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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781785301582 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Black & White Publishing |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2018 |
| Series: | J.T. Ellington Trilogy , #3 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.20(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
The early morning March air was cool and tinged with the unmistakeable tang of the sea. It was a comforting and now familiar scent; a welcoming aroma that would, often as not, greet me as I woke and then gently cosset me as I fell asleep late at night. In the winter of 1967 I had moved out of my digs on Gwyn Street in St Paul's, and discreetly relocated down by the waterside of Bristol harbour and settled on a narrow beamed Dutch barge, which I began renting from the Avonmouth Port Company.
The old vessel had seen better days and was now permanently moored out at Nova Scotia Place on Spike Island, close to the busy Cumberland Basin and the bustle of the town. Despite its unusual location, and rusted and haggard exterior, the ancient boat allowed me and the ghosts I carried around a tenuous sense of privacy. It offered a retreat from the outside world; a place I often found to be inhospitable and one I occasionally struggled to understand and cope with. The barge was well over eighty years old and certainly not most people's idea of the perfect domicile; but for me, despite all its cosmetic flaws, the tatty tub was somewhere I finally felt safe. I'd become happy to call the narrow boat my home; something I'd felt I'd never truly been able to since moving from Barbados to Britain some four years earlier.
It was the day before Good Friday, just after 8am and the low rising sun was misty and soft in the trees. I'd woken early and was sat outside, barefoot in my vest and trousers on a short-legged, wooden stool at the furthest edge of the bow of the barge, clasping a battered blue and white enamel mug filled with coffee. I took a sip of the fragrantly hot liquid and looked out at the smooth water around me then briefly closed my eyes, the cool ozone-scented breeze touching my face and bare shoulders.
Herring gulls squabbled in the sky, their choking calls echoing loudly across the dock. I took another swig of coffee, rested my back against the cabin wall and watched a pair of young water voles swimming between my barge and a small tug boat on the opposite side of the dock. Driftwood bobbed and floated aimlessly across the top of the dark water's surface, its brackish iodine odour mixing with the scent of the Mexican fleabane and bright purple bellflowers which grew in abundance along the harbour walls. A cyclist rode towards me along the towpath. I watched the rider approach, finally recognising a familiar figure distinguished by his well-pressed Royal Mail uniform.
Harry Parkin was my local postman, whose delivery round took in parts of St Paul's and, occasionally, the dockland district. I watched him come to a halt at the side of the boat. He nodded his head at me politely then leaned on the crossbar, where a pair of rabbits, recently shot and freshly gutted, hung from the stem.
"How you doin', Harry?"
"Not bad, not bad at all, Mr Ellington." Harry winked at me then stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and took out a brass pot of Will's snuff. He opened the small tin box and ground tobacco leaves between his thumb and forefinger, placed it carefully in two small heaps on to the back of his hand then inhaled it sharply into both nostrils. Harry threw his head back, wiped at the end of his nose with the back of his hand and coughed loudly after delivering himself the swift hit of nicotine. Harry Parkin was a plain-speaking man, good-humoured, kind-hearted and a natural born crook. He was thin as a rake, with skin as pale as Banquo's Ghost, his lumpy battered face betraying the pain and suffering that he'd survived in his youth.
He was fifty or more years old, balding and had seen his fair share of hardship, mainly across the theatre of war as a sapper with the Eighth Army at places like Tobruk and then Italy. I liked Harry. He wiped again at his nostrils with the edge of his finger then gestured with his head towards the mail sack hanging at his side.
"I bin an' delivered a telegram up to your place o' work this morning."
"A telegram?"
"Yeah, I gave it to that old witch you got working on the door."
"Old witch? You mean, Mrs Pearce?"
"I don't know the biddy's name, I just know she's got a bloody sharp tongue in her head."
I smiled to myself, fully aware of my old neighbour's fearsome reputation and her fiery disposition. "Having her about is cheaper than keeping a guard dog, Harry."
Harry winced at the thought. "I bet she is ... Anyways, I don't often deliver telegrams. I was down this way, thought I'd tip you the nod."
"Thanks, Harry, that's real good of you. It must be my lucky day. Perhaps the queen's gone an' knighted me?"
"You, a knight o' the realm?" Harry smiled then shook his head doubtfully.
I shrugged my shoulders at the mailman. "Stranger things have happened, look at Learie Constantine. He got one."
"Constantine was a bloody good cricketer. You, and what you get up to: I don't think so, matey. The queen ain't in no hurry to send you no medal; not unless Her Majesty's gone all soft an' moved out to the colonies, she ain't."
"The colonies, what you talkin' 'bout?"
"That telegram o' yours, sent from Barbados, it was." Harry raised his eyebrows at me then sat back on the seat of his bicycle, put his feet through the pedal straps and began to proceed back up the towpath. He called after me, his voice crackling with suppressed laughter.
"Either you're being deported, old son, or somebody needs to get a hold of you pretty sharpish. I'll be seeing ya."
I waved farewell to Harry and watched him ride off then closed my eyes again. I listened to the chimes from Holy Trinity Church striking the half hour and to the swallows as they swooped down from the warehouse eaves around me and glided across the still canal water. I shuddered. From out of the darkness behind my eyelids, somewhere in the furthest recesses of my mind, I thought I could hear the sage, foretelling whisper of my long-deceased mama's words calling out to me.
"Boy, yuh 'member, nuthin' travels faster than bad news."
* * *
I sat thinking about what was contained in the wire that was waiting for me back in St Paul's. I mulled over the possibilities whilst I drank the last of my now cold coffee then went back inside and put a kettle of water on top of the wood stove and waited for it to boil. Twenty minutes later I'd washed and shaved. I brushed my teeth, ran Bay Rum through my hair, splashed a palmful of English Leather aftershave across my jaw then dressed in a white cotton shirt and grey herringbone tweed suit. I stood in front of the mirror and knotted a dark blue satin rayon tie around my neck then slowly ran my thumb along the small half-inch scar that ran down the left side of my brow and smiled to myself. The faded cicatrix was an old war wound given to me by my younger sister, Bernice, who had, in a fit of temper, thrown a broken conch shell at me when we were kids. I sank back the remainder of a second mug of coffee, pulled on and laced up my black Oxford brogues, threw on my old Aquascutum overcoat and fitted my black felt trilby on to my head, drawing it down low over my eyes.
I locked up the outside cabin door of the barge and made my way across the wharf and back along the chocolate block stone path towards St Paul's. As I walked, I recalled an observation Lord Learie Constantine had once made more than a decade earlier which aptly summed up the world around me:
"Almost the entire population in Britain really expected thecoloured man to live in an inferior area ... areas devotedto coloured people ... Most British people would be quite unwillingfor a black man to enter their homes, nor would they wish to work with one as a colleague, nor stand shoulder to shoulder with one at a factory bench."
An uninvited anger aroused me as I thought about Constantine's sombre sentiment and I reflected on how little I now missed the rundown ghetto I had recently left and where so many of my fellow émigrés still resided; most living in rundown slum properties, paying criminally high rents to wealthy white landlords.
I climbed a series of steep concrete steps out on to Hotwells Road, stopped for a moment and stared at the magnificent Clifton suspension bridge raised high above Avon Gorge and across to the wealthy city of Bristol; my gaze finally drawn out towards the port town's poorer neighbourhood, St Paul's. Thirteen years on since Learie Constantine uttered his bleak declaration of our migrant plight and his disquieting words were still ringing true ... Some things, I feared, just weren't meant to change.
* * *
I shared my place of work with a two-ring boxing gymnasium. Vic's Gym was a rundown, three-storey Georgian building on Gloucester Road in the heart of St Paul's. It was just after 10.30am by the time I'd climbed the fire stairs at the back of the gym and walked into my office. There were already a dozen or so punters either working out on the heavy bags or sparring with each other. Fighters of all stripes and experience yelled instructions and bawled obscenities as they lifted weights, shadow-boxed, hammered speed bags or punished their muscular bodies with a regime of sit-ups, medicine ball circling or rope-jumping. Most of the men were black; many were aimless young souls who came to Vic's to hone their anger to a fine point of violence in a crude attempt to shed the skin of unemployment, poverty and future lives spent on the shady margins of small-time crime; young lives that would mostly likely be wasted enduring lengthy periods of time holed up in local police jails or rotting in prison cells across the land.
I took off my trilby and overcoat and hung them on the teak coat stand by the entrance to my office door and went to seek out Mrs Pearce. My former neighbour and friend had in the past six months taken it upon herself to become my personal secretary and office cleaner, as well as providing me with a host of nourishing meals, a quality laundry service, and business and personal advice, whether I wanted it or not.
For a woman in her late seventies she was unusually spritely, adept at problem-solving and annoyingly efficient. We shared a love — hate relationship and, in truth, she was the closest thing to a friend that I possessed. The old girl had already sensed my presence in the building, hotfooting it from less important duties downstairs. She was standing like the Sword of Damocles in the shadows at the end of the hallway staring down at her wristwatch.
"Good morning, Mr Ellington. And what time do you call this?"
I looked back at the clock on the back wall of my office. "'Bout the time I be needin' you to brew me a cup o' your tea." I smiled at her and she stared back at me stony-faced. I nervously cleared an imaginary frog from my throat and looked at the telegram clenched in Mrs Pearce's right hand. I pointed sheepishly at the yellow-papered telex like a child awaiting bad news from an unwelcome school report.
"I'm assuming that's fo' me?"
Mrs Pearce nodded and handed me the envelope. "It certainly is. Delivered first thing this morning by that awful postman you drink with in the Prince of Wales public house."
"How'd you know I drink with Harry Parkin in the Prince o' Wales?"
"Because the man reeks of snuff. You may wish to remember that I wash your clothes, Mr Ellington. He must get a half ounce of the stuff down the front of your shirt every time he sneezes. Disgusting pig."
I took the telegram from her and nervously held it by the tips of my fingers, staring down at my name on the front of the envelope, unsure if I wanted to open it for fear of what may be contained inside. Mrs Pearce jabbed at my side with her bony hand.
"Well, come on then, man, I haven't got all day ... open it."
I turned the envelope over and slipped my thumb underneath the seal flap and tore it open. I pulled out the wafer-thin sheet of paper and read the words which had been typed across it.
22nd March 1967
Bridgetown. Barbados. 33 9 1527 Joseph Stop I sincerely regret to inform you of the death of your sister Bernice May Ellington Stop Request you make urgent travel arrangements to return to Barbados to settle affairs Stop Expect Telephone Call At Grosvenor Road With Further Details and Instructions Stop Thursday 23rd March at 19.00GMT Stop V Stop
I felt the tears well up underneath my eyes and a cold pall wash over my body. A bitter metallic taste rose up from the back my mouth and crept across my tongue as the all too familiar and unwelcome revenant of death entered my being once again. Its hidden, wraith-like presence clung at my insides like a craven succubus. My arm fell like a lead weight at my side and the telegram dropped from my trembling fingers and fluttered downwards, landing at my feet. I left Mrs Pearce standing outside of my office door and, without speaking, walked down the hallway and stood on the balcony at the top of the fire stairs. I knew that, behind me, my old neighbour would be picking up and reading the cable sent from my cousin, Victor. I also knew that, at that moment, I did not want to hear the septuagenarian offer her well-meaning words of condolence. My insular anguish was eager to rebuff any reassuring pats on my back or biblical sentiments of solace.
I'd learned since the death of my wife, Ellie, and young daughter, Amelia, that grief was a painfully private and, at times, all-consuming and cruelly bleak emotion. Back then, grief had chosen me very early on as its repository and I found it didn't share itself easily with others.
Outside, it had begun to rain, the water dripping from the roof above me and running in rivulets off the cracked guttering down onto the ground below, collecting in pools across the red bricks in the yard. The sky had darkened and a cool, sharp wind blew across my face, whipping the falling tears from my cheeks and dissolving them into the rainfall. My head throbbed and became woozy, my body light and strangely disconnected from the world I normally existed in. My bleary eyes tried to focus on the row of whitebeam trees which stood behind the wall at the back of the gymnasium, their branches overhanging and laden with clusters of small ivory-coloured flowers. In the greying light, the trees seemed to bow together, their interconnected boughs resembling the entrance to a strange subterranean tunnel to another world. I felt myself being drawn towards the unearthly ingress and gently ushered to a place I could be reunited with those I'd lost. Inside, in the distance I could hear my little girl call out my name. I could not see her, but felt her take my hand in her own and slowly walk me through the darkness to a cold and solitary chamber where I knew wounds healed themselves, mortal flesh would not rot and where sealed coffins could be opened to reveal the wonders of the undead.
CHAPTER 2
I'd never known a longer wait. Eight hours where my mind succumbed to a theatre of free association, allowing me to reside in a sunken, grief-stricken abyss. The strangest thoughts and emotions ran through my addled brain as I struggled to make sense of what I read in the telegram. Mrs Pearce had stood silently at my side on the balcony of the fire escape as I sobbed; my weeping masked by the heavy deluge of rainwater falling out of the heavens. My elderly friend had eventually brought me in out of the rain and we'd returned to my office, where, overcome with shock, I'd dropped into my chair and slumped behind my desk for the rest of the day, either staring into space or watching the hands on the wall clock tick themselves away into oblivion as I waited anxiously for the telephone to ring.
By 3pm the rainstorm had begun to subside. I'd knocked back a few shots of Mount Gay rum earlier, which helped to settle my nerves. Mrs Pearce had taken offence to my drinking liquor so early in the day and had left me with my glass of hooch, malcontent and mumbling to herself, only to return an hour later with freshly made cheese and onion sandwiches and a steaming pot of her darkly brewed tea. To show willing, I took a couple of mouthfuls of one of her sandwiches and, when the old girl wasn't looking, reached down to my bottle of copper-coloured spirit and laced a hefty shot of rum into the mug of tea and began to sip at it like a cat licking at sour milk. I leaned forward in my chair, staring down at the top of my teak desk, my watery eyes following the spiralling, dark grain in the wood, my head lost in a mournful reverie of old memories; melancholic brooding which conjured up long-lost images of my sister, Bernice, our deceased parents and the life we'd once led on a sun-washed island over four thousand miles away.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Restless Coffins"
by .
Copyright © 2018 M.P. Wright.
Excerpted by permission of Black & White Publishing.
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