the window open, a breeze caressing his cheek, or was the closed glass almost opaque with rain? What did Michael do when he was cold? Did he shiver, shaking himself like a dog fresh from a stream, or did he stand erect, wrapped warm in a thick coat? In the eye of my mind Michael Roberts – with his thin moustache and crooked smile – could belong in no other place than on this Caribbean island.
Six
Hortense
My dream was and always had been that I should find employment teaching at the Church of England school in Kingston, for it was there that light-skinned girls in pristine uniforms gathered to drink from the fountain of an English curriculum. But my interview for a position saw the headmaster of that school frowning, concerned not with my acquired qualifications but only with the facts of my upbringing. I evoked my father’s cousins and told him of Lovell Roberts, my father, a man of character, a man of intelligence, noble in a way that made him a legend. The headmaster unwittingly shook his head as he asked me of my mother, my grandmother. His conclusion – although no word on the matter passed between us – was that my breeding was not legitimate enough for him to consider me worthy of standing in their elegant classrooms before their high-class girls. It was my old college friend Celia Langley who eventually found me employment teaching in the scruffy classrooms of Half Way Tree Parish School.
Through those first weeks, my hand was clasped by Celia as tightly as it had been on our first encounter in the washroom of our teacher-training college. So popular at the school was she that small boys lined up to place gifts before her every morning. Little girls jostled and pushed so they might find themselves closer to her at the front of the class. Other teachers whispered to me how lucky I was to have Celia’s expert guidance. And even the headmaster implored me to watch and learn from everything Celia did. But it was not my first, second or third choice to be returned to that school for scoundrels. The spectre of Percival Brown and those wretched black faces grinning before me for the rest of my days made me feel quite sick. All at once my lofty dreams had soured to pitiful torment.
‘“The Lord moves in mysterious ways – his wonders to perform.”’ Celia tried to comfort me.
‘He surely does, Celia, he surely does,’ I said.
For none was so mysterious to me than how, in God’s name, a woman such as I found herself residing in the household of people like the Andersons. It was the wife of the headmaster at the school – a woman who not only had received her education at a boarding-school in Scotland but who was well known for having once been invited to take tea with a member of a royal household – who informed me of a room available in the home of a respectable family. I was convinced that such a recommendation would find me lodging with gracious people. Instead I was soon engulfed by the uncouth antics of this boorish family. So shocked was I by their ill-bred behaviour that I invited Celia to their dinner table so she might witness the manners of these vulgar people for herself.
The old woman, Rosa Anderson, began eating her chicken. Taking the cooked bird in her gnarled hands she stripped off the flesh with the few teeth she still had left in her head, gnawing on it with a vulturine concentration until it was just grey bones. Then sucking, sucking, sucking, as loud as water down a faulty drain, while the rest of the family and Celia behaved as if they were not hearing this revolting noise.
Displaying the food she had just put in her mouth Mrs Anderson, Rosa’s daughter-in-law, told Celia, with embarrassing detail, about the birth of her twin sons. Shot out and deftly caught by the nurse, these two boys, Leonard and Clinton, looked so alike I puzzled on the need for both of them to exist. Fussing over her little sons, Mrs Anderson cut up their food, stealing pieces from their plates, pinching
Six
Hortense
My dream was and always had been that I should find employment teaching at the Church of England school in Kingston, for it was there that light-skinned girls in pristine uniforms gathered to drink from the fountain of an English curriculum. But my interview for a position saw the headmaster of that school frowning, concerned not with my acquired qualifications but only with the facts of my upbringing. I evoked my father’s cousins and told him of Lovell Roberts, my father, a man of character, a man of intelligence, noble in a way that made him a legend. The headmaster unwittingly shook his head as he asked me of my mother, my grandmother. His conclusion – although no word on the matter passed between us – was that my breeding was not legitimate enough for him to consider me worthy of standing in their elegant classrooms before their high-class girls. It was my old college friend Celia Langley who eventually found me employment teaching in the scruffy classrooms of Half Way Tree Parish School.
Through those first weeks, my hand was clasped by Celia as tightly as it had been on our first encounter in the washroom of our teacher-training college. So popular at the school was she that small boys lined up to place gifts before her every morning. Little girls jostled and pushed so they might find themselves closer to her at the front of the class. Other teachers whispered to me how lucky I was to have Celia’s expert guidance. And even the headmaster implored me to watch and learn from everything Celia did. But it was not my first, second or third choice to be returned to that school for scoundrels. The spectre of Percival Brown and those wretched black faces grinning before me for the rest of my days made me feel quite sick. All at once my lofty dreams had soured to pitiful torment.
‘“The Lord moves in mysterious ways – his wonders to perform.”’ Celia tried to comfort me.
‘He surely does, Celia, he surely does,’ I said.
For none was so mysterious to me than how, in God’s name, a woman such as I found herself residing in the household of people like the Andersons. It was the wife of the headmaster at the school – a woman who not only had received her education at a boarding-school in Scotland but who was well known for having once been invited to take tea with a member of a royal household – who informed me of a room available in the home of a respectable family. I was convinced that such a recommendation would find me lodging with gracious people. Instead I was soon engulfed by the uncouth antics of this boorish family. So shocked was I by their ill-bred behaviour that I invited Celia to their dinner table so she might witness the manners of these vulgar people for herself.
The old woman, Rosa Anderson, began eating her chicken. Taking the cooked bird in her gnarled hands she stripped off the flesh with the few teeth she still had left in her head, gnawing on it with a vulturine concentration until it was just grey bones. Then sucking, sucking, sucking, as loud as water down a faulty drain, while the rest of the family and Celia behaved as if they were not hearing this revolting noise.
Displaying the food she had just put in her mouth Mrs Anderson, Rosa’s daughter-in-law, told Celia, with embarrassing detail, about the birth of her twin sons. Shot out and deftly caught by the nurse, these two boys, Leonard and Clinton, looked so alike I puzzled on the need for both of them to exist. Fussing over her little sons, Mrs Anderson cut up their food, stealing pieces from their plates, pinching
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