with him on the phone. Right here in this room because I told Desmond that Karl had to come with me to collect some new missals.’ Then him stop. And then him start again. ‘I waited outside. I did not eavesdrop on their conversation, but when Karl came out he looked anxious and I asked him if he was OK. He said he was alright so we walked together back to the cathedral to meet up with Mui and Desmond and I thought nothing more of it. Not until after it happened. Because although I knew Fay was planning to go to England I never dreamed that she would take the children with her. I just never even conceived of it.’
‘Yu knew she was going?’
‘Yes, and I realise that I was an accomplice. Especially in relation to the children. I helped when I should have been trying to do something to stop it.’
‘When I find you in the cathedral that day, and when I look at you, it don’t seem to me now that you could have been crucifying yourself like that over a telephone call.’ And then I thought maybe I shouldn’t have said a word like
Michael look outta the window and right then it start to rain. That three-thirty Jamaican rain that flood the place in ten minutes and then ten minutes after that you can’t tell it happen except for the fresh smell and the few drops of water still dripping off the banana leaf.
‘She wanted me to go with her.’
‘She wanted you to go with her? She wanted you to go with her to England?’ When I see the flash of panic on Michael’s face I suddenly remember where I was so I lower my voice to a whisper and I say, ‘She wanted you to go with her to England?’ And him nod. ‘So what kinda thing is that? You take your priest with you when you kidnap your children and run four thousand miles away?’
Michael run his hand through him hair and then cover him mouth like there is something he don’t want to say. He sit there like that with his hand over him mouth for a good while.
Then he say, ‘Sin occurs in thought as well as in deed.’
It shock me. I dunno why because it what I been thinking all along anyway. Maybe I didn’t expect him to admit it to me just like that.
‘You mean in thought
‘No, Pao, just thought.’
And I think well that about right, because if Michael had anything to do with Mui I reckon Fay would have been more interested in the child. But then I think to myself, Michael torturing himself like this just for thinking ’bout it? So I reckon maybe it was more than thought. It was somewhere beyond thought, even if it was short of deed.
I say to him, ‘Did you want to go with her?’
Michael think a long time and then him say, ‘Some part of me did. Some part of me wanted to go. Some part of me wanted something with her. But the greater part of me knows that my calling is here.’
I look at him and right then I just get up and I raise Michael up outta the chair and I hug him. I hug him close because he was the only man on this earth who understand how I feel, the only man who understand what we lose. Not just because we lose Fay. But because we both lose the children as well.
When I get to Gloria’s she open the door and she put her arms ’round me. I let myself lean into her, and right then it feel like the first time my body come to rest since the whole thing happen. So I just stand there and she carry on hold me while she say to me, ‘I wonder how long it was going to be before you come.’
I want to tell Gloria everything ’bout what happen, and how Fay do it and ’bout the constables and the taxi driver and what it feel like with the children gone, but I not sure it fair on her. Not sure if it fair for her to have to listen to it when she got all her own feelings ’bout Fay and Mui and Xiuquan, and Esther. So I don’t say nothing, I just follow her inside.
She go into the kitchen and start boil the kettle.
‘You not got no Appleton?’
‘From what Finley tell me you already had plenty enough of that. I fixing us some nice Lipton’s.’
Esther come into the kitchen and look at me. And for the first time it seem like maybe she feel something different from sour to see me standing there. And then she say, ‘I’m sorry to hear about what happen,’ and she go to the back door and step out into the yard.
Gloria put the tea bags in the pot and she pass the little strings through the handle, and then she pour in the boiling water. After she settle us down with the cup and saucer and everything she take my hand and say to me, ‘It like old times, eh?’
And I say, ‘Yes, except twenty years done pass us by.’
‘I know you tell Clifton you want him to go murder everybody, but who you talk to, Pao? Who you talk to ’bout how you feel inside?’
‘I don’t talk to nobody. Who you think I going talk to?’
‘Me. You can talk to me.’
‘What, me talk to you ’bout Fay? I thought that was your one condition?’
‘That a long time ago.’
I look at her and I realise she really mean it.
‘Since the children gone it like somebody reach in my chest and pull out my heart, and I just walking ’round like a dead man. I don’t want to do nothing. I don’t even want to get outta bed in the morning. I don’t want to shower or shave or dress myself. I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to talk to nobody. All I want to do is see the bottom of a glass.
‘And as for Fay, I know she never cared for me none, but what I realise today, just this afternoon, is that all the time I spend with Michael give me a feeling like I connected to her. Like being with him give me a way of being part of something that Fay care about, because I really wanted something between us to work. There was so many times I feel like maybe we could have had something good and then some calamity happen like when she go to Matthews Lane, or when she find out ’bout you or the thing with Samuels or when Kenneth get killed. So many times I think we was going step through a new door together but what happen instead was she go through the door on her own and slam it in my face. Just like what happen on the veranda that night up Lady Musgrave Road.
‘I really wanted us to be a family, yu know. And now she gone and the children gone, what might have been is never going to be.’
And then I throw myself in Gloria’s arms and I cry.
26
When I open my eyes I realise Matthews Lane completely silent. I still hear the dogs barking but that is way out there somewhere. Not here in the yard. The thing that I can’t hear is life. I can’t hear life going on. I can’t hear Ma beating the batter or Tilly picking the saltfish and throwing the skin and bones in the pail, or Hampton sweeping the yard, or Zhang rustling the pages he turning on the Chinese newspaper.
So I get up and pull on some pants and step into the yard to see what going on. I stand on the step of my room and I look ’round. Ma got the bowl in the crook of her arm and the wooden spoon in her hand beating the batter for the saltfish fritters. And I see Tilly there at the sink washing off the saltfish she already soak and boil and drain off the salt water and now she picking off the fish and throwing the skin and bone into the pail. And I look up the yard and Hampton got a yard broom working his way down from the duck pond. And Zhang is sitting there with his rocking chair in the shade reading the paper. And there is not a sound from any one of them.
It so quiet I start wonder if I done lose my hearing. Is only the barking dogs telling me I not got no need to fret ’bout what all that Appleton do to me.
And then I look ’round again and I think it not so much that the place quiet. What wrong with Matthews Lane is that the place empty. The place done lose its energy. Maybe some would say it lose its chi because everybody was going about their business just the same as they always do except there was no substance to it. It was like they a
