The Austin Clarke Library

by Austin Clarke

  The Court is large and sedate and with large windows covered in jalousies, to keep out the heat and the sun. The jalousies are painted green. Everything that belongs to the Government of the Island of Bimshire is painted green. Thick, deep, shiny green. Everything that is important in this Island is also painted green: the shutters of all the buildings on all the plantations; the eaves and the shutters on the windows of the Garrison Savannah Lawn Tennis Club, windows which hang out from the wall like sleepy eyelids; the windows of the pavilions of the First Eleven cricket clubs, and of the Aquatic Club; the windows of the Bimshire Club, whose verandah overlooks Broad Street, the main street in Town; on everything that is English and important is this green, shiny paint.

  On the walls of the High Court are portraits of all the preceding Chief Justices.

  A portrait of the King is on the wall behind the seat of the Chief Justice. This seat looks like a throne. It is high. It is made of stained wood. It has markings and images, like small sculptures of heads of beasts, ugly, prehistoric monsters that do not live in the Island of Bimshire; and a replica of the Goddess of Justice; and there is the head of a lion that is about to eat some small animal, or the nearest, careless human. The heads of gargoyles.

  Below this throne, upholstered in crimson velvet, are seats, on the left and on the right, for the two sides of the Court. Rex versus Accused. Crown versus Defendant. And long tables at which the solicitors and clerks and barristers and juniors of both sides to the argument are seated.

  All are dressed in the black of undertakers, white dress shirt stiff at the winged collar, white tie that is two twoinch wide strips of cotton, black silk jacket, black silk waistcoat and dark grey striped trousers, black shoes; wearing wigs which stand out against their natural hair, and their dark skins and white skins, or the reddened complexions, from sun and rum.

  They all look very intelligent and very sleepy; and very stern. Some look cruel.

  There is a railed, squared-off section, lower than the throne, in which sits the man, or the woman, before the Bar, “the Accused”— the condemned man or the condemned woman—“the Prisoner”; no one escapes lightly from the clutches of Sir Gerald’s encompassing, thorough knowledge of the Laws of Englund applied in classical pronouncement of the English language, straight from his head, to the lawlessness of Bimshire; and without looking into the pages of the huge leather-bound books, whose backs are carved with letters of gold print, and which sit on his desk, piled like cement blocks, to provide protection from the rabblement in his Court, or like huge domino seeds, as if these books of heavy jurisprudence and precedents are placed there to protect Sir G from contamination from the prisoner in the dock; no; no one escapes Sir G’s clutches.

  And in the balcony, or the Gallery, the few fortunate local, native historians of murder cases who will tell you, from memory, years afterwards, precisely which argument it was that swayed Sir G to don his black cap, the second the Foreman cries, “Guilty, sir!”; when Sir G will pronounce Judgement: “You shall be taken from this place, and conveyed to another place, where you shall be held until the day of reckoning come, thence, you shall be taken to the proper place, and hanged by your neck, until you are dead, dead, dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul; these historians, fortunate to be seated within hearing distance of argument and judgement, will stand afterwards in the Yard, under the berry trees and talk, and ignore the yellow sticky berries falling on their heads, will go on talking, reciting the heavy arguments made in Court; and will move from the Yard only when night falls, to the public Standpipe, under a street lamp, in a rum shop, and disclaim, almost word for word, the complicated citing of Law and legal precedents argued by the Solicitor-General, and Torts cited by the Defence, the Island’s leading Barristers-at-Law.

  The names, Christian and surname, including initials, of every barrister, law clerk, solicitor who represents Rex or Defendant— there are no women barristers—involved in any aspect of a murder case is known, by the second day, by the onlooking historians in the Gallery. His mother’s name, and his father’s name are already known. It is known on what day he was born; which elementary school he attended in which corner of the Island; and it is known “how he came” in the Secondary-to-Second-Grade examinations; in which year; what marks he got; and in which subjects in those examinations; and similarly, about the Senior-to-First-Grade exami- nations; and when he finishes either at Harrison College or the Lodge School, it will be known by these “members of the Gallery,” mostly men—and some women, too—that in Latin Distinction he reached Scholarship level; that in Greek he got a Distinction; that in Ancient History, likewise; and that “he went up,” afterwards, to Oxford—or Cambridge—and “lick’ all-them English-boys, and teached them Law!”; and “came back with a One-One!” First amongst all those in the University, and first of all those who got First Class Honours in Jurisprudence.

  To the last man, his credentials are known by the entire Gallery. They are known with the same ferocity of retention as cricket scores of batsmen from Englund, Australia, New Zealand and the Wessindies, are held in the memory, and spewed forth at the smallest challenge.

  It is a contest. There is no interest in the rightness or wrongness of a murder case. Nobody really cares whether “a woman kill a man; he was a worthless son-of-a-bitch, anyhow”; whether he deserved to have his head chopped off; and his “dickey” jammed into his mouth. No one standing in the Yard under the berries is concerned about the horribleness of a crime. Not really. They are here to hear legal argument. They are here to hear “talk.” They are here to hear Sir Gerald interject his wisdom, with humour and quotations from Shakespeare and from the Classics, Livy, Book XXI, and Virgil’s Aeneid, and Tacitus’ Histories; and listen to Sir G’s wit, “dry as a cassava-hat.” They are here as they would be in a cinema, watching a cowboy film that has the longest fight in it in the history of cowboy films.

  The words they will hear, words from the Latin, and with a generous sprinkling of words from Greek classical literature, and from Shakespeare, are words they would not hear every day in their neighbourhoods, on the beach, in the fish market, or at a cricket game on the Pasture, on a Saturday afternoon; but they will like these words, although they do not know Latin, or Greek; or would not have read too much Shakespeare, they will fall in love with these words; and make them their own, by repeating them, even when their usage is not exactly relevant, or exact. It does not matter. It is the word. And these men have always loved the word. And the sound of the word being spoken. For the word is God. And is like the Law. And like the Law, which is English, the word, too, is English. Yes. “Talk-yuh-talk! Yes!”

  “Muh-Lud, humbly I beg leave to proceed in my examination of the person before the Bar . . . Thank you, Muh-Lud.”

  It is more than play-play Court. More than Mute Court.

  “Now, I put it to you, did you, or did you not, depart your domicile on the night in question, and with malice aforethought, did you not in fact proceed at about thirtyfive minutes after six o’clock in the evening in question, on the thirteenth instant, going into a direction which alone of itself could only have brought you within the boundaries of the private property of the Plantation referred to in the Docket of Evidence before this Honourable Court; and did you not, by that trespass, intend to, and have motive, to carry out the dasterly act of which you are hereby charged? I put it to you, did you, or did you not?”

  One man leans closer to the man sitting beside him, and with a hand covering his mouth, whispers, “Words, man! Words.”

  “Too-sweet!” the man replies.

  . . . and she carries the hoe in her right hand, imitating the Lord Bishop with his Staff of Office, holding the end with the blade, pushing little pieces of paper out of her way, wondering how they got here in this subterranean passage; poking the holes in the masonry of the wall, with the handle of the hoe, and bringing down a small gust of white dust. She is holding the hoe with the care that its meaning would insist upon. She carries her ho
e with the aplomb and arrogance and dignity of the Bishop’s Staff. A staff of rank. Or like the polished African stick she saw an African walking with, in the London Illustrated News; and this is what it means to her now.

  Perhaps she is carrying it with this exaggerated importance and imagined symbolism because it has been with her for the same comparative length of time as the wishbone she had carried pinned into the hem of the tunic of her school uniform, when she was in Primer Standard—and later on, in her navy blue bloomers, when she went into a higher standard in Elementary School—for years, touching it during difficult moments in Geography, when it took her some time to remember the capital of Australia; and once, when the name of the highest mountain in India slipped her memory; once again, when she did not spell in time to suit her teacher, the name of the biggest river in Amurca . . . “M-eye-double-s, eye-double-s, eye-double-pee, eye! Mississippi, ma’am”; and that sad, rainy Friday afternoon in Scripture, when she could not remember what the First Commandment warned against doing. But she knew her wishbone was there, to help, in case of some serious problem.

  And it did come to her aid, on another afternoon, when her teacher Miss Blackett was hearing Standard Two in oral Mental Arithmetic: “Class, listen good! A breadfruit and a half cost a penny and a half, hommany breadfruits I will get for three cents?” She put up her hand high up in the air, indicating she knew the answer.

  “Well, Mary, then?” Miss Blackett said. “Yes?”

  “T’ree!”

  “Tree?” Miss Blackett said.

  “T’ree, ma’am! They cost t’ree cents!”

  “You bright as a new shilling, Mary-child!” Miss Blackett told her.

  And afterwards, the girls in her class branded her “the most brightest girl in the whole class, among all of we.”

  And Miss Blackett singled-her-out, for the balance of that week, telling the class, “Mary-girl is going far; far in life.”

  No, she did not forget much; not Mary; and she did not forgive much, either.

  Here she is, in her white dress that was so.Well pressed by Gertrude, which she wore at lunch one day ago now, the Sunday afternoon, sitting at the table covered by a lace cotton tablecloth that she herself had crocheted; the sterling service set precisely and in proper arrangement by Gertrude, whom she had trained in manners and in the art and etiquette of table setting. And at that time of Gertrude’s first engagement as a servant, Mr. Bellfeels would bring his friends to the Great House on Friday nights; and they would eat and laugh and sing bawdy songs and the Blues; and then play poker until all hours of the night, until the sun started to peep over the green cane fields the next morning; and she wanted so much at that time to please Mr. Bellfeels, and make Mr. Bellfeels look good in front of his friends; to be proud of her; and how she looked and contributed to his status, in the presence of his powerful friends: the Solicitor-General, the Vicar, the manager-owner of the Crane Beach Hotel, the Commissioner of Police and managers of the Aquatic Club and of Cave Shepherd & Sons, Haberdasheries, down in Town; and the Chief Justice, to make them like her; and on those merry nights, not always happy nights for her, a guest would wander into the kitchen where she was standing beside Gertrude, showing Gertrude how she wanted the edges cut off the enriched white bread, to make Fray Bentos corn beef sandwiches with, and cucumber sandwiches; and this guest would come up to them, ignoring Gertrude’s presence, and place his hand on Mary-Mathilda’s bottom, and squeeze her.Well-spread bottom, until it seemed his thumb met and touched his index finger, beneath her soft perfumed flesh; “Mary-girl, lemme feel-you-up a lil, girl, nuh? Yuh feel good, girl! Sweets! Thanks”; and in her pain and agony, caused as much by the suddenness of the assault as by the pain from it, Mary-Mathilda would not utter a sound, but would smile pleasantly, and remove the man’s hand. And Gertrude, who saw trouble setting up like rain, by the man’s approach, would of her own will, for the sake of self-preservation, leave the room. But Mary-Mathilda, in her silent disgust, masked her anger and her promise of vengeance in a blank visage as if she were sitting with them, at the table, poker-faced; clutching her wishbone, she wanted Gertrude to remain, and bear witness; to cause the guest to shorten his assault. “Looking good, and feeling more better, girl!”; and the guest would himself take the platter of corn beef and cucumber sandwiches, and another of fish cakes, covered with a damp linen cloth, with him back into the front-house, for the other men to devour.

  In all these times, she hosted these parties, which could not be held in the Main House, because Mistress Bellfeels, his wife, disapproved of his gambling, and of his friends. She herself told Mary-Mathilda on the one occasion that they spoke, Mary-Mathilda, telling her, “Mary, for too long I have endured his crude manners, and the uncivilized behaviour of those men. It’s despicable, the way those men treat women, including me, and in front of my girls!” And Mistress Bellfeels added, “I hope that for your sake, Mary, you will never be exposed to their lawlessness.” This was soon after Wilberforce won the Bimshire Scholarship in Classics; when the Plantation and the Village were rejoicing; and everybody was friendly. But Mary-Mathilda did not have the same legitimate excuse as Mistress Bellfeels. She was not the Mistress. She was plain Mary. Mary Gertrude Mathilda. Not Mistress Mary-Mathilda Bellfeels.

  One night Mr. Bellfeels himself came into the kitchen.

  “Give we a minute,” he said to Gertrude.

  Gertrude took off her apron; wiped the sweat on her face with it; the oven was filled with joints of pork, to be served in a few minutes, so she checked the pork in the oven first; and then left. The back door slammed two times, and then it became very quiet, and Mary-Mathilda thought she could hear Gertrude’s bare feet striking the cement steps that led into the yard, and then moving over the wet grass; and she could picture Gertrude standing beside the garden bed that held the Rachelle Rose; and it was at that moment, hearing Gertrude’s retreating footsteps, that Mr. Bellfeels came right up to her, beside the large iron oven, giving off the smell of delicious pork and heat; and raised her dress, lifting the delicate white sea-island cotton material from her ankles up her shins, past her thighs, over her waist, exposing her.Well-shaped legs and round belly with the sunken navel, tearing apart the cord of her short delicate camisole . . . and when the minute was up, he told her, “Tell Gertrude she could come-back-in.” And he returned to the poker game; and she heard him laugh, with a deep-throated joviality; and then she heard his voice say, “I raise two hundred!” She did not know the poker game of Five Card Stud.

  Standing beside the hot iron stove, she heard the other men laugh; and Sir G’s voice speaking in a foreign language; in Latin: “Missus Hannibal in Hispaniam adventus primo statim adventus omnem exercitum in se convertit; Hamilcarem iuvenem vigorem in vultu vimque in occulis, habitum oris lineamentoque intueri.”

  “. . . and I see that you still remember yuh Six-Form Latin, eh, Judge Jeffreys!” she heard the Vicar say to Sir G.

  The laughter in the front-house rose like fresh waves hitting against the rocks at the Crane Beach Hotel.

  “Bellfeelus nec temere credendum nec asperandum ratus,” Sir G. then said.

  “Oh God, oh-God!” the men screamed.

  “Sweet-sweet!” the Vicar said. “Too-sweet!”

  And the men roared. She could hear the ring of glasses tipped against one another, and the rattling of ice in the glasses, as the men toasted Sir G’s versatility and application of Livy, Book XXI to Mr. Bellfeels’ situation. They had all—except Mr. Bellfeels—studied this book in various Forms at Harrison College, or the Lodge School; most of them, however, had forgotten the passage . . .

  It was a warm feeling. And some of this warmth, whether of anger or of passion, she could feel in her face, in the area round her neck, as she touched herself there, the way she does when she touches her neck with the back of her hand, checking her temperature for fever.

  She did not, at this time, put her life under strict scrutiny, nor did she bend her behaviour under the critical eye of self-r
eproach and doubt. Years after this, after the riotous nights, when Mr. Bellfeels visited, as a parent and as paramour; on Saturday nights when he played the piano, and the three of them, father, son and son’s mother, sang and danced to the beautiful songs from the Amurcan South, songs she later came to know were Negro spirituals and Negro blues and Negro minstrels and Negro gospel music, she would throw her head back and laugh, and spin little Wilberforce, no more than five or six years old then, round and round, and watch his body flailing round, out from her own body, as if he was a merry-go-round; and his head would be thrown back in abandon, in security, in confidence that the woman holding his two hands, his mother, was not so reckless as to release her grip on his hands, in that merry turning world, in the security of the Plantation, in the front-house; and she would laugh as she swung him, and laugh as she heard the tantalizing yet mellow songs which Mr. Bellfeels told her were sung by “Nig-groes,” and by slaves; and she had no thought nor feeling for those Negroes and those slaves; for she was in Bimshire, in this solidly built Great House, square and tough, two storeys high, whose walls were built thick and redoubtable, “like a brick shithouse,” Mr. Lawrence Burkhart the Driver said; just like the walls of His Majesty’s Prison at Glandairy, or Dodds Reformatory for Boys; like the Sin-Anne’s Fort, near the Garrison Savannah, something like the toughness of the walls of Troy which the Greeks could not penetrate by force of arms, or catapults; this Great House, as it is called by everyone, standing, it seems, since time began; for it has been here, like a curse, like a smile, like an insult in the face, from the time people came to live and work on the Plantation; so, in this circle of love, and wealth, and sensuality, and violence and raw unadorned sex, Mary Gertrude Mathilda Paul (taking her mother’s maiden name) made her life with her only surviving child, Wilberforce, whom she worshipped from the time the midwife told her, “This one going-live, this time, darling!”; while the child’s father, Mr. Bellfeels, provided the means of her elevated status, condoned, though circumscribed, in his social circle; and he maintained her livelihood, servants to cook her food, servants to wash up afterwards; servants to wash her clothes; maids to iron her clothes and keep the house clean, and sew the blinds when they got ripped by hurricane winds, and darn the shirts Wilberforce wore to Harrison College, and iron the doilies and clean the cushions; and a boy to sweep the yard, and “mind the stocks,” and a girl to run easy errands. But when she got accustomed to this help, and realized that her servants ate more than they worked for in wages, she asked Mr. Bellfeels if she could dismiss all but Gertrude; and he surprised her, and said, “Man-yes! They does-only-thief the fecking food! I did-waiting to see how long before you catch on!”; and so she kept Gertrude. She loved Gertrude, and did not treat her as a servant: she assisted Gertrude in the kitchen, and round the house.