The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (7 page)

 

George escaped in his rusted pickup truck, driving around for hours, ending up in Paramin, at the top of the hill. Clouds hung in the air, tiny explosions gone still. The air was spiced with chadon beni and wild thyme, his favourite perfume. But he was tired again, always tired. Another headache moving in, a storm at the back of his skull. It was quiet up here. Quiet and still. He came up here again and again. This spot. To admire the shapely mountains, marvel at their sloping flanks. The spine of the northern range loomed across a valley so curved and deep it was like peering into the mouth of a gigantic clam. This spot ‒ where Talbot was beaten.

‘Shit,’ he said aloud.

The world had mattered once. Years ago, before he’d drunk the amount of rum he had, enough to kill a bull elephant. Women. They could do that to a man. Take everything away in a moment. Too damn serious, too damn earnest. All he wanted was to swim in his pool. Read books. Think about the Soca Warriors.

‘Bloody Eric Williams,’ he shouted at the mountains.

He got out of the truck and slammed the door.

Out in the Gulf of Paria, a cruise ship was under sail, exiting the harbour, a huge white swan paddling off. He cringed. Truth was, he preferred Trinidad ‒ always had. He preferred these wild emerald hills, the brash forests, the riotous and unpredictable landscape of Trinidad to the prim hazy pastures of his own country, England. He wanted this bold land. Not the mute grey-drizzle of Harrow on the Hill. He liked the extrovert people, not the prudish and obedient couples his parents had mixed with. He felt alive here; unlike Sabine. But now he should say something, do something, finally. Please his wife, for once. Go and see Bobby Comacho on his way home, take him on. Show Bobby the photos of Talbot’s face; let him know the story would appear in the morning’s papers. He should go and give the bastard a fright.

I’m sick of you.

George spun round.

What?

You selfish man.

He stared into the hills.

Sick of you. Sick from love.

What did you say?

You heard.

George stared. The hills groaned. The groans of a man beaten, spreadeagled across a car door, punched in the gut.
Crack.
Ribs broken.
Crunch.
The butterfly of bruises on Talbot’s young dismal face.

It’s not my fault.

Sabine began to gather all the boxes up. She’d burn them, then they wouldn’t exist. Stupid woman. Younger and foolish in those days.
Idiote!
Burn the evidence. Juvenile to have ideals. George said that once and he was right: George had a clearer sense of these things. He was more understanding of human failing. All a long time ago. Granny Seraphina, those crystal-yellow eyes. Granny had written letters, too. She’d almost forgotten about those goddamn letters. Almost. What had she written about George? She didn’t know; loose mindless rants she’d written on those long evenings, suffocating in the heat. She already needed a drink, a stiff rum. Rum and milk for breakfast. First she’d make a pile, outside in the corner of the garden. Find some kerosene.

Jennifer arrived. She came to bring Sabine a cup of tea.

‘How’s Talbot?’ Sabine asked.

‘He fine fer now.’ Jennifer looked at the chaos of dust all around. ‘Eh, eh, w’appen here?’

‘Nothing. Mr Harwood found some rubbish up in the attic.’

Jennifer didn’t believe her for a moment; she noticed her red eyes. ‘What you cryin’ about?’

Sabine pressed at her eyelids, forcing the tears back in. Her fingers were soon wet and slippery. Jennifer had witnessed her crying many times.

‘Oh gorsh.’ Jennifer stood, waiting for her to get it out. The office ceiling was all opened up, like a big chimney that had belched its contents onto the office floor. Sabine’s face was smudged with soot.

‘You should leave dis damn place,’ Jennifer said.

‘And go where?’

‘Back to England.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m too old. What would I do? Live on my own? In a little two-up two-down?’

‘Live near your son.’

‘He’s busy. He doesn’t want his mother hanging round.’

‘I thought you liked England.’

‘I thought I did, too. It’s . . . changed.’

‘How?’

‘It’s expensive. Dirty . . . it’s . . . oh, I don’t know it any more. I’m a foreigner there. Shopping trips once a year. Harrods. Harvey Nicks. A friend’s flat in Chelsea. Play tourist.’

‘What about French land?’

‘My brothers are dead. My sister lives elsewhere. There’s no one to go to now, not any more.’

‘Mr Harwood tink he should send you back.’

‘I know.’ Sabine laughed inwardly: no secrets between the three of them.

‘Don’t worry, Jennifer.’

Jennifer steupsed.

‘Worry about your son.’

‘I worry enough about him.’

Sabine wanted to be alone but Jennifer was on to her.

‘Dese de letters you write to Eric Williams?’ she asked, nodding at the open boxes.

‘Yes.’

Jennifer went sullen. ‘We have some of Granny’s at home. Some she never posted.’

‘Poor woman.’

‘Granny dead, man.’

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Harwood vexed?’

‘Yes. I think so. Baffled. Men . . .’

Jennifer’s mouth turned down and she shook her head as if she didn’t want to know any more about men, about the crazy letters. As if she wanted to know nothing about anything.

George drove back down the hill, approaching the T-junction by the gas station in Winderflet village. A line of women waited for a taxi, hands out. They stared through him. This was the worst of all their looks: like he actually
was
invisible, like he was already dead and gone. He turned right, spotting the skinny black figure up ahead, on the left, in khaki short pants and white school shirt. The boy lurched along the dusty pavement, one arm longer than the other; this longer arm hung limp, twisted at the joint. This was how he got his nickname, Clock.

George slowed down. ‘Where you going?’

The boy’s face lit up. ‘Boissiere.’

‘Get in. I’ll take you there.’

The boy was a local legend. Invited to sing at the Queen’s Hall. George had interviewed him once. After that George often stopped to pick him up, dropping him back and forth between the village and his aunt’s. The boy never wanted to waste his pocket money on a taxi fare, so he’d set off on foot. He was blessed, people said.
He Sparrow’s son
. Sang like a bird. More talented than the man himself, even, his voice purer. Talk was the famous calypsonian once had a lover out here in one of the houses behind the road.

‘Have you just been to choir practice?’

The boy nodded.

‘Up at the church?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What have you sung?’

‘Holy songs.’

George needed a song. For his soul. But he dared not ask. They drove along in a boy-man, black-white silence. Clock sat bolt upright, staring out the windscreen. Three miles to Boissiere village; the boy would have walked it. His legs were worse than his arms, twisted at the ankles.

‘Mr Harwood. I never see you in church.’

‘I don’t go.’

‘You don’t love God?’

‘I don’t
believe
in God.’

‘People say that. But they still cry out his name when they get vexed.’

‘It slips out sometimes, yes.’

‘I love God.’

‘I know.’

‘He give me bad arms but good lungs. Bad legs, but a good brain.’

‘Your singing is magnificent.’

The boy grinned. He was ten or eleven, black as the universe; his face placid and serene from all his worshipful singing. His eyes were huge and baleful, full of knowledge.
I’ll be your father
‒ the thought came from nowhere. George changed the subject.

‘What do you think of Brian Lara?’

‘Lara? He a man of God.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He gifted.’

‘I may meet him soon, to write about him for the newspaper.’ The boy’s eyes glistened. He nodded.

‘If you could ask Lara one question what would it be?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

The boy thought for a moment, peering up out the windscreen. ‘Look!’ he exclaimed.

The blimp hovered high above, tumescent. ‘Funny, how sometimes you don’t see it,’ George said, looking up.

‘How it do that?’ Clock asked. ‘It make you feel as if it following you.’

‘
God
knows. It’s a trick. There’s a little man up there with binoculars. He spends his time staring down, picking us out.’

The boy smirked at his saying the holy name in vain.

‘OK. I say “God” a lot.’

‘You shouldn’t.’

‘I’m sorry. I won’t in future.’

‘We’ll see ’bout that,’ Clock laughed.

‘So? What would you ask Brian Lara?’

‘I would aks Mr Lara about the blimp.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, man. Lara world famous. He go away a lot. Has he noticed it following him?’

‘Good question,’ George hummed, a shadow of guilt crossing his back; why, he didn’t know. He squirmed and kept his eyes fixed on the uneven road.

 

La Pompey was in the driveway when George returned, lathering Sabine’s car in suds. The dogs were round the back, tied up. La Pompey was afraid of them. The big gate slid back and George drove in, wanting to ask the man in for a drink; anything rather than face Sabine. La Pompey whistled a tune. He raised his hand, smiling a cavernous, toothless grin.

George’s headache hadn’t melted. He rubbed the back of his head. He dearly needed a bath. Parking, he tiptoed through the garage into the house. Something was burning somewhere, something burning outside. A bonfire? He stopped, gazing out into the garden. Black smoke billowed from one corner. Sabine was standing over it, the dusty shoeboxes in a heap at her feet. He watched her feed sheets of paper onto the fire.

Too late. He could recall them at will, alive, fresh. Dancing in his head. The things she said about him, the things she’d never said to him.
I hate him, he stinks. Sometimes his sweat smells like acid. He doesn’t bath enough. Or worse, sometimes he smells of
them
, of cheap cologne, of cheap women’s pussy. An
egoiste
! A bore. I am stuck and cannot get back.
There were conversations he had never wanted to have.

Eric Williams? All along Sabine had
cared
about another man. Her own affair of sorts, maybe worse. She cared. This was a type of love. And what a poor show she had made of it; to love a man she didn’t know. God, what had become of them? Yes, too late to burn the evidence. He ran a bath and when it was full he shrugged out of his dusty clothes, immersing himself completely in the clear warm water, massaging his aching scalp.

He’d seen Williams speak, too, of course. Once, in Woodford Square. Eric Williams was an orator of Athenian dimensions, an educated man who could also speak
like them.
Williams was a man of words. He preached politics to the fruit vendors down in Charlotte Street. He abbreviated world history to the single mothers of Laventille, condemned slavery with the boatmen from the docks, lambasted the evils of colonialism with anyone. He took on any opponent and always won. He spoke the way they spoke. This was his gift: Eric Williams was a teacher.

And Williams was short. A small man: was that why she hated short men? Not at all handsome. But highly erudite: Oxford, later a professor at Howard University in the States. An historian. Williams wrote books, history books of the Caribbean. Slaves. Slavery: that was his thing.

Williams liked big flashy American cars. He liked to mix the drinks.

Williams was also paranoid, suspicious, prone to listening to the gossips around him.

Everyone knew this.

Everyone knew the man.