His father props himself up in bed, and the no-nonsense nurse hands him the cup and saucer before turning her attention to the task of filling in her patient’s chart.
‘You see what I’ve turned into? A bloody Englishman sharing a cup of tea and a biscuit with you.’
‘Nothing wrong with a cup of tea.’
‘So, I have a son who thinks that there’s nothing wrong with an English cup of tea.’
‘Do you want a son at all?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Not every man wants to be a father.’
‘Well, I didn’t plan to have no kids, but your mother was a woman, and women have their own ideas about these kind of things. Anyhow, you’re here, and I don’t have no problem with that.’ He pauses and sips his tea. ‘Nothing can change that.’
Does this obstinate man not realise that after thirty years spent sweeping out lecture halls, and cleaning blackboards and emptying dustbins, his pitiful life has been reduced to drinking by himself in a depressing pub, or making the occasional trip to a community centre to play dominoes, or else falling asleep in front of his television set while programmes about people attempting to sell the junk from their attic blare out until he once again wakes up and crawls upstairs to bed. This is the life that he is trying to rescue his father from, but the man’s feistiness hardly suggests gratitude.
The nurse finishes filling in the chart, which she now hooks on to the foot of the bed. She feels the older man’s forehead with the back of her hand, but his father ignores both the nurse and his son and stares out of the window where it is pitch black. Winter nights are upon them.
‘Mr Gordon, I’m going to love you and leave you, all right? I’ll be back later to check up on you, but you can give me a call if you need anything, okay?’ She pauses. ‘You’ll be all right, will you?’
He realises that the nurse is now talking to him, but she has caught him by surprise. The nurse looks at him as though she is expecting a reply, but then she swivels on her heels and squeaks her way down the polished linoleum floor and in the direction of another patient’s bed. His father puts his tea back down on the saucer with a clatter.
‘That one’s just playing nice.’
‘She seems okay. I suppose they’re overworked.’
‘You think so? I take it Baron phone you and tell you what happen?’ His father coughs violently and reaches out for a tissue. He picks up the box and places it in his father’s lap.
‘You were asleep when I arrived so I went round to see Baron and thank him for looking out for you.’
‘I feel like I have water on my chest, and I don’t mean a drop or two, it feel like a whole pail full of water is pressing down on me.’
‘Do you want me to call the nurse again?’
‘Call her for what? We just get rid of the woman.’
He watches as his father looks for somewhere to discard his tissue, so he lifts up the wastepaper basket and offers it to him. He has already decided that he won’t bother to bring up anything to do with the Mandela Centre, beyond mentioning his visit with Baron, for his father’s belligerence cannot disguise the fact that he is still weak and in need of rest.
‘Shall I leave the bin by the side of the bed?’ His father nods, and so he places the wicker basket on the floor. ‘Maybe you should get some sleep.’
‘I don’t know why I’m so tired. I can hardly keep my damn eyes open.’
‘Well you’ve just had a heart attack. The next few weeks you’ll need to rest up and let these people do what they have to do.’
His father snorts in disgust, but he can see that the older man’s eyes are closing like curtains.
‘You really believe these people know what they’re doing?’ He looks up at his son. ‘Maybe they give me something to make me sleep? I don’t feel normal.’
He takes his father’s hand in his own and squeezes gently.
‘Just rest, okay.’
‘Rest?’ His father laughs. ‘This is no time to rest. Me, I want to go home.’
‘Home? Maybe in a few weeks, but what are you going to do there by yourself? You know it doesn’t make any sense to be living all alone in that house.’
‘You don’t understand me, Keith.’
He looks at his father’s weary face and wonders if maybe this is, in fact, an appropriate time to revisit the idea of his father taking a flatlet in the Mandela Centre. He doesn’t want to bring social services into the picture and force a move upon his father, for he understands that to do so will inevitably trigger painful memories. But having visited Baron, and seen the accommodation for himself, he is now adamant that his father will not be returning to his house. Tomorrow he will go back to the Mandela Centre and pick up the necessary paperwork which will ensure that when his father is discharged from St Joseph’s he will be going directly to a flatlet.
‘You listening to me?’
He looks down at his father’s face.
‘I want to go home, Keith. I don’t mean to some stupid English house. I mean home. Home, home.’ His father stares up at him. ‘You understanding what I mean? I’m not from here. I land in England on a cold Friday morning. It is April 15, 1960, and only three weeks before this I put my father in the ground. It seem to take forever to pass through the Bay of Biscay with its rough, rough sea that is so bad that at night not a single person want to play dominoes, or organise a dance, or any of that kind of thing for everybody is suffering hard, but then eventually all the pitching and rolling and vomiting come to an end and suddenly the sea is smooth like a slack water pond, and I find myself gawping upon land. But even before I get off the boat England deliver a big shock to my system. Looking down from the deck I see plenty of white men in dirty clothes hurrying this way and that way up and down the dock, pushing wheelbarrows, and spitting on the ground and shouting at each other. These people don’t look like the type of white men I used to seeing back home wearing club blazer and tie and walking about the place ramrod straight. Jesus Christ, I don’t know England have such poor white men. I’m only twenty-two years old, in a thin jacket and foolish straw hat, and people on the boat arguing about whether spring reach or if it’s still winter but I feel cold invading my body like it don’t care if it throw me down and finish me off right there and then on day number one, so even before I get off the damn boat England punishing my mind and my body and teaching me a hard lesson about what kind of place it is. I remember, soon after we leave the West Indies, two Trinidadian fellars fall into the habit of sitting out on deck in the afternoon and talking all singsong about what to expect when we reach England. It turn out the two of them get demobbed from the RAF after the war and they take off back to Trinidad hoping to make a go of it, but after fifteen years’ hard scrabbling they coming back to England with big ideas about how much money they going make, and chatting foolishness about how they understand everything about England and so if we want to make good we should shut up and listen to the pair of them running their mouths about how you have to dress for the cold because England have icy wind and sleet and snow that can bite your backside hard, and they telling us that in England everything is dear, and whatever you do don’t show off to these people, and Lord have mercy you better learn to queue because the English relish nothing more than making a queue in an orderly fashion, and in England you have to learn double-talk, because if they ask you to please stay a bit longer, they want you to leave, and they love a sweet clock because everything have to be punctual and on time, and all shipshape and proper, and English people don’t like noise or any kind of trouble with the neighbours, and you must get accustom to the fact that everywhere is a sea of white faces, everywhere you turn you always looking on a sea of white faces and they don’t know nothing about you, or where you from, or who you be, and they don’t know the difference between a Jamaican and a Bajan, or where is this West Indian island, and they never hear the name of that West Indian island, so while you know everything about them, daffodil, king this and queen that,
poet and lyrical feeling and so forth, Sherlock Holmes, Noel Coward, this statue and that statue, castle and tower, Robin Hood, Lord Nelson, whatever question they care to test you on you have England under control, but the truth is most of these people don’t know a blasted thing about themselves so every question pointing at you but if you want to shame them you just turn it round and ask them about themselves and their own history and you soon going see how quickly they stop talking. Mark you, the one thing they all know is they don’t care much for the foreigner and that is you, man, that is always you, but don’t call them prejudice because that will vex them, and don’t tell them you don’t want to hear them talking like you is savage and they come missionaries whose job is to educate and civilise you because this is just going to heat up their blood. What you must do is play the stranger because it make them feel better; play the part of the stranger and nod and smile when they ask you if you know what is a toilet, or if you ever see running water coming from a tap. Look upon their foolishness like a game you winning and the stupid people don’t even know that you busy scoring points off their ignorance. Play the damn stranger and you can win in England and maybe you don’t run crazy, but it don’t matter what the two Trinidadians on the boat say, because when I finally reach England I not ready to deal with everything that I seeing, beginning with the scruffy white men with the wheelbarrows going in all directions up and down the dock. I know then, right there at the start, that serious pressure reach my head because my mind don’t understand what my eyes looking upon, but I have to keep this worry lock up inside of me so nobody can tell what it is that I feeling. Back home people know me as a quiet fellar, and they respect the fact that I keep to myself, especially my sister Leona and my best friend, Ralph. They know me, but I also know them, and because this is the situation we all just get along fine with one another. But even before I get off the boat I looking at this new place and I feel my heart pounding, for what I looking down upon don’t make no sense, and the hurting in my head begin right there, and I find myself standing up on the deck and leaning against the rail in my thin jacket and straw hat and trying hard to act like nothing in the world is the matter even though I feel hungry and light-headed but I fight back the hunger and the fear and I follow everybody down the walkway and straight into the immigration office where I wait and wait and then eventually I show the man my British passport and he speak fast to me with a voice like a gun (got a job have you, son?) and I shake my head and he hand me back my passport and then I take the train to London in a carriage that is full of people from the boat so I don’t really meet England proper till I reach London and I have to change train stations. I make my way across London town in the back of a taxi that I share with a man from Barbados, who say that he also need to find this King’s Cross station, but from the moment we get in the car neither one of us say a word and we just stare out of the window with big, big eyes like we standing up outside a bakery and neither one of us eat properly for a week. Even though it’s still late afternoon, it already look to me like night reach, and then I see the place called Hyde Park which is big like a rainforest, but I take it that all the trees must be dead for hardly any leaves on them. As we pass through the centre of the city the lights from Piccadilly Circus burn my eyes and make me feel giddy, and noisy double-decker buses choking up everywhere I look. I see all the people rushing about and London seem like a place where opportunity must knock and knock again and keep a man awake with all its possibilities for the city is big and crazy like I imagine America must be big and crazy, and it make me think of my brother Desmond, and what he must be going through in whatever part of America he finally decide to live in. In truth, London don’t seem real but this taxi man is driving me through the place in the direction of King’s Cross station at a hell of a lick and I want to lean forward and say to the man, take it easy now because I want you to set me down safe and sound, but I don’t say nothing to the man because it’s his town and he must know what he’s doing.
‘A year before I reach London I find myself sitting in the bar down by the harbour looking upon Ralph, who is slumped over the counter like a long fish. Through the open window I see bright moonlight on the surface of the sea, and I watch the small launch still taking passengers out to the boat. Soon it will be time for my best friend Ralph to pull himself together and make a start on his big journey to England, and so I nudge the man’s cardboard suitcase to one side with the outside of my shoe, and then I kick at Ralph’s stool and the man jump to attention and quickly rub his face with an open palm as though the man’s hand is some kind of small towel. “What happen? I miss the boat?” I don’t study him, and I ask the barman to open up two more bottles of beer so we can fire one for the road that Ralph will be crossing for the next two weeks until England show herself. According to Ralph, once he make it to England he say he will travel to the north of the country because some friend of his godfather promise to find him a job in a factory casting iron and the man claim a West Indian can make big money doing this kind of work. However, Ralph say that after five years he coming back home to open up a garage and establish himself in business as a mechanic. He already have the slogan for the advertisement that he say he going to put in the newspaper: “Bring your auto to the Car Doctor Ralph for he going fix it up nice, nice.” I remember it don’t rhyme or nothing, but it still impress me, and back then I suppose I feel a little jealous toward Ralph because the man talk about his plans with such confidence and I sure he can make anything happen. Me, I don’t have no plans to speak of. Since my mother die, and my pregnant sister Leona leave the house to marry the son of Mr Williams, the taxi driver, it’s just me alone working five days a week in town in the heat and noise of the sugar factory, and then come night I riding the bus back to the village and taking care of my father whose health don’t seem to be getting no better. Even though I don’t have no plans, I still have my dreams, and my dreams all locked up in the law book and the dictionary that I used to carry everywhere. I hold on tight to these two books and when the fellars at the sugar factory take a lunch break I sit on an upturned pail underneath a big tamarind tree and read, and when they start to play dominoes and get boisterous I just continue to read my law book and my dictionary and I don’t study them even when they pitch stones at me and hail me up as “Lawyer Earl”. Back then it is always tall Ralph who stand up and tell them to leave me alone, and it’s Ralph who walk with me to the bus stop at the end of the day and if he don’t have business in town with his woman, Sonia, it’s Ralph who will ride back to the village with me and sit and take a drink at the Bus Stop Bar before we both wander off to our parents’ houses. Sometimes we talk about getting a room together in town so we don’t have to trouble with the bus journey in the morning, and then again at night, but this talk just stop at talk, and then my mother die and my sister get pregnant and so I’m the only one left to watch over my father and after this neither Ralph nor me ever say another thing about rooming together because we both know that come night I don’t have no choice but to go back to the village, and then one day out of the blue Ralph decide that he is going all follow-fashion and taking himself off to England to work, and he reach this decision without so much as a “What do you think?” He’s going and it seem like Ralph don’t want any discussion. So I sitting in the bar down by the harbour and I look at Ralph and ask him if he trouble himself to tell Sonia that he going to England, but he just take a swig of beer and then thump the bottle back down on the bar top and start to laugh. He tell me that I don’t really understand women, because if I did then I would know that once Sonia realise that he gone then it only going take a day or so before she find a next man because women can take a blow and push up their lips and move on like nothing happen. “Maybe Sonia come looking for you with your damn books and your head stuck up in the air like you always thinking about something.” I tell Ralph that I not interested in a fast woman like Sonia, and besides I already have my village thing with Myrna, but he tell me again that I must stop
hitting it with Myrna because every man dipping his bread there and maybe I going catch something. I tell him that Myrna don’t mean nothing to me, and so she don’t cause my head no anxiety, but he laugh out loud and insist that no matter what I say he know that something always causing me to worry. Ralph drape his long arm round my shoulders and the man behind the bar reach up and turn on the electric bulb which hang over the counter. The sounds of the night begin to come louder now, particularly the noise of the waves lapping up against the wooden pier and the rush of the wind passing through the leaves of the palm trees which line the harbour road. I remember, Ralph take his arm from my shoulders and pull out a coin which he tap against the bar and tell the man that we need two more beers. Then he turn to look at me and tell me, “I know, I know, then I have to gone.” The barman disappear to the backyard then soon return with a fresh crate of beers. The man uncap two bottles and push them across the bar, and I find myself thinking about my father, who I know will be lying in the dark waiting for me to come back and feed him up, and then help him to get ready for sleep by rolling him a quarter turn over and on to his side. But tonight he will have to wait. I look across at Ralph and I wonder if I ever going see my friend again, because inside of me I know that Ralph don’t be coming back to this small island in five years, or ten years, or one hundred and ten years, because we both know that Ralph and the cardboard suitcase leaving the island for ever. Ralph swivel round on his stool and look me full in the face. “So you never hear from Desmond then?” I tell Ralph that once upon a time my father get a card from somewhere in America, but my brother don’t send an address so it ain’t possible to write back or anything like that, but I tell him that my father still have the card tucked away someplace. Ralph slowly nod but like the rest of the village Ralph already know that my father place all his faith in his eldest son who, ten years ago, take off to Florida promising that he would come back, but Desmond never come back. Everybody know that after ten years Desmond, the chosen one, is never coming back, but my father continue to torment himself with hope, and when the man look at me and my books his face always turning sour, but part of me want to remind him that at least I stay back so the man have somebody to care for him. Ten years earlier, I remember standing in short pants at the end of the pier, sheltering from the wind behind my sixteen-year-old sister, Leona, and annoying the hell out of her because she want to be left alone so she can play the fool and giggle and so forth with the son of Mr Williams, the taxi driver, a boy who is squatting uncomfortably like a pelican on top of the fence that line the harbour wall. Again Leona pushes me: “Boy, move nuh man so I can get some peace.” I’m enjoying tormenting the girl since the alternative is to stand up next to my long-faced parents and watch the boat slowly pulling out the harbour. My mother is a thin woman, like a piece of cane, and her figure is silhouetted against the night sky. Her eldest son is going to pick oranges in Florida, but it’s the husband who is troubling her head because the man staring at the boat as though he losing some big part of himself. Once the launch reach back, and the crew start to move off in the direction of the bar, my mother turn and look sharply at her budding daughter, who continue to make eyes at the pelican-boy. Mr Williams lean up against his taxi and wait in the shadow of the large treasury building ready for his family of passengers to let him know when it is time to return to the village. Mind you, as long as it’s possible for my father to still see the boat on this side of the black horizon I know we don’t be going nowhere. Later that evening, I stare out the window of Mr Williams’s taxi as it trace its slow way along the island’s one road, a narrow piece of tarmac that hug the coastline tight. On this main road no light coming from neither moon nor streetlamp, and at this time of night the island seem dead, so much so that it difficult to think of the place as being inhabited with people. I turn from the blackness outside the window to my mother, who is resting up gently against my father, and then I look upon my sister Leona who is trying hard not to fall asleep and the girl’s eyes fixed on the back of Mr Williams’s son’s head. The boy is sitting up front in the passenger seat next to his father, while the four of us squeeze into the back, but eventually is me, not Leona, who start to nod. That night, I lie in bed and listen to the frogs outside in the darkness, and the breathing of my sister in the narrow bed next to my own. Between us a pile of schoolbooks is organised in a way that make sense to me, and behind the door my mother already hang up my school shirt for the next day, all wash and iron. I look away from the shirt and close my eyes. The island have only one scholarship for studying overseas at university and at least six boys in my class have parents who can pay for extra lessons, and all of these town boys have new textbooks. Even if I study day and night and don’t bother with sleep I still can’t catch these boys, but my mother don’t believe this. I’m sure that part of the reason Desmond gone off to America is to escape the attention that I getting, and maybe this is why he start to behave bad. In the village, people always running their mouths about Desmond saying he’s a bad john, and talking about how he put a woman in the next village with child, and how the woman’s husband threaten to cut Desmond with a machete, and so leaving to pick oranges in Florida is maybe just an excuse. In the morning I hear my mother shouting at Leona, who like to linger by the gate in the shade of the star-apple tree and talk foolishness with the village boys instead of bringing back the pail of water inside the house. My father long ago gone off to work in the fields, but my mother waiting for the water so she can make some tea for me before I go to school. Leona finally bring the water, then she come into the bedroom and tell me to turn my back while she make herself ready to go off to typing school. Once my sister gone I drink the tea and prepare for school, and soon after Ralph appear at the gate without any books and the two of us walk up the alley and wait for the school bus and I’m watching Ralph idly kicking at stones and messing up his good shoes. That morning he ask me if Desmond truly gone, and when I tell him yes, my brother truly gone to America, he just start to laugh and tell me that Desmond won’t be coming back, but I don’t say anything to Ralph because I already know this and so I just move my books from under one sweaty arm and place them under the next one and shrug my shoulders because I don’t see what it is that Ralph trying to prove. And ten years later, in the semi-dark of the Harbour Lights bar I find myself sitting with the same Ralph and staring at the naked light bulb that brighten up the gloom of the place, and suddenly my best friend looking unsure as to whether he really want to leave for England. I feel sure he want to order another bottle of beer, but Ralph know I watching him good and so he stand up from the stool and reach for the cardboard suitcase. “Well, you want me to write you and let you know how things going over there, or you want me to do you like Desmond and just disappear?” Ralph laugh like he convinced he say something funny. “Man, no need to look at me so. I already tell you, five years then I back. Five years at the most, you hear me?” He pauses. “Well, what happen, somebody glue your backside to the stool?” Ralph throw out an arm like he’s vex with me. “You just going sit?” I remember looking at him, then smiling and I tell him, “Better you just walk out of here like you gone from the bar for the night and I going see you tomorrow. That way it can all seem fine and natural?” Ralph look at me in surprise, then he start to shake his head and tell me how this book learning must have seriously mess up my mind, but I notice that maybe Ralph drink one beer too many because my friend look a little unsteady on his feet. “Look man,” I say, “you better go before Sonia come down here searching you out. Go ahead, England waiting.” Ralph hesitate like he want to shake my hand or something, then he stop himself and the man seem puzzled. “You really want me to go to England just so?” Now it’s my turn to laugh, “Yes man, just like so, because this way I know I going see you again. No big goodbye or nothing, you just go along.” I turn away from him and signal to the barman to open a next beer and out of the corner of my eye I see Ralph walking slowly out the bar like a jumbie, but I don’t look up. I just keep
my eyes focus on the scratched-up bar top and then a beer appear in front of me and I reach down and feel the coldness of the bottle and wonder if I should stop by Myrna’s place for I don’t see the woman for nearly a week. I sit in the bar by myself and listen to the sound of the sea, and I realise that without Ralph the island going seem empty. And then, two months after Ralph leave for good, my father die, but he do so all casual and easy. One night I bring him some tea and a piece of bread, and I help him to make himself upright in the bed. Recently the man’s eyes seem to have grown big, and his stare is intense like he’s accusing me of something, but on this night the eyes seem normal again and he looking at me like he want me to give off some conversation, but I don’t know what to say so I keep one hand steady behind the man’s back, and I feed him the bread with the other hand, and outside it start to rain and the water beating down hard like a hammer on the tin roof and making any kind of talking difficult. In the morning I take my father a glass of water but I can see that he no longer breathing, and his eyes are closed, and to begin with I convince myself that maybe he just fall into a powerful sleep and I must simply shake my father to wake him up. I push the man’s shoulder once, then twice, but nothing happen so I place a hand to his nose and mouth and finally I’m accepting the situation. I sit on the side of the bed for I feel it personally like my father leave me but he can’t trouble himself to say anything, and I thinking if my mother is alive then she would know how to cope with this confusion. Long ago she forgive me for not winning the island scholarship, and she forgive me for ending up working at the sugar factory, but she tell me no matter what anybody say about me being a failure I must never give up my reading. My mother always know what is the best thing to say and do, and when my father shout at me and tell me that he don’t know what a grown man doing living under his roof when I working a job, and he don’t understand why all I do in the evening is just read book to no purpose, it’s my mother who tell him to hush up and mind his business, but now I see my father lying on the bed like a piece of board and I confused about what to feel and what to do and I think maybe I should talk with Leona because my married sister now living in the next village but one. Two years earlier, when my mother die, I know what to feel. Although I hurting bad, it’s a relief that she finally escape the disease that has been eating out her body and already reduce the woman to a skeleton, but this thing with my father is strange and come too quick. The next thing I know I standing next to my sister and I watching as four men lower my father’s body into the ground and I trying like hell to work up some feeling for the man, but my father never recover from Desmond leaving, and he never care much for either me or Leona, and I steal a quick glance at my sister who is dealing with her two children and she too look like she is don’t have no feelings for the proceedings. It seem like the man going into the ground cold and without a tear shed, but I don’t feel it’s my place to pretend and so I just focus on some goats standing nearby who cropping the short grass and keeping the cemetery all shipshape and tidy. Later that same afternoon I sit on the hardback chair in my father’s bedroom and watch Leona open every cupboard and every drawer, but my sister don’t search through anything she just open and open as though she making ready to unpack the man’s life but she don’t know where to begin. Leona pick up his Sunday suit and she hook the hanger over the back of the bedroom door. My sister look closely at the man’s only suit before unhooking it and hanging it back where she find it. “You want anything of his?” I just shrug and tell her, “Take whatever you want for your husband, or give it away to the church. I don’t need anything.” On the bedside table is a bible, and sticking out from the side of the book is the card that I know Desmond send from America. I thinking to myself, so this is where my father keep the thing. On the front of the card is a picture of some trees and a town square with a big clock, but when you turn over the card only a few scratchy words written there. My brother telling his father to let everybody know that he is “just fine”. Nothing about when he might come back, and nothing about how we doing, just he is “fine” and a signature that make it clear that the card is from Desmond. Leona take a seat on the edge of the bed and she ask me what it is that I going do now, meaning now that the man is dead and I don’t have no reason to play nurse any more. “You planning on staying here and growing old in this house?” I look round and realise that the house have nothing for me except bad memories. “Look,” say Leona, “why you don’t take yourself and your books to England. I can sell the house and send you the money to pay back the price of the boat ticket. No point you staying here and feeling miserable. Me, I can’t go no place with two children because England is for people without no obligations, but if you stay here then you just going get catch by Myrna or some other woman and then what will become of you? Think about yourself, Earl. Think about what you can do that will improve your situation.” I looking at Leona, whose eyes make it seem like she upset with me or something. She stand and turn away and slam a drawer shut with a big noise. “Earl, you’re the only brother I have left so this not easy for me, but nothing is here for you. You want to live your life just dreaming and growing old in this two-room house and eventually dying on the same bed that take both our parents?” Outside I can hear the village children squeezing the last drop of playtime out the day, but I know the light is gone and the children just chasing shadows. I also know my sister is right. I want to say “thank you” or something, but instead I look through the open window and watch a chicken backscratching in the dirt beneath the guava tree. The fowl is throwing up a cloud of dust, and then something frighten the bird and it shriek and open its wings and disappear from view. I decide that the next day I going come home from the sugar factory and call on Leona and we can talk properly. Maybe tomorrow brother and sister find it easier to look each other in the eye, but not today, for today things is difficult because we are the two who been left behind. We sit next to each other on the bed and listen to the stubborn children playing outside in the dark, but neither one of us say another word.’
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