Tere­sa White

“Be­have your­self, man, or Boysie Singh goyn get, al­lyuh!”, cau­tion­ary chant used to scare Trinida­di­an chil­dren in­to good be­hav­iour.

There is sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle writ­ten about that larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter, Boysie Singh, but his lega­cy stretch­es far in­to our oral cul­ture. Long be­fore I was born, he lived next door to a house owned by my grand­par­ents, Dr and Mrs CV Gock­ing. Ini­tial­ly, the house was rent­ed out, but they would lat­er be­come neigh­bours.

My knowl­edge of Boysie stems from Gram­pa (an ex­cel­lent sto­ry­teller and re­spect­ed his­to­ri­an), Granny (an afi­ciona­do of all things Wood­brook), and the sem­i­nal text, The Mur­ders of Boysie Singh by Derek Bick­er­ton (a vis­it­ing lin­guist who was in­trigued by this man), which I in­her­it­ed as part of CV’s li­brary (and there is worth not­ing the re­cent edi­tion with an ex­cel­lent in­tro­duc­tion by Prof Ken­neth Ram­c­hand, which I of­ten gift to peo­ple whom I deem spe­cial).

For all Tri­ni bac­cha­nal and court­room lovers (I think that is about 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple), Boysie is an ex­cel­lent copy. So, how great is it that the award-win­ning In­grid Per­saud would choose to write about him? And from the point of view of the var­i­ous women in his life–peo­ple with tra­di­tion­al­ly no voice?

Yes: this is def­i­nite­ly promis­ing stuff. Yes: you will not be dis­ap­point­ed.

I think The Lost Love Songs is even bet­ter than Love Af­ter Love and, that is say­ing some­thing. What we are see­ing here is a tal­ent­ed writer get­ting in­to her stride. Like Love Af­ter Love, her voic­es are cred­i­ble; their lan­guage is right and you can hear their lyri­cism in your head as you read.

Per­saud is un­apolo­getic in her use of Tri­ni di­alects and she does not de­fine terms, there­by sav­ing the text from read­ing like a Gen­er­al Pa­per es­say. The writ­ing runs smooth­ly and the con­text, even for a non-Tri­ni read­er, makes the mean­ing per­fect­ly clear.

Our char­ac­ters are placed in time, coun­try, race and class: the very rich com­plex ta­pes­try that is Trinidad. And, as I of­ten com­ment in re­la­tion to Love Af­ter Love, what we have here is our ver­sion of a Twain, a Faulkn­er and a Chan­dler Har­ris, whose fic­tion was so crit­i­cal in doc­u­ment­ing cer­tain South­ern US di­alects. Spo­ken lan­guage is dy­nam­ic and, if not cap­tured in time, be­comes lost to the ages.

“‘An in­tractable stu­dent’ was I.”

This is one of the few lines that I can re­call from a se­lec­tion of Boysie Singh’s po­et­ry that I read in a Trinidad & To­ba­go Re­view of the last cen­tu­ry (if on­ly could I lay my hands on that page again!).

Whilst one would as­sume that Boysie writ­ing po­et­ry was im­prob­a­ble, it is high­ly prob­a­ble that his New­town RC school­mas­ter dubbed him “in­tractable” and that he would hold that in mind. Mind you, I would call him more than what we Tri­nis call hard­en; he was a psy­chopath. And, if I am not sin­gu­lar in that view, it begs the ques­tion as to what sort of women would choose to con­sort with him. And what would their songs of long­ing be?

Per­saud gives us four women: Rosie (a polyamorous bi-sex­u­al shop­keep­er), Popo (an abused pros­ti­tute who has seen hard times), Mana Lala (the moth­er of Boysie’s adored son, Chunksee), and Doris (the am­bi­tious fair-skinned beau­ty from To­co).

Boysie leaves each of these women with ei­ther some­thing un­re­quit­ed or is the agent of their un­sat­is­fied yearn­ings: the ex­ploita­tion of her fi­nan­cial re­sources and com­mer­cial acu­ity (Popo), the with­hold­ing of his love and her son (Mana Lala), the un­ful­fill­ment of his con­ju­gal re­la­tions (Doris), and the mur­der of her true love whilst ex­tort­ing sig­nif­i­cant sums for pro­tec­tion (Rosie).

There is the hu­mor­ous in­clu­sion of two of my fam­i­ly’s favourite Boysie sto­ries. The first tells of when my grand­par­ents’ row­dy Eng­lish ten­ants were dis­turb­ing his wife’s mid­day rest. This un­sat­is­fac­to­ry sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued un­til Boysie made it per­fect­ly clear to Gram­pa (“the Doc­tor”) that his “boys” would have no choice oth­er than to pay the house a vis­it; that vis­it would in­volve stones that would pelt like rain.

There is al­so the time when Boysie took it up­on him­self to res­cue a des­ti­tute old woman who as­sert­ed her­self at num­ber 13 Ros­ali­no Street un­til she took things too far with the wife. Per­saud in­cor­po­rates these bits of fam­i­ly folk­lore in­to Doris’s song mel­liflu­ous­ly.

The women are nu­anced, how­ev­er, and Boysie shines bright­ly in their eyes. The long-suf­fer­ing Mana Lala is not saint­ed and shows a ten­den­cy to­wards Mun­chausen Syn­drome by proxy to se­cure Boysie’s at­ten­tion and fam­i­ly out­ings to the doc­tor. Rosie’s love for Et­ty, her sex-work­ing school­mate is pal­pa­ble, the les­bian re­la­tion­ship han­dled most sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly and ten­der­ly. Popo is brave, en­ter­pris­ing and in­tel­li­gent.

In­deed, Doris, the most “moral” of the women is, in fact, the most amoral. By con­trast, we can­not help feel­ing sym­pa­thy for each of the oth­er three, even as each of them breaks one of those pre­cious Ten Com­mand­ments.

Doris is a staunch church-go­ing Ro­man Catholic from a sim­ple sta­ble lov­ing home. Though no vir­gin, she mas­ter­ful­ly with­holds sex from Boysie to se­cure him. She is not hun­gry, nor is she des­per­ate. Doris has prospects, but not com­men­su­rate with her as­pi­ra­tions and her greed.

She con­jures im­me­di­ate­ly to mind Bick­er­ton’s damn­ing ob­ser­va­tion of our so­ci­ety back in 1962, the year of our in­de­pen­dence, and a time of our per­ceived in­no­cence: “The split-lev­el house in Bel­mont or Cas­cade, the Im­pala and the Bel Air, the elec­tric gad­gets and the wife or mis­tress star­lit with jew­els–these are the on­ly valid sym­bols of achieve­ment, and once they are ob­tained, there are few who trou­ble to ask by what means.”

Per­saud’s Doris is ex­act­ly the sort of woman whom Granny would have de­scribed as “not able to say prunes, but able to say gua­va” (though Granny nev­er ap­plied that de­scrip­tion to her next-door neigh­bour).

Those words of Bick­er­ton haunt me be­cause they tell us that the in­tractable sit­u­a­tion that we find our­selves in to­day was long in the mak­ing and, thus, will be long in the fix­ing. Per­saud’s Doris is a per­fect em­bod­i­ment of that self-serv­ing hypocrisy that still finds it so easy to look the oth­er way.

(The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh by In­grid Per­saud

will be re­leased by Faber & Faber on April 25, 2024. Per­saud will al­so be at the forth­com­ing Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val in per­son. She will join me on April 27, 2024, on a pan­el with So­raya Parmer, au­thor of The Hu­man Ori­gins of Beat­rice Porter and Oth­er Es­sen­tial Ghosts, at 2:30 pm at the Old Fire Sta­tion.)