The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (40 page)

Venus bent down to his eye-level, wrapping her arms around him. He clung to her, sobbing hot florid tears. Tears in Venus’s eyes, too, as she knelt in the kitchen, holding my son’s grief and homesickness.

‘Oh gorsh, nuh. Oh gorsh, w’appen to you, yousa big man.’ But she hugged him tight, holding on to him in a way which comforted herself. His little frame shook.

I turned away, leaving them.

George stood at the bar, mixing himself a rum and soda. He didn’t like all the fuss, he hadn’t missed our son. He held a frosted clinking glass up towards me. I shook my head, passing him.

In our bedroom I switched on the air conditioning and lay down on our bed. I turned on my side, water spilling from my eyes onto the pillow. I should have escaped then, in those early days, I should have packed up, said goodbye to George and to Trinidad, taken our children back to civilisation.

 

Sebastian never needed me again, not really. He arrived and departed for boarding school three times a year for the next eleven years, but he was never the same again. I’d abandoned him. And he’d abandoned his need for me.

He was bilingual for many years. He learnt to speak impeccable Standard English from his schoolmasters and friends, in self-defence. The boarders were allowed pets and his pet crapaud was replaced by a black bunny called Bouncer that he kept in a hutch. But every time he stepped off that BOAC jet onto the tarmac at Piarco, his first language rushed up his throat. The sing-song came alive, that demented vocabulary. He
eh, ehed
and
ohoed
and steupsed and said
mash up
and
bol’ face
, ran about barefoot and never mentioned a word of his school term, as if it hadn’t happened. In his adult speech, no trace of this island language remained; he spoke the Queen’s English. All this broke my heart so much we never sent Pascale away.

 

George purchased another piece of Trinidad. This time it was a strip of land with some beachfront and a sand-spit and its own little island, a rather ragged-looking rock, I saw from the photographs, off the Blanchisseuse coast. I didn’t want to go to the beach any more, what with my skin the colour of teak. Most afternoons I slept heavily, after two Valium. George would disappear, returning home smelling of grass and spices. That scent, I came to know it well; he came home often wearing it like a cologne, like the scent of another woman. Sometimes he wanted to make love to me, even when I was drugged.

‘How
could
you?’

‘How could I what?’

‘You know! Get off me.’

‘Darling. What’s the matter? You know you like this. You like me.’

‘I’m not in the mood . . .’

‘Really? Are you sure?’ He ran his hands up my legs, up into my skirt. ‘You’re always in the mood.’

I twisted away. ‘Not after you’ve been with
her
.’

‘I’ve been to the beach.’

‘You’ve been with that
bitch
.’

‘You’re imaging things.’

‘And you have no imagination at all. You’re
boring.
You see nothing. Blinkers! Nothing. You’re a boring man. Boring!’ I screamed at him through my haze.

‘Darling.’

‘Get off me!’

He stood and stared, shaking his head.

 

Later, in the garden, I smoked. The green mountain woman peered down at me from her immensity. I knew.

He’s been rolling in
you.

Maybe so.

He’s yours. Have him.

I don’t want him.

Take him off my hands.

I don’t want him.

He’s in love with you and I don’t blame him.

I’m very beautiful. Didn’t you know?

Not till I came.

Your husband knew what he was coming to.

Yes. He’s ruined now. Ruined.

I heard a soft laugh, laughter of wry recognition and exaltation.

I took more pills. Slept for days at a time.

 

Then, one day, George came home excited.

‘Look at this.’ He tossed a small booklet onto a patio table. A downpour had just stopped. Everything dripped and glistened and the keskidees were roused, making a fuss, asking their eternal question:
Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?

I picked up the booklet, realising that it was a passport. Trinidadian. I opened it, reading George’s name, his details. I flipped the blank crisp pages to a recent photo at the back. George’s face had changed. His skin had crinkled around the eyes, his cheeks were more filled out and, yes, he was darker. Still a dashing man, though, his eyes azure against his new skin tone. At thirty-seven, George was in his prime. The passport was brand new.

‘I picked it up this morning,’ he explained.

‘How did you get it, you’re not
born
here?’

‘I have to have it.’

‘Why?’

‘Europeans can’t own land any more. Only Trinidadians can.’

‘So?’

‘So I’ve become a Trinidadian.’

‘I’m a Trinidadian.’

I looked at him, shocked. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve traded my old British passport in. They’re allowing this.’

‘You haven’t.’

‘I had to. It was that or sell up and get out.’

‘But that’s what they
want
. They’re controlling who gets what, so that we don’t get it all any more.’

‘Well, tough, I own parts of Trinidad.’

‘But you’re English! How will you ever be able to get back into
England
?’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’m a born Englishman. By birth and blood. The British Embassy assured me. I
had
to do it.’

‘And you didn’t discuss it with me?’

‘No.’

‘Jesus, George. When are you ever going to see we’re not
wanted
? You’re hanging on to your job as it is.’

‘I’m Trinidadian now, so are our children. We’ve lived here
ten years
. Our home is here. Others are building near by. Soon it’ll be a neighbourhood you’ll
like
. I’ll buy more land. It’s cheap as dirt. If I lose my job I can develop it. When are
you
going to see it all, the bigger picture? What do you want me to do? Go back to a desk job in the City? Commute with my briefcase, going to work in the dark, coming home in the dark, on the train and the tube like so many of those poor fucks. I can’t do that. Here I’m
someone
. We know everyone. What do you want from me? To go back to Harrow on the fucking Hill?’

‘I hate it here!’ I screamed. ‘I want to go back.’

‘Well,
go.
’ His eyes blazed.

I sobbed, facing him. George faced me back. An awkward fear churned in my gut.

I slapped him. He flinched and put his hand to his face. His eyes became calm and serious and at that moment he matched my heat with grace. I don’t know where he summoned this grace from. A resolve that was his, that was a question of his self-worth, the high price he put on his own head. George valued himself in some way which was delicate, unshowy, tenacious. He knew himself. It was the cause of his magnetism. He nodded, careful and slow.

‘If I push this, I’ll lose you,’ I said quietly.

He said nothing.

But I understood. He’d called my bluff.

Qu’est-ce qu’il dit
, the birds outside squawked.

‘Shut up!’ I shouted at them. ‘Shut up, shut up.’

‘He said go, go. And maybe I
should
.’

 

Later, Lucy gave me one of her potions. I knocked it back with more Valium. I slept it off. George went out and got drunk. I wrote to Williams.

I took more pills. That report into basic sanitation in Paramin was never written, maybe not even commissioned. I didn’t care. To hell with it all. I was a fool. And I was married to a man who had carefully thought things through. I couldn’t remember our home in Harrow on the Hill, couldn’t picture it. Then one day I found out, quite by chance, that George had sold it ‒ without telling me.

‘Why?’ I shouted.

‘Because I needed the money.’

‘Again, you never asked. Never consulted me.’

‘Why should I? The house was mine, not yours.’

‘It was a gift to
us.
’

‘Bought with my parents’ money. My name on all the paperwork.’

I’d never considered the implications of this. I owned nothing. My husband owned me, though. I was chattel, human chattel. I was stuck, truly stuck in Trinidad. The green woman gazed down at me, mute, but never sympathetic.

 

Still, we threw parties. Parties cured us. Pool parties, dinner parties, cocktail parties. Always Jules, always Irit and Helena and Gabriel, the Bakers. We were proud of ourselves and our home and our children and everything looked as though we were blessed: money, looks, rude health. Our life appeared charmed. And for those times, yes. Parties brought us back together. We flirted and showed off, alive to our desire for each other. Our physical appetite for each other never waned. Parties made us remember this and I forgave George his infidelities, which sometimes he even confessed.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ George once wept, falling onto his knees. ‘Forgive me. I’m so greedy. I don’t love the others. I’m your slave, Sabine. You have me in chains. My heart is chained to you.’

 

George drank more and more. At weekends it was nothing to drain a rum and soda at 11 a.m., drinking throughout the day.

‘The heat burns it off,’ was his belief. He spent hours by the pool, reading, swilling the ice in his rum. He still cleaned the pool daily, lovingly, hoovering and scattering chlorine and squeezing blue drops into the water. He lived in shorts and cotton sports shirts, flip-flops. His transistor radio was always on, tuned into the local news or the cricket reports. He never lost his English accent, though. If anything, this part of him grew stronger. The whole island spoke in a mellifluous sing-song, in banter and picong, all playful and backward and uncompromising. But George boomed. His laugh was stupendous, a guffaw so loud people smirked at him, behind his back.

 

Still, I wrote to Williams, mostly at night, sneaking off to the study, when the house was dark.

Granny Seraphina fell ill. Boils on her legs, open seeping wounds.

‘She woh go to de hospital,’ Venus said. ‘She woh go to no doctor either.’

‘Has this happened before?’

‘From time to time.’

Their home on the hill was poorly ventilated. Now the boys were older, Granny slept on the floor. The boils appeared out of the pureness of poverty. We brought Granny home, her legs wrapped in bandages made from scraps of material. She slept in Venus’s room, next to the kitchen. Lucy lanced and treated her boils, patching them with soothing herb poultices. Granny approved of Lucy’s cures. The old woman lay silent in Venus’s bed. Venus slept in Sebastian’s room as he was away at school. Bernard and Clive came, too. For a week, we camped. The house was full. Pascale and Venus’s sons whooped and ran wild. George made himself scarce. He didn’t like Granny at all.

‘That woman gives me the creeps.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘She’s trouble.’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t want you encouraging her to stay.’

‘She’ll stay till she’s better.’

‘She looks like she’s already dead.’

‘Quite the opposite. Granny is very alive.’

One evening I peered in to see how she was and found her bed was empty. The bedside light bathed the room in tobacco-coloured light. Singing. I could hear singing, though. Granny? Singing, in high lucid tones. I crept into the room. The door to the small bathroom ensuite was open. The shower was on. Water fell like continual rain; the sound brought on a raw and guilty feeling. My shoulders crawled. The sound of singing and rain.

The shower curtain was pulled only half across. Granny’s old dress lay crumpled on the floor. I dared to look, quickly, surreptitiously ‒ and there she was. A black human cross. Granny Seraphina, arms outstretched, head back, the water bathing her eyes, falling into her nostrils, her open mouth. Singing all the while, her black body lathered with creamy soap. Granny, soaped and lathered and singing like an angel in my house.