortune to serve you, and your father the Colonel, and your grand- uncle Major Beaufort. I learned to farm this wonderful land from your good kin.” Although his mare moved restlessly he continued to look at me, aware of my hidden irony and contempt. He visibly gathered himself together. “I’m glad you know it, O’Neill,” he said with a forced voice. “I’ll be up to you for my gold at the end of the month,” I added, just to irritate him, referring to a payment of seven gold coins due to me after my seven decades of service. The bit in the horse’s mouth was poorly lodged. She moved her head irritably. He couldn’t even saddle his mare properly. He had trouble steadying her. “Of course, the end of the month,” he said loudly before riding away. “One dese days him gonna kill yuh,” my wife whispered as we watched him gallop off. Nobody alive knows the truth. It goes back to the days in Ireland when his father was a Colonel in the English army. I will never forget the day I first saw Colonel Stratford-Rice and his wife land on Jamaica’s shores, armed with trunks of belongings and imperial ideas. I placed his luggage on the carriage and scrutinised his features to see if my eyes deceived me. When I heard him speak and saw his wife’s small body next to his, it was confirmation he was the man who signed my father’s death warrant in Ireland. For many years I was invisible to them. By the time the old Colonel Stratford-Rice recognised me it was too late. On the table beside me are my paper and inkwell. Five years ago, I began to learn to read and write. Each evening when my son Leon and grandson Akeem returned from their hours of schooling they would write their new words in the clay. The other children would copy their squiggles. Like two little tutors, they would create words from the letters and explain their new lesson for the day. Gradually the neighbouring children grew bored with the game. However, I could not stop. I copied the curvy squiggles, marvelling how when put together they made words. I learned the alphabet, the small words and gradually the bigger words. During quiet times of the day I practised with charcoal on the bark of a tree. I spent a few hours a day reading and writing words, testing and retesting my knowledge. As time passed, not only did I learn to read new words but I began to read stories. I learned that each sentence has a reason, the paragraph has a wider explanation and each chapter a purpose until eventually each book has a meaning. “A beginning, a middle and an ending. Like life,” I said, thinking aloud. “Maybe that is why we continue to live. We want to see how our life ends.” I bought my first book in Black River. I tried to read the words. For weeks Akeem and Leon and I followed the words with our fingers. It took us so long to read the book we had forgotten what the story was about when we came to the last page. The Moorland Cottage it was called. There were plenty of words in The Moorland Cottage that we didn’t know. We asked the teacher in the school, but neither did he know all the words. Each month I go to Black River where I sell a book and buy another one. The only book I do not sell is The Mooreland Cottage. Now in a time of my life when there is little to do but grieve for my missing grandson, Akeem, I read. I escape to the foreign countries in the books and leave my porch to mingle with the characters for several hours each day. My wife brings me my breakfast. She places her hand on my shoulder as she passes and sits beside me. “Me man is good?” she cautiously asks. “Not too bad.” The dead I see in my dreams do not trouble me so much. I have not dreamed of my family in Jamaica. It is Ireland I dream of – green, damp, sad and ever-present. As usual she frowns with disapproval when she sees the book, paper and quill on the table. My wife thinks reading and writing is bad for my health. “Is no surprise yuh shoutin’ to yuh mama and papa wen yuh are fillin’ yuh old head wid words,” she chides. “It can’t fit.” She points at her head irritably. “Of course it can fit,” I reply, as I always do when she tackles me on this subject. “Some men know every word ever spoken in the world and they are not dead from packed heads.” “Me poor man!” She laughs as if I am an idiot. “Anyway, who gonna read yuh words? Nobody knows how.” “Enough,” I say. I know she is thinking only of my good. A stoic, hardworking, simple woman. She does not share that awful sadness that afflicts me and so many of my sons. Sometimes I think the sadness is more prevalent in the Irish. I don’t discuss these thoughts with my wife. She does not see the world as I see it. “Maybe it is Akeem?” She looks at me cautiously. Akeem, my grandson, the child I could not save. I am unable to say his name aloud. “Maybe him is safe.” Her voice grows quieter. “Or Okeke? Maybe him is sorry?” Clearly she does not want to mention this but feels compelled for my betterment. I close my eyes against the memory of that most unspeakable act of treachery. There is only the sound of the birds breaking our silence. I wait for them to quieten and flee as they sense my seething rage that I failed Akeem and am grandfather also to a monster like Okeke. Ngozi inclines away from me, afraid of my response. She suddenly appears vulnerable. I take my breakfast bowl in my hand and eat slowly. She gets up from the table and leaves me alone to eat. Although Ngozi is thirty years my junior, somewhere in her early fifties, she remains a striking figure of beauty. She has light-brown skin and a gloriously curvy body. She has a large handsome face dotted with small black spidery freckles. Ngozi’s father was Irish. She says she got her freckles and her singing voice from the Kirwans of Galway. She loves to sing. When she walks she sways as if moving to music. She is soft, soothing and generous. Equally she can be abrupt and angry. Many years ago I taught her grandmother how to speak English when she came from Africa in her slave ship. Ngozi is not legally my wife but the woman who came to my cabin over a decade ago and never left. She gave me one son, my youngest child. He came into my life at a time when my responsibilities were almost gone. The anger and Irish temper had abated over the decades. He got me at my best. “Bring the coffee,” I tell Ngozi. I want her to sit with me and hear her noisily sip coffee and sigh with satisfaction when she finishes the first cup. She has an air of contentment in the morning when she gently sways on the rocking chair, her sandals scratching the wood as she rocks hypnotically. There is something comforting about the early-morning sounds and sight of my Ngozi as she sways and hums. In silence we drink. My son is slow in the morning. He joins me on the veranda. He will go to school for two hours and work with my mulatto son on the acres I own in the hills. Lazily he leans in close to me, and I sink into his large green eyes and forget the ailments of old age. He eats his breakfast at a leisurely pace. He places his hand beside mine and spreads his fingers on the table. He is comparing the size of our hands. My son is ten years of age and cannot wait to grow to a man’s full height. He is impressed with size: big hands, strong men, big ships, wild storms. “Will we go to de Blue Lagoon today?” he says, referring to our favourite fishing post. After living for eighty years, I thought I had felt every sensation known to man. Then my little Leon arrived and he gave me something so unexpected I thought I was growing younger. Like Oisín in the ancient Irish tale who finds his way to Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, my son has been my guide to bring me to my own Tír na nÓg. “Yes, we will,” I reply. He rests his hand on mine, his clean pale fingers a contrast to my withered scarred hands. It is a reminder of our age difference. He taps my arm in a friendly manner as he gets up to leave us for the day. “I will find de best oyster wid de most pearls,” he tries to tease me. “Your oyster will not have as many pearls as mine,” I say. “No, Papa,” he wiggles his finger mischievously, “me oyster will have a hundred round white pearls.” Ngozi and I smile. I have been given one last chance to redeem myself. I am thankful his mother is comfortable enough to challenge me. I come from a time when this little island annihilated the meagre men, persecuted the brave and defiled the pretty. Propelled by fear for my children I tried to teach them. Once, I opened the back of one of my sons with a whip. He robbed from our community to buy rum. I have many regrets. Ngozi bends over me to refill my coffee. Her breast rubs off my shoulder. It distracts from harsh regrets and bitter remembrances. “Thank you,” I say. “You’re a good woman.” She looks at me pensively, her head tilted to one side. Seldom do I give her a compliment. “Big month for yuh, Art – yuh gonna be rich,” she says, looking down at me. “I was always rich with a woman like you,” I reply. She laughs and returns to her chair to rock and scratch the wood with her sandals. I close my eyes, fighting the sense of foreboding. At the end of this month, in twenty days’ time, I will collect seven gold coins from Blair Stratford-Rice. A gold coin to represent each decade I have been of service to the Stratford-Rices. It was promised to me by Blair’s mother for my loyalty when most ex-slaves were lynching their masters. At last I am a free man and will have the money to enact a promise I made to myself five years ago. “Wat yuh gonna do wid de money?” “I will give you money to buy whatever you want,” I say. “Yuh joke, old man, I don’t need nothin’,” she says, yet I can see she is flattered. With the remaining coins I will find and buy my grandson Akeem who was sold to Morocco as a slave by my grandson Okeke. If my health continues, I will find Okeke and, if forgiveness does not find me first, I will kill him. I will buy more land and make my sons proud masters of their lives. Each year we will cherish the distance between slavery and freedom until memory is no more. The gold coins will replenish my dignity and hopefully take me from this crippling melancholy. Those coins will give me hope, like the promise of land gave me hope when I was a gangly eleven-year- old boy arriving on these shores. That is, if Blair Stratford-Rice will give me my due. I will also take the time to leave my sons something more than land. In order to help them understand, I must take them back. I will leave an account of the events that shaped my life and, in turn, shaped their lives. Someday when they are old men, possibly gripped by melancholy or cornered by life, they will understand humanity and accept my achievements and understand my wrongdoings. I will begin at the start and take them back to the rolling hills and green valleys of Ireland with my quill and my paper. DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT THE OTHER STOPS ALONG THE WAY!!
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