Black Marina by Emma Tennant

Teza knew she could survivewithout Ford because she had learned to be a committed feminist. And the Black Panthers were making remarks like a woman’s position was best under a man or something like that. No wonder it didn’t appeal to Teza. At the same time, Ford did enjoy his new position as the great West Indian talent, discovered by Julian Byrne, the critic and mentor of taste, and a lovely white lady with a castle in Scotland that had a moat, and a couple of literary editors who had pull in the States as well and could make Ford’s name worldwide. He had no need for a dingy-looking group of women turning up every night at the house off Portobello Road and making the place stink of take-away while they aired their grievances. He’d swagger in late and call to Teza to fix him a drink, and all hell was let loose.
    So what else is new? I say to myself every time I read of a new thing like palimony – or women preaching in church – or businesswomen in America with marsupial briefcases that hold stiletto-heel shoes for putting on after the Nikes they’d jogged to the office in. I’m from a really distant past, and OK I look like a dinosaur too. But I genuinely didn’t recognize Ford when he came into the store just under two months ago.
    *
    Counter, curtain of beads, stained-wood floor where the fruit squash in when it fall from the basket – big freezer like a punishment cell, holding wild meat and poor fat pre-packed turkey for the Christmas blow-out. Nothing’s different since then – even the helicopter going overhead, and the humming of the generator out there by the chicken shed. The only thing that’s different is that instead of Ford, smiling coolly at me in the beret and the NH glasses without rims and the eyes much too big behind them, there’s this tiresome girl with her hands spread palm down on the counter top. ‘ Where is Ford? ’Who tells her to come here and ask me that? Whogives her permission to swim over into my private lite here anyway?
    ‘Please go in there a moment,’ I say to the girl, indicating the Craft Centre. I can see Sanjay’s shadow on the concrete walkway outside and hear the patter of his daughter’s footsteps after him. ‘You’ll get in trouble,’ I say to the girl – and Millie takes the opportunity to wash her hands of the whole thing and go out through the swinging conches for the last time, swaying hugely, bowed down with carrier bags. ‘You didn’t go through customs, did you?’ I say in my most menacing voice, as it seems that to cap it all the girl has it in mind to disobey me. ‘This is the proprietor of the island coming in now,’ I hiss. ‘He can have you taken for interrogation in Trinidad.’
    ‘OK.’ The girl moved her shoulders in a faint shrug of disdain, as if she knows as well as I do that customs formalities only take place here once a week when the Singer docks, and people from yachts can come and go as they please. And I see as she swings past me and down the one step to the Craft Centre that she has a slight smile on her face. The impertinence! I see too a birthmark, white, something like an unripe Alpine strawberry, on that lovely long neck under the chin. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, I think. And on she walks – and her legs part as neatly as scissors and she’s gone from sight altogether. The saucy creature has climbed right into Jim Davy’s priceless pre-Columbian pot! Now what the heck am I going to do? And I feel suddenly a fatigue that merges in with Sanjay’s face and battered white suit with the image of Ford in his combat jacket and those sweet, kind eyes smiling out at me. Whatever people may say, Millie was right. He’s a sweet boy and he stayed one. But where is he now? And how much was Sanjay to blame?
    ‘Hello, Holly.’ Sanjay came and leaned with one elbow on the counter like he always does. It’s a semi-confidential but still lordly stance. He likes to stay quiet for a time beforeasking with a