The Polished Hoe (8 page)

“But I don’t know if it is a
fete-accomplee
,” Sargeant says.

The programme is over, now. Hymn singing follows the
BBC
Round-Up
programme.

“I merely responding to a call. I don’t know wha’ happen up at the Great House. Perhaps she and Gertrude had a quarrel. Perhaps nothing ain’t happen. Nuh cause, nuh act, nuh motive. I don’t know.”

There is no wind tonight. The air is heavy and tight; and it clutches the collar of Sargeant’s tunic, as if it is a necktie that a criminal is pinning him down with, like a Boston crab choke-hold he had suffered at the hands of Boysie-Boys, the first murderer to escape from His Majesty’s Glandairy Prison.

Sargeant’s tunic has five silver buttons that run down his paunchy chest. The heaviness of the air and the fit of the tunic are making it difficult for him to breathe. Beads of perspiration forming on his forehead and under his neck pour from his smooth black skin, like small beads of pearl.

Still, he does not take his handkerchief from the sleeve of his tunic. He leaves the sweat on his face, as if it is a religious mark, a talisman, a spiritual reminder of faith, and experience.

Earlier on, he had been sitting in the sub-station, the white tunic of his daytime uniform draped over the back of an upright wooden chair with a cane bottom. His braces hung from his waist like the harness of a small parachute; and his grey flannel undershirt had changed to a darker shade than the colour from the perspiration that poured out of his body in the clutching humidity, like larva rising from the ground.

The Constable, his assistant, was sitting in a matching wooden chair, slouched in the same manner as Sargeant was, fanning himself with the four pages of the
Bimshire Daily Herald
, one of the Island’s four newspapers, which he had folded into the shape of a Chinese fan. Naiman, the man who swept the yard and ran errands to the rum shop, who bought cigarettes and tins of Fray Bentos corn beef and hard round biscuits, and who did odd jobs around the substation, cleaning out the two cells, throwing Jays Fluid on the prisoners’ urine to deaden its pungency, himself a former convict, this man Naiman, who also fetched Sargeant’s and the Constable’s home-cooked meals (food: made by a woman in the Village, off the passenger bus, at the appropriate hours—eleven in the morning, for lunch; and five o’clock in the evening, for dinner), sat with them, barefoot, in his workman’s uniform of blue denim short-sleeved shirt and matching short pants, gasping instead of breathing, as if the humidity was about to choke him to death.

Then the telephone had rung, rousing them from their lethargy. Sargeant turned the
BBC
programme down. They were playing hymns from St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

The telephone rang fifteen times.

It was Naiman who had risen from his chair first, slowly and half-dead, to answer it.

“His Majesty’s Police Station! ’Strict D Sub-station! Naiman speaking . . .”

There was a pause.

You could hear the change in Naiman’s breathing, the sudden intake of breath.

The time by the noisy, ticking clock on the wall is seven thirtyfive. Sunday night. The clock is round, and has large black hands and hangs below a framed colour photograph of King George the Fifth.

Just as the three of them, Sargeant, the Constable and Naiman himself, could, at certain times of the afternoon, hear the waves in the sea, when there were no cars and buses speeding in front of the sub-station, so too, now, they could hear the weak waves touching the iron pipe and the crumbling foundation wall of the sub-station. And they could hear the leaves in the beach almond trees shake. And hear the rattle of the dried inedible fruits of the shack-shack tree.

“What you say? You had-better tell this to the Sargeant, yourself, ma’am,” Naiman said into the telephone. “Miss Bellfeels, the Sargeant here . . . he here.”

Naiman pointed the telephone at Sargeant. Sargeant moved slowly, taking fifteen seconds to reach Naiman’s outstretched hand.

Some time passed in silence. Naiman and the Constable could hear Sargeant’s breathing.

“Miss Mary-Mathilda? What you telling me? I don’t want to hear it, if that is what you telling me, Miss Tilda. . . You sure you want me to hear this? Yes, ma’am . . . yes, please, ma’am . . . yes, ma’am. I will come to get a Statement . . . yes, yes . . . it is my duty as a police . . . I can keep a secret. Yes, please . . .”

Sargeant gave the telephone back to Naiman, who put it back on its hook.

“Constable,” Sargeant said.

The Constable stood up.

“Get-dress. Put-on your night uniform. Quick. Something like it happen. You ain’t got much time to change . . .”

The large, round noisy clock told them it was exactly Thirty-seven minutes past seven o’clock. That was the time. Sargeant made a note of it.
“Thirty-seven minutes passed seven o’clock, PM, Sunday evening,”
he wrote in his small black notebook.

Sargeant had looked through the window in the sub-station, towards the Plantation Main House, and could see the cane fields that stretched for miles and miles, round the small three-roomed substation, cells, water closet and office-cum-dressing-and-sleepingroom, making it look and feel like a fishing boat marooned in a sea that had no waves and no current; and no wind blowing on its surface.

“Go up to the Great House,” Sargeant told the Constable, “and see if you could pacify Miss Bellfeels, Mr. Bellfeels lady Miss Tilda, till I get there. And whilst you there, see if you could find out what the arse that woman mean ’bout intent and intending. Tek-down every word she tell you, in a prelimary Statement. Tell she I coming, soon-soon . . .”

“When I was a lil girl, I used to like to climb. Trees and rocks. Specially trees. Ma said I reminded her of the brown-and-white goat we kept in the yard, to give milk. Goats don’t climb trees, though; only rocks and hills. You know the clammy-cherry tree at the junction of Highgates Commons and Reservoir Lane that the Villagers sit under and shade from the sun, when they’re waiting for the bus to Town?”

“I know it!” the Constable says. “We uses clammy-cherries to stick kite paper on our kite frames, during kite-season, when we mekking kites. ’Specially at Easter. Yes! The clammy-cherry tree at the junction!”

“Things made from clammy-cherry last for generations. Tough and durable and rugged things. From clammy-cherry, the Plantation makes the handles of certain implements used in the fields. Like the handles for forks and hoes. And sickles that we cut Khus-Khus grass and Guinea grass with.

“The handle of the hoe I used for all those years in the North Field was made from the same clammy-cherry tree. Yes.

“Ma herself used the hoe she inherited from her mother, my gran. And it was there, on the day she died, leaning up in the yard, strong as anything, strong as the day the Plantation made it. This is the same hoe I inherited from Ma. Yes!

“And it is the handle of that hoe I have been polishing. Rubbingit-down in oils. Night after night, for the past three months. And why three months? I can’t find rhyme nor reason to explain it! Must be one of the
ironies
Wilberforce always talking about, constantly. . .

“I went one morning, when he wasn’t too busy, to see Mr. Waldrond the Joiner and Cabinetmaker. Mr. Waldrond makes the most beautiful furnitures in this Village, in the whole Island, if you ask me! And I respectfully asked Mr. Waldrond for a drop of oil and a daub of the stain or polish he uses on mahogany.Mr.Waldrond look at me, and laughed. ‘Never,’ Mr. Waldrond say, ‘in all my born-days, and during my time as joiner and cabinetmaker to this Plantation, plying my trade in this Village, have a girl, a woman, axe me to lend she the tools of my trade!’

“Heh-heh-heh! I had to laugh, too. I didn’t tell Mr. Waldrond what I needed the stain and the oils for. But outta the goodness of his heart, and without cross-questioning me, Mr. Waldrond give me a few drops of linseed oil and some Hawes Lemon Oil and some homemade polish he uses for polishing mahogany.

“I took those three things, and from that day, I would sit down in a chair in the kitchen, evening after evening, whilst Gertrude would steal a glance at me, when she think I don’t notice, wondering what I am doing rubbing and rubbing the handle of a hoe with linseed oil and Hawes Lemon Oil for, but there I would be, rubbing up and down, up and down; down and up, polishing till the handle start to shine, like Mr. Waldrond’s mahogany furnitures.

“While Gertrude is washing the wares, or starching clothes, doing her housework, there I would be, polishing and polishing the clammy-cherry-tree handle.

“I then turned my attention to the blade. And I used a piece of sharpening-stone with oil on it. This I got from the blacksmith, who shoes the horses on the Plantation. The mules and the donkeys. Ifonly I had the strength to use a anvil, and was able to lift his hammer, I would have beaten-out a brand-new-brand blade for myself. And sharp as a Gillette razor! But I had to rely, every evening, on the sharpening-stone and the oil only. For three months.

“I had-got the oil off the chauffeur, Mr. Broomes, poor man, who drove the cane lorry the Saturday afternoon that he run-over the Bardrock fowl.

“Sometimes, in the heat of thinking of things to do, like making doilies for the furnitures, or preparing great-cakes for festivals and bank holidays, I would miss a evening of polishing and sharpening. But, as regular as I could, I would be at that kitchen table . . .

“But what was I polishing and sharpening for? What was my purpose spending all those hours on a hoe, in the kitchen of this Great House for? After so many years using the same hoe in the fields, retired from the fields, put into the Main House as a houseservant, eventually given certain favours in my upliftment . . . then turned into some man’s kip-woman! To where I am now. Or was it that I am a dreamer?

“Ma always said,
‘Girl, you is the biggest dreamer that I know. You’s a born dreamer, Mary-girl!’

“But there I was . . . not really knowing what destiny God had in mind to put my hoe to.

“And sometimes, as I sit in my kitchen with Gertrude and my hoe, Wilberforce would come in, and pour himself a drink, or take up a slice of sweetbread or steal a pork chop outta Gertrude’s frying pan, and start telling us, Gertrude and me, of his travels.

“And
not once
, did it enter his head to ask me why I was polishing a old hoe? And sharpening the blade?

“And I would stop polishing and sharpening, and let Wilberforce words carry me on those journeys he describe. Wilberforce hadtravel all over Europe, after the War; and once, coming back from Italy, north of a lil town name Vincentia, and seeing the Dollarmites, near the Alps, caused him years later, to make the comment, about how he found the place so desolate; and at the same time, so pretty and appealing. The sharp points of the hills and the mountains, the steepness of the sides of hills forming themselves into gorges, down, down into the valleys, and the sides of those valleys, and how those valleys was so dramatic and frightening, harsh and lovely, painted in the strange colour of the Eyetalian light. Those wonderful colours, Wilberforce say, are to be found only in Italy. And Wilberforce conclude that this part of the world, the valleys of the Dollarmites— I think this is how you pronounce the word—the Dollarmites seemed to be a place where history ordain that a lot of killing and fighting had to take place. As if it was destiny. He told me it was the geography of the place that gave it that ironical meaning, and that history. A history of killing and fighting amongst those European tribes and clans.

“Once, to show me the meaning of words that Winston Churchill used, during the War, namely,
‘Give we the tools, and we will do the rest,’
Wilberforce said those words were really a code.

“The women in my field gang, ordinary women, ascribed to weeding the North Field, I witnessed how some of them never took care of their hoes, the instruments they use daily, to make a living with—such as it was. So, their job and their labour was always more harduous. They had the tools, but not the sharpness in those tools to do the job.Well. And whenever their hoe hit a rock, their labour ended; and the rest of us women would bend over and laugh and laugh at that poor woman’s expense. At her misfortune. Yes.

“When a hoe hits that rock-stone, it send zings of pain climbing right up your two arms. And it dullens the blade of your hope; and the hoe itself. Yes.

“But the history of a hoe hitting rocks and old roots, stumps of pigeon-pea trees and other trees planted generations ago, before this very Plantation was cut out of the land, trees such as the same tamarind tree which Clotelle used; the clammy-cherry tree whose berry is used for sticking paper to kite frames; or the cordear tree, the loveliest tree in the Island, with the sweetest flowers, according to smell and fragrance, but a flower, my God, with the shortest lifespan of existence, this accident of a woman’s hoe hitting gainst a obstruction like the root of a tree hidden in the soil, was an everyday occurrence. Yes. Cause, from in the olden days, in the times of my great-gran, before Ma’s time, this Plantation was nothing but virgin land. Yes.

“I must ask Wilberforce if the Plantation planted these trees after cutting up the land.

“But, going back to Churchill’s code,
‘give we the tools
,’my hoe was always ready. No rust. Always sharp. Sharp as the long knife Manny use for slaughtering animals. Sharp as a iron cane bill for cutting canes. Yes. And always shining. From the linseed oil and the Hawes Lemon Oil. And the sharpening-stone.