The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “Wilberforce loves the dirt his father walk on. That much you must know. But, for me to see and to hear the chastisement in the tone of his words . . .

  “Since those letters arrive, this Steinway never had its lid lifted again after those words of reproach.

  “It hurt my heart to know what betrayal of life we lived without knowing it! And had to live!

  “Those evenings, Mr. Bellfeels would throw in a waltz; and a piece of the Classics, now and then. But he played ‘Banjo on My Knee’ every Saturday night. And ‘Ole Black Joe.’

  “Yes. Those Saturday nights were nights of Amurcan Negro songs, mainly. And even if I was in my vexatious moods, I still learn a lot from listening. Both in this Great House where he put me in, as the mother of his three thrildren, to live, even although only one of the thrildren survived past childbirth, and when I worked in the Main House. Yes, William Henry, named after two kings. Decease soon after birth. Rachelle Sarah Prudence, named after English ladies-in-waiting. Decease likewise, following birth. And Wilberforce. The living boy. Wilberforce Darnley Alexander Randall Bellfeels. W. D. A. R. Bellfeels, M.D., Doctor of Tropical Medicines, as Revern Dowd like to address him. Yes.

  “I mothered Mr. Bellfeels outside-thrildren, and for that he put me in this Great House, and he gave them the name of Bellfeels, even to William Henry and Rachelle Sarah Prudence, before they dead.

  “That is something in his favour, I suppose.

  “Mr. Bellfeels never-even suggest I use his surname, to mean whatever the use of that name mean, in these circumstances. But I know what it could mean. I also know that behind my back, the Villagers call me Miss Bellfeels the Outside-woman. Gertrude told me. I forced it out of her. But praise God, he make my three thrildren, two dead and one still in the quick, legitimate and respectable citizens of Bimshire, bearing the name of Bellfeels. The name Bellfeels, for all the badness it conjure up, and mean to me personally; and the reputation it have in Flagstaff Village, is . . ..Well . . .

  “On Sundays, when the sun cool-off a bit, you could find me in the Church Yard, looking down at the two slabs of white marble covering the graves of my two thrildren who passed-way.”

  William Henry Bellfeels, R.I.P. Rachelle Sarah Prudence, R.I.P.

  “One Sunday evening, near seven o’ clock, just before Eveningsong-and-Service is to begin, I see the back of this man, in the Church Yard, bending down looking at the same two white marble slabs. Him. Mr. Bellfeels! Years ago that happened.

  “Write-this-down in your black notebook, what I was saying, before I got sidetracked by talking about my three thrildren . . . Yes. Write-this-down . . .”

  She looks up from her lap, and sees that the Constable’s eyes are closed; and she stops talking for a moment, waiting to see if he will stir from his slumber; but his eyes remain closed; and his breathing is a bit loud; and she concludes with some resignation that he is asleep. The night is long. It moves at a slow pace. The night takes on the desultory pace of her words and of her recollections. Realizing he is fast asleep, she continues talking, nevertheless.

  “Serving at Mr. Bellfeels table, my first elevation from out the fields, when I was a more younger woman, and was only bearing his weight on my belly, every Saturday night, regardless to whether I was having my menses, or not . . . Yes!

  “That low-class bastard! Pardon my French, Constable, although you fast-asleep.

  “Yes. I remember ‘The Blue Danube.’ And all those foxtrots he would play. People in those days used to dance so formal and lovely, wearing long dresses, with the men in long swizzle-tail coats, looking like undertakers and penguins. But the elegance! In those days! The ironies of elegance! And at the Crane Beach Hotel where the really rich, the really white people, went; or at the Marine Hotel down in Hastings District, where the lower-class Plantation-people who were really not white, went. The Marine Hotel was the class to which Mr. Bellfeels belong, by birthright. To the red-nigger Marine Hotel crowd, down in Hastings.

  “But you should have seen the tribes of them dancing! Those were the days! I wish those days would come back, for the sake of my son Wilberforce, who is approaching the age for marrieding. Is time he find a woman to spend his life with. Yes. For Wilberforce sake, and for the sake of the art of dancing, I wish those days would return-back.

  “In those days, the men of this Island knew how to dance! The Aquatic Club on Bay Street, down in Town, was another popular place. In those days, a person even with a complexion such as mine, ‘a brown-skin bitch,’ as I happen to know is what Gertrude calls me, not even a brown-skin bitch like me, could get-past that iron gate. Unless I was working there, as a servant. And at that, they had a entrance for servants, with a hand-painted sign, saying SERVANTS ONLY. Yes.”

  The Constable opens his eyes, looks around, convinces himself that he did not actually fall-off to sleep; and becomes alert, fiddling with his black notebook. She watches him; and smiles.

  “Now, Wilberforce, being of a even more lighter complexion than me, don’t have that trouble. You see what I mean? Yes. The Aquatic Club. The place where the best dancing was danced to the best music. The Percy Greene Orchestra, plus the Coa Alleyne Orchestra. Big bands, boy! Led by two black musicianers from right here in Bimshire. Two of the best! In the whole Wessindies! Nor only in Bimshire.

  “Did you know that the Percy Greene Orchestra played once for Majesty? Yes.

  “Yes! The King, George-the-Fiff, was in the Island once . . . he wasn’t really King then, he was the Prince o’ Wales, to later become King . . . and they held a dance, a Ball, what am I saying? A Ball. At the Aquatic Club. Proper; and decent, for His Majesty, George-the-Fiff. I know all this because Ma who—God rest her soul—was now promoted from weeding in the North Field, to a position within the kitchen staffs of the Plantation Main House, having a more higher status and position, as a consequence, but getting the same field-hand wage; and the Bookkeeper at the time, none other than Mr. Bellfeels, was appointed Chairman of the Royal Ball, by the Social Events Committee of the Marine Hotel, to be stage manager of the Ball held at the Aquatic Club, plus being in charge of making arrangements for transportation in private cars and hiring hired cars from Johnson’s Stables; for making the banners and screamers, streamers; and buntings; for blowing up the red-white-and-blue balloons; for making-sure that the ballroom floor was waxed, and shining like dogs stones—as the saying goes—and slippery as ice; and just as treacherous; so that if a man step-off, and didn’t hold his balance, like Harry-on-the-ice, moving his body in time to the rhythm of some of the slowest pieces of waltz-music that the Percy Greene Orchestra would play; if that man wasn’t good! and didn’t have perfect balance, nor a knowledge of waltzes, how to move his body in time to the rhythm, how to make his footwork move in and out to the intricate movements, he was in bare trouble! A man wasn’t a man unless he could dance on that Aquatic Club floor, wax to a vexatious perfection! If he moved the wrong way, or turned too fast on that floor, wax like a sheet of ice, brugguh-down! Flat on his arse. In full view of the invited couples, and the eyes of the staffs looking-on through the glass hole in the swing-door leading to the kitchen.

  “So, Mr. Bellfeels axe Ma to help-out that night, with the serving of the sangwiches and the eats and the drinks. Ma, and the other staffs of the Plantation, plus the servants of the rich white people; people like the two leading barsters-at-Law in the Island; the Solicitor-General; the doctors and business people; the Vicar, Revern Dowd; the manager-owner of Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries down in Town, all of them-so contributed their personal staffs to the loyal service of the Royal Ball in honour and by Appointment to the King, George-the-Fiff. Ma and all of them were dressed in servant uniforms, black; with white aprons, white caps, starch-and-ironed; and hard-hard-hard like deal board. Black stockings and black leather shoes. Yes!

  “You shouldda seen Ma! Ma looked so beautiful. Like a queen! Pretty-pretty. Like a, like a movie-screen star. Like a young Mary Pickford!

  “Yes. And, you should hav
e seen the Bimshire ladies and gentlemen that night. It was like a fairyland, like Alice in Wonderland, like starlights burning on a Fiff of November, Guy Fawkes Day, as the King, George-the-Fiff, was in all his regalias and majesty and metals . . . medals, weighing-down his shoulder blade, poor fellow, since, as he was in the flesh, such a diminnative small man to have to bear all those regalias and insignias pin to his chest, Ma say.

  “And the King made a big-big point, that night. His Majesty dance with all the Bimshire ladies. Every last one. And not only the ones that were white, when they were presented to him, and wasn’t . . . and the King, poor fellow, who couldn’t tell who-from-who, since they all looked white to him, traipsed the light-fantastic with every blasted one o’ those whores! . . . Ma tell me so.

  “Ma tell me, also, something that hit me in the pit of my stomach. The strangest utterance. Ma tell me she wished she was somebodyelse that night. To be able to take part in that Ball, dress in a long dress sweeping the floor, and dance with her King, George-the-Fiff; and take her rightful place in the Receiving Line of that gala; and she wished she was not who she was, a field hand, a harlot, a tool for a man who came into her house, small as it was, humble as it was, after the gala was over, and the Ball had come to its end with the playing of ‘God Save the King,’ and after the kitchen staffs had clean-up . . . And robbed her of her maiden. Yes!

  “Took her virginity away from her.

  “She had the right colour, as you can see from my own complexion, for him to want her. But not light-enough to warrant admission on her own oars, and cross the iron gates of the Aquatic Club, to attend the Ball for her king, His Majesty, George-the-Fiff! She had the looks, as you can see she handed down in me. She had everything. Except the accident of borning in the right bedroom. Ma. My mother. God rest her soul.

  “There is a story-and-a-half I could tell you about the doings and the happenings in this small Island of Bimshire! Stories to make your head curl! Stories and skeletons bigger than the square-milearea of this Island.

  “It took Ma until she was on her deathbed before she could empty her heart and tell me. And seek her redemption before God called her to her judgment.

  “Psalm 51, Constable, in the Book of Psalms.

  “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness.

  “Ma was reading this Psalm in the Bible, for days and days, just before she died. As a warning to me, she eventually confess. But he, Mr. Bellfeels, was already inside my system.

  “She was sixteen the night it happened. When he took her.

  “She went to her grave, at the ripe age of seventy-eight.

  “Sixty-one, sixty-two years. Three-score-and-two, she carried that burden like I carried my wishbone, in secrecy, like a skeleton; speechless, and with no utterance. A stain on a white dress, in the wrong place, and that won’t come out, regardless of the bleaching you put it through. A obsession, just like I walked with my wishbone. Not one iota passed her lips. Three-score-and-two years. A whole lifetime. Vouchsafe in the books of the Old Testament.

  “Women of her generation knew how to carry burdens. And how to bury them. Inside their hearts. Concealed in their blood. They were strong women, then. Tough women. Women who gave birth in the fields today, and returned to raise their hoe and lift their load two afternoons later; within forty-eight hours. In the same fields. Yes.”

  She takes the fat-bellied crystal glass from the mahogany side table, and raises it to her lips. She makes no sound as she takes a sip. She places the snifter back onto the white doily in the middle of the rich, brown, shining table made by the Village joiner and cabinetmaker, from mahogany wood, in the shape of a heart. Three others, scattered through the large front-house, are in the shape of a spade, a diamond and a club. Each has the same white crocheted doily on it. One has her Bible.

  “Ma lost the baby conceived in rape, the night His Majesty, her King, George-the-Fiff, danced in Bimshire. ‘My God, the blood.’ That is all Ma said. That is all she remember. It was my great-gran, Ma’s gran-mother, with her knowledge of bushes and vines and leaves used for medicines; and cures; plus a lil touch of obeah and witchcraft, that saved Ma. Ma say that Gran brought this knowledge with her from Almina, in Africa. My great-gran. Yes.

  “She had a name that sounded African. But I could never pronounce it, the right way. It sounded something like Agne Beraku; but in time, it went completely outta my mind, altogether. I do not know my great-gran’s African name. Yes.

  “I would see her, my great-gran-mother, just before she passaway, bent almost in half; her face scenting the bushes; picking and picking; putting a leaf or a twig or a stem inside her mouth and chew on it, to test it; and then spitting it out; with her braided-up grey hair slipping out from underneat her white head-tie, and hanging low to the ground, searching-through worthless rocks and stones as if they were precious pearls and corals, picking a twig from this bush, a twig from the next; and putting all of them in her apron. Gran wore a apron, even when she was long-pastworking in people kitchens. She spent most of her life in the kitchen at the Aquatic Club. It’s a wonder to me, knowing what she must-have-went-through in them days, that she didn’t put a lil twig from the wrong bush, or a stem of Poison Ivy, a lil-lil piece of the root, in the tureens of turtle soup those bastards liked her to cook for them! Yes.

  “My great-gran. Her apron was like a badge of honour. In her apron, always white and starch-and-ironed, and pleated in straight lines from her waist down to below her two ankles, she would put those bushes—sersey bush, Christmas bush, miraculous bush, lignum-vitae bush, soursop leaves and leaves from the puh-paw trees, tamarind tree leaves and sugar-apple leaves . . . I don’t remember the other bushes! But I know that the sersey bush is what did the trick. Sersey bush that Gran boiled thick-thick until it came like tar; bitter and black; and that poor little girl, my ma, no more than seventeen, or sixteen, was made to drink that tartea every morning at five o’ clock, until Mr. Bellfeels vim was worked out of her system. And at every six o’ clock every evening, Gran put Ma in a bush bath, and soaked her until the sin, and the stain, and the mistake, came out in the form of blood. Yes!

  “It take three days and three nights, with Ma’s gran-mother sitting sleepless in a upright chair, for Ma to regain her salvation, and have release from the thing that Mr. Bellfeels sowed inside her, inside Ma.

  “But blood was always in our lives. Blood, and more blood . . . and that is why I did what I did.”

  Sargeant moves through the blackness of the night, like a brown worm, sluggish and silently; burrowing in the wet, soft mud and soil of the acres and acres of Plantation lands surrounding him. There are no street lights in Flagstaff Village. Sin-Davids Anglican Church, on the northeast edge of the Village, stands like a fortress covered in green crawling ivy, and buried in blackness. Sargeant cannot even make out the church tower; and only because he was born in the Village and has seen the Church in its stationary stoutness, day after day, a witness to the sins of the entire Village, can he tell you, by pointing in this black night, that the Church is still there.

  Sin-Davids Elementary School for Boys, and Sin-Davids Elementary School for Girls, have no light over their entrances. They never had.

  The only lights in this part of the Village are the two naked, powerful bulbs which hang like testicles over the verandah of the Plantation Main House. Everything else is in darkness.

  So, on this night, Sargeant, on duty as the Village’s only detective, disconnects the gears in his three-speed Raleigh bicycle, and smiles in the thick dark night as he realizes that the black polished frame of the bicycle contributes to the invisibility which he relishes, as he pedals like a thief throughout the back roads and fields: inspecting and spying, “’vestigating,” looking for suspects, and for women, wherever they may happen to be, before heading for the rum shop, where he will pause, even though he is late in getting to the Great House, and take a snap of overproofed dark Mount Gay Rum, offered free by the owner of the rum shop, Mr. Mandeville Whi
te, Manny to Sargeant, as an indication of Sargeant’s office and status in the Village, and as a down payment in exchange against future protection, and the protection of secrets, some mutual, some personal, all serious; and the occasional offer of an item, evidence no longer essential to a case being “’vestigated”: a wristwatch, a bicycle pump, perhaps; and once, a leather wallet dropped by a man fleeing the clutches of the husband of the woman he was fooping. Sargeant kept the money. Four pounds sterling, and seven shillings. He then tore up the identification card, and the photos of the wife and child of the “fornicater,” before he offered the empty wallet to Manny. Manny paid him five shillings, or one hundred and twenty cents, and a snap of Mount Gay, for the brown buckled-back gentleman’swallet, that had Genuine Leather, English Made, stamped into its rich Moroccan-red leather, in gold lettering.

  Sargeant dislikes what his duty says he has to do tonight. Visit Miss Mary-Mathilda at the Great House. He has to face her before it gets much later. He does not want to take her Statement. If he could avoid it, postpone, forget it, have Vicar Dowd go in his place, ask her to leave the Great House where she lives with her son, the doctor, his doctor; have her leave Bimshire, “emigrade” and just go away . . . Englund, Amurca; live in Brooklyn with the other thousands of illegal people from Bimshire; “escape” to Venezuela, Brazil, even Cuba, Panama, in the Canal Zone, then . . . anywhere but here in Bimshire; and he would do anything, but have to face her . . .