The Angels' Share

by Garfield Ellis

  “I won’t.”

  And so she slips away. I know I will remember this moment forever: how it looks, how it feels, how it touches me. And now I understand a bit how a woman can fill a man so much that a lifetime is not enough to empty himself of her. And if not in a lifetime, then how could he do it in thirty-five years?

  So I turn toward this fine portly woman, take her hand, and give her the full force of my smile. “Come,” I tell her. “Come! Come and tell me about my father.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The time for closure has come and I must admit it brings both relief and regret. For whether I wish to admit it or not, I have enjoyed the last several days with my father. But now I am here halfway to Hampshire to put the final curtain on our adventures.

  It has been two days since I took the hand of the woman called Hope, for whom my father had left his wife, to reunite after thirty-five years. An evening with Hope did little to alter my image of my father, or the new image I’ve had since we started on our adventures, but it has indeed filled in a few blanks. She is a wise and clever woman, almost like a female version of my father in how she answered questions and asked them. But I had few secrets shared with me except for what she felt I should know. She revealed a love for my father that seemed to have continued to this day. She too wanted to look into his eyes one more time. She too wanted to ask him why, in the same way he had wanted to tell her he was sorry.

  After my father, she met a German marine officer who married her and took her with him to Germany. By that time, she hadn’t seen my father for a while. He had stayed away and allowed their relationship to die. When the German had proposed to her, she wrote my father about it, hoping he would tell her not to accept. But he sent her a note to wish her good luck and a long and wonderful life. She said those were not the days I know with telephones, faxes, and zero-wait technology. You were blessed if you by chance found a man who owned a car, and when you did not see him for a while, you waited till he came. She waited for my father, and he did not come. So she moved on with her life, married the German, and moved to Germany. She had resigned herself to not seeing him again, till her cousin wrote and opened the old wounds and reminded her that her relationship with my father still needed closure. So she had come. She wanted to look into his eyes one more time and have him tell her why he left her.

  “I wish we had not made it so mysterious,” she said. “For once we outsmarted ourselves . . . but it was all so romantic, sending those clues and little messages.”

  “I understand,” I told her. Maybe there is nothing wrong with nostalgia—nothing wrong with trying to recapture old moments that mean so much.

  I left her at Tara’s. She will be heading back to Germany in another day or two.

  Now all that’s left is this letter she has given me with her picture in it, and secret words for me to take to my father.

  So here I am, threading my way through the dying evening on my way to my father’s house in Hampshire.

  It has been two days since I saw Hope. Yesterday I slept in; I figured if he could wait for thirty-five years, he could wait another day for his letter. In any event, I was weary from traveling. But I had scarcely had lunch today when Una called to summon me.

  “Everton, are you back in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father said you would be.”

  “He said that?”

  “Can you make it here this afternoon? It’s important.”

  I had planned to relax another day and see him tomorrow, Saturday, but Una’s call changed that plan.

  So I am here with a picture and a letter in my pocket—a message that I hope will bring final closure to the old man’s adventures.

  I love coming out here to see him; I love the drive through the old estates that give the villages their names, especially in the evenings, like now. And every time I come I wonder why I do not come more often. The colors of the vegetation are magnificent, extending for great distances ahead and around me. All shades of green mixing and blending and dazzling till they touch the heavens. At my speed the hues of blue and green give the evening a mix that you only feel on this stretch of road to Hampshire. The grass is a yellowish green and the rows and rows of orange trees are darker, almost black, and then the vast fields of sugar cane with a lighter dustier shade—and the road stretches ahead toward the dark blue hills rimmed by a lighter blue sky.

  Father moved here twelve years ago. He was fifty-five and decided he needed a country estate to retire to. He had worked all his life in the civil service and had been too easy-going to get beyond deputy director, too outspoken to be invited higher, and much too proud to accept promotion as a favor.

  But he had fallen in love with a piece of Hampshire that is nestled inside the heart of St. Catherine, half a mile outside Riversdale. Two and a half acres of lush St. Catherine land; land so rich and pure that “if you see stone on it, is somebody threw it there,” as he once said. The only time in his life he used his job to his advantage. The owner had died and Father held it through his office till he secured a loan on his home in Willowdene. When he finished building the house here, he transferred to the agricultural office in Linstead and Una transferred to be vice principal of Linstead High School.

  Now at sixty-seven, he is retired, five years after his wife, and they live in their piece of heaven in Hampshire.

  * * *

  “He’s been looking out for you all afternoon,” Una tells me as she opens the gate for me. She has a classic beauty made richer by stern, responsible eyes and a gentle manner of pure class. Her bearing would be just as suited for the halls of government, walking among dignitaries, as it is here, probably even more so. Her beauty is that of the sharp lines of jagged rocks, and the gray in her hair is like the white of breaking waves crashing against them.

  She hugs me.

  “The air is so fresh and clean,” I exclaim.

  “You say that every time you come up here.” She pulls away to meet my eyes, but I am still afraid to meet hers.

  “But it’s true,” I smile back.

  “How are you, Everton?”

  “Fine,” I tell her. “Where is he?”

  She shrugs. “Around the back.”

  He is on the back veranda looking out. He sits on a long sofa, one foot in a cast laid flat on the seat while the other rests lightly on the floor. There is a table beside him with fruits, snacks, and a bottle of pimento wine caked with dirt like a newly excavated artifact.

  “Old man broke his foot,” I tease.

  “Old man broke up.” He grins and sits up.

  “Old man must keep quiet.” Una sits beside him on the sofa.

  He places a hand on her lap and she grasps it with her own. There is a difference between them. Usually Una would have left us to talk on our own for a while, but this evening she sits and holds his hand.

  I feel the letter against my breast; I must wait for the right opportunity to give it to him.

  “So you were deep into St. Elizabeth?” He smiles conspiratorially.

  I’m not sure what he means by that. “I went back,” I say cagily.

  “Climbing mountains?”

  “Who is to tell?”

  “Big mountains, small mountains, what did you find down there?”

  He is a handsome man, my father, and his beauty is in his eyes. His features are ordinary. His nose flattish, his mouth full. He has large dimples and the shape of his face is of a young mango—round, full, and a bit long. His hair is gray and he has all of it, but it is thinner and silkier, so it falls around the edges. With the right hairdo he could look like Caesar. But his beauty is in his eyes. Like guides down a mysterious terrain, they tell you how to see his face. You can get caught in them and they dictate to you.

  “No mountains, no new roads?” he asks again.

  I hesitate. The way Una is holding him and the way they are soft and easy against each other makes me feel a tinge of guilt. They have somehow found each other again.

&
nbsp; “Some roads, some places are just for angels,” I finally tell him

  He settles into himself and sighs. “Angels’ share, no?”

  “The angels’ share,” I nod

  “You don’t have to talk codes around me,” Una says with a smile.

  “Codes! No codes, Una. It is just a way of telling my father he should be grateful for what he has.”

  “I know what angels’ share means.” She looks at me without blinking.

  I glance at my father. “I am impressed.”

  He winks at me. “You think you are the only one who can give a speech?”

  “We talked, Everton.” Una pushes a chair to me. “We talked.”

  I look at her, this beautiful, quiet, dignified woman, and I can’t believe it is the same person who traveled a hundred miles to fight for her man. I won’t even try to guess how she found out where we were.

  “So are adventures over now, old man?”

  “For now, maybe.”

  “Will you stop drinking now too, obey your wife, leave the pimento wine?”

  “Well, that would be a new trick, and I am an old dog.”

  She slaps his cast.

  How can I give him this letter now?

  “Give him the Heineken bag,” he says to Una.

  “What bag?” I ask.

  Una rises with a mischievous smile and goes to the small closet at the corner of the veranda. She returns with a green Heineken promotional bag and hands it to me.

  “What’s in here?”

  “What does Heineken sponsor?” he counters.

  “What do they sponsor?” I ask even as I dig.

  He sighs.

  “They sponsor the US Open.” Una is glowing.

  “You think I don’t have a few friends?” Father smiles smugly.

  In the bag I find airline tickets, hotel reservations, some US cash, and, most astonishingly of all, a tournament-long pass to the US Open tennis tournament in New York.

  “Jesus. How did you do this? How did you manage it in two days? No . . . one day!”

  “You think you are the only one with friends?”

  “No, but in one day?”

  “Holly helped, he brought the bag today. That is when I called you,” Una beams. “Only a few days of the preliminaries are gone. The real thing starts next week.You should go, Everton.” She touches my arm. “You deserve it.”

  I rise to her with tears in my eyes. “Come here,” I say.

  “You come,” Father says.

  “Not you,” I tell him. “I am not speaking to you.” I pull Una up and hug her tightly. She is surprised, but holds me as I press my tearing face against her neck. “Thanks.”

  “You see who gets the thanks?” Father complains.

  “Thanks for loving my father,” I tell her. “Thanks for loving me.”

  She too is teary and he is silent and everything is all choked up.

  “A drink is in order,” Father breaks the awkward moment as he reaches for the pimento wine on the table.

  I glance at the wine and then at Una.

  “It is okay,” she says. “The doctor says one glass a day won’t kill him.”

  The bottle of pimento wine is still covered with dust and there is still some mud caked to the bottom. But we want it like that. It would be sacrilege to wash that bottle. I take it from him, do the honors of the opening, and pour everyone a drink. I sip. It bites into me and the shock of the aroma awakens my senses. In my excitement, the sip was too big.

  “You always rush your first sip.”

  I ignore him and savor a smaller sip.

  “This is one of the first bottles I buried in the cellar. Ten years old or so. You know that?”

  “It’s the best yet.” I shake my head as if there are wasps behind my eyes.

  We are on the verge of night. The light leaves the hills reluctantly and in the distance the peaks are still clear. Though the clouds are bright, shadows have darkened inside them. From the veranda where we sit, the air has already changed and the peenie wallies have begun to flit in and out of the bougainvillea.

  I am as happy as I have ever been in the company of my father.

  * * *

  Half an hour later and I am ready to leave. Father has managed to surprise me again. I have come to give him closure, bearing gifts; he had a gift for me as well and a special closure of his own. I must now get home. I have no-pay leave to apply for, I have packing to do. In just a few days I will leave for New York and the US Open to watch Venus Williams play.

  “I am going, old man.”

  “With whatever you found in the country.”

  “I have packing to do.” A thought occurs to me. “And Una . . .”

  “Yes?”

  I pull her close again, and she is shocked. I slip my hand behind her head and release the clasp that buns her hair, admire the beautiful curls that fall to her shoulders, and cannot help but gasp at her profound beauty and the force of her womanhood. “Take the ribbon from your hair.”

  I hear a soft sigh with the half-smile he raises at me and I can hardly meet his eyes, but I do. He is ready to enjoy the rest of his life. I see him grasp her hands as I turn, and I can swear I hear him softly whisper, “Shake it loose and let it fall.”

  But I am out of there. The envelope with the picture, note, and message is still in my pocket. It is mine now, to do with whatever I wish. I pat it lightly as the evening closes on Hampshire.

  * * *

  For every inch of the way from Hampshire to Spanish Town, nothing fills my mind but the image of Venus Williams dancing across the court with the assured elegance of a gazelle. As my mother would say, Tonight, heaven has come down and glory fills my soul.

  Spanish Town has never looked so good, nor has the left turn that leads to my house seemed so softly paved with silver, inviting me to slip home and prepare for the fulfilling of my dreams.

  Yet deep inside I hesitate. And as I pause, the face I see is no longer Venus Williams and the place I want to be is not a certainty anymore. Twenty minutes to my house, my soft bed, my cozy music, my packing for the US Open—and I hesitate. Left turn takes me home, right turn brings to mind a crazy notion. One that rushes at me with a force that takes my breath away. Suddenly, I see her face against the night, I hear her voice like a whisper on the wind, I taste her fragrance like wild musk, I feel the grate, rake, and scrape of her pubic hair.

  Right turn and I would be on the highway and if I try hard I could be cutting through the dry grass and red dirt of St. Elizabeth before ten.

  I could fall in love with you, you know . . . . make haste and come.

  Left turn takes me home, right turn would take me away from everything, away from my flight to New York, away from the US Open, away from Venus Williams. Why do I hesitate?

  Any time you ready . . . just come . . . we’ll go down to Memories . . . whatever you want . . . make haste and come.”

  What hesitation? There is none, there are no second thoughts. I swing the wheel right—away from my house and the silver passage. I won’t even take the chance to go there and change my clothes. I swing away, and the car speeds up as I point it west toward the highway and St. Elizabeth. Damn if I am going to wait thirty-five years, damn if I am going to wait another week, damn if I am going to wait another night. If I hurry, I will make it by ten. If I press, by nine thirty we will be making our own moments, at a little place called Memories By the Sea.

  E-Book Extras

  A Note from the Author

  Photographs

  Reading Group Guide

  About Garfield Ellis

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Some years ago, a friend in his late sixties had a major surgery and for a while did not expect to live through it. After his recovery I asked him what regrets he felt while he was laying there on what he thought would be his deathbed. Without a pause he answered, “Airs.” He wished, he said, he could have gone back over his life as a diplomat, an aristocrat, and a lawyer and undo every
moment he had acted superior or aloof. And knowing him—the person he was and the life he lived—I was immediately struck by the astonishing futility of regret.

  I became fascinated with the notion of regret and wished to explore its nature. I wanted to understand the desire to return to “the seed of the hour” or the fork in the road and try to make things right as we near our end. Thus I embarked on the writing of The Angels’ Share.

  But the story could not be just about the pursuance of futility or the exploration of unfulfilled dreams. It also had to be about the possibility of recognizing those critical life-changing moments, and in recognizing those moments, having the courage to make the decisions that would perhaps minimize the deathbed regrets. But the power of the novel is that despite my intentions it evolved on its own in order to remind me that we can never cover all the bases—and that is okay.

  What surprised me most about the book is how it turned the tables on me and became my own exploration of my own regrets and an unconscious search for those intimate moments I wish I had shared with my father. I grew up yearning for my father and did not meet him till I was thirty years old. By then it was too late to experience those childhood fantasizes. I was now a man and had moved beyond them. But they were unexplored and unresolved and this novel unexpectedly became my own journey to the resolution of some of the misgivings I had about the absence of my father.

  At its core The Angels’ Share is a story about a search for redemption and the discovery that redemptive peace comes with acceptance and forgiveness.

  —Garfield Ellis

  Please enjoy these photographs, taken by the author while researching the locations and histories told in The Angels' Share

  The entrance to The Appleton Estate

  Appleton Estate

  Appleton Estate

  Part of the rich history of Appleton

  Strolling the grounds of Appleton Estate

  Finding the old ways in the new—Moving On