Pao (31 page)

I think to myself ‘ostracised’, what kinda word is this? But then I know Mui smart enough to make her way in England so now she got all sorta English word and she even sound like she English as well.

‘Yu nuh think maybe yu taking it all too serious?’

‘No, Papa, it’s really horrible.’

‘And yu think this Helena saying things to people to make them start treat yu this way?’

‘I can’t say for sure. I haven’t even seen her again since the dinner, but it does seem uncanny in its timing.’

Uncanny? I think she completely outta my league now.

‘But how do you know her anyway?’

‘I help her and her father fix a couple problems they had down here.’

‘Then surely she should be pleased to have met me.’

‘It wasn’t   ’ and then I run outta words but it no matter. Mui cut straight ’cross me.

‘This thing with her happened a few months ago and my life has been unbearable since then. I don’t see how I can carry on like this so I thought the best thing to do is just to come home. That is what I have been wanting to do all along anyway.’

‘Mui, yu not that long qualified. Don’t yu think yu should stay there a while and get yourself some experience?’

‘You don’t understand, Papa. I hate what I am doing. I hate having to get up every day and go to work to face people who have become so cold towards me, who can barely bring themselves to look at me, who walk out of rooms when I enter them. It takes the pleasure out of everything. Everything. At least if I come home I can feel that I am doing some good.’

‘Calm yourself down. Yu getting yourself all irate over some stupid woman. What yu mother say about it anyway?’

‘I haven’t said anything to her about it.’

‘Yu nuh tell your mother ’bout it? Mui, yu got to talk to her. She right there with yu. Not like me four thousand mile away on a telephone. Anyway, how can people change just like that? They nuh know yu long before all of this happen? How can one woman make them turn like that?’

‘Power, Papa. She has it and I don’t. Besides, like you always used to say, white people stick together and that is as true in England as it is in Jamaica.’

I think to myself Mui need to simmer down and take it steady. Everything got its edge. You just have to find it. Sun Tzu say, ‘
The general must rely on his ability to control the situation to his advantage as opportunity dictates
.’

35

The Burning of Personnel

I reckon that getting out from under Ian Maynard
Sam
Fitzgerald was going to take a bigger authority than me. And what with the phone call with Mui and Gloria pointing out to me that Margy Lopez didn’t kill nobody, it put me in mind of Charles Meacham and the thing I realise is that Meacham stop paying me. Him just stop, just like that. Years back. And me so busy feeling bad ’bout Fay taking the children, and Zhang and Ma, and all the excitement with Manley and everything I never even notice. And then I think well, that sorta rude of him. So now I think it time to catch up with Meacham and that murdering daughter of his, Helena.

I call Clifton and say to him let’s go get a drink over the Blue Lagoon. And I ring George Morrison and tell him the same thing.

When we meet up I say to Morrison that I glad to hear John finish him training to be a doctor now and that he and Margaret coming home after this long while. And I congratulate Clifton on him big promotion. ‘You almost at the top of the tree now, Clifton, eh? Chief of police going be your next stop.’ And we clink our glass and drink, and then I tell the two of them what I want them to do.

‘Charles Meacham! We nuh finish with him yet?’

‘I reckon him still owe us one.’ But George and Clifton not so sure, so I say, ‘Come on, George, you know all ’bout England. And, Clifton, you know all ’bout policing. I reckon between the two of you we can find Meacham. I even give you a head start because Helena Meacham a barrister with chambers in Lincoln’s Inn in London.’

The two of them just sit there and look at me. Then George start waving him arm at the bartender to bring him another Appleton, and Clifton say, ‘Yu joking? Yu can’t be serious. A barrister? For real?’

‘For real.’

Him think on it a little while and then him say, ‘Well, they say hide in plain view. So maybe that what she doing. No safer place than right there in the lion’s den. But yu know this a serious business. You playing with fire if yu going take these two on.’

‘Trust me.’

When Clifton ring me a few days later him say him got news and when I go meet him over the Blue Lagoon him tell me.

‘Charles Meacham rise up the ranks to become a major in the British army but now him retired and living in Winchester. The daughter, Helena, go study law at Oxford University and then she go to the Inns of Court School of Law. She called to the Bar in 1968 and now, like yu say, she have her own chambers in Lincoln’s Inn specialising in family and criminal law for women.’

When Clifton finish reading from him little notebook I tell him to give me the address of Helena Meacham chambers in London, and when I get back to Matthews Lane I get on the telephone and order up a big bouquet from one of them international flower people and I send them to her with a note.

Helena,

So good to have caught up with you after all these years.

Warm regards,

Winston Morgan and Aubrey Williams (Club Havana)

When Meacham telephone me the next day I just say to him, ‘Charles, how you doing?’

‘My daughter received your flowers. What silly little game are you playing now, Yang?’

‘Game, Charles? I not playing no game. Is this a game to you? Is that why you just decide to ignore me and hope I wouldn’t notice?’

‘That was years ago. I decided that enough was enough.’

‘True. But I just need one more favour from you. I have a little problem down here that I think you can help me with.’

Meacham quiet at the other end of the telephone so I tell him what I want, and I tell him the name of the culprit and him two henchmen.

‘I couldn’t possibly do something like that! What do you think I am?’

‘Well before you hang up the telephone let me just say, which I sure you know anyway, there not no statute of limitations for murder. Plus, with everything I hear tell ’bout the new-fangled things they doing with this here DNA, I sure pretty soon they will be able to do something with this knife I still got from the last time I meet your daughter. But anyway, Helena doing so well with her lawyer work and everything I reckon she must know ’bout all of that as well.’

Meacham still quiet so I say, ‘And then when that is done you can rest easy and just ignore me because you right, fair is fair and enough is enough. You won’t hear nothing from me after that.’ I catch my breath, and then I say, ‘Tell Helena to give my daughter a rest as well. She will know what I mean.’

Meacham just hang up the telephone. But two weeks later Finley come tell me that Sam Fitzgerald and the two constables disappear. It seem the three of them up in Miami having themself a good time and they just disappear. Just like that, not a trace, and the authorities think it probably drug related.

I think to myself yes sir, the British army is good. I think they must be as good as the CIA, maybe even better, they get their business done so fast.

A couple days later Mui ring me and she seem happier. She say everybody alright with her again. She getting work like she used to. People talking to her just like nothing ever happen. She like her job again. She going stay in England but I mustn’t forget, she still want to come home when the time right in Jamaica, and I just say, ‘Yah, man.’

36

Precautionary Measures

But the whole thing unsettle me, and I start think ’bout what would happen if I should end up marking off the days on the wall of some Kingston jail cell and mopping the floor in the penitentiary. I think well the boys alright, they been making good money all these years, but Merleen only got her little job at the vacation company and Margy nothing more than an employee at Yang Cosmetics.

I tell Merleen to come have lunch with me up in a hotel in New Kingston. The restaurant quiet so I choose a table in the far corner behind some tall potted bamboo.

‘I was very young, and he seemed so mature.’ And then she laugh. ‘Well, I suppose he would seem that way, being old enough to be my father.’

I just smile. Merleen turn into a fine woman. She gracious, and composed.

‘I thought he knew everything there was to know. I thought I was going to be cared for, protected, educated, groomed if you like. I thought he would make something of me.’ She stop while the waitress put down the teriyaki chicken and rice in front of us.

‘I felt sort of honoured. Foolish, wasn’t it?’ And then she laugh again.

‘That wasn’t foolish. Yu was a child. And he was a grown man.’

‘A grown man who came here and captured something young and innocent, something in its infancy, and he took what he wanted from it and when he was done he left us to fend for ourselves, John and me. Independent if you like.’ And she smile. ‘Rather like an English Pinkerton and Chinese Butterfly.’

Well now she completely lose me, but I get her drift because she and me both know she not just talking ’bout her and Meacham, she talking ’bout the British and Jamaica.

When we finish eat and deal with our business I walk with her down the stairs into the lobby and through the side door, past the empty swimming-pool loungers that the tourists should be sunning themself in and the empty chair under the almond tree where they should be reading their book, and we make our way past the rubber trees and coconut palms, and along the path following the pale blue flowers on the plumbago hedge into the hotel car park. The air still damp from the morning rain.

Next day I ring Margy and tell her that I going take a trip to see her next time she in Port Antonio. Then Finley decide we all going go because Port Antonio is really beautiful.

The day before we supposed to go Milton tell me that all the rain we been having the past two weeks cause so much flooding the government declare five parishes disaster areas and they busy evacuating people from them homes.

‘Communications is down and the road system not looking so good under the strain. Plus the
Gleaner
say we facing huge agricultural loss and all sorta health hazards from dead livestock, and damage to water supplies and sanitation.’

Milton talking just like he quoting the
newspaper
to me.

‘So yu think we should call it of
f
? Yu want me fix another time to go see Margy?’

Him stick his thumb in him belt that he always wear now ever since that thing with Clifton Brown, and say to me, ‘No, man. I just telling yu, that’s all. We still going drive over to Port Antonio tomorrow. No problem.’

Me, Finley, Hampton and Milton set off the next day, Milton driving. The water in the road so bad that when we coming down Mountain View Avenue a motorcycle stall in front of us and when the rider put down his foot the water come over his ankle.

Once we outta the city we come face to face with this rural mass that is still Jamaica. The donkey carts; the roadside higglers with them wooden carvings and conch shells; roasted sweetcorn for sale, or three wet fish on a string; multicoloured timber huts in blues and pinks and yellows with them rickety makeshift roof, or some piece of rusting corrugated-zinc sheet; fruit trees growing wild – mango, avocado, ackee, breadfruit, jackfruit, pawpaw, naseberry, soursop, bananas; pineapples laying on top; yams and sweet potatoes in the ground; the banana plantations stretching out on both sides of the road, with them little blue plastic bags that they wrap ’round the bananas to protect them from disease.

Plus with the road not so good anyway and with all this rain, the thing turn treacherous. Potholes full of water and covered in a sorta white slime that wash off the grit and hardcore they scatter down in a effort to patch everything up.

And I think to myself how is progress and prosperity going catch up with a place like this? Especially when every time we take one step forward the rain or the hurricane come to drive us ten steps back.

When we get to Poor Man’s Corner the River Yallahs completely take over the road, gushing fast from left to right and plunging down a steep embankment in this muddy reddish-brown waterfall. Milton stop the car. When the big station wagon behind us overtake and slowly power its way through the water, the spray reach up above the top of the windows.

Milton decide to take a chance. He nudge the car forward trying to keep a steady speed so the engine don’t stall, but when we hit the deepest part halfway across, him slow down and it worry me. We make it alright though, and when we reach the other side Milton laugh and say, ‘Man, even I was sweating then.’

At Green Wall a dead cow lay in a bus stop, all brown and bloated, and frothing at the mouth.

At Morant Bay I ask Milton to drive up to the courthouse where Paul Bogle and his followers stage the demonstration in 1865, and where the volunteer militia fire on the crowd and spark the uprising. What amaze me wasn’t just that the building still standing there, with its red brick and whitewashed stone, but it still functioning as a courthouse. So as I climb up the semi-circular stairway to the upper balcony I begin to hear voices and realise that a trial is actually in motion. And even in this heat the barristers still dress up in them wigs and gowns just like they do it in England.