The Pink House at Appleton

by Jonathan Braham

  She faced Papa that night in 1957 at Appleton, the mother of three children and one on the way, feeling more than a bit desperate.

  ‘I want you to listen to me,’ she said, her voice wavering.

  ‘What?’ Papa sipped his third rum of the night, gazing up at the stars. His plans were falling into place but not fast enough for him. Two years. Two years, and they would leave Appleton for greener pastures. With the children attending the best schools, he could begin to plan for their university education. Only London, Cambridge or Oxford mattered. They would enter the professions: law, medicine, education.

  ‘I want you to help me,’ Mama said.

  Papa laughed innocently. Stars flashed across the sky. ‘Help you with what, Victoria? I need help myself. All the decisions I have to make at the factory, here at the house, this, that and the other. Life isn’t a bed of roses, y’know.’

  Mama rose from the chair. Papa could be so inconsiderate at times. The chair made an extraordinary screeching sound against the tiles. She’d never liked those chairs, heavy aluminium things painted in pastel green and white. But they were the latest thing in verandah chairs and the estate was full of them. She much preferred wicker chairs. Besides, they were never cold at night, didn’t make silly, metallic sounds and weren’t so heavy and ridiculous.

  ‘I need to do something with my life,’ she almost pleaded. Her white skirt appeared pale blue in the dark.

  ‘Need to do something with your life? Victoria, what are you talking about?’

  ‘I mean, I want to do something with my life.’

  ‘I hope it’s not that dressmaking business again,’ Papa said, glaring, a clear warning that he was not interested. Mama didn’t seem to understand his clear objectives for the family, the certainty that they would be achieved, that everyone should get behind him as head of the family, to ensure that nothing blew them off course. She didn’t seem to understand that nothing, absolutely nothing, would drag him down.

  ‘Harold, it’s my life,’ Mama stammered, lips now trembling uncontrollably.

  ‘But you are doing something with your life,’ he told her. ‘You’re expecting another child. I provide a good home. We already have three children. You are a good mother. You could be a lot tougher on them, but we’re all human.’

  Mama was exasperated. ‘I want to talk about me, me.’ She beat her breast. ‘Me! I want to talk about me!’

  ‘Say what you have to say,’ Papa replied, paying no attention to the anguish on her face. ‘Speak up, Victoria. For Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I just want to – ‘

  ‘What?’ Papa snapped once more, as if admonishing a little child. When he was in that state all her confidence flew away.

  Earlier, when she rose from the chair, she had felt a sudden surge of lightning confidence and clarity, but words were now clogging her throat. She was doomed, closed like a tomb, carrying a life, history and dreams that no one would ever know. Papa’s nonchalance and aloofness, and then his aggression, brought her back to what she was, the girl from St Catherine who had never been anywhere. She was a mother whose children would remember her for doing nothing. They would continue to fear and respect their father because he made things happen, good or bad. She would be forgotten because she did not dominate their moments, did not make the air swirl and shake and make their hearts beat, sometimes with fear. She was not that interesting someone who sent them to school, paid the fees, whipped their behinds and left the house every day to return at night smelling of the world. She would not be remembered because she did not leave her mark on them, she had only loved them quietly and constantly. All she had was the smell of home which, one day, they would all want to get away from. She did not want to be alone.

  She had not envied the women at the club who had travelled and studied, who smoked and drank and were so sophisticated and confident. But now she thought of them as better than she was. She had not been to the club for drinks with Ann Mitchison and felt left out. She had not been because Papa had not taken her. It infuriated her that in the space of just a few days Ann Mitchison had gone from being a busybody to a woman almost worthy of worship.

  Mama started to cry. Papa didn’t notice at first but when she sat back down, he saw the round pearls of tears reflecting the moonlight. His instinct was to round on her with disgust. But she seemed so pretty, so vulnerable in the dark, in her white skirt, with her rising bosom, her muted crying, John Pratt’s daughter. He was aroused. He took her into his arms. Instantly, vibrant images of Ann Mitchison assaulted him, shocking him to the core. Try as he might, he could not dispel the images, and so he succumed. He had only met her a few times at the club. She had impressed him as only few women could and he had instinctively camouflaged his appreciation. But he had not been able to ignore the expressive lips, the eyes that drew him in, her provoking presence. He had not been able to free himself from the embrace of British domination expressed in fair womanhood. Now Mama was Ann Mitchison in his arms. She went willingly into the bedroom, like a child, to the place that she knew. Papa felt like a lion, an estate lion, a lion of the cane-piece. Already feeling twitches of the burden of guilt, he sensed that he’d taken the first steps on the road to perdition.

  The very next evening, with the red sun barely below the mountains and the sky full of dive-bombing swallows, Papa, dressed in cricket whites, knocked up some wickets and summoned the boys onto the lawn. They batted and they bowled. They fielded and they kept wicket and they shouted, ‘Collie Smith!’, ‘Rohan Khani!’ and ‘Frank Worrell!’ at intervals. They displayed their cricketing skills for Papa while Mama and Yvonne watched from the verandah. Vincent watched from the porch, shielding his eye from the sun. He ran for the balls that went too far and acted as a kind of outfielder although he wasn’t in the game.

  Later, they gathered on the verandah to listen to Papa’s plans for the future yet again, to hear how Barrington had already left university with a first class degree, qualified as a lawyer and been snapped up by the top law firm in Kingston. They heard how he’d gone on to people the land with the first of the Brookes boys, grandsons for Papa and heirs to the Brookes dynasty.

  ‘But I’m going to be a footballer,’ Barrington protested, sipping bright green Kool-Aid as the night noises came on, as the peeny-waalies came out and as they breathed the evening smell of Appleton.

  ‘You’ll be a great lawyer,’ Papa assurred him, ‘respected throughout the country. You’ll make a lot of money too, drive a Jaguar and live in a bigger house than this one.’

  ‘What about me, Papa?’ Yvonne had seen Barrington’s eyes light up.

  ‘Yvonne, you’ll be a doctor, finding cures for the worst diseases known to man.’

  ‘Diseases? But I want to be an explorer, Papa. Or a nurse, and – .’

  ‘You listen to your Papa. You’ll be a very famous doctor. Dr. Yvonne Brookes. How does that sound?’

  Yvonne beamed. Temporarily lost for words, she turned quickly towards Mama, then Boyd, whose future had not been told. ‘And what about Boyd, Papa?’

  Boyd, who had been watching Mama listen quietly to the conversation, like someone expecting at any moment to hear that she, too, would be a lawyer or someone of very high standing, looked round. But just before Papa spoke, just before Mama’s or Boyd’s future could be foretold, they saw the Mitchison’s maid, Evadne, come through the garden gate with a note in her hand. Poppy immediately set upon her, worrying her ankles and nipping away at the hem of her dress, so that she dashed about, holding the note aloft. Eventually she reached the safety of the verandah. She handed the note to Papa and left, bowing, Poppy escorting her back to the edge of the garden. Boyd, seeing the maid arrive, the maid who came from the same house as the girl with the sun-drenched hair, the girl who was as pink as the pink women in the encyclopaedia, breathed new and delightful scents.

  Papa read the note and handed it to Mama. ‘Invitation to dinner,’ he said, pouring himself another drink and looking pleased with himself.
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br />   ‘Tim and Ann request the pleasure of your company,’ Mama read, then stopped. She immediately thought of the reciprocal dinner party, worried about meeting her neighbour and about the fact that she was still without a competent maid. She worried too about her lack of confidence and about Papa’s sudden interest in Ann Mitchison. That night she searched Papa’s face for the secret that she suspected was hidden there.

  And that night Boyd saw her again in real life images. Behind the pink house, in the shade of the otaheite apple tree, she sat on the swing, hands up, holding on to the thick ropes, feet lightly touching the apple blossoms covering the bare earth, in a slow motion rhythm, back and forth. As the rhythm quickened, she laughed, standing up on the base of the swing, knees bent, pumping hard. He stood in the dandelion bed nearby, watching as she fluttered out and in. It was quiet but for her quick gasps and the fluttering of her dress. Boyd saw her go far out, so far out that he could see the back of her, and so far in that he could see up under her dress. He turned away, not wanting to look, only wanting to see her hair and lips and her eyes and hear the flutter of her dress. But he wanted her to stop, not to swing so far out, to swing low and gently and then stop and run to him in the dandelion bed where Poppy was, and where the heat off them, in a suffocating potpourri, drugged and calmed their eyelids, limbs and their breathing.

  CHAPTER 10

  As Mama’s doubts ate at her, as Boyd’s pleasures and anxieties threatened to overwhelm him, Aunt Enid visited. She brought essence of gladioli in her wake, bags of candy and a florin each for the children and grim news for Mama.

  ‘Vicky, you’ve got to get it out in the open,’ she urged when they were alone together. ‘They say she’s the dead stamp. Not more than seven years old. It would be right after you gave birth to Boyd, you see.’

  ‘It’s too late to do anything,’ Mama told her nervously, seeing her sister’s intervention as unbearable pressure, something she could do without. ‘And he would have said something anyway. It’s not like him.’

  ‘You really think he would tell you of his own volition?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mama whispered. ‘He really looks down on that kind of behaviour.’

  Aunt Enid stared at her sister and shook her head. ‘You’re too trusting. Vicky, it’s deception, plain and simple. You mark my words. If he’s capable of this, he’s capable of anything. He’s just like his father before him. The Brookes men are great philanderers.’

  But Mama wanted her to stop all the whispering and questioning. The fact was, she didn’t want to believe any of it. Worthy Park and Lluidas Vale were in the past and should stay there. In any case, what could she do if it were true? Papa was her life and her future. And she had more urgent issues to attend to than something that might, or might not, have happened years ago between her husband and some woman.

  Aunt Enid asked about Boyd. He was always the first to run and throw himself at her and she, as someone without children, loved to suffocate him to her and feel the warmth and innocence of a child who, everyone could tell, adored her. She often joked that she would take him away with her one day. But it was the first time she’d visited the pink house and had arrived without warning.

  ‘Playing on his own somewhere,’ Mama said. ‘He’ll soon come running.’

  Memorable images of Boyd came to Aunt Enid. He’d spent a week with her in Kingston. She’d been undressing in her bedroom and turned to see him standing at the door silently watching.

  ‘What is it, honeybun?’ she’d said, covering up her bosom instinctively while trying to be casual about it. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ Boyd had answered, coming further into the room and taking a seat on the bed. His eyes, completely absorbed, never left her. But they were gentle eyes, searching eyes, not knowledgeable eyes. There was no guilt about him.

  She continued to undress and to chat with him as though they were in the garden on an ordinary day.

  The following afternoon she’d popped out briefly and asked her maid to keep an eye on him. When she returned, Boyd could not be found. Her maid, a silly, gap-toothed woman with electric-shock hair, knowing her job was on the line, rushed from room to room screeching, giving the moment a level of danger that scared Aunt Enid.

  Boyd was found minutes later in a corner of the garden, under the rose bush, sniffing and licking at the spread pink petals. He did not see Aunt Enid as she came up behind him, did not see the maid pissing herself with relief on the porch in the background, her job saved; but when he did, he just smiled. He said not a word and Aunt Enid, too, said nothing. She just cuddled him to her there in the warm sun, among the roses, next to the hammock under the mango tree, for what seemed to the maid an unnecessarily long time.

  ‘That little boy of yours,’ was all Aunt Enid said now.

  ‘He always plays by himself,’ Mama said quickly. ‘But he has a secret little playmate now, the little white girl across the way. Susan, the Mitchisons’ daughter. She’s a quiet one too and lives in her own little world. Just like Boyd. I see him looking through his binoculars over the hedge, trying to find her. Sometimes she comes looking for him but he hides under the periwinkle fence.’ Mama smiled. ‘They’re just children.’

  ‘Well, what is she like?’ The question came too quickly for Mama.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your new neighbour, the Englishwoman.’

  Mama hesitated. ‘I haven’t met her yet.’

  ‘What?’ Aunt Enid registered both incomprehension and astonishment. ‘You mean to say you weren’t with Harold when he had drinks with her at the club?’

  ‘No, but they’ve invited us to dinner.’ Mama faced her sister meekly, as if guilty of some serious shortcoming. They said nothing for a while. Then Aunt Enid caressed her sister’s arms and spoke to her, calmly, firmly and tenderly.

  ‘Don’t believe everything he tells you. Stand up to him.’

  ‘I do, I do.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘And don’t let him keep you forever at home, Vicky, do you hear me?’

  Mama stammered. ‘He won’t.’ But it wasn’t a very convincing answer.

  * * *

  That Monday morning, the children sat on the verandah of the pink house watching out for the new maid. The verandah was square-shaped, like the house, and almost twelve feet off the ground. Papa said the house was in the Georgian style and Mama did not refute this because she did not want to argue. The children faced a sea of green: lawns, hedgerows, wild growing things that had been tamed. A week ago at the same spot, they had watched Mr Jarrett and his magnificent brass spraying equipment, as he sprayed along the sides of the house. He had been tamed too. They no longer received his sweets, the lovely Paradise Plums and the Mint Balls. Papa had forbidden it both in the children’s and Mr Jarret’s presence. Mr Jarrett had looked down at his feet, his face and shoulders sagging when he was told.

  ‘Unmarried man like that,’ Papa muttered mysteriously when Mr Jarret left.

  But Mr Jarrett’s scent was still so gorgeous that Boyd sniffed the air for him, watched as the fine spray from his equipment swirled and wafted away and reached the verandah. He watched the driveway when he knew Mr Jarrett was visiting so that he could meet his kind but now uncertain eye, to imagine about him, and most of all to reassure him. But Mr Jarrett was beyond reassurance. It was not the first time that men had misjudged him, mistaking his kindness and love of children for guile. He left quietly one afternoon and did not return. Feeling guilty, Papa made enquiries but no one knew what became of him. His little house in Taunton was locked up and stayed locked up. He had kept himself to himself so no one knew about him. Someone said he had taken the train to May Pen, since he had family nearby in Race Course. But no one knew for certain.

  As the children looked straight down the driveway to the whitewashed gates, they could make out a bicycle rider and another figure balanced on the crossbar. Poppy bounded down the steps to cut them off with fierce barks. The man quickly positioned the fend
erless Raleigh between himself and the fiercely snarling dog.

  Mama, hearing the dramatic barking, came out, saw the two figures crouching defensively and seemed to remember something important. ‘It’s Adassa,’ she said.

  Moments later, Adassa sat in the pantry telling them that she had been educated to elementary school level and hoped to travel to England one day to study nursing, to follow in the footsteps of her sister, Desreen, who lived in Birmingham and was doing very well over there. On the covered porch by the kitchen, her man friend sat on a stool drinking ice-cold lemonade and surveying the premises with undisguised interest.

  ‘Ah’m a good cook, ma’am,’ Adassa boasted. ‘Ah can cook callaloo soup, ackee and salt fish and rice and peas, ma’am. Ah’m a good cleaner, and ah can wash and iron. Ma’am, when ah clean dat floor you see your face in it. Ah don’t make no fuss, ma’am, ah go about me work. Just give me the job, ma’am, and you won’t be sorry. Ah not like some of the other maids, ma’am. They only want to use Fab and Breeze. They want dis and they want dat. They want everything. Not me, ma’am. Ah don’t mind using the brown soap, ma’am, if dat is all you have. Ah use dat Reckitt’s Blue, ma’am, to bring out the whites.’

  ‘She a good cook, ma’am,’ the man called out from his place on the porch. He’d been listening keenly. ‘She is a God-fearing woman, ma’am.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr …?’ Mama began, looking bewildered.

  ‘Gordon, ma’am, me uncle,’ Adassa said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Gordon.’

  ‘Ah only telling God’s truth, ma’am,’ the man replied.

  ‘Can you start today?’ Mama asked, awkwardly.

  ‘Today, ma’am?’ Adassa burst into tears, shocking Mama. ‘Ah can start right away, ma’am, right away.’ She shouted to her uncle. ‘Ah get the job! Ah get the job!’