The Pink House at Appleton

by Jonathan Braham

  Pepsi laughed again. ‘You quiet people are the worst. What did you see?’

  Poppy had grown tired of the game and had gone off in a rush through the tall grass after a pair of game pea doves.

  ‘I’m not going to tell anybody. I know what you little boys do. Whatever you tell me is between me and you, okay? When you spied on her, did you see her thing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Boyd replied slowly. He had seen many things.

  Pepsi tittered. ‘Do you know what the slave masters did to the slave women?’

  ‘Beat them,’ Boyd said quickly.

  ‘Don’t be stupid! It’s what men do to women, don’t you know? I’m not making it up. It’s all in the books. The slave owner took out his teapot and put it in the slave woman’s thing. Then she had babies. Did you know that?’

  Boyd shook his head. He couldn’t imagine how anybody’s teapot could make babies. He only peed with it and knew that when he was bursting he had to go, that Perlita referred to the Vienna sausages at breakfast as “little boys’ teapots”, and that Mama always said, ‘Did you wash your teapot?’ after his bath if she didn’t bathe him herself.

  ‘It’s how babies come,’ Pepsi continued. ‘Your mama and papa tell you that babies come from the stork? Well, that’s a lie. Nobody comes from a stork. My cousin says that it’s just to keep children ignorant. You put your teapot into the woman and a baby grows in her tummy until she has to go to the hospital for the doctors to take it out. My cousin studies biology and told me all about it. Every boy can do it, and every girl. It’s how even dogs are born, but they don’t have to go to the hospital. One dog gets on top of the lady dog and puts his thing into her, then after a while the lady dog has puppies. Your mama is going to have a baby soon. It’s growing in her. But don’t tell her what I told you.’

  Pepsi drew close to Boyd in the grass. Her presence overpowered him. ‘Show me your teapot,’ she said. Her face was expressionless. ‘Show it to me, Boyd.’

  It was so sudden and unexpected that Boyd didn’t hear it at first, especially as Poppy had reappeared, panting. Pepsi was so close to him that he could feel the hairs on her arms. But it was her eyes, forcing him down, that placed him where she wanted. His eyes fell upon small peeping lizards in the branches above. Their scarlet tongues jerked with astonishment at the scene beneath them.

  ‘Show it to me,’ Pepsi coaxed. ‘I’m not going to tell anybody.’

  Her fingers were at his trousers. They were surprisingly cool. Beyond the shade of the trees and the deep grass, out past the thick hedge where the house lay in radiant light, Perlita opened the kitchen door and Poppy, distracted by the possibility of food, raced away for the second time. Pepsi had raspberry breath; she was breathing with lips apart, and Boyd saw the pink of her tongue. Even if he could speak it would be impossible to ask her to stop. The buttons of his trousers were almost undone.

  ‘Pepsiiii! Pepsiiii!’ It was Icilyn at the fence again. ‘Mrs Moore want you. Come now. Pepsiii! Pepsiii! Pepsi, you hear me? Don’t be fresh, chile. Come now!’

  The last Boyd saw of Pepsi were her slim legs, the wrinkled white of her shorts displaying grass stains, vanishing in the green. He stayed in the grass, in the close quiet, till the wind rustled the leaves, till the factory siren, the cauchee, screamed like a pig, lusty and terrible, dispensing the hot steam, finding a voice but not release. And Boyd pondered the many questions in his head but found no answers, only a deep bewilderment.

  * * *

  Mrs Moore didn’t remain much longer at Appleton. At the end of the holidays, she and Mr Moore left with all their furniture piled high in a large Bedford truck, Pepsi waving long into the distance. Barrington wrote to her immediately, a letter of several pages, torn up and corrected a dozen times. Excelsior was the only school for him now, and come September he would take the train to live with the Moores in Kingston. It had nothing to do with Pepsi. Boyd was unruffled. The memory of Pepsi’s lips, her lovely girl smell, girl laugh and girl looks, the seductive fearfulness and shocking danger of her were enough for him. He marvelled at the sound of her name, Pepsi, and the memory of the songs of the moment, “Under the Bridges of Paris”, “Passing Strangers” and “Honeycomb”, and he could not forget that instant in the long grass when time stood still.

  Pepsi did not write back. Barrington returned to pretending to be grown-up, walking about with his hands in his pockets and looking serious with a furrowed brow. He also started to practise dynamic tension, something he’d read about in an advertisement featuring Charles Atlas, the body builder, at the back of a Roy Rogers comic.

  Mama went back to listening to Housewives’ Choice while she sewed and leafed through seventy-two pages of Woman magazine. But her thoughts were elsewhere.

  ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ she said to a pensive Boyd sitting next to her on the sofa. ‘People come, people go. Everything comes to an end.’

  ‘Why, Mama?’ Boyd asked, feeling the weight of the words.

  Mama, seeing his troubled look, tried to restrain herself, but was surprised as the words flowed from her, unstoppable. ‘Well, darling, because it’s true. Nothing lasts forever. Mrs Moore and Pepsi were here yesterday and now they’re gone. We lived at Worthy Park and now we don’t live there anymore. You used to see your Aunt Enid often but now we are too far away. I don’t see my mother anymore either. And my father, your grandpapa, isn’t alive anymore.’ Here Mama stopped, aware that she’d said too much. Boyd said nothing but she sensed the enormity of his thoughts.

  ‘Is Grandma going to die, Mama?’

  ‘No, darling, of course not.’ It was the only way to reply. She took him to her.

  ‘Is Papa going to die, Mama?’ Boyd’s eyes didn’t meet hers.

  ‘No, darling!’ Mama cuddled him closer and felt his tension. She kissed his cheeks. ‘Papa will live to a hundred and that’s too far away to even think about.’

  ‘What about you, Mama? And Barrington, and Yvonne? And Poppy, and me?’

  Mama gave a forced laugh, cuddled him even closer, and regretted having started the conversation. ‘Don’t be silly, my little peeny-waalie. No one’s going to die. Little children don’t die. Everything comes to an end but children are here forever and ever.’

  Boyd said nothing more. But the words that mattered so much stuck in his memory. Everything comes to an end. Nothing lasts forever. And he remembered Grandpa Pratt, who they never saw again.

  Mama wished she’d kept her silence, but she’d simply articulated what was uppermost in her mind. She missed Mrs Moore with her floral frocks and her jolly motherly talk and laughter. She missed the coffee mornings and the chance to use her silver service. She missed the social intercourse. And she started to complain that Papa never took her anywhere, not even to the club.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ Papa said.

  ‘We’ve been here almost four weeks,’ Mama told him, pained.

  ‘People will think you have nothing to do at home if you’re always at the club.’

  ‘I don’t want always to be at the club,’ Mama replied, frustration breaking her voice. ‘I just want to go there sometimes, meet new people, get out of this house.’

  Papa grew tense at once and stopped speaking, hearing the two words that infuriated him. He saw this as a direct criticism of his family management, of his implementation of the Brookeses master plan, which, as far as he was concerned, was receiving his full attention. Some people would never understand. He lit one of his Royal Blend cigarettes, breast heaving, dreadfully restrained, reading The Daily Gleaner. The only sound in the room was the vicious snap of the paper as he periodically turned the pages.

  An hour later, at his bedroom window, Boyd saw parachuting dandelions fall into the oleander hedge as Pepsi walked away looking over her shoulder at him, her lips hot and beckoning. He also saw Papa get into the jeep and drive off in the direction of Siloah, the nearest town. At sunset, when the night noises were beginning to be heard, when the garden fragrances had drifted into the house, whe
n The Chordettes sang “Eddie My Love” on the radio, Papa returned. He carried a small, mysterious package tied with silver string.

  CHAPTER 4

  Boyd saw Papa go to Mama, holding the small package behind his back as The Chordettes said, Please Eddie, don’t make me wait too long. Later, he saw Mama standing in the middle of the room crying, just before Papa closed the bedroom door. The next day, they heard the news. Papa had bought Mama a bottle of Evening in Paris, her favourite perfume. Soir De Paris, as lovely a perfume as money can buy, the advertisements in the papers said. And finally, that Saturday evening, Papa took Mama to the club.

  That night, Boyd heard when they returned. He heard their quick footsteps, muffled but excited voices, shoes falling to the floor. Evening in Paris drifted into his room. Soon he heard Mama call out. On tiptoe in the darkness he approached their bedroom door, peeped through the slit and saw Papa in his usual place on top of Mama. They were making more babies.

  ‘The Moodies are very nice people,’ Mama said at breakfast, looking lovely in a short-sleeved white blouse and round, white, clip-on earrings.

  ‘They lived in England,’ Papa said, as if the mere fact that they lived in England made them nice. Papa’s respect and admiration for the English went deep. He accepted, a long time ago, that it was the unjust respect of the colonised for the coloniser, a matter of fact thing. It was the sort of respect that could only be righted or exorcised through true self-government or genuine social intercourse.

  ‘We’re having them for dinner on Saturday,’ Mama gushed. She radiated such enthusiasm that the children sat open-mouthed. Yvonne, who could usually be relied upon for some irreverent comment, only wrinkled her nose. The visit to the club had worked wonders. Mama was blooming. At the club she had had several glasses of Babycham, loving the bubbles and the fizz and especially the picture of the prancing baby deer on the bottle’s label. She talked excitedly about the interesting people she’d met. The children heard about Miss Hutchinson, poised and attractive, who wore clothes straight out of Woman magazine. She spoke with a cultured accent and had travelled widely in Europe, living in Paris and London. She smoked and drank, not Babycham but gin and tonic, and spoke French like the French, not like Jamaicans with dramatic flourishes and unusual nasal voices who thought they were speaking French. Papa said that she was a bohemian but a very nice bohemian. Then there was Miss Chatterjee, the youngest of the younger women, with a degree from London University. She, too, dressed in the most fashionable clothes, played better tennis than anyone, wore expensive perfume and was quite unattainable. All the men were in awe of her because she was impossibly haughty, but haughty in the manner of the young and impossibly beautiful. And one day at lunch a funny thing happened.

  Mama said to Papa, ‘Isn’t Miss Chatterjee beautiful?’

  Papa stammered uncharacteristically, almost choked, looked about guiltily, then back at Mama with lowered eyes. None of the children remembered whether he said yes or no, but they knew immediately that Miss Chatterjee had bowled him over too, like she did all the men, all of whom had sweet dreams about her. Mama had stared and said nothing, her lips suddenly drawn tight.

  Other people at the club included Mr and Mrs Baldoo, a couple in their early forties, respectable and very well educated everyone said, always ready with gravely spoken sound advice. They clearly had values and principles in abundance, and Papa said so at the dinner table. There was Mr Samms, suave, neatly turned out, and with very good manners (‘A real gentleman,’ Papa confirmed). There was Mr Dowding, tall, with a Clark Gable moustache; Mrs Dowding, (‘A Betty Crocker cake mix woman,’ Papa said. ‘When she’s not baking, she spends her time prying and interfering,’) and their son, Dennis, who was mostly away at boarding school. The Pinnocks were boring and their daughter, Geraldine, was, ‘A little show-off,’ Papa said, because she played the piano in an affected manner. And finally there were the Moodies. Mr Moodie was the deputy assistant distiller.

  Mama liked Patricia Moodie immediately because she felt safe with her. Patricia Moodie had no memory of yesterday and gave no caution to the present. She possessed a recklessness that Mama secretly admired.

  ‘She’s a flirt and only knows to dance the mambo,’ Papa said mockingly, and then laughed as if he hadn’t meant it. ‘She doesn’t belong in the country. Too pretentious.’

  Mama had retorted girlishly. ‘Well, I like her. She is a nice person, so gay, not stuck up.’

  And so the Moodies came to dinner, driving what Barrington called a Buick. To Boyd and Yvonne, the red Buick was just an American car: big, flashy, with lots of sharp edges and pointed parts and much chrome, like the cheap, brightly coloured toys with Made in Japan printed on them. But it was a big talking point for Barrington. ‘It’s the only Buick on the estate,’ he said, as if, somehow, all the other vehicles did not count. They could see that he was getting beyond himself because, as everyone knew, and Papa had said it, only English cars mattered. Only flashy people drove American cars. They stood out, both people and cars, drew attention, and were not to be taken seriously. Papa said it was like wearing plastic shoes when you could wear real leather shoes, made to fit.

  Patricia Moodie laughed a lot, flashing white teeth and lovely large dark eyes. She wore small white gloves and a yellow silk dress. Her upper arms were brown and bare and around her neck hung two strings of suckable pearls. She wore that deep-red lipstick with a hint of orange, just like Mama’s. Boyd stared at her lips and felt that if they were sweets he would lick them and never stop. They were luscious lips, warm and seducing.

  She caught him watching her with the longing eyes and said, smiling radiantly, ‘Oh, hello, little Brookes,’ embarrassing and exciting him all at once. She bent to stroke his cheeks and he saw her brown breasts and felt her mystery and bewitching. Memories of that day in Kingston with his Aunt Enid came back to him, the sensation of being so close to a grown woman in the scented heat.

  Patricia Moodie’s swing skirts swung about very much. Boyd imagined that there was an abundance of frilly cloth beneath her skirts. (Perlita later described the frills as crinoline, worn only by hoity-toity people.) His eyes strayed down, out of habit, to her agile ankles and the high-heeled shoes, stilettos, that said clip-clop every time she moved. He imagined her dancing the mambo and liked the movement of the swirling skirts, the rocking of the ankles and the tension in her calves. It was the last thing that he saw before Papa shooed him and Yvonne away to their rooms.

  Stealthily, Boyd joined the night noises and the peeny-waalies in the dark under the window by the oleander bush. He caught the stream of Papa’s Royal Blend cigarette and heard the clip-clop of Patricia Moodie’s shoes.

  ‘We take the diesel train into Kingston,’ Patricia Moodie said from above him on the other side of the window. ‘It’s safer than going by car. And we always go first class to get away from the big-bottomed market women with their bundles of this and that.’

  Boyd heard Mr Moodie roaring at something Papa said. The faster Mr Moodie drank, the louder his laugh became. His cigarette smoke and huge shadow shut out, for just a moment, the yellow light from the drawing room.

  A quarter moon rounded the mountain so that the garden was no longer in deep blackness, as Boyd wished it, but in soft-blue blackness. He drew closer to the oleander bush, leaning hard against the warm, lower brick wall of the house.

  ‘The Ward Theatre and the Little Theatre in Kingston for mainly local productions,’ the clear voice of Patricia Moodie said from the other side of the room. ‘Last year we saw Ivy Baxter’s Danse Elementale and the Ballet Guild of Jamaica. Manjula Chatterjee was in the audience, such a nice surprise! And of course there is the Carib Theatre, which is really a cinema, for some international things. They sometimes use the hotels and the university auditorium because of lack of venues. In London there are so many theatres, so many concert halls, they’re spoiled for choice. And they have good theatre, the best in the world. Moodie isn’t interested in any of this. So uncivilised. So u
ncivilised. I don’t know what to do with him. So many Jamaican men are without curiousity. Nothing interests them. Have you travelled, Victoria?’

  Boyd didn’t hear Mama’s reply. Patricia Moodie did not wear Evening in Paris. She had lived abroad. But Mama, who had not lived abroad, did. It was her only perfume. Evening in Paris was for young mothers and nice girls. It was not frivolous or dangerous, but innocent, excitingly safe and loving. Patricia Moodie’s risqué perfume came out of crystal bottles with gold tops and couldn’t be bought at local shops.

  Papa and Mr Moodie’s shadows merged by the other window and Boyd moved closer.

  ‘Harry, I know you know,’ Mr Moodie said under his heavy gin and tonic breath. ‘You hear the buggers at the club talking. You must have heard the rumours. I don’t believe any of it, but, you know. That little shit.’

  ‘Easy, easy,’ Papa cautioned.

  ‘No fucking shame! Loose! Loose!’

  ‘Moodie!’

  Boyd could feel Papa recoil. Mr Moodie had used a very bad word, the kind that the gardeners and labourers used when they thought no one could hear.

  ‘She was dead set against coming to Appleton,’ he heard Mr Moodie say. ‘She’s a town girl. Every day she threatens to take the train back to Queens Avenue. Dammit, if she wants to go back to Kingston, let her. Harry, I love it here. I am a country boy at heart. Estate life is good for me, you know what I mean?’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Papa said, after considering Moodie’s question. ‘But you’ve only been married a year. You need to talk. It’s the only way. Women need a lot of sensitive handling.’

  But Mr Moodie was no longer listening. He acknowledged to himself that it was rather a bad topic for the evening, a moment of weakness for a man like him, and changed the subject. ‘I hear your name’s down for the big house on the hill,’ he said.