What Was Promised

by Tobias Hill

  ‘Yeah,’ Sybil says, ‘so you going to let me in or what?’

  She follows him up. The building never seems to change, and the flat, too, is much as she always remembers it; underlit, smelling of mice, bare as if untenanted.

  He sits by her while she cooks. From somewhere – Jem or the dole office – he has a crossword over which to grumble. ‘Neville was the one with a head for these things.’

  ‘No one making you do it. No one making you do anything,’ she says, sterner than she feels. At least he’s sitting, and without drinking. On the worst days he lets her in, goes back to bed and waits until she’s gone.

  She fries potatoes, lights the oven. ‘You get that from Jem?’

  ‘He came by some time.’

  ‘He still with that girl?’

  Clarence bends over the crossword, meek and gigantic. ‘No one asking you to like her,’ he says, and Sybil laughs, bitter and easy.

  ‘They wasting time if they trying. Do you?’

  He hides in the puzzle again. ‘Do you?’ she persists, and he sighs.

  ‘The way I remember she was a good child. Not like her old man. Never cold. Besides, Jem don’t bring her here. It isn’t any of our business.’

  She turns potatoes, cracks eggs, shirrs them. Whose business, if it isn’t ours? she thinks, but she keeps her mouth shut. She has said enough and heard enough of Florence Lockhart: talking will only spur her anger.

  ‘How’s that work? They treating you right?’ Dad asks, and Sybil relents.

  ‘This man came in today looking for the holiday of a lifetime. Wants to know all about Jamaica.’

  ‘Better lifetime here,’ Dad says, refractory and loyal always to the mother country, and fetches salt as Sybil brings the food to table.

  After they’re done she washes and dusts. There’s one bottle in the cupboard and she leaves it where it is. It will do no good to take it. ‘Maybe something on the wireless,’ he calls, and she puts it on. The cricket has been rained off but they’re talking it over anyway. Clarence sits in the lounge, half listening, half watching her. The lino is worn patternless in a patch around his feet.

  ‘You look like her just then,’ he says.

  ‘Sweeping up after you?’ she asks, but he smiles, shakes his head.

  ‘Talking about that girl.’

  ‘You look like an old man,’ she says, straightening, ‘And you ain’t. How old are you?’

  ‘If you don’t know I don’t.’

  ‘You’re not old,’ she says, and goes to him, kisses him.

  *

  Sydney. It’s one of those names that no one calls kids anymore. Sydney has gone bad with time. It smells of old men, of rooms where someone in the corner goes on about the war like a vicar with a dog-eared sermon. It’s an old name, and old means poor. Sydney is someone born into another time, a place of jam tomorrow and tomorrow never coming.

  He doesn’t come back for two days. Trudi wonders if they’ve seen the last of him, but Sybil has no doubt. She thinks, He’s summoning his courage. It’ll be easier next time. He was afraid before, scared of sitting down and saying something to my face, but now he’s done it once and that’s why he’ll be back, because the worst is over with.

  She thinks, It’s me that he’s afraid of. There’s no sense in that. It’s me he fears and wants to see, and why? Why do I matter to a stranger? You should run a mile, girl, you shouldn’t mean a thing to him. You shouldn’t talk to him again, she thinks; but she knows she will.

  She wants the measure of him. It vexes her to have no answers. She isn’t scared of him. Sybil prides herself on fearlessness, and he isn’t some dirty old man – whatever Trudi says – or not just that. There’s always sex, but it’s more than that with him. It was more like family, the way she found herself talking. For all his awkwardness she found herself at ease with him. And she’d never tell Trudi, but she might even fancy him, enough at least not to kick him out of bed, if it ever came to that. He’s alright looking, though she has Tony to remind her that looks aren’t everything.

  It’s Thursday noon and busy. Sybil is making calls when Phyllis stops beside her. Phyllis is the office gossip, a sponger of pleasure and grief. ‘Don’t look now, dear,’ she murmurs, and lingers as Sybil does.

  Sydney is in the queue. It’s almost funny, watching him. He’s at the front, but each time a salesgirl comes free he stands aside, letting another in before him. He peers Sybil’s way in cornered exasperation.

  ‘Would you like me –’ Phyllis begins, but Sybil cuts her off, fobs off the voice on the phone, and is hanging up as Sydney seats himself.

  ‘Hello,’ she smiles. ‘I was wondering when I’d see you again.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ he says, and she thinks, No you weren’t, Sydney. You did all your thinking before. It was nerve you needed and you must have found it somewhere, because here you are.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’d like to do it. What you said.’

  ‘The trip of a lifetime, you mean.’

  ‘No. Well, yes. I mean Jamaica.’

  They sit looking at one another. She hasn’t been speaking the way you should with customers. Her voice and look are franker, more clandestine, more cautious. Why cautious? Because whatever’s happening here matters, she thinks, and I still don’t understand why.

  ‘Sydney,’ she says, ‘if all you want is flying, you don’t have to go far. It costs, you see what I’m saying?’

  ‘Oh, I have money,’ he says, and reaching into his coat he brings out a brown envelope, fattened, misshapen. He sets it on the desk carefully, as if its freight is new to him. ‘I’ve been saving,’ he says.

  ‘Put that away,’ she says, and he does while she gets out the forms, the necessary triplicate. She feeds the typewriter. ‘Montego Bay or Kingston?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he says. ‘You decide.’

  ‘Montego, then. You’ll want somewhere to stay, as well.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought,’ he says, and she laughs.

  ‘You planning to sleep on the beach? And you need to give me dates.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘You might choose.’

  ‘Sydney, I can’t do it all for you,’ Sybil says. ‘You got to decide these things for yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d like two tickets.’

  ‘For your wife?’ she asks, though the question makes no sense: she knows there is no wife for a man like Sydney.

  ‘For you,’ he says, wretchedly.

  He doesn’t meet her gaze. He has dropped his head again. Later she’s glad of that. She must have looked so thick just then. And she was angry with him, too. She thought he was playing with her, being cruel with her, and her look must have been vicious.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’d like to do something for you.’

  ‘Why?’ she asks, and when he doesn’t reply, ‘I don’t need charity. You don’t owe me nothing. You don’t even know me.’

  ‘Please don’t shout,’ he says, and Sybil hears that she is. Everyone is looking. She bunches her hands and shuts herself up until they all go back to their own shop-soiled businesses.

  ‘You don’t know me!’ she hisses again, but all he does is shrug.

  ‘Hardly. Even so.’

  She thinks, I had him wrong. He isn’t a nothing man. There’s something about him, under the skin. There’s something in him you don’t see or hear, a strength and intelligence. She thinks, Girl, he’s brave as you are. He comes from somewhere dark and goes along on his own way, like water underground, and there’s no stopping him.

  ‘I ain’t going with you,’ she says, and he looks up.

  ‘I don’t mind. It can be just you.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t mind, really,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to see it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You made it sound nice. But I can stay here.’

  For a long time, then, she stares at him. He doesn’t like it, he fl
inches and fidgets. He puts up with it for as long as he can, then says, ‘I’m not asking for anything. It’s a gift. I want to do it.’

  ‘Flying me halfway around the world. You want to do that.’

  ‘If it’s what you’d like. I thought perhaps you would.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘I might be,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t say.’

  She looks at the triplicate. Where it says Route she has entered a flight path’s cipher, BOAC-Cunard 707, LHR-JFK-MBJ. Passengers, is the next open question. Sybil aligns the page, hovers, types, 2.

  No one believes her, obviously. ‘I don’t believe you!’ Trudi cries, but she’s happy, of course she is – Sybil always knew – to have Tony to herself.

  ‘I don’t believe what I am hearing,’ Clarence roars, slapping his long thighs with his long hands – and it’s not the kind of thing he says, it’s something Neville might have said, but she’s glad he roars it all the same, just to see the light in his eyes, to hear him thundering.

  ‘What is it, then,’ Trudi asks, ‘some kind of honeymoon? What is he, your sugar daddy in mufti?’

  ‘Piss off,’ Sybil says. ‘You telling me you’d say no?’

  Pssh, goes Trudi. ‘You wouldn’t see me for dust, love. Lie back and think of England and never see London again, I wouldn’t need asking twice. I just can’t believe it, him walking in, you saying yes. It’d be romantic if he was normal. You’ll look after yourself, won’t you? You never know, with men.’

  ‘You’re away, then, I hear,’ Tony says, but he believes her even less. His eyes are still laughing as she packs what little she doesn’t mean to leave behind, the tickets in her Bible, pressed between prophets like flowers. You’ll be back, the eyes say. There’s no escape for the likes of you.

  ‘So you leaving us,’ Clarence says, and this second time he has Jem there, the three of them around the table, now loud and hard, now soft and tender, like drinkers at a wake. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I never said that,’ she says. ‘Anyway, you left.’

  ‘That was different. I was coming here. We was coming to a better place.’

  ‘Is that what you call it? This?’

  ‘You don’t know. You was better off raised here. I blame Neville, always with his stories. You belong here.’

  ‘How come you know that, if I don’t?’

  ‘So how come you don’t? You don’t know worse than this, that’s why. You could show your parents some gratitude. And who is this fellow? Who is this Sydney? He should be sitting here at my table with his cap in his hand.’

  ‘He’s just a bloke,’ Sybil says. ‘He won’t be no trouble. Look, I’m not going for him.’

  ‘Dad,’ Jem says, ‘it’s just a holiday,’ but none of them believe it. Clarence’s hands are shaking.

  ‘Is that all it is? Sybil? You tell it to my face.’

  ‘Stop laying it on me like it’s something bad! Accusing me. I’m not planning on never seeing you again. It’s not like I’m going off to war. I’ve got this one chance, you want me to turn it down? You think I won’t regret it? This is what I’ve always wanted, don’t pretend like you don’t remember. You’re not changing my mind.’

  They nurse their drinks like wrongs. Dad shakes his head, he sighs. ‘You need money?’

  ‘No,’ Sybil says, and then, reluctantly, ‘I might need something.’

  Mrs S. Jarrett,

  Highland House, Lucea Road,

  Glasgow,

  Westmoreland,

  Jamaica.

  Saturday 21st September 1968

  Dear Madam,

  Please excuse my writing unexpectedly. My name is Sybil Malcolm. My mother was Bernadette, your daughter.

  My father (Clarence) says you know you have a granddaughter as my mother wrote it to you. I don’t know what else you could know. I am 19 years old now. I am sorry to say I don’t know too much about you. When I was little, my uncle (Neville) used to talk about you often, but that was a long time ago and I suppose things have changed. My father doesn’t talk about you except to give me this address which I hope is still correct so this will reach you.

  I am writing because I have been given a chance to visit Jamaica. I leave here this Thursday and by the time you get this I expect I will be in Montego Bay. I don’t mean to impose on you, but if you would see me I would like that. I will be in touch as best I can,

  Yours sincerely,

  Sybil Malcolm.

  The truth is she doesn’t believe herself. Even at the post office, sending airmail to an old woman who may be in her grave, and counting out seven and six for her Visitors Passport, and then saying her last goodbyes, and waiting for the shuttle bus at the West London Air Terminal; even as she and Sydney Marsh advance awkward and inchmeal down the cabin, the passengers around them all dressed as if for dinner – all the time it’s as if she’s walking on water.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this. As if it hasn’t been said enough she is about to whisper it again when they breast the clouds. ‘Oh,’ she says instead, ‘Sydney, look. Aren’t they beautiful?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sydney murmurs, and Sybil remembers what he said about flying.

  ‘Do you want to sit by the window?’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘no,’ but his eyes still creep back to the unearthly plains and tors that now stretch like Heaven below them. ‘Could I?’

  ‘Course. Here,’ she says, and as the light goes off (the stewardess announcing that they may smoke if they wish, that soon they shall be served cocktails and lunch and afternoon tea), they clamber out of their places, over and around the aggrieved stranger in the aisle seat, who seems to Sybil much less strange than either of them are themselves.

  They leave at noon and arrive as sunset catches up with them. Sydney is sleeping. Sybil watches over him as they swing across the bay. A headland, dirty wharves, a market square. The lights of paradise coming on along the strip. White sand, green sea, and inland in the distance, mountains, dark and rising.

  ‘First time, Miss?’ asks the customs man, and Sybil allows that it is, disliking the gaze which weighs and measures her. ‘Visiting family?’

  ‘I might,’ she says, and he raises an indulgent brow.

  ‘Long way to come for might,’ he says, and waves her on into the twilight.

  Sydney is out ahead of her. Other arrivals part around him, trailing after porters, exclaiming at the heat and tugging at their ties. Sydney’s eyes are closed. ‘What are you doing?’ Sybil asks.

  ‘Smelling. It smells different.’

  She stands beside him, shuts her eyes, smiling. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘alright.’

  ‘The dust is made from different things.’

  ‘Now you’re too mad for me. Come on.’

  Sydney sighs. He opens his eyes like a hampered anchorite. The road is lined with flowering trees and rental lots, Avis, Chelsea, Dullum’s U-Drive. A jet ascends out of the dusk into red light: Sydney’s gaze follows it. ‘Perhaps we could stay here,’ he says, and Sybil has to laugh.

  ‘Sydney, this is just the airport! You come all this way, you don’t want to see what else there is?’

  ‘I don’t know. This is very nice.’

  ‘But I’ve got family. We should go and stay with them.’

  ‘In the town where your mother was born.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it far?’

  But Sybil doesn’t know, their leaving having thrown all planning into disarray. They have to stop at Information, where a winning-smiled boy issues them with a map (Courtesy of ESSO, for the more Discerning Driver) and hunts with them for Glasgow, a pinpoint at a three-way crossroads, and not so far as the crow flies, south-west across inlets and mountains.

  It’s only on the off chance that she asks for the island phonebook. In her dreams there are no telephones in Glasgow, nothing new to break its timeless spell; but her dreams are old and suspect, and there are three listings after all, for the P.O., the police, the inspector of sanitation.

 
‘Good night?’

  ‘Hello? Is that Glasgow post office?’

  ‘What time it is?’

  ‘Sorry? I can’t –’

  ‘You too late, dear, we closed.’

  ‘I don’t want – wait – hello? I’m just looking for a Mrs Jarrett.’

  ‘A who you say?’

  ‘Jarrett. Is she still . . . do you know a Mrs Jarrett?’

  ‘Surely.’

  ‘So she still lives there? In Glasgow?’

  ‘Man was in yesterday.’

  ‘I need to get a message to her. Can you help me? I need to let her know I’m coming. This is her granddaughter. Her granddaughter, Sybil Malcolm. I’ve come from London, England. I wrote to let her know. Hello?’

  ‘I’m still here, child.’

  ‘I’ll be there tomorrow, afternoon or evening. Could you tell her?’

  ‘I’ll send up word.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’

  ‘Never you mind, she’ll hear of it.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Walk good,’ the voice says, and is gone.

  They rent a car. Sybil drives. Montego Bay is coming alive with evening crowds, Yellowbird and Sundowner picked out in neon above them. The first hotels are plush, all red carpets and uplit fountains, and Sybil and Sydney pass them by in silent agreement. For want of a plan they have nowhere booked.

  The sea opens alongside them. The moon is rising. Sybil draws in under the palms. ‘Look at the beach.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Want to get out?’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘We can do anything,’ she says, but still their voices are no more than church whispers as they leave the car behind, as Sybil kicks off her shoes and wades through sand and surf while Sydney sits and watches. To him she becomes a moonlit silhouette, her progress slow and dancelike. He doesn’t see her face when she looks up at him and smiles.

  Afterwards they eat. Sybil drinks. Around them Americans order daiquiris and doubloons. The breeze is cooler now: it catches the rich foreign laughter and carries it out to sea.

  ‘Sydney Marsh,’ Sybil says, and he looks up at his name and down from her gaze. ‘Who are you? Where did you come from?’