‘A Bentley, please.’ I smiled and Martin nodded.
‘Another rum and soda for me,’ Williams said, modifying his accent towards the Trinidadian of the educated classes. Around us heads were turned away but I was aware of ears pricked, of people taking notice.
‘Is she here on holiday?’
‘Yes.’
‘At school, in England?’
‘Yes.’
‘My eldest, my son, is in Kent. He went back a few days ago.’
I couldn’t see Williams’ eyes through his dark sunglasses. I was conscious that he was cool, though. He studied me as I talked. His manner was attentive, courteous, as though storing private ideas. He was much more composed than I was.
‘Has she her father’s brains, too?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And her mother’s looks?’
He exhaled a violet plume of smoke and nodded thoughtfully.
Everyone knew of Williams’ second marriage to Soy Moyou. Soy was the love of his life: young, glamorous, half Chinese. She died of tuberculosis two years after they were married. Erica was their only child.
‘Her mother wasn’t just lovely to look at ‒ as you are. She was a very bright woman.’
I blushed, despite myself.
Eric Williams shot me a wry considered smile, catching me off-guard.
‘I used to be . . . so self-contained before we met, you know? Some people can have that effect on you. They can make you need more than just the self.’
I nodded, a little ashamed. I wanted to flirt, to be in control again, but my throat had dried up. I was struck dumb by his aura of power and by this candid approach. He was working me. Power, ma soeur. I remembered Irit’s words. But he was still assessing me from behind those dark lenses, gauging my reactions.
‘Yes.’ I steadied my gaze. ‘I’ve always felt like that, about my husband, George.’
‘Then he’s a lucky man.’
‘How long has it been since your wife died?’
‘Fourteen years. She died soon after our daughter was born.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Erica is my joy. She keeps me alive, especially on bad days. To have more than just the same old job,’ he joked, swirling his rum.
‘Once, if you’ll forgive me, you were passionate about the job.’
‘Yes.’
‘I saw you speak. Twice, in fact. In Woodford Square.’
He looked genuinely taken aback. ‘What?’
‘Massa day done. I heard you say that. Four years ago.’
Williams moved around in his chair. Touché. I was pleased with myself; now he was off guard. I smiled. ‘Now we drink at lunchtime in Poleska de Boissière’s old home. A relative of yours, maybe?’
I could tell he didn’t want me to speak like this. Not yet. But what had he expected? To gaze at my shapely figure again, to amuse himself while he was alone at the bar? Had he just wanted a female companion for an hour?
Eric Williams lifted his dark glasses. He propped them on his head, staring at me. His eyes were a bold coloured-in brown; the whites were shiny, like polished ivory, like the eyes of a man half his age. Clear and wide and open.
‘You telling me I Massa now?’ His accent dropped, he spoke like the man from those university-of-the-street days.
‘Your words. You just said that.’
‘Everyone say dat.’
‘Would your wife . . . would Soy have said that about you, too?’
Williams stared and half laughed at my impertinence.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I muttered.
‘Soy wanted nothing of politics. She never wanted me to go into politics full-time at all, not like this. If she was still alive I would never have got so involved. She didn’t want that. It would all be different.’
‘Who else, then, if not you?’
Williams shrugged. ‘There are other people. Robinson. Others.’
‘I’ve been here ten years. We arrived the day you launched the PNM. I’ve found this country . . . tiring. It’s got the better of me, too.’
‘Too? You think it’s got the better of me?’
‘Yes.’
‘No running water for your maid who lives up de hill?’
‘Isn’t that the least of it?’
‘You come up here to take another potshot?’
‘I was invited.’
He nodded.
‘Who criticises you, Mr Williams?’
‘Dey all like to criticise; gossip is rife.’
‘And you kill them all off, your opponents. Isn’t that right?’
Williams gazed at my breasts. I let him look. I could have opened my dress, let him feast his eyes. I was suddenly turned on, and furious.
‘You give your husband this . . . criticism?’
‘It’s good for him.’
‘Why don’t you leave? Trinidad is none of your business. You and your type, you and your husband. Why are you still here?’
‘My husband has become a Trinidadian. He owns land now, and you have let him buy it. He doesn’t care what the politicians do. He loves Trinidad the way you do. He loves it here. He’ll die here.’
Williams snorted. ‘White men. White men like George Harwood. They all take, take, take. All the second-raters, those who aren’t good enough to survive in England, they come out to the West Indies and swan about. Buy land, build. Set up shop. They come and stay, ruin their second-rate minds. Is that what you want? To be married to such a man? A man who’ll ruin you, too?’
I glared.
‘He wasn’t such a man when he arrived. George has changed.’
‘Is this all personal enough for you now?’ Williams smiled.
I stood up, trembling.
‘Think. The oldest of twelve, your father in the post office. Oxford, teaching at Howard in the States. All those books, all that time you’ve had to think, all the time in the world to think up new ideas for Trinidad, to make a difference. Kick those fat horses out. But now all you want is this ‒ this life, the old way. You never really wanted to change things too much. You can’t be bothered. All too much hard work, even though it doesn’t really work for the people of Trinidad. You keep things ticking along. The Catholic Church has fought you and won. Your cronies are a bunch of thugs. You listen to gossip and you haven’t managed to change much. You were brilliant once, just like George. Now you sit and drink rum at the Country Club, a place which once barred black men like you from even setting through the door. The Country Club should be blown up. Those bastards, those second-raters you talk about ‒ they made you.’
Williams’ face was set in a look of half fury and half disbelief. I sensed a grim mood sweep over him, that I had overstepped the mark.
I looked at my watch.
‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I have to pick my little girl up from school. Goodbye, Mr Williams. I hope you enjoy the rest of your daughter’s visit.’
I looked around the bar and noticed it had gone quiet, people straining their ears, pretending they hadn’t been listening. I hurried, almost running down that path and across those splendid wide hardwood floors towards the Saaman tree outside.
I was unhappy for days. I couldn’t ban Williams from my dreams or my daydreams. He has appeared. Come to save his vexed and oppress children. He has come forward, cast down he bucket. Everywhere people will bless de name of de hero. Eric Williams. I tossed and turned. The Robber Man, the Mighty Sparrow. Eric Williams. They harassed me in my sleep. I had nowhere to go, no home to return to in England or France. I took pills and they sent me back to sleep and I dreamed even more about Eric Williams, saw him mocking me, sitting in the white wedding cake on the savannah. Eric Williams wore a white suit. He was reading his own History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago aloud to Granny Seraphina and she was nodding, sitting at his feet, her face aglow with reverence.
George and I argued.
‘What’s got into you now?’
‘What’s got out of you? You choose to
be blind.’
‘You’re crazy. Politics again, Sabine?’
‘Am I crazy? At least I’m alive. Thinking. At least I’m not second-rate.’
George stared.
‘Isn’t that why you came here, why you accepted that lowly office job out here, a dot on the map? Out here you can be someone. You can be a master, invent yourself, a little king.’
George stood very still and calm; rage choked in his throat.
‘We invented this island. Wasn’t that the whole point of the West Indies, eh? A get-rich-quick scheme for Europeans?’
‘Is that what you think I’m doing here?’ George said, his voice steely.
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
‘You had it planned all along, didn’t you? You shrewd bastard. You never planned to leave. You’d done your homework. You came to buy, didn’t you? Build, settle, be the king of your castle. Drink rum. Fuck the local women. Keep the wifey sweet, kid her along. I love you, I love you, Sabine. Tell her anything, drug her up.’
I thought of the Cavina, those great black corbeaux in the sky ready to pick me over. George knew then. Dreams and ambitions he never dared reveal, not in one go.
‘Well, why not? Eh?’ George retaliated. ‘OK, why not? Rather a king here than a little clerk in a company in the suburbs of London. Who did you think you were marrying? What did you want from me? Why don’t you save yourself? Leave. Women want men to make them, save them. They get disappointed if we fail, if we do the wrong thing. But what the fuck have you ever done apart from bitch and complain and point out men’s errors?’
‘I hate you,’ I spat.
‘You used to be lovely, sunny, fun. You used to love me. I could feel it.’
George’s eyes pooled. I had never seen him like this.
He was right. At that moment I didn’t like, let alone love him any more.
We made love. Hot and passionate and desperate to find each other again. Eric Williams joined us in our bed. I was making love to Williams, too, not just George. I was disgusted, writhing and unable to escape the clutches of either man. This country, this house under the hip of the green woman, this backwards language, this heat, this mad fucked-up legacy of corrupt ruling. This island was cursed. Nothing, nothing would ever wipe away what had gone before. Granny, Venus, my children who were creole. It was all more than I could stand. I hated my husband as I fucked him, as I let myself be fucked; hated Eric Williams; saw them as the same, the same man.
TRINIDAD, 1970
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BLACK POWER
Trouble had been brewing. Like an approaching hurricane in late August, when the keskidees fall silent and the clouds flee from the sky to outrun the winds, there were signs. Strikes, strikes in the oil fields, strikes on the buses, strikes and more strikes. March 1970, the sun was ferocious, relentless. The country was still delinquent, newly pregnant after carnival. There were marches out on the streets; black people marching in the midday heat. Enough was enough. Rallies out at St Augustine, at the university. A new movement was formed: the National Joint Action Committee. A charismatic student leader, Geddes Granger, spoke up for black disappointment, wanting a complete change of the system of our way of life. Trinidadians had a black government but no black power.
Granger was educated, angry and articulate. Halle-bloody-lujah! I was sick, sick, sick of it. First Williams, then Granger. The same thing all over again, the same man. Except Granger was a much more glamorous figure than Eric Williams; younger. A handsome, bearded black man in jeans and an African shirt, his fist raised. Power to the black man, he shouted. And yet, just like Eric Williams, his eyes were shrouded behind dark glasses and there was something about this screened-off demeanour that was all too familiar. I wanted to knock their heads together.
Venus was unhappy.
‘Granny listen to dese Black Power fellers in Woodford Square. She too old to stan up all day in de sun, man. But she stan up and she listen to dem. She gone de whole day and when she come back she does talk a lot, man. Talk more dan ever about change, about startin’ over here in Trinidad, a new time . . .’
‘Maybe you should go, too,’ I said, testing her.
‘Nah! I doh want no trouble. Granny a mad crazy woman. Nah, not me in de street. Granny Seraphina tell meh to march, too, you know, Miss. She tell meh to quit mih job here, grow afro and be proud and go out and pelt bricks at de Red House. She gone mad, Miss. I ‘fraid she. Boy, she vexed wid de PNM. She gone back to Woodford Square, dis time wid broomstick and she listen to de new leaders, what dey sayin’. I tink she go lick dong de entire buncha dem government fellas. She dangerous, Miss!’
The PNM had reacted badly to all this Black Power business. Stokely Carmichael, the great Black Power leader himself, was barred from entering Trinidad. His books were banned. And Carmichael was a Trinidadian! A black man banned by the black government. The PNM loathed him and his type. Everywhere afros and hippie beads like in America, everywhere Negritude on the streets, anger expressing itself in protest, in barely contained malevolence. There was even a chapter of the Black Panthers in Trinidad. Holy God on earth. And thousands gathering in Woodford Square, all over again, this time marching to Shanty Town, all led by Geddes Granger.
I drank lots of rum. I paced about the house. George didn’t seem to care.
‘It’ll all blow over,’ he predicted. ‘We need to sit tight, wait it out.’
I threw a glass of rum in his face.
‘Why did you do that?’
I glared at him. ‘It’s all beneath you, isn’t it, all this shouting and marching? Emotion is vulgar to you, isn’t it?’
‘You’re being vulgar now, yes.’
I stormed off, slamming doors. ‘This country can go and rot. Let them kill themselves.’
Lucy was stoic, calm. She walked in to us every day from Santa Cruz, over the saddle cut into the mountain. Sometimes she took a route taxi. But her fellow travellers harassed her when she asked the taxi to pull up outside our gate. Leave dem blasted white people. You still house slave? House nigger to white people? She told us of their taunts.
‘Lucy, don’t come in then,’ I begged.
She wasn’t bothered by it all.
‘Dey can’t stop me comin’ to work,’ she complained. ‘I not angry, not like dese fellas.’
I scribbled furiously to Eric Williams.
Granny pelting bricks, Granny there with her broom, outside the Red House. You forgot her, didn’t you? She’s out on the streets. I can’t go out there. I am trapped in the house. But I should go out, too; join the protests, throw bricks at you. I’m that mad. I have a bad feeling about all of this. God bless Granny, keep her safe. I wonder what you are doing with yourself; what you are going to do about all this?
The phone rang late one morning. It was Mrs Roberts, Pascale’s schoolteacher. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Harwood, but we’re sending the children home. It’s not safe. We’re closing the school for the rest of the week. Please come and collect her.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Riots. Riots down in Port of Spain. A Molotov cocktail hurled into the home of the Minister for Education. Shops on fire.’
George came home right away.
‘It’s true,’ he confirmed. He’d sped through town; his hands were shaking. We left the house immediately, driving with all doors locked, windows up, towards Pascale’s school lower down in Winderflet. Everywhere, black faces were leering into the car. Small stones hit the windscreen, the back windows.
I clung to the edge of the car seat. ‘Their own government did this,’ I cried. ‘They did this to themselves. The white man left, quit, years ago. Why are they blaming us? What have we done? What have we done to this place?’
George was like granite, his jaw twitching.
‘Fools!’ I cried. ‘We’re stupid fools.’
We turned into Valenton Avenue to find a traffic jam, a long queue of cars. Black people standing on the pavement, glaring. More of them tha
n us. I began to pray in English and then in French: Marie, pleine de grâce, protégez-nous, gardez-nous, nous sommes - CRACK! A cobweb of glass appeared in the windscreen.
‘George!’
George wound down the window, shouting obscenities at a group standing on the corner, threatening to take them on, man to man, hand to hand. The line of cars began to move. George accelerated.
‘That wasn’t very clever,’ I gasped.
‘The fuckers.’ George shook and sweated.
We were halfway up the hill. A white March heat. Trees, cars outlined in silver. The hairs on my arms quivered. We inched our way up the steep road. White people in a line, windows up, cars turning into ovens. White people melting and their hearts thumping and women shouting at their husbands. Arguments raged in every car on that hill up to the school. Women hurled abuse, praying, crying. Marriages teetered on the brink of divorce, ultimatums were being delivered. Mine would wait, till we got home.
We turned the corner, driving along the side of the school. All the classrooms were empty, the playground deserted. The teachers stood outside the sheltered back entrance with the children lined up in their forms, clutching the smaller children by their hands. Small frightened faces in pink- and blue-checked dresses. Khaki short pants. Two security guards waited with the teachers, both black. They peered at us through the hole in our windscreen.
‘That’s Mrs Roberts.’ I recognised Pascale’s form teacher. She saw us, our windscreen, her face gaunt. She gripped Pascale’s hand. In a moment I was outside the car, hugging my daughter. I hugged Mrs Roberts out of nerves.
‘Thanks so much,’ I gasped.
‘We’ll call you when things change,’ she promised.
Everywhere, mothers were hugging their children, cars were nudging and edging forwards, horns beeping, white faces strained and sweating.
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Page 31