The Polished Hoe Read Online Free PDF

can see how they change form when she walks; he sees the lighter colour of skin of her heels, from the rest of the rich black colour of her instep. Dots of red nail polish, the colour of blood, decorate eight toes. The nails of her little toes are too small to accommodate even one drop of this red blood.
    The Constable can see also the outline of her panties, as she moves in front of the light from the bright bare, naked bulbs that reach two feet above the table on which the bell that he rang, pling! , stands. And he imagines her panties are pink, and plain and without an embroidered edge round the legs and waist; and he can see clear through to them, with the help of his imagination and the naked bulbs, to the thick hair between her legs, and better still, just as she holds her body over, without bending her knees, to open the doors of an ornate cupboard; and from it, take a large decanter of crystal cut glass.
    The Constable thinks of panties, made of soft sea-island cotton, bought on time from the Indian merchants whom he sees coming through the Village on Sundays, just as food is being served in Village kitchens. The Constable closes his eyes and sees Gertrude naked in his new lust, as she pours a drink into a glass. The glass has a large belly. A round belly. Large and round, like the belly of the Vicar of the Anglican Church, the Reverend Mr. M. R. P. P. Dowd, M.Th. (Dunelmn)—Master of Theology; and the Constable makes a wish, and his wish is Gertrude’s voice talking to him; and he smiles, for his wish has at last been granted; and she is telling him, “ Yes, come and take it ”; but it is not Gertrude’s voice: it is Mary-Mathilda, the woman sitting beside him, whose voice he is hearing, who is saying, “Come and take it, your milk. Would you like something else, Constable?”
    “The milk would do, ma’am.”
    “Constable’s milk, and the brandy then, please,” she says to Gertrude, who is still in the room; and to the Constable, “Are you sure you won’t like something more strong than milk? In all my born days, I never met a police who drinks milk!”
    “I loves milk, ma’am.”
    “Now, I am curious to know, Constable, if you ever had something you couldn’t part with? A taw-ee. A nail. Piece of lead-pencil. A button. Anything. Like it was a, a kind of . . . obsession you had. Like something religious. Wilberforce been telling me that the Catholics in Rome-Italy have obsessions like these. The Catholics we have in this Island, small in numbers, since we are basically English and Anglicans, and high-Anglicans to-boot, are like those Catholics in Rome-Italy. People with obsessions. I don’t think that Anglicans have obsessions of such colour and nature, though. Do you? Wilberforce tells me that Catholics walk with a string of beads in their hand, or round their neck; and when they die, they insist, either in their Will, or in their last wishes, that that string of worrying beads, that is what they call them, worrying beads, be buried with them, in their coffin. Isn’t that something? Mr. Bellfeels told me that the man who fathered him had his gold pocket watch and gold chain buried with him in his coffin, according to his last Will and Testament; and that just before the grave diggers pile-on the mould to bury the coffin, the undertaker jumpin the grave, saying that he forget to take off all the silver ornaments from offa the coffin; and he unscrewed the oval hole for viewing the corpse; and quick-so, before the mourners could blink, bram! , the expensive gold pocket watch with matching gold chain was rip-outta the corpse hands, and almost was inside the undertaker paws before Mr. Bellfeels intervene.
    “But when Mr. Bellfeels tell me that story, all I could do was laugh. ‘I snap-on my right hand ’pon the fucker’s wrist, and squeeze , Mr. Bellfeels say he say, and the fucker drop the watch in my left hand. With my right hand, I was choking the fucker. This is the same gold pocket watch you