Pynter Bender (29 page)

P
YNTER SAT ON
the high ridge-road above San Andrews. By night the town was a random spread of lights hemmed in on one side by the depthless void that was the ocean. The lights from streets and houses gave the air a yellow glaze. He could make out the three church towers on Cathedral Street; the dead lighthouse, standing like an up-stuck thumb on the protrusion of granite and limestone where the harbour ended and the ocean began; and above all that, stencilled against the night sky, the high dark place that was Fort Grey, from the top of which a spotlight cut a wide, raw path down towards the harbour.

He knew it simply as the Fort. It was so old that the hunks of granite that had been cut and placed there by the people of Zed Bender's time had re-fused under their own great weight and become once more smooth and seamless rock. Not just a part of the hill but the hill itself. He could never look up at Fort Grey without a flaring sense of danger. He'd dreamt once of children, all dressed in crisp school uniform, leaping from the mouths of its cannons.

The faint hum of engines pulled him out of his thoughts. He allowed the slope of the road to take him down, covering the distance in that lazy, loose-limbed, hop-an'-drop lope that was neither run nor walk. He counted crossroads as he travelled: Morne Bijoux, Prison Cross, Richmond Turn, Croix-Fusil. At the bottom of the hill there was the rising thunder of traffic
converging on San Andrews from the north. He stopped at the junction that went six ways and took the road Paso had described for him – a narrow, teetering path over which the walls of mansions rose. The path ended near the sea.

He wasn't sure what he expected but it was certainly not the large, flat-roofed house over the harbour. The rusted hinges of what used to be a gate were still buried in a low concrete wall which ran right around the house. A little way from the entrance on his right was the top of a giant flight of stone stairs carved into the hillside. It was hemmed in on either side by rows of little houses so tightly packed he wondered how people managed to move amongst them.

He marvelled at how close everything was. If he spat far out and hard enough he could hit the roof of the cinema below. A wide curving beach of asphalt was all there was between the shopfronts and the sea. From here he reckoned he could dive over the rooftops straight into the ocean.

He climbed the short steps at the back of the house and tapped on the slit door, kept tapping till a small brown face appeared in the single square pane of glass cut into the wall above his head. Massive eyes looked out at him.

‘I'z Pynter,' he said. ‘I here to …'

The door eased open and strong hands pulled him in. He was halfway across the room when the young woman stopped abruptly. ‘The other fella?'

‘Tonight,' he said. He gestured at the brightening day behind him. ‘Where's Missa Hugo?'

‘I'm Tinelle.'

‘I'z Pynter. He there?'

She stopped again, sniffed and turned around to face him, ‘You stepped on something?'

‘Well … sort of.'

‘Leave your shoes here. I'll boil a pot of water. I'll get you some clothes too.' She pointed at one of two blue doors to the right of
her. ‘Hugo's behind that door.' She flashed a quick backward glance that took in all of him. ‘My parents won't like you here,' she said. And with that she disappeared.

He'd only seen women like her from a distance. They looked past him from the windows of their father's cars; or from perches on wide encircling verandas. He'd glimpsed them stretched out half-naked on bright-coloured towels on the lawns of Morne Bijoux, lawns trimmed so neatly they didn't look real. Women with up-tilted chins and rigid backbones who handed out their smiles like favours.

He expected the parents to emerge at any minute and order him out of their house. The young woman returned and seemed to read his worry.

‘Canada,' she said. ‘Somebody'll have to write and tell them that you here. Jeezus! You definitely need a douche! I'll get the water ready. I'll do some breakfast after.'

She disappeared again.

His awkwardness would not leave him. He leaned against the door frame, feeling useless in this large room with its heavy brown curtains, low, cushioned chairs and darkly varnished woodwork. The air was dry and sweet with the faintest suggestion of perfume. The odour seemed as much a part of the house as the colour of the walls. It was the young woman's smell. The house was full of her.

He thought of Patty's man-friend, Richard. Imagined his house to be like this, so far removed from the yard that his young aunt came from, like a different country.

Heaps of records lay scattered across the far corner of the room. Their covers were similar – a man suited in black, a stick in hand poised a little way above his nose, like a cock in mid-crow. There were three fat cushions clumped together in the midst of the records, scooped out in the middle by the weight of the body they were accustomed to. He imagined the woman sitting there, her legs pulled in under her, the thick plait of hair
running down her back and brushing the fabric of the cushions like the tail end of a broom.

A row of bottles ran along a shelf above the cushions, their shapes and sizes as varied as the colours of the fluids they contained, from clear-water to a deep, mysterious purple-amber.

When he turned, she was standing by the blue door.

‘How's Paso?' she said. She'd asked for his nephew the way a person would enquire about a brother or a lover.

‘Awright,' he said.

‘He phoned earlier from somewhere. He says that y'all are family?'

‘I'z his uncle.'

She smiled. ‘You say it as if you own him. You come for this fella by yourself?'

‘Uh-huh.'

He pushed himself off the wall and turned to the line of pictures hung in a straight line around the room. The only house he'd ever been to with photographs on the wall was his father's. Old Hope kept their images of family in their heads, passed them on with words. There was a pattern in the way the photographs were lined up, they told a story. The first was of a woman standing with a man beside her. They were Europeans – hatted, gloved and dressed in white – so faded he could barely make out their features. As he moved along the wall, faces became fuller, the tips of noses shorter and more curved. The women's hair darker and more curled.

He paused at the farthest corner and looked back at the young woman.

She'd pulled her lower lip in between her teeth and was chewing on it slowly.

He strode across the room and unhooked the picture of the woman at the farthest corner of the room so that he could study it more closely.

‘A picture missing – not so?' He said.

‘You do this often?' she said.

‘Do what?' he said.

‘Walk into people's homes and meddle with their property?' She came towards him with a hand stretched out before her. She pulled the picture from him, replaced it on the wall, turned and twitched her nose. ‘Go have a wash – you stink.'

‘That is the way you talk to a pusson who arrives at your house as a guest? You think I have to be here. That what you think? I wouldn like yuh people either,' he said. ‘Too stiff, too proper. Too glum. You look a lot like yuh granny, though.' He pointed at the photo of a couple sitting together on easy chairs with clasped hands, their hair brushed back in waves. ‘They your mother-an'-father-in-Canada; not so? An' Missa Hugo?'

The young woman had gone very still. Pynter lifted his chin at the last picture of two small children on the wall. ‘Yuh brother tall like me. Lighter-skin dan you. Different eyes he got. Grey o' green o' something, a lil bit like mine.'

‘What make you say that?'

‘It there,' he said, and turned away from her.

‘You know this by, er, by just …'

She made a small step towards him, then checked herself.

‘It there.' He nodded at the wall.

She strolled over to the picture of her brother and herself. She passed a hand across it as if she'd just discovered it. ‘You could tell the colour of Hugo's eyes even if it's – this is in black'n white?'

‘Yeh. Sorry.'

‘Sorry for what?'

‘You sound upset; I say sorry!'

‘I'm not upset. And don't keep saying sorry, sorry, sorry like …'

Some time later he stood in a pair of her father's trousers which were too large at the waist and a blue shirt which, apart from the tiny spot of ink on the left pocket, was new. It was because of the ink, Tinelle told him, while gathering his discarded
clothing with the end of a broomstick, that Hugo no longer wore it.

‘What time, miss?'

‘Don't call me “miss”.'

‘What time?'

‘Past nine, just past.'

‘Missa Hugo?'

‘Give him another hour. Egg's ready!'

She got up and walked to the kitchen. She brought the food back on a little tray and placed it on the table next to him. He was lying on his side on the floor, looking at her through half-shut lids. Her face made him think of Ceylon mangoes – a smooth, thin-skinned amber-yellow. Her hips flared like a larger woman's. She was about to turn towards Hugo's door when she froze, realising perhaps that he'd been watching her all along.

He rolled over on his back. ‘You don' think I'll make it,' he said.

‘I didn't say that,' she said.

He shrugged and turned his gaze up at the rafters. ‘I not so sure, either.'

She didn't seem to hear him. She was measuring all of him with her eyes. ‘You, you really look like Paso. Difference is, I don' think I like you.'

He lifted his back off the floor and reached for the plate. He pushed the fork aside, lifted the tongue of fried plantain above his mouth and dropped it in. ‘I not sure I like you either,' he said. ‘I hate people who don' like a pusson for no reason and don't have the decency to hide it. But when you got upset I say to meself, “She upset, she awright. People who get upset is awright people.”'

‘The food's not running away,' she said.

Pynter licked his fingers. ‘S'matter o' fact, me, I find you kinda awright, in a pretty sort of way.'

‘Who's your family?' She'd turned her head down, trying to hide the smile.

‘The Benders,' he said.

‘Never heard of them.'

Pynter placed the empty plate on the table and stretched himself out on the cushions that smelled of her. ‘I didn either,' he said. ‘Not until my mother make me. Thanks for de food, Miss Tinelle.'

Hugo was as he'd told Tinelle – a thinner, paler version of his father. He had the largest, most carefully groomed Afro hairstyle Pynter had ever seen.

‘Tin-Tin said you're Paso's …?'

‘Uh-huh.'

‘Sorry, didn't introduce myself. Kwame.' Hugo fluttered a wrist at him.

‘Kwa …?'

‘…me. Kwame – that's me. Means Saturday. African for Saturday. My slave name is Hugo.'

Pynter took the extended hand. ‘I'z Pynter. And I'z a Bender since I born.'

Tinelle's eyes were darting between her brother's face and his.

He would be off next year, Hugo said, to study law. He was more or less working towards it. ‘Tell Paso I'm disappointed he didn't turn up with you.'

Pynter soon got tired of the banter and grunted to everything that Hugo-Kwame-or-whatever-his-name-was said. These two were far removed from his world, especially this Hugo of the supple hands and fluttering eyelashes who talked too fast and too much.

‘Paso come here often?' he said.

‘Used to, but these two started quarrelling.' Pynter caught the quick sideways flash of eyes between them.

‘Look, you're here to get your friend. You need to talk it through with Hugo, at least rehearse it in your mind.'

‘I done rehearse already.'

‘You don't need me then.' Hugo turned towards his door. ‘Got some reading to do. Fanon. I just love Fanon. If you'll excuse me.'

‘Get to know him and you'll like him,' Tinelle said.

‘Don' matter. You know the Barracks?'

‘Like this house,' she said. ‘Used to play up there when I was a child.'

‘You could tell me the best way in?'

‘Don't have a best way in.'

‘Tell me what you know.'

‘I'll do better. I'll walk you past there later.' She glanced at her watch. ‘Around five. That's,' she stared at her watch again, ‘two hours before the curfew starts. You kin see most of it from the road.'

‘You say it don't have no way in?'

‘I didn't say that. I said there is no best way in.'

She pulled the curtains open. The light gushed in and made rainbows of the row of bottles. Pynter wondered what Paso might have told her about him.

‘I'm not like that, you know,' she said.

‘I know,' he said.

‘I'll be honest, when they told me you were coming, I said you wouldn't make it, and definitely not on your own. Made more sense for you to come here first during the day and avoid the inconvenience of the curfew altogether. Would've saved you all that trouble and made a better impression, certainly on me.' She wrinkled her nose. ‘I'll show you a couple of ways to get up there.' She turned to face him. Their eyes met and held. Hers were very wide. He thought of the older women in the photographs above their heads. ‘It is possible for you not to come back.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘Who's the “they” who told you I was coming?'

‘Whoever they are,' she said. ‘You really don' know what this is about, do you? Paso asked me to find some way to stop you. I never heard him so distressed. He was sure that you would come here first. I told him it was too late. He shouldn't've passed the word on to the others, who have a lot more weight than him.
They want us to make sure you do it.' Now she seemed distracted. ‘In this … this night of terror, people need some light. Good news. Real news – everybody's dying for that right now. You go up there, you bring that fella back. S'like walking up to Victor and spitting in his face. It's like telling him we can go inside his bedroom anytime we want and watch him while he sleeps. That's why …'