Singh lived in the village with Myra and his child. His fellow villagers had long since dismissed him as a madman. He had no one there he could call a friend. When he appeared on the street, the children would give him a wide berth. Sometimes, ganging up together, they jeered and threw stones at him, and Singh, flourishing his cutlass, would rush at them. The move from the estate had scarcely affected the manner of his life: he had remained essentially solitary despite Myra and the child. If anything, he had become increasingly wrapped up in himself. All their attempts at friendship having been rebuffed, the villagers had left him alone. He was generally silent – except when he drank. Then he could be ravening; full of a howling sense of the myriad injustices that had been perpetrated on him. This sense of injustice was all that he had. It was his most constant and faithful companion with whom he communed hourly; as constant and faithful as the roar of the sea.
He had emptied the bottle. Singh tossed it into the water and walked on, swinging the cutlass. The first drops of rain splashed on his face and he broke into a trot. He swore loudly as he stumbled and nearly fell. The track petered out into the main street of the village and he tucked the cutlass under his arm. Myra was standing at the door of their one-room shack, scanning the street. She saw the erratic swathes sliced by the beam of the torch.
‘I thought you had drowned yourself,’ she shouted. ‘I tired worrying about you. You never know what could happen with you out drinking yourself to death.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘And in all this rain as well.’
Singh, elbowing her aside, ran up the steps. Myra closed the door after him. Indra was lying face downwards on the bed, dressed in a shiny, salmon-coloured petticoat.
Myra shook her. ‘Get your father a towel. Make yourself useful. You is not a lady of leisure.’
‘I don’t want no towel.’ Singh put the torch on the table. However, he continued to swing the cutlass.
‘Take care with that thing,’ Myra said. ‘One day you going to chop somebody with it. Is not a toy.’
‘I going to chop he with it all right.’ Singh fingered the blade.
‘Mouth,’ Myra answered. ‘Is only mouth you have. You is too big a coward to do anything like that.’
‘I’ll show you if is only mouth I have.’ Singh fenced with the cutlass, parrying imaginary thrusts at his stomach.
‘Put that thing down and tell me what happen,’ Myra said. ‘You see him? He was there?’
I have news for you. Big news!’
Myra and Indra perked up.
Singh sat down heavily on the bed and rested the cutlass on his knees. ‘I had gone there tonight thinking it was only he coming for a little rest and relaxation. All he had to say to me was …’
‘I know exactly what he say to you,’ Myra said. ‘What’s the big news?’
Singh, his head cocked, listened to the rain pounding the shingled roof of the shack. The windows streamed. ‘I wonder how they making out up there …’ He laughed.
‘They?’
‘Imagine how surprise I was when I turn up there tonight and find he bring somebody with him.’
‘What so strange about that?’ Myra asked.
‘Nothing – except that the person he bring with him was a woman.’
Myra burst out laughing. ‘Why shouldn’t he bring a woman with him? He’s a grown man.’
‘This was no ordinary woman,’ Singh said. ‘This was he wife.’ He got up from the bed, swinging the cutlass with renewed vigour. ‘The sonofabitch gone and get married.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that the sonofabitch gone and get married.’
‘Who is the woman?’
‘That is the biggest news of all. She’s one of them Bholai girls. I don’t know which one. But I know she is one of them.’
‘That is news,’ Myra said. ‘I hope she have enough sense to give him hell.’
‘You should see them.’ Singh gurgled. ‘They at each other throat already.’ He prowled about the room. ‘That sonofabitch rob me of everything. I sure the old man had leave something for me. He wouldn’t have forget me. But that thief grab it all for himself and wouldn’t give me what is rightfully mine.’
‘The old man forget about you on the day you was born,’ Myra said. ‘I don’t know where you get the idea from that he leave something for you. If he had not even Wilbert could keep it from you.’
‘He is a robber and thief and I going to chop him.’ The rain pounded the roof.
‘You talking stupidness,’ Myra said. ‘Is all that rum you been drinking. You is too big a coward to do anything like that.’ She might have been goading him into having the courage of his convictions. But she knew he would never do anything.
Singh leapt at her, brandishing the cutlass. ‘Who you calling a coward? I’ll show you who is a coward. I’ll chop you …’
‘If you lay a finger on me I’ll call the police for you.’ Myra grappled with him. ‘I not joking this time. I’ll call the police.’
She wrestled with him, forcing him back. He collapsed on the bed. She took the cutlass from him.
Singh did not resist. The rum had made him sleepy. He closed his eyes and listened to the wind and rain.
Wilbert too was listening to the wind and rain, unable to sleep. Shanty slept soundly, curled up against the wall, not touching him. The taste of their brief, violent lovemaking – the raw taste of toothpaste – lingered in his mouth.
‘Do you have any experience?’ she had asked. ‘Do you know how it’s done?’
‘I have a rough idea,’ he replied.
‘Only a rough idea!’ She giggled. ‘That surprises me. I thought … Never mind. I have some experience.’
‘You got your experience from one of your San Fernando cousins, no doubt? The one who kissed you?’
She was shocked. ‘Oh no! It wasn’t with him. I wouldn’t do such a thing with my cousin.’
‘You kissed him.’
‘A kiss is child’s play. But I wouldn’t do such a thing with him. Not with my cousin.’
‘Who did you do such a thing with then?’ He was not angry; he was not even jealous.
‘If you must know – it was with a friend of his. We did it more than once.’ She laughed. ‘Do you want to know how many times?’
‘No. That isn’t necessary. I’ll take your word for it.’
Once he had got out of the bed to shut the windows. The wind lashed at the roof and there was a sound as of canvas flapping. He had got out of bed a second time to see if he could discover the cause but it remained a mystery. On the shore, the waves raged rebelliously. The night was interminable.
He was woken by the sun shining on his face. Bright blue sky showed through the windows. Shanty slept with the blanket pulled over her head. He heaved himself out of bed and opened the windows. The morning was fresh and clear. Innocuous waves planed on to the smooth brown beach which looked as if it had been scoured and swept. The sea, which had fulminated so threateningly during the night, was tame and welcoming, streaked and flecked with gold from the newly risen sun. A pair of pelicans sailed low across the surface of the water. They were fishing. He watched them dip and circle and dive.
Wilbert changed into his swimming trunks and went down to the beach, a towel draped around his neck. It was deserted, a shimmering arc fringed by a green awning of coconut trees. The sand, though packed hard and firm, was springy and tickled the soles of his feet pleasantly. The beach shelved gently into the waves and, where they rolled back, the sand was a watery mirror reflecting the bright blue sky and the wheeling birds. The distant headlands were veiled by a gauze of seaspray. Shanty watched him from the window, yawning and stretching. Wilbert spread the towel like a mat on the sand and dipped his toes in the water, testing the temperature. It was cold. He ventured in further, treading gingerly over the uneven beds of chip-chip which formed dense colonies along the edge of the shore. The sharp, pointed shells bristled up from the sand at a variety of angles. He negotiated them safely and, when he was waist-deep, he plunge
d in. The cold was bracing and he swam with bold, strenuous strokes until he had warmed himself up. Then he lay on his back and floated, his arms outstretched, lulled by the rocking motion of the water. Seeing only the dome of the sky and the clouds, Wilbert felt as though he were floating far out to sea; a piece of driftwood that had been cast upon the ocean currents to circle the globe endlessly. A purposeless wandering.
‘Wake up! Wake up!’ Shanty was scooping water into his face.
Wilbert waded out of the water and went and sat down on the towel. He let the sun dry his skin. The pair of pelicans had departed and he stared up and down the shimmering, empty beach. About twenty yards from the house was a dead coconut tree, its crown of leaves decapitated. The pitted trunk rose straight up into the air like a telegraph pole. A corbeau was perched magisterially on the truncated summit, its wings folded over its hunched body, gazing along the line of its rapacious beak at others of its kind hopping across the ground and pecking at whatever scraps of food they could find. A fight broke out and there was a flurry of black feathers. A mangy bitch with distended teats wandered respectfully on the fringes of the group of birds, dragging itself listlessly from spot to spot, its tail tucked between its legs and its nose to the ground.
Singh, gaunt and derelict, was approaching through the coconut trees, swinging his cutlass. He slowed his pace when he caught sight of Wilbert and stopped altogether, squinting and tapping the cutlass against his knees. Wilbert waved for him to come forward.
Singh shuffled up to him. ‘I hope the boss and madam had a good night. It was a long time since we had a storm like that.’ He bowed to Shanty who had just come out of the water.
‘No complaints from the madam.’ Shanty laughed. ‘But I can’t speak for the boss.’ She wrapped her towel round her head like a turban.
Wilbert stared at the bitch with the distended teats.
Singh smiled as though he and Shanty had shared a private joke.
‘I’m going inside to have a rest,’ she said. ‘The heat is too much for me.’
‘Would the madam like me to pick a coconut for she? Coconut water is very cooling – like the calypso say.’
‘It’s too much trouble. I’ll go inside.’
‘Is no trouble at all for me,’ Singh said eagerly. ‘No trouble at all if that is what the madam would like.’
Shanty laughed. ‘You’re a real gentleman, Singh.’
‘What about you, boss? You would like a coconut too?’
Wilbert scowled. ‘No.’
Singh took off his thick leather belt and looped it round the trunk of one of the trees, strapping himself in so that his back was supported at the waist. He grasped the sides of the belt and wedged his feet securely against the base of the trunk. Monkey-fashion, he scampered up the tree, hauling himself up with the belt in swift, jerky movements, his knees hugging the rough bark. His torso vanished among the crown of yellow-green leaves.
‘How many would you like, madam?’
‘One will do, Singh.’
‘I’ll pick two,’ he yelled. ‘Just in case. Keep well clear then. It wouldn’t be nice if one of these was to hit you on your head.’
Shanty withdrew to a safer distance. Wilbert stayed where he was.
Two coconuts thudded one after the other on to the sand. Singh shinned down the tree. ‘No trouble at all,’ he said. ‘I is a real expert at picking coconuts. But, like everything else, you have to learn the art. That is the important thing. The art!’ He giggled. ‘You agree with me, boss? Everything have a art to it.’ Singh fetched his cutlass and, picking up a coconut, laid it on the flat of his palm and trimmed one end. With a dexterous flourish, he sliced off the top and presented it to Shanty. ‘Drink. You’ll see how cooling it is.’
Shanty drank, tilting her head and holding the coconut with both hands. The water trickled down the corners of her mouth in two thin streams which joined at the base of her chin.
‘Is cooling?’ Singh asked.
‘Very cooling,’ Shanty replied.
He took the coconut from her and cut it open with the cutlass. ‘I’ll make a spoon for you to eat the jelly with.’ He carved a spoon out of the fibrous covering of the shell and returned the coconut to her.
When she had eaten the jelly, Shanty thanked him and went inside.
With a sudden beating of wings, the corbeau which had remained on its decapitated perch all morning, rose high into the air and glided overhead. Those on the ground followed suit. The mangy bitch trotted away. Wilbert watched it. It came towards the house and clambered through one of the broken windows. It was obviously a rehearsed routine.
‘You can’t blame she,’ Singh said. ‘Is an open invitation with all them broken windows. Is what I was saying …’
‘We’ll see about that.’ Wilbert got up and shook the sand out of the towel.
He found the litter after a short search, guided by smell rather than sight: the pups lay scrambled together in an odiferous heap behind the pile of dried coconuts he had seen the night before. Sacking had been spread for them and a cup of water provided. The pups fought and struggled and pushed in order to get at the niggardly teats of the bitch. Fleas criss-crossed her almost hairless back. She slept, oblivious to the fierce combat being waged over her.
Wilbert looked at Singh. ‘Very nice and cosy. Sacking, water …’
‘I didn’t think you would mind. Nobody does ever use this part of the house so they not in your or anybody else way.’ Singh’s feet grated on the damp concrete.
‘You should have taken them home by you since you love them so much.’
‘It have no room by me,’ Singh replied sullenly. ‘It have nowhere else for them to go.’
‘That’s their – and your – problem. Not mine. I want them out of here.’ Wilbert jerked his thumb towards the door.
Singh knelt down and stroked the pups. ‘They only a few days old. If I was to move them now they would die.’
Wilbert said nothing.
‘They have a right to live,’ Singh blurted out. ‘It don’t matter that they mangy and have fleas. They have as much right to live as you have!’
Wilbert was not angry. He seemed to have lost the capacity for anger. ‘Sometimes the right to live is no good at all,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s better not to have it. By giving them food and water the only thing you’re doing is prolonging their misery. Punishing them. If you were really going to be kind you should have drowned them on the day they were born. That’s what you should have done.’ He laughed and pointed at the bitch. ‘There’s your right to live. Look at it!’ He went to the door. ‘You can do what you want with them,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to accuse me of taking away their right to live.’
Wilbert returned the next day with a bowl of milk and looked behind the pile of dried coconuts. The pups had disappeared and the bitch sniffed at the sacking in a lost and stupid way. She stared at him with her rheumy, bloodshot eyes.
‘What you looking at me like that for?’ he said. ‘I didn’t do anything to you. Go and ask your friend Singh. He will tell you what he did with them.’
The dog shrank away from him, her tail tucked between her legs. He put the bowl of milk on the sacking but she would not touch it.
Dawn was always cool and fresh and translucent, the best time for bathing. The sun would have barely topped the rim of the horizon and the clouds would still be chased with orange fading to white; and the water too reflected the soft, powdered light which, as the sun rose higher, congealed and solidified into broad bands of gold. When the clouds were white and the water gold, it was wise to retreat – for the day proper was beginning. The heat built up inexorably throughout the morning and the sea changed its texture, acquiring a thicker, more oily sheen. Sluggish waves collapsed in frills of foam along the shore, like a tattered border of discoloured lace. Where they broke, the water was muddy brown with the churned-up sand; further out it had the tarnished green of brass; and where it touched the horizon it was a metallic blue. The wind
died and the corbeaux slept perched on the coconut trees and the stray dogs panted in the black, fathomless pools of shadow.
It was at this time, when the tide was out, that the beds of chip-chip were exposed and squadrons of women and children from the village would come down to the beach armed with buckets and basins to gather the harvest of shells. The women wore petticoats but the smaller children would be naked. Separate working parties fanned out along the beach. Squatting on their haunches, they laboured long and assiduously, shovelling and raking over the wet sand with their hands; filling the buckets and basins with the pink and yellow shells which were the size and shape of a long fingernail. Inside each was the sought-after prize: a minuscule kernel of insipid flesh. A full bucket of shells would provide them with a mouthful. But they were not deterred by the disproportion between their labours and their gains. Rather, the very meagreness of their reward seemed to spur them on. Quarrels were frequent, their chief cause being the intrusion of an alien group into the staked-out territory of another. Some of these border conflicts could flare into violence. Tempers sparked easily in the scorching sun. Wilbert would marvel at the dogged application that was displayed and the passions fruitlessly squandered. When they had done their harvesting, they washed themselves in the water and strolled at a leisurely pace back to the village, the women’s bodies etched in sharp outline by their sodden petticoats.
The incoming tide inundated the chip-chip beds and brought with it a fresh litter of debris – chains of seaweed and coconut shells and driftwood – and the beach contracted to a narrow, wavering strip. As the sun sank behind the awning of coconut trees, the day cooled and became softer once more. The twilight closed imperceptibly over the water until only the creamy caps of the waves were visible. The mauve and purple clouds of sunset, more imposing than those of the dawn, took possession of the sky. It was night again and the insects fluttered through the open doors and windows and hummed and whirred around the hurricane lamps.
Scores of jellyfish had been washed up, stranded by the tide during the night. Their tentacles, half-buried in the sand, trailed like sinuous inkstains from their transparent, rainbow-tinted spheres. Unthinkingly, Wilbert punctured the swollen spheres with a stick as he walked along, listening to the small, crackling report as of a bubble of chewing-gum bursting. He had gone about a mile from the house. The sand here was overrun by a thick tangle of creeper which bore pretty lilac flowers.
The Chip-Chip Gatherers Page 35
