The Robber Man stared lasciviously at Grand-mère’s fan.
‘No! You can’t have this.’
‘Oh, no?’
One of the children jumped up. Quick as a flash, the child snatched it and threw it in the coffin.
Wap.
The Robber Man snapped the coffin shut. He smiled and bowed and doffed his fine hat.
‘Good day to you, Madame Lorraine.’
He blew his whistle again. The band moved on and the Robber Man vanished.
When George reappeared with his camera, smiling, he found me dazed and limp, and then furious for no reason as I’d been happy on my own.
‘What happened, darling?’ he quizzed me.
‘Nothing,’ I spluttered. ‘Nothing I want to talk about.’
Eric Williams: that year carnival was Eric Williams. I couldn’t avoid him. A young calypsonian called Sparrow erupted into the public consciousness. Lean and hungry, Sparrow was a mesmerising showman, possessing a powerful baritone. When he laughed, a canyon laughed, deep and echoing, and it was hard not to laugh with him. Sparrow pranced and wined on stage in tight suits, his arse as rotund and muscular as a stallion’s. Gold medallions nestled in his chest hair. In the papers I read that he had won both the Road March and Calypso Monarch competition that year. ‘Jean and Dinah’ blared at every public fête, pulsated from every corner parlour, every rum shop in the villages across Trinidad. He was the people’s
other
hero, photographed everywhere with Eric Williams.
Eric Williams starred in my dreams. Sitting on the veranda at the Country Club, dressed in tweeds, silk tie, polished leather brogues, white waiters attending his every need. Bonny, the bitch, serving him tea and digestive biscuits on her hands and knees. Eric Williams was perusing the grounds of his ancestor, Poleska de Boissière, a white attendant taking notes as he spoke. Eric Williams preparing a speech.
I am going to let down my bucket where I am right here with you in the British West Indies.
My shoebox file grew bigger. Cutting round the articles in the
Trinidad Guardian
that contained him. If I pressed and filed Eric Williams he’d go away, he would stop pestering my thoughts and daydreams. Knowledge was power and with power I could conquer my preoccupation with him.
‘Madam, you
crazy
. Why you put Dr Williams in a box?’
‘That’s where he’s safe.’
‘Why you ’fraid him so? He a good man.’
‘I’m not
afraid
of him. I agree with you. He’ll make a big difference.’
‘Of course. Granny love him.’
‘Will he give Granny what she’s been waiting for? Running water, electricity?’
‘Yes, madam. Everyting go change. I will have bath and light bulb and we go buy a stove. Granny Seraphina been saving for it all now. She keep her money safe under she mattress.’
‘I’m sure she’s right.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘You think you can trust him?’
‘Madam, if we cyan trust him, den who?’
I wanted things to change for Venus. I couldn’t imagine her home. A shack? A shanty, up that cold hill in Paramin? I couldn’t bear to ask. How many shared it? Two or ten? If she bathed in the street what did she use for her ablutions, her time of the month? The whole subject was her secret life, which we never discussed. Besides, we were only visitors. Who was I to distrust or, for that matter, give a damn about Eric Williams? Even so, I kept my cuttings.
Snip snip snip
round that homely scholarly face, the thick-rimmed spectacles.
Snip, snip snip
round his speeches, his meetings.
Once, George almost caught me. A shoebox was on the table, stuffed with clippings. The words
ERIC WILLIAMS
and the year were written on the side of the box facing me.
‘New shoes, my kitten?’ he asked.
I quickly put my newspaper down, covering the box.
‘Yes.’
‘Can I see?’
I blushed. ‘No. I was hoping to surprise you.’
His eyes filled with tenderness.
The box of notes on Eric Williams lay on the table between us. I almost told him then. Almost opened the lid and said,
See? I’m going mad here. I want to leave. I’ve lost my senses.
George came forward and I stood. He put his arms around me and kissed my face, my neck, my mouth. I felt a swoon of love for him, the same swoon as on the first night we met.
And George
did
try to show me the sights. Friends from his office invited us to Toco, the very north-eastern tip of the island. A rough and ragged coastline. Choppy waves. The air fresh with the tang of salt and sea-grapes. But when we reached the beach house the tiny cove was secluded and the sea a lazy lace froth. Some of the froth looked irregular from afar, some of the bubbles bigger than the others. We didn’t go into the sea at first. We dined at the house on the cliff-top, drank rum and ate buljol with Crix. We gossiped.
Later, I wandered down to the cove alone. The surf lapped the shore. On the sand, left behind in the wake of the waves, was something very strange: huge glutinous sacks dotted here and there along the shoreline. Bags of fluid, a frilled ridge along the top. The bags had long tentacles trailing back to the sea. These tentacles were black-blue and several feet long. Not one or two of these jellyfish, but many; I walked along the small beach counting as many as twenty. I looked out to sea and saw that the bubbles in the sea were in fact these jellyfish. Hundreds? Hundreds, like a fleet about to land. Was it the season? I turned and hurried back to warn the others and on the way I came across a gang of skinny children in the narrow lane leading to the house. One was a little Indian girl with long black hair, hanging to her waist. She was elfin, her eyes were black pools. She wore a pink dress and she was gesturing to me while holding out her other arm at a right angle to her body.
‘Come an’ see,’ she said.
I froze.
‘Get that
thing
off you!’ I shrieked.
The little girl didn’t have long hair at all. Along her outstretched arm she had arranged one of these lethal sea-creatures. The milky bag lolloped dangerously on her puny bicep. The tentacles were spread along her arm and dangled from it, like long black hair. The girl smiled, as if pleased with her magic, her ability not to be stung. She came towards me, as if to let me touch it.
‘Keep away!’ I gasped. But the little girl ran away with the huge jellyfish on her arm. Off to scare another. The other children shouted and laughed and chased after her, up the lane.
When I returned, I told the others what I’d seen.
‘Portuguese man-o’-war,’ said one of the locals in our party.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, it’s the season.’
‘So many?’
‘Sometimes.’
No one believed me about the little girl, not even George.
‘You’re imaging things, darling.’
I wanted to throw my glass of rum in his face. He was always right about things. He had the facts. I didn’t. He understood Trinidad. And I was always seeing what he didn’t see.
We moved house. Forbes-Mason were still building a place for us and when I kicked up a fuss we were allowed to find another. Our new home was twice the size of the flat, tucked down a narrow street right opposite the Country Club. I danced around its empty shell. Three bedrooms, a dining and living room, a patio, a small garden. Furniture, too: new beds, tables, chairs, a proper fridge, a stove. A back yard. High walls and a driveway and suddenly there was space to breathe and be alone. Venus came with us and I could hop and skip to the Country Club.
The rains arrived. Not a drizzling affair. Not a piddling, piffling, pitter-pattering. Not a drip, drip, drip. Not the extended misery of an English winter, where the skies are always shrouded and sullen.
The rain came in a moment. From nowhere. A roar. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, like needles. Goosebumps rashed my arms. It was a flood hurled from the sky. I shivered and felt guilty about something I’d done, searching my conscience. I sat in the living room and reached for a cigarette, puffing anxiously as I stared through the louvres at the sheets of belting water. What had I done wrong? What? Pools collected on our new lawn. I watched the green mountains all around. Voluptuous, the undulating hills of a woman. I saw her everywhere, this green woman. Her hips, her breasts, her enticing curves. Shoulders, belly. She encircled us. She laughed at us when it rained, shaking her hair. Birds stopped their chatter. The roar was deafening. The rain, when it came like this, was a lashing, a bombing.
Afterwards, the deep drains behind the house bubbled with brown water. Winderflet River flooded; it became bruised and swollen, the roadside gutters ran riot, engorged, bobbing with stolen goods: shoes, dead snakes, broken-up furniture. Potholes like tiny lakes appeared in the road. Crapauds lumbered out from under stones, burping, licking up the insects hurled from the trees. Mosquitoes, newly hatched, marauded in gangs, clouds of them. It was then I had my first conversation with the hills.
Feel better now, I spoke in a whisper.
Yes.
Feel relaxed?
Yes.
Well, I don’t. I’m on edge.
Relax, she soothed.
You’re beautiful, you know that.
So are you.
I hate you. My husband loves you.
They all love me.
How long will this rain last?
As long as it lasts.
Will there be a hurricane?
No, not this far south.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE WANTS TO BE ONE OF US
April: a time of leatherback turtles. We were staying in an apartment on the north coast. I’d persuaded George to come for a swim with me not long after daybreak. The sky was still pale and the surf was tea-green. We sat under a coconut tree to dry off. I huddled in a towel in George’s arms. He stroked my hair as we contemplated the surf. My skin was salt-tight. The swells were hypnotic, bulging. Then, near the shore, a dark shape broke the waves.
‘Look,’ I exclaimed.
The shape surfaced again, something like a small submarine. And then, in a moment, the animal appeared whole-bodied, its shell sleek, its limbs ancient and elephantine. A head like a boulder, a flash of razor gums. The creature heaved itself from the surf, its fins scraping at the sand, oddly mechanical in its gait. She didn’t notice us, or, if she did, she was too exhausted to care about our presence. She shambled past us and began digging not fifteen feet away, her fins tossing up clumps of sand into the air.
George pressed his lips to my bare shoulder and I felt a thrill spread through my spine. He moved nearer. In minutes the creature had dug a deep well. She manoeuvred herself so that her tail hovered over the pit. I drew closer, too, following George. Then I understood why she didn’t see us. Slowly, George waved his hand in front of her face. No response. She was in an altered state, a birth-trance. The creamy eggs cascaded from her womb. Eyeless, perfect, benign. The sight of them brought on a tender feeling. George reached forward and stroked her blind head. ‘Good girl,’ he whispered. His eyes were also glazed, his face placid: the monster between us was mute, almost desultory, a monument raised from unknowable silt depths. I wanted to put my hand out and catch one of her eggs, steal some of her mystery for myself.
When she was done, she sealed up the hole. We watched from a distance. When she disappeared back into the waves she left a distinctive pattern on the sand, which George carefully swept with branches from a nearby palm. We watched the ocean again and this time I felt an inexplicable emptiness. I felt separate from George, not closer for the experience. George stood at the shoreline and gazed after her for a long time.
George changed. Gradually, over the weeks and months after arriving in Trinidad, I noticed a difference. He stared up at the hills more and more. He would drive up there, up into the spine of Trinidad, past Arima, up to where waterfalls trembled from the green hills. He returned with stories of enclaves of Caribs still living in those hills, of shamans, of ordered mile-long lines of bachac ants, of butterflies the size of birds, blue morpho, of scarlet mountain roses.
George pored over maps, plotted days out, to central Trinidad, the east coast, Manzanilla, Mayaro, once a cocoa estate, where miles of coconut trees arced gracefully towards the sea like crowds of slender girls. Or to the famous Pitch Lake in the south, where thick black tar welled and oozed from the land. He wanted to see the golden tegu lizards at Asa Wright, the agouti, the honeycreepers, the plantations of christophine which covered the hills. Often I went along on these trips. I observed Trinidad as he did, this landscape parading its fertility, a banquet of eccentric delicacies. I had never seen a tiny tree spouting from the parched dried husk of a beached coconut; never seen fireflies, like fairy lights, like minute oil lamps, etching out the garden trees at night. I saw what George saw and knew, finally, that I had competition.
In June, when the rainy season arrived in earnest, the skies swelled and remained dark for most of the day. I didn’t ride my bicycle. George bought a small Ford saloon and I took driving lessons. We found a new club. St Andrew’s Golf Club was higher up in Winderflet. George played mostly in the early mornings in the rainy season. We socialised there on Saturday evenings, especially if there was a tournament. A barbeque, rum punches round the bar. Once, I came up to the bar to meet George and found him standing with a man I didn’t know; his dark hair was slicked back with brilliantine. He was light-skinned, his eyes alert, teasing.
‘Darling!’ George broke off. ‘Come and meet Sebastian.’
We shook hands and, either because he held a cold drink, or because my hand was damp, a crackle shot between us. Momentarily, it was embarrassing.