The Pink House at Appleton

by Jonathan Braham

  Mama sat by the window, where she had an unimpeded view of the driveway. She wanted to make sure she had enough time to secrete the letter and compose herself, should Papa suddenly appear. Her hands trembled as she opened the envelope. Something fell out. It was the picture of a girl, not more than seven years old, smiling sweetly and shyly into the camera. The picture was taken at a photographer’s studio in Spanish Town. His details were stamped clearly on the back in embossed letters.

  Mama looked towards the ceiling as the flesh of her face dropped and sagged. But she did not gain any solace from the ceiling. Deliverance was not there. The little girl had Papa’s defining features: the broad forehead, prominent cheeks, square-cut jaw and strong, even teeth. And she had dimples of the most pleasant kind in her cheeks. She was very pretty. Mama studied the picture. She thought, Poor thing, it’s not your fault. It was the deceit, the dishonesty, the hypocrisy and the mess that they were now all mired in.

  Mama read the letter slowly, trying to understand each word from the strange hand far away in Lluidas Vale. Papa was probably at the factory, or at the club at that very moment, lecturing about values and principles, decrying low morals, highly critical of people like Edgar and others of his sort.

  Again and again she read the letter, wishing it away. She knew she couldn’t possibly talk to Papa about it, not immediately. When things settled down, she would go to him, when he was in a reasonable mood, and hope for a civilised discussion. But she wanted to delay that moment for as long as possible. Turning away from the window, she wished, for one rash moment, that she was Pamela Moodie, asserting her authority as a woman and wife. And for just one more blinding moment she wished that she was reckless and could dance the mambo.

  * * *

  As Papa got into the Land Rover that afternoon, Vincent approached.

  ‘Ah leaving, sar,’ Vincent said, red-eyed.

  ‘Leaving what?’

  ‘The work, sar.’

  Papa gave him an uncomprehending look. Gardeners, yard boys and maids did not leave just like that. They were fired, kicked out, and departed with their sordid little bankras or grips and the clothes on their backs. Vincent’s effrontery was breathtaking.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Papa asked, amused.

  ‘Ah leaving, sar,’ Vincent repeated, suddenly irritated, feeling rising resentment of his employer for his privileged position, envious of his continuing fornication with the white woman, bitter at his own miserable failure with Mavis.

  ‘Don’t be a damn fool, man,’ Papa said, slamming the Land Rover door shut. ‘Make sure you’re here when I get back tonight.’ And he drove off.

  Vincent was left standing in his own shadow, angry at the offhand manner in which he had been treated, had always been treated, by the callous man in short trousers. He had little respect for Mr Brookes. The man was no good. From the very beginning, he had treated him like dirt. He blamed him for everything.

  An hour later, at the factory Papa sat with his head in his hands. A letter lay opened on his desk. It was from a certain Miss Connor. She had written to him at the factory, addressing him as Mr Harold Brookes, Scientist, Appleton Estate in her stumbling handwriting. Served him right, boasting to her the way he had. She had taken him literally. He had been drunk that fateful night but remembered telling her with a slurred tongue, “I’m the schientist, the brains at the factory.” But the biggest blow (he’d raised his hands in despair when he discovered it) was that she had also written to Mama. No wonder Mama had been silent during lunch. He’d thought her silence was to do with Boyd and that disgraceful business with Susan. But he was wrong.

  Papa got down off the stool and walked up and down the office. The reality was impossible – to stand before Mama and accept that all along he had been one of those people, not the man she knew. The humiliation. Men who took their lives he had always considered absolute cowards, not deserving of understanding. Now he knew that putting an end to it wasn’t so unthinkable.

  He was going to have to go home and face Mama. Once he explained everything to her, she would understand. Thank God she was not the unforgiving kind. The very qualities he thought were her weaknesses would now be the saving of him. And while he was about it, he intended to do something else. The business with Ann: he would have to put an end to that too, however difficult. Maybe a transfer to New Yarmouth estate was the answer. Through the laboratory window and across the valley, he saw the two houses against the green hill: the pink house, his home, and the white house of the Mitchisons under its crimson poinciana canopy. He would talk to Ann that night.

  That night, Vincent left the pink house. He went empty-handed, just the clothes on his back and a small bag of the Rastafarian weed, the ganja, in his pocket. He had spent the afternoon cleaning his tools, oiling the lawnmower, sharpening his machete till tiny bits of steel littered the ground at his feet, hoping all the while for salvation. But it was no use. Work, the one thing that gave him a sense of purpose and the only enjoyment he knew, could not take away the feeling of worthlessness. He was without respect, pride or dignity, the things some men killed for, or would die for. Mavis’s position at the pink house and Mr Brookes’ indifference meant that he could have no place there. And yet, his entire working life – and a happy one it had been too with the Maxwell-Smiths – had been spent at this house at Appleton. Poppy limped after him for a time in the warm, cosy darkness, but seeing that his face was set in the distance, returned to sit on the porch, wimpering all evening, as small distressed dogs do.

  And that same night, Miss Chatterjee answered a knock at her door. When she saw who it was, her face brightened, but just as quickly showed alarm. Her maid, Adassa, a deadly gossip, normally gone from the house at that hour, was still about. She was fussing with brown paper bags in the kitchen while her uncle, Mr Gordon, waited patiently on his bicycle in the dark by the porch. Hastily Miss Chatterjee manoeuvred the visitor into her bedroom, dismissed Adassa for the night, locked up the house and drew the curtains.

  CHAPTER 40

  That very same night, he came out of hiding, looked into the distance and saw no living thing. He came out of the man-made cave in the cane-piece by the riverbank and crawled up the side of the hill. He’d been living on sugar cane, mangoes and oranges, gathered only in the dark. But he craved meat, cooked food, a swig of rum to put the fire back in him. These could only come from the houses dotting the lower reaches of the valley, now in complete darkness, except for one. A solitary light shone, yellow and hazy in the drizzle. This would be his guiding light.

  These houses did not have live-in yard boys or vicious dogs, his main threats, only slow-moving maids who would not open their doors in the dead of night. Because he dared not risk using the roads, even at that hour of night, his journey took him over uneven ground, from boulder to boulder, through fence and thicket, deep grass, a cluster of small trees and finally the manicured hedge of the little house. He followed the low-cut fence, head down, to the rear of the building. Here, where it was darkest, the fence petered out. As his eyes grew accustomed to the near blackness, he barely made out, under cover of the trees, the shape of the secluded Jaguar. He wondered why it wasn’t parked out in the carport next to the little Austin Seven where the solitary light blazed. It took him only a few steps to find the kitchen door and a second to raise the worn wooden latch from the outside. Not a single star stood in the sky. It was even darker in the kitchen, so dark he had to put his hands out to feel his way. Kitchen odours, roast beef, fried bacon and baked things, excited and propelled him. Hunger, held in suspension for so long, became acute. He salivated, went weak at the knees and had to brace himself against a workshop or table. Whatever it was moved ever so slightly away from him. A receptacle fell over, scattering cutlery. In the resulting din he ducked down, low on the ground, not breathing, expecting white light to flood the room as someone flicked the switch. But nothing happened. As he waited, he counted out time as he had done all his working life, from ten in the morning to six i
n the evening. Behind him, the night air rose off the valley floor and breezed into the kitchen through the open door. He felt it against his arms, through his shirt and heard the rapid whispers as it swept briskly along the kitchen floor. Just a flicker of light, from a flashlight or match, would reveal the contents of the kitchen. It was all he needed. Most of the houses had wood-burning stoves so there was bound to be safety matches about. Rising slowly in the prickly dark, he stroked the table top, feeling every inch of it. Edging to the side of the room, he felt the warm metal of the Caledonian Modern Dover stove and worked his way back, reaching out into corners and ledges. The rattle of matches was astonishingly loud as his searching fingers came upon a box. He saw the first match splutter and go out, revealing horrible shadows, limbs outstretched, eyes white and accusing. And he heard, from a far-off place, sickening screams, felt the sudden power in his right arm as the machete went up and down with blinding speed. He heard the thuck! thuck! thuck! of hard steel biting into flesh and bone. The motion of his hands had imitated his feet, that quick up and down action against the bicycle pedals, on that terrible day.

  The second match burst into yellow flame. This time he saw bread and butter, the small bankra atop the refrigerator in the corner, the door that led off into the pantry and the dark part of the house. Before the third match went out, he was upon the bread like an assassin, neck bulging, jaws aching, bursting with the intensity of sudden energy. In the refrigerator he found a jug of lemonade, a slab of roast beef and sweet potato pudding. The match went out. The fourth match flared, an elongated flame shot out, sulphur catching his fingers, taking hold, burning into his flesh. Out went his hand like a whiplash, clean and swift and sharp, flicking in the air. Up went the burning match, up and down and out against the window. Into the bankra in the darkness went the bread and roast beef, a carving knife and one or two other items, and he turned quickly to get away. He got to the door and, unusually for a man who wasn’t given to looking over his shoulder, glanced round. The kitchen glowed red. Dark figures writhed against the walls. He stumbled and backed away, cowering. Bright red blood covered the kitchen. It came off the ceiling and floor and washed up, frothing and bubbling, against the windows. Again he heard the cries, saw the figures writhing and thrashing about. Blood poured out the door and splashed his arms and clothes, dripped off his cheeks, into his eyes, discolouring his sight.

  It was still drizzling but it would be dry in his cave, hidden deep among the canes by the river. With an animal grunt, he closed his ears to all sound and set his face towards his refuge. He wanted it to rain hard, to deafen him and drown out all the voices, the animal sounds, the devil utterances.

  * * *

  Papa knew it was late but he couldn’t tear himself away from Ann’s fleshy clutches. The meeting was meant to be business-like and sensible. But he had never known deeper, more consuming passion than he felt that evening. It obliterated everything: the letter, his impending meeting with Mama, his own decision, taken at a sober time, to end the affair. At that moment, in that place, with Ann in his arms, he wanted the past, the present and the future to be of no consequence. He did not want to think. He kissed Ann again, softly at first then deeply and hard. He liked this intense, instinctive, aggressive love-making, this total passion, completely absent from his relationship with Mama. Ann moaned and moved into the kiss, giving him her tongue, clasping his hands into hers. He wanted it to last forever. But she broke away.

  ‘You have to go now, I know. It’s late.’

  ‘It’s past eleven.’ Papa drew her towards him, not wanting to release her.

  ‘Is the club open this late?’ Ann asked.

  ‘Yes. People like Moodie live there, drinking the night away.’

  ‘And you spend many a late night there yourself.’ Ann laughed, regretted it immediately and turned away, embarrassed.

  ‘I do,’ Papa said calmly.

  ‘Doesn’t Victoria ever telephone to find out when you’re coming home?’

  ‘There’s no telephone at the house. I thought you knew.’

  ‘No telephone?’

  ‘No. They took it out before you arrived and installed it here instead.’

  ‘Here? You mean in this house?’

  ‘Yes,’ Papa laughed. ‘Tim is the assistant general manager, y’know, and there are few telephones to go round.’ Papa pulled her to him again, seeing her discomfort. ‘It was the right decision. If I were the manager, I would expect the same.’

  ‘You would not, Harold,’ Ann said, pulling away.

  ‘I would.’ Papa coaxed her back into his arms, stroking the soft of her neck, his hand meandering down to her flanks, pleasing her, not wanting it to end.

  * * *

  Vincent hadn’t returned even when it was past seven o’clock, the latest he had ever been away from the house. Mama put it down to the weather. But she felt sure that Mavis, who had gone on an errand, would return on time. She was a dependable girl. If Mavis said eight o’clock, she meant eight o’clock, even with the weather so uncertain. But eight o’clock came and went and no one heard Mavis’s shuffling feet at the door, only the quietness, the thin falling rain, the consistent plop-plop of water from the roof. Mama just wanted someone to run and fetch Papa. She was beginning to panic.

  Baby Babs was ill. Since four o’clock, she’d been moaning and groaning and her little face was contorted, wet with perspiration. Mama had no idea what to do. She’d tried everything she knew, used every medication, held the baby in every possible position, crooned and whispered and soothed and stroked and tried to work her maternal magic, but to no avail. She wanted Papa to take the baby to Dr Cadien at Balaclava. Boyd and Yvonne gathered round her, frightened too, biting their fingernails. They had been pinning all their hopes on Mavis, who always found a way to fix things.

  ‘Where could your father be?’ Mama despaired. ‘He’s usually home in bad weather.’

  Boyd struggled to speak, agitated, feeling Mama’s distress. He felt a great compulsion to say what he knew, everything, from the very beginning, but pulled back.

  ‘He’s at Mr Mitchison,’ was all he said.

  Mama swung round. ‘Mr Mitchison? How do you know?’

  ‘I saw him driving by in the rain,’ Boyd said, pointing in the general direction of the road and looking extremely stressed.

  ‘When? How do you know?’

  ‘When you were in the kitchen.’ Boyd’s demeanour reflected such uncertainty that Mama had the distinct impression he was making it up.

  ‘How do you know it was your father? It could be anybody.’

  ‘Boyd knows, Mama,’ Yvonne said confidently.

  ‘But how? Did you see him?’

  ‘I saw the jeep – ’

  ‘Land Rover,’ Yvonne corrected.

  ‘From the verandah? In the dark?’

  ‘From the fence.’

  ‘From the periwinkle fence?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the rain! Boyd, you know you shouldn’t. What were you doing there in the dark? Are you sure it was Papa?’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ Boyd said. ‘It was just a drizzle. I wasn’t wet.’

  Mama frowned, observing the diminutive figure in front of her. She was more concerned about his psychological state than the meaning of his words. But she knew what she had to do. She patted his cheek, quickly put on her mac and got out the rarely used butterfly-patterned umbrella. They’d have to telephone Dr Cadien from the Mitchisons’.

  ‘Stand by the baby,’ Mama said to the two children. ‘I’m going to get Papa. If Mavis comes, let her know where I am.’

  And Mama went down the verandah steps, across the lawn to the periwinkle fence, through the gate there and up the road in the dark. Water droplets twinkled and sparkled from trees under the fledgeling moon. Boyd was right. It wasn’t raining, only drizzling. After-rain smells of washed leaves, wet earth, snails, slugs, worms, frogs, virgin blossoms and the scent of raw anxiety permeated the night. Only Mama’s footsteps broke the silence
, footsteps that were slow and tentative. She did not really want to call Papa away from his business with Tim Mitchison but she knew she had no choice.

  * * *

  Beyond the Mitchisons’ verandah, a clean brightness like silver covered the lawn and the sorrounding trees. The lawn was squidgy and all around the house, water settled in clear puddles, reflecting the moon.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Papa, suddenly alert, asked Ann.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Footsteps,’ Papa breathed.

  ‘No,’ Ann said.

  ‘There it is again!’

  Twice during the evening, Papa thought he’d heard footsteps in the wet. Stealthy footsteps, like someone creeping up. Twice that evening he’d looked up, expecting someone to appear out of the darkness. He felt unseen eyes upon him. Ann heard nothing. Papa asked about Adolphus, feeling sure the aged gardener was at it again.

  ‘People like that always eavesdrop,’ he said. ‘It would be hard to find a gardener on the estate who didn’t get up to that kind of mischief. Peeping Toms. Up to no good. Keep your curtains drawn at night. At least Vincent, my gardener, can’t get up to much. You know he has only one eye.’ Ann was shocked and assumed Papa was making it up until he said, ‘This is no joke, Ann. They have nothing better to do, you see.’