by Amanda Smyth
He is certain that the wife, Jeanne, has had breast implants; she wears them boldly, with tight shirts and tube tops. She is friendly, but in a self-conscious way, often adjusting her straightened hair or her straps while complaining about the heat or the rain. He wonders if she ever plays away. He has discovered that it’s possible, in a relationship, to present to the world a picture quite different from the truth. These days, when he meets other couples, he finds himself looking for signs; he contemplates, he speculates. Are they in love? Are they happy? Faithful to one another?
Yes, there is something about Jeanne that seems available, feckless. Satnam, her husband—immaculate, in long-sleeved shirts and slacks, works for the local airline. His senior position means they can fly wherever they wish, and that means mostly Miami, Florida, where she can shop, and where they own two houses.
It is curious to him—a steady, quiet person like Satnam, caught up with a woman like Jeanne. He has seen it before, and it doesn’t always go the way you think; time usually sorts things out. Yes, with time people reveal themselves. He’d put money on Jeanne trading in Satnam at some point down the road; cashing in the houses, the car, half of his annual income, which, by any standards, Trinidad or England, must be considerable. And swiftly marrying someone else; someone younger, more adventurous, better looking. Is this something Satnam ever worries about? Perhaps not.
The day they were leaving for Miami, he saw them in their black 4x4 Hyundai Tucson. Jeanne peeped over the blacked-out electric window, her long earrings dangling.
‘Any requests from Uncle Sam?’
And he had felt embarrassed, and without thinking found himself blurting, ‘I actually hate America.’
He knew by the way she looked at him that she was thrown.
‘Just kidding,’ he added. ‘Have fun.’ He seems to remember they are back on the weekend.
Ahead, he can make out the hills. It is incredible to him how quickly he has grown accustomed to sitting here in the veranda, on the ugly aluminum chairs with the plastic white straps. More than one of the straps has broken, and two of the chairs are more or less useless. Around the veranda is a little brick wall about three feet tall, and in the middle, a white plastic table. It is hardly luxurious. But he has grown to love these hills and the way they change colour; sometimes, particularly in the gentle morning light when he sits outside with his first cup of coffee, they are pale and blueish. By noon they are a hard yellow-green; and in late afternoon they are tinted with shades of violet and mauve. Now they are so very black.
He wanders into the yard. This tropical grass is thicker, tougher than the grass of his English lawn. The blades feel coarse and springy when you walk on them. Recently he has discovered something: he likes to feel his bare feet on the earth, particularly in the early morning when the ground is moist. In the rainy season it turns muddy, and the mud is reddish brown like clay. There is an old sink by the side of the apartment where he can wash his feet. He has to watch out for the tiny ‘ti marie’ that prick the skin. There are ants too, millions of tiny ants. According to Safiya there are twelve different types of ant in Trinidad. He has yet to see the gigantic leaf-cutting bachacs that live in the forests. One day, Safiya will take him there.
He looks out at the dark shapes, the shadowy trees, the small concrete shed, and he wonders about Fanta. Usually at this time, Fanta is sitting on the veranda wall, or sleeping in his wicker basket. He hasn’t seen him all day. Maybe he has things to do: a cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes. Three months ago, he found the stray kitten curled up in a shady corner outside the supermarket. Small enough to sit in the palm of his hand, his ribs protruded and when he stood he had no tail. But his orange coat was pretty and surprisingly soft. Without thinking too much, he put the cat in a brown paper bag, and placed him in the back of his car. At home, Fanta slept and ate milk and crushed water biscuits. Before long he was strong enough to run about. Now he is used to Brunswick tuna and IAMS biscuits imported from America, and Safiya says he is spoiling him. She doesn’t like the name, either. He has explained to Safiya that Fanta is a fizzy English orange drink.
‘I’m hungry,’ Safiya says from the doorway, her voice a sleepy drawl. ‘Are we going out to eat, or should we have something here?’
She is wearing a long yellow T-shirt. She sits, and draws her knees up to her chest. ‘I could do Kentucky.’
In England he would never have dreamed of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken, but here everyone seems to like it. One evening, recently, on the way home from the beach, hungry, sandy and sunbeaten, and dressed only in their beach clothes, on Safiya’s insistence they’d picked up a twelve-piece tub of hot and spicy chicken from the drive-by in Maraval, and parked under the huge Samaan tree; he was surprised at how delicious it tasted.
‘I want to take you somewhere special.’ He squats down on the floor beside her. ‘Take your pick,’ he says. ‘Anywhere you want.’
There are a number of new restaurants on the long strip of road in the centre of the city. Since he arrived, Italian, Chinese and Mexican restaurants have all opened within a few weeks of each other. There is a bar that reminds him of a gastropub in England with its hanging lampshades and ambient music. Safiya likes it but he thinks it is pretentious, and a little young. It is also expensive. Everyone says the economy is booming; it occurs to him that Trinidad seems to be the only country in the world where this is so, where life is still ‘sweet’, as they say.
‘A zinger,’ she says, ‘that’s what I want.’ Then, ‘A zinger, fries and a large Coke.’
He understands why she doesn’t want to go out. In some ways, making a big effort on their last night together makes the separation more poignant, and he doesn’t want her to feel that this is in fact their last evening together. For two weeks, yes, but that’s all. At the same time, an intimate dinner in an expensive restaurant might leave her with a better and more lasting memory; while he is away, he wants her to think of him at his best: supportive, loving, generous. Someone she can have a good time with; someone she can rely on.
He has noticed, since her father’s decline, she is turning to him more and more. He has become a safe place to rest her troubled heart and he is pleased; he had hoped this would happen. The next two weeks will be critical.
TWO
They have overslept. Someone is tapping hard on the bedroom window; he hauls himself from a deep sleep and staggers out into the passageway. He can see a dark shape through the frosted louvers, and he is disorientated. Then he remembers: it is not a workday; he is leaving for Tobago, and he has asked Sherry, his housekeeper, to come today instead of tomorrow. She has arrived early.
‘Mr Rawlinson,’ he hears her high call. ‘Mr Rawlinson.’
She is holding up a plastic bag. ‘I pick up some nice oranges on the highway, right there by the turning. I’ll make a juice.’ He lets her inside, and she goes to the spare bathroom, where she will change into a work dress and an apron. There is a place for her to hang her clothes, and a small shower. It is familiar to her, and he no longer has to instruct her—the way he likes things, the basics. He is not used to taking care of himself, so things are often left undone, unwashed, in a heap. He has to be conscious, make an effort. It doesn’t come naturally.
He inherited Sherry with the apartment, and mostly he is grateful for her; to hear someone else making noises, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, the wringing of the mop in the big metal bucket, cupboards opening and closing, is reassuring. It’s only when she starts preaching that he finds himself feeling irritated. Like last week, when he dropped her off before heading to the beach. As she was getting out of the car, she told him she would pray for him at church on Sunday. ‘It’s too late for all that,’ he’d said. He is sorry that she has come while Safiya is here—what had he been thinking—and in particular, on this last morning that they will be together for some time. He suspects that she does not approve of his relationship with Safiya. Apart from anything else, he is old enough to be her father.
‘Sorry about the Kentucky boxes,’ he says, and moves the empty drinks cartons, the napkins and little tubs of tomato sauce into the black bin liner.
Safiya says there is no time for breakfast, just coffee; she will put on make-up at the other end. She shouts, ‘Morning,’ to Sherry, who is now in the doorway, broom in hand. She grabs her bag, sandals, comb—and asks if he could open the gates, pronto. It is the one thing he wishes he had insisted on, electric gates. Unlocking the chunky padlock, opening and closing the stiff black gates, has become something of a pain.
Next thing Safiya is in her shiny white Mazda 626, and the engine is running and there is music blasting from the radio. She rolls down her window and turns down the sound.
‘Don’t drive like a madwoman, okay. Alert today, alive tomorrow.’
She gives him a look he is certain he will never forget: her eyebrows raised a little, a half smile. He leans in to kiss her, forgetting he is wearing only boxer shorts and there are other people around. She usually complains that English tourists never know how to behave in the sun, that they have no decorum. He tends to agree.
He can see that she has not quite dried herself, the top of her blouse is damp, and where her wet hair sits on her shoulders—it makes him want to pull her out of the car and take her back inside. If Sherry wasn’t here he might consider it—to hell with the office, there are more important things. He had imagined them making love this morning, and he is annoyed that he slept so late.
‘Miss me,’ she says, like an order.
‘I already miss you.’ He kisses her again, aware of his coffee breath.
‘Don’t forget to wear plenty sunblock. You don’t always feel the sun with a sea breeze.’
‘That’s a very wifely thing to say.’
She puts on her Ray-Ban shades, reverses swiftly up the drive, and with her arm stuck out of the window in a kind of salute, Safiya zooms away. He watches her car disappear around the corner of the cul-de-sac. And everything is quiet.
The morning sky is clear and light blue. Two emerald parrots are sitting on the wire, silent; they must have escaped from the flock. They often fly in a crowd overhead and shriek like they are quarrelling. He can’t think of any English birds that make a noise like that, geese, perhaps, turkeys. They are quiet when there are just two of them, it seems. Safiya said parrots are like swans, they mate for life: a very rare species indeed.
From the old-fashioned American mailbox attached to the gate, he takes in today’s rolled-up newspaper, and wanders barefoot back into the yard. The ground is already feeling warm. At one time, he would have worn flip-flops to walk on the concrete because his feet were so soft; his entire life spent in shoes, boots, slippers and socks. But in the last year they have hardened, the soles have a layer of thickened yellowish skin, particularly on the heels, and he is pleased. Perhaps he is finally adapting to his environment.
Everything looks dry, and he knows that he should water the pots around the front area before he leaves. They are mostly ferns, and a couple of larger pots with anthurium lilies; their strange pink flowers look like ears, which he particularly likes.
Safiya has told him it will only get more dry as the coming months arrive. By June the yard will be begging for rain and all the plants and trees stooped like old people.
He finds it hard to keep up with the seasons. Safiya says there is only a dry season and a wet season, but it is apparently more complicated than this. What about the petit carême, a second spell of dry weather in the middle of the wet season? And then there is the hurricane season. Where does that fit in? In England the arrival of seasons is very clear, although they are less obvious than they used to be. It is one of the only things he misses.
Once a week, Vishnu, his gardener, cuts the lawn, clips the trees; there is a small mango tree and an orange tree, and the hedge with blue flowers that reminds him of forget- me-nots. In truth, Vishnu has transformed the garden; he has planted cassava near the fence, banana trees near the water tank, and it is Vishnu who has brought the lilies. Martin has told him he is making more work for himself. The place now needs a certain amount of attention. ‘Not so,’ Vishnu says. ‘Come dry season, it will need watering, but that’s all. You’ll see. I will grow you a little paradise.’
He is glad of Vishnu. He lives in Curepe with Shanti, an older, alcoholic woman who, apparently, makes his life difficult. Sherry says Shanti stays home all day and drinks rum. If Vishnu comes back late, she beats him with whatever she can lay her hands on: a broom, a saucepan, a piece of pipe.
Sometimes, Shanti shows up at the apartment. Once, while he cut the lawn, she lay in the shade of the avocado tree, her arms behind her head, her skinny legs stretched out. After an hour, she made a peculiar noise like a cat, and they disappeared into the shed, where, according to Sherry, they ‘copulate’.
Sherry was angry.
‘How they could do that while I right here in the house? It is disrespectful. Disrespectful to me and to you.’
‘Life is long, Sherry; the average person lives seventy years. Too long to go without fun. Surely Vishnu deserves a little bit of fun.’
Two years ago, he would have given Vishnu a proper ticking-off, but not now. As his mother used to say, Judge not yet ye be judged.
Sherry is stripping his bed, and throwing the sheets on the floor. Her arms are strong and thick; she has a paunch belly and small breasts. Today her black hair looks oily, and it is scraped back. He stands in the doorway and sips his freshly squeezed juice; it is delicious.
‘You’re looking forward to Tobago, Mr Rawlinson? Tobago nice and peaceful. They say it good for newlyweds or nearly deads. You won’t want to come back to this crazy place. Trinidad is a mess.’
Fanta slips in through the open door, his nose up and sniffing the air. This is a very good sign—a sign that the cat is taking ownership. Sherry is unaware and starts to gather up the sheets. The cat stops and looks at her, then turns and strolls out again, brushing his long orange body against the cool white wall.
‘Port of Spain is like Miami now without the police. All these high-rise buildings. Everybody keeps talking about first world, but there is nothing first world about our country. We should be ashamed.’
‘Everywhere, Sherry,’ he tells her. ‘It’s not just Trinidad. Things don’t always work smoothly in England, you know. There are bureaucrats everywhere and it’s impossible to get things done. It’s the same the whole world over.’
‘But in England you don’t have kidnapping like here. When police say they come, they come.’ She rearranges her arms to hold the white mass. It occurs to him how close her face is to their sheets. ‘I hope you teach the police here something.’
He doesn’t know what to say; Sherry has a point. The situation in Trinidad is not about to change anytime soon, if anything, it has got worse. The level of complacency, the resistance to any ideas for improvement have, at times, bewildered him. How often has he heard: That’s all very well, Mr Rawlinson, but it’s not how we do it in our country. They are at least forty years behind. But what can he do? It is what it is. When he first arrived he was determined to make a difference; he continues to do his best.
They stand there looking at one another for a moment, and he realizes that he is still wearing only his boxer shorts.
‘Trinidad has a lot of money, Sherry. You have oil, natural gas. You’re much better off than some of the other islands with only banana or nutmeg trees. Think of Grenada.’
‘Yes, but what are we doing with the money? Building mansions for the prime minister, buying private planes. Putting up skyscrapers. Plenty people don’t have water or a house to live in. And don’t talk to me about schools.’
The telephone rings, and he is relieved. It is Safiya reminding him that she will be in Mayaro for the next couple of days, and probably without a phone signal, should he decide to text.
‘Why aren’t you ready to leave?’ she says. ‘You don’t have long.’
‘Where are you?’ he
asks, trying to conjure her.
‘In the corridor outside the office.’
He remembers the passageway lined with photographs of Trinidad Carnival Kings and Queens taken over the years.
‘They should have a photo of you up there. My Carnival Queen.’
Before he leaves for the airport, he rings the office. He assumes that Juliet has either left for an early lunch, or she is in the toilet. He tries again; the telephone rings and rings. The truth is, it doesn’t really matter if he speaks to her before he goes. But this is something that frustrates him about Trinidad; it is one thing to be laid back in your own time but not during working hours. Juliet should have put on her voicemail. A simple thing. He wants to remind her, when his renewal contract is drafted and ready, to send it out immediately.
He has grown fond of Juliet. She clonks around the office in old-fashioned lace-up shoes and thick nylon stockings as if she has all the time in the world. And yet somehow she manages to get the work done. It is not part of her job to organise his holiday villa, but Juliet did it without turning a hair—the villa (a friend of a friend at an excellent rate), a driver to collect them from the airport and a hire car delivered to their address. What more could he ask for. Occasionally she will bring him treats—homemade coconut cake, brownies, mauby. Last week, when he asked about extending his visa, she made a face.
‘Don’t worry, Mr Rawlinson,’ she said, ‘no one is throwing you out of Trinidad just yet. We need you here. You’re keeping our country safe. Even Raymond say so.’
He was flattered, especially the part about Raymond. He knew that Raymond was resistant to the UK recruits; Raymond thought Trinidad should sort out its own mess. It had taken a long time for Martin to feel accepted. Now, to his amazement, they are friends.
On his first day in the job, as part of his induction, Raymond took him to a lively pub in St James. They sat at the bar and watched the place fill while huge speakers thumped out a fast soca beat; the beer rushed quickly to his head—he hadn’t eaten, and he wasn’t yet used to the heat. He was soon feeling lightheaded. For the first time it hit him: he was in Trinidad; home of calypso and Carnival, according to the guide books, the melting pot of the Caribbean.
