V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

Eddoes agreed, but he didn’t look any happier.

Hat gave the baby a nickname long before she arrived in Miguel Street. He called her Pleasure, and that was how she was called until she became a big girl.

The baby’s mother brought Pleasure one night, but she didn’t stay long. And Eddoes’s stock rose when we saw how beautiful the mother was. She was a wild, Spanish-looking woman.

But one glance at Pleasure made us know that she couldn’t be Eddoes’s baby.

Boyee began whistling the calypso:

‘Chinese children calling me Daddy!

I black like jet,

My wife like tar-baby. And still -

Chinese children calling me Daddy!

Oh God, somebody putting milk in my coffee.

Hat gave Boyee a pinch, and Hat said to Eddoes, ‘She is a good-looking child, Eddoes. Like you.’

Eddoes said, ‘You think so, Hat?’

Hat said, ‘Yes, man. I think she go grow up to be a sweet-girl just as how she father is a sweet-man.’

I said, ‘You have a nice daughter, Eddoes.’

The baby was asleep and pink and beautiful.

Errol said, ‘I could wait sixteen years until she come big enough.’

Eddoes by this time was smiling and for no reason at all was bursting out into laughter.

Hat said, ‘Shut up, Eddoes. You go wake the baby up.’

And Eddoes asked, ‘You really think she take after me, Hat?’

Hat said, ‘Yes, man. I think you do right, you know, Eddoes. If I wasn’t so careful myself and if I did have children outside I woulda bring them all home put them down. Bring them all home and put them down, man. Nothing to shame about.’

Eddoes said, ‘Hat, it have a bird-cage I pick up long time now. Tomorrow I go bring it for you.’

Hat said, ‘Is a long long time now I want a good birdcage.’

And in no time at all Eddoes became the old Eddoes we knew, proud of his job, his junk; and now proud, too, of Pleasure.

She became the street baby and all the women, Mrs Morgan, Mrs Bhakcu, Laura, and my mother, helped to look after her.

And if there was anyone in Miguel Street who wanted to laugh, he kept his mouth shut when Pleasure got the first prize in the Cow and Gate Baby competition, and her picture came out in the papers.

About nine o’clock one morning a hearse and a motor-car stopped outside Miss Hilton’s house. A man and a woman got out of the car. They were both middle-aged and dressed in black. While the man whispered to the two men in the hearse, the woman was crying in a controlled and respectable way.

So I suppose Miss Hilton got the swiftest and most private funeral in Miguel Street. It was nothing like the funeral we had for the other old widow, Miss Ricaud, the M.B.E. and social worker, who lived in a nicer part of the street. At that funeral I counted seventy-nine cars and a bicycle.

The man and the woman returned at midday and there was a bonfire in the yard. Mattresses and pillows and sheets and blankets were burned.

Then all the windows of the grey wooden house were thrown open, a thing I had never seen before.

At the end of the week a sign was nailed on the mango tree: FOR SALE.

Nobody in the street knew Miss Hilton. While she lived, her front gate was always padlocked and no one ever saw her leave or saw anybody go in. So even if you wanted to, you couldn’t feel sorry and say that you missed Miss Hilton.

When I think of her house I see just two colours. Grey and green. The green of the mango tree, the grey of the house and the grey of the high galvanized-iron fence that prevented you from getting at the mangoes.

If your cricket ball fell in Miss Hilton’s yard you never got it back.

It wasn’t the mango season when Miss Hilton died. But we got back about ten or twelve of our cricket balls.

We were prepared to dislike the new people even before they came. I think we were a little worried. Already we had one man who kept on complaining about us to the police. He complained that we played cricket on the pavement; and if we weren’t playing cricket he complained that we were making too much noise anyway.

Sergeant Charles would come and say, ‘Boys, the Super send me. That blasted man ring up again. Take it a little easier.’

One afternoon when I came back from school Hat said, ‘Is a man and a woman. She pretty pretty, but he ugly like hell, man. Portuguese, they look like.’

I didn’t see much. The front gate was open, but the windows were shut again.

I heard a dog barking in an angry way.

One thing was settled pretty quickly. Whoever these people were they would never be the sort to ring up the police and say we were making noise and disturbing their sleep.

A lot of noise came from the house that night. The radio was going full blast until midnight when Trinidad Radio closed down. The dog was barking and the man was shouting. I didn’t hear the woman.

There was a great peace next morning.

I waited until I saw the woman before going to school.

Boyee said, ‘You know, Hat, I think I see that woman somewhere else. I see she when I was delivering milk up Mucurapo way.’

This lady didn’t fit in with the rest of us in Miguel Street. She was too well-dressed. She was a little too pretty and a little too refined, and it was funny to see how she tried to jostle with the other women at Mary’s shop trying to get scarce things like flour and rice.

I thought Boyee was right. It was easier to see this woman hopping about in shorts in the garden of one of the nice Mucurapo houses, with a uniformed servant fussing around in the background.

After the first few days I began to see more of the man. He was tall and thin. His face was ugly and had pink blotches.

Hat said, ‘God, he is a first-class drinking man, you hear.’

It took me some time to realise that the tall man was drunk practically all the time. He gave off a sickening smell of bad rum, and I was afraid of him. Whenever I saw him I crossed the road.

If his wife, or whoever she was, dressed better than any woman in the street, he dressed worse than any of us. He was even dirtier than George.

He never appeared to do any work.

I asked Hat, ‘How a pretty nice woman like that come to get mix up with a man like that? ’

Hat said, ‘Boy, you wouldn’t understand. If I tell you you wouldn’t believe me.’

Then I saw the dog.

It looked as big as a ram-goat and as vicious as a bull. It had the same sort of thin face its master had. I used to see them together.

Hat said, ‘If that dog ever get away it go have big trouble here in this street.’

A few days later Hat said, ‘You know, it just strike me. I ain’t see those people bring in any furnitures at all. It look like all they have is that radio.’

Eddoes said, ‘It have a lot of things I could sell them.’

I used to think of the man and the dog and the woman in that house, and I felt sorry and afraid for the woman. I liked her, too, for the way she went about trying to make out that everything was all right for her, trying to make out that she was just another woman in the street, with nothing odd for people to notice.

Then the beatings began.

The woman used to run out screaming. We would hear the terrible dog barking and we would hear the man shouting and cursing and using language so coarse that we were all shocked.

Hat said to the bigger men, ‘Is easy to put two and two and see what happening there.’

And Edward and Eddoes laughed.

I said, ‘What happening, Hat?’

Hat laughed.

He said, ‘You too small to know, boy. Wait until you in long pants.’

So I thought the worst.

The woman behaved as though she had suddenly lost all shame. She ran crying to anybody in the street, saying, ‘Help me! Help me! He will kill me if he catches me.’