Pao

and picking up after Fay and Daphne, and their little brother Kenneth who Miss Cicely produce long after everybody think she past her time.

Ethyl is looking to better herself. So I tell her I will pay for her to learn shorthand and typing on her day off, and buy a little typewriter and all the books she need so she can practise. And pay for the examination when the time come. And she is happy with that. So that is our secret, because if Miss Cicely catch wind of all of this she will fire Ethyl just like that. Maids are twenty a penny for a person like Miss Cicely in a place like Jamaica.

Ethyl come to see me every week after that and she bring me the news from Lady Musgrave Road. This is a good arrangement because just like Sun Tzu say, the thirteenth principle of the art of war is the employment of secret agents.

‘ What is called “foreknowledge” cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation. ’

13

Offensive Strategy

The next time I see Gloria I take the ring with me because Fay is right, it will look good next to the necklace that Gloria keep lock up in a box at the back of her wardrobe and only get out on special occasions. But the ring she want put on straight away. It fit her like it was bought for her. So she straighten it on her finger and stretch out her arm to admire how gracious it look pon her hand. It suit her. Really and truly. The thing make her skin look rich and succulent. And she so pleased with it I think maybe it mean something more to her than it do to me. So I don’t bother say nothing ’bout Fay and all her antics and carrying on. Not that Gloria want to hear anything ’bout Fay because that was the one condition Gloria had after I get married. She didn’t want to hear nothing ’bout Fay. We was just going to carry on act like Fay didn’t even exist because being married to Fay didn’t change nothing between me and Gloria. I still pick up the money from her. I still giving her protection. I still drinking Lipton’s Yellow Label tea with her. I still seeing her three times a week. I still talking to her ’bout things because Gloria is the only person who ever care to listen to me talk ’bout myself and what this life mean to me.

Then she say to me, ‘I have something to tell you.’

And I say, ‘What?’

And she say, ‘I going to have a baby.’ Well I just reach out and find the arm of a chair to steady myself, and I sit down because it feel like me knees going buckle under me.

‘So how long you know this?’

‘Last week. Well I think two months gone already. I just wanted to be sure.’ I can tell Gloria don’t know what kinda face to put on. She don’t know whether to look happy or worried or vexed because she don’t know how I am going take the news. And truth is I don’t know either.

So I say, ‘What you going do?’

And she say, ‘How you mean?’

‘What you going do with it?’

‘You mean get rid of it?’

‘No. I mean what you want to do? You want to keep it or what?’

‘What you want to do?’ And she look at me now like she scared what the answer going be.

‘It not got nothing to do with me, Gloria. Is not my baby, is yours.’

‘You no know it take two people to make a baby?’

‘You saying it mine? How you so sure?’

She just stand there and look at me. Then she say, ‘OK, if you want say the baby not yours then fine. I will go about my business and sort this out myself.’

‘I’m not saying that, Gloria. I just surprised that’s all. If you say the baby mine then it mine. But it not for me to decide ’bout it. It not going change my life like it going change yours.’ And that is when her face soften, because she could see that I was really giving her a choice. And it was almost like she never thought I would take it that way. Actually just give her the choice like that.

So I say to her, ‘I am good with whatever you want to do. But if you decide to have it you going have to let me look after you better than this place.’ And I just look ’round the room the way it decorate for entertaining men and she knew exactly what I mean. ‘Long time now I been wanting you to stop all this anyway, but sure as eggs is eggs this ain’t no business for a pregnant woman.’

And she laugh and say, ‘Some men come on strong with a pregnant woman.’

‘Not on top of my son.’

‘Who say it going be a boy? Maybe it be a girl. Maybe she become the first woman prime minister of Jamaica.’

‘Maybe.’

After that Gloria start look for a different place to live. She and her sister Marcia going all over Kingston, but truth is I have my heart set on some place in Barbican. It new, it clean, it good neighbourhood. But I don’t say nothing to Gloria because if I say Barbican she going move to Mona Heights. She don’t like me telling her nothing. She say I not got no right, especially after I decide to go marry somebody else. But in the end there was no need to worry. Gloria and Marcia find a nice three-bedroom place, two bathroom, nice tidy yard right up there in Barbican.

The thing I couldn’t figure out was how come after all these years Gloria get pregnant at exactly the same time as Fay. So I decide that maybe it was something to do with me. Or maybe it was something Gloria decide for herself.

When Ethyl come see me at the shop she tell me that Fay start going down to Bishop’s Lodge visiting with some priest, and him visiting her up at Lady Musgrave Road as well. Him called Father Michael Kealey and him young and good looking, so Ethyl say anyway. She say he look like the movie star Jeff Chandler, ‘but a little bit browner than when he was the Indian chief Cochise in Broken Arrow ’. Ethyl say he even got the wavy grey hair and the dimple in his chin. So now this is something else for me to go sort out.

I set Finley to go see what he can find out and sure enough Father Kealey is some young sprat straight outta the seminary in Washington USA although he a Kingston boy that they school up in St George’s College with all them Jesuits. Ethyl tell me that him and Fay spend all hours of the day sitting on the veranda and on the swing way out yonder under the big mango tree, and all the time them talking and talking.

Seem like it been going on for months but is only just now Ethyl decide to tell me. She say she didn’t know what to make of it but she say last week when Father Kealey come knocking up the house in the middle of the night it make Mr Henry so vex he go out there and tell the Father to go home.

‘Mr Henry not a man quick to his temper, so that is when I reckon that maybe something not so right with Miss Fay and Father. And Miss Cicely don’t care for it neither. When they out there on the veranda she play the piano loud. Loud. And sing all them tunes Mr John Wesley make up that she learn when she was a Methodist, all ’bout how sinners going burn in hell and things like that.

‘Then yesterday Miss Cicely and Miss Fay have one almighty knockdown drag-out ’bout how Miss Fay running ’round with a priest and what she doing with Father Kealey. And Miss Cicely saying how Miss Fay been spoil her whole life. And how she make them send her to Immaculate Conception to be a boarder when the school only down the road from the house because all she want do is mix with her rich friends and pretend she white like them. And Miss Cicely say ’bout how Miss Fay spend all her time going to parties and playing tennis when she should have been doing her lessons which, according to Miss Cicely, tennis not no proper pastime for a Jamaican girl anyway. And Miss Cicely say they only let Miss Fay in the tennis club because she half Chinese and her papa rich.

‘And then that is when it really get bad because Miss Cicely say Miss Fay think she better than everybody else because her skin so light and she can get away with forgetting where she come from. Well, Mr Philip, that is when