Black Marina (17 page)

So I just can’t tell how long I lay there, with sometimes the beach under me turning to hard London street and me a
has-been
, a derelict, sleeping rough under a bridge or in a park. I
knew I had to go to the store and get the spade – and I did, time and again in the dream – and set off to the far end of the island. Sometimes I passed Sanjay sitting alone on his verandah or standing deep in thought in that crazy museum of his, staring up at the Slave and his Mistress, the plaster all stripey black and white from the moon making shadows as it came in. Sometimes I didn’t get as far as that, and was stopped by Millie and Tanty Grace on the road. ‘Don’t do it,’ Tanty Grace said. She was enormous and her shadow lay right along the road like a barrier you couldn’t dare to cross. The shadow of her head ended in a sort of blaze, like a witch’s fire with black twigs sticking out, and I was
frightened
of that in the dream and shrank away from her. Millie wasn’t smiling for once; she looked quite stern. ‘There’s been enough trouble caused by you,’ Tanty Grace said. ‘Leave us all alone.’ And then it was suddenly day, much too bright, and a red parakeet, one of the flock Sanjay brought in from Australia, flew down the road and landed right by us. ‘Look at those feathers,’ Tanty Grace said, and I woke. But the tail feathers were poisoned and I knew somehow in the dream that Dora had put the feathers in her hair at a ball in her house by the grey sea in Ireland and they had clawed into her as she danced, so she fell down dead.

I woke and went along the beach towards the store. My legs ached badly, so I knew I wasn’t in the dream any more, and the shape of the shadows was different too, so it must have been quite a lot later. In spite of the waves, and the wind making the palms creak like a bed with a rotten sleeper in it, you could hear the music up at Carib’s Rest. Reels, no less! I had to laugh. Then I realized the Bar must be in silence, or the Scotch skirling would’ve been drowned out by the jukebox. What happened to the drinkers, then? Did they bore themselves into an early night? Surely Ferdie, just to amuse himself, would be listening to reggae, shaking the twenties shaker Dora brought out to the island with her,
jumping tracks to the Stones. But it was dead quiet and there weren’t even lights – or so I realized when I got my wits together. No lights streaming out over the sea. Something’s happening, I thought. And then I knew I wasn’t ready for it at all. My stomach turned to a hard lump and my throat went as dry as sand.

*

Maldwin Carr and Jim Davy sipped brandies on the
verandah
of Carib’s Rest. The girl Marina danced with Sanjay in the long room, and she flashed every few seconds past the open door at the speed of a subliminal image, distracting the journalist but at the same time reassuring him of her
presence
. Maldwin Carr wouldn’t be able to say, later, just when he’d stopped seeing that body go back and forth like a shutter in a camera or like a rapid succession of shots: a white face, moon-shaped, impassive, and black hair
spiralling
out. It was within a few seconds of Jim Davy’s remark, no doubt – and perhaps it was when, hardly able to believe his ears, Maldwin leaned forward to set down the
balloon-glass
of brandy on the table. He complained that the stem of the glass was sticky, and he took out a pristine linen
handkerchief
from the breast pocket of his dinner jacket. Maldwin Carr knew very well how to disguise his reactions in this way, yet he did wonder, as he glanced in the near-dark at the anonymous features of the American, whether Mr Davy was quite taken in after all.

‘Most certainly Ford is dead,’ were the words that had caused Maldwin to set down his glass as casually as possible on the glass table. ‘One of my men shot him. Self-defence, I may say.’

‘Ah,’ said Maldwin.

‘Found him walking along with that crazy albino boy and a couple of mailbags. In broad daylight, too. Mailbags full of arms. Makes you wonder if the guy didn’t ask for it in some way or another.’

‘He was made to open the mailbags by one of your men?’ Maldwin said. ‘You have a police presence on St James, then?’

At the same time, looking up at the door to the long room and smelling a sudden gust of jasmine blown in from the garden by the rising wind, he saw Mari dance by and he heard himself – to his own surprise, for he wasn’t even particularly fond of the girl – let out a sharp sigh. This the wind and the sound of the Scottish reels obliterated, and Mr Davy went on: ‘Yes, since the time of the uprising on Grenada. And this was – just a fortnight or so later. A few men – in case of invasion, or arms smuggling …’ Jim Davy’s voice died away, as the reel came to an end. Mrs Van der Pyck’s voice, loud and drunk, billowed out from the long room like a mynah bird.

‘Why was the death not reported?’ Maldwin Carr said. ‘You realize there is still uncertainty as to the whereabouts of Ford? Surely, all deaths are on the record?’ And Maldwin Carr thought of the millions of unknown and unreported dead in the world, in drought and famine and genocide.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Jim Davy said. ‘I do know our man was threatened at gunpoint by Ford when an order was issued for the mailbags to be opened. It so happened another marine who was patrolling the road down to the southern tip of the island came on the scene in that split second. And Ford, well, he jumped in the air and kind of half-ran, half-fell down the hill and into the sea!’

‘Ah,’ said Maldwin Carr again. He rose suddenly.

‘Mr Carr,’ Jim Davy said, rising also. ‘I was told by Washington that you would supply me with certain
information
. Am I correct in thinking that you expect some form of invasion this evening?’

‘You are,’ said Maldwin Carr, who had by this time reached the door to the long room and was gazing in. The reels had stopped and ‘White Christmas’ was on loud and sickly,
drowning even Mrs Van der Pyck as she shouted her season’s greetings to the dancers on the darkened floor.

‘But I’d like you to tell me one more thing,’ Maldwin Carr said in a half-whisper aimed directly at Mr Jim Davy’s ear. ‘Who told you in the first place that Ford was on the island?’

‘Why do you ask me that?’ said Jim Davy, as Maldwin’s eyes narrowed, and the absence of Mari impressed itself more and more on a room of entwined couples and Sanjay’s cheap lanterns tossing back and forth in the wind.

‘Because I don’t believe Ford’s arrival on the island was previously unknown to you – or to your head office,’ Maldwin Carr said, still in that soft voice which seemed to have the ability to carry so much more successfully than Mrs Van der Pyck’s. ‘I believe orders were given to shoot a man fitting Ford’s description, and he was in all likelihood not armed – on his person, that is – at all.’

Jim Davy shrugged and Maldwin caught the first
intimations
of the man’s importance and his awareness of it. ‘I certainly am not prepared to argue that point,’ Jim Davy said. ‘We did receive information that Ford had come over to St James. It was our business, also, at that time to collect as much intelligence and conduct as many searches as we saw fit.’

‘Indeed,’ said Maldwin Carr softly. ‘And you used for your information – ?’

‘You wouldn’t have met her,’ Jim Davy said. ‘Woman who runs the little store here. Holly Baker by name.’

*

Envy, rage, like
baligey‚
shooting up like the wild banana fronds I stumble through in that jungle they go and cut down. Outside, outside the walls of Thebes where Ford say the singin’ she-dog live, I squat on stone paws answering that riddle where the answer is always incest, ruin, death. Red cocoa fruit, golden apple, mango, peach-ripe nutmeg,
fruits of paradise inside the walls where the white man lay down his straight paths and keep me out. I should have known. But I walk into things (‘That’s you, Holly,’ they say. ‘You a brave girl all right’), and I pick up me cutlass an go.

I carried the spade down the road to the south of the island. The moon was just about big enough to explode and its rays hung down on the place like lines of dirty washing. I turned past the crumbling barn where the slave is sealed for ever in his fake love for his mistress. The door was swinging open, but I didn’t look in. Maybe I knew, or guessed. I walked on. Good, dogged Holly. You’ll beat that girl to the point tonight although you drank and slept, that’s how I muttered to myself as I went, to kill the fear of the jungle with all the sighings that come out of the bushes and the big white flowers like eyes. Good Holly, go and dig up the guns and give them over. You remember what that boy on Grenada say when the gringos come. ‘Before the revolution we were not in the light,’ he said. ‘I rather they kill me dead than I go work for them if they come to take over we land and try to oppress we again.’ And all of twelve years old. Right. You’re right there, son. I’m bringing you light. And I pushed on past roots in the earth that looked like the heads of prehistoric monsters.

Maybe I knew all along just what it was I would see as I half-fell against an upturned tree that was like a great wheel, with all the spokes mangled and forcing themselves out.

Sanjay held her down. Her face was smothered in white but the stuff was smudging off on one side. She was
struggling
sometimes, then sometimes she was still, like a winged bird.

You can’t tell me I have to say if it is rape. I’ll say nothing now but a scream did come out of me.

*

Maldwin Carr scissored himself into the Carib’s Rest jeep, let
off the handbrake and went in a cloud of dust that danced about for a bit in the rays of the moon. He’d hardly had a chance to see the woman on the steps of the old cottonhouse – except to note, while at the same time keeping a close eye on Jim Davy at his side, that she had not been at the evening’s festivities. He would remember her later – thin face, corn-coloured hair pulled back. And would wish that he had stopped then and that he’d pulled her into the jeep with him, to guide him through the ensuing hours. He saw too, as they went by the Coconut Bar, that it was silent, dark. Silent Night, he thought suddenly. Moves have been made already for a landing. And he felt a surge of loathing for the violence that would come with Christmas. Then the feeling passed as soon as they swung down the narrow road and Jim Davy pointed out the right fork, down to the Allard house.
Maldwin
Carr had other things than shock or compassion on his mind. He had been in many similar situations all over the world. They produced their own adrenalin, the imminent arrival of violence and the spilling of blood.

The Allard house had all the lights on, yet it felt empty from the moment Maldwin and Jim Davy arrived. Doorways stood open, bead curtains moved like armies of ants in the strong wind, which grew stronger every minute from the sea. A bamboo rocking-chair, pushed right out to the edge of the verandah, creaked back and forth in the currents of air. A bird – one of Sanjay’s flock perhaps, released to fly away from the dangers of the neighbouring island and returning in a confusion of obedience to the lagoon, gave piercing cries from a tree in the garden. The jungle, cut by the new machinery, showed the red mouth of the new track and then darkness, where lights from the house failed to penetrate.

As they waited, Maldwin and Jim Davy stood out on the verandah. It was like, Maldwin recounted later, waiting for a time bomb to go off when you’ve watched the other man set it. (Others commented, after the event, that Maldwin Carr
was evidently losing his grip. He has still the weird
propensity
of being in a trouble spot at the moment of trouble. But on this occasion he clearly had no idea at all of the way the trouble would go.) For Jim Davy, after calling for Mr Allard and failing to get any answer, produced his radio-transmitter and began to transmit. The sudden disappearance of the girl (and Maldwin’s concern, of course, that she should have got away) had been a final proof to him of tonight’s prospective invasion. Troops must come in.

*

Every single thing got its other side. And I can do that double thinkin’ too. I’m not surprised when they tell me, ‘You know who fix this revolution in Grenada? The fuckin’ CIA, that’s who.’ It was practice time in Vieques years before poor old Bishop overthrow an his girl’s mother come out too late into the street with bread. The Yanks bomb a Puerto Rican island, Vieques. Ferdie tell me that down at the bar. He say its because they practise for Grenada. Whichever one way you go, the path lead back to the same place.

By the same token, I wasn’t surprised to see the girl wandering down to the point just a while after I got there. You may think it romantic-sounding to dig in fine sand by moonlight, but it ain’t. I kept stubbing my toes on those bits of old shards Sanjay likes to collect for his museum. And I got a fright at first, the girl so wild-looking and stumbling about and I heard her gasp because the silly fool had walked into the edge of the reef. You may look great out here, Marina, my darlin’, but you sure belong better in the Portobello Road.

‘Holly,’ the girl said. She took my arm. Her hand was cold and clammy. With her face ghostly white she was like a kind of zombie or one of those nasty things Tanty Grace can get to come up. There was a runway down the cheek where tears were going fast.

‘Leave me alone, Mari,’ I said. Then I looked closer at her
and I said, ‘You was going to have shown a light here tonight, eh, Mari? You had a fall and lost the torch, eh?’ I was annoyed at myself, I sounded like a nurse in an old movie or something. ‘Time for a hot milk,’ you might expect me to say next. And that’s the funny thing with women, I guess, that even if one of them’s digging up an arsenal of guns and the other’s been raped on the way to set off the signal for an invasion that may change the shape of the balance of power with Cuba and Moscow and the States and all that, there’s still something motherly, and daughterly too, in the way they carry on. Mari was clinging to me even harder now. I felt angry with her and sorry for her at the same time.

‘Can’t be bothered to get your hands dirty?’ I said. And I shoved the spade at her. ‘Go on – dig down a bit deeper and you’ll strike something.’