The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  So, Manny and Sargeant and the Solicitor-General and the Headmaster of the Elementary School, and Mr. Edwards who had tutored Wilberforce when he attended Sin-Davids Elementary School, and Mr. Bellfeels, Constable and Naiman and Revern Dowd were drunk and merry and hugging one another, and singing hymns and calypsoes, in the Harlem Bar & Grill.

  They were gathered this night in public, in the Selected Clienteles Room; and the curious eyes of the Village were on them.

  “One o’ the only things, the few things that this scion of my, of my loins, loins, is that he make me, make me proud of him, tonight, so I tip my glass to Bellfeels, W. A. R., Bimshire Scholar, in Classics, be-Christ! Wunnuh know what that mean? Virgil! Caesar! Homer! The Aeneid, gorblummuh, Euripperdees and The Illiad! Jesus Christ, the Classics, boy! Amo, amas, amat. The venerable Classics! My boy. The only son of Darnley Alexander Randall Bellfeels! Gentleman, so I raise my glass. A toast. Down the hatch!” Mr. Bellfeels said. And then he added, “As man!”

  “Down the hatch!” Manny said.

  “To Wilber . . .Wil . . . berforce Alexander Alex . . . xander . . . Ran . . . Randall Bellfeels,” the Vicar, Wilberforce’s godfather, said.

  “Down the hatch!” the Solicitor-General, Wilberforce’s second godfather, said.

  “Down the hatch!” the Headmaster of the Elementary School said.

  “Down the hatch!” Sargeant, a police Constable of ten years, said.

  “Haec apud Romanos consul,” the Solicitor-General said, quoting from Livy, Book XXI, Hannibal’s decision to let his Gallic captives fight in single combat for the prize of freedom,

  Wilberforcus rebus prius quam verbis adhortandos milites ratus, circumdato ad spectaculum exercitu, captivos montanos vinctos in medio statuit, armisque Gallicis ante pedes eorum proiectis, inter-rogare interpretem iussit, ecquis, si vinculis levaretur armaque et equum victor acciperet ferro vellet.

  “The Classics!” Mr. Bellfeels screamed with admiration, although he did not know the translation. “The fecking Classics, boy!”

  And the other men, who, except perhaps the Vicar and the Headmaster, did not know their Latin, screamed their delight at the Solicitor-General’s oratory; and this encouraged the Headmaster to join in the declamations.

  “‘Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

  ‘What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature;

  It is too full of the milk of human kindness

  ‘To catch the nearest way. . . ,’” Headmaster said, quoting from Macbeth.

  The men screamed their delight again.

  “Words, words!” Naiman said; and got a little carried away, and said, “Jesus Christ, words!” And then he softened it, and said, “Here-here!”

  “Here-here!” the Constable, who was not yet a policeman, said.

  So, when the announcement was made that Friday night on the radio, for every inhabitant in Bimshire to hear, the name of Wilberforce’s mother was called out first. And then Mr. Bellfeels’ name, with all his Christian names.

  Sargeant cannot remember if the announcer had said, “Mary Gertrude Mathilda Bellfeels.” Or if he said, “This year’s Bimshire Scholar is Bellfeels, W. A. R., son of Mr. D. A. R. Bellfeels of Flagstaff Plantation, and a student in the Classical Sixth at Harrison College, also the son of Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda.”

  The four initials, MGMB, on the shield of the gold ring intrigue him; but they do not file his memory to the point of sharper recollection.

  He moves his attention from her initials on the ring, and places it instead, and with greater concentration, upon the softness of her fingers.

  Her fingers are like five boughs taken from the silken arrows that grow out from the tops of the sugar cane; and these silken boughs are touching his hand. Their lightness tickles his hand. It is a sensation he has never suffered through before.

  She looks into his eyes. And remains silent. And the force of her gaze, her brown eyes piercing into him, causes him to lower his gaze, to close his eyes, to turn his face away.

  Her grip on his hand is firmer now. He can feel the strength of her fingers digging into his flesh. Abruptly, she gets up from the piano bench and goes to the window, the one through which he had been looking at the waves of sugar canes; and she stands there. And hums.

  He buttons the silver button on which is the Imperial Crown of Englund, embossed in raised figures and letters, at his neck. It is the top button. And he throws his legs over the piano bench, with his back to the keys; and sits erect, facing her, as she continues to hum “Stardust.”

  And when her humming is over . . . she has hummed long enough to have covered only the first two verses . . . she remains standing by the window.

  “You are a man of the world, Percy. Can I address you as Percy, instead of Sargeant? You know things . . .”

  She stops; and then she hums another line which he takes to be from the third verse of “Stardust.”

  “You are a man of the world. A detective. You can read people’s minds. Or should be able to.

  “And I don’t have to guess, Percy, that you understand what nearly happened, just now.

  “But we are big-people. A big man and big woman. Even under the circumstances.”

  “Under the present circumstances, Mary-Mathilda.”

  “Yes, Percy, under the present circumstances.”

  “These circumstances which bring you and me together, at a time like this.”

  “I find myself, a woman my age, here with thoughts that I haven’t entertain in years. Which I always wondered about. But couldn’t entertain having, because of the circumstances.

  “Thinking now of back-then, and these thoughts, these new thoughts that I am having . . . but back-then, the only people who would have-have these thoughts . . .”

  “What we talking-’bout, Mary-Mathilda?”

  “You are a wise man. And I think, also, a sensible . . . a sensitive . . . man. Please, don’t let me have to spell-it-out, Percy. Spare me that embarrassment.”

  “I spare you, Mary-Mathilda. I spare you. But I don’t really know what you getting at.”

  “I am getting at you, Percy.”

  “Me?”

  “And me, Percy.”

  “You-got-me-there!”

  “How do you see me, Percy?”

  “As Wilberforce mother . . .”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “. . . and as Miss Bellfeels, Mr. Bellfeels . . . as the Mistress of this Great House.”

  “How do you really see me?”

  “I see you as the lady-of-the-house. As a person close to Mr. Bellfeels. As a important woman of this n’ighbourhood. People in this n’ighbourhood feel you is the best person living on the Plantation. Only today!.Well-yes! A lil earlier this evening, I happen to be exchanging a few thoughts with Manny at the Harlem Bar & Grill, over a snap; and Manny had to remind me—not that I did-need reminding!—but Manny remind me of the time, during one Crop-Season, when tomatoes was really plentiful, more plentiful than anybody did-know what to do with them; they were so plentiful that they were rotting on the vines; and Mr. Bellfeels wanted to sell them at the usual price, as when they was scarce, and it was you who put your two feet down and make Mr. Bellfeels give-them-way. Practically. For next-to-nothing. People in this Village respect you for things like this. And this happen ten years ago. They loves you for this kind o’ thing. That is how I, and a lot o’ people in Flagstaff, sees you.”

  “You see me as a woman?”

  “Course! You’s a woman, not a man. You’s Wilberforce mother! I must, as a consequence, see you as a woman, therefore.”

  “A mother?”

  “Yes. You born Wilberforce.”

  “Or a woman?”

  “That, too. A little o’ all-two-both!”

  “Any-other-way?”

  “As a person. A lady. Who goes to Church every Sunday, almost. And who would do anything for anybody.”

  “Thank you, Sargeant. But I was wondering how they see me . . . more, as a
woman. As a woman, Percy. How you-yourself see me . . .”

  She still has her back towards him. Between the space of her right arm and the right side of the large window, he can see into the black night, into the distant greenness. She turns around and faces him. And stares at him. But says nothing.

  And he remains sitting on the piano bench, with his back to the keyboard, looking at her; but when she looks him in the eye, he turns his face and evades her eyes.

  Her eyes are brown and are like magnets.

  He knows the things the powerful persons in the Village have said about her. The Solicitor-General. The two leading barristers-at-Law in the Island. The Headmaster of Sin-Davids Elementary School; and the Headmistress. Mistress Bellfeels and the other wives. And Mr. Bellfeels himself. All, except the Vicar.

  And Manny. And he himself, if he is honest.

  He added his two farthings to their portrayal of her, and it was not always in the most polite language. He joined in because the same circumstances which placed her outside his scope also provided him with the cover of undetection, for statements of his nastiness could not get back to her. He did not speak them in Gertrude’s presence. But he was as nasty as the others, because he was jealous. All this “bad-mouth” history he knew about her. His history of her. But he did not repeat the oral narrative of the Village’s history of her.

  Part of it is the narrative of his own history.

  Here she is on this Sunday night, asking him things he dare not admit that he understands. For the hand of Mr. Bellfeels’ vengeance, his hand that dealt brutality and violence—a savagery that touched men . . . Remember Golbourne and Pounce, and even women who were in his way. That hand is still able to flex its muscles and smash him into the soft black mud, the soil of fields, as he himself would crush a centipede. Out of fear. And out of hatred. Despised beyond redemption. That hand that Mr. Bellfeels and his friends called “justice” was able to spawn the white road that marked the Plantation Main House off from the rows of chattel houses, cross the width of this Maginot Line, and crush a man like Sargeant, even though he was the Law, a Crown-Sargeant.

  Mr. Bellfeels and “them” had their own Law. What does he think of her? He thinks he wants to throw her down, right now, and push himself into her, hard, on this settee, or this couch, or on this hardwood floor with the imported carpets . . . and he goes on thinking these thoughts about her, and living them, and making them real, as he had done on that Easter Monday bank holiday at the Church outing and picnic, on the swept sand of the beach at the Crane Beach Hotel, when he followed her, walked in her footsteps, right up to her rendezvous with Mr. Bellfeels, carrying the glass jug in her hand . . .

  How do I think of him? she asks herself. And she answers her own question: I am frightened to face the thoughts that are going through my head. And through my body.

  I am frightened of him.

  A woman my age: with these thoughts; and at a time like this. This is madness. This is lunatic-madness. And it must be the madness of a woman who lives by herself, without a man, even to inhale his stale breath in a bed not used for love; a woman getting old; alone; this madness of the cornered quartered animal, driven into a box; blocked, and with no hole for escape and redemption . . . and what can he think of me, under these circumstances? A woman used. A woman handled by another man. Man-handled. A woman “a-bruised” by another man. And now, in her release from that bondage, by an act she herself cannot face, cannot swear if it is not imagination and not from “temperriment,” an act intended to bring about her release, but which has so far brought about only this meeting between me and him, this conversation between me and him. How pure then is my body to take this communion? And my mind? Have I achieved salvation and release? Am I able to bring about my full release with my own hands? Am I a woman tainted by her experiences?

  What he could be thinking of me? she asks herself.

  What she thinking about? he asks himself.

  She wishes she could ask him openly; just get right up, cross the few yards separating them, rest her hand on his shoulder and just ask him. Put the question to him.

  But ask him what? Has she already formed the words in her mind? Are they on the tip of her tongue? Breathing hard, and desperate to be spoken, putting voice to the imprisonment of her true feeling? Can she tell him the secrets of her life that she has buried all these years?

  Has she also formed the words he would speak to her, in his own head, in anticipation of rejection, or of approval; and if the answer is not what she expects, how then shall she conceal the shock from herself, the wound sinking into dignity, her womanhood, her age, her attractiveness, her desirability, the withholding of her true age from herself, and faded beauty from her lips, and her breasts, and her hips, then . . .

  When last have you found yourself even contemplating these thoughts? These thoughts of youth and lasciviousness? And you with one foot in the grave?

  And let us say that what you think you have done, what you wanted to do, and dreamed that you did it, and it is true, your other foot rests on the rim of the platform of a gallows. Fate and destiny.

  “I must have been sixteen when Ma, trying her best to bring a change in my life, to take me from being too expose to things on this Plantation, learning too fast, too much of its nastiness, Ma thought I would have a better chance in life, working in one of those small cloth stores that sells dress-lengths.

  “Ma chose a store own by a Indian-man that she knew, who had a place in Swan Street, down in Town, a one-door peddling-store that sold and that still sells dry goods and haberdasheries, silk and cotton, in dress-lengths; a cloth store; and when I tell you inside that store was dark? Dark-dark-dark. And with a smell always of incense burning in a brass jar, or vase, with a thin neck.

  “I don’t know how the place never got burned down. With all that cloth piled up high, almost touching the rafters. And the incense always light, and burning.

  “Ma chose that place for me to work at, to try my hand at being self-employed, being my own woman—strange as that may sound— a saleswoman to be trained into a businesswoman; but really meant for me to try my hand at something more better than forking ground, weeding potato slips and hoeing young plants and being a object for Mr. Bellfeels daily wishes. And for me, as Ma say, to have hands like Mistress Bellfeels, his wife, the soft hands of a white lady.

  “To work in this cloth store meant bathing every morning, before five o’clock, in cold water that made your teeth chatter; getting dress in the dark, sometimes with a kerosene lamp; and walking half the distance from here to down in Town, since buses in those days didn’t start at such a early hour; and the chance of getting a lift by some good Samaritan wasn’t so good.

  “But the Monday morning Ma delivered me to Mr. Patel, the owner of the peddling cloth store in Swan Street, I could hardly see Mr. Patel in the chair sitting in the small dark space between the counter and the wall. And not a window in the place. Incense and lights of the dimmest voltage . . . watts, or brightness, were on; and it turn out they were always left burning. And Mr. Patel, invisible almost, because his complexion of brown was identical and matching the colour of the wallpaper on the walls and the shade of light in the store, I could barely make him out.

  “Mr. Patel looked at me with his eyes, as if his eyes were two knives, all the time that Ma was telling him how bright a young woman I is;.Well-brought-up; won’t give him no trouble; and all the time that Ma is going through my testimonials and recommendation, Mr. Patel’s two eyes penetrating through my body, boring holes in my dress, from my two bubbies down, all over my belly, between my two legs, undressing me, naked, naked, naked, although he never as much as touched my dress with his hairy hand . . .

  “I start to get frighten, and start trembling; and although it was sickening to listen to Ma giving Mr. Patel a ritual of my good points, and good behaviour, I still didn’t want Ma to stop talking, because I knew that the moment Ma turn her back, and left the store, before she reach the corner of Swan
Street and Broad Street, leaving me to Mr. Patel’s mercies, Mr. Patel would have his hand down the front of my dress. Mr. Patel would be all over me.

  “I knew this, because Clotelle when I first met her, working in the kitchen here at the Plantation, had-previously worked for a Mr. Boobilal, in the same Swan Street, in a almost identical one-door store, selling dress-lengths and cloth.

  “Clotelle tell me that Mr. Boobilal pass his hand all over her body the first morning she start work. By midday he had begged her two times please for a foop; threatening if she didn’t, he calling the police and saying that she steal money from the till.

  “And every day, punctual at midday, Mr. Boobilal wife coming with his food, curry and curry and curry, with split peas cooked soft-soft, and soft drink; and the moment the wife, Mistress Boobilal, left, Mr. Boobilal trying to get in Clotelle bloomers. And the threats. Because what could poor Clotelle do? Call a police?

  “So I was forewarned through Clotelle’s personal experience; in confidence.

  “And Mr. Patel did come on to me. If I had-scream-out, Ma would-have-hear my plea, Mr. Patel made his move so fast. Ma couldda-heard my cries, if I had open my mouth, in resistance against Mr. Patel’s attempt to take advantage of me, a young woman, not knowing the ways of Town, me, a girl from up in the country.

  “You remember how the soldiers in the Volunteer Regiment and Brigade used to train on the Garrison Savannah Pasture, doing their exercises and other drills they learn from the War, and from being overseas? Things like ju-jitsu? How you could throw a man two times your size in weight and strength flat on his backside and nearly cripple him. Yes!

  “Well, I was always a fast learner. And I would watch, and laugh, and see how those soldiers used to toss-’bout men twice their size in weight, in practice.

  “Mr. Patel seeing me, a girl still in her teens, decide that I was a woman he could subdue. And when he make his first move, rubbing his smelly-self against me, ready now to grab-hold o’ me round my waist, with his left hand, and forcing his hand up my two legs, which I had-squeezed tight,..Well, with Patel trying to separate my two legs, while his hands were occupied thus, Christ! Percy, I remember-just-in-time how I see a soldier-fellow of the Volunteer Regiment and Brigade throw a kick, one kick. Bram! Full between Mr. Patel two legs, smack in his two stones . . .”