The Final Passage

by Caryl Phillips

  Michael had climbed on to the bike. He had practised for a while, thrusting power into it, letting it surge, slipping on the brakes, treating it like an unbroken animal. Then he kicked open the gate and took off toward St Patrick's where he would pick up his future wife, take her to Black Rocks, then sleep. His head was spinning then as it did now.

  The cold breeze dampened as it began to hold the rougher evening spray. Then the dusk fell and Michael stood, the white edge of the sea threatening his feet. He watched the strengthening foam surging towards him. Purposefully, almost stubbornly, he waited until the sea had gathered enough energy to roll gently across his feet before turning and making his tired way back up the hill to his bike. Some of the spittle was still on his shirt. He quickly wiped it off, then spat, properly.

  His grandmother was sitting in the doorway, her bare legs jutting out stiff from underneath her blue dress. She saw Michael but said nothing in reply to his ‘hello’. She leaned to one side and let him pass. As he did so he gently squeezed her shoulder, but his touch was unsure and tense, and his grandmother knew he intended to stay a while. It was more a gesture of arrival than a greeting. She listened as he slipped quietly into his bedroom.

  Michael lay on the bed trying hard to feel calm and peaceful. Then he rolled over and the dust which hung in the air shook. He could not sleep or rest, even, his mind still speeding.

  *

  Two weeks later Leila woke early and prepared a warm bath for Calvin. Millie sat peacefully by the door, holding the sleeping Shere. Across the street the morning light played on the naked bodies of the children. Behind them, rising in mystic spirals, span the greyish mist of burning rubbish. Millie's still half-closed face welcomed the sly seduction of the cool breeze and soon she was asleep again, her head bobbing slightly but her child warm and safe in her arms. Inside Leila dried Calvin slowly, as if smoothing off the edges on a precious piece of wooden sculpture. Then she laid him on his back to rest, his tiny arms and legs sternly erect, scaffold-like, as if waiting for a cloth covering. Leila stood back and sighed, her body graceful and slender like a palm, but on her brow she wore the whorls and curls of a much stouter, a more mature tree.

  A boy of about twelve, dressed in short khaki pants which were neatly torn in a tight curve across the full breadth of his backside, let his ancient bicycle smash to the ground. He ran past the now awakening Millie and into the house. Leila looked up, but before she could speak he began to gasp his garbled message.

  ‘Miss Millie must come quick — now — her Aunt Toosie, she dead.’

  Millie stood and turned her back to the road. She stepped forward into the house. Panic clung to the boy's sticky face. He nervously crooked his leg and rubbed the itchy sole of one foot on the narrow calf of the other. Leila poured him a glass of coconut water and pressed it into his hand, but his fidgety eyes were now fixed on Millie whose mouth hung open, wide and dry.

  *

  Three days later the funeral took place. For those who had known her it was a sad Sunday morning but, as expected, the turn-out was more than respectable. In fact the funeral would be talked about for weeks, maybe months. It was the sign of a good death, and a good life.

  In the afternoon Bradeth and Millie and Leila and the two babies made their slow way up to St Patrick's. When they arrived back Shere and Calvin were laid inside away from the sun, and the three adults sat outside and drank iced water. Eventually, after an uneasy silence, they climbed into the conversation they knew they would have to have, but which none of them wanted to initiate. It was Bradeth who made the first move.

  ‘I decide to marry to Millie and we going back to live in Sandy Bay where we going try and build up Millie's Aunt Toosie's old shop.’

  Again there was silence. Bradeth kicked at the dust, more in exasperation than exhaustion, satisfied he had at least made an effort. Leila looked over at Millie, who in turn took a drink of water, then tucked her knees up under her chin.

  ‘I'm happy for you both,’ said Leila, leaning over and kissing her friend lightly on the cheek.

  Millie smiled quickly, then began to speak.

  ‘I think,’ she hesitated, ‘we both of us may be feeling a little guilty about leaving you and Calvin up here on your own.’

  Leila laughed. ‘It's alright, don't worry about me. You'll soon be married and you have a beautiful daughter and now a shop. I think you have enough to be worrying about.’

  ‘But,’ stuttered Bradeth, ‘you have any idea of what it is you going do? I mean, you feel you can manage?’

  Leila spoke quickly as if making it up on the spur of the moment. ‘I think I'm going to England.’

  ‘When you decide this?’ asked Millie, her voice full of disbelief.

  ‘A few days ago.’

  Again it went quiet and the noises of the street filled their heads. Bradeth scratched desperately at a small callus on his knuckle, convinced that there was some easier, less painful way of getting across their simple decision to Leila. Millie spoke hurriedly, only confirming what he felt.

  ‘Well, till you go you realize that we still want to do all we can to help, and one of us will be up by you every day to check if things is alright.’

  Feeling unable to survive another lull in the conversation, Leila stood up to go inside.

  ‘I thought I heard Calvin crying.’ Nobody answered her so she left the two of them sitting in the sun.

  Millie's hushed voice darted through the air. ‘We can't just leave her on her own with the child.’

  Bradeth flicked the lump of hardened skin up and into the air. ‘Well, it's you who say she don't want to come and stay by us in Sandy Bay.’

  ‘As long as she have her health there's nothing going to take her out of her mother's house.’ They were both silent, hoping that Leila could not hear them. Then Bradeth spoke. ‘I think I going see Michael again. He can't just keep on treating her this way, like she don't exist or nothing.’ He paused. ‘Maybe he change a little?’

  ‘Maybe he grown two heads,’ snapped Millie. ‘And besides that, man have to change more than a bit. Too much proud father on this island with invisible baby.’ Bradeth listened to Millie's anger but he was not following her words.

  ‘I going fetch him,’ he said reflectively. ‘Tell Leila I gone off to move some stuff from the shop or something.’ He threw back his drink and stood up. ‘I see you later.’

  Bradeth kissed Millie on the top of her head and walked back down the road in search of a lift. Leila came out just as Bradeth was disappearing into the bend. She held Calvin in her arms and followed Bradeth around the corner and out of sight, her mouth and eyes working separately. ‘Calvin's too restless to sleep.’

  Michael was not at Beverley's. The door was open but nobody responded to Bradeth's shouting. It seemed like the place had been deserted, and the children stared at him as if astonished that he expected to find it any other way. Bradeth strode up towards the other side of Sandy Bay. He found Michael sitting on his grandmother's step, tossing pebbles at an imaginary target. Uncharacteristically Michael had on a straw hat which was perched uneasily on the back of his head. The beads of perspiration queuing up around his temples and his brow suggested that he had been sat in the sun tossing pebbles for some time. Michael looked up but he continued to lob the small missiles at the target, wildly and without precision, memory being now his sole guide.

  ‘I come to have a talk,’ said Bradeth, hitching up his trousers and tightening his belt two notches. Michael smiled into his friend's face.

  ‘Well, talk then.’

  ‘I soon marrying to Millie,’ he began, ‘and we going to take over the shop now Toosie dead.’ He paused, hoping that Michael would say something, but he did not.

  ‘Your wife going be alone and she have a child, your child.’

  Bradeth felt as if he was talking to himself, for Michael still tossed his idle pebbles. He spoke again, this time gesturing angrily with his hands.

  ‘I mean, you thinking of going back to she
or what it is you playing at, man? You think you come fucking clever, eh?’

  Michael crooked his head so that the frayed edges of his straw hat slatted the smaller rays of the sun which fell through it. He threw down his pebbles and stood up.

  ‘I not playing at anything, what you playing at?’

  ‘I playing at being a friend to your wife. Either you go round there and be a husband for she or I telling you not to bother to go see she at all, for I won't stand by and see you treating her to all this coming and going and coming and going shit.’

  ‘You telling me what to do?’ asked Michael.

  Bradeth spat his answer. ‘I telling you I going break every bone in your damn body if you don't start treating she right. Every last bone.’

  Michael stared back hard, unblinking, so Bradeth, lips drawn tight, continued, ‘We going have to finish off this friendship unless you listen to what I saying, and I telling you that as a man, and I mean it.’

  They stared at each other, then Michael sat. He thought for a while then spoke without looking up. ‘I going see she later.’

  Bradeth looked down at the rough circle of his friend's straw hat and he breathed out, hard and long, but as quietly as possible.

  After Millie had left, Leila put Calvin to sleep. Then she sat on a stool and looked at some of her mother's old letters. Though the daylight was almost spent she wanted to read by what little there was. She was only halfway through the pile when she heard a light tapping at the door. Michael opened it without waiting for an answer, then entered confidently, as if arriving for a pre-arranged appointment.

  ‘I thought maybe we could have a talk.’ He sat down opposite her, but his chair was a little unbalanced and it surprised him. He should have remembered.

  ‘Bradeth tell me that he going marry to Millie and he's worried about you being on your own.’ Michael paused, but Leila said nothing. Then the words just fell limply from his mouth.

  ‘I been staying down by my grandmother and I want to come back to stay by you.’ Again he paused, but there seemed little point in stopping now. ‘I think I should try and make it work for the both of us, and for the sake of the child.

  Leila blinked, her eyes tiring in the now fast-dying light. Her skin felt sticky.

  ‘You said that before.’

  There followed a long pause in which neither could look at the other.

  ‘I want you back.’

  ‘I never went away, Michael.’

  ‘I want to come back, don't you understand what I'm saying?’

  ‘I understand, but . . .’ Leila paused. ‘I married you in a church, not under a bush.’

  Michael dropped his eyes before he spoke.

  ‘I understand. I really do. You're my wife, Leila.’

  Leila listened to him, realizing he was speaking to her as if he were telling her something she did not know.

  They lay in bed. Leila had moved Calvin's cot into her mother's room, though it was still cluttered with Millie's jars and combs and brushes. Then, having waited until they were next to each other, she told Michael what she imagined Bradeth had probably not told him. She told him that she was going to England to be with her mother. Michael turned to face her and he held her hand tightly. Maybe as a family it was what they needed? There was work there, wasn't there? And there was opportunity? His wife looked at him. They could talk about it tomorrow, for she knew Michael did not understand her or her desire to escape the life she was trapped in. And, as she looked at Michael, she saw him still as both a destroyer and a partner, but she knew that he too would come to England because Calvin needed a father, and because she did not want her mother to see her as having failed in something she did not wish her to partake of in the first place. But if the marriage did fail again in England, thought Leila, it would not be her fault. Nobody could blame her. Her mother would see that for herself.

  Leila fell asleep on her stomach, her arm draped lifelessly over Michael's still heaving chest. Then Calvin began to cry and Michael had to wake her up.

  *

  Michael turned off Island Road and rode into the slightly broader main street of the capital. It was a while since he had been to town, but now that he was here the first thing he noticed was that Baytown seemed somehow deserted, especially for a Saturday. No longer was it the familiar crowded chaos, it was more like a mid-American town similar to those in the old western films they had sent down from America once every month, or every two months, that both young and old queued for hours to see.

  He slowed up, avoiding some goats in the street, and parked his bike outside the Day to Dawn bar. Michael dusted himself down. He took off his sunglasses, pushed them into his top pocket and looked at the half dozen or so goats which continued to wander free. Before long someone would come to coax them from the road, for at the moment neither car nor bus could pass safely. Up above the sun burned fiercely and Michael's shadow was short and stunted. He drew the back of his hand across his dry lips where some grit had crept.

  Across the road two boys stood in a large island of shadow cast down by an overhanging tree. A pair of bad men leaning up against a store front, one knee drawn up, foot flat back against the wall, sucking slowly at their shaved ices. They watched him hard, young boys playing tough, then Michael laughed at them and they straightened up, shoulders hunched, teeth bared. The shorter of the two boys threw his shaved ice dramatically to the ground, then faltered and let his eyes drop after it wishing he had not done so. Again Michael laughed as the taller of the two dug his elbow into his friend's side as if to say, ‘Why you do that, man?’ The shorter boy snapped around and sucked his teeth. Michael left the two of them arguing and made his way into the bar.

  Inside the Day to Dawn things were even quieter. Both juke box and radio were silent, as if dead, and barman apart there was nobody else in the place. Michael slapped down 50 cents on the wooden bar top. The barman continued to dry his glass, polishing it like it was a priceless family heirloom, then he threw the towel back over his shoulder and put the glass down to one side.

  ‘Is an eye-opener you want?’ Michael nodded. The man reached for a bottle, broke off the cap, then slopped the contents into an oversized glass.

  ‘First drink of the day always the sweetest,’ he said, sliding the beer a couple of feet along the bar and hoping it would pull up before Michael. It did. Happy with himself, he scratched the 50 cents back up off the top of the bar. It used to be a thick plank of freshly varnished and uniformly dark wood, but now it was lacerated with light scratches of differing depths to match the barman's shifting moods.

  ‘So what happen? We don't be seeing so much of you down here these days. You staying up back of island now Bradeth move out of town?’

  Michael drank deeply, emptying the glass in one, then nodded more out of courtesy than interest.

  ‘So you come country boy for true! Country boy come to town!’

  The barman peeled back his lips like the lid of an old piano, and his teeth played a friendly mocking tune. He picked up Michael's glass, rinsed it in a murky bowl of water, then pulled the towel down from his shoulder and began to dry it.

  ‘So you come country boy!’ he laughed. Then, without warning, he leaned forward and spoke softly as if conveying a secret piece of wisdom. ‘Though they do say if a tree fall over in the forest the others do prop it up. You fall over down here and there be nobody to prop you up and nobody to pick you up either. I planning on going back country myself.’ He paused for a moment, then went on, ‘I work so damn hard down here I sure one of these days I going run my blood to water.’

  Michael drummed his fingers lightly against the top of the bar and nodded. ‘I don't blame you, man. I don't blame you at all.’

  He looked closely at the barman's face, noticing the veins around his temples, like branches from an old tree. In them he saw the hopeless truth. The man could no more return to the country than Michael could run a bar. It was too late. The man continued to dry the glass.

  ‘I going
now,’ said Michael, backing off from the bar. ‘I going see you later.’

  The barman just nodded, then he put down the glass and scratched his head, wondering what it was he had said to drive Michael away. After a while he gave up. Everyone knew the boy had his funny ways.

  The ground was stained with a dark wetness where the shaved ice had melted, but the two boys had gone. Michael began the long slow walk down to the market, edging his way along the narrow and carelessly defined streets. Up above the gulls circled, and to them Baytown must have looked like a hot corrugated iron sea. Michael pressed on, trying not to look at the defeated faces that lined these streets, men in grease-stained felt hats and women in deceptively gay bandannas, their eyes glazed, arms folded, standing, leaning, resting up against the zinc fencing of their front yards, their children playing, racing scraps of wood in the liquid sewage, but the walk only seemed to get longer.

  Though still a way off, Michael could smell the fresh fish and the tangy fruit of the market, and he could feel the growing piles of discarded rubbish under his feet. Then a ringing voice sang out above the buzzing silence of the day, and the man ran towards him, eyes bright, arms flapping wildly, shirt hanging adrift and brazen, detached from his trousers.