The Sea Grape Tree (11 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S
he tried and failed to focus on the many blues of the clouds and the mountain peak, her paintbrush hovering over the paper, her thoughts hovering over the man at her side. Danny seemed to have gone into some deep place while he painted.

That morning, while she pulled up her skirt, wishing again that she'd brought more presentable clothes, she'd tried to think of everything they might need for the painting trip in the Blue Mountains. Would he remember mosquito spray? Probably not. Should she take bottles of water? Yes. Gym shoes, yes. A book, why not? When she'd finished stowing them in an extra bag, she collected the sandwiches Carthena had made for her and, laboring under her bags and boxes, had bumped into Ford at the front door. On his way to the Port Antonio post office in Sonja's car, he'd dropped her at the bottom of the hill.

“Remember to stay on the left,” she'd called while he was driving away.

Minutes later, Danny had appeared in his rented car. At first, they had driven along the coast road, unable to find the road into the Blue Mountains. They'd stopped four times to ask pedestrians—including a woman carrying a live chicken—if they were on the right road. They'd eventually found it and wound upward, a cliff always on one side, only the occasional car barreling toward them blowing its horn.

Soon they were getting valley views between the trees, the mountains browner here than around Largo Bay. Every few hundred yards there were fruit stands and above them, clinging to the side of the hill, were wooden houses with flights of concrete steps leading up to their doors.

“Not very sturdy, is it?” she'd said, pointing to one. “Looks like it'd blow away in a good storm.”

“Or wash down the mountain.”

“I can't imagine a whole family living there.”

At a wide part of the road, Danny had parked the Toyota to allow them space to paint safely between the car and the cliff. He'd selected a spot under a large mango tree, so she wouldn't need to wear her hat or sunglasses to paint, he'd pointed out. When they'd climbed out of the car, he'd exclaimed that he'd never known a road with so many curves. He was dressed today in brown khaki shorts and matching T-shirt, looking like a model in a fashion show for big men, and she was glad she'd worn a skirt, her legs now bright pink. They'd stood together on the edge of the cliff and admired the view for a minute before off-loading the easel and chairs.

Today, she'd announced, she was going to paint straight onto the paper with no pencil. In answer, he'd laughed and picked up a pencil. Within an hour, she had finished one painting and started another, and he was still fitting color within the lines he'd drawn.

“I love how you paint,” he said, swishing his brush in the water jar they were sharing.

“Thank you.” She'd been wondering when or if he'd comment on her work.

“It's small,” he added, “but it has a lot of detail.”

“Probably how my mind works.” A car roared up the hill past them and they could hear the engine climbing and fading away while they continued working and she thought about Danny liking her work, noticing the detail.

It was early afternoon, a warm one and getting warmer, and soon sweat was forming under her breasts. Her companion's scalp was glistening, one artery pulsing as he bent over his paper.

“I want to ask you something,” he said.

“What?”

“How do you get your watercolors to bleed into each other like they do, without making a mess?”

She had him squeeze out a color, water it down, and load the brush. Standing over him, her breast grazing his shoulder, she held his hand and showed him how to approach the edge of one color and nudge it with the brush. While her fingers were wrapped around his thick hand demonstrating the delicate stroke, she felt an exchange of electricity between their hands, almost like being shocked. He looked up at her—his gray eyes with their spokes and yellow rings inches from hers—and she knew he'd felt it, too.

“I've got sandwiches,” she said, straightening. “Would you like one?”

“Sure, what do you have?”

“Only cheese, I'm afraid. I thought it would be safe for a long trip.”

They sat munching the half-melted sandwiches, he finding it funny that the crusts had been sliced off the bread. Ladies' sandwiches, he called them, but he seemed to enjoy them well enough.

“I was going to buy us something to drink—” he said.

“I have water, but they're probably warm by now. A cold Britney would be nice, though.”

“A what?”

“A Britney? A Britney Spears?”

“The singer?”

“No, a beer. A Britney is a beer, that's cockney rhyming.” A little thing, but it started them off with banter that ended the painting for the afternoon.

“Stairs are called
apples and pears
?” he said, shaking his head. “Now I know you're kidding me.”

“I'm telling you,” she protested. “Cockney rhyming is a real language. Londoners created it. There's books written about it.”

“But why? They already speak English.”

“It was a kind of secret code, probably to avoid the police or something.” She handed him a bottle of water.

“You're making this up, I know it. Nobody would say
apples and pears
instead of
stairs
.”

“Nobody in America, maybe. Everything has to be bloody convenient for you—roads, spelling, shopping.”

“Have you ever been to America?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, you'll see. We get things done, and we like to do it fast.”

“But, like painting, sometimes the difference is in the detail, and that takes time.”

He picked up another sandwich. “Tell me more about this rhyming thing. Tell me another word.”

“Let's see. There's
cream crackered
. That means knackered.”

“I don't even know what
knackered
means.”

“Knackered? It means tired.”

“Where did you learn this stuff?”

“We have a cleaning lady from the East End of London, a big, chatty woman. She comes and gives the flat a good spit-and-polish when we can afford her, and she started telling us about things in the kitchen. She calls milk
satin and silk,
and tea
Rosie Lea
. She uses it all the time, so we got to know what she was talking about. We're starting to get good at it.”

“You English are scary, that's all I can say,” he said, laughing and slapping his knee.

“Have you ever been there?”

“No, but I want to go to Europe, travel all over, maybe rent a car and drive, you know, to France and Spain.” He took a long swig of water. “My mother went, though. She wanted a trip with her girlfriend for her sixtieth birthday, so I gave it to her. They had a blast, took some bus tour around. I think they met some guys on the tour and had too much fun. They're still talking about it.”

“So your mum isn't married?”

“No, never was.” Looking at the now-glary hills, he told her how his mother had gotten pregnant in her late teens, just after leaving school. He spoke without bitterness, his openness making her uncomfortable.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“One sister, two years younger than me. She's married in St. Croix and has a couple kids. She never left the island. I think my grandmother wanted her to stay because they were close. She found me kind of difficult to handle.” He made a face. “Teenage boy, you know. I used to give her a hard time—stay out late, that kind of thing. My mother knew how to handle me. She knew what tough love was, I'm telling you.”

A piercing, almost ringing sound coming up the valley made her lift her head. “What's that, a car alarm?”

He gave a big smile, showing his American teeth, all straight and white. “That's a donkey braying. You never heard that before?”

“We don't have donkeys walking the streets of London, thank you.”

“Come on,” he said, standing. “Let's get you a Britney. Maybe we'll hear a few more donkeys braying or even see one.”

“But you haven't finished your painting.”

“I'll do that tomorrow. Lambert told me about this place farther up where they serve tea and scones or something, very English. You going to like it.”

“What's it called?”

“Strawberry Hill, I think.”

When they'd loaded everything back in the car and were well on their way up the winding road, Sarah heard Penny's voice as if it were coming from the backseat.

It's not like you're going to disappear into the mountains or anything.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Y
ou seen Danny?” Janet said, and threw a big handbag on the counter, the gold chains on the front clinking.

“No,” Shad said. “I just know he play golf yesterday—”

“I can't find him nowhere,” the woman said, looking behind her as if she was expecting to find him hiding under a table. “Miss Mac say he gone from early morning, and he didn't say nothing to me about leaving town.”

“Maybe he have some work to do in Port Antonio.”

“On a Friday night?”

Shad grunted. There was no way he'd mention that he'd seen Danny speeding down the road early that morning, heading toward the east end of the bay. Shad had waved, but the big man hadn't noticed, which had been fine with the bartender, because he was going in the opposite direction, anyway, and he'd needed more time to think about his last conversation with Beth.

“They want me to wear a uniform,” she'd announced as soon as he stirred that morning. He'd groaned and she repeated it to make sure he'd heard.

“That good,” he said, his head half hidden by the pillow. He hoped she would get up the way she usually did, get the children ready for school, and leave him to sleep some more. The bar had been full the evening before with folks who'd abstained over the Ash Wednesday holiday, and they hadn't left until the first cock was crowing.

“If it was a nice uniform, yes,” she said, “but this uniform look terrible. The color terrible, the style of it terrible.”

“It going to save you money,” he said, opening one eye. Between them, the rump of a sleeping Joshua was high in the air, his thumb in his mouth.

“I prefer to sew it myself, though. I can make it look nice.”

“Ask them, nuh?” There would be no getting up, he remembered. The children had just started Easter break.

“I going to ask them on Monday. First thing after they show me what to do, I going to ask them.”

His best line of defense was not to answer, he'd decided, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

“If they say yes, you have to fix the sewing machine leg for me,” she said, undaunted. “I need you to fix it, anyway, like how I have to finish the wedding dress.”

He turned over and squinted at her. “What the date, again?”

Beth turned toward the curtain, where the sun was already peeping through a gap. “Look how many times I tell you. You tell me last year I was to find a day, not a holiday weekend, not Father's Day or Mother's Day, and I tell you Saturday, July twenty-eight. Like you not listening to me.”

“Why we can't just live together in peace, the way we living now?” he asked, beating the dead horse one last time.

Beth sat up violently, making the mattress shake. Joshua raised his head. “How many women and children now with no man, where the man just go off to Kingston or America or go live with another woman? Plenty, right?”

“I tell you, I not—”

“That's what you say now, but you can still leave. If you don't want to married, maybe I should be the one to leave, like how I have a job now. Is not only man can leave, you know. You ever think of that?” She picked up the whining Joshua and stalked out of the room, her swinging rump in the blue T-shirt chastising Shad in her wake.

Sleep had been impossible afterward, and he'd eventually taken a cold shower and gone to work early, spotting Danny along the way. He'd blundered through mopping the floor of the bar, kicked over the bucket of dirty water when he finished, and had to mop all over again. After dusting the shelves and bottles, he'd sat down in the kitchen and listened to Maisie complain about Solomon and his drinking. Lunchtime was spent with Miss Mac going over an application for a permit, but her words about the Parish Council's requirements kept getting mixed up with Beth's threat to leave. While Miss Mac read, her glasses sliding down her nose, he pictured himself walking around the empty house, tossing and turning in an empty bed.

Miss Mac's stew peas did nothing to ease his mood. When he returned to the bar that afternoon, he served drinks to the customers without cracking jokes and took food orders without making recommendations. Even Triumphant Arch and two other locals at the end of the counter hadn't been able to engage him in their wrangling.

“You listening to me or what?” Janet said. “I want a Coke, and put little rum in it for me, nuh?” She climbed onto a bar stool, her mouth sour. “I don't know what get into Danny the last few days. Like he always busy, have to do this and do that.”

“He working on the hotel.”

“Something different, I saying.”

“He getting down to business, man.” He placed a rum and Coke in front of Janet and started wiping down the counter.

“I don't know about getting down to business.” The woman bent toward him, her chin brushing the rim of her glass. “The only thing he getting down to is painting.”

“He
painting
?”

“I telling you. Every day he painting—beach and coconut tree, even the bar.” She crowed, a sharp hoot of a sound, and shook her head. “You should see them. They look like a child paint them! He ask me if I want to learn and I say,
No, sir
. I tell him that big people don't play with paint like pickney. I tell him I busy, I have to sew people's clothes.” She cupped her chin with her hands. “If you ask me, is pure
foolishness
.” The word came out with such venom that Shad didn't tell her how he'd watched Jennifer painting the fish mural at the old hotel and thought it would be a joy to paint on a wall and get paid for it.

By the time Shad got back from serving whiskey to three foreigners at a table, Janet's drink was nearly finished and she was feeling better.

“I have a plan, though,” she said with a smirk.

“What kind of plan?”

“I going to the obeah doctor.”

“What you talking?” Shad breathed, eyes wide, thinking of the obeah man, an intelligent man, who'd worn a white suit to his daughter's wedding in the bar.

“You going to work
obeah
on Danny? You joking, right?”

“I telling you, I going to get some Oil-of-Never-Stray.”

Shad leaned across the counter with a fierce frown. “You don't know is devil business that? Danny is a modern man. You can't work no obeah on him!”

Janet emptied her glass and sucked a cube of ice into her mouth. “I just going to sprinkle little bit on him,” she said, like she was gargling.

“If he ever find out, you know what would happen?” No hotel, no partnership.

She crunched down on the ice and chewed it. “If he find out, I will know who tell him.” She pushed away from the counter. “Mistah Daniel Caines not going to get away just so. He a big fish, but I a bigger fisherman.”

“You mean you want to married to him.” The public secret from the minute she stepped into the welcome party in the tight, white dress, the bridal omen.

“What you think?” she said with a smile that set the gold tooth leering. “He a good-looking man and he have money. He tell me he own all kind of business, hairdressing parlor and mall. And,” she added with a wink, “he like a tiger in bed. He know where to put it and love a
pum-pum.
Watch me, he not going to get away. Miss Janet going to put some oil on Mistah Danny, and he going to put a ring on her finger.”

At the end of the bar, Tri called for another shot of white rum and two Red Stripes. The bartender nodded to Janet. “Don't go nowhere.”

When he returned, the seamstress had disappeared. Her glass sat empty, all the ice cubes eaten.