The Polished Hoe (40 page)

“Those places you would have seen me in, from that distance, were times when I would gladly have-exchange my lot with the poorest woman in this Village.

“Even with Clotelle. With Gertrude, who works for me. Even with
his
wife, Mistress Bellfeels, whom I have hardly spoken to. I have hardly picked my teeth to that woman. Nor her to me. Yes.

“You would have seen me, yes, in various places, and I always came back in here and say to Wilberforce, ‘Guess who I saw in Town? The Sargeant. And he never-as-much as acknowledge my presence. Wonder why?’”

“I was scared,” he says. “I was ward-off.”

“Ward-off? And a little woman like me scaring you? Come-come, Sargeant!”

“You know what they say! A lil woman, but a mob-o’-ton o’ woman.”

“Me? Poor me?”

“It is your position and status. Your status, Miss Mary. Your image. I was talking about this only this evening, to Manny, before. And your class. And what it is that you stand for, and mean . . .”

“What I mean? What the hell you mean by what I mean? Am I a . . . a-a-a . . . a
thing?
”

“No, no, Miss Mary. Not that.”

“Then what, Percy?”

“We were discussing something-altogether-different.”

“Do not pity me, Sargeant. Not because I have told you certain things.”

“But, good-Christ, Mary . . .”

“In my house, Sargeant, I am Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda, a lady who . . . if you don’t mind, sir.”

“I sorry, Mary. I am very sorry, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda . . .”

“Thank you, Sargeant.”

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“I have a Statement you have to take from me.”

“Now?”

“Now!”

“Now-now? After the conversation we been having?”

“You are still on duty, Sargeant.”

“But Mary-G . . . I mean, but Miss Mary-Mathilda, do we really have to . . . Why this change o’ heart, all of a sudden?”

“Change o’
heart
?”

“Change o’ mood . . .”

“I went too far, perhaps, in our conversation. And allowed you to get a false impression. You took advantage of me, under the circumstances; and I allowed you to see me with my guard down. But I really do not need your pity, Sargeant Stuart. I am still the
mistress
of this Great House.”

“I don’t feel no pity for you, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda.”

“You are a Crown-Sargeant of Detectives.”

“I still don’t feel no pity for you.”

“You are in my house. My home. You know what this means? You are sitting in my front-house. And in uniform. You are on duty. All I have to do to remind you of this is get a message to the Commissioner. If Gertrude hasn’t left, Gertrude could take a message . . .”

“You would do me so, Tilda? I mean, Miss Mary-Mathilda? You would go to those
lengths
? You would jeopardize my career in the Police? And my life? Expose me naked-naked, to Mr. Bellfeels? You would do this to me?”

She does not answer. She sits with her head leaning slightly in the direction of the open window, as if she is expecting to feel a kiss from the wind, as if she is listening to a noise, a sound announcing arrival that only she can distinguish and hear and know about when it arrives. Her eyes are closed.

He wishes he had the guts, the balls, in this moment of what she called her vulnerability, to stand up, travel the few feet to the chair in which she sits, bend down, take her up, in his arms, and draw her close to him, even pressing her breasts against the rough-edged silver buttons, with the Imperial Crown on each of the five of them, running down the front of his tunic. He wishes he was a man brought up with a stronger sense of confidence, with a background in family and position that was solid enough to make him able to see this woman before him, in the same confidence of presumption as he sees Gertrude; the kind of man whom, ironically, she, Mary-Mathilda, has been dreaming of having, and has been talking about, even if only through implication; but he got the drift of her words; to hold her in his arms, and move her from side to side, take her back to her own infancy and childhood, when it was Ma who did this to her, putting her to bed every night on the mattress stuffed with Khus-Khus grass, her cradle, rockabye, rockabye, rockabye, “Rockabye baby, on a tree top, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock . . .”; hold her and move her, as if he were guiding her in following the melody of “Moonlight Serenade” . . .

She pulls the white cotton handkerchief with the white flowers embroidered into it from the same sleeve as before; and she passes it across her eyes; three times across each eye.

She is crying. She is crying. Her body is shaking, in heaving movements, and she is rocking her body back and forth . . . as she is crying; rockabye, rockabye . . . she is weeping . . . “when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall. Down will come . . .”

“Would you please make me a drink, Percy?”

“Are you sure you want me to make a drink for you?”

“Yes, Percy.”

“What kind o’ drink?”

“What kind you-yourself want? More rum? Or brandy? Why don’t
you
choose?”

“You sure you want me to make myself a drink, Miss Mary-Mathilda?”

“Yes-please, Percy. Don’t have to call me Miss Mary Mathilda, any further. Please. Or Miss Mary.”

“What to call you?”

“Call me Mary.”

“Just Mary?”

PART THREE

THE GRAVEL WAS BEING SCATTERED
by the tires speeding over it. And the sound of the flying gravel was similar to that of marbles rackling inside a galvanized bucket; and indeed some of the stones smashed against the oil drums cut in half that served as planters for the croton and hibiscus trees that lined the driveway. If it were still light outside the Great House painted in a creamy pink wash by the man who cleaned the stables and the pigpens, and if Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda and Sargeant were able to look through the window and pick out anything, they would have seen the gravel rising in swirls of dust, at the speed the car was travelling over the white marl and loose gravel of the driveway shaped like the figure eight. Half of the eight led to the front door of the Main House.

When Wilberforce comes home in this tense, speeding urgency, in broad daylight, the chickens and the fowls, the slow-moving ducks wobbling in the wake of their ducklings, and the gobbling turkeys attracted to noise begin to make louder noise themselves; and all these animals, like members of Miss Mary-Mathilda’s family, would cluster and line up, at safe distance, to welcome Wilberforce.

Wilberforce was coming home.

“Drunk!”
as his mother would have said, had she been looking out the Dutch window in the kitchen, standing beside Gertrude, sitting on the wooden bench that has no back, peeling eddoes for the mutton soup.

The tires now skid to a stop. The engine dies. The door is slammed. The trunk is banged. Sargeant becomes tense as he hears the door of the car shut. Sargeant can also hear the crickets chirruping. And he takes his hand from her lap. She allows his hands to slip from her grasp.

The kitchen door is opened. And then slammed.

Mary-Mathilda gets up, and runs both her hands along the sides of her dress at the same time, passing them from just under her armpits, down her small waist, down along her full hips, until her hands can reach no farther down. And next she passes her hands over the bun in which her hair is tied. And then she passes her right hand, using the third finger of that hand, over her eyes. Her eyes are closed as she does this. Then she opens her eyes, and with the same fingers rubs them.

The door, down the long hallway from the dining room to the kitchen, is now closed firmly. Wilberforce’s footsteps sound on the darkstained hardwood floor. There is an irregular creak of the floorboards as he comes towards his mother.

“Wilberforce!” she calls out to him. “We have guests.”

“Guesses?” he says. His voice rises in laughter; and still laughing, he says, “Guesses? Mother, you celebrating something?”

“Guesses,” she says, speaking the dialect, imitating her son.

“What you celebrating?” he says, as his voice grows closer. Wilberforce is at the door of the front-house, where he stops.
“Sarge?
What the arse you doing here, boy? . . . Mother, don’t lissen to my French . . . but where the guesses? You don’t mean that Sarge is a guess!”

“‘Evening, Wilberforce,” she says.

“Good evening, Mr. Wilberforce!” Sargeant says.

“The Sargeant is here on business,” she says.

“Somebody thief a fowl-cock?” Wilberforce says; and laughs. They laugh with him. “Somebody kill somebody, then? I know one man I would like somebody to kill!” They do not laugh at this.

“The Sargeant is here on business . . .”

“Well, Jesus Christ, welcome then, boy!”

“On business, Wilberforce,” she says.

“Here to lock-up somebody?” Wilberforce says; and laughs. “You here to lock-up Mother?” And he laughs some more.

“No, Mr. Wilberforce,” Sargeant says.

“Drop this Mister-thing, boy! My name is Wilberforce. Or, if you insiss on being proper, Doc, then. Call me Doc, man.”

“Evening, then, Doc.”

“Mother, you looking after Sarge? A good boy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Doc!
Doc, Sarge!”

“Thank you, Doc.”

“How the blood pressure? And what you drinking?”

“A taste of brandy.”

“Good! I sticking with rum. Bellfeels Special Stades White Rum. The best cured darrou in the whole Wessindies, boy!”

“What about dinner, Wilberforce?”

“Gertzie cook, or you?”

“Gertie cook.”

“You should cook more often, Mother, ’specially on a Sunday, as you uses to. Uh mean no disrespect to Gertzie. The two o’ wunnuh going-have to eat without me. Patients. Sarge, it seem that the minute I start enjoying myself with a lil bird, somebody be-Christ, tekking-in, getting sick, with bad-feels! Or they having a pain in their leff side, and calling me in to tek-out their ’pendicitis! A next body getting sick, be-Christ, and deading suddenly, and I got to do the attopsy . . . when um ain’ one thing, um is the next, Christ, I don’t have time for—”

“You would swear, hearing my son talk like this, that Wilberforce was a lighterman, and not a big doctor, who—”

“Man o’ the people, Sarge-boy!
Roots
!”

“So, you’re not eating.”

“A lil bird waiting for me, at the Club.”

He pours himself a large rum in a crystal half-pint tumbler, without chipped ice, without water; and he leans back his head, just a little, and with the mouth of the glass not touching his lips, he lets the rich, white liquid pour into his mouth. He keeps the rum in his mouth, making his mouth look puffed; and with his jaws not moving, he places the glass gingerly back onto the table with the diamond-shaped top, screws up his eyes, swallows the rum inside his mouth, and says,
“Emmm! Uh-hemmm!”

He moves and stands beside Sarge; and pats Sarge heavily on his back, and says, “Down the hatch, boy! Down the hatch! Watch that blood pressure. As man!”

He leaves as noisily as he has entered.

They can hear his feet climbing the stairs at the back of the dining room; and then they hear his footsteps crossing the ceiling, and they look up, as if expecting to see his footprints reproduced on the ceiling; and then they hear drawers being opened and closed; and water running, travelling noisily through the pipes inside the green-papered wall where they stand, looking at the ceiling.

They just stand, and listen. And they follow the progress he makes above their heads; and can almost feel they are in his room with him.

Wilberforce rumbles into the front-house and faces them.

He has changed from “hot” shirt, cream linen slacks and Clark sandals to a dark grey suit with a fine pinstripe; white shirt, university tie of Jesus College, Oxford; dark brown suede shoes; a freshly pressed and starched handkerchief juts from his left breast pocket, ironed in four points, by Gertrude. These points in his handkerchief are like the sails of a four-mast yacht putting out to sea from the Aquatic Club.

“You really walk-all-the-way up to the Main House last night, as you say you was doing, Mother?” he says to his mother. “What was so serious you had to tell Bellfeels?”

The question takes Mary-Mathilda by surprise.

“Sarge, you know anybody who does-address his father by his surname?”

Sargeant looks uncomfortable.

“Calling your father by his surname! Imagine!”

Wilberforce turns his attention to the decanter of Bellfeels Special Stades White Rum and chooses a fresh crystal glass.

He pours the drink, the same size almost as the first one; closes his eyes; holds his breath; holds the rum in his mouth; and finally swallows it; and screws up his face.
“Emmm
!
Uh-hemmm!”
he says; and then, “Down the hatch!” and then, “As man!”

He stands about two feet from them.