The White Woman on the Green Bicycle (8 page)

Was he, George Harwood,
jealous
?

No, he told himself. No.

The bath water had turned lukewarm. He let some water out, then filled it back to the same level with hot. His skin had puckered but he didn’t want to get out. Eric Williams had aroused his wife. Switched her on, to politics, to possibilities, damn him to hell; she had soaked it all up, asked too many questions. But then, Williams had moved everyone. He’d made love to the nation. A brilliant man. And a failure. Was this Sabine’s type? George stared at his feet. He became aware of Sabine, standing at the door behind him.

‘I’ll cut your hair when you get out,’ she said.

 

George’s hair was long and unruly. He tried to keep it tamed in one direction but it always flew the opposite way in the wind. Most days, it looked like a hurricane had passed through the centre of his head. Deep russet once, his hair was now sun-bleached several shades lighter, to an indefinite singed tobacco-rust. It was still good hair, though, never thinned; strong curls which, when wet, hung down to his shoulders.

He dried himself off and wrapped a large towel around his waist. In the kitchen Sabine stood at the stove. He sat down wearily, behind her, in the chair against the wall. When she turned, her eyes were expressionless. Now even his wife had the look, the same look that came at him again and again. He was detested,
detested
. Outside La Pompey sang off-key, a Kitchener calypso, enjoying his work, soaping down the pickup truck parked a few feet from the kitchen.

Sabine disappeared, returning with a pair of scissors and a comb. She began to tug through his long wet hair.

‘Oww,’ George cried out. ‘Oww, that hurts.’

His wife’s voluptuous body was up close. He wanted to press his head into her stomach, say something.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Sabine combed all his hair out straight; it fell about his face like a curtain. The scissors were cold and clean across his nose.
Snip, snip, snip.
Sharp steel flashing blades. His chin was clasped in her hands. La Pompey sang louder and more off-key.

‘I’m going to ask him to clean up your green bicycle,’ George said, surprising himself.

‘What for?’

‘So I can see it again.’

She snipped.

‘Good for you.’

‘Who was that awful little man who met us that day, the man from the company who took us to the hotel? Never saw him again, did we?’

‘No, we didn’t.’

George sighed. He was afraid for his ears. ‘Eric Williams became a dictator,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re living with his mistakes.’

‘It’s hard for a man to do the right thing all the time, you know.’ He dared to look up. She pushed his chin down.

‘He had good people round him once,’ Sabine replied carefully.

‘They were all dismissed,’ she continued. She picked up a handful of hair.

‘Oww. That hurts. Oww. Why ‒ oww ‒ do we expect people in power to be different? We treat politicians like parents, it’s the same relationship. We never forgive them if they fuck up.’

‘He fucked up all right.’

‘He was just one man.’

‘I suppose you understand him better than I ever did,’ Sabine said coldly.

‘We’re weak.’

Sabine stopped cutting, snapping the blades shut. ‘God, politicians, husbands, all given the job of fathering. Holy God on earth, these islands and their father figures.’

‘The islands were children.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Men rule the world badly. It’s everywhere.’

‘And you don’t care.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Maybe I’m stupid.’

‘We’ve both disappointed you, then.’

She took a step back, surveying her work, avoiding his eyes. ‘There. You’re done.’

George wanted to fall on his knees. He wanted her respect. He wanted to respect himself.

La Pompey appeared at the open kitchen door, his bare chest slippery with soap. ‘Two new cars,’ he grinned. ‘Clean as newborn babies.’ He cackled at George. ‘Mr Harwood get a bath, too, I see. Lookin’ baby fresh. Yousa lucky man, to have such a good woman to take care of you so nice.’

‘I am lucky, yes,’ George agreed.

But Sabine had disappeared.

 

The whore sat on the pavement with her legs open. Drunk or on drugs, her eyes glazed. George slowed the truck and she shot him an unfocused look of insolence. The backstreets of St James, the small hours of the morning. He was drunk, drunk on white rum since early evening. Had drunk himself stupid and then sober again. He left the house in the end when Sabine went to bed. Quite plainly this whore had had enough, could no longer be bothered to stand up. Her belly hung over her miniskirt and the straps of her silky black camisole flopped from her shoulders. Her hair was all this way and that, standing around her head in a star.

George stopped but kept the engine running. She half swayed upright and then climbed in, slamming the door shut. She gazed forward. George nodded, looking at her fallen straps.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Luna,’ she whispered in a hiccup, rum on her breath.

‘Like the moon.’

‘Das right.’

‘Very beautiful.’

She ignored this comment.

Luna’s skin lacked lustre. Matt black, black as tar, pimpled, her shoulders scarred with vaccination marks. She slouched back against the seat, mumbling, her legs open, twisting at her panties, itching or restless down there. From the back pocket of her miniskirt she brought out a tiny bottle of perfume, spraying at her pudenda.

‘Please don’t do that,’ George winced. ‘I like you as you are.’

She sniffed loudly and looked out the window. ‘Where yuh wanta park?’

‘At the docks.’

George drove on through the night. The city lay quiet, sleeping off the day. They bumped along the broken-up paved streets, gazing out opposite windows. He was nervous. Nervous, every time. What was he
thinking?
What did he think every time? That he liked sex, still needed it, no matter how, no matter what. Luna was light. Moonlight on his parched soul.

He drove towards the spot of the
Cavina’s
arrival. A strange wheezing rattled from Luna’s side of the bench-seat. Had she fallen asleep? He glanced across. No. Only breathing heavily, chest heaving. She coughed up phlegm, hawking it out the window. She wiped her lips, sniffed up snot and coughed that, too, spitting it out. She opened her legs wider, reaching across, placing his left hand on her thigh.

‘Dis what yuh buyin’.’ She guided his fingers inside her.

Oh Jesus, Lord. Hot there and dry as fuck, dry and fuckless. What had he done? He was ashamed. Ashamed to fuck a woman with no glow in her. Feeling made women glow and wet and he knew the difference between dry and wet when it came to women. What the fuck was he doing? He didn’t care. Could he love Luna? Make her come? He wanted to. Wanted to fuck her and make her come, release himself from the death he’d caused in his wife. He wanted to fuck a woman into life.

The dock was close. Ships were moored up, containers on the wharf. He knew a place. He accelerated. Luna rubbed herself and her legs were now open wide, one foot up on the dashboard.

He crash-parked in an empty lot. There was no one about, the night watchman asleep in his hut. Stars up in the sky, the moon like a lamp. The salt sea breeze was fluttering in from the Gulf of Paria into the cab and Luna was rubbing herself, her heavy breasts spilling from her black camisole, and he could smell her now, sharp and saltier than the sea. Luna rubbing her dry cunt, a cold meaningless expression in her eyes. She was drunk, so drunk she was either going to fall asleep or become violent.

Hands shaking, he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his flies. He was soft. His elderly cock lay flaccid against his thighs, a dribble of its former self. Luna lay back, her head propped up against the door, legs splayed, panties pulled to one side. He could see into her, a place he could fit his hand, like a purse, or a secret crevice in a wall.
George is a drunk, a second-rate specimen
. There, he could store his misery. Store his sins right there: inside Luna.

Luna’s eyes were vacant as Sabine’s.

He threw himself onto her, thrusting and thrusting until he became lost and out of breath. But he was soft, had nothing in him, nothing for anyone. He sweated, thrusted and thrusted, sweating and furious. He thrusted until he thought he’d give himself a heart attack, sweat trickling from his temples, from his hair. He stopped, his heart pounding, his chest heaving.

‘I’m too old,’ he said, by way of an excuse. ‘Too old for you.’ And he was too old. He’d die soon, he knew.

‘You’re very beautiful,’ he muttered.

Luna steupsed, throwing him a look that said she’d seen and heard it all before. She glared at him. ‘Dis still a hundred dollars, eh?’

Early evening, the sky was pink as pomegranate seeds. The keskidees squabbled over the pool in their eternal family argument. A horn beeped outside the front gate.

‘Let me in, let me in,
Daddyyy
,’ Pascale called, her headlights spraying a lemony wash all over the driveway. The dogs rushed out, barking and jumping up, wagging their tails. George sped out with the buzzer to let her in. Sabine stood in the kitchen, holding her breath, counting: one, two, three. She took a clean plate from the rack and began washing it again slowly, listening.

‘Daddy, eh, eh.’ The car door slammed. Pascale’s loud boisterous kissing of her father on both cheeks.

‘How yuh goin’? Nuttin in de paper dis week? W’appen? Eh, eh, dese damn blasted dogs. Down. Down. Henry,
down
, man. Jesus, dogs. Dey diggin’ up de damn blasted roads again. Just like you said. Dey fix dem, den dey go damn well dig dem up again. Write somptin about dis, Daddy. Der’s a huge blasted hole in de middle of de road, just outside Linda’s. I almost drove straight in. Eh, eh. Down, you chupid dogs. Jesus Christ. Where’s Mummy?’

Tears pooled in Sabine’s eyes. Her beautiful daughter. Her daughter’s rich sing-song voice, part of the island now. Those letters George found, all those years she thought they were about to leave. Another three years, another three, and then, and then. Now her daughter spoke like them.

‘Mum’s inside. This is an unexpected pleasure. What a surprise. Lovely to see you. And the kids.’ Joy in George’s voice. A ring in it.

‘I’m here,’ Sabine called, from her pretend washing-up. She stayed still; best let them enjoy each other first.

They’d moved into the living room, Sabine could tell; George, she knew, was already mixing drinks, three-fingered measures. Pascale could drink, like her father. Sabine wiped her hands on a tea towel, patted her forehead dry.
Dear Mr Williams
; what had she been doing? She blushed with the shame of being so naive. She went to join them.

‘How are you, my love,’ she said.

Pascale invaded the living room. Tall, blonde, her curly hair straightened and cut like a boy; she was always in heels, always made-up. Always talking and joking. Pascale stood with the glass of rum in her hand, breathing a jet of cigarette smoke up to the ceiling.

‘Eh eh, Mummyuh, howyuh goin’?’ She smiled in a half-frozen way.

‘You look well,’ Sabine managed.

The women air-kissed.

‘Hello, Zack, Tabitha,’ Sabine greeted her grandchildren, who swarmed to their mother’s long legs. They stared up at Sabine, unspeaking.

‘Come, come, here,’ Pascale chided them. They clung, climbing all over Pascale as she sat down. Both had milk-chocolate skin. Both snuggled into Pascale’s lap as she talked, a continuous stream of news, questions and laughing at her own jokes. Pascale fingered her children’s wiry curls as she laughed. George sat on one of the bar stools, Sabine on the opposite sofa. They stared at their daughter, as if they’d never seen her before.

‘Hey, Daddy, who you interviewin’ nex?’

‘Brian Lara.’

‘Wow! Can I come, too? Hold de tape recorder for you?’

‘He’s coming back from New Zealand soon. It’s not yet confirmed.’

‘I wonder when he’ll retire.’

‘Oh, sometime in the near future. Perhaps after the World Cup in 2007.’

‘It won’t be the same when he goes. I’ll miss him.’

‘Maybe he’ll never go. He may be indispensable.’

‘He cyan disappear.’

‘The ladies like Lara, eh?’

‘And he likes
dem
.’

‘Children like Lara, too,’ George grinned.

‘An ol’ people.’

‘The man’s a national hero.’

‘Of
course
.’

‘That’ll make him hard to interview.’

Look at them. Glowing in each other’s presence. Glowing and laughing like old friends. Just like him, her father’s daughter. Something about the way they sat, stood, held themselves: so similar, both so confident. Pascale drank a lot and smoked and limed and fêted till dawn when she could.

‘Your brother’s coming out in a few days,’ Sabine intervened.

‘Oh, dat go be
fun
.’ She winked.

‘He’ll be here for two weeks.’ Sabine ignored her sarcasm. ‘You know, I told you months ago. He’s coming for Easter.’

‘He bringin’ any of his snobby friends?’

‘They’re not snobs.’

Pascale exhaled a long jet of smoke. ‘Mum, anyone who hates calypso is a snob.’

‘I hate calypso.’

Pascale laughed.

‘I’m not a snob.’

George snorted. Sabine shot him a look.

‘I don’t know why he comes. He doh really enjoy himself.’