The Polished Hoe

by Austin Clarke

  “Expresso!” Gertrude reported to Miss Mary-Mathilda, the first morning.

  “Expresso?” Miss Mary-Mathilda asked.

  “Expresso!”Gertrude repeated to her mistress. “A Eyetalian habit he say he pick-up in Italy. And him a big man, Miss Mary-Mathilda, and a doctor, to-boot, who should know more better! Forsaking the breakfast that I prepare for him, a real Bimshire breakfast! And telling me he having a Continental breakfast instead! Expresso, Mistress? And eating stanning-up! For the food to lodge in his ankles and his two feets? Mistress, you could tell me what so special about this Continental breakfast that consist of only expresso coffee?”

  “Well, when he get run-down, we will see. He will revert-back to eating real food!”

  “I really hope so, Mistress. I like Master Wilberforce too good for this tragedy to befall him.”

  “Civilization, Gertie-girl. Civilization . . .”

  Gertrude had turned away, hurt; and she left behind her, as an indication of the injury to her status in the kitchen, which Wilberforce had compromised with his European habits, a vexatious stewpsing of her mouth: when she sucked her teeth in disgust, it came out as stewwwwwpsse.

  Gertrude was off usually at three o’ clock in the afternoon, every Sunday, except when Easter and Christmas fell on a Sunday. On normal Sundays, Miss Mary did the cooking herself.

  The meal is served at twelve-thirty, after Church, whether she had attended or not. She feels she is a better cook than Gertrude: but she will never tell her so.

  And when she has a bad day; when she would stand alone in her bedroom, and look towards the largest house on the Plantation estate, the Main House, which stands on a hill, a quarter-mile through the fruit trees that seem to guard it, she would think of her life, of her days at school, ended in Standard Seven, too soon; without being able to take up the scholarship to St. Michael’s School, if she had sat the Secondary-to-Second-Grade examination, which she would have passed, and landed her in a secondary school for girls only; paid for by the Social Committee of the Vestry. But she could not, because she had to work in the fields and help the household, consisting of Ma, and Ma’s mother, Gran; and her; and because women were not encouraged to pursue higher learning beyond elementary school (learning to read and write, and the Ten Commandments, was sufficient); so, when she had a bad day, she would stand for hours in her large bedroom in the Great House, and look at the Main House, and at Sargeant’s small chattel house; and see the brightness of day taken over by the sombreness of gold and thickening, rich, heavy colours, the sun touching the sea, the coming on of dusk. The approaching blackness of the end of the day. She would become enveloped in this engulfing sad, veloured house; and her thoughts would wander over the unending fields . . . of the nights, after she had washed her face-and-hands; when the shine on the long handle of the hoe did not satisfy her, did not shine bright enough; when she passed the middle finger of her right hand over the blade of the hoe, to test it, she knew easily that it was razor sharp, because it left a line of red, thin as the thickness of a page, on her finger. Her hoe had to have the same sharpness of any knifeblade in her kitchen.

  There was no other good enough

  To pay the price of sin . . .

  She awakes from her dreaming as Gertrude brings the drinks in on a tray made of mahogany. A tall bottle that once held Gordon’s Dry Gin, with no label, and now containing ice water, is sweating down its sides. There is a soda syphon, and two crystal glasses.

  There are two kinds of rum. One, in a tall crystal decanter that is square and thick-skinned, contains special rum, cured in raisins, currants, orange and grapefruit peel, and gooseberries. The other is kept in a jimmy-john for six weeks, and then poured into a round crystal decanter. This is the ordinary rum.

  Gertrude pours this ordinary rum religiously only for the postman, and for the sanitary inspector who checks once in a fortnight, for “larvees” in the buckets and tanks of water used for drinking, for bathing and for cooking.

  Gertrude pours two drinks of the special rum. She knows the size and strength of her Mistress’s drink. She pours hers first.

  She hesitates before she pours Sargeant’s drink. She does not want to ask him, “Heavy on the rum? Or heavy on the water?” And she does not want her Mistress to know that she has previously served drinks to Sargeant. She has done it, in fact, many times in her house, when her children are not home.

  Sargeant understands her hesitation, and comes to her rescue.

  “Light on the rum,” he says. “And heavy on the water.”

  Gertrude smiles, and is about to leave the parlour, when Miss Mary-Mathilda says, “I won’t need you no more, Gertie-dear. We’ll fix ourselves, if need be . . .”

  Gertrude moves silently over the thick carpets, and pads the floor in her bare feet, like a cat.

  Miss Mary-Mathilda takes the same chair as before, and waits until Sargeant sits before she takes a sip of her drink.

  “Normally, I would have brandy, but I already had one brandy for the night, when the Constable was here.”

  She shifts in her chair, fidgets a little, touches the cover of a large Bible, moving it two inches to the right, on the heart-shaped tabletop; then, two inches to the left; and then passing her palm over it, she dusts it, although it had been dusted by Gertrude on Saturday morning, when she herself had passed her hands over it, each time she passed beside the table. Her fidgeting settles her nervousness. She touches things she does not even know she has touched: the coconut palm leaf, in the shape of a cross, that she received from the hand of Vicar Dowd last Good Friday; touches the porcelain crocodiles and lions on the mantelpiece; touching all these things that have lived with her, things that give her balance and calm.

  “Why we don’t start the Statement, Percy?” she says.

  “How you want we to start, Miss Mary-Mathilda?”

  “From the beginning, and work towards . . .”

  “From the beginning, then.”

  “. . . towards the end.”

  “That way . . .”

  “We’ll hear the whole story.”

  “But Miss Mary, you don’t need to tell the full story. You don’t have to tell me. It is my duty to hear it, but I don’t really want to hear it. The powers-that-be don’t. The public don’t. And the Village don’t. I not telling you what anybody down in the Police Commissioner office tell me to say. Nor am I ’sinuating that I got orders to-don’t take a Statement from offa you. But I telling you what I know the situation is, under the circumstances, namely that nobody, not the Plantation, the Vicar, the Solicitor-General, nor the Commissioner o’ Police himself, going-raise a hand against you, for whatever it is that you say you do. Not the Police. Not the Church. Not the Mothers Union. Nor the Church itself, meaning Revern Dowd. Not the School Systems, meaning the Headmaster and the Headmistress of the two Elementary Schools. And not a member of the Board o’ Governances will want to raise a finger and vote ’gainst you, for whatever it is that you do. And I don’t want to know what your act is, neither. You haven’t tell me what is the act, and I don’t want to know.

  “And I don’t know if I am in the right frame o’ mind to take a Statement offa you, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda, to use your full name as I have to do in all official legal circumstances, seeing as how you and me grow up together, though separate. You is a person of great repuke. People follow your lead. People swear by you. People love you. And respect you. In ways that they don’t respect nor follow the Plantation nor the Plantation’s jurisdiction, if you following me.

  “So, this is the predicament I see myself inside.”

  “But Percy . . .” She takes a sip of her drink. She places the glass daintily upon the doily on the heart-shaped mahogany side table. The light in the crystal glass, and the light from the top of the table, flash; and collide. She cannot decide which of these objects, crystal glass or mahogany polish, gives off the sharper and more pure reflection. “But Percy, I still have to tell the story.

  “For as I sai
d to the Constable, I still have to leave the history for Wilberforce, and one to be left back to the people of this Village, and people coming after me so they would know what happened. And I still have to save my soul.”

  “Save your soul, Miss Mary? What you mean by that?”

  “From the fires of Purgatory. Seek redeeming mercy.”

  “Purgatory, Miss Mary? Redeemings?”

  “A legacy of words behind me so people will know. Not that it was wrong. Or was right. I don’t want people to see my act in such a simple way. In such black-and-whiteness. But if I don’t leave something behind, anybody, anytime . . . tomorrow, next year, in the future and in the generations to come . . . will only know what happened from word of mouth, and from the Bimshire Daily Herald; and the words from the lips of Village gossip. There won’t be nobody to tell the pure history of my act . . .”

  “I sorry to interrupt you, Miss Mary-Mathilda.”

  “That is my meaning to ‘save my soul.’ To save my soul from the various interpretations.”

  “Nobody in their right mind would put a wrong interpretation to . . .”

  “Thank you, Percy, for saying so.”

  “. . .your act. That ain’t nothing at all. And if these circumstances wasn’t such as they are, I would say that your position doesn’t take any skin offa my teet’. If you are following me, Miss Mary. You know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “But you called me and I had to come.”

  “Police response. Yes.”

  “As hurtful as it is.”

  “Duty is duty.”

  “I had to respond.”

  “You have that duty. And I have a duty to give you the history of my situation.”

  “You want to begin now?”

  “When you ready.”

  “I think this drink going to my head.”

  “You was never so light-headed, Percy.”

  “This drink working ’pon me already.”

  “When you are ready for another one, help yourself, Percy. And before I start my Statement, I want to say how glad it is that it is you I giving it to.”

  “Is my honour.”

  “It could be worse. Although I am made aware of how I stand in this Village, I do not intend taking any privileges with the Village. Or with you. I giving it to you. The way it happen. Whiching is the way I intended it to happen. Because I am not talking only about one single, isolated night. Or one act. Something that my body, that only my limbs carried out, physically. And that my mind didn’t play a role in that act.

  “I am talking, about more than that one act. I am talking about history. About the reason my body took it physically upon itself, with the assistance of my head and my mind . . . my soul . . . I am thinking now about the code that a coloured Amurcan from the South stood by; a code that he invented, and nailed-up above the doorpost of a one-room schoolhouse he was headmaster of; and later displayed and distributed this code on other buildings, workshops and sleeping quarters where the coloured people lived and studied and did practical work, like in apprenticeships, for woodwork, carpentry, joinering and making furnitures; and learning the meaning of drainage, crops, cycles o’ planting and agriculture. That coloured Amurcan man’s code was Head. Heart. Hand.

  “It is this code I use to guide the footsteps of my life. I used it to drill common sense inside Wilberforce head; and plant a sense o’ duty . . .

  “And Percy, I don’t have to tell you, a man who sings tenor in the Choir, and takes Communion every first Sunday, that there is something to this act of mine being perpetrated on this sacred day. Sunday.

  “All these years, people from the surrounding villages would visit our Village, take part in Mothers Union meetings, social gatherings, and play cricket against our team; even attend our church festivals; walk in processions, through every road and alley in this Village, with our choir, in praise and in acknowledgment; and anybody, from here and from elsewhere would envy the life I was leading all these years.

  “But they would envy me because they see only the outside of my life. The shell. The husk. The skin and the peel.

  “Nobody would believe that the life I lead in this Great House caused the act that put an end to that very life.

  “I haven’t explained it too.Well. But what I want to tell you is that my act brought a end to its history. To my history.

  “So, Percy, first I have to show you my hoe. There . . . would it be still leaning-up outside, beside the front door?

  “After tonight, I may not have any more use for it. After tonight, its sharpness and its shininess won’t be ironical no more!

  “All those years, I must have been waiting for a sign. A sign, yes.

  “A sign to tell me the correct time had come, counting week, day, daytime or nighttime, hour and down to the minute. Yes.

  “Right down to the second. To the fraction of a second! Yes.

  “And in all of that time, I really could not understand the meaning of my hoe!

  “My hoe, that I used in the North Field; weeding young canes; weeding potato slips; yams; eddoes; just plain weeding; and starting-out as a common field hand, on this Plantation, I was a girl sprouting two bubbies, a spring in my backside, the prey of any bookkeeper, driver, overseer or manager to take advantage of. And they could. And did. Take advantage of this girl. The only body who didn’t stir his spoon in the pot, God bless him, was the Revern. But the rest? I was there. To have, and to discard. To have, at a whim and a will. But, I still had some pleasure to go along with it.

  “For there was little acknowledgment of the advantage-taking: but a acknowledgment, nevertheless. By the Plantation, by the bookkeeper, the overseer and the manager, that I was a damn good labourer. Yes.

  “Damn good in the fields, and damn good in trash heaps, and damn good in bed. Yes.

  “I gave the bastard a son and heir, didn’t I? Yes.

  “And damn good in other ways, too!

  “But my claim to fame, for what it worth, is, I was a damn good labourer.

  “What labourer, though? Field hand!

  “I am talking about a time, when any one of them, driver, overseer, bookkeeper, manager, any one of the four o’ them, even the man-leader of a field gang, anybody in the scheme of things, in a more higher position, could grab your hand, and lead you in a cane field; pull down your bloomers, put you to lay-down on a pile o’ cane trash; and after he unbutton his fly, and pull out his dickey, pardon my French, Sarge-boy, he could lay down ’pon top o’ you, bam-bam-bam!, and jerk off. And that was that. Yes.

  “That is the history of life on a Plantation. In this Island. On any Plantation in Bimshire! I am not talking fiction, Sargeant.”

  “No, you’re not, Miss Mary-Mathilda!” he says. “I have heard such. But not in this abundance.”

  “So, my hoe, in its other history, has served me.Well. And still, in those nights, listening to the BBC programme Calling the Wessindies; or playing the Victrola grammaphone; or else tuning-in to the Voice of Bimshire, I would sit here and listen; or I would turn on the ‘private-set,’ and pick-up Latin-Amurca, Caracas, Brazil, Montevideo, Valparaiso, the Argentyne . . . yes.

  “Even Trinidad, I would get sometimes. All those foreign countries! With their languages and different ways of behaving. Yes, you could find me here, late-late-late, any night turning into morning, with the music from those foreign countries keeping my company.

  “Listening to foreign music is natural to me, because I live in a island. And because the water surrounding we, the Carbean Sea, is the same water flowing here from the oceans of the world, one being the Atlantic, everything that that Atlantic Ocean brings in, with the currents, touches the way we live in this Island; and in any other island in the Wessindies. And I just love to listen to the way foreigners talk, although I don’t understand one damn thing they’re saying.

  “But still, their language is so sweet to listen to. Brabba-rabbabrabba-rabba, sennorita—if they’re speaking Spanish. And if
it is Eyetalian, ciao-ciao, bonna-days, bonna-days, mangiamo, grazzias and ciao. Yes.

  “Foreign talk, foreign language and foreign rhythms and foreign music! And once, by mistake, the ‘private-set’ pick-up Germany. Oh my God! Heine, mine, zee Deutch-zee-Deutch, spraken, racken, nine, nine, nine! And in the midst of the War, to-boot. Whilst the bombs was still falling.

  “And all the time that I am listening, I am running my hand over the handle of my hoe, feeling the bumps where the smaller branches were cut from; and I would praise God, that I, Mary Gertrude Mathilda, a simple woman, living so far from what Wilberforce calls the centre of the world, the axis of civilization, is still filled with the spirit of God, to be able to listen to these small wonders.

  “I don’t see eye-to-eye with Wilberforce in all things. I think that right-here, rightfully-so in Bimshire, we have things and we do things, that qualify we, that qualifies us, right here in the Wessindies, to be as much important as any country in Europe, or Germany, or Italy or France—not to mention Englund—as being a similar axis, and a similar centre of civilized things, too.

  “And it is God. In the lateness of the hour, and in the darkest hour, as Mr. Winston Churchill calls those late-late nights of tragedy, I have to be thankful only to God, for maintaining the handle of my hoe so strong and so long-lasting.

  “Things made from the fustic tree are everlasting in their lastingness. Strength and lastingness. I am sure that the handle of my hoe comes from one of the fustic trees growing on this Plantation. But it could equally-be-from a tamarind tree, too.

  “And still, with all that polishing and sharpening, I still couldn’t pinpoint what use I was going to put it to. Or, what act destiny and fate had in mind for me to perform, using it.

  “But I knew, from the very beginning, yes, that there was an act ordained for me to perform. Yes.