up and tell me I had a nice voice. He was begging me to go to the States.’
Hat said, ‘Why you don’t go then?’
Edward said fiercely, ‘Gimme time. Wait and see if I don’t go.’
Eddoes said, ‘What about all those woman and them who was chasing you? They catch up with you yet or they pass you?’
Edward said, ‘Listen, Joe, I don’t want to start getting tough with you. Do me a favour and shut up.’
When Edward brought any American friends to his house he pretended that he didn’t know us, and it was funny to see him walking with them, holding his arms in the American way, hanging loosely, like a gorilla’s.
Hat said, ‘All the money he making he spending it on rum and ginger, curryfavouring with them Americans.’
In a way, I suppose, we were all jealous of him.
Hat began saying, ‘It ain’t hard to get a work with the Americans. I just don’t want to have boss, that’s all. I like being my own boss.’
Edward didn’t mix much with us now.
One day he came to us with a sad face and said, ‘Hat, it look like if I have to get married.’
He spoke with his Trinidad accent.
Hat looked worried. He said, ‘Why? Why? Why you have to get married?’
‘She making baby.’
‘Is a damn funny thing to say. If everybody married because woman making baby for them it go be a hell of a thing. What happen that you want to be different now from everybody else in Trinidad? You come so American?’
Edward hitched up his tight American-style trousers and made a face like an American film actor. He said, ‘You know all the answers, don’t you? This girl is different. Sure I fall in love maybe once maybe twice before, but this kid’s different.’
Hat said, ‘She’s got what it takes? ’
Edward said, ‘Yes.’
Hat said, ‘Edward, you is a big man. It clear that you make up your mind to married this girl. Why you come round trying to make me force you to married her? You is a big man. You ain’t have to come to me to get permission to do this to do that.’
When Edward left, Hat said, ‘Whenever Edward come to me with a lie, he like a little boy. He can’t lie to me. But if he married this girl, although I ain’t see she, I feel he go live to regret it.’
Edward’s wife was a tall and thin white-skinned woman. She looked very pale and perpetually unwell. She moved as though every step cost her effort. Edward made a great fuss about her and never introduced us.
The women of the street lost no time in passing judgment.
Mrs Morgan said, ‘She is a born troublemaker, that woman. I feel sorry for Edward. He get hisself in one mess.’
Mrs Bhakcu said, ‘She is one of these modern girls. They want their husband to work all day and come home and cook and wash and clean up. All they know is to put powder and rouge on their face and walk out swinging their backside.’
And Hat said, ‘But how she making baby? I can’t see anything.’
Edward dropped out of our circle completely.
Hat said, ‘She giving him good hell.’
And one day Hat shouted across the road to Edward, ‘Joe, come across here for a moment.’
Edward looked very surly. He asked in Trinidadian, ‘What you want?’
Hat smiled and said, ‘What about the baby? When it coming? ’
Edward said, ‘What the hell you want to know for?’
Hat said, ‘I go be a funny sort of uncle if I wasn’t interested in my nephew.’
Edward said, ‘She ain’t making no more baby.’
Eddoes said, ‘So it was just a line she was shooting then?’
Hat said, ‘Edward, you lying. You make up all that in the first place. She wasn’t making no baby, and you know that. She didn’t tell you she was making baby, and you know that too. If you want to married the woman why you making all this thing about it? ’
Edward looked very sad. ‘If you want to know the truth, I don’t think she could make baby.’
And when this news filtered through to the women of the street, they all said what my mother said.
She said, ‘How you could see pink and pale people ever making baby?’
And although we had no evidence, and although Edward’s house was still noisy with Americans, we felt that all was not well with Edward and his wife.
* * *
One Friday, just as it was getting dark, Edward ran up to me