The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  “It is the worst feeling a man, or a woman, could experience. Seasickness. I sometimes wondered during that trip toTrinidad if seasickness amongst the ship’s crew wasn’t the cause of the mutiny on the HMS Bounty? You ever come across the Mutiny on the Bounty in one o’ your library books?”

  “Once. In a library book.”

  “Everything that I had-eat that Sunday, straight from Church— as I had to sing the descant of the carol, in the Choir before leaving for Trinidad—everything. I didn’t really want to keep my two eyes open whilst I was vomiting, but I couldn’t close them because I couldn’t help admiring the birds that followed we out to sea, far-far from land; so pretty; and the fishes and porpusses coming up outta the sea, and disappearing even before you could see them plain-plain; and a big-big boat to our left, moving like silk over the water.

  “The HMS Cornwallis came into my mind. And in the waves, not so rough yet, I counted the grains o’ white rice, the pieces o’ sweet potato, the individual peas from the pigeon-peas I had-cook with the white rice to give it flavour, even the pieces of pig snout that I had boil-down in the rice . . .”

  “You didn’t chew your food properly, Percy. Forty-six times before you swallow a mouthful, Wilberforce say you have to chew your food.”

  “I probably had-eat too fast that Sunday in-true, since I had to travel overseas on the Patel ’Vestigation.”

  “You eat too fast.”

  “Then I see this big ship following us. Nobody in my group didn’t have binoculars nor a spying glass. And I couldn’t borrow the captain own. This ship couldda been a enemy ship following us on the horizon, later to intercept us, and bram!, when you hear the shout, a torpedo in our arse! Like they do to the HMS Cornwallis . . . pardon my language. . . .

  “‘Oh shite!’ I say to myself. Pardon my French, Miss Mary. I conclude that they could be Nazzies in these waters. This is the route that ships, merchant ships and others, with Bimshire men on board, working as deckhands and in the boiler rooms, tending the engines, throwing coal on them big turbines, does be on. Ships bound for Europe and the various theatres o’ war. And ships coming from Chaguaramas in Trinidad; and the British Navy tekking men and ammonitions and things to the Allieds up in Europe, to the Ardennes, Calais, Tripoli, to Desert Fox up in the great African desert of the Sahara, to Sabastopool, them places in Europe, in Bremen, Frankfurt and Poland, and the Darnelles, places I come- across in books, to fight in the various axes and theatres of war, as Churchill define them in speeches ’pon the BBC. And I say to myself, as I am holding over the side of the gunwale of this two-mast schooner, bringing up my Sunday dinner, ‘Lord, don’t let a Nazzie submarine pass this way! Not now!’

  “At night, we was in thick blackness. Lights turn off. And men, the crews and the passengers alike, talking in whispers, in case a Nazzie submarine lurking in the vicinity, and they pick up the noise of our talking, and the voices we are talking in, on their high-power radio transmissions, and find out that we are English, and not speaking the Spanish language and from places like the Argentyne or from Brazil, places that the Nazzies like to hide out in, and use for refuelling in.

  “Quiet-quiet-so, we travelling in total darkness, darkness more thicker than the darkest dark-night on this Plantation, where we are tonight. And I discovered something from that experience of travel.

  “The darkness that fall over land is nothing compared to the darkness that does-fall over the high seas and the ocean. In particular, a big ocean like the Atlantic, the one we was travelling on, even though it was just at the edge, and not in the great, real deepness, as if we was taking a passage from Bimshire up to Englund or a Lady-boat to Canada, by sea. But it was the same darkness.

  “Then it was that I start to get frighten and wonder if the Captain, only a local fellar that I would see many times coming out of a rum shop in Nelson Street, if he had-remember the things he learn in Navigational School. Or, if he even went to Navigational School at all, to learn how to be a navigator of a big-big inter-island schooner with two masts.

  “They don’t have no road signs on the high seas to tell a man tek this turn, this is Swan Street you entering; or that if you tek the next left, you nearing Baxters Road or Broad Street. Not when you out there in the darkness of the deep, yuh! And a compass is round in shape, and in circumference. It is like a circle. A point in navigation is therefore nothing more than a point. If the compass tell you that you pointing nor’-nor-wess, to use navigational language, the language of the deep, and of mariners and sea dogs, and if that compass was to shake a lil, just a pivvy, and that point get off mark, Jesus Christ, Miss Mary, we could have end up in the Argentyne, or in Brazil, in Saw-Paulo, or Buenos-Airs. Even in Caracas-Venezuela then, whiching, as you know from your library books, is only a skip-hop-and-a-jump from Trinidad, ’cross the Gulf of Paria.

  “Matter o’ fact, whilst involve in the Patel ’Vestigation, up in Toonapoona, we discovered a monastery full o’ monks, as I told you about. But the biggest discovery, as I also tell you, was these real sweet mangoes . . .”

  “Give me the Julie-mango anytime!”

  “The Julie is only one! We eat mangoes like they was going outta style! Julie-mangoes, mango-veer, turpentine mangoes, zabecou, calabash, or hog-mangoes, and the one that I like best, mango-Rochelle.”

  “Still, give me a Julie-mango!”

  “But if the captain had fallen off-course, just a fraction of a point, a pivvy, from the course the compass and the sextant—is it a sextant, or a quadrant?—had given him, we could have ended up down in the Argentyne, and I would now be speaking to you in Spanish, with the rest o’ them Nazzies. Don’t laugh!

  “During the War, as a member of the Police Force, we had to engage in certain important kinds of espionage. Undercover work. With risses. Cloak-and-dagger. Things like making sure lights-out is observe. Blackouts. Pasting strips o’ black paper over your motor-car headlights. Observing people that behave strange. Like listening too long to radios. Particular, radios with a short-wave band. Private-sets. They could be spies. And a lotta them was suspected spies. A lot o’ them ’bout-here, in a small place like Bimshire, was spies. Senning vital information. To the enemy. Axes and Fascist sympathizers. Secrets. Disclosing Top-Secret secrets. Nazzies and barr’cudas. So, we spend a lotta time sitting down. Sitting down on a hill, like Flagstaff Hill in Clapham, or Brittons Hill hill, below Flagstaff. And those of us assign to the Special Branch, down in Town, had to siddown night after night, in the darkness o’ night, with the dew falling, and in the cold, as if we were really up in Europe in the theatres o’ War, in the Darnelles, Tripoli, Sabastopool, Poland and Calais, in the First Whirl War, watching the horizon for perriscopes, in case a submarine flying the Swastika or the colours of the German Axes, was to surface for air and to take on water, or to blow up another merchant ship. Our superiors in the War Room Office in Central Police Station down in Town, which was out o’ bounds to ordinary policemen, told us what German submarines does do. We were on the lookout for German submarines, using our bare eyes. We have good eyesight in this Island. Proper vision. In this Island, we does see good-good-good. Twenty-twenty vision. And so, the minute we spot a perriscope, or any enemy activity at all, quick-quick-so, we raise the alarm! By blowing our whistle. I blow my whistle, and a next man, engage in similar espionage, yards away, hear me blow my whistle. And he blow his whistle. And so on, down the line. Down the line of the chain o’ command. And that way, in no time at all, our message is transmuted in code, and reach Espionage Headquarters, in the Special Branch. The information is then uncoded. Next, is put in our dispatches into a new, next code and transmuted by Morse code, dit-dit, dot-dot-dot, da, da, da, da, da . . . that is Morse code.

  “Morse code! It save the Allieds.

  “And we, as ordinary police from Bimshire, played our part in those two great undertakings of military endeavour, the First Whirl War and the Second Whirl War.

  “‘Englund expect every man to do his duty.

  �
�� “So, Trinidad was a relief, a kind of reward for we hard-working members of the Special Branch, on the Police Force, which they assign me to, as a recruit.

  “And the women...Well, as you would expect, I survive the crossing, and the seasickness, and when Trinidad loom up outta the morning mist—you always arrive by sea, into a new island, in the morning. You leave the place of setting out from, in the evening. Those are the laws and etiquettes of sea-travel by boat. The rituals of the deep.

  “Trinidad! And Trinidadian women! For a minute, and with my vision of Trinidadian women, I forgot the mission we was on.

  “Women like peas, Miss Mary-Mathilda, if I say so myself, in all good respects to you, being a woman yourself; and if I may say so, under the present circumstances, namely the cause of my presence this Sunday evening, and the more obvious fact that you is still a woman, a woman of substance, a woman that look still good; good-good-good, if you don’t mind me saying so . . . that I have looked upon you, since we was small thrildren growing up together . . . and you will have to forgive me, Miss Mary-Mathilda, for talking so plain in the presence of a lady, whiching you are. But the truth is the truth. And you will . . .”

  “Continue, Percy.”

  “Continuing . . .” he says.

  “Continue, Percy.”

  “. . . continuing. You’s a woman that my eyes have looked kindly and soft on, from the time that Saturday morning, in the company of your mother, Ma, when she brought you to Manny’s father yard, to get the piece o’ pork she had engage. I was helping Manny’s father clean-out the belly. And washdown the blood from the table where the pig was cut up. You was dressed in a blue dress, part of your school uniform. And your hair had in a blue ribbon. Normally, you would wear the white blouse under the uniform part . . . the tunic, you call it? No, the tank! Anyhow, this was a Saturday, and you was allowed to wear just the tunic. The tunic! That’s the right name for it, the tunic. You were wearing your tunic that Saturday afternoon. And a ordinary plain white bodice underneat’. It was a hot morning, that day.

  “‘This is my Mary,’ your mother tell Manny father. ‘My lil girl, Mary.’

  “‘So, this is Mary! Little Mary-had-a-little-lamb, Mary?’” And Manny father laugh, as he does always laugh when he talk; and say things like this.

  “And your mother say, ‘Say morning to Mr. Biscombe, Mary-girl.’ And you say, ‘How-dee-do, Mr. Biscombe? Good morning, sir.’

  “And Manny’s father say, ‘So, this is lil Mary, who is pretty-prettypretty as the Little Lamb in the storybook! Pretty as a butterfly. I hear that Mary bright-bright as a new shilling!’ he tell your mother. ‘And I hear that this child bright-enough to be and shouldda be going-school at Queens College next term, to say nothing o’ Sin-Michaels Girls School. If things was different with your pocketbook. You know what I mean.’

  “‘Yes,’ your mother tell Manny father. ‘We have to creep before we walk.’

  “‘That is the Gospel, girl! How you mean?’ Manny father tell your mother.

  “And he give your mother the piece o’ pork she engaged. Half-pung o’ harslick. And a pung-and-a-half o’ pork, a piece near the ribs. For pork chops.”

  “You have a good memory, Percy.”

  “The detective-work. Detective-work sharpen my memory . . .”

  “No wonder!”

  “Cause I was watching you all the time. How you was holding your head down, as if you were shy.

  “All this transpired in the presence o’ me. Although it was big-people talking and my presence was invisible to big-people’s company.

  “From that Saturday morning I had eyes that followed your life, wherever possible. Eyes for you. You was in my mind. And in my body. I can say this now. Cause, we are big-people ourselves, and we have to face facts. Sometime-in-our-lives.

  “I facing them facts, now. Tonight.”

  “Facing facts,” she says.

  “I may be outta order. Under the circumstances that find me here, meaning my position in the Constabulary of Bimshire, I might be outta place. But I am here not only as a police, Mary-Mathilda.

  “I wish I was man-enough . . .

  “I wish I could be able to face you, as a man . . .

  “And see you as a woman.

  “And if I am talking outta turn, as I may be, tell me. And as a man, I would take your reprimands. Put on my hat, button-up my tunic neck and leave. Vacate your premises.

  “But that Saturday morning,” he goes on to say, “in the yard of Manny father rum shop, when Manny father tell you about how you should be going to Queens College on the strength of your brains and brightness, but couldn’t, on account of being poor, your mother uttered something which I will always remember.

  “Your mother tell Manny father, ‘Thank you, Mr. Biscombe, for your words in kind regards to my daughter’s potentials. I am acknowledging your words in my daughter behalf. I know what you are saying. I know she deserve a place in Queens College. Mary deserve a place at Sin-Michaels Girls School, to say the least. But if she don’t get there, she will get somewhere else, praise God. She wants to take up needlework. And I promise her that I will try-my-best to buy a Singer sewing machine for her, ’pon time. Before I dead. One o’ these days, this lil girl, this Mary Gertrude Mathilda, Mary-girl, as I calls her, that you see stanning-up here this Saturday morning,..Well, one day, she will be living in one of the biggest houses in this Village, even on that Plantation! Even in the Great House, over there, then! Why not? She can dream, can’t she? Mark my word!’

  “‘What a day that going to be!’ Manny father say. ‘What a blasted good day!’

  “I live to see that prediction come to pass. I see the words your mother uttered that Saturday come true. Your mother, Ma, saw into the future, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda.

  “And now, here I am, too; with you. In this Great House. For the first time in my life, I sitting down in a real front-house! And though the circumstances isn’t what they could or should be, and isn’t the right ones I would have desired, they happen to be the circumstances the two o’ we are faced with. And a man have to throw the dice that are pass to him to play with . . . vap! nick! Throw a seven on the first throw, or crap out!”

  The large front-house is quiet now. Only her breathing can be heard. The smell of canes burnt in fires Saturday night rises stronger now that the wind comes from the direction of the North Field. There is also the fragrance of the lady-of-the-night and the smell of the furniture and the polish used by Gertrude on the mahogany chairs and tables.

  And the smell of food cooking.

  Sargeant tries to imagine what it is that Gertrude is cooking so late at night. And for whom. It could be roast pork. Or pork chops, dipped in meal-corn flour and seasoned deeply with fresh broad-leaf thyme, and cloves, frying in lard oil. Gertrude’s cooking cries out in the sizzling iron saucepan.

  He inhales and tries to distinguish the smell.

  It is chicken being fricasseed.

  It could be pork chops frying.

  It could be a joint o’ pork baking.

  It could be stew, Bimshire Stew, a mixture of fresh beef and fresh pork and fresh fine-leaf thyme, being boiled in the same pot, with onions . . . to be served with meal-corn cou-cou. But this is Sunday, and cou-cou is cooked and eaten piping-hot, on Saturday afternoons only . . . “You staying for dinner?” . . . his mind goes back to that Saturday in Manny’s father’s yard, with him in his khaki short pants patched in the seat in so many places with different colours and materials, so that it was difficult to know which colour or which material was the original the pants were made from, by the Village tailor; his legs stained with traces of pig’s blood; and his bare feet covered with the black shiny hairs that had been scalded off the body of the eighty-pound pig, with pails of boiling water; and then scraped off with a stone. It was a boar-hog . . . “Are you staying for dinner?”

  “I was trying to guess what your maid could be cooking, that smell so sweet?”

  “Well, why don’t you ca
ll her and find out?”

  “Me?”

  “Touch the bell, and she will come.”

  “So, this is how.”

  “I wonder when Wilberforce coming back?”

  “What the time is?” he says.

  “It getting late.”

  Sargeant rings the bell. It reminds him of that bell the Headmaster of his Elementary School rang at nine o’clock every morning to “summonse” the boys from their games in the schoolyard beside the Church wall that has graves behind it; and again, at eleven, to announce “ten minutes,” a break for water from the pipe in the schoolyard; or to pass water in the WC; and again at one minute to twelve noon, for lunch; and for the fourth time, at two in the afternoon, to announce the names of boys allowed to leave early to field tennis balls at the Garrison Savannah Lawn Tennis Club; or to water the flower gardens of the rich; and at three o’clock, the fifth and last time, when the afternoon is tired and humid, now to announce “School lay-by” and “Singing!”

  The entire school stands at attention. “Rule Britannia!” It is the end of the day. The last bell.

  All pupils are admonished to go straight home. “Now, go straight home, boys!” To doff their caps to strangers and adults. To make no noise on the way home. And the boys scamper out of the school like freed prisoners, after having recited the Lord’s Prayer; after singing “Rule Britannia” three times; after reciting “I Vow to Thee, My Country”; and then marching out from their benches and “desses.” The singing of “God Save the King” now ended, the photograph of King George-the-Fiff is saluted, as each boy reaches the door. A smart, swift wave of their black hands before their faces, as their bare feet pound the deal-board floors, marching as to war . . .