The Pink House at Appleton (34 page)

Boyd now faced the floor, not looking at anyone. Something private had been expressed in a public place. He felt as if they had reached in and torn his heart out. Words read at another time came to him, the words of the convict among the graves in
Great Expectations,
who ordered Pip to
“get me wittles…Or I'll cut your heart and liver out.”
He had had nightmares imagining the act. Now they had cut his heart and liver out.

‘He's been sucking flowers since Worthy Park,' Mama said with an air of exhaustion.

Papa gave her a long, withering look that said
I blame you for this
.

‘He don't mean no harm, Mr Brookes,' Mavis pleaded.

Papa turned to Boyd with a strange expression, as if seeing a fascinating object for the first time. Barrington, too, surveyed Boyd with unreserved respect, not because of the eating of the flowers but because of what he imagined Boyd had been doing to Susan. Now he would have to get a copy of that
Tropic of Cancer
. Yvonne turned from Mama to Boyd in slow motion but Boyd wasn't there. He'd fled from the room. In his sudden flight, he stumbled into Mavis, hesitated, her arms clutching, folding about him, but he resisted the temptation and flew through the dining room.

Out into the green he ran, the glad sun licking his face. The sky was open and wide above him. Friends were in every tree, in the fields and mountains. Birds flew free, unfettered, telling of
liberté
and
fraternité
, of lives untainted, unencumbered by worry, never accused or vilified, never having their hearts and livers cut out, never suffering the tragedy of cold incomprehensible condemnation. He ran with Poppy behind the garage to be out of sight of the pink house.

But behind the garage, Poppy got in the way. His tail and legs, uncoordinated in his excitement, became obstacles. Poppy did not seem to understand, thinking it was about play, thinking that it was just another day. Boyd turned on him. He aimed a vicious kick, with wicked intent, and felt it smack hard into Poppy's soft underbelly, felt the warmth of him there, and felt the instant regret too, but it was too late. The kick raised Poppy off the ground. He yelped in surprise, not accustomed to violence, landed on his feet and looked up at Boyd, a streak of red already breaking the whiteness of his eyes. In his recklessness, Boyd kicked again, not once but twice, catching Poppy hard on his front paws. Poppy yelped, confused, overcome with fright and pain, and stumbled nervously on his side, legs flaying the air. He got up timidly, limping badly, and stood to one side, looking down as if ashamed, as if guilty of some hideous, unspeakable deed. In silence, Boyd saw Poppy look at him as at a stranger, saw him drop his head and limp awkwardly back towards the kitchen and Mavis, who was hastening down the steps in pursuit.

He ran out from behind the garage, the tears blinding him, crawled under the fence, into the meadow, down into the river road, across it and into the canes. He ran into the river, to the mountains and over them to Maggotty, into the white Maggotty Falls and over the hills to Black River. He ran far away and still he was running, to the Parisian night in the Evening in Paris blue bottle, into the pretty pictures in the books and into the music. He ran into the glorious warmth of the Mullard radio where Papa did not exist. He wanted to get far, far away, beyond himself, and deeper into himself, to hide.

Boyd ran to the periwinkle fence, remembering halcyon times spent there when neither he nor Poppy knew the vicious pain of hurt. The Mitchison Jaguar roared by, pebbles smacking its undercarriage, white dust pouring out, forcing him back into the hedge, leaving him space and time only for a transient glimpse of Susan's face at the window, hair tussled from a sudden turn, lips parted, looking back. She waved at him furiously. Mrs Mitchison, seeing this, waved too. As the car sped away, Susan, eyes burning bright, threw herself at the rear window and continued to wave from there. Boyd waved back weakly and, as the car vanished, turned and ran deep into the gardens.

* * *

He returned home late that evening, so exhausted and torn that he was ready to confess to anything. He saw the shadowy figures of his family hanging back, heard his mother's distressed wimpering and Mavis's painful cry. Papa took him to the bedroom without a word and locked the door. All feeling went out of Boyd. It wasn't happening to him but to someone else, someone in a book. And Papa wasn't Papa. He was someone else too. And Boyd viewed the scene from the comfort of the chintz armhair.

A monstrous man wielded a heavy leather belt and a small boy wet his pants. The small boy didn't feel the pain of the blows, only the humiliation. No sound left his lips. And the monstrous man wasn't, in the end, so fearful. He was a comic, dark figure, dancing about the room to rhythmless music, music that the boy had never heard and would never hear again. When it was over, the boy stood in the warm puddle, his legs stinging, desperate to clean himself up before his mother and sister entered the room. And, as the man left the room, their eyes met, and the boy saw the hidden secrets behind the man's eyes. He saw that the man was full of immeasurable guilt.

‘Stay in your room!' Papa bellowed. ‘And don't ever let me catch you playing around with Susan Mitchison again. You hear me?' And Papa was gone.

Boyd waited. He thought Mama would be the first to rush in and cuddle him. But no one came. Not Yvonne, because she blamed herself for his troubles. Not Barrington, because Papa was in no mood to be trifled with. Papa would be returning him to school and he wanted him to be in as reasonable a mood as possible for the long ride back to Malvern. Not Mama, because she did not want to tilt Papa over the edge and, in fact, the charge against Boyd was quite monstrous. Not Mavis, because she felt she had overplayed her hand and did not wish, for the time being at least, to appear too understanding. She planned to comfort Boyd when she took him his supper. Mr Brookes had already fixed her twice with that calculating look of his, trying to work something out.

The shadows drew in earlier than usual that evening and the air streaming through Boyd's bedroom window was forbidding. He saw no hint of setting sun, only the dreadful chill and the creeping darkness. Not even the swallows were about. There was no sound of their shrieking. And there was no sign or sound of Poppy. Distraught, Boyd wished desperately that he could hear Poppy bark, that the seared picture in his head was not the one of the small dog limping away in pain. The only sound that came into the room came from the Mullard radio: music meant only for him, poignant, compassionate, soothing. He closed his eyes and felt the music's warm embrace. When it was over, he heard only his own close breathing. But the music remained with him, his only companion.

When Mavis appeared with the wooden tray, long after the others had had their dinner, she closed the door gently behind her. They exchanged looks as she put the tray down. Boyd's lips trembled. She went straight to him, caution thrown to the winds, noting his silent weeping, his outstretched hands seeking and took him fully into her arms. It would have been wicked not to.

‘Ooh, ooh, sugar,' she said softly, kissing his forehead and cheeks, feeling him snuggling deep into her, weeping stifled. ‘Ooh, ooh, sugar. You didn't do nothing wrong. Not a thing. Hush, hush, hush. Mrs Dowding don't know what she talking about.'

Boyd, hearing the kind words, clung tighter.

He wanted comfort sucking, Mavis could tell, for his mouth made little darting movements towards her titties.

‘Supper is on the tray,' she said, pointing. ‘You must eat something, sugar. Look. Fried breadfruit, ackee and bacon. And nice hot chocolate with Betty condensed milk.'

Boyd had been cold, without a heart or liver. Mavis was warm and near, a soothing place. She felt his hands reaching urgently between her breasts and could stop it. But she hesitated. She knew Mr Brookes had already left with Barrington but his huge presence was still in the house. She knew that Mrs Brookes and Yvonne were on the verandah entertaining Mrs Dowding. Footsteps on the floorboards would be heard if anyone approached the room, giving her enough time to compose herself before the door opened. One brief, tender suck could do no harm.

Quickly, furtively, she hurried her bursting brown breast to his lips, his eyes full of hunger and thirst. He buried his face into the lovely flesh, the heat returning to him. Mavis, feeding his mouth and quite carried away, could not pull back. It was not going to be brief. A wisping sound at the door turned her head. In a panic she saw the slit where the evening breeze had cracked the door partly open. Releasing her breast, she hurried to the door and, looking down the hall to make sure there was no one there, closed it. Then she returned to Boyd. But this time she was more anxious and kept looking over her shoulder. Only one minute more and it would be over, then she would kiss his cheek and be on her way. The evening breeze streamed through the window bringing amherstia and oleander.

Mavis did not see but felt, catching her breath, a shadow enter the room. Looking up, she saw a face at the window, black against the paleness of the evening sky. It was Vincent, silently watching, his one eye fixed upon the scene before him. He seemed strangely drunk, head swaying like a zombie. Mavis swung round. Unsucking Boyd's lips from her breast as tenderly as she could, she walked directly to the window and pulled it firmly down, drawing the curtains across it, unblinking. She shut Vincent out.

Vincent blinked. He had been hoping beyond hope for a miracle from Mavis, some scrap of kindness, pity even, after his disgrace. Time and time again a child had gone where he, a grown man, had never been. He was undone. He had always been shut out. But he wouldn't be shut out anymore.

Sitting with Mrs Dowding on the verandah, Mama had tried to listen attentively. The older woman had come as a good neighbour. Mrs Dowding talked about how boys would be boys but that they needed careful watching. When her Dennis was just a child, she never let him out of her sight
once
and now look at him. He was a decent young man beginning to take his place in the world and able to respect womankind. But she did not come to remind Mama about sordid things. She had come to talk about her nephew, Andrew, recently appointed to London University as a lecturer. She had the letter with her; red, white and blue airmail, written in purple ink, page after page of it. But Mama was unable to listen. She kept seeing Boyd, standing on one leg, scared to death, repeating, ‘No, Papa.' She had let him down. She hadn't sprung to his defence and believed him as she knew she should. She couldn't listen to the sound of his beating and had closed her ears against it. She blamed Papa. He had bullied her, making her believe everything he told her about Boyd and Susan, making her silence her own voice, making her crush her misgivings. Mrs Dowding's penchant for jumping to conclusions and getting it wrong was well known and scandalous. Mavis had behaved more like a mother should, and yet she, a young, inexperienced woman, had never given birth, did not, could not know motherly attachment to an offspring. Mama felt ashamed. Listening to the dull, prejudiced, interfering Mrs Dowding drone on and on, all she could think of was Boyd alone in his room, his suffering doubled by his incarceration. Abruptly, Mama excused herself, leaving Mrs Dowding to turn her attention to an insistent Yvonne lurking by the door, and walked barefoot on Mavis's highly polished floor towards Boyd's room.

Mama got to the door and, seeing it slightly ajar, hesitated. Like a child, she swallowed hard, peering into the room, bracing herself for the ordeal to come. She did not expect to see Mavis there. But there she was, sitting on the bed, facing Boyd with her back to the door. There was no mistaking the young woman's stance, the position of her body, the movement of her arm. She was cradling Boyd's head to her bosom. Mama stared, understanding at once the private, silent scene before her. She looked away but then returned again to the cuddling figures, making sure she knew what she saw. She thought, bizarrely, that it could have been a painting of a mother tending her child. But it was not a picture. This was no figment of her imagination. Her eight-year-old son was at Mavis's breast. Mama swallowed hard again, and feeling a cold sweat and the onset of overwhelming fear, tiptoed back to the verandah, where she detained Yvonne. She hoped desperately that Mavis would end it soon and that no one else would see what she'd just seen.

At about ten o'clock the next morning, Mavis entered Mama's bedroom.

‘Letter for you, Mrs B,' she said. ‘And it's in a nice white envelope, ma'am. Not a bad telegram this time, ma'am. It's about time you have some good news, after everything.'

‘Thank you, Mavis,' Mama said, as calm as it was possible to be, not facing the young woman. Mavis, smiling cheerfully, left the room.

The envelope was addressed to Mama in a spidery, unschooled hand. She studied the writing, the formation of her own name, the blotted ink, the peculiar placing of the stamp, the postmark. She could never understand why people didn't line up the stamp with the sides of the envelope so that it fitted squarely in the corner. She did not want to open the envelope. The scent of the letter-writer (Mama was certain it was a woman) and all the unwelcome odours of the place she came from would fill the room, contaminating everything. Mama was thinking of a small district in St Catherine, Lluidas Vale, and a woman whose name had never crossed her lips. It had come to pass. Enid had always told her to
confront
him. But Enid never understood her position, neither did her own mother, thinking it misguided. She prayed to God that the letter had nothing to do with the news she feared, coming on top of everything.

Mama sat by the window, where she had an unimpeded view of the driveway. She wanted to make sure she had enough time to secrete the letter and compose herself, should Papa suddenly appear. Her hands trembled as she opened the envelope. Something fell out. It was the picture of a girl, not more than seven years old, smiling sweetly and shyly into the camera. The picture was taken at a photographer's studio in Spanish Town. His details were stamped clearly on the back in embossed letters.

Mama looked towards the ceiling as the flesh of her face dropped and sagged. But she did not gain any solace from the ceiling. Deliverance was not there. The little girl had Papa's defining features: the broad forehead, prominent cheeks, square-cut jaw and strong, even teeth. And she had dimples of the most pleasant kind in her cheeks. She was very pretty. Mama studied the picture. She thought,
Poor thing, it's not your fault
. It was the deceit, the dishonesty, the hypocrisy and the mess that they were now all mired in.

Mama read the letter slowly, trying to understand each word from the strange hand far away in Lluidas Vale. Papa was probably at the factory, or at the club at that very moment, lecturing about
values and principles
, decrying low morals, highly critical of people like Edgar and others of his sort.

Again and again she read the letter, wishing it away. She knew she couldn't possibly talk to Papa about it, not immediately. When things settled down, she would go to him, when he was in a reasonable mood, and hope for a civilised discussion. But she wanted to delay that moment for as long as possible. Turning away from the window, she wished, for one rash moment, that she was Pamela Moodie, asserting her authority as a woman and wife. And for just one more blinding moment she wished that she was reckless and could dance the mambo.

* * *

As Papa got into the Land Rover that afternoon, Vincent approached.

‘Ah leaving, sar,' Vincent said, red-eyed.

‘Leaving what?'

‘The work, sar.'

Papa gave him an uncomprehending look. Gardeners, yard boys and maids did not leave just like that. They were fired, kicked out, and departed with their sordid little
bankras
or grips and the clothes on their backs. Vincent's effrontery was breathtaking.

‘Where are you going?' Papa asked, amused.

‘Ah leaving, sar,' Vincent repeated, suddenly irritated, feeling rising resentment of his employer for his privileged position, envious of his continuing fornication with the white woman, bitter at his own miserable failure with Mavis.

‘Don't be a damn fool, man,' Papa said, slamming the Land Rover door shut. ‘Make sure you're here when I get back tonight.' And he drove off.

Vincent was left standing in his own shadow, angry at the offhand manner in which he had been treated,
had always been treated,
by the callous man in short trousers. He had little respect for Mr Brookes. The man was no good. From the very beginning, he had treated him like dirt. He blamed him for everything.

An hour later, at the factory Papa sat with his head in his hands. A letter lay opened on his desk. It was from a certain Miss Connor. She had written to him at the factory, addressing him as
Mr Harold Brookes, Scientist, Appleton Estate
in her stumbling handwriting. Served him right, boasting to her the way he had. She had taken him literally. He had been drunk that fateful night but remembered telling her with a slurred tongue, “I'm the
schientist
, the brains at the factory.” But the biggest blow (he'd raised his hands in despair when he discovered it) was that she had also written to Mama. No wonder Mama had been silent during lunch. He'd thought her silence was to do with Boyd and that disgraceful business with Susan. But he was wrong.

Papa got down off the stool and walked up and down the office. The reality was impossible – to stand before Mama and accept that all along he had been one of
those people
, not the man she knew. The
humiliation
. Men who took their lives he had always considered absolute cowards, not deserving of understanding. Now he knew that putting an end to it wasn't so unthinkable.

He was going to have to go home and face Mama. Once he explained everything to her, she would understand. Thank God she was not the unforgiving kind. The very qualities he thought were her weaknesses would now be the saving of him. And while he was about it, he intended to do something else. The business with Ann: he would have to put an end to that too, however difficult. Maybe a transfer to New Yarmouth estate was the answer. Through the laboratory window and across the valley, he saw the two houses against the green hill: the pink house, his home, and the white house of the Mitchisons under its crimson poinciana canopy. He would talk to Ann that night.

That night, Vincent left the pink house. He went empty-handed, just the clothes on his back and a small bag of the Rastafarian weed, the ganja, in his pocket. He had spent the afternoon cleaning his tools, oiling the lawnmower, sharpening his machete till tiny bits of steel littered the ground at his feet, hoping all the while for salvation. But it was no use. Work, the one thing that gave him a sense of purpose and the only enjoyment he knew, could not take away the feeling of worthlessness. He was without respect, pride or dignity, the things some men killed for, or would die for. Mavis's position at the pink house and Mr Brookes' indifference meant that he could have no place there. And yet, his entire working life – and a happy one it had been too with the Maxwell-Smiths – had been spent at this house at Appleton. Poppy limped after him for a time in the warm, cosy darkness, but seeing that his face was set in the distance, returned to sit on the porch, wimpering all evening, as small distressed dogs do.

And that same night, Miss Chatterjee answered a knock at her door. When she saw who it was, her face brightened, but just as quickly showed alarm. Her maid, Adassa, a deadly gossip, normally gone from the house at that hour, was still about. She was fussing with brown paper bags in the kitchen while her uncle, Mr Gordon, waited patiently on his bicycle in the dark by the porch. Hastily Miss Chatterjee manoeuvred the visitor into her bedroom, dismissed Adassa for the night, locked up the house and drew the curtains.