Sic Transit Wagon

by Barbara Jenkins

  She said to herself, though she knew she should say it aloud to him but couldn’t. Nothing? So, whose are the lips, the breasts, the eyes, the legs, the feet, the buttocks, the hands, the pubes that hang from your walls in colour, in stark black and white? What of the girl who, you report, passing by a Tobago fisherman’s beach stall, reached out, pulled the pulsing heart right out of a flapping cavali and popped it in her mouth – at which the fisherman, jaw open, could only say, Where you from girl? What of the intellectuals of the left bank of sixties barricaded Paris and the slumming aristocratic babes of swinging London? Don’t say you got nothing.

  The sting had stopped hurting; now she was numb. She put the phone handset on the bedside table, from where it continued to drone, his voice reduced to a distant irritated static. She slid back down to her semi-reclining reading position and picked up her Graham Greene… When it came to the decision there seemed nothing to choose except red snapper and tomatoes and again she offered him her tomatoes; perhaps he had grown to expect it and already she was chained by custom… She let him unburden on the phone, well past midnight, and off and on she listened. He did not expect anything from her but murmurs of agreement, grunts of admission – the aural and oral equivalent of breast-beating. She couldn’t hang up – what anger would she be penting up in him to be later unleashed on herself by that act? She couldn’t defend herself – what defence could she have against the accusation that she had deliberately sabotaged his life? She had once said she knew what she was doing when she got married, he accused. She hadn’t done it without careful thought. That night he persisted with that theme.

  – Did you even for a minute think about me? Did you remember me? Maybe you did and decided that I was of no value; I could be dispensed with like that.

  The dismissive finger and thumb click came clear down the phone line. What was the honest answer to that? What was the safe answer? The honest answer was not the safe answer. The former would ignite a firestorm; the latter couldn’t be supported by her actions in the past. She decided she couldn’t make an honest man of him until she became an honest woman herself, and that was more than she could bear to contemplate. Honesty, she had long decided, was somewhat overrated as a virtue – used by those who didn’t want the hard work that goes into what was, to her, a nobler virtue, charity. She said to him, aloud, I thought of you and hoped you were happy too. She listened. There was no answer. Good night, she said and again listening, again heard nothing. She hung up, rolled onto her right side, read a few more lines: “I always sleep well.” It was a lie – the kind of unimportant lie one tells a husband or a lover in order to keep some privacy… She closed her eyes and waited for a fine, deep sleep.

  MAKING PASTELLES IN DICKENSLAND

  I didn’t stop to think. I just blurted out what jumped into my head.

  “You serious? With all that is happening right now, you talking about making pastelles?”

  “But, I really want to make pastelles,” he said.

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  True, it was December, and what is that month for if not to set grated ginger, cloves, cinnamon and water in an earthenware jar out in the hot sunshine to concentrate their spicy zing, separate blood-red sorrel sepals from their fat, spiky seed pods and brew from them a tart ruby beverage; pack all manner of minced dried fruit into tall glass jars to soak in rum for the black fruit cake. And above all, what was December for, if not to make pastelles? But that was another time – another life.

  We made pastelles on the weekend before Christmas. Early on the Saturday morning, he took the cutlass to the lush grove of banana trees that sprang out of the compost heap in the backyard. I looked down from the kitchen window, now and again catching sight of his wide-brimmed West Indies cricket hat as the broad blades of the banana trees fanned the angled sunlight, first lighting then shadowing him. He chose only perfect leaves – smooth, entire, not yet ravaged by time into ragged ribbons. The night dew, bright crystal balls, caught the blue sky and raced off the slick surface of the leaves, whole worlds of fortune spinning away. He held up the cut leaves, each big enough to screen all six-foot of him, and every time he was lost to view, I could feel my breath stop a little, till I caught sight of him again. With the care of one putting a sleeping baby in its cot, he laid the leaves one over one to build a pile, a dozen leaves high. He then ran the blade along the midribs. From the midribs a grating shriek rose as weft and warp parted, and the half leaves curled away from the blade, green waves breaking on the lawn sea.

  Then, I would go down to take him a drink of iced water in his Ddraig Goch tankard. As he turned towards me, I crossed my fingers to protect my good fortune. How lucky I was to have found him – an unexpected gift. How lucky that he left his own big country to live in mine, to make my little Caribbean island his. He smiled, sweat channelling down his face. He drained the tankard in long gulps. I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand; he bent his head and leaned into the touch. His shoulder was warm, sinewy through the thin, damp T-shirt; his thick brown mane fell over his eyes screening their green depths. He lifted the half-leaves and draped them across my outstretched arms, chief celebrant to acolyte, and I took them to the kitchen, to the hot work of tearing them into squares, softening them over a flame, transforming them from crisp and brittle to limp and pliable. I could hear him calling the children over from the swings where they were waiting until this moment, when, with no cutlass flailing the air, it was safe. I watched as they played with the heap of pale midribs, catching glimpses of the make-believe spears fletched with clinging leaf remnants, fluttering like festive bunting as they sailed towards their target – the wrinkled trunk of the big old flamboyant. High-pitched screeching, the soft patter of barefooted running mingled with the deep, “careful” or “welldone” and the clomping of wellingtons, floated up to the kitchen.

  But that was then.

  “Yes,” he said again, “couldn’t we?”

  “And where will we find banana leaves in Southwark?”

  “We don’t have to use banana leaves. We can use aluminium foil. People do that nowadays, you know, even back home.”

  “My mother would turn in her grave.”

  It was only an excuse, I knew. I couldn’t voice the thought that he wasn’t up to doing anything that called for much effort. Even getting ready to leave the house that morning would have taken twice as long as it did, if the others – our adult children – hadn’t been there to help. We talked as we walked the short distance to the train to take us to his last radiotherapy before the Christmas weekend. He held my arm, holding me close as if I was the one needing support. I cursed the cold air that bit through dense wool layers – coat, scarf, jumper, vest, and trousers – into bones. I cursed the ice-slicked pavement. I cursed the disease that was chewing him up from inside. He did not complain nor did we speak about his condition. Speaking it, the implications of it, would make it real – something to contend with.

  At the hospital, I sat on a chair of sterile moulded plastic, a body-sized heap of shed outer garments on the chair beside me, as I looked through the plate glass at him, at what they were doing to him. They fitted the plastic bivalve shell, a mould of his head, over his face and closed it shut, trapping him, holding his skull fast in place, so that the rays could target and burn out the cells that had spread through the interstices – wherever lymph flows. I could see him tensing, fighting the claustrophobia that kept him out of elevators and closed rooms. My stomach squeezed acid bile up my throat as I watched his struggle with himself behind the mask.

  Afterwards, in the hospital canteen, we had weak, acrid tea in small paper cups, just to do something ordinary, though neither of us could manage even that mean cupful. We gathered our scarves and gloves, shook on our coats and stumbled into the sleety rain to fight for a cab, losing over and over to the more agile, the fitter and healthier. On the way back we sat, propped up against each other. I rested my head on his shoulder and through his coat, his jacket, h
is shirt, I could feel bones – bones laid bare – the sharp outline of the joint where arm bone fitted into shoulder socket, every movement now amplified. We hardly spoke, but I wouldn’t let go of his hand, the skin cold, clammy, translucent, a fragile shield to his long, thin finger bones. We emerged into a veil of sunset-gilded fog that blurred the edges of everything, softening the view. He shivered and I reached up to pull the knitted hat over his ears. The corners of his lips lifted in a grateful smile, and I ran a finger along a new deep groove in his greyed face, thinking that it was only six months ago that I could barely keep up with him when we went on evening walks through our old neighbourhood. Now, he put his arm around my shoulder, slowing my pace to match his – his way, I thought, of slowing down time.

  I was grateful for the fog. It quickly absorbed the noise and reek of traffic from the main road just behind us. We entered a ghostly realm away from reality, a dream space where our shoes made no sound on the cobbles of the narrow lane, where neither buildings nor worries seemed to have a discrete form. The things inside me were hard and weighty but had no shape and no names. I had no way of saying those things to myself in my own head and no way of saying them aloud. I did not know then, though I think I know now, that hard things have no words for them – they are too heavy to float up and out of the mouth; they stay stuck inside and, around them, lighter things rise up, bubbles that float free. It was easier to make out that we were in an ordinary, everything-is-all-right world.

  “Isn’t this little area so like a back-in-time place?”

  “It’s surprising really, that it is still here. Most of the bombing was just there, along the docks, the warehouses and so on.” He gestured towards the river.

  “Quite a miracle then that this little Victorian bit escaped. It’s so quaint.”

  “Yes, it’s like it’s not real.”

  “I looked it up on the A-Z before I came. I was charmed by the street names.”

  “Check this one – Copperfield Street.” He pointed to a street sign set into the wall of a building, hazy in the fog.

  “And I spotted a Little Dorrit Park nearby. I wonder whether parents who take their children there to play think about Little Dorrit’s ghost?”

  “Marshalsea Road makes me look over my shoulder for Fagin.”

  “You know he lived round the corner? In Lant Street.”

  “Who? Fagin?” He squeezed my arm as he said this.

  “No, clown. Dickens.” I looked at his face and we smiled. “You know what? I’m really looking forward to reading something about the history of this place – stuff like whether Dickens’ fiction was used to name the places or whether the real places found their way into the fiction.”

  “What I’m looking forward to right now is a lie down and a cup of real tea.”

  We arrived and opened the door to warmth and cosiness, to the promise of rest and tea.

  Later that evening we six gathered for dinner. The talk ran to Christmas preparations.

  “Your father wants pastelles.” I raised my eyes to heaven.

  “Yum! Pastelles!”

  “Wouldn’t be Christmas otherwise.”

  “Tomorrow. We can make them tomorrow.”

  “What about the cornmeal?” I wondered whether no one but me was grounded in reality.

  “We sure to find cornmeal somewhere.”

  The next morning we found no cornmeal in Southwark, but in nearby Elephant & Castle, a Colombian shop stocked raw cornmeal of a coarse variety. It was that or nothing, and the one thing it couldn’t be was nothing. His smile lifted his thinned face – he had had a triumph, something was working out. We bought the other ingredients, and by the time we were done, he had to be helped down the steps for he was in a cold sweat and limp. We stood by the curb with the creeping realisation that London’s iconic taxis did not frequent Elephant & Castle. At a minicab outlet they promised us a cab in half an hour. On the cold, damp steps of the shopping centre, he sat huddled in the gloomy mizzle of the day as the half hour lengthened. Standing apart, pacing the pavement, I could feel my irritation at this whimsical enterprise rising. Why had we willingly chosen to subject ourselves to this misery? We could all have stayed home, warm and snug. When finally we got back to the house, it took a couple of hours before mint tea with honey and bed rest did their work and he could stand without help.

  We crowded into the tiny kitchen. I looked on as they poured the cornmeal into a wide bowl, worked in salt, a big knob of butter.

  “Mummy, how much water?”

  “Start with two cups.” The dough remained stiff, too brittle to shape.

  “Drizzle in some water till it’s softer.”

  A drizzle – nothing; another – nothing; a third and suddenly the mass loosened, slumping to a yellow puddle.

  “Water more than flour.” Our metaphor for total disaster popped into my head; I tried to shut it out by closing my eyes to its literal manifestation.

  Ordinarily, to return it to the right state, we would just add more cornmeal. But how could we do that? We had just used it all up. It was late. Elephant & Castle would be closed for the night.

  “Try dusting on some regular flour to help it bind,” he suggested.

  A quick check was made of the cupboards.

  “Sorry, can’t see any.”

  “You know what? Let’s just stop now. It’s not going to work.” I tried to get them to see sense.

  “Come on, let’s at least get some flour and see if that works.” He wouldn’t give up.

  There was a hurried trip to the corner shop.

  A fine rain of white flour was sifted over and the dough kneaded till it was smooth. I prodded the mass with a judgmental finger. The dough sank then bounced back.

  “Just look at this. This is too springy for pastelles. I start to make pastelles and now I find myself making cornmeal dumplings.”

  I could hear my voice coming out thin, whiny, complaining.

  They persisted.

  “I like dumplings.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Me, three.”

  “Stuffed cornmeal dumplings? That could become the new signature dish.”

  So much effort, so much making do, for what? I just wanted it to finish, to be done with, no matter how it turned out.

  “OK, just do whatever you want.”

  They took over.

  “I will make the dough into balls while you cook the meat.”

  “Put plenty seasoning, you hear? Pepper, herbs.”

  “I’m going to chop the olives.”

  “Can somebody get out the raisins and capers and put them in little dishes?”

  “Daddy, would you like to sit here and cut the foil?”

  Back home, he manned the wooden press. Taking a piece of banana leaf, placing it on the press, dipping his fingers into a bowl of olive oil and running them over the leaf, placing a cornmeal ball on the greased leaf and patting it flatter, greasing a second leaf, placing it on the ball, folding the hinged upper half of the press with its long arm over the lot, applying pressure on the arm to flatten the ball, reversing the action with the press, lifting the top leaf to reveal a perfect, thin disc on the bottom leaf: all this took under a minute. In Dickensland there was no pastelle press, so what could we use?

  “What about a rolling pin?” I asked.

  “We don’t have one.”

  “An ordinary rum bottle?”

  “A rum bottle isn’t ordinary here, Mummy.”

  “Any kind of bottle?”

  We looked at the available alcohol bottles – square section, embossed, tapering, bulbous – whatever happened to cylindrical as the basic bottle shape? A trip out was made again – this time a quest for a suitable bottle.

  We laughed at the report that came back. “The barman at the pub couldn’t believe I was choosing alcohol according to the shape of the bottle it was in. He asked if it was for some kind of ritual.”

  We now had a bottle of vodka for a pastelle press. I looked across at him
. He was sitting up straight and rubbing his palms together. He looked as boyish and as eager as he did when we first met more than thirty years before. My irritation evaporated in the warmth of his smile, his delight in anticipation. He was about to engage in something that gave him pleasure, something he had set in motion and was about to see to its satisfying finish. He oiled two squares of foil, placed the dough ball on one, flattened the ball slightly, placed the second square on top, and rolled the bottle from the centre outwards till the ball was flattened. He then lifted a corner of the top foil square to separate the two foil pieces. Six heads bent over the counter to witness the result. Each piece of foil bore ragged pieces of flattened dough. There was no perfect disc. We looked at one another, trying to find a way to make it work.

  “Let’s roll it back in a ball and try again, only, don’t press so hard.”

  This time, almost all stayed on the bottom foil, but it wasn’t flat enough or big enough.

  “Let’s try with just the bottle and the bottom foil.”

  The dough wrapped itself firmly around the bottle and wouldn’t peel off in one piece.

  “Cling film, try cling film.”

  “But you can’t steam pastelles in cling film.” My voice was raised more than I had intended. I could see them looking at one another in a sort of helpless way. He spoke softly.

  “I know. You’re right. But we can try to roll it out between pieces of cling film and transfer it to the foil afterwards for filling and cooking.”

  They were all looking at me, urging me to go along. Why were they doing this? Making me feel bad, as if I was being difficult. We had created this problem ourselves; why? Surely we had enough to deal with already. Was I the only one who could see that?

  Prising the roll of cling film from the box, I scratched and scratched and scratched around the whole circumference, trying to find the end of the roll and finally I found something that was a possibility. I traced it around and started pulling a good length. With the roll now back in the box, I was ready to tear the film against the serrated metal strip. The piece that I had pulled away from the roll flipped over, making of itself a thick creased ribbon. I tore it off and started to unfold it. It first clung to my palm then fell back, folding on itself again. I crumpled the scrap and started over, found the end once more and unrolled a smooth length, pulling it against the sharp edge of the box. But instead of cutting cleanly, the film gathered into a ruffle, trapped in the metal teeth. Snatching the bad-minded, stupid little piece of thing, I crumpled it too. I searched around the roll to find the end again. It seemed that all eyes were fixed on my hands fumbling at the simple task. I stopped and looked at what I was fighting with – a silly little roll of plastic film – and losing. I could feel my eyes fill up, my throat get tight. The roll of cling film was still in my hands. I held it firmly and twisted my hands round and round until the cardboard tube was a warped spiral and I hurled the damn thing against the kitchen wall.