by Phyllis Shand Allfrey

I was stretched out on a mat under the impenetrable mango tree in the back garden sucking pear-drops and reading a very old copy of Tiger Tim's Weekly, for I had been told not to show myself at the front gates. Although innocent of any design on the reputation of the white official class, I was in disgrace.

My great-uncle, the colony's medical officer, had issued a statement to the press that the prevalent epidemic was kaffir-pox, a disease that was unlikely to afflict people of pure European blood. Unfortunately, the first white victim of this unpleasant ailment was the Anglican archdeacon and the second was myself, then a child of ten.

My nurse, finding me on that morning fretful and convalescent, had bribed me to stay out of sight under the mango tree by giving me a bag of sweets and making many promises which I knew she would not keep. My spotty face was spellbound over the English comic strips, and every now and then I would break one of my nurse's don'ts and scratch my legs with the hand that turned the pages and brushed away flies.

I must have been there for over half an hour before a heavy rustling in the boughs above me made me conscious that something larger than bird or animal was about to slide to the ground. It was Breeze, Breeze the wild girl, the notorious creature, who had been studying me in silence, but could not bear to see the last pear drops vanish into my listless mouth. Leaping down like a panther, Breeze grabbed the bag and then, a pear-drop bulging out of her cheek, greeted me:

"Hullo skinny! Got the kaffir-pox?"

Although I had never met Breeze before and only seen her once in the distance being chased by a policeman, I knew who she was and a great deal about her. She was the girl who had no home, who lived wild, who was only fourteen, but had been to jail five times, who stole, who wore no clothes or at most one garment; yes, she looked exactly the way the elders said she did, crispy hair shaved, face hard and saucy and merry...and as if to demonstrate those legs which were as fleet as the wind and which had inspired her name, Breeze vaulted up into the branches again, her shapeless grey garment flapping.

"Oh, do you live in our mango tree, Breeze?" I exclaimed in admiration, ignoring Breeze's insulting behaviour, for having attained a high branch, she leaned down grinning like the Cheshire cat and calling out just loudly enough for me to hear:

"Skinny, skinny, poxy, poxy."

After a while I became irritated by these epithets and muttered back:

"Jail bird, jail bird. Naked jail bird."

"Like to see me naked? Like to see how I get out of this dress when they chase me?" asked Breeze, and I nodded avidly.

She slid down the trunk of the mango tree again, and with a single wriggle of her bronze shoulders disposed of the shapeless sack, which had a large neck opening and no buttons. She stood there before me in maidenly magnificence, and as if the sight of her was not sufficient to shame my puny child limbs, she remarked: "Wouldn't call me skinny, would you? That's my town clothes. When I live in forest I live free."

I gazed at her enviously. To live free! Wasn't that what every child desired! Not to be fretted on hot days by starched muslin dresses and cotton bloomers! To sleep in trees like a bird! And to be as beautiful a series of round shapes as Breeze, who was what the elders called ominously, "a Big Girl Now."

"Wish't I could be you, Breeze," I complained.

But Breeze said surprisingly, "Rather be skinny. Don't run so fast now I'm grown. They catch me. Wanted to put me to school. Want me to live on cooked food. Want to put me to work. Listen Skinny," she bent down and glared at me terrifyingly, her brown shining face very near, "know what the p'leece want me to be? Want me to be a bucket-lady."

Now although I was only ten I knew well that to be a bucket lady was to pursue one of the two most ignominious professions in the colony; the other being designated "huckster," and having something or other to do with meeting ships and trading with sailors.

"A bucket-lady!" I said aghast.

Breeze to empty our privy pail for one-and-sixpence a week or worse - the privy pail of some family of lower social standing! Breeze having to walk carefully with a stinking bucket poised on her turban, sneaking down the lesser streets where no white people lived, towards the sea-dump, on dark nights!

"Don't ever let them catch you and make you a bucket-lady, Breeze!" I cried.

"Oh, I don't mind smells, I sleep in closets on rainy nights," said Breeze proudly, "but I mind walking slow and not living free, I mind doing same things every week. Hey, what you got on your arm, poxy?" she exclaimed, seizing the wrist on which the tight little gold-coiled bracelet, a gift from my great-uncle when I was five, clung like a permanent handcuff. "Gold! Real gold!" cried Breeze, her eyes greedy for the yellow shining thing. "Gimme that. Make me lovely earrings - I got pierced ears. Gimme, or I'll take it."

And as I crouched away from her, nor knowing whether to cry or to comply, Breeze made a nearer tiger-leap and snarled in my ear: "You gimme. Take it off or I'll bite it off." While I huddled petrified and fascinated, she added: "And I'll bite your hand off, too."

Hastily, I tugged at the bracelet, trying to part its two thick gold knobs with my left hand; fortunately, I had grown so thin that it came away suddenly, leaving red marks on my wrist. It rolled on the grass and Breeze picked it up and put it in her mouth, where it gleamed like a bit between her ferociously beautiful teeth.

I began to howl with rage and loss, and Breeze, hearing a bustle in the building behind me, snatched up her grey dress and slipped naked into the undergrowth. Yet so strong was my fear of Breeze, and perhaps also my loyalty to her enviable freedom, that I lay howling on the grass with my wrist tucked under my stomach, refusing to say what was the matter.

I never saw Breeze again, and nobody ever found out what had become of my gold bracelet. I heard of her further escapades, of course, and would listen with fascinated horror to tales of how she bit a policeman and sent him to hospital for weeks, or how she kicked the matron over, jumped the prison wall and disappeared into the hills. While I listened to these anecdotes I would think of Breeze with fond partisanship.

After a while I also became "a Big Girl Now" and left the colony for the milder savagery of boarding school.

The other day I met an American captain at a cocktail party, and he told me how he had visited my colony just before the war to make watercolour sketches. He told me how when his ship pulled into the bay, a young woman carrying a tray full of terrible beads and junk, her face powdered till it looked blue, and her lips painted purple, stepped up the gangway, and oh boy! What a type! She was a walking tigress, and when she swept off that ship she took with her the chief petty officer and half a dozen sailors and a bribe of a pound from the purser to clear off and quit making a nuisance of herself, for it seemed that even the local police couldn't keep her in order. "Gee, she was a darn beautiful coloured woman, and I'd have given a lot to have seen her with her face washed and as nude as a diving boy... "

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