by Sharon Maas
Just one thing missing: Rika’s forgiveness.
Now, she had that too.
She smiled to herself, and opened her eyes. They fell upon a framed photo on the wall opposite. In the picture were two slim young men, bright eyed and smiling, their arms around each other, one dark, one fair; one in uniform, one in civilians. Smiling at the camera, the day before the ship set sail taking Freddy off to war.
Dorothea stood up and, without using her cane, limped over to the wall, took down the photo, returned to the bed. There, she gazed at the photo, kissed it twice. Smiled, and lay down again, her hand clasping the photo to her breast. She took a deep breath. Then let out the longest sigh of her life.
CHAPTER FIFTY
INKY
There was that bird again, chirruping outside my bedroom window: Kiskadee! Kiskadee! Kiss-kiss-kisskadee! Joyful, fresh and carefree, which was exactly how I felt on this, my second morning in Lamaha Street. I lay enclosed in my mosquito net tent, last night’s drama playing over and over again in my mind. Relaxed, at ease, at home in myself; smiling into the half-light, I hugged my pillow in glee as I looked forward to what the new day might bring, now that we’d all walked out of yesterday’s shadows.
Marion had promised me all sorts of delights; a trip to Kaietuer Falls, in the Interior; a visit to a rainforest resort on a creek in the Essequibo District; wild animals in the Nature Reserve and a dash up to Diane McTurk’s otter refuge in the Rupununi. And then, of course, there was Christmas coming up – a grand Quint family Christmas, my first! All that to be squeezed into the three weeks before my flight back to England.
At that thought my smile faded and a dark fist grabbed hold of my belly. At home, there’d be Sal and Cat, revelling in their reunion and reawakened love, wanting to share it all with me. How was I to deal with that? Sal, Sal, why didn’t I realise? Why didn’t I speak my mind, my heart? It was a dull sickness inside me, an inner ache that not even the unalloyed joy of the kiskadee’s song could dispel. I reached under the mosquito net for my mobile on the bedside table, switched it on: again no signal. I reckoned there’d never be a signal out here and switched it off. I clambered out of the net and perhaps a little too violently pulled it from the mattress. Maybe there was an Internet Café somewhere I could use. I’d email him and see what was up. No. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. It was over and I had to accept that.
There was a soft tap at the door and it opened gently. Marion poked in her head.
‘Ah, you’re up! Morning, Inky. Sleep well?’
‘Like a baby!’ I said, and pushed my heartache away. ‘I’ll be down in a sec. What are we doing today?’
Marion didn’t reply at first, so I looked up. Her face seemed drained, empty, yet her eyes so full it made me stop and take a second look.
‘Marion? Are you OK? Is something the matter?’
‘Yes, actually, there is.’ She came into the room then and took hold of my two hands. ‘Inky – Gran died last night, in her sleep. It’s all a bit – sudden.’
In spite of the morning warmth I went all cold, and my knees gave way. I sprang out of bed.
‘No – I don’t believe it – she can’t be! She wasn’t ill or anything! Last night she …’
And then I knew it was true and a great gulf opened in my being and I fell into it. I sank back down to the bed and began to sob, sob and sob for everything I had lost and now could never recover. I cried for Gran and her lost love, I cried for the burden she had carried so many years and finally laid down last night. I cried for the young girl who still lived in an old woman’s body, the young girl who should have been my friend but who I rejected because I only saw the old woman.
Marion came and sat down next to me. She put an arm around me and said,
‘Don’t be sad, Inky; she was ready to go and she’s in a good place. Come and have a look at her.’
I resisted. I could not bear to look at Gran as a corpse, the life and energy of her gone forever. I shook my head and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes as if to stop the tears. But Marion wasn’t having it. Her voice became brisk and no-nonsense; she got up and pulled me to my feet.
‘Girl, you coming down with me if I got to carry you there meself.’ And so she led me down the stairs to Gran’s room, a small one just off the stairwell. Mum was there already, sitting on a chair next to the bed. She got up when I entered, and we fell into each other’s arms. I broke out in sobs again, but Mum was quiet and calm and only rubbed my back.
‘She’s all right, Inky. She’s at peace,’ she whispered into my ear.
‘But she’s gone!’ I wailed. ‘I never got to know her properly!’
‘Well, look at her now and you’ll see all you need to know.’
Until now I had refused to even glance at the body laid out on the bed, afraid of that awful spectre, death, hanging there above it. Now, I looked.
‘We haven’t moved her at all. This is how we found her,’ Marion said.
Gran lay on the bed straight out as if already in her coffin. Her hands were folded over a photograph, only the edges visible. No; two photographs. The edges of a second photo peeked out from behind the first. Next to her on a bedside table were the separated parts of an empty picture frame. On the wall above her was another picture frame, also empty.
I knew whose photos she chosen to die with. Knowing Gran, she’d gone on to be with those two husbands. Freddy and Humphrey. Would they form a blissful threesome in heaven? Or would they, as Mum believed, merge into some great blissful Oneness? One day, I too would know.
On Gran’s face lay an expression of unutterable peace. Her lips were slightly raised at their corners, as if she had died smiling. I could not but gaze at that face, and as I did so I too felt that peace, and my tears dried and I knew Mum and Marion were right. She was in a good place, and at peace; this corpse was but the husk that had once enclosed her. She had left it behind, and moved on.
* * *
In spite of the preparations for Gran’s funeral, and, a week later, the funeral itself, to which half Georgetown came, Marion kept her promise and we went to all the places she’d planned, and by the time my holiday came to an end I had fallen in love, and more. It was as if my feet had walked a swamp all my life, but now I’d found my footing. Maybe it was the exuberance of nature, the majesty of that waterfall plunging eight hundred feet into a jungle gorge; maybe it was the warmth and openness and simple lovingness of the people I met; maybe it was Christmas, and the good food and the celebration and the wonderful people who came in and out of the house all day; maybe it was Quints who flew in from America and Canada and even the UK – imagine! I had Quint cousins in London! – and who folded me into the family like a long-lost daughter.
Or maybe it was the food. Christmas! Pepperpot! That legendary dish Marian had enticed me with back in Streatham; prepared days in advance by Marion and Evelyn, because it tastes better over time: beef stewed with cinnamon, orange peel, cloves, hot pepper, preserved with an Amerindian preservative called cassareep that colours it black, and served with plait bread! Or the traditional Christmas Black Cake, made weeks, months ahead of time by marinating fruit in rum; moist, juicy, out-of-this-world delicious! That Christmas I died and went to heaven.
Maybe it was the stories. The love-story of Granny Quint, now a legend in the family; Mum, telling for the first time of her travels in South America and India; the stories of other members of Quints spread across the world. My family. Stories of wounds opened and healed that cured me of the sickness I’d carried with me, it seemed, all my life. I could not bear the thought of returning home. Mum, who spent half her time up on the Pomeroon river and the other half with us, was staying for at least another two months; why not me too?
‘No,’ said Mum, quite adamant. ‘Back you go. You need to take care of … matters. And Sal. And your life, waiting for you.’
‘But I don’t want that life anymore!’ I wailed. ‘It was just all so – empty.’
‘If your life was empty
then it was because you were empty. Now go back to it with the fullness you feel now and put that fullness into your life there. You can do it, Inky!’
‘But Mum – Sal …’ And I told her then. I told her I loved him, but had lost him, to Cat. I thought she’d sympathise, but she only laughed.
‘Just go back and meet him and see. It’s not over until the fat lady sings,’ was all she said to that, which I found most unhelpful. I told her so.
‘See, Inky,’ she said then, ‘One thing I learned through all this, is not to live in fear. Face your fears, and see what happens. I think you want to stay here not because you really want to, but because you’re afraid of a life without Sal. Go back, and face that fear. Take it one day at a time. You’ll be fine.’
‘You can talk!’ I said, somewhat bitchily, remembering the huge pile of unpaid bills in unopened envelopes in her room. That one unopened envelope stuck to the back of her wardrobe. ‘It took you thirty long years to face your fears. And that letter! If you’d faced it back then, how much hassle it would have spared us!’
Mum laughed, a relaxed, open laugh. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘but that’s why I can talk! Learn from my mistakes. Go home, Inky. Don’t be afraid.’
And then Mum gave me the stamp, the precious Quint.
‘Put it to auction,’ she said, ‘and pay off all my debts.’
* * *
And so I returned, reluctantly, to my private little hell. While waiting for my luggage at Gatwick I reached into my handbag for my mobile, which was lying right at the bottom with some other unused stuff. My fingers closed around a packet of pre-rolled cigarettes. I drew it out and stared at it, bemused. I had not smoked a single one since boarding the plane on my way out, three weeks ago, and what’s more, had not even thought of smoking since arriving in Guyana. I chucked it in a bin, took out my mobile and switched it on. Five missed calls, all from Sal.
So I called him back, heart rattling like a jackhammer.
And when I arrived home there he was, sitting on the wall outside, waiting. I dropped the suitcase I’d been lugging up from Streatham Hill Station and just ran to him and flung myself at him and I didn’t even have to say I love you because he knew, and I knew it when his arms closed around me and his lips found mine. And the word ‘Cat’ didn’t even get an honourable mention.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
INKY
I did all that Mum had said. There was a heap of post for her and countless phone messages. I checked her email but there was nothing in particular, except from some woman called Nora Docherty who said she’d call, and she did, no less than five times, each time leaving a voice mail saying she’d try again. When next I rang Mum I casually mentioned it. Mum let out a shriek that rendered my left ear deaf, or almost so.
‘Nora Docherty, she’s only just about the top agent at the top agency in London!’ she cried when she finally found her tongue. ‘Inky, phone her at once and give her my number over here.’
So I did that and next thing we knew, Mum had a literary agent who thought her book was ‘marvellous, fantastic, unputdownable, and yet so full of insight and wisdom’, with ‘characters who crawl into your soul and take possession of your heart’. (That’s what she said in an email to Mum, who forwarded it to me.) In other words; mega-wicked.
And next thing we knew, four big London publishers were hungry for Mum’s last novel and Nora Docherty was holding an auction for it, and next thing we knew, Mum accepted what is known as a ‘major deal’ which I learned in publishing terms means a six-figure advance, but Mum wouldn’t tell me the exact amount; and she came back to England to meet with agents and publishers and various business people.
I haven’t read it yet, Mum won’t let me, but will do so as soon as we get the ARCs – that’s Advance Review Copies, as I now proudly know.
With that deal in her pocket, Mum made another decision. The Quint was set to bring us a small fortune at auction; we’d set some of that money aside for ourselves, for boring things like investments and pensions and getting my career started, and we’d give some to Marion to renovate the Lamaha Street house; we no longer needed to sell it. Renovated, it could be rented out, and stay in the family. If there was anything left over we’d found a charity, which was to be named ‘The Dorothea Quint Trust for Women in Need’ which Marion was to run in Guyana, and which would be a financial fund for Guyanese women who needed help, ‘WIN’ for short. Mum breathed a deep sigh of relief. Yes, that’s what we’d do.
* * *
Finances all sorted, Mum returned to Guyana again, and that’s when she told me her decision, over Skype. She would move back to Guyana, live on the Pomeroon River with Rajan. She had already spoken to his brother, who lived in the big house; she would add an extension to the blue cottage, or maybe add another storey, a room at the top, in the canopy; a little blue room, with windows all around.
‘A room of my own,’ she said.
I was shocked.
‘Mum! You can’t just throw your life away like that! I mean, it’s all very noble and self-sacrificing and everything but why should you take on such a burden? Think of yourself! Why should you give up your life for him? I mean, with all due respect, he’s just a …’
‘Stop it, Inky. Just stop it!’ interrupted Mum. ‘Not another word!’
‘But, Mum. What kind of a life will it be? I just don’t believe in women sacrificing themselves for men. I mean, you’re a feminist too, aren’t you?’
Mum’s eyes were fierce now. ‘No, Inky, just no. Just leave it.’
I couldn’t leave it.
‘But, Mum …’
‘Listen: don’t come with you have to think of yourself first nonsense, because that’s not my philosophy. And it's not a sacrifice or a burden. I'm not giving up my life for him. This is my life. This is what life is calling me to do now, and that means it's exactly the right thing. I won't lose myself. I'll find myself. Do you think that life in London is particularly fulfilling? It’s not the circumstances that define who we are; it's how we handle them. And this is it, for me.’
She took a deep breath, then said:
‘I never told you this, but I’ve always been a fish out of water in London. I guess I’m one of those back-to-nature freaks at heart. I’ve been thinking for a long time about where I’d go on retirement, which isn’t so far away. The only problem was that huge debt – I couldn’t have left you with that. But I’ve longed for somewhere tropical, somewhere without a winter, a garden, overflowing with bougainvillea and hibiscus, mango and coconut trees – oh, for years! I’ve always missed that sense of Home. What could be more perfect than this?’
‘But – what will you do all day? Read stories to Rajan?’
Mum looked annoyed for a moment, but she caught herself, and answered calmly.
‘Finish my novel. Write new novels. Learn to paddle a canoe, drive a motor-boat. Get into gardening, my hands in the earth. Grow flowers. Learn to play the guitar. Perfect my Spanish and Portuguese, read novels in those languages. Read lots of novels, in fact. Practice Yoga. Meditate. Teach Amerindian children, read them stories. Be with Rajan, learn his language. Just Be.’
She grinned. ‘I always had the makings of a hermit. An ascetic. But with that list …’
But I wasn’t giving up that easily. As romantic as it all sounded, I hated the thought of her throwing away her life like that. I’d always thought Mum would find some nice middle-aged man to settle with, to grow old with. I had to say something.
‘But, Mum – it’ll mean looking after him for the rest of your life!’
‘I won’t be looking after him. He’s got a personal carer for the hard bits of looking after him; the physical bits.’
Still. I had other plans for Mum. Once, back in Guyana, a nice middle-aged man had come to visit, an old friend of Mum’s, apparently. An old boyfriend? He’d taken us out to dinner at the Pegasus, which is Guyana’s best hotel, and it turned out he was divorced. His name was Don, and he must have been good-lo
oking in his day, though now he was balding and had a paunch, and he kept gazing at Mum, in a flirty sort of way, but admiring rather than lusting. I don’t blame him; Mum was positively luminous
The thing is: it seemed to me her radiance came not because of Don, and not even because of Rajan. She was glowing because she’d dropped that huge heavy burden she’d been schlepping around for decades, and now she was light and free, the way she was supposed to be. And at the Pegasus she just glowed and sparkled and looked so special, and Don looked so old and tired. Still. Why not? At least he was a man, presumably healthy.
‘What about that guy Don? I bet he’s interested. I bet you could catch him like that.’
I snapped my fingers.
Mum just laughed mysteriously and shook her head. But I still wasn’t giving up.
‘But, Mum! Rajan! I mean, in all respect … what kind of a marriage will that be? What about communication? You can’t even talk to him!’
‘Who said anything about marriage?’ A wave of relief swept through me.
‘So – it’s more of a platonic thing?’
She nodded. ‘I suppose you could call it that. Inky, when I was young, Rajan practically saved my life. He pulled me out of a deep hole of insecurity and self-doubt. I owe everything I am now to him – truly. I feel such gratitude – I just want to be able to give back. I’ll be happy here, believe me.’
Silence descended between us, and then she grinned cheekily.
‘I guess you could call this dropping out, like people did in the Sixties, like I did. Just with a bit more financial security! One of the perks of middle age is that you don’t feel the pressure to be normal and live normal lives. The bane of my teenage years! Oh yes! Thank goodness that’s over. Who cares what people say!’
Another silence as I tried to digest all this. My voice broke when I spoke again.