The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (19 page)

He followed her up a wooden staircase to a vast parlour room with a long balcony overlooking the city’s great park. The floor was hard, polished wood, the antique furniture stood sparse and ill at ease against the walls. The windows were shut, the massive panes of glass magnifying the sun’s heat. He recognised a silence of being watched: cameras, guards, servants padding about.

‘Do sit down,’ the young woman said. ‘Can I bring you anything?’

‘A glass of water, please.’

George began to perspire in his too-tight threadbare suit. His hair was unfurling from its sticky trap. He ran his hands roughly over his head several times, smoothing it back.

‘Bugger,’ he whispered, seeing he’d smeared grease on his trousers.

The woman returned with the glass of water. The minute she disappeared he glugged two long, greedy gulps. He took his flask from his pocket, wafting it under his nose; the rum’s astringent vapours were like a slap in the face, sobering him up. He knocked back a hefty slug. This was how the fuckers did it, of course. Leave ’em to sweat. This went on in every great house of power all over the world: the waiting. He loosened his tie. Damp had spread in patches under his arms and a ripe salt odour rose up around him, mingling with the scent of mothballs. He checked his briefcase for his tape recorders, setting them out on the table, unaware that Patrick Manning had entered the room behind him.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Harwood.’

George jumped, shooting straight upright, causing one of the tape recorders to clatter to the floor. A ripping sound exploded somewhere in his suit and, as he leant over to shake the Prime Minister’s hand, he knocked the glass of water over, water running off the table.

‘Oh, God. I’m sorry.’ He suppressed the urge to fart.

Manning stifled a grin. ‘Maxine,’ he called. A woman hurried in with a cloth and wiped the water up, taking the glass.

Manning extended his hand once more.

‘Pleased to meet you.’ George shook it, shuddering. Manning was tall and well-built with caramel-coloured skin. A footballer’s physique. He grinned from ear to ear, which meant nothing; this was his habit. That lopsided grin. The Prime Minister sat down with his back to a pane of glass, the heat blazing in, onto his shoulders.

‘I’m a big fan of your writing,’ Manning breezed.

‘Thank you,’ George said stiffly, hatred blossoming in him. It was a surprise to him; he hadn’t known his own feelings.

‘I liked the interview with Brian Lara recently. Mossad agents in the jungle!’ Manning laughed, genuinely tickled.

The twit was already getting the better of him. Manning was relaxed, at home and George was so hot he could hardly speak.

This was no Eric Williams. Williams was better dressed, for a start. George leaned forward and switched the tape recorders on.

‘Yes ‒ the blimp. What is it?’

‘Eh, eh.’ Manning looked taken aback. ‘Howyuh mean?’

‘Is it a US-backed spy ship?’

Manning laughed out loud.

‘Well,
is
it?’

Manning suppressed a knowing smile and stared hard at him.

‘Chávez,’ George pushed. ‘The new threat. The new Castro in the Caribbean. It’s not so far-fetched. Trinidad’s oil installations out at sea. It must make George Bush rather nervous, no?’

Manning looked away and kept smiling, as if the questions would just go away.

George studied him.

‘You have a wild imagination,’ Manning said, finally.

‘I have my sources.’

Manning sighed. But he wouldn’t be drawn. George knew the blimp was also used to show off, to prove a point, like at the match the other day.

‘Did you enjoy the football match?’ George tried.

‘Oh yes, indeed. You were there?’

‘I went with a friend. We were sitting right opposite you, in fact. We enjoyed the day. Pity about the football.’

‘Well.’ Manning steupsed. ‘It was a friendly game, nuh.’

‘Eric Williams was a keen footballer. What do you think he’d make of Trinidad and Tobago in the 2006 World Cup?’

‘Ah . . . Eric? Pleased as punch.’

‘Fifty years of the PNM. Quite a year, eh?’

‘An exceptional year.’ Manning grinned. This was more what he had come to talk about. The football in 2006, the cricket World Cup in 2007, the economy booming. Panday, the leader of the opposition, arrested on corruption charges. The Prime Minister beamed with all this good fortune.

‘You must have been, what, about ten years old when the PNM came into power?’

‘Yeah, man. Just a boy.’

‘A son of the PNM, would you say?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Yet in the past, you’ve called yourself the
Father
of the Nation.’

Manning stared, grinning.

‘Eric Williams’ ‒ George put steel into his voice ‒ ‘I would have thought, took that title, no?’

Manning’s grin faded.

‘The little boy I took to the football match needs a father.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

George read from his notes. ‘“Between 1991 and 1995 the PNM did not spend enough time looking after its own children.”’ George looked up. ‘Do you know who said that?’

‘I can’t remember offhand, no.’

‘You did.’

Manning shot him a fierce stare.

‘“I assure you that shall not happen again,”’ George read.

Manning’s forehead glistened. The tape recorders whirred. He took on a careful, studious expression.

‘Ten years have passed. That little boy. Born poor. He’ll stay poor.’

Manning huffed. ‘Trinidad’s economy is booming,’ he rehearsed. ‘Trinidad is healthier, thanks to all the foreign investment. Plus we have a Social Vision for 2020. You must have heard of it.’

‘I’ve read about this vision on the PNM’s website. The 2020 Vision pages are empty.’

Manning checked his watch.

George removed his reading glasses. ‘I haven’t been such a great father myself. I’ve been selfish. I got rich here, you see. Easy to get rich in Trinidad, for some people.’

‘Have your children forgiven you?’

‘Oh, one hates me, one adores me. My wife despises me, though.’

Manning looked puzzled. The sun’s gaze, through the glass, was beginning to get to him.

‘She despises you, too, of course. And Williams. Eric Williams broke her heart.’

‘Did she
know
Eric?’

‘We
all
knew Eric. Tell me,’ George pressed, ‘don’t you ever feel uncomfortable in this house?’

‘Why?’

‘A slave owner’s house. My son-in-law’s former family home, in fact. Yet you’re using it as the seat of government.’

The Prime Minister steupsed, irritated.

‘There was a moment, Mr Manning,’ George continued, ‘when everything could have been rethought, way back.’

‘That’s naive.’

‘Or revolutionary.’

‘Revolutions! Pah. Look at what happened to Haiti. Cuba. We didn’t have to fight for power, anyway. We were handed it.’

‘I don’t need a history lesson.’

‘What’s your
point
then?’ Manning snapped.

‘Trinidad needs a good government. Not a bad
father
. Not a father at all. Leave that to the man in the street. Stop patronising the people of Trinidad.’

Manning’s eyes shone. The interview would soon terminate, George could see that. He didn’t care: now was the moment.
Win her
.

‘I don’t mean to speak out of turn,’ George persisted. ‘But if you’ll forgive me, Prime Minister, things could be so different.’

‘Then why don’t you start up a political party of
your own
?’

‘I asked my wife the same question once.’

‘Sounds like she’s been an influence.’

‘Yours too, no?’

‘Leave my wife out of this.’ Manning stood up; he looked down at George. ‘You stink of rum and yet you talk
down
to
me
?’

‘I’d hardly talk
up
to you, would I?’ George joked. ‘In general.’

The Prime Minister’s eyes were hard, treacherous, his lips pursed. The tape recorders grinned.

‘Dictator,’ George blurted.

‘What?’

‘Opportunist!’

‘This interview has come to an end,’ Manning spat.

‘I know you,’ George slurred. ‘I know your type. You greedy, selfish . . .
colonial!
’ The headache broke through the shield of rum and pills, arriving in hot waves, up the back of his skull.

‘Takes one to
know one
,’ he sneered. ‘The police, beating people up every day. No one important ever complains. They’re a squad of
thugs
.’

Manning bent down, level with his head: eye to eye. His teeth were bared.

‘And you?’ he rasped, gazing at the tape recorders. ‘I know you, too. We’ve all seen your type. White man in the West Indies. Second-rate, eh? Never management material in the UK. Here, a big shot. A hot shot. Couldn’t face going back. Stayed too long, eh? Too long in the sun. Drank too much rum. Came here years ago to build and take. Take, take, take. You’re nothing special, Mr Harwood. You’re common. You are the past and you can stick your critique of my government, elected by the people, for the people, up your pathetic old white ass.’

 

Outside, the sun was so intense George feared venturing past the steps. The light scalded his eyes and they bled tears. He hid in the shade of the long sweeping porch. The bored security guards eyed him with a sense of purpose. One walked towards him but he smudged. George wiped his eyes, blinking. He couldn’t see anything, just smudges and light. He clung to the wall, a hammering in his head.

‘Sir.’

George tried to speak. The headache scraped into the back of his skull. Tears of pain flowed, pain and fatigue. He wanted to sleep. His legs were melting, melting from his bones; a slow feeling poured over him, over his tired body. He felt himself falling, sliding down the wall, and was unable to stop himself as he fainted, down beside a large potted fern.

Sabine clasped her daughter’s hand. The scanner room was quiet, the floor cool, a buffed puce hospital-pink. The room made her nervous; that aloof, sterile atmosphere of all medical institutions.

The MRI scanner loomed feet away, a hollow white tube. George lay on a trolley about to disappear inside it. White robe, a tag on his wrist. His face was pale, his forehead damp.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he insisted. ‘This is ridiculous.’

A whirring sound started up; the trolley moved forward, taking George into the tunnel of the machine.

‘I don’t see why I should be here,’ George complained. His voice was muffled.

The scanner screen stood to one side of the tube. The technician switched it on. Snap, snap. Snap. It took grainy black and white images of George’s skull. The front, the back. The side.

Sabine gasped.

The tumour was immediately apparent, even to the untrained eye.

‘Mummy,
that’s
what it is,’ Pascale sobbed.

Clearly defined, snuggled neatly into the left side of his brain, a growth. Dense, meaty. How could it be there? Something so big, without forming a lump?

‘My poor love,’ Sabine wept.

Pascale wiped away tears.

The machine clicked, snapping shots; macabre smeary black images of a skull, of the matter it contained, of the presence of the parasite tumour. It was present from every angle.

‘How can we take it away?’ Sabine said, her voice officious.

‘Come on, Mummy.’ Pascale led her out of the room.

Sabine sat down. Her hands buzzed with nerves, her feet, too. Aches in her throat, her ribs, her wrists. What
was
that thing growing inside her husband’s head? Had she seen right?

The surgeon came to speak to them while George got dressed.

‘It’s been there for years,’ he said. ‘You have to decide quickly what you want to do. If we don’t operate soon, he won’t survive.’

 

The iguana tumbled from the coconut tree. The dogs barked and crashed after it. Sabine went to put the kettle on.

Jennifer steupsed. ‘Go sit outside,’ she commanded. ‘I go bring de tray.’

Sabine joined Pascale and George on the porch. Pascale’s eyes were glassy, dreamy; she was only half-listening to what George was saying about the Prime Minister.

‘Stupid arse. I read him a piece of one of his
own speeches
! Didn’t recognise it at all. I was scared, though. Whitehall’s a big place. Almost farted.’

Pascale laughed.

George fished out the two tape recorders, placing them on the table near by, patting them.

‘Ray will be pleased.’

Sabine looked at her daughter, who looked just like George. She was bold like him, clever like him. A Trinidadian, like him.

Katinka waved her fluffy tail. Sabine bent down to scoop her up, sitting the animal on her lap. George rambled on about Manning. The sun sank, setting itself in crème tangerine. The keskidees chattered and swooped above the pool. Jennifer brought out a pot of tea and slices of ginger cake.