Black Marina (9 page)

I wonder, Maldwin Carr thought. ‘Didn’t he have a
daughter?’ he said. ‘I remember reading a couple of months ago, when the Grenada affair blew up and everyone started looking for Ford, that a daughter was mentioned in the press. Do you know where I could contact her?’.

‘Oh, I wish you
would
!’
For the first time in the afternoon, Julian Byrne leaned right forward in his ancient armchair. ‘She’s terribly unhappy. It really
is
tragic. I’m afraid’ – Julian Byrne lowered his voice as if a procession of enraged
feminist
mothers was about to invade his flat – ‘I’m afraid that Teza was the most hopeless mother to the girl.’

Maldwin Carr raised his eyebrows in mock sternness. He was used to moral disapproval, usually of maternal functions improperly carried out, symbolizing a strong dislike for women, ‘She didn’t bring her up well,’ he murmured, eyes chastely down as a priest in the confessional.

‘
Well
?
’
Julian Byrne said, and this time the tones of Lady Bracknell could be heard in him. ‘She never told her daughter who her father was. The girl, Mari, discovered only the other day that Ford really
was
her father. I mean, it was so
egotistical
of Teza – just because Ford left her years and years ago, she didn’t feel she
had
to tell Mari about him.’ Julian Byrne leaned forward once more, this time with a self-sending-up conspiratorial air. ‘If Teza hadn’t been at those endless
meetings
… You know what I mean.’

‘So the girl is very disturbed?’ Maldwin Carr said.

‘Oh, yes. It was so sweet of her – she came to see me about three weeks ago, I suppose. She was distraught. She told me Ford was dead. But I don’t see how she could possibly have known.’

‘She told you that?’ said Maldwin Carr in a different tone. Caution compelled him to keep still, while Julian Byrne’s long fingers, stained amber from the many small cigars that made up his daily intake of nicotine, still fluttered in the air. ‘Why do you think she wouldn’t know?’

‘Ford never communicated with her. She didn’t seem to
know any friends of his either.’ Julian Byrne shrugged. ‘She said she’d had a dream. And, of course, the one thing she wants is to go out to St James and find her father’s body and give it a proper burial.’

‘Ah,’ said Maldwin Carr.

‘Antigone – rather touching,’ said Julian Byrne. ‘She may find him alive there, but I rather doubt it, you know.’

‘I see.’ Maldwin Carr rose to his feet. ‘And she lives – in her mother’s – in Teza’s house, does she? Could you possibly give me the address?’

‘Of
course
I will.’ Julian Byrne, beaming, also rose to his feet. ‘Poor Mari is absolutely penniless as well,’ he said. ‘Teza gives all her money to the Greenham women or something. It’s rather marvellous of her – but poor Mari!’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Maldwin Carr quickly, as Julian Byrne scribbled down the street and number and handed it to him. ‘I can’t thank you enough for all your help.’

‘I’ll see you out,’ said Julian Byrne, as the King Charles spaniel, sensing the rare opening of the door, went into a volley of barking from the old pantry. ‘And do tell Mari to come and see me whenever she’d like to.’

The door was opened – quickly and jerkily – and Maldwin Carr guessed at his host’s eagerness to be rid of him.
Self-trained
to exact information from the most unlikely sources, Maldwin patted his pocket and gave a mutter of annoyance. ‘Too silly of me!’

‘What?’ Julian Byrne was right up close to him and caught off-guard. He wobbled on stork legs as Maldwin Carr pushed gently back past him into the sitting room.

‘My pen,’ Carr said, poking under the ottoman with a toe. ‘Ah, here it is. Thank goodness. By the way,’ he added as he went once more to the door and Julian Byrne, gyrating, became increasingly entangled in his own limbs, ‘do you ever see Rex Spracker? I bumped into him the other day on the Underground.’

‘Rex Spracker,’ Julian Byrne said, as if reciting from an oculist’s card.

‘The militant Star Group chap. Friend of Ford. In that Black Power set-up with him and then disappeared. I was
surprised
to see him the other day, I have to admit. Now there’s someone who one really would expect to be dead. It was like seeing a ghost of 1968.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Julian Byrne said distantly, as if a parvenu, arriving for tea, had brought up the name of someone socially unacceptable.

‘So Ford gave up politics?’ Maldwin Carr said. He had been watching Julian Byrne closely while talking, and he saw that his words had produced, as he hoped they would, a fair amount of response. But at the word ‘politics’ the body of Julian Byrne straightened and the white hair shook vigorously.

‘Ford was never properly serious about politics. He should have stuck to his early poetry. The last time I saw him – God knows how long ago it was – he told me he was thinking of joining the Ess Dee Pee!’

Julian Byrne’s mocking laughter was long and shrill. Smiling in response, Maldwin Carr stepped backwards out of the antiquated flat and made his way down the stone stairwell. The laughter echoed behind him as he went.

*

The funny thing was [Lore wrote me in a letter that had ‘Post Early for Christmas’ on the envelope, which made me so homesick I nearly walked straight on to the
Singer
,
which had brought over the weekly mail and sat there at the quay by the Coconut Bar like a bucket-shaped exit to freedom, London streets, rain and sanity] that when that strange guy Julian Byrne came round to see us I could have sworn he’d let himself in upstairs and had gone walking about in the sitting room, it must have been a few days before coming down the basement steps to ring our bell. You know, the boards let all
the sound through, like with Teza’s bloody meetings. And as soon as I saw him I realized he’d been hanging around on the street. But Teza was away, so I don’t see how he can have. It spooked me a bit. Who’s up to what? I keep thinking of stories of people breaking in and squatting a house before you can even tell the police.

Julian Byrne was kind to Mari, though, I must say. He came round a few days after a piece had appeared in the
Guardian
,
saying Ford hadn’t been seen lately and had he possibly been involved in the recent coup in Grenada. Julian Byrne came in and sat in my kitchen – he really is an odd fellow, Holly, do you remember him from the Green
Velveteen
? – and he said how fond of Ford he’d been and how he’d known him and Teza when they came over from St James and Ford started writing his poems. He was the first person to get
Dread
Dance
and
Lond’n
is
a
Singin’
She-Dog
into print. He said he’d always wondered how Mari was, he’d last seen her when she was a tiny baby.

It was touching, I suppose. Mari is such a mixture of tough and vulnerable. I wish her own mother could see that and do something for her. (Teza’s gone off to Cuba on a Women’s International Conference or whatever, so maybe she’ll pay you a flying visit.) Mari’s eyes filled with tears. ‘If only I could remember him,’ she said to Julian. ‘But I can’t. I can’t remember him at all!’ And then there she was bursting into tears and Julian Byrne was comforting her in that very compelling voice he has, as if he’s speaking fine lines to an audience. ‘If only I could see him once,’ poor Mari went on. ‘Now I know for sure. About him being my father, I mean. D’you think he did go out to Grenada or St James and something … something happened to him?’

Holly, I could swear that man knows more than he’ll let on. He said, ‘He may have gone out there, Mari. He may well.’ And she said, ‘But why? Why would he put himself in such terrible danger?’ And Julian Byrne said, ‘If you believe in a
cause, Mari, you find you have to do these things.’ And she said, what cause was it? And he said, a cause which meant that the rich countries of the world wouldn’t go on exploiting the poor Afro-Caribbean peoples. Mari looked very sad and proud at this – and then she said, surely the poetry was the important thing: it was better to stay home and write this beautiful poetry. Julian Byrne just shook his head, very decisively. I was a bit shocked, to tell the truth, because Mari is in a very thin-skinned state and everything Byrne said went straight in like gospel, just because he’d known Ford from his early days. ‘How can poetry be as important as making a good life for people,’ he said, ‘as stopping imperialist aggression?’ Mari nodded, she just sat there staring at him with her big eyes. I know it sounds cynical, Holly, but I wished at that moment that she’d never found out she was Ford’s daughter. She was just starting a job on the local news-sheet reporting police assaults on the immigrant population, trouble at the West One Club, fires breaking out, old-age pensioners mugged – all that sort of thing. She’d been very happy doing that, and the editor said she could certainly string two words together. Now she thinks the gift for writing comes from Ford. She’s sort of exalted and
miserable
at the same time. And if you take away the point of having a gift, which Julian Byrne did that day he came round, you’re left with a very confused person.

‘I’d really like to go out to St James and see it for myself,’ Mari said. ‘It’s where I come from.’ She looked angrily at me, as if I was her rejecting mother. (I think I’ll have to clear out of here soon, Holly. Like you, I get stuck into places, that’s the problem.)

‘Yes, you should,’ Julian Byrne said in a kind voice. ‘
Perhaps
I can help you.’

‘I haven’t any money,’ Mari said, going very red because it was clear Byrne had guessed that. ‘I couldn’t take from you – really –’

The long and short of it was that she didn’t need to, and you may know that by now because she may be with you already. It was just such a strange succession of happenings. This man called Mal-something Carr comes round, and
before
you know where you are he says he’s planning a cruise to the West Indies and would Mari like to come with him and cook? (I couldn’t help laughing at that. The girl is bone-idle. Take-away kebab, pizza, hot dog, that’s about all she’ll go for, and she won’t know how to fix those in the galley of a yacht.) And, as I say, this Carr man and Mari may have landed on your hibiscus shores by now, for all I know. But I get the feeling there’s something very strange indeed going on.

Maldwin Carr was perfectly straight with Mari. He said he was a friend of Julian Byrne, or an acquaintance anyway. They’d met recently for a chat and Julian Byrne in passing had said that Mari was the daughter of the poet Ford and that there was nothing she wanted more than to go and find her roots in St James. And as he was planning this cruise – he had to write a book on some nomad tribe and he needed absolute tranquillity – why didn’t Mari, etc., etc.?

Well, she fell for it, hook line and sinker. (Though just what she’s falling for I don’t yet know.) She changed colour like litmus paper. ‘I’d really love to,’ she said. Then she looked very sad again. ‘I did dream a horrible dream,’ she said, in such a low voice that neither Maldwin Carr nor I could clearly hear her. ‘I dreamed my father was dead.’

Oh dear, Holly, it was all quite upsetting. I suppose Teza can’t possibly know her daughter’s gone to St James, not very far as a Hercules flies (as Teza would put it) from Cuba, where Teza is now.

By the way, what you say in your last letter about ordering a gun from the States – do take care, Holly. If only you came back here, I’d move out and we’d go back to a life like the old days, before all this funny political stuff and violence started
to get into everything. First of all, I’d take you to the new Indian restaurant in Westbourne Grove. It’s great – and they’re very proud of their cinema ad that they have no flock wallpaper! Then we’d go back over to Chelsea and get some new boots. I wish you’d come.

*

‘Describe my father to me,’ Mari said as we stood in the store with Millie gone, swaying out up the hill with the
Mediterranean
goodies for Christmas dinner at Carib’s Rest. ‘Ford came back here the other day, didn’t he, Holly? Just after the Americans went into Grenada. Had he changed a lot since you first knew him? Did he speak about me at all?’

No, you poor child, I nearly said. Ford walked in here looking young and fit. He wore a cream linen suit,
exquisitely
tailored: it was his way, no doubt, of making a joke against the Establishment, coming back to the island of his birth, ready to blow it up in the cause of freedom, and he’ll dress posh for the part. No beret and jacket garb for he. He smiled at me. He gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘Here’s my luggage, Holly,’ he said. The big canvas bags followed him into the store. He smiled a wide smile.

‘What’s that, Ford?’ I said. ‘Where did you bring those bags from?’ It was clear he’d bribed Mighty Barby, who always hangs around the quay when the
Singer
comes in, to carry the bags along the beach to the store for him.

‘I’ve become a businessman,’ Ford said. ‘Export-Import. This is just a little bit on the Import side.’

Honestly, I don’t know how he had the nerve. But he had charm all right. ‘He was as charming as ever,’ I said to Mari as she gazed at me like a young child made up sullen by a photographer for a shot but, under it all, shy and anxious, desperate even.

‘The day Teza and he met,’ Mari pleaded with me. ‘Did they fall in love just like that?’

I said, ‘Oh yes, they did.’ But when I look back on it I can’t remember anything special – when people are young they just seem to meet. Mari wouldn’t ever be like that, I could see: Teza has spoiled her chances already.

‘Ford, are you seriously asking me to look after these for you?’ I said on that day he dropped in out of the blue. ‘Suppose someone wants to open them and look inside? What’s in there, and what about the customs?’

‘I been through customs, man,’ Ford said and he burst out laughing.

‘But suppose you get caught?’ I said, for I felt pretty sure by now. ‘It’s not worth it, surely?’

‘There’s my Holly,’ says he, coming round the counter, pulling me out on to the floor of the store and giving me the once-over. ‘Not so bad after all these years. I know where your heart lies, eh Holly? I sure I do!’