The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (2 page)

But Johnny hit him again.

Then Johnny and Marco took turns. They hit Talbot one and two and three while Talbot’s head bounced back and forth.

When they stopped, Johnny went up close to Talbot. His face was all swollen and his eyes were sealed shut. Johnny whispered to Talbot, close into his ear. He told Talbot he deserved the beating. He said, ‘You part of what wrong wid de country. It your fault you get licks. We watchin’ you. De licks, dis a warnin’, yes, an’ if you ever complain again about anytin’ to do wid de police force, we go
come back.
’

They let him go.

Talbot sank to the ground.

They left him like that. It was dark. No one else was around. They thought no one saw what happened.

Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree.
Bdup!
While sunbathing, it had fallen asleep, relaxing its grip, dropping from a considerable height. It always landed like a cat, on all fours, ready to fight. The dogs always went berserk, gnashing and chasing after the creature as it fled, scuttling across the grass, a streak of lime green disappearing off into the undergrowth.

‘It never remembers the day before,’ Sabine remarked. ‘Never remembers its dreams, either, I suppose. Brain like a
peanut
.’

The lizard’s daily plummet acted like an alarm clock, prompting Sabine to make their afternoon pot of tea. She went to put the kettle on.

‘Jennifer, tell your son Talbot to come and kill that damn lizard.’

But Jennifer only rolled her eyes. She’d dominated the kitchen all day, baking gooey cakes and sweet-breads, stewing chicken with brown sugar. She’d been making pellau for the weekend. On the kitchen table, two halves of Madeira sponge were just out of the oven, cooling on racks.

‘Why?’

‘It upsets the dogs.’

‘So?’

‘It’s driving me crazy.’

‘Let de dog go bite it, nuh, den dey go see somptin!’

‘I don’t want it to bite the dogs.’

‘Dem dogs chupid.’

‘Not my little one,
ma petite
.’

‘She de
woss
.’

‘Oh Jennifer, how can you say that?’

‘If dat lizard go fall on she, she go dead.’

‘Don’t say that.’

Jennifer chuckled, enjoying the thought of the lizard falling on Katinka’s glossy Pomeranian head.

‘I want Talbot to kill it.’

‘He won’t kill it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Talbot ’fraid dat lizard too bad.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He can cook it, or do whatever he wants with it.’

‘Put it in a pot,’ Jennifer teased her.

‘Uggghhh.’

‘Stew it up.’

Sabine flinched, making a wincing-chewing face.

‘It taste
nice
, boy.’ Jennifer stifled a laugh.

‘No, thank you.’

‘You never taste it?’

‘Of course not, eh, eh,’ Sabine steupsed, sucking her teeth.

Jennifer laughed and Sabine poked out her tongue in response.

Jennifer was mostly African, mixed up with some Spanish blood, or so she claimed. Her arms were heavy and her hips had spread, but she was proud of her heart-shaped face, her round polished cheekbones. She waxed her kinky hair and pinned it up. Jennifer smelled rich, coconut oil and Paramin mountain herbs, fresh rosemary, wild thyme, scents she knew well. And yes, these days Jennifer was much too fresh by half, never did what she was asked any more; did what she liked and when she liked, in her own time. Jennifer hoovered when she wanted to, polished the silver and cleaned the crystal only when she felt like it. Jennifer ran things now: good for her.

‘Oh Gyaaaad,’ Sabine complained loudly. ‘The heat! Jennifer, I cyan take it.’ She lifted up her voluminous house dress and fanned it up to her face, exposing her pink cotton knickers.

‘
Phhhhhut
!’ She made a loud hissing sound, fanning herself. ‘
C’est un fourneau
.’

Jennifer shook her head. ‘Take cyare Mr Harwood ent come in and ketch a fright.’

‘Ha ha,’ Sabine cut back. As if George looked at her any more; as if he cared to look.

‘You can talk. You’re almost as fat as me.’

Jennifer gasped. ‘I not
fat
.’

‘You were skinny once, like a piece of spaghetti when you first came to us. Now look at you.’

Jennifer pursed her lips. ‘I does look
healthy
.’

‘You’ll get fatter if you’re not careful. Your daughter Chantal is already getting fat.’

Jennifer stopped her mixing at the stove; she turned and fixed her hands on her wide hips. ‘Oh gorshhh, nuh. I don’t want to see your panties.’

Sabine kept fanning herself. ‘Oh, don’t be so prudish. Who cares?’

‘I does care.’

‘Oh! It’s too hot to wear clothes.’

Jennifer stared as if Sabine was crazy.

Sabine smiled and slowly fanned her dress downwards. She made the tea and carried the tray out to George, who was reading out on the porch, researching his next article for the
Trinidad Guardian
. Reading, reading, reading, he was always reading, sometimes not speaking for hours. But at four, he’d put down his book. They would discuss their plans for tomorrow. It was about all they had, these days, this teatime catch-up. But at least her husband wasn’t boring. Or short. Sabine detested little men and boring people. George was still brilliant, somehow, despite it all, maybe even more so. He turned heads, George did, with his skin turned red as rum and his hawk-like nose. In his later years, he’d come to resemble a totem pole. And his eyes shone brighter, his blue eyes were turquoise now, like a wild liqueur. No, despite it all, she’d never stopped wanting to talk to George.

‘Jennifer is baking cakes in the kitchen,’ she told him.

‘Oh, good. What kind?’

‘Banana.’

‘The best.’

‘I know you like to eat banana cake when it’s still warm. She’ll bring it out.’

‘Thank you. Give an Englishman cake, tea and cake every day of his life.’ George rubbed his hands with impending pleasure, trying to catch her eye, his gaze shy of hers.

Tea. At 4 p.m. every day on the porch out back. Tea and cake and the keskidees swooping to drink from the swimming pool. Earl Grey. White sugar in lumps. No one else around drank tea like this, no one on the island cared for tea, not like them. ‘Allyuh white people crayzee wid all dis tea.’ That’s what Jennifer always said.

‘So. Who’s next to be interviewed?’ Sabine pressed; George often didn’t say.

‘The coach.’ His voice was hesitant.

‘Beenhakker?’

‘Yes. Why not?’

Sabine grimaced.

‘I’m going to ask Ray later.’

‘They’ve spent a fortune on this man.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Football, they spend millions. Hospitals,
zero
.’

George stared at his tea.

Sabine stirred hers. The Soca Warriors, Trinidad and Tobago’s national team. A ragbag collection of players, some just out of high school. Only two professionals, both almost forty. She made a sarcastic smile.

‘It’s an important event.’

‘Of course, darling.’

‘Trinidadians are good at football.’

Sabine nodded. ‘I know. Talented bunch. Good all-rounders.’

‘Try to see it as a good thing. Try, darling.’

Sabine squinted. ‘Ugh. Football, football. The world loves football. Men kicking a ball around, so proud of their countries, most run by imbeciles.’

‘Oh, Sabine!’

‘Eric Williams loved football, didn’t he?’

‘So? Where did
that
come from?’

‘Never mind,’ Sabine brooded, surprised at herself.

‘Pass the cake, please.’

But she didn’t want to pass the cake. She watched the keskidees swoop at the pool. The air was like glue. Her face glistened. George reached forward and speared banana cake onto his plate, his long hair undone. A strand hung over his face. His eyes were a little vacant. She’d made him angry again.

‘Sorry, darling. I’m so hot.
Phutt
!’ She fanned herself. The black-blue birds shouted
Qu’est-ce qu’il dit -
What’s he saying? He wasn’t saying anything; he was just trying to understand her, as usual.

After tea, George escaped Sabine and her holier-than-thou ideas. Pain in the neck with her righteous questions: as if he didn’t know or care either. Well, mosst times he didn’t: caring never helped things along. He drove away from the house towards the chaos of Port of Spain. It was March. Dry season. George melted in the pickup truck. The liver spots on the backs of his hands seemed to double before his eyes, the windscreen acting like a magnifying glass.

How he loved this city. Port of Spain. Poor old blind-deaf city. It spanned back, in a grid, from a busy port and dock; worn out now, ruined and ruinous and suffering, always suffering. It had survived military invasions, great fires, meek hurricanes, riots, mutinies, half a century of jouvay mornings, carnival Mondays and Tuesdays. No wonder it looked fatigued. Port of Spain: assaulted again and again and risen again and again, each time leaving the remnants of what had once been. Parts of the city still renewed themselves, rising up against the odds. These days it was garish and glittering office blocks, government housing projects, Honda showrooms. But in other parts, the ornate balconies and balustrades, the twee romantic town houses and gingerbread cottages of Great Britannia, of French Creoliana, were visibly tumbling into the dust.

George peered upwards and cursed. There it was. Staring, just like the sky stared, another pair of eyes. Something very new had risen in recent months. Not up through the streets, no. It hovered high above, farcical, spectral.

The blimp. Or, more commonly,
de blimp
, for great fun was made of it.

‘Where was de blimp, nuh?’ people joked every time another murder was reported.

Every day, the blimp now circled over Port of Spain. Sabine hated it, of course. It had cost 40 million dollars. This was the second blimp, in fact, the first having had problems staying up. Its mission, officially, was surveillance. The PNM had informed the country that the blimp was part of their crime-busting initiative, stationed up there to spy on the slums of Laventille and Belmont and other trouble spots, where the gangs roamed.

The blimp hovered high above the coughing city. A stout blue mini-zeppelin, it puttered around, resembling a huge udder escaped from a pantomime cow. George often fantasised about shooting it down. But it wasn’t just the blimp. Sometimes the air above Port of Spain hammered with the drone of metal wasps. Attack helicopters. These, according to reports, were supposed to strike the slums from the sky, snatch and scare bandits, run them down. So far they hadn’t been lucky either.

The
Trinidad Guardian
offices stood on St Vincent Street, a stone’s throw from the Red House, in the west of the city, close to some of the colonial buildings which still survived. An air of academia faintly existed, what with the infamous Woodford Square and the National Library. Two black women, bulging in their security uniforms, ate warm nuts at reception. They both had large dolorous eyes and wore their hair coiled in ringlets; they rang up for him without so much as meeting his eye. He studiously overlooked their manner.

The newspaper offices spread across the first floor, air-conditioned and open-plan, existing in a moody, far-too-quiet smoked glass environment.

Ray looked relaxed, recovered from a busy afternoon, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken from a box, feet up on his desk.

‘George, how yuh goin.’ Half-Chinese, Ray was young and good-looking. Most of the
Guardian’s
staff had quit a few years back, following a conglomerate takeover, leaving George with a steady stream of work, increasing his profile. The new owner was an economic superpower on the island. People thought him in favour with Patrick Manning, the supreme leader.