The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (28 page)

A tray of canapés appeared. It was hard to pick anything up in gloves. Irit took hers off, swiping a vol-au-vent.

‘Open wide.’ She popped one in my mouth.

The men had wandered off. The invitation came through their bosses and they were obligated to circulate; this was our formal welcome to Trinidad. I didn’t recognise anybody. Here was the colonial old guard: bureaucrats, civil servants, the Police Commissioner, his cronies. Hummingbirds hovered near the vases of Bermuda lilies, blurs of iridescent green, their wing-beats like a hurricane’s fury. The cucumber sandwiches had curled, the stuffed eggs perspired and glistened like fat men, the salmon mousse had collapsed into itself, making a revolting pink mess. Ice in glasses vanished in minutes. Everything disappeared as we avoided the subject of the heat.

‘I must try to behave myself, for John,’ Irit smiled.

I recognised Bonny, one of the manager’s wives from my first week. She blossomed from the crowd of pastel dresses, a flute of warm champagne clasped to her breast. Her eyes sharpened when she saw me.

‘So.’ She looked me up and down. ‘How are you coping?’

‘Well,’ I pretended.

She forced a smile.

‘This is my friend, Irit.’ I gestured, turning to include her.

Bonny nodded stiffly, barely glancing at her. ‘You’ve been to the Country Club?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s very nice.’

‘And where else?’

‘The beach, Maracas. It’s beautiful.’

‘Oh, my
dear
. You can’t swim there. The currents will drown you.’

‘I’ve swum there quite happily.’

Bonny grimaced.

‘And I’ve been to the market in Charlotte Street.’

‘Ugh, that dreadful place. I send my maid.’

‘And to the University of Woodford Square.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You can’t be
serious.
’

‘Yes. Eric Williams is a very interesting figure. Don’t you think?’

‘I can’t stand him.’

I grinned. ‘I think he’s quite original. Inspiring, in fact.’

‘Ugh, that awful man.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Irit stepped in.

‘He has a chip on his shoulder. He’s a racist. He only appeals to the masses. He’ll do nothing for the whites here, the business class, those who’ve built and run Trinidad. He’ll destroy what they’ve done. We will be forced to leave.’

‘And go
where
?’ Irit said, suddenly terse. ‘Back to your mansion in England? To your big house in the country?’

Bonny stared.

‘Back to your English servants there? Your butlers and chauffeurs? Your gardeners, eh, your serfs?’

‘Eric Williams will destroy this country.’ Bonny’s eyes hardened.

‘Oh really? He’s a well-educated man. He’s been to Oxford. He’s an historian. How many people here can claim that? Do you think there’s one person in this garden with a university degree?’

Bonny quivered, a snarl on her lips. ‘Williams is
obsessed
with slavery. It’s all about the past. He can’t let it drop. He should forget about it. It’s
so
boring.’

‘What? Forget about the past, just like that? No one would
dare
say that to a Jew!’ Irit growled.

Bonny was thrown.

Irit became ice-cold. ‘Forget the Holocaust? Six million gassed. Oh, just forget about it. Get on with it?’

‘That’s different.’

Irit laughed. ‘Yes, it is. At least they killed us lousy filthy Jews
quicker
. Six million in only five years.
Poof
! All in the oven. Slavery went on for hundreds of years.
Huuunndreds
,’ Irit purred.

Bonny paled. ‘Slavery and the Holocaust are two different things,’ she stuttered.

‘Yes,’ Irit spat. ‘But both barbaric genocide.’

Irit’s fists were clenched. I was proud of her then. Bonny backed away from us, blending quickly into the crowd of tea dresses.

 

John lent us their car and we drove to Maracas Bay, a remote beach tucked into a curve along Trinidad’s rugged north coast. This beach was famous for its strong currents and rough waters, just as Bonny had said. It was late afternoon and the waves were rolling onto the shore in measured swells. I chose a spot where the waves looked calmer and swam out far and dived deep and cried into the sea.

I hated Trinidad. I felt constantly misled, constantly in a state resembling grief. I didn’t understand anything. And just when I thought I did, it was snatched out from under me.
Three years. George loves it. I’ll do it for him.
The sea absorbed my tears. The water buoyed me up, made me light. It communed with the water in me. In the sea I became peaceful. I was a sea-creature. I sprouted fins on my ankles. A tail to swish. I swam somersaults and backflips.

George came out to me, paddling like a dog. ‘I never knew you were such a good swimmer.’

‘I’ve always loved the sea and the beach. We spent summers at the seaside, always.’

‘The Med is flat, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not scared of these waves?’

‘It’s the currents you need to be wary of. But you can see them.’

‘I’m proud of you.’

‘Good.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m not sure. What kind of place have you brought me to?’

‘Another world, a world we Europeans made.’

‘It doesn’t feel like Europe at all. Nothing makes sense.’

‘But isn’t that interesting?’

‘No.’

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘Everything.’

‘Really?’

‘I feel as if I have to learn everything again, what to say to who, who is who and why. Why I’m so funny on my bicycle? I wish you’d told me it would be so . . .’

‘So what?’

‘Restrictive.’

George looked sad. ‘Just enjoy it, my love, while we’re here. This island is rich and very, very beautiful. I’ll show you round; you might change your opinion.’

‘Just bring me here, to the sea, from time to time.’

‘I will, my darling.’

We kissed and frolicked for an hour or so, till the sun began to set. We sat on the dry, warm sand wrapped in towels, watching the display ‒ shades of mango, paw-paw and hibiscus swam in the sky. We drank a rum-cocktail mixture from a flask and I felt a little better. I loved my husband. Maybe he was right: don’t ask questions. I squeezed his hand and he kissed my fingers.

‘Paradise,’ George said, hugging me.

 

That first year we wanted to watch the carnival bands. This meant a whole day in the sun. I decided on my favourite Chinese coolie hat with cherries on one side, a gift from George purchased on a trip to Paris. I wanted to dress up.

‘I shall take Grand-mère’s fan,’ I decided. ‘It’ll be so hot.’

Grand-mère’s fan, a prized possession, a hundred years old at least. Whalebone and lace, it resembled the wing of a decayed red admiral butterfly. Grand-mère used it in the high summer months, batting it against her chest. As a child, she let me snap it in and out, play coquette, stamp around her flat shouting ‘
Olé!
’, hiding my eyes dramatically behind it. Grand-mère’s Chanel No. 5 still lingered in the fabric.

We parked at the nearest corner of the savannah and walked towards town. It was mid-morning and we joined the gathering throng; everywhere groups of people drifted in the same direction, towards Fredrick Street, some in costume, others like us. Open-top cars, full of white people, toured the savannah beeping their horns. They looked gay and happy and festive and black people stared at them as if they were the outsiders, a little odd and foolish.

In those days the carnival masquerade bands were small and fairly segregated. Whites and other light-skinned people stuck together. They played pretty mas by day and their bands were well ordered, parading in lines down the centre of the street or across the stage in the savannah. Some had brass instruments, trombones, trumpets. Their costumes were fairly innocent: farmers, cowgirls, sailors. The whites behaved in an orderly fashion, as though attending an English country fair.

The black bands were more alive and seemed to be more spontaneous in their revelry. This was carnival born from the barrack yards, the jamette class, a spontaneous festival of foolery and trickery devised, years back, to ridicule the rich whites with transvestism and piss-stained sheets. Carnival wasn’t just dressing up, oh no, nothing so simple. It was first fuelled by ill-feeling, by the loathing of the black man for the white master. As I approached the top end of town it was with a sense of thrill mixed with threat, a spectator and yet also an object, the spectacle itself.

 

The black masqueraders jumped in the streets, their bands accompanied by kings and queens, huge papier-mâché statues on wheels pulled along by a cavorting man or woman. Enormous butterfly creatures, fantasy insects, grasshoppers, begemmed praying mantis. Contraptions of netting and sequins. In Frederick Street we stopped, standing on the pavement outside Sa Gomes, watching the bands parade past. I was grateful for my fan, hiding behind it to watch. Men and women danced in a lewd manner, rotating their hips in full circles, thrusting their backsides rhythmically in and out, often inches apart.
Wining
, they called it.

A Spanish Armada floated past, papier-mâché galleon-headdresses bobbing on the sea of afro heads. Classical costumes, too: the planter and the planter’s wife, Dame Lorraine, a stock character still much lampooned. Statues of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse bobbed past. The American marines based at Chaguaramas were unpopular. Little boys, painted blue or red, tiny horns stuck on their heads and with pointy wire tails, ran around causing havoc. Devils. Jab Jabs.

I forgot to hide behind my fan. I wanted to join in, but didn’t dare. I turned round to dance with George but he’d wandered across the hot road to take photographs. I waved at him and he waved back. I moved to the music, enjoying myself, closing my eyes, letting the rhythm take effect, climbing up through my soles, grasping my calves.

So I didn’t see the ol’ mas band arrive with its donkey carts and the men’s faces blackened with coal; didn’t see the Robber Man on his way through the streets, the carnival band in the street scattering. I heard his whistle, though, an ear-splitting screech.

My eyes shot open.

A tall black man stood in front of me. My heart faltered. He wore a wide-brimmed Cavalier’s hat, a black ostrich plume curling from it. His silk cape was voluminous, covering his shoulders and torso. He carried a small box the shape of a coffin.

‘Eh, eh! Look wa’ we have here! A real life Dame Lorraine,’ he said, looking at me. ‘My God. Ting self, man! Look she fan and she hat. She dan dan.’ He pranced around me, showing me off.

His entourage laughed. Children gathered round him, half frozen with fear, half awestruck. I was quickly encircled. At first, I wasn’t too scared.

‘Let me introduce myself,’ he proclaimed, taking my hand as if to kiss it. ‘I am the Night Invader, the Unthwarted Bandit of Paramin, the King of the Verdant Hills, Conjurer of the Clouds, Highwayman,
Body Snatcher
!’ The children squealed. He bent to kiss my wrist formally, but snarled and slobbered instead.

I tried to snatch it back.

‘Oho. She try to wriggle free.’ He clasped my hand in a steel grip. ‘Madame Lorraine doesn’t like to look at me. Why so? She ‘fraid? She does not know who I am? Why, Madame, wid dis whistle, I can call hurricane from de sout. I can break up de lan’ wid earthquake. I does mash up de sea wid big waves, calling dem ovuh de norden range, over de hills of Paramin. I does wake up de dead!’

His henchmen crowed. The children darted about in circles. One poked at my shoes. The Robber Man clutched my hand.

‘Eh, whitey. You here by yourself? Eh, eh,
she pretty like pretty self.
Doux doux. Sweetheart. Look how she blush and fan she face. You like it here in Trinidad? Have you sampled any of de local
delicacies
?’ He rolled his hips, leering. By then a crowd had gathered, others joining his band, whistling, egging him on.

He stood up straight, about to make a speech.

‘Eh, you like it here in Trinidad? Well, Miss, lemme tell yuh somptin: yuh days
numbered.
Go back to where you came from. De Doc go put allyuh on a boat. Send you home pack up head to foot, pack you tight,
in chains
. And if you doh like it he go pitch you overboard. You tink I make joke? Go back, white girl. Take my advice. It time for de people to have der day. We go run dis place, den you go see how yuh like it, eh? Maybe you get taste of your own
treat-ment
. Maybe we go bury you up to your neck near a red-ant nest! Paste your pretty mout wid
honey
.’

The crowd erupted, jeering.

The Robber Man lowered his head; we were eye to eye. ‘Or
wossssss
. Fill dat lovely ass of yours wid
gunpowder
.’

The children shrieked.

‘Blow you up like a cannon!’

He thrust his face close to mine and smiled sweetly. ‘Eh, doux, doux?’

I trembled.

‘De Doc, he does read books. He know a ting or two. Nature speaks in louder tones dan philosophy. Lightning announce thunder.’ The Robber Man threw his cape back.

‘I tell you dis. Plenty lightning now. He has appeared. Come to save his vexed and oppress children. He has come forward, cast down he bucket. Everywhere people will bless de name of de hero.
Eric Williams
. Trophies will be raised in his honour.’

I backed up against the shop front in a cold terror.

‘Time to pay up, my plump white chicken!’ The Robber Man opened his coffin. Inside, rolled-up banknotes and coins, a packet of cigarettes, bracelets.

Intentionally, I had left my handbag at home. George kept our money; he was nowhere to be seen.

‘I h-have nothing to give.’

‘Oh no?’

I shook my head.