The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Read online

  Table of Contents

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  TRINIDAD, 2006

  CHAPTER ONE - THE BLIMP

  CHAPTER TWO - FLY AWAY

  CHAPTER THREE - THE AFFAIR

  CHAPTER FOUR - NICE TRY

  CHAPTER FIVE - SEBASTIAN

  CHAPTER SIX - THE MIGHTY SPARROW’S ADVICE

  CHAPTER SEVEN - BRIAN LARA AND HIS STRANGE IDEAS

  CHAPTER EIGHT - SOCA WARRIORS

  CHAPTER NINE - MANNING

  CHAPTER TEN - DEPARTURE

  TRINIDAD, 1956

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - ARRIVAL

  CHAPTER TWELVE - THE HIDING CLUB

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - THE UNIVERSITY OF WOODFORD SQUARE

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - THE ROBBER MAN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - HE WANTS TO BE ONE OF US

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - THE HOUSE IN PARAMIN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - MASSA DAY DONE

  TRINIDAD, 1963

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE CASTLE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - VALIUM

  CHAPTER TWENTY - QU’EST-CE QU’IL DIT ?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - DE MAN WOH BITE

  TRINIDAD, 1970

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - BLACK POWER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - EMERGENCY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - THE GREEN BICYCLE

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

  “Roffey’s evocation of Trinidad is extraordinarily vivid, the central relationship beautifully observed. . . . Deservedly short-listed for the Orange Prize.”

  —Kate Saunders, The Times (London)

  “A rich and highly engaging novel.”

  —The Guardian (London)

  “Equal love and attention go into the marriage and the country at the heart of this Orange Prize short-listed novel. . . . It’s a book packed with meaty themes, from racism to corruption to passion and loyalty.”

  —Seven, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine (London)

  “Roffey’s Orange Prize-nominated book is a brilliant, brutal study of a marriage overcast by too much mutual compromise.”

  —The Independent (London)

  “A searing account of the bitter disappointment suffered by Trinidadians on securing their independence from British colonial rule and of the mixed feelings felt by a white couple who decide to stay on. An earthy, full-blooded piece of writing, steaming with West Indian heat.”

  —London Evening Standard

  “Her plot engages the reader through a gradual revelation of the past—slowly forming a melancholy whole.”

  —Financial Times

  “A beautiful, moving, and haunting book.”

  —Edinburgh Evening News

  “From its opening pages, I was entranced by the world of this novel. Monique Roffey’s Trinidad is full of strife and languor, violence and also hushed moments of peace, so beautifully and lushly evoked that while I was reading Trinidad became more real for me than my own neighborhood. What a vibrant, provocative, satisfying novel—I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  —Suzanne Berne, Orange Prize winner

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated in the UK. Her highly acclaimed debut novel, Sun Dog, was published in 2002. Since then she has worked as a Centre Director for the Arvon foundation and has held the post of Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sussex and Chichester universities. She currently lives in Harlesden, north London, where she spends most of the day in her pajamas, writing.

  Read more at: wwwmoniqueroffey.co.uk.

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  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., 2009 Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2011

  “Love for an Island” by Phyllis Shand Allfrey reproduced with the permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London, on behalf of the estate of Phyllis Shand Allfrey

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Monique Roffey, 2009, 2011 All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51405-4

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  For my mother, Yvette Roffey

  Love for an Island

  Love for an island is the sternest passion;

  pulsing beyond the blood through roots and loam

  it overflows the boundary of bedrooms

  and courses past the fragile walls of home.

  Those nourished on the sap and the milk of beauty

  (born in its landsight) tremble like a tree

  at the first footfall of the dread usurper -

  a carpet-bagging mediocrity.

  Theirs is no mild attachment, but rapacious

  craving for a possession rude and whole;

  lovers of islands drive their stake, prospecting

  to run the flag of ego up the pole,

  sink on the tented ground, hot under azure,

  plunge in the heat of earth, and smell the stars

  of the incredible vales. At night, triumphant,

  they lift their eyes to Venus and to Mars.

  Their passion drives them to perpetuation:

  they dig, they plant, they build and they aspire

  to the eternal landmark; when they die

  the forest covers up their set desire,

  Salesmen and termites occupy their dwellings,

  their legendary politics decay,

  yet they achieve an ultimate memorial:

  they blend their flesh with the beloved clay.

  - Phyllis Shand Allfrey

  HURRICANE

  They took him to the top of Paramin Hill. Right to the top, where there was no one around, where no one could hear him call for help. Four of them. Four to carry out such a job. They wanted to teach him a lesson. He’d no business complaining. So what if the police had stolen his mobile phone, they can damn well take what they like. And poor Talbot – well – yes. Mixed up with the local thugs, the badjohns up on this hill, the ones causing all the
problems. The police already knew Talbot. And now they wanted to teach him not to go making more trouble.

  Talbot was in the back of the police vehicle, squeezed up between two of them, handcuffed. They’d already hit him about when they picked him up – slapped his face, told him to shut up or they’d return for his sexy younger sister, Chantal. They told him to shut his damn blasted mout.

  ‘Leave mih sister outa dis,’ Talbot shouted. But they hit his face hard. Then Talbot shut up. They parked and left the headlights on full. It was dusk, darkness about to settle. The biggest of them, a man called Johnny, was laughing like he knew what to do. Last week he gave the same treatment to another man, some poorfuck up in Debe.

  ‘De damn blasted people need to show some respek, man,’ he’d said then and meant it. They pulled Talbot out shaking and blabbering and begging, saying he was sorry, sorry he told his girlfriend about the mobile phone, sorry he made a fuss. He didn’t need it, he didn’t want it. They took off the cuffs and Talbot rubbed his wrists.

  Badap. The first blow sang out. Then Johnny went at him with another big punch, whaddap. This time he hit Talbot in the belly. Talbot doubled over. He spewed something out onto the grass. Talbot staggered, holding his sides. He looked up.

  ‘Show some damn fockin’ respek, man.’ Johnny smiled; his eyes were wild and dark. It was he who stole Talbot’s phone at the fête the week before. Later, Johnny got a ticking-off from the Superintendent – nothing big, but Johnny’d had a lot of pressure recently. Too many complaints.

  ‘Hol’ him, nuh,’ Johnny said. Two of the men held Talbot back by his arms, across the broadside of the police vehicle. The headlights sprayed light across the hillside bamboos.

  Badap. Another punch. Johnny had some boxing experience. He took off his uniform shirt and his muscles glowed in the heat. He flexed and shadow-danced a little. He laughed as the other men held Talbot down. Talbot said nothing. His eyes were open wide. Johnny and his friend Marco, a policeman on another force, took turns with Talbot. Bam, badap. Each punch brought Talbot’s eyes out of his head. Blood sprayed out. Sweat flew from his chest. Bam, baff. Talbot took the punches, but he cried like a little boy. Each one made him jump off the ground and made him weak, so weak they had to hold him upright. Then Talbot went limp. They straightened him up and pinned him across the door of the car. He was crying, crying for them to stop.

  And then Johnny got really mean. He set in. His eyes gleamed like he was enjoying himself and then he lashed out like a kung fu expert, executing all manner of kicks. He round-kicked at Talbot with his big police boots and he swung around, kicking him again and again, in his stomach, in his mouth. Crunch, a sound like something had split in Talbot’s chest. Crack. Bones were breaking. Talbot groaned, blood trickled from his mouth.

  Then they both started kicking him: flying kicks and blows, karate chops. Talbot couldn’t stand up. His face was mashed up, his chest bleeding; he was black and blue and sweating. The man poured with sweat and blood. They continued punching and kicking him. When they stopped, because they had tired themselves out, they drank rum from a bottle of Vat 19. Johnny and Marco were sweating, too, from all their kicks. They spat out some rum on the ground.

  ‘He go dead,’ one said, looking at Talbot.

  ‘Nah, man,’ Johnny replied. He hadn’t finished yet.

  Again Johnny went at poor damn Talbot, this time with his fists, and he worked him over, smack, crunch. A rain of blows to Talbot’s face. Blood spurted out. Blood on Johnny’s hands that he wiped on his uniform trousers. Johnny smashed up the man’s nose so it folded across his face. Talbot was unconscious.

  ‘Enough,’ one of the policemen told Johnny.

  But Johnny hit him again.

  Then Johnny and Marco took turns. They hit Talbot one and two and three while Talbot’s head bounced back and forth.

  When they stopped, Johnny went up close to Talbot. His face was all swollen and his eyes were sealed shut. Johnny whispered to Talbot, close into his ear. He told Talbot he deserved the beating. He said, ‘You part of what wrong wid de country. It your fault you get licks. We watchin’ you. De licks, dis a warnin’, yes, an’ if you ever complain again about anytin’ to do wid de police force, we go come back.’

  They let him go.

  Talbot sank to the ground.

  They left him like that. It was dark. No one else was around. They thought no one saw what happened.

  TRINIDAD, 2006

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE BLIMP

  Every afternoon, around four, the iguana fell out of the coconut tree. Bdup! While sunbathing, it had fallen asleep, relaxing its grip, dropping from a considerable height. It always landed like a cat, on all fours, ready to fight. The dogs always went berserk, gnashing and chasing after the creature as it fled, scuttling across the grass, a streak of lime green disappearing off into the undergrowth.

  ‘It never remembers the day before,’ Sabine remarked. ‘Never remembers its dreams, either, I suppose. Brain like a peanut.’

  The lizard’s daily plummet acted like an alarm clock, prompting Sabine to make their afternoon pot of tea. She went to put the kettle on.

  ‘Jennifer, tell your son Talbot to come and kill that damn lizard.’

  But Jennifer only rolled her eyes. She’d dominated the kitchen all day, baking gooey cakes and sweet-breads, stewing chicken with brown sugar. She’d been making pellau for the weekend. On the kitchen table, two halves of Madeira sponge were just out of the oven, cooling on racks.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It upsets the dogs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s driving me crazy.’

  ‘Let de dog go bite it, nuh, den dey go see somptin!’

  ‘I don’t want it to bite the dogs.’

  ‘Dem dogs chupid.’

  ‘Not my little one, ma petite.’

  ‘She de woss.’

  ‘Oh Jennifer, how can you say that?’

  ‘If dat lizard go fall on she, she go dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  Jennifer chuckled, enjoying the thought of the lizard falling on Katinka’s glossy Pomeranian head.

  ‘I want Talbot to kill it.’

  ‘He won’t kill it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Talbot ’fraid dat lizard too bad.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He can cook it, or do whatever he wants with it.’

  ‘Put it in a pot,’ Jennifer teased her.

  ‘Uggghhh.’

  ‘Stew it up.’

  Sabine flinched, making a wincing-chewing face.

  ‘It taste nice, boy.’ Jennifer stifled a laugh.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You never taste it?’

  ‘Of course not, eh, eh,’ Sabine steupsed, sucking her teeth.

  Jennifer laughed and Sabine poked out her tongue in response.

  Jennifer was mostly African, mixed up with some Spanish blood, or so she claimed. Her arms were heavy and her hips had spread, but she was proud of her heart-shaped face, her round polished cheekbones. She waxed her kinky hair and pinned it up. Jennifer smelled rich, coconut oil and Paramin mountain herbs, fresh rosemary, wild thyme, scents she knew well. And yes, these days Jennifer was much too fresh by half, never did what she was asked any more; did what she liked and when she liked, in her own time. Jennifer hoovered when she wanted to, polished the silver and cleaned the crystal only when she felt like it. Jennifer ran things now: good for her.

  ‘Oh Gyaaaad,’ Sabine complained loudly. ‘The heat! Jennifer, I cyan take it.’ She lifted up her voluminous house dress and fanned it up to her face, exposing her pink cotton knickers.

  ‘Phhhhhut!’ She made a loud hissing sound, fanning herself. ‘C’est un fourneau.’

  Jennifer shook her head. ‘Take cyare Mr Harwood ent come in and ketch a fright.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Sabine cut back. As if George looked at her any more; as if he cared to look.

  ‘You can talk. You’re almost as fat as me.’ />
  Jennifer gasped. ‘I not fat.’

  ‘You were skinny once, like a piece of spaghetti when you first came to us. Now look at you.’

  Jennifer pursed her lips. ‘I does look healthy.’

  ‘You’ll get fatter if you’re not careful. Your daughter Chantal is already getting fat.’

  Jennifer stopped her mixing at the stove; she turned and fixed her hands on her wide hips. ‘Oh gorshhh, nuh. I don’t want to see your panties.’

  Sabine kept fanning herself. ‘Oh, don’t be so prudish. Who cares?’

  ‘I does care.’

  ‘Oh! It’s too hot to wear clothes.’

  Jennifer stared as if Sabine was crazy.

  Sabine smiled and slowly fanned her dress downwards. She made the tea and carried the tray out to George, who was reading out on the porch, researching his next article for the Trinidad Guardian. Reading, reading, reading, he was always reading, sometimes not speaking for hours. But at four, he’d put down his book. They would discuss their plans for tomorrow. It was about all they had, these days, this teatime catch-up. But at least her husband wasn’t boring. Or short. Sabine detested little men and boring people. George was still brilliant, somehow, despite it all, maybe even more so. He turned heads, George did, with his skin turned red as rum and his hawk-like nose. In his later years, he’d come to resemble a totem pole. And his eyes shone brighter, his blue eyes were turquoise now, like a wild liqueur. No, despite it all, she’d never stopped wanting to talk to George.