Caca Tibaba! He gave Paul the greeting he’d hoped for – the old nickname, the big hug, the slap on the back, taking Paul by the shoulders and examining him to see if he was still there, the Paul he knew, the little half-brother of his blood brother Jean-Marie, though Paul had been so young then. And perhaps this examination was a way to stop Paul from looking too closely at him.
Gaetan lived in the same lacaz tol set back from the road. But when he swung open the door – it was unlocked – Paul was shocked at the state of the place. The bed was unmade, the floor littered with copies of Turf Magazine and dirty plates, these last beaded with flies. Unwashed clothes hung limp from the back of the only chair. Some of the weave had come loose from its seat and stuck out untidily like stray hairs.
Gaetan waved an arm about. Nothing’s changed. He smiled, slightly embarrassed.
Gaetan was well past forty now but looked older. His hair had mostly gone and what was left was grey and bristled. The whites of his eyes were flecked with blood and his face was bloated. His Manchester United shirt was streaked with something and he smelt of last night’s drink.
Those horses you used to back – are they still running? Paul laughed, nudging with his foot a heap of betting slips on the floor. They rested on a pile of coins and crumpled tissues, the contents of a turned-out pocket. Paul put the bottle of Le Corsaire on the table, prompting Gaetan to disappear into the kitchen area.
There was a calendar on the wall above the bed, the kind that might come free with a Sunday supplement. The page was turned to January. January of the previous year, Paul noticed. It showed pictures of big grey Gothic buildings. The days of the week were in a language he did not recognise.
Where’s this? he asked.
Helsinki.
Why have you got this up?
I don’t know. Gaetan shrugged. He had returned with two glasses and a bowl of peanuts in their shells. It looks really foreign. Cold.
Paul knew then that he didn’t need to ask if Gaetan had ever managed to leave the island.
A tourist gave it to me.
You’re still playing the hotels, then? Paul asked.
Sort of.
Gaetan nodded towards the chair, which Paul took, while he himself settled down on the bed. He opened the rum and poured out two large measures of the dark, treacly-looking stuff. They clinked glasses and drank.
So, said Gaetan, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand and looking Paul full in the eyes, making it sound almost like an accusation, where have you been all this time? What are you doing back here?
It was a shock to hear a cockerel again. Paul woke up terrified when he heard it – that raw sound, its voice almost straining, breaking his sleep, a rude awakening, and then the dogs started, and sleep was over for the night. He had dreamt of Jean-Marie. The last thing he remembered them talking about, before passing out. Shortly after Jean-Marie died, Paul had spent a month here. But this time Gaetan had given up his bed and now he lay snoring on the floor, the smell of stale alcohol rolling off him in waves. Paul stepped over him, and went out into the back, to the kitchen area. His friend was a big drinker now, it seemed. They had worked their way through a whole bottle of rum, Gaetan tossing back most of it like lemonade.
Paul filled a pan with water and put it on the stove to boil. Walking out into the yard, he felt a freshness coming in from the sea. It was half-dark outside, the sky a faint lilac, still scattered with stars, and through the trees he imagined he could see the silhouettes of fishermen arranging their nets, dragging their pirog down to the water. He’d gone out there with Gaetan all those years ago and suddenly he remembered what a strangely beautiful and terrifying time it had been. But last night, when he’d asked about the pirog, Gaetan had just shrugged and said he’d lost the taste for being out at sea. Things were clearly not going so well for him: Paul had noticed a dead pot-plant in the corner where his guitar used to stand. But Gaetan seemed cheerful enough. He had even suggested a trip to Tamarin the next day.
Not tomorrow, Paul had said. There is someone I need to see.
Grandmère seemed to have brightened with age, Paul thought: her hair was a shinier blue-black and her blue-brown eyes gleamed in her brown skin. Or perhaps it was Mauritius that had brightened her. When they hugged, the flesh on her bare arms was like butter that had softened in the heat. There was something to be said for dementia, Paul thought: she carried herself with none of the shame he had noticed in some very old people, who seemed slightly embarrassed to still be alive. What age did Grandmère believe herself to be, anyway? He’d heard that in some cases the memories that came back to the afflicted were received as present-tense experiences; for some their memories stopped at a specific point in time. He’d heard of people who could not recognise themselves in photos beyond a certain age; people who could not recognise themselves in the mirror.
So! Grandmère said, patting the wicker sofa next to her. You are?
Paul, he said.
My grandson’s name. She smiled, seeming to need no further explanation as to who this particular Paul was. She put her finger to her lips and nodded at the antique-looking TV. She was watching one of those corny old soaps he remembered from the last time he was in Mauritius: Secrets de la famille, made in Brazil and dubbed in France. He watched the last ten minutes with her, during which it was revealed that the master of the big house was the father of the young maid’s illegitimate baby. When the credits rolled, Grandmère exhaled with satisfaction and indicated that he could switch the set off now. Then all he could hear was the heavy tick of a clock and suddenly he was back at her place in Hackney, on a Sunday afternoon after church.
Grandmère fanned herself, shaking her head. Oh lo lo! she chuckled. Always the same: two sides to every story and the white side is always the dark side. Just like my grandson’s!
Paul, said Paul.
Yes, she said, beaming. Paul.
He looked around. This was not the kind of over-upholstered waiting room for death he associated with retirement homes in England. This seemed like a proper home. They were in the salon. The room was cool and dark. In the corner was a mahogany dresser, its marble top crowded with coloured glasses and bonbonnières; the parquet floors were highly polished and there were cotton lace curtains at the French windows, which opened onto a verandah overlooking a garden.
It’s nice here, Paul said.
Yes, she said. But it’s not Mauritius. I miss Mauritius.
Paul, looking out at the mango trees, marvelled at the power of a mind to deceive itself.
Perhaps you’ll go back, one day.
Oh, no, she sighed, I’m going to die in London. You look a lot like my grandson, you know. What he’ll look like when he’s older.
How old is Paul?
Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.
What’s he like?
Oh, difficult. She sighed again. His mother and sister are very upset with him.
Why?
He’s run off to Mauritius. I lent him some money to do a computer course and instead he bought a plane ticket. Can you imagine! He lied to me.
Are you angry with him?
Not really, no. I can understand. London has never suited him. He came here when he was a boy. With his sister. His little sister adores him. I must say, he is very sweet with her. My daughter brought them here from Mauritius six years ago when she left her husband.
Maybe Paul never wanted to leave the island.
You’re probably right. If I think about how he was when he first came to London. Oh, it breaks my heart. One story –
Tell me, said Paul.
(iv) Grandmère’s Story
The first time I ever met my grandson was at Heathrow Airport. He was ten years old. I had gone with my husband to meet them all, Paul, and my daughter and my little granddaughter Genie. And I can barely remember Paul there at the airport: while the rest of us were hugging and crying, Paul was standing on his own, hanging from the railings which separated the new arrivals from the waiting, s
winging loosely to and fro, as though he didn’t really care how he fitted into this new family, this new country. He was a very beautiful child. But this was of no comfort to him. He had left behind the only father he had ever known. But worse for him, I think, was losing his big brother. Jean-Marie was really Genie’s brother but Paul missed him more. On that first walk home from the tube station, I watched how Paul looked around, registering just how different London was from Mauritius. That is how we learn to feel at home in a place: to notice what makes it different. Paul did not speak much at all, those first few days. We took him and Genie to the park, took them for walks in the neighbourhood. When we tried to draw him out, when we asked him what he thought of the place, he said, Where are the trees? Where are the dogs? In Mauritius there were many dogs. I remember them myself. They live in the streets and they all look bred from the same stock: skinny but jowly, dog-eared, slack-titted, piebald brown or black and white, or a dirty yellow colour. When Paul first came to London, he would obsessively draw pictures of these dogs. In Mauritius you see such dogs hanging around in the streets, taking themselves out for walks, snapping at one another in aggression or play. They have that sly, sideways skitter that street dogs develop, so that they never have their backs to danger. When Paul came to London that was what he noticed: there were no fruits hanging on the trees and no dogs wandering the streets. And then one day, some weeks after he and Genie arrived, the two of them were outside playing. When night fell they still had not come home and we began to get worried. When they finally came in, long after they were due home, their mother shouted at them. I asked them where they had been. Paul looked upset and would not speak. But Genie told us this story. They were out in the street when they saw a dog, a ginger dog. Paul said it was lost. Genie asked how Paul knew it was lost and Paul said, ’Cos it’s alone: dogs on their own are always lost. But what about cats? Genie said. Cats are different, Paul said. She said, But why? and he said, Because. This dog belongs to someone, Paul said. The dog nosed around their legs and sniffed their feet. Genie thought they should keep it. I can just see her now, squatting down and throwing her arms around the dog’s neck, kissing his flat, greasy head. Paul felt for a collar. He found a bronze disc on it that said ‘Pieshop’. That’s his name, Paul said. He lives in Camden. He must have been gone from home a while, he’s lost weight: look how loose his collar is. Pieshop lifted his eyes from the pavement, his gaze shifting to and from Paul’s. From some angles, Paul told me later, his brown eyes had an orange glow. Like Genie’s. Then Pieshop dipped his head and licked the pavement. Do you think he’s hungry? Genie asked. Yeah, probably, Paul said, but we don’t have any money. We should just get him back to his home and then he can eat. Paul said he would take the dog back home and Genie said she would go with him. Paul refused, but some way along Brecknock Road when she was still trailing him he had to stop and let her catch up as he didn’t want her to get lost. OK, he said, come, but you’re not sharing my reward. I don’t want any reward, she said. Will there be a reward? The address was one of those tatty terraced houses with basement flats on the main road where people walking past will throw down their burger boxes and crisp packets. They walked up to the front door and knocked. It was opened by an old man. Pieshop! He called out to the dog but Pieshop only cowered, so the old man climbed down the steps and grabbed him by the collar. Bastard dog’s always running away. As he was closing the door, Genie asked if Paul could have his reward; that Paul had told her Pieshop’s owner would give him a reward for returning the dog. So the old man disappeared into the house and came back with two oranges. There you go, he said, closing the door. What kind of a reward is that? Paul said, looking at his orange in disgust. It was the kind with thin skin that hurt your thumbs to peel. As they were standing there, they heard the man shouting, then heard Pieshop emit a yelp. Oh, cried Genie, that was Pieshop! Genie started to sob and asked Paul to do something. Paul shrugged. I can’t, he said. He doesn’t belong to us. Then Paul threw his orange as hard as he could and watched it burst and dribble down the old man’s door. And then Genie threw her orange and it fell short and rolled away back down the steps towards them and they looked at each other and Paul grabbed Genie’s hand and they ran.
After Genie told us this story, Paul broke down in sobs. The dog was trying to run away, he said. And I took him back. I remembered this story as soon as his mother told me that he had gone back to Mauritius.
(v) April 1988
It was Jean-Marie who died, but it was Paul who felt like the ghost. In the days following the funeral he wandered alone around the house, trying to walk through walls. Gaetan, who’d not heard from him in days, called round and was concerned at the state in which he found his friend. You’re coming with me, he told Paul, and Paul, feeling no impulse to the contrary – no impulses whatsoever – did not object.
In the state that he was in – beyond desires – and with Gaetan’s good grace, Paul might well have remained in La Gaulette indefinitely. But then, after a month or so, came a chance encounter on the beach. After this, Paul realised he should return to London.
At Gaetan’s, Paul shifted from ghost to shadow. Lacking the ability to progress through the day unaided, he took to copying Gaetan’s every move. And, since Gaetan rose every morning before the sun did, to walk to La Gaulette and drag his pirog down to the sea where under a pale violet sky he rowed out to the reef and cast his nets, so did Paul. And because Gaetan spent the afternoon squatting under a tamarind tree by the shop – the morning’s fishing over, his catch sold – drinking until sundown, Paul did too. Paul followed Gaetan in tossing back rum in front of the television until sleep hit them; the day that followed played out in much the same way as the previous one had.
All this Paul did without thinking, or feeling, both intellect and sentiment overwhelmed by an almost hubristic and hysterical sense of physical self. He ached in a million places from his sleepless nights on Gaetan’s floor. His head thrummed from the almost constant rain that battered the tin roof of Gaetan’s shack – the wet season, drawing to an end, seemed all the wetter for it. He seemed to be permanently hungry, eating as though he were hollow and trying to fill the hole in himself. He could not pass a woman, pretty or otherwise, without the instant threat of an erection. At times Paul’s senses were so overstimulated that they became wildly uncalibrated and he experienced a kind of transcendental synaesthesia, so that when he walked on the beach before dawn he would confuse for an exhilarating second the grit of wet sand grains that rubbed between his bare feet and flip-flops with the stars still pricking the sky.
Out at sea, Paul would fall into a trance. The sea, unsettled by recent storms, became more agitated by the day. The waves smashed against the reef and Gaetan’s jaw would clench with fear. Gaetan took to bringing a rum bottle with him, on which he pulled more and more as the days passed, while Paul stared at rainbows in the spray, following without question Gaetan’s instructions. They caught fewer and fewer fish.
The day before their last ever fishing trip together, Gaetan had taken less than half his usual catch. They were sitting under the tamarind tree drinking, barely stirring in the heat. The question of their diminishing catch arose in conversation. Then Gaetan, apparently changing the subject, asked Paul if he had heard about some islands of near mythical beauty close by, where no people lived and turtles made pilgrimages to lay their eggs.
No, said Paul.
There are no women allowed on those islands, Gaetan told him. But one day a fisherman broke this taboo and brought his fiancée – in disguise – on board ship, telling the rest of the crew she was his little brother. They reached the islands safely and found a lagoon where all was calm and you could find big turtles so gentle they let themselves be taken without trying to escape. Then all the men disembarked to spend the night on land. That was when the storm broke. It swept over the island. The men took refuge in the trees, praying to the Virgin and the saints as their boat was smashed to splinters by the maddened waves. Then a huge wave
bigger than all the others rolled in towards land and tore up a rock where some of the men were sheltering, washing them all away. As suddenly as the storm had broken, the wind then dropped, the sea was stilled and the sun broke through the clouds. The men fell on their knees thanking God but they heard a mournful voice crying, Aiyo, tifrere! It was the young fisherman. His fiancée had been swept away. He had caused the storm by bringing his lover to the island. He dared not admit what he had done and could only cry out for his ‘little brother’.
That’s nice, Paul said. It reminds me of Paul et Virginie. You know, the boy losing his love to the sea.
All our stories remind you of Paul et Virginie.
And Gaetan sucked his teeth and finished the bottle of rum without speaking.
Paul thought of Genie, and how long it had been since he had in fact last thought about her. Then he wondered why Gaetan had told him this story.
The next day, they caught no fish. The waves were purple, the sky was swagged with clouds and the wind moaned over the heaving water. It’s biblical out here, Gaetan muttered, casting his eyes aloft, Gaetan himself transformed for an instant into an Old Testament engraving as he was illuminated by a break in the clouds. Hauling in their nets, Paul caught Gaetan glancing at him in the same way he had at the heavens. Suddenly Paul felt bereft, as though with that silent accusation Gaetan had severed the invisible thread which had fated Paul to follow, unthinking, his friend’s every movement. This feeling persisted long after they’d landed, and that afternoon they drank their rum in silence.
The next morning, Paul woke to see Gaetan creep about in the shadows, before gently opening the door to leave.
Genie and Paul Page 10