A Cupboard Full of Coats (7 page)

Without asking he turned on the kitchen radio. It was set to Classic FM. Bach’s
Magnificat
ceased abruptly as Lemon began to retune the station, turning the volume up in an effort to hear the faintest illegal transmissions of reggae pirate-radio stations, and the static crackling and hissing, the tuning in and out of stations he had no interest in, went on at length, stretching my poor nerves till I felt like a passenger travelling on a fast train beside an open window.

He found a station of his choice finally, an old-style giggipgiggip channel, playing the weary, slow reggae of singers long dead. To raise them, he whacked the volume up as high as it could go.

My eyes followed him back to the sink where he washed the lamb, lifting the pieces out, and trimmed off the fat and bloodied edges with fingers that went about their task deftly. Compared with how clumsy his handling was of the table knife I gave him last night with dinner, he wielded the meat cleaver with the finesse of a pro.

All the while, he kept a lit cigarette poised in the right-hand side of his mouth. He kept the smoke out of his eyes by keeping the right eye half closed and his head tilted slightly to the left.

I watched.

He put the lamb into the pot and emptied another kettleful of hot water over it. He selected a few choice branches of thyme, ran the water over them at the sink, shook the excess off as though he were shaking down the mercury in a thermometer, then tossed them into the cauldron as well. He rummaged in the cutlery drawer for a ladle, positioned himself in front of the cooker and, with his back to me, as uninhibited as if I was not sitting there watching him and scowling at all, as he stirred the pot, he started to dance.

Instantly, the room was filled with the aroma of soup beginnings, the earliest stage when all the ingredients still retained their own fresh and heightened smells, an aroma that was a group or sequence of different scents that assailed individually, till the fragrant thyme finally rose to dominate. Then, on the back of the record before it, from the radio came the instrumental sounds of ‘Mr Bojangles’, and John Holt’s smooth vocals began to croon about the very first time he’d met him.

There were things I no longer believed in. God was one; a pretty straightforward process of elimination had clarified that issue once my mother was dead. And all the stuff she believed in, that they all believed in, their generation, the spirits and jumbies and obeah, the miscellaneous hocus pocus, all of that nonsense I had thrown out years ago. I was not a spiritual person. I did not believe in karma – of which I had seen little evidence – or fate or destiny or anything along those lines. It goes without saying that listening to someone explain an out-of-body experience would have produced little more response from me than a sneer.

Yet I don’t know how else to describe it. The combination of the soup and the music and Lemon throwing down moves like he was Mr Bojangles himself, and I had a feeling, like déjà vu, as if the whole universe and every sound and atom of air inside it had curved sharply and was blasted back on rewind at warp speed, and suddenly the kitchen was full of glamorous bejewelled women, and sharply dressed men, the air filled with the smell of party foods: lamb curry, rice and peas, beef patties, goat water, salt-fish fritters and fried chicken. There were drinks galore, the hard stuff, rum and vodka and whisky and brandy, and everyone had a glass, drinking and chatting away in voices that sounded like they were cussing each other, drowned out by loud and regular laughter.

Over in the corner stood Berris on his own, sucking on a toothpick, immaculately dressed even by his standards, dripping gold from every part of his body that could sustain it, sipping whisky chased with water, red-eyed from the marijuana he had been smoking, green-eyed with petty rage, staring through the open double doors between the kitchen and the living room.

In the living room, calypso blared, Arrow’s
‘
Hot Hot Hot’
,
and a sea of bodies bobbed and swayed, arms raised, backs bending, hips bumping, waists winding, and in the midst of them all, my mother, the best dancer of all the women there, and Lemon, the best man, bouncing off each other’s bodies in a perfect passion of rhythm and style.

Finally, Berris put his drink down on the counter closest to him and removed the toothpick from his lips. He dropped it into the glass and began making his way towards them. His gait was brisk and sure, like a bulldog on muscular legs slightly bowed, his shoulders moving as if they too were strolling, left right left right left. In his expression there was no trace of anger or malice. Instead his features were set hard into the focused expression of a man who had repulsive but necessary tasks to perform; the man responsible for garbage disposal or sewage clearance, the person charged with vermin exterminations.

Only his eyes blazed.

All but two of the people in the house that night were aware of him as he walked, and the wave of bodies across his path parted as if he were Moses himself. For a man who danced badly, there was grace in the fluid swing of his arm, and my mother spun across the room in a clumsy pirouette for one who danced so well. She landed on the floor in shock and it was only after she touched her nose and saw blood that she even realized what had happened. By then, Berris had passed her en route to the record player. There he dragged up the stylus in a loud and permanent scrape across the LP. In the quiet, no one spoke. Berris looked around, like a proud father at his daughter’s wedding, just checking he had everyone’s attention, about to commence his speech:
ting ting ting
. It must have been a trick of the dark, but he appeared taller, his chest fuller. He had but the two words to say to the people watching, and when he spoke his voice was loud but calm.

‘Party done.’

When I came to I was lying on the settee. I felt dizzy and confused. There was a pillow under my head and a blanket over my body. It was dark outside and the living-room lights were on. Kneeling on the floor beside the settee was Lemon, his hand on my forehead, like he was checking to see if I had a temperature. There was a pain towards the back of my head, above the left ear, like I had taken a hard blow. I looked around the room, trying to get my bearings. It was the decor that was out of place. My mind was in the wrong era. She was not here and had not been for years.

‘What happened?’ I asked. My throat was dry and I cleared it.

Using his thumb, he pulled back my eyelids, first one then the other, examining my pupils, looking for signs of concussion I guessed.

‘You passed out. But not to worry. I gotta strong feeling you gonna live.’

‘Super,’ I said.

I tried to sit up, but the effort required was too much. I flopped back down and Lemon adjusted the blanket gently.

‘You have somewhere to go?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Then rest up. Relax. S’about time you start take care of youself.’

I thought about my life, tried to think of a single good thing in it, just the smallest reason to want to live, to care enough either way, and found nothing.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What’s the point?’

‘What no kill you make you strong.’

‘Spare me the cheery sermons, please.’

He looked at me like I imagined I looked at Ben sometimes. As though I was a difficult child and he was doing his best to not rise to it. He picked up a bowl containing water and a flannel from where he had placed it on the floor beside him and I realized while I had been unconscious he had obviously been using it to wipe my head. It felt like the greatest act of kindness anyone had done for me in years, that simple functional task: dipping, squeezing, dabbing. To my horror I felt tears prickling the surface of my eyes.

‘I’d really prefer to be left alone,’ I said.

He stood up. ‘Let me get you some soup.’

Oohh, that soup, that soup, that soup; it was heaven. Not too runny, not too thick, the consistency was perfect. Saffroncoloured and bursting with flavour, with small, soft pieces of yam and sweet potato and green banana and tania seed, and chewy torpedo dumplings. The lamb was not overcooked till it fell from the bone, but had retained its elasticity. Every mouthful bore deliciously delicate treats: carrots and pearl barley and christophine and lima beans. He sat beside me on the settee and fed me like he must have done his wife, slow, careful, spoonful by spoonful. I recalled the story of Rapunzel and her barren, unhappy mother who, having tasted the salad pilfered from the witch’s garden, decided she must have more of it or die. With every swallow, how I identified with her.

And as I ate in wonder, Lemon spoke non-stop, voice low, as if I were too infirm to converse back and it was incumbent on him to keep the conversation going single-handed. The most important ingredient was the pumpkin. Once the pumpkin was good, you were halfway there. And you had to know the difference between what you wanted boiled into the soup for flavour and what should be kept back and added later. And you needed to know when the lamb was cooked, the point at which it should be removed from the pot, to be later returned. Timing was everything. To cook a perfect pot of soup, you had first to learn how to tell the time.

When the contents of the bowl had been polished off, I offered up the three words that best expressed my feelings.

‘I want more,’ I said.

He looked at me and smiled. It was the first time he had smiled since his arrival. I had forgotten how charming it was, how attractive it made him. He had one of those smiles that engaged every feature on his face, his wide mouth, his lean cheeks, his eyes, the creased skin at their corners. When he smiled at you it was as if you had his fullest attention; no one else existed for him anywhere. It was irresistible. I felt myself smiling back as he rose and left to bring me seconds.

I felt different. In the centre of my feelings, like the eye of a tornado, the anger held its ground, but around the edges I could feel it giving way to something softer that made me feel uncomfortable. Vulnerable. I wished I had the capacity to just enjoy the moment, to embrace the pleasure of having things done for me, but it was not in me. Instead, I found myself wondering what was in it for him, why he was doing this, and just how bad the sting would be that brought me back down to earth.

When he returned I was happy to see the bowl was almost as full as it had been last time. Carefully he settled on the floor beside the settee, moving slowly, careful not to spill a drop. I reached out and took the bowl from him, turning to lie on my side so I could feed myself.

‘You sure you can manage?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Why are you doing this?’

‘Got nothing else to do.’

‘That’s not a good enough answer.’

‘It’s the best answer you gonna get.’

‘I don’t want the “best answer”, I want the truth.’ I waited, but he didn’t reply. ‘You visited him, didn’t you, in prison? That’s why he came to see you.’

He shook his head. ‘Me and Berris go back a ways. We had unfinished business, things that needed to be said.’

‘About my mother?’

He shrugged. ‘And other things.’

‘Like?’

‘You asking me to number and reel them off? Most stories are like that bowl of soup you eating now, a whole heap of ingredients put together at the proper time. You can’t pick up one thing on its own, piece of dasheen say, and study it then walk and tell people you gotta understanding of soup. You have to start with the things that need to go in the pot first. You want the truth, I gotta start at the beginning.’

‘So start at the beginning then,’ I said, wondering where the beginning of my own confession lay. Not the night of the engagement party,
ting ting ting
. By then things were already in full swing. The beginning was back further. Months back.

‘Now?’ he asked.

‘Yes now.’

‘I need a drink.’

‘So? Get one.’

He was slow to stand, unsure but going along with it. He rubbed his hands together, psyching himself up.

‘You want one as well?’

‘Sure,’ I answered. ‘Why not?’

*

‘We growed up together, me and Berris both. In Cudjoe Head. North Montserrat. People say his father never want to know him from when he born. Don’t know if it’s true but it don’t matter anyhow, ’cos Berris believe it to be so.

‘His mother put him to board with Mistress Jolly when she went to Curaçao. Visited a few times but never come back to get him or send ticket for him to come. Wasn’t no work in Montserrat then. Yeah, there was the odd cleaning job in one of the hotel or rich people house, but you couldn’t live off what you earn there. Folks had to go to the other islands. At that time was mostly Curaçao they went. Had sugar and coffee and oil there. Was work to be had, and money.

‘They went off. Send back whatever they could to keep the kids. Pretty sure his mum done that, same as everybody else, but Berris say if she did, he never see a cent. Mistress Jolly tell him his mother never send a bean. Type of person she was, can’t see she woulda keep him for nothing. But that’s what she say and that’s what the man believe.

‘We was raggedy. All the kids was raggedy then. Had but the two pair of trouser, one for church and one for school. You never wear you church trouser to school ’less you want you arse cut, and you school pants you take off soon as you reach home in case you wear those out before time and have to go school with you arse outta door. Must be only a handful had shoes and them what did was lucky if they fit. I remember Orlando Weekes, schoolteacher son. Boy used to bawl fire because the shoes be biting him all day and his mother make him keep them on. Boy used to limp like a dog with a crab on him paw. Girl, we were raggedy then. Raggedy. Times was rough and all of us together was poor.

‘But it come like Berris was worse off. Don’t know if it was the hair or what. We used to go down by Mas’ Cook. Mas’ Cook was a handicap. Had short legs but might as wella had no legs and done ’cos they never work. Used to pull hisself ’long on him backside with the hands. Come like after a while you hardly even notice ’cos he move so fast. He’s the one person I know them times make a good living. Man used to make mat and basket from reed and they was always by the gate for people to see and buy. And he used to cut hair. He cut all our hair. Would chap you in the head if you move once he start cut. Most times you get a skiffle you hadda lump on you head you never start out with.