I drink so much I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t even see straight most of the time. All I could do was walk up to Barry Street to fetch the next bottle. Then one day Hampton come in the yard and him got Ethyl follow behind. This is the first time Ethyl ever come to Matthews Lane. Every time she come see me before that she come to the shop. But since I nuh leave Matthews Lane since the children gone I guess this the only way she going see me.
I sitting in a little straight-back chair by the duck pond when the two of them come up the yard and Hampton step up and say to me, ‘Ethyl got something to tell yu but she ’fraid in case yu vex with her and she worried what yu going do to her.’
‘What I going do to her? You see me do anything to anybody?’
So Hampton step back and push Ethyl forward. She timid and when she start talk she whispering so much I can hardly hear a word she saying.
‘You need to talk up, Ethyl.’
So she clear her throat and she say, ‘Yes, Mr Philip.’ And then after Hampton nod at her, she start, ‘The Sunday before Miss Fay take the children I overhear her on the telephone. She was in the living room and I just go in there to put down a vase of fresh flowers like Miss Cicely ask me to and Miss Fay just turn ’round and wave her hand at me and tell me to get out. I didn’t even get a chance to put down the vase. It was like she vex with me for going in there. So when I shut the door I just wait outside a little minute and listen. And that is when I hear her say “I will be in the taxi”, which make me think that she just making some arrangement with one of her friends. But the way she say it seem a bit funny. And it funny that she didn’t want me to hear her, because them not usually worried ’bout that sort of thing. Anyway, the next thing I hear is when she say, “Do you understand?” It nuh sound like well I didn’t know what it sound like, but now I realise what funny about it was maybe she was talking to a child. That she not talking to one of her friends after all.’
I just sit and stare at her standing there in front of me. Hampton tell her is OK, she done the right thing. He tell her to go wait down by the gate and he will come directly and drive her home. Then him sorta lean over me, and really look at me like him worried ’bout something.
And then him say to me, ‘You alright?’
But I no answer.
So him say, ‘I think it best she come tell yu. I reckon yu would want to know. And I think it better if it come from her.’ Him wait a bit and then say, ‘I going drive her home now if that alright with you.’
‘Yes, is alright.’ And just as him step away I reach out and grab his arm and say, ‘Thank you, Hampton.’ And then I shout out to Ethyl as she opening the gate to leave, ‘Thank you, Ethyl.’
According to Sun Tzu, Mencius say, ‘ The appropriate season is not as important as the advantages of the ground; these are not as important as harmonious human relations .’
The next day I take a shower and shave and get dressed and go ’round to see Michael. The housekeeper don’t want to let me in but Michael hear my voice from the next room and shout to her that it OK, she can let me by. When I come into his study he ask the housekeeper, Miss Crawford he call her, to go put on some coffee, and he invite me to sit down in a armchair by the open window. This here is the first time I see him since I grab him up in the cathedral that day. Michael look like he lose some weight, and he look tired.
‘I have been meaning to call you.’ This is what him say as he sitting down in the armchair next to me.
The window reach down to the ground so when you sit down you can see the garden right there in front of you, and you can catch a nice breeze to take the edge off the afternoon heat.
‘That day I grab you up in the cathedral I could see you was suffering. And now I come here and see you like this it seem like you still the same way. So maybe the confession thing switch ’round now and is you that need to tell me what you got on your mind.’
Michael look at me and I can see he got all sort of things going ’round in his head. Is like he can’t even think where to begin there is so much he got to tell. But what strike me is it seem like he been waiting and wanting and wishing for me to come over here and ask him ’bout what happened and what he had to do with it.
Right then the door open and Miss Crawford come in with a tray with the coffee and cups and such. She put it on a side table and Michael thank her. When she gone Michael get up and pour the coffee. The rich, heavy smell of the Blue Mountain fill up the room.
When he hand me the cup him say, ‘The week before it happened Fay asked me if she could visit with the children on the Sunday when they came to Mass, and I said no.’
Then he sit down next to me with the cup of coffee he pour for himself.
‘I told her that if she wanted to visit with the children she would have to make arrangements with you. She became quite distraught over this. It took some time for her to calm down and compose herself. And then she asked me if I would at least allow her to talk to Karl on the telephone.’
Michael stop. I think he get startled at how I suddenly just right then put all my attention on him. It give out a kind of electric shock. So the two of us just sit there and wait for it to pass.
‘I don’t know why I agreed to it, but I said yes. So on the Sunday before that was what happened. She spoke with him on the phone. Right here in this room because I told Desmond that Karl had to come with me to collect some new missals.’ Then him stop. And then him start again. ‘I waited outside. I did not eavesdrop on their conversation, but when Karl came out he looked anxious and I asked him if he was OK. He said he was alright so we walked together back to the cathedral to meet up with Mui and Desmond and I thought nothing more of it. Not until after it happened. Because although I knew Fay was planning to go to England I never dreamed that she would take the children with her. I just never even conceived of it.’
‘Yu knew she was going?’
‘Yes, and I realise that I was an accomplice. Especially in relation to the children. I helped when I should have been trying to do something to stop it.’
‘When I find you in the cathedral that day, and when I look at you, it don’t seem to me now that you could have been crucifying yourself like that over a telephone call.’ And then I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said a word like crucify .
Michael look outta the window and right then it start to rain. That three-thirty Jamaican rain that flood the place in ten minutes and then ten minutes after that you can’t tell it happen except for the fresh smell and the few drops of water still dripping off the banana leaf.
‘She wanted me to go with her.’
‘She wanted you to go with her? She wanted you to go with her to England?’ When I see the flash of panic on Michael’s face I suddenly remember where I was so I lower my voice to a whisper and I say, ‘She wanted you to go with her to England?’ And him nod. ‘So what kinda thing is that? You take your priest with you when you kidnap your children and run four thousand miles away?’
Michael run his hand through him hair and then cover him mouth like there is something he don’t want to say. He sit there like that with his hand over him mouth for a good while.
Then he say, ‘Sin occurs in thought as well as in deed.’
It shock me. I dunno why because it what I been thinking all along anyway. Maybe I didn’t expect him to admit it to me just like that.
‘You mean in thought and deed?’
‘No, Pao, just thought.’
And I think well that about right, because if Michael had anything to do with Mui I reckon Fay would have been more interested in the child. But then I think to myself, Michael torturing himself like this just for thinking ’bout it? So I reckon maybe it was more than thought. It was somewhere beyond thought, even if it was short of deed.
I say to him, ‘Did you want to go with her?’
Michael think a long time and then him say, ‘Some part of me did. Some part of me wanted to go. Some part of me wanted something with her. But the greater part of me knows that my calling is here.’
I look at him and right then I just get up and I raise Michael up outta the chair and I hug him. I hug him close because he was the only man on this earth who understand how I feel, the only man who understand what we lose. Not just because we lose Fay. But because we both lose the children as well.
When I get to Gloria’s she open the door and she put her arms ’round me. I let myself lean into her, and right then it feel like the first time my body come to rest since the whole thing happen. So I just stand there and she carry on hold me while she say to me, ‘I wonder how long it was going to be before you come.’
I want to tell Gloria everything ’bout what happen, and how Fay do it and ’bout the constables and the taxi driver and what it feel like with the children gone, but I not sure it fair on her. Not sure if it fair for her to have to listen to it when she got all her own feelings ’bout Fay and Mui and Xiuquan, and Esther. So I don’t say nothing, I just follow her inside.
She go into the kitchen and start boil the kettle.
‘You not got no Appleton?’
‘From what Finley tell me you already had plenty enough of that. I fixing us some nice Lipton’s.’
Esther come into the kitchen and look at me. And for the first time it seem like maybe she feel something different from sour to see me standing there. And then she say, ‘I’m sorry to hear about what happen,’ and she go to the back door and step out into the yard.
Gloria put the tea bags in the pot and she pass the little strings through the handle, and then she pour in the boiling water. After she settle us down with the cup and saucer and everything she take my hand and say to me, ‘It like old times, eh?’
And I say, ‘Yes, except twenty years done pass us by.’
‘I know you tell Clifton you want him to go murder everybody, but who you talk to, Pao? Who you talk to ’bout how you feel inside?’
‘I don’t talk to nobody. Who you think I going talk to?’
‘Me. You can talk to me.’
‘What, me talk to you ’bout Fay? I thought that was your one condition?’
‘That a long time ago.’
I look at her and I realise she really mean it.
‘Since the children gone it like somebody reach in my chest and pull out my heart, and I just walking ’round like a dead man. I don’t want to do nothing. I don’t even want to get outta bed in the morning. I don’t want to shower or shave or dress myself. I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to talk to nobody. All I want to do is see the bottom of a glass.
‘And as for Fay, I know she never cared for me none, but what I realise today, just this afternoon, is that all the time I spend with Michael give me a feeling like I connected to her. Like being with him give me a way of being part of something that Fay care about, because I really wanted something between us to work. There was so many times I feel like maybe we could have had something good and then some calamity happen like when she go to Matthews Lane, or when she find out ’bout you or the thing with Samuels or when Kenneth get killed. So many times I think we was going step through a new door together but what happen instead was she go through the door on her own and slam it in my face. Just like what happen on the veranda that night up Lady Musgrave Road.
‘I really wanted us to be a family, yu know. And now she gone and the children gone, what might have been is never going to be.’
And then I throw myself in Gloria’s arms and I cry.