‘Darling.’
‘Get off me!’
He stood and stared, shaking his head.
Later, in the garden, I smoked. The green mountain woman peered down at me from her immensity. I knew.
He’s been rolling in you.
Maybe so.
He’s yours. Have him.
I don’t want him.
Take him off my hands.
I don’t want him.
He’s in love with you and I don’t blame him.
I’m very beautiful. Didn’t you know?
Not till I came.
Your husband knew what he was coming to.
Yes. He’s ruined now. Ruined.
I heard a soft laugh, laughter of wry recognition and exaltation.
I took more pills. Slept for days at a time.
Then, one day, George came home excited.
‘Look at this.’ He tossed a small booklet onto a patio table. A downpour had just stopped. Everything dripped and glistened and the keskidees were roused, making a fuss, asking their eternal question: Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?
I picked up the booklet, realising that it was a passport. Trinidadian. I opened it, reading George’s name, his details. I flipped the blank crisp pages to a recent photo at the back. George’s face had changed. His skin had crinkled around the eyes, his cheeks were more filled out and, yes, he was darker. Still a dashing man, though, his eyes azure against his new skin tone. At thirty-seven, George was in his prime. The passport was brand new.
‘I picked it up this morning,’ he explained.
‘How did you get it, you’re not born here?’
‘I have to have it.’
‘Why?’
‘Europeans can’t own land any more. Only Trinidadians can.’
‘So?’
‘So I’ve become a Trinidadian.’
‘What!’
‘I’m a Trinidadian.’
I looked at him, shocked. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘How?’
‘I’ve traded my old British passport in. They’re allowing this.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘I had to. It was that or sell up and get out.’
‘But that’s what they want. They’re controlling who gets what, so that we don’t get it all any more.’
‘Well, tough, I own parts of Trinidad.’
‘But you’re English! How will you ever be able to get back into England?’
‘Don’t worry about that. I’m a born Englishman. By birth and blood. The British Embassy assured me. I had to do it.’
‘And you didn’t discuss it with me?’
‘No.’
‘Jesus, George. When are you ever going to see we’re not wanted? You’re hanging on to your job as it is.’
‘I’m Trinidadian now, so are our children. We’ve lived here ten years. Our home is here. Others are building near by. Soon it’ll be a neighbourhood you’ll like. I’ll buy more land. It’s cheap as dirt. If I lose my job I can develop it. When are you going to see it all, the bigger picture? What do you want me to do? Go back to a desk job in the City? Commute with my briefcase, going to work in the dark, coming home in the dark, on the train and the tube like so many of those poor fucks. I can’t do that. Here I’m someone. We know everyone. What do you want from me? To go back to Harrow on the fucking Hill?’
‘I hate it here!’ I screamed. ‘I want to go back.’
‘Well, go.’ His eyes blazed.
I sobbed, facing him. George faced me back. An awkward fear churned in my gut.
I slapped him. He flinched and put his hand to his face. His eyes became calm and serious and at that moment he matched my heat with grace. I don’t know where he summoned this grace from. A resolve that was his, that was a question of his self-worth, the high price he put on his own head. George valued himself in some way which was delicate, unshowy, tenacious. He knew himself. It was the cause of his magnetism. He nodded, careful and slow.
‘If I push this, I’ll lose you,’ I said quietly.
He said nothing.
But I understood. He’d called my bluff.
Qu’est-ce qu’il dit, the birds outside squawked.
‘Shut up!’ I shouted at them. ‘Shut up, shut up.’
Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?
‘He said go, go. And maybe I should.’
Later, Lucy gave me one of her potions. I knocked it back with more Valium. I slept it off. George went out and got drunk. I wrote to Williams.
Corruption now is obvious! Everybody talks about it. Ten years you’ve had. Like me. Ten years. I’m still waiting for that report. Is that hearing aid even switched on? We all know about the deal with the foreign sewage company, how your ministers asked for more money for the boys, your closest advisers. They say you were shocked at first, to hear about this racket, but they talked you round. The beginning of the end. Now you take this extra cash just like they do.
Beware of Granny. She still shits outside. She’s coming to your door, now. Beware her wrath. Even your old friend Sparrow has turned against you. His latest calypso says it all: ‘Get de hell outta here’. I hear it all the time on the radio. My boxes have grown. Ten boxes now. I hide them in the attic of our office. George doesn’t know. George can go to hell, like you. You were brilliant, excellent, once. Educated friends, C.L.R. James, George Padmore, Aimé Césaire. You knew them all. No wonder they fired you from the Caribbean Commission. No wonder. You were dynamite. Exactly what they didn’t want, a firebrand, a demagogue they couldn’t control. And then you arrest C.L.R. James for fear of his subversive influence. Arrest him! Your teacher, your friend.
I took more pills. That report into basic sanitation in Paramin was never written, maybe not even commissioned. I didn’t care. To hell with it all. I was a fool. And I was married to a man who had carefully thought things through. I couldn’t remember our home in Harrow on the Hill, couldn’t picture it. Then one day I found out, quite by chance, that George had sold it ‒ without telling me.
‘Why?’ I shouted.
‘Because I needed the money.’
‘Again, you never asked. Never consulted me.’
‘Why should I? The house was mine, not yours.’
‘It was a gift to us.’
‘Bought with my parents’ money. My name on all the paperwork.’
I’d never considered the implications of this. I owned nothing. My husband owned me, though. I was chattel, human chattel. I was stuck, truly stuck in Trinidad. The green woman gazed down at me, mute, but never sympathetic.
Still, we threw parties. Parties cured us. Pool parties, dinner parties, cocktail parties. Always Jules, always Irit and Helena and Gabriel, the Bakers. We were proud of ourselves and our home and our children and everything looked as though we were blessed: money, looks, rude health. Our life appeared charmed. And for those times, yes. Parties brought us back together. We flirted and showed off, alive to our desire for each other. Our physical appetite for each other never waned. Parties made us remember this and I forgave George his infidelities, which sometimes he even confessed.
‘I’m so, so sorry,’ George once wept, falling onto his knees. ‘Forgive me. I’m so greedy. I don’t love the others. I’m your slave, Sabine. You have me in chains. My heart is chained to you.’
George drank more and more. At weekends it was nothing to drain a rum and soda at 11 a.m., drinking throughout the day.
‘The heat burns it off,’ was his belief. He spent hours by the pool, reading, swilling the ice in his rum. He still cleaned the pool daily, lovingly, hoovering and scattering chlorine and squeezing blue drops into the water. He lived in shorts and cotton sports shirts, flip-flops. His transistor radio was always on, tuned into the local news or the cricket reports. He never lost his English accent, though. If anything, this part of him grew stronger. The whole island spoke in a mellifluous sing-song, in banter and picong, all playful and backward and uncompromising. But George boome
d. His laugh was stupendous, a guffaw so loud people smirked at him, behind his back.
Still, I wrote to Williams, mostly at night, sneaking off to the study, when the house was dark.
Strikes everywhere, hundreds, one every day in the news, unrest in the oil fields, in the sugar factories. The PNM’s response? To ban strikes! You are corrupt and so is George. Is this the island’s curse? Did the Amerindians curse us all, condemn us to our follies, to what the island offers so freely? To lust and booze and failure to govern. A national inheritance? You’ve lost the plot. You are overwhelmed and overturned. You are indentured. You are enslaved. You are colonial. You are stuck in the revolving door of all these past methods. All men are born equally stupid and greedy.
Granny Seraphina fell ill. Boils on her legs, open seeping wounds.
‘She woh go to de hospital,’ Venus said. ‘She woh go to no doctor either.’
‘Has this happened before?’
‘From time to time.’
Their home on the hill was poorly ventilated. Now the boys were older, Granny slept on the floor. The boils appeared out of the pureness of poverty. We brought Granny home, her legs wrapped in bandages made from scraps of material. She slept in Venus’s room, next to the kitchen. Lucy lanced and treated her boils, patching them with soothing herb poultices. Granny approved of Lucy’s cures. The old woman lay silent in Venus’s bed. Venus slept in Sebastian’s room as he was away at school. Bernard and Clive came, too. For a week, we camped. The house was full. Pascale and Venus’s sons whooped and ran wild. George made himself scarce. He didn’t like Granny at all.
‘That woman gives me the creeps.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘She’s trouble.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want you encouraging her to stay.’
‘She’ll stay till she’s better.’
‘She looks like she’s already dead.’
‘Quite the opposite. Granny is very alive.’
One evening I peered in to see how she was and found her bed was empty. The bedside light bathed the room in tobacco-coloured light. Singing. I could hear singing, though. Granny? Singing, in high lucid tones. I crept into the room. The door to the small bathroom ensuite was open. The shower was on. Water fell like continual rain; the sound brought on a raw and guilty feeling. My shoulders crawled. The sound of singing and rain.
The shower curtain was pulled only half across. Granny’s old dress lay crumpled on the floor. I dared to look, quickly, surreptitiously ‒ and there she was. A black human cross. Granny Seraphina, arms outstretched, head back, the water bathing her eyes, falling into her nostrils, her open mouth. Singing all the while, her black body lathered with creamy soap. Granny, soaped and lathered and singing like an angel in my house.
Later that evening, Lucy came to me, finding me in bed.
‘Madam, drink this.’
I drank her cooling tonics frequently. Most were innocent enough, no more than soluble aspirins. They tasted quite pleasant, too, and brought relief. This tonic looked different, darker, shreds of bark spiralling in it.
‘What’s this?’
‘Drink it. It good for you.’
I sniffed and tasted it. ‘Oooh.’ I grimaced. ‘That’s gosh.’ I sipped again, then looked at her squarely, balancing the glass on my knee.
Lucy always looked sad. Her sadness was like mine and this made me feel comforted.
‘Lucy, what happened?’
Lucy’s brown eyes were molten soft. She wasn’t sure what she should say to me. The slope of her shoulders, the sag of her breasts, even her face was lopsided with grief. Her still eye bored through me. ‘My daughter die, madam.’
‘Oh Lucy, I’m so sorry.’
She nodded, as if to confirm the fact to herself.
‘What happened?’
‘Nobody does know. De doctors don’t even know. She get sick. Some kind of brain fever.’
‘How awful.’
‘Yes, madam. She died in the car, on the way to the hospital.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Why?’
‘It all very sudden.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Years ago, madam. She was a woman, she was twenty-two years old.’
A tear spilled down one of Lucy’s cheeks.
‘You weren’t able to help her with your medicine?’
‘I try. But nothing help her. There was nothing I know of to save her.’
I gazed into the tonic Lucy had prepared for me. ‘Can you save me?’
‘No, madam.’
‘Sometimes I feel like I’m dying, too.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I’m homesick, you see. Can you give me something for it?’
‘Yes, madam. Drink what I give you.’
‘The Africans who came to the Caribbean on the ships, they were homesick, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘They never got back either, did they?’
‘Some go back in spirit.’
‘How?’
‘They drink a broth. A poison.’
I looked at her, hopeful. ‘Could you mix me up such a broth?’
‘No, madam.’
‘I’m sorry, Lucy.’ I hung my head.
She left. I sipped her tonic and was soon asleep, dreaming of Sebastian and Pascale. They were waving at me from a spit of sand. Sebastian held a small clay urn in his hands. He opened it and began to scatter something from it. Ashes. Ashes fluttered down like birds, caught on the wind. Some fell and floated on the sea. I stood across a bay from them, on another sand-spit, ankle-deep in water. Some of the ashes floated on the surface, towards me. They made a dappled pattern. Large black flakes: who were they scattering? I didn’t know. The ashes floated towards me, in on a tide, slipping between my feet. I danced backwards to avoid them, knowing then. It was George. George’s ashes, wet and sodden and clinging to my shins.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
DE MAN WOH BITE
It became more and more common to see black- and brown-skinned members at the Country Club, including Eric Williams and various hangers-on. They liked to swan about, drinking cocktails and laughing loudly at the bar. Mostly I avoided them.
One lunchtime, I was there at the Club alone. Sebastian was away at school in England and Pascale was attending primary school near by. I had taken to spending lunches and early afternoons alone at the Club, sunbathing near the fountain. I read and smoked and watched the iguanas scuttle across the grass. Or I swam lengths in the Olympic-sized swimming pool, sometimes up to forty. I was known to the staff and so when a waiter came over with a tray, I was surprised. I hadn’t yet ordered a drink.
‘Hello, Martin,’ I said to the handsome young black man in a pristine white shirt.
Martin seemed a little nervous as he approached and when he lowered the tray I saw a white envelope. Martin and I looked at each other with mute and mutual curiosity. I raised my eyebrows and he pulled his lips down, miming a serious face. I opened the envelope and read the short note.
‘Where is he?’ I whispered, shocked, peering behind Martin.
‘At de bar, madam.’
‘Jesus God.’
Martin smiled, delighted to be the messenger.
I read the note again, lips moving.
I looked up towards the covered bar area. Yes, I could just make out a familiar figure sitting there. Suit and tie, dark glasses, hearing aid. A teenage girl was with him. His daughter, Erica?
‘He daughter here from school in England,’ Martin explained. ‘He bring her here sometime. He like to be with her.’
‘Martin. Good God. He’s invited me up for a drink.’
Martin’s face creased into a toothy grin.
I laughed to cover my fear. ‘Are you surprised?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit. What shall I do?’
Martin looked up towards where Williams sat, head down in a newspaper.
‘Go up
, nuh. De man woh bite.’
‘I can’t. I’m too nervous and I hate him.’
‘He not so bad, Miss. He come many times. He good to us.’
‘You still trust him?’
Martin’s face fell to a slack uncaring expression. He shrugged.
I was wearing a bikini and I was covered in suntan oil and still damp from a swim. I peered upwards at the besuited blind-deaf figure and a murderous hatred stirred through me. Did he remember me from the Hilton? Did he connect me with Irit, with my husband?
‘How does he think he knows me?’
‘He aks meh if you is Mrs Harwood, madam.’
‘Did he, now?’
‘Yeah, de lady who ride de green bicycle down Port of Spain.’
I stared at Martin, stunned.
Martin’s eyes danced and he stifled a laugh. ‘You does ride a bike one time, madam?’
‘Yes.’ I felt sad all of a sudden. ‘Yes, years ago. When I first arrived.’
Martin looked impressed. He shook his head.
I noticed Williams’ daughter had gone down to the pool and was standing at the edge, about to dive in. Williams had dropped his newspaper and was waiting to watch.
‘He’s here alone? No bodyguards, no entourage?’
‘He alone, madam.’
His daughter was thin and leggy, pretty. She executed a neat precise dive into the pool.
I sighed. ‘Tell the Prime Minister I’ll be up in a moment. I’m just going to change into some clothes.’
‘Your daughter is a strong swimmer,’ I said to Eric Williams as I approached. As it turned out, I had only brought a flimsy polka-dotted wrap dress with me, so I wore that, purposely leaving some bosom exposed. My short blonde hair was still wet and combed back off my face. My skin was somehow nuder for the recent swim and the sun cream. I wore flip-flops and I was tanned a honey-brown. On behalf of Granny I didn’t extend my hand or offer any form of deference to who he was. I sat down in the wicker armchair opposite him and made myself comfortable. Martin glided to our table.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Page 30