And De Fun Don't Done (55 page)

‘Ya roo! Ire. Jah Rastafah. Jah Rastafah,' howled the mob.

‘Ire. Jah Rastafarai,' said the dread up on stage.

By the time he'd had another two tokes while continuing his rap, about the only things Haile Selassie hadn't done was invent the wheel, discover penicillin and beat Armstrong to the moon. The rasta was just about to load up again when Les noticed the bloke on stage wasn't the only centre of attention. Norton looked around and there were all these odd-looking, pinky brown eyes staring at him from the darkness. It was then that Les also noticed he was the only slice of white bread at the rastas' picnic; and from the looks he was getting it was giving most of the gathering a bad case of indigestion. Oh well, thought Les. I think it might be exit stage right for the goyen. Slowly and smiling Les eased his way through the crowd,
jogged across the street and around the barricade, winked at a cop, then joined the crowds of people swarming past the waterfront along Gloucester Avenue.

There were hundreds of people crowding along the street, mainly Jamaicans in their early twenties and a smattering of Euro-trash backpackers. The seaward side of the street was fenced off and open with a few restaurants, the other side mainly held small hotels and shops. Les passed another smaller park then above the crowds of people something caught his eye. It was a small, white, two-storey hotel with a parking area out the front for about a dozen cars and a sign near the street that said Biltmore Hotel, same as the one at Bondi. Norton's face broke into a grin, then a thought struck him. He wasn't all that rapt in where he was staying and was thinking of brushing it; the only reason he was there was because he'd been a bit confused and in a hurry and it was the only place he could think of. He could have stayed at the best hotel there was in Montego Bay. But why not get a room at the Biltmore just for a gag? It was only for another night. Yeah, bugger it. Why not? Les laughed to himself. I'll see if they've got any rooms. There was a vacant building on the right side and an open-front bar on the other. Les skipped through the crowd and into the parking lot.

It was full of small cars and led to a very plain-looking hairdressing salon at the rear, left of a set of stairs. A security guard in a white shirt and black bowtie was leaning against the wall next to the bottom step. He seemed about as energetic as the one at the Badminton Club but about a foot taller. He looked at Les sleepily.

‘I'm after a room,' said Les. ‘Okay if I go up?' The man mumbled something that sounded and looked like yes and stood aside. ‘Thanks, mate,' winked Les, and jogged up the steps.

The stairs went up one storey to the foyer and office set just to the left. Right of the office a door led to what looked like a bar or restaurant and in the left corner from the office another set of stairs went to the floor above. On
either side of the office the rooms angled off along two long balconies looking down on the carpark and at the top of the stairs was a small dining area scattered with black and white chairs and tables that overlooked the carpark and the darkness of the ocean behind. The reception desk was a wooden counter with a bell and the usual things found on hotel counters, a wall and a glass door led to the safe and office behind. A girl sitting on a chair behind the bell looked up as Les approached. She was plain and dumpy in a yellow uniform but appeared to be about a thousand times more pleasant than Lucretia Borgia up at the Badminton Club.

‘Good evening, miss,' said Norton, returning her smile. ‘I'd like a room for two nights if I could?'

‘No problem, mon.' She pointed to the balcony behind Norton on his left. ‘There's one over there. When did you want to move in?'

‘Tomorrow morning.'

‘No problem, mon.'

Les explained his position to the girl about being in the other hotel and not liking it, how he was walking past, saw this place but the only ID he had on him was his room key at the Badminton Club. Would $50 US as deposit be okay? No problem, mon. The girl gave him a receipt and Les said he'd fix the rest up when he came down in the morning with his bags to pick up the key. He wouldn't bother to check the room; he was certain it would be alright. Les pocketed the receipt, thanked the girl and said he'd see her tomorrow. Thank you, sir. Have a good night at the Mardi Gras. Les jogged down the stairs, told Sleepy on the door he was moving in and rejoined the noisy throng milling along Gloucester Avenue.

Les got about two hundred yards or so when things began to change. All along the sides of the road now was stall after stall of people trying to sell pretty much the same stuff. Jamaican T-shirts, beanies, scarves, etc. Jewellery, carvings, shells, dope pipes, etc. The usual tourist junk you find in any tourist trap anywhere in the world. Others that didn't have a stall were walking along
the road, trying to flog stuff to any luckless tourists strolling along. As soon as they saw a white face they zeroed in like heat-seeking missiles.

‘Hey, mon.'

‘Hey, mon.'

‘Hey come here, mon. I don't want to sell you nothing. I just wan to talk wit yu.'

After a while Les was wishing them to the shithouse and starting to think he wasn't a human being, just a walking dollar bill sign. A few higgler women selling fruit got a bit of Norton's business. He bought some beautifully sweet, chopped-up pineapple, some bananas and a bunch of what looked like huge yellow grapes that were more like berries with a big stone in them and reminded him of a cross between a plum and a paw-paw.

It was about now Les began to notice he was getting lots of smiles from young girls in bunches of twos and threes. Like a mug Les began smiling back. Next thing he knew he had five girls on his arm; two on his left, three on his right. They were all about twenty, wearing jeans, short dresses and T-shirts. No oil paintings and not quite as swedyang tunti as the two he picked up in the car. But takeaway tunti, nonetheless. In which Norton was not the slightest bit interested. Not having access to three, industrial strength, East German condoms and a hose-down with detoxicant afterwards. Les laughed along with the girls though and was sorry he hadn't brought his camera. It would have made a good photo; if someone could have taken one without running off with it. Les was pretty certain the young ladies weren't after him for his good looks and it didn't take them long to put their spiel on. First was, give them twenty bucks to get into the Mardi Gras. You didn't have to be a Rhodes scholar to know it was free and you were already there. Then it was, fifty bucks to get some beef jerky — they were hungry and hadn't eaten. Back in Australia three of the girls could have done with fifty bucks to join Jenny Craig.

Strolling along with the five young chicks having a yahoo was fun and they liked him even more when they
realised he wasn't an American. But some of the looks he was getting from the local lads weren't so funny. Some of them seemed to know the girls and when they spoke Les could pick up parts of the conversation that were along the lines of, what are you girls doing with that prick just because he's got money when you should be porking your own kind for free. Les walked along with them a bit further before slipping each girl some monopoly money, saying he'd meet them later outside the hotel they were standing in front of. Once he was rid of them Les disappeared into the crowd.

It was a big night at the Mardi Gras, heaps of people, bustle and noise and a few reggae bands here and there; even if it did appear to be put on mainly for the tourists and the stallholders. Les couldn't make out much from the surrounding buildings because of the crowds, but it seemed to be mainly hotels and restaurants, a little like Manly Corso or St Kilda maybe. He found a bank, the post office and a chemist shop and that in a kind of mall near a park, but thought he'd check it out in more detail when he moved in tomorrow. Not that there was all that much need; he'd be leaving the next day.

Les was strolling along, looking around, avoiding the pricks running at him trying to flog something, when the crowd parted and a marching band about fifteen strong came down the street. Silver uniforms and hats, cymbals crashing, drums banging, brass blaring as they wound their way through the people who were dancing all these funny steps to the music they were playing. The band leader was a skinny little bloke with a baton and whistle. He'd blow his whistle, toss the baton and jump up in the air, and another little bloke next to him would do the same thing with a huge pair of cymbals. He'd jump up, spin around and crash the cymbals together in mid-air while behind him the band would kick their legs up, bob up and down or do something dazzling in time to the music. They were the best thing on the night and got a great reaction from the crowd. Les watched them till they moved on and once again wished he'd brought his camera.

The reggae bands sounded alright, but no one was nodding their heads, let alone getting up and having a bit of dance or a jig around. It was very subdued. In fact, apart from the marching band the whole scene was fairly average for a Mardi Gras. The higglers and the other rats weren't doing much of a trade because tourists were pretty thin on the ground, and the locals weren't buying anything because they were probably all too broke. Les also began to notice he was getting some dirty looks and muttered remarks from different bunches of blokes walking past. Les thought it best to avoid too much eye contact and kept in among the crowd. I suppose if I turned around and told some of them to get fucked, he thought, I'd be up for racial vilification.

There were a number of small stands selling rum- punches, which weren't bad, for around a dollar each so he had two. Another stand was selling some kind of flat bread with curried vegetables and a few stringy bits of meat on it, which didn't smell too bad either, so Les had a couple of these too. Standing back, eating and watching the punters, was okay. But there was something about the whole third-world scene that made him wary and took the edge off it. In fact, a few young blokes, as well as giving him dirty looks, were openly gobbing off at him. It definitely wasn't a good place to be on your own. Les got some more pineapple and started walking back to the car.

Past the Biltmore the crowd was starting to thin out a little and there were some blokes in battered cars touting as taxis. Yes, nodded Les. That could be an idea. Rather than walk past that park then up the hill on my own I might catch a cab. I can handle the rort to a certain extent. But a local posse of about half a dozen hungry nutters carrying knives and probably off their faces? Leave that to the Bruce Lee movies. Les bundled into some Japanese rustbucket with black carpet across the dash, told the drive he was German so he wouldn't have to talk to him and got a lift to his car. The bloke wanted five dollars US, rather than haggle Les gave him a handful of monopoly money, got in the Honda and
drove back to the penthouse suite at the Badminton Club.

Speedy's mate opened the boomgate and Les parked in front of the office next to four other cars. Although he hadn't done a great deal all day, Les was looking forward to hitting the sack as he followed the path alongside the swimming pool. The sound of reggae music coming from closeby made him look up and Les was a little surprised to see the lights on and the bar open. It looked like a big night too. There was a blonde couple and two young Jamaican girls seated at tables in front of a tired-looking barman polishing glasses who could have been the bloke on the gate's brother. Ohh yeah, thought Les. Why not a couple of little nightcaps before I climb in the cot? Glad it was open in a way, he strolled over to the bar.

The Badminton Club cocktail lounge was about twice as big as your average loungeroom, with stone walls at one end and wooden ones at the other. It was painted a light mauve and dotted with orange light fittings. The bar was varnished wood, the chairs and tables the same, though they were just as much wood as they were varnish. There was a mirror behind the bar crossed with shelves full of bottles and edged in with tourist posters of Jamaica plus one of the Jamaican soccer team and another of Eartha Kitt. There was a TV set that wasn't on, and the music was a tape playing through the speakers set at either end of the bar. It was still quite hot so Les thought he might have a nice cold beer and ordered a Red Stripe, which he charged to his room.

‘No problem, mon,' said the barman, placing the bottle in front of him. Les left the glass on the bar, took a good long pull and had a look around.

The couple were two Nordic Germans in shorts and T- shirts eyeing each other off very Teutonically and correctly over their bottles of Red Stripe. The two girls looked about twenty and were definitely no glamours, although their figures weren't too bad. One had on a pair of cheap, grey cord jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt. The other wore tight black shorts with red polka-dots and a
white T-shirt with a pastel-coloured drawing of a reggae band on the front. They both had thick, short, bushy hair, big lips, and solid, bony features, and as far as being Jamaicans went, they could have both just paddled a canoe down the Sepik River in New Guinea. The one in the jeans's eyes were that far apart they were almost on the side of her head like a goldfish. But looks aside, they were the two most sorrowful, miserable, hangdog- looking excuses for women Norton had ever seen. They were both sitting staring into space, absolutely dejected, with nothing in front of them but an empty table top; no drinks, no purse, no keys, nothing. Just a plastic shopping bag under the table. Bloody hell, thought Les, looking at their pathetic faces. I know this place is a dump, but surely it's not that bad.

The one in jeans caught Les staring at them and said something to the barman in patois which Les didn't quite catch.

‘Hey mon,' said the barman. ‘Deh girls want to know would you buy dem a drink. Deh naa no dunza.'

Hello, here we go a-bloody-gain, thought Norton. I must have MUG written across my forehead in letters three feet high. ‘Yeah, righto,' he replied wearily. ‘Give them whatever they want. And put it on my tab.'