Miguel Street

16. HAT

Hat loved to make a mystery of the smallest things. His relationship to Boyee and Errol, for instance. He told strangers they were illegitimate children of his. Sometimes he said he wasn’t sure whether they were his at all, and he would spin a fantastic story about some woman both he and Edward lived with at the same time. Sometimes, again, he would make out that they were his sons by an early marriage, and you felt you could cry when you heard Hat tell how the boys’ mother had gathered them around her deathbed and made them promise to be good.

It took me some time to find out that Boyee and Errol were really Hat’s nephews. Their mother, who lived up in the bush near Sangre Grande, died soon after her husband died, and the boys came to live with Hat.

The boys showed Hat little respect. They never called him Uncle, only Hat; and for their part they didn’t mind when Hat said they were illegitimate. They were, in fact, willing to support any story Hat told about their birth.

I first got to know Hat when he offered to take me to the cricket at the Oval. I soon found out that he had picked up eleven other boys from four or five streets around, and was taking them as well.

We lined up at the ticket office and Hat counted us loudly. He said, ‘One and twelve half.’

Many people stopped minding their business and looked up.

The man selling tickets said, ‘Twelve half? ’

Hat looked down at his shoes and said, ‘Twelve half.’

We created a lot of excitement when all thirteen of us, Hat at the head, filed around the ground, looking for a place to sit.

People shouted, ‘They is all yours, mister?’

Hat smiled, weakly, and made people believe it was so. When we sat down he made a point of counting us loudly again. He said, ‘I don’t want your mother raising hell when I get home, saying one missing.’

It was the last day of the last match between Trinidad and Jamaica. Gerry Gomez and Len Harbin were making a great stand for Trinidad, and when Gomez reached his 150 Hat went crazy and danced up and down, shouting, ‘White people is God, you hear!’

A woman selling soft drinks passed in front of us.

Hat said, ‘How you selling this thing you have in the glass and them?’

The woman said, ‘Six cents a glass.’

Hat said, ‘I want the wholesale price. I want thirteen.’

The woman said, ‘These children is all yours?’

Hat said, ‘What wrong with that? ’

The woman sold the drinks at five cents a glass.

When Len Harbin was 89, he was out lbw, and Trinidad declared.

Hat was angry. ‘Lbw? Lbw? How he lbw? Is only a lot of robbery. And is a Trinidad umpire, too. God, even umpires taking bribe now.’

Hat taught me many things that afternoon. From the way he pronounced them, I learned about the beauty of cricketers’ names, and he gave me all his own excitement at watching a cricket match.

I asked him to explain the scoreboard.

He said, ‘On the left-hand side they have the names of the batsman who finish batting.’

I remember that because I thought it such a nice way of saying that a batsman was out: to say that he had finished batting.

All during the tea interval Hat was as excited as ever. He tried to get all sorts of people to take all sorts of crazy bets. He ran about waving a dollar-note and shouting, ‘A dollar to a shilling, Headley don’t reach double figures.’ Or, ‘A dollar, Stollmeyer field the first ball.’

The umpires were walking out when one of the boys began crying.

Hat said, ‘What you crying for? ’

The boy cried and mumbled.

Hat said, ‘But what you crying for?’

A man shouted, ‘He want a bottle.’

Hat turned to the man and said, ‘Two dollars, five Jamaican wickets fall this afternoon.’

The man said, ‘Is all right by me, if is hurry you is to lose your money.’

A third man held the stakes.

The boy was still crying.

Hat said, ‘But you see how you shaming me in front of all these people? Tell me quick what you want.’

The boy only cried. Another boy came up to Hat and whispered in his ear.

Hat said, ‘Oh, God! How? Just when they coming out.’

He made us all stand. He marched us away from the grounds and made us line up against the galvanized-iron paling of the Oval.

He said, ‘All right now, pee. Pee quick, all of all — you.’

The cricket that afternoon was fantastic. The Jamaican team, which included the great Headley, lost six wickets for thirty-one runs. In the fading light the Trinidad fast bowler, Tyrell Johnson, was unplayable, and his success seemed to increase his speed.

A fat old woman on our left began screaming at Tyrell Johnson, and whenever she stopped screaming she turned to us and said very quietly, ‘I know Tyrell since he was a boy so high. We use to pitch marble together.’ Then she turned away and began screaming again.

Hat collected his bet.

This, I discovered presently, was one of Hat’s weaknesses — his passion for impossible bets. At the races particularly, he lost a lot of money, but sometimes he won, and then he made so much he could afford to treat all of us in Miguel Street.

I never knew a man who enjoyed life as much as Hat did. He did nothing new or spectacular-in fact, he did practically the same things every day-but he always enjoyed what he did. And every now and then he managed to give a fantastic twist to some very ordinary thing.

He was a bit like his dog. This was the tamest Alsatian I have ever known. One of the things I noticed in Miguel Street was the way dogs resembled their owners. George had a surly, mean mongrel. Toni’s dog was a terrible savage. Hat’s dog was the only Alsatian I knew with a sense of humour.

In the first place it behaved oddly, for an Alsatian. You could make it the happiest dog on earth if you flung things for it to retrieve. One day, in the Savannah, I flung a guava into some thick bushes. He couldn’t get at the guava, and he whined and complained. He suddenly turned and ran back past me, barking loudly. While I turned to see what was wrong, he ran back to the bushes. I saw nothing strange, and when I looked back I was just in time to see him taking another guava behind the bushes.

I called him and he rushed up whining and barking.

I said, ‘Go on, boy. Go on and get the guava.’

He ran back to the bushes and poked and sniffed a bit and then dashed behind the bushes to get the guava he had himself placed there.

I only wish the beautiful birds Hat collected were as tame as the Alsatian. The macaws and the parrots looked like angry and quarrelsome old women and they attacked anybody. Sometimes Hat’shouse became a dangerous place with all these birds around. You would be talking quietly when you would suddenly feel a prick and a tug on your calf. The macaw or the parrot. Hat tried to make us believe they didn’t bite him, but I know that they did.

Strange that both Hat and Edward became dangerous when they tried meddling with beauty. There was Edward with his painting, and Hat with his sharp-beaked macaws.

Hat was always getting into trouble with the police. Nothing serious, though. A little cockfighting here, some gambling there, a little drinking somewhere else, and so on.

But it never soured him against the law. In fact, every Christmas Sergeant Charles, with the postman and the sanitary inspector, came to Hat’s place for a drink.

Sergeant Charles would say, ‘Is only a living I have to make, you know, Hat. Nobody ain’t have to tell me. I know I ain’t going to get any more promotion, but still.’

Hat would say, ‘Is all right, Sergeant. None of we don’t mind. How your children these days? How Elijah?’

Elijah was a bright boy.

‘Elijah? Oh, I think he go get a exhibition this year. Is all we could do, eh, Hat? All we could do is try. We can’t do no more.’

And they always separated as good friends.

But once Hat got into serious trouble for watering his milk.

He said, ‘The police and them come round asking me how the water get in the milk. As if I know. I ain’t know how the water get there. You know I does put the pan in water to keep the milk cool arid prevent it from turning. I suppose the pan did have a hole, that’s all. A tiny little hole.’

Edward said, ‘It better to be frank and tell the magistrate that.’

Hat said, ‘Edward, you talking as if Trinidad is England. You ever hear that people tell the truth in Trinidad and get away? In Trinidad the more you innocent, the more they throw you in jail, and the more bribe you got to hand out. You got to bribe the magistrate. You got to give them fowl, big big Leghorn hen, and you got to give them money. You got to bribe the inspectors. By the time you finish bribing it would be better if you did take your jail quiet quiet.’

Edward said, ‘It is the truth. But you can’t plead guilty. You have to make up some new story.’

Hat was fined two hundred dollars and the magistrate preached a long sermon at him.

He was in a real temper when he came back from court. He tore off his tie and coat and said, ‘Is a damn funny world. You bathe, you put on a clean shirt, you put on tie and you put on jacket, you shine up your shoe. And all for what? Is only to go in front of some stupid magistrate for him to abuse you.’

It rankled for days.

Hat said, ‘Hitler was right, man. Burn all the law books. Burn all of them up. Make a big pile and set fire to the whole damn thing. Burn them up and watch them burn. Hitler was right, man. I don’t know why we fighting him for.’

Eddoes said, ‘You talking a lot of nonsense, you know, Hat.’

Hat said, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to talk about it. Hitler was right. Burn the law books. Burn all of them up. Don’t want to talk about it.’

For three months Hat and Sergeant Charles were not on speaking terms. Sergeant Charles was hurt, and he was always sending messages of goodwill to Hat.

One day he called me and said, ‘You go be seeing Hat this evening?’

I said, ‘Yes.’

‘You did see him yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘How he is?’

‘How?’

‘Well, I mean, how he looking? He looking well? Happy?’

I said, ‘He looking damn vex.’

Sergeant Charles said, ‘Oh.’

I said, ‘All right.’

‘Look, before you go away ’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. No, no. Wait before you go. Tell Hat how for me, you hear.’

I told Hat, ‘Sergeant Charles call me to his house today and begin one crying and begging. He keep on asking me to tell you that he not vex with you, that it wasn’t he who tell the police about the milk and the water.’

Hat said, ‘ Which water in which milk? ’

I didn’t know what to say.

Hat said, ‘You see the sort of place Trinidad coming now. Somebody say it had water in my milk. Nobody see me put water in the milk, but everybody talking now as if they see me. Everybody talking about the water in the milk.’

Hat, I saw, was enjoying even this.

I always looked upon Hat as a man of settled habits, and it was hard to think of him looking otherwise than he did. I suppose he was thirty-five when he took me to that cricket-match, and forty-three when he went to jail. Yet he always looked the same to me.

In appearance, as I have said, he was dark-brown in complexion, of medium height and medium build. He had a slightly bow-legged walk and he had flat feet.

I was prepared to see him do the same things for the rest of his life. Cricket, football, horse-racing; read the paper in the mornings and afternoons; sit on the pavement and talk; get noisily drunk on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

He didn’t appear to need anything else. He was self-sufficient, and I didn’t believe he even needed women. I knew, of course, that he visited certain places in the city from time to time, but I thought he did this more for the vicious thrill than for the women.

And then this thing happened. It broke up the Miguel Street Club, and Hat himself was never the same afterwards.

In a way, I suppose, it was Edward’s fault. I don’t think any of us realised how much Hat loved Edward and how heartbroken he was when Edward got married. He couldn’t hide his delight when Edward’s wife ran away with the American soldier, and he was greatly disappointed when Edward went to Aruba.

Once he said, ‘Everybody growing up or they leaving.’

Another time he said, ‘I think I was a damn fool not go and work with the Americans, like Edward and so much other people.’

Eddoes said, ‘Hat going to town a lot these nights.’

Boyee said, ‘Well, he is a big man. Why he shouldn’t do what he want to do? ’

Eddoes said, ‘It have some men like that. As a matter of fact, it does happen to all man. They getting old and they get frighten and they want to remain young.’

I got angry with Eddoes because I didn’t want to think of Hat in that way and the worst thing was that I was ashamed because I felt Eddoes was right.

I said, ‘Eddoes, why you don’t take your dirty mind somewhere else, eh? Why you don’t leave all your dirtiness in the rubbish-dump?’

And then one day Hat brought home a woman.

I felt a little uneasy now in Hat’s company. He had become a man with responsibility and obligations, and he could no longer give us all his time and attention. To make matters worse, everybody pretended that the woman wasn’t there. Even Hat. He never spoke about her and he behaved as though he wanted us to believe that everything was just the same.

She was a pale-brown woman, about thirty, somewhat plump, and her favourite colour was blue. She called herself Dolly. We used to see her looking blankly out of the windows of Hat’s house. She never spoke to any of us. In fact, I hardly heard her speak at all, except to call Hat inside.

But Boyee and Edward were pleased with the changes she brought.

Boyee said, ‘Is the first time I remember living with a woman in the house, and it make a lot of difference. Is hard to explain, but I find it nicer.’

My mother said, ‘You see how man stupid. Hat see what happen to Edward and you mean to say that Hat still get hisself mix up with this woman?’

Mrs Morgan and Mrs Bhakcu saw so little of Dolly they had little to dislike in her, but they agreed that she was a lazy good-for-nothing.

Mrs Morgan said, ‘This Dolly look like a old madame to me, you hear.’

It was easy enough for us to forget that Dolly was there, because Hat continued living as before. We still went to all the sports and we still sat on the pavement and talked.

Whenever Dolly piped, ‘Hat, you coming?’ Hat wouldn’t reply.

About half an hour later Dolly would say, ‘Hat, you coming or you ain’t coming?’

And Hat would say then, ‘I coming.’

I wondered what life was like for Dolly. She was nearly always inside the house and Hat was nearly always outside. She seemed to spend a great deal of her time at the front window looking out.

They were really the queerest couple in the street. They never went out together. We never heard them laughing. They never even quarrelled.

Eddoes said, ‘They like two strangers.’

Errol said, ‘Don’t mind that, you hear. All you seeing Hat sitting quiet quiet here, but is different when he get inside. He ain’t the same man when he talking with Dolly. He buy she a lot of joolry, you know.’

Eddoes said, ‘I have a feeling she a little bit like Matilda. You know, the woman in the calypso:

“Matilda, Matilda,

Matilda, you thief my money

And gone Venezuela.”

Buying joolry! But what happening to Hat? He behaving as though he is a old man. Woman don’t want joolry from a man like Hat, they want something else.’

Looking on from the outside, though, one could see only two changes in Hat’s household. All the birds were caged, and the Alsatian was chained and miserable.

But no one spoke about Dolly to Hat. I suppose the whole business had come as too much of a surprise.

What followed was an even bigger surprise, and it was some time before we could get all the details. At first I noticed Hat was missing, and then I heard rumours.

This was the story, as it later came out in court. Dolly had run away from Hat, taking all his gifts, of course. Hat had chased her and found her with another man. There was a great quarrel, the man had fled, and Hat had taken it out on Dolly. Afterwards, the police statement said, he had gone, in tears, to the police station to give himself up. He said, ‘I kill a woman.’

But Dolly wasn’t dead.

We received the news as though it was news of a death. We couldn’t believe it for a day or two.

And then a great hush fell on Miguel Street. No boys and men gathered under the lamp-post outside Hat’s house, talking about this and that and the other. No one played cricket and disturbed people taking afternoon naps. The Club was dead.

Cruelly, we forgot all about Dolly and thought only about Hat. We couldn’t find it in our hearts to find fault with him. We suffered with him.

We saw a changed man in court. He had grown older, and when he smiled at us he smiled only with his mouth. Still, he put on a show for us and even while we laughed we were ready to cry.

The prosecutor asked Hat, ‘Was it a dark night?’

Hat said, ‘All night dark.’

Hat’s lawyer was a short fat man called Chittaranjan who wore a smelly brown suit.

Chittaranjan began reeling off Portia’s speech about mercy, and he would have gone on to the end if the judge hadn’t said, ‘All this is interesting and some of it even true but, Mr Chittaranjan, you are wasting the court’s time.’

Chittaranjan made a great deal of fuss about the wild passion of love. He said Antony had thrown away an empire for the sake of love, just as Hat had thrown away his self-respect. He said that Hat’s crime was really a crime passionel. In France, he said — and he knew what he was talking about, because he had been to Paris — in France, Hat would have been a hero. Women would have garlanded him.

Eddoes said, ‘Is this sort of lawyer who does get man hang, you know.’

Hat was sentenced to four years.

We went to Frederick Street jail to see him. It was a disappointing jail. The walls were light cream, and not very high, and I was surprised to see that most of the visitors were very gay. Only a few women wept, but the whole thing was like a party, with people laughing and chatting.

Eddoes, who had put on his best suit for the occasion, held his hat in his hand and looked around. He said to Hat, ‘It don’t look too bad here.’

Hat said, ‘They taking me to Carrera next week.’

Carrera was the small prison-island a few miles from Port of Spain.

Hat said, ‘Don’t worry about me. You know me. In two three weeks I go make them give me something easy to do.’

Whenever I went to Carénage or Point Cumana for a bathe, I looked across the green water to the island of Carrera, rising high out of the sea, with its neat pink buildings. I tried to picture what went on inside those buildings, but my imagination refused to work. I used to think, ‘Hat there, I here. He know I here, thinking about him?’

But as the months passed I became more and more concerned with myself, and I wouldn’t think about Hat for weeks on end. It was useless trying to feel ashamed. I had to face the fact that I was no longer missing Hat. From time to time when my mind was empty, I would stop and think how long it would be before he came out, but I was not really concerned.

I was fifteen when Hat went to jail and eighteen when he came out. A lot happened in those three years. I left school and I began working in the customs. I was no longer a boy. I was a man, earning money.

Hat’s homecoming fell a little flat. It wasn’t only that we boys had grown older. Hat, too, had changed. Some of the brightness had left him, and conversation was hard to make.

He visited all the houses he knew and he spoke about his experiences with great zest.

My mother gave him tea.

Hat said, ‘Is just what I expect. I get friendly with some of the turnkey and them, and you know what happen? I pull two three strings and — bam! — they make me librarian. They have a big library there, you know. All sort of big book. Is the sort of place Titus Hoyt would like. So much book with nobody to read them.’

I offered Hat a cigarette and he took it mechanically.

Then he shouted, ‘But, eh-eh, what is this? You come a big man now! When I leave you wasn’t smoking. Was a long time now, though.’

I said, ‘Yes. Was a long time.’

A long time. But it was just three years, three years in which I had grown up and looked critically at the people around me. I no longer wanted to be like Eddoes. He was so weak and thin, and I hadn’t realised that he was so small. Titus Hoyt was stupid and boring, and not funny at all. Everything had changed.

When Hat went to jail, part of me had died.