‘Safe travels, sweet girl. Safe travels.’
The taxi pulled out of the driveway and instantly the big old house on North Shore Road felt different. She closed the front door and walked past the sitting room, picturing Oscar fresh from his bath, running around the room, trying to evade her grip.
‘You need to let me dry your hair!’ Cee-Cee brandished the towel as the little boy jumped behind her on the sofa and then back down to the rug, darting this way and that around the room in his pyjamas like a tiddler in a bucket trying to escape capture.
‘Oscar! You can laugh and run around as much as you like, but you are not going to sleep with wet hair, it will do you no good!’
Reluctantly he sat down hard on the pouffe and leaned back against her. Cee-Cee gently cradled his head in the fluffy white towel and soaked up the residue of water that ran in tiny rivulets down his slender neck. When she had finished, she raked at his parting with her fingertips, styling his soft, straw-coloured hair into something flat and neat.
‘You’ll do.’ She kissed his head and he stood, running now around the edge of the rug.
‘Upstairs, Oscar, it’s bedtime.’
‘I’ll race you!’ he had called, and she chuckled.
‘I’ll race you with my seventy-year-old knees!’ She laughed.
By the time she got to his room, he was under the duvet with just his head poking out and Mr Bob by his side.
‘Cee-Cee?’
‘Yes?’
‘Hank says when his wobbly tooth came out, he got ten dollars from the tooth fairy!’
Five-year-old Oscar pulled and prodded his teeth determinedly and huffed in disappointment to find that they were stuck fast.
‘Ten dollars! That is a king’s fortune.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe I should put my teeth under the pillow and pay off the mortgage!’
‘Pay off the mortgage?’ He looked at her quizzically.
‘I don’t have a mortgage, but it’s an expression.’ She laughed again. ‘Don’t you go worrying about your teeth, and don’t go wishing your life away! One day you will blink and you will be very, very old like me!’
‘You’re not very, very old!’
‘Try telling that to my aching bones.’ She smiled. ‘Being old is a privilege, Oscar, of that I am sure. It gives me time to reflect. It’s like when we walk up the hill to go to the supermarket and we need to take a breather, so we park on the wall or bench and sit and watch the world pass by for a moment or two while everything settles.’
The little boy nodded.
Oscar pulled Mr Bob into the crook of his neck, as ever only half listening. It was getting close to his sleepy time. His mum and dad were having dinner at the Reefs and Cee-Cee would sleep right here in the chair until they returned. Keeping watch.
Cee-Cee smiled at the memory and ran a cool glass of water, which she took to the kitchen table, before lifting the notepad from her bag, along with her pen.
I have just waved you goodbye and my heart aches with all I am trying to keep inside it. I shall miss you! Oh, how I shall miss you! And how I will miss the family that I came to love, now just one: James. My heart aches for him too. I feel part of this family and I hope it is okay for me to say that, it’s the truth. I see Oscar everywhere I look and now you, only recently gone, will linger in the quiet corners of rooms and in the shadows of the hallways where laughter used to live. I will add you to the list of the many people in my life that made an impact – those who taught me things that now live on in my consciousness; single moments that made me laugh, made me cry. Not always big things, either. I think about a woman wearing lemon-coloured gloves and a white pillbox hat, who I bumped into outside Trimminghams on Front Street, when I was no more than a girl. She was carrying a fistful of brown paper bags with ribbon handles containing Lord knows what, but they looked fancy. I was young and had been rushing and we banged against each other, all elbows and ribs, a-clattering on the hot pavement. With clothes and pride askew, we both knelt to the floor to gather what had been dropped and apologised profusely, equally keen I would say to bring our encounter to an end. As I turned away, still half in tune with the voice of the woman whose lemon gloves I greatly admired, I heard her mutter to her friend, ‘Did you see those killer cheekbones? Lucky girl!’ Now I have to confess that the shape and prominence of your cheekbones is not a learned skill nor something you can do a dang thing about, but I took the compliment nonetheless and my heart swelled a little. Little did that lady in the lemon-coloured gloves know that on that day when my confidence was low and my spirit beyond fragile, these few words gave me the shot in the arm needed to go and do and say what I had to. She, of course, would never know, but it was a lesson to me. Kind words or a compliment can heal, just like mean words can cut.
Yes, I remember her even now.
Cee-Cee looked around the kitchen and glanced at the clock, wondering if she might take Rachel up a cup of tea, before remembering that she had left.
‘Don’t be stupid, Cee-Cee.’ She closed her eyes. ‘May the Lord keep you safe, and may his angels guard you while you fly.’ She turned her attention back to her letter.
I also think a lot about my best friend Eliza-Jane Clara May Brown. Oh, Clara and I have history! I don’t rightly know if our lives were so interwoven because we were best friends or we were best friends because our lives were so interwoven. Even here, even now, that question is no clearer to me. Clara was as fine a friend as I could ever have had – at least, that was what I believed, but I only had sight of half of the deck of cards, as my daddy might have said.
Clara loved being in our house – by our house I mean Grandma Sally’s house, where I might have told you I slept, with my mommy and daddy in the house next door. I loved to sleep with my gran in her two rooms. Her sons, my uncles, worked up at The Royal Naval Dockyard in Sandys Parish and slept in the rough accommodation provided, no more than bunks and a bucket by all accounts. But there weren’t nothing rough about Grandma Sally’s house. It was painted in the prettiest shade of lilac, with the traditional white limestone-blocked roof that like all the other roofs on the island, looked like the upside-down hull of a boat. The inverted steps just the right shape to resist hurricanes and the clever design meant water flowed over it and was collected with ease. Clara always dithered at the end of Grandma Sally’s path, making a great show about whether she should come in or go home. I think she liked me to plead with her, it made her feel wanted, and who can’t relate to that? She’d stand there running her palm over the small hibiscus bush that had sprouted, drawn like a buzzing bee to them vibrant pink blooms. I can see her now, holding those delicate, silk-like petals and then swiping them under her broad nose, inhaling the remnants of that lingering perfume like it was smelling salts. I heard her, time and again, stating with certainty, ‘When I’m older, I’m going to live in a big old house with hibiscus plants all around the edge, so I can wander into my garden and pick a bloom whenever I feel like it!’
I naturally added this, her utmost desire, to my daily prayer, which was primarily a celestial shopping list for all the things I figured those around me might need or want. The Almighty God must have been listening, because to my knowledge, Clara got one of the prettiest houses in the whole of Warwick Parish and a man who could afford it on account of his promotion at the ferry company.
Clara had been the youngest of five, and she lived further along in Pembroke Parish, towards Hamilton, just off Marsh Folly Road, backatown, near the stinking dump. That’s where she lived in one room of a wooden construction with meagre proportions with her momma, Eula. It was sad, but true that Momma Eula showed Clara more impatience than love. Grandma Sally said that Eula had figured her child-rearing days were over and having waved off her last teen on the path of self-governance, was looking forward to enjoying her twilight years with her feet up and a strong pipe in her hand as the sun set.
The appearance of Clara, all ten pounds of her, exactly nine months after a brief, but by all accounts, delightful evening spent at the Swizzle Inn in the company of a Ghanaian gentleman stopping over on our island on his way to New York, was a little unexpected and most unwelcome. Not to mention a scandal. I figure these things shaped my friend in ways we did not yet know. Not that I gave a hoot about her beginnings – not then, and not now. I only mention it because it popped into my head and as I said, my thoughts and those I choose to voice are whatever comes to me and for that I make no apology.
It was while we dithered on the path one night having spent the afternoon at the beach that Grandma Sally came outside. ‘Good evening, girls,’ she called from the porch, with her hands on her broad hips. ‘Who would like a bowl of my green split-pea and ham soup?’
How we smiled, our mouths watering at the very suggestion.
Momma Eula would just have to wait.
I can picture Grandma Sally now, ladling the thick broth into two white enamel bowls with a blue-painted edge, and setting them on the little table on a white embroidered tablecloth. Now, I don’t want you to go thinking that my family were anything high and mighty, we were no wealthier than the next and carried humility about us like a comfortable yoke, but my grandma had a certain refinement about her, picked up from working in some of the finest houses on the island. Once, she was called to work up at Government House, where she got to pass canapés around while the governor himself hosted dignitaries from London, England. Yes! England. The governor’s name was Admiral Sir Ralph Leatham and he thanked her in person for helping the evening go smoothly. She told me she spent the whole time in awe of the jewellery worn by the ladies – brilliant diamonds and gold chains with rubies and sapphires so plentiful she wondered if they had found treasure in a wreck on our own shores. She concluded that even the plainest woman with a pinched nose, thin, bloodless lips and a pointy chin could be made to look pretty with the addition of these baubles. My daddy, overhearing, pointed out that no matter how many jewels anyone hung from their person or their clothes, it was ’portant to remember that we all shit through the same hole. God forgive my coarseness, Rachel, but that is what he said.
And he was right.
All those years waiting at tables and helping at events and soirées, meant Grandma Sally knew a thing or two about being a host and keeping a home. She was never to be seen without her hair fastened inside a white, floppy, linen hat and her feet stuffed inside white leather shoes that were at least half a size too small, causing her instep to bunch up like a trotter and sit in a rounded lump that pushed against the stiff sides of those shoes.
Her most prized possessions were three things: a delicate green, glass-shaded lamp with pale glass fronds that hung like a fringe all around it and, once the kerosene wick was lit, bathed the room in its amber glow. A bamboo card table, worn and stained the colour of strong tea through age and sea air, and a dainty blue-china, hand-painted cup and saucer with a fluted edge picked out in pure gold! A generous homeowner for whom she had worked had gifted her all of these things. It delighted Grandma Sally that these objects, deemed good enough to grace the parlour of the fashionable Madam Jean-Laurent Laroche from Paris, France, now sat inside her humble little house in Warwick Parish. The beautiful trinkets and hints of finery, no matter how patched, with which my grandma surrounded herself were proof of how far she had come. She always reminded me that it was a mere slip in the hand of time, not much more than one hundred years previous that her great-great-grandma had toiled in slavery, living outside with no shelter and no need of a pretty lamp or tablecloth. I kept that knowledge close to my heart and it shaped me every day.
It still does.
So there we were, enjoying our soup, when Grandma Sally walked to the closet in the corner and opened the door. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ She pulled out a swatch of stunning white organza fabric covered in a raised pattern of cherries that sat in bunches of twos with the relief of foliage behind. It was something quite beautiful. ‘Oh, it’s so lovely!’ Clara clapped her hands together. ‘Is it for the dance?’ she asked. My grandma nodded and I concentrated on my soup, feeling a flash of guilt to be the owner of something so showy and so very beautiful. I was never that kind of girl. ‘I shall make a very long skirt with a petticoat underneath and a nipped in little waist with a contrast sash. I’ve given it a lot of thought,’ Grandma Sally explained. I didn’t want to boast, but my stomach swelled with excitement – either that or I was full of hot soup. ‘And what about you, Miss Clara, what are you planning on wearing?’ Grandma asked, and Clara sat up straight and said, ‘Actually, I don’t think I shall be going this year; I may have other plans.’ And I will never forget what came next: ‘Oh well, that is a shame,’ muttered Grandma Sally. ‘What in the Lord’s name am I going to do with this?’ From inside the cupboard, she drew out a second swatch of the exact same fabric but in a delicate shade of pale pink; it was equally as beautiful! ‘I was fixing on making you the same dress in this, but if you have other plans . . .’ Grandma Sally shook her head and made to return the fabric to the cupboard.
‘Grandma Sally, bring me that fabric! Of course I’m going now!’ Clara boomed, and wrapped the piece around her head, delighted.
Yes, we were sisters in every sense. Although sisters I now know should look out for one another, help and support each other. And there weren’t nothing sisterly about what she did to me in my time of need, my time of distress.
Nothing at all.
Cee-Cee sat up straight at the sound of the front door opening. She must have fallen into a doze.
‘Well, look at that. Time got carried away with me.’
‘Are you okay, Cee-Cee? You’re sitting in the dark.’ James spoke softly, as he switched on the kitchen light.
‘Well, I didn’t realise the time!’ She stood, embarrassed, and walked to the stove.
‘I don’t want any supper, Cee-Cee. But thank you. I’m not hungry. Not tonight.’
‘There is cheese in the fridge if you get peckish later.’
He nodded. ‘Did . . . did she get away okay?’
‘Taxi picked her up fine.’ She saw the look of sadness in his eyes.
‘I miss her already. In fact’ – he shook his head and looked out of the window – ‘I have missed her for a long time now.’
‘What is meant to, comes back to you.’
‘I hope so.’ He gave her a brief smile and coughed to mask his emotion. ‘Let me drop you home.’
‘No, I like a walk at this time of night.’ She walked to the table and folded her notebook and pen back inside her bag.
‘It’s starting to get quite dark, Cee-Cee.’
She smiled at him. ‘James, I know every inch of these roads with my eyes closed. I have been walking them for more than seventy years. Now get some rest.’ She nodded at him and made her way across the vast hallway where her footsteps echoed in the quiet.