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СКАЧАТЬ must never tell your mother about these things, y’unnerstan? You talk to me or Tan Cee, but never your mother, y’hear me?’

      He’d asked her why. She seemed to be making up her mind about something, then she touched his arm, ‘Know Miss Maisie?’

      He nodded.

      ‘See that long white mark that run across she face?’

      He nodded.

      ‘Well, one time, when y’all was little baby, Maisie say something to your mother about y’all and Manuel Forsyth. Elena put you an’ Peter down by the roadside and went fo’ her. It take four people to pull her off. She only had time to do that to her face. Imagine if she had another coupla minutes.’

      He looked across at his mother, his voice a plea this time. ‘Let Peter go – I don’ like ’im, Na.’

      ‘You don’ like somebody you don’ know? Is you he ask for.’

      ‘Why?’

      She looked away.

      ‘I wan’ to stay with Tan.’

      ‘What you say?’

      He felt the change in her. It was as quiet as it was frightening. He jumped to his feet to run. Her hand shot out and closed around his shirt.

      ‘Siddown!’ The voice came from her throat. ‘Lemme teach you something. I’ll never have to do this with Peter – but you, you different. I don’ know what kind o’ child you is. You want to know who’s your modder? Well, let me,’ she shook him, ‘show you,’ she shook him again, ‘who your modder is!’

      She was loosening the buttons of her bodice with the other hand. He watched as she lifted the ends of the garment. Still staring into his eyes, she took his hand and placed it on the small bulge on the left side of her stomach. He tried to pull away. She dragged him back.

      ‘Peter was here fo’ eight months an’ thirteen days. You,’ she pulled his hand over to the other side, ‘you was here a extra two days. This,’ she forced his finger along the lines that ran like a faint network of vines around the bulges, ‘is y’all signature. Is de writing dat y’all leave on me. Dis is Peter; dis is you. Me, Elena Bender, I’z your modder. So!’ She shook him hard. ‘Don’ get renk with me, y’hear me! I not askin you, I tellin you – next week you goin live with your father.’

      She pushed his hand away, got to her feet and went inside.

      A couple of mornings every week, when it was still so dark even the chickens beneath the house had not begun to stir, there came the clip-clop-clipping of his father’s donkey, the thud of a bag of provisions hitting the ground, then the voice, ‘Elen-ooy!’

      Pynter would listen to his mother in the bedroom as she got up, quickly dressed and hurried down the hill to the road.

      Pynter would hear the rhythm of the donkey’s hooves fading into the distance, following them in his imagination through the sea of plantation canes in the lower valleys of Old Hope, over the Déli Morne River, past the stony wastelands of Salt Fields, where they said the bamboo rose so high their branches swept the sky.

      For a long time Pynter had tried to put a face to that voice.

      The hands that lifted him onto the back of the donkey were big like Birdie’s. A face turned back at him – brown and smooth and hairless, the eyes resting on him almost as a hand would. And then a voice, ‘Is quiet where we going; you sure you want to come?’

      He nodded. He liked the smell of the man.

      His father’s house stood on a ridge that looked down on Old Hope. From there he could see the deep green scoop of the valley winding towards the Kalivini swamps where his grandfather disappeared, and the purple-dark hills that seemed to hold back the sea from spilling over onto the canes and the people who worked in them. His father’s house was smaller than his mother’s and had no yard to speak of, just the lawn he was not allowed to walk on, which belonged to Miss Maddie – a greying woman whom he’d only caught a glimpse of, and who his father called his daughter.

      A window with six glass panes let light into the bedroom. It was the only room with a door that was open to the day.

      His father pointed at the back room first – a lightless doorway that stood gaping like a toothless mouth, and from which came a warm and unexpected breath – the odour of musty, nameless things. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he said, without offering a reason. ‘And leave this place alone,’ he added, turning to the living room.

      He’d said ‘this place’ as if the living room did not belong to the house. It had been abandoned to spiders and dust mites. A mahogany table, on whose surface he drew finger faces and curlicues, stood in the middle of it. The matching chairs were arranged around it strangely, as if the people who had been sitting there had suddenly got up and, without looking back, had left the room for good. Two brownish photographs hung in the gloomiest corner of the room. The smaller one was just the head of a young man, his hair cropped short, staring directly out at them. In the other, a man sat on a beautiful chair with a gaze that was direct and grave. A still-faced woman rested a gloved hand on his arm. Four children, a boy and three girls, were arranged around them like flowers in a vase.

      His father gave him their names the moment he stepped through the doorway: Maddie, a sour-faced child, knock-kneed and resentful even then. To the left of her, Eileen – beautiful and dreamy. His father’s voice had gone dreamy too. Eileen left the island soon’z she was old enough to travel. Never look back. Pearly was the youngest – too young then to know that she had to sit still to get a proper picture, which was why her face was no more than a smudge.

      He left Gideon for last. Gideon was the only boy. ‘Apart from y’all, of course. Gideon build bridges for the government.

      ‘Gideon fifty next year. Pearly forty-seven. Eileen,’ he smiled, ‘she thirty-five next month.’

      For a while Pynter felt that the man had forgotten he was there. The bag he’d taken off the donkey was still hanging from his shoulder. His eyes were on the photograph. A stillness had come over his face.

      ‘Time pass. Time pass too fast, son. Time does pass too fast.’ His voice had grown thick and slow. There was a sadness there that made Pynter turn his eyes up at the heavy shape against the backlight of the doorway.

      Once, this shape had been no more than a sound. A voice. It used to stop his hands from whatever they were doing. His father’s voice – different from the voices of all the men he’d ever heard. And now that he could see him, it was the only voice that fitted the face to which it belonged. A large face, brown like burnt ginger, not smiling, not strict, not young, not old. A face that shifted easily, like shadow over water.

      Miss Lizzie’s words came back to him, ‘Ole Man Manuel, s’not s’pose to be.’ Words that invited him to shame. Words that tried to force themselves into him the way his mother and his aunts would pin his arms against his sides, pull his head back and pour medicine down his throat. Old Man Manuel … Peter and he were not supposed to be. Something, something must’ve happen. Something …

      And whatever that something was, it shone like a dark light in their eyes; in the women’s laughter by the river. It was there in the silence of his mother when she pulled him and Peter close to her to inspect their hair or skin. It was there when she combed СКАЧАТЬ