However, it was not only the workers’ tempers which had cooled. So had Wilbert’s ardour for reform and improvement That night he had gone to the Depot in his pyjamas and seen the thin plume of smoke and the cluster of fire engines, the Ramsaran Transport Company ceased to be the sun round which the universe revolved. It was then he stopped seeing it with the eyes of childhood. The Depot was no more than a squalid shell of stone and mortar. ‘If the flames had get to the gasoline …’ The merest chance had prevented the life work of Egbert Ramsaran from being blown skyhigh by the antics of a soapbox orator.
The sacking of Mr Balkissoon had been an accident; an impromptu gesture. But accidents were not any the less real for being accidents. They had their consequences and whether these were enormous or trivial, it was necessary to take account of and adjust to them. The wrecking of Julian’s model aeroplanes had been an accident, an impromptu gesture which could not be undone. Such accidents constituted the pattern, the very stuff of his life. They were a measure of his powerlessness. The whole edifice he had been bequeathed – around which his life had been organized – had come crashing down on top of him. In a sense, the catastrophe had liberated him. Unfortunately, his freedom was of no use to him: he had not been trained for it. One burden had been replaced by another. His liberation had come too late for it to matter.
2
‘How is Julian getting on?’ Basdai asked. ‘I waiting for him to come back and cure my cough.’ She tapped her bony chest.
‘He passing all his exams with flying colours,’ Mrs Bholai said. ‘Nobody could touch him over there.’
‘I glad to hear he doing so well,’ Basdai replied with a hint of sadness. Good news bored her. She had developed a craving for tragedy. She reverted to a gloomier topic. ‘I does still think of that business with him and Sita.’
‘That done and finish with.’ Mrs Bholai was brusque. ‘In the last letter he write he mention some girl …’
‘Like you hear from him lately then? The last time I was speaking to your husband he was saying how he does scarcely ever write …’
‘Bholai always complaining about one thing or another. Jules can’t spend all his time writing we letters. He have other things to think about. You mustn’t pay any attention to what Bholai say.’ She evaded Basdai’s penetrating and sceptical scrutiny. ‘As I was saying, in his last letter he mention some girl he was going out with …’
‘Talking of Julian and Sita remind me of something I been meaning to ask you,’ Basdai interrupted. She squinted slyly. ‘I notice Wilbert is a regular visitor to you ever since he had all that trouble about the strike and whatnot.’
Mrs Bholai smiled happily. ‘You notice that, have you?’
‘Is Shanty he does come to see, not so?’
Mrs Bholai was coy. ‘Whoever tell you that?’
‘Is what I hear,’ Basdai said.
‘What you hear?’ Mrs Bholai asked delightedly.
‘They say he does spend nearly all his time with Shanty when he come here.’
‘He like talking to Shanty,’ Mrs Bholai conceded discreetly. ‘The two of them have a lot in common.’
‘I hear is more than that involved.’
‘That is not for me to say,’ Mrs Bholai replied, her discretion straining at the seams.
Basdai stared at her pensively.
‘To be frank with you,’ Mrs Bholai said impulsively. Then she checked herself. ‘No. Is better not to talk about these things.’
Basdai’s mouth watered. ‘You could tell me, Mrs Bholai.’
‘I not sure that I should. It might bring bad luck.’
‘Chut!’
Mrs Bholai hesitated. ‘You think you could keep a secret, Basdai?’
Basdai was offended.
Mrs Bholai lowered her voice and Basdai brought her head closer. Their foreheads touched. ‘To be frank with you, Basdai, I expecting him to propose to she any day now.’
‘You don’t say, Mrs Bholai!’
Mrs Bholai opened her eyes wide and nodded emphatically. ‘But not a word to anybody. You hear? Not a word!’
‘Not a word will pass my lips,’ Basdai assured her. ‘But you sure you doing the right thing by Shanty?’
‘Eh?’ Mrs Bholai pulled her head back. It was not the reception she had bargained for.
‘I wouldn’t trust my daughter to a Ramsaran. That family have a lot of bad blood running in they veins. You yourself used to say so. And now …’
Mrs Bholai began to regret having confided in Basdai. ‘Wilbert is different from the rest,’ she said.
‘Like father like son.’ Basdai wagged a mournful finger in her face.
‘I don’t believe in all this bad blood business,’ she declared confidently. ‘And, when you think about it, Egbert Ramsaran wasn’t such a wicked man. What was wicked about him? Is only jealousy that make people spread all those stories about him.’
Basdai cackled. ‘You certainly change your tune! I remember …’
Mrs Bholai went on the defensive. ‘I not saying he was a saint. But he had to work very hard to reach where he get to. That is one thing I had always admire him for and it have nothing wicked in that.’
‘He reach Where he get to because he was a crook. A smuggler! I remember all the whisky and cigarettes he used to bring home for his mother and father – you wasn’t living here then. But I remember. He was a crook and a smuggler and I wouldn’t be surprise if he had murder one or two people on the side as well.’
Mrs Bholai took a leaf out of her husband’s book. ‘That is slander, Basdai. You have no proof. You could get into a lot of trouble with the law for saying things like that. Anyway, even if he was all the things you say he was, what that have to do with Wilbert?’
‘Like father like son,’ Basdai repeated.
Mrs Bholai lost her patience. ‘I don’t care what you say, Basdai. All I know is that Wilbert will make Shanty a very good husband. He not like the rest of his family.’
‘What about all them planes he mash up? That show he have the same bad blood in him.’ Basdai was relentless.
‘They was playing,’ Mrs Bholai said. ‘It was an accident. Wilbert didn’t mean to mash up the planes. Children like to play rough.’
‘But at the time you yourself had tell me …’
Mrs Bholai, having lost her patience, now lost her temper. ‘I don’t care what I tell you at the time. I sorry I ever tell you anything. I not going to stand here and listen to you say another word against Wilbert. You just jealous like the rest of them.’
‘I was only trying to warn you …’
‘Warn yourself!’ Mrs Bholai grimaced. ‘This will be the last time I ever tell you anything.’
Wilbert had taken up Mrs Bholai’s offer for no other reason than that the house in Victoria had become unbearable to him. There were too many dead voices to haunt him. It was an abode suited only for the habitation of ghosts. The ghosts of his mother and father, of Sushila and her daughter, of Singh, of the clients – even his own ghost – flitted there restlessly, dogging his every footstep. They gave him no respite. Immediately he pushed open the front gate and walked up the path, the unholy congregation assembled at the top of the steps to greet him. To avoid them, he contrived a hundred excuses for not having to return to the house in the evening. Mrs Bholai was astonished and overjoyed at the alacrity with which he had acted on her offer to ‘drop in’ at any time; and Wilbert was aware of the hopes which his frequent visits to the Settlement must inevitably nurture. Nevertheless, despite its disadvantages, the company of the living was infinitely preferable to that of the dead.
At the start, Mrs Bholai’s solicitude had been overwhelming. She behaved like someone who, after years of fruitless toil and effort to ensnare some rare and wild bird, had woken up one morning to discover it had strayed into her garden. She pinched herself – it might be a mirage. But this was no mirage. Wilbert was actually there in the living flesh. Then she feared the bird would fly away and never come back. She felt it he
r duty to sweeten its captivity by giving it her unremitting and undivided attention.
‘You sure you comfortable sitting on that chair, Wilbert?’
‘Very comfortable, Mrs Bholai.’
‘Have something to eat. Let Shanty show you what a good cook she is.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Not even a piece of bread and cheese?’
Wilbert shook his head tiredly.
‘Something to drink then.’
‘I’m not thirsty.’
‘Let him alone. Moon,’ Mr Bholai said from behind his newspaper. ‘He will tell you when he hungry or thirsty.’
Mrs Bholai could not contain herself indefinitely.
‘You positive you comfortable on that chair, Wilbert?’
‘Positive.’
‘Come on, Bholai. Be a gentleman. Give Wilbert your chair. I don’t know why you always have to be hogging the softest chair in the house.’
‘You want this chair, Wilbert?’ Mr Bholai was compelled to ask.
‘I’m fine as I am. Fine.’
‘Okay, Moon?’
‘Wilbert only refuse because you too lazy and selfish to give it up,’ Mrs Bholai retorted.
Mr Bholai sighed. ‘If you go on like that you will end by driving him away.’
‘You said you weren’t going to stand on ceremony with me,’ Wilbert said, ‘and I want you to do just that. Better still, forget I’m here. Treat me as if I was invisible. That’s how I would like it to be.’
Mrs Bholai could not do that; but she heeded the danger signal and reduced her solicitude to a more acceptable level. She grew – as did the others – accustomed to his presence. Wilbert was sufficiently familiar for them not to feel it necessary to make conversation’ and keep him entertained. He talked very little, content to sit quietly while they carried out the usual routines of family life. These held an inexpressible fascination for him. It was soothing to watch the Bholais absorbed in everyday concerns and trivialities: Mr Bholai reading aloud (though nobody listened to him) the court cases in the Trinidad Chronicle; Mrs Bholai fretting and fussing without effect; Mynah bent over the dining table filling her drawing pad with sketches; Shanty, her knees folded under her, reading a magazine; Gita drooping palely and staring at her slippered feet. Even the abuse Mrs Bholai hurled at her husband and the undercurrent of enmity between Mynah and Shanty were reassuring landmarks. Their rituals never bored him. The Bholais seemed blessed with happiness. It became harder and harder for him to tear himself away; and it was a punishing moment when he dragged himself up and stammered his farewells.
Mrs Bholai engineered it so that Wilbert and Shanty were frequently left alone. They were clumsy, obvious manoeuvres which generated a universal discomfort. Yet, gradually, the clumsiness and the obviousness faded; and, eventually, they disappeared. It was not that Mrs Bholai had improved her technique: quite simply, there had ceased to be any need for technique. The family departed by frictionless and mutual consent from the sitting-room, Mynah and Gita yielding pride of place to their sister without a murmur. A new mood, which owed nothing to the crude machinations of Mrs Bholai, had stealthily imposed itself. It was as if they had instinctively recognized that the games of childhood were over and their animosities would have to be transferred to a different plane; that there were certain spheres allocated to each into which the rest must not intrude. And Wilbert belonged to Shanty’s sphere.
In staying behind Shanty seemed – to herself and the others – to be behaving in a manner entirely natural and fated. She betrayed no awkwardness or embarrassment. Shanty was not conscious of harbouring any ulterior designs: her staying behind, so far as she was concerned, did not commit Wilbert – or her – to anything specific. She was merely holding herself in a state of receptive readiness for whatever might transpire. Shanty did not tease Wilbert. Nor did she giggle. She was circumspect but not incommunicative; serious but not dour; polite but not discouraging.
Sitting there alone with her, Wilbert toyed with the idea of marriage to Shanty. What was to prevent him from doing as Mrs Bholai wished? As, perhaps, Shanty herself wished? Admittedly, it would not be a love match: he could detect no embers of passion in either Shanty or himself. The arrangements would be a compromise on both sides. If Shanty agreed to marry him, she would be obeying a practical, commonsensical law. The material benefits he could offer her as his bride would balance and possibly outweigh the deficiency of her passion. Her motives would be comprehensible. But what about his motives? What sort of law would he be obeying if he married her? The answer was less clearcut. He would be doing it because he could do worse; because he despaired of ever finding a love match; and, above all, because he felt he owed it to Shanty and her mother for receiving him into their house. However, these were not reasons: they were admissions of defeat. No! He refused to blunder into such a marriage. It was doomed to disaster. He was being bludgeoned – and blackmailed. He would not allow himself to be blackmailed by a misplaced sense of gratitude to these people. Everything else in his life had been decided for him. He had never been consulted. His marriage, however, was one area where he could – and would – exercise freedom of choice and not submit to external pressures. Time was running out. He would make tonight his last visit. There was no other way to extricate himself from this drift into disaster. Tonight. He must make tonight his last visit.
‘What’s the time?’ he asked.
‘I should think it’s past eleven o’clock.’ Shanty did not lift her head from the magazine she was reading.
‘It’s late.’ His voice laboured out the words. He made no move to rise from the chair. The ghosts were lining up to greet him at the top of the steps.
‘Don’t bother.’ Shanty turned a page and went on reading.
The ghosts were clamouring. ‘They’re talking of building a new road from Port-of-Spain to San Fernando,’ he said, striving to shut out the clamour. ‘Bypassing the Settlement.’
‘Pa was saying something about that.’
‘Cutting straight through the canefields,’ he added above the clamour. ‘A more direct route. It will take ten miles off the journey.’
‘That’s interesting.’
‘It will mean the end of the Settlement,’ he said.
‘Good riddance!’
Tonight. This must be his last visit. ‘I ought to be going. All this talk about new roads … I must be keeping you up.’
‘You’re not keeping me up. I’ll tell you when I want to go to bed.’ She turned another page. ‘You don’t have to go even then if you don’t want to.’
‘But I must!’ The exclamation was a sharp, involuntary spasm of pain.
Shanty looked up at him.
Where was he to flee next to seek refuge from that insistent clamour of dead voices? To the Bird of Paradise and the fevered, funereal embraces waiting to swallow him up behind those inscrutable, numbered doors? A tremor of repugnance and horror constricted his stomach.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, laying aside the magazine. ‘Don’t you feel too well?’ She came across to him and stared down at his face. It had a basic peasant roughness: the eyes were narrow and set close together; the broad nose jutted out aggressively; the mouth was truculent; the ears were too big. Shanty catalogued his infirmities. The most unequivocally pleasing features were the eyebrows which curved in a gentle, bushy arc and the sloping forehead across which his stiff, wiry hair curled. They were softening traits. ‘What the matter?’ she asked again.
‘I ought to go home,’ he said. The constriction in his stomach tightened.
‘Nobody’s stopping you. The door is open. You can go any time you feel like it.’ She looked at him curiously.
A great weight was pressing him into the chair, counteracting his efforts to rise. ‘You don’t understand. It’s not so easy.’ Time was running out; his resolution faltering. ‘Have you ever thought … It’s much too late. I must go home.’ He battled to rise.
‘Have I ever thought what?’ Shan
ty intercepted the phrase in mid-air.
‘I must go home,’ he said.
‘Have I ever thought what?’ She was cornering him.
He could not wage two battles. ‘Have you ever thought why it is I come here so often … and never want to leave?’
‘Well … because you are lonely.’ It was a tentative questioning assertion.
‘That’s only part of it.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Guess again.’
Shanty hesitated. ‘If it’s not because you’re lonely …’
‘I’ll tell you since you don’t know. I’ll tell you!’ He spoke with a suppressed fury; as though impatient of her stupidity and slowness. ‘It’s because I can’t stand being in that house alone. Having to live with ghosts is too much for me. I can’t stand it! That’s why I never want to leave. Do you understand me now? It’s more than loneliness.’ She had dragged it out of him – but he had lent her his assistance. The confession eased the constriction in his stomach.
Shanty said nothing. His fury puzzled her. What ghosts was he referring to?
‘So what’s your solution? Tell me how you would solve that little problem.’ He stared rigidly at her, observing her vague expectancy. ‘Your mother would say I ought to get married. That would be her solution.’ His fury was subsiding into despair. Time had almost run out for him. ‘What’s your solution?’ He laughed joylessly.
She did not answer him, gazing down at the floor.
‘I don’t like suspense,’ he said.
‘It’s what you’ve been waiting for me to do, isn’t it? What is it to be? Is it to be yes? Or is it to be no?’ He lowered at her. ‘I won’t make any demands on you. You’ll be free to do as you wish – and have the security of a husband. I’m not exactly a pauper – as you must know.’ He laughed. ‘I’m no Julian. You said once he was your ideal type of man. But then you can’t have everything.’
The Chip-Chip Gatherers Page 33