We were dues In/Dues Out clerks in the Ordnance Corps, responsible for the supply of weapons, armoured vehicles and other military equipment: ammunition, clothing and general stores; vehicle storage and spares. Requisitioning, warehousing and consignment of every damn thing the British army used, from uniforms and boots and cans of soup to tanks and jeeps and guns. Everything imported directly from England, landing at the dock and taken by truck along South Camp Road to Up Park Camp. Most of the provisions I could understand, but what they needed all this heavy artillery for I didn’t know. Playing boy soldiers at the camp, I guess.
I didn’t say anything to Mama. I just got dressed and left the house in the mornings and went to GC’s to change into my uniform. And then together Beverley and I caught the tram downtown to the depot, which was right on the harbour. We could even see the sea from our desks through the office window. And in the evening, I did the whole thing in reverse.
What mattered to me was that I was learning. Shorthand and typing; invoicing; filing; making inventories of all the incoming supplies; and, as they were issued to the camp, knowing when and how to order replacements and keep the warehouse stocked. I was even learning to drive and fire a gun, which, as it turned out, I was quite good at. Army life was fun. With dances at which you were never short of a partner.
The best part was having my own money. My very own cheque account at the bank. Not having to ask Papa for handouts any more. I was my own woman with enough for my half of the deposit so Beverley and I were going here and there looking for a place to rent. My plan, when we got ourselves sorted, was just to leave Lady Musgrave Road, and in the meantime I didn’t reckon there was any point in taking aggravation from Mama about what I was doing. So I let her carry on planning the wedding because that is what she wanted to do.
Daphne suspected something, though. I even caught her searching my room one day, when I came home early and found her all flustered and harassed saying she’d gone in to close the window. Since when did anybody in our house do something like that? I didn’t say anything about it, just decided it was better left alone. There wasn’t anything for her to find anyway. So I smiled at her knowing that pretty soon it would be over.
And then one morning they sent for me. Just like that. Out of the blue. An army jeep with two military policemen to take me uptown to the camp. When I got there, they marched me into the administrative building, up the stairs and told me to take a seat and wait outside the colonel’s office. I sat there sweating and racking my brain for near on forty minutes trying to think what it was I had done. When the door finally opened it was by a corporal with plump, feminine hips, who told me to come in.
Colonel Stephenson was tall and thin with a skinny face and pointed chin. But the weird thing about him was his shoulders, which were hunched up and stiff like someone had nailed a piece of wood across his back.
‘Private Wong, please sit down.’ He was standing behind his green leather-topped mahogany desk. Hands clasped at his back.
I sat. Organised my skirt to look presentable.
‘It has come to my attention that you are betrothed.’
Oh God, I thought. He’s going to throw me out. ‘I’m not going to do that, sir. It’s my mother’s plan but I have no intention of marrying anyone.’
‘Ah, that is what I wanted to talk with you about.’ He sat in his chair and swivelled his back to me so he could look out of his first-floor window at the parade ground. ‘This man, Yang Pao. What do you know about him?’
‘Nothing, Colonel. Nothing at all.’
He swung around suddenly, plonked his elbows on the desk and stared at me. ‘A Chinatown racketeer. That is what he is, Private Wong. Involved in all sorts of protection, illegal gambling and stolen goods.’
‘The man is a crook?’ I wanted to sound surprised, even though Sissy had intimated as much to me.
‘We are not interested in him. That’s a matter for the local constabulary.’
My stomach began to churn.
‘Tell me, have you heard of the four Hs?’
‘Sir?’
‘Hill, Ken and Frank. Richard Hart. Arthur Henry.’
And then I remembered the night two years earlier when Isaac and I had listened to Hill and Hart address the crowd supporting the bus workers’ strike. I swallowed the sour bile that was gathering in my throat, but said nothing.
‘They are communists. And pretty soon they will be exposed and disgraced.’
Oh my God, he thinks I’m a communist. ‘Colonel Stephenson, sir. I don’t know anything about these men. Are they really communists?’
He tapped his baton on the edge of the desk as his mood softened. ‘My dear, I don’t expect you to know anything about communists. A girl like you from your background.’
It felt like being in a bad B movie, with two cardboard characters reading from a really awful script.
‘Now tell me, what do you know about a West Indies federation?’
I didn’t. So he explained about the conference in Montego Bay in 1947 where representatives of all the British Caribbean islands had come together to talk about uniting into one federal government. And how some committee they set up was about to report.
‘The creation of a single political state, eventually independent from Britain. Do you understand?’
I nodded my head but, no, I didn’t understand. Not really. And especially not what it had to do with me.
‘And the last thing anyone wants is a communist Jamaica at the centre of it.’ He leant back and rested his feet on his desk, hands behind his head. Full of confidence. ‘So that is what I want you to do. Help in the fight against communism.’
‘Yes, you, Private Wong. And the first thing to do is marry this Yang Pao.’
‘Because he’s a communist?’
Colonel Stephenson looked at me as if in disbelief of my naivety.
‘Colonel Stephenson, sir. I really don’t know anything about communists. And I don’t know anything about Yang Pao.’
‘Ah, but Zhang Xiuquan?’
I was hot and sweaty, and wanted to vomit. ‘I don’t know who that is.’
‘You don’t know? He will be your father-in-law. When you are married, that is. A known communist. Came to Jamaica in 1912 after fighting for the People’s Republic on the side of Sun Yat-sen. Wanders around Chinatown, even to this day, extolling the virtues of communism. You really don’t know about him?’ I sat stunned. ‘You will,’ he said and put both his feet firmly on the floor. Then he stood and reached across the desk to shake my hand. ‘Go back to work now and next week we’ll get together for another chat.’
When I told him I wasn’t going to do it, he raised his brows and said, ‘So you would prefer detention?’
‘Sir?’
‘Do you have any idea what military detention barracks are like? How it would be to spend the remainder of your three years there? It is three years, isn’t it, you signed up for?’
My body went into a rigid, clammy shock. ‘Colonel Stephenson, sir. I think there must be some mistake. I have no idea about any of this.’
‘That is what makes you so perfect, Private. All you have to do is look and listen. And report what you see and hear to me. Nothing to it. No thinking or analysis required. You are an innocent that no one would ever suspect.’ He smiled a self-satisfied grin of slightly yellowing, uneven teeth.
‘It’s this or detention, Private Wong. I am serious.’
‘Don’t you think that’s rather extreme?’ And then I hastily added, ‘Sir.’
‘These are extreme times, Private.’ Spittle was spraying from his mouth. ‘Bus bombings, shootings, stabbings, threatened destruction of government property. Illegal public meetings. All of which is telling us something. Do you know what that something is?’
I shook my head.
‘That the communists are everywhere and must be stamped out. Whether they are members of the People’s National Party or Chinese soldiers from the old country.’
Beverley said we should contact Freddie. We knew his father had connections in the British army in Jamaica. Maybe he could get someone to pull a few strings to keep me out of jail. So I told her about his letter. She frowned and pouted. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘how could I do that when he himself chose prison?’
Grandmother Chung was sympathetic but there was nothing she could do. And since we couldn’t go blabbing to everybody about it, including Sissy, which was sad because it was my first secret from her, my trip down the aisle with gangsterman Yang Pao seemed more and more inevitable.
The following week Colonel Stephenson sent for me just as he’d said. No more working at the ordnance depot. No more uniform. Just the simple life of a married woman caring for husband and home.
So as Mama’s excitement grew so did my sense of doom. And the more she chastised me about my lacklustre attitude towards the dress fittings, bridesmaid gowns, invitation list, menu selection, flowers, beautician, hairdresser, orchestra, the more my silence consumed me.
The atmosphere in the house was full of ambivalence and foreboding. The maids carried out Mama’s instructions but without energy. Only the new girl, Ethyl, seemed to show any enthusiasm for what was happening. Edmond persevered with Mama’s remodelling of the garden under her tireless harassment and constant criticism. Daphne feigned interest but really I think she suspected the wedding would be called off at the last minute. Kenneth played with his toy trucks and trains as any four-year-old would. Oblivious.
I asked Papa if he knew about Yang Pao’s activities and why he would let me marry a man like that.
‘Illegal,’ he sighed. ‘What is illegal? Chinese. We like gamble. Little pai-ke-p’iao, that all it is. Everybody chip in. It more like community lottery. No harm in it. Not hurting anyone. The British, they only worry ’bout their taxes.’
‘What about the protection racket?’
‘Oh, Fay. That not racket. That go way back when old man Zhang first come here. You know the shopkeepers actually ask him to come. Paid passage from China so he come protect them against all the thieving and burning and looting going on. Nobody in Chinatown mind about that.’
‘And the stolen goods?’
‘That is US navy surplus. Yang Pao not stealing that. As for other things, he will grow out of them when he married and settled.’
I should have asked ‘what other things?’, but before I gathered my thoughts to do so Papa said, ‘You don’t have to marry him if you don’t want. I will pay for you have own place.’
But I didn’t feel I could tell him about the army and Colonel Stephenson’s threat. Couldn’t explain to him that the marriage was already signed and sealed. So I left it.
‘The man has been waiting on that veranda for well over an hour. Do you have any intention of going out there to him?’
I was sitting on the backyard steps with Daphne, making plans for her birthday party. Not that she was involving herself much. She didn’t even seem to have anybody she wanted to invite.
‘Yu going to be eighteen, Daphne. That not worth celebrating?’
‘If you want,’ she said and shrugged, which made my own shoulders sag a little.
‘We’ll make it fun, I promise. Music and food and liquor. Champagne. That’s what we’ll serve. Want to come to the shop with me?’ She shrugged again. I wondered why I was bothering. But still, I wanted to make the occasion special.
I patted her on the knee as I got up. ‘And maybe some dancing, eh?’ And then I walked inside, brushing past Mama as she hovered in the doorway.
He was sitting. Feet together, hands in his lap. Holding the teacup. He stood as I came towards him. Bowed his head even. Ever so slightly. And waited for me to sit down before retaking his seat.
‘Edmond seem to be doing a good job with the garden.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He shuffled his feet to break the silence. ‘The new girl Ethyl working out OK?’
‘She somebody to you?’
‘No,’ he said hastily. ‘I just asking, that is all.’ He paused. ‘Just making conversation.’
He rearranged himself in the chair.
Then I said, ‘I don’t mean to insult you, Yang Pao. I don’t even know you. I just wasn’t planning on marrying anybody right now.’
‘I understand.’ He looked out over the lawn watching the sprinkler splash its water back and forth. And then he said, ‘So ask me something.’
‘Ask you something?’
‘So you can get to know me.’
He surprised me. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just the unexpectedness of it. The humility of him, sitting there like an eager schoolboy exposing a vulnerability I had not anticipated. It wasn’t the picture Colonel Stephenson had painted. So for the first time I actually allowed myself to look at him. Really take him in. Not just the crew cut and two-tone shoes, but his strong frame that still somehow had a softness about it. Like he was steel covered in cotton wool. It gave his body a gentleness that matched the kindness in his deep-brown eyes.
‘What do you want me to ask you?’
‘Anything you want,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I will just tell you some things.’
His hands. That is what I noticed. As he reached across to rest the cup and saucer on the table. They had an energy about them. Open and flowing. I could imagine them holding a baby or writing a poem. Not clenched into fists the way I imagined the hands of a man like him would be.
‘When I saw you at the athletic club, I thought you were the most beautiful woman. Perfect, you were. Screwing up your eyes and throwing back your head when you laughed. And so that very day I decided to make it my business to come find you and get you to marry me.’
‘But you don’t even know me.’
‘Not yet, but I will. In time. Plenty marriages start this way in Chinatown.’ He sat forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. Hands clasped, almost like he was praying. Or begging maybe.
‘All I ask is that you give me a chance.’
When the day finally arrived I felt like I was in a dream. Looking from the outside at my own life as if I was an observer and it wasn’t really happening to me. Papa wore a black tuxedo with a starched white shirt and black bow tie. The bridesmaids, Beverley and Daphne, were dressed in yellow and white to match Mama’s outfit. But whereas their headpieces were based on a simple tiara style, Mama’s hat was a colossal, wide-brimmed affair decorated with a vast ensemble of ribbon and feathers like she was presenting herself for a day at Ascot, which I knew about from the photograph of Freddie with his mother that sat on the table next to his bed. Yang Pao chose a white tuxedo and white tie. And actually he looked quite elegant. Clean and sharp.
Mama had decided on the cathedral. Holy Trinity. With its white-domed roof and Byzantine splendour. The service? I didn’t hear a word of it, except when we got to the moment when he put the ring on my finger and I came to and realised that was it. With this ring, I thee wed. The deed was done. Even though I couldn’t actually remember saying ‘I do’. The kissing of the bride? I’d told Mama to instruct the priest to leave that part out. And as for cherish and obey, richer or poorer, sickness and in health until death do us part, we asked him to skip over that too.
The organ played I don’t know what as we walked back along the aisle towards the open door. That was when I noticed how completely packed the church was. It was bursting at the seams with people I’d never seen before. All invited by Mama, obviously. Most probably hired for the occasion, dressed in clothes so colourful and outlandish they were probably hired as well. Yang Pao invited a grand total of seven people. Apparently.
When we reached the door, he tried to take my hand but I pulled it away and he got the message. To make sure, I fiddled with the dress, rearranging the skirt that had so much material in it and the long train behind that Beverley and Daphne had to follow and fuss over every step.
The midday sun blinded me, so it was a while before I could focus on the crowd waiting outside. Standing there in the street they were, peering through the fence. Why waste your time coming to see a thing like this? It seemed pathetic. And then there was a hand on my arm directing me towards the statue of Our Lady where they wanted to take the photographs. The bride and groom. The bride with her parents. The groom with his parents. The family of the bride. The family of the groom. The bride with her bridesmaids. The bride with her bouquet. It was all such a farce. Such a ridiculous display given what every single one of us knew.
And just like we were throughout the preparations, we all had our own look. Yang Pao looked frightened. Maybe even he realised at this point that he’d made a mistake. Papa looked worried. Beverley? Numb. Which is exactly how I felt. The rest of the assembled? They just looked vague, like they were waiting for the proceedings to be over so they could dash off to the next engagement for which they had been booked. Maybe another wedding. Perhaps a funeral. Who knew.
The only person with any sign of life in them was Mama. Cheerful and satisfied, she was, with what she had pulled off. The beautiful, perfect wedding of her firstborn daughter. To a Chinaman, with prospects. A man who, in her mind, would seek out prosperity. But most of all, I was out of Lady Musgrave Road, which is what she wanted more than anything else.
The reception at the house was all canapés and pink champagne. Cocktail-size patties and triangle sandwiches made with coloured bread: yellow, red, blue and green. Standard Jamaican party fare. But where my mother learned about devilled eggs and devils on horseback God knows. The six-piece band? That was fun. Playing all the old standards from Ellington and Basie, with a smattering of Sinatra and calypso to mix it up. The crowd enjoyed it even if Mama frowned at them for not playing something more cultured. Dancing? There was none. Thankfully. I don’t think I could have faced doing that with him. So I just walked around grinning and curtsying to various strangers, steering clear of conversation and drinking glass after glass of cool bubbly.
Later in the afternoon they served rice and curry goat. Buffet-style. Beverley and I ate ours sitting out by the tennis court, hidden behind the hibiscus hedge, away from the throng. We stayed there for the rest of the day, laughing about the situation and remembering the school motto ‘Through Difficulties to Excellence’, wondering how the excellence was going to materialise. Then just as darkness began to fall, Ethyl came to tell me that it was time to leave.
‘Really? Where am I going?’
‘The honeymoon, miss. Ocho Rios.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘Yes, miss. Your husband said that maybe yu should stay and travel in di morning but Miss Cicely say no. Yu should go tonight so yu have di wedding night there.’
‘I haven’t packed anything.’
‘I do it fah yu already, miss. That is what Miss Cicely tell me to do.’
I stood up and followed Ethyl back to the house. The guests were gathered. I looked at her.
‘Yu case already in di car, miss.’
Beverley hugged me tight just before I got into the blue and white Chevy next to him. He didn’t even look at me. He just started the engine, put the gear lever into reverse, rested his arm on the back of my seat, turned his head to check behind, released the handbrake and pushed his foot down on the gas. As soon as we changed to forward motion I snuggled down into the seat, closed my eyes and went to sleep.
By the time we arrived at the hotel it was late into the evening. I slumped into the comfortable chintz sofa and waited while he checked in at the small office window bordering the otherwise open reception area. The old-fashioned furniture and cool, colonial blue and white decor had unassuming sophistication written all over it. Even in the dark I could sense that the garden was luscious and beautiful. The sound of the gentle breeze in the banana trees alone told me that.
We followed the porter to our room along a red-tiled external corridor planted with vines of enormous deep-green leaves, and in the bed below creepers of emerald. Actually, it was quite stunning. Gorgeous. I couldn’t imagine how he found the place or what gave him the confidence to come here. It was so far away from downtown Kingston, in elegance and spirit not just in miles.
The bedroom was simply but graciously furnished. Dark wood headboard on the double bed with its fluffy pillows and crisp white cotton sheets. Side tables with lamps. A small dresser with mirror. A ceiling fan. At the far end, white, full-length, folding louvre shutters instead of doors. The bathroom? Marble vanity unit containing the basin. Bath with shower over. Flowers in a vase. Jug with ice-water. Two glasses. That is where I changed into my nightgown. And then I went straight to bed. Lying on the edge with my back to him. Pulling the sheet completely over my head.
When I awoke he was already gone. So I showered and dressed, relieved and grateful that he’d had the good manners to bring us to somewhere civilised with hot water and fragrant soaps. And even though I could already tell that he had dug deep into his pockets, opening the shutters still took my breath away. Not just the veranda with its scattered sofas and occasional tables, but the view. The wide-open bluest sky, and beneath it banana trees, coconut palms, blushing jacaranda, purple bougainvillaea. And beneath that, beds of red and yellow shrimp plant and red ginger. There was even a croquet lawn set with its little hoops. And beyond? The sea with its own white sandy cove. It was paradise. Jamaica at her best.
He was fully dressed in slacks and a sports shirt. Sitting in the armchair flicking through one of the hotel brochures. When I looked closer, it said ‘Jamaica Inn’.
The thing about Yang Pao was his silence. He barely said two words to me. And I barely said two words to him because all I wanted to do was sleep. So every morning after breakfast I settled myself on the beach under the shade of a palm and closed my eyes. And a little later I would hear him sorting himself out on a lounger next to mine.
That is how we passed the week, with nothing between us while I exchanged pleasantries and made casual conversation with the hotel owner and American couples from Washington and New York and wherever else. Asking them about their trips to Dunn’s River Falls, or rafting down the Rio Grande, or shopping at the craft market in town. In turn, they congratulated me on my wedding and hoped I was enjoying the honeymoon. Actually, I was thankful for the rest. But as the days moved on I realised that I was drawing ever closer to facing the reality I had left behind. The life Colonel Stephenson had fashioned for me, as wife to a hoodlum and informer for the British army.
The strange thing was that Pao, in his withdrawn acceptance, was almost endearing. There was a solidness about him, a resolve that stayed constant despite my complete lack of affection towards him. He was attentive, making sure that I had absolutely everything I needed. A dry beach towel, enough shade, a rum punch, a glass of ice-water. He even negotiated with waiters over what was being served for dinner and whether it would be to my liking. He wanted to please. Wanted me to have a good time even though I didn’t care for one second what kind of time he was having. So in the end, I started to think that maybe I could afford to unfreeze a little because what was happening was so unfair. And so unkind, especially the sleeping arrangement with my back to him and the sheet over my head. Him on the far side of the bed so close to the edge he was practically falling on to the floor.
Pao married me for his own reasons, that was clear, but why I married him wasn’t his fault. And now we were stuck together for better or worse. A part of me wanted to tell him, felt I owed him an explanation. But what could I say? So I just sat there or slept while he watched me and I watched him out of the corner of my eye.
The last night while he was in the shower and getting ready for dinner I sat on the darkened veranda thinking about returning to Kingston and what was waiting for me. And I started to cry with silent tears running down my cheeks. He came out and sat on the sofa behind me. And then, after a while, he got up and walked over to look me in the face. To check his suspicion. He reached into his pocket and handed me a clean handkerchief, which I took and mopped my eyes while he returned to the sofa and resumed his seat.
Then I said to him, ‘My father told me it would be better for me to marry you than spend the rest of my life fighting with my mother.’ So there. That was my story.
‘You didn’t have to marry me. You could have waited for someone more suitable to come along.’
‘What, after my mother had set her sights on you?’
‘I’m sure Miss Cicely not so stubborn to stick to her own view if maybe you happier with somebody else.’
I laughed. Then I turned around and looked at him. ‘You think?’
It wasn’t my intention to say any more. There wasn’t any need or any point. I’d already made up my partly true reason for marrying him. It would suffice.
I stood up to walk back into the bedroom. But just as I was passing him he reached out and grabbed me and hugged me to him. The closeness of his warm body and deliberate arms, being held like that, in the dark, breached my defences and unlocked the emotion that had been buried inside me since that afternoon in the colonel’s office.
I sobbed so much and went so weak in the knees it took all of his strength to stop the weight of me from dragging us both to the ground. Wave after wave of howling and heaving, that is how I was. Not saying anything and him not knowing what to say to me as I reeled in self-pity, grieving about life with Mama, life without Freddie, all the bad decisions I had made, fear about what lay ahead.
After a while he said, ‘Do you want to get some dinner?’ And the spell was broken. That night when we went to bed I reached out to him, pulling him back from the abyss, and rested my head on his shoulder. And he put his arm around me.
When we returned to Kingston he took me to his home. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine how he expected me to live in a place like that. A concrete yard behind a door in a fence in downtown Matthews Lane. A row of five separate bedrooms each with its own door and steps into the yard. A covered area open to the elements with a long wooden table beneath it. A zinc shower cubicle. A toilet at the top of the yard next to the duck pond. He’d been so many times to Lady Musgrave Road, how could he possibly see me living here? I was so stunned I couldn’t say a word. Not to his mother, Ma, or to Zhang Xiuquan, the communist, or Hampton, Pao’s man who lived there like a constant bodyguard.
So I went to bed. And the next morning I walked to Barry Street, and caught a cab home.