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scales. Every four o’clock, Monday, Wednesdays and Friday, straight from Harrison College.
    “One night, during this time, Mr. Bellfeels came over, and I offered him something to drink; and he took a Tennents Stout. That was his drink, when he was a more younger man. In later life, he switch to white rum. And that, plus a few more things, was what I couldn’t stomach in him. Belching as he swallowing the Tennents. No class. A few coppers rackling-’bout inside his pockets, yes. But no class. The right complexion and colour of skin for living high-on-the-hog, in this Island, yes. But class? Not one bloody ounce. The man would break wind, pass gas in front of me, and his son—fart, then!—even carrying on this behaviour home, in front o’ Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie. Mistress Bellfeels, his wife, in one of the few exchanges we ever had, told me such.
    “I have seen Ma, whilst she was his maid, iron dozens of handkerchiefs, every Friday evening, rinsing-and-starching them on the Thursday; white cotton ones, with a light-blue border in all of them. And never-once Mr. Bellfeels used a handkerchief. Index finger gainst one nostril, and phew! Splat in the road, and watch the thick green stuff slide over a rock and disappear in the ground.
    “I don’t know how I managed to stomach his weight layingdown on top of me all those years; breeding me and having his wish; and me smelling him; and him giving-off a smell like fresh dirt, mould that I turned over with my hoe, at first planting, following a downpour of rain, when all the centipees and rats, cockroaches and insects on God’s earth start crawling-out in full vision and sight, outta the North Field.
    “And a man of his means! To live like that! And never think of dashing a dash of cologne, or some Florida Water over his face and under his two armpits . . .”
    She stops talking, as she dabs a handkerchief at her mouth; and then at her right eye; and then at her left eye. The Constable sits and wonders why women always wipe their lips first, when it is their eyes that express the emotion they no longer want to disclose.
    Her body shakes a little. In his eyes, she is a woman past desire; a woman who wears her dress below the knee; a powerful, rich, “brown-skin” woman; a woman to fear. He remembers her screaming at him when he was her yard-boy, because he had not swept the garbage clean from the yard; that was years ago; and he can still hear her high-pitched voice that sent chills down his back. But each evening, when he was leaving, she placed a brown paper bag into his hand, told him, “Tell your mother I say how-d.” The paper bag contained large and small tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, three eggs and leftover chicken legs for his mother; a brown sugar cake and a penny for himself.
    He pulls himself together now; puts all thought of Gertrude, and thoughts of this rich, brown-skin woman’s plight, out of his mind; and recaptures the dignity of being a Constable in the Constabulary of the Island of Bimshire Police Force.
    He must not let this woman’s personal appeal and her physical attractiveness affect his concentration.
    He must not, under the circumstances, let her soften his duty to conclude his preliminary Statement; nor, considering the act in question, have her ruffle his thoughts on Gertrude.
    He is once more a Constable in the Constabulary.
    So, he straightens his shoulders and sits erect in the straight-backed tub-chair.
    She does the same thing with her posture, in her chair, and smiles with him.
    She looks very beautiful to him, at this moment. Tempting as his grandmother told him she was, as a little girl. “Many a man’ heart skip a beat after that Tilda, before she even reach her teens. Any man would want to ravish Tilda’s beauty and virginity. But she save everything for Bellfeels. ”
    “. . . And the nights Mr. Bellfeels came over, I remember how Wilberforce, then in Third Form, beginning to take Latin and Greek, the boy was so happy