The dance continued till long after five o’clock, but Anita had to leave at three. Sebastian got tired of sitting down in a corner of the room while she whisked around. He felt just a trifle sulky, for he had wanted to leave an hour before, but she, drinking of an intoxicating mixture of admiration, success and excitement, had implored him to stay a little longer. They went home almost in silence, he sleepy, she tired, each thinking the other offended. It was the first little cloud between them.
“It is nothing,” thought Anita, “we shall make it up tomorrow night.” She thought of something and smiled, but as she peeped at Sebastian and saw him peeping at her, she assumed a more serious expression. Tomorrow, not tonight.
Once inside the bedroom she started to undress quickly, took out a few pins and went to the table to put them down in the cigarette tin in which she kept her knick-knacks. Her mother, who was lying on the bed and listening with half-closed eyes to Anita’s account of the dance, was startled by a sudden silence, followed by the sound of a heavy fall. She sprang down quickly, bent over the prostrate form of Anita, and turned to the little table to get the smelling-salts. Then she herself stood motionless, as if stricken, her senseless daughter lying unheeded on the floor. There, in its old place in the cigarette tin, lay a little chain of gold.
The Cricket Match
by Samuel Selvon
London, UK
(Originally published in 1957)
The time when the West Indies cricket eleven come to England to show the Englishmen the finer points of the game, Algernon was working in a tyre factory down by Chiswick way, and he lambast them English fellars for so.
“That is the way to play the game,” he tell them, as the series went on and West Indies making some big score and bowling out them English fellars for duck and thing, “you thought we didn’t know how to play the game, eh? That is cricket, lovely cricket.”
And all day he singing a calypso that he make up about the cricket matches that play, ending up by saying that in the world of sport, is to wait until the West Indies report.
Well in truth and in fact, the people in this country believe that everybody who come from the West Indies at least like the game even if they can’t play it. But you could take it from me that it have some tests that don’t like the game at all, and among them was Algernon. But he see a chance to give the Nordics tone and get all the gen on the matches and players, and come like an authority in the factory on cricket. In fact, the more they ask him the more convinced Algernon get that perhaps he have the talent of a Walcott in him only waiting for a chance to come out.
They have a portable radio hide away from the foreman and they listening to the score every day. And as the match going on you should hear Algernon: “Yes, lovely stroke,” and “That should have been a six,” and so on. Meanwhile, he picking up any round object that near to hand and making demonstration, showing them how Ramadhin does spin the ball.
“I bet you used to play a lot back home,” the English fellars tell him.
“Who me?” Algernon say. “Man, cricket is breakfast and dinner where I come from. If you want to learn about the game you must go down there. I don’t want to brag,” he say, hanging his head a little, “but I used to live next door to Ramadhin, and we used to teach one another the fine points.”
But what you think Algernon know about cricket in truth? The most he ever play was on the street, with a bat make from a coconut branch, a dry mango seed for ball, and a pitchoil tin for wicket. And that was when he was a boy, and one day he got lash with the mango seed and since that time he never play again.
But all day long in the factory, he and another West Indian fellar name Roy getting on as if they invent the game, and the more the West Indies eleven score, the more they getting on. At last a Englisher name Charles, who was living in the suburbs, say to Algernon one morning:
“You chaps from the West Indies are really fine cricketers. I was just wondering . . . I play for a side where I live, and the other day I mentioned you and Roy to our captain, and he said why don’t you organize an eleven and come down our way one Saturday for a match? Of course,” Charles went on earnestly, “we don’t expect to be good enough for you, but still, it will be fun.”
“Oh,” Algernon say airily, “I don’t know. I uses to play in first-class matches, and most of the boys I know accustom to a real good game with strong opposition. What kind of pitch you have?”
“The pitch is good,” Charles say. “Real English turf.”
Algernon start to hedge. He scratch his head. He say, “I don’t know. What do you think about the idea, Roy?”
Roy decide to hem and leave Algernon to get them out of the mooch. He say, “I don’t know, either. It sound like a good idea, though.”
“See what you can do,” Charles say, “and let me know this week.”
Afterwards in the canteen having elevenses Roy tell Algernon: “You see what your big mouth get us into.”
“My big mouth!” Algernon say. “Who it is say he bowl four top bats for duck one after the other in a match in Queen’s Park oval in Port of Spain? Who it is say he score two hundred and fifty not out in a match against Jamaica?”
“Well to tell you the truth, Algernon,” Roy say, now that they was down to brass tacks, “I ain’t play cricket for a long time. In fact, I don’t believe I could still play.”
“Me too, boy,” Algernon say. “I mean, up here in England you don’t get a chance to practice or anything. I must be out of form.”
They sit down there in the canteen cogitating on the problem.
“Anyway,” Roy say, “it look as if we will have to hustle an eleven somehow. We can’t back out of it now.”
“I studying,” Algernon say, scratching his head. “What about Eric, you think he will play?”
“You could ask him, he might. And what about Williams? And Wilky? And Heads? Those boys should know how to play.”
“Yes, but look at trouble to get them! Wilky working night and he will want to sleep. Heads is a man you can’t find when you want. And Williams—I ain’t seen him for a long time, because he owe me a pound and he don’t come my way these days.”
“Still,” Roy say, “we will have to manage to get a side together. If we back out of this now them English fellars will say we are only talkers. You better wait for me after work this evening, and we will go around by some of the boys and see what we could do.”
That was the Monday, and the Wednesday night about twelve of the boys get together in Algernon room in Kensal Rise, and Algernon boiling water in the kettle and making tea while they discuss the situation.
“Algernon always have big mouth, and at last it land him in trouble.”
“Cricket! I never play in my life!”
“I uses to play a little ‘pass-out’ in my days, but to go and play against a English side! Boy, them fellars like this game, and they could play, too!”
“One time I hit a ball and it went over a fence and break a lady window and . . .”
“All right, all right, ease up on the good old days, the problem is right now. I mean, we have to rally.”
“Yes, and then when we go there everybody get bowl for duck, and when them fellars batting we can’t get them out. Not me.”
But in the end, after a lot of blague and argument, they agree that they would go and play.
“What about some practice?” Wilky say anxiously. Wilky was the only fellar who really serious about the game.
“Practice!” Roy say. “It ain’t have time for that. I wonder if I could still hold a bat?” And he get up and pick up a stick Algernon had in the corner and begin to make stance.
“Is not that way to hold a bat, stupid. Is so.”
And there in Algernon room the boys begin to remember what they could of the game, and Wilky saying he ain’t playing unless he is captain, and Eric saying he ain’t playing unless he get pads because one time a cork ball nearly break his shinbone, and a fellar name Chips pull a cricket cap from
his back pocket and trying it on in front a mirror.
So everything was arranged in a half-hearted sort of way. When the great day come, Algernon had hopes that they might postpone the match, because only eight of the boys turn up, but the English captain say it was a shame for them to return without playing, that he would make his side eight, too.
Well that Saturday on the village green was a historic day. Whether cold feet take the English side because of the licks the West Indies eleven was sharing at Lord’s I can’t say, but the fact is that they had to bowl first and they only coming down with some nice hop-and-drop that the boys lashing for six and four.
When Algernon turn to bat he walk out like a veteran. He bend down and inspect the pitch closely and shake his head, as if he ain’t too satisfied with the condition of it but had to put up with it. He put on gloves, stretch out his hands as if he about to shift a heavy tyre in the factory, and take up the most unorthodox stance them English fellars ever did see. Algernon legs wide apart as if he doing the split and he have the bat already swing over his shoulder although the bowler ain’t bowl yet. The umpire making sign to him that he covering the wicket but Algernon do as if he can’t see. He make up his mind that he rather go for l.b.w. than for the stumps to fly.
No doubt an ordinary ball thrown with ease would have had him out in two-twos, but as I was saying, it look as if the unusual play of the boys have the Englishers in a quandary, and the bowler come down with a nice hop-and-drop that a baby couldn’t miss.
Algernon close his eyes and he make a swipe at the ball, and he swipe so hard that when the bat collide the ball went right out of the field and fall in the road.
Them Englishers never see a stroke like that in their lives. All heads turn up to the sky watching the ball going.
Algernon feel like a king: only thing, when he hit the ball the bat went after it and nearly knock down a English fellar who was fielding silly-mid-on-square-leg.
Well praise the lord, the score was then sixty-nine and one set of rain start to fall and stop the match.
Later on, entertaining the boys in the local pub, the Englishers asking all sorts of questions, like when they stand so and so and why they make such and such a stroke, and the boys talking as if cricket so common in the West Indies that the babies born either with a bat or a ball, depending on if it would be a good bowler or batsman.
“That was a wonderful shot,” Charles tell Algernon grudgingly. Charles still had a feeling that the boys was only talkers, but so much controversy raging that he don’t know what to say.
“If my bat didn’t fly out of my hand,” Algernon say, and wave his hand in the air dramatically, as if to say he would have lost the ball in the other county.
“Of course, we still have to see your bowling,” the English captain say. “Pity about the rain—usual English weather, you know.”
“Bowling!” Algernon echo, feeling as if he is a Walcott and a Valentine roll into one. “Oh yes, we must come back some time and finish off the match.”
“What about next Saturday?” the captain press, eager to see the boys in action again, not sure if he was dreaming about all them wild swipe and crazy stokes.
“Sure, I’ll get the boys together,” Algernon say.
Algernon say that, but it wasn’t possible, because none of them wanted to go back after batting, frighten that they won’t be able to bowl the Englishers out.
And Charles keep reminding Algernon all the time, but Algernon keep saying how the boys scatter about, some gone Birmingham to live, and others move and gone to work somewhere else, and he can’t find them anywhere.
“Never mind,” Algernon tell Charles, “next cricket season I will get a sharp eleven together and come down your way for another match. Now, if you want me to show you how I make that stroke . . .”
Homestead
by Eric Roach
Mount Pleasant, Tobago
(Originally published in 1953)
Seven splendid cedars break the trades
from the thin gables of my house,
seven towers of song when the trades rage
through their full green season foliage.
but weathers veer, the drought returns,
the sun burns emerald to ochre
and thirsty winds strip the boughs bare,
then they are tragic stands of sticks
pitiful in pitiless noons
and wear dusk’s buskin and the moon’s.
And north beyond them lie the fields
which one man laboured his life’s days,
one man wearying his bone
shaped them as monuments in stone,
hammered them with iron will
and a rugged earthy courage.
and going, left me heritage.
is labour lovely for a man
that drags him daily into earth
returns no fragrance of him forth?
The man is dead but I recall
him in my voluntary verse,
his life was unadorned as bread,
he reckoned weathers in his head
and wore their ages on his face
and felt their keenness to his bone
the sting of sun and whip of rain.
he read day’s event from the dawn
and saw the quality of morning
through the sunset mask of evening.
In the fervour of my song
I hold him firm upon the fields
in many homely images.
His ghost’s as tall as the tall trees;
he tramps these tracks his business made
by daily roundabout in boots
tougher and earthier than roots;
and every furrow of the earth
and every shaken grace of grass
knows him the spirit of the place.
He was a slave’s son, peasant born,
paisan, paisano—those common
men about the field, world over,
of sugar, cotton, corn or clover
who are unsung but who remain
perpetual as the passing wind,
unkillable as the frail grass;
who, from their graves within their graves,
nourish the splendour of the earth
and give her substance, give her worth.
Poets and artists turn again,
construct your cunning tapestries
upon the ages of their acres,
the endless labours of their years;
still at the centre of their world
cultivate the first green graces,
courage, strength and kindliness,
love of man and beast and landscape;
still sow and graft the primal good,
green boughs of innocence to God.
Man-man
by V.S. Naipaul
Blue Basin
(Originally published in 1959)
Everybody in Miguel Street said that Man-man was mad, and so they left him alone. But I am not so sure now that he was mad, and I can think of many people much madder than Man-man ever was.
He didn’t look mad. He was a man of medium height, thin; and he wasn’t bad-looking either. He never stared at you the way I expected a mad man to do; and when you spoke to him you were sure of getting a very reasonable reply.
But he did have some curious habits.
He went up for every election, city council or legislative council, and then he stuck posters everywhere in the district. These posters were well printed. They just had the word Vote and below that, Man-man’s picture.
At every election he got exactly three votes. That I couldn’t understand. Man-man voted for himself, but who were the other two?
I asked Hat.
Hat said, “I really can’t say, boy. Is a real mystery. Perhaps is two jokers. But they is funny sort of jokers if they do the same thing so many times. They must be mad just like he.”
And for a long time the thought of these two mad men who voted for Man-man haun
ted me. Every time I saw someone doing anything just a little bit odd, I wondered, “Is he who vote for Man-man?”
At large in the city were these two men of mystery.
Man-man never worked. But he was never idle. He was hypnotized by the word, particularly the written word, and he would spend a whole day writing a single word.
One day I met Man-man at the corner of Miguel Street.
“Boy, where you going?” Man-man asked.
“I going to school,” I said.
And Man-man, looking at me solemnly, said in a mocking way, “So you goes to school, eh?”
I said automatically, “Yes, I goes to school.” And I found that without intending it I had imitated Man-man’s correct and very English accent.
That again was another mystery about Man-man. His accent. If you shut your eyes while he spoke, you would believe an Englishman—a good-class Englishman who wasn’t particular about grammar—was talking to you.
Man-man said, as though speaking to himself, “So the little man is going to school.”
Then he forgot me, and took out a long stick of chalk from his pocket and began writing on the pavement. He drew a very big S in outline and then filled it in, and then the C and the H and the O. But then he started making several O’s, each smaller than the last, until he was writing in cursive, O after flowing O.
When I came home for lunch, he had got to French Street, and he was still writing O’s, rubbing off mistakes with a rag.
In the afternoon he had gone round the block and was practically back in Miguel Street.
I went home, changed from my school-clothes into my home-clothes and went out to the street.
He was now half-way up Miguel Street.
He said, “So the little man gone to school today?”
I said, “Yes.”
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