Penville, Dominica, West Indies - February 1956
I caught a glimpse of him as he descended the road through Lower Penville upon which our house is situated. If I am truthful, and I try to be, I’ve been watching, waiting, more than is healthy, more than is dignified for a woman of my age. My mother, to whom I seem a constant source of disappointment, catches me as I gaze up the road, more in hope than expectation. A knowing look, a shake of the head, her point is made.
Yes, if indeed I were to be truthful, I’ve been waiting all day. Waiting, just as I did for his elder brother Gabriel years ago, before he decided that I was unworthy of further attention and to sail off to a distant land across the ocean whose gentle murmur I hear this very moment.
He looks weary today, and more than a little care-laden. So serious for such a young man. Too serious. His father, Ton Pierre, a man respected across the north of the island and of some standing - not as an educated man, or even wealthy beyond his peers, but as a fine carpenter and a skilled musician - says he should be more like some of his brothers. I assume by that he means he should drink more liquor. Or perhaps what he really means is Tio should be more like his father. Let me tell you something, if he was like his father, I would not be waiting for him at all.
My own beloved father, dearly departed for some nine years, left us this modest residence as an inheritance. It commands a view of the mighty Atlantic Ocean - magnificent on an evening such as this, but worrisome come hurricane season, being as it is, a little more exposed to the elements than some here in Penville.
I thank Providence - no, not Providence - I thank the Good Lord Himself that my father was able to leave this place to us as an inheritance. I cannot begin to tell you what it means to a woman such as myself and my ailing, ever-present, ever-disapproving mother. Life without it would surely have been unbearable.
An unmarried woman approaching thirty - okay, over thirty, as my mother takes it upon herself to remind me daily - has only her dignity, her charm, her reputation and her wits, such as they are, and such as they manage to remain intact.
Everyone assumed - some very vocally – that my mother and I would not be able to maintain this house once my father died. We scraped by at first, she by doing seamstress work and working our modest plot of land, me by looking after the bright-eyed, bare-footed, knowledge-hungry children in the Vielle Case government school, a few miles away. I teach them the poems of Wordsworth, Sir John Squire and others. They stand in their little semi-circle and I chastise them should they not remember their lines.
Lately, some of the children's parents have taken to chastising me. What use, they ask, are such poems, when the children have a far greater need to learn what is necessary to survive, to forge a living from the land? Why do their children come running home, crying that I have given them blows for forgetting their lines? What possible use is it to them to learn about the kings and queens of England, about King Henry and his six wives and such foolishness?
My attempts to placate seem to be working, though. I ask in return: you may work the land, but do you not want your children to achieve more? I have said this more than once and on no occasion could the parent answer me.
In truth, they have a point about the teaching of a land thousands of miles away that most of them will never visit, and even if they should do so, will probably never see the rolling hills and wide expanses as described so elegantly by Mr. William Wordsworth. But should I apologise for wanting to expand their minds and expose them to that which transcends their daily existence?
Such parents understand little how I love those children. Yes, love is not too strong a word. I have invested my life in them, and for that, I expect to see a return on my investment – namely, that from these humble beginnings they will go on to do great things.
I lift up thanks to the Almighty for a great many things in my life, such as my education. I was fortunate to achieve the ‘upper standard’ at school as a pupil. From there, the government school at Vielle Case was able to employ me full-time as a schoolteacher. Moreover, my modest salary is now sufficient for us not to have to worry.
I am also thankful for the diligence of my late father, whom I miss more than words can say. They say that a daughter seeks the likeness of her father in a husband. My father was a good man. I dare to hope that I have found such a man in Benoit Mourillon, Tio to those to whom he is close.
Those who don’t like him simply don’t know him. He will make a fine husband. For him to do so, this stubborn goat of a man must first propose marriage. Yes, that would surely be a start.
BackgroundClara was a schoolteacher my father intended to marry before embarking on his journey to the UK. I only learned of her existence after he died in 2010. He had previously made reference to her some years previous, I'm told, but I had not fully appreciated who she was and what relevance she held in his life. I don't know too much about her other than the fact that she taught at rural school in the north of Dominica, that in doing so, she would have been well versed in the literature and subject matter of the 'mother country', more so than of Dominica itself - part of the legacy of colonialism. Pupils of my father's generation would have learned the poetry of Wordsworth and Tennyson more so than that of J R Casimir or the prose of Jean Rhys or Phyliis Shand Allfrey. After skin colour - Dominican society adhered to a hierarchy loosely based on how light or dark skinned you were, and unfortunate hang up from the days of slavery - education was the great differentiator in society. There was currency in being exalted enough to be educated to the 'upper standard'. It exposed you to opportunities to elevate yourself to something other than a journeyman, someone who out of necessity must work the land. Another societal differentiator in those days would be a reticence to speak Patois, and by not doing so projecting an image of yourself as somehow refined and cultured, often leading to tensions with those who spoke it often and fluently. Max LeBlanc was, by Dominican standards of the era, not a big drinker in comparison to his father and some of his elder brothers. As such, he was sometimes thought dour and overly serious. |