Theo looked up and smiled, knowingly, and carried on, ‘Before the war I was living nice. Hot potato with me bacon, stew pork and rice.’ He could be cheeky.
The wake of the passing boats had reached the beach and the jetty, swamping the boards, breakers crashing one upon the other under the kitchen. ‘Big wake, them boat have.’ Then, he was gone again.
With a tap on his shoulder, Theo called Vincent to table. A single place was laid at table. There was a steaming plate of ground provisions.
‘Yam, dasheen, cassava! Boy, what’s this? Sancoche?’
There was a tall drinking glass of iced red sorrel. ‘The last of the sorrel? Are you not eating with me, Theo?’
Theo was back in role. Mute. He pulled out Vincent’s chair, and then hovered near the kitchen door, looking from afar at the event he had arranged. This was his drama, lunch at the dining room table for Mister. The game was becoming uncomfortable.
Vincent played along. ‘The sancoche, good, Theo, the best I eat.’
Theo came to the door of the dining room, hovered for an instant, and then disappeared again. Vincent smiled to himself. What had brought this on? One moment he was the sophisticated follower of the war, another a child playing a sinister game. But he noticed when the games were more than just a game. They were never really just a game.
The house went silent. Vincent sipped on his sancoche.
Then, he noticed that there was a small brass bell on the table. He had not seen this bell in a long while. From where had Theo retrieved this relic? He could see his mother’s hand hovering over the bell at Versailles, ringing it between courses for the table to be cleared, for the vegetables to be served. He had witnessed as a child the elaborate training that new servants went through when they first took up their posts. ‘My dear,’ his mother would say to a visiting aunt, ‘it takes all my time to train them, they might as well pay me. Breaking in a new girl!’
Theo knew that he, Vincent, would know all about this. He, Theo, had been a witness. His mother had been such a servant. What he did not know was whether Vincent would play along. Would he be playing or acting for truth? He was expected to ring this bell when he had finished his sancoche, wanted some more, or was indicating that he was now awaiting the clearing of the table, and desiring his dessert. He presumed there was a dessert.
They were having the full works. Should he play along and ring the bell? Vincent’s hand hovered like his mother’s had done over the bell. No, he would give another signal.
‘Theo, Theo, really good, boy, sancoche real hot!’
At first there was no reply. Then, Theo suddenly marched out of the kitchen to the table, picked up the bell, and rang it. Its shrill noise had the parakeets going off in the cocorite palms. Then he slammed it down. ‘Ring the blasted bell, nuh,’ he screamed.
For a moment Vincent was stunned. Theo had cracked. What he saw in that instant were the tears welling up in the boy’s eyes. ‘Theo, Theo, you don’t need to to do this.’
He stretched out to touch his arm. The boy moved away. Then, he returned to the kitchen and came back out again as if nothing had happened. In his arms was the large bowl of sancoche and a silver ladle that Vincent had never seen before. Where was he finding all these relics of Versailles? He stood at the side of Vincent to replenish his plate. He accepted graciously.
Finishing his second helping, he then rang the bell for the table to be cleared and for dessert to be served. Theo delivered orange and grapefruit salad. There was a splash of Angostura Bitters, which reddened the syrup. He played along. ‘Boy, that was good!’
Theo cleared the dishes in silence. Vincent waited. He remembered his mother saying that his grandfather always said, ‘One never grows old at table.’
The washing of wares clattered in the kitchen. Vincent dozed.
As he opened his eyes, the sea kept appearing and disappearing as the hammock dipped beneath the ledge. Theo must have lowered the blinds. The verandah was in shade. He was sitting at the top of the steps. There was the smell of silver and brass polish. Newspaper was laid out on the floor. He had all the cutlery from the sideboard drawers out. They sparkled in the sun. He was counting the forks, rubbing down the spoons.
Theo had discovered more relics of Versailles’ past. These he was busy washing in a basin with gravel and sour oranges. He was leaning into the bowl as into a mirror. Vincent watched the boy. He had not stopped all day. He was used up. What had brought about this endless preoccupation with service? Did this have anything to do with what he had seen at Singh’s. ‘I see them in the back,’ he had said. Vincent could guess. His own guilt made him more censorious. He would have to speak to Singh.
The day had seemed unreal. Everything that Theo had been doing had taken him back to Versailles. All this old silver and brass was from under the stairs. Then Vincent thought of how this boy had obviously gone with his mother to the house on Pepper Hill, the big house made of lace and hanging like a Chinese lantern in the night. ‘Big house,’ he had called it, in his story; a house like the house where Chantal lived with her long blonde hair.
He heard the deep sobbing coming from the boy where he sat on the steps. He got up and sat near to him. ‘Come Theo. It’s all been too much, hasn’t it. We’ve taken it too far today. Let’s stop this. Let’s put these things away. Let me give you a hand.’ Together they put away the relics of Versailles, the toys for these games, back under the stairs.
‘Let’s go for a swim.’ Vincent was trying to jolly Theo out of his mood.
Down on the jetty, they saw the coastguard launch, which had brought the Archbishop and the Governor’s secretary, leaving on its return journey. Vincent wondered how things had gone. He and Theo dived and then swam the length to Father Meyer’s jetty and back.
The spell of activity which had fallen over the day was broken.
The priest waved from his verandah, happy to be back from the detention centre for all Germans on Sancta Trinidad. Instead, he was now content to have the police launch calling every other day. There had been a rumour that he might have been interned.
He was shouting something. It was just audible. ‘Bacchanal over there!’ He was pointing to Saint Damian’s.
Vincent waved. He did not want to hear Father Meyer’s account of the day.
‘Race,’ cried Theo, as he kicked away. Vincent followed.
They clambered up onto the jetty by the ladder. They lay exhausted, laughing. Theo then ran up to the house and came back with two towels and the fishing rods.
They baited the hooks and fished for their supper.
The evening declined, leaving the jetty in shadow. The sunset burned a red hole in the sky over Venezuela. There was an unusual quiet.
It was when Vincent went back up to the dark house to light a lantern, and to draw the blackout curtains, that he saw her coming down through the bush and the razor grass. She was picking her way across the burnt ground, lifting her white skirts, where the sorrel bushes had grown. He saw her stockinged ankles. He met her at the door.
‘Doctor?’
‘Sister? The boy’s on the jetty.’
‘Vincent.’
‘Madeleine.’
Then, she was in his arms, their mouths hungry for each other.
‘I had to come and see you,’ she said, between kisses.
The Visit
As Vincent held Madeleine in his arms, he looked over her shoulder down to the jetty. He did not think that Theo could see them from there, standing inside the darkness of the house. Folded together, they would appear as one person from that distance.
Suddenly, the boy jumped up, pulling in his line with great excitement and shouting out, ‘Doc, Doc, I catch him. I catch him.’ It was his favourite, a red snapper, he was sure. Red fish were Theo’s favourite dish. That would be their supper tonight, like last night. You need to catch another, Vincent said to himself, relieved to see the boy return to his old self.
‘Stay for supper?’ he wooed her. He felt like he was as
king her out to dinner. She clung to his shoulder. She tried to smile through her tears. There was a wisp of black hair escaping from beneath the tight skull cap under her veil. He tried to push it back, slipping his fingers beneath the cap near her temple. But his efforts only made more of her black hair escape. ‘Oh, dear, I’m making a mess of this,’ he said.
‘No.’ She slipped her fingers into the crevice, tidying away her hair, unpinning, and pinning again more securely her veil to her skull cap.
He had not been able to get a coherent word from Madeleine as they moved onto the verandah, where they now stood, so that he could see Theo, and decide what they would do when the boy came up to the house. Madeleine wanted to be held, but at the same time she wanted to break out of Vincent’s arms.
‘I had to come. I had to come. It’s all getting out of hand. I wish you’d been there today.’
‘What do you mean? What has happened?’ Then he remembered Father Meyer calling out, bachannal.
It was like trying to hold a frightened bird. He wanted to kiss her again and then he did not, because he felt he would be taking advantage of her mood. They had kept their hands off each other since the boathouse. But now they could not resist each other.
They heard the early fishermen passing just out in the bay. It was Atilla’s latest, which seemed ironic at this moment in time:
‘We shall extend to the Jews hospitality
As a monument to our ancestors’ memory.’
Vincent hummed the new calypso as he looked at Madeleine. She pinched her brow. ‘These calypsos, even when they’re positive, disturb me.’
She had heard Singh speaking under the almond tree recently, linking the fate of the Jews in Europe, their enforced migration, with the enslaved Africans and indentured East Indians. There was controversy over Atilla’s calypso in The Gazette. It was was being censored by the Governor. He did not like the idea of the British slave masters being compared to the Nazis.
‘Madeleine, try and tell me what is distressing you so much this evening.’ Vincent lifted her chin.
‘This afternoon. It started this afternoon, up in Indian Valley. Drumming. At first, it was just the Indian patients, but then the African patients as well, started going up into Indian Valley, taking their drums, all the time, the drumming getting louder. How come you didn’t hear it at your house? When they drum at night I can’t sleep.’
‘Must be the way the wind blows. The sound carries directly across the bay to you. I’m round the point, behind the hill. So, what then?’
‘Well, we waited, tried to keep the small children on the ward happy, playing. The older ones, even Ti-Jean on his crutches, took off with the grown ups.’
‘What’s going on? I’m away for a day and this is what happens. Why did Jonah not come over and see me?’
‘Maybe they took the opportunity of you not being there.’
‘It’s not like that. Not Jonah, maybe Singh. What then?’
‘The rumour is that they’re planning a march. The slogans, anti-American rather than anti-Mother Superior. They find it easier to attack the Americans. They don’t like the prohibitions, the threats of shooting. The children are confused though, because they like the soldiers. There’s an epidemic of chewing gum. They hand it through the barbed wire fences. With cigarettes sometimes. The children play all along the perimeter.’
‘I know. Theo is always chewing now. Goes up to the gun station at the back of the house, has made friends with one of the Marines.’
She turned and followed his gaze onto the jetty and the boy fishing at the edge. ‘We’ve missed him at the school recently. Singh was asking for him.’
‘He’s been caught up in his work here. You should see his room. I think he needs his freedom sometimes, both here, and getting about the island on Cervantes. It rescues him from his isolation. Perhaps not a bad idea to have a break from Singh.’
A bat swooped in from outside.
‘Will you rescue me?’ She turned and looked up into his face quickly and then turned away, not waiting for an answer, and gazed at the boy on the jetty in the fast-encroaching darkness.
‘Is that what you want?’
A mabouyan lizard darted across the wall. ‘Esprit marlin,’ Madeleine whispered in Vincent’s ear.
‘What?’
‘Sister Marguerite. That’s what she calls the mabouyan.’
‘Old superstition. Evil spirits.’
‘It’s what people believe. You don’t believe in evil?’
‘How did all this start, the decision to go up to Indian Valley? I can’t believe this has been going on without me. Ah Singh! He’s sure to be behind it.’
‘Some of the sisters say it started during the Archbishop’s service, during the sermon. I had to leave to be on duty on the ward. In fact, I left earlier because I was so upset. Then the drumming started and the crowds going up into Indian Valley. I felt I had to come and tell you. But also…’
‘What is it Madeleine? Tell me what has brought you over at this hour. Forbidden by the rules. Has something happened? Something I should know?’
‘Questions? I almost got lost getting here. It looks so different since the Marines have dug up the track and put down their fences. And then I found myself going to the boathouse?’ She looked at him from under her eyes, wiping a tear away.
‘Madeleine, sweetheart.’
‘I was not in yesterday. I could not leave my cell.’
‘I did wonder where you were. I found it difficult to ask. Could not leave your cell? Why? Influenza?’
‘No, I’m well. Not influenza, nothing like that.’
‘What then?’
‘Such a surprise for me. Singh and Jonah have been holding meetings. Everyone today so agitated, with the Governor’s representative coming. And the Archbishop’s secretary going to be there as well. So much whitewashing going on to get ready for the visit.’
‘I thought this would happen. Mother Superior wanted me away from the hospital today. Jonah and Singh were supposed to be absent as well.’
Vincent could see that Theo was packing up. He was preparing to come up to the house. He was tidying up his rods and lines. ‘The boy will be here any moment. Tell me what has happened. Stay for supper. We’ll talk later.’
‘I’m being shunned. I’m being persecuted’ she blurted out. ‘You remember the yellow star?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve a collection now. Each morning, one is deposited under the door of my cell. I wake to it there. Well made, stitched with care by the fingers of one who knows how to sew well, how to embroider. I can tell. The last one had the word Juif embroidered in its centre.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘I can’t go on. I can’t show my face. This is a community of nuns! What’s going on in the world? And this morning, a message attached. “Join the vermin on Nelson Island.” Can you imagine? I wake to that. I find them as I lie on the floor and curl my body, performing my venia.’
He imagined her religious observance, her foetus shape on the floor of her cell. ‘I’m sorry.’ He took her hand.
‘It’s why I left the service. It became overwhelming, sitting there praying with the community.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ He stroked her arm.
There was a clatter as Theo dropped the fishing rods on the verandah floor.
‘Theo, is that you? I’ve not lit the lanterns yet, nor drawn the blackouts. We’re here,’ Vincent called from the shadows. ‘Come and meet Sister Thérèse from the hospital.’
‘Theo.’ Thérèse tried to compose herself.
Theo put out his hand to shake Thérèse’s. ‘Theophilus, Madame.’ He was being gallant, welcoming her for the first time to the house.
‘We’ve missed you at the school. The smaller children are missing your stories. And Mr Singh.’
Theo stopped in his tracks to the kitchen. He turned and faced Sister Thérèse. His eyes grew large with interest. What did she know about Singh?
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br /> ‘Is there enough fish for Sister Thérèse, Theo?’ Vincent called after the boy. ‘Don’t mention Singh,’ Vincent whispered. Thérèse raised her eyebrows.
‘Plenty. I catch two, you know? Two on one hook. Imagine that. And, I done bake this morning.’ He had run back out onto the verandah. He smiled at Sister Thérèse. He was excited by her presence in the house. They did not have visitors, and when they did, not women. In a moment he was in the kitchen again.
‘There’s a problem with Singh,’ Vincent explained. He lit the lantern and drew the blackouts. ‘You wouldn’t think we needed blackouts here. I’ll let Theo have the lantern.’
They sat quietly, as they heard the Angelus being rung, the familiar sound taking Thérèse back to the convent.
‘Have you told Mother Superior about the yellow stars?’ Vincent took Thérèse’s hand in the dim light.
‘No! I can’t. I can’t expose myself like that. I try to ignore it once I’m at work. Today I made it to the ferry, just in time, the boatman had almost started moving away from the jetty. I had to jump on. I can’t look into my sisters’ faces. I keep asking myself, which one is it?’
‘This can’t go on. We’ll have to think what we can do.’
‘I’m having the most terrible dreams. Each night, the same dream. I’m much younger. Younger than the year when my mother died. I’m hiding between walls. There are no doors, no windows. I’m wearing my confirmation dress. A yellow star, like a brooch, shines on my white confirmation dress. There is just this narrow space between the walls. Right at the top of this tall narrow room is a little bit of blue sky, like through a skylight? A black bird is walking on the glass. Tock tocking on the glass, scratching, you know? I keep looking up at it. There’s more to the dream, but this is the bit which stays with me in the morning.’
‘I can hardly believe that one of the nuns can be doing this, but then, who else? No one else can have access to your cells.’
Night Calypso Page 24