V. Naipaul - Collected Short Fiction

We used to hear fights and hear the children screaming all over the place, and when we saw Nathaniel, he would just say, ‘Just been beating some sense into that woman.’

Hat said, ‘Is a funny thing. Laura don’t look any sadder.’

Nathaniel said, ‘Is only blows she really want to keep she happy.’

Nathaniel was lying, of course. It wasn’t he who was giving the blows, it was Laura. That came out the day when Nathaniel tried to wear a hat to cover up a beaten eye.

Eddoes said, ‘It look like they make up that calypso about men, not women.’

Nathaniel tried to get at Eddoes, who was small and thin. But Hat said, ‘Go try that on Laura. I know Laura. Laura just trying not to beat you up too bad just to keep you with she, but the day she start getting tired of you, you better run, boy.’

We prayed for something to happen to make Nathaniel leave Miguel Street.

Hat said, ‘We ain’t have to wait long. Laura making baby eight months now. Another month, and Nathaniel gone.’

Eddoes said, ‘That would be a real record. Seven children with seven different man.’

The baby came.

It was on a Saturday. Just the evening before I had seen Laura standing in her yard leaning on the fence.

The baby came at eight o’clock in the morning. And, like a miracle, just two hours later, Laura was calling across to my mother.

I hid and looked.

Laura was leaning on her window-sill. She was eating a mango, and the yellow juice was smeared all over her face.

She was saying to my mother, ‘The baby come this morning.’

And my mother only said, ‘Boy or girl?’

Laura said, ‘What sort of luck you think I have? It looks like I really blight. Is another girl. I just thought I would let you know, that’s all. Well, I got to go now. I have to do some sewing.’

And that very evening it looked as though what Hat said was going to come true. For that evening Laura came out to the pavement and shouted to Nathaniel, ‘Hey, Nathaniel, come here.’

Hat said, ‘But what the hell is this? Ain’t it this morning she make baby?’

Nathaniel tried to show off to us. He said to Laura, ‘I busy. I ain’t coming.’

Laura advanced, and I could see fight in her manner. She said, ‘You ain’t coming? Ain’t coming? But what is this I hearing?’

Nathaniel was worried. He tried to talk to us, but he wasn’t talking in a sensible way.

Laura said, ‘You think you is a man. But don’t try playing man with me, you hear. Yes, Nathaniel, is you I talking to, you with your bottom like two stale bread in your pants.’

This was one of Laura’s best, and we all began laughing. When she saw us laughing, Laura burst out too.

Hat said, ‘This woman is a real case.’

But even after the birth of his baby Nathaniel didn’t leave Miguel Street. We were a little worried.

Hat said, ‘If she don’t look out she go have another baby with the same man, you know.’

It wasn’t Laura’s fault that Nathaniel didn’t go. She knocked him about a lot, and did so quite openly now. Sometimes she locked him out, and then we would hear Nathaniel crying and coaxing from the pavement, ‘Laura, darling, Laura, doux-doux , just let me come in tonight. Laura, doux-doux , let me come in.’

He had dropped all pretence now of keeping Laura in her place. He no longer sought our company, and we were glad of that.

Hat used to say, ‘I don’t know why he don’t go back to the Dry River where he come from. They ain’t have any culture there, and he would be happier.’

I couldn’t understand why he stayed.

Hat said, ‘It have some man like that. They like woman to kick them around.’

And Laura was getting angrier with Nathaniel.

One day we heard her tell him, ‘You think because you give me one baby, you own me. That baby only come by accident, you hear.’

She threatened to get the police.

Nathaniel said, ‘But who go mind your children?’

Laura said, ‘That is my worry. I don’t want you here. You is only another mouth to feed. And if you don’t leave me right right now I go go and call Sergeant Charles for you.’

It was this threat of the police that made Nathaniel leave.

He was in tears.

But Laura was swelling out again.

Hat said, ‘Oh, God! Two babies by the same man!’

One of the miracles of life in Miguel Street was that no one starved. If you sit down at a table with pencil and paper and try to work it out, you will find it impossible. But I lived in Miguel Street, and can assure you that no one starved. Perhaps they did go hungry, but you never heard about it.

Laura’s children grew.

The eldest daughter, Lorna, began working as a servant in a house in St Clair and took typing lessons from a man in Sackville Street.

Laura used to say, ‘It have nothing like education in the world. I don’t want my children to grow like me.’

In time, Laura delivered her eighth baby, as effortlessly as usual.

That baby was her last.

It wasn’t that she was tired or that she had lost her love of the human race or lost her passion for adding to it. As a matter of fact, Laura never seemed to grow any older or less cheerful. I always felt that, given the opportunity, she could just go on and on having babies.

The eldest daughter, Lorna, came home from her typing lessons late one night and said, ‘Ma, I going to make a baby.’ I heard the shriek that Laura gave.

And for the first time I heard Laura crying. It wasn’t ordinary crying. She seemed to be crying all the cry she had saved up since she was born, all the cry she had tried to cover up with her laughter. I have heard people cry at funerals, but there is a lot of showing-off in their crying. Laura’s crying that night was the most terrible thing I had heard. It made me feel that the world was a stupid, sad place, and I almost began crying with Laura.

All the street heard Laura crying.

Next day Boyee said, ‘I don’t see why she so mad about that. She does do the same.’

Hat got so annoyed that he took off his leather belt and beat Boyee.

I didn’t know who I felt sorrier for — Laura or her daughter.

I felt that Laura was ashamed now to show herself in the street. When I did see her I found it hard to believe that she was the same woman who used to laugh with me and give me sugar-cakes.

She was an old woman now.

She no longer shouted at her children, no longer beat them. I don’t know whether she was taking especial care of them or whether she had lost interest in them.

But we never heard Laura say a word of reproach to Lorna.

That was terrible.

Lorna brought her baby home. There were no jokes about it in the street.

Laura’s house was a dead, silent house.

Hat said, ‘Life is helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can’t do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.’

According to the papers, it was just another week-end tragedy, one of many.

Lorna was drowned at Carenage.

Hat said, ‘Is what they always do, swim out and out until they tired and can’t swim no more.’

And when the police came to tell Laura about it, she had said very little.

Laura said, ‘It good. It good. It better that way.’

THERE WERE MANY reasons why I wanted to be like Eddoes when I grew up.

He was one of the aristocrats of the street. He drove a scavenging cart and so worked only in the mornings.

Then, as everybody said, Eddoes was a real ‘saga-boy’. This didn’t mean that he wrote epic poetry. It meant that he was a ‘sweet-man’, a man of leisure, well-dressed, and keen on women.

Hat used to say, ‘For a man who does drive a scavenging cart, this Eddoes too clean, you hear.’