The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  The emotion this touch of her body causes, like an explosion, brings with it the caution of pause. But then, his hand takes a detour and moves under her armpits. He can feel the stutter of his blood. The loss of breath. Then the regaining of breath and grown confidence. The warmth of her flesh. And he feels also the dampness of her armpits. The scent of Johnson’s Baby Powder rises suddenly to his nostrils, from under her armpits, and this gives his hand greater courage, and adds force and roughness to his caresses. When she moves away from him, she leaves a different perfume behind her. The scent that fills the room, is the smell of Eau de Cologne No. 4711 . . . He has smelled this cologne before, merely once, in a bottle with a gold and green label, in the Perfume and Fragrances Department at Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries, in Town. He had blinked his eyes in disbelief, when he saw the price; and a woman, “the clerkess,” seeing his unease, and understanding his interest in the perfume—it was the week before Christmas—came to his rescue; and when he saw her coming towards him, he raised his arms above his head, as men do, who want to confess, or to surrender . . . He was in his policeman’s uniform. He was a private . . . and then he smiled; and the woman smiled with him, and said, “Constable, hold your hand out, nuh.” And he had held his hand out; and received the squirt; and his eyes started to burn; and he held his hand out a second time, this time palm-up; and received another spurt of vapour; and his mind went wild, for he was smelling the cologne in the bottle, and the fragrance of lust that lay heavily in the woman’s eyes, and in her hands as she passed them softly, slowly over his hands; and hours later, he held this same hand out, his left hand, in the barracks in Central Police Station, on Coleridge Street in Town, where he was stationed, across one narrow street from Cave Shepherd & Sons, Harberdashers; and he thought of the blue veins in the woman’s hand that held the bottle of Eau de Cologne No. 4711.

  He did not wash that hand, his left hand, for three days.

  Miss P. Wilkinson was printed on a small rectangle of metal that looked like gold, that was pinned above her right breast. Her nipples came clear through her salmon-coloured jersey to his eyes.

  Yes, it is Eau de Cologne No. 4711. And the room is turning, slowly; spinning like the revolutions of the grammaphone record when the song has ended. His hands are travelling, as his breathing is racing. Now, they have stopped for breath above her breasts; and his fingers, the thumb, index and second fingers on each hand wander to and feel the softness of her nipples; and a shudder comes through his body, weakening him. He is stiff as a piece of iron. His hands now stray farther afield, to find the richer, the sweeter, the more churning and turbulent downward climb in his travelling, to the heat between her thighs. And then, he hears the voice of a woman.

  It is the voice of the singer, saying: “‘. . . My brown-and-yellow basket . . .’”

  “You haven’t heard a word I been saying to you for the last five minutes, haven’t you, Percy?”

  This is her voice. Not the voice he thinks he is hearing. The grammaphone is playing; and the other voice is the voice of Miss Ella Fitzgerald.

  “I was going over things,” he says.

  “Sometimes I sit here, and my eyes would travel over the canes, and I would imagine that the canes are the waves in the sea, or the Atlantic Ocean; and I am travelling over all that saltwater; and the currents leading me away from Bimshire, this Island; and I am one of the tourisses, visiting those places that Wilberforce is always ranting about. Countries. Cities. Civilizations. Places where they speak different languages from me and you. Englund. Germany. Sicily. Austria. Italy. Sicily.”

  “You mention Sicily two times.”

  “Yes? Sicily. Rome. London-Englund. And Paris! Oh boy! Paris! The things I have heard about Paris! And seen! In magazines knockingaround this house!

  “If I could only choose. Percy, if I only had the power of choice to change my life, even at this late stage, under the present circumstances, Paris would be the destination in my first-and-only overseas-European-travel.

  “Yes. Going overseas to Europe! Going away!”

  “Yes. But gimme Amurca! Any day! The bigness of Amurca. And the money of Amurca. The cars and the clothes of Amurca. And the idea that a man, if he don’t like going to work in the daytime, could choose his working hours to night. And tek the night shift. That is a pretty thing, Miss Mary-Mathilda, a thing of freedom. Just to hear about. It is a thing that we don’t have in this Island. Not yet. But we need to learn to work at night. Yuh got to be big, big-minded, to give a fellar that choice. Between day-work and tekking the night shift? A fellow who lived in both Amurca and in Englund tell me that they haven’t arrived at that big-mindedness yet neither, in Englund. The night shift. Known also in Amurcan vernacular, as the graveyard. Even the words, night shift, sound so pretty. You don’t think so, Miss Mary?”

  “You haven’t listened to one word of Miss Ella Fitzgerald song!”

  “I was travelling with my thoughts.”

  “Travelling overseas. Gimme Paris, any morning . . .”

  “You don’t mind winding the Victrola again, do you, Miss Mary? And playing ‘A Tisket, a Tasket’ a second time? If you don’t mind, please?”

  She winds the grammaphone, until the handle gives a slight kick back, warning her that the spring is tight; and she takes the thick vinyl record off the turntable, and passes it in a circular motion over her left hand, and then she places it closer to her face and blows upon it. It is a loud, strong, exhaling of wind. And she goes back to sit in her chair just in time, as Miss Ella Fitzgerald, who has been waiting for the opening notes of the orchestra, begins “A Tisket, a Tasket.”

  “What really is a tisket, Percy?”

  “A tisket?”

  “You ever come across one?”

  “Not to my knowledge, Miss Mary.”

  “My boy would know. If he was home, I would ask him.”

  “Yes, Mr.Wilberforce would know. We should axe Mr. Wilberforce.”

  “I should ask him. And tasket? Could that be a tisket with a a?”

  “Your son would know.”

  She takes the heavy arm off the record, and the weight of the arm, tricky in her own hand and unexpectedly heavy, drops too early on the black record and misses the groove, and the sound of the scrape that results reminds Sargeant of the noise of brakes late at night, at the intersection of the two roads, Highgates Commons and Reservoir Lane, which meet close to his house.

  But this noise is a sweeter noise. And less jarring upon his nerves. This noise brings peace and a desire to travel, to walk, to stroll, loll about the narrow tree-lined lanes of the Village, winding around clusters of mahogany trees, of Guinea grass and Khus-Khus grass, cut out by the passage of time, and of bare feet, between fields of sugar cane. The lane he takes to lead Gertrude deeper into the green night, to lie on the padded brown trash. He can see the cane field from where he is sitting in a chair with a white doily draped over its back so that the heavy Vaseline grease for grooming his hair cut to suit a policeman, does not touch the rich, expensive velour material of the chair. He knows that the back of the chair is filled with horsehair. A strand of its stiff stuffing shows through in two places near his neck, like whiskers left two days on the chin. Sargeant travels over the land that surrounds him now, in thick green silence, as he listens more attentively to the words of the American woman coming through the speaker of the Victrola grammaphone. The speaker is in the shape of a large horn, a cornucopia, attached to the body of the grammaphone.

  And his mind, and his body with it, go back over the years, searching as he had turned the pages of those out-of-date magazines in the equipment room of the Garrison Savannah Lawn Tennis Club, sitting amongst the long, black rubber hose for watering the lawns, the noisy lawn mower, and old, damp, stinking tennis shirts and shorts of the male members; going back over time, until it had rested on that Monday, a bank holiday, Easter bank holiday, when the sea was calm and the sand on the beach was fresh as if the waves had come in during the long black nig
ht and had used its quieter current to comb the sand clean of pieces of dried bramble, of flotsam and jetsam, empty Trumpeter cigarette boxes, and empty Swan Vesta wooden matchboxes, “the smoker’s match” . . . Sargeant knew these beaches and the sand on them, so often resembling a dump where the Villagers threw their garbage. Empty tots that once contained condensed milk, and young water coconuts, some still green on the outside, and used by small boys as cricket balls; and some riper coconuts chopped into two, exposing where the skin was left on the brutally chopped shell, and thrown away on a mounting pile of rot; and still some other water coconuts chopped into half or as near to half as hungry, impatient hands could perform the trick; and pieces of stick and twigs, blackened by age and the constant pounding of the waves. And Sheik french leathers.

  Whenever he was on night patrol on this same beach, usually after midnight, which hour he assumed was best for catching criminals, he would find himself looking up into the darkened sky, always at this time, painted in blackness; and he would try to count the stars, and name the constellations; and sometimes the skies would be without stars; at least he could not see them, and could not count them; he was always uneasy when he looked at the skies without stars; but there was always enough light for him to see the coconut trees growing tall to almost touch the skies. This is why the Villagers called them “mile trees.” He always was in wonder at the guts it took for a thief to climb these “mile trees” in the blackness of night to pick the coconut from the highest branch of these majestic trees that grew almost straight as a cane arrow; and getting away from the watchman stalking him, invisible in the black night by means of his dress, the uniform of his profession: black jacket, black discarded policeman’s serge trousers—with the two twoinch red seams at the sides, removed—and barefoot. The night watchman in his tracking of the thief, had already discarded the pair of policeman’s black boots he had been given by Sargeant, because their creaking might reveal his presence and expose him to the thief; and his own black skin, the mark of his rank, the qualification insisted upon by the Plantation, the Solicitor-General, the leading barristers-at-Law, before anyone who needed a night watchman, would hire one, his black skin was discussed as the desirable testimonial for being “taken on” for this dangerous job. Night watchman. Flagstaff Village has more night watchmen than teachers, policemen and needleworkers put together. It is as if the Village has within its boundaries, valuables and trinkets and priceless jewels stored in safes in locked bedrooms, and in caves and in underground tunnels, that these have to be watched during the day, and continually and “vigilled-over” especially during the night. Nighht waaatchman . . . the Sin-Davids Anglican Church Annual Outing and Picnic, held this Easter Monday bank holiday on the beach at the Crane Beach Hotel, where the breakers were sometimes as tall as the night watchman himself; where the sand moves like a waltz along the beach, in places fifty yards in depth; where the pure, clean sand is the colour of a conch shell; and is swept by the hotel gardeners with brooms made from the spine of the leaves from the coconut palm, in preparation for the outing.

  The gardeners had been given strict instructions by the manager of the hotel.

  “I want the blasted beach sweep clean-clean-clean, so clean that any son-of-a-bitch could pick up a chicken foot offa the sand and eat it! You hear me?” he had told them.

  Mr. Bellfeels, the manager of the Plantation; the Reverend Mr. M. R. P. P. Dowd, Vicar of Sin-Davids Anglican Church; the Commissioner of Police; the Headmaster of Harrison College; and the Headmistress of Queen’s College, “Harsun College sisterschool”; the Solicitor-General of the Island; the two leading barristers-at-Law in the Island, Mr. E.Wharton-Barr, KC, and Mr. G. Herbert-Addis, KC; and the Member of the Legislative Council of Bimshire would be present. With them would be their wives. And families. And dozens and dozens of the Villagers, bearing chairs with heavy invalids in them; pushing perambulators over the tricky, shifting sand of the beach, near the waves which come in at high tide, during the early afternoon, like small climbing hurricanes, to make the men scream at their maids fearing for the safety of their women and their children, “Oh Jesus Christ! Not suh-close to the blasted waves, girl! You want to commit murder this nice bank holiday? Not so blasted close! You can’t see the tide coming in?”; with toddlers in them; and on this Monday bank holiday years ago, Mary Gertrude Mathilda—Tilda to the Village boys—young and with her.Well-nourished body bursting through her thin, cotton white dress that reached one inch below her knees; thirteen years old; and her hair combed and plaited in long rows that were then woven back into the rest of her hair, giving her hair the overall effect of rows of ploughed sweet-potatoes, or like terraces on an Italian mountainside; and he remembered how her legs looked: sturdy and shiny and soft as velvet from the coconut oil with which they were rubbed and bathed, and greased; and she was smelling sweet, with that smell which he did not know the name of then, not before he had found himself standing in the Perfume and Fragrances Department of Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries; and he, a young boy then, having just completed Standard Five, was at the time of this church picnic, apprenticed to the Garrison Savannah Tennis Club, as an Assistant Gardener and Chief Water Boy; and his job which paid him one shilling and sixpence per week, every Friday at two o’clock, with two changes of blue denim suits, short-sleeved shirt, short pants, no cap or hat, no shoes—not even canvas pumps—was the most happy and exciting days of his young adolescence; and he grew accustomed to seeing women’s legs and to witnessing flashes of their “knockie” and pubic hair, dark brown and red, blond and fuzzy; and once, there was no hair there at all; swift like visions, in lightning speed as if these exposures were matching the backhand shots played by the women in doubles; and in this fast time, he would see these private parts that the short white cotton panties could not conceal completely from his wandering eyes that loitered on legs, whenever a backhand shot was smashed against the tape on the net and dribbled “out!”; or when the woman player slipped on the freshly watered grass surface, and her body was slammed against the tall green-painted fence that kept the balls inside the grounds, and out of the hands of the Village boys who watched; eyes and heads moving back and forth, wishing that their eyeballs were magnets; hoping that a ball struck with spin and pace would climb the ten-foot green-painted fence; and they would pocket it in a flash, pocket it in delight and with equal lightning speed “take off” with the tennis ball, for their game of “hopping-ball cricket”; and this very sight and sudden showing of legs within the safety of the club, safe from the wandering, fast, flashing eyes of the young men and boys who pressed their faces against the green fence to see the direction the ball would take when it crashed against racquet, the sound it made announcing that it is hit, the unrhythmic sound, close to that of leather hitting skin, in random accuracy; or to the sound of a broken string: plop . . . plop . . . plop; plop . . . plop . . . plop . . . plop, plop, plop-plop . . .

  “Well-played, I say!”

  “Good shot that!”

  “Ball! Ball! Boy! Ball-boy!”

  It is the hysterical, high-pitched voice of the man partnering the woman who has just struck the ball, who has now fallen on the green grass in her white shorts, who has exposed the entire area taken up by her “knockie,” by accident; she had made a commitment before she was ready, had made an unforced error, had hit the ball by chance, in casu; an act; a stroke similar to putting too much spin on the backhand shot; this high-pitched feminine voice coming from the man playing with her always shouted orders at Sargeant, as if the voice was asking a question, incapable of giving an order, not knowing how to “be a man,” as it were; as if the man talking was wondering aloud whether the tennis ball was really a ball or a green golden apple.

  “Ball?” he shouts. “Boy? Boy?”

  Sargeant is still taken in by the strange colour of this woman’s pubic hairs and the colour of her panties, and her flesh, turning pink from exhaustion in the tennis game and exposure to the sun which beats down savagely just befor
e three o’clock in the afternoon; taken in by her sadness at being beaten by the two players across the net, as much as by the humidity; and so he does not hear the high-pitched voice of the man ordering him to get the “bloody ball!”; Sargeant’s eyes have taken in too much for his ears to function now to hear the warning falsetto cries that leave the woman’s male partner’s mouth in threatening . . .

  “Boy?”

  . . . and Sargeant is blinded by what his eyes have chanced upon, and is insensitive to orders; cannot obey; is motionless, incapable of seeing danger, and cannot reach for the ball and throw it back into play, in to the woman who still holds service.

  “Boy?”

  And the voice comes at him again, speaking with a heavy English accent.

  “What the dickens, boy? Boy!”

  The voice is shrieking now. The voice wants to rouse the staring black eyes from their examination of this young beautiful girl’s private parts. To protect her. To remind the “boy” that this is a closeness, this staring, which is infra dig; this is an assault, this is a kind of rape by eyes and staring, that his brothers, yes, his type, those boys standing at the ten-foot fence painted green, with their faces pressed against the fence with its fine mesh, which has left its design imprinted, like embossed fine English stationery, on their concentrating faces; yes, his brothers, the voice seems to say, as it would contain in its anxiety and anger, some knowledge of this kind of staring, by this type, by this kind of boy, similar in his desire to Emmett Till’s, “up in Amerrica where this kind of thing,” these kinds of staring boys are lynched for . . . She puts on a grammaphone record; and in his mind, Sargeant dances with her, and can feel the softness of her body, and can touch her body, clear and as real as that bank holiday afternoon when for the first time, he saw her body through the fabric of her dress. She was dressed in a frilly white sea-island cotton dress . . .

  “We didn’t get the answer,” she tells him.