The Pink House at Appleton (7 page)

When he'd had enough of this adventure, Boyd took himself further along the fence to a secluded spot where he could see the curling blue smoke from the coolie settlement down in the valley. The coolies were the Sioux in the comics on his bed, exotic, mysterious, wronged. Their cooking smoke were smoke signals. The signals drew him to them and he gazed long at the brown barracks, nostrils open to the wind, trying to detect the scent of their living, seeing images of bashful dark-haired squaws. They were waiting for him. The urge to creep under the fence and into the ecstasy of the comic books was overwhelming. The comic books had come alive at the new house. It was useless to fight.

Towards midday, when Papa had left, when the sun was clean and hot, the air vibrating and scented, Boyd put
Drums of War
down on the bed and rose, summoned. The coolie drums sought him out, led him on to where the coolie girls waited in the shadows of their barracks. Down the verandah steps he went, out into the powerful music.

He hesitated in the fragrant heat as a black and yellow butterfly shot up out of the hibiscus. It flew above Mama's flowerbeds, swooped across the lawn, made as if to perch on the jacaranda but flew behind the house and over the fence. Boyd raced after it. Poppy, coming from nowhere, joined in the chase. Boyd had seen such a butterfly, a swallowtail, in the encyclopaedia. Excitement obliterated Papa's rule never to cross the fence where it separated the green pastures from the house, the gateway to the pretty squaws, the coolies down in the valley, whose drums were now beating like thunder.

Under the barbed wire fence Boyd scrambled, shirt momentarily caught in the rusting barbs, Poppy falling back, eyes fixed on the darting spectacle against the blue sky. On and on they went, downhill, gasping for breath, hoping their prey would alight in one of the low branches of the cashew trees dotting the slope. But the butterfly came down in a yellow patch of daisies, only yards from the fence separating the field from the dirt road and the coolie settlement. It seemed almost invisible among the daisies and Boyd crept forward. Suddenly the coolie barracks loomed near. Behind him, up the hill, the pink house seemed a long way away. The drums were silent now. And Boyd heard screams.

The noise frightened him, but he felt dragged towards it. Crossing the dirt road, he entered the coolie compound. Smoke came from behind the barracks. The screams came from there too, and people's voices and fearful sounds. Smells that tasted of dirt and death reached his nostrils. It was a pig squealing without dignity. It seemed to be struggling, fighting to break loose from whatever danger imprisoned it. As the screams rose to a bloodcurdling pitch, Boyd pushed forward and came upon a savage scene. A crowd of coolies in a courtyard surrounded a rectangular stone platform: old men and women with silver hair to their shoulders; naked little children with iron rust bodies and dark hair; pretty, pretty girls his age with dirt-stiffened dresses, fragile hairy arms and stringy brown hair. There were girls there like Estella with pouting full lips, dark of eye, calculating stares. The older people sat quietly in the shade. Some of the women were combing their hair with a languid air while the girls watched, their arms fine and elegant. But Boyd's attention was dragged towards the centre of the courtyard. On the raised platform, two slim, hairy coolies held down, on its back, a crusty black pig with a savage snout, the biggest pig Boyd had ever seen. He thought with horror that they had undressed and were holding down a
higgler
, one of the strapping, large-breasted marketwomen with enormous
bankras
on their heads who came to the house
selling red beans. The pig was constantly breaking loose, shaking them off. A third coolie, shirtless and brandishing a long knife with a sharpened blade that flashed in the sun, stood a little apart, waiting his moment. That moment came as the pig, weakened momentarily, was forced down in a final burst of violence. The knife flashed once, came out red and plunged in again, swift and deep, killing deep. The pig, surprised, gave a hoarse cough as thick blood splashed everywhere. Other men jumped forward, keen to join in the butchering.

Quickly the coolies poured hot water over the black body. A horrible stench erupted. With sharp knives they set to work to skin the animal in swift, practised flourishes. Each swipe of their knives revealed white strips of the pig's under-skin. Boyd inhaled terrible odours and retched. If only he had stayed with the butterfly.

‘Me name Ramsook. Me kill the pig.' The tall, shirtless coolie pig killer was standing next to him. Coolie children and a few old women, fine-boned and elegant, approached. Boyd smelled their coolie smell. He couldn't speak.

‘You live in big house?' The man pointed towards the hill.

Boyd nodded. The children stared, not saying anything.

‘Your father big man at factory, make sugar, make rum,' the coolie said.

The coolie women had a philosophical air and did not look at Boyd directly but at something just over his shoulder. They had small faces and a beautiful demeanour. He could see them sitting in the Lloyd Loom chairs at the club sipping Babycham. If only they were clean, wore nice frocks and shoes and didn't sit as they did on the porch with legs wide apart. Some might even appear as pretty as Miss Chatterjee.

‘You tell your father we want work. No work for us in cane-piece. Tell him to give us work. We cut cane, plant ratoon, dig trench, cart manure, hoe, weed.'

Boyd backed away, not understanding. Poppy was struggling defiantly on the ground with a coolie dog twice his size.

‘Stop it!' Boyd cried out, imagining Poppy lying dead in the dirt.

‘Away, Cutthroat!' the coolie said, waving his arms. A small coolie boy chased after Cutthroat, a dog with a slinking tail and a wicked eye. Poppy got to his feet barking vigorously, his coat covered in red dirt.

‘You want pig meat?' It was the pig killer again. ‘Take up to the house?'

‘No,' Boyd said quickly, backing away, now that Poppy was no longer preoccupied.

‘Tell your father what Ramsook say,' Ramsook reminded him as he left the courtyard with its smells, smoke and blood. The disgraced pig lay naked and white on the block, mouth open, showing discoloured teeth and a pink slit in an arc at its throat.

A light wind sprang up, shifting the red dust as Boyd made his way back out into the dirt road. A dozen silent coolie children and their dogs followed him, stopping as one when they got to the fence. The sultry coolie girls gave him lingering looks and one, the dead stamp of Estella, appearing as if she meant to go after him, stared haughtily, hands on hips. Boyd wrenched his gaze away. The air in the pastures was clean, the grass luscious underfoot. He ran all the way up the hill, not looking back until he reached the summit. Back down the hill, the coolie girls were still standing by their rusting barbed-wire fence. The vast cane fields behind their houses were blue-green, their small clearing like a spot of dried blood on the lush landscape. Boyd wished they had green grass instead of dust in their yard and that Mr Ramsook had not killed the struggling
higgler
woman in cold blood.

Boyd's worry was how to approach Papa about Mr Ramsook. He knew that Papa would not focus on getting Mr Ramsook a job. He would want to ask questions: ‘What were you doing down there? Didn't I tell you never to cross the fence? What is the matter with you? What if you caught lice and hookworm from those people?'

Papa would want to cloud the issue.

‘They just sit on their backsides all day and expect to get work. Lazy buggers. Ramsook wants work? Let him get work. And if I ever hear of you going down there again, I'll whip you so hard you'll wish you were never born. Now, get out of my sight.'

Boyd knew that it was impossible to mention Mr Ramsook to Papa, nothing about his silent promise to the pig killer, nothing about the coolie girls with their slender, hairy arms, their dark Estella looks. And nothing about how the violent and bloody killing of the pig had erased much of the exotic imagery of the squaws from his memory.

As he slipped back under the fence of the pink house, he saw the familiar form of Vincent, like a pliant hunchback, on his knees planting banana suckers in the moist dark earth behind the garage. And he saw someone else too. Far to the left of the hill against an open sky, he glimpsed a fair figure gazing with riveting interest at the coolie barracks, the wind ruffling her hair. It was a white woman, her cotton skirts thrashing about her creamy legs in the lively valley breeze. As he watched, she walked rapidly away, round the hill, behind a clump of trees, towards the big houses down the lane. Boyd did not move but continued to stare silently, inquisitively, at the place where the woman had been.

* * *

At the end of the first week at the pink house, Barrington, sitting quietly on the windowsill and dreaming of Geraldine Pinnock, while simultaneosuly imagining himself playing for Jamaica against the rest of the world in the greatest ever football match at Wembley, raised his eyes level with the emerald green hedge at one end of the lawn and discovered Boyd standing there, staring up into a blue sky. Barrington watched him for a long time and counted up to a hundred, expecting him to move, but Boyd didn't. Barrington counted to a hundred and fifty and willed Boyd to move as he didn't want to count any more. He wanted to ride over to the Pinnocks and show Geraldine his gun. But Boyd stood still with his arms spread wide, taking the sun, his features swimming in the heat. Then, as Barrington stopped counting, frustrated, Boyd fell backwards, hands straight out in front of him, into the deep embracing grass. Sage-green birds flew up in a cloud.

Birds flew up as Boyd fell down into the deep, fragrant grass. He lay as if dead against the breathing earth, feeling the tingling passions, the delirious quiet, the secret music. There were many days like this. But that day something new happened.

As he left the grassy embrace, he wandered off to the far end of the garden, where the periwinkle fence grew. Here, where the fence ended, the private road began, leading to the big houses of the Mitchisons and the Dowdings. The sunlight came through the trees in soft gold spots upon his face. He put the binoculars to his eyes and gazed out beyond the green, across the private road, over the fence. He saw figures moving about in the garden of the big house. It was the Mitchisons, the English family recently arrived from Monymusk sugar estate, the family about whom Papa had raged. The woman he'd seen on the hill overlooking the coolie barracks was Mrs Mitchison.

Boyd saw a small figure on a blue and white bicycle held upright by their maid, a woman in a starched blue uniform. The figure on the bicycle was pink, with light-brown, short-cut, sun-touched hair, and wore a lilac gingham dress. As he watched, the maid let the bicycle go. After an awkward moment, during which everyone stood braced for action, the bicycle circled the poinciana tree in the centre of the garden and vanished round the corner of the house in a wink of pink. Mr and Mrs Mitchison and the maid followed, half-running. Boyd waited in his spot under the trees, unblinking. But she did not reappear. A sudden wind blew up from the valley, rustling the trees, sprinkling a potpourri of new scents which appeared in sad and exciting colour. And he went into himself, deep down where thoughts originated. Something had shifted in his firmament. Poppy was frantic at his feet, prancing, tail whipping about, breathing furiously, tongue lashing. His thoughts racing, redolent in hibiscus-pink, Boyd felt fascination of a kind he had never known. He couldn't wait to see the pink girl again.

That night at dinner, Yvonne said, ‘Mama, there's a little white girl next door. I saw her peeping over the fence.'

‘That will be the Mitchison's daughter, Susan,' Papa told them.

Boyd trembled when he heard this. What a name.
Susan
. It had music and heartbeat and the scent of evening primrose. And it was pink like the Appleton sunsets.

That night he stayed up late listening to the radio and the pretty songs, “Don't Forbid Me”, “Moonlight Gambler” and “The Green Door.” The peeny-waalies flew by the window and away into the night. And he was warm and dying, dying with gladness. No one knew. He just listened to the radio, the crackling Mullard radio, and through the whizz and the buzz and the miaow, heard the pretty songs from the distant place and thought of the people who had just arrived at the house down the road. The door to their house was “The Green Door”
(
one more night without sleeping, watching till the morning comes creeping). He couldn't sleep and longed for the next day when the figure on the bicycle would appear with the sun and the sugar smell of Appleton.

She did not appear at all the next morning, and not in the afternoon, the girl on the bicycle.
Susan
. That wonderful name. He repeated it over and over again until it became more than a name. And he was waiting for her the following day too, sheltered among the green things, the binoculars clamped to his eyes. When at last he was about to give up, she appeared from the side of the house with the sun behind her. She did not see him. Waves of warm air, in shimmering streams, separated the two of them. She continued walking towards the periwinkle fence on her side of the private road and seemed to be looking for something in the bushes. Boyd left the shadow of the trees. He saw her hair ablaze in the sun. She was pink against the green. Breathlessly he put the binoculars down.

Birds flew up out of the hedge and across the road. Instantly her head jerked back. She watched as the small yellow birds flew in a smooth, undulating motion and alighted on the fence opposite, where a small boy and a dog stood looking into the sky. She drew closer to the fence, surprised, not expecting to see anyone there. The boy was not looking into the sky but over her shoulder. His head was inclined obliquely. She saw him see her in that split-hazy moment. But before their eyes met, he quickly looked down, as if shy. Then he moved backwards into the trees. She stood on tiptoe to try to see over the hedge, but the boy, about her age, did not reappear. Through the sunshine-yellow haze she saw the pink house looming through the trees like a picture in a book. All was quiet. Susan Mitchison stood still. She heard the musical voices whispering
hush, hushh
,
hushhh
, and in her quietness was overcome with unspeakable joy.
It was just as she imagined it when Rosalind came upon Orlando in the Forest of Arden!
The book, Lambs'
Tales from Shakespeare
, lay opened on her bed at the chapter entitled “As You Like It.” Susan's feelings and her thoughts, mostly in crimson, dwarfed her. She was seven years old.

* * *

Something had shifted in Mama and Papa's firmament also, but they did not yet know it. Late that night, as the dew appeared on the lawn, Mama faced Papa.

They had been talking on the verandah in the dark when it had come up in her, the feeling of desperation. Suddenly she'd seen the dull flash of ambition growing dimmer and dimmer and it frightened her. It would die soon. She faced Papa because he had commented, casually, about Ann Mitchison, the wife of the assistant general manager. He said that she had qualified in fine art at a college in London and was politically very astute,
very astute
. So, no longer was she an interfering busybody! He said she shared his views about Jamaica's political future. Full self-government, complete independence was the answer. Papa said he could not agree more. He had found her, at a meeting at the club over drinks, totally absorbing,
totally absorbing
. Here was a
woman who
knew her mind
. And Papa had said no more, returning casually to his drink and looking into the
peeny-waalie
-filled night. Mama, not usually a jealous person, experienced what could only be described as a vague sensitivity. But as the moments drifted by, this passing sensitivity took hold. Here was a woman, Ann Mitchison, who had achieved something with her life, something Papa had no difficulty in appreciating. And yet, in his own house, his own wife's tireless begging for an opportunity for personal development fell on deaf ears. All she ever wanted was to be a designer of women's dresses and sell to selective shops like
Daphne's
in Kingston. Long before Papa came along, that was her dream. Some of her early drawings on creamy paper were at the bottom of her suitcase at the back of the wardrobe. None of her children had ever seen them; neither had Papa.

She faced Papa that night in 1957 at Appleton, the mother of three children and one on the way, feeling more than a bit desperate.

‘I want you to listen to me,' she said, her voice wavering.

‘What?' Papa sipped his third rum of the night, gazing up at the stars. His plans were falling into place but not fast enough for him. Two years. Two years, and they would leave Appleton for greener pastures. With the children attending the best schools, he could begin to plan for their university education. Only London, Cambridge or Oxford mattered. They would enter the professions: law, medicine, education.

‘I want you to help me,' Mama said.

Papa laughed innocently. Stars flashed across the sky. ‘Help you with what, Victoria? I need help myself. All the decisions I have to make at the factory, here at the house, this, that and the other. Life isn't a bed of roses, y'know.'

Mama rose from the chair. Papa could be so inconsiderate at times. The chair made an extraordinary screeching sound against the tiles. She'd never liked those chairs, heavy aluminium things painted in pastel green and white. But they were the latest thing in verandah chairs and the estate was full of them. She much preferred wicker chairs. Besides, they were never cold at night, didn't make silly, metallic sounds and weren't so heavy and
ridiculous
.

‘I need to do something with my life,' she almost pleaded. Her white skirt appeared pale blue in the dark.

‘Need to do something with your life? Victoria, what are you talking about?'

‘I mean, I
want
to do something with my life.'

‘I hope it's not that dressmaking business again,' Papa said, glaring, a clear warning that he was not interested. Mama didn't seem to understand his clear objectives for the family, the certainty that they would be achieved, that everyone should get behind him as head of the family, to ensure that nothing blew them off course. She didn't seem to understand that nothing, absolutely nothing, would drag him down.

‘Harold, it's my life,' Mama stammered, lips now trembling uncontrollably.

‘But you are doing something with your life,' he told her. ‘You're expecting another child. I provide a good home. We already have three children. You are a good mother. You could be a lot tougher on them, but we're all human.'

Mama was exasperated. ‘I want to talk about me, me.' She beat her breast. ‘
Me
! I want to talk about
me
!'

‘Say what you have to say,' Papa replied, paying no attention to the anguish on her face. ‘Speak up, Victoria. For Christ's sake.'

‘I just want to – ‘

‘What?' Papa snapped once more, as if admonishing a little child. When he was in that state all her confidence flew away.

Earlier, when she rose from the chair, she had felt a sudden surge of lightning confidence and clarity, but words were now clogging her throat. She was doomed, closed like a tomb, carrying a life, history and dreams that no one would ever know. Papa's nonchalance and aloofness, and then his aggression, brought her back to what she was, the girl from St Catherine who had never been anywhere. She was a mother whose children would remember her for doing nothing. They would continue to fear and respect their father because he made things happen, good or bad. She would be forgotten because she did not dominate their moments, did not make the air swirl and shake and make their hearts beat, sometimes with fear. She was not that interesting someone who sent them to school, paid the fees, whipped their behinds and left the house every day to return at night smelling of the world. She would not be remembered because she did not leave her mark on them, she had only loved them quietly and constantly. All she had was the smell of home which, one day, they would all want to get away from. She did not want to be alone.

She had not envied the women at the club who had travelled and studied, who smoked and drank and were so sophisticated and confident. But now she thought of them as better than she was. She had not been to the club for drinks with Ann Mitchison and felt left out. She had not been because Papa had not taken her. It infuriated her that in the space of just a few days Ann Mitchison had gone from being a busybody to a woman almost worthy of worship.

Mama started to cry. Papa didn't notice at first but when she sat back down, he saw the round pearls of tears reflecting the moonlight. His instinct was to round on her with disgust. But she seemed so pretty, so vulnerable in the dark, in her white skirt, with her rising bosom, her muted crying, John Pratt's daughter. He was aroused. He took her into his arms. Instantly, vibrant images of Ann Mitchison assaulted him, shocking him to the core. Try as he might, he could not dispel the images, and so he succumed. He had only met her a few times at the club. She had impressed him as only few women could and he had instinctively camouflaged his appreciation. But he had not been able to ignore the expressive lips, the eyes that drew him in, her provoking presence. He had not been able to free himself from the embrace of British domination expressed in fair womanhood. Now Mama was Ann Mitchison in his arms. She went willingly into the bedroom, like a child, to the place that she knew. Papa felt like a lion, an estate lion, a lion of the cane-piece. Already feeling twitches of the burden of guilt, he sensed that he'd taken the first steps on the road to perdition.

The very next evening, with the red sun barely below the mountains and the sky full of dive-bombing swallows, Papa, dressed in cricket whites, knocked up some wickets and summoned the boys onto the lawn. They batted and they bowled. They fielded and they kept wicket and they shouted, ‘Collie Smith!', ‘Rohan Khani!' and ‘Frank Worrell!' at intervals. They displayed their cricketing skills for Papa while Mama and Yvonne watched from the verandah. Vincent watched from the porch, shielding his eye from the sun. He ran for the balls that went too far and acted as a kind of outfielder although he wasn't in the game.

Later, they gathered on the verandah to listen to Papa's plans for the future yet again, to hear how Barrington had already left university with a first class degree, qualified as a lawyer and been snapped up by the top law firm in Kingston. They heard how he'd gone on to people the land with the first of the Brookes boys, grandsons for Papa and heirs to the Brookes dynasty.

‘But I'm going to be a footballer,' Barrington protested, sipping bright green Kool-Aid as the night noises came on, as the
peeny-waalies
came out and as they breathed the evening smell of Appleton.

‘You'll be a great lawyer,' Papa assurred him, ‘respected throughout the country. You'll make a lot of money too, drive a Jaguar and live in a bigger house than this one.'

‘What about me, Papa?' Yvonne had seen Barrington's eyes light up.

‘Yvonne, you'll be a doctor, finding cures for the worst diseases known to man.'

‘Diseases? But I want to be an explorer, Papa. Or a nurse, and – .'

‘You listen to your Papa. You'll be a very famous doctor. Dr. Yvonne Brookes. How does that sound?'

Yvonne beamed. Temporarily lost for words, she turned quickly towards Mama, then Boyd, whose future had not been told. ‘And what about Boyd, Papa?'

Boyd, who had been watching Mama listen quietly to the conversation, like someone expecting at any moment to hear that she, too, would be a lawyer or someone of very high standing, looked round. But just before Papa spoke, just before Mama's or Boyd's future could be foretold, they saw the Mitchison's maid, Evadne, come through the garden gate with a note in her hand. Poppy immediately set upon her, worrying her ankles and nipping away at the hem of her dress, so that she dashed about, holding the note aloft. Eventually she reached the safety of the verandah. She handed the note to Papa and left, bowing, Poppy escorting her back to the edge of the garden. Boyd, seeing the maid arrive, the maid who came from the same house as the girl with the sun-drenched hair, the girl who was as pink as the pink women in the encyclopaedia, breathed new and delightful scents.

Papa read the note and handed it to Mama. ‘Invitation to dinner,' he said, pouring himself another drink and looking pleased with himself.

‘Tim and Ann request the pleasure of your company,' Mama read, then stopped. She immediately thought of the reciprocal dinner party, worried about meeting her neighbour and about the fact that she was still without a competent maid. She worried too about her lack of confidence and about Papa's sudden interest in Ann Mitchison. That night she searched Papa's face for the secret that she suspected was hidden there.

And that night Boyd saw her again in real life images.
Behind the pink house, in the shade of the otaheite apple tree, she sat on the swing, hands up, holding on to the thick ropes, feet lightly touching the apple blossoms covering the bare earth, in a slow motion rhythm, back and forth. As the rhythm quickened, she laughed, standing up on the base of the swing, knees bent, pumping hard. He stood in the dandelion bed nearby, watching as she fluttered out and in. It was quiet but for her quick gasps and the fluttering of her dress. Boyd saw her go far out, so far out that he could see the back of her, and so far in that he could see up under her dress. He turned away, not wanting to look, only wanting to see her hair and lips and her eyes and hear the flutter of her dress. But he wanted her to stop, not to swing so far out, to swing low and gently and then stop and run to him in the dandelion bed where Poppy was, and where the heat off them, in a suffocating potpourri, drugged and calmed their eyelids, limbs and their breathing.