V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

Edward was waiting for us. He said, ‘You take a damn long time getting just two policemen.’

The policemen went inside the house with Edward and a little crowd gathered on the pavement.

Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘Is just what I expect. I know from the first it was going to end up like this.’

Mrs Morgan said, ‘Life is a funny thing. I wish I was like she and couldn’t make baby. And it have a woman now trying to kill sheself because she can’t make baby.’

Eddoes said, ‘How you know is that she want to kill she-self for?’

Mrs Morgan shook a fat shoulder. ‘What else?’

From then on I began to feel sorry for Edward because the men in the street and the women didn’t give him a chance. And no matter how many big parties Edward gave at his house for Americans, I could see that he was affected when Eddoes shouted, ‘Why you don’t take your wife to America, boy? Those American doctors smart like hell, you know. They could do anything.’ Or when Mrs Bhakcu suggested that she should have a blood test at the Caribbean Medical Commission at the end of Ariapita Avenue.

The parties at Edward’s house grew wilder and more extravagant. Hat said, ‘Every party does have a end and people have to go home. Edward only making hisself more miserable.’

The parties certainly were not making Edward’s wife any happier. She still looked frail and cantankerous, and now we sometimes heard Edward’s voice raised in argument with her. It was not the usual sort of man-and-wife argument we had in the street. Edward sounded exasperated, but anxious to please.

Eddoes said, ‘I wish any woman I married try behaving like that. Man, I give she one good beating and I make she straight straight like bamboo.’

Hat said, ‘Edward ask for what he get. And the stupid thing is that I believe Edward really love the woman.’

Edward would talk to Hat and Eddoes and the other big men when they spoke to him, but when we boys tried talking to him, he had no patience. He would threaten to beat us and so we left him alone.

But whenever Edward passed, Boyee, brave and stupid as ever, would say in an American accent, ‘What’s up, Joe?’

Edward would stop and look angrily at Boyee and then lunge at him, shouting and swearing. He used to say, ‘You see the sort of way Trinidad children does behave? What else this boy want but a good cut-arse?’

One day Edward caught Boyee and began flogging him.

At every stroke Boyee shouted, ‘No, Edward.’

And Edward got madder and madder.

Then Hat ran up and said, ‘Edward, put down that boy this minute or else it have big big trouble in this street. Put him down, I tell you. I ain’t fraid of your big arms, you know.’

The men in the street had to break up the fight.

And when Boyee was freed, he shouted to Edward, ‘Why you don’t make child yourself and then beat it?’

Hat said, ‘Boyee, I going to cut your tail this minute. Errol, go break a good whip for me.’

It was Edward himself who broke the news.

He said, ‘She leave me.’ He spoke in a very casual way.

Eddoes said, ‘I sorry too bad, Edward.’

Hat said, ‘Edward, boy, the things that not to be don’t be.’

Edward didn’t seem to be paying too much attention.

So Eddoes went on, ‘I didn’t like she from the first and I don’t think a man should married a woman who can’t make baby ’

Edward said, ‘Eddoes, shut your thin little mouth up. And you, too, Hat, giving me all this make-up sympathy. I know how sad all-you is, all-you so sad all-you laughing.’

Hat said, ‘But who laughing? Look, Edward, go and give anybody else all this temper, you hear, but leave me out. After all, it ain’t nothing strange for a man wife to run away. Is like the calypso Invader sing:

“ I was living with my decent and contented wife

Until the soldiers came and broke up my life.”

‘It ain’t your fault, is the Americans’ fault.’

Eddoes said, ‘You know who she run away with?’

Edward said, ‘You hear me say she run away with anybody?’

Eddoes said, ‘No, you didn’t say that, but is what I feel.’

Edward said sadly, ‘Yes, she run away. With a American soldier. And I give the man so much of my rum to drink.’

But after a few days Edward was running around telling people what had happened and saying, ‘Is a damn good thing. I don’t want a wife that can’t make baby.’

And now nobody made fun of Edward’s Americanism, and I think we were all ready to welcome him back to us. But he wasn’t really interested. We hardly saw him in the street. When he wasn’t working he was out on some excursion.

Hat said, ‘Is love he really love she. He looking for she.’

In the calypso by Lord Invader the singer loses his wife to the Americans and when he begs her to come back to him, she says:

‘Invader, I change my mind,

I living with my Yankee soldier’

This was exactly what happened to Edward.

He came back in a great temper. He was miserable. He said, ‘I leaving Trinidad.’

Eddoes said, ‘Where you going? America?’

Edward almost cuffed Eddoes.

Hat said, ‘But how you want to let one woman break up your life so? You behaving as if you is the first man this thing happen to.’

But Edward didn’t listen.

At the end of the month he sold his house and left Trini dad. I think he went to Aruba or Curaçao, working with the big Dutch oil company.

And some months later Hat said, ‘You know what I hear? Edward wife have a baby for she American.’

Hat loved to make a mystery of the smallest things. His relationship to Boyee and Errol, for instance. He told strangers they were illegitimate children of his. Sometimes he said he wasn’t sure whether they were his at all, and he would spin a fantastic story about some woman both he and Edward lived with at the same time. Sometimes, again, he would make out that they were his sons by an early marriage, and you felt you could cry when you heard Hat tell how the boys’ mother had gathered them around her deathbed and made them promise to be good.

It took me some time to find out that Boyee and Errol were really Hat’s nephews. Their mother, who lived up in the bush near Sangre Grande, died soon after her husband died, and the boys came to live with Hat.

The boys showed Hat little respect. They never called him Uncle, only Hat; and for their part they didn’t mind when Hat said they were illegitimate. They were, in fact, willing to support any story Hat told about their birth.

I first got to know Hat when he offered to take me to the cricket at the Oval. I soon found out that he had picked up eleven other boys from four or five streets around, and was taking them as well.

We lined up at the ticket office and Hat counted us loudly. He said, ‘One and twelve half.’

Many people stopped minding their business and looked up.

The man selling tickets said, ‘Twelve half? ’

Hat looked down at his shoes and said, ‘Twelve half.’

We created a lot of excitement when all thirteen of us, Hat at the head, filed around the ground, looking for a place to sit.

People shouted, ‘They is all yours, mister?’

Hat smiled, weakly, and made people believe it was so. When we sat down he made a point of counting us loudly again. He said, ‘I don’t want your mother raising hell when I get home, saying one missing.’

It was the last day of the last match between Trinidad and Jamaica. Gerry Gomez and Len Harbin were making a great stand for Trinidad, and when Gomez reached his 150 Hat went crazy and danced up and down, shouting, ‘White people is God, you hear!’

A woman selling soft drinks passed in front of us.