Dinner Along the Amazon (7 page)

The next morning, Harper went to the grocery store and bought lemons and sugar and paper cups. Bertha gave him the money.

As he was coming past Mrs Jamieson’s house on his way home, loaded down with his purchases and practically staggering under their weight, he heard a voice calling him.

“Oh, Harper! Harper Dewey.”

He stopped and listened.

“Harper, dear. I’m over here.”

He looked around and saw Mrs Jamieson standing under a tree in her front garden. She held a trowel in one hand and wore a large sun hat that had a ribbon hanging down the back. She beckoned him in.

He set the parcel of lemons and sugar and paper cups inside her gate and walked over her lawn.

“Good morning, Harpie. What have you got there?” she said.

Mrs Jamieson was the only person, besides his mother, who called him Harpie and he distinctly rebelled against it, as it seemed far too personal a name for her to use.

“I’m selling lemonade all afternoon,” he said.

“Oh! You’re going to have a lemonade bazaar. How nice. I suppose you’re trying to make some extra pocket money—is that it?”

“Yes.”

“What for, dear?”

Mrs Jamieson went back to her trowelling, around the base of the tree.

“Just to buy something.”

“Well tell me what, dear? What is it you want?”

Harper was silent.

Mrs Jamieson looked up, pushing back the brim of her sun hat.

“Oh, I see. It’s a secret!” she said, “something for that naughty mother of yours? I’ll bet that’s it. You know, I saw her coming home yesterday. Oh, Harper, you must be a very brave little boy to put up with all that. You know, of course, don’t you darling, that all grownups don’t behave like that? It’s just, I suppose, that your mummy is sick. But we all don’t do that when we’re sick. Some of us are brave. And you must be brave too. Not that you haven’t been. As I said, dear, I think you must be very brave. Very, very brave to stand for it for so long; and so well too. But you mustn’t get the idea that we’re all like that or that anybody needs to be, dear. Drinking…” Mrs Jamieson droned on over the earth she was working, “is just an escape and only irresponsible people do it. It’s only apt to show us how weak they are, my dear, and we must never think of them as being pitiful or sad. Your mother, Harper, used to be one of the most beautiful women you could see anywhere in the whole world. But she let herself go, you see, and that was naughty of her.”

She looked at Harper and smiled. He stood listening to her with his hands held behind his back.

“When you grow up, you won’t do that will you, Harper? You won’t let go and give in like that? God doesn’t want us to be like that, you know. He wants us to be strong and brave.” She went back to her work. “Tell me, Harper. Tell me something. Does your mother pray, dear? Do you know?”

“Bertha prays,” said Harper flatly.

“Yes, dear, I know—but does your mother? Do you know if she does?”

Harper looked off over Mrs Jamieson’s head towards his own house beyond the hedge and the fence. He looked at his mother’s window. Then he spoke, very quietly and almost with serenity, to Mrs Jamieson.

“I think God must hate having made anyone as silly as you are,” he said.

He left immediately, without looking at her, without pausing to determine her reaction and without any feeling of fear or of remorse. He picked up his package at the gate and walked, sedately and evenly, all the way to the side door where he rang the bell, because he was locked out.

At three o’clock Harper went down the drive and set up the orange crate and the chair and put out the paper cups and put on his white sun hat with the green eye-shade and rang the bell. The bell was the little silver one that Mrs Dewey rang at table when it was time for Bertha to clear. In the thick air of the afternoon it didn’t seem to make much noise—and for about half an hour there weren’t any customers. Then the first one came. Jo-Jo Parkinson—five years old—from across the street.

“Howdy Harper,” he said. He was all undone down the front and his hands were filthy.

Harper said: “You have dirty hands Jo-Jo—get in an’ wash.”

“I been in the sand pile at Sally’s. She’s coming across too—with two dimes. So set up.”

“When Sally Davis comes here I’m telling her to take you up to wash over them hands. You look plain disgusting and your pants are undone.”

“I just went.”

“Well do up.”

Jo-Jo giggled and did up.

“I went in the sand,” he confided. “Like our cat does. And then you bury it.”

Sally Davis came over.

Sally Davis was eight like Harper. They were both hard put to it to make up who was the more adult.

“This child here,” said Harper, “has got dirty hands and face. I’m not gonna sell no lemonade to a coalman.”

“He’s been in the sand.”

Jo-Jo gigged.

“I know,” said Harper. “He said that. Are you gonna wash him over?”

“No. I want two lemonades please. Why’s it so expensive. Ten cents is too much.”

“It’s gotta be ten cents.”

“Why.”

“It’s just gotta be. That’s all.”

“Well—all right.”

Harper eyed Jo-Jo. “But I’ll remind you if he’s sick it’s not my fault. It’s those hands of his which are just purely revolting.” He dipped out two paper cups of ‘lemonade’ with a long-handled saucepan—and handed them over on receipt of Sally’s twenty cents.

He watched them drink.

Jo-Jo was delighted and immediately asked for more. But Sally was slightly suspicious.

“You call this here lemonade, Harper?”

“Read it on the sign.”

Sally read out: “‘Harper’s Bazaar of Lemonade 10c.’ Well I don’t know. Tastes peculiar to me.”

“Jo-Jo likes it.”

“Do you Jo-Jo?”

“Yes,” said Jo-Jo. “I like it an’ more thank you.” He set out his paper cup on the top of the orange crate.

“It costs you ten cents,” said Harper.

“Sally?”

“I already gave you ten cents. Don’t come to me.”

“O.K. G’bye then,” said Jo-Jo and went off towards his own house at a run.

“I think maybe I would like another cupful please Harper,” said Sally Davis, fishing in the pocket of her shorts for a dime, “the flavour sort of grows on you.”

Bertha stood at the top of the drive and hollered out: “How’s sales going, Harper? Hello there Sally.”

Harper replied that sales were practically non-existent and Sally said “Hello.”

Bertha went in. Sally drank her second cup slowly.

“Harper…” she said. “How about for a little free trade—I drum you up some business and you give me two more cups in exchange?”

“Just where do you expect to find this business. It’s gotta be people off the street and there’s no one about. I guess it’s too hot.”

“Jack Parker and Tim are over in Tim’s back yard. I heard ‘em. I could sort of provoke ‘em over I guess.”

“How provoke ‘em?”

“All you gotta do is mention cold drink on a day like this.”

“It ain’t so cold right now,” said Harper—poking his finger into a stone jug of lemonade. “But go ahead and try.”

Harper had left the big pot in the garage out of the sun and brought down two stone jugs and the long handled saucepan to ladle with.

When Sally had gone Harper tipped back on his chair and looked both ways along the street. The high elm trees were like umbrellas up and down the sidewalks. Far away he could hear a dog barking at a car—and the car going away into the distance. He thought about his mother. He was glad, when he thought of her, that Sally Davis was going to drum up more business—because he wanted it all sold. After it had all been sold, he would take the money and buy back his mother’s jewels. The jewels had bought the frosted bottles—now the frosted bottles would buy them back. He had comfort in his heart.

Soon he saw Miss Kennedy coming along under the elm umbrellas—carrying her coat over her arm and looking very hot and depressed—and he prepared to make a sale.

She came up.

“Hello Harper.”

“Hullo Miss Kennedy.”

She began to rummage about in her handbag.

“I don’t seem to have a dime dear. But I have a quarter—can you change it?”

“Yes’m. I have fifteen cents here.”

“Then I’d like some lemonade, please.”

Harper dipped her out a cupful.

Miss Kennedy stood back and admired the view along the street.

“Oh Harper, how I do love summer. But for this heat I’d say that summer on this street is summer like nowhere else in the world.”

“Yes’m. It’s pretty.”

Miss Kennedy finished her cup of lemonade.

“That is a remarkable concoction Harper. Let me have another cup.”

Harper began to worry. If Miss Kennedy stayed too long the children might not come, they being so afraid of her.

“Were you going somewhere, Miss Kennedy,” asked Harper—as he handed her her third cup of lemonade.

“Oh yes, but I have lots of time. I thought I’d seek out some nice air-conditioned movie house and relax this afternoon. But out here—thank you Harper—out here it seems so tranquil and still—it’s very relaxing and this lemonade of yours certainly does help to take the edge off the heat. Oh dear—it was so hot. I thought I was going to suffocate up there in my house.”

She had a fourth cup—and then a fifth.

Jo-Jo appeared on the other side of the street. He had apparently seen Miss Kennedy and had decided to wait until she had gone. He sat down on the curb and stuck his dirty hands in the summer-dried leaves in the gutter. Every once-in-a-while he eyed Harper and Harper would smile and beckon him but he turned his head away and pretended to look somewhere else.

“Harper?” said Miss Kennedy.

“Yes’m.”

“How would it be if you set up a chair here for me on the boulevard, under this tree—” She gestured vaguely towards one of the elms—and he could see that she was slightly bewildered.

“This stuff of my mother’s,” he thought, “certainly has a powerful effect on people.”

“—and you might do me the favour to bring me an umbrella from the house. I think I won’t go to the movies after all.”

“Yes’m.”

As Harper went up the drive he thought to himself that Miss Kennedy “plonking herself down” right there would be the end of business—but when he returned with the chair and the umbrella it was obvious that precisely the opposite was to be the fact.

Miss Kennedy was surrounded by children. They had made a great circle around her and she was standing in the middle smiling, but he could see that she was somewhat confused. Popularity was strange to her. The children (Sally was there and Jack Parker and Tim—and Annabelle Harrison, the terrible rich snob from round the corner—and several others) were all silent. Jo-Jo still sat, immune to their curiosity of Miss Kennedy, poking his fingers into the gutter across the street.

“Thank you Harper,” said Miss Kennedy as Harper broke through the circle to set up her chair. “That’s just fine.”

They set up the chair—(it was a deck chair with orange and white candy-stripe canvas)—and Miss Kennedy sat in it and put up the black umbrella over her head. She looked like someone in the middle of Africa—a missionary surrounded by natives.

“Bring another cup of the delicious lemonade my dear.”

Harper obeyed.

“Hey look,” said Sally, “let’s us all have lemonade. That’s what we came for.”

Harper was kept quite busy taking in the money and serving up and he had to go up to the garage to get more so that he didn’t notice at first what was happening between Miss Kennedy and Jo-Jo Parkinson. What was happening between Miss Kennedy and Jo-Jo Parkinson practically amounted to a chronicled fairy tale. “The old witch” sat there eyeing him with one hypnotic drunken eye—her head slightly cocked, her gaze beaming from under the black umbrella.

Jo-Jo was fascinated and rooted to the spot.

“Little boy,” called Miss Kennedy with her wistful voice, “why don’t you come across that street and have yourself some lemonade?”

The hot afternoon beat its heavy wing over the elm trees and over the front lawns along the street—and over the group of people at Harper Dewey’s front drive.

“Little boy,” cried Miss Kennedy.

The birds were silent in the trees. The lemonade drinkers paused to listen.

“Little boy—put down that dirty stick and come across to me.”

Jo-Jo put down the stick.

“Little boy—listen to me—I myself will buy you lemonade.”

Jo-Jo came across.

Harper Dewey watched with the rest as Jo-Jo stood at the foot of the deck chair and looked sheepishly into the witch’s eyes. Miss Kennedy smiled.

“Harper—bring this child a cup of lemonade.”

With a look at the others—at Sally Davis and Jack Parker and Tim and even Annabelle Harrison the terrible rich snob from around the corner—Harper Dewey drew a cup of ‘lemonade’ for Jo-Jo Parkinson.

“Now bring it here.”

Harper brought.

“Give it to him.”

Jo-Jo accepted the paper cup without taking his eyes from Miss Kennedy’s smiling face.

“There you are, Jo-Jo,” said Harper. “That’ll be ten cents.”

Miss Kennedy paid him—and when, instead of going back to his booth, he stood there staring at her—she said to him: “Go on Harper—Go away.”

Harper went. He and the others grouped themselves in silence around the orange crate. Even Bertha came down to have a look.

“Drink it up.”

Jo-Jo stood still.

“Don’t you like it?”

Jo-Jo continued his position, like a stagnant pond about to have a pebble thrown into it.

“Who’s got your tongue, little boy? Old cat?”

Jo-Jo very slowly stuck out his tongue to show her that he still had it in his mouth.

“That’s right. Now put it back.”

He drew it back in.

“Do you know how to smile, little boy?”

Jo-Jo nodded.

“Well then…?”

Nothing happened. Jo-Jo looked at the lemonade in his hand.

“Harper—bring me another cup,” cried the witch.

Harper brought again—received his ten cents and dutifully returned to the selling stand, this time without being told. He was thinking of Mrs Harper Dewey—his mother—and how she had never wooed him.

“Now,” said Miss Kennedy, “you and I will take this drink together—and then we’ll have another.”