I was chilled to the bone, as they say. Cyril took my arm and said he was going to be sick. We headed back to the house together. My mother-in-law, a woman susceptible to distress, took to her bed. Celia busied herself preparing a pot of tea. She looked whiter than usual, especially in the lips and around the mouth — rather like you now, my dear. She offered some tea to Cyril and me, and we sat together sipping, talking little. And it was the tea that banished the chill from my flesh. Not that it made everything all right, never since then have I been able to eat fish. But it revived my centre, if you know what I mean. It even put some colour back into Celia’s cheeks.
I see from your face, my dear, that this is not what you had in mind when you brought up this question of lazing about. But this is what you get for making such cracks. Now then, shall I continue in a more pleasant vein?
On the whole, such long and lazy days of doing nothing as we had took place not at the beach but in the middle of the city, on a hard metal chair in a covered pavilion overlooking the island’s premier cricket field.
Yes, my dear, I said cricket …
No, it’s not in the least like baseball. Oh, I do get tired of saying that! The similarities are superficial. That’s like saying the moon’s like the sun because they both shine in the sky. Or a bird’s like an airplane because they both fly. You hit a ball with a bat and you score runs. That’s about it. Any resemblance to any other sport, living or dead, is purely … ignorant.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes. Long and lazy days watching cricket. Friends and family around. Celia, and sometimes Penny. Do you know — following my marriage, it was at cricket that I most saw my family? My parents were modern-minded, but still my marriage meant that I was no longer quite theirs. Not that I had become a stranger. More like a good acquaintance who now belonged to another family. A certain distance grew up between us — a distance that solidified, following the death of my parents. I have not known most of my family for decades.
My father was often there, drinking rum from teacups with his cronies, except when my mother was around. She only came occasionally, and just for the morning session. She didn’t care for cricket. I think she came just to bring lunch. She’d arrive with two bags heavy with food. Dhalpuris, chicken and aloo roti — a kind of sandwich, my dear, stuffed with chicken and potatoes — tins of sweets. Funny thing about lunch. Celia and I always took white-bread sandwiches. Egg. Tuna. It would never have occurred to us to ask Amina to pack the food we usually ate at home. As soon as lunch was over, my mother would return to see to her household duties.
The one who was always there, though, was my brother, Sonny. He lives in Belleville now, and has trouble with his memory. Back then, he was quite the dashing figure. Always careful of his clothes, stylish. He dreamed of being an historian, of rescuing the lost stories of our people. And this created a certain bond between him and my husband. My brother wanted to secure the past, and my husband wanted to secure the future. So there was a kind of continuum between them. I’m not sure which of them had the harder time of it.
My brother earned his living as a high-school teacher. He thought he could pursue his historical writing on his own, but he learned soon enough that there was no scope for the writing of history in our little society. So he became a reader of it, and fell into what I’ve always felt was a lifelong confusion. He developed an enduring passion for the Second World War. I cannot say for certain what fired his imagination but I suspect it had something to do with distance and exoticism. I think he came to believe — or perhaps convinced himself — that our history did not matter, that the war was grand and important and easy to lose yourself in.
Today my brother no longer recognizes me but back then he would sit with Celia and Penny and me and follow the match with greater intensity than the rest of us put together.
My husband? Oh, no, he had no time for attending cricket matches. He was much too busy.
Oh, dear, my throat is going all dry on me. Perhaps, for a bit of a change, a nice glass of water?
Are you sure, my dear? Are you sure you haven’t —
All right, if you insist. Oh, dear, it’s gone cold, I’m afraid. But if you’re sure a fresh cuppa will put some colour back into your cheeks, I shall prepare us another pot. Won’t be long.
14
A LITTLE FARTHER on, after a lengthy bend that unscrolls an infinity of sea and sky, the wooden shacks and shops give way to grassy fields and, suddenly, to a modern suburb of recent construction. Each house stands well back from its fence. Each is skirted by generous stretches of land, some with lawns freshly planted, others still chaotic with building equipment and rubble.
Penny says, “All this land use to belong to your grandfather. Use to be a cocoa estate. We had to sell it off over the years. A parcel here, a parcel there. Now one man owns it all, except for the piece we keep. He sells the plots and builds the houses. It worth more now with houses on it than it was ever worth with jus’ cocoa trees.”
Yasmin notices how she drives: with intensity; fingers fastened around the steering wheel as if fearful it will spin out of control without warning.
Presently they leave the construction behind. The road narrows, vegetation returns to the verge. On one side the land falling off to water; on the other, undulating gently upwards in fields that end, farther back, at forest.
After another lengthy bend in the road, Yasmin sees a large two-storey house of concrete and brick, painted green and trimmed in white, sitting midway up the rise in the land. The house commands a view of an extensive lawn, and of the road and the sea and the horizon. To either side of it are trees, behind it the wild vegetation of the fields. The limits of the property are clearly marked by a chain-link fence. A gravel driveway leads from a gate in the fence to the house.
Penny slows the car as they approach the house, turns into the driveway, stops at the gate: it is locked in the middle, heavily chained at both top and base. Yasmin sees that braided through the uppermost squares of both fence and gate are several strands of barbed wire. She sees, too, that the lower floor of the house is without windows, and that its single door sits in the wall with the flush solidity of fortification. A stairway, clinging to the side of the house, leads from the ground to the second floor.
Penny sounds the horn twice and presently a shirtless young man — he is sixteen or seventeen, Yasmin surmises — trots around from behind the house. He hurries down the driveway, his brown skin glistening with perspiration, the muscles of his chest and arms taut and, even from a distance, scrawled with swollen veins. As he undoes the locks and unwinds the chains, Penny says, “That’s Ash. He lives with us. His parents are cousins of ours. Distant — but family is family, eh? They take off for South America with a circus six, seven years ago. They wanted to take Ash with them, but I convince them he was too young, so they leave him here with me. Last we hear, about three years ago, they digging for gold in the Amazon.”
Yasmin stares at the young man through the windshield. She wonders if this is what amnesia feels like — an unknown face, the knowledge of shared blood — and after a moment says the only words that come to her: “I see.”
The gravel crunches lightly under the tires as the car proceeds up the driveway towards a spacious two-car garage beside the house. It is of wood, painted green like the house, but in a state of disrepair, large doors hanging open on broken hinges. One side is taken up with an old American car that sits on blocks, rear lights broken, chrome bumper detached at one end and resting on the ground.
Penny says, “Looks like we interrupted his workout. Weight-liftin’. Mr. America stuff, nuh.” She pulls carefully into the garage, crowded with bags and boxes and dismounted bicycles. Puts the car into park, pulls up the hand brake, turns off the ignition and says, “Home.”
Yasmin glances at her. Who, she wonders, is Penny talking to?
When they get to the top of the stairs, Yasmin is surprised to hear a voice say, “Hello, hello.” It is a man’s voice, musical and merry. “W
elcome, welcome. I’m Cyril.”
Cyril. Her father’s younger brother. Yasmin smiles, extends a hand — and sees immediately that the action relieves him of the burden of how to greet her. He is a short man, and short of hair, with the neatness that so often seems innate to the balding. Even his belly, rotund and solid, hangs over the top of his belt with a certain precision, a belly indicative not of gluttony but of a measured satisfaction. The grasp of his hand is warm, and she sees, as he lets his gaze linger on hers, that he has invested her visit with hopes that Penny has not.
Penny says, “Cyril, keep Yasmin company while I help Amie in the kitchen.” And turning to Yasmin she adds, “Something cold to drink? Or maybe some tea?”
Yasmin asks for coffee and Penny, after the briefest of pauses, says, “Instant or perked?”
“Perked, please.”
Cyril, with some haste, says he too will have coffee.
Penny taps her chest and says his name as if in warning.
Cyril is adamant. “Is a special occasion,” he says.
After Penny slides through the lace curtains hanging at the door, Cyril says, “You’d think is her heart that blocks up.”
Yasmin chooses to ignore the invitation to inquire about his health problems. Instead she steps closer to the waist-high wall enclosing the porch and gazes out at a small boat cutting slowly through the water towards the horizon.
Cyril shuffles over beside her and she gets a whiff of baby powder. He says, “Your father was a romantic, you know. Ram use to stand here, on the balcony, with his hands just so” — he flattens his palms on the smooth top of the wall — “an’ just look out, for hours on end. Dreamin’ his big dreams.”
And the view from here, Yasmin thinks, is one made for big dreams. It is a view that not only offers the spectacular but, because of the extra elevation of the house, dominates it.
“They say that from here you could o’ watch the history of the island,” Cyril continues. “Five hundred years ago you would o’ seen Columbus sail across the bay. Then the Spanish treasure galleons goin’ to and from South America. The raiders of one kind or another. French, Dutch, English. The traders. And the slave ships. For a very long time, the slave ships. And when the slavers stopped comin’, other ships came, first with the Chinese and when they didn’t work out, with our people.”
Yasmin thinks: Our people?
15
WHEN YASMIN MENTIONED with calculated nonchalance that she had met a nice man, her mother was not fooled, asking immediately, “Is it serious?”
Yasmin laughed. “You make it sound as if I have a disease, Mom.”
“It’s not serious, then,” her mother said, sounding vaguely disappointed.
“Yes,” Yasmin said after a moment, speaking as much to herself as to her mother. “I think it might be.”
“Then you must ask him to tea next Sunday,” her mother said.
Yasmin told Jim he should bring nothing. He insisted on stopping to buy a bouquet of flowers. She told him to keep it modest. He returned to the car with a cone of lilies several feet tall.
“I don’t think she’s got a vase that’ll hold those,” Yasmin said.
“She’ll think of something.”
“You aren’t nervous, are you?”
“I’m meeting your mother,” he said. “What d’you think?
“She’s going to love you.”
When they entered the apartment, Yasmin saw that her mother had been to the hairdresser. Her silvered hair, always well-tended, was tied back into its bun with a professional neatness. And she had been to the Indian shops. On the coffee table, several plates displayed the sweets now offered only to guests, her own health dictating abstinence.
“Mom, I’d like you to meet Jim.”
They shook hands.
“Mister —?”
“Summerhayes,” Jim said, cradling the flowers in his left arm. “But please call me Jim.” He offered the flowers to her.
“For me? How kind. Yasmin, would you show Mr. Summer-hayes to the living room?”
Yasmin said, “You don’t have to be so formal, Mom.” But her mother had already taken the flowers into the tiny kitchen.
“Can I give you a hand with those?” Jim called.
“No, thank you, Mr. Summerhayes, I’ll manage. They’re lovely. It’s just that they’re so … large.”
Jim, feeling slightly swatted, turned to Yasmin for support, but she simply took his arm and led him into the living room.
There, she patted his chest like an indulgent parent and turned her attention to the plates of sweets.
Jim, anxious, wandered over to the window. A northerly view: trees, roofs of houses. Directly below, some distance down, the grey stone buildings of educational privilege sitting adamant in the sunlight, girdled by an intimidating moat of lawn and sports fields, a paradigm of the old world transported to the new. In a field to the right, men in white were arrayed around a cricket pitch.
“Mr. Summerhayes,” her mother called from the kitchen, “where are your people from?”
“My people?” he said, unsure of what she was asking.
“Yes. Your family.”
“Montreal, mostly.”
“And before that?”
“England. Wales.”
“Your parents?”
“Grandparents.”
He waited for further questions, but none came. On the windowsill was a pair of binoculars. He picked them up, glanced over at Yasmin in puzzlement.
“For the cricket,” she said.
He trained the binoculars on the field below, adjusting the focus until the players, all black, came into sharp view: the bowler running up to the wicket, the ball leaving his hand, the batsman offering a defensive shot. The colours — white on green, the red ball rolling harmlessly back along the tan pitch — were vibrant through the glasses.
“You know cricket, Mr. Summerhayes?” She had placed the flowers, shorter by a foot, in two brass vases.
“I used to play when I was a boy. My grandfather taught me.”
“Silly mid-on, silly mid-off and all of that?”
“I was the wicket-keeper.”
“Ah,” she said, taking one vase to the coffee table. “The anchor.”
“Like the catcher in baseball,” Jim said, fetching the other vase from the kitchen.
“Yes. I suppose.” She glanced around the apartment. “On the credenza, Mr. Summerhayes, if you don’t mind. Gently.”
“Are you a baseball fan, too?” Jim eased the vase onto the polished wood, beside the silver-framed graduation photograph of Yasmin.
Her mother sighed, moved over to the window. “The Americans,” she said, “have a way of simplifying things. They’ve changed a game for gentlemen into a pastime for boys. Is it your opinion that baseball, like cricket, shapes character, Mr. Summerhayes?”
“Baseball’s more complex than it looks,” Jim said. “That’s one of its beauties. In fact, I’ve always thought that cricket was deceptively complex and baseball deceptively simple.” He joined her at the window, his gaze following hers down to the figures in white. A batsman was making his way off the field while another strode on to replace him. Two players and an umpire were tending to the broken stumps.
“Does the name Sir Learie Constantine mean anything to you, Mr. Summerhayes? He was a wonderful West Indian cricketer, a man of superb talents. He once ran at full speed to the edge of the field to make a catch. He caught the ball behind his back, with one hand. Behind his back with one hand, Mr. Summer-hayes! There was once hope for a people who could produce a man like that.”
“I saw Sir Garfield Sobers once,” Jim said. “He was pointed out to me in a nightclub in the Barbados —”
“Just ‘Barbados,’ Mr. Summerhayes. It’s a single island.”
Jim, Yasmin saw, remained unperturbed. “He seemed quite the local hero,” he continued. “Everyone treated him with great deference.”
“Not just a local hero, Mr. Summerhayes. And
perhaps not deference but respect. He remains, I believe, although I may be mistaken, the only man to have hit six sixes off six balls. A wonderful achievement, even though it was only in a county game in England and not a test match. Has anyone ever come close to such a feat in your baseball, Mr. Summerhayes? Six home runs off six pitches?”
Jim smiled. He said, “Sobers played for Nottinghamshire, I believe?”
“Notts? Yes, perhaps. I honestly don’t remember.”
But Yasmin, nibbling at a piece of kurma — fingers of dough fried crunchy and caked in sugar — did not miss the note of surprise in her mother’s voice. She had never known her mother to be easily impressed.
“All these men,” her mother continued, “titled for their sporting prowess. Bradman. Sir Stanley Matthews, the football player. They were heroes to us, you know. Our children learnt about them in schoolbooks. Do they still knight sportsmen, Mr. Summerhayes? I’m quite out of touch now, it’s been so long.”
Jim didn’t know. Canadians, no longer permitting the use of foreign honorifics, paid scant attention to news of the freshly anointed.
“Highly unlikely these days, I would think,” her mother said. “Sportsmen have become such hooligans. The very idea of sportsmanship has been lost, don’t you agree?”
Jim nodded, but Yasmin saw that her mother took little notice.
“My husband didn’t like them, you know, men like Constantine and Sobers.”
Yasmin’s eyes fluttered up from the plates of sweets. She recognized the ever-so-slight shift in her mother’s voice, as small talk was left behind.
“He couldn’t help admiring their talents but he regretted their race. He felt that his people, our people, were hard done by. He felt that the Indian cricketers of the West Indies never got their due. This was how my husband saw things, Mr. Summerhayes. Through a racial prism. He didn’t even like the name I chose for our daughter. Yasmin. It’s a Muslim name, you see, and we are, traditionally at least, Hindus. But I liked the name. And he never objected to other family members being named Robert or David or Elizabeth. I always felt it held him back, this racial allegiance, although he saw it as inescapable. He was in political life, you see, and circumstances, I suppose …” Her mother’s voice trailed off. She raised the binoculars to her eyes. After a moment, “Were you an aggressive batsman, Mr. Summerhayes?”
The Worlds Within Her Page 6