He said, I have a younger brother whom I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get to know him.
The names of your sisters popped up: Chantal, Giselle.
He recalled your mother’s death. Her dresses, he said. I remember her dresses hanging in her press. I went and smelt them. And Dad… then his voice faded.
But he wouldn’t let me write. He once said that despite all the work he had done on himself he could not bring himself actually to say to any member of his family that he was gay. Somehow, that very deep sense of sin, shame, never left him. Catholicism, a pernicious religion! Joe said, characteristically. Miriam wasn’t there to moderate him.
Joe’s voice goes on in my head. The two photographs arrived today. Krishna brought them up in the post. I’ve propped them up on my desk on the verandah where I do the estate work.
J. M. and Edward.
Joe’s voice is under the rain which is falling in the cocoa. Like an English summer’s rain. Now I make the comparisons.
He asked me to plant some hyacinth bulbs and put them in the dark, Joe continued. He said that I must bring them out in in February or March and put them on the windowsill. I saw him look as far as the window and stop. I thought he must’ve wondered how far his future stretched. Always, from his student days he had hyacinths in the spring. What did he say the smell brought back? The pomme arac! There were geraniums in the summer. Always red, in terracotta pots. Funnily, though, he would often say of the plants, I’ve got to clear these out and get some other fragrances in my life. There was always a hankering for a monastic cell.
Miriam was out. I was there alone with him. Miriam promised she would get back early, but there was some hold-up at her work. He was in and out of consciousness. He wouldn’t go into hospital. He begged me not to put him into hospital. He said, Let me leave from here, Joe. The effort to breathe was intense, but he didn’t always want the mask on.
He called for Benedict. Is that you, Benedict? Benedict, my love, he said. After all these years! He called for Edward to come and get him. I think he’s coming, Joe, he said, and turned his head towards me. It was a real effort to turn his head. His eyes were crossed. The doctor had said something was going in the optic nerve.
I was standing looking out of the window watching the bulbs grow. I heard something different, like a gurgle. I turned around to look at him. He was gone.
When I took his hand there might have been some consciousness there. I was alone with his body for half an hour before Miriam got back.
Thank you Joe, I said.
Now, again, Thank you.
I wanted to tell you, he said. The rest you know: his ashes sprinkled in the cemetery with the African heads where he had sprinkled Ed’s.
Yes, yes.
The rain was coming in at the window, Joe said.
I hear the drip of the rain in the cocoa. The scent of pomme aracs rise from the garden below the window at Malgretoute.
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About the Author
LAWRENCE SCOTT is from Trinidad and Tobago. His previous works include the acclaimed novel Witchbroom; Ballad for the New World, which contains the award-winning short story ‘The House of Funerals’; Aelred’s Sin, winner of a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book; and the much-praised Night Calypso, shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2006. Scott’s stories have been read on BBC Radio 4. He regularly moves between London and Port-of-Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, and combines writing with teaching literature and creative writing.
www.lawrencescott.co.uk
By Lawrence Scott
Aelred’s Sin
Night Calypso
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
12 Fitzroy Mews
London W1T 6DW
www.allisonandbusby.com
First published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 1998.
This ebook edition first published in 2014.
Copyright © 1998 by LAWRENCE SCOTT
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1752–1
Aelred's Sin Page 35