Jane said, “Sandwiches?”
Adela bunched her lips and knitted her brow, buttering now with the air of someone too busy to waste time on idle talk.
Jane recognized Adela’s explosive mood and said no more. She drank a tumbler of cold water—there were four bottles in the refrigerator to see them through the waterless afternoon—and went back to her shuttered room. There she began to think. The electricity might fail. No electricity, no water, no refrigerator, no lights, no cooking: sandwiches for the long siege. Would they eat all those sandwiches? Would the sandwiches keep? She remembered what Harry had said about food, and she became dismayed. She went out into the passage and saw Roche. He had been to the kitchen and had seen what Jane had seen; he too was dismayed.
He said, “It looks as though we’re losing some of our rations.”
Jane went to the kitchen and said, “You’ve made a lot of sandwiches, Adela.”
Adela said, “I taking it down to the station.”
The station: the police station. Jane could say nothing. She stood by, watching and not interfering, while Adela, still with knitted brow, and still with deft hands, lined two wickerwork shopping baskets with a damp cloth, packed the sandwiches in, covered them with another damp cloth, and then knotted the bundle within each basket.
Feeding the warriors, the protectors. Where had Adela acquired this knowledge? She behaved as though she had been through crises like this before, as though, at times like this, certain things had to be done, as certain things had to be done when a baby was born or when someone died. She hadn’t asked for permission to prepare the sandwiches; she hadn’t asked for help. And when she was ready she didn’t ask for a lift. She hooked the baskets on her sturdy arms; and Jane watched her stride down the drive to the gate, brisk in the sun, her shadow dancing, looking like a nurse in her white uniform, which dazzled. It was oddly reassuring.
The sun was now falling on the front of the house, on the concrete wall and the louvers and the sealed glass of the picture window. It was time to open the back door, which had been closed after lunch to keep out the glare. When Jane opened the door she saw the shadow of the house was just covering the porch; and she sat in one of the metal chairs, still warm, and waited for Adela to return. The silent city burned in four or five places now. The smoke from the first fire was still black, but less dense.
Then she saw the plane. She had heard nothing. It was the faint brown smoke trail, rapidly vanishing, that led her eye to the plane climbing above the airport and away from the city.
She stayed where she was, in the metal chair, and watched the shadow of the house move down the slope of the back garden. She saw the heat waves disappear and felt the porch and the ground about the porch grow cool. She heard Adela come back. She had been waiting for Adela, for the reassurance of her presence, for the life she would give to the house, which she knew better than Jane or Roche and treated with a respect she withheld from them. She had also been waiting for Adela’s news. But she didn’t go to see Adela. She remained in her chair, and Adela didn’t come out to her.
She heard Roche moving restlessly about the house. But he too didn’t come out to the porch. She heard him talking to Adela and attempting in his polite and roundabout way to get some news from her. Adela’s tone was abrupt and sour; and though later Roche succeeded in getting her to talk, her words were not easy to follow and Jane didn’t listen.
The sunlight yellowed. The shadow of the house spread further down the garden slope. The light turned amber and gave a richness to the choked soft growth of Bermuda grass against the retaining wall, where the grass seed had been washed down, during the now distant time of the rains, from the clay of the front and back lawns: thin blanched stalks of grass, pale green at the tips and browning toward the roots. The amber light deepened and fleetingly the garden and the dusty brown vegetation of the hill glowed.
She heard the telephone ring. She didn’t get up. Roche answered; she heard him talking to Harry; she closed her mind to his words.
The amber light died. The city remained silent. Below the splendor of the early evening sky the city and the sea went dark and the fires in the city were little patches of glow. They became dimmer when the electric lights came on. Yet occasionally, in a brightening glow, the movement of black smoke could be seen. It became cold on the porch. The fluorescent light began to jump in the kitchen and then the blue-white light fell on the back lawn and melted away into the darkness of the sloping garden. Jane heard a tap running in the kitchen. Water. She got up at last, to go inside. She was thinking: After this, I’ll live alone.
Throughout the evening that resolution, which was like a new comfort, was with her. It was with her in the morning: the silence continuing, a strain now, the lawn wet again, the metal chairs on the porch wet, the fires in the city thinner, less black, seemingly almost burnt out.
Her calm did not break through all the routine of Tuesday morning: Adela’s bedroom noises and radio program, the BBC news, breakfast. Her calm came to an end, and for the first time during the crisis she knew panic when, lunchtime past, with no call from Adela, she left her louvered room and looked for Adela and couldn’t find her. The back door was open: the brick porch baked.
Without Adela the house was empty. Adela had been the link for the last day and a half between Roche and herself. Without Adela the house had no meaning. Jane could feel the thinness of its walls, the brittleness of the louvers, the breakability of its glass, the exposed position of the house on the Ridge. So that even in the dark of her bedroom she no longer felt protected or confined. That was where she stayed, waiting for Adela through all the heat of the afternoon, through fantasies of bigger fires starting in the city, around the squarer, taller buildings that rose above the brown tufts of trees in the main park. She waited until sunset. And when the telephone rang she hurried to the warm sitting room to answer it.
It was Harry, telephoning for the second time that day.
He said, “It’s bad, girl. They say the police cracking up. Guys taking off their uniforms and running away. But I don’t know. The police are still at our station. And Joseph is still taking food down there.”
“Oh, is Joseph taking food too?” And Jane realized, from the difficulty she had in getting out those words, that she hadn’t spoken for twenty-four hours.
“Marie-Thérèse telephone him,” Harry said. “Is what everybody around here doing.”
Jane said, “Adela took some sandwiches down.”
“I don’t see how you can blame the police. They don’t know who they fighting or who they fighting for. Everybody down there is a leader now. I hear there isn’t even a government. You hear about Meredith? He went out braver-danger, you know, to try to talk to them. They chase him.”
“Meredith can look after himself.”
“Well, I suppose you right, child.”
“How is Marie-Thérèse?”
“She’s all right. She’s telephoning all the time. I don’t know what she’s saying to Joseph, but he is keeping very cool.”
“Adela has left us.”
“Jane.”
“She left this midday.”
“She’s probably just gone for a little stroll. With all the excitement, nuh, she’s probably deciding to put first things first. She’s probably got some little thing going down the gully somewhere.”
“She’s taken her transistor.”
“Well, child, I don’t know whether you lucky or unlucky. I don’t know whether I should ask you to come over here for the night. Or whether I should be coming to you. To tell you the truth, I am not too happy living alone in this house with Joseph.”
When she put down the telephone, there was again the silence. Time had jumped: it was night. The lights had come on, but not everywhere. Parts of the city remained in darkness. The irregular shapes of the lit-up areas, linked sometimes by the white lights of main roads, created an odd pattern, as of something seen under a microscope. The smoldering rubbish dump glowed faintly
in the darkness that surrounded it. In the dark areas of the city itself there were about half a dozen fires. Abruptly sometimes a fire glowed and lit up the smoke that rose from it; then the glow faded and the smoke was hard to see.
. . .
EARLY IN the morning Harry came. Jane had not been long on the back porch—the sea glassy, the smoke from last night’s fires in the city white and thin, the newspaper Roche had left out on the metal table on the porch sodden with dew (one of the things that infuriated Adela)—when she heard the car idling at the front gate and then driving in. She walked round to the front lawn. Harry had parked in the drive and was closing the gate.
He made it seem like a Sunday. He was dressed as for his beach house, in his fringed knee-length shorts and a long-sleeved jersey with a high neck, for his asthma. His white canvas shoes made his feet look very big and busy as he walked across the wet lawn.
Jane was glad to see him, but after greeting him she found it hard to speak. They went around the house to the back porch and passed through to the kitchen. Roche was there. He ignored Jane; he looked strained, distressed. But he was as anxious as Jane to claim Harry; and Harry seemed to hesitate before the warmth, and near wordlessness, of their welcome.
The right-hand pocket of Harry’s tight shorts bulged.
Roche said, “I hope that thing isn’t loaded.”
“No, man. I don’t want to blow my balls off—excuse me, Jane. I’m just hiding it from Joseph.” He took out the revolver and showed it, and they all sat down at the breakfast table. “It used to belong to my father.”
Jane plugged the kettle in. “Have you ever used it?”
“Not me. And I don’t know whether my father ever used it. It resemble him a little bit. He was about five foot high, with a temper to match. It looks a damn unreliable little thing, you don’t find? I feel the only person you would damage with this would be yourself.” He tucked the revolver back in his pocket and said, “But it’s so damn peaceful up here, man. So peaceful. Adela come back?”
Jane said, “I haven’t heard her.”
Harry pushed the revolver deeper into his pocket. He said, “You know, we used to laugh at the old people. And they had their funny little ways. But they were damn right about certain things. My father never employed anybody he couldn’t beat with his own two hands. He used to say to me, ‘Harry, if you’re employing anybody who is going to be close to you in the house or in the office, forget about qualifications and recommendations. Worry about that last. The first question to ask yourself is: “Should the occasion arise, would I be able to bust this man’s arse?” ’ Nowadays they’re sending people up to the States to do diplomas in personnel management and that kind of nonsense. The only personnel management you have to study is whether you could bust the feller’s arse. It’s not funny, Jane. You hear me talking like this now. And you know what? I got that big, hulking, hard-back nigger man walking about my house and yard. I am telling you, Jane. I am frightened to say good morning to Joseph.”
Jane brewed instant coffee in the heavy company cups. She said, “But, Harry, your asthma. It’s gone.”
“Well, girl, is as they say. Fire drive out fire.”
Roche said, “Does anybody know what is happening?”
Harry said, “I don’t think so. I don’t think anybody knows what is happening with the police down there. I don’t think even our local police people know. They’re just sitting tight and eating our food.”
“What about Jimmy?” Roche said. “Any more about him?”
“Jimmy kinda drop out of the news. At first it was all Jimmy Ahmed and the Arrow of Peace. Now you hearing about all kinds of guys popping up everywhere. Peter, tell me. Before Sunday, did you ever hear about the Arrow of Peace? How did I miss a thing like that?”
“I’m the last person to ask. I miss everything. I never thought Jimmy had it in him to start anything like that. I always thought that Jimmy was the kind of man who would disappear at the first sign of trouble.”
“That’s probably what he’s done. Events move too fast for him. And for Meredith too. The two of them wanted to play bad-John, and the two of them get licked down.”
Roche said, smiling, “Meredith was certainly planning something more long-term.”
Harry said, “A child could have told Meredith that they were calling him back to the government just to throw him to the crowd. You see how a man can destroy his life in two days. They did terrible things to Meredith. Joseph was telling me. They strip him naked. Joseph say somebody even put a knife to the man’s balls—excuse me, Jane. Then they give him a piece of palm branch and make him run for his life. You see the kind of thoughts that can get in those people’s head? And Meredith is one of them. He will have to hide now, you know. He can’t live here after this. The place is too small.”
Roche said, “I wanted to telephone Jimmy. I even went to the telephone once or twice. But I changed my mind.”
“Like me and Meredith. I don’t know what to do. I want to show some kind of solidarity with the guy, but I don’t know what the hell I can telephone him and say. And then I don’t even know whether half I hear about him is even true.”
Jane said, “You can telephone him and congratulate him on being a minister.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “You can say that Merry looked for what he got.”
Jane said, “Did you see the airplane on Monday afternoon?”
“Girl, I can’t tell you the stories. If everybody who they say leave was on that plane, the damn thing wouldn’t have got off the ground.”
Roche said, “It isn’t only Mrs. Grandlieu who can’t get to the airport.”
Jane ignored this. She said to Harry, “But the place just can’t stay like this. It can’t just turn into a great ripe cheese.”
Roche looked at her. He said, “Why not?” It was the first time he had spoken to her for two days, and the words held all his secreted rage.
Jane continued to look at Harry. Her eyes went moist; she took the coffee cup to her lips and held it there.
Harry, responding to Jane’s eyes, and then looking away, began talking, softly at first, and slowly. He said, “Those guys down there don’t know what they’re doing. All this talk of independence, but they don’t really believe that times have changed. They still feel they’re just taking a chance, and that when the show is over somebody is going to go down there and start dishing out licks. And they half want it to be over, you know. They would go crazy if somebody tell them that this time nobody might be going down to dish out licks and pick up the pieces.”
Jane looked at Harry while he spoke. Roche saw the look in her eyes: the violated. His anger grew again.
Roche said, almost shouted, “They know what they’re doing. They’re pulling the place down.”
Harry said uneasily, “All right, boss.”
Jane said, still looking at Harry, “So what are we to do?’ ”
Harry said, “What are we to do? Nothing. We can only sit tight and wait.”
Roche, looking between them, addressing neither of them, said, “The world isn’t what it was. So it must go up in flames.”
Harry stood up. “Jane, I want to make a telephone call.”
She said, “You can use the one in the sitting room.”
“No, it’s nothing private. I’ll use the one here.”
He went to the wall telephone near the door that opened into the garage, and he began to dial.
Roche leaned across the white breakfast table and brought his face close to Jane’s. She saw a face of pure hatred: the face whose existence she had intuited ever since that day when, too late, already committed to him and this adventure, she had seen him grin and had seen his long, black-rooted molars.
He said violently, “Yes, it’s going up in flames. But it’s taking you with it.”
Harry said into the telephone, “Bertie. Harry.”
Jane caught Harry’s pronunciation of his name: she understood now that he pronounced it Hah-ree when he us
ed the name by itself, without his surname.
“But, Bertie, you’re like the Scarlet Pimpernel these days. How you liking the little excitement? … Still, I glad I catch you. Bertie, what the hell is happening? Your paper is telling me nothing. The damn thing is more like a crossword puzzle these days. Clues down and across all over the place. You saving up the solution for next week? … I understand … I understand the position.… But that is damn good news, man. If it is true.… Well, stick in a little something for us too, nuh … I don’t know. I hear some people talking about vigilante patrols.… I agree with you, Bertie. We don’t want to be provocative neither. To tell you the truth, I was thinking more of something like Ridge Residents Starve Dogs. I think there may be one or two guys down there who ought to be informed that the dogs up here haven’t fed since Sunday … no big fuss, but don’t lose it in the paper. Page one or page two, nuh … I wouldn’t say it is too obscure. It is a fairly straight message to whom it may concern. And is a nice little story too, I think.… All right, Bertie-boy. I’ll be reading the paper tomorrow please God.… ‘Please God’? Yes, man, these days we all start talking like the old people.”
He came back to the breakfast table. Jane and Roche were sitting silent, not looking at one another.
Harry said, “Good news. If it’s true. Bertie says he thinks the police are holding out. It was just that airplane on Monday. It demoralized a lot of people.”
Jane filled the coffee cups again, and they all went out on the porch. Jane cleared away the sodden newspaper, and she and Harry wiped the wet table and chairs.
When they were all seated, Harry said, “Can you imagine this green, Jane?”
She said, “It was green when I came. But that’s how it always is. I always have to imagine what I’m missing.”
Roche said, “Did Bertie say anything about the government?”
Guerrillas Page 19
