Black Marina (5 page)

*

All that’s as it may be. I don’t like my store overcrowded. Sanjay and his daughter will be here any minute now and it just won’t do at all.

‘Can I help you?’ I say in a surly voice to the girl while I finish wrapping black olives for Millie. (American
Mediterranean
! Half the visitors down here pretend they’ve gone to Greece, we’ve even had orders for retsina. They’re missing the culture. There’s no culture here and no history and without those you can’t have a sense of achievement, or so says V. S. Nightfall.)

‘Will I be seeing you later at the Coconut Bar?’ I say to Millie, although of course I know I will.

And Millie says, ‘I don’t know if I’ll make it this year.’ Which is her stock reply, except I see in her eyes all of a sudden that she means it this year. And we both see together the red blood spreading in the sea and the little fishes with bulging eyes that jump in and out of the waves as if nothing on earth was going on.

‘I’ll see you alone,’ the girl says.

Just like that. Millie stands back and looks at her in earnest and I think at the same time how the two women could have come from a different planet, for all they could ever know about each other or understand. The girl – her hair is drying out now and I see it’s really quite fair, in an Afro. Her eyes, gold, yellow-gold, with flecks and curls of light.
Chrysanthemum
eyes. A wide face, a beautiful face if it wasn’t for the expression, the mouth that’s set like a strung bow, the lips
that hardly part, as if she’s learned from an early age not to give anything away. Her shoulders and neck are slender. Her colour is lovely, like gold, half-wet, half-dry out in the sun. Millie looks at her as if she can’t see her properly, with that blind look of eyes white like sea shells in a black, black face. She turns away, shoulders thick with the muscle of a lifetime’s labour. The two carrier bags are hoisted up as she turns to the door, showing a great stomach starting up high under the breasts. Then she turns back towards me.

‘I do love him, Holly. Whatever he do he OK by me.’ And she walks out the door, through a rattle of Polynesian beads Sanjay brought back from a tour to the South Seas in earlier, happier days. Beads and miniature conches – they rattle and shake as she goes, like the orchestra of a tribal queen. Through all this the girl stands half-on to both of us, looking at Millie through lowered lids. ‘When Ford so high’ – Millie’s hand sweeps down – ‘we play mas together.’ Her mouth suddenly opens in a dazzling white grin. ‘Christmas only
a-sing
de carols’ – in self-mockery this, with a look of
humorous
self-deprecation; Millie is a fantastic mime. ‘So what damn good Christmas this year for me?’

‘Ford would want you to come and dance,’ I said. But I knew my tone was insincere. Ford wouldn’t have cared what Millie did, as long as she was getting re-educated away from imperialism and on to the true path.

The girl steps forwards, the swinging beads throw shadows on her tawny body and she stands there dappled like a beautiful cat. ‘Ford,’ she says, ‘where is he?’

*

Ford was kind to Millie the only time she was sent over to London. Mrs Van der Pyck had organized a cooking course: Millie, who had pounded plantain with pestle and mortar like her mother and grandmother and fried yam and cooked up the fish as it came in, was to learn how to decorate a
breaded veal escalope with anchovy turrets, or a castle of crystallized cherry. She must learn to make for the Europeans a chocolate mousse with whorls of whipped cream, a fine straw-coloured consommé where prawns would swim, for the Americans mango ice-cream, not too fibrous, to give the idea of local colour at Carib’s Rest. How to make croissants, éclairs, the little things for which the visitor, if he begins to miss them, will all at once decide to pack up and go home. And for the British, although there were every year fewer of them in number at St James, a Queen of Puddings as heavy and significant as the Empire at the height of its glory.

*

You know [Lore said in a letter about that time], I went round to Teza’s house. It was raining cats and dogs. I think I’ll come and join you in the glorious Tropics, Holly, if you’re not careful. Ask Sanjay if he doesn’t need someone to invent new cocktails in his famous Bar. Everyone’s so miserable here, too.

The door was opened by a big black woman and she looked pretty sad as well. Fancy being sent over here to learn to cook! But she said Teza was kind to her and there was another friend, Ford, who had found her a room in a squat where he is in Stoke Newington. It turns out the woman who owns the posh hotel on your island didn’t give Millie nearly enough to live on in London, as well as pay for the course at Cuisine Française, School, which is quite near where Teza lives, as it happens. Anyway, I put two and two together and I remembered your searing account of the day you went up to the village and Teza met Ford hanging around up there, and there’d been a good, kind woman who gave Teza a bed. So that’s Millie. She tells me there are smart houses now on St James with French tiles on the roof and Italian tiles on the floor and Spanish tiles, oh Lord, all over the bathroom and she started me off laughing – the first time for a month or two, I can tell you.

I asked Millie why Ford was living in this squat some way away. But she just shrugged. ‘I thought Ford and Teza lived together here,’ I said. Mind you I hadn’t been around for longer than I thought. I don’t know what it is in London: in Chelsea you just feel you’re under the river all the year round and the seasons never change, and then you go up Portobello way and you find there’s cherries and melons in the market and the last time there was leeks and spuds. This time it was corn on the cob, hazelnuts, blackberries, Cox’s orange pippins. I’d bought a bunch of those Michaelmas daisies for Teza and a punnet of blackberries too. ‘You making blackberry and apple tart at the Cuisine Française?’ I asked Millie but she just shook her head and rolled her eyes like a fruit machine. ‘Flan,’ she said at last in a really comic voice and we rolled about again.

Then she got up and went to the door and opened it, and sure enough her ears are sharper than mine and there was someone standing out there. Just as I said, fancy that, Holly, the funniest looking little kid. So I was right – Teza had been kind of restless last time I saw her – it wasn’t that she was likely to have a baby to pass the time, if you know what I mean, it was that she had one hidden away already. ‘Why on earth didn’t she say so before?’ I said to Millie when I’d recovered from staring at the little creature. ‘What’s been going on here anyway?’

It turned out that Teza’s aunt, her mother’s sister, was pretty elderly and lived in a great house in Suffolk or
somewhere
and was due to leave her remaining fortune to Teza. ‘Now aren’t some people greedy?’ I couldn’t help thinking, when Teza’s mother had already left her enough to buy this house off the Portobello Road and money for donations to Black Power too, I wouldn’t wonder. This aunt was a strict Baptist, Millie says – and there’s some respect in her voice. There’s a lot of all that in the islands, I suppose, so you can see why Millie would understand what seems pretty barbaric
to me, i.e. covering up the birth of your illegitimate half-caste (for that’s how Teza’s aunt would doubtless label the child) in order to inherit later. Now, evidently, the aunt has died and the baby can come out of the closet, as you might say. ‘So Teza lives alone now, does she?’ I say. And I couldn’t help asking about Ford.

Obviously, Millie was thrilled that Ford had kept in touch over the years. He’d sent her cards, he told her she should come over and the Party would send a fare. There was an American Black Panther coming and there’d be a big meeting … and there’d be ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ for Millie to sing, as well as meet a lot of new friends. But something held her back – she’d worked for people too long to do something without being told to. God, I’m getting like that myself, Holly. Just about creep into the Green Velveteen with the hangover of the century and totter round with the Green Velvet Special (new since your day, crème de menthe and coffee shaken up with crushed ice and a spot of orange bitters). I’ll say, ‘Yes, please’ when they announce I’m to work right over the Yuletide Season without a break. Just like the way Millie waited till Mrs Van der Pyck pushed her on the
Singer
with her ticket on the LIAT plane from St Jude to Barbados in one hand and her bag and Bible in the other. She was very sick too on the flight in the Jumbo from Barbados to London because they put her in the tail of the plane and it swung around all over the place. She thought she was going to die, Millie said, like being inside the belly of a whale. And Ford was there to meet her at the airport! She was happy in the squat, except Howard and Lucy, some white couple in the rock record business, who were in the squat too, were terribly dirty. And most nights there was the sound of breaking glass.

Ford had moved out some time ago, she said. (Sorry I’m so bad on when, it must be an age since I went up Portobello Road way. You know, Holly, I rather like it round there. I
think I’ll move – and maybe you’ll feel like coming back one day and joining me, it’ll be like the old days except we’re one hell of a lot older. But you must get tired of sitting on your rock sometimes, despite the weather!)

When I asked why Ford had gone, Millie just shrugged again. I daresay his interests had moved away from Teza’s quite a bit by then, he was all Black Power. And also he’s been taken up in a big way by the glitterati (Eng. Lits. and media and money with a touch of art) and Teza wasn’t included in the invitation. That made me feel a bit sorry for her, even if she is now a rich lady living on her own. And honestly, Holly, as soon as you see Teza you remember her charm. Even though her eyebrows are all knitted up with theory and how feminism must be free of sexism before it can reach the aspired-for level of socialism, she’s still
somehow
good to be with. She came down the stairs and caught the little kid into her arms on the landing and gave a really nice friendly laugh when she saw me. ‘Hi, Lore,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a drink and then I’ll take you to a new stall in the market where they’ve got the most lovely textiles you ever saw. Coming?’

You remember all those pieces of fabric we used to hoard, Holly? Well Teza’s not interested in that sort of thing herself, but she likes to give pleasure to others. That’s how I see it – on a rainy day and all – and no doubt a million pamphlets to get out for the sisterhood or whatever in the pipeline. ‘What about the baby?’ I said, after making all the usual remarks that it’s the most lovely little child I’d ever seen, etc. ‘She’ll stay with Millie,’ Teza said, smiling. ‘It’s an Ibo fabric stall I’m going to show you. You’ll be able to hang the cloth on your walls or make a tablecloth or cushions. You can make one for me while you’re about it.’

It was really great seeing Teza again. I said I was thinking of moving round here myself and she said why not come and live in her basement? All this money has made her generous,
and that’s not how it takes most people. Millie looked happy too, and she smiled quite motherly at Teza when she handed over the little kid and we left. ‘It’s a pity Millie can’t stay forever and help you out,’ I said, because my admiration for Teza was growing with each minute. I mean there she is abandoned by her boyfriend and father of her child just when she needs support. It’s all very well, money isn’t everything. ‘Well, yes,’ Teza said, and then we were out of the house and walking down the empty, rainy market to this incredible old Nigerian who sells rugs and textiles patterned like nothing you’ve seen in your life before, Holly.

*

It’s been difficult for me out here, trying to imagine the changes at home – and in America too, of course, but the kind of man and woman you get coming down from the States are definitely the unreconstructed sort. The women are covered in scarlet nail polish and the men hold the door open for them, and at night in the little converted slave cottages at the side of Carib’s Rest you hear them helping themselves to ice and liquor from the fridge and sobbing and shouting at each other. The jet set’s a bit more cool – there was a Princess something who had a vibrator and a pistol in her bag – but usually when they go you find nothing but syringes, they’re too far out of it to leave a tip.

Maybe I look back a little too sentimentally to the old days in King’s Road and West London, but it seems to me that Lore, Teza and I had just about the best time three girls – you say women now, of course, I know that – could have had at any time in history. London was doing all this swinging, and even though the tourists and the magazine editors did all they could to cash in on it, it just happened by itself, wherever it felt like happening. Lore’s hair was short and curly and she looked like a sexy, grinning chestnut. Teza’s long cornfield hair came down as low as the top of her mini,
and the Slavonic side of her was most in evidence then. Perhaps it was before the English mother had asserted her side of the family by making over funds and all that. Teza was certainly totally broke. And I – they all said I looked a bit like Ava Gardner. It was just the time old movies were becoming a cult on their own. A couple of gays had a gigantic collection of portraits of Garbo and Dietrich and Crawford, etc., and the mags printed them large. We dressed in all colours like the Pied Piper of Hamlin by day and lay in the parks, stoned; at night we drew on Cupid’s bows and went dancing in our beaded thirties gowns from the antique supermarket. Most girls, even if they did buy a poster of the dead and beautiful Che Guevara, still thought
underdevelopment
was to do with your cup size in a bra.

Once I realized I was well and truly stranded here and Lore wrote me about the fashions and whatever was going on, I began to feel like Robinson Crusoe, starting out from scratch on a desert island. It seems the more women’s consciousness was raised, the further the hemline went down. I had to sew about six minis together to get a skirt that came to the new length – and then after all that I felt like a suffragette who’d got washed up after a shipwreck. And the longer I stayed on here the more uncertain I became about going back at all. I’d be Rip Van Winkle by now. But it’s one of the factors, I’m sure, that goes to make up my lack of understanding of the new relationships. It’s not just that men nowadays seem to want to take half the responsibility for the home and the kids and so on and take courses in ante-natal breathing exercises. It’s the new way of splitting apart, too. Teza really wanted Ford to feel free, as Lore told me that time she came out here and we managed to have a good talk – when the men weren’t circling round Lore in the Bar, that is. (She still knows how to do it. In the end she was so hassled she had to go and spend the night with Ferdie the barman. At least he doesn’t want to give me anything, she said.) Teza knew she could survive
without Ford because she had learned to be a committed feminist. And the Black Panthers were making remarks like a woman’s position was best under a man or something like that. No wonder it didn’t appeal to Teza. At the same time, Ford did enjoy his new position as the great West Indian talent, discovered by Julian Byrne, the critic and mentor of taste, and a lovely white lady with a castle in Scotland that had a moat, and a couple of literary editors who had pull in the States as well and could make Ford’s name worldwide. He had no need for a dingy-looking group of women turning up every night at the house off Portobello Road and making the place stink of take-away while they aired their grievances. He’d swagger in late and call to Teza to fix him a drink, and all hell was let loose.