Mr Ten-To-Six had cycled home, bent double, to murder his wife in the heat of the afternoon, in violent ecstasy. Boyd imagined the butcher’s blood staining the floor in Mrs Ten-To-Six’s home and heard the bloodcurdling squeal of pigs. No one would set time by Mr Ten-To-Six any more. He was no longer wonderfully mysterious, just a vicious killer.
The men at the factory had murmured that Mrs Ten-To-Six had been washing, ironing and cooking for the new man in the district, the mechanic, Carlton Smith. It was all Mr Ten-To-Six needed to hear. Now Mrs Ten-To-Six lay dead, along with her two children, Carlton Smith too, their heads severed at the neck.
‘Those eight children, without a mother,’ Mama lamented.
‘Oh, they have their own mother, ma’am,’ Mavis explained. ‘Mr Ten-To-Six is their father. He had four other women he used to live with, ma’am. The dead Mrs Ten-To-Six wasn’t the first, no ma’am. He killed the two children he had with her.’
Papa raised his eyebrows at this. ‘You know what I’ve always said about those people,’ he said scornfully. ‘And that is exactly what I mean. They have children they can’t look after and create problems they can’t solve. Killing his own children!’
‘He chopped off their heads, Mr Brookes,’ Mavis added.
‘Severed at the neck.’ Mama shook her head, hands outstretched, eyes unbelieving. The news of the violent murder relieved her, temporarily, of the unrestrained thoughts that Papa’s behaviour engendered. And she repeated the words like a mantra. ‘Severed at the neck! At the neck!’
Severed at the neck was a very bad thing. It was so bad that it was reported in The Daily Gleaner and in the evening paper, The Star, with neighbours of Mr and Mrs Ten-To-Six providing graphic details of the tragedy. Corporal Duncan rode up on Cyrus to give reassurance that there were no other labourers on the rampage, that this was a one- off. Even though Mr Ten-To-Six had escaped to the impenetrable hill country beyond Accompong, where the Maroons lived, a people accustomed to hiding and fighting and surviving since the days of slavery; Corporal Duncan felt certain that he would be hunted down and brought to justice. But it was out of his hands. The police high command of the parish had taken charge and brought in some tough detectives from Kingston who had a propensity for shooting first and talking later. Mr Ten-To-Six was as good as dead.
‘Is bad omen, ma’am,’ Mavis told Mama.
‘What do you mean?’
Mavis seemed surprised. ‘Bad omen, Miss Victoria, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Bad omen.’ It was what she knew and couldn’t understand anyone not knowing.
As the children clustered round, Mama saw her own life wrapped up, somehow, in the tragedy, and could already see and feel the gathering tribulations.
Mavis had shocking news of her own from people who knew people at Taunton. Mrs Ten-To-Six, a Jehovah’s Witness, had been reading her Bible when Mr Ten-To-Six chopped off her head. The head jumped across the floor, rolled down the steps and lay in the yard, eyes wide open and looking up to heaven. But other people said that Mr Ten-To-Six had caught Mrs Ten-To-Six with Carlton Smith. They had been fornicating, Mavis declared, savouring the drama. She said fornicating twice with much emphasis, obviously a word she had just discovered, not knowing its exact meaning but knowing that it contained wickedness. Everybody in the district knew Mrs Ten-To-Six. She was an upright woman. Her little boy, Leroy, still wearing his black bow tie, lay next to his mother and his little sister, Pansey. Mama and the children listened to the animated Mavis with increasing dread.
On the verandah, Papa and Corporal Duncan deplored, in strong language, the frailty of some members of the human race. And Papa was heard to say, ‘Y’know, I always knew there was something funny about that man, Ten-To-Six. Any man who keeps himself to himself like that is up to no good. Weak and wicked. Pshaw!’
Out in the yard, the children admired Cyrus, tethered near to the silver water tank. They were so taken with him that they missed the stealthy arrival of the bicycle rider and only heard when Mama cried out. It was a cry so chilling coming in the aftermath of the vicious murder that, galvanised with fright and imagining all manner of calamity, they turned and dashed, Poppy one frantic gallop ahead of them, through the house and to the verandah. There they found Mama in hysterics, Corporal Duncan assisting her to a chair, while Papa held a salmon-coloured envelope up to the light. It was a telegram.
‘Is bad omen,’ Mavis breathed, observing the agitated Mama sipping from a glass of water, remembering her own words earlier. ‘Bad news always come in threes, ma’am.’ She and Mama exchanged wild looks.
‘Well,’ Papa said to Mama, ‘it’s for you.’
Mama lived in fear of telegrams. Only news of death came in them. The last time she’d received a telegram was at Worthy Park Estate, in the days when Papa was obliging and generous. Her father, John Pratt, had died. After reading in the newspaper about the shooting of Mr Lee of Water Lane, Kingston, she had recurring nightmares about her mother lying dead in a pool of her own blood from a robber’s bullet. She’d begged Papa to take her and the children to see Grandma Rosetta but he hadn’t seemed interested. Now the murder of Mrs Ten-To-Six only heightened her fears.
Papa opened the envelope and read silently, every single eye on him, including Poppy’s, whose presence on the verandah in the midst of the excitement had gone unnoticed by Papa. A knowing smile came over Papa’s face and he handed the telegram to Mama. It was from Aunt Amanda, Mama’s older sister. Her daughter, Polly, had won a scholarship to a prestigious state school. Mama cried out with sheer relief. She forgot all her worries and talked excitedly about the news from her sister all evening.
‘Polly’s going to be an important person. I see her at the United Nations.’
‘Why is she going there, Mama?’ Yvonne asked, dumbfounded.
As Mama tried to explain, Boyd remembered their cousin, Polly. On the great occasion when they last visited Grandma Rosetta, Polly had brought a note with unsettling news. It was during the fascinating weeks before they departed Worthy Park for Appleton. He remembered the rambling gingerbread house and Grandma Rosetta lying in the gloom of a great four-poster bed, a furled mosquito net suspended in a huge knot above her head. He remembered her dark, heavy body in the bed, her old smell, old breath, and felt a terrible sadness. He had wanted to tell her to place the brown bakelite Bush radio on the table by the bed so that when she was alone she could hear the music and be young again. He wanted to say that it didn’t matter being alone when you had the radio.
‘Where are you going, Boyd?’ Grandma Rosetta had said, wagging her finger at him. ‘Come and sit next to me.’
He had wanted to tell her that in the dark country night, when there was nothing to look forward to, the radio could become her morning, her afternoon, her pleasant evening, lovely thoughts and dreams. But he had said nothing.
He and Yvonne had been sent to the barbecue, the terrace at the side of the house while Mama and her brothers discussed family business. The barbecue held thousands of coffee berries drying in the sun. The freshest berries were blood-red but the ones that had been there the longest were black, wrinkled and distressed, just like Grandma Rosetta. They sniffed the coffee berries and watched as the country buses with names like The Morning Star, The Mayflower and The Magnet rattled by at the bottom of the hill. All the buses seemed to be going to, or coming from, a place called Kellits.
On that day, cousin Polly arrived in one of the colourful buses, looking very coy, with a small brown cardboard suitcase. She also brought a special book that she held against her chest called The Student’s Companion. From its pages she had memorised the capital cities of the world, the highest mountain peaks, the active volcanoes and all the major deserts. She put the book aside on the bed while respectfully and dutifully handing Mama the important-looking envelope. Mama had secreted it away in the large pocket of her cotton skirt and behaved as if nothing had happened.
But later, standing just outside the door, Boyd heard Grandma Rosetta say, ‘It’s that wo
man from Lluidas Vale. It’s a disgrace. He has no right, no right.’ And Boyd knew that Papa was implicated.
‘We don’t know,’ Mama had said. ‘It’s only talk.’
‘Amanda knows more than what’s in that note,’ Grandma Rosetta said. ‘Get him to take you up to Amanda so you can find out. Talk to Enid. She knows what’s what.’
‘No,’ Mama replied indignantly. ‘No.’
In the end, when Papa arrived after work, when it was time to go in the inky-black country night, they had all gathered at Grandma Rosetta’s bed, kissing, hands caressing, not letting go, saying goodbye again and again at the door. Mama had hung back, hugging her mother and behaving like a girl. And when she came out of the room, they could see she’d been crying. They squeezed by Uncle Albert, who pinched their cheeks and said ‘Cluck, Cluck,’ in their ears while a fondly smiling Uncle Haughton ushered them out. They stroked Christmas, his dog, who had crept out from under the house to stand next to Polly on the verandah. There was a slight delay as Papa tried, fussing good-naturedly, to get Mama’s small flowerpots containing assorted plants and numerous cuttings from Grandma Rosetta’s garden into the boot of the car. Polly, silhouetted against the lamplight, waved from the verandah, telling them not to forget to write. But when they got to Appleton, with its glorious sugar smell, its shhing steam, its dunder, its cauchee and its fantasy, they did forget. But Boyd never forgot Polly’s note and Grandma Rosetta’s comments about the woman from Lluidas Vale who made Mama cry.
Mama wasn’t crying now. She couldn’t stop kissing and cuddling the children and looking dreamily into the distance. ‘Bad omen, is it, Mavis?’ she said, smiling.
Mavis smiled too, because it was right to do so. But her instinct, experience and culture told her that bad news was bad news and came in threes, and that poor Mrs Brookes, or the entire Brookes family, or perhaps even she herself, would receive more bad news. It could come tomorrow, or the day after, or next month. As God was her judge, two more pieces of bad news awaited them. Mrs Ten-To-Six was the first.
That night, Mama again begged Papa to take her and the children to visit her mother.
‘It’s only in Kingston that they rob and kill people,’ Papa told her gruffly. ‘People don’t rob private houses in St Catherine. When was the last time you heard of any crime where your mother lives?’
Nevertheless, Papa felt that it was time he visited Mama’s family, time they knew he was a star at Appleton Estate with a house like the manager’s and a future to die for. But he wanted to wait until the waters ran smoothly. So all he said to Mama was that when she had the baby, and there wasn’t long to wait, he would take her to see her mother, and wouldn’t it be a great occasion then?
Mama stopped mentioning Grandma Rosetta, feeling guilty to be such a burden. Mavis’s news the following afternoon that Mr Ten-To-Six was still at large and had been sighted near Maggotty Falls did nothing to change her view that she was being a bit of a nuisance. Even when Grandma Rosetta wrote a three-page letter saying she’d not been well of late and that it would be nice to see the children, she said nothing more to Papa.
CHAPTER 26
When the stranger came riding up the driveway, Poppy went to meet him. It had rained heavily during the night and the sound of wet was everywhere. The children, sitting on the verandah, saw Poppy stand back to let the rider pass and were astonished at this peculiar behaviour. Barrington put his Superman comic down, Boyd turned his gaze away from the Mitchison’s house, shelved his passionate exploits with Susan and watched in silence as the rider approached, splashing through puddles, small birds flitting out of his way.
The cyclist handed Yvonne a salmon-coloured envelope with black writing on it. Then he bowed guiltily and rode off. Poppy did not chase after him but went quietly under the house, head down, eyes to the ground.
‘What is it?’ Mama asked tentatively from the depths of the bedroom.
Yvonne, anticipating much woe, held out the salmon-coloured envelope. Mama’s hand shot to her throat. Fingers trembling, she read the pink letter. Then she uttered a mournful cry that carried throughout the house. Barrington rushed to her immediately, followed by Mavis, arms covered in flour up to her elbows.
‘Is everything all right, ma’am?’ It seemed as if Mavis could fix anything in that instant, send back the man on the bicycle and above all, drive away the awful sound that Mama had made. It was in their hearts and it represented the dread that was now everywhere and could not be escaped from. Mavis took charge in quicksilver fashion, flour-covered hands flashing, accomplishing multiple actions all at once. She said nothing about the bad omens but she kept count.
Boyd backed away down the verandah steps and into the garden to stand in crystal-clear puddles and count small birds hopping about. The smell was of raw, wet earth, the air pure and cool. But he felt hot and feverish. Mama would never see her mother alive again. Grandma Rosetta was dead.
Mama had begged and begged Papa to take her for a visit. And now it was too late. In the great four-poster bed in that dark room, Grandma Rosetta lay, rotting, like Grandpa Pratt. Her flesh would run purple like the dye from the logwood tree, and it would run into the coffee beans drying on the terrace of the gingerbread house.
He remembered when Grandpa John Pratt had died: the women’s perspiration, their sobbing, the men’s liquor-breath and moth-balled, chalk-stripe suits and white shirts with sweaty collars. There was a moment when he stood riveted, watching the made-up body of Grandpa Pratt. It was the dead flesh, covered in potions to hide the unforgiving, that had mattered so much. And the smell that he knew was there, of rotting flesh, like the dead frog that he’d found in the garden when he was only three. The body of Mama’s father hadn’t moved. A fragrant Aunt Enid had dragged him away as if he’d witnessed the forbidden. So he knew from then that death was ugly and old.
He knew that when Papa came home, it would be the same as it had been at Worthy Park. Papa would walk briskly up and down on the wooden floors while Mama wept silently in her room, beyond comfort. And they would make preparations to go to St Catherine, to the gingerbread house among the fruit trees and flowers, where the rest of the family would be gathered. Polly, the scholarship girl, would be there too, polite and observant. Her parents would be there, Uncle George with his philosophic smile, Aunt Amanda, calm and composed, and her many square-jawed brothers and pretty sisters, respectful and studious. But he did not want to go to St Catherine. He did not want to see Grandma Rosetta dead in the front room, powdered and dressed, her old flesh like tree bark. He wandered to the back garden and stared at Vincent, who was picking ripe tomatoes. Vincent, sensing something amiss, took him to the kitchen and handed him over to Mavis.
‘What is it, petal?’ Mavis put her arms round him.
He snuggled up tight against her, inhaling thyme and scallion, the pure scent of the living. Mavis took him straight to his bed. Mama came in to lay the back of her hand on his forehead. She smelled of camphor from the balls in her chest of drawers because she’d started to assemble funeral clothes.
‘You’ve got a raging fever,’ she said.
Yvonne sat on the bed, sucking her thumb and dangling her feet until she heard the splashing of the Land Rover coming up the driveway. Then she dashed away to be the first to tell Papa the news.
Papa stopped at the door and fixed Boyd with a suspicious stare. ‘You can’t stay here like that,’ he said, seeing deep into Boyd’s heart.
Boyd trembled when he heard the words and felt the pain thumping in his head. He couldn’t face Papa. Papa would see the truth in his eyes. They could not make him go. In his heart he felt a tender union with the Grandma Rosetta he knew, the one with the funny wagging finger, the one who said Where are you going, Boyd? only because she wanted him to come to her. He felt guilty because he didn’t want his Grandma Rosetta; he did not want death and sorrow and weeping; he did not want duty and responsibility. All he wanted was the sun and Susan, who was warm and fragrant and alive and dying for him. N
ow that Mama and Papa, Barrington and Yvonne would be away in St Catherine, it was his best chance yet to carry out the act. He knew that his impatience for Papa and Mama to drive off to St Catherine was indecent but could only accept it as a matter of fact. Susan would come magically through the fence in the warm sun the moment they left.
‘Mama’s not packing Boyd’s clothes,’ Yvonne told Mavis. ‘He’s poorly.’
Boyd could feel Yvonne close by the bed, smell her wax crayon scent. He pretended to be sleeping and groaned weakly as if from a bad dream.
‘Mama washed him down with Bay Rum,’ Yvonne said.
‘It will drive out the fever,’ Mavis told her.
In the end, Boyd, head deep in fluffy pillows, waved goodbye with a limp hand. By now, his self-induced fever had become real. Mama kissed him with red lipsticked lips and felt the heat at his temples. Her eyes were weary, and when she looked at him, it was so long and so deep that he thought she too could see into him. Papa, still suspicious, warned him not to get up to any hanky-panky, sick or not. Barrington gave him a funny look, as if to say, How do you get away with it?
‘Ah take good care of him,’ Mavis assured everyone as they left the room.
From the window, Boyd peered at the burnished little Prefect speeding away, Yvonne’s face gazing out the rear window directly at him. The feeling of guilt and remorse was short-lived. The house was quiet, the radio his alone, the garden empty and waiting in the radiant sunlight. But his joints and head ached tremendously and the heat radiating from him felt like an open fire. Boyd knew he was being punished for the lies and the pretence. He really wanted to do it in Technicolor while everyone was away.
He met her in the sunlight away from the dead, in fragrant heat, in the perfumed brightness of buttercups and orange blossoms, free from the clutching guilt. Their hearts were free and light, like butterfly wings in warm air, and they went behind the pink house on the crest of the hill like figures in a book. She sat upright in the grass, her scent like cinnamon, drawing him in, her skin radiating heat that wafted about him, her fine brown hair touched with light gold, her lips like strawberry jam, tasty and sweet. Their hearts beat like the wings of big bats, limbs weakened by extravagant expectation, tortured by the feverish waiting, sick with the absence of touch. They would end the sickness and the torture that very day. He entered the cinnamon heat, hidden away from the pink house, using his wet tongue upon the dripping jam, licking, sucking, unable to stop. And music gave them wings, sealed their first touch, marked the spot with memory.
The Pink House at Appleton Page 22
