The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke

Author:Austin Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000
Publisher: Thomas Allen Publishers
Published: 2010-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

The large front-house is quiet now. Only her breathing can be heard. The smell of canes burnt in fires Saturday night rises stronger now that the wind comes from the direction of the North Field. There is also the fragrance of the lady-of-the-night and the smell of the furniture and the polish used by Gertrude on the mahogany chairs and tables.

And the smell of food cooking.

Sargeant tries to imagine what it is that Gertrude is cooking so late at night. And for whom. It could be roast pork. Or pork chops, dipped in meal-corn flour and seasoned deeply with fresh broad-leaf thyme, and cloves, frying in lard oil. Gertrude’s cooking cries out in the sizzling iron saucepan.

He inhales and tries to distinguish the smell.

It is chicken being fricasseed.

It could be pork chops frying.

It could be a joint o’ pork baking.

It could be stew, Bimshire Stew, a mixture of fresh beef and fresh pork and fresh fine-leaf thyme, being boiled in the same pot, with onions . . . to be served with meal-corn cou-cou. But this is Sunday, and cou-cou is cooked and eaten piping-hot, on Saturday afternoons only . . . “You staying for dinner?” . . . his mind goes back to that Saturday in Manny’s father’s yard, with him in his khaki short pants patched in the seat in so many places with different colours and materials, so that it was difficult to know which colour or which material was the original the pants were made from, by the Village tailor; his legs stained with traces of pig’s blood; and his bare feet covered with the black shiny hairs that had been scalded off the body of the eighty-pound pig, with pails of boiling water; and then scraped off with a stone. It was a boar-hog . . . “Are you staying for dinner?”

“I was trying to guess what your maid could be cooking, that smell so sweet?”

“Well, why don’t you call her and find out?”

“Me?”

“Touch the bell, and she will come.”

“So, this is how.”

“I wonder when Wilberforce coming back?”

“What the time is?” he says.

“It getting late.”

Sargeant rings the bell. It reminds him of that bell the Headmaster of his Elementary School rang at nine o’clock every morning to “summonse” the boys from their games in the schoolyard beside the Church wall that has graves behind it; and again, at eleven, to announce “ten minutes,” a break for water from the pipe in the schoolyard; or to pass water in the WC; and again at one minute to twelve noon, for lunch; and for the fourth time, at two in the afternoon, to announce the names of boys allowed to leave early to field tennis balls at the Garrison Savannah Lawn Tennis Club; or to water the flower gardens of the rich; and at three o’clock, the fifth and last time, when the afternoon is tired and humid, now to announce “School lay-by” and “Singing!”

The entire school stands at attention. “Rule Britannia!” It is the end of the day.

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