Pao

by Kerry Young

  ‘I miss them, Miss Cicely. Everybody miss them. Matthews Lane like a ghost town with everybody just going about their chores in silence. It like the life take outta the place.’

  She look at me and then she have a little think to herself and she say, ‘It is unusual for me to hear a man speak this way. I did not realise you had such feelings in you. I thought you just concentrated on business ’ she pause a little ‘. and, well, the other things that men think about. You are quite a surprise, Philip. Really.’

  ‘What was it like for you, Miss Cicely, having the children here, and now they gone?’

  She take a sip of lemonade and pick up a fan off the table and start move the air. She fanning her face this side and that and I can see the relief it bringing her.

  ‘The children brought a much-needed breath of fresh air into the house. Well Mui anyway. Karl was a different matter. He was always rather sullen. A very frightened boy. I suspect he spent too much time concerned about his mother. Not a healthy preoccupation for a boy, or any child I dare say. And although some children know how to balance their concerns with more carefree pastimes, Karl was not one of them. He was a sad boy in many ways. Devoted to Fay of course, and given the deficiencies of my relationship with her, Karl did not care for me a great deal.’

  Miss Cicely examine her lemonade and then she carry on.

  ‘Mui? Well, Mui is Mui. I’m sure you know what I mean, Philip. She is quite a free spirit, isn’t she? A live wire you might say. Although quite where she gets some of her ideas I cannot imagine.’

  I don’t say nothing. I just sit there and look at Miss Cicely like I can’t imagine either.

  ‘Yes, she was full of invention, and games that frankly I sometimes had to put a stop to so as to enable the maids to get on with their work. Nevertheless, one could not help but grow fond of her and feel kindly towards her concern for those less fortunate. An admirable quality, I’m sure, despite her liking for that word “plight”. One can only hope that her love for Father Kealey and the Catholic Church will help her to learn to express herself in more Christian terms.’

  And then she stop and look at me. Right then Daphne step out on to the veranda and ask if she can come join us, so I say it alright with me and I look at Miss Cicely who just sorta raise her eyebrows and nod her head. So Daphne sit down and next thing Ethyl come out to see what Daphne want to drink and she say for Ethyl to bring her some of the sorrel they just finish making and then she say to me, ‘Would you like some sorrel, Pao?’ And I say yes but I notice how Miss Cicely pick up her embroidery and start sewing again like she was doing before I get there. For me the sorrel over sweet and it need more ginger. But it cool and refreshing so I drink it down.

  I say to Daphne, ‘Me and Miss Cicely just talking ’bout how the house now with the children gone.’

  Daphne look at me like she wish she nuh bother sit down. ‘Well of course, they were only here intermittently. Karl more often than Mui and he was a very quiet boy.’

  ‘So it don’t seem no different to you then?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say. Maybe after time passes without a visit. Maybe you come to notice their absence.’

  Then Miss Cicely look up from her sewing and say, ‘You surprise me, Daphne. I thought you and Karl were quite close.’

  Daphne look like she dunno why Miss Cicely want to go say a thing like that. Like she think Miss Cicely done let out some big secret.

  ‘Well I wouldn’t say close exactly although we would talk together from time to time. He was here much more often than Mui, but then I have already said that.’

  ‘Didn’t you get some books so that you and he could find out all about England?’

  Daphne spin her head ’round and look so fierce at Miss Cicely I didn’t know she had that sorta fury in her. But Miss Cicely still concentrating on her needlework and she no pay Daphne no mind.

  So I say to her, ‘You do that?’

  ‘Pao. You have to understand. Fay had made up her mind. I was just helping Karl to come to terms with it, trying to help him see it as a positive, a new experience, a new adventure if you like.’

  I can feel my blood boiling but I don’t say nothing. I just let her carry on and give myself a moment in case I go do something really bad in front of Miss Cicely.

  ‘Something to look forward to rather than something to dread. It was going to happen. That was not in question. So it was a matter of what attitude he was going to have about it.’

  ‘What attitude? And what attitude did he have?’ Daphne nuh say nothing. So I say, ‘What attitude did Mui have?’

  ‘Mui didn’t know anything about it. We thought it better to keep it that way with her.’

  ‘We? You mean you and Fay? You and Fay that was busy plotting to take my children away from me?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘So what was it like?’

  Then Miss Cicely say, ‘I brought up the matter of the book because I did not want us to sit here talking in a way that turns a partial truth into a complete lie. It is true that the children were only here intermittently and also true that Karl was here more often than Mui. But it is not true to suggest that there was no engagement with them. And especially not true to suggest that there was no engagement with him.’

  I sit there listening to Miss Cicely but I looking at Daphne because I can’t believe she betray me like this. After everything I do, what with her meeting the Queen of England, and shopping in Miami, and how many hours I sit right here on this veranda and pass the time of day with her. After all of this she still go behind my back and help Fay take the children from me.

  ‘Why you no come to me, Daphne, and tell me what Fay was planning?’ But she don’t have no answer. She just sit there with her eyes fix on the tile floor.

  ‘You know how much it would mean to me that Fay take the children away. You nuh care that Mui nuh seem like she want to get on no aeroplane to England? None of this matter to you?’

  Miss Cicely say, ‘What is done is done. We must believe that Daphne had her own reasons. Just like Fay had her own good reasons. The question is where do we go from here?’

  I just sit there looking at Daphne and then I say, ‘I come here today to ask you to give me Stanley’s address in England so I can at least write a letter to my children.’

  Before Daphne get a word out, Miss Cicely say, ‘I am afraid I cannot help you with that, Philip. Stanley and I have never corresponded since the day he left to join the Queen’s Royal Air Force. Not a whisper have I ever heard from him.’

  I turn to Daphne and she say, ‘I can’t do that, Pao. I promised Fay I wouldn’t do it.’

  I have to control myself because all I want to do is get up and walk ’cross the veranda and give Daphne a box in the mouth. That is all I can see in my mind’s eye. My arm swinging through the air and slapping her face and her head swivelling ’round to the side and her hair flying and the blood spurting from her nose and the split lip she got when her head swing back and me stepping back outta the way so the splash don’t catch my shoes.

  But I don’t do none of that. I just sit there as still as I can and I say, ‘Daphne, is not like I can even do anything. I don’t know nobody in England to go cause no trouble. I not going risk a English jail to go try kidnap the children. I not going plague Fay to make her come back here. All I want to do is write a letter to my children. You can’t understand that?’

  She sit there but I know she not think nothing ’bout what I say to her. I know she only waiting for me to finish talking just so she can pause and say, ‘I can’t do it, Pao.’

  When Ethyl come to see me the next week she tell me that Miss Cicely try to make Daphne tell me Stanley’s address but she still won’t do it.

  ‘Miss Daphne say she understand how yu feel but she promise her sister. That yu shouldn’t feel so bad. Maybe Miss Fay not the best person for yu. Maybe yu realise yu better off without her. Maybe yu find somebody else that treat yu better and have some other children.’r />
  So I say to her, ‘Ethyl, all the time yu busy running to the post office with Miss Fay’s letters to her brother did yu ever think to maybe make a note of the address?’

  And she say, ‘No, Mister Philip. It never dawn on me to go do a thing like that, but I know it in London somewhere.’

  28

  Resilience

  When Judge Finley tell me that while I was busy trying to drink every drop of Appleton they got on the island Hampton and Desmond go find the two constables and give them a hiding I say to him, ‘Yu serious? Yu mean them same two constables that help Fay take the children?’

  ‘Yah, man.’

  ‘They lose their mind? Wasn’t it you and Clifton that sit right there and tell me there wasn’t nothing we could do ’bout them two piece of shit?’

  ‘We say yu couldn’t go kill them like you want, but they could take a hiding so Desmond and Hampton go do it.’

  ‘So how bad they hurt them?’

  ‘It not too bad. They survive. They alright.’

  ‘And what happen after that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? Yu sure?’ And Finley just nod him head. ‘So how long ago they go do all that?’

  ‘Six, maybe eight week.’

  ‘And nothing happen?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And what Mutt and Jeff doing now?’

  ‘They was off work a little while, but now they back in the police station just carry on like nothing happen. I reckon they know they do wrong and they take the punishment and now it done.’

  Then George Morrison say Margaret want to go back to Scotland. So I ask him what she want to go do a thing like that for, and he say she not feel so comfortable here in Jamaica no more. There no place for her and her work.

  ‘She says Jamaica is changing. She says that even though we have been here for so many years she will never be Jamaican. She will never be able to claim the dream of a truly independent and equal Jamaica. She will always be on the wrong side of that power divide. She says it is different for the white Jamaicans who were actually born here. They have birthright. She does not.’

  ‘And what do you say, George?’

  ‘Jamaica is my home and you are my family; Finley, Clifton, Hampton. I cannot even begin to imagine a life without you. There is nothing for me in Edinburgh except the dark winter and biting cold.’

  ‘And yu son?’

  ‘John is a child but a Jamaican. Half Chinese and half English, I know, but a Jamaican through and through. After all, which Jamaican does not have a little mix of this and that? But he is only five years old so he will have to go with Margaret.’

  ‘So what you going to do, George?’

  ‘I am conflicted. I came here over twenty-five years ago because it was what Margaret wanted and now she wants to go back I cannot find it in my heart to follow. Yet I know that she would be devastated to return to Scotland without me and I would miss her deeply. Well I can’t even conceive of it. So I have agreed with her that we will go for a visit and explore the possibilities.’

  So George getting ready to go back to Scotland and Finley decide that maybe George can go see if he can find where Stanley at, and Fay and the children. After all, Scotland only at the top of England. It seem like a good idea to me. He going that way anyway and then he can send back word to us ’bout what is happening.

  But George not the only one going. They jumping on the plane by the dozen and they not looking back. And when I start take notice I see how things on the island getting real bad. Sure enough some people make a lot of money after Independence with all the development that was going on, but at the same time we had very high unemployment, and since we nuh got no welfare, the poor was just getting poorer, and the difference was really showing. Worse than anything we had before. Them with the money was affording the high life, mansions in Beverly Hills, Mercedes-Benz. They was busy buying up everything and hiring more help and jetting all over the place. The poor was just getting sick and tired and desperate.

  The whole thing cause me a big problem as well because Chinatown was on the move. All these people I deal with all these years suddenly start take off for Canada or the US, and the ones that stay behind move uptown or go to Port Antonio, or Ocho Rios or Montego Bay like what Round One Chin do. Pretty soon, there was going to be nobody left in Chinatown to protect, because the people moving in didn’t need or want no protection from me. They got that all sorted out themselves.

  And as far as the gambling go nobody want do it. They too busy saving their hard-earn cash for the next flight to Miami. Plus with all this unemployment and poverty what happen was a big increase in street trade, which mean business really take a dive for the girls stuck in them East Kingston houses. So they start talking ’bout go working on the street, and no matter how much I try talk them out of it, they do it anyway because that is the only way they can see to beat the competition. All the time I just worry for them, because I remember how all them years back Gloria’s sister get mash up by the American sailor bwoy and I think how I never want to see a sight like that again, or worse, that one of them go get killed.

  The construction surplus, the goods off the dock, that all finish. Too much competition, too many people trying to make ends meet.

  Finley say to me, ‘Yu think George going stay in Scotland?’

  And I say to him, ‘Can you see George Morrison going back to regular doctoring in some cold, dingy hospital where he have to actually tend to the real sick and dying every day and at the end of the month they give him some little pay cheque that wouldn’t last a afternoon at Caymanas Park racecourse, where the most exciting thing going happen to him is reading little John’s school report and where he got to face the dark and the wind and the snow, and go back to being a church-going sober Presbyterian day in day out? Can you see that?’

  And Finley look at me and just say, ‘No.’

  Well, whether or not he stay there, Morrison was going to Scotland so I reckon he could have a go anyway at looking for Stanley. But the truth was we didn’t really have nothing to go on. Looking for Stanley Johnson was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, there was that many Jamaican ex-servicemen in London. Stanley and Fay could have been anywhere.

  And when I was busy telling all of this to Michael him just look at me and say, ‘I have the address, Pao.’

  I can’t believe my ears. After all this upset with Daphne and planning with Morrison, Michael sit down there as calm as you please and just say, ‘I have the address.’

  ‘Yu have the address? Stanley address?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where yu get it from?’

  ‘Fay wrote to me.’

  ‘Fay wrote to yu?’ I talking so loud everybody in the fry-fish and bammy shack turn ’round and looking at me like maybe they think I going start a brawl. So I calm myself down and I say to him, ‘Michael, how long you have the address? Yu nuh know I desperate to find where the children at?’

  ‘It was a personal letter to me, Pao, about how she was finding life in England. It was the sort of letter one would write to one’s priest.’

  ‘Come on, Michael, we gone past that now. We both know that any letter Fay write to you wasn’t no letter that one would write to one’s priest.’ And I sorta mimic him because I was getting vex.

  ‘Well I assure you that my reply was entirely the sort of response one might expect to receive from one’s priest.’

  And that much I believe is true. Michael already punish himself enough over Fay to go get catch up in a whole load of letter writing that going mash up him chances of making archbishop, because as well as everything else that Michael Kealey is, I discover over the years that him also ambitious. He know he get away with the Fay thing one time already and he not going chance it another time ’round.

  ‘I received a letter from Mui as well.’

  ‘And yu no say nothing to me? Jesus Christ, Michael, I can’t believe yu. Honest to god. As if the secret catechism cla
sses not enough, now yu have to go do this. Why yu nuh say nothing to me?’

  ‘Pao.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I sorry ’bout the blaspheming, but honestly, Michael.’ And I calm down and I lower my voice and I see the rest of the customers resting a bit easier because after all Michael sitting there still wearing the little dog-collar thing.

  ‘It only arrived yesterday and I knew I was seeing you today so I brought it with me.’ And he take the envelope outta his pocket and hand it to me. When I turn it over I see it say ‘Sealed and not to be opened by anyone except Father Michael’. I take out the piece of paper and start read.

  Dear Father Michael,

  I hope you are well. I am sorry not to have written to you before but I have been very busy settling into my new school, and I also know that Mama has been keeping you up to date with our news.

  The lessons at school are the same – reading, writing and arithmetic – but not as much fun. The other children do not seem so friendly.

  Uncle Stanley’s house is small but he has made us welcome and Mama says we should be grateful, which I am because otherwise we would not have anywhere else to live in England where it seems I must stay for the time being anyway.

  I was not so happy about it at first which is partly why I did not write to you because Mama said you knew all about us coming to England so I was cross with you, and I only wrote to my papa instead. But I am not cross any more. England is not too bad. It seems OK. And since I miss you I thought I would write. Our parish priest is not like you. He is a very serious old man who I don’t think likes children very much.

  I have a favour to ask. Could you please ask my papa why he has not written back to me? Maybe he did not get my letter because I just wrote Yang Pao, Matthews Lane, Kingston, Jamaica because I did not know the post office box number.