The Pink House at Appleton (11 page)

And that same evening, as the orange sky changed to vermilion and the swallows came out, Susan Mitchison rode gingerly down the road, eyes fixed on the pink house.
His name was Boyd, the boy who lived at the pink house, her mother had said, and he would be going to the
same school as her in September. She stared long and hard up the driveway and at the empty verandah. If only he would come out and play with her instead of hiding behind the shrubbery and the trees. They would ride down the lane and along the river road together. And what a lovely little dog! It would be so nice to run up and down the garden with them, somersault down the slope, swing from the branch of a tree, ride to the riverbank and watch the mongoose, hide in the canes and feel the sugar-scented heat. And at night, while her mother talked with Mr Brookes, she'd often seen them, they could snuggle up in bed and tell stories. And she would tell him about
“
As You Like It”, the story in her book, Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare. She would tell him that he was Orlando and she was Rosalind, that Rosalind liked Orlando the very first time she saw him in the Forest of Arden. She would tell him things she couldn't tell anyone else.

In the morning, Boyd, troubled still by Mama's unease, wandered behind the house overlooking the valley, near to the spot where he had seen Susan's mother gazing down at the coolie settlement. As he gazed into the distance, he saw Papa's Land Rover racing along the valley road away from the estate in the direction of Maggotty. Behind it raced the Land Rover of the Mitchisons. The vehicles disappeared together in the blue-green expanse of sugar cane. Boyd watched the white road for a long time, the only sound the testing calls of crickets in the thickets, then calmly walked away, head down.

Moments later, from another strategic spot in the gardens, he spied someone on a bicycle in the shadows of the private road – a pink figure, hair tossing in the sun. Realising immediately who it was, he rushed madly out into the sun towards the fence, keeping very close to the trees. Susan was on her own – a stabbing emotion among the apple-green leaves. Her face was hot and glowing, her hands grasping the handlebars tightly, hair in motion. Her uncertain legs pumped at the pedals from under a yellow printed cotton dress. Boyd's head hurt with incomprehension and wonder. He watched her get off the bicycle and look in his direction. She did not see him. Was she thinking of him? Turning round, she rode back up the road towards her house, looking desperately through the trees. Boyd did not move. She was looking for him. He did not know what he was feeling because he had not felt it before. But he knew he was frightened.

‘Boyd not eating, ma'am,' Mavis said to Mama. ‘Is the second day in a row he leave half his lunch on the plate.'

Mama went to Boyd's room immediately, closely followed by Mavis. He was lying on the bed, looking out the window.

‘You're not well,' Mama said, feeling his forehead. ‘What is it?'

‘Nothing, Mama,' Boyd said, taken aback with the sudden attention and with Mavis staring, her big girl's eyes crystal clear.

‘P'rhaps me cooking don't agree with him, ma'am,' Mavis suggested over Mama's shoulders, not masking her worry.

‘No, no,' Mama replied reassuringly. ‘He loves your cooking – your rice and peas, your ginger cakes, your dumplings, roast beef and carrots, everything!'

Mavis exchanged warm looks with Boyd. ‘Maybe he eating too much fruit, ma'am,' she said. ‘Too much of one thing good for nothing.'

‘Are you, Boyd?'

‘No, Mama,' Boyd said, weakening, having a sudden rash impulse to tell them everything, about the Susan feelings, the fever, the sweet mystery, other things that he knew. But he did not know how to say it. The feelings had no matching words, were just flutterings, palpitations, sublime music, like “The Melody of Love”, played on the gramophone at the cinema just before the showing of a film.

‘Well, I think it's all that fruit,' Mama said. ‘Maybe green plums? You need to eat properly and grow up to be a big, healthy boy.' She took her hand away from his forehead. ‘My little
peeny-waalie
.'

‘Yes, Mama,' he said, loving the fact that he was her
little
peeny-waalie
.

Mama thought she saw panic in his eyes but she couldn't be sure. Boyd watched them go, Mavis with her dimpled back-of-knees and bouncy manner and Mama gliding and cool in her maternity clothes. A soft breeze rustled the curtains, bringing fragrances of Susan. And cool shadows crossed the lawn, heralding an evening of dramatic images and beautiful anguish.

On the third day, he came down with a raging fever.

‘Ah'll have to make him mint tea right away,' Mavis said, hurrying off to the kitchen the moment she found out.

‘No,' Mama told her. ‘Ginger tea, Mavis. Fresh ginger.'

‘Yes, ma'am,' Mavis said, pausing in mid-stride. ‘We have a heap of fresh ginger. A good thing Vincent bring some in from the back garden this morning.'

Boyd spent the afternoon in Mama's arms, his temples burning and his body sickly hot. He felt Mama's tummy where the little baby was and breathed Mama's scent, comforting and good, but hearing notes of distress. And he listened for the voices of the garden, and they came to him in rich, wonderful tones, repeating only one name.

Over at the Mitchison's house at about that time, Ann Mitchison felt Susan's forehead not once but twice. Susan was sitting up in bed, gazing out the window at the magic garden. A copy of
Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare
lay on her pillow opened at “As
You like It”. Above her head the mosquito net was tied in a single knot, just like the knot that prevented her breathing, just like the knot in her stomach. Her head hurt, but it was pleasant lying in bed with her mother's warm hand on her forehead. Susan had big feelings too, feelings that words could not describe, feelings that came with music and colour, feelings that overwhelmed her.
She was snug in bed in the cottage in the Forest of Arden. And she was awaiting Orlando's arrival. He would come to her out of the forest.

‘It's all right, darling,' Ann Mitchison said. ‘Mummy's here.' And she took Susan in her arms, seeing the weepy face and remembering the time, in Barbados, when she had last seen that expression. On that day they had been unable to find Susan. They searched everywhere, the maid and gardener joining in, scouring beneath the house, combing the adjoining fields, calling her name. And when the men from the estate heard that she couldn't swim, they ran even more frantically up and down the banks of the river at the back of the house shouting out her name. Finally, when they were exhausted and desperate, thinking the worst, the maid found Susan sitting quietly under overhanging bushes not far from the house, at the point of tears, gazing intently into the heart of a beautiful red anthurium and fingering its leathery flower. She had heard nothing.

It was the same week during which Papa returned home from the club two nights in a row, so late that not even dogs barked. When he came to bed, Mama detected stale perfume. But she dispelled the thought, a wicked, wicked thought, immediately.

‘Late drinks session at the club,' was all Papa said on both occasions, getting into bed and falling asleep almost instantly.

On both nights, Mama lay awake, unable to sleep.

* * *

That Sunday evening, the Moodies visited to celebrate Papa's promotion. The pink house stood big and handsome in the midst of luxuriant greenery. Papa was standing on the clipped green lawn, back to the sun, hands on hips. He had been pointing out parts of the house to Mr Moodie.

‘This could be the manager's house,' his after-lunch voice boasted. He spread his arms wide as he spoke and bared his teeth in a wide smile.

Mr Moodie laughed, slapped Papa on the back, and both retired to the green lattice table and chairs on the lawn with bottles of gin and rum. Papa talked about how Appleton was good for ten thousand tons of refined sugar that year, about quotas and the world market, boring Moodie to death. Then Papa mentioned the new assistant general manager and his wife.

‘She's not a bad-looking woman,' Moodie observed, coming to life. ‘But married to a man like that! He could be her father, the age on him.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about,' Papa said dismissively. ‘Most Englishmen look like that. They bald before their time. It's the weather over there. They're a decent couple, with the right values.'

‘Harry, what do you care?' Moodie stared at him.

‘A little bit more than you do. She's not your typical Englishwoman come out to the colonies, full of ignorance and prejudice. She genuinely gets involved. She's trying to get work for some of the coolies down at the settlement; that bugger Ramsook and his hordes. And she talks sensible politics too.'

‘You think because she is English it's okay for her to flirt the way she does? If our wives were to behave like that we wouldn't tolerate it for one minute, not one minute, Harry. You know I'm right.'

‘For Christ's sake, man, she's not flirting. She's being sociable. She's just not stuck up. I've worked on sugar estates where the wives of foreign managers look down their noses at you. She's good for Appleton.'

‘Mitchison evidently doesn't agree with you. He spends most of his time away from her, supposedly on business. People say he may have a woman in Kingston. The maids are talking too. And they always know a thing or two.'

Mavis drew near with the ice bucket and they stopped talking.

Papa and Mr Moodie sat in the shade, where the jacaranda blossoms formed a blue carpet on the bottle-green grass under their feet. Mr Moodie was dressed in flashy two-tone shoes, white trousers, lime-green shirt and dark-green sunglasses. This was not his usual attire, and later Papa said he was only trying to keep up with Patricia Moodie. The children were fascinated by the dark glasses because they were mainly seen on people in magazines and on film posters. If they didn't know who Mr Moodie was, they might have thought he was a visiting film star.

As Mavis returned to the house, Mr Moodie continued. ‘They certainly know a thing or two, the maids. And another thing, Harry, she might not be your typical Englishwoman, Ann Mitchison, but I bet you she's already fooling around.'

‘Christ almighty, man!' Papa turned away in disgust.

‘You take it from me, I know women. She looks the type. She'll play, and she'll play discreetly.'

‘So you think everybody's at it.'

‘Harry, I know women.'

‘You don't know what the hell you're talking about.' Papa was clearly put out and Mr Moodie wondered at this because there was no basis for it.

Papa knocked back his drink and called out for Mama to join them. Mama was busy with Patricia Moodie in her bedroom, talking nineteen to the dozen like young girls. That day, Patricia Moodie seemed like an actress herself, ‘Like Audrey Hepburn,' Mavis told them. She was dressed in an apple-green swing skirt that moved with a life of its own, sweeping the furniture and the children who stood around. But most of all it was her perfume (‘Good
Essen,'
Mavis said) that made Boyd swoon. He'd been swooning ever since she arrived in the red open-top Buick.

‘What's buzzing?' she said when she arrived, flowing into the house, sunglasses perched on her forehead. The children had smiled sheepishly and Yvonne walked immediately behind her, copying her walk, extending her arms with fingers splayed, her bottom in a quick left-right, left-right motion.

Papa's guests laughed long into the evening. When their spirits soared impetuously after several gin and tonics, Patricia Moodie suggested driving up to the club.

‘To the club! To the club!' She darted away, white teeth flashing, neck like a swan, arms flailing the air. ‘Catch me, Moodie, catch me!' She was as restless as the wind.

‘Go as you are, Victoria,' Papa said quietly as a compliment, not looking at Mama, who sat back, horrified. She was wearing a floral frock with a single string of pearls and seemed casually elegant. But going to the club meant dressing up.

‘They're so happy,' Mama murmered, observing her guests embracing against a pink sunset. She didn't face Papa, who said nothing.

‘Live for today!' Patricia Moodie cried, returning from her little run, free from the clutches of Mr Moodie, visibly intoxicated. ‘Let the good times roll, Daddy-O.'

‘The good times are already rolling for Harry and Victoria,' Mr Moodie said. ‘The house, the Land Rover, whitewall tyres for the car, young Barrington off to Munro. And did you see their new maid?'

‘She's so young,' Patricia Moodie breathed. ‘And such lovely skin.'

‘But not as lovely as Ann Mitchison.' Mr Moodie roared mischievously in his gin and tonic voice. He winked at Papa, who winced.

‘She's refreshing,' Patricia Moodie said to Mama, not appreciating Moodie's joke. ‘She could really improve Appleton.'

‘Yes?' Mama said, looking suspicious.

‘Oh, yes. You need a woman like that in a place like this. Did you know that she set up education classes for some of the poor young girls at Siloah?'

‘Oh,' Mama said.

‘One helluva woman,' Mr Moodie said, chuckling.

After a brief silence, Papa got up. ‘Well, let's go,' he said.

Poor Mavis was forced to cancel all her plans for the evening, cajoling Vincent, who didn't need much cajoling, into running four miles with a message to her family in Taunton, while the Prefect, reflecting the blazing red sunset in its rear window, roared off down the driveway and to the club.

Boyd watched from the verandah as they left. He was tortured with feeling and went deep into himself.
Papa and Mama had changed. He could feel the space between them and hear the words that they were not speaking. That evening, the Mullard radio whispered
“The Blue Danube Waltz”
. He wanted to creep into the radio, drugged with passion. He was Boyd, but he was nothing. And then he was everything and did not wish it and was overwhelmed with the music and saw beautiful things and started to cry. He just wanted Mama and Papa to talk to each other again, for Susan to come riding up the driveway and smile and say ‘Hello, Boyd'. But the music wrenched at his heart and wouldn't stop.

* * *

Papa had shocking news at dinner a few nights later. Patricia Moodie had left Mr Moodie.

‘Walked out on him,' Papa said grimly. ‘No gratitude.'

Mama's hand flew to her opened mouth. ‘No,' she gasped.

‘Yes,' Papa confirmed.

The children stopped eating their boiled bananas and mackerel, onions and tomatoes. Papa, brows wrinkled, related how a man had driven up to the house that morning while Mr Moodie was at work and had driven off with Patricia Moodie, leaving a disbelieving maid on the verandah and all Mr Moodie's clothes scattered on the lawn. Mama wept. Papa thought Mr Moodie had done everything he could to please Patricia Moodie, even dressing like a film star and driving that ridiculous car. But, at last, he was on his own, free again, riding his horses on Sundays and drinking at the club till the wee hours. Throughout this talk, Mama looked long into the distance.