A Kind of Eden (6 page)

‘Look at the babies!' Georgia stretches her arm out of the window. The goats carry on eating as if they are not there. They are white and scrawny. It is something he has noticed here: cattle and goats are often malnourished, their stomachs distended, bloated. Like Africa.

On either side, there is a golf course, smooth shaved green mounds and a green plateau. There are two or three houses on the right, and up on the left is a large, low-roofed bungalow surrounded by land. They pull up outside and the driver gets out and rings a bell. Within moments, electric gates open and the long maroon American car swings into the gravelled driveway, past the dark lawn and a row of pots filled with brightly coloured bougainvillea.

The house is impressive. Dark beams reach high above the living room, which opens onto a large veranda. There are large comfortable white chairs and a hammock. More importantly, Terence shows him, there is a sea view. The water is dark now, and he can see it shifting and moving beyond the trees. Terence, the caretaker, has lived here for almost ten years. ‘If you have a problem you come to me,' he says, and taps his chest. He has a pleasant face, probably in his early forties, or perhaps older, though it is sometimes hard to tell with dark skin. Safiya says
black don't crack, and he has found this to be mostly true. Terence is short, and in his Adidas vest top and denim shorts he looks wiry, strong. Just the kind of man you might want looking after your property.

The house has been empty for weeks. Today the lady who cleans brought bread, milk, and basic provisions for them. She picked oranges from the tree and put them there.

‘She knew you'd arrive when the stores are shut. They open again tomorrow at eight.'

Georgia has already found her room. It is at the end of a corridor, separated from the main living area by a glass door, which they can slide back and forth. He is glad to see it is also lockable, an extra security feature. There are twin beds, and a large bathroom with shutters; from the window you can see the driveway, the long garden. She has pulled her suitcase inside the room and started to open it up. There is a walk-in closet, how about that! She will come and see the rest of the house in a minute, Georgia says. For now she will lounge in her own quarters. Like a celebrity.

On the other side of the living room is another passageway, the left wing, and here are two good-sized bedrooms, and a cosy American den with plaid sofas and a television.

‘You have cable and DVDs, whatever you wish.'

Terence opens the door to the master bedroom. It is a dark room and, without doubt, the most appealing. It has a four-poster bed, and an old-fashioned dressing table. Miriam, who he had almost forgotten about, says, ‘Wonderful!' And she skips to the centre of the room and, holding out her shirttails, twirls girlishly around.

‘Somebody's pleased,' he says, and follows Terence into the en suite. The bathroom is dated, a '70s beige, but it is big enough. While Miriam opens cupboards and checks for space, he walks with Terence back along the passageway to the kitchen, the big brown, earthy kitchen with its shining silver stove. Like something from a magazine.

Juliet told him, the owners, Steven and Jennifer Dial, work in textiles; they have property both in Florida and London. Jennifer liked the idea of an English family staying in their Tobago villa—these days it is rarely used—and offered a lower, family rate. Perhaps, as a small favour, he would check on their security. Yes, he could do that, no problem.

‘Here is the telephone and emergency numbers,' and Terence holds up a slim rectangular box, like a television remote control. ‘The gate opener: always remember to take it with you, without it you can't get back in unless someone opens the gate from inside.' Then he shows him a single key—for the hire car parked around the back.

They walk to the edge of the garden and look through the trees at the ocean. Now he can really see the water breathing in and out.

‘Watch out for these,' Terence stoops and picks up a tiny brown shape like a nut or a fir cone. ‘They'll hurt your feet.' He points along the edge of the garden. ‘They come from the casuarinas.' The trees are tall with broad branches; they look like a kind of pine.

There is a drop onto the beach, and steps lead down through the rocks. ‘We have a couple of kayaks, surfboards and lilos, goggles and snorkels. There's a dingy too, which is a lot of fun. I'll show you tomorrow.'

Since living in Trinidad, he has come to love the ocean. The first time he swam at Maracas Bay it was a kind of baptism. Born anew, his soul washed free in the cool, lively water. He had never experienced anything quite like it. He made himself into a ball and somersaulted in the sea like when he was a child. He dived down and swam over the pale seabed. Yes, he had been to the Costa del Sol, but the sea there was completely different, somehow stale, greyish, like it was dead. Then Safiya gave him a small surfboard, a boogie board, and he learned how to ride the waves as they broke at Las Cuevas. You're a natural, she'd said. Who'd have thought? If he kept it up, she promised to buy him a full-sized surfboard. They could spend their weekends up in Sans Souci. She would like that. They would both like that.

Terence leads him around the side of the house to his studio apartment.

‘This is where I live. You can find me here most of the time apart from Sunday. Sunday, I go to church and then to my mother's in Buccoo.'

It always surprises him how church-going people are in these islands. Safiya says that Trinidadians are a people of great faith: Hindu, Catholic, Church of England, Shouter Baptist, and Obeah can all find a place here. This is what will save Trinidad, she says. ‘Think of all the different religions existing simultaneously and harmoniously on this island. Where else in the world do you find that level of tolerance?' Safiya has a point.

There are two chairs in front of the French doors and a tree that reminds him of a weeping willow. He can see a bed, and a kitchen beyond. From the top of an old television set, Terence takes up a framed photograph.

‘My daughter,' he says, proudly. ‘Chelsea. After my favourite football team.'

‘Lucky it's not Tottenham.'

Terence grins.

‘How old is she?'

‘She just turned five. Her mother lives in Scarborough but she's from Sweden.'

The little girl is light-skinned, her eyes are a greenish brown.

‘Sometimes she comes to stay; usually when my ex has a date and wants the place to herself.'

‘She's beautiful. I hope we get to meet her. I'm sure Georgia would love to see her.'

It is hot in the room, and they step outside. There is a cool, soft breeze swishing the tree. This is not a bad life, he thinks: looking after a luxury property with your own private living quarters and the Caribbean Sea on your doorstep: all this beauty without expense. There are worse ways to earn a living. Could he do it? Maybe so. Although he'd rather not be alone.

‘This is Conan,' Terence says. A three-legged Alsatian trots down the driveway towards them and barks loudly.

‘Conan is our early-warning system. Anyone comes to the gate and he barks.' The dog's tail is wagging, and he seems friendly enough.

‘What happened to his leg?'

‘He was down in the village chasing chickens, and someone chop him with a cutlass. The cut get bad and the vet had to take it off.'

‘That's pretty brutal.'

‘The vet or the man who chop him?'

Terence smiles and he catches sight of a gold tooth.

‘Let me tell you, sir, Tobago people can be savage.' Conan rolls down on the ground and tips back his head. Terence puts his foot on the dog's stomach.

‘I need to show you how to work the metal shutters. They only put them in the living room; the rest of the place has bars.'

From the doorway, he watches Miriam unpacking her suitcase. She has turned on the overhead lights and it is bright. She is tired but determined, her dark hair pulled back from her thin face.

‘There's plenty of space. If I put mine on this side, you can have the other,' she says, cheerfully. ‘And there's lots of drawers too.'

He glances around the room, and in particular at the large four-poster bed; her folded nightdress is on top of the sheet along with a clean pair of underwear, no doubt for after her shower.

He says, ‘Are you hungry? There's bread; I can rustle something up.'

Miriam nods. ‘Georgia is probably starving; she hardly ate on the plane.' She steps towards him, cautiously. ‘I'm really pleased we came.'

‘Me too,' and he rubs her arm awkwardly. He can see that this confuses her slightly and he doesn't know what else to do. At one time he would have kissed her mouth, put his arms around her.

Glad of an excuse, he leaves the room and goes to the kitchen. He opens a bottle of cold beer and leans for a moment against
the tiled worktop. There is a large stone arch, and through it he can see the living room, and a painting of a woman with her breasts bared. It is a strange and erotic painting to hang in a family holiday villa. The buttery-coloured woman is wearing a headscarf and her arm is back, above her head. She is boldly showing herself to someone, someone she must like very much. At one time Miriam might have shown herself to him like this. Not now. At least he hopes not now. How do feelings change? Is it a slow, ongoing metamorphosis or a quick and sudden thing?

When he first met Miriam, she had seemed somehow familiar. She was attractive; her features were too hawkish to be pretty. Her cousin, a colleague and friend, introduced them. She seemed carefree and plucky, opinionated; different from any other girls he knew. That summer, she was visiting from northern Spain where she taught English as a foreign language in a small school.

At the time, Miriam warned him that she had a boyfriend, José, who lived in Barcelona, and they had been together for almost a year. For two weeks, Martin pursued her as if his life depended on it. When he finally persuaded her to cut loose, she discovered that she was six weeks pregnant with José's baby. Miriam was inconsolable. She said her life was over. He reassured her; she could stay in England and decide about her future. He would support her.

They moved together into a tiny semi-detached house, in Roundhay, Leeds. He had finished his two-year induction, and was about to start working shifts. For a while Miriam played homemaker. She stripped and painted the walls. She dug up the tiny garden and planted shrubs; where there had once been
gravel, grass soon grew. When the house was finished, Miriam enrolled on a teacher-training course. There was no use in wasting her language skills, she said; she would teach Spanish.

For a long time, they didn't talk about the abortion. Yet he felt, instinctively, that she was sometimes disappointed in the path she had chosen; that she regretted leaving Spain and all it had offered. Even then, he was aware of his desire to make it up to her, to prove to her that she had, in fact, picked well. This desire had no doubt made him more ambitious than he might otherwise have been. He has loved her well, he believes.

But are we are really meant, by nature, to be monogamous? These days, people live such long lives. Last week in
Time
magazine he'd read and memorised a quote describing exactly how he feels and has felt for the last two years:
The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark
.

He checks the cupboards. There are several tins of Vienna sausages and a couple of onions. He can fry these up, and make a kind of hot dog: a Safiya special. The first time she made it, they had come home late, hungry. After a few minutes of scrabbling in the kitchen, suddenly, there it was: a delicious spicy sausage mix squished between two slices of bread. Safiya had a knack for making something from nothing.

Georgia is lying on her bed, the small bedside lamps throw a soft amber light. It is cool; clever girl, she has figured out how to use the air conditioner.

‘Dinner in ten. Is that okay?'

‘Sure!'

He notices that her bed is nearest the door and he wishes it
wasn't. There is something about sleeping away from the door that offers more protection; like walking on the inside of the pavement. He would like to tell her but she will complain that he is being overprotective. It is curious to him how the need to safeguard his daughter never goes away. His mother had warned him, when you have children you will understand why I worry so. Georgia's delicate frame, her gentleness, has always made him feel overly protective. That, and, of course, the other more obvious reason, has turned him, where she is concerned, into something of a worrier.

He remembers one afternoon, her primary school teacher telephoned to say that Georgia had fallen in the playground and taken a ‘nasty bump'. Martin left the station and drove there at once. When he saw her small face bloody and scuffed, her gaping chin, he'd actually cried. These last months he has felt her absence deeply like a limb lopped off. In her young hands she carries his heart. He has talked to Safiya about this. Georgia is the one thing that always stops him in his tracks—his red light.

And yet, if it wasn't for Georgia, he might not be in Trinidad. Three years ago, after thirty years of service, he'd retired. Using his chunky lump sum, they moved from their detached, modern estate house to a five-bedroom farmhouse with two acres, and a paddock—and enrolled Georgia in an excellent private school. He carried on working in the same post as a civilian; with a smaller salary and his pension, they could more than manage. The Home Office warned of cuts but it was still a surprise when redundancies were announced and, more so, when his post was axed, along with an entire department of Community Safety Officers.

Miriam returned to work full-time, but they soon found themselves struggling to pay the £15,000-a-year school fees. It was either sell the house, put Georgia into a local comprehensive, or he must find another job. He registered with recruitment agencies in Birmingham, Leicestershire, and Nottingham. He was beginning to despair when, out of the blue, Nigel Rush telephoned about opportunities for former army and police officers in Trinidad. Easy money, Nigel said. Tax-free; expenses covered, accommodation included, along with regular flights home. Apparently, he fitted the criteria, perfectly.
You could do this standing on your head with your eyes shut
. Martin wasn't sure exactly where Trinidad was.