You think it look like me?” The young man straightened his head to look more like the sketch he was holding.
“I think so,” Sarah said, walking toward him with her paintbrush.
Square Jaw raised his eyes. “I really look so serious?”
“That’s how you look.”
“I can have it?”
“Let me see it first.”
He handed her the drawing and she looked at it, pursing her lips, as if she was trying to make up her mind. “I don’t know. You’d have to tell me your name first.”
“Why?”
“Drawings and paintings have to have a name, and I can’t just make up a name and pretend you’re somebody else. Clementine’s has her name.”
The man frowned and ran his hand over his head. He’d been lured into the room by news that Sarah had drawn his portrait. The maid had clasped her hands against her gingham chest when she first saw it that morning. Clementine had already been given her own portrait the day before, to thank her, Sarah had said, for the top sheet she’d added to the fitted sheet. The Walrus had tried hard not to smile when she saw the drawing, but she’d puffed up her top lip more than usual and announced she was going to take the drawing home to show her grandchildren.
The two portraits, both a bold six inches square, had been drawn with care, each on its own large sheet, the edges cleanly marked with a ruler, the spacious white margins emphasizing the drawings’ charcoal lines and shadows. Her subjects looked handsome and proud, almost heroic. Clementine with a curve of the lips, her kidnapper looking straight at the viewer. Sarah had worked on them from memory, late into the last two nights, finding the end results just as good as those of the Bayswater sidewalk artists. While she was bent over the drawing of Square Jaw, she’d thought that maybe she should substitute her restaurant work for tourist portraits, once she got out.
She’d laid the drawing of Square Jaw on the bed to await the maid’s breakfast arrival.
“It look like him, for true,” the woman had said. “You even get the way his hair shave close to his head,” she’d added, sweeping her finger across her forehead. “I going to tell him.”
Square Jaw had arrived an hour later. He was wearing light blue running shoes with a navy blue swoosh on the sides, probably new by the way he was walking, with his feet sticking out like Charlie Chaplin, and he’d asked in a few gruff words to see the drawing she’d made of him.
He hadn’t visited the room in the last three days, his voice absent from the voices rising and falling in the living room, and she’d found herself almost relieved to hear him outside the day before. She had the impression that he respected her more than the driver did, that he saw her as more than a job. He’d entered the room once to search through her bags. When she stood behind him, asking why she was still being held here, he’d told her to sit down and said something about asking too many questions.
“What are you looking for?” she’d demanded, when he’d finished tossing her clothes out of the bag.
“You have any scissors or knife?”
“Of course not. You can’t take them on an airplane.”
He’d stood up and brushed off his knees. “We don’t want you trying to—”
“I don’t deserve this, you know,” she’d called after him while he left the room mumbling to himself, irritated with somebody.
She’d returned to her work with a vengeance after that, keeping at bay the anxiety that lived with her day and night. Nothing would come from giving in to fear, she knew. Her only salvation would be to clear her mind of clutter and find out as much as she could from the people around her. Better the evil that you know. Her mother’s words had come back to her after she’d made her seventh scratch at the foot of the wall. Evil or not, the square-jawed fellow was someone she wanted to know better.
The young man looked up from the drawing. “Me can have it?” he asked her in broad patois, waving the drawing in his hand.
“You still haven’t given me your name.”
He scratched the back of one hand. “Batsman,” he mumbled.
“Batsman, then.” She dug around in a bag and found a pen. “Played cricket, did you?”
The man shook his head, wiping his laugh away with his hand. “No, Batsman, like Batsman and Robin, the guys in the movie.”
After writing the name at the foot of the page, she handed it back to him. “Has anyone ever drawn your picture before?”
“No, but ah have plenty camera pictures.”
His description of his older brother’s photography tumbled out, something about his brother having a camera and taking family photographs. She grabbed on to the few words she could understand, stringing them together to create a chain of visuals of a family and a celebration when someone visited from overseas.
What had at first seemed impossible, that she could understand the harsh language around her, had turned into a challenge to learn what her captors were saying, to learn patois. As soon as she heard voices outside, she’d stand at the door and press her ear to the gap, separating out the words she understood from the ones she never would. The cadence had been a struggle at first, with the forceful upward swings and quick descents, the staccato intervals and abrupt endings. She’d practiced saying a few phrases to get the hang of it, thinking of her uncle, a linguistics professor at the University of Kent, who would have learned it by now.
After Batsman had gone, Sarah settled in front of her easel and her work of the last couple days. With her watercolor pad now completely filled, each page slightly warped, and her sketch pad unable to take paint, she’d started in on the one large sheet left of the five she’d originally brought from London. Today she was painting another sea grape leaf. It had started to age, one brown edge curling in death, a nice contrast to the two other paintings of healthy green leaves on the page.
She leaned her head to one side and squinted. Three rectangles were scattered around the page already, each four by six inches, two horizontal and one vertical, each a different leaf, one with a lizard sitting on its stem. If she continued like this, filling the page with squares, inserting boxes between the boxes, she’d fill up the entire sheet—to create one large painting. She allowed herself a tiny smile to think that she’d be able to fulfill Roper’s challenge in the most ironic of ways. It would be a jigsaw of miniature boxes.
While she continued painting, she thought about her dream the night before. It had awakened her, her chest constricted, and she hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. She’d lain afterward with listening eyes wide, thinking of the dream in all its detail. She’d been back in Maidstone and she was young, an adolescent changing out of her choir robe. Penny Clutterbuck was there and had giggled something about Peter inviting her to the cinema.
“But he’s too fat,” she’d whispered, so the others behind wouldn’t hear.
Penny and the nameless others had disappeared and she was suddenly alone under a streetlight on the Old Edgecombe Road. Traffic was sparse, a Sunday evening, she knew. It was dark already, cold, and she hadn’t brought gloves. She’d known somehow that the day had been overcast, making the colors on the leaves look dull all day until they faded into autumn darkness. She’d turned up her collar and dug her hands into her coat pockets. It was a coat she’d actually worn and loved at that age, a dark blue cloth one with padded shoulders, but under the streetlight it seemed bleached yellow and her shadow had circled her like a black ball.
Her mother was to fetch her after church, but she was late. She’d looked up the road. A bicyclist and one car passed. The church grounds were dark behind her and she didn’t know where else to go. A man and a woman walked by holding hands, the woman pregnant in a bright red coat. They were talking as they passed.
“She did no such thing!” the woman said to the man, then looked at Sarah questioningly. They’d turned the corner beside the church and disappeared, leaving the young girl alone
and Sarah wide awake.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
* * *
The stool lay on its side behind a patch of weeds. Shad leaned in to examine it, making sure to stay well away because Beth wouldn’t tolerate him snagging the new khaki pants she’d bought him. It was a simple wooden stool with a round seat, the kind you’d find in a kitchen, or that an artist would sit on. Already late for work, he walked quickly toward the beach. Just before the end of the path, he stopped and made a full turn.
Earlier that afternoon, Sonja had pointed to the path Sarah used every morning to go to her painting spot, and he’d descended the driveway to inspect it. He was now standing in a clearing large enough for someone to set down a stool, yet have privacy behind a couple of coconut trees. Peanut shells were scattered among the fallen palm leaves. Shad crossed his arms and stared at the spot where Sarah must have painted. She was disciplined, Sonja had said, and she’d painted up to the day she’d left. He rested his cheek on the fist of one hand and looked at the waves, pounding and dragging, a few yards away.
Shad’s excuse for coming to Roper’s house on a Saturday—when Carthena wouldn’t be around—was to ask for Ford. He knew he wasn’t at home, since he’d seen him heading out of town with Roper. The bartender had told Sonja he wanted to recommend some backup musicians to the trumpeter. She’d invited him inside when he’d appeared at the door, something a little unusual for a lady of her standing, but Sonja was different from the other browning women, her hair worn natural like she was proud of her kinky hair.
The writer had told him that Roper and Ford had gone to Ocho Rios, and the bartender had thanked her and started toward the door, turning back just as his hand reached for the brass knob.
“I sorry to hear that the artist lady gone,” he’d said sadly. “I wanted to see her paintings.”
Sonja’s eyes had become unfocused. “I’m sorry, too.”
“People always have a reason for running away like that, you know, and I been wondering what make her do it.”
The woman had struggled with what she should say, he could see, her hand to her throat. She’d walked out to the deck in her long dress and leaned over the rail, as if she were expecting Sarah to appear on the steep driveway below.
“She used to walk down to that path every morning carrying all her art stuff. She insisted on doing it herself, never wanted any help. Every day she’d do that, except on weekends, just like she was going to work. She was really serious about her art.”
The bartender had nodded. “Strange, eh? She don’t say nothing, just slip away like that.”
“Women do strange things when they’re upset.”
“She was upset? I hate to know she leave Largo upset.”
Sonja had cupped her left breast with her hand, like she was carrying something heavy on her chest. Shad had leaned on the rail and looked toward the village’s rusty rooftops peeking out between the coconut trees.
“What happen to her?” he asked Sonja, because he knew she was an honest woman.
She had leaned on the rail and sighed, blowing the air hard out her nostrils. “One evening, a few days before she left, my—boyfriend, partner, whatever—sometimes I don’t know what to call him—he said something to her. He didn’t approve of her dating Danny and he let her know.”
She couldn’t look him straight in the eye, a person who always looked straight at everybody. It was the class thing, Shad knew, the same kind of foolishness that had kept Jamaican people apart from before Granny’s time, that had made Horace want to deprive him of success, the wall that he and his children would have to climb all their lives. Maybe Danny Caines had dropped an h and his grammar had failed him, or he’d told them that his parents were poor. One way or another, the American had slipped up, enough for Roper to classify him as lower class.
“We hardly saw her after that—she stayed out of our way, gobbled her dinner without saying much. I think she was really uncomfortable here.” The writer had turned toward the front door, ready to have him leave, but Shad had stroked his chin.
“She was having a good time, you don’t think?”
“I thought so, but something happened—even before the argument with Roper. She started getting kind of anxious a couple weeks before.”
“After the night you all come to the bar, the night you ordered the jerk chicken?”
“Could have been, I don’t remember exactly when. She never stopped painting, though. Right up to the day she disappeared, she went off painting in the morning.”
“She come back to get her things?”
“I didn’t see her if she did. We left in the morning to go into town. Roper had a doctor’s appointment and I wanted to go shopping, and Ford tagged along because he wanted to see Kingston. When we came back that night, she was . . . She must have planned to pack up and leave after we were gone.”
“So she must have had a taxi come and get her with all her things.”
“Carthena said she never heard anything.”
“She had a ticket to go back, then.”
Sonja shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“She didn’t go into town to buy a ticket?”
“Maybe with Danny, but not with us,” she’d said, leading him to the front door.
After examining the trampled coconut fronds at Sarah’s painting site, Shad walked back to the main road. High above the road, Roper’s deck was empty and there was no sound coming from the house. Wiping his damp palms on his pants, the bartender crossed the road and walked up the driveway slowly, glancing up at the deck and the windows to check for onlookers. His excuse, in case he was seen, would be that he forgot to leave the names and numbers of the musicians for Ford.
Avoiding the steps leading up to the front door, he slipped behind the grove of bamboo that he’d seen from the deck. It was the kind of wall that thoughtful hosts planted to provide privacy for visitors—and for a guest room. On the other side of the bamboo was a stone patio with some chairs. Shad peered through the sliding glass doors. Inside, two twin beds faced the terrace, both neatly made up with colorful spreads. It was empty—no luggage, no clothes—a room standing ready for the next guest.
It only took a sharp penknife to work the lock and Shad slid the door open, remembering other doors he’d opened exactly like that, a long time ago. He slid the door shut behind him. The sandy soles of his sneakers crunched on the tiles and he tiptoed slowly toward the chest of drawers. A quiet examination of its six drawers yielded nothing but a few American coins and a hairpin. The drawers of a small desk and bedside table were similarly empty.
After turning on his heel in the middle of the room, Shad asked himself what Ellis J. Oakland, author and detective, would have done next, then he carried the desk chair to the closet and set it down without a sound.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
* * *
Eric picked up the banana from the kitchen bowl and marched it into the bar with a disgusted mouth.
“Do you see that?” he asked Shad, who was pouring a white rum for the evening’s first customer. Eric pointed to the dime-shaped hole in the side of the banana. “We have a rat, and he’s eaten my Chinese banana.”
“The bar is open, boss, anything can come in. You forget we in the Caribbean, plenty roaches and spiders and mosquitoes. You don’t think we going to have rats?”
“But we have an exterminator, that pest control guy with the green truck.”
“You stop paying him, remember?”
“Rats everywhere,” Tri called gleefully from the end of the bar. “They going to be here after we gone, Mistah Eric. Rats going to be king.”
“Somebody should have covered up the bananas or something.” Eric threw the fruit into the garbage and washed his hands. “I’m going to set a rat trap tonight and catch the son of a bitch.”
“You better set ten traps for the whole family,”
Tri suggested.
“And, boss,” Shad murmured, “if you going into Port Antonio to buy the trap, don’t forget to pay the phone bill. They cut off the phone this morning.”
“One damn bill after another.”
“So life go, boss.”
“Where’s Solomon? He’s late.”
“Maisie say he get a cut on the bottom of his foot, so he must be walking slow.”
“Good thing we don’t have any customers yet.”
“Tri is—”
“You know what I mean.”
“Boss,” Shad said. “I want to ask you a little something.” He walked partway to the kitchen, spinning the towel in his hand. Eric followed him, in no mood to explain why he couldn’t give him a raise or why his parents had been unhappy.
The small man turned and stretched the towel between his hands. “Can a foreign person—a real foreigner, not a Jamaican living abroad—can they leave Jamaica without a passport?”
“I don’t think so. Once upon a time an American could get in on his driver’s license, but not anymore. Everybody has to have a passport.”
“What about an English person?”
“Same thing.” Eric tucked his hair behind his ears. “Why do you ask?” Shad’s reasons for asking questions were always as good as the questions.
“Remember I tell you that the English artist gone, just disappear one day? Well, she leave her passport.”
“You’re kidding! How you know that?”
“Somebody tell me.”
“You tell the person that if her passport’s here, she’s probably still in the country, unless she left with a fake passport.”
“She don’t look like the kind of lady who would make a fake passport, though.”
“If she has a real passport, she wouldn’t need one.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Shad said, starting back to the bar, snapping the towel as he walked.
The Sea Grape Tree Page 23