It was Irie Jones all right. Six years older than the last time they met. Taller, wider, with breasts and no hair and slippers just visible underneath a long duffle coat. And it was Hortense Bowden. Six years older, shorter, wider, with breasts on her belly and no hair (though she took the peculiar step of putting her wig in curlers) and slippers just visible underneath a long, padded baby-pink housecoat. But the real difference was Hortense was eighty-four. Not a littleoldwoman by any means; she was a round robust one, her fat so taut against her skin the epidermis was having a hard time wrinkling. Still, eighty-four is not seventy-seven or sixty-three; at eighty-four there is nothing but death ahead, tedious in its insistence. It was there in her face as Irie had never seen it before. The waiting and the fear and the blessed relief.
Yet though there were differences, walking down the steps and into Hortense’s basement flat, Irie was struck by the shock of sameness. Way-back-when, she had been a fairly regular visitor at her grandmother’s: sneaky visits with Archie while her mother was at college, and always leaving with something unusual, a pickled fish head, chilli dumplings, the lyrics of a stray but persistent psalm. Then at Darcus’s funeral in 1985, ten-year-old Irie had let slip about these social calls and Clara had put a stop to them altogether. They still called each other on the phone, on occasion. And to this day Irie received short letters on exercise paper with a copy of the Watchtower slipped inside. Sometimes Irie looked at her mother’s face and saw her grandmother: those majestic cheekbones, those feline eyes. But they had not been face to face for six years.
As far as the house was concerned, six seconds seemed to have passed. Still dark, still dank, still underground. Still decorated with hundreds of secular figurines (‘Cinderella on her way to the Ball’, ‘Mrs Tiddlytum shows the little squirrels the way to the picnic’), all balanced on their separate doilies and laughing gaily amongst themselves, amused that anyone would pay a hundred and fifty pounds in fifteen instalments for such inferior pieces of china and glass as they. A huge tripartite tapestry, which Irie remembered the sewing of, now hung on the wall above the fireplace, depicting, in its first strip, the Anointed sitting in judgement with Jesus in heaven. The Anointed were all blond and blue-eyed and appeared as serene as Hortense’s cheap wool would allow, and were looking down at the Great Crowd – who were happy-looking, but not as happy as the Anointed – frolicking in eternal paradise on earth. The Great Crowd were in turn looking piteously at the heathens (by far the largest group), dead in their graves, and packed on top of each other like sardines.
The only thing missing was Darcus (whom Irie only faintly remembered as a mixture of smell and texture; naphthalene and damp wool); there was his huge empty chair, still fetid, and there was his television, still on.
‘Irie, look at you! Pickney nah even got a gansey on – child must be freezin’! Shiverin’ like a Mexico bean. Let me feel you. Fever! You bringin’ fever into my house?’
It was important, in Hortense’s presence, never to admit to illness. The cure, as in most Jamaican households, was always more painful than the symptoms.
‘I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong with-’
‘Oh, really?’ Hortense put Irie’s hand on her own forehead. ‘That’s fever as sure as fever is fever. Feel it?’
Irie felt it. She was hot as hell.
‘Come ’ere.’ Hortense grabbed a rug from Darcus’s chair and wrapped it around Irie’s shoulders, ‘Now come into the kitchen an’ cease an’ sekkle. Runnin’ roun’ on a night like dis, wearin’ flimsy nonsense! You’re having a hot drink of cerace and den gone a bed quicker den you ever did in your life.’
Irie accepted the smelly wrap and followed Hortense into the tiny kitchen, where they both sat down.
‘Let me look at you.’
Hortense leant against the oven with hands on hips. ‘You look like Mr Death, your new lover. How you get here?’
Once again, one had to be careful in answering. Hortense’s contempt for London Transport was a great comfort to her in her old age. She could take one word like train and draw a melody out of it (Northern Line), which expanded into an aria (The Underground) and blossomed into a theme (The Overground) and then grew exponentially into an operetta (The Evils and Inequities of British Rail).
‘Er… Bus. N17. It was cold on the top deck. Maybe I caught a chill.’
‘I don’ tink dere’s any maybes about it, young lady. An’ I’m sure I don’ know why you come ’pon de bus, when it take tree hours to arrive an’ leave you waitin’ in de col’ an’ den’ when you get pon it de windows are open anyway an’ you freeze half to death.’
Hortense poured a colourless liquid from a small plastic container into her hand. ‘Come ’ere.’
‘Why?’ demanded Irie, immediately suspicious. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nuttin’, come ’ere. Take off your spectacles.’
Hortense approached with a cupped hand.
‘Not in my eye! There’s nothing wrong with my eye!’
‘Stop fussin’. I’m not puttin’ nuttin’ in your eye.’
‘Just tell me what it is,’ pleaded Irie, trying to work out for which orifice it was intended and screaming as the cupped hand reached her face, spreading the liquid from forehead to chin.
‘Aaagh! It burns!’
‘Bay rum,’ said Hortense matter-of-factly. ‘Burns de fever away. No, don’ wash it off. Jus’ leave it to do its biznezz.’
Irie gritted her teeth as the torture of a thousand pin-pricks faded to five hundred, then twenty-five, until finally it was just a warm flush of the kind delivered by a slap.
‘So!’ said Hortense, entirely awake now and somewhat triumphant. ‘You finally dash from that godless woman, I see. An’ caught a flu while you doin’ it! Well… there are those who wouldn’t blame you, no, not at all… No one knows better dan me what dat woman be like. Never at home, learnin’ all her isms and skisms in the university, leavin’ husband and pickney at home, hungry and maga. Lord, naturally you flee! Well…’ She sighed and put a copper kettle on the stove. ‘It is written. You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. Zechariah 14:5. In the end the good ones will flee from the evil. Oh, Irie Ambrosia… I knew you come in de end. All God’s children return in de end.’
‘Gran, I haven’t come to find God. I just want to do some quiet study here and get my head together. I need to stay a few months – at least till the New Year. Oh… ugh… I feel a bit woozy. Can I have an orange?’
‘Yes, dey all return to de Lord Jesus in de end,’ continued Hortense to herself, placing the bitter root of cerace into a kettle. ‘Dat’s not a real orange, dear. All de fruit is plasticated. De flowers are plasticated also. I don’t believe de Lord meant me to spend de little housekeeping money I possess on perishable goods. Have some dates.’
Irie grimaced at the shrivelled fruit plonked in front of her.
‘So you lef Archibald wid dat woman… poor ting. Me always like Archibald,’ said Hortense sadly, scrubbing the brown scum from a teacup with two soapy fingers. ‘Him was never my objection as such. He always been a level-headed sort a fellow. Blessed are de peacekeepers. He always strike me as a peacekeeper. But it more de principle of de ting, you know? Black and white never come to no good. De Lord Jesus never meant us to mix it up. Dat’s why he made a hol’ heap a fuss about de children of men building de tower of Babel. ’Im want everybody to keep tings separate. And the Lord did confound the language of all the earth and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:9. When you mix it up, nuttin’ good can come. It wasn’t intended. Except you,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘You’re about de only good ting to come out of dat… Bwoy, sometime it like lookin’ in a mirror-glass,’ she said, lifting Irie’s chin with her wrinkled digits. ‘You built like me, big, you know! Hip and tie and rhas, and titties. My mudder was de same way. You even named after my mudder.’
‘Irie?’ asked Irie, trying hard to listen, but feeling the damp smog of her fever pulling her under.
‘No, dear, Ambrosia. De stuff dat make you live for ever. Now,’ she said, clapping her hands together, catching Irie’s next question between them, ‘you sleepin’ in de living room. I’ll get a blanket and pillows and den we talk in de marnin’. I’m up at six, ’cos I got Witness biznezz, so don’ tink you sleeping none after eight. Pickney, you hear me?’
‘Mmm. But what about Mum’s old room? Can’t I just sleep in there?’
Hortense took Irie’s weight half on her shoulder and led her into the living room. ‘No, dat’s not possible. Dere is a certain situation,’ said Hortense mysteriously. ‘Dat can wait till de sun is up to be hexplained. Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed,’ she intoned quietly, turning to go. ‘And nothing hid, that shall not be known. Dat is Mat-chew, 10:26.’
An autumn morning was the only time worth spending in that basement flat. Between 6 and 7 a.m. when the sun was still low, light shot through the front window, bathed the lounge in yellow, dappled the long thin allotment (7 ft × 30 ft) and gave a healthy veneer to the tomatoes. You could almost convince yourself, at 6 a.m., that you were downstairs in some Continental cabana, or at least street level in Torquay, rather than below ground in Lambeth. The glare was such that you couldn’t make out the railway sidings where the strip of green ended, or the busy everyday feet that passed by the lounge window, kicking dust through the grating at the glass. It was all white light and clever shade at six in the morning. Hugging a cup of tea at the kitchen table, squinting at the grass, Irie saw vineyards out there; she saw Florentine scenes instead of the uneven higgledy-piggledy of Lambeth rooftops; she saw a muscular shadowy Italian plucking full berries and crushing them underfoot. Then the mirage, sun reliant as it was, disappeared, the whole scene swallowed by a devouring cloud. Leaving only some crumbling Edwardian housing. Railway sidings named after a careless child. A long, narrow strip of allotment where next to nothing would grow. And a bleached-out bandy-legged red-headed man with terrible posture and wellington boots, stamping away in the mulch, trying to shake the remnants of a squashed tomato from his heel.
‘Dat is Mr Topps,’ said Hortense, hurrying across the kitchen in a dark maroon dress, the eyes and hooks undone, and a hat in her hand with plastic flowers askew. ‘He has been such a help to me since Darcus died. He soothes away my vexation and calms my mind.’
She waved to him and he straightened up and waved back. Irie watched him pick up two plastic bags filled with tomatoes and walk in his strange pigeon-footed manner up the garden towards the back kitchen door.
‘An’ he de only man who made a solitary ting grow out dere. Such a crop of tomatoes as you never did see! Irie Ambrosia, stop starin’ and come an’ do up dis dress. Quick before your goggle-eye fall out.’
‘Does he live here?’ whispered Irie in amazement, struggling to join the two sides of Hortense’s dress over her substantial flank. ‘I mean, with you?’
‘Not in de sense you meaning,’ sniffed Hortense. ‘He is jus’ a great help to me in my ol’ age. He bin wid me deez six years, God bless ’im and keep ’is soul. Now, pass me dat pin.’
Irie passed her the long hat pin which was sitting on top of a butter dish. Hortense set the plastic carnations straight on her hat and stabbed them fiercely, then brought the pin back up through the felt, leaving two inches of exposed silver sticking up from the hat like a German pickelhaube.
‘Well, don’ look so shock. It a very satisfactory arrangement. Women need a man ’bout de house, udderwise ting an’ ting get messy. Mr Topps and I, we ol’ soldiers fightin’ the battle of de Lord. Some time ago he converted to the Witness church, an’ his rise has been quick an’ sure. I’ve waited fifty years to do someting else in de Kingdom Hall except clean,’ said Hortense sadly, ‘but dey don’ wan’ women interfering with real church bizness. Bot Mr Topps do a great deal, and ’im let me help on occasion. He’s a very good man. But ’im family are nasty-nasty,’ she murmured confidentially. ‘The farder is a terrible man, gambler an’ whoremonger… so after a while, I arks him to come and live with me, seein’ how de room empty and Darcus gone. ’Im a very civilized bwoy. Never married, though. Married to de church, yes, suh! An’ ’im call me Mrs Bowden deez six years, never any ting else.’ Hortense sighed ever so slightly. ‘Don’ know de meaning of bein’ improper. De only ting he wan’ in life is to become one of de Anointed. I have de greatest hadmiration for him. He himproved so much. He talk so posh now, you know! And ’im very good wid de pipin’ an’ plummin’ also. How’s your fever?’
‘Not great. Last hook… there that’s done.’
Hortense fairly bounced away from her and walked into the hall to open the back door to Ryan.
‘But Gran, why does he live-’
‘Well, you’re going to have to eat up dis marnin’ – feed a fever, starve a col’. Deez tomatoes fried wid plantain and some of las’ night’s fish. I’ll fry it up and den pop it in de microwave.’
‘I thought it was starve a fe-’
‘Good marnin’, Mr Topps.’
‘Good mornin’, Missus Bowden,’ said Mr Topps, closing the door behind him and peeling off a protective cagoule to reveal a cheap blue suit, with a tiny gold cross pendant on the collar. ‘I trust you is almost of a readiness? We’ve got to be at the hall on the dot of seven.’
As yet, Ryan had not spotted Irie. He was bent over shaking the mud from his boots. And he did it formidably slowly, just as he spoke, and with his translucent eyelids fluttering like a man in a coma. Irie could only see half of him from where she stood: a red fringe, a bent knee and the shirt cuff of one hand.
But the voice was a visual in itself: cockney yet refined, a voice that had had much work done upon it – missing key consonants and adding others where they were never meant to be, and all delivered through the nose with only the slightest help from the mouth.
‘Fine mornin’, Mrs B., fine mornin’. Somefing to fank the Lord for.’
Hortense seemed terribly nervous about the imminent likelihood that he should raise his head and spot the girl standing by the stove. She kept beckoning Irie forward and then shooing her back, uncertain whether they should meet at all.
‘Oh yes, Mr Topps, it is, an’ I am ready as ready can be. My hat give me a little trouble, you know, but I just got a pin an-’
‘But the Lord ain’t interested in the vanities of the flesh, now, is he Mrs B.?’ said Ryan, slowly and painfully enunciating each word while crouching awkwardly and removing his left boot. ‘Jehovah is in need of your soul.’
‘Oh yes, surely dat is de holy troot,’ said Hortense anxiously, fingering her plasticated carnations. ‘But at de same time, surely a Witness lady don’ wan’ look like a, well, a buguyaga in de house of de Lord.’
Ryan frowned. ‘My point is, you must avoid interpretin’ scripture by yourself, Mrs Bowden. In future, discuss it wiv myself and my colleagues. Ask us: is pleasant clothing a concern of the Lord’s? And myself and my colleagues amongst the Anointed, will look up the necessary chapter and verse…’
Ryan’s sentence faded into a general Erhummmm, a sound he was prone to making. It began in his arched nostrils and reverberated through his slight, elongated, misshapen limbs like the final shiver of a hanged man.
‘I don’ know why I do it, Mr Topps,’ said Hortense shaking her head. ‘Sometime I tink I could be one of dem dat teach, you know? Even though I am a woman… I feel like the Lord talk to me in a special way… It jus’ a bad habit… but so much in de church change recently, sometimes me kyan keep up wid all de rules and regulations.’
Ryan looked out through the double glazing. His face was pained. ‘Nuffin’ changes about the word of God, Mrs B. Only people are mistaken. The best thing you can do for the Truth, is just pray that the Brooklyn Hall will soon deliver us with the final date. Erhummmm.’
‘Oh yes, Mr Topps. I do it day and night.’
Ryan clapped his hands together in a pale imitation of enthusiasm. ‘Now, did I ’ear you say plantain for breakfast, Mrs B.?’
‘Oh yes, Mr Topps, and dem tomatoes if you will be kind enough to han’ dem over to de chef.’
As Hortense had hoped, the passing of the tomatoes coincided with the spotting of Irie.
‘Now, dis is my granddarter, Irie Ambrosia Jones. And dis is Mr Ryan Topps. Say hello, Irie, dear.’
Irie did so, stepping forward nervously and reaching out her hand to shake his. But there was no response from Ryan Topps, and the inequality was only increased when on the sudden he seemed to recognize her; there was a pulse of familiarity as his eyes moved over her, whereas Irie saw nothing, not even a type, not even a genre of face in his; the monstrosity of him was quite unique, redder than any red-head, more freckled than the freckled, more blue-veined than a lobster.
‘She’s – she’s – Clara’s darter,’ said Hortense tentatively. ‘Mr Topps knew your mudder, long time. But it all right, Mr Topps, she come to live wid us now.’
‘Only for a little time,’ Irie corrected hurriedly, noting the look of vague horror on Mr Topps’s face. ‘Just for a few months maybe, through the winter while I study. I’ve got exams in June.’
Mr Topps did not move. Moreover nothing on him moved. Like one of China’s terracotta army, he seemed poised for battle yet unable to move.
‘Clara’s darter,’ repeated Hortense in a tearful whisper. ‘She might have been yours.’
Nothing surprised Irie about this final, whispered aside; she just added it to the list: Ambrosia Bowden gave birth in an earthquake… Captain Charlie Durham was a no-good djam fool bwoy… false teeth in a glass… she might have been yours…
Half-heartedly, with no expectation of an answer, Irie asked, ‘What?’
‘Oh, nuttin’, Irie, dear. Nuttin’, nuttin’. Let me start fryin’. I can hear bellies rumblin’. You remember Clara, don’t you Mr Topps? You and she were quite good… friends. Mr Topps?’
For two minutes now Ryan had been fixing Irie with an unwavering stare, his body held absolutely straight, his mouth slightly open. At the question, he seemed to compose himself, closed his mouth and took his seat at the unlaid table.
‘Clara’s daughter, is it? Erhummmm…’ He removed what looked like a small policeman’s pad from his breast pocket and poised a pen upon it as if this would kickstart his memory.
‘You see, many of the episodes, people and events from my earlier life have been, as it were, severed from myself by the almighty sword that cut me from my past when the Lord Jehovah saw fit to enlighten me with the Truth, and as he has chosen me for a new role I must, as Paul so wisely recommended in his epistle to the Corinfians, put away childish things, allowing earlier incarnations of myself to be enveloped into a great smog in which,’ said Ryan Topps, taking only the smallest breath and his cutlery from Hortense, ‘it appears that your mother, and any memory I might ’ave of her, ’ave disappeared. Erhummmm.’
‘She never mentioned you either,’ said Irie.
‘Well, it was all a long time ago now,’ said Hortense with forced joviality. ‘But you did try your best wid ’er, Mr Topps. She was my miracle child, Clara. I was forty-eight! I taut she was God’s child. But Clara was bound for evil… she never was a godly girl an’ in de end dere was nuttin’ to be done.’
‘He will send down His vengeance, Mrs B.,’ said Ryan, with more cheerful animation than Irie had yet seen him display. ‘He will send terrible torture to those who ’ave earned it. Three plantain for me, if you please.’
Hortense set all three plates down and Irie, realizing she hadn’t eaten since the previous morning, scraped a mountain of plantain on to her plate.
‘Ah! It’s hot!’
‘Better hot dan lukewarm,’ said Hortense grimly, with a meaningful shudder. ‘Ever so, hamen.’
‘Amen,’ echoed Ryan, braving the red-hot plantain. ‘Amen. So. What exactly is it that you are studyin’?’ he asked, looking so intently past Irie that it took a moment before she realized he was addressing her.
‘Chemistry, biology and religious studies.’ Irie blew on a hot piece of plantain. ‘I want to be a dentist.’
Ryan perked up. ‘Religious studies? And do they acquaint you with the only true church?’
Irie shifted in her seat. ‘Er… I guess it’s more the big three. Jews, Christians, Muslims. We did a month on Catholicism.’
Ryan grimaced. ‘And do you have any uvver in-ter-rests?’
Irie considered. ‘Music. I like music. Concerts, clubs, that kind of thing.’
‘Yes, erhummmm. I used to go in for all that myself at one time. Until the Good News was delivered unto me. Large gatherings of yoof, of the kind that frequent popular concerts, are commonly breeding grounds for devil worship. A girl of your physical… assets might find herself lured into the lascivious arms of a sexualist,’ said Ryan, standing up from the table and looking at his watch. ‘Now that I fink about it, in a certain light you look a lot like your mother. Similar… cheekbones.’
Ryan wiped a pearly line of sweat from his forehead. There was a silence in which Hortense stood motionless, clinging nervously to a dishcloth, and Irie had to physically cross the room for a glass of water to remove herself from Mr Topps’s stare.
‘Well. That’s twenty minutes and counting, Mrs B. I’ll get the gear, shall I?’
‘Oh yes, Mr Topps,’ said Hortense beaming. But the moment Ryan left the room the beam turned to a scowl.
‘Why must you go an’ say tings like dat, hmm? You wan’ ’im to tink you some devilish heathen gal? Why kyan you say stamp-collecting or some ting? Come on, I gat to clean deez plates – finish up.’
Irie looked at the pile of food left on her plate and guiltily tapped her stomach.
‘Cho! Just as I suspeck. Your eyes see more dan your belly can hol’! Give it ’ere.’
Hortense leant against the sink and began popping bits of plantain into her mouth. ‘Now, you don’ backchat Mr Topps while you here. You gat study to do an’ he gat study too,’ said Hortense, lowering her voice. ‘He’s in consultation with the Brooklyn gentlemen at de moment… fixing de final date; no mistakes dis time. You jus’ ’ave to look at de trouble goin’ on in de world to know we nat far from de appointed day.’
‘I won’t be any trouble,’ said Irie, approaching the washing-up as a gesture of goodwill. ‘He just seems a little… weird.’
‘De ones who are chosen by the Lord always seem peculiar to de heathen. Mr Topps is jus’ misunderstood. ’Im mean a lot to me. Me never have nobody before. Your mudder don’ like to tell you since she got all hitey-titey, but de Bowden family have had it hard long time. I was barn during an eart-quake. Almost kill fore I was barn. An’ den when me a fully grown woman, my own darter run from me. Me never see my only grandpickney. I only have de Lord, all dem years. Mr Topps de first human man who look pon me and take pity an’ care. Your mudder was a fool to let ’im go, true sir!’
Irie gave it one last try. ‘What? What does that mean?’
‘Oh, nuttin, nuttin, dear Lord… I and I talking all over de place dis marnin… Oh Mr Topps, dere you are. We not going to be late now, are we?’
Mr Topps, who had just re-entered the room, was fully adorned in leather from head to toe, a huge motorcycle helmet on his head, a small red light attached to his left ankle and a small white light strapped to his right. He flipped up the visor.
‘No, we’re all right, by the grace of God. Where’s your helmet, Mrs B.?’
‘Oh, I’ve started keepin’ it in the oven. Keeps it warm and toasty on de col’ marnins. Irie Ambrosia, fetch it for me please.’
Sure enough, on the middle shelf preheated to gas mark 2 sat Hortense’s helmet. Irie scooped it out and carefully fitted it over her grandmother’s plasticated carnations.
‘You ride a motorbike,’ said Irie, by way of conversation.
But Mr Topps seemed defensive. ‘A GS Vespa. Nuffink fancy. I did fink about givin’ it away at one point. It represented a life I’d raaver forget, if you get my meaning. A motorbike is a sexual magnet, an’ God forgive me, but I misused it in that fashion. I was all set on gettin’ rid of it. But then Mrs B. convinced me that what wiv all my public speaking, I need somefing quick to get around on. An’ Mrs B. don’t want to be messin’ about with buses and trains at her age, do you Mrs B.?’
‘No, indeed. He got me dis little buggy-’
‘Sidecar,’ corrected Ryan tetchily. ‘It’s called a sidecar. Minetto Motorcycle-combination, 1973 model.’
‘Yes, of course, a sidecar, an’ it is comfortable as a bed. We go everywhere in it, Mr Topps an’ I.’
Hortense took down her overcoat from a hook on the door, and reached in the pockets for two Velcro reflector bands which she strapped round each arm.
‘Now, Irie, I’ve got a great deal of bizness to be gettin’ on with today, so you’re going to have to cook for yourself, because I kyan tell what time we’ll be home. But don’ worry. Me soon come.’
‘No problem.’
Hortense sucked her teeth. ‘No problem. Dat’s what her name mean in patois: Irie, no problem. Now, what kind of a name is datto…?’
Mr Topps didn’t answer. He was already out on the pavement, revving up the Vespa.
‘First I have to keep her from those Chalfens,’ growls Clara over the phone, her voice a resonant tremolando of anger and fear. ‘And now you people again.’
On the other end, her mother takes the washing out of the machine and listens silently through the cordless that is tucked between ear and weary shoulder, biding her time.
‘Hortense, I don’t want you filling her head with a whole load of nonsense. You hear me? Your mother was fool to it, and then you were fool to it, but the buck stopped with me and it ain’t going no further. If Irie comes home spouting any of that claptrap, you can forget about the Second Comin’ ’cos you’ll be dead by the time it arrives.’
Big words. But how fragile is Clara’s atheism! Like one of those tiny glass doves Hortense keeps in the lounge cabinet – a breath would knock it over. Talking of which, Clara still holds hers when passing churches the same way adolescent vegetarians scurry by butchers; she avoids Kilburn on a Saturday for fear of streetside preachers on their upturned apple crates. Hortense senses Clara’s terror. Coolly cramming in another load of whites and measuring out the liquid with a thrifty woman’s eye, she is short and decided: ‘Don’ you worry about Irie Ambrosia. She in a good place now. She’ll tell you herself.’ As if she had ascended with the heavenly host rather than entombed herself below ground in the borough of Lambeth with Ryan Topps.
Clara hears her daughter getting on the extension; an initial crackle and then a voice as clear as a carillon. ‘Look, I’m not coming home, all right, so don’t bother. I’ll be back when I’m back, just don’t worry about me.’ And there should be nothing to worry about and there is nothing to worry about, except maybe that outside in the streets it is cold packed on cold, even the dogshit has crystallized, there is the first suggestion of ice on the windscreens and Clara has been in that house through the winters. She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an hour. But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls the end of the world.
But Clara needn’t have feared. Irie’s atheism was robust. It was Chalfenist in its confidence, and she approached her stay with Hortense with detached amusement. She was intrigued by the Bowden household. It was a place of endgames and aftertimes, fullstops and finales; where to count on the arrival of tomorrow was an indulgence, and every service in the house, from the milkman to the electricity, was paid for on a strictly daily basis so as not to spend money on utilities or goods that would be wasted should God turn up in all his holy vengeance the very next day. Bowdenism gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘hand-to-mouth’. This was living in the eternal instant, ceaselessly teetering on the precipice of total annihilation; there are people who take a great deal of drugs simply to experience something comparable to 84-year-old Hortense Bowden’s day-to-day existence. So you’ve seen dwarfs rip open their bellies and show you their insides, you’ve been a television switched off without warning, you’ve experienced the whole world as one Krishna consciousness, free of individual ego, floating through the infinite cosmos of the soul? Big fucking deal. That’s all bullshit next to St John’s trip when Christ laid the twenty-two chapters of Revelation on him. It must have been a hell of a shock for the apostle (after that thorough spin-job, the New Testament, all those sweet words and sublime sentiments) to discover Old Testament vengeance lurking round the corner after all. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. That must have been some eye-opener.
Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It’s the last stop on the nutso express. And Bowdenism, which was the Witnesses plus Revelation and then some, was as left field as they come. Par exemple: Hortense Bowden interpreted Revelation 3:15 – I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth – as a literal mandate. She understood ‘lukewarm’ to be an evil property in and of itself. She kept a microwave on hand at all times (her sole concession to modern technology – for a long time it was a toss-up between pleasing the Lord and laying oneself open to the United States mind-ray control programme as operated through high-frequency radiowaves) in order to heat every meal to an impossible temperature; she kept whole buckets of ice to chill every glass of water ‘colder than cold’. She wore two pairs of knickers at all times like a wary potential traffic-victim; when Irie asked why, she sheepishly revealed that upon hearing the first signs of the Lord (approaching thunder, bellowing voice, Wagner’s Ring Cycle), she intended to whip off the one closest to her and replace it with the outer pair, so that Jesus would find her fresh and odourless and ready for heaven. She kept a tub of black paint in the hallway so when the time came she might daub the neighbours’ doors with the sign of the Beast, saving the Lord all that trouble of weeding out the baddies, separating sheep from goats. And you couldn’t form any sentence in that house which included the words ‘end’, ‘finished’, ‘done’, etc., for these were like so many triggers setting off both Hortense and Ryan with the usual ghoulish relish:
Irie: I finished the washing-up.
Ryan Topps (shaking his head solemnly at the truth of it): As one day we all shall be finished, Irie, my dear; be zealous therefore, and repent.
Or
Irie: It was a such a good film. The end was great!
Hortense Bowden (tearfully): And dem dat expeck such an end to dis world will be sorely disappointed, for He will come trailin’ terror and Lo de generation dat witness de events of 1914 shall now witness de turd part of de trees burn, and the turd part of de sea become as blood, and de turd part of de…
And then there was Hortense’s horror of weather reports. Whoever it was, however benign, honey-voiced and inoffensively dressed, she cursed them bitterly for the five minutes they stood there, and then, out of what appeared to be sheer perversity, proceeded to take the opposite of whatever advice had been proffered (light jacket and no umbrella for rain, full cagoule and rain hat for sun). It was several weeks before Irie understood that weathermen were the secular antithesis of Hortense’s life work, which was, essentially, a kind of supercosmic attempt to second-guess the Lord with one almighty biblical exegesis of a weather report. Next to that weathermen were nothing but upstarts… And tomorrow, coming in from the east, we can expect a great furnace to rise up and envelop the area with flames that give no light, but rather darkness visible… while I’m afraid the northern regions are advised to wrap up warm against thick-ribbed ice, and there’s a fair likelihood that the coast will be beaten with perpetual storms of whirlwind and dire hail which on firm land thaws not… Michael Fish and his ilk were stabbers-in-the-dark, trusting to the tomfoolery of the Met Office, making a mockery of that precise science, eschatology, that Hortense had spent over fifty years in the study of.
‘Any news, Mr Topps?’ (This question almost invariably asked over breakfast; and girlishly, breathlessly, like a child asking after Santa.)
‘No, Mrs B. We are still completing our studies. You must let my colleagues and myself deliberate thoroughly. In this life there are them that are teachers and then there are them that are pupils. There are eight million Witnesses of Jehovah waiting for our decision, waiting for the Judgement Day. But you must learn to leave such fings to them that ’ave the direct line, Mrs B., the direct line.’
After bunking for a few weeks, Irie returned to school. But it seemed so distant; even the journey from South to North each morning felt like an almighty polar trek, and worse, one that stopped short of its goal and ended up instead in the tepid regions, a non-event compared with the boiling maelstrom of the Bowden home. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. You become so used to extremity, suddenly nothing else will do.
She saw Millat regularly, but their conversations were brief. He was green-tied now and otherwise engaged. She still did Marcus’s filing twice a week, but avoided the rest of the family. She saw Josh fleetingly. He seemed to be avoiding the Chalfens as assiduously as she. Her parents she saw on weekends, icy occasions when everybody called everybody by their first names (Irie, can you pass the salt to Archie? Clara, Archie wants to know where the scissors are), and all parties felt deserted. She sensed that she was being whispered about in N W 2, the way North Londoners will when they suspect someone of coming down with religion, that nasty disease. So she hurried back to No. 28 Lindaker Road, Lambeth, relieved to be back in the darkness, for it was like hibernating or being cocooned, and she was as curious as everyone else to see what kind of Irie would emerge. It wasn’t any kind of prison. That house was an adventure. In cupboards and neglected drawers and in grimy frames were the secrets that had been hoarded for so long, as if secrets were going out of fashion. She found pictures of her great-grandmother Ambrosia, a bony, beautiful thing, with huge almond eyes, and one of Charlie ‘Whitey’ Durham standing in a pile of rubble with a sepia-print sea behind him. She found a bible with one line torn from it. She found photo-booth snaps of Clara in school uniform, grinning maniacally, the true horror of the teeth revealed. She read alternately from Dental Anatomy by Gerald M. Cathey and The Good News Bible, and raced voraciously through Hortense’s small and eclectic library, blowing the red dust of a Jamaican schoolhouse off the covers and often using a pen knife to cut never-before-read pages. February’s list was as follows:
An Account of a West Indian Sanatorium, by Geo. J. H. Sutton Moxly. London: Sampson, Low, Marston amp; Co., 1886. (There was an inverse correlation between the length of the author’s name and the poor quality of his book.)
Tom Cringle’s Log, by Michael Scott. Edinburgh: 1875.
In Sugar Cane Land, by Eden Phillpotts. London: McClure amp; Co., 1893.
Dominica: Hints and Notes to Intending Settlers, by His Honour H. Hesketh Bell, CMG. London: A. amp; C. Black, 1906.
The more she read, the more that picture of dashing Capt. Durham aroused her natural curiosity: handsome and melancholy, surveying the bricks of half a church, looking worldly-wise despite his youth, looking every inch the Englishman, looking like he could tell someone or another a thing or two about something. Maybe Irie herself. Just in case, she kept him under her pillow. And in the mornings it wasn’t Italianate vineyards out there any more, it was sugar, sugar, sugar, and next door was nothing but tobacco and she presumptuously fancied that the smell of plantain sent her back to somewhere, somewhere quite fictional, for she’d never been there. Somewhere Columbus called St Jago but the arawaks stubbornly re-named Xaymaca, the name lasting longer than they did. Well-wooded and Watered. Not that Irie had heard of those little sweet-tempered pot-bellied victims of their own sweet-tempers. Those were some other Jamaicans, fallen short of the attention-span of history. She laid claim to the past – her version of the past – aggressively, as if retrieving misdirected mail. So this was where she came from. This all belonged to her, her birthright, like a pair of pearl earrings or a post office bond. X marks the spot, and Irie put an X on everything she found, collecting bits and bobs (birth certificates, maps, army reports, news articles) and storing them under the sofa, so that as if by osmosis the richness of them would pass through the fabric while she was sleeping and seep right into her.
As the buds came with the spring, so like any anchoress she was visited. First, by voices. Coming crackling over Hortense’s neolithic radio, Joyce Chalfen on Gardeners’ Question Time:
Foreman: Another question from the audience, I think. Mrs Sally Whitaker from Bournemouth has a question for the panel, I believe. Mrs Whitaker?
Mrs Whitaker: Thank you, Brian. Well, I’m a new gardener and this is my first frost and in two short months my garden’s gone from being a real colour explosion to a very bare thing indeed… Friends have advised flowers with a compact habit but that leaves me with lots of tiny auricula and double daisies, which look silly because the garden’s really quite large. Now, I’d really like to plant something a little more striking, around the height of a delphinium, but then the wind gets it and people look over their fences thinking: Dear oh dear (sympathetic laughter from the studio audience). So, my question to the panel is, how do you keep up appearances in the bleak midwinter?
Foreman: Thank you, Mrs Whitaker. Well, it’s a common problem… and it doesn’t necessarily get any easier for the seasoned gardener. Personally, I never get it quite right. Well, let’s hand the question over to the panel, shall we? Joyce Chalfen, any answers or suggestions for the bleak midwinter?
Joyce Chalfen: Well, first I must say your neighbours sound very nosy. I’d tell them to mind their own beeswax if I were you (laughter from audience). But to be serious, I think this whole trend for round-the-clock bloom is actually very unhealthy for the garden and the gardener and particularly the soil, I really do… I think the winter should be a time of rest, subdued colours, you know – and then when the late spring does finally arrive the neighbours get a hell of a shock! Boom! There it is, this wonderful explosion of growth. I think the deep winter is really a time for nurturing the soil, turning it over, allowing it a rest and plotting its future all the better to surprise the nosy people next door. I always think of a garden’s soil like a woman’s body – moving in cycles, you know, fertile at some times and not others, and that’s really quite natural. But if you really are determined, then Lenten roses – Helleborus corsicus – do remarkably well in cold, calcareous soil, even if they’re quite in the-
Irie switched Joyce off. It was quite therapeutic switching Joyce off. This was not entirely personal. It just seemed tiring and unnecessary all of a sudden, that struggle to force something out of the recalcitrant English soil. Why bother when there was now this other place? (For Jamaica appeared to Irie as if it were newly made. Like Columbus himself, just by discovering it she had brought it into existence.) This well-wooded and watered place. Where things sprang from the soil riotously and without supervision, and a young white captain could meet a young black girl with no complications, both of them fresh and untainted and without past or dictated future – a place where things simply were. No fictions, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs – this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. And the particular magic of homeland, its particular spell over Irie, was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page.
But every time Irie felt herself closer to it, to the perfect blankness of the past, something of the present would ring the Bowden doorbell and intrude. Mothering Sunday brought a surprise visit from Joshua, angry on the doorstep, at least a stone and a half lighter, and much scruffier than usual. Before Irie had a chance to express either concern or shock, he had flounced into the lounge and slammed the door. ‘I’m sick of it! Sick to the back fucking teeth with it!’
The vibration of the door knocked Capt. Durham from his perch on Irie’s windowsill, and she carefully re-erected him.
‘Yeah, nice to see you too, man. Why don’t you sit down and slow down. Sick of what?’
‘Them. They sicken me. They go on about rights and freedoms, and then they eat fifty chickens every fucking week! Hypocrites!’
Irie couldn’t immediately see the connection. She took out a fag in preparation for a long story. To her surprise Joshua took one too, and they went to kneel on the window seat, blowing smoke through the grate up into the street.
‘Do you know how battery chickens live?’
Irie didn’t. Joshua explained. Cooped up for most of their poor chicken lives in total chicken darkness, packed together like chicken sardines in their chicken shit and fed the worst type of chicken grain.
And this, according to Joshua, was apparently nothing on how pigs and cows and sheep spent their time. ‘It’s a fucking crime. But try telling Marcus that. Try getting him to give up his Sunday hog-fest. He’s so fucking ill informed. Have you ever noticed that? He knows this enormous amount about one thing, but there’s this whole other world that… Oh, before I forget – you should take a leaflet.’
Irie never thought she would see the day when Joshua Chalfen handed her a leaflet. But here it was in her palm. It was called: Meat is Murder: The Facts and the Fiction, a publication from the FATE organization.
‘It stands for Fighting Animal Torture and Exploitation. They’re like the hardcore end of Greenpeace or whatever. Read it – they’re not just hippy freaks, they’re coming from a solid scientific and academic background and they’re working from an anarchist perspective. I feel like I’ve really found my niche, you know? It’s a really incredible group. Dedicated to direct action. The deputy’s an ex-Oxford fellow.’
‘Mmmm. How’s Millat?’
Joshua shook off the question. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Barmy. Going barmy. And Joyce is still pandering to his every whim. Just don’t ask me. They all sicken me. Everything’s changed.’ Josh ran his fingers anxiously through his hair, which just reached his shoulders now in what Willesdeners affectionately call a Jew-fro Mullet. ‘I just can’t tell you how everything’s changed. I’m having these real… moments of clarity.’
Irie nodded. She was sympathetic to moments of clarity. Her seventeenth year was proving chock-a-block with them. And she wasn’t surprised by Joshua’s metamorphosis. Four months in the life of a seventeen-year-old is the stuff of swings and roundabouts; Stones fans into Beatles fans, Tories into Liberal Democrats and back again, vinyl junkies to CD freaks. Never again in your life do you possess the capacity for such total personality overhaul.
‘I knew you’d understand. I wish I’d talked to you before, but I just can’t bear to be in the house these days and when I do see you Millat always seems to be in the way. It’s really good to see you.’
‘You too. You look different.’
Josh gestured dismissively at his clothes, which were distinctly less nerdy than they had been.
‘I guess you can’t wear your father’s old corduroy for ever.’
‘I guess not.’
Joshua clapped his hands together. ‘Well, I’ve booked my ticket for Glastonbury and I might not come back. I met these people from FATE and I’m going with them.’
‘It’s March. Not till the summer, surely.’
‘Joely and Crispin – that’s these people I met – say we might go up there early. You know, camp out for a bit.’
‘And school?’
‘If you can bunk, I can bunk… it’s not as if I’m going to fall behind. I’ve still got a Chalfen head on my shoulders, I’ll just come back for the exams and then fuck off again. Irie, you’ve just got to meet these people. They’re just… incredible. He’s a Dadaist. And she’s an anarchist. A real one. Not like Marcus. I told her about Marcus and his bloody FutureMouse. She thinks he’s a dangerous individual. Quite possibly psychopathic.’
Irie thought about this. ‘Mmm. I’d be surprised.’
Without stubbing out his fag, he threw it up on to the pavement. ‘And I’m giving up all meat. I’m a pescatarian at the moment, but that’s just half measures. I’m becoming a fucking vegetarian.’
Irie shrugged, not certain what the right response should be.
‘There’s a lot to be said for the old motto, you know?’
‘Old motto?’
‘Fight fire with fire. It’s only by really fucking extreme behaviour that you can get through to somebody like Marcus. He doesn’t even know how out there he is. There’s no point being reasonable with him because he thinks he owns reasonableness. How do you deal with people like that? Oh, and I’m giving up leather – wearing it – and all other animal by-products. Gelatin and stuff.’
After a while of watching the feet go by – leathers, sneakers, heels – Irie said, ‘That’ll show ’em.’
On April Fool’s Day, Samad turned up. He was all in white, on his way to the restaurant, crumpled and creased like a disappointed saint. He looked to be on the brink of tears. Irie let him in.
‘Hello, Miss Jones,’ said Samad, bowing ever so slightly. ‘And how is your father?’
Irie smiled with recognition. ‘You see him more than we do. How’s God?’
‘Perfectly fine, thank you. Have you seen my good-for-nothing son recently?’
Before Irie had a chance to give her next line, Samad broke down in front of her and had to be led into the living room, sat in Darcus’s chair and brought a cup of tea before he could speak.
‘Mr Iqbal, what’s wrong?’
‘What is right?’
‘Has something happened to Dad?’
‘Oh no, no… Archibald is fine. He is like the washing-machine advert. He carries on and on as ever.’
‘Then what?’
‘Millat. He has been missing these three weeks.’
‘God. Well, have you tried the Chalfens?’
‘He is not with them. I know where he is. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He is on some retreat with these lunatic green-tie people. In a sports centre in Chester.’
‘Bloody hell.’
Irie sat down cross-legged and took out a fag. ‘I hadn’t seen him in school, but I didn’t realize how long it had been. But if you know where he is…’
‘I didn’t come here to find him, I came to ask your advice, Irie. What can I do? You know him – how does one get through?’
Irie bit her lip, her mother’s old habit. ‘I mean, I don’t know… we’re not as close as we were… but I’ve always thought that maybe it’s the Magid thing… missing him… I mean he’d never admit it… but Magid’s his twin and maybe if he saw him-’
‘No, no. No, no, no. I wish that were the solution. Allah knows how I pinned all my hopes on Magid. And now he says he is coming back to study the English law – paid for by these Chalfen people. He wants to enforce the laws of man rather than the laws of God. He has learnt none of the lessons of Muhammad – peace be upon Him! Of course, his mother is delighted. But he is nothing but a disappointment to me. More English than the English. Believe me, Magid will do Millat no good and Millat will do Magid no good. They have both lost their way. Strayed so far from the life I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave. All I wanted was two good Muslim boys. Oh, Irie…’ Samad took her free hand and patted it with sad affection. ‘I just don’t understand where I have gone wrong. You teach them but they do not listen because they have the “Public Enemy” music on at full blast. You show them the road and they take the bloody path to the Inns of Court. You guide them and they run from your grasp to a Chester sports centre. You try to plan everything and nothing happens in the way that you expected…’
But if you could begin again, thought Irie, if you could take them back to the source of the river, to the start of the story, to the homeland… But she didn’t say that, because he felt it as she felt it and both knew it was as useless as chasing your own shadow. Instead she took her hand from underneath his and placed it on top, returning the stroke. ‘Oh, Mr Iqbal. I don’t know what to say…’
‘There are no words. The one I send home comes out a pukka Englishman, white suited, silly wig lawyer. The one I keep here is fully paid-up green bow-tie-wearing fundamentalist terrorist. I sometimes wonder why I bother,’ said Samad bitterly, betraying the English inflections of twenty years in the country, ‘I really do. These days, it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers – who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact… it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere.’
‘Oh, that’s not true, surely.’
‘And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie… and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?’
As Samad described this dystopia with a look of horror, Irie was ashamed to find that the land of accidents sounded like paradise to her. Sounded like freedom.
‘Do you understand, child? I know you understand.’
And what he really meant was: do we speak the same language? Are we from the same place? Are we the same?
Irie squeezed his hand and nodded vigorously, trying to ward off his tears. What else could she tell him but what he wanted to hear?
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
When Hortense and Ryan came home that evening after a late-night prayer meeting, both were in a state of high excitement. Tonight was the night. After giving Hortense a flurry of instructions as to the typesetting and layout of his latest Watchtower article, Ryan went into the hallway to make his telephone call to Brooklyn to get the news.
‘But I thought he was in consultation with them.’
‘Yes, yes, he is… but de final confirmation, you understand, mus’ come from Mr Charles Wintry himself in Brooklyn,’ said Hortense breathlessly. ‘What a day dis is! What a day! Help me wid liftin’ dis typewriter now… I need it on de table.’
Irie did as she was told, carrying the enormous old Remington to the kitchen and laying it down in front of Hortense. Hortense passed Irie a bundle of white paper covered in Ryan’s tiny script.
‘Now you read dat to me, Irie Ambrosia, slowly now… an’ I’ll get it down in type.’
Irie read for half an hour or so, wincing at Ryan’s horrible corkscrew prose, passing the whiting fluid when it was required, and gritting her teeth at the author’s interruptions as every ten minutes he popped back into the room to adjust his syntax or rephrase a paragraph.
‘Mr Topps, did you get trew yet?’
‘Not yet, Mrs B., not yet. Very busy, Mr Charles Wintry. I’m going to try again now.’
A sentence, Samad’s sentence, was passing through Irie’s tired brain. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. And now that Ryan was out of the way, Irie saw her opportunity to ask it, though she framed it carefully.
Hortense leant back in her chair and placed her hands on her lap. ‘I bin doin’ dis a very long time, Irie Ambrosia. I bin’ waitin’ ever since I was a pickney in long socks.’
‘But that’s no reason-’
‘What d’you know fe reasons? Nuttin’ at all. The Witness church is where my roots are. It bin good to me when nobody else has. It was de good ting my mudder gave me, an’ I nat going to let it go now we so close to de end.’
‘But Gran, it’s not… you won’t ever…’
‘Lemme tell you someting. I’m not like dem Witnesses jus’ scared of dyin’. Jus’ scared. Dem wan’ everybody to die excep’ dem. Dat’s not a reason to dedicate your life to Jesus Christ. I gat very different aims. I still hope to be one of de Anointed evan if I am a woman. I want it all my life. I want to be dere wid de Lord making de laws and de decisions.’ Hortense sucked her teeth long and loud. ‘I gat so tired wid de church always tellin’ me I’m a woman or I’m nat heducated enough. Everybody always tryin’ to heducate you; heducate you about dis, heducate you about dat… Dat’s always bin de problem wid de women in dis family. Somebody always tryin’ to heducate them about someting, pretendin’ it all about learnin’ when it all about a battle of de wills. But if I were one of de hundred an’ forty-four, no one gwan try to heducate me. Dat would be my job! I’d make my own laws an’ I wouldn’t be wanting anybody else’s opinions. My mudder was strong-willed deep down, and I’m de same. Lord knows, your mudder was de same. And you de same.’
‘Tell me about Ambrosia,’ said Irie, spotting a chink in Hortense’s armour that one might squeeze through. ‘Please.’
But Hortense remained solid. ‘You know enough already. De past is done wid. Nobody learn nuttin’ from it. Top of page five please – I tink dat’s where we were.’
At that moment Ryan returned to the room, face redder than ever.
‘What, Mr Topps? Is it? Do you know?’
‘God help the heathen, Mrs B., for the day is indeed at hand! It is as the Lord laid out clearly in his book of Revelation. He never intended a third millennium. Now I’ll need that article typed up, and then another one that I’ll dictate to you off the cuff – you’ll need to telephone all the Lambeth members, and leaflet the-’
‘Oh, yes, Mr Topps – but jus’ let me tyake it in jus’ a minute… It couldn’t be any udder date, could it, Mr Topps? I tol’ you I felt it in my bones.’
‘I’m not sure as to how much your bones had to do wiv it, Mrs B. Surely more credit is due to the thorough scriptural study done by myself and my colleagues-’
‘And God, presumably,’ said Irie, cutting him a sharp glare, going over to hold Hortense, who was shaking with sobs. Hortense kissed Irie on both cheeks and Irie smiled at the hot wetness.
‘Oh, Irie Ambrosia. I’m so glad you’re here to share dis. I live dis century – I came into dis world in an eart-quake at de very beginning and I shall see the hevil and sinful pollution be herased in a mighty rumbling eart-quake once more. Praise de Lord! It is as he promised after all. I knew I’d make it. I got jus’ seven years to wait. Ninety-two!’ Hortense sucked her teeth contemptuously. ‘Cho! My grandmudder live to see one hundered-and-tree an de woman could skip rope till de day she keel over and drop col’. Me gwan make it. I make it dis far. My mudder suffer to get me here – but she knew de true church and she make heffort to push me out in de mos’ difficult circumstances so I could live to see that glory day.’
‘Amen!’
‘Oh, hamen, Mr Topps. Put on de complete suit of armour of God! Now, Irie Ambrosia, witness me as I say it: I’m gwan be dere. An’ I’m gwan to be in Jamaica to see it. I’m going home that year of our Lord. An’ you can come dere too if you learn from me and listen. You wan come Jamaica in de year two thousand?’
Irie let out a little scream and rushed to give her grandmother another hug.
Hortense wiped her tears with her apron. ‘Lord Jesus, I live dis century! Well and truly I live dis terrible century wid all its troubles and vexations. And tanks to you, Lord, I’m gwan a feel a rumble at both ends.’