The Pink House at Appleton (2 page)

Other people passed by too. The maids in pairs, chattering and gay, laughing like carefree birds by the water's edge; and
higglers
, market women, their breasts heaving and their bottoms in a shocking rhythmic romp,
bankras
heavy on their heads. And there were gardeners in overalls, more casual in their walking, handymen and beggars and peculiar people whose business they could not determine. And there was one other person.

This person wore dark clothes and rode by the house on a black bicycle every day just before ten o'clock. The only thing that was not dark about him was his machete, two and a half feet of steel, white sharp in the light, strapped to the bicycle frame. The children found him mysterious. They had their eyes on him every day, daring him to look so that they could wave, but they never waved because he never looked.

‘He's not nice,' Yvonne said, exasperated, after five mornings in a row fixing him with a steady eye and getting no response.

‘You mustn't say that,' Perlita cautioned, a picking finger up her nose. ‘Him is as straight as a arrow. Everybody say so.'

‘But he's not looking at us,' Yvonne remonstrated, not interested. ‘He's blind. And deaf and dumb too!'

‘Don't be stupid,' Barrington told her. ‘Blind people don't ride bicycles.'

Watching the dark figure disappear down the lane, Boyd knew why he didn't look. It was for the same reason he himself didn't always look people in the eye. Papa said it was because of
lack of confidence
, but it wasn't anything of the sort. The eye revealed everything. People could look straight into you, deep down into the secret pinkness where you lived. The bicycle rider concealed things he did not want anyone to know about. Boyd knew. He had secrets too.
Great Expectations
lay opened on his bed at a certain page. He couldn't wait to get back to the book and to the two fascinating characters in it: the pretty girl, Estella, who made his heart flutter, and the boy, Pip, who really was Boyd Longfellow Brookes. And so, as he hurried away, he did not hear Perlita's final remarks.

‘Him keep himself to himself,' Perlita said of the bicycle-rider. ‘Him don't drink at rum bars all night like some of the good-for-nothing men. Him don't smoke or gamble. Him is a strange man but him don't busy himself in other people's business.' Perlita said he arrived at the factory at ten o'clock every day and left at six every evening. People set their watches by him. His name was Mr Ten-To-Six.

‘
Ten-To-Six
!' Yvonne laughed, unbelieving.

* * *

It was wonderful at first, this standing about on the verandah of the new house, waving cheerfully at all and sundry. Yvonne even pretended that the balustrade was a bucking horse and rode it, shouting ‘Giddyap, giddyap!' brown legs and feet in misbehaving imaginary stirrups.

‘Those lovely little children,' Mrs Moore said. And the maids commented to their mistresses, who mentioned it to their husbands, who repeated it, in their way, at the club. Papa got wind of it, interpreted it as only he could, and put a stop to it forthwith. Driving home early from work one day he towered over the children, scowling, in short khaki trousers, knee-length socks, and heavy brown brogues smelling of Nugget polish.

‘Get inside the house. You're not little vagabonds. If I ever catch you out here again fooling around, I'll put you on the streets to beg your bread!'

The words were so shocking that the children stumbled backward into the house. They knew (from peering out the rear window of the Prefect) what it was like to beg for bread. Mr Rawhog, the local vagabond, did it. And look at him – forever crouching in the gutters, dirty, his crotch wet and smelling of wee, always hungry and desperate-looking, no home to go to, always at the mercy of the rain, and no roast beef, rice and peas, cabbage and fried plantains cooked by Perlita for Sunday lunch.

‘Get out of my sight!' Papa marched after them. ‘Here I am trying to teach you
values and principles
and there you are trying to drag me into the gutter. You want to behave like
those people?
Go on. You'll see where that will get you.'

Papa was
values and principles.
He talked about
values
and principles
at the dinner table when everyone was there to hear, and in the car when no one could get away. He said that
those people
would never amount to anything because they lacked two very vital ingredients,
values
and
principles
.
Those people
were degenerates who had children (little bastards) in every town and village and who walked away from their responsibilities.
Those people
, Papa had said, lowering his voice, were all busy committing
adultery
, which was all they were good for. None of the children knew what
adultery
meant. But they guessed it meant something bad, and because Mama seemed very uncomfortable, never dreamed of asking her. The dreadful people committing
adultery
were so disreputable that they made no plans for their children's education. That, Papa said, was the most irresponsible thing of all. Large numbers of them were leaving Jamaica for England by banana boat. Good riddance.

From the safety of their bedrooms they heard Papa's strident voice. Mama's was low and whimpering. They heard Papa's heavy brown brogues firm and quick upon the red Polyflor-polished wooden floors. Hidden behind drawn curtains they saw him lurching in the yellow Willys jeep down the winding road, back to the factory with its white steam that said
Shhhhh, Shhhhh
,
Shhhhh
day after day, and the pervasive smell of boiling sugar that lulled everything into pastoral calm.

When Papa was gone, the children came out from their rooms and Mama came to them. It was in that magical period of the morning between nine and eleven o'clock. At that time fathers were at work and maids dusted and polished and the Mullard radio played
Housewives' Choice
, music by Harry Belafonte, Doris Day, The Platters and Jimmie Rodgers
(Oh, Honeycomb, won't
you be my baby, well, Honeycomb, be my own)
. The verandah opened upon the world and Mama herself wanted to be in the world, not locked away in an estate house. But that was where Papa wanted them to stay, not standing idly about on the verandah like common people. Mama herself now watched for the yellow jeep with its big, baby-round headlamp eyes and warned the children as it laboured up the slope. But she was sad.

Mama did not want to end up like her mother, alone in that house in St Catherine, unfulfilled, with only death to look forward to. She wanted to realise her little dream.

‘A dressmaker!' Papa said, shocked, when she first brought it up. ‘You want to be a dressmaker?'

‘More like a designer,' Mama calmly suggested, desperately wanting Papa to show just a flicker of genuine interest.

‘You've never said anything before.'

Mama was silent, thinking about Enid, her sister. Enid led a fantastic social life, had a smart house in an upmarket district of Kingston, knew people, had travelled abroad and had the sort of experience Mama could only dream about. Enid had realised her dream.

‘And where would you do your dressmaking?'

‘I would work from home,' Mama replied eagerly, immediately seeing orders for her clothes being dispatched by train to
Daphne's
and
Issa's
in Kingston, and Sunday newspaper articles raving about her designs.

Papa had laughed and stared at her hard. You are a mad woman, his eyes said. Papa knew about dressmakers. They were small-town, peasant women, who sat before aged Singer sewing machines in the untidy front room of their modest little houses, surrounded by cheap-smelling materials and half-finished clothes for even less dignified women and various odd people. It was not an image that complemented his vision of big house and garden and servants, and delightful evenings at the club. He found it hard to believe that Mama could contemplate such a thing. He wouldn't hear another word about it after that.

After that dressing-down from Papa, the children kept well away from the front verandah. Mama too. She felt as if she'd received a dressing-down herself, and decided that if she couldn't go into the world, she would invite the world in. So she invited Mrs Moore for a chat one morning. Boyd peeped in at the door, sniffing and savouring the drifting woman fragrance of Mrs Moore. It was a spicy-camphor sort of smell, nothing like his Aunt Enid's frangipani scent. The radio played
Que Sera Sera, Whatever Will Be Will Be
while Mrs Moore talked in her older woman's voice. And she showed ankles and smooth upper arms that stirred feelings and thoughts that Boyd had never known.

‘Victoria, you must come up to the club and meet the rest of us,' the older woman's voice of Mrs Moore said. ‘You can't stay shut up in the house forever.' She laughed and Mama laughed too, liking Mrs Moore with her colourful hat, encrusted with artificial fruit.

‘I see you've already got yourself a maid,' Mrs Moore observed. ‘It took me six months to get anyone decent. Good maids are hard to come by in St Elizabeth, and you have to teach them everything. Is she any good?'

‘Oh, she seems fine,' Mama replied, not wanting to mention Perlita's frequent nose-picking and the many nasty little habits she was fast discovering, like the endless hawking and spitting. Mama was tired of telling Perlita to wash her hands before she kneaded the dough for the dumplings. Perlita didn't think much of that advice. She went to the bathroom to do number two and didn't wash her hands there either, and she coughed and sneezed at will. Sometimes wriggly strands of her hair were found in the sauce at dinner. Perlita was on borrowed time. One more slip and she was out, to beg for her bread on the hot, dusty roads of St Elizabeth. That was what Papa said.

‘Hmm,' Mrs Moore murmured. ‘Never let anything fester. If they have to go, let them go.' She slapped her fleshy thigh to make her point and Mama's head snapped back. ‘Get rid of them. On the spot!'

‘She seems fine,' Mama repeated meekly. ‘Very pleasant.'

‘Without a good maid,' Mrs Moore told Mama gravely, ‘it's difficult to run an estate house, as you know. And it's more difficult here in St Elizabeth with the poor quality of the maids. The laziness. The gossip! Everyone on the estate knows your business. It's all they're interested in. And the thieving! They'll steal the clothes off your back.'

Mama giggled and Mrs Moore smiled and added, ‘If you let them.'

At that moment, Mama knew that she had a friend. Mrs Moore leaned forward and spoke with a tone and expression of pure wisdom. ‘Victoria, you will not settle until the right maid is in the house. Don't feel sorry for them. Remember, you cannot help every poor girl who comes to the door looking for work. You'll know when the right one comes along and, believe you me, quite a number of them will come along. Hmm.'

There was a pause in the conversation as Mrs Moore sipped her coffee, her huge breasts formidable and reassuring. Boyd's eyes widened. Then Mrs Moore disappointed Mama. ‘We won't be staying here long,' she said, looking swiftly and approvingly about the room. ‘Stanley plans to work for a big engineering company in Kingston. We'll take Icilyn with us. She'll be cheaper than the Kingston maids and more respectful too, after all the training I've given her. Appleton is good for us – free house, furniture and everything – and you can live like a king on a few pounds. But our home is in Kingston. And there's not a lot to do here. Yes, there's the club, the odd party, dinners and so forth, and some people getting up to mischief, as they always do, Victoria.' Mrs Moore laughed loud and long until she wheezed. ‘And sports for the younger ones. Young people need sports. And the Crop-Over Dance, of course, when the bigwigs come up from Kingston and people let their hair down. My niece, Pepsi, comes up on school holidays to keep me company. A bright, lovely girl with a magnificent head of hair. Wait till you see her, just wait. But you must come to the club, Victoria, show yourself.'

Boyd, moving quickly away from the door at the sound of chairs being pushed back and seeing shocking images of the heaving udders of Mrs Moore, wondered with great imagination at the coming of a girl named Pepsi, and could not wait.

* * *

When Papa entered the hall that evening, Boyd was slumped in the armchair breathing hard,
Great Expectations
opened in his lap. Deep cello music came from the recesses of the Mullard radio nearby. Boyd was thinking, with delicious torment, about the beautiful and heart-breaking Estella, so ruthless towards Pip. He had reached the part on page eighty-nine where Estella takes Pip into a corner and says “You may kiss me, if
you like.”
You may kiss me!
It was so breathtaking for a girl to say a thing like that. But Estella was cold and didn't mean any of it. Boyd felt Pip's hurt and yet, especially because of her cruelty, felt a deep and burning attraction for Estella. Even the sight of her name on the page sparked passion, pain, pleasure. He'd felt the same about Lydia Parsons, that haughty girl at Worthy Park Prep, who took away his crayons and never gave him the time of day. Night after night he'd had torturous dreams about Lydia Parsons for that reason alone. She and Estella were the same. He wondered if all pretty girls were like that.

‘What's the matter with that child now?' Papa asked Mama, closing the bedroom door behind him.

‘Who?' Mama asked.

‘Boyd. Who else? He's sitting by the radio sniffling again.'

‘Nothing's the matter with him,' Mama said, her tone suddenly assertive.

‘You could fool me.'

‘He's just a thoughtful child. Little things affect him.'

‘I see,' Papa said. ‘He stands naked in the rain like a little savage. Sometimes he just sits on the verandah looking into space, and when you say anything to him he bursts into tears. What's going on in that head of his?' But before Mama could answer, Papa carried on. ‘He has to learn not to dwell on things. You think I allow this, that or the other to get to me at the factory?' Papa gave a sarcastic little laugh.

Mama faced him, surprised. ‘He's only a child.'

‘And he'll remain a child until he learns to manage his feelings.'

‘Did you understand your feelings when you were eight?'

‘I certainly didn't dwell on them. Sometimes you have to put feelings aside and get on with life. And he's aways hidden away in the garden, doing what, no one knows. Now, that is strange.'

‘A little sensitivity doesn't harm anybody.'

Papa rolled his eyes and left the room just as the dinner bell went.

During dinner the small spotted dog, standing outside by the kitchen door, uttered pitiful sounds, lamenting his absence at the table. Not more than six months old, he came with the house, waiting on the front steps, tail whipping in a blur on the day of their arrival. He had sidled up to Boyd, who promptly named him “Poppy”.

Now Boyd waited impatiently to get to Poppy and the back verandah. The back verandah received the red sunset in late evening. Very often he stood alone in the warm dark, breathing the evening scents, roseapple and jasmine, feeling the quiet and strangeness of a new place, listening to the cautious night noises, and watching the fireflies, the
peeny-waalies,
approach from the darkness behind the maids' quarters. And he always wondered, as he stood there, what Perlita was doing in her room with the door closed. Sometimes, from the darkness outside he peeped in, flat against her window, standing on half a brick, expecting to see her slowly undressing, expecting to see a pink slip, her woman's heavy titties and thighs, slow self-conscious movements, like Mama. But Perlita never took her clothes off. She seemed busy with other things.

As he waited, Boyd saw the gathering darkness, the
peeny-waalies
nervously watching, the flowers waiting to breathe their night breath, all awaiting Papa's departure. He waited too, for Perlita to undress, for Pepsi to arrive, for his tangled feelings to turn into pretty common sense. And from the bathroom he heard Papa's unrestrained voice,
Beecaause you come to me, because you speak to me, beecaause…

Throughout dinner Yvonne had given Boyd mischievous little glances. Now, as Papa left for the club, his grand tenor waning, his lime-green Limacol cologne wafting in his wake, his brogues firm upon the wooden floor she turned to Mama, who was staring wistfully at Papa's departing back.

‘Mama, Boyd took out his teapot and pee-peed on the ants. And he's eating the flowers again.' She was only five years old. At that age every thought turned into words. Barrington, as impatient to get to his scrapbook of footballers and cars as Papa was impatient to get to the club, quickly left the table.

‘Eat your pudding,' Mama told Yvonne, imagining Boyd's discomfort.

But Boyd only saw himself in the fragrant darkness of the garden. He was alone with Pepsi, whose face was already the face of a girl he knew, whose strawberry-red lips spoke impossible things, just like Estella.

Mama saw Boyd in the garden too, but he did not see her. Watching from her bedroom window one day, she had learned something about her son. And she wondered what Papa would say if he knew about Boyd's peculiar habit.

* * *

The first time he tongued the flowers was in the garden at Worthy Park, in a quiet place where no one could see. It was almost like sucking Mama's titties in the lily-scented bedroom on a hot afternoon. He didn't know when he stopped sucking Mama's titties but it wasn't long ago.

On that day the roses hung ripe, soft-fleshed, and so mouth-watering that he had simply fallen upon them, the music alive in his head, his skin hot and tingling. He thought of pink tongues and lollipops, and then warm, firm titties, full for sucking. The warmth of the earth rose up and smote him and all around flowers of every colour spread a path for his approach. The hibiscus came first, unwrapped lollipops to be taken in the open, translucent, exotic in the sun, silky and wet upon his tongue.

The first time tonguing, he did not hear Mama. She called him ten times that day and got no reply. But she was not cross with him when he finally entered the house, fresh from the garden. She was relieved. She saw the dark stains on his lips and judging that he had been gorging himself on otaheite apples again, pointed straight to the washstand where the pink Lifebuoy carbolic soap lay.

‘Wash out your mouth,' Mama said then.

But there were other times. Mama did not say
wash out your mouth
when the rain tongued him, falling hard through the trees upon the grass, like horses on the rampage. He remembered the first day in it. The noise of the rain was like voices and music, Christmas paper torn and rustled, filling his ears. It was Mama's voice calling, but obliterated amid the rushing crystal-clear water. As the skies opened up, he had dashed out the back door, hidden in the violence and whiteness. It was shocking, joyful, making his heart churn.

‘Boyd, get out of the rain!' Mama shouted frantically from the verandah, spying the small dripping shape, the first time it happened.

‘'E's soaked right through, ma'am,' the maid said, unbelieving, not understanding, grasping at him as he entered the kitchen.

Barrington said in code,
Stop acting like a fool, you. You're just asking for Papa to give you a beating.

‘Boyd, why did you stand in the rain?' Yvonne asked, genuinely concerned, as he was towelled down, and Bay Rum applied hurriedly and liberally about his body. She helped with the towelling, to prevent him getting pneumonia.

He only gave a half-smile, inhaling the Bay Rum. The question was impossible. Maybe when Yvonne was eight years old she would know the pleasure of rain, know what it was to be suspended in the universe, at the centre of things, with the mad rushing in the ears, yearning fiercely, deeply seeking, senses fired up, passions like red hot sunsets.

* * *

That night, following Mrs Moore's visit, he could not sleep. It was because of the new house smell, a trembling, delicate pink scent; the new feelings and the waiting for Pepsi. It was because of the moonlight silver on the verandah, the new dog asleep somewhere outside and the little slaps and cries from Mama's room. Mama and Papa had stayed up listening to the radio, the WINZEE station from America, and talking. He heard when they struggled off to bed in the late hours, when the sky was grey-blue. And he listened at Mama's door, as he often did, to the whispers and the strange sounds. He could see them clearly through the slit in the door. The moonlight came through the window and splashed the sheets on their side of the room. Papa was on top of Mama and fighting her, slapping her, hurting her. Mama was not fighting back. She was moaning deep in the sheets. He trembled barefoot at the door. He had thought that coming to Appleton would put a stop to it. He'd seen it happen many times at Worthy Park and wanted it to end. Now he knew there was no end to it.

He went back to bed. But it wasn't long before he walked dreamily out into the garden, into magnolia. The sun warmed his face and hands and he felt the urgent tug of the music, heard the voices whispering hush, hushh, hushhh.

When the music called, from deep in the pink core of him where feelings lived, he came into himself. During the evenings, at sunset, when he sat in the chintz armchair listening to the Mullard radio deep in arias and fugues and adagios and burst into quiet tears, he knew it would always be thus. Sometimes he was scared with the enormity of feeling, of not knowing, unable to find expression, drowning in melancholia.

‘Miss Mama?' he remembered Aunt Enid saying.

Mama had two sisters, Aunt Amanda and Aunt Enid. Aunt Enid had the lemonade voice, frangipani scent and warm caresses. She was unmarried and without children, and loved Boyd. She exuded everything good. He had spent a week at her Kingston house where the garden was lush and a hammock hung from a St Julian mango tree. The days were nectar days and the sun like honey. The mango scents weakened his senses and Aunt Enid came to him in the warm afternoon in the garden, sat with him in the hammock so that they could look back at the house in the background and hear nothing. Her breasts were like soft toffee. He lapped at her and ate her and was smothered by her. And she took him to her without words. They were together in the silence. And there was no aching because there was no anguish. It was the first time he had been away from Mama and Papa. He was six years old.