by Paul Mendez
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Paul Mendez
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Dialogue Books, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, an Hachette UK Company, London, in 2020. Published by arrangement with Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Cover photograph © simonapilolla/iStock/Getty Images
Hand-lettering by Samantha Hahn
Cover design by Emily Mahon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mendez, Paul, [date] author.
Title: Rainbow milk : a novel / Paul Mendez.
Description: New York : Doubleday, [2021] | Identifiers: LCCN 2020034603 (print) | LCCN 2020034604 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385547062 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385547093 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PR6113.E54 R35 2021 (print) | LCC PR6113.E54 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034603
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034604
Ebook ISBN 9780385547093
ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Swan Village
Great Bridge
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Earl’s Court
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Bruce Grove
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Brixton
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Acknowledgments
Playlist
Dedication
A Note About the Author
For James and Bertie
SWAN VILLAGE
JULY 20, 1959
This the best summer since we come to England three year ago. It hot, not hot like Jamaica but I don’t feel a cloud pass the sun today, and no rain has fall for a long time now. I stand on my front lawn and breathe. The bush are strong with plenty of fragrant rose. My son Robert love to totter round with the watering can, that almost as big as him. I can hear how much water he is pouring on each root. I don’t know how he can’t feel the cold water dribbling on his foot. Strong little man. He is going to be tall; already he is quite up to my knee. Glorie want to help but she is too small, and I have to listen for her all the time in case I trip up on her or she scratch herself on the thorn.
“Not too much, son,” I say to Robert when I can hear the water start to puddle. “Move to the next one.”
“Allo, little man, am you helpin’ ya dad water the garden?” Mr. Pearce, my neighbour, make me jump as he walk up his path.
“Say hello to Mr. Pearce, Robert.”
“Hello,” he say, all quiet.
I say, “Good afternoon, Mr. Pearce. How are you today?,” knowing he will just go on and on about his ailment.
“Oh, I int too bad, you know. Same old aches and pains. Me arthritis ’as been playin’ me up summat rotten but I can’t complain. Ethel int well herself, with her legs. Cor wait till your lad’s big enough to run down the shops for we. Anyway, it’s a bit hot for me in this heat. It’s alright for you, coming from the West Indies.”
“Not really,” I say. “My body used to the cold, now.” I have hardly any sight left but I know Mr. Pearce never leave his door without his flat cap, old work coat and boot, though he must have retired from the gas work ten year ago.
“You must’ve heard all that that’s been happenin’ down London with all them White Defence League rallies. We was ever so sorry to see they’d painted them Keep England White or whatever it is on your door. Me and Ethel was talking about it the other night and we both agreed that we don’t mind you being here at all. We’m all the same, int we, white or coloured or not.”
I should not be still here in the sun, like what the doctor said, because my head start to throb and darkness falling on my eye, so I step closer to the house, into the shade.
“Well, that is very kind of you, Mr. Pearce. Your bag must be heavy. Why don’t you take them inside and we’ll talk later on. Robert, where are you?”
“Here, Daddy,” he say, still watering the rose and singing to himself. He love the new Cliff Richard song “Living Doll,” and he don’t know the word, but he can sing the melody in his nice little voice.
“Remember to water the soil not the flower. Where is your sister?”
“There with the block,” he say, like I’m stupid cos I can’t see what right in front of me. Cha. True, now I see the blur of her white gown in the middle of the lawn, and hear the crack-crack of the block as she bash one on another.
“Gerrin’ big, ay they. How old am they, now?”
“Robert soon three, Glorie ten months.”
“He’s ever so clever, int he!”
Clever but every time I hear one engine pass I fear he will dash into the road and dead under the wheel of a truck, or run and hide in the gas work. I don’t have eyesight but that is the vision I have.
“Yes, he is a good help to we, especially with his sister.”
“And what about your Claudette? Ethel was saying she never sees her now. She thought you might’ve locked her up in the basement or summat,” him laugh.
I force myself to laugh a little bit with him, even though it hurt my head.
“No, no. She is fine. She just work a lot, at the factory and the hospital.”
“It’s a shame, int it, in your culture, for the wife to be out doin’ all the work while the ’usband’s at home?”
“That not the same in every country?” I know I have to be careful the way I speak sometime. “Nothing we can do about it anyway, for she is healthy and I am sick.” I wish this man can just mind his business so I can take my children inside and rest my head.
“You finish with the water, Robert?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Robert say.
“Good boy. Go play with your sister, then,” I tell him, and like any child told their work is done he throw down the can with a thud.
“Pick it up properly and put it by the door,” I say to him, and nobody talk until he do as him told.
“Bet you wish you could see them roses more clear. They look absolutely beautiful against your white fence.”
I sigh, the way this man torment me. “I can’t lie to you, Mr. Pearce. I do wish I did have back my sight.”
“How much can you see?”
Not my children face, is the pity. “Nothing, really. Everything is a blur. All I can see is colour, spread out and mix up together.”
&nb
sp; “Such a shame. Fit young lad like you. Well, I can tell you, your garden’s looking grand. Sometimes I see people trying to take cuttings, you know, and I always chase ’em off. Oh. Alright am ya!”
He is speaking to someone across the street who did call Coowee! Sound like Mrs. Philpott from number three. I don’t mind being blind in front of her.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Philpott,” I say.
“Afternoon,” she call, and I can hear her upturn nose. She always jealous of my rose, like so many people who have nice garden but who not an expert like me.
“Who came to steal my rose?” I ask Mr. Pearce.
“It was, er, a woman. It happened just last week. I was sitting waiting for the postman and I seen her through me winder. Brazen cow her was, come right up your path in broad daylight with her clippers to take a cuttin’ o’ them ones right behind you there, the dark red’uns with the white tips. I knocked on me winder and she ran off. I int seen her before or since.”
“The Girod de l’Ain?”
“Ay?”
“Baron Girod de l’Ain. A French lawyer and politician who did help conquer Napoleon. The rose name after him.”
“Yo’ve been readin’ your history books, then,” he say, like it a crime. “I thought you was bloind.”
“I use to work as a gardener in Jamaica for a very high-class Englishman. He teach me about all the variation and their history. It why I know exactly which rose to plant and where. I did want rose that smell beautiful and fragrant, some for the shade, some for the sun, some for climb, all for repeat.”
“Is that so? Oh well. I’d better get all this in before the milk spoils. Alright, young Norman.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pearce, and do send my regard to Ethel. Don’t worry yourself when people want to take from me, for their conscience will burn them. The rose will grow back anyway. I’ll see you, Mr. Pearce.”
His front door shut. He’s not so bad, really. When we first come here, he and Ethel don’t talk to we for must be the first six month. Then I hear at work somebody say that most English people don’t like to live next door to a West Indian family, for they don’t like the smell of we food. Well. I write a little coupon from the newspaper to Mr. Austin, the nurseryman of Wolverhampton. I choose the Baron, the pink Souvenir de la Malmaison, the white Boule de Neige, the Honorine de Brabant, which light pink with a streak of blood red, and Kronprinzessin Viktoria, white, with a hint of yellow. And so I plant them in the spring, bountiful. I give them space to grow but build them up, and water them, and this is what we have now. Finally the Garden of Eden we come for, and not a sniff of Jamaican food will reach a white man nostril through these bush. Must be the most fragrant garden on the whole estate. I don’t know if it would grow so strong if I did still working all day at the gas work. Jasmine at we back door, to stop the smell of coal burning coming into the kitchen.
“You want toto, baby?”
“Yes!”
“What you say?”
“Yes, please!”
“Good boy. Pick up Glorie block for me and come inside.”
I wonder who it is who try to take cutting from my rose bush. When you blind, it seem like anybody can come and do anything to you, and there is nothing you can do, like when Claudette did come home from work bawling to me, asking me how I did not hear somebody come up to we door to paint KBW—Keep Britain White—on it, when I was in the front room asleep with my children.
* * *
Back home I did use to work full-time for one American hotel in St. Ann’s Bay. Claudette work as waitress in the restaurant and I work outside. The white American love Claudette because she pretty and light-skin with long, wavy hair, but she wasn’t charm by their fat white American money. Plenty time she find me to cry about some badmind drunk white man who think brown skin girl easy. We know one another from a long time ago, for we come from the same part of the parish, where Marcus Garvey born. Claudette visit me sometime in my little shack at the back of the ground; one morning she come and the biggest, most beautiful black-and-yellow Jamaican swallowtail butterfly follow behind she, like it give us it little blessing. When I was a boy, I used to watch them flutter round the forest all the time, but must be in hurricane most of them dead.
Then one day I hear that the owner plan to clear the garden to build a ballroom and car park. Next morning digger crush down the whole place; I hear a hum that get louder from dawn till I reach the hotel. When I see my shack gone the manager tell me to start work on the other side of the ground or he will take back my job. So I wish him all the best to find a better gardener than me and walk back home.
* * *
—
“Careful you don’t make too much mess, Robert. You must pick up any crumb you leave on the floor before your mother come from work, you hear?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
They did help me make the toto this morning. I have to shut them up in the front room while I take time to wipe down the whole kitchen, and then when I finish I let them lick the cake bowl clean. The toto eat good. Soft and sweet. It a quarter to two, and Listen with Mother come on the radio. This is the BBC, for mothers and children at home, the announcer say. We don’t get show like this for entertain we as children back home; we did outside a play. And what about the father—we not at home too, sometime? No. Not really. Only if something wrong with we. I can’t see my daughter face and I don’t want my children to see me cry.
“You want to dance to the music, Glorie, sweetie? The toto nice, eh? Soon you will meet your grandmother who pass me down the recipe.”
Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been? I’ve been up to London to look at the Queen.
I can imagine if Claudette was here she would tell me off for dancing Glorie on my knee while she eat in case she choke. “One day I will take you both to London. You want to go to London with Daddy, Mommy and Robert? We can look at the Queen too, if you want. We can ride on the bus to Buckingham Palace, the House of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul Cathedral, and watch the marching band play ‘God Save the Queen.’ Whatever you want, we can do, you see?”
But she can’t talk yet, just wah wah wah and make mess, and Robert must be in his own little dream world. The flower in the vase smell like the water want change.
* * *
—
It did me that take over the gardening back home after my father dead. I learn how to grow from seed or cutting everything from lignum vitae, the national tree of Jamaica, to more unusual shrub like crab claw and bird of paradise. Can’t say my gardening skill was that good then, for I was young and I don’t know anything, really, for Daddy did die quick of a heart attack and he don’t teach me to that. I see that I can help my mother by keeping the garden clean. I pick up a spade and trowel and that was that; the rest I learn at the hotel. The day after I leave that job, one rich white Englishman stop by we house in his long-bonnet Bentley to ask who is we gardener, for some of the flower we grow he did not see before. I hear the engine roar up from where I was, at the bottom of the garden, clearing up the leaf beneath the blue jacaranda.
“Norman!” she bawl. Mommy voice strong. Can bet she don’t even turn away from his face when she shout so. “Norman!”
A prince standing there when I come around the side to see what all the noise about. With a strong handshake and his blue eye resting on mine, he introduce himself as Henry Chambers, owner of a big old plantation house outside St. Ann’s Bay. He compliment my work and ask me if I want to work for him in his garden. Never yet did such a man step toward we house. All my little picky-hair niece and nephew congregate round their grandmother feet at the door, quiet and good like it Bustamante himself show up. Mommy bow her head and ask him in for tea. She sit him down in the front room in the best armchair, with the same antimacassar on it back since the day my daddy bury. She blow out the dust from the best cup and saucer and shoo the children off
to run and play somewhere else. She come back into the front room—in a green dress with her hair comb back and lipstick on her teeth—with pot of tea, milk, sugar and two piece of toto on her best wicker tray. She stretch out her vowel and talk slow and loud, as if Mr. Chambers deaf, and in what she must think sound like an English accent. She even tell me to sit down on the settee, opposite Mr. Chambers, a privilege I never yet grant in the front room, where nobody even go except on a special occasion. I know she will run her mouth to me after, for sitting in her good settee in my outside clothes.
“Now, I shall leave you two to chat,” she say. It feel like I am on a date. My hands too big for these delicate little cup and saucer. I fill up the cup too high with milk and tea after I watch what Mr. Chambers do, and I’m fraid it will spill as I tremble it up to my lip. The room is silent apart from the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. I wonder where Mommy get these pretty cup and saucer from, with hibiscus flower paint on them; which cupboard in the kitchen they stay. A vision pass my eye where in the still of night she clear out some big house abandon by English people gone to the war, but this was ’54. The war done long time.
My first brother Philip, an engineer, volunteer with the Royal Air Force, training to become a wireless operator gunner. He become a gentleman, mixing with white people from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He first have to train for sixteen week on a lathe and grinder, somewhere in the north of England, and learn blueprint, slide rule, and all the technicality of the British strategy. He write to tell we about his plan to marry one white girl from the switchboard, and settle in England, where it cold and depress from the war, but where most people seem grateful for his help in the fight, though some tell him he must come back a Jamaica when the war finish. He could have done great things, but he dead in a plane crash in ’43.