Come Let Us Sing Anyway Read online

  Joshua smiled around his wineglass. ‘I like your work,’ he said to me. ‘You care about everything you write.’

  ‘I can’t do it unless I care about it.’

  ‘Like playing God, eh?’ he said.

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘You get to make everything turn out right.’

  ‘Well… it’s not as simple as that.’

  Che patted me on the arm. ‘Yeah, man. Of course it is.’

  I didn’t know very many other artists. I’d never let myself be part of a shared creative space. Novelists are solitary; we might get edited, but we don’t like negotiating the rules of the game. Somehow, these two made it look like it would be fun.

  Hours went by easily. A vase of flowers wilted on the table. We passed each other cheese and black pepper, much more wine and beer, covering our hands with dying pollen, bright yellow against our palms, sucking pepper shrimp heads. Joshua had longer, more delicate hands, strange on a man of his stature. He knocked things over, but he wasn’t clumsy – his energy was just too big for his skin, like it was pouring over the edges of him. They talked to me and each other, showing each other off. They didn’t seem to notice the golden pollen cloud across the tablecloth.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  They didn’t turn me on. They weren’t chatting me up. I liked that.

  *

  We got funding for four months of work. The deadline was non-negotiable, but they reassured me. I was shy, sometimes. They’d worked together before and it took me time to fall into their rhythm. But slowly, I relaxed. For three weeks I went to Che’s apartment every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Fans buzzed overhead. His home was messy: tarps covered works in progress, odd, painful paintings askew on the walls. Too many books to fit, by writers I’d never heard of before, and the fridge smelled bad. I balled up on the edge of a sofa. These day-long sessions took on a life of their own: we bitched, brainstormed, then moved to our own little bubbles of space in the room. I sat scribbling ideas on a pad and then transferring them to my laptop. Joshua played questioning chords, patting a big, fat drum, humming. He was creating sound, but his was still the quietest corner. Che danced around weird buckets and made sketches on pieces of paper. Sometimes there was only the sound of our breathing and our thoughts. It was always Che who got bored first.

  One day when I arrived they grabbed me at the door and hauled me back to my car, laughing.

  ‘Give me the keys,’ said Joshua.

  ‘You mad? Give you the keys to my baby?’

  Che snorted and tapped my battered VW bug. ‘Look like a big, hardback man to me.’

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘Manning Cup match.’

  ‘What?’

  Joshua tutted. ‘Manning Cup, woman. You know football, right?’

  ‘Of course, but…’

  ‘JC’s playing Campion,’ said Che. ‘We have to go watch JC bruk up dem rass!’

  I rolled my eyes, but I wanted to laugh. ‘You guys not over this high school rivalry yet?’

  ‘Never!’ they chorused.

  *

  We wormed our way into bleacher seats; above us, jittering young boys beat drums and cheered before anything had started. People called out to Joshua and Che, so the journey to our seats took a long time, as they swapped stories and memories. They introduced me to everybody; I began to see friends of my own, made my own introductions.

  ‘JC!’ Che and Joshua yelled as loud as they could. Which was loud. They were both dressed in blue, the colour of their team. Che wrapped an old school tie around his head. He looked ridiculous, and wonderful.

  ‘Campion!’ roared our rivals.

  I watched an old man selling peanuts in the crowd. I hadn’t been to a Manning Cup match for ten years, but I could have sworn it was the same old man who sold me peanuts when I was sixteen. His back was bent into a question mark; the wrinkles that covered his face made an elaborate pattern. I recognised him from the sound of his voice. I’d never been able to understand what he was saying. I plucked at Che’s sleeve.

  ‘You know what the peanut man is saying?’

  ‘Who, Burt? He’s been here from time.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘You don’t have ears?’

  I was irritated. ‘Che, if I could hear him, I wouldn’t have to ask you.’

  He reached for my face, closing my eyes under his palms. ‘Listen.’

  The peanut seller’s voice was clear and beautiful under the roars.

  ‘Peee-nuts!’ Then that something I couldn’t make out. ‘Che, I can’t…’

  ‘Listen.’

  His skin smelled of hot nuts and clay.

  ‘Peeee-nuts! Peee-nuts! If you cyaan crack dem, mumble dem!’

  I wanted to giggle. ‘Mumble them?’

  Che took his hands away. Pointed at the man. ‘See? Him don’t have no teeth. If you cyaan crack the peanuts, mumble them. Between your gums.’

  We giggled. It was so yardie. I scribbled down a description of the old man as the teams ran onto the pitch and the crowd rose to its feet.

  Later, I danced. We all danced, as rhyming insults ran back and forth between supporters of the teams. Our side mashed their rivals into the ground. Someone poured a bottle of beer down the back of my T-shirt and I broke a nail. I didn’t care. Che picked me up and put me on his shoulders. I worried that people would complain that they couldn’t see, but no one did, so I danced there too.

  ‘Boy, you feel all hot and sweaty,’ Che said. Bawled at the field. ‘Ref, you mad or what?’

  I drummed my fists on the top of his head. And when Campion equalised, I prayed, for the first time in a long time. I prayed for the winning goal, and it came, with twenty-five seconds to spare.

  *

  We worked around each other. We peeled each other’s layers. Joshua told me about his divorce three years ago. At some point it became clear that Che had only ever loved one woman in his life. I listened to stories about Joshua’s three-year-old boy and his sinus problems. Che insisted on reading Philip K. Dick and Asimov out loud. We listened to Marley and Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite and Sade and a little bit of Brahms, Che conducting. But mostly, we worked.

  Finally, I let it slip that I was celibate. They thought this was hilarious. They asked me how I was managing. I said it was my choice and nobody else’s business. That there were no good men in Jamaica; they were all married or dogs. Or both.

  ‘Is true!’ yelled Che. ‘Talk it, sister! Man ah dawg!’ He hit Joshua. ‘You ah dawg?’ They howled and barked and I tried to be angry. But I couldn’t.

  They praised me, like the big brothers I never had. They patted me all the time, on the butt, on my shoulders. They ruffled my hair. They tossed me back and forth between them. I wrote well. Images were fresh, narrative seemed effortless. I said what I meant. One night we got drunk and ate too much pepperoni pizza with pear on top. Joshua and I play-fought with Che’s cushions. I was laughing so hard I kept falling down. We ended up on the floor, panting. My legs were plaited through his. They were like iron bars. His face was inches from mine.

  ‘Where is your libido, these days?’ he asked.

  I giggled. ‘Nowhere. It took a trip on a sailing ship.’

  Che grabbed me by the armpits and slid me out from underneath his friend. ‘What you say you libido doing?’

  I blew him a kiss. My head was swimming. I was so rarely silly.

  ‘I hear it’s having a nice time in some drunk jungle. But those are only rumours.’

  Che shook me. ‘So drunk. Girl, you need a grind.’

  I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘Typical male response.’

  ‘I know what Simone is like in bed…’ he teased. The comment was directed at Joshua, like I wasn’t there. Joshua smiled indulgently.

  ‘She’s the kind of woman who takes hours…’ said Che.

  I sat cross-legged and swigged some Jack. ‘You don’t know nothing!’

  ‘She’s not the ki
nd of woman you can check for five minutes,’ said Che. ‘She likes a lot of foreplay –’

  ‘Every woman likes that.’

  He ignored me. ‘Kind of woman who’d cover you in scented oil, rub you down, feed you. Take a bath, suck you, back off again. Tease.’

  Inside me, something was turning over and burning. He wasn’t talking about the way I was: just how I’d always planned to be. If someone loved me, I could be that way.

  ‘She’d want to drive you crazy, keep you waiting. And just when you can’t take anymore, she lets you in. And then you just settle down into the pum-pum.’ He sighed, theatrically.

  We laughed. I laughed because I was embarrassed. I didn’t know why Joshua was laughing, but I did know his knee was brushing mine. It was a small thing; it might even have been an accident. He had one hand around the stem of his beer bottle, rubbing it up and down. The movement of his hand seemed languorous, lazy but purposeful. I stared at the hand, trying to remember what it reminded me of. I could suddenly imagine what he’d looked like as a boy. I wanted to tell him everything was alright.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Teasing over, Che went back to his work, body set in concentration. He was moulding a woman’s hips from what looked like play dough. In the background, Joshua got to work with the Rizlas. I wrote. Drunk. Regardless. Squiggles all over the page like a kid.

  *

  And then one night I got to the house and found Joshua prowling around the door, banging. He looked as if he wanted to cry and I felt suddenly sick.

  ‘What is it?’ My heart was beating too fast.

  ‘Che won’t answer the door.’

  ‘So maybe he’s not there.’

  He glared at me. ‘He’s there.’ He pounded. ‘Che! Answer the bloodclaaht door!’

  Silence.

  ‘Joshua, what is the matter?’

  ‘Him sick, alright?’

  ‘What you mean?’

  He pounded again.

  ‘Joshua!’

  There was a slight crack of the door and we could see Che’s face.

  He was nearly unrecognisable. From yesterday. His hair had gone dull. His eyes were dull. Joshua put a foot in the crack and shoved. Che scuttled back and sat in a corner.

  Later, I tried to tell Marcia about this most passionate of men, swollen with bleakness, scratches on his face and his hands where he’d been trying to distract himself. I never knew that the one woman Che loved, had died. Stabbed with an ice pick on a bus. For a gold chain and a near-empty purse.

  ‘So what did you do?’ Marcia asked.

  ‘Me? Nothing. It was Joshua talking to him. He put him to bed. He’s still there now. He says this happens every couple months. He’s manic depressive.’

  She frowned. ‘But the man have to get over this, girl. Is how long since him woman dead?’

  ‘Three years.’

  ‘Isn’t that when Joshua wife lef’ him?’

  ‘Yeah. They brought each other through.’

  ‘Rahtid.’ She hugged me. ‘Simone, I love you. But if my man dead, and your marriage mash up, I don’t know whether I can do one damn thing fi you.’

  I tried to smile. ‘So you planning to give up you slack ways and get a man?’

  ‘If you can find me one like dem two. But not the mad one.’

  ‘Marcia!’

  ‘Just jokin’, baby.’

  We hugged.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I said.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘I want him to be better.’

  ‘And…?’

  I buried my face in her shoulder. I felt so guilty. ‘I want us to finish.’

  ‘But you can always publish the stuff you’re doing now –’

  ‘No. That’s not how it works. It’s ours. It has to be all of us.’

  *

  Three days passed. I knew I should have tried to help, but I couldn’t think how. And then Che arrived on my doorstep, carrying a bucket. I hugged him at the door and gave him lemonade. I was awkward. I didn’t know what to say, but his bounce was back, small, but present.

  ‘So how you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Me? How you feel?’

  He looked around my apartment. ‘This place is just like you.’

  I sighed inwardly. Cream and orderly, just like my mother would have liked it. Sometimes I wanted to be untidy, but I couldn’t.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘But it is, y’ know. Not the fancy sofa or the colour, but look.’ He got up and moved around, touching things. A bottle of oil on the side table. He opened it and sniffed. ‘I can smell it in your hair.’ He brushed the wind chimes at the window with his palm. ‘You play with these when you’re lonely. And –’ he sat on the sofa again and reached underneath. I watched him, disbelieving, as he pulled out a sheaf of paper. ‘Yeah man, me did know. You sit here writing bad poetry. All about man, right? Man that leave you.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I snatched the paper.

  ‘Do me a favour. Give me your hand.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your writing hand.’

  He covered my left hand in something that felt like Vaseline. His touch was quiet and efficient; I stayed quiet and let him rub the jelly into each crease and crevice, up to my forearm. He pushed the bucket forward. ‘Stick your hand in this. It’s plaster.’

  I obeyed. We were quiet again. After a while he signalled for me to pull out of the bucket. After the cast dried, he pulled it off me. We regarded the disembodied hand in silence. Its fingers were spread, long, frozen in a caress. He placed the hand on my side table. I didn’t know my hand looked like that. Capable. Powerful.

  ‘That’s for you,’ he said. ‘I’ll finish it and then you can have it.’

  We’d never worked anywhere else but his house, but I could see that wasn’t right anymore: he’d exposed too much. We ordered pizza and called Joshua. I knew they’d move the sofa and disturb my neighbours; I decided not to care. We’d begun again.

  *

  I gave them just over thirty thousand words and then I didn’t see them for weeks. They said they wanted to surprise me, but I was vex as hell. It was strangely unbearable. I prowled my house. I kept on writing, astonished that another novel was coming, with two protagonists. One with dishevelled hair and sad eyes, one with skin like jet rock. But there was space for other things too. More balance. I masturbated idly, called old friends. I was writing, not hiding. A new way.

  ‘Not even one of them did make a move?’ asked Marcia.

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  She ignored me. ‘Which one you prefer?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’ My head hurt. ‘Neither.’

  ‘I woulda grab at least one grind offa them,’ she said, grimly.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  I felt sour about her all over again.

  Dreamt once about golden pollen spilling across the tablecloth, and hands.

  *

  They call me, finally. It’s finished.

  The drive takes so long.

  Joshua meets me at the door. If he were Che, he would be dancing from one foot to the other. Because he is Joshua, he is still and mysterious. He carries a blindfold.

  ‘May I?’ he says.

  I let him tie me blind. I let him put a hand in the small of my back, another on my shoulder. I let him guide me.

  In the room, there is silence, and then the sound of drums. I want to reach for the sound, to grab it, to pull it to me. It is sound that could be felt, that could be loved. It is just like Joshua: solid, unmistakable. But there is a new vibe, something I didn’t know he was feeling. The sound of mischief conquering rationality. It is a gorgeous surrender of his masks. I pull back against him. ‘It’s beautiful, Joshua.’

  ‘Of course it is. It would have to be.’

  ‘You so full of yourself.’

  He laughs. ‘You don’t understand. Listen.’

  I listen. Then I realise. It’s not ju
st him. There’s a dark piano chord for Che.

  ‘It’s us,’ I breathe.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But with you at the centre. Hear it?’

  A guitar wails through.

  I want to cry. ‘That’s me?’

  ‘If you were sound, yeah.’

  And I know what they have done. ‘Let me see the sculpture.’

  He unties the blindfold and light creeps into the room. Trickles of blue smoke. I stare.

  The sculpture reaches almost to the ceiling. Che has crafted her of apricot soapstone. My stories climb across her skin and flood onto the wall behind her, the ground beneath her, in oranges, yellows, reds, against the blue. The sculpture’s eyes are blurred and beautiful, as if she is looking at forever. She is naked. Hands soft in her lap. Fingers wreathed in golden pollen. She’s not me; that would be too much. But she’s something we all know.

  *

  I think it will be Che, with his whip-efficient body, coming from behind the sculpture, dancing up to us, so proud. I am wet-eyed. But it’s Joshua who brings it to a beginning.

  ‘Look at how beautiful you are,’ he says.

  He puts his hand between my legs, and I realise that more than my eyes are wet. I am amazed that what he does is OK, that a kiss was not what I needed first. He is stroking me through my thin leggings, and his hand knows me. I don’t think of protest, of the future, even how it will be right this minute. I just sink into Joshua as Che stands behind me, waiting his turn.

  Joshua is slow. Slower than I ever could have imagined. The drums have not stopped, and he winds the music through my hair. His breath is hot. I’m moaning their names like a string of moonstones, like their names make one name.

  Joshua gives me to Che. He sits on the floor and watches his friend pull my blouse over my head. I watch him watching us. Che picks me up, leans against the wall, pulls my legs around his waist, my heels in the small of his back. He pulls off his shirt, lifts my breasts until our nipples are touching. I look into his face, so serious.

  ‘You’re a clever man,’ I say. My throat hurts. He buries his face into my neck. The rub of his skin against mine makes me want to scream. He is rubbing me into him, masturbating me against his waist and groin. His legs are trembling with the effort. I look back at Joshua. He is naked, has his dick in his hand, rubbing and rubbing. I want it in my mouth. I slide off Che, kneel in front of Joshua, run my tongue around his balls, tickle the underside, listen to him groan.