The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

by Monique Roffey

  ‘Don’t be crazy.’

  ‘Eric Williams.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s all his fault.’

  George went silent, not wanting this conversation again. Sabine, he could see, was brooding up a storm.

  ‘Things could have been so different,’ she said in a sullen tone.

  Sabine followed George through the maze of desks. The newsroom was air-conditioned and quiet and yet suitably ramshackle, half library, half common room; people with their heads down, on the phone, laughter and ol’ talk, a mostly young staff. She’d always been curious. George had been allowed into this world late in life, when Ray had first asked him to cover the golf tournaments in Tobago. He had retired from his working life long ago – and Ray had given him these odd assignments. Turned out George could write. He was funny, too, fluent and erudite with it – and soon he had a following. More assignments followed. In those days, she typed his articles out from his longhand; she was part of things then, this second career, before he bought a computer and learnt to type.

  ‘Darling, this is Joel.’ They were at the news desk. Six desks facing each other at the far end of the room. A poster of Malcolm X on the wall behind Joel’s head. Next to it, Fidel Castro biting a cigar.

  ‘Joel, this is my wife, Sabine.’

  The young man stood up and shook her hand. The other reporters all looked up with open interest.

  ‘Oh, dis a surprise, de ol’ man talk about you a lot.’ Joel winked at George but Sabine could tell he was intrigued, sizing her up. Sabine let him stare into her ravaged face.

  ‘Likewise,’ she smiled sweetly. Joel was handsome, a dougla, afro hair and Indian features. His eyes were inky black and his skin the colour of cocoa dust.

  ‘What brings you in today?’ Joel eyed the camera Sabine held like a grenade.

  ‘Spot of trouble,’ George explained.

  Joel grinned at this Englishman’s understatement. He rubbed his chin.

  ‘Fucking bastards beat up our maid’s son,’ Sabine blurted.

  Joel raised his eyebrows. ‘Mrs Harwood, who beat up who?’

  ‘Bloody police. Three of them, beat him half to death. Left him up there to die. Top of Paramin Hill, left him for hours. Days even. You know it gets cold up there. Cold. Damn cowards. Cochons. He’s in the medical centre in St Clair.’

  Joel whistled. The other reporters were now plainly aware of this white woman with a foul mouth.

  Sabine smiled, apologetic. ‘Pardon my French, boys. Wait till you see the pictures.’

  ‘You have pictures?’

  ‘Not of the event. Of his injuries.’

  ‘Will he speak?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ George cut in. Sabine could tell he’d hoped to handle this.

  ‘Witnesses?’ Joel pressed.

  ‘None,’ said George.

  ‘Just those hills,’ Sabine added. ‘The hills witnessed the attack.’

  George coughed, trying to cut her off.

  ‘Those weaklings threatened to kill him,’ Sabine continued. ‘For a mobile phone.’

  ‘Policemen bad dese days, Mrs Harwood. We run a story like dis every day.’

  ‘I stopped reading the newspapers, I’m afraid. Some time ago.’ She shot George a dark collusive stare.

  ‘We go take a look at de pictures,’ Joel said. ‘We go run de story, nuh. We always do. Our own little campaign.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Sabine handed over the camera.

  ‘Thanks, Joel,’ George said.

  ‘We’ll need to speak to dis fella, aks him questions.’

  ‘I’ll give you directions.’ George came forward and the pair began to make notes.

  On the wall behind, Malcolm X stared right at Sabine. The young men at the news desk looked up under him, their faces young and bright and scrubbed, proud of themselves. They all stared, as if she were a hologram.

  ‘What about him?’ Sabine pointed to the poster.

  Joel turned round to see what she was looking at. He raised his fist. His face, like the others’, was open, boyish. ‘Black Power, man.’

  ‘Really? I’m surprised you say that.’

  George sighed. ‘Here she goes.’

  Joel’s face was amused, trying to please.

  ‘What kind of power does Talbot have?’

  His face fell.

  George looked awkward.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Harwood. The Chief of Police in de pocket of Mr Manning. Everyone know dat.’

  ‘But you can’t write anything about that. Can you?’

  Joel shook his head. ‘Mrs Harwood, maybe we should hire you, too. We could give you a news column. Mr Harwood, eh, watcha say?’

  George looked appalled.

  Sabine fluttered her eyelashes. ‘I’d like that.’

  Joel went serious; his voice dropped so he was speaking in confidence. ‘We criticise, we do. We try to. The news speak for itself. Manning cyan law enforce dis country – enforce all he friens at top level? But de PNM cyan argue wid fact. Fact is fact, man. No one can stop me from writing down fact.’

  ‘Good.’

  Sabine felt a dull glow of pleasure. ‘Will that loathsome fuckwit Patrick Manning get in next year?’

  Joel erupted with laughter. The boys behind him hooted. ‘Of course. Wid all de votes he buy.’

  ‘Black Power,’ Sabine said. ‘That’s what it’s been since the PNM took over. Black Power for one man only, or for the few.’

  ‘Sabine—’ George made as if to go.

  Joel looked genuinely surprised by her words. He winked at George.

  ‘See?’ George half smiled. ‘See how I live?’

  Sabine made a grim face, unperturbed. Let them think what they liked.

  ‘Lady, it real nice to meet you at las.’ Joel shook her hand.

  ‘Nice to meet you, too.’

  ‘I jus write de news.’

  ‘I’m glad you do. Thank you, and thank you for helping us.’

  At the medical centre in St Clair, Talbot was dozing. He’d been expertly patched up. Four broken ribs, a broken nose; two mangled fingers were splinted. No internal bleeding, though. His ribs were bandaged, his head wrapped so heavily his face was nearly hidden behind all the padding. He’d been bathed and his unbruised skin glowed. He smelled clean, medical and citrusy from Limacol. Jennifer had her son back again, in almost one piece. If that had been Sebastian ‒ dear God, what hell then. What would Granny Seraphina make of this, eh? She would turn in her cardboard-box grave.

  Talbot lay on clean white sheets, probably the cleanest and whitest sheets he’d ever had. Jennifer sat next to him on one of two metal chairs. Sabine sat down next to her and reached for her hand. Jennifer, usually so verbal, so quick to tease and retaliate, to picong and ol’ talk and giggle and make noise and fun for her and George, was speechless. She looked aged, but somehow dignified, like Granny. Some of that old woman’s resolve set in her face, her shoulders. Some of that slave silence.

  ‘I told Mr Harwood I’m going to give Bobby Comacho hell.’

  Jennifer didn’t stir.

  ‘Shoot him in the balls.’

  Jennifer’s shoulders shook.

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Yeah, man. Watch out, den dey trow you in a cell.’

  ‘What ‒ then they’d have trouble on their hands.’

  ‘Jesus Lord.’ Jennifer pressed her palms to her forehead. She steupsed in a long miserable way. ‘I wish I could . . . fly away, yes. You know? To another place.’

  Sabine put her arm around Jennifer. Tears spilled from Jennifer’s eyes. ‘Dis not fair. It not right. Dey leave him up der, Mrs Harwood. He try to crawl dong on his hands and knees, den a man fine him and bring him down by us. And when I see him in mih house, oh gorsh. I ent recognise mih own son.’

  Sabine squeezed her shoulders. ‘He’s better now. He’ll be OK.’ ‘I wish I could fly far away.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Far away, man. To another place.’

  ‘Yes. I
know.’

  Jennifer raised her head and looked at her, harshly. ‘You shoulda lef, man. I cyan understand why you never leave.’

  Sabine exhaled. ‘I almost did, once.’

  ‘Das what Mr Harwood say. Das what Venus say before she lef.’

  ‘I can’t even remember those days, Jennifer. I was another woman then. Young. Naive.’

  ‘You wanted to go?’

  ‘Yes. I missed my son. And there was trouble here in 1970. Mr Harwood’s business was burnt down. They poisoned our dogs. Oh, and worse . . .’

  ‘You still vexed? Venus say she miss livin’ wid you and de chilren.’

  ‘Yes. Me, too. We were great friends.’

  ‘Aunt Venus say you used to ride a green bicycle all over Port of Spain. You was famus ridin’ on dat bike.’ She chuckled.

  ‘Yes, I think I was.’

  ‘De same bike all rusted in de garage?’

  ‘Do we still have it?’

  ‘Must be.’

  ‘I thought we gave it away. Didn’t we? So much I can’t remember.’

  Jennifer steupsed. Jennifer never liked it when Sabine talked around things, what she called English-talk. Even though she knew the Harwoods well, she disapproved of any vagueness; she saw it as cowardice, somehow even as lying. Trinidadians had the tendency to be explicitly honest about everything.

  ‘I mean it,’ Sabine repeated. ‘I’ve forgotten myself.’

  ‘Forgotten Eric Williams, too?’

  Sabine winced. ‘Eh, eh. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Aunt Venus say you used to write to him, always. Letters. She say you like to put dem in a box. Put Dr Williams in a box.’

  ‘Oh. Venus told you that?’

  ‘Long time ago.’

  Sabine felt blank about it all. She felt none of her long-ago feelings, nothing of those early days. ‘Venus was right.’

  ‘So, you forget about him?’

  Sabine had never spoken to anyone about him at all, only Venus. Careful, she looked at Jennifer, trusting her. ‘No.’ Her eyes welled. ‘No. In fact, you know what? I dream of Eric Williams. From time to time.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, man.’

  Sabine laughed at herself. ‘Don’t tell Mr Harwood.’

  ‘He would be vexed?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care, either. But sometimes I dream of Eric Williams, you know. In Woodford Square. He was impressive then. A sight to see.’

  ‘You saw him then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow. Legend time, man. A famous man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jennifer looked at her, as if she had lit upon a sudden idea. ‘You stay here in Trinidad because you love Mr Harwood?’

  Sabine stared away from her, out through the jalousie shutters at the car park. Love Mr Harwood? What a question. Did she? What had happened between them? She could no longer be sure of things any more. She knew she loved him once, long ago, loved him fierce as a hurricane, fiercer. But now? Hard to tell, hard to know anything.

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t remember, Jennifer.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE AFFAIR

  Midnight. A clamorous hour in the house beneath the hip of the green woman. The temperature had dropped causing the cicadas to make a sound like constantly shaking maracas. Tiny tree frogs croaked, brassy. Crickets shouted, trying to compete. The house groaned, shifting with the coolness of the night’s shade. Sabine snored in their bed down the hall. The dogs whimpered in their dreams, chasing the iguana round and round.

  ‘Now where is that file on Brian Lara?’ George muttered. Sabine used the office in the mornings for letter writing; he used it in the afternoons. It worked well enough, except for her tidy-ups.

  ‘Bugger,’ he cursed, finding a torch in the desk drawer. He climbed up onto the office chair, sliding back the hatch to the storage space above. Everything ended up stashed there but he’d never dared search the space, left it to Sabine; it was her hidey-hole.

  ‘Jesus,’ he gasped, as the beam swept across the cavern.

  Boxes, mostly, stuffed with letters, postcards, papers, cards. Years-out-of-date bills. Piles of magazines: TIME, Newsweek, Vogue. Sabine’s rusted Remington typewriter.

  Then, in a corner, an uneven stack, covered with what looked like an old tablecloth. He shone the beam across it. The cloth was filthy, lacy with cobwebs and mould; the stack appeared hunched over, like a tramp crouching in the dust. He pushed himself up so half his body was in the darkened space and tugged at the cloth. It slipped off easily, revealing a dust-caked pile of small boxes, shoeboxes, twenty or so, each with the same two words written across the side: Eric Williams.

  ‘Dear God.’ He reached forward and pulled one of the boxes towards him. There was a date on the lid: 1958. Years ago. Decades.

  ‘Oh, no . . .’ he whispered, dragging more shoeboxes towards him. Each bore a different date.

  George dragged more and more across, throwing them down onto the desk below, silky grey dust cascading, powdering the office floor. Quickly, he pulled down every single box in the stack, until the desk below was a shipwreck of hidden loot, piled high and precarious. Dust everywhere. His hands were blackened, his hair caught up with cobwebs. He got down and roughly lined the boxes along the floor, running in order of year. Each box bulged, heavily stuffed with papers. Each was precisely marked up. Eric Williams. Twenty-six years, twenty-six boxes. Williams had ruled for twenty-six years. Each box was precisely dated. Sabine, Sabine, what on earth had she been doing?

  1956. The year the boxes started. They arrived in Trinidad that year. January 1956, to be precise. Eric Williams launched the People’s National Movement the same month and won his first election later in the year; a famous year in the history of Trinidad. Eighty per cent of the nation turned out to vote him in and the British out.

  George snapped open 1956.

  Newspaper clippings. Yellowed and crisp. Hundreds of timeworn Trinidad Guardian clippings. Tidily snipped. Each dated in Sabine’s hand.

  He scooped the whole lot out in one. Kneeling down, he spread them across the office floor.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ A compendium of Williams: comment, op-ed, reports, photos of him with members of his cabinet, with the Beatles, for God’s sake, with the Mighty Sparrow. With Harold Macmillan, with Gerald Ford. Phrases, comments underlined in blotted blue ink. Sabine’s hand. An asterisk in the margin. An exclamation mark.

  George groaned long and loud, expelling a grand and pent-up disappointment, a disappointment held in for so long he’d almost forgotten it. Stupid fucker. He knew. Sabine had seen Eric Williams speak in Woodford Square, once, maybe even twice, early on when Eric Williams was in his prime; she had been overwhelmed. Sabine had so many theories about Eric Williams. But he’d blocked them out after a while. They had even met Williams at the Hilton once, a strange meeting. They’d fought afterwards. Then 1970, Black Power: Sabine was never the same again. Granny Seraphina ‒ his wife had caught something from that old slave woman.

  Everything was in the box. Not just his political career, but photos of Williams’ daughter, Erica. His dead wife, Soy. Photos of Soy and Williams together.

  George opened 1957. More sheaves of yellowed newspaper cuttings. More Eric Williams. Quickly, he opened box after box in the row: everyone the same. Fragments of Eric Williams’ life. His speeches. His essays and commentaries in the Trinidad Guardian. His comings and goings. Photo-portraits. Eric Williams had been a striking man, as imposing as Churchill or Chairman Mao. His glued-on hearing aid, the heavy dark glasses.

  The 1962 box felt lighter. He opened it.

  ‘Dear God.’

  Letters! Tied with a red ribbon, twenty or so. A few newspaper clippings beneath them. Letters, letters. All addressed to Eric Williams. George scrabbled at the ribbon’s knot, his fingers stiff.

  Dear Mr Williams, the first letter began.

 
; George dumped the box upside down, shaking it. Clippings tumbled out. Letters from his wife to Eric Williams, the Prime Minister of Trinidad. He stared at Sabine’s delicate handwriting. So nonchalant, evoking another woman. Sabine, writing as she talked, free as a schoolgirl. Independence Day. Memories of that day. They’d watched it all on TV. The red, black and white flag hoisted up, the Union Jack fluttering down. Sabine, here in his hands ‒ writing to congratulate Eric Williams, saying something bitchy about Princess Margaret, something very Sabine. His first wife, here in his hands. The wife he’d lost.

  George opened the box for 1963.

  More letters, a bigger sheaf. Dear Mr Williams. He couldn’t read past this opening line. What had been going on? This was madness. Had the letters been sent to Williams? Then sent back? Opened? Unopened? Had there been a correspondence? An affair? He thought hard. Those years, long ago; difficult to know any more. Bad years between them, and then they had almost left Trinidad. And then Williams had died. Had Williams written back?

  On his hands and knees George crawled across the office floor, opening box after box. In each, like a corpse, a sheaf of beribboned letters. Sabine! Her questions, her voice. What had happened? He knew. He’d turned a blind eye. Crisp curled pages of Sabine’s writing on her favourite onion-skin paper. Sabine’s hand. His wife’s outpourings to the Prime Minister of Trinidad.

  George read till dawn. Sitting on the office floor, his back against the wall. He read every letter, mouthing the words. Three hundred and fifty-eight letters in all. Dear Mr Williams. Nothing as straightforward as a love affair: passion, guilt, betrayal, all the usual to and fro. No. They were far worse. He stopped several times to ponder, lost in reveries of their life together. He only knew the half of it, only half her despair.

  The letters were originals. Unsent. Communiqués to the self in some respects. He found no replies and wondered if they were in another stash, other boxes hidden elsewhere in the house. From what she had written, he began to understand.

  I’m sick of George.

  I’m sick from loving him.

  I can’t see past the bars on the gates of this wretched house. There seem to be thousands of them.