the fights upstairs when she had to ring the bell for Clovis to stop the bus by a phone box so she could call the police because mobile phones hadn’t been invented
the night shifts was worse what with drunks raging about and throwing up and assaults and someone was knifed to death
on her shift
not that she’s complaining, she appreciated not having a boss keeping an eye on her and when the route was quiet she liked having a laugh with the regulars
Winsome takes the fish out of the fridge, scales, fillets, slices it with her sharpest knife, runs it under cold water, dips it in white vinegar, rinses it off again
she makes a marinade of myrtle pepper, garlic, coriander, thyme and oil in a bowl, coats the fish in it, wraps it in foil, puts it in the fridge
she picks up the breadfruit from the counter, cuts out the stem as she’s not got the strength to twist it out with her bare hands no more
she cuts a cross into the top of the fruit, rubs vegetable oil all over its large, green, pimpled contours
pops it in the oven where it’s going to bake for about ninety minutes
should emerge perfectly cooked to provide nourishment and pleasure for her family
she herself is a grateful person
grateful she had Barbados to return home to when her English friends had to stay over there and spend their old age worrying about the cost of heating and whether they’d survive a bad winter
grateful that as soon as she stepped off the plane to walk into the blast of heat, her arthritic joints stopped playing up
haven’t so much as muttered a word of protest since
grateful that the sale of the house in London allowed them to buy this one by the beach
grateful that she and Clovis, now in their eighties, have a reasonable pension, and won’t have to worry about money for the rest of their lives so long as they stay parsimonious, which is true of her generation anyway, who only buy what they need, not what they want
you got into debt to buy a house, not a new dress
Winsome counts her blessings every day and thanks Jesus for bringing her home to a more comfortable life
she thanks Jesus she made new friends with women who’d also returned from America, Canada and Britain and asked her to join their reading group
she was honoured, she’d been a bus conductor, they didn’t mind
Bernadette had been a secretary in the civil service in Toronto and never married, her boyfriend visits her on the nights he doesn’t visit his other women
Celestine’s hot on conspiracy theories, was a clerk at the CIA in Virginia, lives with Josephine from Iowa, which she doesn’t have to hide from them, but does
Hazel ran the first black hairdresser’s in Bristol until her husband, Trevor, got early dementia and died, whereupon she sold up, came home, lives alone
Dora’s thrice married, once widowed, once divorced, and now married to Jason, a management consultant, she’s the most intellectual in the group and was one of Britain’s first black schoolteachers back in the sixties
every month they read a new book, started off with The Lonely Londoners by the Trini writer Selvon, about young Caribbean men in England who get up to mischief and treat women badly, women who don’t even get a chance to speak in the book
everyone agreed those fellas needed a slap upside their heads and they agreed to focus on women writers of the Caribbean, who would be more mature and responsible, and move on to the fellas later
Winsome feels quite a literary person these days and has got used to reading books, when for most of her life she only read the newspapers
her favourite writers are Olive Senior from Jamaica, Rosa Guy from Trinidad, Paule Marshall from Barbados, Jamaica Kincaid from Antigua, and Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe
her favourite poetry book is called I is a Long Memoried Woman by a Guyanese lady called Grace Nichols
we the women/whose praises go unsung/whose voices go unheard
she and the reading group had a big argument, no, it wasn’t no argument, it was a debate, the other day, about whether a poem was good because they related to it, or whether it was good in and of itself
Bernadette said it was up to the literature specialists to decide what was good, they only knew whether they liked something or not
Winsome agreed, she wasn’t no expert
Celestine said poetry was made deliberately difficult so that only a few clever people could understand it as a way to keep everyone else in the dark
Hazel said novels was better value than poetry books because they had more words in them, poetry books was a rip-off
(Winsome doesn’t think Hazel should be in their reading group)
Dora said there was no such thing as objective truth and if you think something’s good because it speaks to you
it is
why should Wordsworth or Whitman, T. S. Eliot or Ted Hughes mean anything special to we people of the Caribbean?
Winsome made a note to go to the library to look those names up
when she walked home from their weekly gathering
as the sun rose higher in the sky and the tourists peeled off the beaches back to their hotels and restaurants
her mind buzzed with their debates and she thought of how she could improve her arguments in the future
today
she looks out on to the beach to see Lennox and Clovis disappear around the bend to where Clovis moored the fishing boat he’d recently bought second hand
and was patching up
he almost drowned in the last one when it let in water, he only saved himself by bailing it out with a bucket all the way home
dragging himself exhausted up the beach
and letting the old boat drift away to its watery graveyard
both men are wearing knee-length shorts and short-sleeved cotton shirts, neither has much hair left, both have broad backs, strong legs (although Lennox is a bit bow-legged, which she still finds very sexy)
both have easy barefoot strides in the sand and are even a similar height and shape these days
Clovis has shrunk a little height-wise, Lennox has expanded a little width-wise
Winsome still wants him, not Clovis, but Lennox, she tells Shirley she’s lucky to have such a husband
Shirley replies he’s lucky to have her as his wife
which is typical of her
Lennox will spend the summer helping Clovis out with the boat
they’ll replace planks, fit a new engine, install seating and windows, seal and paint it
he’s better in that respect than Tony and Errol who are more like their sister
we work forty-eight weeks a year, Mum, this is our recuperation time, they protest as they pig out and drink too many beers
her boys started off in junior jobs before rising up the ranks
Tony is a crime decision maker for the Police Service
Errol is a support manager for Children’s Services
they might still resent Clovis for giving them beats as children and have scars on their backs and buttocks as evidence, but it was hard raising sons in the seventies
Clovis had to protect them from the malevolent spirits that would bring them down: the police, skinheads – and themselves
their parents had to give them a solid foundation with which to face themselves and the world
she didn’t need to do that with Shirley
girls have it easier
Rachel comes into the kitchen with Madison, all sleepy-headed, who shuffles over for a hug, I love you, great-granny, she says, as Winsome picks her up and inhales her good hair that’s almost straight and smelling of the shampoo Rachel used on it yesterday before leaving for the airport
she taught Shirley who in turn taught Rachel to ensure they was all clean and well-dressed when they got on a plane
you never know what might happen
you want sasparilla? she asks them
Rachel goes to the fridge and brings the jug over to the table, unlike Shirley who’ll say yes and wait for it to be brought to her by the maid