A View of the Empire at Sunset

by Caryl Phillips

  8

  Civilization

  She sits stiff and upright on a chair to the side of her parents’ bed, above which a canopy of mosquito netting has been delicately twisted and knotted so that it hovers in a discreet manner. She looks at the jumble of ornately framed photographs that decorate her mother’s dressing table and fights back tears. Her parents’ bedroom is heavy with the scent of freshly cut flowers, and an opulent floor lamp with a white gauze shade gives off the gentlest glow. A few months ago her father had announced to his wife and children that civilization in the form of electricity was about to reach their island, and between the hours of six and ten in the evening the hospital and some select residences in Roseau would be receiving the benefits of this new development.

  Downstairs her mother is hosting a party because, according to the informal roster that the ladies of the island appear to have committed to memory, it is her turn to do so. Her mother has always maintained that accepting an invitation to join a couple At Home obliges one to reciprocate; in fact, in her mother’s world, society can function only if one has the good manners to intuit when one’s name has once again risen to the top of the list and thereafter respond by forthwith dispatching invitations. For the past few hours, the two dozen or so guests have continued to circulate downstairs with glasses in hand, having earlier listened to her father address them on his latest topic of complaint. After almost a year, her father has finally given up berating the government for having the temerity to construct the Roseau waterworks without consulting a medical man. He never seems to tire of reminding people that he is, after all, the chief medical officer of the region, and the subsequent epidemic of dysentery, with its accompanying high mortality rate, might well have been avoided had somebody from Government House exercised some simple common sense. Mercifully, the outbreak now appears to be under control, and so of late the doctor’s ire has been directed towards the new settlers from the colonies of Ceylon and Malaya.

  As her father began to address the assembled company, she stood silently to one side with a glass of lime juice. Her father scoffed at the arrogance of the newcomers, who claimed that having successfully tamed nature in their faraway corners of the empire, they intended now to take advantage of the construction of the island’s new interior road and buy up accessible acreage in order to “try out” the West Indies. Her father paused and theatrically made his captive audience wait. He took his time relighting his Cuban cigar, and then he continued. “These people have the opportunity to be somebody here, but some of them appear to be interested in little more than the social cachet of writing their names in the visitor’s book at Government House in the hope of an invitation to the fortnightly receptions and the opportunity to display their ignorance of our ways. Has it not occurred to them that they must leave behind their old attitudes and adopt our own? We drink cocktails, not ‘sundowners.’ Our people are not coolies or punkah wallahs. Negroes are not open to being treated with disdain. You mark my words, unless these infernal interlopers change their tune, then both the flora and the Negroes shall carry the day.”

  Spindly, grey-bearded Mr. Howard was paying little attention to her father’s speech and continued to stare intently in her direction. Clad in an elegant white linen suit, Mr. Howard had reluctantly broken off his whispered conversation with her when her father began to lecture his guests on the subject of the newcomers. A temporary visitor to the region, Mr. Howard had made it his business to befriend her parents shortly after his arrival. Within a month he was declaring to anybody who would listen that he had become so enchanted with the island that he had decided to extend his stay through the winter. As her father began to speak, she watched Mr. Howard’s painfully thin wife extricate herself from the company of the Catholic priest and take up a position next to her husband. As her father continued to expound on the idiocy of this new wave of migrants, Mr. Howard attempted to once again establish a hushed intimacy with her. “I must say, the good doctor makes a fine case.” She heard Mrs. Howard tactfully cough, letting her husband know that he ought to immediately cease talking, but she knew that there was no guarantee that Mr. Howard would take his wife’s hint. She closed her eyes, for the thought of having to endure more words from this man made her feel nauseated. Without bother ing to excuse herself, she turned and set down her lime juice on a side table and then slipped out of the living room and quietly made her way upstairs. Her sister had retired early, so in order to find some solitude she tiptoed her way along the corridor and opened the door to her parents’ bedroom and cautiously closed it behind her.

  She sits now on the stool in front of the dressing-table and picks up a sepia-coloured photograph of her mother in a petite straw hat. Her mother is poised awkwardly on the steps that lead up to her family’s house at their Geneva estate in the south of the island. Strangely, there is no evidence of joy in her mother’s features despite the fact that she is surrounded by her five children. She recognizes herself standing slightly apart on the lowest step; she is a five-year-old girl with boredom clearly imprinted on her face. Why, she wonders, has her mother chosen to dress her in a dreadful, overly pleated skirt that is far too large for her? It is a hot day, that much is clear, and she and her siblings are costumed with comical formality, but why line them up for this contrived photograph when surely her mother must have realized that their greatest desire was to race off and bathe in a river pool and thereafter run wild for what remained of the day? And where was her father? Presumably visiting patients in the surrounding villages, or maybe on duty at the hospital in Roseau. Was her lonely mother having further doubts about her marriage to the loquacious Welsh doctor? Was she chastising herself for having chosen a colonial arrivant from outside her family’s Creole world? She stares at her poor mother and wonders: After the photograph was taken, did her mother find it in herself to unpin her straw hat and release her children to roam free and go play in a rock-strewn gully through which ran a lazy stream that when replenished with rain from the mountains quickly became a dangerous thundering river? Or were the children instructed to file one after the other up and into the shade of the dining room and sit politely at the table while the servants served lunch? Has her mother, she speculates, ever known pleasure?

  The evidence of her mother’s despondency is again clear in the largest of the photographs on the dressing table. In the formal portrait her mother’s hair is drawn back from her heavily powdered face and secured tightly in a severe bun, although her lipstick appears to be far too dark. Is it possible that her mother has overly decorated her face so as to discourage interest of any kind? She holds the photograph up to the light and can see just how well her mother has hidden herself away behind the mask. As yet she doesn’t possess the evasive skills of her stern-faced mother, for this Mr. Howard clearly regards her as one who might be easily duped. Before her father began to hold forth, Mr. Howard ran his hand down her arm as though it was a familiar landscape and murmured that he very much enjoyed looking at her, but she already knew that men of all stations liked to steal furtive glances at girls. Mr. Howard continued and whispered that she was truly beautiful. “My dear, you have a haunting sensuality that very few young ladies ever achieve. But trust me, you’re not yet the finished article. You’re like a flower opening up, but for whom, may I ask?” It was then, as her father began to speak, that she saw Mr. Howard’s wife offer the Catholic priest a hasty excuse and begin to nudge her way across the room. Evidently she had finally noticed that her husband appeared to have developed an interest in the fifteen-year-old daughter of their hosts. As her father settled into his oratorical stride, Mr. Howard endeavoured to extend their blundering conversation. “I must say, the good doctor makes a fine case.” Mrs. Howard coughed. Ignoring both the grey-bearded man and his thin wife, she resolved now to hurry upstairs, where she would remain until each and every one of her parents’ guests had departed from their home. Only then would she quietly make her way back downstairs and then go out onto the veranda, where she woul
d join her father. Once there, the two of them would sit quietly, their tranquility interrupted only by the intermittent flash of fireflies, and together they would wait in silence until the island’s electricity supply was switched off for the evening.

  9

  That Williams Girl

  She knocked timidly on Mother Mount Calvary’s door, but there was no answer. She was about to raise her hand to try again when she heard the nun call out “Enter,” and her heart sank, for there was no longer any possibility of avoiding this audience. At lunchtime, Mother Sacred Heart had wandered over to her and whispered that once classes were finished for the day she was to report to Mother Mount Calvary’s office, but the strict-looking nun with pursed lips gave her no indication as to why she was being summoned. However, they both knew that something must be amiss, for the Mother Superior seldom spoke directly with individual pupils.

  “Well sit down, then.”

  She took up a seat on the other side of the imposing mahogany desk and waited for the senior nun to lift her head from the papers she was scrutinizing. The shutters were open, but in this part of the Convent School little light seemed to find its way into the building, for a large two-story brick resi dence that stood behind the school meant that beyond a certain point in the afternoon it was impossible for sunlight to penetrate.

  Eventually Mother Mount Calvary put aside her pen, drew her hands together in a prayerlike clasp, and then looked at the girl seated across from her. The white band and black veil that framed the nun’s face were in stark contrast to the woman’s otherwise soothing countenance.

  “Well, do you know why I have asked to see you?”

  She shook her head, but instantly knew that this was rude. However, it seemed to her too late to rectify the situation, so she remained silent and simply studied the nun’s mottled hands.

  “Really, you have no idea?”

  “No, Mother Mount Calvary.”

  “I see.” The nun paused, and then sat back in her chair. “Well, this morning your mother visited the school and asked to speak with me. I take it you know what it was she came to tell me?”

  She nodded slowly and stared out through the window, where in the distance she could discern the feathered head of a royal palm swaying gently in the wind. She waited for Mother Mount Calvary to continue.

  * * *

  Last week her mother had opened the door to the living room and stood before her in a pink dress that she had chosen to complement with a matching pink hat. The Colonial Administrator, Mr. Bell, was hosting a late-afternoon cocktail party for the ladies of the island before moving on to his new posting in the African territory of Uganda. Her mother had assumed that the eldest of her remaining daughters would be accompanying her to the event, but when her mother saw that she was not yet dressed for the occasion, and was in fact curled up on the sofa reading another one of the oversized novels that increasingly seemed to command her attention, the older woman struggled to control her irritation. Her mother swallowed deeply and ordered her daughter to go upstairs and prepare herself.

  “Come along, we don’t have much time.”

  She looked quizzically at her mother and furrowed her brow.

  “No,” she said as she puzzled over the absurdity of her mother’s directive. “I don’t want to go to Mr. Bell’s.”

  “Gwendolen, I’m serious. We mustn’t be late.”

  For a few moments, she continued to look at her embarrassingly overdressed mother, and then she simply returned to her book. When she glanced up again, her mother was angrily stripping the pink hat from her head, and the woman now declared that she would wait until her husband had returned from his duties at the hospital in order that she might urgently inform him of how appallingly his daughter had behaved. Her mother’s hands were trembling and she looked as though she might at any moment explode with fury, but the now bareheaded woman managed to compose herself. She watched with some bemusement as her mother retreated noisily from the living room and went to sit by herself on the veranda, where she struck a silent and sullen pose, although it seemed clear to her that her mother continued to smoulder with rage.

  She was upstairs in her bedroom when she heard her father return from the hospital. Thereafter, she listened to his leaden footsteps as he painstakingly made his way up the staircase, and then she heard him tap gently on the bedroom door. Her drowsy father came in and kissed her on the forehead, and then sat opposite her on a flimsy cane chair that was too small for his heft. They were both aware of her sister Brenda, who was already asleep in the bed beneath the window, and in a half-whisper her father asked if he might speak with her downstairs. She closed her book and nodded, and then watched as her father smiled and stood up and eased his way out of the bedroom, leaving the door ajar so she might follow.

  She sat calmly on the living room sofa and faced her father, who blinked his tired eyes as though attempting to clear them before beginning to choose his words carefully.

  “I gather you are experiencing some difficulty with your mother.” She listened, but decided that she should remain quiet and allow her father time to discover the right words. “You see, your mother has told me what happened this evening.” He paused and scrutinized his daughter’s face as though anticipating some form of a response, but she said nothing. “To tell you the truth, for some time now I have thought that it might well be beneficial for you to travel to England for a year or so of schooling, what do you think? Such a course of action will also enable you to see something of the world beyond our island.” She felt momentarily stunned, as though she had been struck an unpleasant blow. “Your mother said you screamed at her, is this true?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Her father nodded and closed his eyes in exasperation. She could see that he had already anticipated the answer and he clearly regretted having posed the question.

  “I’m sorry, but I had to ask.” He paused. “You see, Gwen, your mother feels that you are obstinate and growing beyond her reach and influence. However, your mother is not altogether well, and she is fearful of many things. I do think it best that you perhaps accompany your Aunt Clarice on her Atlantic passage, and I feel sure that things will be easier on your return.” She stared at her poor father, who was finding it difficult to return her gaze. She understood that he no longer wanted her to suffer under the same roof as her mother, but the thought of leaving the island was impossible for her to grasp. And for England? She bit down hard on her lip and tried to think of how she might respectfully respond to her father’s hurtful suggestion.

  * * *

  She looked on as Mother Mount Calvary lit a small candle on her desk. Dusk was closing in and the flame began to dance, which suggested that from some hidden corner a small draught was blowing through the musty office.

  “My child, you’re a misfit, that’s what we’d call you in England.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother Mount Calvary.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother Mount Calvary.” She heard the nun mimic her voice. “Tell me, are you trying deliberately to sound like a Negress?”

  “No, Mother Mount Calvary.”

  The English nun perused her closely.

  “People are forever talking to me about ‘that Williams girl,’ and I hope you understand that a bad reputation can’t be washed away with soap and water. But you’re not a bad girl, are you?”

  Without taking her eyes from the Mother Superior, she shook her head and whispered, “No.” And then she continued.

  “I don’t want to go to England.”

  “No, of course not. For heaven’s sake, why would you? To the English, women from the colonies can be very aggravating, droning on at length about the virtues of their climate and the lushness of their vegetation. I imagine that’s how they’ll perceive you. At least to begin with.”

  She stared keenly at the nun, and then she self-consciously introduced a remoteness into her eyes and looked down at the dusty floorboards. God employed this woman, and it was clear that Mother
Mount Calvary revered Him and wished to do a good job, but she was beginning to wonder if the Good Mother had had experience of employment out in the world before assuming this present role.

  “Your father is only trying to do what he thinks is best for your family, so try not to be angry with him. However, at some point you will have to choose whether to accept or reject your own stubborn nature. After all, it is extremely exhausting to live life without compromise. You do understand, my dear, that you run the risk of simply wearing yourself out if you persist with your war against social decorum.”

  She continued to stare at the floor, and then she heard the hiss of the sputtering candle, and when the flame settled, the room seemed to some degree brighter, although her own mood remained despondent. She pictured her mother marching triumphantly up the hill to visit the Convent School in order that she might announce her daughter’s imminent departure, which she no doubt did with some enthusiasm. Her mother knew instinctively that this particular daughter was never going to live a quiet life behind the jalousies, and she presumed that her mother, having successfully lobbied her father, was delighted that she would soon be rid of her. She sensed that Mother Mount Calvary was most likely still looking in her direction with her lips divulging the most delicate of smiles, and she decided to avoid any further eye contact. But could the nun please help her? Could she not do something to alter her fate? Please. They sat together in silence, and they both listened to the sound of a solitary dog barking as it ambled its way along the alleyway to the back of the school.