The timbers of the verandah creaked, momentarily giving Molly the impression that she was on the deck of a huge white ship that sailed on dry land, going nowhere. She shook her head to dispel the sense of unreality, rose from her chair and walked to the end of the verandah where Maxine was sweeping. Stinking foul water from the narrow concrete trench running alongside the road made her stomach queasy. Molly attempted to catch Maxine’s eye and smile. The maid steadfastly ignored her.
Something was approaching down the street. Molly blinked. At first sight it looked like a walking tree. She looked again. It was a man, thin and black, dressed entirely in shreds and tatters of cloth that had turned as black as his skin with age, sweat and heat. His hair grew knotted and wild. He walked with obsessive regularity of stride, stiff-legged as if his legs were branches hung with fluttering scraps of material. Barefoot, he progressed with astonishing speed, eyes fixed straight ahead.
‘Who is this, Maxine?’
Maxine looked up indifferently from her broom and glanced down the street:
‘The King of Rags.’ She chewed on a matchstick.
‘What does he do?’ asked Molly.
‘Me na know. ‘E jus’ walk.’
Maxine was still sulking over Donella’s accusations that she had left the door unlocked. She swept on methodically, then added with a grin: ‘Maybe he’s walking for summady.’
‘How do you mean?’ Molly wondered if she meant he was going on an errand.
‘Maybe he tryin’ to walk summady to death.’ She squinted at Molly in the sunlight. ‘We can do that here, yuh know. ‘I’ll walk for you.’ She shook her finger, indicating a mock threat, and laughed.
Donella reappeared dressed in a pair of light grey slacks and an expensively tailored blouse. Maxine served her breakfast outside:
‘Excuse me eating my breakfast, dear. I figure you’ve already had yours.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Molly with martyrish restraint. She watched Donella tuck into a plate of scrambled egg and tomato. Some of the food fell from her mouth onto the table:
‘You know, when I was in England I was very friendly with the Duke of Blenheim’s family. His cousin was a very good friend of mine. Do you know them at all?’
‘I’m afraid not. They’re a little out of my sphere,’ replied Molly smugly.
Donella rattled on: ‘Yes. She came to visit me in the clinic when my son was born – so drunk my dear, she was falling all over the room begging me to let her hold the baby and I was saying ‘No … er … please don’t.’ I dare say if I was back there now she would be expecting me to sweep her floors.’ She wiped her mouth on one of the paper napkins torn in quarters to make them last longer:
‘You leave that country and nobody gives a squot!’ she added bitterly.
The door buzzer sounded. A second or two later, Ralph Rawlings walked across the wide varnished floor to greet them. He was a bulky, balding mulatto of about forty-five with a loud shirt and squeaky shoes. He constantly adusted the black-rimmed spectacles on his nose:
‘Some kinda chicken riot downtown.’ Ralph always sounded exasperated, impatient. Now he was feeling especially burdened by this white stranger who had been foisted on him by his far-distant sister and to whom he had to play host.
‘What kind of riot?’ Donella exaggerated a mild panic. ‘I am supposed to be doing a little supervision for someone downtown this morning.’
‘Seemingly some chicken arrived from the States at half the normal price. People fightin’ over it. It’s the distribution that’s all wrong in this blasted country. Distribution all the time.’
‘I shall phone the shop immediately and tell them I am too distraught to undertake any supervision today. The loss of both the radio and the iron is catastrophic. I shall seize this opportunity to fly up to the Rupununi. I have been trying to organise a flight up there for days. Now, Ralph, might I prevail upon you to drive me to the airport? My car is out of commission until a new clutch flies in from Miami. My bag is packed and ready.’ She clapped her hands with girlish eagerness.
Ralph looked at his watch. He could spare a couple of hours and Donella was useful to him. She had good contacts in transportation and knew of outlets for his timber business:
‘How do you feel about comin’ out to the airport?’ he asked Molly.
‘Well, it was on my schedule this morning to go down and buy some books and materials for my class …’
Donella interrupted. ‘Don’t be foolish my dear. All those books come from England. You can get them when you return. Besides, there’s little enough here without you walking off with half the literature in the country.’
Molly did not attempt to argue.
The road to the airport was long and straight. Molly was bounced up and down on the broken springs of the back seat. Now and then she glimpsed the brown Demerara river through the bush. Donella addressed her from the front seat:
‘You see, Molly, I have a dear friend, my alter ego, who is stranded up on her ranch in the Rupununi. She has nothing to eat, literally nothing but farine. She is relying on me. The herd got rabies. They’re innoculated now but there will be no animals to sell for three months. The situation is utterly parlous.’
Donella turned to Ralph: ‘Eight gallons of latex has come into my possession. What sort of price would you give me for it?’
The two of them bargained fiercely over the price.
Molly gripped the window frame and looked out. A small, dark, skinny man, one foot on the pedal of his bike, came scooting towards them along the grass verge at the side of the road. As the car neared him, she heard him bringing up the phlegm from the back of his throat. The gob of spittle hit her full in the forehead. Quickly, she retreated into the back of the car and took a handkerchief from her handbag. She wiped her face and then surreptitiously threw the handkerchief from the car window. Not surprising, she thought, given the history of the place, that someone should spit at a white face. Her own magnanimity and understanding of the incident warmed her. The others were still discussing the latex and hadn’t noticed anything. After a while, Ralph stopped the car and bought three slices of fresh pineapple, cut lengthwise, from a sharp-eyed Indian woman at the side of the road. Molly remained in the back of the car, smiling. She gets on my nerves, thought Ralph, as he returned to the driving seat.
They walked through the airport which was in chaos. The air-conditioning had broken. A throng of people besieged the solitary man behind the check-in counter. Hands waved tickets and immigration papers in the air to attract his attention. Some passengers near the counter sat on their bags and refused to move although their flight had been cancelled. Ralph steered Molly towards a gap in the crowd. A disconsolate group stood round the telephone watching a man bang the receiver up and down trying to make it work. Donella went off to try and organise her flight. Molly suppressed her distaste at the general mêlée.
‘Excuse me, Ralph,’ she said. ‘I have to use the toilet.’
She pushed her way through the crowded concourse wishing she had been able to keep to her original plan of browsing through the bookshop. The disorder upset her. A foul stench hit her as she entered the Ladies. She held her breath and entered one of the cubicles. The toilet was packed with shit. So was the next one. And the next. She exited quickly and drew breath:
‘It’s not very nice in there,’ she said, apologetically.
‘They should do something about this place,’ said Ralph, darkly.
They went up the stairs to the bar. It was gloomy but not as crowded as outside. A black girl in a green and white check overall drooped lethargically behind the counter:
‘We gat a power outage,’ she said. ‘We ain’ gat no cold drinks. We gat carbonated orange and black cherry drink.’ She wiped the bar down with a piece of paper. Ralph ordered a vodka and black cherry. Molly sipped an orange drink she did not want. She felt sick.
‘See that man over there,’ said Ralph. ‘That’s the Minister of Sport. They say his heart is not well. He should
lose weight.’ Molly turned to see a group of Afro-Guyanese men standing in the corner of the room laughing and drinking. The Minister laughed too but he looked anxious all the same. His eyes kept flicking from side to side as if there might be an enemy in the bar.
‘Ralph Rawlings!’
A smartly dressed Malaysian woman with neatly permed black hair and a little button of a mouth held out her arms to Ralph. Her red linen suit made a splash of colour in the darkened bar-room. Molly made an effort to smile as she waited to be introduced.
‘Mrs Chan. How you do? Meet Molly Summers, a visitor from England.’
A brief handshake and Mrs Chan turned back to Ralph:
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘I had to come back. I thought I was settled in Miami for good but I re-married to a Guyanese and I had to come back.’ She looked around her and a shadow of disgust passed over her face. She caught Molly looking at her:
‘My sons stayed behind though,’ she added with pride. ‘I jus’ goin’ back to see them now.’
She lowered her voice so that it was just audible over the hubbub of the bar:
‘Joan Robson is back too.’ She spoke with malicious satisfaction. ‘See her over there. Remember how glamorous she used to be? Something happened. She was at Columbia University. Some story … racism … something dreadful happened. A suicide … something. There was a car crash too. See the scars on her face.’
Molly studied the slim, honey-coloured woman seated at a table nearby. The skin on her fine-boned face was discoloured in patches. Skin grafts.
‘She used to be so beautiful!’ continued Mrs Chan with barely suppressed glee. ‘Her body lookin’ old now. There was some kinda breakdown. Cocaine too, I heard. She looks like some kinda rehabilitated person, don’t you think?’
Grim pleasure shone out of Mrs Chan’s black eyes:
‘Anyway. She back too. Marketing peppers. Which reminds me, Ralph. You wan’ buy some cement? I can deal with the freight but not the duty. I can’t handle the duty at all. I’ll call you when I get back. Think about it. Well, I suppose I better go wiggle my behind at those immigration people.’
Ralph shook his head as he watched her weaving her way out through the waiting passengers:
‘Is women doin’ all the business now,’ he said, as if he too experienced the indefinable turmoil that was affecting Molly.
A cheer went up at the arrival of some long-awaited flight from Trinidad. Two dark patches of sweat showed under the arms of Ralph’s shirt and now he was arguing with the girl behind the bar. She had accidentally served him with pure water from a bottle instead of vodka. She was convulsed with laughter at her mistake.
The heavily pregnant black woman with close-cropped hair who had been observing Molly grasped her opportunity and glided across to stand directly in front of her. Molly had to bend her head to hear what she was saying:
‘You can spare me a dollar, please?’ Her big belly made the woman’s dress ride up at the front and dip at the back, like a child’s. She spoke quietly. Molly reached in her purse and willingly handed over three dollars. The woman took it and vanished. The dark room bubbled with conversation. Molly had the sensation that she was under water. Unable to breathe freely. She shut her eyes and tried to focus on the purpose of her visit. Donella’s high-pitched voice cut through the noise:
‘I am in despair.’ She faced them, arms akimbo. ‘No flights. Freddie has to wait for a consignment of something that is stuck in Customs. It’s too disastrous. My alter ego will starve.’
The three of them trailed across the airport car park: Donella wringing her hands and lamenting, Ralph perspiring heavily, Molly tip-toeing behind because the tarmac was burning the soles of her feet even through the sandals. A savage, unremitting heat replaced the swirling confusion of the airport. Molly felt that she had turned into a mirage, shimmering and unreal. The ground radiated heat. She pulled the top of her soaking blue cotton dress away from her breasts before getting into the back of the car. The seat scorched her thighs. She felt dizzy.
‘Your car still gat four tyres, sir. I guardin’ it for you.’
Ralph gave the urchin some coins and clambered into the driving seat. Molly leaned back weakly as they set off. Her thoughts were becoming disjointed. She was unable to concentrate on anything. She closed her eyes then opened them briefly and saw an endless expanse of blue sky with two clouds like white meringues. The black speck of a vulture hovered over the bush in the distance. She closed her eyes once more. Too much sky, she thought. On the journey back, pictures swam behind her eyelids; the pregnant beggar woman teaching a class in her school in London; Maxine, the maid, casually chewing on a match as she examined a rack of shoes in the shop at Finsbury Park. They reached town. Ralph drove past Stabroek market towards the Chase Manhattan bank. Molly spotted the King of Rags, stationary now, standing near a pile of dried-out coconut trash talking to a man with tray of watches for sale. Ralph pulled over by the bank. People streamed from the pavement round the car. Molly tried to suppress a feeling of dislike for the throng of unfamilar faces; mahogany faces, cinammon faces, ebony faces, agate faces. She yearned for the cool peace of the Meeting House.
So swiftly did the figure move to her side of the car that Molly barely had time to register it. For a second or two glaring sun prevented her from seeing that it was the figure of a white man, not more than twenty-five years old. Rough, unshaven stubble glittered ginger on the bottom half of his face as he thrust it in through the car window. The hair was cropped short in a crew-cut that could have belonged to a soldier or a convict. The face reddened by exposure to the sun made his blue eyes look fierce. He was blinking as he leaned in towards Molly:
‘Are you English?’ The accent was cockney.
‘Yes.’ Molly’s pale forehead puckered with astonishment.
‘Gimme some money,’ he whined menacingly.
She stared at him in disbelief.
‘Gimme some money. I want some dinner.’
She made a feeble attempt to wind up the window but the mechanism was broken. He persisted:
‘I was in Pentonville prison. D’you know it? Near Kings Cross.’
She nodded dumbly. He shoved his head further in the car and she pulled her head back into a nest of chins. He continued:
‘I used to live in Streatham Hill. D’you know round there?’
She nodded again, speechless, her mouth dry. His foot slipped on some garbage in the gutter and he stepped back. She saw his plimsolls dirty and without laces; the jeans ragged at the bottom; his navy-blue vest torn and stained. She raised her eyes. He seemed enormous. His head eclipsed the sun, a fiery halo dancing round its silhouette, the sky stretching away behind.
‘My wife left me. I had a nervous breakdown. That’s when they put me in Pentonville. Dr Rhodes sent me here. You must have heard of Dr Rhodes. He sent me here. He sent me here.’
The voice was echoing in Molly’s ears.
‘Help me. I must get back. I’m tryin’ to get me fare back.’
‘But … but,’ Molly stammered, ‘you’re English. You shouldn’t be doing this.’
Something was happening to her. The sun seemed to have broken loose from its moorings and to be moving round in circles in the sky. She heard the voice faintly now:
‘Well just give me the money for me dinner. I’m starvin’.’
Ralph came out of the bank. He pushed the man out of the way and got into the car. Molly was making little whimpering sounds in the back.
‘Girl – you all right?’ he asked anxiously.
‘He’s English … that beggar … a white man.’
She became aware of Donella and Ralph looking over their shoulders at her curiously. Suddenly an enormous rage consumed the whole of her body as if somehow or other she had been tricked. She tried to speak but no words came. Ralph saw that she was gasping for breath and noticed little purple blotches appearing on her face. She tried to correct her mistake. What she wanted to say was perfectly clear in her head and it woul
d make everything all right again. It would stop the doubtful accusing looks on the faces of those two people staring at her from the front seats. But her lips just moved without producing a sound like a fish out of water. Slumped against the back seat she started to gurgle. Her grey hair was soaked with sweat. A small child poked at her through the window trying to sell her some peanuts.
‘Blast it,’ thought Ralph. ‘Don’ tell me the woman has come all the way over here just to die in the back of my car.’ He started up the engine and headed for the Public Hospital.
The Conversion of Millicent Vernon
IN THE DISTANCE, THE BELL FROM THE LUTHERAN church started to sound. A minute or so later it was joined by the lugubrious, deeper bell of the Anglican church. For a while these two bells limped along together, out of step, and then the high sweet chimes of the Catholic church rang out, intermingling with them and confusing the difference between all three.
Millicent Vernon, a light-skinned girl of eighteen leaned her elbows on the rail of Canje Bridge and stared dejectedly into the brown creek waters. Selma, her friend, stood with her back to the rail jutting out her pointy breasts like an old poster of Jane Russell she had once seen and spitting the stones from purply-black jamoon fruit into the road.
‘Oh God, Selma, is how I goin’ get money to fix me teeth?’
‘Write your cousin in England and beg her the money. You know how we Guyanese like to beg.’ Selma gave a malicious smile.
The two girls turned and began to stroll back to New Amsterdam. A carload of boys in an ancient jalopy passed them, whooping and hollering in the early evening light. Selma threw them one of her sultry, haughty looks as she strutted along in her skin-tight, shiny blue pants, slapping at the sandflies as they bit. Millie wore a white blouse and red shorts. Her long legs turned to gold in the evening sunlight. Somewhere, in the bush alongside the creek, a keskidee bird was calling.
On their right, set back off the road in a patch of land that seemed a wilderness, stood the rambling ramshackle madhouse. From one of the upper storeys, as they passed, came the sound of a woman’s voice screaming like a cat:
Shape-Shifter Page 3
