But it wasn’t any good. No point to it. Because all I found at Lady Musgrave Road was Mama.
‘The honeymoon not over five minutes and you back here snivelling into your pillow. Time you wake up, gal, and face the fact that you are a married woman now. With responsibilities.’
I called Beverley but all she did was remind me that Colonel Stephenson was waiting in the wings. She was still working at the ordnance depot but had left GC’s. Where was she living? With Marjorie Williams. Sharing a two-bedroom house uptown in Osborne Road. Marjorie’s roommate had moved out so there was space and she’d asked Beverley if she wanted it.
‘Well,’ Beverley said, ‘I’d been staying there on and off for yonks. Yu know, when I needed some privacy.’ And then she laughed that embarrassed laugh of hers so I knew that’s where she’d taken Isaac.
‘And GC?’
‘Oh, she’s fine. I’m still over there every other day. Things aren’t that bad. I just needed to spread my wings a little. Know what I mean?’
The following day I went back to Matthews Lane. But I couldn’t stop crying. I never realised I had so much regret in me. Or maybe that wasn’t it. Regret. Maybe it was that crying was the only positive thing I could think to do.
‘I know this house not what you used to but it not so bad. We can do something fix it up.’
I listened to him but Pao had no idea. How could he possibly think that place could be fixed to compare with Lady Musgrave Road?
‘It better than fighting with Miss Cicely.’
Better? I didn’t know. It was different, I’d grant him that. Less injurious because every time Mama opened her mouth it was like a dagger being thrust into my heart. But still, it had energy. Vigour. Not like the lethargy inside me now. Like I was slowly drowning with no desire to save myself. I couldn’t even be bothered to wave my arms in the air. Not like Marjorie Williams at Sigarney beach.
‘What on earth made you think I could come here to Matthews Lane and live in a place like this?’
‘It’s my home, Fay. This is my family with Ma and Zhang. What do you want me to do, leave them? Look at them, the two of them old. I can’t go leave them just like that. And I don’t want to. I am the son, they my responsibility. You forget you Chinese?’
‘You think I am Chinese?’
‘What you talking ’bout?’
I walked out of the bedroom because I didn’t feel like explaining anything to him. Even if Pao could understand what it meant to me, all these years, not to be full Chinese it wouldn’t change anything. Wouldn’t change the fact that, as Mama so frequently liked to remind me, I am neither one thing nor the other.
Pao did what he could to make things better. Talking each night about his antics downtown, as if I cared, and bringing gifts of silk blouses and stockings, and vases from Chinatown to brighten up the bedroom. But it didn’t help. The room was still as dingy and miserable as before, with the rickety narrow double bed and side table with the lamp, and the old wardrobe with the big drawer beneath, and tall dresser standing in the corner. So much dark furniture in such a small space. A tiny window looking out on to the concrete yard and a solid wooden door at the end, which when opened provided welcome air and sunlight but which also let in the uninvited ears and eyes of everyone in the house as they passed about their business. So mostly we kept them shut and confined ourselves to the semi-darkness that enveloped the room, and our life.
There I cried. Not that I thought it would solve anything. But just because I could. Could cry to my heart’s content in a way I had never allowed myself to at Lady Musgrave Road. I could feel sorry for myself and weep out twenty-six years of pain and hurt, sorrow and suffering, without Mama’s rebuke or worrying that I was adding to her satisfaction.
‘No use bury head under sheet. Everybody in this house work. Me, Tilly, Hampton, Pao. Zhang, he old man. He already do everything for everybody. He finish now. Deserve rest. But you still young. What you do?’
I grew tired of listening to Ma’s complaining, so I got up. Got up one morning after I heard Tilly, the daily help, come through the gate at five-thirty am to boil the saltfish and pick the flesh from the skin and bone, and drop it into the batter that Ma beat with a wooden spoon in a big bowl she balanced in the crook of her arm, to make fritters that they would fry and drain. Over and over until they had four dozen, which Tilly packed and carried to Barry Street to be sold from some grocer’s hot cabinet. Every day of the week except Sunday. Come rain or shine.
And when she came back from Chinatown, Tilly and Ma would sit down together and pluck the duck feathers to stuff the pillows. For sale.
But that wasn’t all Tilly did because she also washed and cleaned. And ironed. And when Ma wanted, Tilly would help with fixing the dinner or even cook it herself if the old woman was too busy playing mah-jongg in the yard with her friends. Or felt too tired or irritable to want to bother.
Zhang? He sat. On the wooden rocking chair he took from his room and placed in the shade by the duck pond. Sometimes he’d walk to Chinatown to visit the herbalist or to get his hair cut. And every Wednesday morning he made a trip for the newspaper. Not the world news written in Chinese, but news from China itself. News of home and abroad. As approved by the Chinese government.
Other times he’d play cards or dominoes with the old African, McKenzie, who, as folklore had it, committed some atrocity that Zhang had to punish when he was godfather of Chinatown and a law unto himself. So why was McKenzie now his best friend? Because Zhang showed mercy, nursing the man back to health after practically trying to kill him by hanging him upside down on a scaffold in the hot afternoon sun. Hanging there for hours, he was, in public view so that he could be a lesson to others.
‘Tilly not here to play housemaid to you. She here to help me make a living.’
‘I know, Ma.’
‘Just so you do,’ she said as she carried on with the hard yard broom, sweeping up the duck shit and scooping it into the crocus bag for Tilly to take to the garbage at the corner of the road.
That was Matthews Lane. All coming and going. Chopping and stirring. Scooping and shovelling. Listening to Ma’s grumbling tone as she chuntered away in Chinese. Watching Zhang hawk and spit. Feeling the wrath of Pao as he instructed and reprimanded his men. The silent and long-suffering Neville Finley, who they called Judge, and Hampton, who was as much at Tilly’s beck and call as Pao’s. Being her younger brother.
Then one day, for no reason whatsoever, Pao decided we would go out. Together.
‘What yu want to do?’ he asked me. I was so shocked I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t even know if I wanted to be seen in public with him. In case someone recognised me. ‘Maybe see a picture? Yu want do that? What tek yu fancy?’
He came home and showered after work on the appointed day. And put on a clean shirt and trousers before we walked up to Barry Street and caught a cab to Cross Roads. The film he wanted to see was The Virginian with Joel McCrea. I didn’t care.
He bought the tickets. Best seats in the house. ‘Nothing too good for you this evening,’ he said, dropping his Jamaican lilt and grinning as he waited in line for popcorn and soft drinks. He took my hand as well, after we were seated, and rubbed the back of it gently.
The film drifted over me. Half the time I couldn’t even hear what was being said, that much of a daze I was in. Bewildered at his sudden attention and lightened spirit. What I did catch made me wonder if Pao had taken us there specifically to send a message to me. If he really imagined that I could be Molly Wood, Vermont schoolteacher who goes out west to encounter and resolutely dislike the Virginian only to later fall in love with him. Is that what he thought? That he was a Wyoming cowboy and I would get over my aversion and ride off with him into the sunset.
Afterwards, I asked him, ‘Has something happened?’
‘Happened? Yu think something happen?’
I looked at him. ‘You seem different.’
‘I seem different to you?’
I didn’t answer but there was definitely a new air about him. A new gait in his stride. A playfulness in his manner. He seemed fresher. Younger. More wholesome somehow. Handsome even.
‘Yu know things not as bad as yu think. Home is fine and business is good. All yu need to do is settle into the house. Mek like family. Yu know wid Ma and Zhang. Everything will be irie. Yu will see.’ And then he started to sing. Standing right there outside the picture house. The voice that came out of him was the most unexpected tenor you could have imagined. ‘Roses of Picardy’: that is what he chose to serenade the street with. In a smooth, melodic tone that was soft and gentle. And soulful. Not sharp and jagged the way he so often was. This was a different Pao. More like the one I observed that night on the veranda. A Pao whose hand I decided to take as we sauntered through the crowd together. With people stopping to cheer and clap him. And him giving a little bow to his appreciative audience.
Yet despite the cheer in the atmosphere I couldn’t take the squalor. That was something I couldn’t get over. The slime in the zinc cubicle of a shower, slippery underfoot, with green, greying, furry mildew around the edges. Hair in the plughole from Ma’s long black strands, which blocked the drain so that no matter how little water you used you still found yourself standing in inches of a soapy morass, grimy from the floor and the red mud that slipped from the pipe time to time.
The duck shit that floated down the concrete channel, the full length of the yard into the gutter outside the gate. That was odious. Like the toilet shed with its high-hung cistern and long metal pull-chain. Funny thing was, it didn’t smell. Not like Isaac’s place because every day Ma would scrub the whole interior from top to bottom. And pour Jeyes fluid in every corner. To keep out the rats as much as to dampen the stench.
The kitchen? Cockroaches. So bad that if you turned on a light at night the entire place moved. It was exhausting. Just to get up each morning to face it. And to go to bed at night knowing that all of that biology was alive and multiplying as you slept. Lying there as you did, covered in a full-body sweat. In the heat of that room. Locked up like an enclosed tomb.
That is why I decided to go home. For some fresh air, a decent shower and a swim in the pool.
That is how Mama greeted me when she returned from her church meeting. She and Miss Allen. The two of them locked together in the gossip of the day.
‘That a problem for you?’
‘Me?’ And then she said it again. ‘Me?’ Standing back this time with an exaggerated look of surprise on her face and a hand resting on her cheek like she was imitating Miss Lou in a pantomime. Which made Miss Allen laugh. Which started Mama prancing around, holding her skirt hem and swivelling it as she twisted and turned. Repeating all of the time ‘Me? Me?’ as she stopped to strike a different pose for her amused companion.
I picked up my coffee from the side table, kissed my teeth and walked inside. And God what a mistake that was.
‘You come here when you should be gone. And use everything like some white boopsie at the Constant Spring Hotel high school and then kiss yu teeth? Just like that?’
So I stepped back on to the veranda, which I should never have done.
‘Who you calling boopsie? If I am a kept woman then what are you? You who never worked one single day in your entire miserable life.’
‘Work? I work every single hour of every single day. Yu think this house run itself?’
And Miss Allen added, ‘With maids to order and chillen to keep on the straight and narrow so deh remember which side a di fence deh come from.’
‘Which side a di fence? Which side a di fence do you call this? Maids and swimming pool and tennis court.’
Mama intervened. ‘I am a black African woman. Strong and proud, and don’t you ever forget that.’
‘So that is why every afternoon right here on this veranda they busy serving you salmon sandwiches and Earl Grey tea?’
‘Don’t yu dear talk to yu mother like dat. Who yu think yu are coming in here like dis?’
‘Miss Allen,’ I pointed a finger directly at her, ‘shut your mouth or I will shut it for you. This is my home before it is yours.’
‘Don’t you talk to her like that.’
I looked over Mama’s shoulder at Ethyl and Pearl standing in the doorway, which made her and Miss Allen turn around to check what I was staring at.
‘You two go back inside. This doesn’t concern you.’ That is what Mama said to them. And they obliged. But their presence, as brief as it was, lowered the fever.
‘Mama, this is the truth. You are ashamed of being black. That is why yu never have one good word to say about the black man. And why yu drive Stanley away. And drink tea and eat cake every single day. To mek at least some small part a yu white English. That is why yu convert from Methodist to Catholic. And send me to Immaculate so the whole world could see how much money Henry and Cicely Wong have. As long as I didn’t mix with the white girls or be too smart at the lessons. And as for being a boopsie, that is what you fear and have feared my whole life. Even when I was a child and Delton try to rob me on the street that day, and all you could fuss over was how I was rolling ’round in the dirt with him.’
Miss Allen started to open her mouth but Mama rested a hand on her arm to stop her. She, Mama, wanted to be the one to speak. She stood there stony-faced and then she said, ‘That is your truth. Now this is mine. You are not welcome in this house. Go back to Matthews Lane where you belong.’ And then she took Miss Allen by the elbow and led her inside.
I went back to Matthews Lane. And cried.
Pao couldn’t take it so he started to sleep at the shop, after which I barely saw him. Sometimes a mid-afternoon visit for tea with Zhang or to check in with his mother. Dinner most evenings, followed by the collection of clean clothes and his departure, which in some bizarre way seemed to add to my sadness.
‘Unhappiness so deep is old. Not new.’ That was the first thing Zhang ever said to me. Directly.
I looked up at him standing there with the tea bowl and Chinese newspaper in hand. Something about him reminded me of my father. The tall squareness of him, and the dead-straight, flowing grey hair. But in Zhang there was a stillness. An inner calm that Papa didn’t quite have. He pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat down next to me, resting the bowl and paper on the floor.
‘When I was boy in China, whole country at mercy of warlords. Men with no shame or conscience. So many, many terrible things they do. But people, if they believe in self, can overcome anything. Even a mountain of suffering.’ He held his arms above his head. Fingertips together. To show me a mountain. Then he put them down again. ‘You are free. Let go of thoughts that keep you prisoner.’ And then he stood, replaced the chair at the table, picked up his tea and paper and clomped his way towards his room. His wooden slippers slapping noisily on the concrete path.
* * *
Eventually, when Pao decided that something had to be done, he came to me. I was sitting on the edge of the bed when he knelt down on the wooden floor and took my hands in his. It felt reassuring. I even let him wipe away a few strands of hair that had become stuck to my wet face.
‘What we going to do, eh?’
‘Why did you marry me, Pao? You married me because my father is Henry Wong. Isn’t that the truth? Honestly?’
He hesitated. And then, looking me straight in the eye, he said, ‘Yes. Yes it the truth. That is how it start, Fay, but that not how it is now, not since the honeymoon. When we was at the Jamaica Inn I see a different side of you. You must admit yourself we cross a bridge that week you and me. Don’t tell me it didn’t mean nothing to you.’
I was grateful for his honesty, because I had never believed his speech about how perfect I was. Not for one second. But being the son-in-law of Henry Wong? I could understand that. It was a step up for him.
‘I can’t live like this, Pao. Can’t you see that you and this house are the punishment my mother picked out for me? This is the suffering she wants me to have for the rest of my life.’
‘What suffering?’
So I told him about the beatings and starvation, and so many lonely afternoons of being locked in the piano room. He was sympathetic, saying that we could make our own life not just let Mama decide it for us, which was sweet of him. But I knew that Yang Pao was no match for my mother. I’d seen him kowtowing to her on that veranda far too many times.