* * *
That Friday evening at their green and cream Appleton house, Perlita washed up the dinner things and put them away after a day full of imperfections. She was in her room preparing for home when Papa appeared by the side gate, blocking her path. His hands were on his hips. Perlita must have known everything was up because she started crying – a terrible wailing and howling, so terrible that Mama rushed out wringing her hands. Dogs began to bark from miles away and others nearby joined in. Perlita dropped her bags and Papa, waiting for that very moment, pounced. Six large fried fish, red snappers, covered in onions and red peppers, presented themselves, wrapped in newspaper. They lay on their sides unhappily, eyes vacant.
‘Why is Perlita crying, Mama?’ Yvonne asked.
Mama did not reply, her eyes fixed on Papa.
Perlita appealed to Mama. ‘We are poor people, ma’am. Ah have brothers and sisters to feed. It won’t happen again, ma’am. Ah will pay for it out of me wages. Is only a few fish, ma’am.’
Big mistake. Perlita miscalculated. Those fish were not a few fish. They were a hundred thousand fish and they were not just fish. They represented Papa and everything he stood for. They were the shirt off his back. They were his fish, his children’s fish, his wife’s fish, his sweat and blood and everything else too, and nobody was going to spirit them off like that. Perlita was history.
‘Ah beg you, ma’am, sar. Please, please.’ Perlita’s pleases tumbled out without self-respect. ‘Please, sar, please, sar. Ah won’t do it again, sar.’
Her begging made everyone uncomfortable. Mama turned towards Papa who was pointing to the opened gate beneath the logwood tree at the side of the house, dark now in the congealed, dying sun. She saw Papa’s implacable face and knew that there was absolutely no hope. Perlita saw it too and in that moment revealed herself. Fierce malevolence came from her eyes.
‘You black Neaga, you.’ She glared at Papa. ‘You wicked ol’ Neaga. God going strike you down!’
‘What is Neaga, Papa?’ Yvonne’s sudden question revealed her innocence. It was not a term used at the dinner table and not one that came easily to Papa’s lips. People like him knew that such an expression belonged firmly in the vocabulary of dark people. Perlita was simply behaving true to type.
‘She’s ignorant,’ Papa growled, his face blue-black with indignation. ‘She means Negro. And she probably doesn’t know that she’s just described herself.’
It was the last time they saw Perlita, wiping her red snapper fish eyes as she gathered up her belongings, reduced now, and went out through the gate, not once looking back. As the gate closed behind her, the last weak streaks of sun disappeared, plunging the verandah into purple darkness.
CHAPTER 6
A few days after Perlita left, Poppy barked up such a racket that everyone ran for the front door. A woman stood on the bottom steps of the verandah with a huge grip in one hand. From where they stood, just inside the door, her perspiration assaulted their senses. Poppy sniffed the air noisily, haughtily. Could this be the new maid?
‘Ah come for the work, mo’om,’ Agatha said, for it was she.
‘Agatha?’ Mama asked, to make sure it wasn’t someone else.
‘Yes, mo’om,’ Agatha answered. ‘Agatta Mac, mo’om.’
The children noticed the maid’s pronunciation of her own name. (‘Put your tongue between your teeth to pronounce th,’ Papa always said.)
‘Did you come all the way from Santa Cruz?’
‘Yes, mo’om. Ah took the bus halfway.’
‘Come in,’ Mama said.
Agatha’s steps were ponderous and uncertain as she made her way through the drawing room. Barrington was nimble enough to catch a small vase as it fell in her wake. Corner tables and occasional chairs somehow got in her way. The curtains between the dining room and the pantry deliberately reached out to detain her. Once again it was Barrington, seeing the impending calamity, who leapt forward and prevented further damage. Boyd and Yvonne exchanged looks of alarm at this strange, unintentional recklessness, and fanned out before and beside her to protect her and the furniture. Poppy sniffed high and low.
When they got Agatha into the kitchen, Mama made ginger tea and sat her down at the kitchen table. Another piece of theatre took place. Agatha fumbled with the teacup. Tea splashed into the saucer. They saw her gnarled fingers, too big for the handle of the cup. Finally she got the cup to her lips, watched by four pairs of eyes. Only Mama had the grace to look elsewhere. Poppy was the main culprit, staring Agatha down, eyes following every action, head ascending and descending with each movement of her hand. He was also the first to recoil when she started to slurp. These were not reluctant slurps but vicious, deliberate slurps, the very things Papa warned against, the slurps of those people. ‘They know no better,’ Papa often said, referring to those people of whom Agatha was one, and at the same time giving notice that children didn’t slurp at the table or anywhere else, and that if he ever caught them doing such a thing, well, they knew what. Agatha had already lost important points. Then she burped. Not once, but three times, each one fiercer than the first. And they knew she was doomed before she started.
After tea, Agatha clarified two things. She was Seventh Day Adventist and intended going to church every Saturday. ‘To do God’s work, mo’om.’ And she insisted on Fab to wash the clothes. ‘Is what them use in foreign, mo’om.’
Fab was popular with the maids on the hill. They liked it because it smelled nice and created sparkling white suds, not like the heavy brown soap bought in squares from village shops. Fab was the new detergent from abroad, from foreign, that the Queen at Buckingham Palace used, and film stars too, that The Daily Gleaner in its pages proclaimed as giving the brightest clean. It just takes away the dirt. All the maids wanted soap to “take away” the dirt. They didn’t want to spend back-breaking hours over a scrubbing board and evil-smelling water. Fab was just so fab.
‘Fab or Tide, whichever you prefer,’ Mama said.
Agatha smiled. Mama couldn’t settle the church issue, but Papa would.
When Papa arrived, the landscape gold, lamps glowing from every house on the hill, families settling down to dinner, Agatha was safe in her room reading her Bible. Her lamp cast broken shadows on the wall. Papa would interrogate her in the morning.
That evening, Mama served up hot Fry’s cocoa and ginger biscuits in the drawing room. She read The Star while Papa read The Daily Gleaner. The children sipped their cocoa and barely breathed while on the radio, very softly, Cathy Carr sang, Come down, come down from your Ivory Tower.
‘The poor man.’ Mama reached a hand to her breast, horrified.
‘What?’ Papa did not look up from his paper.
‘“Mr Donald Lee,’’’ Mama read out. ‘“Shopkeeper of Water Lane, Kingston, was shot three times in the chest by a burglar on Friday night last. Mr Lee and his wife were awakened in the middle of the night by noises outside the shop window and turned on the light to investigate. The burglar fired two storeys up, hitting Mr Lee. He died on the spot. Mr Lee leaves a wife, Esmie, two daughters and a son.’’’
‘The mistake was to turn on the light,’ Papa observed.
‘The poor wife and children,’ Mama lamented, on the verge of tears.
‘If you should hear anything suspicious in the middle of the night, never turn on the lights,’ Papa warned. ‘Why? That is the excuse the criminals are looking for. You’ll be in the light and they’ll be in the dark. Shoot you down dead.’
‘At least it only happens in Kingston,’ Mama said.
‘Out here in the country mad people will chop you up with machetes,’ Papa replied.
‘Don’t frighten the children. The last time someone went mad was in Lluidas Vale and that was ten years ago, and he didn’t harm anyone. Alphanso Robinson was his name. He was wandering about the district naked, for several days.’
‘With a name like that no wonder he went mad,’ Papa tried to joke. ‘No family to look after him, probably al
l living in Birmingham, England.’
The children trembled. Boyd strained his ears to hear Mitch Miller and “The Yellow Rose of Texas” from the golden depths of the Mullard radio. The songs came from a magical place, far from their sombre drawing room. Outside, the night seemed to be crawling with burglars, waiting to shoot them down in cold blood or chop them up with the machetes the cane-cutters used. Poppy’s plaintive cry gave credence to the picture building up. He barked low, frightened low, and kept on scratching against the back door.
‘What’s wrong with that dog?’
‘He had his dinner,’ Mama said, as if dogs only barked when they were hungry.
Papa was looking straight into the dining room and out through the green jalousies at the end of the room. Suddenly he bounded in a single movement into the pantry.
‘Fire!’ Papa cried out, in a new voice that they did not know.
He switched on the kitchen lights, flinging the back door open. In bounded Poppy, tail in a spin. In came the night air and out they all went behind Papa. The sky seemed like a red inferno. It was Agatha’s room. Shadows leaped like demons behind the windows and red flames shot out from the opened door. Agatha herself stood away from the building, Bible in hand, praying aloud.
‘Lawd Jesus! Lawd Jesus!’ she kept muttering, oblivious of Papa, who rushed by her. ‘Help me, oh Lawd! Help me, oh Lawd!’
Papa attached the writhing pink hose to the outside tap while Barrington, full of purpose, turned the handle all the way out. The water shot up in a white jet and they could hear it hitting the wooden walls. Papa got as far as the door but fresh flames leaped out.
‘Back, back!’ Papa commanded, wrestling with the hose. Everyone clustered round Mama on the back verandah as Papa, in a heroic stance, mastered the flames. Barrington crouched as if awaiting another call to action. Agatha remained in the shadows, slapping her Bible with open palms and stomping about on the spot. A dreadful, burnt-wet smell hovered in the air and settled into their clothes.
Agatha left at midday the next day, teary-eyed, her shadow slow on the ground. She did not hurl fierce malevolence at them, as Perlita had done, but went meekly, clearly filled to overflowing with the Biblical promise that the meek would inherit the earth.
As Agatha departed, the estate carpenters arrived, sawing, hammering and planing until a new building appeared at the end of the day. But Mama’s brows wrinkled because she remembered Mrs Moore’s words: Without a good maid, it’s difficult to run an estate house. And Papa avoided discussing the matter because both his first and his second domestic appointments had failed spectacularly.
At this time, several very concerned older women at the club took Mama under their wing and described the difficulty they, too, had had in finding a competent maid.
‘Oh, yes,’ one woman said, ‘there are plenty of maids about. But can they cook, wash and iron? Can they take instruction? What about their hygiene?’
‘It’s a tricky business,’ another woman, more serious-looking than the first, said. ‘You can find a girl who can cook like your mother but who has the most disgusting personal habits. And it’s not unknown to find them as clean as Sunlight soap but with the brains of an imbecile. Most are as dark as anything, not having completed elementary school or worse, unable to read or write. Watch out for those. They are the ones who believe in Duppies and Rolling Calves. Send them packing at once!’
‘The best way to go about finding the right sort,’ the most concerned of the older women said, ‘is to employ them and watch their every move like a hawk. Search their rooms when they aren’t there. Keep a watch on their coming and going and the type of visitors they entertain. At the first sign of trouble, too much Bush tea drinking, food missing, bedclothes, cutlery and worse, money, fire them on the spot!’
These older women who advised Mama had spent an extraordinary amount of time on the subject of maids. It was the main topic of conversation at their dinner parties and at the club. Some of them, after many years at the estate, had still not found the right maid. A hardened group, the most serious of the concerned women, held committee meetings to discuss the maid problem, the one problem that completely bedevilled them. Mama listened politely and smiled a great deal, but she wanted to get away from their company.
And Papa reassured Mama, saying that they were bound to find the right maid soon. Thieves and Bible-reading ignoramuses just wouldn’t do. And he made urgent enquiries at the factory through his dubious intermediaries.
* * *
Two maids came and went in quick succession, lasting only four days between them. The first, Edilyna, burnt through three of Papa’s shirts during the ironing and burnt breakfast, lunch and dinner. Papa fired her after dinner on the first day. The second, Lurlene, took two hours to prepare breakfast and seemed completely exhausted on her feet. She fell asleep at the kitchen sink on the second morning. ‘Sleeping sickness,’ Papa said. Lurlene was given her wages on the third day when she was found seriously nodding off in front of the red-hot cooker. And then there was Melvyna.
Melvyna, the fifth maid, came up from Lacovia with all her belongings crammed in a large bankra on her head, and her face drenched in perspiration from the long walk. Mama commented on the attractiveness of the bankra and said she had seen very attractive baskets at the Victoria Crafts Market in Kingston but none came close to Melvyna’s. Melvyna was well pleased and promised Mama a bankra of her own, as her brothers back in Lacovia made the baskets themselves to sell at the local markets. She was quick of eye and swift of motion, preparing breakfast, polishing the furniture and getting down to the washing before anyone was awake. Mama had to restrain her. She made a promising start.
And so, on a Sunday evening with the scent of boiling sugar in the air, Melvyna pushed Yvonne’s pram along the paved roads, with the children all round her in their Sunday clothes. She wore a floral dress that Mama had given her, a wide-brimmed, black straw hat and white shoes. Yvonne’s big pink doll with the corn-yellow hair sat in the pram. Sometimes, when she got tired, Yvonne sat in the pram with the doll in her lap.
Barrington wanted to walk by Geraldine Pinnock’s house. He didn’t say so himself, he just walked in that direction as if he had no particular interest in going there, and Melvyna followed. Geraldine Pinnock was only eleven years old but she was going to be a concert pianist like Winifred Atwell. That September she was off to the Hampton School for Girls, which was not far from Munro College, Barrington’s new school. All evening long she played the piano but didn’t appear on the verandah. Barrington had his hands in his pockets and observed the house from under uninterested brows, but Boyd knew where his heart was. He and Yvonne picked roseapples near Mr and Mrs Moore’s old house and paid no attention whatever to Melvyna’s entreaties to be orderly and to pick, if they had to pick, only the ripe apples. The roseapple smell and taste mesmerised them. They had never seen so many lovely roseapples hanging from a single tree before.
They crossed the railway tracks to gaze down into the river, saw the strong current dragging long grass and reeds along the banks, and held Poppy tight to prevent him falling in. Poppy, excited to the full, made little darting movements between their legs as if he would rush headlong into the water but always pulled up at the last minute.
‘If him not careful him will end up at Black River,’ Melvyna warned.
‘But this is the Black River,’ Yvonne told her, pointing into the dark, swiftly moving water and glancing at Poppy with some concern. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Boyd seemed hypnotised by the silent power of the water. None of them could swim and she didn’t think Poppy could either. He was just a small dog. Maybe when he was a grown-up dog he would learn to swim.
‘Black River is a town where the river go,’ Melvyna told them. ‘They sell ice cream in little white boxes from a white van in the street down there. And you eat the ice cream with wooden spoons.’
‘Wooden spoons!’ Yvonne was disgusted.
‘Let your Papa drive you down
there and you will see.’
‘Ice cream spoons,’ Barrington informed them authorita-tively. He had been to the estate manager’s garden party for big children. At that party, Geraldine Pinnock, in her white silk dress, dark plaited hair and black patent leather shoes with the button at the side, had played the piano. Everybody had eaten ice cream, not with boring old silver spoons but with cute little wooden spoons like they used in America. It was the latest thing. They even had Coca-Cola, that new dark drink in the curvy bottle.
‘You know nothing,’ Barrington told Yvonne.
By the time they got in sight of home, Yvonne was doubled up in pain. She was moaning and holding her stomach, her forehead contorted and sweating.
‘Eating green roseapple,’ Melvyna deduced, with a look of sadness. She knew her fate and was resigned to it. She would be blamed for letting the children eat unripe fruit while she was in charge. It was a sacking offence.
Mama put Yvonne to bed and told off Melvyna, mostly with bad looks.
‘But ma’am, but ma’am,’ Melvyna protested. She dreaded Papa coming home and finding Yvonne in her wretched state.
Melvyna went to bed early, but not before she begged Mama, almost on bended knees, to let her prepare hot Cerasee tea, a special concoction she knew of. Yvonne, the poor chile, would be better in no time. If that didn’t work she knew how to make a Fever Grass drink, another special concoction. Mama said no. But, Melvyna desperately wanted to know, what about a little Bissy tea, or Leaf of Life tea with nutmeg? Certainly not, Mama told her. Not even a little Bush tea, ma’am? Melvyna was persistent: Yvonne would be better before you could say hallelujah, tenk you Jesus! Mama again told her no. Depressed, she sat up in bed reading her Bible. She and the house were fast asleep when Papa finally arrived well past ten o’clock. So she escaped his wrath that night.
The Pink House at Appleton Page 6