Then, silence.
They remained clutching each other. Sabine was in tears. George held her in his arms whispering soothing words: how much he loved her, loved her from first sight, how much he’d loved their life together, how everything would be all right.
‘You’re not dying, are you?’ Tears glistened on Sabine’s cheeks.
‘No.’
They lay for several moments on the bed which had lurched a foot from the wall. Perfume bottles lay smashed on the floor; scents of Chanel and Dior hung in a heady cloud. Sabine and George gazed at each other, like they had a thousand times before.
‘I’m still yours,’ Sabine whispered.
The dogs barked and clawed outside.
George kissed her on the cheek and rose. Sabine lay on the bed, closing her eyes, remembering Stern John. This time he belted the ball into the goal. Red everywhere, erupting. Jennifer jumping for joy. The green woman, her lush rounded curves bucking and jolting. She could never compete, never win her husband’s heart back from this bewitching country, not now.
The dogs clambered over George and he couldn’t do anything until he’d fed and reassured them. Inside the house, paintings and pictures had crashed to the floor. Glasses had jumped from shelves, plates had fallen and smashed. Outside, the damage was much worse. A coconut tree had fallen down; its head draped in the pool, the long fronds like hair. The dogs padded round to stare at it. Katinka sniffed and woofed, her fluffy tail up like a flag. The three dogs escorted him on his tour of the garden and its walls and yes, two of the walls had long rambling cracks. In one, the crack was so wide he could insert the tips of his fingers, tracing its length from ground to top. Another tree had fallen down in the front garden, an old lime tree; limes like yellow golf balls were scattered over the lawn. Out behind the walls, electricity cables were down. The heavy-legged vulgar condominiums across the road were still standing, though.
‘Jesus God,’ George uttered, staring at them.
Jennifer’s home.
George ran to his truck, driving out the gate in moments, speeding along the empty road. Everywhere trees were down and cracks had split the road. Tarmac pushed up in unstitched scars; telegraph poles were leaning, wires slack. He accelerated. Talbot, Chantal, the little baby girl, he hoped no one was hurt, that no one was asleep inside when the quake hit. Pelting down the road, he took the turn by the gas station, the tyres screeching. La Pompey stood in the forecourt, the only person about. He laughed as he saw George’s truck burning rubber and waved a fistful of red dollar notes. George floored the accelerator, roaring up the steep sharp bends of Paramin. No cars coming down. No one around. People were still indoors, too frightened to venture out. Tremors often followed. Up and up and up and then right, then up again, until he was upon the bend where her house had stood for a hundred years or more, since slave days over. Up here the slaves came to recover from those times, grow yams and cassava, spend their days in blissful contemplation of the clouds, watch the grass flourish, their children grow fat.
The house laughed at him. Jennifer sat on the top step. She laughed, too, when she saw him appear, so worried. Baby Nathalie-Anne sucked her thumb, sitting on her grandmother’s lap. Talbot appeared at the door and stared.
‘What yuh doin’ up here, Mr Harwood?’ Jennifer’s face lit up, triumphant. ‘I tellyuh already. Nuttin go lick dong dis house. No hurricane. No earthquake. Nuttin. It steady as a rock.’
CHAPTER TEN
DEPARTURE
In the kitchen Sabine soaked raisins in rum. She’d sprinkle them over coconut ice cream for dessert, some fresh pineapple, too. Incredible that the quake hadn’t tumbled the shack down Paramin Hill. Imagine that, forty or so shacks thrown into that great open valley; imagine the disaster if a really monstrous quake hit. One day, one day, it just might. Imagine the tenacity in those wooden limbs, those posts laid down as temporary. Slaves like chattel, like cows. Granny Seraphina. Bless her soul. What will she do with George? George never liked Granny much, afraid of those sour yellow eyes. Poor Granny. Poor George.
Kersplash. The sound came from outside, of George diving into the pool.
The dogs woofed, running round.
The doctors had told him to swim, but not to dive. Silly, silly fool. The operation was at the weekend. Eight hours it would take to remove the tumour. That morning George had talked of taking a holiday, after he recuperated, a trip to London or Paris.
The raisins kept for weeks. Irit had taught Sabine how to do them. Excellent sprinkled into fruit salads, cakes. Always a jar of rum and raisins in the fridge. Good with almost anything.
She stopped.
‘George?’
A knowing, right there, between her shoulder blades. The garden was too quiet. None of the usual splashing.
‘George?’
‘George,’ she said louder, wiping her hands on her dress. ‘Are you there?’
She put down the jar of rum and raisins, striding from the kitchen, through the house, calling his name, seeing the dogs behaving oddly, their tails lowered, cowering, nervous round the pool. Then she was running and shouting, ‘George!’ He wasn’t in the pool. Where, where was he? Was he in the garden? Had he stepped out? Was he tinkering with his barbeque? Could he have gone round to the back door?
‘George!’
The dogs whimpered and then she was struck, immobile, yards from the pool, feet nailed to the ground. The dogs could see, they knew. Sabine willed herself forward, walking towards the pool.
George was there, at the bottom. His hands were outstretched in a V, in the diving position, as if he’d died mid-air, as if he’d dived and died and fallen to the bottom of the pool. Sabine couldn’t hear herself screaming. Then she was in the pool, trying to reach George at the bottom, holding her nose and diving and trying to reach him and coming up for air and screaming and then the big dogs, out of fear and excitement, jumped into the pool, paddling round in circles and barking. Katinka jumped in, too, snapping at the water. The keskidees flew out in a party, swooping and squawking and dive-bombing the dogs, who barked louder and struggled for the sides, unable to get out. Sabine managed to haul herself out, her dress sodden. She screamed and bellowed for help and jumped in again, holding her nose, this time reaching the bottom, enough to grasp a handful of George’s hair and move him a little before she burst up for air. She hoisted herself out again, finding the pool scoop, trying to poke at him, dig up under him and raise him up, all the while screaming and the dogs barking and paddling round in circles and then at last the neighbours knew something terrible was happening. They came running.
Floris and Edmund Knags arrived first. They heard the commotion and saw Sabine in her dress, soaking, standing at the side of the pool with the scoop and the dogs barking, trying to get out.
Edmund jumped in, diving to the bottom. He brought George up.
‘My love, my love,’ Sabine sobbed, kneeling at the side of the pool, grabbing for her husband’s body.
Edmund pushed and Sabine pulled and George’s body heaved forward in one movement, falling onto Sabine’s lap. She bent over him, kissing him. ‘No, no, no. Get him a blanket!’
George’s long hair lay like strands of seaweed down his face. His eyes were closed and he looked like he was only asleep. Peaceful. ‘No, no, no,’ Sabine wailed. A blanket arrived and they wrapped him up as best they could. More neighbours turned up in twos and threes and Sabine couldn’t see them through her hurricane of tears. They gaped, appalled, saying, Oh, Sabine, Sabine. No one knew quite what to say or do. Sabine wailed and rocked her husband’s wet body.
Quickly, the house was full and the driveway chock-a-block, cars on the driveway, on the grass, on the verge outside the house. Passers-by would assume there was a party going on inside. Sabine sat by the side of the pool with George on her lap, wrapped in a blanket as if to warm him back to life, warm his bones. She wouldn’t move or let anyone take him from her. She sobbed and rocked and choked and kissed his head. ‘My love, my love, my love
,’ she cried, and rocked.
The house bustled. Phone calls were made to the district officer, the undertaker. Someone telephoned Pascale. Someone else telephoned Sebastian in London. Someone called Dr Sebastian Baker.
Dr Baker came immediately, hurrying up the drive and through the house. He gasped when he saw Sabine and George by the pool. He knelt down next to them and put his hand on Sabine’s bowed head.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said as he kissed Sabine on the forehead. Sabine let him examine George and pronounce him dead, saying his heart had gone, saying he’d do the paperwork, get the certificate ready. He’d have to go back to the office, he’d be back again soon.
Sabine couldn’t see Dr Baker through her grief. She only remembered the dances at the Country Club, all those years ago, how he had held her close, how things were so different then, a different life for her and George. Dr Baker bent closer and held her tight for a few moments but had no words, nothing to say to her.
‘I won’t last long without him,’ Sabine whispered thickly to his ear. ‘I won’t last too much longer here.’
Pascale flew through the house and saw her father lying there, wrapped up like a mummy. She ran to Sabine and only then could Sabine let her husband go and stagger to her feet.
‘He’s dead, he’s gone,’ she wailed and the women locked in an embrace, clutching each other tightly. Pascale sobbed and Sabine groaned like an animal. No one knew what to say and so they left the two women by the pool with the large dead man wrapped in a blanket, his long wet hair flowing over his peaceful face. They held each other and talked to him and waited for the undertakers to arrive. The dogs were wet and exhausted, whimpering and lying flat on the grass, not too far from George. They whined, a nervous desperate sound, wanting to know what had happened. Someone went over to comfort them and lead them away to the front garden.
Sabine stood on the steps of the red and vanilla church in the pounding sun, sunglasses clamped to her face. Her beautiful son Sebastian had flown back from London the next day. The house was still full of people when he arrived: neighbours, friends, friends of Pascale’s. People had brought food, soups and hops and ham and pelau. Jennifer was shocked; she kept uttering Oh gorsh and dropping things. The dogs were quiet. They kept looking into the pool. Sabine hadn’t slept for days. She kept repeating the story of finding George dead in the pool again and again, to anyone who’d listen, as if convincing herself that it had happened. Pascale had gone mute and was staring all the time, staring into her future. How could George be dead? He was much too young; he had more time, surely? She still had so much more to say to him. It wasn’t right. How could George die? That lump in his head ‒ they hadn’t finished arguing.
The hearse appeared. The sombre-faced pall-bearers hovered round the back doors, Sabine’s son amongst them. Sebastian wanted to do it, wanted to carry his father’s body inside the church. The same church where he was baptised, where he wanted to have his own funeral. Sabine and Pascale moved towards the entrance, where they stood waiting for the other mourners; they resembled soft statues, statues of themselves in the process of falling. They tried to hold each other up but their shoulders and knees sagged. They held hands and didn’t speak. Those who came to pay their respects kissed them softly on the cheek, whispering their regrets.
The coffin slid out on a trolley. Everyone waited inside the church. Sabine and Pascale and Jennifer sat in the front pew. Six men carried the coffin. Frank Farfan was one of them. George’s younger brother had flown in, too, three of George’s regular bridge buddies and Sebastian. Sabine fought waves of nausea and remembered the Cavina and the day they arrived on the island, those big black birds circling overhead. They could take her now. Pick her bones clean; strip her of her sins, of her bitterness. Eric Williams, on the bandstand that day in Woodford Square so long ago. Tears fell.
The men linked elbows under the coffin for support and carried it slowly up the church steps, stopping where the pews began. The organist began to play and the congregation rose. The singing in the church chilled Sabine’s bones. It was somehow too intimate, too damn intimate. One voice seemed to be leading the choir, clearer and higher than the rest, a crystal voice. This one voice penetrated Sabine, slowed her breath and made her body soften. She dared not look towards the choir stalls; she kept her head bowed, eyes lowered. The coffin was laid on a stand waiting next to their pew. Sabine didn’t look up or around. The singing was getting to her, gnawing at the very edges of her. Sebastian slipped into the pew with them. They all stared upwards, towards Father Andrew who was conducting the service with great reverence. The priest had come to their home every Wednesday night to play bridge with George, too, every Wednesday night for decades.
The boy’s voice entered her. Only then did she let herself gaze across to the choir. Clock stood with one hand over his breast, peering down at George’s coffin. He sang like a bird, pure and high and lucid, like a nightingale alone in a tree. He was singing his heart out. His eyes were big and black and baleful, as if he knew of things others didn’t. Did he know her secrets? Yes, probably. He was George’s friend, after all. The boy sang and her heart rose and fluttered and the boy sang for her, for her only, so that she could remain upright.
The next morning, Jennifer was late in. Sebastian was asleep. Katinka had been digging a tunnel into the neighbour’s garden and was covered in dirt. Sabine picked her up, dumping her into the deep scullery sink out the back, dousing her down with water and squirting her with shampoo. Stupid little dog. She scrubbed and lathered the dog up so she looked like a poodle, all white balls of froth. She rinsed and then dried her with an old towel, scattering flea powder on her, watching the fleas jump off. Katinka was a present from George, years ago; George had always been good with presents. Sabine hadn’t slept. It wasn’t possible to sleep, or think clearly. Adrenalin still coursed through her, she could feel it like a river. Adrenalin and caffeine and the hundreds of cigarettes she had smoked in the last few days. Her head pounded and yet somewhere, inside her, she knew she wanted to close her eyes.
A creak sounded at the gates. The dog yapped.
‘Thank God, Jennifer’s here,’ Sabine told her.
Jennifer appeared but didn’t say hello at first. Her face was puffy, eyes red with tears. She assumed Jennifer was still crying over George. Then she realised something else was wrong. Jennifer looked frightened.
‘Jennifer, what’s happened?’
‘Nuttin.’
‘Jennifer. Don’t say that. What’s wrong?’
‘Oh gorsh, nuttin.’
‘Don’t nothing me; I’m not in the mood.’
Jennifer’s eyes were filmed over.
‘Come on, out with it.’
‘Dey treaten Talbot.’
Sabine stared. ‘Who . . . what, who’s threatened Talbot?’
‘One o’ dem police fellas. He see Talbot las night up on de hill. Talbot say dis police fella was lookin’ fer him. Talbot doin’ nuttin. He just walkin’ dong de road, mindin’ himself. De police man stop his jeep and he tell Talbot he go dead him de next time he see him. Next time four eyes meet.’
‘Four eyes meet?’
‘Next time dey meet alone. Eye to eye.’
‘Jennifer, this is serious. One of those police thugs threatened to kill your son.’
Jennifer nodded. ‘Talbot ’fraid to go out. He hidin’ all now in de house. He ’fraid, madam. I ’fraid for mih son.’
‘Quite. A policeman has threatened to kill him.’
‘De policeman say an ol’ white man come to de station two weeks ago and vex de Superintendent. Bobby Comacho, dis Superintendent, he know de white man. Mr Comacho give dem hell.’
‘Oh God. Oh no. George. What did he do?’
‘Madam, who else would it be?’
Sabine exhaled loudly. ‘Oh my dear George. Oh Jennifer, I’m so sorry.’
‘Mr Harwood tell mih he go pay for a lawyer to help Talbot.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. He
tell mih not to say anytin to you. Keep it secret.’
‘George said that?’
‘He was goin’ to pay for a lawyer, to defend Talbot.’
‘How? In court?’
‘Das what he say . . . he want to help.’
‘Oh dear Lord. He never told me half of the things he did . . . Mr Harwood had a separate life . . . oh God . . . that stupid man. I mean, oh God, what was he thinking?’
‘I tink he doin’ it for you, madam . . . in a funny way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I ent know exactly, it jus my feelin’ . . . he want to make good.’
‘Oh George!’
‘Talbot ’fraid dese fellas bad, ’fraid dey come back, but Mr Harwood say he go protek him. Now he die and news mus get out. Dese fellas come back fer him, treaten him. How Talbot goin’ to get by now Mr Harwood dead?’
‘Jesus Lord.’
‘Mr Harwood dead. Now Talbot, mih son go dead too.’
‘No!’ Sabine shrieked. ‘I give you my word. No one is going to touch your son. No one.’
Jennifer had tears in her eyes. She steupsed and went towards the kitchen. ‘I goin’ to mek tea.’
Sabine gazed across at the garage wall. The newly polished green bicycle stood against it like a child waiting to be noticed. She had ignored it, purposely, to hurt George, to make a point. It had collected even more carrier bags full of junk since she last inspected it. Stacks of newspapers had been placed over the wicker basket in front. Strange. Like someone had tried to cover the bike again, cover it up. She went over and began to relieve the bike of its cargo, the bags of garage tools which hung from the handlebars, wiping the dust that had gathered. She lifted the newspapers out of the wicker basket and peered inside. In the basket she saw a crumpled brown Hi-Lo bag. She reached down and pulled it out, feeling it was heavy in her hands. She looked inside and saw the smaller parcel, wrapped in waxed paper and instantly knew what it was, what George had been hiding in the basket of her green bicycle.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Page 15