The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (44 page)

We were housebound, relying on the radio and television for the latest reports. Thousands gathered in Woodford Square. From there Granger led a march south to Caroni and then on to Couva. The Young Power Movement marched on Whitehall and Balisier House. Williams made a public address, his voice crackling over our tinny transistor radio, saying that while people had a right to march they had no right to trample on others’ freedom. The riots, he said, were part of a global revolt against traditional institutions.

More violence. Worse violence. Riots in Charlotte Street, the police using tear gas to disperse the crowds. Black Power leaders chanting
Power to the people
and the crowds pelting the police with bottles and stones.

George slept outside on the porch with his baseball bat. Venus went home. Lucy stayed away. Freddie hired guards. The dogs barked at everything that moved beyond the gates. Pascale couldn’t sleep. We were running out of food. The woman up in the hills peered down, silently victorious. Nature always wins in the end, will always overturn men’s wars. The heat declared war on us. We sweated through sheets, through clothes; the worst dry season in years. No breeze, no mist from the mountain tops at night. An eruption of bachacs, lines teeming from a nest newly built God knows where. Agressive red ants marched through the house. George bashed them with his baseball bat.

I took down more suitcases, dusted them off. George and I rowed.

‘I’m leaving, I’ll be gone in ten days. BOAC will take everything in the hold. I’ve checked.’

‘Fine.’

‘Stay here, die here. I hope you do.’

‘Go back to England, then, see how far you get.’

‘I can’t compete with this island.’

‘Why do you hate it so?’

‘You’re a drunk.’

‘And you’ve become
black
. Like one of those Black Power people.’

 

We fucked and fucked. It was obscene. We tried to fuck each other into submission, tried to fuck things right again between us. It was our first language and our last, the only conversation we had left, and it proved useless.

I wrote to Eric Williams.

The riots spread to Tobago. A rioter in Port of Spain, Basil Davis, was shot dead by a police officer. His funeral was immense; like that of a head of state, his body carried aloft through the streets of Port of Spain, the crowd twenty men wide, the streets crammed with black people, afro heads, fists raised. Thousands mourned him, banging drums, waving flags, singing hymns.

Granny Seraphina attended. She let her white hair flow wild. She raised her fist and chanted,
power to the black man, power to the people
.

I started to pack in our office. My Remington typewriter. I wanted to take that. Plus some books, some papers, photo albums. And, of course, there were the shoe-boxes of letters to Eric Williams. Fourteen in all. Did I take them, too? Or burn them, every one, out in the garden, when George was out? No one knew of them but me. I could destroy the evidence of my past folly. I’d written them for company. Notes to self. They’d been a record of my loneliness and despair and now they were irrelevant and embarrassing. I’d burn them the minute I could.

 

We stayed at home for days. We nipped to Chen’s when it was quiet. Bought the newspaper, milk, rum, food. We swapped gossip and news reports with neighbours. It wasn’t safe for George to go to his office.

I came into the kitchen one morning, unlocking the kitchen door. The dogs weren’t there. Immediately, I was fearful. The dogs were
always
there when I opened the door, waiting to be fed, to greet whoever woke first with their wet noses and handsome heads. Both had grown waist-high, the colour of peanut butter, their muzzles musky black.

I called their names. Neither appeared. I whistled, walking out towards the driveway, calling them. I stopped: the dogs lay out there on the drive.

I called their names again, this time quietly, as though calling to a naughty child. Neither moved. I approached them, wiping tears from my eyes; then I was standing above them. Their tongues lolled blue, engorged, their eyes had rolled backwards. Flies buzzed around their muzzles. They were stiff with rigor mortis. Dead for hours, dead in the night. Nearby lay some of the raw meat thrown to them. I left the dogs there in the morning sun on the driveway. Two immense creatures, laid out like big game trophies, waiting to be stuffed or made into rugs.

I returned to the kitchen, putting the kettle on. I made a pot of tea and took the tea tray into George. He was sitting up in bed with the papers.

‘The dogs are dead,’ I said.

‘
What
?’

‘Poisoned, I think. Please don’t go out, not now. I found them dead, on the drive.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

George’s face was a little boy’s, incredulous.

‘
Both
of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dear God.’ His face sagged, his eyes pooled.

‘They threw meat for them, poisoned meat. In the night. They’re quite dead now.’

‘Oh,
no
.’

‘I’m sorry, George.’

George’s frown slid down his face, his lips slackened. Tears came and he wept like an infant. I sat down near to him on the bed and held him in my arms.

George and Freddie dug two deep graves in the earth out in the back yard, under a mango tree. The dogs were so stiff it was like burying two tables. The men dug for hours and sprinkled lime into the pits. Flies swarmed over the dogs’ mouths and eyes and genitals. I didn’t let Pascale see them; I told her they’d eaten something which had made them sick and that they’d gone to heaven. She bawled and flung herself on her bed, kicking and screaming, sobbing into her pillow, saying they were her best friends, her very best friends.

Pascale insisted on a funeral. When the men had shovelled all the earth back into the pits, when the dogs were completely hidden, we gathered around the graves. Pascale had decorated their collars with ginger lilies. She knelt near the freshly dug earth, reading out a poem she had written on a piece of paper in felt-tip pen. A poem for their souls in heaven. George, Freddie and I stood behind her.

Solemnly, Pascale placed the dogs’ collars in the crook of the mango tree, then pinned the poem to the trunk. I sprinkled grass seed over the raw-earth plots. George smoothed the seed over with his spade. Freddie cussed under his breath. Pascale was brave; this was her first funeral, her first encounter with the dead. Later I promised her I would plant a pink hibiscus bush to mark their graves.

The house was much quieter without the dogs. George was wordless, struck dumb. Pascale was tearful for days. I continued packing in a trance-like state, trying to stay clear-headed, trying to decide what we’d leave, what we’d take, even packing a case for George, hoping he might come back with us.

 

Then, it all happened at once. Riots erupted in Port of Spain, the angriest yet. A flurry of phone calls from friends, all with businesses in town. A hundred businesses had been fire-bombed overnight; cars overturned and set on fire down in Independence Square. Many of the old French Creole enterprises were destroyed by the mob. Foreign companies were also targeted, whole office blocks smashed up, those run by the light-skinned middle classes, the bourgeoisie of Trinidad.

‘Can’t see why they’d attack Forbes-Mason, down by the dock. We’ve always treated staff well, always worked with the boatmen down there. They know us.’

But George received a telephone call from the Director of the company. ‘Forbes-Mason has been hit. It’s on fire.’

George phoned London immediately.

‘The office won’t be rebuilt,’ they said. ‘We’re not going to open elsewhere, either. It’s time to call it quits. Sorry, George. The
Southern Cross
is still in the harbour for the next day or two. We’ll pay your passage. I’d get on the boat.’

‘
What
boat?’ I wanted to know. ‘WHAT boat? George?’ I stared, shaking, unable to think straight. Had he deceived me?

George sighed. He didn’t look at all guilty.

‘Please tell me.’

‘There’s a cruise ship in; it hasn’t been able to get away because the captain went to stay with friends of his family for a few days. Now he can’t get back. It’ll be leaving as soon as he can.’

‘There’s a
ship
on the dock?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘No.’

‘
Why
not?’

‘Why do you think?’

I was sorry for him then, for the coward that he’d become. This was our last chance. ‘Come
with me
, George. Please, I beg you. I haven’t yet booked the flight. This will be quicker, easier. All of us together.’

George hung his head.

‘Can’t you see it’s all over? This is the hurricane. It’s come. The old ways will be swept away.’

I saw him struggle to stay in control of himself. He never planned to leave. The riots, the Molotov cocktails, the dogs rotting under the earth; now he’d no place of work. I could see it was all beyond his thinking. All these years he’d rejected my ideas, the things which were invisible, but there, always.

‘Yes. I can finally see what you mean.’

‘Then
come. Please.
’

‘OK.’

‘Oh thank God!’ I hugged him.

‘You’ve won, Sabine. I’m so sorry about all this. It’s all gone wrong.’ He sighed heavily; his sun-drenched, rum-drenched days were over. ‘I’ll go back with you, of course.’

‘George, we’ll start again, we’ll be with Sebastian, we’ll all live together. It won’t be as bad as you imagine. When’s the boat leaving?’

‘In two days.’

‘Oh
mon Dieu
,
merci
. Thank God.’

We packed till late into the night. I rang Irit to see if she and John might like to live in the house, rent-free, asking her to be its keeper until we were settled in England.

She was delighted. ‘I will be Queen of your castle,’ she purred. ‘Irit, are you all right, over there?’

‘Of course, dahling.’

‘What about your shop?’

‘It’s higher up, the riots are further down, near the dock. So far so good.’

‘You’re staying?’

‘Of course. This storm will pass. It is disgraceful what the PNM are doing. They are all at the Hilton,
hiding
. Williams is at home with his little gang of advisers. They are drinking rum and Port of Spain is burning. I like this Granger. Handsome, no? I hear there’ll be trouble tomorrow; they’re calling in warships from England and America.’

‘No!’

‘Oh yes. You wait. Tomorrow is a big day.’

‘But our boat is leaving soon.’

‘Ha ha, you may have to swim after it.’

 

We slept fitfully. Baseball bat by the bed. Sweating through the sheets. Mosquitoes buzzing, our legs blotched with red lumps. The hills around us shifted, groaning with the hotness of the earth. I went outside and stared up at the green woman.

So, we’re leaving finally. I’m taking him back, I said to her.

Yes, it’s time to go.

He’ll miss you.

Don’t worry about that. Look, you see, you won in the end.

I’ll miss you, too, in a way.

You can always come back.

Never.

You never know.

Never. Good luck.

 

Our suitcases stood in a line downstairs, bulging. Twelve of them bound up with straps. Lucy had slept the night on the sofa.

At dawn, we switched on the radio. The Black Power leaders had been arrested. All except Granger, who’d disappeared.

‘Treachery,’ I muttered. ‘That fucking hypocrite. How could Williams do this to his
own people
? His own students?’

Police occupied the Red House. Riot police had invaded Woodford Square, cleared it with tear gas. Warships were on their way. A curfew had been imposed from 6 p.m. in the evening till 6 a.m. the following day. A State of Emergency was declared.

 

Venus managed to get a message through to us from a payphone.

‘Ah cyan come in. Granny tek Bernard and Clive into tong, she take dem on de marches. Dey peltin’ stones at de police. Ah cyan come. All rong me upset. Everyone out. Dey burnin’ down de place. No taxis on de road. Granny gone mad.’

‘Do you have water?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘And food?’

‘For now.’

‘I’ll come over when I can, in the next day or so. I’ll bring you some ice for the cooler.’

‘Don’t come, madam.’

‘Why not?’

‘It not safe.’

Bernard was nine by then, Clive eleven. Good little boys. I imagined them marching down Frederick Street with Granny, their fists raised. I imagined she was filling their heads, lighting fire in their souls; that one day the boys would be just like Geddes Granger.

I wrote to Eric Williams: