Hand Me Down World Read online

  She is getting down off her stool when he reaches for her hand, then he leans over her and kisses her lightly behind the ear. A group of tourists were laughing like jackals at one end of the bar. She looked to see if anyone had seen. No one had—but Jermayne had, he had seen her looking, seen her eyes looking for trouble, for blame. He smiled. He told her to relax. She was safe. He wouldn’t hurt her or do anything that would get her into trouble. That’s not my calling—that’s what he told her. He said now listen—and she did.

  The next day—it was after her shift—I saw them paddle a skiff out to the artificial reef. I saw them pull the skiff up the beach and walk to the ocean side. This was her first swimming lesson. I didn’t see any of it. This is just what she told me, and this was a good deal later, months later following the events that I am leading up to.

  Her first swimming lesson begins with Jermayne walking into the sea up to his waist. He looks around to see if she has followed. She hasn’t moved from the sand. He tells her there’s nothing to be afraid of. If he sees a shark he will grab the thing by its tail and hold it still until she has run back to shore. She is afraid, but she enters the water. The whole time she doesn’t take her eyes off him. To do so, she feels, will see her tumble into an abyss. So, there they are walking deeper into the sea. She is also walking deeper into his trust—that is also true. The rest is straightforward. She did what he asked her to do. She lay down on the sea. She turned herself into a floating palm leaf. She felt his broad hand reach under her belly. Then she begins to float by herself. Every now and then her belly touches Jermayne’s ready hand. Then, she said, it was just the idea of his hand that kept her afloat. I have never put my head under the sea so I can only go on what she said about it pouring into her ears and up her nostrils. I thought, I will never do that. I will never ever allow the sea to invade me. But she’d done it all wrong. That’s the point—what she wished me to know. She’d forgotten to take a breath.

  Jermayne gave her buoyancy. He taught her how to float like a food scrap. But it was a Dutchman who properly taught her. He never used the words ‘trust me’. If he had she would not have listened. He would say ‘like so…’ and demonstrate the frog kick and the crawl. I haven’t learnt those strokes myself, just the words. Frog kick. I like that. I’m not sure about the word ‘crawl’ any more, especially when I look out at a sea that is as vast as any desert. She tried to show me these things by lying flat on a bed. That’s where she used to practise her strokes when the guests were using the pool. I had to pretend the bed was the sea. But I did not want to swim. Besides, what I have just said belongs to another story.

  What I meant to say is this. With Jermayne it was all about her trusting him. And she did. Some of the things I will say now are what she told me. I was not there. How could I be? But this is what she said. When he asked her if she ever felt lonely, she had to stop and think. It had never occurred to her that she might feel lonely. I often wonder about that magic. Where does that feeling come from? If we don’t know the word for our wants maybe that is better. Anyway, they are out at the pool bar. Everyone has moved inside. They are by themselves. Perhaps the barman is there. I don’t know. After asking if she is ever lonely he touches her hand, moves his hand to her arm, now her neck. He asks if he can come to her room. ‘No,’ she tells him. She is the supervisor. She would have to sack herself. ‘In that case,’ he says, ‘come to my room. Come and lie with me.’ She looks around in case someone overheard. ‘Trust me,’ he says.

  In Jermayne’s room there was just the one embarrassing moment—there may have been others which I have since forgotten, but this is the one that has stuck. At some point he asks her if she would like to use the bathroom. She’s surprised that he should ask. Why would he? Does he know when she needs to pee? Then she realises why he asked. It’s because she has stood there rooted to the spot staring in at the white lavatory. It was the marvel of being in a guest’s room without rushing to clean the toilet bowl and tie a paper band around it to declare it is hygienically fit for use. Or to spray the door knobs so the room will smell nice or to punch the pillows and turn up the bed.

  She stayed the night—well not quite because she woke to the noise of the generators. There had been a power cut. She got out of bed and dressed and returned unseen to the staff quarters. I know she stayed with him the next night, and the one after. Then Jermayne flew back to Germany. He said he would ring. I did not think he would. But I underestimated him. Sometimes I would see her on the phone in the lobby and I would know it was him calling across the sea. A month later he was back, this time for a shorter stay, and it must have been during this period that she became pregnant. I was the only one to know. At first I should say, because eventually there is no hiding a pregnancy.

  Jermayne came and stayed another two times. The last time was for the birth. The hotel gave her time off. Jermayne rented an apartment in a nice neighbourhood on the other side of town from the market. I visited her there once. It was nice, quiet. There were no flies. He insisted she stay there with him. For a short time they lived as man and wife. She rang me once at the hotel. She said she just wanted to hear my voice, to be sure we still occupied the same world. She was visited by a doctor. She had never seen a doctor. He took her blood pressure and her pulse and put his hands where a midwife would. Jermayne was there, holding her hand. She listened to him ask the doctor questions. Many, many questions. Until he was satisfied the baby would be a healthy one. She had never known anyone to show so much care. When her waters broke there was a taxi waiting to take her to hospital. That Jermayne thought of everything.

  They hadn’t talked about what would happen next. I was sure Jermayne would take her to Germany. There she might start a new life. She was willing. I sensed that. She hoped that was what Jermayne had in mind. She never did ask. She did not want to burden him with a surprise. Of course she hoped it would not be a surprise, that the plans she saw clicking away behind his eyes involved her. He was with her at all times, even for the delivery, and before, too, breathing with her, holding her hand.

  Many hours later a baby boy is clamped to her breast. And there is Jermayne with a bunch of flowers. There are forms to fill out. Jermayne has thought of everything. Some of the forms are in another language, Deutsch, she sees. She checked with Jermayne. He explains, it is like taking possession of something. You have to sign for it. Like signing in for a room. So she did, she signed where he indicated on the forms. After two days in hospital a taxi brought her back to Jermayne’s apartment. He’d been out to buy baby clothes. He put her and the baby to bed. At night they lay with the baby between them. Once she asked Jermayne to come and lie next to her. She wanted to feel his hand on her, like the times when he was teaching her how to float. He turned his head on the pillow. A car’s headlights found the window and in that single moment she saw him with his eyelids closed.

  He insists she stay in bed. She has to mend. She tells him nothing is broken. But he doesn’t hear. Jermayne has to do things the Jermayne way. He doesn’t hear what he doesn’t want to hear.

  One morning she woke to the sound of the shower running. It was very early, yet when Jermayne comes out of the bathroom he is fully dressed. His face alters a little to find her sitting up in bed. He puts on a smile. Yes. A nice smile. A smile to calm the world. He puts a finger to his lips to shush her. They don’t want to wake the baby. He sits on the edge of the bed. He bends down to tie his shoelaces. She watches him doing this, wanting to speak, to ask what he thinks he’s lost because now he’s walking from one corner of the apartment to another. Now he’s found it. A baby carrier. It’s the first time she’s seen it. Now he comes to his side of the bed and picks up the baby. He presses his nose to its belly. He always does that. She likes it when he does that. Jermayne will be a good father, a loving father.

  The baby stirs; its eyes are still fiercely shut when it opens its mouth and makes a waking noise. At last they can talk. He says it is time for the baby to get some air. He doesn’t want
to take him out when the sun is up. It will be too hot. He stresses to her the importance that he get used to different air. So he will take the baby for a short walk. Not far. He doesn’t want to tire him out. Just as far as the gardens at the end of the road and back. He holds the baby out to her. ‘Kiss Mummy goodbye,’ he says. She kisses the baby’s cheek. Then she lies back, head on pillow, hands on her belly, eyes closed. Then she reaches a hand into the space beside her. How strange it is to find that space empty. How quiet the apartment suddenly feels. It feels wrong. She tries keeping her eyes closed but it is no good. There is nothing to mend, no tiredness to collapse into. That’s when she gets out of bed. She walks to the window. Maybe she will see Jermayne and the baby, and she does. There they are—well, the top of Jermayne’s head. There is also a taxi. The back door opens and a woman gets out. Jermayne hands over the baby and the woman cradles the baby in her arms, rocks the baby, looks at its face for a long time, then she lowers her face into the bundle. Jermayne holds the door of the taxi. He looks up once to the windows of the apartment. Now the woman and the baby get in the back, followed by Jermayne, the door closes, and the taxi moves up the street.

  The rest I don’t know. I don’t know how she spent the hours waiting for Jermayne to return. I don’t know what her thoughts were. But, for only the second time in my life, there is a phone call for me. I hear the whole story, and when she comes to the bit about the strange woman waiting by the taxi I know who that woman is; it is the same woman I thought I saw with Jermayne months earlier. They crossed the lobby together. She went into the lift ahead of him. At that moment I felt quite sure they were together. In a hotel you quickly learn who is alone and which ones are couples, and which ones are unhappy. And when you change their sheets you know more still. I never saw that woman again. And remember, at breakfast there was just Jermayne.

  But as soon as I hear about the woman getting out of the taxi I see the woman walking slightly ahead for the lifts, and I see Jermayne gesture with his hand for her to go in first, and I see, as if for the first time, the woman open and close her purse, and as the lift doors are closing I see her turn to Jermayne. This is information that sits inside my mouth. Perhaps one day I will spit it out and tell her. But as she is telling me about that woman getting out of the taxi I hold my tongue and at the same time I feel a prickly heat cover me from head to toe. This is my cross to bear. But listen to what I say to myself. If I tell her, I feel I will lose a friend. Because if I tell her she will think she has lost a friend. A friend would have shared such information. Why did I not say something at the time? She will want to know. And I don’t know what I might say. Now I do know. I would have said I wanted her to be happy.

  It was another two days until my day off. I walked across the city to the apartment. It was very hot. No one else was out. There were cars. But no one was walking. I was walking because I had only enough money for the trip back to the hotel in the taxi.

  I was expecting her to be upset. I’m not saying she wasn’t. But most people when they are upset will cry or wave their arms about. Not her. She was still, very still. Still as a hotel palm on one of those hot breathless days. I gave her a hug but I can’t say I felt flesh, not breathing, living kind of flesh. She lowered her eyes away from me. She would not let me see her or get near to how she felt. Perhaps there was no way of getting closer. I only know she was glad I was there to bring her home to the hotel.

  The hotel managers were surprised to find her back on the roster. Like everyone else they had imagined she would move away with Jermayne. They thought of her story as a good luck story. A bit of star dust had fallen out of the sky and landed at her feet. That’s how they saw it. I backed up her miscarriage story. The management were kind. They gave her time off. One of the women gave her a hug. A man we hardly ever saw, he had something to do with laundry, he gave her flowers. Soon she was back in uniform, back to supervisor, but there was no going back to that person she had been.

  She did not smile at the guests. She looked right through them when they made their little complaints. She did not care. I saw her take a skiff out to the artificial reef. She did that by herself. I would like to have gone out there but she didn’t invite me and I didn’t ask because these were pilgrimages. I could see her quite clearly, walking up and down that shoreline looking off in the direction of Europe.

  One afternoon while I am looking at that solitary figure on the reef Mr Newton from management comes up behind me and whispers in my ear. How would I like to be made supervisor? Well I am still that person today. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I am happy. I believe in love. I would like some of that to fall out of the sky and land at my feet one day. But before I bend down and pick it up I will be sure of what it is first.

  two

  The inspector

  The boat she paid for stank of fish. She never saw the pilot. There were crew—a few men, always with their backs turned to her— and the others. It was at night and so it was hard to know exactly how many of them there were. But then cargo doesn’t ever stop and think to count.

  To pay for her berth she had hotel sex with foreigners— counting the Dutchman who had taught her to swim. She had saved money of all denominations and currencies. Some she thought must be Chinese, but also euros and pounds and American dollars. She rolled these notes over and over into a cigar which she slipped inside of herself for safe keeping.

  For hours there was just the slap of the sea against the bowsprit. The cargo sat huddled. People from different parts of the continent. No one speaking for fear of being overheard. The danger is around them, thickly layered, ears filled with good hearing, eyes able to pierce the darkest night. They sit with their bundles of belongings. They sit on top of their emptied bowels. They haven’t eaten for hours, half a day or more. They have been advised it is better that way.

  The slowing of the boat made everyone sit taller. Heads turned. Those seated opposite peered back across her shoulder. That’s when she turned and saw the coastal lights of Europe. From the area of the stern there came a loud splash. She watched a black face scramble and clutch a buoy at the side of the boat. The man was still hugging it as the boat pulled away. Now, for the first time, she heard the instructions. Another boat would be by to pick them up. They aren’t to worry. They can expect to be in the sea for upwards of an hour. They should hang onto the buoy and wait. There is no need to be afraid. It will work to plan just as it has so many times before. She was reminded of the hotel voice used to placate guests—gentle, reassuring, smiling. The water will soon be back on. It won’t be much longer before the electricity is restored. A repair man is on his way to your room. Of course you may drink the water if you so choose but it is not advisable.

  There was a splash. Another body writhed in the unfamiliar, and, as before, a pair of frightened eyes receded into the night.

  An older man sitting further along the gunwale quietly announces he cannot swim. He is sitting with a box of belongings on his lap, his long peasant arms thrown over it. No one said anything and no one turned to look at the splash he made.

  She can at least swim. The Dutchman used to sneak her into the hotel pool at night. He told her to lie in the water and to pretend it was a bed, then he had shown her how to move her arms and to think that the thing she was reaching for lay continually beyond her grasp.

  A face wearing a black woollen cap crouches near her. As the boat quietly comes around she sees the buoy. She had taken off her sneakers and is bending down to pick them up when a hand shoves her and she falls on her side into the sea. Briefly, miraculously, she doesn’t seem to get wet. She is in the water but it isn’t in her. It was just for a split second, something for hope and amazement to cling to. Then all at once the water seeped through her clothing and she thrashed around in the sea at the shock of it until she felt the hard plastic of the buoy.

  The boat moved away, and the night and a sense of the void walled up around her. In the unseen distance she heard another splash. From the bo
at the coastal lights had been clear. Now she can’t see them any more. The sea is in the way, heaving and dragging her around the buoy. The buoy is difficult to hold. It is too big, too round. She has to settle for hanging onto its anchoring rope and changing hands whenever one arm tires.

  How long was she in the water? What is time under those circumstances? What is an hour? What is ten minutes? Time can be measured in other ways. By the cold. By fear. By the length of time it takes for flesh to turn numb and then to rot and come away from her bones. She began to doubt the words of the crew. Or else something had happened. That was more believable because whatever was supposed to happen rarely did.

  She saw the sun rise and draw itself against the sky. The last of the blinking lights died. The sea bulged up, and the line of Europe turned to mist.

  The Dutchman had taught her to swim like a dog. ‘Dog paddling.’ On her own she had managed only one length. But he’d encouraged her to keep going, to practise. After a month she could do fifty lengths of the pool. Once, to the amusement of a hotel guest who sat the whole time on a recliner with a cocktail, she swam one hundred lengths to win a bet of ten dollars.

  Her shoulders ache, her lips are swollen, her eyes hurt. Her skin wants nothing more to do with her. It has lost the silky touch that guests always liked to comment on. Whenever they stopped to pet her she liked to watch the slow marvel of herself emerge in the eyes and face of a perfect stranger.