by Jacob Ross
I’m not wishing you good luck, Pynter. It’s never been about luck.
I take it that you’ve been doing the work. Go finish it in June.
Always, Pynter, always – I carry you inside me.
Sislyn Chappel
36
TINELLE BEGAN preparing him for a visit to her aunt. It was the week after he’d astonished her by asking for a pen and telling her he was going to sit his exams.
She was going to introduce him to her entire family, she said. That, he learned, was a single aunt who lived on a hill called Morne Parnasse, over Temple Valley. Aunt Linora lived at the ‘ancestral home’ built by her ‘great great and greater still’ grandfather ten years after he arrived from Scotland. Morne Parnasse was where the McMurdos first planted themselves on the island and took root. The Old Man – Tinelle talked as if she had known him personally – had decided to name the building Troy. And whatever Pynter did, he must remember this: Aunt Linora’s son, Laban, was studying Philosophy in London.
Troy was a ponderous wooden structure on stone pillars, painted cream with a veranda that encircled the house completely. There were large windows on every side. It had its own wide stone road that led up to it, paved with slabs of lichen-covered granite that had gone lopsided in some places. Tall walls of ancient hibiscus stood on either side of them. Their limbs were padded with green moss. It reminded Pynter of the old plantation houses further inland.
Tinelle had given him a hive of advice about how not to act in the presence of her aunt. Aunt Linora’s first impression of him had to be a good one. Aunt Linora never changed her views after a first impression.
He hated the bright green shirt Tinelle bought him. She asked him to wear it nevertheless, for her. He was suspicious of knives and forks but ate with them during the week Tinelle was getting him ready. It brought to mind Patty’s preparation for her new job in San Andrews. His young aunt had given up her spoon for the inconvenience of those two flimsy bits of metal, her grace before meals replaced with a muttered recitation which she said exactly as she would a prayer.
Knife on de right,
Fork on de left,
Keep de chat light,
An’ to hell with de rest.
He used to laugh at her. Now he ran the rhyme over in his mind every time he took up the knife and fork. ‘S’a wicked, sadistic so-an’-so who invent dese tings, Tinelle. People not s’pose to relax and enjoy de food dey eat?’
‘They look beautiful in your hands,’ Tinelle said.
‘Gimme a spoon, girl.’
‘Having a meal and eating food not the same things, Pynter Bender. Remember?’
She’d cut his hair. ‘You’ve got Indian in your blood?’ she’d said.
‘Nuh, I got only blood,’ he’d said. He’d glanced down at the soft nightfall of hair Tinelle had just snipped off.
‘What you thinking, Pynter Bender?’
‘Goldin apples. Green ones. They hard, they sour but they sweet. I missin goldin apple.’
He’d refused to change the way he spoke and, sensing his rising irritation, Tinelle had backed down quickly.
Linora was a little lady, older by far than the smiling woman he’d seen in the photograph in Tinelle’s house. She could not keep her hands off Tinelle. She hugged and kissed and tugged her, while chiding her for not phoning. Didn’t she remember the number? It was still working. Never had it disconnected, because Laban called every Christmas. Did she know that Laban called home every Christmas? Been calling for the last five years without fail? And Hugo. How’s Hugo? Always said he should be doing something legal. The boy was born judgemental. Remember him as a tiny child sitting in the yard with a stick in his hand passing sentence on the chickens. Did she know it was on her insistence that their father, Richard, began to prepare Hugo’s mind for law? And her son, Laban – God, that boy was a born philosopher. His very great grandfather must have been one. Only a philosopher would travel all the way from Scotland and come to set up house and family here.
Tinelle pounced during the pause.
‘Auntie Li, this is my boyfriend, Pynter.’
Auntie Li looked him up and down. ‘Fine young man. A bit, er, tall. But then I always notice because, apart from Hugo, us McMurdos aren’t.’
‘Nice to meet yuh,’ Pynter said.
‘How are you?’ Her tone now matched her eyes exactly. She was a paler version of Tinelle’s mother. She’d bleached her hair a subtle silver and was tucking it in and patting it as if to assure herself it was all still there.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘And you?’
Linora shot a finger in the air. ‘Oh! Tinelle, I found it! I found that picture you were pestering me about. Your great-aunt. You never knew what she looked like, did you? I’ll show you where I found it. God, you’d never believe it! Come on, child!’
Pynter stepped out of the door. He propped himself up on the veranda, and followed the chirping of the woman in the house. There was a soft fluttering above him. He turned his gaze up at the old soursop tree which leaned against the house. He saw the bird, grey as ash, moving clumsily through the branches, a cuckoo myuck. He thought how odd it was that it should appear so early in the year, and then he remembered that it was already dry season and this, the world’s saddest bird, was cursed to quench its thirst from the leaves of trees. He’d wondered when he was a child how they survived the long dry season.
The veranda was covered with patches of peeling paint, the crevices in the woodwork were caked with lichen. On the slope below him, lime trees had taken over the orchard of low-growing pawpaw, Julie and Rose mangoes. The pawpaw fruits were shredded by kongorees, birds and lizards. Further down the hill, the green gave way to a kind of darkness and a chill that he could feel even from where he sat. For there was no sensation like the chill that seeped from the roots of a dying cocoa plantation. And if anyone needed proof of it, it was right there in the bright, parasitic spread of love vines.
He wondered if Tinelle’s cat-eyed aunt knew what was happening. The forest was moving in on her. In ten years’ time, perhaps sooner, Linora and Troy would be swallowed up.
In the house the woman flitted about like a child, fussing about Laban. He would be back in two years. Then he would fix the veranda, pave the path with stones like his great-great-grandfather did when he first built Troy. She turned to Pynter. Did he see those stones out there, those flat white ones laid down along the side of the road? The grass was all over them now but her very great, great-grandfather laid them down himself. Scottish – Tinelle and all the McMurdos on the island were from Scottish stock. Did Tinelle tell him that? The name itself said so. Proud, hard-working people the Scotsmen were. Blue eyes too. Where her very great grandfather came from they all had sky-blue eyes. Did he know that? Blue eyes like Laban had been born with. He lost the blue as he grew up, though. Always said it was the climate. Had to be the climate. Too much sun and certain, erm, associations.
The grey eyes were now averted, the chin pushed high. Certain associations didn’t do the family any good. Definitely not. She was a God-fearing Christian woman, but she had to say it, certain unfortunate associations caused the McMurdos to lose those marvellous blue eyes. It was up to the women to keep things clean. That was why McMurdo women should never go that way. Or that would be the end of it.
‘End of what?’ Pynter asked.
‘You a strong-looking young fellow. It would be nice to have somebody cut those fruit trees down, especially those pawpaw. God! I can’t stand the smell of those things. Did you know, Tinelle, when Laban left there wasn’t half as many down there? Why on earth do they grow so fast?’
‘Don’ worry, he goin’ cut dem when he come,’ he said.
‘It’ll be all done by then, I hope.’ The woman laughed.
‘I hope so too,’ Pynter said.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ she smiled, ‘I would have said you’ve got hazel in those eyes.’
‘Is de hot sun in we backside,’ he answered drily. ‘I
t bleach out some people eye, yunno.’
A figure crossed his vision. A shadow at the back of Linora. He could not keep his eyes off the girl who moved about the house. Linora’s servant was a long-limbed young woman of about eighteen. She reminded him of the people on Top Hill, those he’d described to Tinelle as ‘the people of the wind’. The woman kept referring to her as ‘D’, mainly when she was telling Tinelle about some new recipe she’d read about in Harpers and asked the young woman to try out.
Linora was a strange woman, Pynter thought, and Miss D there, D for Delia or Doreen or Daphne or whatever, hugging the shadows of this flippin house jus’ like a ghost. Why the hell didn she come forward?
‘Darky’s getting quite good at it. Last time I had the La Fortunes over. She did a gorgeous flan.’
Tinelle had finished rearranging the basket of dried flowers on the piano in the corner. She eased the lid of the instrument open to expose a row of black and yellow keys.
‘That’s what de “D” stand for?’ he said.
Linora looked brightly up at him and mumbled that he must not mind the words of a tired old woman. Just a friendly joke between herself and Syl. In fact Miss Syl didn’t mind at all.
Miss Syl was now beside the sink with a handful of radish under the tap. The girl was pretending not to hear them.
‘As long as people call me by my real name. My whole name,’ he told her quietly. ‘Besides…’
‘Laban sent any pictures lately, Auntie Li?’ Tinelle asked.
Tinelle’s mention of pictures did something magical to Linora McMurdo. She was more than glad to show him the pictures of Laban – a student of Literature and Philosophy in London, England. Pynter was genuinely intrigued by the pictures of Laban as a baby, Laban as a boy with his uncle in New York, Laban as a young man holding up a handful of snow in Canada, Laban graduating from college in Chicago, and finally Laban and his English girlfriend against a small red car ‘in Knightsbridge’. Linora explained how it was his very own car which he’d bought last year with the money she had been saving up for him from the first month he was born. Five dollars a week for twenty-five years is quite a bit. Did he know that?
‘Six thousand, five hundred dollars,’ Pynter said, almost before she’d finished.
Not many students, not even English people, could afford to buy a car like Laban’s. Did he know that? He sounded like a smart boy! Did she know his family?
‘I’m Pynter, Pynter Bender.’
‘Ben … Oh, Benoit! The Benoits. You a Benoit.’ Linora’s face lit up. ‘That’s where you get the height. Which one of the brothers is your father?’
‘Not Benoit, Bender.’
She looked doubtfully at Tinelle. ‘Ben-uh-der. Never heard that name before. From?’
‘Old Hope.’
‘Eh?’
‘Old Hope. I come from a lil cane village name Old Hope.’
Tinelle was brushing her fingers across the keys of the piano.
‘Yes, well…’ Linora got to her feet and looked vaguely about the room. ‘You’ll excuse me, er … T? Those orchids I’ve been trying to grow, you remember? Come, I want to show you how I’ve been getting on. Laban sent me this wonderful book about growing orchids. All sorts, my dear! Excuse us, er, young man.’
Linora and Tinelle went into the dining room, leaving Pynter to drift about the house on his own. He went into the kitchen and there was Miss Syl again. She was leaning against the dresser. She’d folded her arms and her eyes were on him, probing him. A Deeka gaze. She was telling him she knew him.
‘Don’ let ’er call you no fuckin D-fo’-Darky,’ Pynter said, washing his hands at the tap. ‘Y’hear me?’
Miss Syl moved towards the door that led into the flower garden at the back. ‘She don’t like you,’ she whispered. ‘Dat’s what she been tellin de girl in quiet. She fink you not good enough fo’ her.’
Pynter dried his palms on his trousers. ‘She can’t stop six. The quenk! What’s your real name?’
‘Selina. Everybody call me Lina at home.’ Lina was grinning, probably at the name he’d called the woman.
‘I’z Pynter.’
‘She like you?’
‘I don’ flippin care.’
‘Not she – Miss Dolly-face, I mean.’
‘Of course!’
‘Only fuh your looks?’
Pynter shook his head. ‘Not only. Don’t let nobody fool you. You pretty like hell. Nicer-lookin than dat half-bake son she got. And if …’
Lina’s face went dead. Tinelle was standing in the other room, her back against the partition, looking across at them. He had never seen her look so small and vulnerable.
‘See yuh,’ he mumbled.
Lina nodded, her eyes shifting to the floor.
‘I gettin outta here, Tinelle.’ His voice was loud enough to fill the house. ‘You comin or you stayin?’
‘We came together, not so?’ Tinelle sounded plaintive.
Linora saw them to the door. ‘Think about what I told you, Tinelle.’
‘I can’t remember everything you told me, Auntie Li. You told me so much, dearest.’
Outside, Tinelle plunged her left hand into Pynter’s pocket and turned her face up to him. Temple Valley lay blue and beautiful below them, and above them were great walls of hibiscus, probably planted there by the blue-eyed grandfather from Scotland.
‘Hibiscus and begonias,’ he said. ‘The names always nicer than the plant. Begonias remind me of my aunt, Tan Cee. Begonias especially.’
‘She crazy about plants.’
‘She know plants. Tan Cee is plant modder.’
‘Not her, Aunt Li.’
‘Oh she! She jus’ crazy, full stop!’
‘Not crazy. Just living her life for Laban.’
‘And you don’ call dat craziness? Like de world begin and end with dat chupid fella name Laban. What’s so special about ’im anyway?’
‘He’s her son.’
‘I’z also my modder son, but she not sitting down and waiting while the whole world tumble down around her. Dat’s what Silly Lily doing.’
‘Stop it!’
‘Stop what! Stop my arse! I putting it to you dat Linora de loveless not crazy about no plants. Is appease she tryin to appease them. Becuz them coming fo’ her. Dey closing in! You watch that forest down there and, mark my words, your Aunt Ugly Lily better watch she arse, becuz de forest creepin up to get she tail and it goin to finish her off long before she live to see you married to a D for Darky like me.’
‘Pynter! You shouting.’
‘Sooo! I kin flippin shout loud as I want. I not inside dat fallin-down house no more. I don’ know what de hell you bring me here for. If you come to my yard, dey will treat you proper. Dey won’ call you no Pale Face, or Red ’Ooman, or Brownie. Dey will treat you like you was a flesh-an’-blood pusson.’
‘Pynter!’
‘Don’ call my name. In fact, I surprise you know it, seein as Lily de lyin, loveless, lonely little …’
‘Pynterrr.’
They were at the end of the road, against the iron gate. He pulled her to him, still angry and drunk with it. She was crying. He glimpsed Lina at the side of the house looking across at them, her hands on her hips. The old woman had come out too.
When he raised his head again, Selina and Linora had vanished.
They were on the road above San Andrews. He was marvelling at the red trail of flowers discarded by the high flame trees that stood above the twisting strip of asphalt when Tinelle began talking. Didn’t he want to know what Auntie Li was saying to her? Did he realise she loved him? She’d never said that to a man before.
She was speaking so quickly she had to stop to catch her breath. Laban, she said, was never going to give Linora the grandchildren she wanted so desperately. He was not planning on returning. He had no interest in family. Would not have one for the sake of continuing his or anybody else’s name, for the same reasons that Hugo did not give a damn about children either. What s
he could never bring herself to do was explain to her aunt that Laban loved living abroad. He saw himself as being in a state of waiting. When Linora died he was going to sell the house and the land it was rotting on.
Tinelle looked up at the hills, at the green waterfalls of leaves and trees and vines. She stopped and turned to face him. ‘With Hugo and Laban out of it, there’s just me to carry on the family name. Or us McMurdos will disappear off this island.’
‘Never mind. There’s lots o’ you in Scotland!’ Pynter said.
‘I’m not joking. My children will have to carry my name.’
‘Call all of them Tinelle then.’
They were still fretting at each other when they got to the house. Something restless and unsated sat between them.
Tinelle went into her room. Shortly after, she emerged wearing a purple dress. It swirled around her naked feet.
‘Shower now and change, please, Pynter,’ she said.
She’d put on some music when he returned. She was standing in the middle of the hallway. The windows were thrown open to the town. And the yellow night glow of San Andrews was all the light there was.
‘I want this back, Pynter. I want us to rectify what went wrong today. In here.’ She touched her chest. She pulled her breath in and looked away. ‘I want to dance with you till we fall asleep. Or get so tired we can’t think or feel any more. And when we wake up, I hope …’ Her voice faltered.
She reached for his hands and opened his arms. He folded them around her.
‘Who’s the voice?’ he whispered.
‘Millie Jackson,’ she said.
Up there in the big white house above the harbour, they swayed together in each other’s arms and he was alive to the brush of her lips and her whispered words. The sound of the sea became a soft snore in the distance.
37
PYNTER CAUGHT THE smell of the canes as soon as he reached Old Hope. He’d been away for seven months and he wondered how they would receive him.