The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “And Wilberforce was embarrassing me so much that Saturday afternoon, with his running up to the pavilion behind Mr. Bellfeels, even when Mr. Bellfeels wasn’t batting or fielding. And the minute Mr. Bellfeels start to bowl, and whilst he was bowling, that boy would be pelting from outta my two arms, right on to the playing field, then on the cricket pitch itself, and right up into Mr. Bellfeels face. Only up in Mr. Bellfeels face. Mr. Bellfeels pick him up once, in his arms, and run his face against Wilberforce face, making funny noises, and giggling. This was early-on, and many of the people living on the Plantation estate didn’t know exactly who fathered Wilberforce. It was too early to tell. I didn’t let-on, neither. My philosophy was ‘who know, know; who don’t know, is none o’ their damn business, anyhow.’ Yes . . .

  “Well, this didn’t happen only during the special match between Spartans and Flagstaff. Whenever our fellows were playing at home, and the Plantation made this big lavish Lunch, serving cucumber sangwiches and corn beef sangwiches; and at Tea, cheese sangwiches and plain old butter sangwiches, made with sweet butter from Englund, that boy would choose this time to run up to Mr. Bellfeels, to Mr. Bellfeels only, and pull at the man white flannel trousers.

  “Those Saturdays of cricket playing on the Pasture! Beginning from the Friday night, Gertrude, already tired as a ox, poor soul, and me, just as tired, ironing the linens for napkins, and cutting the bread in slices, leaving-back the crust and the edges to mix with pollard, for the ducks and the turkeys; and putting the sangwiches under a cloth that we had dampened first, to keep them soft and fresh till in the morning, because there was no refrigerator, only a icebox; and that was already full; and picking long-grain, dirty rice from Demerara, cause the Plantation has the habit of feeding people with so much food, at the slightest drop of a bat, as if they thought food was going get scarce again like in the War-years; and cricket in Bimshire was not just cricket, but our lifeblood; cricket was cricket; and me and Gertrude picking mounds and mounds of Demerara rice, to get out the weebulls, weevils, as rice shipped here came by schooner from Demerara—and you never know what could get in the cargo that them Demerara people put in the blasted hold!—and picking-out the dead worrums, and the living little green ones from the pigeon-peas that Gertrude had-pick fresh from the trees round the edge of the North Field the same afternoon; and all this food, because there is eleven men on each team, plus one Extra each per team, plus two empires. Umpires. Plus the Water Boy, and the groundsman who took six days preparing the pitch; watering it, rolling it with the heavy-roller, watering it again, putting the light-roller on it, flinging dry-grass on it, and after a final watering, hit she with the heavy-roller again, the Saturday morning, just before eleven o’ clock; and the special guests, or as Wilberforce calls them the ‘guesses,’ the Vicar, who loves to eat; and the Solicitor-General, who once played first-class cricket for Bimshire, I am told; and the various managers of the surrounding sugar plantations, men with big appetites; and then, for the last, the servants, or ‘Staffs,’ as Mr. Bellfeels used to call us, by a English word he pick-up from up in Englund, after a three-week visit to Wilberforce at Oxford, coming back here talking as if he had a hot hard-boil egg inside his blasted mouth. After the cricketers and the invited guesses came the Staffs. But everybody eating, and drinking, as if it was Doomsday. Staffs and guesses. Yes! Those Saturday afternoons with cricket was like Easter Monday bank holiday with a sea bath!

  “And you should have seen Golbourne! Golbourne who licked-down so many wickets of the Spartans team in one afternoon! Licking-down all them wickets in less than forty-five minutes! Clean-bowl! Every time you raise your two eyes and look up from your knitting, or a magazine you happen to be reading, or from peeling a Julie-mango, intending to eat it, plah-daxxx! Golbourne have another one. Another Spartans-man wicket lick-outta-the-ground! It was too-sweet! Spartans was a all-white team. And Golbourne, who as you know was apprenticing to the joiner trade, under the watchful eye of Mr. Waldrond, was the only man of colour playing for us, on the Flagstaff team, picked by the Plantation.

  “Golbourne was our star-boy. And when Golbourne was still suffering the aftermaths from rum he drink the night-before, on the Friday night, meanwhile me and Gertrude are here preparing the peas-and-rice and the pork chops; and on the day of the match, the Saturday morning, oh-loss!; and Golbourne still stale-drunk; and My God, Golbourne get mad and mean and nasty, from having-in his liquors, he start bowling bumpers, wuh-loss! look-out, boy! Bram! A Spartans-man get hit by a bumper, right in his chest! And he bend-over. In pain. And all of we, the Staffs and me, hoping that Golbourne didn’t really kill-he! Only touch-he-up, to soften-he. And members of his own team, the Plantation-people, like Bellfeels and the Vicar, saying how ‘Golbourne wrong-wrong, wrong and vicious,’ to lick-down a Spartans-man, and that ‘this isn’t cricket’ to lick-down a visitor of the visiting team; but we the Staffs, all the time having sentiments in the opposite: ‘Lick-he-down, Golbourne! Lick-he-to-hell-down!’, in whispers, under our breaths; because, after all, bowling body-lines and touching-up the oppositioners with bumpers wasn’t cricket, meaning it wasn’t English . . .

  “But the minute the two Umpires say, ‘Light! Stumps draw!’, and the game done, and the various Plantation managers already gone in the verandah of the Plantation Main House for drinks— Mistress Dora Blanche Spence Hyphen Bellfeels prohibited them from crossing her front-house—and we the Staffs begin cleaning up things, and are in the Great House kitchen preparing the food, and they can’t overhear what we saying amongst ourselves, boy, you should hear the way we begin to carry-on; and laughing-out loud-loud-loud at the top of our voices, and getting-on-bad, and imitating the way the Spartans-men bend-over, and grit their teeth, and wriggle up their body, struggling to rub their two balls, or take-out the protective box from their jockstrap, riding in bare agonies. ‘Lick-he-down, Golbourne! Man, lick-he-to-hell down!’

  “And Golbourne would tack-back to the Great House, to enter through the back door, out of sight of the verandah-full of men up at the Main House, cause he couldn’t let Mr. Bellfeels spot him; and he would eat with me and Gertrude.

  “Golbourne was our star-boy. And he would sometimes bringback Pounce and Naiman, and whoever-else he could find, with him. I always wondered why you never took that opportunity, on those Saturday afternoons of cricket. Perhaps you were otherwise engaged . . .

  “But those Saturday afternoons! Imagine that. Golbourne, single-handed, and by himself alone, defeated all the Spartans-men, now up at the Main House, enjoying themselves on the verandah: whereas Golbourne was never extended a invitation. Not a blasted invitement! Never extended the courtesy, after a cricket game, to sit down in the verandah with the rest of the team, to drink a Bellfeels Special Stades White Rum. The man, who alone by himself, and single-handedly, brought victory to the Flagstaff team, over Spartans! And now, look at them up there! Mr. Bellfeels host- ing the host of Spartans-men. Talk about blood more thicker than cricket!

  “And I wonder what those men found to talk about, in celebrating their victory, when the general of the battle was not present. When the star-boy was serrigated from them! And for what reason. . . !”

  “I heard these stories about Golbourne,” Sargeant says.

  “This took place before he had his little accident, naturally. His tragedy. Before his two testicles start to spread and grow. And the .Welling, good-Christ, that no amount of WinterGreen, Sersey-bush tea, the rubbing with fresh coconut oil, heated tepid to a certain temperature, alcohol, and fresh limes could bring-down the .Welling. Nothing was effective. Consequently, and sadly, concluding in goadies!

  “Those Saturdays were like little weddings, little ceremonies, little Services-of-Song, little receptions on account of the hospitalities. And when the cricket game is over, the food! The different courses of food would come out. The Staffs carrying the trays. And there would be music. There always was music. Live music. From the few instruments the cricketers and other guesses could manage to play. Fi
fe and drum. And a flute. If the reception was outside in the open air.

  “If the rain had-fall, then the reception would be-move-inside, on the verandah; and I could stand from where my House is, all hours of the night, and hear the piano, and somebody playing a trumpet and another visitor on the saxophone. Tenor saxophone. Till all hours, going into Sunday. And then, one by one, you would hear those guesses trooping-out, talking at the top of their voices. The swear words! The vulgarities! And profanities! And getting in their motor-cars . . .

  “Well, all the time before I had the privilege to witness this behaviour amongst Plantation-people, I thought that we, the locals and the Staffs, and the field hands in general, could swear real stink, and use dirty language! We are infants compared to them! The vile language. And the noise they make when they are happy.

  “And then, all of a sudden, it is quiet. Peaceful. Golbourne in a corner, on the floor, sleeping. Sleeping-off the rum, cause first thing in the morning, as a apprentice, he got to fork himself in Mr. Waldrond Joiner Shop, six o’clock! Even on a Sunday, to start sawing-up logs o’ mahogany tree trunks and cure chair legs in water.

  “But the silence that fall over the Plantation on Sunday mornings!

  “You could almost smell the silence. And then, the wood-doves starting to coo, ‘Moses speak God’s words; Moses speak God’s words,’ and then the fowl-cocks begin their crowing, and the peace of Sunday overtake the whole land. And it is time for Church. Yes!

  “Yes, those Saturday afternoons when they played cricket on the Pasture! All that is gone . . .”

  “Yes! Manny’s father pass-down the stories about those Saturdays.”

  “But getting back to what I was about to tell you . . . On those Saturday afternoons, when Golbourne, like a freight train, would run through those Spartans-men like a dose of Glauber Salts; and Mr. Bellfeels would see little Wilberforce coming towards him, and he couldn’t lift a hand to ward-off Wilberforce, or give him a slap; and I not knowing which it was, whether he saw his son with the eyes of guilt on his conscience, or whether it was the embarrassment of having me living in a Plantation house, so close to his other household, butting-and-bounding, as they say; so close to his wife, Mistress Dora Blanche Spence Hyphen Bellfeels, and his two daughters, Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie respectively; of whom both of the two daughters remained spinsters, untouch to this day . . . sins of the father! . . . with those two young ladies still living at home, and me and Wilberforce so close, must have been a lil difficult, if not pure hell, for that man, Mr. Bellfeels. Poor fellow.

  “I don’t have no pity inside my heart for Mr. Bellfeels, but I can understand.

  “Say anything about him. Say he is the biggest crook in the world. Say he has no respect for women. Say that he could be more better, particularly in certain things and ways. You know what I mean. Say all those things. You have to still admit that never once, not once, in the thirty-two years that Wilberforce born, has Wilberforce lacked for anything. Not one damn thing. Food. Clothes. Pocket-money, even when he was a child, he had his florin every Friday. As if he was getting wages for working, like the rest of us; only difference, his money, which Mr. Bellfeels called “an allowance,” was brought to him here, by the chauffeur, and he didn’t have to walk from the fields and line-up under a tamarind tree, in the Plantation Yard, like the rest o’ we, to wait till when a blasted bookeeper ready, before you hear your name called out, and then answer to your name.

  “‘Mary Gertrude Matilda, here?’ No title, no entitlements, no surname, nothing, and you having to answer-up, plain and loud, and all the other hands, giggling and holding-down their heads, some in shame, some in glee and jealousy, although the whole blasted bunch o’ we was in the same so-and-so bucket. Crabs! In the same skillet! Yes!

  “You had to answer ‘sir’ and hear your work history for that week advertise: the times absent; the times late; the times the overseer caught you sitting down under a pigeon-pea tree, in the shade. The times you sick. The times you had to take-off that particular week, because of the time o’ month.

  “‘Eunomia Irene X?’”

  “‘Present, sir!’”

  “‘Two pence off, for lateness!’”

  “‘Yes, sir.’”

  “‘Mary Gertrude Mathilda?’”

  “‘Here, sir . . .’”

  Sargeant remains silent, stunned by her narrative. When he was fielding tennis balls; and learning to enjoy women running after the yellowish tennis balls; she was in the hot broiling sun, weeding fields of potatoes and sugar canes, with her hoe. He can feel and taste the shame of her labour.

  “Wilberforce hasn’t lacked for nothing. Education. Nothing. Private school when he was a infant. Private tuitions, like you, from Mr. Edwards. Harrison College, on full scholarship, from First Form.

  “And then, when it was time to go abroad, Oxford. Wilberforce win the Bimshire Scholarship, granting him free tuition fees and living-’lowances; everything free except travel-money, which Mr. Bellfeels provided, gladly. Pocket-money, clothes-allowance, travel-money and liquors, in case he start drinking now he ain’t home, Mr. Bellfeels was willing, and able, to foot the entire bill. And after Oxford, Cambridge, as if he was greedy for more higher learning, or if Mr. Bellfeels was out to show the world, or the whole o’ Bimshire that his son . . . remember he had only girls from the wife . . . Wilberforce could-go-on to the other-best university on the face of the earth.

  “And as for me. What about me? The woman who gave him this only son?

  “Whether it was because of Wilberforce, or whether it was mainly on my own account, but nevertheless, I too stood in need of nothing. Because having to feed one mouth, namely Wilberforce, he might-as.Well feed the other mouth, at the same time meaning me. How yuh like that? That is what Ma did-mean by telling me I was fixed-for-life. I stand in need of nothing. To this day. To this night.

  “I stand in need of no material needs. In need of nothing.

  “But I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of my sins. So, even if two wrongs don’t add-up to make one right, and even though I carry such deep hatred and animosities inside my heart for that man, that I could kill him . . .

  “I could kill him dead,” she says. After a pause, she says, “Dead-dead-dead. And not shed a tear for him. Not one drop. Not one drop of cry-water will leave my two eyes.

  “Not one drop o’ cry-water will leave my two eyes.

  “What has he done to me? From the beginning, from that Sunday after Church, when I saw him step out of his seat in the Plantation Pew, two rows from the front, under the pulpit and to the left of the Font; and he bend-down on his left knee; and made the Sign of the Cross; and then walked slow-slow-slow, up to face Vicar Dowd; and kneel a second time on the long white stool that stretched from the front row of the Choirs on the right; to the window on the left that has the garden scene of Jesus and a little child and a little white lamb; on the stool that the Mothers Union— including Ma—embroidered; Mr. Bellfeels kneeled down and took his Communion wafer from Revern Dowd hand; and when Revern Dowd pass-back the second time, with the silver chalice, I was just being ushered along with the other thrildren from the Plantation and elsewhere from the other estates, field hands included, out of my seat, by the Sunday School mistress to proceed through to the Lady Altar, so that I had the second chance to see Mr. Bellfeels, first from the back, and then from the side—his right side turned to me—and finally, from the front; and Revern Dowd passing back the third time with the chalice-full of wine, for other kneelers, Mr. Bellfeels took the cup from the hands of the Vicar, and held his head back, just like how he drinks Bellfeels Special Stades White Rum, he took the cup and nearly drink-off all the Communion wine; and then, he made the Sign of the Cross a second time. And I ask myself, as I ask God nightly, what has he done to me—meaning Mr. Bellfeels—what has he done to me? That was the first Sunday, at eleven o’ clock Matins.

  “And you would think that as a
Christian, or a man just taking Holy Communion, and then coming back down from the chancel, with his two hands folded in front of him, resting on his chest, and looking as if he really had-just-had the Holy Ghost inside him . . . ‘Take, eat, this is my Body which is given to you: Do this in remembrance of me . . .’ you wouldda thought being so close to God, would have-touch his heart!”

  And she stops there.

  “‘Likewise after supper,’” Sargeant says, “‘he took the cup; and, when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, “Drink ye all of this; for this is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is . . .’”

  “Thank you, Percival,” she says, cutting him off deliberately. “Thank you very much, Percy. And coming back down the marble of the aisle, his riding boots creaking like hell, every inch of the way, until he reach-back to the Plantation Pew, serious and innocent now, as a mouse. And not ten minutes later, that man is standing over me, tall as the water tower over there on the Plantation stands over the fields, passing his riding-crop over my body. And then for me to find out why Ma, ‘Miss Eunomia Irene X,’ could not raise a hand in defence of me, her own daughter, when that riding-crop, and then his two eyes strip me naked-naked, naked; and pass his leather riding-crop, like a cold hand, like cold water, back up, all over my body. And then for me, for I, I, me, to find out, to find out that he is . . .

  “Forgive my tears, Percival. But I can’t control them, no more . . .

  “But those Saturday afternoons! When Wilberforce would roam the Pasture and the cricket grounds and invade the playing field, heading straight for Mr. Bellfeels, the same minute that Mr. Bellfeels took the ball to bowl; and to the amusement of all those gentlemen on the two teams who must have smelled a rat, some who thought they knew and some who had a hint, since it was common practice on most plantations for the overseer, the driver, the bookkeeper, and don’t mention the manager, to breed the slaves, any slave-woman, from age ten to forty, fifty, sixty . . . we were common preys; you snap your finger and a slave-woman come running, and end-up laying down under you . . . ‘Hey-you! . . . Cumm-ere!” Yes!