bunch of duppies just waving their arms about but there was nothing there. No intention. Just their empty movement.
Then little by little as the days go by I start notice how Ma grumbling to herself that there is no little hands to help chop a few vegetables, or a little voice that showing interest in how you season the duck or pickle the cabbage. No one eager to wash the rice, or help set up the mah-jongg table, or greet your friends with a warm welcome and a hot bowl of tea, or light a extra incense stick at temple, or just sit with you and pick the bean sprouts, or help cut a few threads on your mending. Now you have to do everything on your own.
Zhang solemn as well. Like he dragging them wooden slippers up the concrete path rather than lift up his feet. All the news in the paper is bad news. Everybody he read about and everybody he know and everybody he talk to is dishonourable and cantankerous. There not one good thing in the whole of Zhang’s world. Not like when you have somebody take some interest in history, and the revolution and what is honourable and noble, and wants to know what is the right thing to do in different circumstances, and is a good student of tai chi, who practise hard and ask sensible questions, and who is getting better every day at reading the Chinese newspaper, and who want to understand that there is a connection between the plight and destiny of poor men and women everywhere in the world.
Hampton huffing and puffing with every clunk of them weights on the bench press. Up and down. Up and down. Up and down. With the sweat pouring outta him in the midday sun. It almost like Hampton want to kill himself with exercise. Well what you going do when you not got nobody to play shove ha’penny, or go fishing off the wharf with a hook, line and sinker, or go swimming over Lime Cay, or to bring you two piece of wood that need nail together, or they got string and paper and they want to make a kite, or you need to go get some old truck tyre to take to the beach, or you got to make a cart with wheels that turn. What you going to do if there is no one to ask you ’bout what you and your friends used to get up to when you boys, and what you know ’bout Uncle Xiuquan, and what her papa like when he young? What you going to do apart from pile the next few pounds on the barbell?
The thing I can’t understand is how come I no notice when all of this was going on. Mui so busy with everybody in the house, while I was driving from here to there with chickens and cigarettes and paying the child no mind. I try hard to think what it was I do with her because I wasn’t making no cart or kite or singing the praises of Sun Yat-sen or Mao Zedong, or picking the root off the bean sprouts. Truth is all I was doing was reading the newspaper and smoking a cigar. I was sitting down in my room or in the little sun trap just outside, outta sight of all of this with the faint sound of it coming to me on a breeze drifting down the yard. And the only thing that I do that seem important to me was to haul the children ’round Chinatown thinking that this was going to be their inheritance like it was mine. And all that happen from that was Xiuquan go get himself arrested and bring me face to face with them two good-for-nothing constables.
I say to Zhang, ‘What is it you think the children get from me? I mean it seem like everybody got something they do with them except me. They cooking and talking and playing and what not. What you think I do with them?’
‘You teach them tai chi.’
‘I start teach them. But every time they got a question is you they running to. Is you they want show off to how well they practise. Well, Mui anyway. Xiuquan don’t seem like him that interested. What Xiuquan interested in, yu think?’
Zhang pour more tea and he look ’round the empty yard because Ma at temple and Hampton out doing his chores.
‘Life not so easy for Xiuquan. Mui she spend much time Matthews Lane. Xiuquan he spend much time Lady Musgrave Road. Mui she learn ask question. Xiuquan he learn stay quiet. Mui she ask question in own head and tell you what on her mind. Xiuquan he got question in head but he not telling you nothing. Or maybe he tell people up Lady Musgrave Road. I don’t know.’
‘What question she ask you?’
‘Like she say, “In 1865 Paul Bogle and his comrades marched up to the courthouse in Morant Bay to protest about the injustice and abuses suffered by the people. He did not shoot his neighbour. He went to the authorities to air the many grievances of which the peasants of the parish complained. Why don’t the people today go to the authorities with their grievances?” And I say to her, maybe because they do not believe that the authorities are going to listen to them. And she say, “The authorities didn’t listen to Paul Bogle. They hanged him. That is why we struggled so hard for self-government and the right to government of the people, by the people, for the people. So how come a hundred years later the people still can’t get their grievances heard?” ’
‘But where she get all of this from?’
‘You. She get from listen to you. “Killing your neighbour not going solve unemployment and poverty. Foreign investors taking all the profit. The masa don’t even have to beat the slave any more in Jamaica.” This is you. Mui listen good and then she make up her own mind. The night you and Fay fight, Xiuquan confused but Mui know exactly where she want to be, and it with you.’
27
Sun Tzu say, ‘
I sit there on the veranda and I look at Miss Cicely and she just say to me, ‘The children were silent when they were here. Maybe Mui played some game with the maids, but Karl sat silent and read his comic book under the mango tree, or comforted his mother who was often distraught.’
‘And what about when Father Kealey come to visit?’
‘That was strictly a private matter between him and Fay. The children did not seem to be a part of that although it was obvious that Mui thought a great deal of him, and he in turn was very fond of her.’
‘But what about Xiuquan?’
‘Like I said, Karl read his comic book and watched television.’ And then she start look around like she already done finish with the conversation. She already done tell me everything and she can’t think what else there may be to say. She even get up and walk over to the edge of the veranda to go check what Edmond busy doing ’round the side of the house. Then Ethyl bring some cool lemonade and pour it out, and Miss Cicely sit down and take a sip and say to me, ‘The thing that interests me, Philip, is why you are so concerned about how the children spent their time here. And why now? It didn’t seem to me that you were concerned previously.’
I dunno what to say to her. Miss Cicely don’t think that children is a proper subject for men to be interested in. She tell me that a long time ago when I ask her ’bout marrying Fay. Or maybe it was more like Henry Wong didn’t think it was a concern for men. So I decide to just tell her the truth.
‘I miss them, Miss Cicely. Everybody miss them. Matthews Lane like a ghost town with everybody just going about their chores in silence. It like the life take outta the place.’
She look at me and then she have a little think to herself and she say, ‘It is unusual for me to hear a man speak this way. I did not realise you had such feelings in you. I thought you just concentrated on business ’ she pause a little ‘. and, well, the other things that men think about. You are quite a surprise, Philip. Really.’
‘What was it like for you, Miss Cicely, having the children here, and now they gone?’
She take a sip of lemonade and pick up a fan off the table and start move the air. She fanning her face this side and that and I can see the relief it bringing her.
‘The children brought a much-needed breath of fresh air into the house. Well Mui anyway. Karl was a different matter. He was always rather sullen. A very frightened boy. I suspect he spent too much time concerned about his mother. Not a healthy preoccupation for a boy, or any child I dare say. And although some children know how to balance their concerns with more carefree pastimes, Karl was not one of them. He was a sad boy in many ways. Devoted to Fay of course, and given the deficiencies of my relationship with her, Karl did not care for me a great deal.’
Miss Cicely examine her lemonade and then she carry on.
‘Mui? Well, Mui is Mui. I’m sure you know what I mean, Philip. She is quite a free spirit, isn’t she? A live wire
