Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange

by Amanda Smyth

He glanced toward the kitchen. Then he said, “Are you all right?”

  “A lot’s happened since I got here. Nothing bad. I’ll tell you in a while.”

  Aunt Tassi brought out hot bakes on a tray and put them on the little round table. “You’ve been to Tobago before, William?”

  “Yes, Mrs. D’Abadie. I was in Scarborough a few years ago.”

  “Maybe Celia will show you around Black Rock.”

  “That would be nice,” he said, and looked at me. Then Aunt Tassi went to her room, as if she knew we wanted to be left alone; I was relieved.

  William hardly ate. Instead he looked out at the yard; he was nervous and distracted. He said he wanted to go somewhere we could talk and be alone. Now I was feeling nervous, too.

  I told Aunt Tassi we were going to the beach. Quietly, she asked if everything was okay, and I told her, yes.

  WE WALKED IN silence; William looking ahead now and again, but mostly his eyes were low on the ground, as if thinking hard about something. He was carrying a large bag. I had told him he could leave it in the house, that it would be safe, but he had insisted. “This isn’t Laventille; people leave their doors and windows open all day.”

  We turned down the narrow path. The almond trees had thrown their big leaves on the ground; the grass was green-brown, and then it was soft with sand. At the tall trees, we stepped out onto the beach; already the sun was blasting down. “Come,” I said, “let’s go to where there’s shade.” We sat near the sea grape trees, and I could see the branches were full of little pinkish green grapes.

  “You know they say a witch came here from Africa. Her name was Gang Gang Sara. After a while she wanted to go back home, but she couldn’t because she had eaten salt. There’s a grave right there in Golden Lane village.”

  William watched me; his eyes steady for the first time.

  “Sometimes I feel like Gang Gang Sara. Like I’ll end up here, no matter how hard I try to get out.” From my pocket, I took out the piece of black rock that Mrs. Jeremiah had given me. “Did I ever show you this? The soothsayer gave it to me.” Then, “She died last year.”

  William examined it, held it up to the light. “You deserve much more than this place,” he said, and looked out at the sea.

  “Tell me, William. Tell me what’s happened to you. And then I’ll tell you my news.”

  William put his hands up to his face. “I have to move fast, Celia. I shouldn’t even be here. Somebody might have seen me getting on the boat.”

  I felt my mouth go dry. It was worse than I thought.

  “Say it, whatever it is.”

  He looked at me. “Solomon kill a man.”

  This wasn’t such a surprise; I knew he had it in him.

  “But what did you have to do with it? Tell me that part.”

  I kept thinking: If I can keep calm, then he will tell me. If I start to panic, it will take too long. I had never seen William like this.

  “Solomon say he going to see Nathaniel and he want me to come with him. He say there’s a little job to do up there in the east. I ask him what kind of job and he say he going to collect some cash from somebody. So we drive to Arima and he stop and buy a few beers; he drink them right there, with his friend from the rum shop. I have a drink, too. But only one, because he say I need to have my wits.”

  William was looking down, trying to remember.

  “We carry on to the country and he never say too much. Next thing I know, we reach El Quemado road, and he park up, and tell me to keep watch from the bush. He say when a car come, I have to sound the horn. I tell him yes, but I want to know what going on. He say it’s better if I don’t know anything. I say better for who, he say better for me.

  “I see him talking to someone and it’s Nathaniel. Then I can’t see them anymore. Ten minutes pass and an old truck drive by. I sound the horn, just like he tell me to. I wait. Nothing happen. Another fifteen minutes pass. This time I see a white car come. I hear the car running and then I hear it stop. Then I hear a dog barking, and there’s shouting, a lot of shouting, and a noise like bamboo splitting, and I feel something bad happening. I hear more shouting and more bamboo splitting. Then I knew it wasn’t bamboo; it was gunshots.”

  He was shaking now.

  “Carry on,” I said.

  “I see Solomon running down the road, like somebody chasing him, and he have a gun in his hand. I throw open the door, he jump in and he drive away. We drive past the white car and we almost run over the body lying right there. I tell Solomon to go around. And he did, and then he go fast like the devil behind us. He drive like this all through the country to Arima.”

  “It sounds to me like you didn’t really do anything. It sounds like Solomon’s in a lot of trouble.”

  “When we get to Arima, I ask Solomon what happen. He say it all went wrong; how he’d needed money for the new business. And how Mr. Carr Brown drive from Port of Spain on the last day of the month with plenty money to pay the wages.”

  I fixed my eyes on William’s; there was something else happening here now.

  “Nathaniel and Solomon had put a log in the middle of the road. The white car I see was Mr. Carr Brown’s.”

  William looked at me.

  I felt my stomach rise. “Go on.”

  “Mr. Carr Brown drive until he reach the log and he get out to move it. That’s when Solomon come at him with a gun, and ask him for money. If he’d given him the money it would have turned out different. But Mr. Carr Brown’s dog rush at Solomon. Remember how that dog didn’t like him at Tamana? Well it was the same black dog. Solomon shoot it. Mr. Carr Brown so mad he lunge at Solomon and next thing the gun go off. And Mr. Carr Brown fall down in the road. Mr. Carr Brown dead, Celia. Mr. Carr Brown dead.”

  I looked at William as if he was making this up. He drew his hands up to his face, so that I could only see his eyes, his forehead speckled with sweat. “I so sorry, Celia. I know how much you like Mr. Carr Brown.”

  I kept looking at him.

  “We were supposed to do a job next week, not this one. I didn’t know anything about this one. I feel Solomon trick me.”

  For a few moments, we stayed like that, him looking at me and me staring at him. This could not be true; this could not be possible.

  I did not sound like myself when I said, “Are you sure he was dead?”

  “Yes. When we pass, I see blood coming from his mouth. He so big, he stretch across the whole road.”

  Now William did not look like William. He looked like someone I hardly knew.

  “The police searching all over Port of Spain for Solomon and probably me, too.”

  He drew his knees up to his chest. “The law don’t make joke when a man like that get killed. They come down hard.” Then, “Please say something, Celia.”

  But I couldn’t talk. I looked down at the soft, fine white sand and I wished I was somewhere else, that I was someone else, that I could find myself in a dream and wake up from it.

  Eventually, in a voice thin like thread when it is frayed enough to break, I said, “I want you to go,” and I pointed to the path that led to the village. “I need you to go.”

  And then I got up and walked toward the bright sunlight; away from the shade, away from William. The ground was hot, a floor in hell. I stood for a moment in the familiar bright white light. Then I walked until I reached the sea, until the water licked over my feet and my ankles. I waded into the sea, until it was up to my knees, then my waist, then right up to my neck. And I let my head go under and the world became silent.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THERE WERE NO ANSWERS. I HAD NOTHING. THERE WAS only heat and the bright light that made that kind of heat. There was no shade, nowhere to rest, nowhere that the sun was not. You follow your life, you don’t lead your life. I could sing with pain. Sing so high, high, high. Would my mother hear my singing? Once I had nothing. Now I had less than nothing. My whole life. My whole life I wanted to know my father. I wanted him more than anybody. More than Dr. Emmanuel R
odriguez. I shall never know happiness. The light was on the other side of the world, in Southampton, England. All my life I stepped toward it, little steps. I was halfway there and then I sank. The light pulled me from my darkness. I remembered the light when everything was bad. And now you put out the light. Just like that. I had less than nothing. It couldn’t be like this. It couldn’t be this way. God is good. They say God is good. How was that so.

  WHEN AUNT TASSI came home, she found me in my room, sitting on the floor looking at photographs she had given me. When I told her what had happened, she brought her hands up to her face. “Oh God, Celia, no.” Then, “Why this have to happen. Why?” She asked me how I knew. “The boy who came this morning had something to do with it?” I said, “Yes.” She looked out the window, as if trying to understand.

  “Where is he? Where he went?”

  “I don’t know.” I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. I was exhausted. I wanted to be alone.

  LATER, SHE BROUGHT a newspaper. The Gazette had a full front-page report and a photograph of my father. Perhaps when I felt better, Aunt Tassi said, I could read the article and tell her what it said. I had forgotten Aunt Tassi could not read.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE HEADLINE OF THE GAZETTE READ ESTATE OWNER ATTACKED IN FOUR ROADS. I studied the photograph next to it, and tried to see myself in Joseph Carr Brown’s face.

  YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, FRIDAY, April 7, 1958, Joseph Carr Brown picked up his brown leather money bag and went to his bank in Port of Spain where he withdrew three thousand dollars to pay his workers at the Tamana Estate. After lunching with a friend in Bayshore, Mr. Carr Brown began his journey home. At approximately four o’clock he reached Arima, and after a short break started toward Talparo. Half an hour later Mr. Carr Brown’s vehicle was at a standstill in the center of the El Quemado road and he was lying in a pool of blood next to a log about three feet in front of the car. The planter had been shot in the chest. Lying beside him was a black dog, also dead.

  By the time police arrived, all investigators could confirm was that the fatal bullet was discharged from a person at close range. There was no attempt to search the victim’s pockets. The door next to the driver’s seat was open and there was no evidence that an attempt was made to force open the trunk of the car. It is thought that the killer was disturbed. An eyewitness from Four Roads, who recognized the driver as a “familiar face,” saw the truck traveling at high speed toward the main road.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THAT SAME DAY, I TOLD AUNT TASSI ABOUT THE BABY I was carrying. I told her that the father of my baby was the man I had worked for, a man I had loved and still loved. The master of the house. I told her that I had not wanted to have an affair with him, but I didn’t have much choice. He does not love me, I said. But that doesn’t matter. I want to be a good mother and I will never give my child away, and one day I will tell my child exactly who her father is. And if my child is a girl, I said, I shall call her Sula, after her grandmother. And if my child is a boy, I shall call him Joseph, after his grandfather. There will be no secrets. There will be no lies.

  For some reason, Aunt Tassi was not so surprised. She was sorry for all this pain, she said. Sometimes life is very hard. One soul flies in, another flies out. She put her arms around me. The news of my baby was the best news she could have hoped for. She begged me to stay in Black Rock. “There’s so few of us now; we must stick together. We can all help out with the child.” She had never understood why I had left in the first place. I knew that one day I would tell her about Roman, but not yet.

  WHEN HE WAS arrested, Solomon did not tell the police that William was involved in the robbery. For once he did something good. They say he is on the island called Carrera, the prison island off the northwest coast of Trinidad. If I close my eyes I can see it sticking out of the sea like the back of an animal. It is old and broken down. I imagine him killing rats—beating them with his hands, putting the meat on the iron bars, and roasting it in the sun. You know how many restaurants cook dog and rat and call it chicken? And then I make myself open my eyes.

  I believe that William is in British Guiana. A postcard arrived from that place, with a picture of the Virgin Mary floating above the shining Essequibo River. I recognized his handwriting, although there was no message, just the initials: WDS.

  TWO WEEKS AGO, a crate arrived from Trinidad. There were things from Tamana: a painting of a Spanish girl from Venezuela. I had never noticed the colors before—the green of the girl’s dress, her copper eyes. Wrapped in sheets of thick cloth was Aunt Sula’s beautiful mahogany chest. I ran my fingers over the carved shapes—tall peacocks, long wavy grass, palm trees. Inside the chest, was Aunt Sula’s gramophone player. I took it out and opened it there on the ground. There were records, too.

  I found a white plate with a gold rim, a shiny vase I remembered filled with ginger lilies; there were many Reader’s Digest books. There was also an envelope. I opened it, and counted five hundred dollars. His short note read: “Dear Celia, I hope this will help in some small way. Yours, Joseph Carr Brown.” On the day my father was shot he had arranged for these things to be shipped to me in Tobago, care of Aunt Tassi.

  NOW I LOOK to the future; perhaps I will make something of it.

  Acknowledgments

  SPECIAL THANKS TO Ali Smith, Teresa Nicholls, Barrie Fernandez, Michelle Tessler, and Lucy Luck for their great support. Kate Kennedy for her passion and commitment, and all the team at Shaye Areheart Books for their hard work.

  My deepest gratitude to Wayne Brown for showing me how.

  Thank you to my wonderful mother and grandmother for sharing their stories with me.

  And finally, to Lee, for his love and support without which the road would have been so much harder.

  About the Author

  AMANDA SMYTH is Irish Trinidadian and lives in England. Her short stories have been published in New Writing 12, London Magazine, and Jamaica Observer Arts Magazine. She completed an MA in creative writing at East Anglia, and some of her short stories from the collection Look at You were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as part of the series, Love and Loss. She was awarded an Arts Council grant for Lime Tree Can’t Bear Orange.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

  product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Amanda Smyth

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the

  Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Originally published in Great Britain by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd., London.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-46065-3

  v3.0