The Polished Hoe (37 page)

“Morse code! It save the Allieds.

“And we, as ordinary police from Bimshire, played our part in those two great undertakings of military endeavour, the First Whirl War and the Second Whirl War.

“‘
Englund expect every man to do his duty.

’ “So, Trinidad was a relief, a kind of reward for we hard-working members of the Special Branch, on the Police Force, which they assign me to, as a recruit.

“And the women...Well, as you would expect, I survive the crossing, and the seasickness, and when Trinidad loom up outta the morning mist—you always arrive by sea, into a new island, in the morning. You leave the place of setting out from, in the evening. Those are the laws and etiquettes of sea-travel by boat. The rituals of the deep.

“Trinidad! And Trinidadian women! For a minute, and with my vision of Trinidadian women, I forgot the mission we was on.

“Women like peas, Miss Mary-Mathilda, if I say so myself, in all good respects to you, being a woman yourself; and if I may say so, under the present circumstances, namely the cause of my presence this Sunday evening, and the more obvious fact that you is still a woman, a woman of substance, a woman that look still good; good-good-good, if you don’t mind me saying so . . . that I have looked upon you, since we was small thrildren growing up together . . . and you will have to forgive me, Miss Mary-Mathilda, for talking so plain in the presence of a lady, whiching you are. But the truth is the truth. And you will . . .”

“Continue, Percy.”

“Continuing . . .” he says.

“Continue, Percy.”

“. . . continuing. You’s a woman that my eyes have looked kindly and soft on, from the time that Saturday morning, in the company of your mother, Ma, when she brought you to Manny’s father yard, to get the piece o’ pork she had engage. I was helping Manny’s father clean-out the belly. And washdown the blood from the table where the pig was cut up. You was dressed in a blue dress, part of your school uniform. And your hair had in a blue ribbon. Normally, you would wear the white blouse under the uniform part . . . the tunic, you call it? No, the tank! Anyhow, this was a Saturday, and you was allowed to wear just the tunic. The tunic! That’s the right name for it, the
tunic
. You were wearing your tunic that Saturday afternoon. And a ordinary plain white bodice underneat’. It was a hot morning, that day.

“‘
This is my Mary,’
your mother tell Manny father.
‘My lil girl, Mary.’

“‘
So, this is Mary! Little Mary-had-a-little-lamb, Mary?’”
And Manny father laugh, as he does always laugh when he talk; and say things like this.

“And your mother say,
‘Say morning to Mr. Biscombe, Mary-girl.’
And you say,
‘How-dee-do, Mr. Biscombe? Good morning, sir.’

“And Manny’s father say,
‘So, this is lil Mary, who is pretty-prettypretty as the Little Lamb in the storybook! Pretty as a butterfly. I hear that Mary bright-bright as a new shilling!’
he tell your mother.
‘And I hear that this child bright-enough to be and shouldda be going-school at Queens College next term, to say nothing o’ Sin-Michaels Girls School. If things was different with your pocketbook. You know what I mean.’

“‘Yes,’
your mother tell Manny father.
‘We have to creep before we walk.’

“‘That is the Gospel, girl! How you mean?’
Manny father tell your mother.

“And he give your mother the piece o’ pork she engaged. Half-pung o’ harslick. And a pung-and-a-half o’ pork, a piece near the ribs. For pork chops.”

“You have a good memory, Percy.”

“The detective-work. Detective-work sharpen my memory . . .”

“No wonder!”

“Cause I was watching you all the time. How you was holding your head down, as if you were shy.

“All this transpired in the presence o’ me. Although it was big-people talking and my presence was invisible to big-people’s company.

“From that Saturday morning I had eyes that followed your life, wherever possible. Eyes for you. You was in my mind. And in my body. I can say this now. Cause, we are big-people ourselves, and we have to face facts. Sometime-in-our-lives.

“I facing them facts, now. Tonight.”

“Facing facts,” she says.

“I may be outta order. Under the circumstances that find me here, meaning my position in the Constabulary of Bimshire, I might be outta place. But I am here not only as a police, Mary-Mathilda.

“I wish I was man-enough . . .

“I wish I could be able to face you, as a man . . .

“And see you as a woman.

“And if I am talking outta turn, as I may be, tell me. And as a man, I would take your reprimands. Put on my hat, button-up my tunic neck and leave. Vacate your premises.

“But that Saturday morning,” he goes on to say, “in the yard of Manny father rum shop, when Manny father tell you about how you should be going to Queens College on the strength of your brains and brightness, but couldn’t, on account of being poor, your mother uttered something which I will always remember.

“Your mother tell Manny father,
‘Thank you, Mr. Biscombe, for your words in kind regards to my daughter’s potentials. I am acknowledging your words in my daughter behalf. I know what you are saying. I know she deserve a place in Queens College. Mary deserve a place at Sin-Michaels Girls School, to say the least. But if she don’t get there, she will get somewhere else, praise God. She wants to take up needlework. And I promise her that I will try-my-best to buy a Singer sewing machine for her, ’pon time. Before I dead. One o’ these days, this lil girl, this Mary Gertrude Mathilda, Mary-girl, as I calls her, that you see stanning-up here this Saturday morning,..Well, one day, she will be living in one of the biggest houses in this Village, even on that Plantation! Even in the Great House, over there, then! Why not? She can dream, can’t she? Mark my word!’

“‘What a day that going to be!’
Manny father say.
‘What a blasted good day!’

“I live to see that prediction come to pass. I see the words your mother uttered that Saturday come true. Your mother, Ma, saw into the future, Miss Mary Gertrude Mathilda.

“And now, here I am, too; with you. In this Great House. For the first time in my life, I sitting down in a real front-house! And though the circumstances isn’t what they could or should be, and isn’t the right ones I would have desired, they happen to be the circumstances the two o’ we are faced with. And a man have to throw the dice that are pass to him to play with . . .
vap! nick! Throw a seven on the first throw, or crap out!
”

The large front-house is quiet now. Only her breathing can be heard. The smell of canes burnt in fires Saturday night rises stronger now that the wind comes from the direction of the North Field. There is also the fragrance of the lady-of-the-night and the smell of the furniture and the polish used by Gertrude on the mahogany chairs and tables.

And the smell of food cooking.

Sargeant tries to imagine what it is that Gertrude is cooking so late at night. And for whom. It could be roast pork. Or pork chops, dipped in meal-corn flour and seasoned deeply with fresh broad-leaf thyme, and cloves, frying in lard oil. Gertrude’s cooking cries out in the sizzling iron saucepan.

He inhales and tries to distinguish the smell.

It is chicken being fricasseed.

It could be pork chops frying.

It could be a joint o’ pork baking.

It could be stew, Bimshire Stew, a mixture of fresh beef and fresh pork and fresh fine-leaf thyme, being boiled in the same pot, with onions . . . to be served with meal-corn cou-cou. But this is Sunday, and cou-cou is cooked and eaten piping-hot, on Saturday afternoons only . . .
“You staying for dinner?”
. . . his mind goes back to that Saturday in Manny’s father’s yard, with him in his khaki short pants patched in the seat in so many places with different colours and materials, so that it was difficult to know which colour or which material was the original the pants were made from, by the Village tailor; his legs stained with traces of pig’s blood; and his bare feet covered with the black shiny hairs that had been scalded off the body of the eighty-pound pig, with pails of boiling water; and then scraped off with a stone. It was a boar-hog . . .
“Are you staying for dinner?”

“I was trying to guess what your maid could be cooking, that smell so sweet?”

“Well, why don’t you call her and find out?”

“Me?”

“Touch the bell, and she will come.”

“So, this is how.”

“I wonder when Wilberforce coming back?”

“What the time is?” he says.

“It getting late.”

Sargeant rings the bell. It reminds him of that bell the Headmaster of his Elementary School rang at nine o’clock every morning to “summonse” the boys from their games in the schoolyard beside the Church wall that has graves behind it; and again, at eleven, to announce “ten minutes,” a break for water from the pipe in the schoolyard; or to pass water in the
WC
; and again at one minute to twelve noon, for lunch; and for the fourth time, at two in the afternoon, to announce the names of boys allowed to leave early to field tennis balls at the Garrison Savannah Lawn Tennis Club; or to water the flower gardens of the rich; and at three o’clock, the fifth and last time, when the afternoon is tired and humid, now to announce
“School lay-by”
and
“Singing!”

The entire school stands at attention. “Rule Britannia!” It is the end of the day. The last bell.

All pupils are admonished to go straight home.
“Now, go straight home, boys!”
To doff their caps to strangers and adults. To make no noise on the way home. And the boys scamper out of the school like freed prisoners, after having recited the Lord’s Prayer; after singing “Rule Britannia” three times; after reciting “I Vow to Thee, My Country”; and then marching out from their benches and “desses.” The singing of “God Save the King” now ended, the photograph of King George-the-Fiff is saluted, as each boy reaches the door. A smart, swift wave of their black hands before their faces, as their bare feet pound the deal-board floors, marching as to war . . .

And Gertrude comes. Like a ghost, without ceremony; like the Inspector of Elementary Schools, sneaking up on the Headmaster and trying to catch him off-guard; talking to herself . . . “I-myself was just-this-minute going to come in and see if you want me to serve now, Mistress? Wait until Mr.Wilberforce come? Since you having-in guesses, you want me to leave things until you ready to go to the table? Or-if-not, if you want me for something else, like more drinks. Or. . . ? But I really was wondering, Mistress, if I could take-off as soon as I clean up?” . . . There are many things on Gertrude’s mind: what is Sargeant doing, talking so damn long; and why the Mistress haven’t told her to take-off early tonight, as usual; and as promised; “. . . and I promise myself to pass-round by the Pilgrim Holiness tonight, and see if the Sisters getting in the spirit, and hear the word o’ God at the same time . . . Lord, what wrong with this woman, tonight . . ?”

“Lock-up before you leave, please, Gertrude.”

“Thanks. And good night, Mistress.”

“You got somebody to company-you-home? It dark.”

“Yes, Mistress. My cousin . . .”

“Be careful . . .”

“Good night, Mr. Stuart.”

“Throw-on one o’ Wilberforce old black jackets over your two shoulders, Gertrude. To prevent yourself from catching a draught . . . The night cold. And the dew falling, hear?”

“Good night, Miss Gertrude,” Sargeant says, very formally.

“Night!” Gertrude says. “Well, I leaving, now, then . . .”

“Night! And Wilberforce isn’t even here . . . I had no idea I keep the child so late! . . . to give her a drop to the corner . . .”

“Night!” Sargeant says.

“I going now, then,” Gertrude says; and closes the parlour door a little noisily behind her.

“Why you never took-up with a steady woman?” Mary-Mathilda says, now that they are alone.

“After the mother of your two daughters left Bimshire and died, you became a sad, lonely man. We used to wonder, and some people even bet that before-long, you was going to put a end to your life by your own two hands. And when you were telling me about your trip to Trinidad, and knowing you were likely to meet some Trinidadian woman down-in-there, I was waiting to hear if you left some thrildren behind; or if you married to one, hoping some day to bring-she-back to Bimshire; or you return back down in Trinidad. But, nothing, Percy?
Nothing?

“So, I ask you
why
, as a consequence? Why?”

“Celia DiFranco was a light-skin woman of Porchogeeze-Negro extractions that I meet, when a Trinidadian detective-fellar take we out on the town one night, from up in Toonapoona where we were billeted, all the way down in Port-o’-Spain, by car, near the Savannah. In a place,my-God, Mary-Mathilda, that sold the sweetest ice cream in the whole Wessindies! The Green Corner. Or the Corner of Green.

“This girl—she was a schoolgirl at the time I was in Trinidad, tracking down the whereabouts of Patel. This girl, not more than sixteen when I meet her, ’cause she was still ’tending high school, Bishops High School for Girls.