I could hear Mrs. Moore grumbling. It was eight thirty-five, and she was none too happy. First, she had turned the house inside out looking for us, and had to eventually involve security. Had we been gone five minutes longer, it might have escalated into a national crisis. Second, dinner had not yet been served, and third, Lewis had a dinner guest who had been left neglected.
“I thought I had been stood up,” a voice said. When Agnes Gooding stepped from the living room and into the hall, I almost fell over.
“I’m so sorry,” Lewis said as Agnes walked up to him and brushed a leaf off his collar.
“You’re wet,” she whispered a little more suggestively than I thought necessary.
“Went for a walk and got caught in that sudden rainstorm. Had to wait it out.”
“You went for a walk without your security people, Lewis? And after what happened today at the hospital site? Everyone here was so worried. It’s not a good idea to go off by yourself like that, is it?”
I had been standing in a shadow. When I stepped forward, Agnes’ eyes shifted. Her smile flickered like the light on a firefly.
“Well then, it doesn’t quite look like you were by yourself. Last night when I saw you,” she paused and looked over at me with a gleam in her eye. The night before, I had gone to bed before Lewis had gotten home. I figured he had just been working late. “You sounded like the most cautious man. And today, so cavalier.”
“Why don’t you go on into the dining room, Agnes. I need to get changed and I’m sure Souci feels the same.”
Agnes raised her head and kissed Lewis gently on the cheek. “It’s good to see you, wet or dry,” she said. Lewis walked on and started up the stairs. As I walked past Agnes, she touched my arm.
“Souci, you’ve ruined your top. It’s silk, dear. You’re not supposed to have that on in a rainstorm.”
“Oh, it’s okay.”
“I can help you change for dinner, if you’d like.”
“There’s nothing I would hate more than that, Agnes,” I wanted to say. Instead, I just told her it would be faster if I got ready on my own.
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ll wait for you and Lewis in the living room.… By the way, Souci. One more thing.” Agnes walked right up to me. “You might have his ring, and using your little country charms might get you a prize or two, but you will never have his heart.”
I just stared at Agnes, not sure I had heard her right. But as she looked back at me defiantly, I knew I had. I saw the fine bones in her jaw flinch. I could tell that she was clenching her teeth. She reached down and moved a wet strand of hair out of my face.
“You should be more careful with that hair, sweetie. Don’t want it to kink back up now, do you?”
-23-
Lewis left on an eight-day trip through the Caribbean to try and organize his economic conference. I don’t think I ever spent a more conflicted or confused week in my life. I was still overwhelmed by what had happened between us at Skyward, and was hoping it wouldn’t be just a one-time thing. Then I thought of how close he and Agnes seemed at dinner. I thought of him being with Agnes the night before, and my stomach just turned. “It doesn’t matter what obstacle was in her way. She always manages to get around it,” Paulette and Marilyn had told me. How could I ever compete with the long history between Agnes and Lewis? But I wasn’t about to give up without a fight.
Lewis had me sit for dinner with him once he returned from his trip. The minute I walked into the dining room, I sensed there was something on his mind, and I sensed that this “something” involved me. He didn’t make any eye contact, and he was quiet for some time.
“Anything wrong?” I asked as I watched him twirl a spoon around absently.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“I can just tell.”
He put the spoon down. “Souci, where would you be now if you weren’t confined to this arrangement?”
My heart skipped a beat.
“I guess back in the country, married to Greenie. Maybe have a baby or two. Why?”
“You’re very young. Maybe after all this, you can find someone who will love you; someone you can have a family with.”
“After all this?”
I shook my head slowly. Maybe he had gotten what he needed out of our arrangement, and now he saw me as a complication.
“I really hope I can convince these other islands to come together for a Caribbean economic union,” Lewis said. “We’d be so much better off if we as Jamaicans owned what was truly ours; if we as West Indians as a whole did that.” He sounded as if he was making a campaign speech. And it really wasn’t his habit to talk about his policies with me.
“But perhaps I’ve moved too fast,” he continued. “Some key management people have left the island, and I’ve turned some pretty powerful people against me.” He started to ramble, and it became difficult to follow his train of thought.
“These things are always going through my brain. Did I do this the right way? Could it make things worse in the future? Will the people really understand what I’m trying to do here? I suppose only time will tell. I strove to succeed in order to conquer some personal demons. That was definitely a part of it. But once I got to the top, I realized that all the wrongs I had written about and had seen, I could help change. It’s just that sometimes the means seem so God awful. But then I think of the ends …”
Whenever we sat for dinner, Mrs. Moore was always fluttering in and out, bringing in pumpkin soup or papaya salad or whatever it was she had come up with for the menu. But this night, we had already been seated ten or so minutes, and she hadn’t once come in.
“Lewis, I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
His lips moved, but nothing came out. He shook his head slowly, pushed his chair away fron the table, and walked over to the French doors.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded, but said nothing else. I looked up at the large chandelier he hated so much. One of the bulbs was out.
“Something more is on your mind you want to talk to me about?”
“Yes.”
“You never had a problem with that before.”
“That’s because nothing I’ve ever had to say to you has been of this caliber.”
I swallowed hard and braced myself. Lewis continued to look out into the yard. “It’s a beautiful evening out here. As a boy, sunsets used to make me so sad. It just signaled an ending to me.”
I looked toward the sky. The setting sun cast orange, pink and magenta shades against the clouds.
“I’ve been completely selfish,” he mumbled.
“Okay.”
“I haven’t considered your feelings.”
“Yes.”
He suddenly lowered his voice. “One of your most basic feelings. You’re a young woman. You have urges and needs, like any young woman would.”
He still hadn’t turned to face me, so I was looking at his back the entire time.
“Souci,” he said, only to abruptly stop speaking.
“Yes, Lewis.” My heart was beating wildly. Finally, he turned in my direction. I would have sworn on my dead ancestors there was perspiration on his forehead.
“Are you sick?” I asked. I stood up and started toward him.
“No, no. I’m not ill.” He stuck his right arm out and held his hand up, so I sat back down. “I’ve just been working very hard, pushing myself a bit. It’s an all encompassing job. I mean, everyday I get up and there is so much in front of me. I implement a policy that benefits one group, but at the same time, it ends up being disadvantageous to another. I suppose you can’t please all the people all of the time, but perhaps … perhaps …” He turned toward the French doors once again. “Perhapsyoushouldhaveamakeover.”
“A makeover?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said I should have a makeover.”
With an exasperated shake of his head, he looked away once more.
“You didn’t ask me to get a makeover?”
“No.”
“Then what did you say? And you can’t turn away from me because I can’t hear you.”
He let out a great sigh, then turned toward me and cast his eyes downward. He had his hands in his pant pockets. When he spoke, his voice seemed to come from far away.
“I said that perhaps you should take a lover.”
Although I heard the words the moment they were said, they didn’t register for some time.
“A what?”
“A lover.”
“How do you mean?” I asked as I slouched a little lower into my chair.
“I mean, we could find someone for you … a young man. We could have an arrangement.”
“Another one,” I interrupted.
“Maybe a couple of days before you had a need for him, you could inform me or James, and we could have him transported…”
“Transported from where?” I laughed so hard, my body began to shake. I laughed so hard, tears came to my eyes.
“I’m happy you find this so funny,” he said as he removed his hands from his pockets and crossed them in front of his chest. He started pacing around the table. “I’ve been turning this over in my mind for a long time now. This is very difficult for me.”
“It should be. How else am I supposed to react? You’re telling me I should somehow get my feelings down in such a way that I would know at least two days in advance that I was going to have that ‘certain feeling.’ Then I should call you, or funnier still, call James and tell him I’m about to have this ‘certain feeling,’ and you all will get somebody here for me. Can I ask something, Lewis? Where you planning on finding this person?”
Lewis stopped pacing, leaned against the head of the table and looked straight down.
“We have people at our disposal. People who are trustworthy. It could be a very discreet, very workable arrangement.”
“You have people at your disposal who will go and do that kind of thing?” I stood up and walked over to the same spot in front of the French doors where Lewis had been. I stood with my back to him, looking out into the yard. I always loved when the almond tree was blossoming. It was such a beautiful night, but inside that dining room, everything felt so heavy.
“People at your disposal. You serious?” I asked.
“Of course I am.”
“And you thought I would agree to this?”
“It seemed like a feasible idea.”
“To who? Did you and James come up with this over dinner one of those late nights at Jamaica House, or maybe it was you and Agnes.”
“James doesn’t know about this yet and it has nothing to do with Agnes.”
“So it’s all your idea,” I asked, but he didn’t answer.
“I don’t understand why you’re reacting this way. I meant you no offense.”
“Maybe you didn’t mean it, but …” I turned toward him as I asked this, but he was still looking down at the table. “Do you have someone like that at your disposal?”
He straightened up and put his hands back into his pockets, but he didn’t say anything.
“It makes me wonder what other kind of people you might also have at your disposal,” I said.
“Look, Souci. I just want to apologize to you for the way I behaved the other week. It was completely unfair to you.”
“How was it unfair to me?” I asked.
Lewis finally made eye contact. He took a couple of steps toward me, then stopped. “I’m a man of power. I’ve altered the course your life had been following and moved you into this strange, new world. I don’t want you to feel you’re obligated to do anything you don’t want to.”
I wanted to come up with the words to tell him he was the most wonderful, intriguing man I had ever met. I wanted to tell him how much I looked forward to him returning to Reach each night. I wanted to tell him how I watched the JBC evening news just to catch a glimpse of him giving a speech, or addressing his ministers, or just sitting behind his desk at Jamaica House looking so very important. He was tall and strong and powerful and too perfect to be real. He was a dream. He was my dream. He was the hero in my own personal paperback romance.
“Lewis, it’s all right.”
“That’s just it. It’s not all right. What we have here is an agreement. It’s wrong for me to break it. It’s not fair to you.”
“But I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to.”
He became silent again, so I decided to do show him exactly how I felt about him. I got up and walked around the table and over to the French doors. He kept his eyes glued to me in uncertainty. I gathered every ounce of courage in my body, took a deep breath, then stood on the tips of my toes and put my lips to his. But Lewis broke away as if I had fed him poison. He looked at me as if he had never seen me before, then walked back over to the table. And his eyes … they looked shocked and afraid and confused all at once. Those eyes that had made me feel so beautiful only a few days before, now made me feel so small and so ugly. He walked back over to the French doors and leaned his forehead against a pane. His back was to me when he spoke. His words were drawn out and forceful.
“I don’t want you to feel like that’s something you have to do.”
“I don’t feel like it’s something I have to do.”
“Then you mustn’t do it. I get quite emotional whenever I visit that place. My senses take leave of me. What I was trying to avoid saying is that, last week, up on that hill, it wasn’t you I was there with. It could have been Mrs. Moore or even Mrs. Eldermeyer and I might have reacted in a similar … You’re not required to fulfill any wifely duties, and that is our agreement. If that’s what I needed, I could have employed a whore.” He stopped speaking and turned to face me.
I stood there in complete shock. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t move.
“I fully understand that what happened just now occurred because you felt an obligation to respond to my foolhardiness,” he continued. “You feel sorry for me. Don’t! If you’d pardon the arrogance, I’d have no problems whatsoever getting women, if that was what I desired. I don’t know how else to put it. I do not see you in a wifely or a womanly way. I see you only as a means to attain a certain prize. For whatever sacrifices you have had to make, you are being repaid quite generously, and I thank you. It must end here. There must be absolutely no misunderstandings.” With this, he walked over to the dining room door and opened it. Almost immediately, Mrs. Moore appeared with the start of dinner. I think it was a cucumber and tomato salad. I wasn’t paying that much attention.
I wanted to slump down into the floor and disappear. I couldn’t have hurt anymore had Lewis taken a great big, wooden stake and driven it into my chest. He wasn’t supposed to have reacted that way. He was supposed to have kissed me back and held me and told me that I was the woman he wanted, not Agnes. He was supposed to have called me beautiful and sworn that he didn’t want a woman with straight hair and cherry red lips and a dancer’s body. Somehow, I forced my head up and my eyes to his face, but he never once looked at me.
I refused to show him how much he had hurt me, so I remained at the dinner table for as long as I could—sitting there in silence, trying to force down food I could hardly stomach. But somewhere between the roasted chicken and the dessert, my emotions became too much to bear. I managed to keep my head held high as I walked out of the dining room, through that hallway and up the stairs. I held my breath the entire way because I felt, had I exhaled, I would have fallen to pieces. Suddenly, I remembered something Lewis’ mother had said the day of the wedding. She talked about his “mean-spiritedness.” I wondered if his first wife hadn’t seen that side of him, too, and if that hadn’t been the reason she had given up on their marriage and left Jamaica. Then I thought of how tender his letter to Elsie was, and I wondered if he wasn’t actually two people trapped within the same body.
* * *
19 Skyline Close
St. And
rew
March 19, 1977
Dear Souci
Look at us. Who would ever think the day would come when we wouldn’t be together all the time. Wish I had a telephone so I could talk to you. Now I have to write you to tell you about all the trouble I get myself into. I wish I still had you here to help me get out of it. But you got this great life now. Still I haven’t forgot you and I hope you haven’t forgot me. I read about you in the paper all the time. It always make me smile.
How is your husband? I hear all the things they say about him. That he’s a communist. But I don’t believe that. Mavis Parker went to Bog Walk maybe a month ago to visit her cousin. She say things ain’t too good in Kingston, that things expensive but what these old time people know. They been saying it for years. How you and you husband getting along?
Well I figure you know I’m not just writing to talk about stupid things. That’s true. Red ask me to marry him. I know you probably thinking how that can be since I’m already a married woman. Well he ask anyway and what a big thing when he did. Winston was home but Red didn’t care. He just march in all strong and tall and say he was moving back to Nine Mile full time to take care of his father farm. I suppose he give up on making the cricket team. Anyway he say he can’t manage that big farm all on his own. He need somebody to cook and clean and wash for him and he think I’m the best person. Ain’t that wonderful. Poor Winston. He try to put up a fight but Red just dash him this way and that. The thing is that I could go to Ochi and draw up papers for me and Winston. Red looking into how long that would take. But if Winston agree it shouldn’t take that long. And Winston would agree if I ask him. You know he’s that kind of person.
I know you probably screwing up your face wondering how I can even think about marrying Red with all his girlfriends and all. But Souci this is the one thing I ever want ever since that day after school when I first see him. I love him since then. I know you don’t think he love me and maybe he don’t but I could make him maybe. Winston been good to me but I don’t love him. I never will no matter how I try. I wish I could then I wouldn’t even think about Red. But I can’t help the way I feel. And you know how I think. You only on God green earth once and if you don’t make the best of it then you just die without living much of a life. I don’t mean to be selfish but Red is the kids father and is the one that make my heart beat the way it should. You never know when is going to be your time so might as well live it to the fullest. Right?
Crickets' Serenade Page 22