The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q (6 page)

I took my purchases inside the shop to pay for them. The shopkeeper – not Errol, but maybe Errol’s son – packed everything into blue plastic bags and told me the price. I opened the purse and gave him a ten pound note, and as he turned to the till to get the change I bent down to pack the goods into my backpack. When I straightened up again the shopkeeper pointed to my purse, which I’d left lying on the countertop.

‘You don’t belong in Brixton, right?’ he said. ‘Never leave your purse unattended like that here. Nex’ time, you might find it gone!’

The customer behind me, an elderly man, nodded and smiled. ‘I was thinking the same thing!’ he said. ‘Just be careful, Miss! Look after youself!’

I smiled at both in gratitude, feeling stupid. ‘Thanks!’ I said. ‘This is my first time here. I won’t do it again.’

‘Yeah, I thought you was new, I never seen you face before. Well, then, welcome to Brixton, and I hope I didn’t put you off forever! Most of us good honest people!’

Errol’s son’s warm smile made me feel right at home.

‘No, no, of course not. I think you’ll see a lot of me in future.’

Yes. Brixton Market had found a new recruit.

‘Nice, nice!’ He reached across a pile of sick-coloured bottles of fizzy drinks and grabbed a beautiful golden mango, which he handed to me.

‘There you go! Have a great weekend! Come back soon!’

As I thanked him and packed the mango into my backpack – this time, my purse clamped under my arm – a new feeling flooded me: gratitude, mingled with shame, and a delicious sense of comfort. Sometimes it’s just nice to belong. I suppose that’s the advantage of village life.

I met up with Marion and Jocelyn but it seemed they hadn’t finished their conversation yet, and had made plans. For me.

‘I hear you like Guyanese cooking?’ said Jocelyn to me, with a wicked glint in her eyes.

‘Love it!’ I said.

Jocelyn grabbed my arm, hooked hers into it. ‘Well then, you got to come to Brown Betty. Marion and me takin’ an early lunch there. Best Caribbean food in town – in the whole country!’

And they marched me off, down a side street where we were accosted by a black preacher with piled up dreadlocks yelling at us to ‘Repent! For the day of Retribution is nigh!’ Past stalls loaded with cheap bric-a-brac, past a sweet arcade; and then we were at Brown Betty, a narrow little place with one table on the street and a big glass window and an open door. In we went.

The place was crammed. There were only four tables, not counting the one outside, and all of them were crowded with plates piled high with food and surrounded by people eating. There were chairs everywhere, and people standing and talking and coming and going. A buxom black woman screamed when she saw Jocelyn and pushed her way past to enclose her in a tight hug. Her unblemished skin was polished to a deep mahogany, skin so tight and pure it could have belonged to a child. Her hair was arranged in small tight cornrows that started at her brow and rode across her skull to be gathered at the back of her neck on rolls of soft flesh. She and Jocelyn hugged as if they were long-lost sisters, and then they pulled apart and Jocelyn introduced her to Marion, who was pulled into a similar embrace, and then it was my turn. Strong arms closed around me and pressed me against a pillow of a breast; and all to the tune of ‘Welcome, Welcome darling, welcome my dear, welcome to Brown Betty!’

This was Betty, we learned next, and though the place was full, Betty found room for us by chasing out the four occupants of one of the tables who she lambasted for having been sitting there for four hours and just ‘gaffin’ de mahnin’ away when other people got wuk to do’ and ‘keepin’ away de custom’.

‘Ow, Aunty, leh we stay, nuh?’ said a thin black woman, with big golden hoop earrings and an elaborate corn-row hair style, grinning up at Betty in supplication.

‘You think skinnin’ you teeth gon’ help yuh? Haul yuh tail! Every man Jack!’

Reluctantly, the guests got up and left. Marion pushed Rika into the corner space they had left, and she and Jocelyn sat down opposite her.

‘Just like home!’ said Marion in delight, looking around her at the wooden walls painted in primary colours, posters pinned to them inviting people to a Jamboree or advertising hair extensions or ‘Cheap Calls to Guyana and the Caribbean’.

‘You mean to say, you live here all you life and this is your first time in Brixton?’ Jocelyn couldn’t believe it; she looked at me as if I were some alien.

‘Is not she fault,’ said Marion, ‘is my sister Rika – she always goin’ she own way.’

‘No sense of roots!’ said Jocelyn. ‘My cousin daughter just like dat. They wouldn’t set foot in Brixton – t’ink dey is too good.’

‘Brown Betty was a restaurant in centre Georgetown,’ Marion explained. ‘Gone now, but oh my! They used to have the best chicken-in-the-rough in the whole country. Served in a basket!’

‘Ice cream too!’ said Jocelyn. ‘We used to go every Sunday evening. Then drive to the Sea Wall and eat we chicken.’

‘Closed down now,’ said Marion, ‘But Betty here, she is the granddaughter. And Betty cousin …’ She launched into the story of Betty’s cousin.

Betty, meanwhile, who had disappeared into the kitchen some time ago, reappeared with several dishes balanced on her arms. She placed them on the red-and-white chequered tablecloth: dhal puri and chicken curry, plus pumpkin bhaji with mango achar, black pudding, metagee and cook-up-rice, channa and chow-mein – all of which I was commanded to heap onto my plate and
eat up, eat up.

I ate my way through the dishes set before me, each one more delicious than the one before it. I was going to get so fat, but I didn’t care. Marion, Jocelyn and Betty looked on with delight.

‘A proper Guyanese!’ said Jocelyn.

‘She eats everything but rope, soap and iron!’ Marion informed her.

‘That’s the way!’ said Betty. ‘Eat up, darlin’, eat up!’

‘So when you goin’ home?’ Jocelyn asked me, in between all the food and drink.

I looked at my watch, and then at Marion. ‘Actually, we should leave, in half an hour at the latest,’ I said, and Marion and Jocelyn burst into laughter.

‘Not that home …
home,
home. Guyana!’ said Jocelyn.

‘Um – actually, I don’t have any plans. Probably never,’ I said, and hoped it didn’t sound rude. I didn’t say that
this
was home. London. South London. And now, Brixton.

Marion patted me on the back.

‘You will go. One day you will. Wait and see,’ she said.

Later on, I staggered and stumbled home – my present home, that is – with Marion, stuffed full with the most delicious food I’d ever tasted and satiated with enough affection to keep me going until – until I returned to Brixton and Brown Betty, which definitely would have to be soon. For the time being, that would be my Guyana. For it had dawned on me that day: Marion was right. One day, I’d go and find that place she and Mum called home. Meanwhile, I had learned a valuable lesson: Guyana’s way to my heart was definitely through the stomach.

M
arion
and I were cooking together one evening when I broached the taboo subject of Mum, Gran, and the Terrible Thing that had torn them apart.

‘What really happened?’ I asked, as casually as I could. Marion looked at me and shrugged.

‘If your mummy never told you, it means she don’t want you to know. It doesn’t really concern you and it’s all in the past.’

‘But I just think I should
know
. There’s such a tension between them. If I knew I could somehow… mediate. I have the feeling they both
want
to be friends, they both
want
reconciliation but something is holding them back. Maybe it’s pride or something. Maybe one of them needs to say sorry and if I knew …’

Marion sighed. ‘So you picked up on that? You’re right, Inky. The two of them are just dying to make up but it’s like they’re caught in a time trap, and they can’t escape, both too proud to make the first move. First Mummy rejected Rika and then Rika got her revenge by rejecting Mummy … it’s like a wall of rejection and if only they could just get past that wall – tear it down …’

‘But why, Marion? What happened?’

‘Sorry, Inky, you not getting that information from me. It’s too personal. Ask your mummy.’

‘You know what she’s like. She never talks about personal stuff. I asked her a couple of times already and she always manages to change the subject.’

‘Then ask Granny.’

‘She won’t talk either. She just keeps dropping hints. If I knew who had to forgive whom … whose fault it was. Was it really
that
bad?’

Marion didn’t answer. She was chopping onions. She rubbed her eyes. But I refused to be ignored.

‘Marion – how bad was it really?’

She glanced at me and said beneath her breath:

‘It was…
horrendous.’

A
fly was crawling
along the back of her neck. Dorothea flicked her pigtails and it flew away. She turned her mind back to Pa’s sermon, both hands, in white lace gloves, decorously folded on her hymn book.

There it was again, the fly, crawling down towards the collar of her dress, tight around her neck. This time she reached behind to chase it away. Her hand dislodged her hat of white lace, matching the gloves. She straightened it unobtrusively. If she fidgeted too much, Pa, up there in the pulpit, would notice and teach her to her pay attention by learning a new psalm out by heart, after the service. So she fixed her gaze on Pa and tried to absorb the sermon, which wasn’t too hard as she’d heard it a million times before, if in other words.

It was a most persistent fly. It was back, this time crawling around the side of her neck towards her chin. She slapped at it and the noise fell unfortunately into a potent pause in the sermon. Mums, stiff-backed next to her in the pew, looked down at her and frowned. Dorothea smiled back, scratched her neck as if that was all she had been doing, and focused on Pa. He missed nothing, and up there in the front row she was practically under his nose.

‘And so, brethren in the Lord, be alert, for Satan walks among us. Brothers and sisters, let not your eyes be blinded by the illusion of his works, nor your ears be made deaf by his lies! He walks among ye in many a beautiful guise, so let the words of your Lord stand guard over your heart! Let the sign of the cross be written in light above your heads as you go about your daily lives! Let the Holy Book accompany you on your journey through life…’

He held up the enormous black Bible and pumped it as if gauging its weight, which Dorothea knew, was several pounds, for, under Pa’s eagle eye, she spent a part of each day strutting about the house with that very same Bible balanced on her head. A young lady must keep a straight back and a high head, Pa said, and the Bible must be her refuge at all times. Only thus could Satan be kept at bay.

But that fly must be Satan, out to tempt her, for there it was again, tickling the nape of her neck, just beneath the hairline. She wrinkled her face and once again swung her pigtails, keeping her hands folded on her lap. The fly was not one bit bothered. There it was again.

The game might have gone on all through the sermon but a smothered giggle and some shuffling behind her made Dorothea glance around. And at once she knew.

It was those dreadful Quint brothers, most specifically, Freddy Quint, the youngest.

There was not a time when Dorothea had not been aware of the Quint boys. They were an integral part of her childhood. Their jungle backyard swarmed with them, a horde of loud, rambunctious boys who claimed it as hunting territory. Dorothea had never stopped to count them; might as well count a cage full of monkeys, and anyway, throughout the years they had been heard rather than seen, their shrill boy-voices yelling blue murder above the backyard treetops or from the alley that linked their homes. Rumour had it there were eight of them.

They lived in a big timber house in Lamaha Street, just a few yards down the alleyway from Dorothea’s own house in Waterloo Street. In fact, Dorothea’s upper-storey bedroom window at the back of the house overlooked the Quint backyard and, though you could not see what was going on beneath the treetops, you could certainly hear the yelling and the screaming from the wild games they played. True, as they grew older the yard grew quieter, but somehow their reputation as ‘mad’ and ‘wild’ remained. All boys. No girls. She’d known them all her life but never spoken a word to any of them, because Pa said they were bad company; but mostly because they were boys, and a van Dam girl never went near boys.

When she
had
seen them, it was in the street, for they had claimed Waterloo Street –
her
street! – as part of their territory, Lamaha Street being far too busy for serious boy-action. Most afternoons the Quint boys came tearing around the corner, still in their St Stanislaus school uniforms, into the calm tree-shaded avenue outside the van Dam house, and converted it into bedlam. They would ride back and forth with no hands or perform circus tricks, swinging their lithe boy bodies over their saddles or handlebars, riding backwards or piling on five to a bike, and of course, racing each other up and down the street. They would weave through traffic as if it did not exist, ramming on the brakes till they squealed and rearing up to ride on one wheel, cowboys on thin iron horses.

Dorothea could not tell one from another, not put names to all the faces, but Freddy, being the wildest of the bunch, had gained Pa’s attention when he, Pa, had caught him up the mango tree last year at the height of the season, with a bucket full of the plumpest mangoes. Pa had chased him away and lodged a formal complaint with his mother, that dark-haired Englishwoman, who had accepted it with an apology on behalf of her son, a dismissal along the lines of ‘boys will be boys’, and a gift; a basket of sweet, ripe, White Lady guavas from the Quints’ own backyard.

Freddy Quint was the worst of the lot. He was the only one she could identify by name, him being the youngest and thus the smallest. The rest of them seemed simply an amorphous blob of gangling animal maleness; she had not deigned to separate the whole into its separate fidgeting parts. She only knew they were dreadful, because Pa told her so. All of them were older than her; in fact quite a few years older, but Freddy seemed about her age, thirteen. Normally, they’d have met at primary school but Freddy had gone to the liberal private school in Camp Street whereas she, of course, had attended the Mission School in Croal Street. And now he, like all his brothers, was at the all-boys Saint Stansilaus College. Dorothea had attended the female pendant, the all-girls Catholic St Rose’s High School, until, a year ago, Pa had fallen out with the Sister Antony on a small (in his eyes, big) matter of doctrine. Since then Dorothea went to the Government School, Bishops’ High. Pa didn’t like Catholics anyway, and Bishops’ was just as strict. She was safe there, safe from the likes of Freddy Quint.

But all this was mostly in the past. As the boys grew up, so had the neighbourhood gradually returned to its original state of leafy, sun-filtered serenity; one by one the Quint boys approached the more serious pursuits of manhood, and, occasionally, one or the other abandoned home for studies abroad. Only Freddy remained wild, and, to Dorothea, conspicuous. She had never been this close to him, never spoken to him.

N
ow
, she glanced behind her again, and frowned. He was up to no good, for sure. He sat immediately behind her, hands tucked demurely under his thighs. It was the broad grin across his face that gave him away, and the smothered giggles of his brothers at either side. All eight of them sat in the pew behind her, book-ended by their parents.

The Quint boys were all tall and lanky, but that was the only resemblance between them. Otherwise, they were as unalike as a random handful of seashells, ranging in skin colour from almost-white through cinnamon to mahogany brown – Freddy being the darkest – and with hair colour and texture ranging between straight blonde to crinkly black. Freddy’s hair was a compromise; a mane of dark curls that hung over his forehead and down his neck, almost as long as a girl’s, over it a wide-brimmed straw hat which he wore constantly, even in church, even though it was by now worn-out and floppy and quite grimy.

Dorothea wondered why Ma Quint didn’t insist on a better turnout for church; but Ma Quint was herself eccentric; ‘crazy’, was Pa’s word for her, as it was for almost anyone who wasn’t in his congregation. She was a dark-haired Englishwoman with a ‘reputation’; she’d broken all the rules, people whispered, though Dorothea had never quite understood
which
rules she’d broken. Together with her husband, a dark, tall, African man, she added a few more ingredients to the genetic stew that was British Guiana’s population. As, of course, had Dorothea’s own parents; Pa was white, a first-generation Englishman, and Mums was black, her own parents the children of emancipated slaves.

Dorothea had often wondered what had brought her parents together; she couldn’t ask directly, of course, but finally she had got to the truth through Miss Percival, the gossipy best friend of Aunt Jemima, her mother’s equally gossipy sister. Giggling, Miss Percival had whispered to her during an unobserved moment at last year’s Easter Revival, held at their house.

‘Your father was a handsome man, above that dog collar!’ Miss Percival had said, ‘But most of all, he was white. Your mother was the most ambitious of the Williamson sisters. An unmarried spinster! Getting on in years. And proud. Only the best was good enough for Emily. She wanted a white man, and in the end she caught one.’

Miss Percival giggled wildly at that and poked a finger into Dorothea’s chest.

‘You!’ she said. ‘You were on the way, and what would the world have said if Pastor van Dam had made of her a Fallen Woman?’

Another wild flurry of giggles, and she scurried off before Dorothea could ask more. She was confused. What did her being on the way have to do with her mother being a Fallen Woman, or catching a white man? If she, Dorothea, was on the way then of course they were already married. You had to be married to have children. Everyone knew that. And what, exactly, was a Fallen Woman’? Dorothea knew it was something extremely shocking, but nobody ever explained exactly
how
or
why.

Now, Dorothea frowned, mouthed the words ‘Stop it!’ to Freddy Quint, straightened her hat once more, and turned back to Pa’s sermon; but unfortunately Pa had noticed the little skirmish and now glared down at her with blazing eyes, not missing a beat in the sermon.

‘Satan walks in flesh and blood among us!’ he boomed. ‘He is everywhere! Be ye alert at all times and in all places! Be ye not deceived by the works and the words of the Devil, for they lead you from the Straight and Narrow along the dark winding pathways of Sin!’

After the sermon they all rose for the last hymn, during which the collection was taken. ‘Immortal, invisible, God only wise!’ sang Dorothea. Behind her, she was aware of the cacophonous croaking emitted by eight adolescent male throats and repressed a smile of amusement.
Boys!
What a strange invention; what a weird, gangling chaos of humanity; almost as if God was having a joke.

The ‘fly’ alighted once more on her neck, but this time Dorothea was ready. She swung around and grabbed it, and then she held it up: Freddy Quint’s wrist, and in his hand, a hen’s feather. Dorothea squeezed and twisted the wrist till Freddy dropped the feather and his face convulsed with pain. Ma Quint, at the end of her pew, leaned forward to see what was going on and the other Quint brothers croaked louder than ever to mask the scrimmage.

Mums had noticed too, and slapped Dorothea’s hand. Dorothea immediately let go of Freddy’s, not without flashing him a gloating grin of triumph. She turned away and stood once again demurely in the pew. She had not missed a beat of the hymn.

‘Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days!’ she sang, ‘Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise!’

Pa had left the pulpit and now stood at the altar performing some ceremony, his back to the congregation, and hadn’t noticed a thing, which was good. But even if he
had
noticed, she didn’t care. Causing and witnessing Freddy Quint’s comeuppance made her Sunday: for that, she would gladly have committed several psalms, collects and prayers to memory, taking her punishment as a fair price for revenge.

Nobody, just nobody, made a fool of Dorothea van Dam.

T
hat very Sunday afternoon
, Dorothea was down in the garden cutting roses for the drawing room table when a piercing whistle made her jump. She swung around, but all she could see were the hibiscus bushes growing along the back palings, taller than her, luxuriant with red and yellow flowers. She shrugged and turned back to her roses.

That whistle came again, sharp and loud, and this time it was followed by a call, half whispered, half shouted: ‘Dorothea!’

It definitely came from behind the hibiscus hedge. ‘Who is it?’ Dorothea called back.

‘It’s me!’

‘Me, who?’

‘Freddy, Freddy Quint. The boy with the feather?’

‘Oh, you.’ She tried to put as much disdain as she could into her voice; or perhaps indifference. She wasn’t quite sure which was more appropriate. Maybe neither.

‘I can see you, can’t you see me?’

‘No, I can’t.’

Instead of an answer, a thump and a crack, followed by the rustling of leaves and branches, and a moment later Freddy Quint stood before her in flesh and blood.

‘You broke down the palings! You …’

‘Kicked down a paling, and here I be before you, ma’am, at your service!’ He gave her a sweeping bow, removing his hat and circling it wide so it touched the ground. Replacing the hat, he stood grinning before her.

‘Pa will kill you! And you better get out before he comes!’

‘But he’s out. I know he is ‘cause I just saw him leave in that old rattletrap of his.’

He meant the Ford, the green Prefect, Pa’s pride and joy. Dorothea was offended on Pa’s behalf.

‘It’s not a rattletrap! It’s almost new and we’ve never had a breakdown, and just because …’

‘Just teasin’. But I know he’s out, and your Mum too. Like every Sunday.’

He was right, of course, and Dorothea was surprised at how much he knew. Every Sunday Pa took the family up the East Bank of Demerara to Goed Fortuin sugar plantation, which Uncle Hendrik owned. There, Pa had managed to build up a community church to serve the converted Christian East Indian plantation workers and poor families from the surrounding villages. Services were held in the late afternoon, but Dorothea had managed to free herself from attending with the excuse of extra schoolwork; eventually, she had been permanently released from these Sunday afternoon trips; she regarded Sunday as her day off.

Now, Freddy continued. ‘… and I wanted to say sorry, for this morning. And ask how you got so strong, for a girl. ‘Course, if you hadn’t taken me by surprise, it would’ve been different. And anyway I had to let you win, ‘cause you’re a girl, an’ I didn’t want to make a scene, ‘cause it was in church.’