No Safeguards by H. Nigel Thomas Read Free Book Online

right, but fate worked it out so that I didn’t have time to think about horning your father, because five years after we were married, he dropped dead on the beach. Went there to buy fish. Mama herself died eighteen months after the wedding. The only reason Kirton used to buy fish was that he was too damn afraid of the sea to go catch the fish himself. Nearly drowned when he was five. What a tightwad that man was! Raised his own chickens. Guess who cleaned the chicken shit? Kept goats and a cow, too. Said buying meat and milk and eggs was money going out of his pocket. His secret was to take in and not put out. Good thing he didn’t take his own advice literally — or maybe he did. The day he dropped dead on the beach, a mason was up the hill outlining the spot where Kirton had hired him to build a pigpen. He had already worked it out that you and I would go and collect vegetable peelings from the neighbours to feed them. You know why, Anna: because he wanted us to earn our keep. What a miser that man was!
    â€œâ€˜You know, about three months after he died — I shouldn’t tell you this, Anna, I saw his death as a chance to make a life of my own choosing. Anna, his death was a blessing. He’d have robbed you of your childhood and robbed me of a life. That man had already turned me into a hag. You know that I love to read, always did. Your father ignited whenever he saw me reading. Kirton would start to twitch if the light was on after eight o’clock, would come and pull the book or magazine away from me, and order me into bed.
    â€œâ€˜My mother used to do the laundry for the Anderson Greathouse, and I won a scholarship to Kingstown Secondary. But in my second year, barely a month after my grandmother died, my mother was walking under some coconut trees on the beach and a coconut fell and hit her on the head and brought on a stroke. She had just turned thirty. She returned from hospital half-paralysed. I, 13 years old at the time, had to take over the washing and ironing because that was what fed us. I managed to finish the second year and scraped through the third year, but I had to give up school. Mr. Bentley, a good man — he owned Bentley and Sons, a dry goods store, knew my situation and gave me a job to sell in his store. At 17 I was running it. With my pay I fed my mother and myself and had a little something for myself to buy a magazine or two and make myself look pretty.
    â€œâ€˜I read everything in the Georgetown library, not that there was a lot to read: two bookcases. I always hoped to finish my education. I would have gone to England to study nursing — easy in those days — and gone on to university afterwards, but I stayed home to take care of my mother, and I ended up marrying your father. So when your father died, it was a relief. If I didn’t have you, I would have gone to England. In those days with a year or two in high school, you could get into nursing. Instead I married Benjamin Bradley: earthly possessions: two pairs o’ drawers — one on his arse and one on the clothesline, three shirts, two trousers, and a pair of sneakers. Not even a hairbrush to take the knots out of his hair. I was in love with him when your father asked for my hand. That man wanted to spend your father’s money on his harlots — until I got fed-up and put his clothes in the road. By that time, child, I was ready to live without a man, and I understood why my mother used to say that sex sweet until you find out what it cost.’
    â€œYou’re frowning, Jay.”
    â€œI’m wondering how come Grama talked to you like that.”
    â€œWell that was Mama alright. No use telling her her speech was vulgar. She would say: ‘You understand what I’m saying?’ And I would nod. And she would say: ‘Good. That is what I want. I don’t know anything about foul language. I don’t have feathers, I don’t lay eggs, and I