The Pink House at Appleton

by Jonathan Braham

  ‘All of them is rass clart,’ a voice said, waking Boyd from his reverie. The curse words hissed like searing steam in the quiet. It was Rufus, the club gardener, pushing his ancient green lawnmower. They saw each other at the same time.

  ‘Sarry, baas,’ Rufus said, putting one hand on his heart. ‘Ah never see you. Ah sarry, bass, ah sarry.’

  Rufus, who people said was on John Crow Batty from mid-morning, had been offended. That was the reason he had used the dreadful curse words, rass clart, words less repulsive than bombo clart, the vilest words anyone could utter. The John Crow Batty smell came off his clothes like fresh fumes from the distillery.

  ‘Ah mind me own business,’ Rufus told Boyd. ‘Ah don’t interfere wid no one. Ah figger dat no one should interfere wid me. Right, baas?’

  Boyd nodded.

  ‘Doin’ it right dere in me tool shed.’ Rufus raised his eyes skyward. ‘Right dere in the middle of all me t’ings. The crocus bags dem scattered all over the place. Ah was only gone ‘alf a ‘our to pick up some provision from the factory. But no, dem couldn’t wait. Like two stray dawgs. Two stray dawgs! No shame. Ah expect better fram Miss Pam, but dat Dennis?’ He shook his head and dropped his mouth in a grim expression. ‘Dat boy only know one t’ing.’

  Rufus walked off, still speaking to himself and shaking his head.

  ‘Ready for the tennis lesson?’ It was Dennis, face radiant, coming out of the greenery. Behind him, Pamela Carby’s own face was radiant. Before Boyd could answer, Dennis massaged his shoulder affectionately.

  ‘But it’s up to you,’ Dennis said. ‘Barrington’s playing football and you could be eating ice cream and a gingerbun. They just brought in fresh gingerbuns from the Silver Nook Bakery with the paper all crispy and warm.’

  Pamela Carby moved closer. She radiated a complex potpourri of bouquets that Boyd could not define. He knew the smell and taste of gingerbuns though.

  ‘Ice cream and gingerbun, yes?’ Dennis urged. ‘Silver Nook Bakery gingerbuns. Oh, man! Don’t worry, we’ll play tennis another day. Remember, I’m on holidays now.’

  Pamela’s enticing arm was about Boyd’s shoulders. ‘You are such a lovely boy, little Boyd,’ she said when she heard his reply.

  As he ate his ice cream and gingerbun on the high stool at the bar, Boyd pretended not to see the damask-covered table where Pamela and Dennis had their heads together. Dennis was stroking Pamela’s supple thighs, which appeared radiant brown against the white tablecloth.

  Two girls in pleated tennis skirts joined Dennis and Pamela, while a waiter in a white calico apron, having just rushed from the kitchen, served them. The girls wore sunglasses with white plastic frames. These were the latest in sunglasses and the senior girls at Hampton didn’t go anywhere without them. Barrington, sweaty and excited from his football playing, also joined Dennis and the girls and was now seriously attending to a bowl of steaming beef soup. He had the sweaty brow and look that he had every Saturday at lunchtime when Mavis served beef soup: the look of a little Papa.

  Boyd viewed with increasing panic the table reserved for Ann Mitchison. And he dreaded Papa’s arrival. He had thought that the tennis lessons and his encounter with Susan would be over long before lunchtime. In desperation, he rushed to the bathroom. When he returned to the terrace, the Mitchisons were already there. Ann Mitchison was wearing a yellow and white flowery frock and Susan a white, puffed-sleeved blouse. Her fine brown hair shone. They had just sat down, Ann Mitchison nodding left and right to their neighbours. Boyd dodged down immediately, keeping close to the back of the terrace, trying to get to the sanctuary of the secluded courts without being seen.

  There was a clatter of plates at Dennis’s table and the girls laughed, attracting the stares of the men at the bar. The waiter with the white calico apron rushed forward attentively as the girls giggled and hid behind their large winged sunglasses. Barrington behaved like a big boy, like Dennis, laughing rather too noisily. Maybe it was because he was going off to Munro soon, to live in a dormitory with other boys, that he so easily forgot Papa’s words. Boyd saw the men look towards Dennis’s table and mutter to themselves.

  At last he got to the steps and scrambled down them into green space, trying to bring calm to his rattled thoughts. There was no time to lose. Emboldened, he reached into his pocket. The note came up bright between his fingers. Folding the paper twice, he stumbled down the side stairs to the car park, to the Mitchison’s Jaguar. Seeing no one about, hearing only the Shhh, Shhh, Shhhing of the steam from the factory, he placed the note in the side window of the car. She was bound to see it there.

  At the top of the stairs, he turned back to look. The note stood out, bright white in the sun against the window, unmissable, a public statement of private longing. And it was too late to retrieve it. Other vehicles were entering the car park. Creeping through the fence at the side of the building, stung and cut by nettles and thorns, he limped back to the courts. There he sat on a bench behind a small bush that sprouted lilac flowers. While the minutes ticked away and the sun inched across the lawn, the men drove back to the factory in their Fords and Land Rovers. They would be back at the club in the evening. Boyd waited, knowing that Barrington would come looking for him when it was time to go. At last he heard footsteps. But when he looked up, it wasn’t Barrington.

  Susan was standing at the side of the court. She stood pale pink against the green. He lowered his head, observing her through the leaves. She’d found the note and had come looking for him, obviously. Estella, heart-stopping Estella, was waiting in Miss Havisham’s garden, waiting for him, waiting to say the words. His heart thumped for he knew immediately that he couldn’t do it then and there. Susan’s white blouse was fresh and crisp like Mavis’s washing, hair glossier than the mane on Corporal Duncan’s horse, Cyrus, on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Although every sinew in his body wanted him to call out, it was impossible. They both remained still while the earth beat. Boyd thought they stood there from one to a hundred but it was only for a second, one to two, and it was over. Someone called out Susan’s name. Startled, she ran back up the steps, taking her sun-warmed scent with her.

  Instantly, Boyd went back through the hole in the fence, pricked and poked and scratched and torn. Paying no heed to the pain and the spectacle, he emerged running to the side of the building, a sudden sugar breeze lapping at his cheeks. He could see the Jaguar under the Appleton sun, its chrome parts winking. He saw Ann Mitchison come down the steps, her yellow flowery frock in a giddy dance around her legs. Susan followed, her own dress whipped up by the breeze around her thighs. As he watched with bursting excitement, Susan fighting to keep her dress down, he saw a white butterfly detach itself from the car and fly into the air. It flew away, swept up by the scented sugar breeze, over the hedge, across the lawns, towards the canefields, up over them and away to the river. It was his note, words that no one but Susan should see. He watched as the Jaguar went out through the gates, turned left down the Appleton road and was lost to sight.

  That night, he went to her, unsettled, aching, wanting her. But Mavis was not in her room. He returned to the amber light of the pink house and to Mama, who smiled away her burdens and showed him a special handwritten note from Miss Hutchinson.

  CHAPTER 19

  Papa rushed home just before dusk and leaped out of the Land Rover, trembling with excitement.

  ‘Where are the boys?’ he demanded, not looking at Mama.

  ‘Why do you want them?’ Mama asked suspiciously.

  ‘I’m taking them to a political meeting,’ Papa said proudly and loudly.

  ‘A political meeting?’ Mama was aghast. She associated such things with bad behaviour and violence, critical press reports and condemnation from respectable people. Maybe nice people like Ann Mitchison went to political meetings in England, but in Jamaica it was mostly always the hooligans and poor people who went. She didn’t see why Boyd and Barrington should be dragged off to places like that. And she knew immediately that Ann Mit
chison had something to do with it.

  ‘Yes, that is what I said, Victoria,’ Papa replied with bravado. He wanted to look dangerous. Miss Hutchinson’s words, Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité, were still with him, and in a tiny part of his mind, he imagined himself leading the revolution, the revolution, bringing down the old order, the ancien régime, as Miss Hutchinson had described it. His boys would attend a political meeting as Ann Mitchison did as a child. He knew it was good for them, long before Ann Mitchison said so, but her words had acted as a catalyst. He would have something to say the next time at the club when the talk turned, as he always made sure it did, to politics. Ann Mitchison would have her impressions confirmed that he was serious about his politics and a force to be reckoned with. And her eyes would say the things that her lips already revealed.

  Papa found Boyd curled up listening to the radio, to the slow piano of Beethoven’s Sonata No 8, the Adagio. He was looking out the window, seduced by passions that he could not understand. He did not know what it was that he listened to, but the music brought beautiful melancholy. It also brought Susan’s small voice and many references to her. His feeling was one of blissfulness and sadness. She was waiting and he was desperately yearning. He was in that state of mind when Papa rushed in.

  ‘Boyd, get dressed, you’re coming with me.’

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ he said, rising from the armchair, sadness and bliss leaping out the window. He searched Mama’s face for some sign, some notion of what you’re coming with me meant. There was nothing.

  ‘Where is Barrington?’ Papa asked, tramping off towards Barrington’s room.

  Barrington was considering the merits of two advertised football boots, Puma and Adidas. He wasn’t sure, but he thought Pele wore Puma. He couldn’t decide which was the better of the two, but he would give up his scrapbook, not eat for two days, take tennis lessons from Miss Chatterjee and look deep into Vincent’s pus-filled eye if he could wear the boots. He would even take a whipping from Papa – not one of his vicious whippings, only an ordinary whipping – if only he could play a game in them, just for one afternoon.

  ‘Barrington,’ Papa said, appearing at the door, ‘get dressed.’

  Barrington knew what a political meeting was. It was about the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party, about Norman Washington Manley the Chief Minister, and Alexander Bustamante, leader of the opposition. He had heard men at the club talk, men like the bartender and the watchman. It was where people stood on a platform, spoke through loudhailers and shook their fists. They spoke about trade unions, wages, poor people who were comrades, Britain, colonial rule and self-government. He saw pictures of political meetings in The Daily Gleaner all the time. The only people who went to such meetings were small farmers and the sort of men who sat around outside shops and stared at Papa as he got into his car after buying his Royal Blend cigarettes.

  They waved goodbye to Mama standing under the light on the patio, Yvonne entwined in her arms, waving too. They drove into the night, their scalps burning from the bristles of the hairbrush and their faces grey from too much Cashmere soap. Papa called them “boys” and behaved as if he were just a big brother, not their father. He stopped the car at a small shop to buy Staggerback, Paradise Plums and Jureidini’s cream soda, the best cream soda in the world. They drove on and on into the night, through cane fields and one-shop villages, under star-filled skies.

  Papa talked of Norman Manley and his son, Michael Manley, a young man of great promise who would be the main speaker at the meeting. Papa could not disguise his excitement. It showed in the way he abused the cigarettes, sucking at them harshly and flinging them out the window half-smoked; in the way he braked for potholes and steep corners and accelerated out of them; in the way he cut corners, speeded up hills and down slopes. The boys loved it, hanging on to their seats, looking wide-eyed at one another and at their Papa, not believing what was happening. There was Papa laughing away and telling jokes that they had never heard before. But it was the driving that excited them most. Papa was driving like a racing driver, fast, confident and fearless. ‘Like Stirling Moss,’ Barrington said with pride later. If Mama had been in the car, she would have said, ‘Slow down, you’re going too fast!’ But Mama wasn’t there. It was dangerous, but it was more exciting than dangerous. Papa knew what he was doing and they believed in their Papa. The Prefect obeyed him. The boys felt very close to their Papa. While he drove, he had one arm around them. He had been drinking too and the adult rum smell came off him.

  ‘Boys, boys! We’re going to see a great Jamaican. A great Jamaican! Let me tell you, this will be a night you will never forget, as long as you live. You will tell this to your children. You, Barrington. You, Boyd.’

  Because of the way Papa spoke about the young man, Michael Manley, the boys thought of him as a film star admired by Mavis, or a cowboy who would bring order to a lawless town. He was already their hero, because he was Papa’s hero.

  Hands sticky from the cream sodas and Staggerbacks, they got out of the car in a small village square. A hundred eyes followed them as they left the Prefect. A couple of Fargo trucks and vans were parked at the side of the road. Bicycles, big, black, muddy things with huge generators and headlight casings, were thrown about. Several old Land Rovers and John Deere tractors littered the scene, caked in mud and festooned with tufts of grass and cane leaves. People were excited at the smallest movement in the crowd, the flash of new headlights, the crunch of tyres. ‘Comrade Mike,’ someone called out and a shout went up. But it wasn’t Comrade Mike. It was new arrivals, looking pitiful and ordinary. Once or twice a few farmers and several men from the estate in big cars drove up. Papa knew some of these men and went over to talk, introducing Boyd and Barrington, who felt as if they were grown-up, especially when their hands were shaken by the big hands of the big men. The boys stood close to the car because the engine was still warm. Already half asleep, the boys wanted to crawl back into the leather seats and curl up. They thought of their warm beds back at the pink house.

  It was late when the young Michael Manley arrived. Papa ushered them in among the big men in their farm clothes, smelling of pigs and two-day-old perspiration. It was like a film show to the boys: the waiting, the bright lights in front, the roar of the crowd and then the silence, all eyes riveted on one spot. They fought to keep their eyes open.

  Boyd remembered a tall man looking like a big schoolboy with big ears and curly fair hair, which seemed to glow in the harsh light. He was golden under the lights. But it was his voice that identified him – a voice that was brave and sincere, touching the crowd, reaching deep into their hearts. Brothers and Sisters, we have been divided, but now we are joined. The word is love. Between slow blinks, Boyd remembered Papa punching the air and roaring magnificently, just like Mr Samms. And he could not be sure but he thought he saw, out of the gloom, the soft-white form of Ann Mitchison with her hot burgundy lips, standing next to Papa. He remembered the voice and the light and the tall, golden man, the adulation, the chill of the night. Then he was falling into bed, warm and dreamy.

  Just before sleep came, he saw her again, Ann Mitchison. She was standing by her Land Rover, stopped in the road in the dark, Papa next to her in the white headlights. And a strange thing happened. Mr Samms was suddenly there too, in the darkness and the mystery of the night, outrageously kissing Ann Mitchison, his lips squashed against hers, devouring her. And he was wearing Papa’s clothes. But, much later, when Papa finally slid in behind the steering wheel, the car had the scarlet scent of kiss.

  CHAPTER 20

  ‘So, my little peeny-waalie, Miss Hutchinson wants you over at her house,’ Mama said, smiling sweetly, not knowing about Tropic of Cancer, his and Miss Hutchinson’s deepest secret. ‘That’s far better than going to a political meeting, and you won’t get sick from too much cream soda and sweets.’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ Boyd said, knowing not to mention about Ann Mitchison.

  And on that special day, Papa, in a
moment of unexpected generosity, allowed him the pleasure of cycling the two miles to Miss Hutchinson’s, waving aside Mama’s protestations.

  ‘He’s a growing boy,’ Papa said irritably. ‘The house is just across the way. There’s no need for me to drive him up there. You worry too much. Everything bothers you these days, woman. Jeezas.’

  ‘Bothers?’ Mama rounded on him. ‘What makes you think that?’

  But Papa had already left the room.

  Barrington, performing big brother duties, showed Boyd how to get the best out of the bicycle, his bicycle, the prized hybrid Raleigh that took him on adventures round the estate roads, past Geraldine Pinnock’s house, during the hours Papa was at the factory.

  ‘Don’t stay too long, and look out for the train at the crossing,’ Mama called out as Boyd pedalled furiously away. Yvonne, a solitary figure on the verandah, threw June Rose blossoms after him with jealous rage, but seeing the futility of it, returned to dressing her dolls.

  Boyd rode down the slope and across the bridge, feeling the bicycle wheels churning the fine sand of the road. The sun drooled. Sugar and dunder odours from the factory streamed over him. The sky was clear, shiny blue. He believed that somehow Susan knew of his intentions and would be at Miss Hutchinson’s house waiting, invited there by Miss Hutchinson herself, who knew the whole story. And because he believed this, he pedalled harder, mounting the railway crossing just as the bell clanged and the gate closed. Looking back, he saw the slow train, the puffing black engine and the thirty or so grey carriages full of livestock and machinery. In no time he was on the smooth asphalt of the Appleton road leading up to Miss Hutchinson’s house. It was a brilliant-white house with a green roof and green shutters. Creepers were entwined in the shutters and tiny white butterflies danced about in a cluster. Purple bougainvillea shrouded both ends of the house, dropping blossoms on the perfect lawn. In the distance, the rushing steam from the factory warned Shhhhhhh! Shhhhhhh! And it alarmed Boyd because it sounded clearer on that side of the valley, and more urgent.