‘Thank you,’ George said stiffly, hatred blossoming in him. It was a surprise to him; he hadn’t known his own feelings.
‘I liked the interview with Brian Lara recently. Mossad agents in the jungle!’ Manning laughed, genuinely tickled.
The twit was already getting the better of him. Manning was relaxed, at home and George was so hot he could hardly speak.
This was no Eric Williams. Williams was better dressed, for a start. George leaned forward and switched the tape recorders on.
‘Yes ‒ the blimp. What is it?’
‘Eh, eh.’ Manning looked taken aback. ‘Howyuh mean?’
‘Is it a US-backed spy ship?’
Manning laughed out loud.
‘Well, is it?’
Manning suppressed a knowing smile and stared hard at him.
‘Chávez,’ George pushed. ‘The new threat. The new Castro in the Caribbean. It’s not so far-fetched. Trinidad’s oil installations out at sea. It must make George Bush rather nervous, no?’
Manning looked away and kept smiling, as if the questions would just go away.
George studied him.
‘You have a wild imagination,’ Manning said, finally.
‘I have my sources.’
Manning sighed. But he wouldn’t be drawn. George knew the blimp was also used to show off, to prove a point, like at the match the other day.
‘Did you enjoy the football match?’ George tried.
‘Oh yes, indeed. You were there?’
‘I went with a friend. We were sitting right opposite you, in fact. We enjoyed the day. Pity about the football.’
‘Well.’ Manning steupsed. ‘It was a friendly game, nuh.’
‘Eric Williams was a keen footballer. What do you think he’d make of Trinidad and Tobago in the 2006 World Cup?’
‘Ah . . . Eric? Pleased as punch.’
‘Fifty years of the PNM. Quite a year, eh?’
‘An exceptional year.’ Manning grinned. This was more what he had come to talk about. The football in 2006, the cricket World Cup in 2007, the economy booming. Panday, the leader of the opposition, arrested on corruption charges. The Prime Minister beamed with all this good fortune.
‘You must have been, what, about ten years old when the PNM came into power?’
‘Yeah, man. Just a boy.’
‘A son of the PNM, would you say?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Yet in the past, you’ve called yourself the Father of the Nation.’
Manning stared, grinning.
‘Eric Williams’ ‒ George put steel into his voice ‒ ‘I would have thought, took that title, no?’
Manning’s grin faded.
‘The little boy I took to the football match needs a father.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
George read from his notes. ‘“Between 1991 and 1995 the PNM did not spend enough time looking after its own children.”’ George looked up. ‘Do you know who said that?’
‘I can’t remember offhand, no.’
‘You did.’
Manning shot him a fierce stare.
‘“I assure you that shall not happen again,”’ George read.
Manning’s forehead glistened. The tape recorders whirred. He took on a careful, studious expression.
‘Ten years have passed. That little boy. Born poor. He’ll stay poor.’
Manning huffed. ‘Trinidad’s economy is booming,’ he rehearsed. ‘Trinidad is healthier, thanks to all the foreign investment. Plus we have a Social Vision for 2020. You must have heard of it.’
‘I’ve read about this vision on the PNM’s website. The 2020 Vision pages are empty.’
Manning checked his watch.
George removed his reading glasses. ‘I haven’t been such a great father myself. I’ve been selfish. I got rich here, you see. Easy to get rich in Trinidad, for some people.’
‘Have your children forgiven you?’
‘Oh, one hates me, one adores me. My wife despises me, though.’
Manning looked puzzled. The sun’s gaze, through the glass, was beginning to get to him.
‘She despises you, too, of course. And Williams. Eric Williams broke her heart.’
‘Did she know Eric?’
‘We all knew Eric. Tell me,’ George pressed, ‘don’t you ever feel uncomfortable in this house?’
‘Why?’
‘A slave owner’s house. My son-in-law’s former family home, in fact. Yet you’re using it as the seat of government.’
The Prime Minister steupsed, irritated.
‘There was a moment, Mr Manning,’ George continued, ‘when everything could have been rethought, way back.’
‘That’s naive.’
‘Or revolutionary.’
‘Revolutions! Pah. Look at what happened to Haiti. Cuba. We didn’t have to fight for power, anyway. We were handed it.’
‘I don’t need a history lesson.’
‘What’s your point then?’ Manning snapped.
‘Trinidad needs a good government. Not a bad father. Not a father at all. Leave that to the man in the street. Stop patronising the people of Trinidad.’
Manning’s eyes shone. The interview would soon terminate, George could see that. He didn’t care: now was the moment. Win her.
‘I don’t mean to speak out of turn,’ George persisted. ‘But if you’ll forgive me, Prime Minister, things could be so different.’
‘Then why don’t you start up a political party of your own?’
‘I asked my wife the same question once.’
‘Sounds like she’s been an influence.’
‘Yours too, no?’
‘Leave my wife out of this.’ Manning stood up; he looked down at George. ‘You stink of rum and yet you talk down to me?’
‘I’d hardly talk up to you, would I?’ George joked. ‘In general.’
The Prime Minister’s eyes were hard, treacherous, his lips pursed. The tape recorders grinned.
‘Dictator,’ George blurted.
‘What?’
‘Opportunist!’
‘This interview has come to an end,’ Manning spat.
‘I know you,’ George slurred. ‘I know your type. You greedy, selfish . . . colonial!’ The headache broke through the shield of rum and pills, arriving in hot waves, up the back of his skull.
‘Takes one to know one,’ he sneered. ‘The police, beating people up every day. No one important ever complains. They’re a squad of thugs.’
Manning bent down, level with his head: eye to eye. His teeth were bared.
‘And you?’ he rasped, gazing at the tape recorders. ‘I know you, too. We’ve all seen your type. White man in the West Indies. Second-rate, eh? Never management material in the UK. Here, a big shot. A hot shot. Couldn’t face going back. Stayed too long, eh? Too long in the sun. Drank too much rum. Came here years ago to build and take. Take, take, take. You’re nothing special, Mr Harwood. You’re common. You are the past and you can stick your critique of my government, elected by the people, for the people, up your pathetic old white ass.’
Outside, the sun was so intense George feared venturing past the steps. The light scalded his eyes and they bled tears. He hid in the shade of the long sweeping porch. The bored security guards eyed him with a sense of purpose. One walked towards him but he smudged. George wiped his eyes, blinking. He couldn’t see anything, just smudges and light. He clung to the wall, a hammering in his head.
‘Sir.’
George tried to speak. The headache scraped into the back of his skull. Tears of pain flowed, pain and fatigue. He wanted to sleep. His legs were melting, melting from his bones; a slow feeling poured over him, over his tired body. He felt himself falling, sliding down the wall, and was unable to stop himself as he fainted, down beside a large potted fern.
Sabine clasped her daughter’s hand. The scanner room was quiet, the floor cool, a buffed puce hospital-pink. The room made her nervous; that aloof, sterile
atmosphere of all medical institutions.
The MRI scanner loomed feet away, a hollow white tube. George lay on a trolley about to disappear inside it. White robe, a tag on his wrist. His face was pale, his forehead damp.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he insisted. ‘This is ridiculous.’
A whirring sound started up; the trolley moved forward, taking George into the tunnel of the machine.
‘I don’t see why I should be here,’ George complained. His voice was muffled.
The scanner screen stood to one side of the tube. The technician switched it on. Snap, snap. Snap. It took grainy black and white images of George’s skull. The front, the back. The side.
Sabine gasped.
The tumour was immediately apparent, even to the untrained eye.
‘Mummy, that’s what it is,’ Pascale sobbed.
Clearly defined, snuggled neatly into the left side of his brain, a growth. Dense, meaty. How could it be there? Something so big, without forming a lump?
‘My poor love,’ Sabine wept.
Pascale wiped away tears.
The machine clicked, snapping shots; macabre smeary black images of a skull, of the matter it contained, of the presence of the parasite tumour. It was present from every angle.
‘How can we take it away?’ Sabine said, her voice officious.
‘Come on, Mummy.’ Pascale led her out of the room.
Sabine sat down. Her hands buzzed with nerves, her feet, too. Aches in her throat, her ribs, her wrists. What was that thing growing inside her husband’s head? Had she seen right?
The surgeon came to speak to them while George got dressed.
‘It’s been there for years,’ he said. ‘You have to decide quickly what you want to do. If we don’t operate soon, he won’t survive.’
The iguana tumbled from the coconut tree. The dogs barked and crashed after it. Sabine went to put the kettle on.
Jennifer steupsed. ‘Go sit outside,’ she commanded. ‘I go bring de tray.’
Sabine joined Pascale and George on the porch. Pascale’s eyes were glassy, dreamy; she was only half-listening to what George was saying about the Prime Minister.
‘Stupid arse. I read him a piece of one of his own speeches! Didn’t recognise it at all. I was scared, though. Whitehall’s a big place. Almost farted.’
Pascale laughed.
George fished out the two tape recorders, placing them on the table near by, patting them.
‘Ray will be pleased.’
Sabine looked at her daughter, who looked just like George. She was bold like him, clever like him. A Trinidadian, like him.
Katinka waved her fluffy tail. Sabine bent down to scoop her up, sitting the animal on her lap. George rambled on about Manning. The sun sank, setting itself in crème tangerine. The keskidees chattered and swooped above the pool. Jennifer brought out a pot of tea and slices of ginger cake.
‘W’appen?’ she chided. ‘Dis place like a funeral parlour. Eat, nuh. I don’t want to see allyuh ent eatin’ mih cake. Ah bake it fresh. I goin’ home.’
‘OK then, Jennifer.’
Jennifer disappeared, steupsing.
Sabine watched George talk, his eyes crinkly. Radioactive with life. The pleasure of knowing him, of being with him all this time. The knowledge of loving him; she could never speak about it. Why had she taken up with George? She didn’t know. She was still deciding if she liked him, that was the truth. After all these years, George and her, a mystery; a love affair she had never fully got the measure of. What was he thinking? She understood: George didn’t want to know what they’d seen in the scanner room. It didn’t matter to him.
George said he was going for forty winks. He disappeared into the bedroom, slept soundly for hours. Sabine talked with Pascale. They decided the operation should be performed in Trinidad. That he shouldn’t be flown to England; they’d never get him on a plane.
‘Do you want me to stay here?’ Pascale asked.
‘No, I’m fine. I’ll be OK. I’ll speak to your father later.’
Sabine wandered the house, drifting across the back porch. The two tape recorders were still on the table. Should she press play? Listen in? Fifty years. She still wondered about him, about what George got up to when he wasn’t with her. The little black boy: his friend. Their relationship had been full of secrets. Could the surgeons extract the lump? Could they remove the blame he’d harboured all these years?
The rains arrived that afternoon. The yellow pouis had been exploding in the hills for weeks and this meant certain rain. And yet, when it came, Sabine was surprised: she’d forgotten about rain. Rain in the late afternoon was rare. It brought on a mixed-up earthy smell. The garden sighed. The Robber Man came to her, from years ago. Send yuh back in chains. Just like a slave. And yet she’d remained. Jennifer’s Aunt Venus had mocked her for the articles she’d snipped out. He a good man, she’d said about Williams, all those years ago. Now Venus lived in Peckham. Those days of her life, with Lucy and Venus, when the children were small and delicious. Pascale with her afro of bubble-curls, Sebastian all buck-toothed and freckled. When she couldn’t wait to see George at the end of every afternoon, cycling out to greet him on her green bicycle. Riding to the dock. Eating snow cones smothered in condensed milk. Foraging for the long, hard seed pods fallen from the flamboyants: they played pretend fencing matches. The end of the dry season then, too. She’d forgotten everything between those days and the day she saw the malicious tumour in George’s head.
And what if George disappeared? Her husband of half a century. Vanished. Dead. One minute there and then not. What would she do? The thought alone evoked the onset of nerves, a swell of crisis in her stomach. A dead-dull feeling inside her, as if parts of her, her core, her inner stuff, would also cease to generate. Her nails, her hair might dry out. The hum of life would fade inside her. She might cease walking; she could halt mid-sentence, mid-step, even. One day Jennifer would find her just stopped, like a watch, sitting on the floor, or maybe under a tree in the garden. If George died she might stop living, too. That happened to couples who’d lived together as long as they had. One dies and the other fails to continue. It was that simple. Would that happen? She felt sure it would. Weeks later, she would be found sat upright, eyes closed, under a mango tree.
Jennifer sat moping in the kitchen. The big dogs stood in the doorway, noses twitching, wanting attention.
‘Jennifer, stop moping.’
‘I ent mopin’.’
‘The silver needs a polish.’
‘I ent polishin’ no silver.’
‘Then go home. You said you would.’
‘Eh, eh, what wrong wid you?’
Sabine huffed and sat down on one of the stools around the kitchen table. She rubbed her eyes. They were dry and red.
‘How’s Talbot?’
‘He walkin’ and feelin’ better in himself.’
‘And those thugs still wearing uniforms.’
‘He keepin’ to himself. He ent looking for trouble.’
‘Don’t have children.’
Jennifer laughed.
‘I need a stiff Scotch.’
‘When de last time you and Mr Harwood take a holiday?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Go, nuh.’
‘Where? Up the islands? More beaches? Nah.’
‘Go to England.’
‘George would never come.’
‘Take a tour. It good for you.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Howyuh mean?’
‘I don’t feel like it any more.’
‘I ent ever take a holiday.’
Sabine looked at Jennifer; she was dreamy-eyed. ‘Where would you go?’
‘Germany.’
‘Ugghh. I hate Germans.’
‘To see de Soca Warriors. Take mih family. Chantal and Nathalie-Anne and Talbot. Everyone. Stay in a hotel. Watch all tree games.’
‘Mr Harwood just saw them. He said we’re going to ge
t a beating.’
‘I doh care. It would be great to see dem.’
‘It’s a big thing, I suppose.’
‘It de biggest ting I ever know.’
‘I wish I could afford to send you all. I fear it’s too late for tickets.’
‘Can I bring de kids dong here to watch de games on TV?’
‘Of course.’
‘We can pretend it’s Germany.’
‘Mr Harwood would like that.’
Sabine came awake in her dream. Germany: the Trinidad striker Stern John was steaming down the pitch, England players falling and tripping by the wayside as they tackled him. He thundered past, but couldn’t get far enough down the pitch to score. The ground slipped beneath him, shaking, tipping him backwards. She woke with a start, eyes wide open. The bed trembled.
‘Jesus Christ. George!’
She clasped his hand.
‘George, an earthquake.’
The bed bucked. The earth hummed, building to a larger sound, a growl. Dimly, she was aware of groans outside, the trees, the walls of the house creaking, the grass flinching. Menacing sounds, like something was going to snap. The dogs whimpered and whined, clawing at the glass sliding doors, trying to get in. The ground heaved and swelled, a giant ocean wave.
‘She’s moving again!’ Sabine shouted.
George was awake, holding her hand tight. They were pinned to the bed by a force pressing them down.
‘She’s rolling in her sleep.’
‘Christ, it’s a big one. Sabine, don’t try to move.’
‘I can’t.’
A framed photograph crashed to the floor. Perfume bottles leapfrogged across Sabine’s dressing table. The bed swayed, throwing them together so they clutched each other.
‘Stop! Stop!’ Sabine commanded. Every moment was a minute, each second she expected the green woman to stop thrashing her hips. But the shaking didn’t stop. Outside, the rushing of palm fronds. Wallop. A tree smashing to the ground. The dogs clawed and barked. There was a sense that the ground would open up, that the house would fall into the jaws of the earth. Marie, pleine de grâce, Sabine prayed. Protégez-nous, gardez-nous.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Page 14