Pao (11 page)

She put the glass down on the table next to me and say, ‘Miss Fay and Miss Daphne most likely gone out to celebrate about the baby.’ Well it was a good job I was already sitting down because otherwise I would have fall down. I look at Ethyl and I can see she think that maybe she say something outta turn, so she run inside without saying another word.

When I come round it was dark and I could smell the evening scent off the angel trumpet. But I know I not been sleeping all this while because there is three empty glasses on the table next to me. Then I hear a car door slam and the next thing Henry Wong is coming up the veranda steps. His tall, square frame look tired and weary. When he see me sitting there he take a hand and brush the greying hair back off his forehead and then he come and sit down next to me. Him take my hand in his. Gentle like.

‘Is my fault,’ him say to me. ‘You think you good father. Give children everything they want. But maybe it not so good. Maybe they just grow up good for nothing. Fay not bad girl. She just spoil.’

I was looking at him and wondering how come he manage to live in a house full of women like this.

‘Fay tell me ’bout Matthews Lane, how the house small and how you got no help. And I tell her you are a young man, just making your way. When business get better you will move her to a better house, get some help, make things good. She just need to have some patience. When I married her mother I was just a young man like you. Just got the one shop, but when business get better, everything get better. Patience, Pao, that is what it takes. That is what I tell Fay, that she has to stay with you and have patience. Anyway, I tell her, it better to be downtown with your own people. Better than living up here in this desert like me.’

‘Did Miss Cicely keep running back to her father every other week as well?’

‘No, that was a different situation.’ And then him look sorta sad and pause for a minute. ‘Women are not like men, Pao, they change with the wind. That is why we men have to steady ourselves. Make a firm anchor with a good business and work hard.’ Then he stop and think a minute. And then he say, ‘You go home now. You don’t want to be having no talk with Fay at this time of night and with everything else,’ him sort of motioning towards the empty glasses. ‘Tomorrow is plenty time to sort things out.’

The next morning when I go up to the house, Fay already come and gone again. Ethyl look sheepish when she have to tell me but she still look sorry for me. So I say to her, ‘Ethyl, you know where my shop is down West Street?’

‘Yes, Mr Philip.’

‘Next time you get a day off come see me will you?’ And she agree to do it the next week Wednesday.

Then just as I start to leave Fay and Daphne turn up. Daphne fussing ’round Fay because Fay her older sister and she know she got to show respect. But it also because Daphne plain and everybody get taken with Fay like they don’t even know Daphne is there. Daphne used to being invisible.

So I get outta the car and stand up in front of Fay in the driveway. She look truculent like she going just kiss her teeth and walk inside. But she don’t, she just stand up there with her hand on her hip while Daphne go inside the house.

‘What you doing here, Pao?’

‘What you doing here, Fay?’

‘This is my home.’

‘No, this is your papa’s home. Your home is with me, downtown in Matthews Lane.’ And then she do exactly what I think, she kiss her teeth and walk off. I follow her up the steps on to the veranda.

‘You got no business here, you know.’

‘You is my business. A wife supposed to stay with her husband, not making a fool outta him every week running back to her papa.’

‘Is that what you are worried about, me making a fool out of you? Well don’t fuss yourself about that. You are making a fine job of it yourself.’

And she start to walk inside so I grab her hand to pull her back, but she just jerk it away from me and start yelling like she want to wise up the whole neighbourhood to what she have to say to me.

‘Take your hand off me. Who do you think you are, grabbing after me like that? You are not downtown now with your little whores and hoodlums. You are in a respectable place and you need to act like it.’

‘You think this is respectable, you and me bawling at each other right out here on the veranda?’

‘You should be the last person on this earth to talk about what is respectable. If you weren’t so pathetic you would make me laugh.’

Well that make me mad. I just fix her with a stare cold as ice and she stop because I think she remember who she was talking to. So she calm down and I say to her, ‘Is it true you pregnant?’ But she don’t want to answer me, so I have to ask her again.

‘Is it true you pregnant?’

But she still don’t say nothing so I take a deep breath and I fix her with my eyes and I say to her, ‘Remember you are a Catholic.’

And just then I put my hand in my pocket and I feel the box still sitting there. So I pull it out and I hold it out to her. She look at it there in my hand, and then she look at me in the face.

‘Take it.’

‘What is it?’

‘Take it and see.’ So she reach out and take it from me.

‘Go on, open it.’

She unwrap the bow and tear off the paper. When she open the box she just stare at the ring. And then she reach inside the box with her right hand and pick it up. And she raise up her arm, and swing, and throw the ring into the yard.

‘That would be the companion piece to the jade necklace you bought for your whore in East Kingston.’ She look at me. ‘You think I didn’t know?’ And then she just walk inside and close the door, which was the first time I even seen that door shut.

Three days later she come back to Matthews Lane, most likely after her papa tell her to. But she don’t say nothing to me ’bout the baby or the ring or anything else. And I don’t say nothing to her.

When Ethyl come see me the next week she bring me back the ring she fetch outta the flower bed.

‘I think you might want this back.’

And she hand it to me in the box she must have pick up off the veranda. I take it from her and say thank you and put it in my pocket.

Ethyl is young. She want something more than being down on her knees scrubbing the Wongs’ mahogany floor, and picking up after Fay and Daphne, and their little brother Kenneth who Miss Cicely produce long after everybody think she past her time.

Ethyl is looking to better herself. So I tell her I will pay for her to learn shorthand and typing on her day off, and buy a little typewriter and all the books she need so she can practise. And pay for the examination when the time come. And she is happy with that. So that is our secret, because if Miss Cicely catch wind of all of this she will fire Ethyl just like that. Maids are twenty a penny for a person like Miss Cicely in a place like Jamaica.

Ethyl come to see me every week after that and she bring me the news from Lady Musgrave Road. This is a good arrangement because just like Sun Tzu say, the thirteenth principle of the art of war is the employment of secret agents.

‘
What is called “foreknowledge” cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation.
’

13

Offensive Strategy

The next time I see Gloria I take the ring with me because Fay is right, it will look good next to the necklace that Gloria keep lock up in a box at the back of her wardrobe and only get out on special occasions. But the ring she want put on straight away. It fit her like it was bought for her. So she straighten it on her finger and stretch out her arm to admire how gracious it look pon her hand. It suit her. Really and truly. The thing make her skin look rich and succulent. And she so pleased with it I think maybe it mean something more to her than it do to me. So I don’t bother say nothing ’bout Fay and all her antics and carrying on. Not that Gloria want to hear anything ’bout Fay because that was the one condition Gloria had after I get married. She didn’t want to hear nothing ’bout Fay. We was just going to carry on act like Fay didn’t even exist because being married to Fay didn’t change nothing between me and Gloria. I still pick up the money from her. I still giving her protection. I still drinking Lipton’s Yellow Label tea with her. I still seeing her three times a week. I still talking to her ’bout things because Gloria is the only person who ever care to listen to me talk ’bout myself and what this life mean to me.

Then she say to me, ‘I have something to tell you.’

And I say, ‘What?’

And she say, ‘I going to have a baby.’ Well I just reach out and find the arm of a chair to steady myself, and I sit down because it feel like me knees going buckle under me.

‘So how long you know this?’

‘Last week. Well I think two months gone already. I just wanted to be sure.’ I can tell Gloria don’t know what kinda face to put on. She don’t know whether to look happy or worried or vexed because she don’t know how I am going take the news. And truth is I don’t know either.

So I say, ‘What you going do?’

And she say, ‘How you mean?’

‘What you going do with it?’

‘You mean get rid of it?’

‘No. I mean what you want to do? You want to keep it or what?’

‘What you want to do?’ And she look at me now like she scared what the answer going be.

‘It not got nothing to do with me, Gloria. Is not my baby, is yours.’

‘You no know it take two people to make a baby?’

‘You saying it mine? How you so sure?’

She just stand there and look at me. Then she say, ‘OK, if you want say the baby not yours then fine. I will go about my business and sort this out myself.’

‘I’m not saying that, Gloria. I just surprised that’s all. If you say the baby mine then it mine. But it not for me to decide ’bout it. It not going change my life like it going change yours.’ And that is when her face soften, because she could see that I was really giving her a choice. And it was almost like she never thought I would take it that way. Actually just give her the choice like that.

So I say to her, ‘I am good with whatever you want to do. But if you decide to have it you going have to let me look after you better than this place.’ And I just look ’round the room the way it decorate for entertaining men and she knew exactly what I mean. ‘Long time now I been wanting you to stop all this anyway, but sure as eggs is eggs this ain’t no business for a pregnant woman.’

And she laugh and say, ‘Some men come on strong with a pregnant woman.’

‘Not on top of my son.’

‘Who say it going be a boy? Maybe it be a girl. Maybe she become the first woman prime minister of Jamaica.’

‘Maybe.’

After that Gloria start look for a different place to live. She and her sister Marcia going all over Kingston, but truth is I have my heart set on some place in Barbican. It new, it clean, it good neighbourhood. But I don’t say nothing to Gloria because if I say Barbican she going move to Mona Heights. She don’t like me telling her nothing. She say I not got no right, especially after I decide to go marry somebody else. But in the end there was no need to worry. Gloria and Marcia find a nice three-bedroom place, two bathroom, nice tidy yard right up there in Barbican.

The thing I couldn’t figure out was how come after all these years Gloria get pregnant at exactly the same time as Fay. So I decide that maybe it was something to do with me. Or maybe it was something Gloria decide for herself.

When Ethyl come see me at the shop she tell me that Fay start going down to Bishop’s Lodge visiting with some priest, and him visiting her up at Lady Musgrave Road as well. Him called Father Michael Kealey and him young and good looking, so Ethyl say anyway. She say he look like the movie star Jeff Chandler, ‘but a little bit browner than when he was the Indian chief Cochise in
Broken Arrow
’. Ethyl say he even got the wavy grey hair and the dimple in his chin. So now this is something else for me to go sort out.

I set Finley to go see what he can find out and sure enough Father Kealey is some young sprat straight outta the seminary in Washington USA although he a Kingston boy that they school up in St George’s College with all them Jesuits. Ethyl tell me that him and Fay spend all hours of the day sitting on the veranda and on the swing way out yonder under the big mango tree, and all the time them talking and talking.

Seem like it been going on for months but is only just now Ethyl decide to tell me. She say she didn’t know what to make of it but she say last week when Father Kealey come knocking up the house in the middle of the night it make Mr Henry so vex he go out there and tell the Father to go home.

‘Mr Henry not a man quick to his temper, so that is when I reckon that maybe something not so right with Miss Fay and Father. And Miss Cicely don’t care for it neither. When they out there on the veranda she play the piano loud. Loud. And sing all them tunes Mr John Wesley make up that she learn when she was a Methodist, all ’bout how sinners going burn in hell and things like that.

‘Then yesterday Miss Cicely and Miss Fay have one almighty knockdown drag-out ’bout how Miss Fay running ’round with a priest and what she doing with Father Kealey. And Miss Cicely saying how Miss Fay been spoil her whole life. And how she make them send her to Immaculate Conception to be a boarder when the school only down the road from the house because all she want do is mix with her rich friends and pretend she white like them. And Miss Cicely say ’bout how Miss Fay spend all her time going to parties and playing tennis when she should have been doing her lessons which, according to Miss Cicely, tennis not no proper pastime for a Jamaican girl anyway. And Miss Cicely say they only let Miss Fay in the tennis club because she half Chinese and her papa rich.