1 Winsome is preparing a family favourite of roast breadfruit, fried flying fish seasoned with onion and thyme, with a side dish of grilled yellow squash, eggplant, zucchini and pan-roasted mushrooms with a herb-lemon sauce as the sea air breezes into the kitchen through the mosquito meshes that stop the flies invading in the daytime and the mozzies at night she appreciates healthy eating now she's back home and eating food grown in her vegetable garden and fish caught fresh from the sea to her kitchen direct Shirley, Lennox, their daughter Rachel and her daughter Madison are here Tony, Errol, Karen and their families will arrive later this summer Winsome likes having her family around her, and their friends; Amma has visited twice, she's been fond of her since she met Shirley at secondary school every mother wants their child to have a best friend Amma was a quiet child until she started attending the youth theatre and became a more extravagant personality who liked to wear eccentric clothes
Winsome told Shirley not to copy her, to dress to blend in or she'd become a target Winsome was wrong, Amma never became nobody's target when Amma came out as lesbian as a teenager, Winsome was worried the poor child's life would be blighted, and feared Shirley would catch the bug and be resigned to a life of misery too she was wrong about that too the French doors overlook the veranda where Shirley is winding down with a glass of wine while gazing dreamily at the sea like it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen she behaves like a tourist when she's here, expects everything to be perfect and wears all white: blouse, trousers, comfy sandals I only wear white on holiday, Mum, it's symbolic of the psychological cleansing I have to undergo Winsome is tempted to reply, you mean it's symbolic of you not helping out around here she won't ever tell Shirley off, though, if her daughter gets upset she'll never hear the end of it Shirley looks ashen and drawn when she first arrives from England, give her a couple of weeks and she's going to look radiant, her body will free-up itself from the up-tightness of city life and she's going to walk with more lyricalness it happens to everybody if they stay in Barbados long enough by the end of Shirley's vacation, she's going to look and walk as if she is truly a child of the soil, not one raised in a cold climate who feels everything is against her as Shirley does who's an emotional dumper as Shirley is complaining about her terrible job in that terrible school, and when Winsome advises her to leave and maybe become an educational consultant, Shirley replies, I don't want suggestions, Mum, I just need you to listen Shirley
who's never satisfied with what she has: excellent health, cushy job, hunky husband, lovely daughters and granddaughter, good house and car, no debts, free luxury holiday in the tropics every year tough life, Shirl compared to Winsome who spent her working life standing on the open platform of a Routemaster bus bombarded with rain or snow or hailstones climbing stairs a million times a day with a heavy ticket machine hanging from her neck and big money bag around her waist that got heavier as the journey progressed giving her round shoulders and back problems to this very day having to deal with non-payers and under-payers who refused to get off de dam bus who cussed her for being a silly cow or a nig nog or a bloody foreigner the hordes of schoolchildren fighting each other to get on the bus, same with the stampedes of suited cattle in the rush hour the fights upstairs when she had to ring the bell for Clovis to stop the bus by a phone box so she could call the police because mobile phones hadn't been invented the night shifts was worse what with drunks raging about and throwing up and assaults and someone was knifed to death on her shift not that she's complaining, she appreciated not having a boss keeping an eye on her and when the route was quiet she liked having a laugh with the regulars Winsome takes the fish out of the fridge, scales, fillets, slices it with her sharpest knife, runs it under cold water, dips it in white vinegar, rinses it off again she makes a marinade of myrtle pepper, garlic, coriander, thyme and oil in a bowl, coats the fish in it, wraps it in foil, puts it in the fridge she picks up the breadfruit from the counter, cuts out the stem as she's not got the strength to twist it out with her bare hands no more she cuts a cross into the top of the fruit, rubs vegetable oil all over its large, green, pimpled contours pops it in the oven where it's going to bake for about ninety minutes
should emerge perfectly cooked to provide nourishment and pleasure for her family she herself is a grateful person grateful she had Barbados to return home to when her English friends had to stay over there and spend their old age worrying about the cost of heating and whether they'd survive a bad winter grateful that as soon as she stepped off the plane to walk into the blast of heat, her arthritic joints stopped playing up haven't so much as muttered a word of protest since grateful that the sale of the house in London allowed them to buy this one by the beach grateful that she and Clovis, now in their eighties, have a reasonable pension, and won't have to worry about money for the rest of their lives so long as they stay parsimonious, which is true of her generation anyway, who only buy what they need, not what they want you got into debt to buy a house, not a new dress Winsome counts her blessings every day and thanks Jesus for bringing her home to a more comfortable life she thanks Jesus she made new friends with women who'd also returned from America, Canada and Britain and asked her to join their reading group she was honoured, she'd been a bus conductor, they didn't mind Bernadette had been a secretary in the civil service in Toronto and never married, her boyfriend visits her on the nights he doesn't visit his other women Celestine's hot on conspiracy theories, was a clerk at the CIA in Virginia, lives with Josephine from Iowa, which she doesn't have to hide from them, but does Hazel ran the first black hairdresser's in Bristol until her husband, Trevor, got early dementia and died, whereupon she sold up, came home, lives alone Dora's thrice married, once widowed, once divorced, and now married to Jason, a management consultant, she's the most intellectual in the group and was one of Britain's first black schoolteachers back in the sixties
every month they read a new book, started off with The Lonely Londoners by the Trini writer Selvon, about young Caribbean men in England who get up to mischief and treat women badly, women who don't even get a chance to speak in the book everyone agreed those fellas needed a slap upside their heads and they agreed to focus on women writers of the Caribbean, who would be more mature and responsible, and move on to the fellas later Winsome feels quite a literary person these days and has got used to reading books, when for most of her life she only read the newspapers her favourite writers are Olive Senior from Jamaica, Rosa Guy from Trinidad, Paule Marshall from Barbados, Jamaica Kincaid from Antigua, and Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe her favourite poetry book is called I is a Long Memoried Woman by a Guyanese lady called Grace Nichols we the women/whose praises go unsung/whose voices go unheard she and the reading group had a big argument, no, it wasn't no argument, it was a debate, the other day, about whether a poem was good because they related to it, or whether it was good in and of itself Bernadette said it was up to the literature specialists to decide what was good, they only knew whether they liked something or not Winsome agreed, she wasn't no expert Celestine said poetry was made deliberately difficult so that only a few clever people could understand it as a way to keep everyone else in the dark Hazel said novels was better value than poetry books because they had more words in them, poetry books was a rip-off (Winsome doesn't think Hazel should be in their reading group) Dora said there was no such thing as objective truth and if you think something's good because it speaks to you it is why should Wordsworth or Whitman, T. S. Eliot or Ted Hughes mean anything special to we people of the Caribbean? Winsome made a note to go to the library to look those names up when she walked home from their weekly gathering as the sun rose higher in the sky and the tourists peeled off the beaches back to their hotels and restaurants
her mind buzzed with their debates and she thought of how she could improve her arguments in the future today she looks out on to the beach to see Lennox and Clovis disappear around the bend to where Clovis moored the fishing boat he'd recently bought second hand and was patching up he almost drowned in the last one when it let in water, he only saved himself by bailing it out with a bucket all the way home dragging himself exhausted up the beach and letting the old boat drift away to its watery graveyard both men are wearing knee-length shorts and short-sleeved cotton shirts, neither has much hair left, both have broad backs, strong legs (although Lennox is a bit bow-legged, which she still finds very sexy) both have easy barefoot strides in the sand and are even a similar height and shape these days Clovis has shrunk a little height-wise, Lennox has expanded a little width-wise Winsome still wants him, not Clovis, but Lennox, she tells Shirley she's lucky to have such a husband Shirley replies he's lucky to have her as his wife which is typical of her Lennox will spend the summer helping Clovis out with the boat they'll replace planks, fit a new engine, install seating and windows, seal and paint it he's better in that respect than Tony and Errol who are more like their sister we work forty-eight weeks a year, Mum, this is our recuperation time, they protest as they pig out and drink too many beers her boys started off in junior jobs before rising up the ranks Tony is a crime decision maker for the Police Service Errol is a support manager for Children's Services they might still resent Clovis for giving them beats as children and have scars on their backs and buttocks as evidence, but it was hard raising sons in the seventies
Clovis had to protect them from the malevolent spirits that would bring them down: the police, skinheads – and themselves their parents had to give them a solid foundation with which to face themselves and the world she didn't need to do that with Shirley girls have it easier Rachel comes into the kitchen with Madison, all sleepy-headed, who shuffles over for a hug, I love you, great-granny, she says, as Winsome picks her up and inhales her good hair that's almost straight and smelling of the shampoo Rachel used on it yesterday before leaving for the airport she taught Shirley who in turn taught Rachel to ensure they was all clean and well-dressed when they got on a plane you never know what might happen you want sasparilla? she asks them Rachel goes to the fridge and brings the jug over to the table, unlike Shirley who'll say yes and wait for it to be brought to her by the maid would you like some, Nana? Rachel asks politely, she's the most considerate of her grandchildren Winsome sets to slicing the vegetables and gathers the ingredients for the dressing of thyme, salt, ground black pepper, hot pepper flakes, grated lemon and sunflower oil tell me about how you and Grandad met, Rachel asks her out of the blue, stroking Madison's back who's perched sleepily, precariously on her lap Winsome must look taken aback because Rachel adds, I want to know your stories to pass on to Madison when she's older, Nana, I want to know what it was like when you were a person in your own right Winsome has listened to her grandchildren's lives since they could speak, and they've never asked about her she understands that young people are consumed by themselves, and her role is to comfort and reassure and be caring towards them when their parents are cross with them Winsome likes the fact that Rachel is curious enough to know who her grandmother was before she was a mother, when she was a person in her own right, as she described it
except she never has been, first she was a daughter, then a wife and mother, and now also a grandmother and great-grandmother.