say to be happy is to suffer less, and to suffer less is to be free from wanting. You accept what you have. Now I am here with Pao and Zhang.’
It good to hear Ma and Fay actually talk to each other. It a relief more than anything to think maybe the war between them not going go on for ever. That maybe Xiuquan going help that. But two things still true.
First, even though Zhang proud like he got a grandson name after him, Fay won’t never call the baby Xiuquan. She call him Karl all the time and everybody in the house notice it but they don’t say nothing ’bout it. Second, Fay still going to Bishop’s Lodge so the Father Kealey thing not done with yet.
Sun Tzu say, ‘
‘How the hell you think I going do that?’
‘You policeman, you fix it. How you do it your business. If you need money I give it to you. But you have to make the contacts, man. You have to set up the situation. I want two invitation. One for Miss Cicely and another one in case she want take somebody with her.’
Miss Cicely take Daphne with her, and she can’t thank me enough. After all these years of Earl Grey tea and Victoria sponge she finally get to meet the Queen of England. She actually get introduced to her. That is how good Clifton Brown is.
Three week later I make Hampton go with Miss Cicely and Daphne to Miami on a little shopping trip. They over the moon. They have such a good time they bring me a tie and some aftershave and a bath robe, although god knows what they think I going do with that. But it not enough for Daphne to just give me the things. She want to invite me to dinner so we can sit down and eat and open up the parcels like it something special.
So I go up to Lady Musgrave Road and sit down there eating this chicken with Miss Cicely and Daphne and the little brother, Kenneth, who keep looking at me like he can’t wait for the dinner to be over so he can corner me and beg me again to take him on. I tired of telling this boy no so I chewing my food good and slow and I chatting with Miss Cicely in between every mouthful hoping that the boy get fed up of waiting and go find himself something else to do.
Sure enough when him finish eat him get restless because I am chewing and chatting, and chatting and chewing, and no look like I going get done this side of New Year. So Kenneth get up and take off and I think thank god.
Then after dinner Miss Cicely say we should go sit on the veranda and we do it. Daphne sit down there hanging on every single word that passing between me and Miss Cicely ’bout her meeting with the Queen and the shopping trip to Miami. And that is when Daphne rush inside and bring out these parcels for me to unwrap. It feel nice that somebody want to give me something. That they want to say thank you. It not something that happen that much. In fact I can’t remember the last time I get a present from anybody.
And then just as I try look pleased and grateful for the gifts they bring me and start to say thank you, Daphne get up and come over to me and kiss me. Just like that. On the cheek. And then she sit herself down again and straighten her skirt. I so surprised I just look at her, but she glancing past me like maybe somebody coming up behind but there not nobody there. So I look again at Miss Cicely but it don’t seem like she notice anything at all.
By this time I am making regular donations to Father Kealey’s orphan fund and his projects for poor relief and education in the rural areas. And him already done tell me to call him Michael and I tell him to call me Pao.
Sometimes we just sit and chat at Bishop’s Lodge, him telling me ’bout how his projects doing and me just making conversation. Other times we go somewhere grab some lunch. Michael is a man of discretion. He never mention Fay to me. And just the same way, I know he never mention me to Fay because she not say nothing to me ’bout him and I know if she knew I was seeing him she would have something to say ’bout it.
So I reckon I manage to do what Sun Tzu say. I disrupt Fay’s alliances. Not that Fay see Miss Cicely that way, but she treat the house at Lady Musgrave Road like a sanctuary and now that was mine because Miss Cicely and Daphne and Ethyl belong to me. Just like Father Kealey was coming to me with his God and his hope to find some goodness in me. And the same way Henry Wong would take me in as a full son-in-law, because that was my next move.
14
By the mid 1950s Jamaica was on the up, especially because they discover the bauxite. But the big profit was going to the overseas aluminium companies who invested in the mining, because up to 1954 Busta’s government let the bauxite ore be shipped out for 10 cents a ton. When the government change in 1955, Norman Manley negotiate a new royalty and tax at $1.40 a ton. It was a pittance when you compare it to the profit the aluminium companies was making but still Jamaica was earning and people had jobs and training. It was good but it didn’t stop me from noticing that the whole thing was just like the same way the plantation profits gone to England back in the old days. It was just like a new version of that, including them passing some laws to secure the special rights and status of the foreigners
But when all was said and done there was still money to be made, so there was improvements in industry and agriculture, and especially tourism. Suddenly hotels was jumping up all over the place. Jamaica was happy and dancing and getting fat. So whereas in the 1940s Kingston was busting with US sailors, in the 1950s Ocho Rios was ripe with the rich and famous – Rock Hudson, Katharine Hepburn, Noel Coward, Clark Gable, John F. Kennedy – a whole load of them, sunning and swimming and having themselves a ball. Jamaica was like a party-time paradise for white people. Some of them staying in that same hotel me and Fay go for the honeymoon.
So that was when I say to Henry Wong that we should go into business together. He had the wholesalers and wine merchants and I had a van and the men, so next thing Hampton and Milton was busy running food and liquor to every major hotel on the north coast and me and Henry Wong was partners, which vex Fay but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Henry was a businessman. Making money was all he was interested in.
I understand how she feel though because she had nowhere to turn. There wasn’t a single soul that she could complain to about me. And then to make matters worse she get pregnant again. She was as mad as hell. So I make sure to tell Father Kealey good and quick so that way there was nothing she could do apart from have the baby when it come due and give it a home, because she wasn’t going shame herself in front of Him by doing anything else.
In truth I did feel bad about it though because I know that the time when she must have got pregnant is when I force myself on her. Not that Fay was ever willing as such but that time it was bad. There was all sort of twisting and turning, and shoving and scratching. She even try to hit me with the bedside lamp but the electric cord stop her short.
I don’t know what come over me. I just thought I would teach her a lesson for looking down her nose at me and acting like she better than the rest of us; better than everybody that was important to me like Ma and Zhang, and Finley and the boys; like she was above us all. And having that look on her face, like she smell something rotten. It remind me of the way a white man would look at you when you accidentally run into him coming outta Gloria’s house, like you are the scum that is going in to collect the protection money, not him is the scum that is coming outta there after doing god knows what and paying for it – and the only reason I got to be there is to protect these women against him and his nastiness. Somehow they never see it that way. They just have that look. Whatever service you providing for them you get the same look, like they think you a cockroach and you lucky they don’t just lift up their foot and pulp you.
So I just grab her arms and I pin her down on the bed and do it to her, even though she was crying and throwing her legs about all the time.
