Gloria (33 page)
‘This?’ And he take the cigar and twizzle it ’round in his hand to admire it.
‘This I start do after I settle the business with DeFreitas. I was celebrating.’
‘Well I don’t want yu celebrating with it here.’
‘This here is a real good Havana cigar, Gloria. I would have thought yu would like the smell a that.’
‘When the Cubans celebrating with a cigar they celebrating the revolution not some backwater power struggle.’
‘Yu take everything too serious, Gloria.’
‘Serious? Yu nuh think it serious that people prepared to kill and maim each other over a little more bread and a little more butter? At least the Cubans fighting for liberation. What we doing not going bring down no government. It not even going put a dent in the injustice that going on here.’ Then I say, ‘The Cubans, they are revolutionaries. We are discontents. And that is a different thing entirely.’
He sit there a while but he don’t say nothing. And then he suddenly turn to me and say, ‘Esther, she doing all right at St Andrew? She leave all that bad school business behind her?’
I nod my head. ‘Yes, she doing fine. Everything turning ’round for her.’
‘That is good. Very good.’
And then after a little while he say, ‘I will talk to Kenneth.’
We carry on sitting there sipping the tea and looking out on the lawn and the people strolling by on the distant street. And then he take a big puff on the cigar and my nose catch the smoke coming to me on the evening breeze and I remember the green coffee hills, and the morning clouds rising in the bright Cuban sky.
‘I don’t care what yu celebrating, I don’t want yu smoking any cigar in this house. I cyan tek the smell.’
Next time I see Henry he tell me Kenneth still working for Pao.
‘Kenneth no respect for anybody or anything. You know he even smoking ganja in the house. Plain as day like it not illegal and he not care.’
So I decide to go see Father Michael. The idea just come to me one afternoon when I was downtown because I think maybe he was the only person that going talk some sense into Pao. But the Father not much help. Even though he give me a warm welcome and ask me ’bout how Esther doing at St Andrew, it seem like he got something else on his mind. All he could say to me before he usher me out the door was he would try to raise the issue with him but that he was powerless to intervene in Pao’s business activities. That is how he put it. Somehow I expected more from him than that especially after he been so kind giving his time to Esther and talking with me ’bout her schooling and such.
I walk up the road to find a taxi and as I turn the corner who should I bump into but Fay Wong. She practically walk straight into me. When she see me she stop.
‘My, my, Gloria Campbell.’
I so surprised she recognise me I dunno what to say to her.
‘You know me?’
‘I know you now, but I have known of you for a very long time.’ And then she look at me like she was two foot higher staring down her nose at me. She a little taller in truth, but it wasn’t by that much. She wearing a beautiful yellow linen dress trimmed in white at the neck and sleeves, and white shoes with little heels, and she clutching a gorgeous white patent leather purse. She make me feel like a shambles in the floral cotton I was wearing even though it was a good frock and not cheap neither.
We stand there silent for a while and then she say, ‘I have often wondered what it would be like to meet you face to face. Have you ever wondered that?’
I think on it and then I say, ‘We met already. One time long ago, in your father’s wine store when you were organising your sister’s birthday party.’
‘Really?’ Then she bite her lip little bit before she say, ‘Are you still enjoying the jade necklace?’
It shock me that she so haughty to mention it like that. But I don’t see no point in continuing down this track with her. ‘You and me been sharing a life for a very long time whether or not we like it. So maybe it is providence that we should meet like this because now we don’t have to wonder.’
She take one last look at me and then walk off down the street. And I think to myself now I understand why the Father was in such a hurry to see the back of me.
A few days later for reasons I couldn’t understand Pao decide it time for me to meet his children.
‘After all these years? What I going meet them for?’
‘Because it time, Gloria. Fay gone. We making a real home and family at Matthews Lane now. We not got nobody coming and going disrupting the place like she can’t make up her mind where she live. We settled. It good time the children meet you. Xiuquan twelve years old and Mui eight now. It time.’
‘So how yu going explain to them who I am?’
‘It nuh matter. We can just meet by accident.’
‘Accident! Yu serious?’
‘It will be all right. You just step outta Times Store this Saturday ’bout two o’clock and we will be there.’
I can’t think of anything so ridiculous. ‘What is the point a me meeting them? What purpose it going serve? Tell me that.’
‘Purpose? For you to know them and them to know you. What more purpose yu want than that?’
So come Saturday afternoon I step outta Times Store and the three of them standing up in the street with Pao acting like he not waiting for me.
‘Hello, Gloria. It such a surprise to see you.’
And I say, ‘Yes, quite a surprise.’ It was comical. He introduce me to the children, first Mui and then Xiuquan. When I look at them I think how fair their skin is. Not dark like Esther. Mui’s hair straight. Not even the slightest kink does it have. Neat in two little plaits falling down her back. She bright-eyed with a certain confidence. She will fit fine into Immaculate. Xiuquan got more colour and a wave in his hair. Like he Spanish or Cuban, which make me smile. But he sullen. Sad inside like his mama.
Mui put out her hand to shake. Him, he don’t want to know. And when I call him Xiuquan he say that not his name. His name Karl, which is what Pao tell me Fay always call him.
Pao march us into the store like he supervising a military manoeuvre and we go upstairs to the soda fountain where he order up ice cream for the children and I take some coffee and he a glass of ice water. And as soon as we sit down at the little table in the corner I knew it was a mistake because now I am sitting here explaining to these children that I am an old friend of their father knowing full well that Xiuquan don’t believe a word of what I am saying.
Then Mui start ask me if I have any children and I tell her ’bout Esther, which set her chatting ’bout everything under the sun while Xiuquan just sit there silent with his back half turned to me. And then she start talk ’bout Father Michael who it seem she worship, and if Esther know the Father. Well Esther and him not anybody’s business, especially not Mui or Pao. So I just say Esther not a Catholic, which she can’t believe like it unimaginable to her there could be anyone on this earth not Catholic.
‘Papa, do you know that Esther is not a Catholic?’
But before Pao can give her an answer Xiuquan just turn ’round and say, ‘Yes, he does.’ And then he get up from the table and walk off and that was the end of our accidental meeting.
All the way back to Barbican I chastise myself for letting Pao talk me into it. What good did I think it would do? With Fay up Lady Musgrave Road bumping into me and the attitude that Xiuquan got.
When I get back to the house I find Clifton waiting for me.
‘Yu nuh got nothing better to do than to be sitting down here drinking my liquor?’
‘Gloria, Gloria. It is one small drink that is all.’
‘What yu doing here anyway? I thought every time yu see me it had to be in a dark corner in Club Havana or over Morgan’s Harbour?’
‘That is because it done.’
‘What yu mean, done?’
‘Done. The murder investigation over, finish, kaput.’ And he take a sip from the glass.
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that. Old and cold. Nobody care no more.’
I feel my heart settle and a thin smile across my lips as I am coming fully up the veranda steps. I rest my purse on a chair and sit down next to him.
‘So where yu been? I been waiting for yu to come tell me something ’bout Fingernail.’
He laugh. ‘I been in Miami. I just come back.’
‘What yu doing in Miami?’
‘I got people there.’ I don’t say nothing even though I know there got to be more to it than that. I just kick off my shoes and reach over and take a taste from his glass.
‘Jesus, Clifton, that is neat Appleton. Yu never hear ’bout a drop a water?’
‘Gloria, this is how yu say good afternoon to yu bredda?’
I put the glass back on the table. ‘Tell me what yu come over here for. And yu not my bredda.’
‘Every Jamaican woman is a sista and every Jamaican man is a bredda. Yu nuh know that?’
I raise my eyebrows just the same way he do to me over Morgan’s Harbour.
‘I don’t want nothing, Gloria. I just come to check yu.’
After Clifton gone I say to Auntie, ‘How come yu let Clifton Brown come here and settle himself and drink out my liquor?’
She spin ’round and look at me like she affronted.
‘A nuh who yu do fah, a who do fi yu.’ And then she turn and walk off into the kitchen while I am wondering what it is Auntie know about what Clifton is doing for me.
When I ask Dr Morrison what Clifton doing in Miami he tell me there was an incident. That is what he say.
‘An incident at Club Havana involving two boys.’
‘Yu mean the one in the newspaper where the two boys get knived to death?’
He nod.
‘So what that got to do with Clifton?’
‘There was an English girl, let us say, in the back of her car entertaining a waitress . . .’
‘Entertaining? A waitress?’
He look at me like as to say, ‘Gloria, please.’ Then he nod again, slow and deliberate like his patience running out. ‘She was
entertaining
the waitress.’
So I wait while he sipping the rum. ‘Anyway, Pao came to the rescue. As always. Cleaning up the mess and dispatching the girl back to England and the waitress to Miami. Escorted by Clifton. So there you have it.’
‘So who murder the two boys?’
‘The English girl. She was here with her father for the independence anniversary celebrations. Out on her own for the night. With the knife under the car seat.’
I can’t believe they let her get away with murder just like that. And then I think who am I to talk. ‘And Pao didn’t say nothing ’bout it being two women in the car?’
‘The waitress was an innocent bystander, Gloria. A young, impulsive girl who had nothing to do with the wreckless mayhem of that evening. And as for the other one, her father is paying Pao for that, just like he paid for John.’
‘It the same man? The father of Merleen Chin’s baby?’
‘Same one. Anyway, being a British army officer, it’s doubtful what kind of justice his daughter would have faced. The most likely outcome would have been our waitress in jail because simply being there, in that car with another woman, would have been guilt enough.’
And then almost like he read my mind he say, ‘Pao and Clifton are like brothers. This other thing is just su-su to him. That is what you Jamaicans say, isn’t it?’
‘Gossip?’
‘Yes. The malicious sort that serves only to justify small-mindedness and prejudice. And Yang Pao is not like that. He could see that the waitress going to jail for a crime she hadn’t committed would be a travesty.’
Why it surprise me I don’t know, especially after what Pao say ’bout Clifton being a loyal friend. And in truth all of them stood by Clifton from the beginning. Pao, Hampton, Finley. And in all these years I never hear any of them, not even once, say anything ’bout battyman or chi-chi. They just leave it be and get on with their business. So I reckon if Pao and them can take it in their stride then I got no business feeling any way ’bout Marcia.
In October the flood rain from Hurricane Flora cause all sorta wicked damage across Jamaica. And just the same way we always expect the worse, we nail wooden planks over the windows, and gather together every bit of food that come dry or in a can, and fill everything we could find that could take fresh water, and sit in the dining room at Franklyn Town with the kerosene lamp and Sybil and Beryl and Auntie and Esther listening to the prime minister on the radio wishing us well and then the crackle on the line as it go dead and then the sound of the wind. We do it. Just like we do for every hurricane that ravage this island.
But even though Jamaica drowning under the water, my mind was not on that. My mind was on Cuba and the four days that Flora hang there causing havoc and mayhem. My mind was on the wind that reached 125 miles per hour and the 100 inches of rain that fall over Santiago de Cuba. My mind was on a house perched on a mountaintop and the coffee crop, and Ernesto Sánchez.
‘While more deeper is the wound.’
