The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (39 page)

‘Don’t you come for him again!’ I threatened. Swearing and cursing and shaking with anger, I walked Sebastian home, all the while wheeling the bicycle. ‘Just wait till your father hears about this.’ He was sullen and hot-faced and not the least bit penitent.

George greeted us anxiously. He’d sped from the office. When I told him the story he thrashed Sebastian soundly and sent him to his room. ‘That’ll teach him.’ George was sure. But I was miserable. My bitten hand throbbed.

 

Out of guilt, I took the children to Maracas the next day. Sebastian was still sulking. Pascale was oblivious. The sea was how I liked it best: heavy rollers crashing in all over the place. I’d have plunged straight in under them, if it wasn’t for the children. Instead, we spread out towels under a cluster of coconut trees next to the river at the western end, near the fishing village. I coaxed Pascale into the calm shallow river water, tiny fish flitting around in it. I left Sebastian moping on the sand, keeping an eye on him. Pascale was already something of an individual. It wasn’t just the graffiti on the walls. She was scared of the full moon, howling if she saw it. She often slept with her bum in the air, as though worshipping Allah; most nights we’d have to turn her over. She was a fussy eater, hating milk and loathing eggs, especially boiled eggs. She was afraid of eggs. She already wanted to be a ballerina and all her swimsuits had tutu-like skirts of some persuasion, pleats, frills. She had one lazy eye which wandered when she was tired. She was precocious and clever, just like her father. She was all George except for her blonde halo. And her Trini sing-song.

With Pascale clinging to my back, I swam deeper to do our favourite submarine act. I dived down slowly, like a manatee, a cub on my back. I could swim quite some way with her hanging on to me, her little legs kicking.

‘One, two, three,’ I counted and we both gulped for air and plunged under the water, our hair silky and waving like seaweed. It was silent and green under there. Immediately I was relieved. The sea water had a dissolving effect. We dipped down and came up for air and dived again, paddling up the narrow river, our skin as slippery as a dolphin’s.

‘Again, again!’ Pascale squealed.

We dipped and dived and swam and surfaced and dipped again. The river was peaceful, the scent of sea-grapes in the air, a heaviness like a narcotic. A rustling in the coconut trees as the breeze raked their dry brown branches.

We clambered laughing up the bank to find Sebastian no longer sitting in our camp.

‘
Sebastian
!’ I shouted, peering down the beach.

‘Dear God, dear God, dear, God,’ I shouted to myself. The same old anxiety flooded back. I turned and covered my eyes with my hands, searching up the beach towards the fishing village. And there, in the distance, out on a flat football pitch of sand, between two pirogues dragged up and chained to their moorings, lying on their sides, a group of small boys were kicking a football. One of them was blond and white.

 

Even the children were falling in love with Trinidad. I could fight George, but not them. A week later, I woke one morning unable to lift my head from the pillow. I couldn’t move my limbs. My body was leaden and aching. It was as though I’d been attacked with a hammer; every bone in me felt broken.

‘Dengue,’ Venus muttered. ‘It dengue fever, madam. Der been an outbreak in de village. Mosquitoes bad jus now. Der ent nuttin you can do, jus sweat de fever and in five days it pass.’

‘Break bone disease,’ Lucy called it, its other name. Exactly right.

By day, while George was at work, Venus and Lucy nursed me, bringing jugs of chilled lime juice, mopping my brow with damp compresses which burnt through quickly. I was delirious for days, writhing and sweating through the sheets. Their faces appeared distorted, as though I saw them through water; sometimes their voices grew distant. I fell into a stupor. Hundreds of faces swarmed around me, looming, glowering, Amerindians, Aruacs, Africans, all filing in to pick me over.

Was this Venus or Lucy? Was this what
they
were saying?

Who was saying this?

The words fell from the air.

I wept and sweated.

‘Lucy! Lucy!’ I cried.

But Lucy was at home, asleep. Venus came to me. I couldn’t hear her.

‘Shh, shhh,’ I heard, I think.

I trembled, afraid of Venus, what she might do, what she was thinking. George had left me alone with them. They could kill me, kill me in my sleep, in my fevered state. I tossed and sweated, aware of their hands on me. I shivered with terror. I knew they hated me. I sensed it. I heard them discussing plans to stake me out over an ants’ nest, paste my mouth with honey. The Robber Man laughed at me. I saw his coffin box.
Wap!
Eric Williams in Woodford Square, on the bandstand.
Repudiate colonialism.
I wanted him to save me, save me from Lucy and Venus. Poleska de Boissière sitting in an old carriage with a parasol, making the rounds of her estate; she was ninety, or was she fifty? Eric Williams sitting next to her. The carriage, a huge baby’s pram, just like royalty use in England. They were royalty, riding around together, waving like the Queen.

Venus was right. Five days later I lifted my head. I was thinner and weaker when I stood.

‘Look at this!’ I was suddenly scared. ‘What have you
done
, what have you done to me?’ I shrieked. All along my arms and legs, my stomach, an outbreak, a rash like measles.

‘That a good sign, madam,’ Lucy assured me. ‘The fever leaving you.’

No way to atone for the sins of those who came before me, or even for my own sins, for George’s sins: stupid foolish white man spreading his seed. The hills nodded down at me. Those great shoulders shook and heaved, laughing.

 

I was white. White in a country where this was to be implicated, complicated, and, whatever way I tried to square it, guilty. Genocide. Slavery. Indenture. Colonialism ‒ big words which were linked to crimes so hideous no manner of punishment was adequate.

Or perhaps this eternal guilt
was
the only fitting retribution; a curse, yes, an agony. Daily, I held myself together in the face of this appalling history. I just wanted to get on with things, ignore it all, live as if all these crimes were a dream, long ago happenings. No white person I came across
ever
mentioned them: no expat, no ex-colonial, no French Creole, those flinty-eyed beauties like Christobel who arrived from Martinique, who once ran the estates. No white person spoke of these things.

I was naive. I dared not bring up the subject of slavery. The whites just wanted the blacks to learn from them, run things as the colonials had. They still wanted Europe in the West Indies.

‘Get on with it, man. Stop being
the victim
. Slavery was appalling, but you can’t blame it for everything. Get on with it now.’

‘Slavery was
mild
in Trinidad. We were good masters, we treated them well. We looked after our people, looked on them as family.’

‘Whites don’t owe you a living.’

‘The black man is lazy.’

‘He can’t govern himself.’

‘Massa day done, eh? Now none of them want to work. What they going to do now?’

‘They’re getting rid of us, but they can’t take over.’

Comments made by friends around the dinner table. Trinidad’s whites felt no guilt at all. They’d done nothing wrong.

 

Eric Williams was the only person I knew who spoke of slavery. And so I wrote to him:

George didn’t like the new me. I was quieter, secretive. Resentful of his affairs. He knew nothing of my private world, the letters and the pills.

‘What’s got into you?’ he quizzed me one day.

‘I’ve told you many times.’

‘You want to leave all this behind.’

‘Yes.’

‘Any more theories about Eric Williams?’

‘Yes. Convenient how he’s grown deaf.’

‘Why do you care?’

‘Maybe I don’t.’

‘Maybe you should stop being so juvenile.’

‘Juvenile?’

‘It’s juvenile to have ideals. Man is an imperfect beast. Williams is a man.’

‘I think about him a lot.’ I said this without a thought. It was the truth. I thought about Eric Williams more than George.

Granny Seraphina. One day I spotted her waiting for a route taxi on the hot pavement near Boissiere village, umbrella held aloft. Eyes like yellow headlights on full, flagging me down. I stopped the car.

‘Would you like a lift?’ I called across to her.

The old woman nodded, as if she’d been expecting me. Granny closed her umbrella, folding her bony legs and arms into the front seat.

‘I’m on my way into town,’ I explained. ‘Where can I drop you?’

‘De Red House,’ she replied, her chin set.

‘Oh, you have an appointment?’ I smiled, teasing her.

She clung to her handbag, staring out the windscreen.

I pushed. ‘Do you go to the Red House often?’

She looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Friday las’ of every month.’

I was shocked. ‘Why?’

‘Ah does go to give in mih letter.’

‘What letter?’ My stomach churned.

‘De one Clive write fuh meh.’

‘Clive writes letters for you?’

She nodded.

‘Who are you writing to?’

‘Dr Williams.’

‘The Prime Minster?’

The old woman nodded, glancing shiftily at me.

I almost stopped the car but managed to drive on. ‘And you . . . take your letter in by hand?’

She nodded.

‘Do you ever get a reply?’

She made a small dismissive gesture: again, a stupid question. ‘What do you write about?’

‘Ah aksin’ for somptin.’ Her voice was curt, anger smouldering in it. She was tired of waiting.

‘Granny, you will get what you want. I know you will.’

But Granny’s eyes were distant and she kept her mouth clamped shut. I was afraid of her then. I drove on, changing my course so I could take the old woman right to the steps of the house of power. Big stone hall, painted blood red, burnt to the ground at least once and rebuilt exactly the same. Granny climbed out, clutching her brolly and handbag. She didn’t say thank you or goodbye or anything like that. I noticed she was more gaunt and bent than the last time we met, as though she could only look downwards.

 

I sent my son away at the age of eight. I posted him off to England. I wasn’t the only mother to do it either; we all sent them off, those who stayed on. Little blond creole boy; I sent him to get an education. To prepare him for when we’d join him in England ‒ right then I
still
held hope that one day we would leave. Maybe I sent him to get a taste of what I wanted, bring it home with him? We chose a small preparatory school in Kent. Blazers and boaters and short trousers and ties and knee socks and a games kit and plimsolls and new underpants and vests and
shoes
. Shoes with laces, two pairs; one for best. I spent hours sewing name tags into every single garment and towel, every sheet and blanket.
Sebastian Harwood
.
Made in Trinidad.

After Sebastian’s first term we went to Piarco Airport to meet him off the BOAC jet. I wore large sunglasses to hide my wet eyes.

‘That’s him, that’s him!’ I cried, seeing a blond boy emerge at the top of the flimsy BOAC staircase. He appeared unsure of himself, climbing down each step with purpose, as if just woken from sleep. He frowned as he descended, something on his mind.

‘Darling, it’s
him
. Thank God!’

George was immersed in a magazine. My heart thudded, eager to have my little boy in my arms again. Several mothers stood there, waiting anxiously. The BOAC aunties guided our children back and forth. I ran to greet Sebastian, bombing him with kisses, squeezing him so hard he yelped. Poor little boy: wordless, dazed, unable to answer the hundreds of questions I fired at him.

‘How was the flight?’

‘The food on the flight?’

‘The other children on board, did you know anyone?’

‘Are you tired, my love?’

‘Hungry?

He nodded, sleepy-eyed, in reply to all my questions. Lucy had made his favourite dinner: callaloo and fried plantain. ‘Just wait till we get you home.’ I hugged him tight.

Venus was in the kitchen when we returned.

‘Eh, eh, Look who
back
! A big young man. Look how tin he get and how white. Eh, Mr Skinny Pokey?’

She laughed, hugging Sebastian even though he didn’t want to be hugged, holding himself back. Quickly, though, he was full of tears.