The Pink House at Appleton

by Jonathan Braham

  ‘Boyd not eating, ma’am,’ Mavis said to Mama. ‘Is the second day in a row he leave half his lunch on the plate.’

  Mama went to Boyd’s room immediately, closely followed by Mavis. He was lying on the bed, looking out the window.

  ‘You’re not well,’ Mama said, feeling his forehead. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing, Mama,’ Boyd said, taken aback with the sudden attention and with Mavis staring, her big girl’s eyes crystal clear.

  ‘P’rhaps me cooking don’t agree with him, ma’am,’ Mavis suggested over Mama’s shoulders, not masking her worry.

  ‘No, no,’ Mama replied reassuringly. ‘He loves your cooking – your rice and peas, your ginger cakes, your dumplings, roast beef and carrots, everything!’

  Mavis exchanged warm looks with Boyd. ‘Maybe he eating too much fruit, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Too much of one thing good for nothing.’

  ‘Are you, Boyd?’

  ‘No, Mama,’ Boyd said, weakening, having a sudden rash impulse to tell them everything, about the Susan feelings, the fever, the sweet mystery, other things that he knew. But he did not know how to say it. The feelings had no matching words, were just flutterings, palpitations, sublime music, like “The Melody of Love”, played on the gramophone at the cinema just before the showing of a film.

  ‘Well, I think it’s all that fruit,’ Mama said. ‘Maybe green plums? You need to eat properly and grow up to be a big, healthy boy.’ She took her hand away from his forehead. ‘My little peeny-waalie.’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ he said, loving the fact that he was her little peeny-waalie.

  Mama thought she saw panic in his eyes but she couldn’t be sure. Boyd watched them go, Mavis with her dimpled back-of-knees and bouncy manner and Mama gliding and cool in her maternity clothes. A soft breeze rustled the curtains, bringing fragrances of Susan. And cool shadows crossed the lawn, heralding an evening of dramatic images and beautiful anguish.

  On the third day, he came down with a raging fever.

  ‘Ah’ll have to make him mint tea right away,’ Mavis said, hurrying off to the kitchen the moment she found out.

  ‘No,’ Mama told her. ‘Ginger tea, Mavis. Fresh ginger.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Mavis said, pausing in mid-stride. ‘We have a heap of fresh ginger. A good thing Vincent bring some in from the back garden this morning.’

  Boyd spent the afternoon in Mama’s arms, his temples burning and his body sickly hot. He felt Mama’s tummy where the little baby was and breathed Mama’s scent, comforting and good, but hearing notes of distress. And he listened for the voices of the garden, and they came to him in rich, wonderful tones, repeating only one name.

  Over at the Mitchison’s house at about that time, Ann Mitchison felt Susan’s forehead not once but twice. Susan was sitting up in bed, gazing out the window at the magic garden. A copy of Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare lay on her pillow opened at “As You like It”. Above her head the mosquito net was tied in a single knot, just like the knot that prevented her breathing, just like the knot in her stomach. Her head hurt, but it was pleasant lying in bed with her mother’s warm hand on her forehead. Susan had big feelings too, feelings that words could not describe, feelings that came with music and colour, feelings that overwhelmed her. She was snug in bed in the cottage in the Forest of Arden. And she was awaiting Orlando’s arrival. He would come to her out of the forest.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ Ann Mitchison said. ‘Mummy’s here.’ And she took Susan in her arms, seeing the weepy face and remembering the time, in Barbados, when she had last seen that expression. On that day they had been unable to find Susan. They searched everywhere, the maid and gardener joining in, scouring beneath the house, combing the adjoining fields, calling her name. And when the men from the estate heard that she couldn’t swim, they ran even more frantically up and down the banks of the river at the back of the house shouting out her name. Finally, when they were exhausted and desperate, thinking the worst, the maid found Susan sitting quietly under overhanging bushes not far from the house, at the point of tears, gazing intently into the heart of a beautiful red anthurium and fingering its leathery flower. She had heard nothing.

  It was the same week during which Papa returned home from the club two nights in a row, so late that not even dogs barked. When he came to bed, Mama detected stale perfume. But she dispelled the thought, a wicked, wicked thought, immediately.

  ‘Late drinks session at the club,’ was all Papa said on both occasions, getting into bed and falling asleep almost instantly.

  On both nights, Mama lay awake, unable to sleep.

  * * *

  That Sunday evening, the Moodies visited to celebrate Papa’s promotion. The pink house stood big and handsome in the midst of luxuriant greenery. Papa was standing on the clipped green lawn, back to the sun, hands on hips. He had been pointing out parts of the house to Mr Moodie.

  ‘This could be the manager’s house,’ his after-lunch voice boasted. He spread his arms wide as he spoke and bared his teeth in a wide smile.

  Mr Moodie laughed, slapped Papa on the back, and both retired to the green lattice table and chairs on the lawn with bottles of gin and rum. Papa talked about how Appleton was good for ten thousand tons of refined sugar that year, about quotas and the world market, boring Moodie to death. Then Papa mentioned the new assistant general manager and his wife.

  ‘She’s not a bad-looking woman,’ Moodie observed, coming to life. ‘But married to a man like that! He could be her father, the age on him.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Papa said dismissively. ‘Most Englishmen look like that. They bald before their time. It’s the weather over there. They’re a decent couple, with the right values.’

  ‘Harry, what do you care?’ Moodie stared at him.

  ‘A little bit more than you do. She’s not your typical Englishwoman come out to the colonies, full of ignorance and prejudice. She genuinely gets involved. She’s trying to get work for some of the coolies down at the settlement; that bugger Ramsook and his hordes. And she talks sensible politics too.’

  ‘You think because she is English it’s okay for her to flirt the way she does? If our wives were to behave like that we wouldn’t tolerate it for one minute, not one minute, Harry. You know I’m right.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, man, she’s not flirting. She’s being sociable. She’s just not stuck up. I’ve worked on sugar estates where the wives of foreign managers look down their noses at you. She’s good for Appleton.’

  ‘Mitchison evidently doesn’t agree with you. He spends most of his time away from her, supposedly on business. People say he may have a woman in Kingston. The maids are talking too. And they always know a thing or two.’

  Mavis drew near with the ice bucket and they stopped talking.

  Papa and Mr Moodie sat in the shade, where the jacaranda blossoms formed a blue carpet on the bottle-green grass under their feet. Mr Moodie was dressed in flashy two-tone shoes, white trousers, lime-green shirt and dark-green sunglasses. This was not his usual attire, and later Papa said he was only trying to keep up with Patricia Moodie. The children were fascinated by the dark glasses because they were mainly seen on people in magazines and on film posters. If they didn’t know who Mr Moodie was, they might have thought he was a visiting film star.

  As Mavis returned to the house, Mr Moodie continued. ‘They certainly know a thing or two, the maids. And another thing, Harry, she might not be your typical Englishwoman, Ann Mitchison, but I bet you she’s already fooling around.’

  ‘Christ almighty, man!’ Papa turned away in disgust.

  ‘You take it from me, I know women. She looks the type. She’ll play, and she’ll play discreetly.’

  ‘So you think everybody’s at it.’

  ‘Harry, I know women.’

  ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ Papa was clearly put out and Mr Moodie wondered at this because there was no basis for it.

&n
bsp; Papa knocked back his drink and called out for Mama to join them. Mama was busy with Patricia Moodie in her bedroom, talking nineteen to the dozen like young girls. That day, Patricia Moodie seemed like an actress herself, ‘Like Audrey Hepburn,’ Mavis told them. She was dressed in an apple-green swing skirt that moved with a life of its own, sweeping the furniture and the children who stood around. But most of all it was her perfume (‘Good Essen,’ Mavis said) that made Boyd swoon. He’d been swooning ever since she arrived in the red open-top Buick.

  ‘What’s buzzing?’ she said when she arrived, flowing into the house, sunglasses perched on her forehead. The children had smiled sheepishly and Yvonne walked immediately behind her, copying her walk, extending her arms with fingers splayed, her bottom in a quick left-right, left-right motion.

  Papa’s guests laughed long into the evening. When their spirits soared impetuously after several gin and tonics, Patricia Moodie suggested driving up to the club.

  ‘To the club! To the club!’ She darted away, white teeth flashing, neck like a swan, arms flailing the air. ‘Catch me, Moodie, catch me!’ She was as restless as the wind.

  ‘Go as you are, Victoria,’ Papa said quietly as a compliment, not looking at Mama, who sat back, horrified. She was wearing a floral frock with a single string of pearls and seemed casually elegant. But going to the club meant dressing up.

  ‘They’re so happy,’ Mama murmered, observing her guests embracing against a pink sunset. She didn’t face Papa, who said nothing.

  ‘Live for today!’ Patricia Moodie cried, returning from her little run, free from the clutches of Mr Moodie, visibly intoxicated. ‘Let the good times roll, Daddy-O.’

  ‘The good times are already rolling for Harry and Victoria,’ Mr Moodie said. ‘The house, the Land Rover, whitewall tyres for the car, young Barrington off to Munro. And did you see their new maid?’

  ‘She’s so young,’ Patricia Moodie breathed. ‘And such lovely skin.’

  ‘But not as lovely as Ann Mitchison.’ Mr Moodie roared mischievously in his gin and tonic voice. He winked at Papa, who winced.

  ‘She’s refreshing,’ Patricia Moodie said to Mama, not appreciating Moodie’s joke. ‘She could really improve Appleton.’

  ‘Yes?’ Mama said, looking suspicious.

  ‘Oh, yes. You need a woman like that in a place like this. Did you know that she set up education classes for some of the poor young girls at Siloah?’

  ‘Oh,’ Mama said.

  ‘One helluva woman,’ Mr Moodie said, chuckling.

  After a brief silence, Papa got up. ‘Well, let’s go,’ he said.

  Poor Mavis was forced to cancel all her plans for the evening, cajoling Vincent, who didn’t need much cajoling, into running four miles with a message to her family in Taunton, while the Prefect, reflecting the blazing red sunset in its rear window, roared off down the driveway and to the club.

  Boyd watched from the verandah as they left. He was tortured with feeling and went deep into himself. Papa and Mama had changed. He could feel the space between them and hear the words that they were not speaking. That evening, the Mullard radio whispered “The Blue Danube Waltz”. He wanted to creep into the radio, drugged with passion. He was Boyd, but he was nothing. And then he was everything and did not wish it and was overwhelmed with the music and saw beautiful things and started to cry. He just wanted Mama and Papa to talk to each other again, for Susan to come riding up the driveway and smile and say ‘Hello, Boyd’. But the music wrenched at his heart and wouldn’t stop.

  * * *

  Papa had shocking news at dinner a few nights later. Patricia Moodie had left Mr Moodie.

  ‘Walked out on him,’ Papa said grimly. ‘No gratitude.’

  Mama’s hand flew to her opened mouth. ‘No,’ she gasped.

  ‘Yes,’ Papa confirmed.

  The children stopped eating their boiled bananas and mackerel, onions and tomatoes. Papa, brows wrinkled, related how a man had driven up to the house that morning while Mr Moodie was at work and had driven off with Patricia Moodie, leaving a disbelieving maid on the verandah and all Mr Moodie’s clothes scattered on the lawn. Mama wept. Papa thought Mr Moodie had done everything he could to please Patricia Moodie, even dressing like a film star and driving that ridiculous car. But, at last, he was on his own, free again, riding his horses on Sundays and drinking at the club till the wee hours. Throughout this talk, Mama looked long into the distance.

  ‘She wasn’t right for him,’ Papa said, quietly observing Mama.

  ‘I thought they were just right for each other.’

  Papa seemed shocked. ‘It was doomed from the beginning.’

  ‘You couldn’t tell,’ Mama stuttered and clasped her hands together. ‘There wasn’t anything outward for anyone to tell that they were unhappy.’

  Papa considered this. ‘She didn’t care for him,’ he said. ‘She’s heartless. Moodie’s better off.’

  But Mr Moodie didn’t feel better off. News reached them that the first thing he did after the shock of the news was to send the keys of his Appleton house by courier to Patricia Moodie all the way in Kingston. He couldn’t let her go. She’d gone into him deep. He wanted her to know that she still had access and would always have access, because she was special, the only woman he had opened his heart to, that he would never let her go, that he was nothing without her. He didn’t wait long for an answer. The keys were returned the following day without a written note, without an oral message delivered by the courier, just the cold keys on their own, alone, like he was. It was the lowest point in his life – he was abandoned, discarded, tossed aside, of no significance. He was not even history. It was as if she had erased him from memory, when he so much wanted to be remembered. He cried like a baby all night.

  Boyd dreamt of Patricia Moodie, her swirling skirts, her supple calves, the high heels, the red-lipsticked lips, the pearls falling into the secret part between her breasts, her warm presence. How could it be that she didn’t last forever? He knew her scent and the music from her. If she, someone he knew so well and was so passionate about, didn’t last, who could? In these Technicolor dreams he was tossed and torn and felt the searing pleasure of her heartlessness. People come, people go, nothing lasts forever.

  And in the days after her leaving, he saw a drooping Mama still with no real friends, listening to Housewives’ Choice day after day, pondering her own future and talking to Mavis, fascinated with her gossip. For a maid, Mavis seemed to know more about the goings-on at the estate than Mama; about the Mitchisons, the Dowdings, Miss Chatterjee, what happened at the club, the Bull Pen over the weekend, who did what, when and how.

  ‘All the men fancy Miss Chatterjee, ma’am,’ Mavis gushed.

  Mama rolled her eyes.

  ‘Every single one of them, ma’am,’ Mavis laughed.

  Mavis reported the demise of Mr Dixon, the electrician who lived at the Bull Pen. She had news long before Papa announced it at the dinner table.

  ‘Ruby throw kerosene oil all over Mr Dixon last night and strike a match,’ Mavis said. ‘While him sleeping in bed, ma’am. Sleeping in bed!’

  ‘What?’ Mama asked, astonished.

  ‘Yes, Miss Victoria, ma’am. Mr Dixon scorn her and take up with another woman. Ruby, the woman him scorn, so vexed she went straight to the Bull Pen when she know him sleeping. Set him alight in the night, ma’am. Poor Mr Dixon burn bad, bad. And Ruby in the lock-up now, mad as a dawg.’

  Before Mama could draw breath, Mavis carried on. ‘And Mrs Mitchison always at the club, planning this, planning that and chatting with Mr Brookes. If she have anything to say, she say it to Mr Brookes. She respect him, ma’am.’ Seeing Mama’s look of disbelief, she asserted, ‘Yes, ma’am, is true. So Evadne tell me. Her cousin, Ralstan, is the bartender at the club. And when Mrs Mitchison have her lunch at the club she take little Susan with her. Evadne have the run of the house from ten o’clock every day when Mrs Mitchison drive off, ma’am. And…’

  Mavis didn’t
understand Mama’s sudden silence and her fixed stare into the distance. She knew that Mrs Brookes was a very thoughtful woman. The nicest and the best women were.

  As Boyd heard Susan’s name mentioned, a sudden warmth spread from his cheeks down to his toes. And Susan came to him. She came to him suddenly. Mama did not know. Papa did not know. He frolicked about with her in the sun. They climbed trees together, sweated and laughed and sat in the shade and chatted. They dashed about in the gardens till late in the afternoon and felt each other’s heat and breath. Sometimes they watched, close together, not speaking, the evening shadows growing long on the cooling grass, and forgot to hear the dinner bell and so had to be pulled apart by the cloying hands of Evadne and Mavis. Susan was all the pretty girls in all the books he’d ever read. And she was Estella. Pretty, heart-breaking Estella, growing more alluring each day with absence. Susan was sitting next to him with her legs drawn up under her berry-red gingham dress with the puff sleeves. She was a pink hibiscus. He just wanted to run his tongue slowly up the silky petals and down deep into the pink centre. He wanted to feel her lips like he felt the petals. He wanted to kiss just like in the movies, lips squashing against lips, eyes closed like babies at titties, the music rising while the sun turned to Technicolor red, hearts beating amid hard breathing.