Golden Child by Claire Adam

Author:Claire Adam [Claire Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571339839
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2018-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

10

Father Kavanagh had expected to be lonely at first. When he arrived in Trinidad in August, he knew only the name of his supervisor who would meet him at the airport, and not another soul. Now, it is December; only a few short months have passed and, already, when he walks around the Savannah in the cool of the late afternoons to stretch his legs, he is constantly waving to people, saying hello. Joggers tap him gently on the shoulder as they pass: Hi Father! Arms stick out the windows of passing cars, and wave madly: Father Kavanagh! Hi! Men playing football on the grass, boys ambling along with their shirts untucked, ladies with children in prams, sitting under the big trees for shade: Hi Father! You out for your walk? How you going, Father? When he comes up past the old colonial buildings on the western side of the Savannah, the coconut seller, Johnnie, picks out a coconut from his cart, hacks it open with his cutlass, and hands it to him solemnly. ‘You looking hot, Fadder. Drink dat.’ The first time, he used the straw that Johnnie gave him but he realised, as the weeks passed, that this is just for foreigners. Now, he does it the way everyone else does, with the rough husk pressed to his lips, the sweet milky water dribbling down his chin.

Today, when he comes back from his walk, only the retired priest, Father de Souza, is at home, sitting out on the patio with the newspaper folded up on the little table next to him. He’s eighty, although he looks much younger, with toffee-coloured skin and a ring of tufty white hair like a halo. Father Kavanagh pats their little dog, Zelly, on his way up the steps, and he tells the older priest about his day: how many students got detention for ogling the girls at the school across the road; that he tried to pay a bill at lunchtime, at the post office on Abercromby Street, but that the queue was so long and so slow that he gave up; that the teachers brought him a snack from one of the street-vendors at lunchtime, a spicy thing called ‘doubles’, which was very tasty but had too much pepper for him. Father de Souza listens with great delight to all his stories and questions and troubles. It is Father de Souza that Father Kavanagh has gotten to know best in these few months that he has lived in Trinidad: the other priests are often out at this time of day – at committee meetings or functions, visiting the elderly, the bereaved, the sick.

A brick wall separates the garden from the pavement just in front: it’s not high, perhaps four feet, and the taller passers-by can easily see over the top – indeed, some of them crane their necks as they walk past, to get a proper look. A slender, muscular man, wearing only a pair of shortpants held up at the waist by a length of rope, stops at the wrought-iron gate and looks up the path towards them.

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