‘It does warm up later,’ Sammy said. ‘What you want to drink?’
‘Anything will do.’
‘Beer or rum? They is the cheapest things you could buy here.’
‘Beer.’
Dodging the dancing couples, they made their way to the bar at the opposite end of the room. Wilbert’s eyes had not yet accustomed themselves to the gloom and he waded blindly after Sammy.
‘Two beers,’ Sammy said to the barman with practised ease, ‘and make sure they cold.’
Sammy sat perched on a stool, swinging his legs and beating time to the music on the counter. A mirror reflected the rows of bottles. Wilbert scanned the labels. The barman brought their beer and Sammy counted out the coins and paid him. They moved away from the bar, drifting aimlessly among the dancers. The jukebox throbbed, the popular numbers recurring to universal acclaim.
‘What you think of the talent?’ Sammy rehearsed a stylish dance step.
‘The talent?’
‘The girls, man,’ Sammy said pityingly. ‘The girls.’
Wilbert could see better now. Ranks of unattached women leaned against the walls or sat on the scattered chairs in a variety of poses and attitudes. Some were eager and alert, darting enquiring glances in every direction; while others betrayed not the slightest interest in what was going on around them. One very young girl – she might have been fifteen – was sprawled on her chair, her mouth wide open and her eyes closed as if she was exhausted beyond endurance. Her feet tapped the floor in mechanical accord with the music. The girl next to her, her hands clasped demurely on her lap, smiled modestly and waited to be approached. Her companion yawned languidly, passing her tongue over her cracked lips and scratching her armpits. Another patrolled the edges of the room, constantly adjusting the strap of her dress which kept slipping off her shoulder, and laughing raucously at every remark addressed to her. There were bored faces, haggard faces, stupefied faces, brutal faces. There was pride, defiance, abasement. And, often, there seemed to be nothing; nothing but the ravaged flesh hung out sacrificially every night to be pecked at by the circling vultures and rendered insensible to pain and pleasure alike.
Sammy had joined the dancers. Wilbert returned to the bar which was a good vantage point. He stared at a woman dressed in blue satin who sat alone in a far corner of the room. She was middle-aged and looked like a countrywoman come up to town for the day. Ignored, she sat absolutely still. Her eyes followed the dancers. They radiated a fatigued, maternal resignation. She seemed bewildered – as though she had come to the wrong place and, rather than ask for directions, preferred to stay where she was until the difficulty, by whatever agency, was resolved. A handbag lay at her feet. Bending down, she took from it a pocket mirror, a comb and a tube of lipstick. As she was straightening up, she turned her head and saw him watching her. Simultaneously, her mouth distended, splitting open into a macabre, welcoming smile which showed her blackened gums and several missing teeth. He gulped more beer into his queasy stomach.
‘You haven’t found yourself anything as yet?’ Sammy capered drunkenly in front of him. ‘You can’t be too choosy in a place like this, man.’ As he spoke, Sammy drew his partner closer to him and kissed her on the lips. They whirled away into the centre of the room and disappeared among the eddying dancers.
Wilbert’s attention was attracted by a large, ornately framed photograph hanging in an alcove. It was an even more macabre sight than the middle-aged matron who had leered at him. His gaze was riveted by it.
‘Who’s that man?’
‘Is men you come here to look at?’ The barman regarded him laughingly.
‘That man. The man in the picture.’ Wilbert pointed.
The barman shrugged. ‘Nobody know who he is.’
It was a photograph of an austere, clerical-looking individual wearing a high starched collar and a black cravat. A meticulously trimmed moustache, streaked with grey, curled at the corners of his mouth. His sparse hair was combed flat across a smooth, unwrinkled forehead. A watch-chain was looped across a tight-fitting waistcoat. The stern eyes stared with impartial severity into the green, music-ridden gloom, though the severity was tempered by the patina of dust which neglect had allowed to settle on the protecting glass. It belonged to a respectable drawing-room. Generations were meant to meditate upon those stern, unbending features. What had gone amiss? What could have plucked and rooted it up from its proper environment and brought it to this, its final resting place – an alcove in the saloon bar of the Bird of Paradise?
Someone shrieked loudly. It was only then Wilbert noticed there was a girl sitting in the alcove directly beneath the photograph. She was flailing her arms wildly at a customer who was stooping over her and trying to get her to dance. Each time he approached her she jumped back from him and shrieked. The man gave up the attempt. She remained hunched, her arms clasped about her and her neck craned forward.
‘As mad as they come,’ the barman said. ‘I don’t know why she does bother to come here to tell you the truth. All she does do is sit there the whole night until everybody gone home. She doesn’t even drink! A man don’t even have to touch she for she to start screaming the place down. If you just go too near – that is enough for she.’
The girl, muttering continuously under her breath and glancing round furtively, shivered and hugged herself as if she were cold. She was as elusive and insubstantial as the wavering reflection of light on water, altering from moment to moment. For some minutes her muttering was cowed and frightened and her gaze was concentrated on herself; then the fright changed to self-pity and the mutter became a low, howling moan and she rocked from side to side, hugging and comforting herself; then the self-pity changed to hostility and, raising her eyes to the room, she glared combatively at everyone; then she was sly and slinking and calculating; then that too faded and she began to mutter again, cowed and frightened and with her gaze concentrated on herself. The cycle was completed.
Another man had approached her. She screamed and jumped back from him like a terrified animal.
‘Don’t bother with she, mister,’ the barman shouted. ‘She mad. No good at all. Find somebody else.’ He laughed uproariously.
The dancers eddied and gyrated in the quivering green jelly. There were more of them than there had been earlier in the evening. The jukebox thumped and throbbed in its corner. The combined influence of the beer, the dancers and the music was having its effect on Wilbert. It enveloped and cosseted him. What was there to be puzzled over? The mysterious portrait, the mad girl, the middle-aged matron were all elements of an indivisible whole of which he was part. He was being absorbed into the music and the green gloom.
‘You want anything?’ A short, plump girl with woolly, close-cropped hair had come up to him.
‘Let’s dance,’ Wilbert said.
He did not like dancing, but he forgot this as they surged and pushed forward to the crowded centre of the room. The girl let her head fall on his shoulder. She was being dutifully passionate; doing her job. Her face shone with sweat and her thick solid lips were slightly parted. There was not much space for manoeuvre and they shuffled in a small, tight circle. The jukebox pounded tirelessly and hypnotically.
‘That’s the way!’ Sammy sailed past him and disappeared.
‘You want a room?’ The girl leaned on him, barely moving.
‘How much?’
‘Is only five dollars. I been on my feet all night.’ She lifted her head off his shoulder. ‘If you don’t want a room you only wasting my time.’ She was abrupt and businesslike.
They went to the bar, the girl moving purposefully ahead.
‘Give Terence the money if you want a room,’ she said.
Wilbert handed a five-dollar note to the barman and received a key in return.
‘Number eight,’ Terence said.
‘I don’t like number eight,’ the girl replied pettishly. ‘What about three?’
‘Full up.’
‘Five then.’
‘Full up.’
The girl scowled. ‘Nothing else?’
‘Unless you want to wait,’ Terence said. ‘Number two might be ready soon. They been in there more than half an hour now.’ He looked at his watch.
‘I don’t feel like waiting,’ the girl replied. ‘I been on my feet all night and they killing me.’ She glanced at Wilbert. ‘Follow me.’
They left the saloon bar, going out through a side door designated ‘Fire Exit’. The music died behind them. They climbed a steep flight of steps to a long, windowless corridor at the top of the building. Black watermarks stained the bare concrete walls. An unshaded electric bulb burned at the end of a grimy cord suspended from the centre of the ceiling. It was quiet up here and their footsteps resounded on the stone floor. On either side there were numbered doors.
The girl showed him Number Three. ‘That is by far the best one,’ she said. ‘Is a real competition to get it though. All the girls does want to go there.’
Number Three looked no different from the rest, presenting the same blank, inscrutable exterior. A crack of light filtered through the gap under the door.
‘What’s so special about it?’ Wilbert asked.
‘It have the nicest view,’ the girl said.
They walked on.
‘Number Five have a nice view too,’ she added. ‘But is not so big as Number Three.’
Outside Number Eight she stopped. ‘Give the key to me. Is a hard one to unlock.’ She struggled with the lock. ‘This is the smallest and it have no view at all. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, is right next to the Gents.’
To emphasize what she had said, a lavatory flushed and a man emerged buttoning his flies. He hurried past them and vanished into Number Seven. After much twisting and forcing of the key, the door to Number Eight swung open. The girl had not exaggerated its defects. It was a cramped cubbyhole about ten foot square. The windows stared out at the unrelieved brick wall of the adjacent building. Two narrow beds had been crammed into the available space. A chair was placed between the beds. There was a clogged washbasin with a cake of flaking soap and above it a blemished shaving mirror. Fingerprints and obscene graffiti decorated the whitewashed walls.
Wilbert sat down on the chair. The beer had left an unpleasant aftertaste at the back of his throat and his head ached monotonously. His exhilaration was on the ebb and, try as he might, he could not recapture it. He read the scrawled remarks on the walls. Next door the lavatory flushed. The girl started to take off her clothes, folding each of her garments neatly and arranging them on one of the beds.
‘You going to remain with your clothes on?’ She came and stood nakedly in front of him, rubbing her protruding belly.
He did not answer her. His exhilaration had ebbed to vanishing point.
‘You don’t have to be shame,’ the girl said. ‘Is only me going to see you.’ She bent over him, breasts elongated and drooping, undoing the buckle of his trouser belt.
He stayed her hand.
Her thick lips curled scornfully. ‘I don’t have time to waste, you know.’ She sat down on the bed, crossing her legs. ‘Like you never been with a girl before?’
‘Let’s wait a while,’ he said.
‘Five dollars only entitle you to half an hour. You’ll have to pay extra for anything over that.’ She patted the bed. ‘Stop wasting time and let me give you value for your money. Come and sit by me.’
He obeyed her without thinking. With a premeditated violence, her arms entwined and imprisoned him and she pulled him down on top of her, her hands fumbling with his clothes. Wilbert submitted passively to her assault. Her hot breath gushed and spurted rancidly on his cheeks. Groaning and grunting, she loaded him with the dutiful caresses he had paid for and which she was determined to give him. Value for money. It seemed he had set out from Victoria with Sammy an eternity ago. Again he was a spectator of his own dreams: a lighted doorway and the soft chatter of two respectable old men on a landing; eddying dancers in a gyrating, jellied gloom; the enticing buzz of a honeyed voice; a walk down a concrete corridor flanked by inscrutable, numbered doors; the macabre leer of a middle-aged matron. Did these images belong to one and the same dream? Or were they the flotsam and jetsam of other dreams long dreamt? A pair of stern eyes stared out at him through a patina of dust. He could not withstand their chill disapproval. His gaze shifted to the wild and terrified creature beneath who shivered with cold and hugged herself. She was screaming at him, her hands flailing his face, because he had approached too near. He wished to explain that it was a mistake, that he had no intention of harming her. But he never had the chance because she was all over him, her naked limbs thrashing, pinning his body to hers as if for warmth and tearing at his flesh with her fingernails. Then it was he, angry with her for not listening to what he wished to say, who was screaming and repelling her writhing nakedness.
He was out of the bed and trembling with rage. The girl was crawling away from him.
‘You wouldn’t listen to me! I wanted to explain. But you wouldn’t listen to what I had to say!’
‘It can’t be me you talking to, mister. It must be somebody else.’
Wilbert groaned aloud and sat down on the chair, smoothing his dishevelled hair. His head sank until it came to rest on his chest. Observing no sign of a fresh eruption, the girl reached cautiously across the bed for her clothes and started to put them on. She became bolder.
‘I don’t know why people like you does bother to come here. What you take me for? Is my job to give people value for they money …’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘What you waiting for then? Go!’
Wilbert opened the door and went out. He traversed the corridor quickly, chased by the curses of the girl. He raced unseeingly down the successive flights of steps – past the fire exit, past the throbbing saloon bar, past the two respectable men who were still chatting on the first landing – and out to the empty street. He breathed in deeply in an effort to dispel the noxious vapours of the Bird of Paradise.
4
‘What did you say your name was, child?’
‘Sita.’
‘Sita. I must try and remember that. Is not such a difficult name. What you doing here, Sita?’
‘Looking after you.’
‘Ah! I sure you tell me that before.’ Egbert Ramsaran nodded and relapsed into silence. The sun was creeping up the front path as it had done every day during the last six months. In the distance, beyond the rusted rooftops of Victoria, the hills were a dense smoky blue and the valleys were drowned in shadow. It was two weeks since he had regained his voice. The questions he asked never varied. ‘My muscles not so strong as they used to be. They don’t do what I want them to do any more. What happen to them?’
‘You had a stroke.’
‘Is that why I need somebody to look after me?’
‘Yes. And that is why I am here. To look after you.’
‘Ah. I don’t know how I would make out without you to look after me. My son is still too small for that. He’s at school learning how to add and subtract. He can’t take care of me. His teachers does always be coming here and complaining to me about him.’
‘Your son is not at school and he’s not a small boy any more. He’s a grown man. You see him yourself every day.’
He stared at her. ‘I does keep forgetting that. Yes. He’s a grown man now. How time does fly.’ His brows knitted. ‘But why is you who have to be looking after me? What about his mother? What she doing? What she think I marry she for?’ He became agitated. ‘Call she to me.’
‘She can’t come to you.’
‘Where she gone gallivanting? To she no-good family?’
‘She’s dead. She died a long time ago. You should remember.’
He calmed down. ‘I remember now. You quite right.’ He fell silent again, musing. ‘It was my biggest mistake to have married she. You know that?’ The sun had crept up to the bottom step. ‘She does haunt me from the grave. That’s what
she does do. Haunt me from the grave.’
‘It’s time for me to take you inside.’
‘I can’t go inside. Not yet. I expecting somebody.’ Egbert Ramsaran swivelled his head. ‘That is the reason why I sitting here. I expecting somebody to come back at any minute. Once she come I’ll go inside. Why don’t you go down to the road and see if you see she?’
Sita went to the front gate and came back to him.
‘You see she?’
Sita shook her head.
‘She should have been here long before now. What keeping she so long?’ His voice whistled as of old. ‘Is not that far and she leave here early this morning to go and collect she daughter. She should have been here long before now. You think is the traffic holding she up?’ He gazed at her anxiously.
‘Let me take you inside.’ The sun was licking at the third step.
‘I don’t like this waiting at all. It does make me nervous. She might never come back. Might never come back.’ He wrung his hands. ‘I’m very tired with this waiting, child. Very tired.’
‘You should rest. Let me take you inside.’
‘I can’t rest until she come back. I might miss she.’
‘You must rest. I’ll make certain that you don’t miss her.’
‘You must knock on my door the moment she come. You promise to do that?’
‘I promise.’
Sita wheeled him inside.
Egbert Ramsaran had a second stroke that night and on the following day he died. The news of his death spread quickly and the people of Victoria arrived in droves and leaned against the fence as they had done in the early days of his illness. They were not allowed to enter the house though many expressed a desire to pay their ‘last respects’. Wilbert refused. ‘He wouldn’t have any use for your last respects,’ he told them. He was for having no one at all come to the house. ‘A dead body is a dead body,’ he said to Sita. ‘It have nothing to see.’
The Chip-Chip Gatherers Page 31