The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “Round the yard here, I use it to weed the beds of the kitchen garden, the small tomatoes, for making gravy; and large beefsteak tomatoes; string beans, christophenes, squash, cucumbers, lima beans, pigeon-peas and punkin-vines, all from the kitchen-garden.

  “And in the afternoons, when there is a lil relief from the sun and the humidity, I turned from the kitchen-garden to the flower beds, cleaning and weeding the rose of Sharon, daisies, pansies, bourganvillea, flowers . . . to help-them-along more faster.

  “You could see the lovely flowers round the property, as you ride-up the path of white marl and loose gravel, if it wasn’t so difficult in the darkness to see the flowers?”

  “I see flowers all the time, Miss Mary-Mathilda, even on a dark night. Flowers don’t mean that-much, to me, though,” Sargeant says. “They grow and I passes them; and sometimes I don’t see them at all. But I know they are there.”

  “I-too. I’m not much for flowers, neither. No.

  “But to give Satan his due, Mr. Bellfeels was. Is. A master at growing flowers. Specially roses. He even grafted a new rose and named it after my daughter, Rachelle Sarah Prudence, who did not live long, my only girl, who didn’t survive two months after birth. God rest her poor soul! Sweet child . . .”

  She makes the sign of the Cross.

  Sargeant makes the sign of the Cross, imitating her.

  “The Rachelle Rose. Named after my late daughter. You can see it better when the sun come up . . . in the morning . . .”

  “I see it once, one day long ago when I had to pass here,” he says.

  “And Wilberforce take after Mr. Bellfeels, in regards to having a green-thumb. And Gertrude. Now-and-then. Gertrude’s two hands are green thumbs. But she is sometime-ish, even although anything she touch, turns to gold. Anything I plant, drops-down-dead by the second day. My fortay lies in the use of my hoe, with regards to tending and cultivating the ground, the hard, thick, musty, smelly ground, that black soil. The soil that is so cruel, when you come to know it. When you clear a field of trees and tree-roots, or even turn a fallow field, once full o’ canes, into a field for planting potatoes, or even yams and eddoes, my-Christ, Sargeant, the number of forty-legs, centipees that appear at your two feet, up to your ankles, thick as if you are walking through mud! The droves of centipees crawling outta that ground the same colour as the soil, that fresh ground, that they call virgin soil! My God-in-heaven, Sargeant, centipees in such countless, numberless numbers! . . . So, all you could do was just stand there, dumbstruck. And you would think that what it is, was the earth, the ground itself, moving and wringling, .Welling and contracting like the bellows of a concertina.

  “Sargeant, pray to God that one of those bastards don’t crawl-up your trousers leg, oh Christ, man! The sting they could put in your you-know-what! Or, in your behind. Takes days and days to bring-down the .Welling, and ease the sting and release the pus and the venom!

  “Jesus Christ, Percy. You must remember Golbourne? And the pain? And the sorrow Golbourne went through, when that centipee crawled slow-slow from under his bed, one night, and walk all over Golbourne face, as if it was vestigating his entire anatomy, and then how it slip-into his mouth . . . Golbourne still sleeps with his mouth wide-open . . . and the bastard crawl-back-through Golbourne nose-hole, his nostril? Jesus-Christ-inheaven! Yes!

  “I shake, I shake with, with disgust. . . my stomach quiver, and get into knots, even to this day, whenever I think of it. Golbourne was how old when that happen? Five?”

  “Six!”

  “Six? You sure? Yes. But he wasn’t quite-six, yet, Sargeant. He wasn’t yet in Primer Standard at Sin-Davids Elementary, although he start late. Nor in Kinter-garden, neither.”

  “Not quite six. Five, then?”

  “Yes. Five! Golbourne was five when that centipee crawledthrough his two nostrils, from the inside out.”

  “My God!” Sargeant says.

  And he pulls a large white handkerchief from the sleeve of his black serge tunic. He pulls it out like a conjurer performing tricks. And when the handkerchief eventually comes out, like a long white snake, he wipes his face with it. The buttons at the front of his black tunic are buttoned. Up to his neck. The buttons are silver and shining. His face is large, and strong. And black. Like ebony. A happy face. A face you normally would confuse with honesty, if not with unsophistication and j.Welled naivety. No, not quite that kind of a face. It is, in its smooth roundness, a face with no trace of complicatedness and complexity, shaven with such regular care that it looks as if hair has not yet sprouted from it. The face of a boy. Yes, that is Sargeant’s face. It is an honest, boy-like face.

  “My God!” he says.

  And this time, he shivers. He shivers and hopes it tells her that his skin crawls, too, to hear about Golbourne; that he, too, can feel pain, and can recoil at the disgustedness, same as hers, at the sight of a centipede coming back out through a child’s nostril.

  The sudden and uncontrolled movements his body goes through, are larger and more dramatic than normal.

  “And you call yourself a detective, Percy! Haven’t you seen worse things? A lil thing, like a centipee crawling-through a child’s two nostrils makes you shake and shudder and squirm like that? You look as if nothing tragic ever stared you in your face! You remember the plight of Clotelle? You remember Pounce’s lot?”

  “Just the thought, Miss Mary, just the thought.”

  “It wasn’t pleasant.”

  “Being a Crown-Sargeant in the Force, I see certain things which a normal person isn’t privilege to see; and don’t see. And when my two eyes sees such things, it don’t mean that my constitution is so toughened-up by my job that I loss all sense o’ compassion and feelings . . .”

  “You have any compassion and feelings for me, in my present circumstances?”

  “I know, Miss Mary, that . . .”

  “You have a job to do. I have a job to make your job more easier. Not making statements to com-promise you.”

  “You already do,” he says. “Making my job more easier.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Making my life easier? I mean, sitting here with you in your front-house, on a Sunday evening, talking to me as if you are really not Miss Mary-Mathilda, Miss Bellfeels of the Great House, as we call you, and what that mean, but sitting here, you is still,somehow, the girl who I went-school with. And who uses to play London Bridge and Ship-Sail with me. And as if I is not a police come to take your Statement.

  “This is the very first time that I have the honour to grace a seat in your front-house. Except years ago, the time Mr. Bellfeels bring me here, on his horse, before you was living in this house, and make me stand-up in the kitchen, as he question you and axe you to swear that I steal the Plantation mangoes . . .”

  “Yes! Bellfeels scared you like hell. Threatened to give you five years in Dodd’s Reformatory!”

  “Yes. And he hold me by my two ears, and turn-me-round, and lifted me up in the air, offa the red tiles on the kitchen floor . . . I’ll never forget the colour of the tiles in the kitchen . . . and twist my ears, whilst forcing you to swear um was me who climb the mango tree. No, you were not living in this Great House yet. You was your mother’s helper in the kitchen, here in this Great House.”

  “What a brute! Bellfeels. Is. And was. Treating you like a harden criminal.

  “And when you count the number of mango trees we have on this Plantation, mangoes like peas! Pah-wees, common-mango, the Trinidadian version; mangoes from Sin-Lucia; and see the number o’ mangoes, ripe ones, green ones, and young mangoes, that fall outta the tree, and leff on the ground to rot . . .

  “Or, to feed to the stocks!

  “Bellfeels was itching to tar your backside, that afternoon. And if I didn’t lie . . . with Ma touching my back to do it . . . and intervene in your behalf, Jesus-Christ, Percy-boy, you wouldda gone up. Straight to Dodd’s. Over one mango!”

  “One mango. From that day forth . . . I pee my pants that day Mr.
Bellfeels hold-me-on on the hard leather saddle of his horse, tight . . . from that day, and years afterwards, every time I see Mr. Bellfeels, I wet my pants, again. And for years afterwards, like a thing that Mr.Wilberforce call a cause-and-effect, the mere thought of that day in the kitchen, on the red tiles, makes my bladder burn and I want to pee . . . excuse me for talking so plain. But that day, I also make a vow to be a police. So that nobody-else could ever take advantage o’ me. This burning bladder and wanting to pee bad went on till a year or two before I joined the Force. The peeing of my pants, in times of emergency, I mean.”

  “The man is a savage,” she says.

  “Was like a savage he treated me,” Sargeant says. “But that is over.”

  “Thank God for that!”

  “Thank God.”

  “That part of him is still alive. That in-born nastiness don’t ever die. It is round-here, somewhere. Perhaps, in the fields. Or in habitation in the Plantation Main House itself. For sure, I know it is still inhabiting this Great House with me. And I regret that it still resides inside this place, with Wilberforce living here. But my days here, are numbered, and . . .”

  “What you mean by ‘numbered’? Nobody isn’t counting your remaining days, Miss Mary-Mathilda.”

  “I mean death. When I dead-and-gone, this Great House may go to Wilberforce. I hope that if he inherit it, first thing he will do, is give it a thorough going-through. Purge it.”

  “Oh!” he says, “you had me scared, there!”

  “Mr. Bellfeels start talking to the owners of the Plantation up in Englund, to let me live in this Great House, the day after he was promoted from overseer of the field gang. As gang leader, he looked after the horses, and the mules, and the donkeys. And the pens. Head of the stables and stable boys. He got a quick promotion from being head of the stables, to be assistant overseer. Then, overseer. Then, bookkeeper assistant. Then, full bookkeeper. It was as bookkeeper that this Great House was put at his disposal.

  “Mr. Bellfeels, as white as he looks today, is really not pure white. He mixed. He doesn’t like to be in the sun too long. And he never bathes in the sea. Saltwater, he used to tell me, tans the skin, and turns you too black. Isn’t that man a foolish son-of-a-bitch! Pardon my French, Sargeant.

  “Then, he was made manager-acting. And from manageracting to his present position. Manager of this Plantation.

  “The Main House, as you know, is the biggest house on this estate. It is just the distance of a four-hundred-and-forty-yard race, from this Great House. But with the fruit trees and the fields and the turns in the road, you can’t see it from here, and it look more farther from where we are. The Plantation Main House is the power on the estate.

  “Yes! So, he was eventually made Manager, and it take exactly the number of years Wilberforce born for Mr. Bellfeels to rule this Plantation.

  “But that taste I was talking about. That taste, that taint, that mouldiness like the soil of the North Field; that sickening smell of dirt and wet dust, reminding you of something that is dead, perpetually rotting . . . I suppose our bodies go through that kind of disfiguration, ‘earth to earth: duss to duss’; the mould carrying in its smell, the smell of a million centipees crawling in one thick, neverending dark-brown wave of nastiness and stinging disgustedness, disgusting to people, all people, not only infants and boys like Golbourne. Disgusting to animals, too. That smell of wet, black soil, is his smell, is Mr. Bellfeels smell. Yes.

  “And it will always be lingering-’bout here; inside this house; on these curtains and blinds; inside the wallpaper; on the pictures and picture frames; in this front-house parlour where me and you sitting on this Sunday evening, in question. It is lingering in the kitchen with Gertrude, poor soul, as she does her housework; in all the rooms upstairs, my dressing room, Wilberforce bedroom and his study; and even after all these years, in my bedroom.

  “Don’t even mention in my bed, or inside the mattress. It is like the rot that grows from dampness. Regardless of the amount o’ Jays Fluid, blue soap, white-head bush, bleach and kerosene oil that you pour over certain stains, that kind o’ spot will never come out. Will never leave delicate material, like muslim or sea-island cotton, which it has stained with its stubbornness.

  “My boy, Wilberforce, a doctor of Tropical Medicines, calls this kind o’ stain, indellable. Indellable.”

  “Indellable,” Sargeant says, with a smile on his face. “Like the ink we have to use in the writing-up of Confidential Reports and Statements! And in our promotion examinations.”

  “Like that.”

  “Like Quink Ink, Royal Blue in colour.”

  “Like Royal Blue Quink Ink. We used it in Penmanship classes at Sin-Davids Elementary School for Girls.”

  “We still uses it in Reports and Statements, that is official. And in our promotion examinations.”

  “I have seen Mr. Bellfeels use that same ink to write in his ledgers; and he would try over and over to wipe out certain figures, before he felt safe-enough to present them to the owners up in Englund, his superiors; before he could justify his personal statements of how the Plantation money was handled; yes, to the Board of Governors living in Bimshire, and the overseas owners, up in Englund. I have seen Mr. Bellfeels struggle many a night, sweat and perspiration pouring down his face, lose his temper, curse stink-stink, ‘. . . these fecking Limey-bastards! They think all o’ we in Bimshire is slaves?’; having the nerves and anxious moments, shortening-tempers, as he struggled to change a hundredPounds loss, into a seven-hundred-Pounds loss; and pocket the difference struggling to make his figures written down, coincide with his verbal statements, in telephone conversations to the local Board of Governors; and with the cablegrams he sent overseas to the owners in Englund.

  “So, I know about Quink Ink. The Royal Blue tints and tinctures, as Mr. Bellfeels himself was in the habit of calling it by.”

  “But what a lovely ink, though!” Sargeant says. His face is beaming. Perhaps it is the perspiration on his cheeks. “I have a Watermans fountain pen that the Commissioner o’ Police give me, the day I made Crown-Sargeant. And I won’t be caught dead without my Watermans, always full o’ Royal Blue Quink ink. I even got it with me, now!

  “Once in Standard Four, a afternoon, round half-pass two, we was doing Penmanship; and the Teacher was telling we how to write the t more shorter than the h; and he show we on the blackboard . . . blackboards in them days not only was to write on, but they was used as dividers of one class from the next. Behind our blackboard was Standard Five. On our blackboard, though, the Teacher was writing, Manners Maketh Man. The Teacher went to the blackboard to show us how to write; and he had a prettypretty writing-hand; and every time he write a g, the chalk make a shrieking sound like a squeak; and the boys would laugh. I was the only boy to get catched laughing. And the Teacher screeled at me, ‘Stuart! One mark off! For cackling like a hen in class! Lines!’ And I start crying. And the rest of the boys start laughing. ‘You will write out Manners Maketh Man, fifty times. In your English Grammar Exercise Book! In Quink Ink, Stuart! Quink Ink.’ That is why my writing-hand is so good today.

  “I know ’bout Quink Ink. And fountain pens. I carries my Watermans clip-on in my inside-pocket, whether it is this uniform, or the shirts I knocks around the house in; whatever I am wearing. My Watermans is in my black suit I wears to weddings, funerals and Services-o’-Songs. My Watermans! Or in the insidepocket of any suit I wear to church, when I singing tenor in the Choir.

  “I don’t leave home without it. Not my Watermans. It travels with me, wherever I go.”

  “I know. I know it. And I have seen you wearing it, too. In a short-sleeve sports shirt, one Saturday afternoon, watching cricket on the Pasture. Just like my wishbone.”

  “Your wishbone?”

  “Yes. My wishbone.”

  “This is something I should take-down and add-on to your Statement? It may be something extenniating.”

  “You can get it from the Constable. Me and him talked enough alrea
dy about that wishbone, a wishbone I carried around for years, the same way you carry around your Watermans pen. But mine was like a talisman, a word I hear Wilberforce use.”

  “I would not know that word, Miss Mary-Mathilda. Talisman?”

  “You are a Crown-Sargeant in the Royal Constabulary of the Island of Bimshire, and you should know the word, Percy DaCosta Benjamin Stuart?”

  “Well . . ...Well, I have my thoughts . . .”

  “On Friday nights over their fried dolphin steaks and dry-peas and rice, Percy Stuart, what you think they does-talk about? The crops? The thrildren? Church? Or even school? For one thing, they don’t talk nothing about education, cause the majority of them didn’t get too far in school!

  “They talk about you. Not meaning you, personally. But, about you. In broad terms. And me. The labourers. The maids. The cooks. The messengers. The men who tend the stocks and the stables. Cane cutters. Lorry drivers. And the women they foop and rape, on the Plantation. And breed.

  “They lambast politicians who they don’t like. And everybody coloured, or that black. Yes.

  “And they talk about taking their next Home-Leave, in Englund. They all born here, mind you! But home is still Englund. So, every year, they head straight to Englund. You see what that mean? Yes.

  “They hate all o’ we. Me. You. Gertrude, out there in the kitchen. Everybody.

  “Regardless to colour and complexion. So long as we are not white like them, and belongst to a Plantation.

  “Percy Stuart, I have served and I have listened, and pretended I didn’t hear nothing that pass their lips in their condemnation of the black people of this Island.

  “I watch them iamming fried dolphin steaks, and fulling their mouths with dry-peas and rice, wash-away in thick, brown gravy; and I smile to myself. But I listen with my two ears prick.

  “I have washed their plates, their cups, their glasses and their silvers; and I have listened. And I would pretend not to hear, nor be interested in hearing their stories; have no concern with nothing; aside from concentrating on the sting of the blue soap in the water, and the tightness from the detergents clogging-up my veins as I wash their clothes.