‘Guess who came yesterday?’ Irit gushed one day.
‘Who?’
‘Eric Williams.’
‘No!’
‘Oui.’
‘On his own?’
‘Yes, of course. Late, after I’d closed. Earlier I’d received a telephone call from his secretary. She asked me if he could come then. He likes to be private.’
‘And he came?’
‘Of course. He has very good taste. He likes to give presents.’ I couldn’t hide my amazement.
‘He bought several things, all the most expensive. He knew exactly what was what, has a very good eye for what a woman might want. He even asked me to order something, too, something from New York. He chose all the finest quality.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Charming, natural. I liked him. We talked. He sat down and drank my coffee.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Yes. I am a Trinidadian citizen now. I will vote for him in September and I told him so.’
I felt heat blossom in my face, heat in my chest. ‘I bet that shocked him.’
‘No. He has whites in his party, some influential French Creoles. He’s not stupid; he wants his party to appeal broadly. And he’s a man, he likes women. I fluttered my eyelashes at him.’
‘He’s married, no?’
‘Yes.’
‘He bought gifts for her?’
‘I didn’t ask! He has many friends, I expect.’
‘Where did he sit?’
‘Where you are. Right there.’
‘Williams sat here?’ I almost shot straight out of that great peacock-backed chair.
‘My dear. You’re blushing like a child.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Well, nothing wrong with that. I blushed, too. He will be in charge. Run things. Power, ma soeur. I had to go home and have a cold shower afterwards.’
‘I saw him speak a few weeks ago, down in Woodford Square.’
‘Yes ‒ I know.’ Irit’s eyebrows rose. ‘Good for you.’
I wanted to tell her about my boxes of clippings, how I’d been following Eric Williams’ career. I wanted to confess, as though it were a sin.
‘The PNM will win this election in September and then all the British will leave soon afterwards. Give them a few years. Then the PNM will run things, formally. The Queen will come and shake hands and say bye-bye. Williams will be Prime Minister.’
‘We will leave, too.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. Our contract will be up by then.’
‘And you think George will leave his new job and all that is happening here? Go back to that dreary weather and all those grey, sick-looking people in England? Live in the suburbs? Why should he go back?’ Irit levelled her long lashes at me. ‘What’s there for him? Why don’t you like it here?’ Irit spoke like a villain, like she was in cahoots with the PNM, part of their secret force. And for a moment I didn’t doubt that she had charmed Eric Williams. I could see them conferring, thick as thieves, both cool and glamorous and serious in their intentions.
In September 1956, Election Day was fraught: a British warship was anchored in the Gulf of Paria, another off San Fernando in the south. Eighty per cent of the population turned out to vote with long winding queues all over Trinidad. Schools and community centres were packed. That evening the masses rallied in Woodford Square, baying for Eric Williams to be with them, beckoning him from a cool shower, his hot dinner. Euphoric, he went to speak to them again, taking the bandstand. His public speeches had already made him an iconic figure: in a year, he’d caused a revolution without spilling a drop of blood. Eric Williams’ PNM won thirteen of twenty-four seats; it was all announced on television.
Irit was exuberant. ‘I’m glad for them,’ she toasted the PNM. ‘I’m glad they will kick those fat horses out. Hooray for Trinidad and for Eric Williams. I gave Glory the week off. It’s like carnival again this year, eh? Mas in Port of Spain, everybody drunk. I think the people are shocked. This is historic, no? Viens, come over for some rum punch.’
Helena was cautious. ‘So now maybe the Country Club will accept me as a member.’ She smiled her serene, distanced smile. ‘I’ll be the first to put my name down. Or maybe I won’t. I’ll see. Maybe now I’ll have the choice.’
Venus was overcome. ‘We goin’ to de Red House to celebrate, madam. Granny gone already. Ah meeting her der. She cryin’ all day, she overcome. She dancin’. De house decorated wid PNM flags, wid balisiers. Oh gorsh. Dis a good ting, madam. Carnival in tong in trute.’
Carnival, the Robber Man, bloody Eric Williams and his big flashy car, his robber talk, the people of Trinidad absorbing his every word up there on the bandstand. I thought of that hot day in Woodford Square, of his queer stare through the window of the car, his eyes on me. Something wasn’t right and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Eric Williams now had the chance to deliver what he promised. Love? Oh God. The people of Trinidad were in love with him, all right. Somehow, we all were ‒ such was the need for him then and there, at that particular hour in Trinidad.
I was happy for Venus. This was her victory. Even so, we stuck to our own kind. We entertained a lot at home, socialised with our own type or Trinidadians of our own class, those with light skins who went to the clubs, others from George’s working world. We refrained from talking politics.
We drank more rum.
I brooded. When we’d left Southampton eight months earlier, I hadn’t bargained for this. I thought we were coming to a friendly charming island. Palm trees. Beaches. I hadn’t bargained on sullen black women in the supermarket, on being laughed at on my bicycle, on ‘racism’, on snooty French Creoles, on seas infested with man-o’-war, or this Eric Williams and all that came with him. I wanted to make sure George was on board, that he too would be looking forward to getting back to a life in a temperate country.
‘I want to have a baby,’ I informed George one morning.
‘All of a sudden?’
‘No. I’ve been thinking about it.’ My thoughts were that once children came along, George would see sense, pack up and go back to England at the end of our contract. ‘I want your babies, remember?’
‘Of course.’
‘And I want to leave in two years, before we’re sent back all tied up in chains.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like the Robber Man threatened. I want to come and go in peace.’
‘We will.’
‘You’ll be sad, won’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m not afraid of the Robber Man.’
I inspected my brown skin. It was impossible to stay indoors all day. I was changing, too, in some indistinct way. The heat made me weary, less me.
‘I don’t want our children to be Creole,’ I told George. ‘It’s far too complicated. I want them to be English, European. I don’t want my children to be part of this.’
‘But “this” is exciting.’
‘I want to leave.’
‘But we’ve just got here. Remember, a few months ago. I’m doing well in the job. The boss is already talking promotion.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you said three years.’
‘And you said you were flexible.’
‘I was. Before I got here.’
Two months later, I was pregnant. With my son in my belly, I rode past the same spot where our crate marked FRAGILE was tossed onto the dock, where the old Chevrolet waited for us. I gazed out at the Gulf of Paria, wanting to jump in; I could have happily swum back to England. My head was full of ideas and possibilities, and of what lay ahead, of what I would do when we got back to England. Two years away. I thought of the new woollen clothes I’d need in England, new shops I’d visit. Shops! And theatres and cafés and everything would be familiar and I could say I’d once lived in Trinidad, but it was a strange place. That the people there were waiting; that they were somehow en train d’attendre . And that I’d never fe
lt at ease there. We had arrived at the wrong moment. Eventually, I’d acclimatise, get used to England again. Eventually, I’d forget Trinidad completely.
My son was born in the month of August. The Mountain, a Spencer Tracy film, was showing at the Starlight Drive-In at the shopping plaza in Diego Martin; we didn’t see it all. My waters broke halfway through, flooding the car seat. George sped me to the Park Nursing Home opposite the cricket oval in St Clair. Dr Sebastian Baker met us there.
‘Here we go, Sabine,’ he smiled, all scrubbed and gowned. Sebastian Baker had a talent for doctoring, especially this kind of hands-on work. In his green theatre gown, he was no longer the ladies’ man, the limer, drinker, raconteur. He was tense as a scholar in his approach, gracious in his bedside manner. His eyes glinted and he smelled of antiseptic soap.
‘No wriggling,’ Dr Baker joked softly, placing my legs in the stirrups. My son had curled up inside me, his backside pointing downwards as if he were already suckling my breast. The midwife remained mostly silent yet I understood her every instruction: breathe, push, pant, strain, push again. George had brought me in at half past ten and by two in the morning there was still no progress. The baby was stuck, unable to turn around. Dr Baker grew calm, and calmer still as the evening wore on, as I panicked more.
‘This may have to go Caesarean,’ Dr Baker muttered.
‘No!’ I cried, more frightened of the knife than anything. ‘I don’t want a big scar. I want to wear a bikini!’
Dr Baker raised his eyebrows.
‘I’m serious!’ I shrieked. I was serious. I’d seen other woman with Caesarean scars, a great mess on their stomachs, as if clamped back together with coat hangers.
Dr Baker fell quiet. Sweat beads popped on his forehead and the air was a fog despite the jalousie shutters. The delivery-room lights dazzled like radiant sunshine even though the clock showed the dead of night. But I’d more strength left in me.
‘Please, no knife, no cutting,’ I begged.
The midwife steupsed and turned her back, busying herself in the corner.
‘Please,’ I whispered.
Dr Baker nodded.
I lay back on the hospital bed and prayed, opening myself up wide. His hand slipped inside me, enough to get a gentle grip, enough to turn my son round. Oh, he was quick as a fish. In and out and then he caught my son as he slipped from me in his coils and fluid.
It rained. It rained my son. When the storm broke, relief surged through me, racking my body in aftershock. I bucked out the rest of what was inside me, the swell sending me into a stupor, a grand and intoxicating relief, the relief of all births, of all deliverances. I wanted to sleep heavily and immediately but George ran in from the waiting room, speechless.
‘A boy!’ he cried. George kissed me, weeping, his warm tears falling onto my damp face. Dr Baker and the midwife attended our new baby.
Venus was delighted with our firstborn.
‘Watcha go call him?’
I had already suggested the name to George, on the way home. He’d agreed. It was a fine name.
‘Sebastian. Sebastian Wilfred Harwood.’
‘Madam, he so handsome already. How he get so handsome?’
Two years later, again at Park Nursing Home, I gave birth to Pascale. She was bonny and bright-eyed from the day of her birth. We took her home and she fitted right into things. George had persuaded me to stay one more year. I agreed.
Now we were four. A family. This was a new time for us. My children were both born on the island. They were Creole. I was only dimly conscious of this, at first. Venus mothered them almost as much as I did, hugging them to her black breast, singing them her African lullabies, loving them as her own. They wore her smell as much as mine, they knew her voice, obeyed her wishes. They kept her in their eye, tracked her movements. She could hush them when they cried. So my children knew two mothers: one black, one white. They extracted love from us equally, needed us equally. I wasn’t troubled by all this, not at first. I was glad of Venus’s help. In her large extended family an infant was always being nursed. Venus owned a natural passed-down wisdom when it came to mothering and I observed her. I came to care for her sons, too. Granny Seraphina looked after them mostly. Granny Seraphina: by then she had become a fabled luminary, such was the reverence with which Venus spoke of her. I saw Bernard and Clive now and then, Venus’s children, when Venus brought them over. Even so, my relationship with Venus’s children was different. They didn’t wear my smell on their skin.
George and I made love often, sometimes twice a day. Once, George returned home from work early, full of passion. The children were asleep, Venus was preparing dinner.
‘I’ve been thinking of you,’ he whispered into my neck, as he pulled me into his arms.
In the bedroom he peeled off my clothes, gasping at my still-swollen belly, my milk-laden breasts. I was overripe, vulnerable, fruit exploded and fallen from the branches of my former life. George fed on me, just like an infant, even more love-struck with the mother-wife I’d become than the girl he’d met on the beach-front. He delighted in my body’s changes; he was intoxicated with my new shape and smells. Our lovemaking was full of hope for the future.
In the early hours of the next morning, the room was still dark and the day still unbroken when George moved over me.
‘I know you’re all relying on me,’ he whispered. ‘I know only too well. And you can trust me. I’ll be there for you, all three of you.’ But he sounded lost or somehow sorry for himself.
The children learnt to swim before they could walk. We tied a foam bubble around their honey-brown bellies and tossed them in the sea. Both swam like dolphins. The four of us often went to Tobago to swim in the flat transparent waters at Pigeon Point.
‘They’ll be so different from the other children when they return,’ I commented. ‘Like little urchins.’
‘Sea urchins,’ George laughed.
‘We can send Sebastian to your old school.’
‘Indeed,’ he agreed.
I was happy then. I saw us moving back to our house, a wedding present, in Harrow on the Hill. I saw the children living at home with us. They would have dual nationality ‒ born in the Caribbean, but able to get British passports because of George. I saw them integrated and settled back into a more civilised lifestyle. Little did I know that George’s old school took boarders.
But we stayed on ‒ signed another contract. Forbes-Mason promoted George to managerial status. George persuaded me: he was so eager about the new position in the company.
‘And our children are so perfect, like you,’ he whispered. ‘You have made me rich. Let me repay you. Let me make something of myself here.’ We fell into a swoon of success: George’s new position, a bigger salary, our beautiful children. I was almost happy in that small house opposite the Country Club. The babies distracted me.
‘I want to show you something,’ George announced one day.
‘Now?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ll take you there.’
‘But the children . . .’
‘Venus is here.’
I went to get my handbag and sunglasses, rather excited, hoping George had bought me a present.
He drove me down Saddle Road, way down, past St Andrew’s Golf Club and then past Andalusia Estate, where the road became very broken and full of potholes; then even further down into lower Winderflet, following the river, driving towards the turning for Maracas.
‘Are we going to the beach?’
‘No.’
We turned a corner. Ahead of us lay a stretch of badly surfaced road, a wall of mountains to the right, to the left what had once been a cocoa estate, Perseverance Estate, now fallen into ruin. George drove a little further and stopped the car.
‘Why have we stopped?’
‘To look at the view.’
‘What view?’
‘Of our land.’
‘What?’
George got o
ut and walked over to my side, spreading his arms out, gesturing across a wide expanse of bush. ‘What do you think?’
I stared.
‘George, what do you mean?’
‘All this is ours.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No. I paid one dollar per square foot. I’ve bought three plots, all this right along the road.’
I didn’t get out of the car. George got back in and started the engine, driving slowly past his purchase, examining it with pride. I was silent, trying to understand. We’d passed this stretch of bush many times on the way to the beach. I had ignored it; it was meaningless.
‘Don’t you like it?’
I laughed.
‘It’s prime property.’
I glared at the land. Impenetrable scrub; the grasses were neck high. It wouldn’t have been possible to walk on it.
‘What do you think you’re going to do with it?’
‘Build a house.’
‘What? You’re crazy. Oh no, no, no. Here?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
‘I’m not living here! In this jungle.’
‘We’ll raze it all, clear it off. You’ll see.’
‘Nobody lives out here, George. I’m not living out here on my own, with you at work all day. Are you mad?’
‘Others will buy. We’re the first.’
‘We already have a home. In England, remember?’
His eyes glazed over.
I understood it then: now that I had babies George thought I was content for ever in Trinidad.
‘Stop the car,’ I commanded. George stopped. I got out and slammed the door, stalking back the way we came, down the broken tarmac.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Page 23