“It go on for days, ma’am, the whole island shut down. From time to time, night and day, you hearing gunshots, sometimes jus’ one or two, sometimes so much at firs’ you think is an explosion but after it go on for two, three minutes … I spend the whole time here, ma’am, in the hotel. We push some furniture up agains’ the doors, jus’ in case, nuh. The telephone was still working so I manage to talk with the family to make sure everything okay, but nobody knew what was going on. Everybody was saying coup, coup, but who, why, where, nobody could say.”
One by one the police outposts were retaken by soldiers wearing ski masks. A few prisoners were taken, many others were shot. Two of the outposts exploded in flames, the fire spreading quickly to adjacent buildings.
Around the parliament building they continued to wait.
“And then early one morning we hear a boom. Then nothing. Then a lot o’ wild shooting. Then it was over. We watch it on. Fellas coming out with their hands up, soldiers aiming at their head, pushing them rough-rough to the ground.
“I give it a couple of hours before heading home. You know, ma’am, when I step out the door, everything felt different. Even the air felt kind o’ dead. It was like the whole world had changed. I mean, here, at home, we had people countin’ bodies.”
Yasmin feels the evening darkness weighing on the town, feels it tightening around the hotel, feels the hotel tightening around her.
Jennifer says, “Is like everybody just waitin’.”
“What for?” Yasmin asks.
Jennifer shakes her head. “Just waitin’.”
The guard, gesturing towards a glassed door beyond the desk, says, “Maybe a drink is better idea than a walk, ma’am.”
Yasmin considers the suggestion. She imagines pushing that door open to ferns and Tiffany lampshades, to a worldly and timeless elegance of long evening dresses and white jackets, as in countless old black-and-white movies. Claudette Colbert would be nursing some exotic drink at the bar. Over in the corner, Leslie Howard would be picking out a melancholy melody on a grand piano. Yasmin says, “Is there a piano in there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jennifer replies. “There’s a piano.”
“Is there a piano player?”
Jennifer smiles sadly and opens her palms in regret.
The room has grown warm. She kicks off her shoes and stretches out on the bed. For the first time she regrets Jim’s absence. She closes her eyes, listens to the air squeezing through the air conditioner, squeezing into her lungs, and waits for the regret to pass.
Regret begets regret.
She regrets that her memories come in bits and pieces — sound bites of the mind. What she wants, what she yearns for, is memories that unroll like film: a long and seamless evocation of mood and nuance.
Her daughter is sitting on the carpet in front of the door. She is struggling with the straps of her new shoes; they are stiff and will not slip easily into the buckle.
Jim, briefcase in hand, waits impatiently beside her, car keys already jingling in his hand.
When her daughter sighs and begins again, a shadow crosses Jim’s face. Yasmin is about to rein in his impatience when, inexplicably, his features soften. He puts down the briefcase and crouches, his hand lighting on the curve of her daughter’s back.
Their daughter’s back.
As the unskilled fingers slip the strap into the silver buckle, as they tighten and secure it, Jim gently runs his thumb down her backbone: a long and languorous caress. He is as if in awe: of the shape, of the solidity, of the very reality of the child. He has, Yasmin sees, stopped the world.
His love, she thinks, rarely glitters. Rather, it glimmers in subdued constancy; and only occasionally — as at that moment years ago; as at that other moment years before that when he first held their newborn daughter — does it sparkle.
This waiting for the regret to pass: it is, she thinks, the only wisdom she has acquired in her fifteen years with Jim.
4
THE ONLY TRICK, my dear, is patience. The preparation is really quite simple. You see this little implement?
Yes, you’re right. It does rather look like a miniature milk pail with handle and spout, doesn’t it?
I bought it specially, you know. It’s used for making both Turkish coffee and Moroccan mint tea. So, at least, I was told by the man in the shop. You put the mint leaves in with the water and you let it boil for five minutes, until it grows thick and fragrant. Then you add mounds of sugar and sip it piping hot.
Exotic, my dear? I suppose so, but that is no reason to fear it, is it now? I don’t mean to compare myself to tea, but I know what it is to be exotic, my dear, to be seen as being so different you are disliked for it … But I’ve told you the story about my husband in the London hotel, haven’t I?
It was soon after my husband’s posting to London. Springtime, I think. I remember it was wet and cold, humid — but not the unpleasant, piercing humidity of fall and winter. No, there was a weak sunshine, with the promise of much more to come, and the sense of a great drying up, of grass turning green and hints of indiscreet colour. So it must have been spring — but the season actually is beside the point. This could have happened in any season …
What’s the matter, my dear? Don’t you fancy the tea?
So what’s the meaning of that face then? Sweet? Of course it’s sweet. It’s supposed to be sweet. Just sip at it, dear. Gently does it.
In any case, we were walking around, exploring the city, acquainting ourselves with it. We weren’t far from Buckingham Palace, as I recall, but I may be mistaken. There was a large park —
Hyde Park? Who knows? Possibly. There are other parks in London, you know.
My husband experienced a sudden and rather urgent need to visit a washroom. We spotted a row of hotels on the far side of the park and headed quickly towards them. He chose the closest and we went in.
The lobby was not large but it was grand in a sombre, conspiratorial sort of way. All dark, polished wood and heavy drapery that absorbed the light from the chandeliers. There was a clutch of American tourists at the desk, so he turned to the doorman who was standing in his uniform — a cherry-red affair, with brass buttons and gold tassels — rather grandly surveying the scene. My husband asked if he would be so good as to point out the nearest washroom. The doorman cocked a cold eye at him, surveyed him with obvious contempt from head to foot — and said nothing.
My husband repeated his request — positively offending the man. I thought he was about to spit! “Look,” my husband said, “either you show me where the washroom is or you and I are both going to be very embarrassed in a moment.”
The doorman froze, just long enough, I imagine, for him to decide that this savage was indeed capable of, well, you know, embarrassing them both. Then he flicked his gloved hand in the direction of an unmarked door beside the main desk.
Afterwards my husband made a point of thanking him as we left — but he was seething inside that the English, as he saw it, were the kind of people to make a man beg even to have a pee in private. He tended to elevate an individual’s bad manners to a judgment on the society as a whole, you see. Of course he didn’t forgive the man, either. He understood that the fellow was simply performing his duties, but he felt he was doing so at the expense of his own humanity. He always insisted, my husband, on the superiority of individual conscience over group or professional demands. He felt the hotel doorman had sold his conscience, and so his dignity, to a place where he himself would be welcome only as hired help. He was the living embodiment of a lackey — and lackeys earned nothing but contempt from my husband — unless they happened to be his lackeys.
So you see what I mean about being exotic, my dear. It means you are never at the centre of things, and the centre was where my husband always wanted to be. He used everything, even our wedding, to get there.
But more about that in a moment. First, shall we indulge in another drop or two?
5
IT HAD BEEN warm, too, and moist, that day
in the wine bar. Yasmin had paused, uncertain, on its aluminum threshold. But Charlotte was already inside scouting out a table.
They were both single, still close friends despite the many years they had known each other. Yasmin no longer counted the number of times she had found herself enlisted by Charlotte in activities calculated to benefit her mind, body or soul — in yoga sessions, ceramics classes, art appreciation seminars, badminton lessons, kite-flying, egg painting. No enthusiasm, though, ever lasted beyond the next man, and a few men lasted beyond the lure of an enthusiasm. Charlotte, in a rare moment of insight, had once said of herself that she feared being the kind of person who enjoyed falling in love but detested being in love.
Yasmin had always been struck by their differing reactions to physical attractiveness. Beauty disarmed Charlotte; it made her helpless. But beauty, by its very nature, suggested to Yasmin the untrustworthy; it put her on her guard.
There was Garth, for instance, a researcher at the station. Tall, confident, athletic Garth. He had appealed to Charlotte, the ease with which he carried himself, the width of his shoulders, the narrowness of his hips. Gorgeous Garth, Yasmin had called him, and Charlotte, in the grip of her infatuation, had misconstrued the sarcasm as admiration. “He’s not your type,” she had retorted. That Garth knew himself to be attractive was, in Charlotte’s view, no hindrance. Charlotte’s attractiveness was no secret to herself either.
Then one afternoon Garth, spotting a photograph of a bikinied woman on the fashion reporter’s desk, had called out, “Hey, who’s the babe in the ’kini?” He seized the photograph and examined it with an adolescent avidity.
“Christ!” Charlotte said afterwards. “I thought he was going to jerk off right there.”
“Thought or hoped?” Yasmin said.
Charlotte shook her head, as if to free it of shattered illusions. “Yet another one,” she said, “who seems like a normal human being until he’s caught off guard.”
It was a day or two later that Yasmin found on her desk a flyer advertising the wine-tasting evening at the local wine bar.
From the street of its location, in the basement of an office building, it had not been promising. And from the threshold where she stood, Yasmin thought the interior offered little hope of improvement. It was dimly lit, probably to enhance its approximation of old-world intimacy: wall-panelling of weathered planks, wooden beams which, she was sure, would ring hollow when tapped.
She saw with relief that every table was taken and had begun to hope they would have to return another day when Charlotte, with the boldness that made her good at her job, approached a man sitting alone at a table in a corner. She beckoned Yasmin over.
The man introduced himself as Jim Summerhayes. He was an architect. He was here, he said, because he liked to expand his horizons.
Yasmin thought: Great, another winner …
His gourmet-cooking course had ended the week before, and learning more about wines seemed the next logical step.
Charlotte nodded eagerly. “Absolutely.”
Yasmin said, “You must have a lot of time on your hands. You unemployed or just no good at what you do?”
Charlotte said, “Yas!”
Jim looked thoughtfully at her. Then he laughed. “Neither of the above.”
Yasmin guessed him to be in his early thirties. An ordinary, intelligent face, angular. He was casually dressed, in a tan turtleneck and tweed jacket. His palms were broad, with long slender fingers and neatly trimmed nails. He wore no wedding band, but that meant nothing.
The wine tasting continued. After each sampling the expert on hand gave his impressions, reading the effects of the wine on his tongue. His vocabulary was so esoteric that by the third glass Charlotte and Yasmin both stopped scribbling notes on the forms they’d been given. Jim, though, was assiduous in filling out his, intense in the way of university students who noted down the lecturer’s every tic and cough.
“Nutty?” Charlotte repeated as the expert intoned his judgment. “Him or the wine?”
Jim smiled, whether from politeness or genuine amusement Yasmin could not say. But he continued to scribble, paying close attention to the expert’s opinion.
Yasmin, nibbling on dry bread, settled back to enjoy the glow of the wine. On a poster pinned to the wall behind Jim a red and yellow ribbon swirled into the shape of a bottle. Sipping at her fifth or sixth glass, the wines all tasting the same now, Yasmin found herself enjoying its movement, the touch of gaiety it lent to the sedate atmosphere.
Beside her, Charlotte sighed unhappily and Yasmin knew she would not soon wish to return to the bar. Its earnestness discouraged the mingling and easy conversation that led to the discovery or invention of mutual interests, to the exchange of phone numbers.
Yasmin’s gaze fell from the poster to Jim’s hands, the left lying palm down on the table, the right holding the glass to his lips. Tenacious hands, she thought, but composed. The hands of a man at ease with himself. She wondered what it would feel like to touch them, what it would feel like to be touched by them. She had once seen Charlotte take the hand of an attractive stranger and, under the pretext of reading his palm, arouse his interest with the caress of her fingertips. Yasmin was not timid, but she did not share Charlotte’s impetuousness.
Jim slowly placed the glass on the table, his eyes following it as if in silent interrogation. He made a note on his form, put down the pencil and reached for a heel of bread. He said, “Did you know that the Russians claim that if you just sniff at some bread or a pickle you won’t get drunk? On vodka, of course.”
Charlotte said, “I’ve heard that.”
Yasmin said, “Think it works with wine?”
He held the bread up to her. “Here. Try.”
When they left not long after, Charlotte said, “I saw that. Daring.”
“What?”
“You know what. He’ll call you for sure now.”
“I don’t know what —” But her face was burning hot.
“Did you see the look on his face?”
No, she hadn’t. She hadn’t seen anything but the spongy whiteness of the bread, had sensed with a dizzying keenness the swirl of red and yellow ribbon on the wall above.
“Bet you anything he’s heading home to a wet dream.”
“Charlotte!”
“Give it up, Yas. No man’s going to forget a woman who licked his finger the way you did.”
“It was an accident. The wine. I —”
But Charlotte had no interest in explanations. She hailed a passing taxi.
On the way home to the apartment they shared, Charlotte teased Yasmin by licking at her own index finger and making faces of ecstasy.
Yasmin ignored her. The smoothness of his nail was imprinted on her tongue. As the taxi pulled up to the apartment building, an icy shiver radiated down her spine. For the first time in her life, she had done the unthinkable.
6
HERE WE GO. There’s nothing like the odour of a fresh brew, is there, my dear?
Now, where was I? Ah, yes, my wedding. Tell me, Mrs. Livingston, do you know what privilege is?
Having the supermarket deliver your groceries for free? Well, yes, I suppose. But, my dear, you are aware that privilege has a less pleasant side, are you not? In my part of the world — or at least that part of the world that used to be mine — it was a deadly serious game of exclusion. Privilege, you see, manifested itself through the colour of one’s skin.
I won’t bore you with the countless ways in which skin from light to white eased lives, both social and professional. Suffice it to say that entire careers were built on that one qualification, just as entire lives were derailed because of it. My husband used the occasion of our wedding to begin the process of lifting this prejudice from the shoulders of our people.
Keep in mind there are two ways to look at this story. His supporters saw it as proof of his commitment, his detractors as proof of his opportunism —
How did I see it? Let me tell you
the story first, my dear. Now, where shall I begin? With another sip of tea, I should think. It is rather dry in here, isn’t it? Oh, that’s good. Now then …
At the time of our marriage, you see, my husband had begun to acquire a small reputation as a leader in some quarters, as a troublemaker in others. He needed —
No, let me put it less indelicately. Politics is drama, and drama needs event. My husband knew he would benefit greatly from an event that would earn him the right enemies, and it so happened that our wedding presented him with just such an opportunity.
We had a club in the island, you see. Its name alone — “The Majesty” — bespoke glamour. It was a large lounge, really, in a hotel in the town — the island’s first hotel, if I’m not mistaken. There was a tennis court out back, I seem to remember, and a swimming pool — and members were allowed to run up tabs, which seemed a particularly stylish thing to do. When I imagined the goings-on at the Majesty, I always pictured the women in evening dresses, the men in dinner jackets — and the entire scene in black and white. It was the vision that had been given to me, you see, by the movies, and I could not — indeed, it never occurred to me to — make the leap to colour. And it was only much later that I realized this. To me at the time, it was quite normal. Elegance came in black and white — which is an irony much too simplistic for words …
The one time the queen visited our island, she was conveyed from the royal yacht Britannia directly to the Majesty for a reception. You see the kind of cachet this place had.
Now, the only problem with the Majesty was that it was exclusive to the whites of the island. Understand: this was not a rule, it was not written anywhere; it was more of an understanding, a social convention, and so all the more powerful. Once, on New Year’s Eve, which we called Old Year’s, my husband and some of his friends, having already imbibed a fair amount, were turned away, a sting that never stopped smarting — and which later led to accusations against him of a personal vendetta. Some pointed to the personal slight as proof that he was not principled.
The Worlds Within Her Page 3