Just Joshua (6 page)

‘Mountain man! Mountain man!’ Robert taunted him.

‘He is not!’

They rolled over and over in the dust. Joshua kicked
and made contact with a shin bone.

‘Ouch!’ Robert shouted.

Joshua was glad it had hurt. He had wanted it to hurt. ‘Take it back! He’s not a mountain man. Take it back!’ Joshua was on top now. He and Robert had never fought before. At least, not like this. This felt serious.

He wished Robert would hurry up and say he hadn’t meant it. He wanted this fight to end. But first Robert had to apologise. ‘Take it back,’ he urged again, raising his fist.

‘All right! All right! I take it back.’

Joshua waited for a moment to make sure that Robert wouldn’t go back on his word, but all Robert did was stare up at him. ‘Say you’re sorry,’ he demanded, and instantly regretted it. If Robert refused, he would have to fight him again.

There was a long silence.

‘Sorry.’ The muscles of Robert’s face didn’t even twitch.

Relieved, Joshua got off.

Robert scrambled to his feet and brushed the dirt from his shorts.

Joshua held out a hand.

Robert ignored it. Seconds passed. Then, reluctantly, he reached out, clasped Joshua’s hand and shook it. ‘See you around,’ he said curtly and turned to go.

‘Rob …’ Joshua began, but then changed his mind
and decided to say nothing. Maybe it was best to let Robert go.

He sloped inside, lit a candle and held it up to the small mirror that hung from a nail in the corner. He gazed at himself. His pointed chin was different from his father’s broad face and his eyes weren’t deep set like his father’s. But his hair – dark, strong and very straight – was his father’s hair. It flopped over his
eyebrows
, except when he’d been in the sea and could slick it back from his forehead with his fingers. He was shorter than Robert too, but that had never bothered him before. He reached up and felt his hair. Robert was right. He was different.

Out at sea a cruise ship lay at anchor, white and
gleaming
, a gangway lowered down the side. Figures descended the gangway to the boat waiting below. When they were all in, it drew away from the ship and crept across the bay, heading for the jetty where Joshua and Millie, Robert and Solomon sat patiently, legs
dangling
, watching it approach. It was the last day of the holidays.

The boat nudged the bottom step. Tom was waiting. He took the rope his father threw him and tied it fast to a ring. Then he held it still while his father helped
tourists
up the wet steps and on to the jetty.

There were eleven of them, large men and women, cluttered with hats and cameras, bags and sunglasses. They climbed carefully up the steps, looking around and calling out to each other. They moved slowly down the short jetty in a group. Tourists were always a
welcome
sight. They didn’t come often and they never stayed long.

Tom came scrambling up the steps. ‘Come on.’ He beckoned his friends to follow. One man in long, tight
shorts looked back, saw them tagging along and pointed a camera at them.

Millie began to giggle.

‘Don’t,’ Robert said sternly.

She put one hand over her mouth, then the other, but the giggles wouldn’t stop. Tom was the first to catch them from her, then Solomon and Joshua together, and, finally, Robert.

Millie began to imitate one of the women. She pranced on pretend high heels and peered through imaginary sunglasses. The boys rolled in the road, laughing and squirming for joy.

Millie and Tom’s father overtook them. ‘They’re going to the shop,’ he told them, jerking his head.

Millie was the first to pull herself together. They
followed
the tourists into the smart part of the village, beyond the market, near the Gola and the hospital. Millie still succumbed to the odd snort of laughter.

They reached the part where the road was swept every day. You could still see the patterns left by the brooms that morning. A little further on they came to the stone shop that sold local crafts. The tourists crowded inside. The children sat down under a tree to wait, all except Millie who went and stood on a newly painted bench under the window to look in.

‘Josh! Come here!’ She beckoned furiously.

Joshua and Robert jumped up beside her on the
bench. Since the night of their fight and making up, they’d become somehow closer, and they’d never talked again about mountain men.

Inside, the tourists moved from a display of lace to a pyramid of hand-woven baskets to a selection of
pottery
…

‘You see?’ Millie hopped excitedly. ‘Our animals.’

There was a glass shelf full of familiar bluey-grey stone creatures.

‘Wow!’ Robert breathed. They had never seen so many together. And none of these were broken.

The shopkeeper looked up and glared at them. He waved his arms crossly, motioning them to get down. Millie stuck out her tongue at him.

Joshua tugged at her dress. ‘Come on. Down,’ he said.

They went and stood at a little distance from the open door, staring in. They couldn’t see the stone
carvings
any more, but they could see that the tourists were bringing things to the counter to be wrapped carefully in shiny paper and tied ceremoniously with string. Singly and in twos and threes the tourists emerged into the sunlight.

The children were ready. Each darted to a different target. Joshua headed for a woman wearing a short dress the colour of cut watermelon.

‘Carry your parcel, Miss?’ he asked, making carrying
movements with his hands so that the woman would know what he wanted.

She looked down at him. ‘Oh my, aren’t you sweet? Walter …’ she plucked at the sleeve of the man beside her, ‘Walter, isn’t he sweet?’ Two pairs of sunglasses gazed down at him. Two mouths smiled, showing large, even teeth.

Joshua couldn’t understand the words. He smiled hopefully back at them and touched the parcels in the woman’s hand. ‘Carry them?’

‘No, that’s okay,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘They’re not heavy.’

Joshua stood his ground.

‘Give them to him, Marguerite,’ the man said. ‘I think it’s expected.’

To Joshua’s delight, the parcels were handed over.

The group reformed and moved off towards the old leper hospital, with the children in tow. Joshua looked across at Millie who grinned triumphantly at him. They had all managed to get something to carry, even little Solomon clasped a box carefully and proudly to his chest.

From the old leper hospital they trailed to the
harbour
building and then to the Gola Hotel at the water’s edge, where the tourists stopped at the bar for a drink. Joshua gazed up at the winding iron stairs that led to the top floor and its shuttered bedrooms.

‘Here.’ A hand reached down and took the parcels from him.

Startled, he released them. Just in time he
remembered
to hold out a hand and smile.

The man raised a camera and it clicked in his face.

‘Oh, Walter,’ the woman said, ‘he is lovely, isn’t he. Just look at those eyes. What do you think he’s called?’

‘Ask him,’ the man grunted, turning to go.

She bent down to him, pointed at herself and said, ‘Marguerite,’ very loudly. ‘I’m Marguerite,’ she repeated, stabbing her chest with her finger.

She pointed the finger at Joshua.

‘Joshua,’ he told her, understanding.

‘Yoswa,’ she repeated. It sounded more or less right, so he nodded, his hand still held out, palm upwards.

‘Oh, of course. I’m so sorry.’

He heard her speak, saw her fumble with the clasp of her handbag. She pulled out a purse and took some coins from it and dropped them in his hand.

He closed his hand over them, grinned at her and ran off to join the others who were waiting impatiently.

‘How much?’ Millie demanded, jiggling about. ‘I got two, so did Tom, Robert got one and Solomon three.’

Joshua unfolded his fist. ‘Five,’ he breathed.

‘Wow!’

‘Let’s get some chocolate,’ he suggested. He was feeling generous and wanted to share his good fortune.
He didn’t think his father would mind.

Solomon beamed and began to nod. Joshua tapped Solomon’s head gently to stop it nodding, took his hand, and off they went, back towards the jetty and to the small shop at the crossroads.

They clustered around the counter where a small display of sweets and chocolates sheltered in the corner furthest from the sun. The shopkeeper sat in the shadows, sipping his tea and keeping a careful eye on his young customers. Joshua’s hand hovered over the bars of chocolate, then pounced, picking up two of the same kind. He held out his money to the shopkeeper who relieved him of two coins.

Turning away from the counter, the little group went into a huddle. Joshua pulled off the wrapper from the first bar and peeled back the silver paper. He broke off squares, one at a time, and handed them round. He waited till everyone had finished chewing and sucking and then shared out the other bar, keeping back two squares which he wrapped up neatly in the silver paper and put in his pocket.

‘See you later,’ he said and ran home. His father was still sitting on a stool behind the counter in the empty shop, exactly as he had left him earlier. There were no customers. Joshua went behind the counter and slid the chocolate along to his father.

‘Chocolate, Dad. Look.’

When his father didn’t respond, he undid the silver paper and pressed it into his hand. He licked his fingers where the chocolate had melted.

His father swung his head round and looked at him, the dullness in his eyes lifting for a moment.

‘You’re a good boy.’

‘Eat it,’ Joshua urged. ‘Before it melts. Go on.’

Obediently, his father put the chocolate in his mouth. Joshua waited for him to ask how he had got hold of it.

But his father didn’t ask. He didn’t seem to be
interested
. With a sigh, Joshua put the remaining three coins down on the counter and pushed them in front of him.

‘Good lad,’ his father said. ‘Fetch me some toddy.’

Joshua didn’t move.

His father’s voice tightened. ‘Hurry up. It’s in the corner.’

Joshua knew very well where the toddy was kept. Since the riot over Pig, his father had been drinking it a lot. There was a mug on the floor beside the jar. He filled it and took it to him.

‘No customers?’

What was left of the last pig looked forlorn in the counter. They had thrown some away the night before. Hardly anyone came to buy meat now. Not since the trouble.

‘None,’ his father answered. ‘We’ll have to get rid of the lot tonight.’

Joshua went out of the shop, leaving him brooding. He breathed in deeply and began to hum, determined not to be miserable. The humming turned to singing, which gave him an idea. He went into the house, pulled out the box from under his bed and took rattles from it: one was a big matchbox containing hard, red seeds; the other made from half a coconut shell filled with small cowrie shells he’d collected on the beach, with a thin bit of wood nailed down over it. He shook the box and then the shell. The shell was louder and sharper, but both were good rattles, the best he’d ever made. At the doorway he hesitated, then went back inside, picked up the comb from the shelf and
pocketed
it, along with a thin piece of paper which he folded carefully.

‘I’m going to Robert’s.’ He put his head through the fishnet curtain and told his father quickly, running off before he could be stopped.

Robert and his family were eating. Robert’s mother looked up and saw Joshua standing there. ‘Hello, Joshua. Come and sit down. Move up, Robert.’

Robert shuffled along the bench, making a place for him. On his other side was Sister Martha, a teacher from the convent where they went to school. She and
Robert’s
mother were cousins. They even looked a bit alike, at least, from what you could see of Sister Martha, which wasn’t much – only her face and hands.
Everything else was covered up by her nun’s white habit. She offered him a bit of banana from her plate and he took it eagerly.

Robert’s mother noticed. ‘Haven’t you eaten?’

He shook his head.

She sighed. ‘Miriam, fetch another plate.’

When Robert’s sister returned, she went round the table, taking half a spoonful of rice from one plate, a bit of fish from another, fried plantain from another, till Joshua had a plateful.

‘There now,’ she said, presenting it to him. ‘Eat.’

He put his rattles down on the ground and took it. ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled.

‘He’s drinking too much,’ he heard Robert’s mother mutter to Sister Martha.

Joshua stiffened. He began to shovel in the food.

‘It’s a shame. At least he’d always been such a good father.’

‘He still is!’ he wanted to shout. He was pretty certain his father would have given him supper if he’d stayed. At least, he thought so. He put down his plate and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Hey, Robert!’ he called. ‘Why don’t we go and play to the tourists.’ He didn’t like to hear his father criticised. He wanted to get away. Now.

Solomon leapt to his feet. ‘Yes!’ he cried and
scampered
indoors, Miriam and Tony close on his heels.

Robert groaned when the three of them ran out with an assortment of home-made instruments, jars and
bottles
and a length of tin lids threaded on a stick. ‘Do you lot really have to come?’

‘Yes, yes!’ they cried, jumping up and down.

‘Take them, Robert,’ his mother said. ‘Sister Martha and Leon and I could do with some peace.’

‘Oh, okay,’ Robert agreed, grudgingly.

‘Yeah!’ Solomon cheered.

Joshua was pleased. The more the better, he thought.

On the way, they picked up Tom and Millie. Tom had a tin and a stick, Millie a stick with tins nailed to it that clattered as they walked.

Some of the tourists were gathered outside the Gola, drinks in hand, smoking and chatting. Others sat on tall bar stools on the other side of the open windows.

Robert took charge. ‘Sing your market song, Joshua,’ he commanded, ‘they won’t know.’ He took Joshua’s coconut rattle and began to shake it to mark time. He nudged Miriam who lifted a bottle to her lips and blew across it with a soft moaning sound. Joshua opened his mouth and sang just as he did in the market:

Millie took up Robert’s rhythm with her stick of tin lids. Tom pushed his stick through his tin. Solomon blew his bottle then put it down and broke into a
capering
sort of dance. The tourists didn’t know that this was just a market chant, but they clearly liked the sound, so the children played it over again, beaming at each other, pleased at the strangers’ reactions. Joshua looked up at the windows of the hotel bar; the woman who had talked to him was leaning over one of the sills. She smiled and waved at him when he caught her eye. The man came into view beside her. She nudged him and pointed and they gazed intently down at Joshua.

‘Let’s do the river song,’ Millie said, ‘Can we, Josh? Josh? Will you sing it?’

Joshua looked away from the window and nodded. It was a village favourite. He sang one verse, then put the comb, which he had covered with thin paper, to his mouth and blew. At that point the others joined in, one by one. They played an accompaniment as he sang the next verse. It was a slow, wailing sort of melody about a woman looking for her drowned lover. Joshua
concentrated
hard on the words. They were so sad, he felt his eyes begin to prick.

Halfway through, the tune changed and became lively. He stopped singing and swapped his comb for
Solomon’s bottle and they both played, notes tumbling from them till even the tourists began to jig.