The Pink House at Appleton (4 page)

Boyd saw Papa go to Mama, holding the small package behind his back as The Chordettes said,
Please Eddie, don't make me wait too long
. Later, he saw Mama standing in the middle of the room crying, just before Papa closed the bedroom door. The next day, they heard the news. Papa had bought Mama a bottle of
Evening in Paris
, her favourite perfume.
Soir De Paris
,
as lovely a perfume as money can buy,
the advertisements in the papers said. And finally, that Saturday evening, Papa took Mama to the club.

That night, Boyd heard when they returned. He heard their quick footsteps, muffled but excited voices, shoes falling to the floor.
Evening in Paris
drifted into his room. Soon he heard Mama call out. On tiptoe in the darkness he approached their bedroom door, peeped through the slit and saw Papa in his usual place on top of Mama.
They were making more babies
.

‘The Moodies are very nice people,' Mama said at breakfast, looking lovely in a short-sleeved white blouse and round, white, clip-on earrings.

‘They lived in England,' Papa said, as if the mere fact that they lived in England made them nice. Papa's respect and admiration for the English went deep. He accepted, a long time ago, that it was the unjust respect of the colonised for the coloniser, a matter of fact thing. It was the sort of respect that could only be righted or exorcised through true self-government or genuine social intercourse.

‘We're having them for dinner on Saturday,' Mama gushed. She radiated such enthusiasm that the children sat open-mouthed. Yvonne, who could usually be relied upon for some irreverent comment, only wrinkled her nose. The visit to the club had worked wonders. Mama was blooming. At the club she had had several glasses of Babycham, loving the bubbles and the fizz and especially the picture of the prancing baby deer on the bottle's label. She talked excitedly about the interesting people she'd met. The children heard about Miss Hutchinson, poised and attractive, who wore clothes straight out of
Woman
magazine. She spoke with a cultured accent and had travelled widely in Europe, living in Paris and London. She smoked and drank, not Babycham but gin and tonic, and spoke French like the French, not like Jamaicans with dramatic flourishes and unusual nasal voices who thought they were speaking French. Papa said that she was a bohemian but a very nice bohemian. Then there was Miss Chatterjee, the youngest of the younger women, with a degree from London University. She, too, dressed in the most fashionable clothes, played better tennis than anyone, wore expensive perfume and was quite unattainable. All the men were in awe of her because she was impossibly haughty, but haughty in the manner of the young and impossibly beautiful. And one day at lunch a funny thing happened.

Mama said to Papa, ‘Isn't Miss Chatterjee beautiful?'

Papa stammered uncharacteristically, almost choked, looked about guiltily, then back at Mama with lowered eyes. None of the children remembered whether he said yes or no, but they knew immediately that Miss Chatterjee had bowled him over too, like she did all the men, all of whom had sweet dreams about her. Mama had stared and said nothing, her lips suddenly drawn tight.

Other people at the club included Mr and Mrs Baldoo, a couple in their early forties, respectable and very well educated everyone said, always ready with gravely spoken sound advice. They clearly had
values
and
principles
in abundance, and Papa said so at the dinner table. There was Mr Samms, suave, neatly turned out, and with very good manners (‘A real gentleman,' Papa confirmed). There was Mr Dowding, tall, with a Clark Gable moustache; Mrs Dowding, (‘A Betty Crocker cake mix woman,' Papa said. ‘When she's not baking, she spends her time prying and interfering,') and their son, Dennis, who was mostly away at boarding school. The Pinnocks were boring and their daughter, Geraldine, was, ‘A little show-off,' Papa said, because she played the piano in an affected manner. And finally there were the Moodies. Mr Moodie was the deputy assistant distiller.

Mama liked Patricia Moodie immediately because she felt safe with her. Patricia Moodie had no memory of yesterday and gave no caution to the present. She possessed a recklessness that Mama secretly admired.

‘She's a flirt and only knows to dance the mambo,' Papa said mockingly, and then laughed as if he hadn't meant it. ‘She doesn't belong in the country. Too pretentious.'

Mama had retorted girlishly. ‘Well, I like her. She is a nice person, so gay, not stuck up.'

And so the Moodies came to dinner, driving what Barrington called a Buick. To Boyd and Yvonne, the red Buick was just an
American
car: big, flashy, with lots of sharp edges and pointed parts and much chrome, like the cheap, brightly coloured toys with
Made in Japan
printed on them. But it was a big talking point for Barrington. ‘It's the only Buick on the estate,' he said, as if, somehow, all the other vehicles did not count. They could see that he was getting beyond himself because, as everyone knew, and Papa had said it, only English cars mattered. Only flashy people drove American cars. They stood out, both people and cars, drew attention, and were not to be taken seriously. Papa said it was like wearing plastic shoes when you could wear real leather shoes, made to fit.

Patricia Moodie laughed a lot, flashing white teeth and lovely large dark eyes. She wore small white gloves and a yellow silk dress. Her upper arms were brown and bare and around her neck hung two strings of suckable pearls. She wore that deep-red lipstick with a hint of orange, just like Mama's. Boyd stared at her lips and felt that if they were sweets he would lick them and never stop. They were luscious lips, warm and seducing.

She caught him watching her with the longing eyes and said, smiling radiantly, ‘Oh, hello, little Brookes,' embarrassing and exciting him all at once. She bent to stroke his cheeks and he saw her brown breasts and felt her mystery and bewitching. Memories of that day in Kingston with his Aunt Enid came back to him, the sensation of being so close to a grown woman in the scented heat.

Patricia Moodie's swing skirts swung about very much. Boyd imagined that there was an abundance of frilly cloth beneath her skirts. (Perlita later described the frills as
crinoline
, worn only by hoity-toity people.) His eyes strayed down, out of habit, to her agile ankles and the high-heeled shoes,
stilettos
, that said clip-clop every time she moved. He imagined her dancing the mambo and liked the movement of the swirling skirts, the rocking of the ankles and the tension in her calves. It was the last thing that he saw before Papa shooed him and Yvonne away to their rooms.

Stealthily, Boyd joined the night noises and the
peeny-waalies
in the dark under the window by the oleander bush. He caught the stream of Papa's Royal Blend cigarette and heard the clip-clop of Patricia Moodie's shoes.

‘We take the diesel train into Kingston,' Patricia Moodie said from above him on the other side of the window. ‘It's safer than going by car. And we always go first class to get away from the big-bottomed market women with their bundles of this and that.'

Boyd heard Mr Moodie roaring at something Papa said. The faster Mr Moodie drank, the louder his laugh became. His cigarette smoke and huge shadow shut out, for just a moment, the yellow light from the drawing room.

A quarter moon rounded the mountain so that the garden was no longer in deep blackness, as Boyd wished it, but in soft-blue blackness. He drew closer to the oleander bush, leaning hard against the warm, lower brick wall of the house.

‘The Ward Theatre and the Little Theatre in Kingston for mainly local productions,' the clear voice of Patricia Moodie said from the other side of the room. ‘Last year we saw Ivy Baxter's
Danse Elementale
and the Ballet Guild of Jamaica. Manjula Chatterjee was in the audience, such a nice surprise! And of course there is the Carib Theatre, which is really a cinema, for some international things. They sometimes use the hotels and the university auditorium because of lack of venues. In London there are so many theatres, so many concert halls, they're spoiled for choice. And they have good theatre, the best in the world. Moodie isn't interested in any of this. So uncivilised.
So uncivilised
. I don't know what to do with him. So many Jamaican men are without curiousity. Nothing interests them. Have you travelled, Victoria?'

Boyd didn't hear Mama's reply. Patricia Moodie did not wear
Evening in Paris
. She had lived abroad. But Mama, who had not lived abroad, did. It was her only perfume.
Evening in Paris
was for young mothers and nice girls. It was not frivolous or dangerous, but innocent, excitingly safe and loving. Patricia Moodie's risqué perfume came out of crystal bottles with gold tops and couldn't be bought at local shops.

Papa and Mr Moodie's shadows merged by the other window and Boyd moved closer.

‘Harry, I know you know,' Mr Moodie said under his heavy gin and tonic breath. ‘You hear the buggers at the club talking. You must have heard the rumours. I don't believe any of it, but, you know. That little shit.'

‘Easy, easy,' Papa cautioned.

‘No fucking shame! Loose! Loose!'

‘Moodie!'

Boyd could feel Papa recoil. Mr Moodie had used a very bad word, the kind that the gardeners and labourers used when they thought no one could hear.

‘She was dead set against coming to Appleton,' he heard Mr Moodie say. ‘She's a town girl. Every day she threatens to take the train back to Queens Avenue. Dammit, if she wants to go back to Kingston, let her. Harry, I love it here. I am a country boy at heart. Estate life is good for me, you know what I mean?'

‘I know exactly what you mean,' Papa said, after considering Moodie's question. ‘But you've only been married a year. You need to talk. It's the only way. Women need a lot of sensitive handling.'

But Mr Moodie was no longer listening. He acknowledged to himself that it was rather a bad topic for the evening, a moment of weakness for a man like him, and changed the subject. ‘I hear your name's down for the big house on the hill,' he said.

Papa laughed with relief. He had not been impressed with Moodie at all. Moodie needed to get a grip. He would much rather talk about his biggest project at the moment, upon which much depended: the new house on the hill. ‘What else did you hear?'

It was Mr Moodie's turn to laugh. ‘Harry, you deserve that house. Boy, you don't waste time. You'll probably get rid of that little American jeep of yours and get a Land Rover now, just like a proper estate
busha
.'

Papa chuckled. ‘Maxwell-Smith's still on contract, but he's definitely going early. Moodie, that house was built for me. It was waiting for us. Gawd! Don't say anything at dinner, whatever you do. I haven't told Victoria yet, in case things don't work out. Y'know, no use raising her hopes.'

‘Your secret is safe with me,
busha
Brookes,' Moodie said, downing another stiff gin and tonic and casting his wife a swift, glowering look.

That night Boyd dreamt of a house, set among perfectly drawn trees with leaves like green clouds, in a forest full of mystery, with a winding white road leading to it, the pink house of the Maxwell-Smiths.

The Maxwell-Smiths were an English family. Papa said they were English because they said “Tay” instead of “Tea” and didn't socialise. To get to their pink house meant driving across the black metal bridge over the Black River. It meant driving up the white road between green pastures with guango trees and Brahman bulls on every side, up beyond the tree-lined path, through heavy whitewashed wooden gates on estate-manufactured hinges and onto a driveway, to the right of which lay an expanse of emerald-green lawn. Where the lawn ended there loomed the impressive pink house with the red roof. An English car, a Wolseley, burnished-grey with coffee-coloured leather upholstery, sat just outside the gleaming whitewashed garage in the shade of giant papaya trees.

This pink house, a delicate pink that appeared white in the heat, with its exotic red roof, gleamed and winked during the day. The children, on the verandah of their green and cream house on the opposite side of the valley, gazed longingly at it because it looked like a picture in a book. Papa contemplated it over his test tubes and Bunsen burner at the factory. He looked at it from the open-top jeep on the way home each evening. And he studied it from the verandah of the house he now despised, the house that did not do justice to his station.

‘Inez going to Englan' with Mrs Maxwell-Smith,' Perlita announced breathlessly at breakfast, as she served up fried dumplings and burnt Vienna sausages for the fourth morning in a row. ‘She travelling by BOAC, ma'am, by aeroplane!'

Papa and the children's heads went up in a single motion. The children were fascinated with the new dumplings, small, round, the size of golf balls. They loved them. Papa's head went up for another reason.

‘Is that so?' he said, with magnificent restraint. He'd been struggling not to tell Perlita to pack her bags. But she was lucky that day. Perlita's younger sister, Inez, worked for the Maxwell-Smiths at the pink house.

‘Yes, sar,' Perlita said. ‘She buying grip and getting her passport. She going to Englan', sar, Englan'! The Queen, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben!'

‘So when is she leaving?' Papa enquired casually.

‘The first week of July, sar. It all planned. She going to bettah herself in Englan', where the Queen live. Travelling by BOAC, sar.'

Perlita held a dishcloth in one hand and a heavy wooden tray in the other. She smelled of Vim and coconut oil. It was her only smell; Vim from scouring the saucepans and the sweet coconut oil from all the frying. She wanted to talk and there was much to tell. Mama and the children were studies in curiosity. Papa ate, not looking up, the muscles in his temples working away.

‘I see,' he said finally.

‘Yes, sar, ma'am, she going to bettah herself. She can't sleep. The poor chile so excited. Mrs Maxwell-Smith leaving me some of her clothes, nice things, shoes and such. And Mista Maxwell-Smith is a very nice man, y'know, sar? Him leaving us a clock, crockery and other things as well. English people sooo nice.'

‘Coffee,' Papa said curtly, giving Perlita one of his hard looks.

‘Ah bring in the pot right away, sar.' And off she went, her flip-flops flip-flopping noisily against her bare heels.

Yvonne, forehead wrinkled, asked, ‘Are we going to England, Papa?'

‘England?' Papa eyed Yvonne with his customary mixture of pity and amusement. ‘Only poor people go to England,' he said. ‘The kind who don't know how to use their knives and forks; people who sit with their elbows on the table, who speak with food in their mouths, who yawn without putting a hand to their lips. Did you hear me, all of you?'

‘Yes, Papa,' the children said in unison, snapping to attention.

‘Those are the kinds of people who pack their grips and go to England, to better themselves, as they say. And God knows they need to better themselves. The men have names like Delroy, Elroy, Glenroy, Alphanso, Adolphus and Wilfred. And the women are called Icilda, Delcita, Agatha, Esmeralda and,' Papa thrust his chin in the direction of the kitchen and lowered his voice, ‘you know who.'

‘Perlita,' Yvonne chirped innocently.

Papa glared at her. ‘Eat your breakfast,' he said.

‘Aunt Leah's daughter, Bunny, went to England, to Cambridge University,' Mama said, not looking at Papa. ‘And cousin Astley, too. They're not exactly poor people.'

Papa pretended to scowl at her, putting up two fingers. ‘All right. Only two types of people go to England. A few students to university. Mainly to London, Cambridge or Oxford. They are from good families and come right back home with their names in
The
Daily Gleaner
against a BA, an MA or a PhD, and take up respectable positions in education, medicine, law or the government. All the rest, the great mass of them with their brown grips, their white shoes, the women especially, flashy hats and badly made double-breasted flannel suits, are poor people. English people think that these are the only Jamaicans that exist. They think that all Jamaicans are like you know who.' He glared at Yvonne. ‘Can you imagine a thing like that? Gawd. They go up to England and disgrace the rest of us with their bad behaviour. It's always in the English newspapers. The best people stay at home and build the country. Poor people go to England to work. And they never go by BOAC, only by boat. Why? Everyone of them as poor as a hungry mongoose.'

Yvonne laughed out loud and repeated, ‘Poor as a hungry mongoose.' She would repeat it throughout the day until someone said ‘Shh!' and ‘That's enough!' She laughed then and everyone joined in, even Perlita, listening in at the kitchen door on one leg.

‘Hmm,' Mama said. ‘Men from Lluidas Vale have been going to England by boat for years, leaving their poor wives behind.'

‘See what I mean?' Papa said. ‘By their behaviour you shall know them. They leave their wives and children here in Jamaica, go over to England and shack up with English women. They have another half dozen children but never stay around long enough to accept their fatherly responsibilities. That's poor people for you, reckless, irresponsible.'

‘They do well in England by the look of it,' Mama said. ‘They send home money for relatives; a guinea here, a guinea there, which goes a long way. And parcels too, with English clothes, woollen hats and coats and furry boots.'

‘Sending woollen hats and furry boots to a hot country,' Papa said with contempt. ‘What they should be doing is getting an education. They don't have to pay for it in England, thanks to a Labour government. But I bet you tuppence that all they do is sit on their behinds in rum bars. They call them pubs over there. They're not going to England to become lawyers or doctors or big shots. Mark my words. A few may, if they buckle down. But most of them will go to what they know: cleaning houses, driving buses, lazing about at the betting shop and thieving. Why? Well, you can take a person out of the pigsty but you cannot take the pigsty out of a person. That is what poor is.'

‘Is Inez poor?' Yvonne asked the question they all wanted to ask. They weren't sure about Inez and Perlita, who ate three meals every day, wore clean clothes and were given heaps of money in a brown envelope on Fridays. If anyone was poor it surely must be people like Mr Rawhog, who lived in the gutter with bloodshot eyes, wet, red lips and a stench so revolting that even dogs backed away. But he wasn't going to England.

‘Well, she's going to England but she's certainly not going to university,' Papa said under his breath. Fresh coffee aroma drifted into the room.

‘Where's the coffee?' Papa thundered.

‘Coming, sar,' a high-pitched voice shot back from the kitchen, triggering utensil sounds, slamming of cupboard doors and the turning on and off of taps.

‘Are we poor?' Yvonne asked, her confused face turned towards Mama, hoping to get an answer that was not suspect.

‘Out of the mouth of babes,' was all Mama said, as if some fundamental question had been answered.

Papa laughed a whooping laugh, his voice echoing in the pantry, head thrown back. ‘Are we poor? Well, we don't have stupid, frilly crochet stuff, glass animals and plastic flowers on our coffee table. And you don't go to government schools. You're not poor if you are educated, speak proper English, dress correctly and don't behave like
dark people.'

Papa had strong views about
dark people
. They were people who were constantly leaning up against a wall, a tree, a door or anywhere. They didn't stand tall and straight. Such people were weak of character. They crowded outside betting shops with beer bottles in their hands, used bad words like
rass clart
and
blood clart,
and had little or no education. Jamaica was full of them.
Dark people
were decidedly worse than
those people
because, in addition to
values and
principles
, they also lacked genuine ambition and were narrow-minded. In Papa's book they were the lowest of the low. Many of them, trying their luck, were taking the boat to England, to places like Birmingham and Manchester, dressed up in ill-fitting clothes and carrying huge brown grips. Good riddance to them too.

‘You'll be poor if you don't study your lessons,' Papa warned. ‘All this fooling about on the verandah will get you nowhere. You'll end up like little ragamuffins.'

‘They need a good school,' Mama sighed, ‘as good as Worthy Park Prep.'

‘You know it's at the top of my list, the very top,' Papa told her irritably. There's a Catholic prep at Balaclava but it's very expensive. That's the place I'm thinking of.' He turned to the children who were listening intently. ‘Don't buckle down to your work and I will put you on the streets to beg your bread. Let me tell you, you and you.' He pointed a threatening finger at each of them in turn.

Hearing this, Perlita stepped forward. ‘Sar, my niece, Ina, go to Teacher Fraser school in Taunton.' For a moment she'd hesitated, then she came right out with it, convinced she was helping her employer. ‘Is a good school, sar. She get good eddication, sar, good eddication. Teacher Fraser is no fool.'

‘Thank you, Perlita,' Mama said, hoping to spare her, anticipating Papa's response.

Yvonne's eyes lit up instantly. ‘Papa, why can't we go to Ina's school?'

‘Yvonne, look at me,' Papa said with a basilisk stare, his forehead deeply lined. ‘There are other schools. You hear me, other schools.'

Yvonne seemed confused. ‘But why can't we go to Ina's school?'

‘That's not the school for you.'

‘But, why?' Yvonne spread her arms indignantly.

‘Because I say so.'

Yvonne persisted. ‘But, why?'

‘Go to your rooms and read your books,' Papa growled, waving them away.

‘But we haven't done anything!' Yvonne was dumbstruck.

‘You've done enough. Get away!'

* * *

That night, Mama and Papa sat on the verandah talking, a half-moon contemplating them. They sat in nocturnal warmth, breathing roseapple and guinep. Their words drifted into the room where Boyd lay in bed under the covers.

‘Barrington will go to Munro College in September,' Papa was saying. ‘And he'll eat well there because they've just advertised in
The Daily Gleaner
for a new catering matron. I'm not sending him to that government school at Taunton. Full of riff-raff.'

‘But it's so far,' Mama said, thinking of Barrington living away from home.

‘Baldoo thinks Munro is the best private secondary school in St Elizabeth, in the country; and the Balaclava Academy the best prep in the parish. It's where that young Miss Casserly teaches. A lot of Chinese and white children go there; the Lee's children, the Cadien's, the Lyn's and the Jureidini's. Boyd will start in September. Yvonne, next year.'

Lying in the dark, Boyd's excitement and anxiety grew.

‘But the expense,' he heard Mama say.

Papa inhaled harshly. ‘They think they're on holiday because they haven't gone straight to a new school. I'll get a private tutor to brush them up before next term and get Yvonne a few more books. Keep her busy with reading, writing and arithmetic.'

‘When they go back to school they'll settle down,' Mama said.

There was a pause. Then Papa's voice took on a restrained, meaningful tone. ‘Victoria, you know I'll always look after you. And I'm not saying this because I've been drinking. Yes, you know I can sometimes be a bit hard, but that's only to make sure the children understand that life isn't a bed of roses. They think everything comes easy. As long as you are a black person in this country you have to work three times as hard as other people to get anywhere. English people with half your experience and brains come out here and before you know it, they take over. In two ticks they're in charge. It's not right.'

‘You work very hard, I know,' Mama told him. ‘Harold, I want to help, I can –‘

‘Victoria, you cannot help. This is my responsibility as head of the house. And that's not complaining. It's just a fact.'

‘But you have us!' Mama was emphatic. ‘Harold, you are not on your own.'

Papa chuckled. ‘I don't need help. My father knew what he was doing when he spent all the money he had on my education and all the time he had on his women. With education you can go anywhere, face anyone. You can stand on your own two feet. I disowned my mother and her side of the family because they chose to be peasants, without ambition. I am a motherless child, Victoria, a loner. I want the best for the children. They will be everything we have ever dreamed about. I'll work my fingers to the bone, for you, for them. I have my faults but, in the final analysis, I will succeed because I take my responsibilities seriously, you know…'

Papa's voice trailed off, replaced by Mama's reassuring words. ‘Harold, I know. You do your very best. You're a good man.'