The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (14 page)

She followed the crumbs across the front garden and back into the house.

‘That stupid dog!’ In the living room she stopped, panting for breath. Her bones creaked, all of them at once.

Jennifer appeared. ‘Oh gorsh, nuh man, leave de damn dog alone.’

‘I’m going to kill him this time.’

Up the stairs ‒ cake crumbs on the stairs. The dog’s giant paws jutted from under the hem of the office curtains.

Jennifer laughed. ‘Henry hidin’ from you.’

‘The rotten coward,’ Sabine cursed. The dog pressed its muzzle flat to the wall and the curtain bulged over its body.

Sabine removed one of her bedroom slippers.

‘Oh
gorsh
, leave de poor dog,’ Jennifer complained.

Sweat dripped from Sabine’s face like rain. ‘I’m going to
kill
you this time,’ she vowed, mounting the stairs on tiptoe. She entered the office. The dog shuddered, pressing itself against the wall.

Sabine towered over him. ‘You stupid animal.’

The dog whimpered.

Jennifer came up behind her.

Sabine snatched the curtain back. Henry’s eyes were pressed closed, long eyelashes like spider’s legs, jittering. Those eyelashes, like a beautiful girl’s, reminding her of dancing, of those days when Dr Baker pressed himself to her. Sabine hesitated, arm raised.

‘You stupid animal,’ she whispered, bringing the slipper down on the dog’s slim head.
Whack.

The dog cowed its head, sinking to the floor.

‘Oh gorsh, leave de dog,’ Jennifer begged. ‘Doh beat de poor damn animal.’

‘The dog’s always stealing from the kitchen table. How many times does he have to be told?’ Sabine cried.
Whack.
The dog bowed its head, hiding its nose between its front legs.

‘I’ll kill you,’ Sabine gargled.

Jennifer went silent and left the room.

Tears in Sabine’s eyes. Her breath quickened and her lips curled. She beat and beat the dog. She wanted to kill it dead, kill herself dead.

George spotted the skinny black boy, stumbling along the pavement, a tiny fragile bird, a sparrow in the dust. His movements were jerky, his one long arm swinging like the arm of a clock. His real name was Joshua Pierre. His mother was Lavinia Pierre, a deep-black, good-looking woman who lived in an unpainted concrete house the other side of Winderflet River, near the bend by the fruit stall. The little boy stumbled with his head up, eyes looking straight ahead, a small knapsack on his back. George slowed down, pulling in alongside.

‘Hop in,’ he called through the window, opening the door of the truck.

The boy smiled, as if he’d been expecting to see George. On the seat he wriggled from his knapsack, pulling it onto his lap, loosening the tie.

‘What have you got there?’ George asked.

‘I bring you something.’

‘Oh, that’s good of you.’

‘It a present.’

‘But it’s not my birthday.’

‘It not that kind of present.’

‘What kind is it then?’

‘It something to help when you call out the name of our Father in Heaven.’

‘Oh? What?’

From the knapsack the boy pulled out a small figurine, made of plaster. Mary, Mother of Jesus.

George blushed, dumbstruck.

‘She have a little sticker underneath,’ the boy explained, peeling it off from the bottom and leaning forward. ‘So you can see she.’ He stuck the statue of the Virgin to the dashboard of the truck.

‘See? Now she there all de time. A good woman. You can speak to her. Talk to she when you get vexed.’

Mary’s hands were outstretched, palms open; horribly, ridiculously holy. It made George uncomfortable just to look at her, so saintly on his truck. His truck ‒ in which he’d fucked a dozen women along the bench-seat, at least one of them a virgin.

The boy beamed.

Who is your father
? George wanted to ask the little boy. The Mighty Sparrow? Patrick Manning? Eric Williams? All had failed him. No wonder the boy loved God, the great Papa in the Sky.

George kept driving. Clock began to sing, quietly at first, to himself. George glanced across at his birdcage chest to make sure he was seeing right, that the sound was really emanating from such a small space.
Glory to God on high, Peace to those on earth.
The boy’s voice grew as he sang, as they drove on up Saddle Road, past the Country Club. Clock’s voice doubled, then trebled, sounding like brass, hot and fluid. The cab of the truck filled with the sound of holiness and the hairs on the back of George’s neck stood erect. Joshua, son of Sparrow ‒ or maybe not. Son of Patrick Manning? The little boy threw back his head, a beatific smile on his face, a halo of light around him; yes, the boy glowed like a frigging divine apparition. He sang a chorus of
Hosannas
, eyes closed, in a swoon. George swooned. A hundred memories fluttered from his head, women like birds, all his infidelities, flew out and up and away from him, on a bold band of song, away and up and into the sky above the road up to Winderflet village.

 

When he got home, George immediately set to writing the Sparrow interview up. Henry came to the office door looking sorry for himself. ‘What’s the matter, eh?’ He stroked the dog’s slim head. ‘What’s up?’ The dog slid to the floor and folded his nose into his shins. Had Sabine scolded him, had he stolen a cake again? ‘We’ll go to the beach soon,’ George told the dog.

He didn’t get a story, as such, from Sparrow. But a scoop ‒ yes. He had the new calypso on tape. He listened to it again on his portable tape recorder. It was vintage Sparrow, not his usual party stuff of late; old-school calypso, critical, political. ‘Shoot Dong de Blimp’. The man was still dangerous to those in power. Maybe he’d written it secretly with Sabine ‒ nothing could surprise George these days. His headache had come back and his skull throbbed, as though there were another person inside, banging to get out.

‘Hi, Dad.’ Sebastian popped his head round the door.

‘I thought you were at the beach.’

‘I was. Not for long, though. Almost had my wallet stolen at Maracas. Little bugger, about ten years old, chased him across the car park.’

‘Did you report it? There’s a station on the hill just behind the beach.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Don’t tell your mother.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d just rather you didn’t. You know . . . she’ll get . . . like she does.’

‘How does she get, Dad?’

‘Tired.’

Sebastian laughed. ‘
That’s
your word for it.’

‘What’s yours?’

‘Depressed.’

‘She’s not
depressed.
’

‘Her face is always damp. Clammy. It’s torturous for her ‒ just being here. Getting through each day.’

‘Oh, we’re
all
too hot sometimes.’

‘You’re not. Mum looks like she’s melting.’

‘She doesn’t complain.’

‘You don’t hear her. Or choose not to.’

‘This is my house. I choose what I like.’

‘Exactly.’

‘If you don’t like it here, why do you keep coming back?’

‘I was born here.’

‘Yes, I was there that day.’

‘Mum loves you, Dad . . . more than she hates Trinidad.’

George looked directly at him. ‘You’re judging
my
marriage and you’ve never been married at all, eh, Father Sebastian?’

Sebastian glared. ‘They don’t make love affairs like yours any more, Dad.’

‘Oh no? That’s an interesting observation. Why not?’

‘Most women of my generation would have left you, years ago.’

‘Oh good. All those feminists and whatnot. Good for them. Marriage is dying, I hear, isn’t it?’

‘Women have changed.’

‘And I’m a dinosaur.’

‘Actually, Dad, you have no idea at all. I’ve watched you and Mum for years, since I was a boy. I’ve always
envied
you, Dad.’

George stared. ‘What have you envied?’

‘You and Mum. I remember you.’

Slowly, carefully, George rubbed at the pain gathering in the back of his head.

‘You were quite something. My role models. I’ve tried to find what you have for myself and I’ve failed. I still think of you as the most glamorous couple I’ve ever met.’

‘I doubt that. Your friends all seem quite chic.’

‘Few have loved like you and Mum.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ve loved and lost as well,’ Sebastian cut back. ‘More than once. I wish . . .’

‘Oh, save the sermon.’

‘OK, Dad,
stay
ignorant.’

George wanted to spit. He stared up at his younger, more handsome self. Sebastian could go to hell. Why had he abandoned the island? His so-called glamorous London friends were far less interesting.

‘I’m ignorant. And you’re not. Is that your line of reasoning? I’m a fool and you aren’t?’

Sabine appeared in the hall doorway, sleepy-eyed from an afternoon nap. ‘You two woke me up.’

George stared. No one spoke for a moment.

‘Sebastian almost had his wallet nicked,’ George said coldly.

‘Where?’

‘Maracas.’

‘I overheard what you were saying.’

George didn’t try to hide his irritation. ‘Oh, good.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t argue. You’re as stupid and foolish as each other. Stop this battle. Or I’ll crack your heads.’

‘We. . . just see things differently. We weren’t arguing.’ Sebastian tried to smooth things.

‘Just shut up.’ Sabine eyed them both, deadly calm. ‘Did I also overhear Mr Sparrow’s new calypso?’

‘Yes.’

‘You interviewed him?’

‘Yes, this afternoon.’

‘He’s back on form, then.’

‘Seems so.’

‘I’ve always liked Mr Sparrow. Time he started to write again.’

‘Sparrow knew Eric Williams well. We talked of him.’

‘Oh yes? You should invite Mr Sparrow round for tea, then.’

George smiled.

Sabine smiled back for the first time in a long time.
Win her
.

Sabine left the room. Sebastian looked at George with shrewd and rueful eyes that held the glimmer of an apology. George went back to work, thinking of the Mighty Sparrow, the man of love, thinking of his words.
Win her
. Maybe he could. Not with his songs or dancing or poems, no, bollocks to that. He would write, write. Write something which might actually matter, for once.

Easter Sunday. Long lines of cars, people on foot, families, couples, old people, young people, black people, white people, long silent strings of the newly innocent, the penitent, the hungover, the starting over, the resurrected. All wordless, climbing up the hill to the red and vanilla church in Winderflet village. Nine in the morning and the heat was still on hold.

‘Let’s sit near one of the side-exits,’ Sabine said to Sebastian as they parked at the top. ‘So we can feel the breeze.’

A life-size statue of Joseph prayed down at them from the crèche cut into the hill-rock. Joseph and Mary, cast in plaster, prayed there all year round.

‘He’s looking straight at me,’ Sebastian joked. ‘He knows something I don’t.’

‘Ha, him. He knows everything. I thought he was looking at
me
. To hell with all this penitence. You know, we could just go to the beach instead. Sit in the shade. Take a bottle of champagne. It’d be empty today. The whole of Maracas to ourselves. Half the country is at church.’

‘No. I
like
going to church here, Mum.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. Only here, actually.’

‘Why?’

‘I was baptised here. So was Pascale. She was married here.’

‘Pascale was born at Easter. It’s her birthday soon.’

‘I want to be married here one day, too. And if I never marry, I want my funeral held here.’

‘What a thing to say!’

‘I mean it.’

‘Well, I’ll be long gone. I won’t be buried here.’

‘No?’

‘No. Send me back in a box. Bury me anywhere but here.’

‘I’ll try to remember that.’

‘You don’t go to church in London?’

‘No. No one I know goes to church
ever
. I only go here.’

‘Why?’

‘I feel more aware here.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of myself. Of my sins.’

‘Good God.’

‘It’s peaceful up on this hill, don’t you think?’

‘No.’

‘I find praying hard, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Sometimes.’

‘There’s a knack to it, isn’t there? It’s an art. You’re supposed to know how to do it.’

Sabine nodded. Joseph was peering down at her over his praying hands, hands like the walls of Jennifer’s holy shack. Patient Joseph. Patient shack, patient Granny Seraphina. Granny who waited for so long for nothing to change, who, when time ran out, ran riot with the rest of them. Bless her.