Free The Meeting Point by Austin Clarke

waiting for the passengers), showed him their passports; said something to him, in that close, secretive manner she had come to notice so well on the plane; and then passed on, without too much fuss, into another room, where some other CUSTOMS men stood guard. Trunks were tumbling onto a revolving conveyer platform; and some red caps, vague and suspicious about the best-goddamn-tipping-arrivals, were studying the passengers, as if they were studying the markings on a spinning wheel in a gambling casino. The family group of man, woman, children and Captain Morgan, was watching Estelle. They had been watching her very closely: (once, out of boredom, Estelle passed her hand over her behind, and just caught herself in time, before giving it a satisfying scratch; and frightened to be caught scratching she glanced round, and there! staring at her, with rivets in their eyes, were Mr. and Mrs. Captain Morgan, the children and the rum case).
    Her satin dress shone like coconut oil on a road at midday; her compressed cardboard valise was in her left hand; another valise of cardboard which was used to ship Country Life cigarettes before Estelle made it into a valise (and which contained five dozen flying fish fried in lard oil; a Christmas great cake, although it was not even near Christmas; a bottle of pure Caribbean sea-water for purging Bernice’s bowels) was in her right hand. The parcel which the Chinese stewardess had placed under her armpit, was really a box which oncecontained Lifebuoy, and which now had a large cooked meal of increased-peas and flying-fish, steamed in case Estelle felt peckish in mid-air. But Estelle had felt too embarrassed to be seen eating so much food in mid-air. To her, it was definitely sinful.
    The family group was smiling now. But still they looked like a portrait snapped while they were dead; a portrait snapped and snatched with a smile on their dead faces. The smile bothered Estelle. Theirs was similar to the look she thought she noticed on everybody’s face, on the plane. She smiled at them, with them; and straightaway, they looked in another direction. This upset her. In Barbados, everybody spoke to almost everybody. Her eyes wandered again to the black woman sitting on her half of the hemisphere of the bench with the white woman. She smiled at the woman. The woman held down her head, and covered her face under the broad brim of her straw hat which said NASSAU. And Estelle’s smiles were soon buried in the footprints on the cement floor, among the pools of melting snow which outlined the season of the year. When she looked up again, she was standing before a man in a black uniform. CANADIAN IMMIGRATION was written on his shoulders.
    “Where were you born, ma’am?”
    “In Barbados, in the West Indies, please.”
    “Passport, please.” Before she could move, he was saying, “What’s the purpose of your visit to Canada? How long do you intend staying?”
    “Just a minute, please, just a minute.” She was fumbling with the parcel under her arm. She put one valise on the floor. The passport was in the valise. The valise was tied with a heavy kind of shaggy hemp rope which Mammy had wrapped round and round it; and this gave the valise a battered appearance, asif the bodies of many snakes were curled around. The rope was knotted in many places, for safety. Estelle realized she would have to untie all these knots, before she could … but when she looked up, the immigration officer had
that look
on his face. Turning to the man behind her, she said, “If I could only get this parcel opened, if I could get some person to help me get this parcel, hold on to this parcel for me, please.” She turned to the gentleman for help. “Would you, please?” He took the parcel. The same time, the immigration officer held up his hand to prevent the man (who was a minister of the church) from taking the parcel.
    “Lady,” he said, in a tone that was both pleading and authoritative, one which had always