Shape-Shifter (3 page)

Hogg frowned. ‘What brought you here?’ He sounded suspicious.

‘A feelin’. A powerful feelin’,’ said Shakespeare.

Shakespeare peered timorously at the corpulent figure beside him. Hogg appeared preoccupied. He was scowling as he fingered the ring on his right hand, twisting it this way and that. Suddenly, he pulled the ring off and flung it through the car window. Just then, the car headlights picked out the anxious face of the chauffeur. He was with another man and together they set about removing the tree from the path of the car. Shakespeare knew that if he was to seize the opportunity before it vanished he would have to make his move fast:

‘Well, sir … Comrade sir, I can see that you are safe now. I must be gettin’ home. Sadly, I have been made redundant from the broadcasting station and I have got to get up early and look for other work.’

Hogg turned slowly and scrutinised Shakespeare. Shakespeare wilted a little under the penetrating stare.

‘I have an idea,’ said Hogg, thoughtfully. ‘I think I might be able to help you on this.’

Shakespeare batted his eyelids and started to thank him effusively, hoping for an immediate return to the broadcasting station, but Hogg continued: ‘I am going to offer you a position as my personal adviser.’

In his grandmother’s kitchen the next day, Shakespeare strutted from the window to the table, laughing and boasting as he related, in full detail, the success of his ruse:

‘So, what you think, grandmumma. I clever? You grandson clever? I am now Personal Adviser to Comrade Vice-President Hogg,’ he crowed.

She stirred some casreep into the pepper-pot.

‘Leave the country,’ she said.

‘
I AM MAROONED, MOLLY
!’

Donella Saunders stood on the verandah and gazed across the dried patch of garden towards the neighbouring house. That house, like her own, needed a coat of paint. The white wooden building sagged in places. Rust had crept over the zinc roof of the outhouse. The stake fence between the two properties zigzagged all askew under the weight of untrimmed hibiscus that ran along its length.

The plump white woman with a necklace of mosquito bites around her neck sat in the wicker chair and said nothing.

‘I cannot imagine why you came,’ continued Donella. ‘We are in a parlous situation here. Extremely parlous.’

A brown-skinned woman in her mid-fifties, she was tall, extraordinarily thin, with a high forehead and an air of ravaged elegance. Her wavy brown hair was scraped back from her face and pinned untidily with combs. She flicked ash from her cigarette nervously into the garden and stared morosely ahead of her at nothing in particular.

Molly Summers basked in the satisfaction of knowing precisely why she was there in the sun-struck capital of Guyana. It was in order to enrich the lives of the schoolchildren she taught in England. Only half-aware of the other woman’s mood, she sipped a cold cup of coffee and inspected her new sandals. She tried to imagine the shoe shop in Finsbury Park where she had bought them, continuing business as usual while she sat thousands of miles away on the other side of the Atlantic.

From the first moment when, some years ago now, she had muttered ‘Oh yes Lord’ in the silence and tranquillity of the Friends’ Meeting House in Muswell Hill, she had recognised her mission: to work for, understand and promote the culture of the oppressed races in England; to ensure equality of treatment at least as far as Moseley Road Junior School was concerned – she had even proposed (unsuccessfully) that the name of the school be changed. By nature a self-effacing woman, she overcame her timidity to make frequent interventions at staff meetings. She attended all the anti-racist courses run by the local education authority and cast reproving looks at colleagues who made racially ambiguous statements. She studied the pre-emancipation history of the West Indies, experiencing quiet satisfaction at the role of the Quaker movement in the struggle against slavery. The Quaker faith suited her with its one god so pale and subdued and down to earth that he barely existed. High self-esteem was an abomination to Molly, who trod a lifelong tightrope between trying to do good and trying not to feel pleased with herself for having done so. But as far as the race question went she prided herself on having got it pretty much right. When the opportunity to visit the West Indies came in the form of a remark made casually by the only black teacher in the school – who never dreamed that it would be taken up and acted upon – that if Molly really wanted to visit the Caribbean she could probably stay with her brother, Molly leapt at it. It was her duty to go. She battened down her feelings of apprehension and consulted her colleague on appropriate clothing.

And here she was.

It was ten in the morning. The sun was manoeuvring itself into position for the mid-day strike and Molly felt a prickling sensation along her forearms as if tiny, crystalline needles were being inserted under the skin. She raised a chubby hand and patted the top of her head. If only someone had reminded her to bring some sort of hat. Her pleasant, unremarkable face was framed by a neat helmet of iron grey hair, cut pudding basin style with a fringe. When she smiled, her expectant expression combined with the childish haircut made her look like one of those fuzzy newspaper photos of a murdered ten-year-old girl. She was, in fact, fifty-nine years old.

Donella pulled her yellow kimono round a body that was all angles like a stick insect and addressed Molly:

‘Excuse my
déshabillée
. You must forgive me. My mind too is disorganised this morning.’ The accent was extravagently English upper-class, hardly a trace of Guyanese, the result of years spent in England, daughter of some high-ranking diplomat. She stood facing Molly, taking short nervy puffs at her cigarette.

‘The iron and the radio have gone,’ she announced. ‘Someone climbed in through the window. I am totally unnerved. Completely and utterly unnerved. Do you think the maid left the top half of the door unlocked or did they come in through the window? On top of everything, this is the last straw. The radio I can do without, but not the iron. The iron cost three hundred dollars. We have nothing here. I am distraught.’

She wafted from the verandah into the living room to look for an ashtray. In a minute, she returned:

‘Excuse me, dear. Here are some magazines for you to look at.’ She tossed some ancient copies of
Harper’s
magazine and a
Tatler
onto the table. ‘I am afraid the telephone is constantly demanding my attention.’

Molly could hear her dialling a number on the telephone and then heard the wailing voice relating the story of the iron and the radio. She had been dumped at Donella’s house by her reluctant host, Ralph Rawlings, while he went about some business downtown. As soon as he returned she would persuade him to drop her at a bookshop where she might find some educational material to take home. She had begun collecting small items like a calabash, postcards, Amerindian artefacts, the sort of thing that would be a stimulus in the classroom. Now she needed books. Story books and picture books.

She picked up a magazine idly and put it down again. A fat, old, black woman came onto the verandah of the house opposite and threw something from a pot into the garden. Heat pinioned Molly to her seat. She remembered the night she had arrived at Timehri Airport. Nothing had prepared her for the beauty of Georgetown. The streets were the widest she had ever seen. Tall slender Royal Palms tapered off into the sky, the foliage of each one silhouetted against the night clouds like a spider dancing on a stick. The taxi passed stylish old colonial buildings whose latticed partitions and verandahs gave the appearance of white wooden lace and then continued, carrying her across small bridges over intersecting canals. But the next morning she awoke to find the city smiling at her with rotting teeth. She was living in an open sewer. A tentative, exploratory walk revealed the city to be built on a network of stagnant, liquorice-smelling drains and canals choked with rubbish. Floating belly up in one of them was an enormous, bloated rat. Molly was shocked. Later that morning she walked with her measured, schoolmistress tread to the sea wall and looked out over the pink metallic sea to where she supposed England was. One of these two countries is imaginary, she thought. And I think it is this one.

Donella posed in the doorway. Behind her the ebony-faced maid did not look up as she dusted assiduously and moved things round the table.

‘My dear, would you be so kind as to pass me my cigarettes? Please understand that you have caught me in a state of dire confusion because of this break-in. Maxine! Bring me some matches please.’ The maid brought matches. ‘I shall repair to my dressing-room and find some clothes to throw on my body after I have showered. In England, you know, I would shower however cold it was, whatever parts of me were freezing and dropping off. If I remember correctly, the English do not cleanse themselves too frequently.’ She went off into some other part of the house.

The timbers of the verandah creaked, momentarily giving Molly the impression that she was on the deck of a huge white ship that sailed on dry land, going nowhere. She shook her head to dispel the sense of unreality, rose from her chair and walked to the end of the verandah where Maxine was sweeping. Stinking foul water from the narrow concrete trench running alongside the road made her stomach queasy. Molly attempted to catch Maxine’s eye and smile. The maid steadfastly ignored her.

Something was approaching down the street. Molly blinked. At first sight it looked like a walking tree. She looked again. It was a man, thin and black, dressed entirely in shreds and tatters of cloth that had turned as black as his skin with age, sweat and heat. His hair grew knotted and wild. He walked with obsessive regularity of stride, stiff-legged as if his legs were branches hung with fluttering scraps of material. Barefoot, he progressed with astonishing speed, eyes fixed straight ahead.

‘Who is this, Maxine?’

Maxine looked up indifferently from her broom and glanced down the street:

‘The King of Rags.’ She chewed on a matchstick.

‘What does he do?’ asked Molly.

‘Me na know. ‘E jus’ walk.’

Maxine was still sulking over Donella’s accusations that she had left the door unlocked. She swept on methodically, then added with a grin: ‘Maybe he’s walking for summady.’

‘How do you mean?’ Molly wondered if she meant he was going on an errand.

‘Maybe he tryin’ to walk summady to death.’ She squinted at Molly in the sunlight. ‘We can do that here, yuh know. ‘I’ll walk for you.’ She shook her finger, indicating a mock threat, and laughed.

Donella reappeared dressed in a pair of light grey slacks and an expensively tailored blouse. Maxine served her breakfast outside:

‘Excuse me eating my breakfast, dear. I figure you’ve already had yours.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Molly with martyrish restraint. She watched Donella tuck into a plate of scrambled egg and tomato. Some of the food fell from her mouth onto the table:

‘You know, when I was in England I was very friendly with the Duke of Blenheim’s family. His cousin was a very good friend of mine. Do you know them at all?’

‘I’m afraid not. They’re a little out of my sphere,’ replied Molly smugly.

Donella rattled on: ‘Yes. She came to visit me in the clinic when my son was born – so drunk my dear, she was falling all over the room begging me to let her hold the baby and I was saying ‘No … er … please don’t.’ I dare say if I was back there now she would be expecting me to sweep her floors.’ She wiped her mouth on one of the paper napkins torn in quarters to make them last longer:

‘You leave that country and nobody gives a squot!’ she added bitterly.

The door buzzer sounded. A second or two later, Ralph Rawlings walked across the wide varnished floor to greet them. He was a bulky, balding mulatto of about forty-five with a loud shirt and squeaky shoes. He constantly adusted the black-rimmed spectacles on his nose:

‘Some kinda chicken riot downtown.’ Ralph always sounded exasperated, impatient. Now he was feeling especially burdened by this white stranger who had been foisted on him by his far-distant sister and to whom he had to play host.

‘What kind of riot?’ Donella exaggerated a mild panic. ‘I am supposed to be doing a little supervision for someone downtown this morning.’

‘Seemingly some chicken arrived from the States at half the normal price. People fightin’ over it. It’s the distribution that’s all wrong in this blasted country. Distribution all the time.’

‘I shall phone the shop immediately and tell them I am too distraught to undertake any supervision today. The loss of both the radio and the iron is catastrophic. I shall seize this opportunity to fly up to the Rupununi. I have been trying to organise a flight up there for days. Now, Ralph, might I prevail upon you to drive me to the airport? My car is out of commission until a new clutch flies in from Miami. My bag is packed and ready.’ She clapped her hands with girlish eagerness.

Ralph looked at his watch. He could spare a couple of hours and Donella was useful to him. She had good contacts in transportation and knew of outlets for his timber business:

‘How do you feel about comin’ out to the airport?’ he asked Molly.

‘Well, it was on my schedule this morning to go down and buy some books and materials for my class …’

Donella interrupted. ‘Don’t be foolish my dear. All those books come from England. You can get them when you return. Besides, there’s little enough here without you walking off with half the literature in the country.’

Molly did not attempt to argue.

The road to the airport was long and straight. Molly was bounced up and down on the broken springs of the back seat. Now and then she glimpsed the brown Demerara river through the bush. Donella addressed her from the front seat:

‘You see, Molly, I have a dear friend, my alter ego, who is stranded up on her ranch in the Rupununi. She has nothing to eat, literally nothing but farine. She is relying on me. The herd got rabies. They’re innoculated now but there will be no animals to sell for three months. The situation is utterly parlous.’