‘Well maybe you can try wash a few pots or something.’
So I am standing in the shop and it is a jade ring that catch my eye. Dark green jade sitting on a 22-carat-gold band, and I buy it. I have them wrap the box in some soft green tissue paper and put a bow on it. And even though this is not the first time I try sweeten Fay with something like this I feel uplifted. That maybe this time I might manage to get something she find some favour with because I think she really been trying her best to get along in the house with Ma and I know it not easy.
All the way back to Matthews Lane there is a spring in my step, with this jade ring in my pocket rubbing against my thigh feeling like a nice shiny big red apple for the teacher. Not that I know anything ’bout apples and teachers but I seen enough American movies to know how good it feel when you got a thing like that you going give to somebody.
But when I get back to Matthews Lane Fay not there, Ma say she gone back to her father’s. And I don’t know why, but this time I just see red. Maybe it was because the ring was sitting there in my pocket. And I just run out the house and jump in the car.
All the time I am driving with my hand down on the horn I can see in my mind’s eye the signs on the highway that say ‘Undertakers Love Overtakers’. Even when I hit Cross Roads I just ignore the sign that say ‘Careful Drivers Stop at Red Lights’ and just press my foot on the gas and keep going. When I get to Lady Musgrave Road I turn into the driveway so fast I can smell the rubber the tyres is leaving on the road.
But it is just the same thing. The housemaid Ethyl come out to tell me that Fay not there. She gone out with her sister Daphne. I think Ethyl feel sorry for me just standing there like that because she tell me to sit down on the veranda and offer to bring me a glass of lemonade. But it is not lemonade I want, so she bring me a glass of Appleton.
She put the glass down on the table next to me and say, ‘Miss Fay and Miss Daphne most likely gone out to celebrate about the baby.’ Well it was a good job I was already sitting down because otherwise I would have fall down. I look at Ethyl and I can see she think that maybe she say something outta turn, so she run inside without saying another word.
When I come round it was dark and I could smell the evening scent off the angel trumpet. But I know I not been sleeping all this while because there is three empty glasses on the table next to me. Then I hear a car door slam and the next thing Henry Wong is coming up the veranda steps. His tall, square frame look tired and weary. When he see me sitting there he take a hand and brush the greying hair back off his forehead and then he come and sit down next to me. Him take my hand in his. Gentle like.
‘Is my fault,’ him say to me. ‘You think you good father. Give children everything they want. But maybe it not so good. Maybe they just grow up good for nothing. Fay not bad girl. She just spoil.’
I was looking at him and wondering how come he manage to live in a house full of women like this.
‘Fay tell me ’bout Matthews Lane, how the house small and how you got no help. And I tell her you are a young man, just making your way. When business get better you will move her to a better house, get some help, make things good. She just need to have some patience. When I married her mother I was just a young man like you. Just got the one shop, but when business get better, everything get better. Patience, Pao, that is what it takes. That is what I tell Fay, that she has to stay with you and have patience. Anyway, I tell her, it better to be downtown with your own people. Better than living up here in this desert like me.’
‘Did Miss Cicely keep running back to her father every other week as well?’
‘No, that was a different situation.’ And then him look sorta sad and pause for a minute. ‘Women are not like men, Pao, they change with the wind. That is why we men have to steady ourselves. Make a firm anchor with a good business and work hard.’ Then he stop and think a minute. And then he say, ‘You go home now. You don’t want to be having no talk with Fay at this time of night and with everything else,’ him sort of motioning towards the empty glasses. ‘Tomorrow is plenty time to sort things out.’
The next morning when I go up to the house, Fay already come and gone again. Ethyl look sheepish when she have to tell me but she still look sorry for me. So I say to her, ‘Ethyl, you know where my shop is down West Street?’
‘Yes, Mr Philip.’
‘Next time you get a day off come see me will you?’ And she agree to do it the next week Wednesday.
Then just as I start to leave Fay and Daphne turn up. Daphne fussing ’round Fay because Fay her older sister and she know she got to show respect. But it also because Daphne plain and everybody get taken with Fay like they don’t even know Daphne is there. Daphne used to being invisible.
So I get outta the car and stand up in front of Fay in the driveway. She look truculent like she going just kiss her teeth and walk inside. But she don’t, she just stand up there with her hand on her hip while Daphne go inside the house.
‘What you doing here, Pao?’
‘What you doing here, Fay?’
‘This is my home.’
‘No, this is your papa’s home. Your home is with me, downtown in Matthews Lane.’ And then she do exactly what I think, she kiss her teeth and walk off. I follow her up the steps on to the veranda.
‘You got no business here, you know.’
‘You is my business. A wife supposed to stay with her husband, not making a fool outta him every week running back to her papa.’
‘Is that what you are worried about, me making a fool out of you? Well don’t fuss yourself about that. You are making a fine job of it yourself.’
And she start to walk inside so I grab her hand to pull her back, but she just jerk it away from me and start yelling like she want to wise up the whole neighbourhood to what she have to say to me.
‘Take your hand off me. Who do you think you are, grabbing after me like that? You are not downtown now with your little whores and hoodlums. You are in a respectable place and you need to act like it.’
‘You think this is respectable, you and me bawling at each other right out here on the veranda?’
‘You should be the last person on this earth to talk about what is respectable. If you weren’t so pathetic you would make me laugh.’
Well that make me mad. I just fix her with a stare cold as ice and she stop because I think she remember who she was talking to. So she calm down and I say to her, ‘Is it true you pregnant?’ But she don’t want to answer me, so I have to ask her again.
‘Is it true you pregnant?’
But she still don’t say nothing so I take a deep breath and I fix her with my eyes and I say to her, ‘Remember you are a Catholic.’
And just then I put my hand in my pocket and I feel the box still sitting there. So I pull it out and I hold it out to her. She look at it there in my hand, and then she look at me in the face.
‘Take it.’
‘What is it?’
‘Take it and see.’ So she reach out and take it from me.
‘Go on, open it.’
She unwrap the bow and tear off the paper. When she open the box she just stare at the ring. And then she reach inside the box with her right hand and pick it up. And she raise up her arm, and swing, and throw the ring into the yard.
‘That would be the companion piece to the jade necklace you bought for your whore in East Kingston.’ She look at me. ‘You think I didn’t know?’ And then she just walk inside and close the door, which was the first time I even seen that door shut.
Three days later she come back to Matthews Lane, most likely after her papa tell her to. But she don’t say nothing to me ’bout the baby or the ring or anything else. And I don’t say nothing to her.
When Ethyl come see me the next week she bring me back the ring she fetch outta the flower bed.
‘I think you might want this back.’
And she hand it to me in the box she must have pick up off the veranda. I take it from her and say thank you and put it in my pocket.
Ethyl is young. She want something more than being down on her knees scrubbing the Wongs’ mahogany floor,
