The Polished Hoe
The Polished Hoe
BOOKS BY AUSTIN CLARKE
FICTION
The Survivors of the Crossing
Amongst Thistles and Thorns
The Meeting Point
Storm of Fortune
The Bigger Light
When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks
When Women Rule
The Prime Minister
Nine Men Who Laughed
Proud Empires
In This City
There Are No Elders
The Origin of Waves
The Question
Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke
NONFICTION
Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack
A Passage Home
Pig Tails ’n Breadfruit: Rituals of Slave Food
SELECTED WRITINGS
The Austin Clarke Reader
Austin Clarke
THE POLISHED HOE
A Novel
Thomas Allen Publishers
Toronto
Copyright © 2002 by Austin Clarke
First published in paperback in 2003
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Clarke, Austin, 1934–
The polished hoe / Austin Clarke.
ISBN
0-88762-110-4 (bound). —
ISBN
0-88762-134-1 (pbk.)
I. Title.
C813'.54 C2002-902554-0
PR9199.3.C526P64 2002
Cover and text design: Gordon Robertson
Editor: Patrick Crean
Cover image: John Sann, courtesy Getty Images
Author photo: Nermeen Mouftah
Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,
a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,
145 Front Street East, Suite 209,
Toronto, Ontario M5A 1E3 Canada
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $
20.1
million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.
We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
Printed in Canada by Tri-Graphic Printing (Ottawa) Ltd.
Seventh Paperback Printing, November 2009
13 12 11 10 09 7 8 9 10 11
The Polished Hoe
“
MY NAME IS MARY.
People in this Village call me Mary-Mathilda. Or, Tilda, for short. To my mother I was Mary-girl. My names I am christen with are Mary Gertrude Mathilda, but I don’t use Gertrude, because my maid has the same name. My surname that people ’bout-here uses, is either Paul, or Bellfeels, depending who you speak to . . .”
“Everybody in Flagstaff Village knows you as Miss Bellfeels, ma’am,” the Constable says. “And they respects you.”
“Nevertheless, Bellfeels is not the name I want attach to this Statement that I giving you . . .”
“I will write-down that, ma’am, as you tell it to me. But . . .”
“This Sunday evening,” she says, interrupting him, “a little earlier, round seven o’clock, I walked outta here, taking the track through the valley; past the two stables converted into a cottage; past the sheep pens and the goat pens, and fowl coops; and through the grove of fruit trees until I came to the Front-Road, walking between two fields of canes. In total darkness. But I knew the way, like the back of my two hands. Now, where we are in this Great House is the extremity of the Plantation Houses, meaning the furtherest away from the Main House, with six other houses, intervening. These consist of the house the Bookkeeper occupies; one for the Overseer, Mr. Lawrence Burkhart, who we call the Driver—that’s the smallest house; one for the Assistant Manager, a Englishman, which is the third biggest after the Main House; and there is a lil hut for the watchman, Watchie; and then there is this Great House where we are. The Main House have three floors, to look over the entire estate of the Plantation, like a tower in a castle. To spy on everybody. Every-other house has two floors. Like this one. That would give you, in case you never been so close to this Plantation before, the lay of the land and of things; the division of work and of household.”
“I sees this Plantation only from a distance, ma’am. I know it from a distance only,” the Constable says.
“It was dark, and I couldn’t see even my two hands outstretch in front of me. I took the way from here, right through the valley where the track cuts through it. I could make out the canes on both sides of me; and I could hear them shaking, as there was a steady wind the whole evening; the kind of wind that comes just before a heavy downpour of rain, like before a hurricane. They were ‘arrows’ shooting-out from the tops of canes. Crop-Season, as you.Well-know, is in full swing; and the Factory grinding canes, day and night. You could smell the crack-liquor, the fresh cane juice, strong-strong! What a sweet, but sickening smell cane juice is, when you smell it from near!
“Wilberforce, my son, who was home earlier, is my witness to the hour I left . . .
“Have I told you about Wilberforce, yet? No? Pardon me. The memory is fading, Constable, the memory. The mind not sharp no more, and . . . very often . . . What was I telling you about?”
“You was talking about your son, Mr. Wilberforce, the doctor, ma’am.”
“Yes! Wilberforce! My first-born. He isn’t really the first of my thrildren I give birth to. He’s the one outta the three who livedpast childbirth.
“Wilberforce, always with his head always inside a book, I keep telling him that with all that book-learning retain in his head, if he’s not careful, he going burst his blasted brains!
“He, I gave birth to, in the year nineteen . . . I told you that, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t tell me when Mr.Wilberforce born, ma’am.”
“Nevertheless. Two more thrildren I had. A boy and a girl. I gave them the names I intended to christen them with, if they hadlive. William Henry. Two names I took from a English magazine. And Rachelle Sarah Prudence, the girl. Lovely English names I named my two dead thrildren with. One died eighteen months after the first one. The boy.
“My third-born, Wilberforce, became therefore my first-born. A mother’s pride and joy.
“Wilberforce went to the best schools in this Island of Bimshire. Then overseas. He travel to countries like Italy, France, Austria and Europe; and when he return-back here to this Island, he start behaving more like a European than somebody born here. But, at least, he came back with his ambition fulfill. A Doctor. Of Tropical Medicines.
“Whereas, had the other two thrildren survive, I wanted them to follow in the path of the Law. They would have made such lovely barsters-at-Law! You don’t think so?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the Constable says.
“My sweet boy-child, William Henry; and lovely Rachelle Sarah Prudence, the girl.
“Yes, Constable. Me. I, Mary-Mathilda . . . I, Mary Gertrude Mathilda, although I don’t use Gertrude, as I told you . . .”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“. . . left inside-here at seven o’ clock this evening, and walked the four hundred and something yards from here to the Plantation Main House, and it take me fifteen minutes time to arrive there; and . . .”
“Which night you mean, ma’am, when you left your residence of abode?”
“Which night I took the walk? Was it Saturday night, last night, or tonight Sunday night, is what you getting at?”
“I mean that, too, ma’am. But what I really getting at, is if the moon was shining when you leff your home and place of abode, on the night in question, walking to your destination? Or if you was walking in the rain. ’Cause with rain, I have to refer to footsteps. They bound to be footprints . . .”
“If there are footsteps, those would be my prints in the ground, Constable. Bold and strong and deep-deep; deep-enough for water to collect in them. Deep-enough to match the temperriment I was in. I can tell you that my determination was strong.
“It was dark-dark, earlier tonight. But in that darkness, I was not hiding from anybody. Not from the Law; not from God; not from my conscience, as I walked in the valley of the shadow of darkness and of death. No. There was no moon. But I was not a thief, craving the darkness, and dodging from detection. Oh, no!
“A long time ago, before tonight, I decided to stop walking in darkness.
“With that temperriment and determination of mind, I firststarted, on a regular basis, to polish my hoe. And to pass a grindingstone dip in car-grease, along the blade, since September the fifteenth last-gone; September, October, November just-pass, is three months; and every day for those months, night after night as God send, more than I can call-to-mind. And I have to laugh, why, all-of-a sudden, I went back to a hoe, I had-first-used when I was a girl, working in the cane fields, not quite eight years of age. The same hoe, weeding young canes, sweet potato slips, ‘eight-weeks’ yams, eddoes, all those ground provisions.
“This hoe that I used all those years, in the North Field, is the same hoe I used this Sunday night.
“If it wasn’t so black outside, you could look through that window you sitting beside, and see the North Field I refer to, vast and green and thick with sugar cane, stretching for acres and acres, beyond the reach of your eyes, unmeasuring as the sea . . .
“So, no, Constable. I was not seeking the shadows of night, even though the moon wasn’t shining!
“I already stated to you that at seven o’clock, the hour in question, it was like a full moon was shining, by which I mean, as the saying in this Village goes, a full-moon alters the way men behave— and women, too!—turns them into lunatics, and—”
“Pardon me, ma’am. But on the telephone to the sub-station, in your perlimary Statement to Sargeant, Sargeant say that you say the night was dark, and no moon wasn’t shining. Is so, Sargeant tell me to write down your Statement, in my notebook, using your exact words. So, I hope that I not stating now, in-front-’o-you, what you didn’t state, nor intend to state, in your telephone Statement, ma’am?
“Sargeant send me to get your Statement offa you before he come himself. All we know is what you say when you call, that something happen, and you want Sargeant to come, and take your Statement, first-hand, from you. We don’t know what happen and we don’t yet know what is the circumstances. Sargeant would look after that. He say to say he have another important assignment. I am consequently here until Sargeant comes. But Sargeant coming . . . ”
“Soon, I hope.”
“Sargeant soon will be here.”
“. . . and so, what I mean by a bright night and the moon shining, is merely a comparison of my disposition towards darkness and light; something, as Wilberforce calls it, like the ironies of life.
Ironies
. He uses it all the time, and would say, ‘Sitting down to eat food is full of ironies.’ ‘Life is full of ironies.’ ‘A full moon is full of ironies.’ That is Wilberforce favourite word for it.
Ironies
.