The White Woman on the Green Bicycle Page 2

  ‘Jennifer is baking cakes in the kitchen,’ she told him.

  ‘Oh, good. What kind?’

  ‘Banana.’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘I know you like to eat banana cake when it’s still warm. She’ll bring it out.’

  ‘Thank you. Give an Englishman cake, tea and cake every day of his life.’ George rubbed his hands with impending pleasure, trying to catch her eye, his gaze shy of hers.

  Tea. At 4 p.m. every day on the porch out back. Tea and cake and the keskidees swooping to drink from the swimming pool. Earl Grey. White sugar in lumps. No one else around drank tea like this, no one on the island cared for tea, not like them. ‘Allyuh white people crayzee wid all dis tea.’ That’s what Jennifer always said.

  ‘So. Who’s next to be interviewed?’ Sabine pressed; George often didn’t say.

  ‘The coach.’ His voice was hesitant.

  ‘Beenhakker?’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’

  Sabine grimaced.

  ‘I’m going to ask Ray later.’

  ‘They’ve spent a fortune on this man.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Football, they spend millions. Hospitals, zero.’

  George stared at his tea.

  Sabine stirred hers. The Soca Warriors, Trinidad and Tobago’s national team. A ragbag collection of players, some just out of high school. Only two professionals, both almost forty. She made a sarcastic smile.

  ‘It’s an important event.’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  ‘Trinidadians are good at football.’

  Sabine nodded. ‘I know. Talented bunch. Good all-rounders.’

  ‘Try to see it as a good thing. Try, darling.’

  Sabine squinted. ‘Ugh. Football, football. The world loves football. Men kicking a ball around, so proud of their countries, most run by imbeciles.’

  ‘Oh, Sabine!’

  ‘Eric Williams loved football, didn’t he?’

  ‘So? Where did that come from?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Sabine brooded, surprised at herself.

  ‘Pass the cake, please.’

  But she didn’t want to pass the cake. She watched the keskidees swoop at the pool. The air was like glue. Her face glistened. George reached forward and speared banana cake onto his plate, his long hair undone. A strand hung over his face. His eyes were a little vacant. She’d made him angry again.

  ‘Sorry, darling. I’m so hot. Phutt!’ She fanned herself. The black-blue birds shouted Qu’est-ce qu’il dit - What’s he saying? He wasn’t saying anything; he was just trying to understand her, as usual.

  After tea, George escaped Sabine and her holier-than-thou ideas. Pain in the neck with her righteous questions: as if he didn’t know or care either. Well, mosst times he didn’t: caring never helped things along. He drove away from the house towards the chaos of Port of Spain. It was March. Dry season. George melted in the pickup truck. The liver spots on the backs of his hands seemed to double before his eyes, the windscreen acting like a magnifying glass.

  How he loved this city. Port of Spain. Poor old blind-deaf city. It spanned back, in a grid, from a busy port and dock; worn out now, ruined and ruinous and suffering, always suffering. It had survived military invasions, great fires, meek hurricanes, riots, mutinies, half a century of jouvay mornings, carnival Mondays and Tuesdays. No wonder it looked fatigued. Port of Spain: assaulted again and again and risen again and again, each time leaving the remnants of what had once been. Parts of the city still renewed themselves, rising up against the odds. These days it was garish and glittering office blocks, government housing projects, Honda showrooms. But in other parts, the ornate balconies and balustrades, the twee romantic town houses and gingerbread cottages of Great Britannia, of French Creoliana, were visibly tumbling into the dust.

  George peered upwards and cursed. There it was. Staring, just like the sky stared, another pair of eyes. Something very new had risen in recent months. Not up through the streets, no. It hovered high above, farcical, spectral.

  The blimp. Or, more commonly, de blimp, for great fun was made of it.

  ‘Where was de blimp, nuh?’ people joked every time another murder was reported.

  Every day, the blimp now circled over Port of Spain. Sabine hated it, of course. It had cost 40 million dollars. This was the second blimp, in fact, the first having had problems staying up. Its mission, officially, was surveillance. The PNM had informed the country that the blimp was part of their crime-busting initiative, stationed up there to spy on the slums of Laventille and Belmont and other trouble spots, where the gangs roamed.

  The blimp hovered high above the coughing city. A stout blue mini-zeppelin, it puttered around, resembling a huge udder escaped from a pantomime cow. George often fantasised about shooting it down. But it wasn’t just the blimp. Sometimes the air above Port of Spain hammered with the drone of metal wasps. Attack helicopters. These, according to reports, were supposed to strike the slums from the sky, snatch and scare bandits, run them down. So far they hadn’t been lucky either.

  The Trinidad Guardian offices stood on St Vincent Street, a stone’s throw from the Red House, in the west of the city, close to some of the colonial buildings which still survived. An air of academia faintly existed, what with the infamous Woodford Square and the National Library. Two black women, bulging in their security uniforms, ate warm nuts at reception. They both had large dolorous eyes and wore their hair coiled in ringlets; they rang up for him without so much as meeting his eye. He studiously overlooked their manner.

  The newspaper offices spread across the first floor, air-conditioned and open-plan, existing in a moody, far-too-quiet smoked glass environment.

  Ray looked relaxed, recovered from a busy afternoon, eating Kentucky Fried Chicken from a box, feet up on his desk.

  ‘George, how yuh goin.’ Half-Chinese, Ray was young and good-looking. Most of the Guardian’s staff had quit a few years back, following a conglomerate takeover, leaving George with a steady stream of work, increasing his profile. The new owner was an economic superpower on the island. People thought him in favour with Patrick Manning, the supreme leader.

  ‘De Tineke interview a big hit. She sexy, eh?’

  ‘Yes, a nice girl. Clever, too.’

  ‘Who you wanna do nex?’

  George’s heart surged. Ray was in a good mood.

  ‘The coach. Beenhakker.’

  ‘Ahhh.’ Ray laughed in appreciation, sucking up a French fry. ‘Somptin tell meh you go aks dat. De Warriors comin’ soon, yes. We already try him. He not givin’ one-on-one interviews yet or even at all as far as we know. An’ if he do, de editor go give him to de boys in de newsroom. Dey already fightin’ over it. It go be a big ting, George.’

  ‘I see. Of course.’ George tried to hide his disappointment. Trinidad and Tobago had qualified for the 2006 World Cup. Thanks to their expensive Dutch coach, the Soca Warriors were going to Germany. A huge story. He was OK with his status at the paper. Crazy-ass ol’ white man; good writer, though. Besides, he’d invented himself; the personal interview was his forte. George Harwood – Soft News Man. He covered features, fluffy stuff. He interviewed women, children, elderly people, award-winners, priests, nuns, monks, comedians, calypsonians, businessmen, birdwatchers, dog lovers, forest-dwellers, potters, painters, Rastamen, Baptist shouters, and, occasionally, members of the government. He’d interviewed almost everyone on the island and wrote his interviews with love and care. He did all the upbeat stories, the good-news stories the younger men on the paper refused to touch.

  ‘I’d like you to do Boogsie for me.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Dey name a trophy after him.’

  ‘A Boogsie Sharp trophy?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ray laughed. ‘At de music festival. Just do us somptin small. For next Sunday.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I hear Lara coming back after New Zealand.’

  ‘Brian Lara?’

  Ray
nodded. ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘Actually, I haven’t.’

  ‘If he come, ah go ring yuh. I know you hot on cricket.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  George left Ray’s office whistling. Lara, he was happy with that. Brian Lara was a great man.

  The newsroom boys were back from an editorial meeting, a young bunch, all in ties and Clarks’ desert boots, hair slicked back.

  ‘What are the stories for tomorrow, boys?’ George asked.

  ‘Cop on murder charge,’ Joel read from his screen.

  ‘Cop on drugs charge,’ Ramesh read from his.

  ‘Policeman chopped chasing drug traffickers,’ chipped in Corey.

  ‘Family claim police brutality charges,’ said Joel.

  ‘Surely there must be one baby rescued from a burning building?’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ The boys smirked at him pityingly.

  ‘You wanna interview my mother?’ Joel laughed. Joel was the chief reporter, serious about his work, but also the office joker.

  ‘Is she as ugly as you?’

  ‘Uglier. But she like your interviews. She aks meh if yousa single man. Ah could fix you up.’

  George walked past them, shaking his head.

  ‘Goodbye, boys.’

  ‘Bye George,’ they chorused.

  ‘Ay, how de lips dese days,’ Joel called after him.

  George turned round, blushing and smiling with shame. ‘Get lost,’ he mouthed.

  The boys fell about laughing.

  At the last Christmas staff party George got rat-arsed, taking a shine to a pretty, skinny Indian girl in the subs department. He stayed on far too late, fancying his chances, that she had liked him back, for he hadn’t completely vanished, damn it. The girl was at least ten years younger than his daughter; tiny tits, round and hard as apples, tiny backside, tiny T-shirt, tight jeans. Finding himself alone in the lift with her on the way down, he became confused, missing the curves of his wife, the luscious wife of his youth. Knowing he’d always been lucky with women. He lunged. The girl dodged. He’d ended up kissing the wall.

  Sabine smoked in their air-conditioned bedroom, curtains drawn, the covers pulled up over her knees. She liked to smoke in the cool and the dim light. At least she no longer took pills, no longer slept for days at a time. Lucy, many years she worked for them, years ago now; her tonics had brought her some relief, pleasant fragrant drinks made of hibiscus petals. The Cavina, the banana boat which had delivered them to the island decades ago, she saw it drifting towards the dock. Those black birds in the sky, corbeaux. She still saw them, too, circling overhead. Saw them every day, picking at her carrion flesh, the dead meat she was. Now she couldn’t remember how to leave the island. And to where? Her skin was black now, just like them. Being like this was a soft experience, as though she were nearing death. Of course she was near death. But at last she was from here now, like it or not. She was part of things. She no longer lived in the past, or dreamt of the future, no one could accuse her of that. She lived day to day, thinking for the moment. She avoided the newspapers, of course, never even read George’s articles any more. Life was simple, like a hermit’s. She ate very little. She drank a lot, though. Never mind about that. She smoked her cigarette to the nub and crushed it out, then rolled over and curled herself up into a ball under the covers. Eric Williams – the football. She remembered taking him in her arms. Those bleak days, Port of Spain in flames. She shut them out but they returned again and again. The letters she wrote. Hundreds. The air-conditioner hummed. It lulled her into a vague, comforting doze and once again she forgot.

  On his way home, George slowed his truck to let cars pass at the bottom of Morne Cocoa Road, at the T-junction joining Saddle Road, next to the gas station, opposite the route-taxi pickup spot. La Pompey stood in the gas-station forecourt in ragged shorts and a bright white pair of trainers, his mahogany chest aglow in the evening’s dim heat, his girlish pointy nipples erect. He counted through a roll of red dollar notes, the money he had earned from washing cars.

  ‘Yess, Mr Harwood.’ La Pompey grinned across at him.

  La Pompey wasn’t mad. Maybe a bit simple. But no madman.

  ‘Good evening, sir.’ George waved from the cab of the truck.

  ‘Man, yuh truck a state. Looking like it been tru de pitch lake.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry about that.’

  ‘How yuh could drive dat ting so wid no shame?’

  George shrugged. The rust was so bad it resembled a spray of machine-gun bullet holes, but he was very attached to it.

  ‘It need a wash, man. Ah comin’ to fix it up.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Come round any time.’

  ‘How’s Mrs Harwood?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘You is keepin’ her well den. You know what dey say.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A kiss a day keep de doctor away.’

  George made an amused half-sour face. ‘You should write greetings cards, sir.’

  ‘Yes, man. Kiss your woman every day and keep her sweet and she will always be a treat.’

  ‘You’re a poet, too, Mr La Pompey.’

  ‘Just La Pompey, La Pompey,’ he corrected. ‘Yes, man, ah does write a little verse from time to time.’

  ‘And your favourite poet, do tell.’

  ‘William Shakespeare.’

  ‘Shakespeare?’

  ‘Yes, man. Learn him well in school and ting.’

  ‘And what poems did you learn?’

  La Pompey smiled, only three teeth showing before his face went calm and serious. He studied George with careful attention, his eyes a little wet. ‘Shall I compare de to a summer’s day?’

  George stared.

  La Pompey mock-wooed George through the car window. ‘Dou art more lovely, man, yes, man – an’ more tem-per-ate!’

  George wanted to kiss him.

  La Pompey slow-winked. ‘Nice, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poetry say everytin.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Summer, man.’ La Pompey grinned. ‘Summer all de time in Trinidad. Heat in de place. Heat an’ sunshine.’ He glowed, his face like a big sun.

  ‘I like that poem.’

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You does speak poems for Mrs Harwood?’

  ‘Not these days.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear dat. You should speak more poems fer she.’

  ‘She wouldn’t like it if I did.’

  ‘Really? You never know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You mus speak of de love inside you, man. Or else where it go? It go rot, form a lump inside you. Rot and swell and make you sick.’

  ‘How did you know . . . that’s how it feels?’

  ‘I’s a sweet-man.’ He winked again. ‘Can’t you see? Ah does love plenty women. Keep me healthy.’

  ‘Good for you, La Pompey.’

  ‘Yes, man. Take care Mrs Harwood. Treat she sweet. Mrs Harwood a plenty good woman an’ yousa lucky man. Summer every day, man, in Trinidad.’

  A car behind beeped George and he turned left, driving on through the village.

  Winderflet village spread itself beneath the green hills of Paramin. The valley, rich in soil, once boasted nine flourishing estates, several mills and four rum distilleries. A brown river, Winderflet River, sometimes slim, sometimes fat, according to the season, slithered through the valley and the village embraced its shallow curves. Our Lady of Lourdes dominated the settlement, a grand square church peering down from an excavated mound; French, Catholic, it was carnivalesque with its gaudy red and vanilla exterior. The church cast a long shadow from up there on the mound, a shadow which fell directly onto Winderflet Police Station, much to the disdain of Superintendent Bobby ‘Big Balls’ Comacho. Between the church and the police station, they had things all sewn up. A quiet place, Winderflet. The church boasted a robust choir, tenors, a soprano, the whole range of gospel voices. Sometim
es, when driving through the village during choir practice, George listened to the hymns sailing out, songs to God, songs floating upwards, lifting his heart. One voice was always very particular, more celestial than the others, mournful: the boy’s voice.

  It was dark by the time he arrived home. The house he had built nestled at the foot of the same imposing green hills. Sabine had always seen a woman in the hills, a colossus, asleep on her side, half-exposing her loins. The house was a Spanish finca in design, arches and courtyards and wide porches all around. Sliding glass windows opened so the hummingbirds could flit through, siphoning nectar from the cut ginger lilies. A pool out back in which George paddled like a duck. He stopped at the wrought-iron gates which stood seven foot tall and peered through the bars.

  The sticky Julie mango tree nodded at him.

  Don’t look at me like that.

  Like what?

  Like you know how.

  No, I don’t.

  One day she lit up, one day I lit her up; the next, nothing. When did it happen? I don’t recall the day.

  It’s not your fault.

  Sabine was right about this country. She punishes me.

  It’s not your fault. Anyway, you’re sure it all happened in one day? Think.

  What? Think?

  Eric Williams, remember him?

  Yes.

  It’s all his fault. More than you care to know.

  George snorted. You going to quote Shakespeare to me, too?

  I am going to let down my bucket where I am, right here with you, in the British West Indies.

  Who said that?

  Eric Williams.

  When?

  A long time ago.

  Yes. Poor bastard. Whatever became of him in the end?

  Ask your wife.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  You know.

  No, I don’t.

  You do, you just don’t want to remember.

  I miss her.

  Yes.

  We survive off our past glory.

  It’s not your fault.

  No.