The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (23 page)

 

On land, the heat was stupendous. Show-offy, acrobatic; the air was somehow mobile, writhing from all the sun’s stunts. My lacquered hair, I feared, was turning to kindling, the skin on my shoulders sizzled. I thought I might actually be cooking, just like a pork chop. The pavement smouldered up through the thin soles of my sandals. I wanted to return immediately to the ship.

‘Are you all right, my love?’ George asked.

‘Mmmm . . .’

‘Darling, you’ve lost the ability to speak.’

He was right: I couldn’t find the breath to form words. A stout red-faced Englishman came forward from the crowd to greet us, sweat trickling in straight lines down his temples. He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

‘George and Sabine Harwood.’ George grinned, stepping towards him, ushering me in the man’s direction. We all shook hands briefly. A car was waiting near by, a Chevrolet. Perspiration had collected in my eyelashes and my sight was blurred. I was close to fainting. And the smells! Heat and fruit and the strong ripe musk of Negroes. Black people everywhere. I tried not to stare. I’d never seen so many of them before. They were strangely quiet and distanced, as if they only existed in the background.

 

A commotion started up near the hold. Directions were shouted, people beckoned others loudly, calling those on the dock to come forward to retrieve their crates. My green bicycle appeared. Two men wheeled it down the ramp, laughing and making a fuss over it, as if it were some novelty toy. A steward pointed in my direction.

‘Lady, lady,’ they called. ‘Bring it fuh she. White English lady.’

I blushed, thanking them profusely.

‘I’m
French
, not English, you know,’ I said to one, but he only laughed.

We recognised our crate emerging, too. A young stevedore tossed it from the ship’s belly to the wharf. The crate landed with a thud in the dust. George ran to rescue it. But I was shocked, checking myself: maybe these people couldn’t read English?

 

The Chevrolet swept us along the foreshore, along Wrightson Road, to a hotel opposite open parkland called the Queen’s Park Savannah. This was the Queen’s Park Hotel: the grandest in Port of Spain. My spirits lifted. A curious building; the main part resembled a Victorian country house, though one adapted for the Caribbean, constructed from rainforest hardwood, with wide verandas and jalousie shutters. One wing was art deco in style, tall, with scalloped windows. We were shown to the older rooms. Inside, slow-moving ceiling fans stirred the thick air. In the corners there were nests of softly faded white wicker furniture, feather-stuffed chintz cushions. Persian rugs thrown down onto wide polished wooden floors. An atmosphere I immediately recognised. Two macaws clambered along the veranda rails, one turquoise, one scarlet.

Qui est là? Qui est là?
One spoke in French. I was delighted.

George squeezed my arm. Here I could collect myself. We went upstairs to our room and collapsed on the four-poster bed. The ceiling was high and our balcony overlooked the huge savannah opposite; a light breeze fluttered in. I loosened the mosquito net hanging above the bed.

‘Other wives,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘I’m
not
like those other expat wives, am I?’

‘No, my petal. You’re not.’

‘I won’t want to leave, I promise.’

George was already drifting into sleep. ‘That’s right,’ he muttered. ‘That’s right, my darling.’

I watched George sleep, pressed my lips to his warm belly. Of course, there had been an interview in London. George’s bosses at Forbes-Mason had wanted to meet me. Other wives hadn’t liked it. The firm had found it impossible to keep its employees long in Trinidad. Three couples had quit before us, all lasting months, not years. Men loved the West Indies. They had something to do. Usually they enjoyed higher positions than they did in England. They loved the climate and the people. The wives hated it, though. I knew this. But I wasn’t put off. George wanted to show me off, to show them that I was different. And I was. I knew that, too. I was bilingual. I was comfortable with a mixture of tongues and races, different cuisines and cultures. I had lived in a hot place before. I was gay, vivacious. It wasn’t hard to reassure his bosses. They only had to take one look at me, my olive skin, my Mediterranean nature, to see that I was different. I impressed those grey men. Three years: we had nothing to lose. A house was thrown in. We signed the contract. I thought:
I’ll show them.

I drifted off, too, dreaming, of all things, that I was riding my green bicycle along the road to my new home in Harrow on the Hill. The road was frosted; it was January. I was wrapped up in a tweed coat and gloves and shivering with the cold, riding home to meet George. Happy, newly wed. Eager to see him. As I rode, white flecks tumbled from the sky, graceful and mesmerising, reminding me of something: black flecks I’d seen somewhere else, against a blanket of white. The white flecks became black flecks. Black birds spiralled and wheeled ahead of me, littering the sky.

We stayed exactly one week at the Queen’s Park Hotel. The company wined and dined us dutifully and we received an invitation to tea with George’s new bosses and their wives. Bonny and Miriam amazed me: they wore hats and gloves and stockings.

‘Where are you from,
originally
?’ Bonny probed. Her creamy oval face was rather stern; a shadow of dark hair crept along her jaw.

‘Antibes.’

Tight, forced smiles.

‘And did you have a good trip out?’

‘No,’ I laughed. ‘I was seasick all the way.’

‘Did you bring much with you?’

‘Just my bicycle.’

Their eyes shot wide open. Miriam smirked. ‘I suppose you’ll buy a
vehicle,
’ she said.

‘I don’t drive.’

Looks of horror.

‘Do you play bridge?’

‘No.’

Froideur.

I grinned and puffed my cigarette smoke into their eyes. I had so many questions but it was clear they weren’t the right women to ask for advice. They thought I wouldn’t last. This only concentrated my resolve. We would not only stay but do well.

 

That first honeymoon week ended. Only then did we find out that the home we’d been promised hadn’t even been built! We were expecting the key. But when we arrived, the entire subject was tacitly avoided. I pushed, gently. We were taken to view a tiny apartment on Bergerac Road in a district called Winderflet. Near Chen’s Pick and Pay, a supermarket, and the Country Club.

‘Handy for six months or so.’ The company didn’t even apologise.

When we opened the door I yelped. Black shiny cockroaches, fat as mice, scuttled up ceilings and across the floor.

‘
Qu’est-ce que c’est
?’ I shrieked.

‘Just beetles.’ George tried to placate me.

‘Beetles? They’re not
beetles
. They’re demons!’

George stormed in yelling and stamping on as many as possible. The flat was in a shocking state. The mattresses hopped with nits, the refrigerator was mottled with mould. The walls flaked grey paint.

Tears welled and ran down my cheeks. ‘Take me straight back to the hotel,’ I commanded.

George nodded, his cheeks flushed. ‘Sabine, I can’t understand this . . . Really. There must be a mix-up.’

The company weren’t even ashamed. At my insistence, the flat was quickly scrubbed and repainted, new furniture was delivered. A bed, a table and four armchairs. A new fridge. Those tight forced smiles: my first taste of what those dour English women didn’t speak of. Chin up, don’t mention it. A large glass of rum. In the afternoons, a little Valium.

 

I was determined not to be bored in Trinidad. When George was at the office I tidied and cleaned our minute flat till it was spick and span. I decorated it with the few precious knick-knacks we brought out with us. I went shopping every day at Chen’s, the dark and ramshackle supermarket near by. My first shopping trip was difficult. My simple shopping list read:

Chen’s appeared deserted at first. Outside, a row of rusty shopping trolleys burnt molten hot in the sun. I managed to disentangle one, pushing it ahead of me like a shield. At the entrance, I stopped. The shop bore a tangible air of melancholy. A dank earthen odour hung in the aisles and the two bare light bulbs leaked a wispy light.

Immediately, I came across the fruit-and-vegetable section. I saw a large heap of root-like bulbs, dirty and hairy, like potatoes or coconuts. I looked for a label but found none. Next to them, a pile of bananas and hills of green beans, forlorn and shrivelled. I found tomatoes, too, grown locally, small and yellow, a little rotten; also some cauliflowers, heat-tired and turning brown. Oranges, I recognised oranges, except they were green. I picked one up and squeezed it. It was solid. I pushed my trolley past this section several times. Overripe mangoes exploded like hand grenades, fizzing with their own juice. Flies buzzed over them, over everything. Nothing even resembled an apple.

The wooden shelves were dusty, their contents sparse. Boxes of flour and tins of Carnation condensed milk. Tins of corned beef. Other brands I recognised: Heinz, Bachelors soup. Tins of orange juice and garden peas. Fray Bentos pies. Bags of rice and pulses. Split peas. Black-eyed peas. Gungo peas. Tubs of ghee, bottles of cooking oil. Bottles and boxes of local products: Matouk’s, Bermudez. Towers of wooden crates of Coca-Cola bottles; bottles of rum. Cockroaches flitted along the shelves. I turned a corner.

A fridge! Thank God. In it, four pats of butter. Six packets of Birds Eye fish fingers. No milk.

I decided to ask for help, steering my trolley to one of the checkout tills. A young black woman with stencilled-on eyebrows and a hairnet sat there, half asleep.

‘Excuse me.’ I smiled as charmingly as I could. ‘I’m looking for milk and some cheese.’

Her huge black eyes blinked. She looked at me with a profound blankness, somewhere between depression and contempt.

‘I’m new here,’ I explained.

She looked away, muttering inaudible words.

‘Sorry?’

Again, she muttered.

‘I’m afraid I can’t hear you.’

‘We ha’ no
cheese.
’

‘Oh.’ I perspired profusely.

‘Milk?’

She stared through me.

I waited.

Finally. ‘Ovuh der.’

I didn’t understand. I cringed.

She pointed to the aisle where I’d seen the tins of condensed milk.

‘I want
real
milk,’ I explained.

She looked mystified and then sullen, as if offended.

I returned to the aisle and found the condensed milk. I threw a tin into my trolley. After that, I hurried. Too ashamed to return to the till empty-handed, I bought anything to fill the trolley, pulling boxes and tins off the shelves without looking at prices, wanting to escape quickly. On the way out, I passed through a different checkout. I didn’t even glance into my basket until I returned safely to our flat. When I emptied it, the contents were very different to my shopping list.

That evening, George laughed at my haul and reluctantly I did, too. We sat on our balcony and drank rum and ate fish fingers and peas. We devoured the bananas.

‘They’re a little tart, don’t you think?’ George commented.

We discussed the bulb; George found one of his botany books and we decided it was either a yam or cassava. I wanted to talk about the young black checkout girl’s attitude but didn’t know how to bring up the subject. George would only say he didn’t know what I meant. But I wasn’t imagining it. She wasn’t exactly rude or unhelpful; it was her complete refusal to engage, as if I were an irritant. I pushed the subject to the back of my head as best I could.

We played Scrabble and I won.

‘Damn!’ George leapt from his seat in feigned anger at his loss, burying his head in my lap, taking the material of my skirt in his mouth and tugging at it like a lion might tear at a kill. I shrieked as he plunged his head deep between my thighs and somehow, between my protests and then moans, he managed to tear the skirt from my hips with his teeth. We made love on the floor. George whispered thickly into my ear,
I love you, love you, love you, Sabine
. I never quite managed to mouth the same words back. Most times, I went near to unconscious in his hands.

 

In the morning our stomachs were bad. The bananas, we discovered, were unripe plantain.