The Polished Hoe Read online

  The Polished Hoe

  BOOKS BY AUSTIN CLARKE

  FICTION

  The Survivors of the Crossing

  Amongst Thistles and Thorns

  The Meeting Point

  Storm of Fortune

  The Bigger Light

  When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks

  When Women Rule

  The Prime Minister

  Nine Men Who Laughed

  Proud Empires

  In This City

  There Are No Elders

  The Origin of Waves

  The Question

  Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke

  NONFICTION

  Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack

  A Passage Home

  Pig Tails ’n Breadfruit: Rituals of Slave Food

  SELECTED WRITINGS

  The Austin Clarke Reader

  Austin Clarke

  THE POLISHED HOE

  A Novel

  Thomas Allen Publishers

  Toronto

  Copyright © 2002 by Austin Clarke

  First published in paperback in 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Clarke, Austin, 1934–

  The polished hoe / Austin Clarke.

  ISBN 0-88762-110-4 (bound). — ISBN 0-88762-134-1 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  C813'.54 C2002-902554-0

  PR9199.3.C526P64 2002

  Cover and text design: Gordon Robertson

  Editor: Patrick Crean

  Cover image: John Sann, courtesy Getty Images

  Author photo: Nermeen Mouftah

  Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,

  a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,

  145 Front Street East, Suite 209,

  Toronto, Ontario M5A 1E3 Canada

  www.thomas-allen.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

  Printed in Canada by Tri-Graphic Printing (Ottawa) Ltd.

  Seventh Paperback Printing, November 2009

  13 12 11 10 09 7 8 9 10 11

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  The Polished Hoe

  PART ONE

  “MY NAME IS MARY. People in this Village call me Mary-Mathilda. Or, Tilda, for short. To my mother I was Mary-girl. My names I am christen with are Mary Gertrude Mathilda, but I don’t use Gertrude, because my maid has the same name. My surname that people ’bout-here uses, is either Paul, or Bellfeels, depending who you speak to . . .”

  “Everybody in Flagstaff Village knows you as Miss Bellfeels, ma’am,” the Constable says. “And they respects you.”

  “Nevertheless, Bellfeels is not the name I want attach to this Statement that I giving you . . .”

  “I will write-down that, ma’am, as you tell it to me. But . . .”

  “This Sunday evening,” she says, interrupting him, “a little earlier, round seven o’clock, I walked outta here, taking the track through the valley; past the two stables converted into a cottage; past the sheep pens and the goat pens, and fowl coops; and through the grove of fruit trees until I came to the Front-Road, walking between two fields of canes. In total darkness. But I knew the way, like the back of my two hands. Now, where we are in this Great House is the extremity of the Plantation Houses, meaning the furtherest away from the Main House, with six other houses, intervening. These consist of the house the Bookkeeper occupies; one for the Overseer, Mr. Lawrence Burkhart, who we call the Driver—that’s the smallest house; one for the Assistant Manager, a Englishman, which is the third biggest after the Main House; and there is a lil hut for the watchman, Watchie; and then there is this Great House where we are. The Main House have three floors, to look over the entire estate of the Plantation, like a tower in a castle. To spy on everybody. Every-other house has two floors. Like this one. That would give you, in case you never been so close to this Plantation before, the lay of the land and of things; the division of work and of household.”

  “I sees this Plantation only from a distance, ma’am. I know it from a distance only,” the Constable says.

  “It was dark, and I couldn’t see even my two hands outstretch in front of me. I took the way from here, right through the valley where the track cuts through it. I could make out the canes on both sides of me; and I could hear them shaking, as there was a steady wind the whole evening; the kind of wind that comes just before a heavy downpour of rain, like before a hurricane. They were ‘arrows’ shooting-out from the tops of canes. Crop-Season, as you.Well-know, is in full swing; and the Factory grinding canes, day and night. You could smell the crack-liquor, the fresh cane juice, strong-strong! What a sweet, but sickening smell cane juice is, when you smell it from near!

  “Wilberforce, my son, who was home earlier, is my witness to the hour I left . . .

  “Have I told you about Wilberforce, yet? No? Pardon me. The memory is fading, Constable, the memory. The mind not sharp no more, and . . . very often . . . What was I telling you about?”

  “You was talking about your son, Mr. Wilberforce, the doctor, ma’am.”

  “Yes! Wilberforce! My first-born. He isn’t really the first of my thrildren I give birth to. He’s the one outta the three who livedpast childbirth.

  “Wilberforce, always with his head always inside a book, I keep telling him that with all that book-learning retain in his head, if he’s not careful, he going burst his blasted brains!

  “He, I gave birth to, in the year nineteen . . . I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t tell me when Mr.Wilberforce born, ma’am.”

  “Nevertheless. Two more thrildren I had. A boy and a girl. I gave them the names I intended to christen them with, if they hadlive. William Henry. Two names I took from a English magazine. And Rachelle Sarah Prudence, the girl. Lovely English names I named my two dead thrildren with. One died eighteen months after the first one. The boy.

  “My third-born, Wilberforce, became therefore my first-born. A mother’s pride and joy.

  “Wilberforce went to the best schools in this Island of Bimshire. Then overseas. He travel to countries like Italy, France, Austria and Europe; and when he return-back here to this Island, he start behaving more like a European than somebody born here. But, at least, he came back with his ambition fulfill. A Doctor. Of Tropical Medicines.

  “Whereas, had the other two thrildren survive, I wanted them to follow in the path of the Law. They would have made such lovely barsters-at-Law! You don’t think so?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the Constable says.

  “My sweet boy-child, William Henry; and lovely Rachelle Sarah Prudence, the girl.

  “Yes, Constable. Me. I, Mary-Mathilda . . . I, Mary Gertrude Mathilda, although I don’t use Gertrude, as I told you . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “. . . left in
side-here at seven o’ clock this evening, and walked the four hundred and something yards from here to the Plantation Main House, and it take me fifteen minutes time to arrive there; and . . .”

  “Which night you mean, ma’am, when you left your residence of abode?”

  “Which night I took the walk? Was it Saturday night, last night, or tonight Sunday night, is what you getting at?”

  “I mean that, too, ma’am. But what I really getting at, is if the moon was shining when you leff your home and place of abode, on the night in question, walking to your destination? Or if you was walking in the rain. ’Cause with rain, I have to refer to footsteps. They bound to be footprints . . .”

  “If there are footsteps, those would be my prints in the ground, Constable. Bold and strong and deep-deep; deep-enough for water to collect in them. Deep-enough to match the temperriment I was in. I can tell you that my determination was strong.

  “It was dark-dark, earlier tonight. But in that darkness, I was not hiding from anybody. Not from the Law; not from God; not from my conscience, as I walked in the valley of the shadow of darkness and of death. No. There was no moon. But I was not a thief, craving the darkness, and dodging from detection. Oh, no!

  “A long time ago, before tonight, I decided to stop walking in darkness.

  “With that temperriment and determination of mind, I firststarted, on a regular basis, to polish my hoe. And to pass a grindingstone dip in car-grease, along the blade, since September the fifteenth last-gone; September, October, November just-pass, is three months; and every day for those months, night after night as God send, more than I can call-to-mind. And I have to laugh, why, all-of-a sudden, I went back to a hoe, I had-first-used when I was a girl, working in the cane fields, not quite eight years of age. The same hoe, weeding young canes, sweet potato slips, ‘eight-weeks’ yams, eddoes, all those ground provisions.

  “This hoe that I used all those years, in the North Field, is the same hoe I used this Sunday night.

  “If it wasn’t so black outside, you could look through that window you sitting beside, and see the North Field I refer to, vast and green and thick with sugar cane, stretching for acres and acres, beyond the reach of your eyes, unmeasuring as the sea . . .

  “So, no, Constable. I was not seeking the shadows of night, even though the moon wasn’t shining!

  “I already stated to you that at seven o’clock, the hour in question, it was like a full moon was shining, by which I mean, as the saying in this Village goes, a full-moon alters the way men behave— and women, too!—turns them into lunatics, and—”

  “Pardon me, ma’am. But on the telephone to the sub-station, in your perlimary Statement to Sargeant, Sargeant say that you say the night was dark, and no moon wasn’t shining. Is so, Sargeant tell me to write down your Statement, in my notebook, using your exact words. So, I hope that I not stating now, in-front-’o-you, what you didn’t state, nor intend to state, in your telephone Statement, ma’am?

  “Sargeant send me to get your Statement offa you before he come himself. All we know is what you say when you call, that something happen, and you want Sargeant to come, and take your Statement, first-hand, from you. We don’t know what happen and we don’t yet know what is the circumstances. Sargeant would look after that. He say to say he have another important assignment. I am consequently here until Sargeant comes. But Sargeant coming . . . ”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “Sargeant soon will be here.”

  “. . . and so, what I mean by a bright night and the moon shining, is merely a comparison of my disposition towards darkness and light; something, as Wilberforce calls it, like the ironies of life. Ironies. He uses it all the time, and would say, ‘Sitting down to eat food is full of ironies.’ ‘Life is full of ironies.’ ‘A full moon is full of ironies.’ That is Wilberforce favourite word for it. Ironies.

  “When there is a full moon, people behave strange. But tonight, with no moon at all, my behaviour was still strange, granted.

  “Tonight, the thirteenth, a Sunday, in spite of no moon, the act that I committed, however the people in this Island wish to label it, is not a act, or behaviour of a woman ruled by a full moon; nor of a woman who chooses darkness over light, to move in, or to hide her act in.

  “My footprints that you say might be evidence, was, in the darkness, strong footprints, if not stronger even than my temperriment itself. And my act went along with that. I was determined. And deliberate. Because I knew what my cause was. And I had a cause.”

  The lights dip from their brilliance; and for just one second, it is dark in the front-house, where they are; dark, as when, long ago, the wind would run through these same windows, and brush aside the flames from the mantles of the large acetylene lamps that have Home Sweet Home printed in white letters on their polished lampshades. Just for one moment, that moment that it takes for a mouse the same colour as the carpet to steal into a corner.

  But wind cannot play those tricks with the electric lighting. The two bulbs hang low, just above their heads, from two long, ugly brown electrical wires, on which, during the day, and especially late at night, flies and other bugs make their homes, and their graves; and are stuck to death.

  The wind continues pushing itself through the windows, and brings on its breath the smell of flowers, poinsettia and lady-of-the-night and the strong smell of sugar-cane juice from the Factory. And the lingering intoxicating smell of burnt sugar canes; and the pungency of burnt cane trash, comes into the front-house with them . . .

  “From the time, way-way back, when Ma, my mother, out of need, sent me while I was still a lil girl, seven or eight, to the Plantation to work in the fields, from that time, I had a cause. And in particular from that day, when the midwife delivered Wilberforce, I have had a cause.

  “And I am very sorry to have to talk this way to you, a Constable, sitting in my front-house, on a Sunday night, filling in for Sargeant, who promise me faithfully, to come later, and take my Statement.

  “Incidentally, Sargeant and me, went-school together. Did you know that? He was always inquisitive. Always hunting-down answers. And lizards which he put in cigarette boxes, as coffins, to bury them. Now, we are from two different sides of the paling. But . . .”

  “How I should write-down your name, in its official status, ma’am?”

  “My name is Mary-Mathilda. My full name is Mary Gertrude Mathilda. But I drop Gertrude because of my maid.”

  “The whole Village know your names and your surnames, ma’am. And they worships you.”

  “It began, this whole thing, many-many years ago, on a Sunday. A Sunday morning, close to midday, about ten-to-twelve o’clock. We were in the Church Yard of Sin-Davids Anglican Church. Near the graves and tombs and tombstones; where they buried Englishmen and sailors from Lord Horatio Nelson’s fleet that went down in these waters.

  “I remember that my shoes were burning my feet. And I had slip them off. To ease the pain. All through the sermon that the Vicar, Revern Dowd, was delivering from the pulpit, so high and powerful; above my head; high as the water tank in the Plantation Yard . . . I couldn’t follow one word that Vicar Dowd was talking, from so on high. His words were too big for me.

  “Some words passed my ear, though. I remember that Revern Dowd had-take his sermon from One, Sin-Peter, three, seventeen. Whether I remember it on my own, or Ma had-remind me afterwards, Revern Dowd was saying how it is more better for a man to suffer for his.Well-doing, than for his evil-doing. I remember only those words, from that Sunday.

  “It is better, if the will of God be so, that a man suffer for.Well-doing, than for evil-doing.

  “Those were the words. I have walked with that text in my heart, since that Sunday. And if, right-now, you open my Bible there on that mahogany centre-table with the white crochet-cloth on it, you will see the text, mark by a palm-leaf cross from last Palm Sunday, One, Sin-Peter, three, seventeen . . .

  “It is better to suffer for.Well-doing, than . . .

&nb
sp; “I was a lil girl, then; no more than seven or eight; in such pain from my new shoes. My new shoes weren’t purchase new, from Cave Shepherd & Sons, the Haberdasheries store down in Town. They was a pair that the youngest daughter of Mr. Bellfeels had grown outta. Hand-me-downs. Not through inheritance; but castaways. They were new to me, though. Mr. Bellfeels daughter, Miss Emonie, was the same size as me, in clothes and in height. But her shoes pinched like hell, because her feet were white feet; and very narrow.

  “That Sunday morning was in the Easter season! It was Easter Even.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am,” the Constable says, “Easter is the time I like best outta the whole year o’ goingchurch. Easter! Easter morning, with the singing of carols and psalms! ‘O, all ye beasts of the sea!’

  ‘Praise Him, and glorify Him, forever!’

  “And the sermon does be so sweet. But long. And then, after Easter, is Easter bank holiday! And flying kites! And holding goatraces!”

  “The Collect that Sunday, the morning of Easter Even . . . though I can’t naturally call-to-mind the entire Collect, I remember this passage: ‘. . . and that through the grave, and the gate of hell, we may pass to our joyful resurrection . . .’”

  “What that mean, ma,am, “the Constable says.

  “Resurrection,” she says.

  “Amen!” the Constable says.

  “We may pass to our joyful resurrection. Amen.’”

  “For the carol-singing and the sermons, gimme Easter to Christmas, any Sunday morning, ma’am!”

  “So, it was that on that same Sunday morning, Ma introduce me to this powerful man. Mr. Bellfeels. He wasn’t Plantation manager then; just a field overseer. A driver, as we labourers called such men. Mr. Bellfeels the Driver.

  “Ma was in the gang of women weeding in the North Field. In time, that same North Field was assign to me. And in time, because I was young and vigorous, I became the leader of the same gang of women.