The Jam Fruit Tree

by Carl Muller

  Sonnaboy was pleased. Nobody had called him a gentleman before. Also, he had a sneaking respect for Papa Werkmeister who was a clever man, educated, too, and doing very well. He even talked better. Sonnaboy sighed and thought it might be nice to be a cut above the rest and talk ‘bookish’, as Werkmeister did.

  When Sonnaboy told Elaine that he had no intention of marrying her and that he had found another girl to so honour, he was ready for a scene. Elaine was unnerved, true, but she did not get hysterical. She had a shrewd mind and considered this very much in the line of convent friendships. Best friends suddenly cool towards each other and find new friends. There was a sort of circle in this business of being inseparables today, on nodding terms tomorrow and bosom pals again next week. She had noticed this with her brothers, too, like when Merril developed a crush on Mister de Jong next door. De Jong would give Merril books and help him make his catapults and teach him how to shoot with the Daisy air rifle. For months, Merril was full of Mr de Jong said this and Mr de Jong can do that and he would nip over the fence and seek out de Jong all the time. Then one day he came home and never went there again. Even when de Jong would pop his head over the fence and say, ‘Hullo, Merril, haven’t seen you for a long time,’ Merril would go quite red and lower his eyes and mutter something about being busy. No one could fathom why, and even Papa Werkmeister would say: ‘Such a nice chap, that de Jong. Very fond of children. Don’t know why he doesn’t think of getting married.’

  Elaine told Sonnaboy: ‘Anney, I don’t know about all this. You promised to marry me, no? Everybody knows this, and you gave ring also—’

  ‘That’s all right. You can keep ring if you like. Only what I’m saying is that this Beryl is whom I want to marry.’

  ‘But you said, no? that she is very young and her mama won’t allow. All foolishness, I think. Having me and here I am doing everything you like and all these months you’re coming and everybody knows that we will get married and all. Supposing you cannot marry this Beryl? Now you are promoted also. I thought we can get married soon. Instead of which you are telling something else.’

  ‘But what to do, Elaine, this Beryl is—is—don’t know, men, not like you at all. When I saw her I felt like something. You keep the ring, never mind. You can get any other fellow.’

  Elaine considered him darkly. ‘What other fellow? You think after getting engaged and all I can just go and find someone else? You’re mad, I think. And you yourself telling that Beryl cannot even see you.’

  ‘That’s what they think. Every day I manage to see her somehow. Go to Retreat Road on the other side of the convent and she comes out from the side gate and we go to beach for a little and talk and nobody knows.’

  ‘And you’re doing that way to her also?’ Elaine like to get things straight.

  ‘You’re mad, men, on the beach? With everyone looking?’

  This made Elaine angry. ‘Yes, but you can come here and do to me. Quietly going round the kitchen and whole time saying ‘tighten your legs’ and putting your stuff all over. But did I say I can’t? And inside my thighs all red by your rubbing. And after all this now you say don’t want to marry me even.’

  ‘What can I do, men. You think I’m not sorry? But when I saw Beryl . . . .’

  Elaine raised a hand. ‘So you saw her. I know, I know, so you thought she is nice and must be nice to do to her also, no? Like doing to me. That is the way with men nowadays. You think I don’t know how men think? Only one thing, when we marry no going all over the place putting between anyone else’s!’

  ‘But I’m telling you, no? I want to marry Beryl.’

  Elaine sniffed. ‘We’ll see. You promised to marry me. Gave ring also. And we had a party also, no? If I tell Papa now what you’re saying, think he will keep quiet?’

  ‘So tell,’ said Sonnaboy recklessly, ‘You think I’m worried what he can do? What can he do? And what can you do? Think you can catch and force me to marry you?’

  Elaine’s reserve broke. She had tried, she told herself, to be understanding and treat this business in a dignified manner. It hadn’t helped. She tossed an angry head and rose, ‘All right, if that’s the way you’re thinking. I’ll tell Papa whole story and you see, what he will do. If you don’t marry me you’re going to get it properly!’

  These were the sort of fighting words Sonnaboy understood. He strode out, stood in the porch and bawled: ‘You think I’m afraid of anybody? Tell them to come if they want—your papa and your brothers—all three I’ll send to hospital!’

  So Elaine went to old Werkmeister and he listened and nodded and said: ‘Why did you go to argue with him? He has to marry you. I have his letter. If he won’t we will go to courts and sue him. You don’t worry.’ Then a thought struck him. ‘You didn’t allow him to take liberties, miss?’

  ‘Liberties?’

  ‘You know, child, like meddling with you and doing unnecessary things.’

  Elaine thought awhile. ‘No, Papa.’

  ‘Good, good, but if did anything can make bigger case and disgrace him. Never mind, I will write a letter.’

  Elaine consulted her brothers. The latter half of the conversation had given rise to some doubts. She was not very sure if what Sonnaboy had been doing to her constituted ‘liberties’. Eustace and Merril listened. ‘Only putting between and going like a dog,’ she explained and Merril unwittingly burst out: ‘Like what that de Jong used to do,’ and his brother and sister stared at him and he turned crimsom.

  ‘What?’ said Eustace, ‘That old bugger did that to you? When?’

  ‘Long time ago. ‘Member I used go there to shoot with his gun and all? One day he standing behind and showing how to aim and telling this is foresight and must hold gun correct and then he slowly start feeling my bum and then he quietly unbutton my trousers and pull them down and made my one stand up with feeling it.’

  ‘He also tell to cross the legs?’ Elaine asked.

  ‘No. He squeezing and saying have nice fat thighs and then from behind he suddenly put his one between and going backwards forwards. I don’t know what to do. I’m with gun in my hands and he going on and panting also and suddenly he finish and give me a cloth and tell to wipe and put the trousers and asking me to come again. But I never went. How to go, men. The way he breathing and hugging me round the stomach . . . .’

  Eustace patted him on the shoulder. ‘Never mind, men. In school Father Theo did the same to me when I was small. And that is no harm, actually, for girls. If Sonnaboy doing the same thing to you then you are all right. If he start doing inside only must be carefully because he put the white in and you can get a baby.’

  Elaine was relieved. ‘No, he never try to go inside. Quite happy doing outside, and I allow him because he is going to marry me, no? I thought if I don’t allow will start doing to some other girl. And now, after all this he is saying I can keep the ring and he doesn’t want to marry me.’

  The brothers thought this over. ‘You told Papa?’

  Elaine nodded. ‘Papa said don’t worry. Will go to court and make him marry me. Anney, I don’t know now. If make him marry also he may just marry because he has to and then will hate me and won’t even come near me.’

  Merril was thinking. ‘So why he saying to cross the legs?’

  Elaine shrugged and did not wish to discuss the matter but the boys must have thought more on the subject for that night they crept over and later had to agree that Sonnaboy was right. Elaine had to cross her long, lean legs before giving them any satisfaction.

  Meanwhile, despite Sonnaboy’s claims to daily meetings with Beryl he found this particular romance hard going. His duty shifts were not always timed to Beryl’s end-of-school hours and there were weeks when he never did have the opportunity to meet her. Also, he found to his dismay that he had a great deal to study. Apprenticed as an engine driver, he was not merely standing on the footplate of a steam locomotive, yanking on the regulator and hauling on the vacuum brake lever. There were handbooks to con over and diagr
ams to pore over and tables to memorise and the operation of all manner of gauges to keep in mind. All very fascinating, of course, if he hadn’t Beryl to think about and spending a lot of his working moments scheming how he could be at Retreat Road, Babalapitiya by 3.30 p.m. But he had to admit that all his great love for the plump-cheeked schoolgirl would not get him far up the road. So, when Totoboy remarked one day, ‘Funny thing, no? My Iris not in when I went yesterday and her mama said she gone to Bambalapitiya to take Elva’s measurements. I asking what Elva? And she saying I don’t know child, some friend. So I wait and talking to the mama and old lady, and I put a small brandy also, and then Iris come and I ask who this Elva you went to see and she said why, you didn’t know, that is Sonnaboy’s girlfriend’s sister who is friend of mine and how she is sewing frocks for her for a long time. Funny no? How Iris knowing this Elva like that?’

  Sonnaboy’s head swam a little as it usually did when he had to listen to his brother. But he caught the gist of it. ‘Iris knows Beryl also?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’ll ask and see. Must be knowing, no? After all, going there and all.’

  Iris did, of course, and Sonnaboy hatched a neat little egg. He could use Iris to get to Beryl. A made-to-order messenger. And he could concentrate on his job and get over a raft of difficulties. ‘The thing is to keep in touch with Beryl,’ he explained to Iris the next day, ‘Now I’m in locomotive yard and have to do firing also and learning signals and shunting and points also. Must see all the diagrams. Get mad trying to follow them.’ Therefore, he would like Iris to take his letters and the occasional gift to Beryl.

  ‘If that you can do she will know I’m loving her and thinking about her and never mind then if I can’t come and I can tell how much I’m working and learning and soon I will be shunting driver and next year I will be class three driver also. Imagine salary I will then get.’

  Iris thought this over, ‘Only thing is if start going there everyday, will wonder why I’m coming up and down.’

  ‘Not everyday, men. How to write everyday? Maybe once-twice a week. Only thing tell that Beryl to hide letters. It her mama find them . . . .’

  ‘Better if I tell to read and burn, no?’

  Sonnaboy nodded with slight regret. He couldn’t imagine his masterpieces consigned to the kitchen fire. Anyway, Iris agreed and actually unhooked her lower lip to smile, and Sonnaboy smiled and thought what a fine girl she was and how he had misjudged her. Also, as things developed—and they were bound to develop—he had his own problems to countenance.

  Papa Werkmeister came calling and aired his grievance to a bemused Cecilprins who wondered if he could plead insanity or something in the face of the gathering storm. Sonnaboy was nonplussed. He imagined that his father would support him; but Werkmeister stood, as it were, on some lofty pillar of propriety. A private discussion with his sons on Elaine’s predicament had let the cat out of the bag when Merril blurted: ‘And that’s not everything, no? Elaine told us that this Sonnaboy was doing dirty things to her also.’

  ‘What!?’

  Eustace nodded. ‘Only don’t tell her you know, Papa. Just come out of her mouth when she was talking to us.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me straight away? Fine children you are. But now he can’t escape. I’m going to see his father today.’

  Cecilprins had expected Joe Werkmeister ever since this Beryl business begun. He had no Maudiegirl to help him now, and he felt extremely guilty about the visit to the da Breas which, he felt, he should not have consented to. ‘Should have washed the hands from the whole thing,’ he muttered several times over, and now here was his old friend Joe looking very severe and not even saying ‘How’ when he said, ‘How, Joe? come, come, come and sit.’

  Werkmeister had that look. When he had said his piece, Cecilprins could only bleat, ‘I know, men, don’t think I’m trying to pull for Sonnaboy even if my own son and all. Very ugly, no? the way he behaving and won’t think, men. That’s the trouble nowadays. These young buggers won’t think. Told him that he is very lucky to have girl like Elaine from such good family, but what’s the use—’

  ‘My Elaine is too good for him!’Werkmeister declared.

  ‘Of course, of course. As if I don’t know. My poor Maudiegirl turning for sure in her grave with all this. Really, I’m thanking God she not here now to see all this.’

  Werkmeister was not interested in Maudiegirl’s graveyard gyrations. ‘You are the father. You must make the boy see sense. Tchah! If I have a son like this do you know what I will do?’

  ‘What, what?’

  ‘I’ll kick the bugger out. What for keeping? Damn disgrace, no?’

  Cecilprins had to concede that Sonnaboy was not doing anything for the family escutcheon.

  ‘In the mud!’ Werkmeister exclaimed, ‘Dragging your name in the mud. And you know something . . . ‘ he looked around, leaned forward and muttered, and Cecilprins raised a hand to his mouth and said, ‘No! You are sure? Chee, men, no respect for girl, no? Going every Sunday to church and all, and this is how he behave.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Can talk to him. Good if he listen and start to think properly. Don’t worry, Joe, when he come home I’ll catch and give good lecture.’

  Sonnaboy and lectures were as distant as—to quote a popular expression—a Moorman and pork. Cecilprins said, ‘My friend Joe came to see how we are and not happy about you and Elaine. You giving letter also, no? What for doing the la-di-da with that Beryl after saying will marry Elaine, I don’t know. And now you okay in the railway so why you not marry and bring Elaine to stay here. Can manage a small party even.’

  ‘What did that old bugger say?’ Sonnaboy demanded, ‘I told that Elaine, no? I won’t marry her. So that’s all. Let them do anything they want.’

  ‘But he telling me you ruin his daughter, no? You meddling with her and now spoilt her for other men and because of what you have done how she can get married to anybody else. You’re not thinking. That’s the whole trouble. If your poor mama here what she will say I don’t know.’

  ‘What will she say?’ Sonnaboy growled, ‘When Dunnyboy meddling with everybody here and showing to all the children in the lane what Mama say? If Elaine didn’t like, why didn’t she tell? When doing not a word. Now because I tell I’m not going to marry everything is bad. If so bad, then why she still want to marry me?’

  ‘Again you’re not thinking,’ Cecilprins shouted, ‘That’s the trouble with you. Only if married that you can do anything, no? And she must have allowed also because you promised to marry, no?’

  ‘I don’t care. Let them say anything. I’m going to marry Beryl.’

  ‘But you know, no? What her mother say. She not of age. How you can wait six years?’

  ‘I don’t care, I tell you. Old bugger coming here to complain. As if can’t find ‘nother chap for Elaine. If ask me I can bring twenty fellows from railway for her to choose.’

  Cecilprins found the conversation getting nowhere, or rather, far out of reach. ‘You’re not thinking!’ he shouted, ‘You wait and see what will happen for your stubbornness. So go and do what you want, but don’t you bring that Beryl here. Even if you marry you take and go somewhere else,’ and with that, he went trembling to his room and refused to come out for dinner that evening.

  Sonnaboy considered Werkmeister’s visit was unwarranted. So he banged his bicycle against the latter’s gate the next evening, strode in and declared that he had nothing more to do with Elaine, so there!

  ‘Nothing more?’ Werkmeister quivered, ‘After you do too much already? What sort of gentleman are you?’

  ‘So who said anything about gentlemen?’ Sonnaboy gritted, ‘You’re the one, taking letters and starting all this gentleman business. What I’m saying is, useless your coming to say things to my papa. I’m not going to marry your daughter. Told her that, no? What, men, simple thing like this even you people cannot understand?’

  ‘Oh, I understand,’ said Werkmeiste
r coldly, ‘After promising and having fun with my girl, now you want to wriggle out. I should have known better.’

  ‘So now you know, no? And what fun you’re talking about? You think I have fun? Who told you that? Can have better fun with the hopper woman.’

  ‘So that’s the kind of person you are! But don’t think you are going to get away with this. I will make you pay for this.’

  ‘Pay? Why, you want money from me for not having fun? You can do what you want. Only came to tell you and don’t you come to upset my papa again. Telling all sorts of things behind my back.’

  ‘Lucky for you my boys aren’t at home,’ shouted Werkmeister, ‘or they’ll teach you a good lesson.’

  ‘Lucky for them, I think,’ said Sonnaboy, ‘Tell them to come anytime.’

  ‘Get out of my house!’

  Sonnaboy grinned. ‘You think I want to come here again? But if I catch you or that Merril or Eustace in Boteju Lane . . . .’

  ‘What will you do?’ Werkmeister hooted. ‘You think you can come in here and threaten this family?’

  ‘Not threatening. Only telling. Put a foot near our house to see,’ Sonnaboy promised and stormed out. And that was Act One, Scene Four.

  It can only be hazarded what Werkmeister told his children, but it is believed that a fierce before-dinner argument took place and Elaine received an even fiercer slap from her father and cried herself to sleep while the boys decided that with some luck, both of them could get the better of Sonnaboy, if they could take him by surprise. So they went to bed plotting in whispers, and then shelved the scheme the next morning, for the light of day mocked their plans and reminded them that even their combined muscle could not save them from all sorts of grief.