Oh Dear Silvia (13 page)

‘On and on like that Silv, ’til it wasn’t possible to listen any more. ’Til y’know, it wasn’t possible to let him live …’

Monday noon

As Winnie whooshes into the room, she is wiping her mouth.‘Wha gwaan sistren! Sorry Silvia, mi no like fi nyam in front o’ you, but honestly, dis morning so busy, mi no haffi time fe food. No breakfass, no tea, no biscuits. Mi famish! Well, not really famish, like dem poor souls ’pon TV in Ethiopia an’ Somalia wid huge sad eye. I feel shame for alla us when mi see dat. How we come to dis? Why we nuh share alla de food for everybody de same? I see dem whole heap o’ huge bins at back of Morrisons on a Sunday marnin, heavin wid de out-o’-dates tings, still good to nyam. Jus fe you n’mi to know, mi haffi tek from dem bins sometime, when mi cheque run out. A true dis. Yu haffi dweet, if yu have a h’empty pickney. Evr’yone dweet. No shame in dat, but plenty o’ shame lookin at di eyes of dem mawga babies an’ dey big bellies dem. Proper shame in dat.

‘Some have so much, some have so lickle. We need fe get
dose unfairness sort out, truss mi. If mi a queen o’ de world, mi would say the skinniest get most and the fattest get least. Surely dat got to be right. Lord a God. Bless dem, and keep dem safe in hope. But h’anyway, sorry Silvia, fe stuffin mi face. It all gone now. Wasn’t even tasty, a muffin from dat h’ugly man at de coffee shop. One poun’ forty pence fe dat wortless cake! I only paid it fe hunger. Cyan’t believe it. I fill up mi belly so fass, I feel sick now. Cha.’

All the time Winnie is speaking, she is going about her work, monitoring Silvia’s current status. Her usual efficiency is tinged with a hint of edginess today. Her work isn’t compromised in any way, but she definitely has the air of someone distracted and irked. She starts to hum, which she always does when she’s concentrating, but the hum is the clue to her agitated state of mind. The hum is too loud and too vigorous. She doesn’t hum anything specific. It is a generic hymn, incorporating the random sounds of many hymns she knows. Winnie can’t possibly relax today because she is still stinging from the humiliation of last week.

On Saturday, there were three weddings at Winnie’s church, the Word of God Church, near St Stephen’s Park. It used to be St Stephen’s Church but when it was about to close down due to low attendance, Winnie’s pastor suggested her church took over and with growing support and constantly rising attendance figures, the church has flourished.

The only problem Pastor Saul faces is the dilapidated state of the poorly old building. He has received an estimate of nearly
two hundred thousand pounds just to secure the integrity of the exterior. This figure is beyond the belief of anybody in the congregation, but they must believe it, because it is true. Pastor Saul tells the truth, and the builder who has given him the estimate is one of his flock, so he is also telling the truth. Two hundred thousand pounds to raise. Astonishing. Shocking. That’s before they refurbish anything inside the church. To do that, there would have to be a second push on fund-raising. Pastor Saul has asked everyone to think of ways of raising the money. He himself is going to pray. A lot. And possibly arrange a car boot sale.

Despite their worries for their church building, the choir keep their spirits up by rehearsing for the weddings. Winnie finds the commitment to the rehearsals quite wearing, and she feels guilty about having more time away from Luke, but this is church work, so not up for debate. Plus, honestly, Winnie finds great solace in the singing. She is one of the stronger voices, she knows that. Brother Claude often encourages her to take a solo, and she seizes that opportunity with relish. Her voice is her gift from her God, and she wishes to return her thanks to him when she lifts it up in his name. It’s with that intention that she strives to be the best singer she can be, and she attempts more and more difficult arrangements.

When she is singing, Winnie is truly Winnie. She is free from all other restraints. She is no one’s daughter, mother, nurse or anything else. She is the channel through which God’s word is sung. She closes her eyes, breathes deep into her soul and lets
the spirit flow out of her in reverent and supreme worship. It flows like rivers of love and Winnie communes with that love and feels it ’til it fills her up. Sometimes the sheer exquisite pleasure of it causes Winnie to weep with joy.

Yes, she knows how to speak to her God through song, and it matters very much to her, which is why it was so upsetting when Brother Claude ruined it all last week, at the final rehearsal for the weddings. When she thinks of it now, she hums louder to mask the embarrassment.

The rehearsal was going well, although the church was cold and Winnie could see her breath in front of her face. She was wearing the fingerless gloves Luke gave her for Christmas. He had saved his pocket money for weeks and bought them on the market for her. Her favourite colours too, pink and purple together. The only problem with fingerless gloves is that they are fingerless, and it’s your fingers that get cold, so what is the point of them? Luke bought them because he thought Winnie could wear them at work and still operate intricate machinery and so on, but sadly, nurses aren’t allowed to wear germ-gathering gloves on the ward. Winnie didn’t tell him that of course. She kissed his dear head on Christmas morning and thanked him profusely for his kindness, telling him how proud she was that he is such a beautifully generous boy. In her head, Winnie had put the phrase (unlike your father) in brackets, but she didn’t say that out loud either, because she too is kind.

The choir had been working hard and it was time to stop for
a quick tea break. Claude had said five minutes, but since most of the choir are Jamaicans, they operate on Jamaican Time, which is different to Greenwich Mean Time, which is truly MEAN. Five minutes accepts thirty minutes in Jamaican time and ‘come for ya dinna at one o’clock’ accepts turning up at 6pm and it’s all perfectly alright. This all leads to an interesting domino effect of later and later weddings on a Saturday. It’s advisable to be the first wedding of the day, then at least you can set your own agenda for the tardiness and not be at the mercy of others!

So somewhere in the twentieth minute of the five-minute break, Claude sidles up to Winnie, who was checking messages on her phone. There were none, actually, but no one knew that and checking the phone makes you feel efficient, Winnie always feels. It makes you appear to be connected to a rich tapestry of a world. Winnie was actually connected to a Sudoku app she had downloaded. She turned the phone away as Claude approached.

‘You OK deh, Sista Winnie?’

‘Oh yes tank you Brother Claude. Very good tank you.’

‘You soundin very good tonight. Very strong, very pyure.’

Winnie felt flattered and happy that Brother Claude should be so pleased with her. He knew his choirmaster stuff, and Winnie was a relatively new recruit to the choir, since it had taken a while for her to muster the courage to ask to move from her place in the pews with the rest of the congregation to a seat in the choir,
in the revered front row of the choir, no less. Winnie still felt a little in awe of Claude and Claude’s wife, Odine, who was his deputy in effect and a formidable woman you wouldn’t want to argue with. Odine is always in charge of the refreshments at the tea break. She bakes ginger cake and then overcharges the choir for each slice, and for each cup of tea. Winnie finds this unfair, and expensive, and so has started to bring her own flask and her own munchies from home but that has not escaped Odine’s eagle eye which is massively disapproving.

Winnie feared that perhaps this is what Claude had come to talk to her about. Apparently not.

‘Seemin very clear to mi, Sista Winnie, dat you have de chops to be a bit of a solo star, yes?’

‘Really? Me? Sorry, Brother Claude, how you mean exactly?’

‘Well now missy, I’m tinking you know h’exactly what I mean.’

Winnie started to feel strangely uncomfortable and looked to see where the rest of the choir were. They were all gathered by the huge warm tea urn right at the back of the church, nowhere near enough for Winnie’s liking at this particularly awkward moment.

‘I … h’enjoy dis music you’ve chosen Brother Claude, very much … and I tank you for letting mi sing a solo sometimes …’

‘It hasn’t h’escaped mi notice, Sista Winnie, dat you operatin solo mos’ o’ de time, yes?’

‘Well, yes. Dat is true. Sorry, y’mean the singin? … Or what, sorry?’

‘Mi jus’ tinkin you might be needin some company from time to time … das all … a man remin’ you how fine you look, how h’attractive. Y’know, you definitely the mos’ pretty in dis ya choir.’

Winnie’s good heart fell into the pit of her stomach. How disappointing. ’Til this moment, she had looked upon Brother Claude as an upstanding man. An honourable, God-fearing man, and yet here he was, yards from his wife, making Winnie feel nervous – as he flirted with her. What a cheek. Winnie had to be sure she wasn’t misreading these signals, she didn’t want to jump to any wrong conclusions and she didn’t want it to be true that it was happening at all. She knew she would have to be bold to be sure.

‘Is you sayin, Brother Claude, dat you could be my time-to-time company? Is you sayin dat, I’m wonderin?’

Claude leaned in towards her, as close as he could get without alerting the others. Close enough for Winnie to smell his wife’s ginger cake on his breath.

‘Perhaps. You could get special one-on-one attention for yuh solos. If you lucky gyal.’

Something about the arrogance of him made Winnie want to gag, she found it so offensive. How dare he assume she would be lucky to have his adulterous attentions? She’s felt lucky and grateful before for this kind of paltry offering, and look where that got her. It might have behoven Winnie to have held her tongue a few seconds more until she had thought through the consequence of what she next said. But she didn’t.

She leaned in close to him and hissed, ‘Wha di blouse an’ skirt you tink you doin? Wid ya wifey a stan’ over deso? Wha fuckery dis? You tink I dat cheap? You tink I a dyam fool? Go an suck ya mudda before I box ya face. Move yuh bumbaclaat backside! Cha!’

With that, she pushed heftily past him, and nearly knocked him into the next pew. Winnie rushed to the toilet where she sat quietly for the next few minutes, composing herself and taming her racing heartbeat. She couldn’t believe she had unleashed her potty mouth so impetuously, but she couldn’t entirely regret it either. She wished very much that none of it had happened, and especially in the House of the Lord. She felt shame about that.

Eventually, when she heard the music start, she knew it was time to return to the rehearsals. It was a long walk for her to return to her place and she took comfort from the fact that none of the other eight singers took the slightest bit of notice, so she deduced that no suspicions had been raised, thank goodness.

Her torture began when she realized that Claude was hell-bent on ignoring her. He made absolutely no eye contact with her and even turned his back when her solo came, and started a conversation with the pianist, Nat. He was singularly rude and Winnie felt that he may well be stupid enough to draw attention to something that hadn’t even happened, if he persisted, but she carried on as normal, hoping everything would
settle down when Claude had had enough time to consider the error of his ways and lick his wounds.

Not Claude. He is too boorish to bow out with grace. As the rehearsal came to an end, Claude asked for attention to discuss the weddings on Saturday.

‘Right, now lissen up people. Saturday a big day for Calvary Voices. Three services. So that will be thirty pound each by the h’end of de day. It not sound much, but is God’s work and we send praise and thanks. AMEN. Ev’rybody to be here by nine o’clock please and if mi could ask nicely, please all wear correct dress for church. Mi no wan’ to point de finger at a particular, but Lord a mercy, Sista Winnie, de folk at de weddin don’t wanna be lookin at your chests, thank you, inna di trampy low-cut top like dat …’

He pointed at Winnie’s blouse, which, as far as she knew, was perfectly respectable. It was a blouse she often wore to and from work, and for one awful, culpable, red-faced moment of hot embarrassment, she felt she may have been horribly unprofessional. She looked down. The blouse definitely covered her breasts, the top button being well above her cleavage if a bit tight. The blouse was not an affront to anyone, it couldn’t possibly be.

She eyeballed Claude, in the certain knowledge that this was an attack. An attack she must suffer in silence, as he concluded.

‘Not suitable for a place of worship. H’after all, we not visitin de red-light distric, are we? No, we are raisin our voices to God the Father. Who, praise him, would like the women in his
house to look smart an’ wholesome, in cris clothes. Like Odine always do. No one person should be drawin the eye to jus them, becaa we a team, yes?’

‘AMEN,’ replied the choir, through their chortles and tuts. There’s nothing like the dressing down of a newby to unite a team in their combined Schadenfreude.

That’s Winnie told. Good.

Winnie gathered her music up and purposely walked slowly out of the church when the rehearsal was over. She wasn’t going to scurry away, she would show she had backbone and dignity, in bucketfuls. She could feel Claude’s eyes burrowing into her to check if his lashing had landed somewhere sore but she refused to return his glare. She wouldn’t give him the pleasure. She held her head high and she sashayed out of the church, like a queen.

Once outside and out of sight, she ran and ran, gasping for breath ’til she arrived home on her doorstep, panting. She had skipped a whole bus journey home, so vexed was she. Her only comfort was that she knew she had made the right choices, and for that reason she slept easy, until Saturday the day of the wedding triathlon.

Winnie was at the Word of God Church by eight forty-five in the morning, sporting a demure dark blouse and a neat pleated skirt. She knew she looked smart and no one could possibly accuse her of being racy. She had already opened her throat in the steam of her morning shower, and she knew she was in good voice. When the time came for Winnie’s solo, she closed
her eyes, thought about her redeemer and sung out for the new love of this first fresh-faced bride and groom.