Right then a woman come by to collect up the empty cups and Fay just catch her eye and ask her if she can have a top-up. The woman look down at Fay sitting in the chair and turn vex like she thinking to herself, ‘What yu asking me for? I am not nuh waitress.’
But even though she feel sour she reach over and pick up the cup and saucer and say, ‘I see yu tek milk. Yu want me bring yu back some sugar as well?’
Fay just smile and say, ‘No, thank you. That’s very kind.’ And the woman walk off.
‘And just to infuriate her I used to pretend I was with the white girls all the time. I used to even force myself into their company so I could show off to Mama.’
‘But I thought she was happy for you to pass. That was what she was proud of.’
‘Only if she was in control of it.’
The woman bring the fresh coffee and put it on the table, and Fay say thank you in the sweetest, gentlest voice you could imagine. And as the woman walking away I realise she never ask me if I wanted more coffee or anything. She never even look at me.
‘Anyway, much later I met a man. He was standing outside the Carib one night as a friend and I came out of the pictures. In fact I’d seen him there several times before, but that night I took one look at him and when he smiled at me I knew he was perfect. Isaac was as big and as black as any man could be. So I just walked up to him and told him to come with me and I put him in a taxi and took him to Lady Musgrave Road.’ And then she laugh. ‘Can you imagine? Mama was completely beside herself. A black man sitting on her veranda talking to her fair-skinned daughter. The steam was practically coming out of her ears! It was the most gratifying sight I had ever seen.’ Fay laugh and laugh at the memory that even after all this time she was still delighting in.
‘Mama hates black men. According to her they are all irresponsible and unreliable. Indolent and slipshod, that is what she says. So Isaac was my revenge on her for all the years and all the ways in which she made my life a living hell.
‘So I started with Isaac, who was much older than me and worked in a butcher shop.’
Isaac in the butcher shop? I couldn’t believe my ears. She mean that man laying in the stinking bed asking Sybil for money? No, this must be a different Isaac. But standing outside the Carib night after night? Smiling at young women?
‘I even used to go and spend time in the one room he rented upstairs filled with the stench of raw meat and blood.’
I think to myself, yes, it him. The same one!
‘It was sordid and I revelled in every minute of it. And every time I dropped his name into conversation with her or had him sitting on the veranda while she was inside playing the piano and singing about hell and damnation, it was delicious.’
And the history he got with Sybil and Beryl? And the boy, Junior?
‘The funny thing was Isaac was actually good company. Not too bright but very humorous and I thought caring. And after a while I really grew to like him and I thought he liked me. So when Mama told me she wanted me to marry Pao I thought Isaac would have something to say about it. But all he did was sit there with the cigarette in his hand as if it had nothing to do with him. And eventually when I pressed him, all he could say was, “Do whatever yu want.”’
And this thing from Isaac, Fay say in real Jamaican just like him, to show me she could do it. And then she smile with her eyebrows raised at the insolence of the man. My head busy figuring the years so I realise she must be talking ’bout a time long before I meet him.
‘So you see, I went with Isaac to spite Mama, and I married Pao to spite Isaac.’
I can’t think what to say to her so I just say, ‘I thought you married Pao to get away from your mama?’
‘That is what I told him, but it was only partly the truth. Isaac was the other part.’
‘You ever see Isaac again?’
‘Years later I passed him in King Street with some young black woman on his arm. I just walked past and you know, he never even turned his head.’
I sit there looking at her this beautiful, rich, educated woman and think what a mess we all are. Every single one of us, no matter how we appear on the outside.
‘Did you love him, Isaac?’
‘Love? What is that, Gloria? Do you know?’
She waiting for an answer but there is nothing I have to say, so she carry on.
‘All of my life I thought that everything could be solved inside my own head. All I had to do was to be smart enough. And I would disappear into this head for hours and days, thinking and thinking and thinking some more. But you know the problem with that? You can only think what you can think.’ And she smile. ‘You can only see things the way you see them. You can only understand them the way you understand them. So in the end you just go round and round in circles getting even more confused and exhausted. And when I tired I would just stop and decide that everything would be fine. Just to get a rest. Then I would rally myself and carry on with nothing having been resolved. That is what I did running between school and Mama, and then Matthews Lane and Lady Musgrave Road. It was all I could do because escaping from that internal madness takes courage. You have to step outside of your own head. You have to be prepared to let someone else in and believe that it is possible to expose your vulnerabilities and inner torment to them without feeling invaded. You have to give up fear, and have hope. You have to trust. And most people, Gloria, including me, are not that brave. It took a very long time and many hours of anguish for me to see that. It took Michael Kealey.’ And then she look at me and say, ‘I know you know.’
So I just smile back at her and we sit there in silence for a while. And then I say to her, ‘How did you find out about me?’
‘The necklace. I knew Pao was going to the house in Franklyn Town, so when I heard about the argument over the necklace I knew it was you.’
‘How you know about that?’
‘Sissy. She was my nursemaid before she left us to set up her boarding house. That is how my father knows her.’ And then she say, ‘I know about your daughter as well, at St Andrew. I know.’
I think on it and then I say, ‘Fay, what is all of this about?’
She wait before she start to talk. ‘I want you to know that I don’t hold any malice towards you. I also want to apologise for my mention of the necklace the last time we met. It was spiteful and I am sorry. The past is the past, Gloria. What happened, happened. So be it, but the future is a different matter. I suppose I just wanted you to understand something about me. Know me, not only what is said about me. We have shared such a lot it seems there should be more between us.’
She stop. And then she turn really serious. ‘How old are you, Gloria?’
‘Forty-three.’
‘I have just turned forty and I have spent almost all of that time trying to spite someone, first Mama, then Isaac, then Pao. And I have never ever stopped to think, I mean really think, about who I am or what I want. I have never had any sense of direction about my life. I have just stumbled from one disaster to the next trying to make the best of a bad job. Trying to salvage something from my misery. And now, finally, I want to change my life.’
And just like that she get up from the table and pick up her purse and say, ‘Walk with me to the car park and I’ll give you a ride back to Barbican.’
I call by the ladies’ room on the way so by the time I get there Fay was already sitting in the maroon Mercedes and drove me home without needing any directions from me.
Henry’s funeral was at Holy Trinity Cathedral. The same place that Pao and Fay get married. Father Michael was up there conducting the service even though he the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kingston now, which maybe was fitting given how rich Henry was and how close the Father is to Fay. The cathedral was full and when I squeeze my head ’round the corner I see Pao standing there with Mui on one side and Xiuquan on the other busy crossing himself and reciting all sorta things about confessing to Almighty God and how he had sinned in thought, word and deed. It was a vision of him I never ever thought I would see in my life. Standing there with the frankincense burning and the little bells ringing almost like he was going to cry. That moved he was by the whole thing.
I walk off before the end when the woman was singing Ave Maria because nobody invited me and I didn’t think if they see me they would have wanted to make me that welcome. The Father look good though in the purple and white and gold. And he made it a real gracious send-off for Henry, which I was glad for. Especially when he said the part about Henry resting in the sleep of peace. That was nice.
For me, I couldn’t hardly believe he was gone. It seemed like he was all of Kingston to me ever since that day he picked me up off the road when I was so in need of some kindness. And that is what he gave me all of these years, kindness, and even though I still had Sybil and Marcia, Henry’s passing made me feel like I had lost my best friend. Even Alfred Ho, the way he was with me when I go pick up the money, seem to know what losing Henry mean to me. So who knows what Henry say to him. All Mr Ho say to me was that Henry wanted me to have what he was keeping. And he hand me the shoebox. And I say thank you.
‘That not all, Gloria.’
And then he go out back and come with four more boxes.
‘Five boxes a money, Mr Ho?’
‘Full, Gloria. Full to the brim.’ And he smile. ‘You need ride to take you home I think. I get car.’
When we turn ’round to leave I see he got a picture a Chiang Kai-shek hanging on the wall.
‘Since when you a supporter of Chiang Kai-shek?’
‘Oh, times change, Gloria. Not like old days. Back then, man could sell his rice and flour with no hindrance. Nowadays, since half of Chinatown run here to get away from Mao, businessman have to know which way land lie and breeze blow.’
Henry keep his word and before he die he tell Pao he could have all the supermarket, wholesale and wine merchant businesses. But even though he make this gift to Pao, Henry never get a chance to make a will so now Miss Cicely calling him up to Lady Musgrave Road to tell him that she got no intention of granting Henry’s wish because she worried ’bout what Kenneth going to inherit. And what she want is for Pao to take Kenneth under his wing to learn the supermarket trade so that in a few years’ time Pao can have the wholesale and wine merchant and Kenneth can have the supermarkets.
‘And no matter how much I tell her that Kenneth not got no interest in being a shopkeeper she not listening to me. All she got to say is let’s give it a try, and how I am the general manager and Kenneth is my apprentice. The woman is mad you hear me, mad. So now me and her fifty-fifty partners and I have to pay Kenneth outta my share. You ever hear of a thing like that?’
I never know Miss Cicely was such a shrewd businesswoman. I was impressed even though I feel sorry for Pao because he thought he had the whole thing sealed and delivered. Still, I reckon he got a taste of his own medicine after all these years he been fixing everybody else’s business.
But, just like anybody could have predicted, Kenneth Wong is no shopkeeper. So now Pao coming ’round the house every night telling me how Kenneth lazy and unreliable and only doing it because Miss Cicely threaten to throw him outta the house at Lady Musgrave Road if he don’t. According to Pao, the whole thing is a disaster and there is no way out of it because Miss Cicely got him over a barrel and anyway he need her because what with the political situation the gambling and protection not doing so good no more. And even though he still got the Navy and other surplus off the wharf and hotel construction sites it not enough to keep everybody going. And that this thing with Miss Cicely is his only chance to make a future and even get legal, which for the first time in his life is what it seem he want.
So every night I am listening to this tale of woe, on and on. And I sit there on the veranda or living room or stand up in the kitchen and nod my head and say yes and show some sympathy because I really do feel bad for him.
And in between all of this I got Clifton Brown coming ’round when he feel like it drinking my liquor and making himself at home. One time I even come and find him sitting on the veranda with Auntie passing the time of day. And after she gone inside he start congratulating himself on how the Fingernail thing sort itself out without him having to do nothing because ‘the trail’ go to the grave with Henry Wong. And then he help himself to another drink.
All of this time the situation was getting worse. Political gang warfare, clashes with security forces, strikes and industrial disputes. The government bulldozing shacks and making people homeless. It was bedlam. Even Haile Selassie coming here cause a stampede with so much people and disorder at the airport. And that is how it gwaan until October 1966 when things get so serious in West Kingston the government have to declare a state of emergency.
And in the middle of all of this Kenneth Wong go get himself shot in some gun battle that it take the police five hours to get under control and during which time Kenneth lay there and bleed to death in the street. This is what Judge Finley come tell me, and how Fay telephone Pao in a state yelling at him because she think it was his fault that Kenneth mixed up with all of this. That if it wasn’t for Pao, Kenneth would never have been on the street to meet a man like Louis DeFreitas and none of this would have happened. So now they all worried that Fay going leave and go to England.