The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “However, I had visited those places in daydreams, even before I gave birth to Wilberforce!

  “But I never visited Latin-Amurca. Nor any place in the Wessindies. And I wonder why?

  “I won’t tell you, since you are nothing but a boy, where exactly on my dress, on my person, I carried that wishbone! But I held on to it, as if I expected a full-grown Bardrock pullet to spring-up from that lil wishbone, and grace our dinner table, every Sunday after that first Sunday, for Ma and me, until I became a woman and could provide more better.

  “And every day, in all that time, ten or maybe eleven years, I made a wish on that wishbone; a wish never-ever to forget Mr. Bellfeels; and how he moved the riding-crop over my entire body, as if he was taking off my clothes, and then taking off my skin. And every time my hand touch that wishbone I take a oath to myself to never to forget to give him back.

  “Can I ask you a question, Constable, before I stray more farther? It’s a personal question.”

  “You could axe me any question; or anything, ma’am. I hold it as a privilege if you cross-examine me.”

  “Before I ask. That bell. On the table, touch it for me. Let’s see what Gertrude is up to. She’s too quiet . . . Thank you, Constable.”

  “I touch the bell.”

  “Thanks. The personal question. Do you attend Church?”

  “You mean if I goes to Church? Or if I belongst to a particular ’nomination, or congregation?..Well, the answer is part o’ both. What I mean by that is this. I goes to Church, but on Easters mainly. And then, Christmas, for the five o’clock service in the morning. Or if somebody that I know dead. Or pass away. Or, or if a friend o’ mine is getting henged, meaning getting married, and . . .”

  “You know God, then, don’t you, Constable?”

  “I really and truly don’t know, ma’am, if I know God. Or if God know me. I don’t know God in the way I getting to know you, though, ma’am. I don’t know if I should know God more better, or less better than I knowing you. We was never that close, meaning God and me.

  “The only other thing I could say in regards to knowing God, is that I learned about God in elementary school. Every afternoon at Sin-Davids Elementary School for Boys, we had oral Scripture. That is where I went-school.

  “You may not remember this, ma’am, but I uses to help you round the yard when I was a lil boy. ’Specially in the long vacation, June, July and August. I uses to sweep-up the yard with a coconut broom; feed the sheeps and the other stocks; washdown the pigpens; and burn the trash and dry-leaves, in a’ empty oil drum.”

  “And what is your name?”

  “I name Bennett. Granville Chesterfield Bennett Browne. But they calls me Benn, ma’am. My proper name is Bennett.”

  “And you’re a Constable in the Force!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You have a nice name.”

  “My gran-mother give me these big-names.”

  “Years and years ago, Constable . . . after Wilberforce finished at the same Sin-Davids, and start attending Harrison College . . .”

  “I went as far as Six Standard. And straight outta Six Standard, I join the Force.”

  “You did..Well, too! And your gran-mother gave you three nice names. Anglican?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Confirmed?”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “It must be the police work. Oh, here Gertrude comes!”

  “Evening, Mistress. Good evening, Constable.”

  “Good evening, ma’am,” the Constable says.

  “Constable, is there anything at all I can offer you? Cocoa-tea, or anything?”

  “A cup o’ cocoa-tea, please,” the Constable says. “I don’t normally drink cocoa-tea, but as I on duty, ma’am . . .”

  “Good! Cocoa, then. Bring the Constable a nice glass of milk, Gertrude. He could mix-in the cocoa on his own. I’ll have my usual . . .”

  The Constable, who is about twenty-two years old, has a head shaven almost to its shining pate, as if it is purposely done this way to fit the policeman’s peak cap, issued too small. He is handsome in his night uniform of black serge tunic and trousers; “for the occasion, boy; for the grave occasion,” Sargeant had told him; and beside him, on the floor, he has rested his cap, that has a red band round the side. He is sitting up, in a straight-backed mahogany tub-chair; and is watching Gertrude with one eye; and with his other, Miss Mary-Mathilda Bellfeels—he calls her Miss Bellfeels, as she is known in the Village—to see if she is watching him watch Gertrude.

  Gertrude is.Well-built, not fat, but with large breasts, round face, large brown eyes and a.Well-padded behind—a “big botsy,” he calls it. Gertrude’s skin is like velvet, black and smooth. She is five feet seven inches. The Constable sees her as a very appealing woman, for the first time, in this new light; but before tonight, and previously, on his own rounds, he would see her coming from Wednesday night prayer meetings, and revival meetings, particularly during Crop-Season; and in all these years, he never had eyes for her; never looked at her with lust. Because of the competition from other men, among them Manny who owns the Harlem Bar & Grill. So he went his way, and she hers. And then, on that Friday night, when the annual Harvest Festival of the Church of the Nazarene, where she was a Sister, ended, with the clapping and the shouting and the singing and the testifying and the sound of the joyful tambourines late in the humid, sweating air and in her spirit, Constable saw Gertrude holding Sargeant’s hand, entering a field of canes.

  He looks at her now, as she comes into this front-house, twice the size of the house in which he was born and still lives; facing him; the two of them thrown together in this Great House, with its shining floors, whose wood give off the smell of freshly polished mahogany, and the smell of Hawes Furniture Polish; surrounding him with a smell of sweet sexual sweetness he imagines coming from her; and he lowers his eyes to watch her small, dainty feet, bare; uncovered; not dressed in washercongs, or even Indian slippers. They are greased with coconut oil. Yes. It is the coconut oil that he smells. Not the polished mahogany furniture, nor the Hawes Furniture Polish.

  Gertrude moves silent as a cat, over the thick Persian carpets. He can see the sinews on the insteps of her feet; he can see how they change form when she walks; he sees the lighter colour of skin of her heels, from the rest of the rich black colour of her instep. Dots of red nail polish, the colour of blood, decorate eight toes. The nails of her little toes are too small to accommodate even one drop of this red blood.

  The Constable can see also the outline of her panties, as she moves in front of the light from the bright bare, naked bulbs that reach two feet above the table on which the bell that he rang, pling!, stands. And he imagines her panties are pink, and plain and without an embroidered edge round the legs and waist; and he can see clear through to them, with the help of his imagination and the naked bulbs, to the thick hair between her legs, and better still, just as she holds her body over, without bending her knees, to open the doors of an ornate cupboard; and from it, take a large decanter of crystal cut glass.

  The Constable thinks of panties, made of soft sea-island cotton, bought on time from the Indian merchants whom he sees coming through the Village on Sundays, just as food is being served in Village kitchens. The Constable closes his eyes and sees Gertrude naked in his new lust, as she pours a drink into a glass. The glass has a large belly. A round belly. Large and round, like the belly of the Vicar of the Anglican Church, the Reverend Mr. M. R. P. P. Dowd, M.Th. (Dunelmn)—Master of Theology; and the Constable makes a wish, and his wish is Gertrude’s voice talking to him; and he smiles, for his wish has at last been granted; and she is telling him, “Yes, come and take it”; but it is not Gertrude’s voice: it is Mary-Mathilda, the woman sitting beside him, whose voice he is hearing, who is saying, “Come and take it, your milk. Would you like something else, Constable?”

  “The milk would do, ma’am.”

  “Constable’s milk, and the brandy then, please,” she
says to Gertrude, who is still in the room; and to the Constable, “Are you sure you won’t like something more strong than milk? In all my born days, I never met a police who drinks milk!”

  “I loves milk, ma’am.”

  “Now, I am curious to know, Constable, if you ever had something you couldn’t part with? A taw-ee. A nail. Piece of lead-pencil. A button. Anything. Like it was a, a kind of . . . obsession you had. Like something religious. Wilberforce been telling me that the Catholics in Rome-Italy have obsessions like these. The Catholics we have in this Island, small in numbers, since we are basically English and Anglicans, and high-Anglicans to-boot, are like those Catholics in Rome-Italy. People with obsessions. I don’t think that Anglicans have obsessions of such colour and nature, though. Do you? Wilberforce tells me that Catholics walk with a string of beads in their hand, or round their neck; and when they die, they insist, either in their Will, or in their last wishes, that that string of worrying beads, that is what they call them, worrying beads, be buried with them, in their coffin. Isn’t that something? Mr. Bellfeels told me that the man who fathered him had his gold pocket watch and gold chain buried with him in his coffin, according to his last Will and Testament; and that just before the grave diggers pile-on the mould to bury the coffin, the undertaker jumpin the grave, saying that he forget to take off all the silver ornaments from offa the coffin; and he unscrewed the oval hole for viewing the corpse; and quick-so, before the mourners could blink, bram!, the expensive gold pocket watch with matching gold chain was rip-outta the corpse hands, and almost was inside the undertaker paws before Mr. Bellfeels intervene.

  “But when Mr. Bellfeels tell me that story, all I could do was laugh. ‘I snap-on my right hand ’pon the fucker’s wrist, and squeeze, Mr. Bellfeels say he say, and the fucker drop the watch in my left hand. With my right hand, I was choking the fucker. This is the same gold pocket watch you see me wearing all the time. My father watch.’

  “Mr. Bellfeels say that most Plantation-people want to carry their riches with them, to the grave. And they live just like that. Isn’t that something?

  “Poor people, on the other hand, leave-back their poorness for their offsprings to inherit. And their miseries. That is something!

  “Well, that is the story about my wishbone. I lived with it, like I was a Catholic. And it lived with me, too. Carrying it all that time, from the age of eight, and for fifteen to twenty years, made it turn it into an ornament.

  “But I need to get back to my Statement. I am sorry. I am sure that Sargeant did not send you here to listen to me wandering-off about wishbones and obsessions. You are here about the matter in question, and my preliminary Statement.”

  “But I enjoying listening to you talk about the history of the Island,” the Constable says. “To-besides, we need to know the whole background to a person, for a Statement to be a statement worth its salt. Sargeant is coming. Sargeant pick me to proceed him, because he didn’t want to come himself and upset you, by being the first to open the ’vestigation, and have to axe you questions that he have to axe you, because of his position. Sargeant say he can’t cross the threshold of this Great House, just so, and precede to axe you questions. Sargeant tell me to tell you to-don’t get worried. He not digging too deep into your business, as he and the majority o’ Flagstaff people know the history of the Plantation. As aforemention, ma’am, Sargeant tell me to tell you so. Your son the doctor looks after Sargeant. We all know that. Been looking after Sargeant for years now, ma’am; and never-once charge Sargeant a copper-penny, for consultations, medicine, tablets nor proscriptions. Sargeant, as you know, have the pressure. High blood pressure. And your son is who save his life, by looking after Sargeant. Sargeant have the nerves, too. Tension and stresses from the job. We know how important you and your son is to the people of this Village. Sargeant say to tell you that he send his respects, under the circumstances.”

  “Under the circumstances.”

  “What is the real circumstances, though, ma’am? I have to put this in my report.”

  “Do you always drink milk when you are vestigating and taking Statements?”

  “No, ma’am. I doesn’t drink milk at all, but in your presence I would drink it.”

  “But you still like it.”

  “Suppose so. But I didn’t get enough when I was small.”

  “Just milk?”

  “Ulcers, too, ma’am. Occasionally, I takes something strong. Like at a wedding, or when Sargeant invite me at him, to hear the new piano that his daughter send-down from Amurca, two Christmases ago. From Brooklyn, I think, is where she lives.”

  “You play yourself?”

  “Just a few chords. Tinklelling the ivories.”

  “Look at this Steinway. This Steinway is a gift, twenty-five years ago, when Wilberforce was five. Mr. Bellfeels wanted his son to have the same things in this Great House as his two daughters, Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie, had when they were growing up in the Plantation Main House.

  “Wilberforce got the same as them.

  “Gifts! Gifts is funny things, Constable. They could tie you to a person. And then you can’t untie yourself, nor extricate your independence from that person. The knot round your neck is too tight. Gifts are unhealthy; but there are gifts. So, sometimes, you have to accept them with a smile, and a skin-teet, meaning you are far from sincere.

  “There were always gifts, expensive gifts that really could not buy-me-off, even with the generousness buried inside the gifts themselves. Gifts were not enough.

  “That old Steinway there, been standing like a dumb person, with no power of words. Mr. Steinway’s tongue cut out. Ten-fifteen years, now.

  “Wilberforce learned to play on it. And Miss Grimes smacked Wilberforce knuckles three evenings a week, learning his scales. Every four o’clock, Monday, Wednesdays and Friday, straight from Harrison College.

  “One night, during this time, Mr. Bellfeels came over, and I offered him something to drink; and he took a Tennents Stout. That was his drink, when he was a more younger man. In later life, he switch to white rum. And that, plus a few more things, was what I couldn’t stomach in him. Belching as he swallowing the Tennents. No class. A few coppers rackling-’bout inside his pockets, yes. But no class. The right complexion and colour of skin for living high-on-the-hog, in this Island, yes. But class? Not one bloody ounce. The man would break wind, pass gas in front of me, and his son—fart, then!—even carrying on this behaviour home, in front o’ Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie. Mistress Bellfeels, his wife, in one of the few exchanges we ever had, told me such.

  “I have seen Ma, whilst she was his maid, iron dozens of handkerchiefs, every Friday evening, rinsing-and-starching them on the Thursday; white cotton ones, with a light-blue border in all of them. And never-once Mr. Bellfeels used a handkerchief. Index finger gainst one nostril, and phew! Splat in the road, and watch the thick green stuff slide over a rock and disappear in the ground.

  “I don’t know how I managed to stomach his weight layingdown on top of me all those years; breeding me and having his wish; and me smelling him; and him giving-off a smell like fresh dirt, mould that I turned over with my hoe, at first planting, following a downpour of rain, when all the centipees and rats, cockroaches and insects on God’s earth start crawling-out in full vision and sight, outta the North Field.

  “And a man of his means! To live like that! And never think of dashing a dash of cologne, or some Florida Water over his face and under his two armpits . . .”

  She stops talking, as she dabs a handkerchief at her mouth; and then at her right eye; and then at her left eye. The Constable sits and wonders why women always wipe their lips first, when it is their eyes that express the emotion they no longer want to disclose.

  Her body shakes a little. In his eyes, she is a woman past desire; a woman who wears her dress below the knee; a powerful, rich, “brown-skin” woman; a woman to fear. He remembers her screaming at him when he was her yard-boy, because he had not swept the garbage clean
from the yard; that was years ago; and he can still hear her high-pitched voice that sent chills down his back. But each evening, when he was leaving, she placed a brown paper bag into his hand, told him, “Tell your mother I say how-d.” The paper bag contained large and small tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, three eggs and leftover chicken legs for his mother; a brown sugar cake and a penny for himself.

  He pulls himself together now; puts all thought of Gertrude, and thoughts of this rich, brown-skin woman’s plight, out of his mind; and recaptures the dignity of being a Constable in the Constabulary of the Island of Bimshire Police Force.

  He must not let this woman’s personal appeal and her physical attractiveness affect his concentration.

  He must not, under the circumstances, let her soften his duty to conclude his preliminary Statement; nor, considering the act in question, have her ruffle his thoughts on Gertrude.

  He is once more a Constable in the Constabulary.

  So, he straightens his shoulders and sits erect in the straight-backed tub-chair.

  She does the same thing with her posture, in her chair, and smiles with him.

  She looks very beautiful to him, at this moment. Tempting as his grandmother told him she was, as a little girl. “Many a man’ heart skip a beat after that Tilda, before she even reach her teens. Any man would want to ravish Tilda’s beauty and virginity. But she save everything for Bellfeels.”

  “. . . And the nights Mr. Bellfeels came over, I remember how Wilberforce, then in Third Form, beginning to take Latin and Greek, the boy was so happy to hear his father play those lovely old tunes. In foxtrot time, mainly. And ‘Ole Liza Jane.’ ‘Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny.’ And the one that Wilberforce liked best, ‘Banjo on My Knee.’

  “You shouldda seen the three of us! Father. Mother. And child. And then, Wilberforce and me! Jumping-round on the carpets in this front-house! Skinning our teet, and imitating the rhythms of dancing like if we were Amurcan Negroes. Doing a jig.

  “Years later, Wilberforce who had-spend time in France and Germany and Rome-Italy, was now at Oxford and the Imperial College, in Tropical Medicines, studying to be a doctor, learning about malarias and sleeping sickness, from-where he would write letters to me, usually once a week, though they didn’t reach these shores till months later, sometimes, specially during the War; nevertheless, in two letters, in two consecutive weeks, flashing-back to those nights when Mr. Bellfeels play ‘Ole Black Joe’ on the Steinway, Wilberforce tell me in the two letters . . . and these are his own words . . . ‘We carried on like slaves’—Wilberforce exact words— ’like slaves on a plantation, we put on that pantomine to entertain that man, and were ignorant, and did not know the ironies in our behaviour.’