Bodily Harm (17 page)

At the foot of the stairs the deaf and dumb man is curled, asleep and snoring, drunk most likely. His fly is open, revealing torn cloth, grey; there’s a recent cut across his cheek, the white stubble on his face is now half an inch long. Rennie can’t get the box up the stairs without moving his legs, so she moves them. When she’s setting down his feet, bare and crusted with drying mud, he opens his eyes and smiles at her, a smile that would be innocent, blissful even, if it weren’t for the missing teeth. She’s afraid he will want to shake her hand again, but he doesn’t. Maybe he thinks she has enough good luck already.

Rennie negotiates the stairs, hugging the box, lifting it one stair at a time. It’s too hot to be doing this; she’s an idiot for getting herself into it, for saying she would.

When she reaches the front desk the Englishwoman informs her that it’s now too late for breakfast.

“What can I have then?” says Rennie.

“Tea and biscuits,” says the Englishwoman crisply.

“Can’t I have some toast?” says Rennie, trying not to whine.

The Englishwoman gives her a contemptuous look. “You might find something else,” she says, “out there.” Her tone implies that anything eaten out there will result in cholera or worse.

Rennie orders the tea and biscuits and pulls the box along the
hall to her room. By now it’s almost like another person, a body, a dancing partner who’s passed out cold. There’s no place to put it, it won’t fit into the bureau and there’s no closet. Rennie slides it under the bed, and she’s still on her knees when one of the waitresses brings the tea and biscuits, on a plastic tray with a picture of Windsor Castle on it.

Rennie clears the Bible and her clock off the night table so the waitress can set the tray down. The bed hasn’t been made. When the waitress has gone Rennie bundles the mosquito netting into a loose knot and sits down on the twisted sheets.

The tea is made with a Tetley’s teabag, and water that was obviously not boiling. The biscuits are arrogantly English, flat beige ovals with the edges stamped into a Victorian-ceiling design and the centres dabbed with putty-like red jam. They look like enlarged corn plasters. Rennie bites into one. It’s uncompromisingly stale, it tastes like a winter foot, like a cellar, like damp wool. Rennie wants to go home.

Rennie sits by the window, staring at her notebook, in which she’s managed to write four words:
Fun in the Sunspots
. But why worry? The editors always change her titles anyway.

There’s a knock at the door. A man, says the maid, is waiting for her at the front desk. Rennie thinks it must be Paul; she checks her face in the small mirror. Now she will have to explain.

But it’s Dr. Minnow, in a khaki shirt and immaculate white shorts, looking even neater than he did on the plane.

“You are enjoying your stay?” he asks, smiling his crooked smile. “You are learning about local customs?”

“Yes,” says Rennie, wondering what he wants.

“I have come to take you to the Botanic Gardens,” he says. “As we arranged.”

Rennie can’t remember having arranged any such thing, but perhaps arrangements are more casual here. She also can’t remember having told him where she’s staying. The Englishwoman is looking at her from behind the desk. “Of course,” says Rennie. “That would be very nice.”

She collects her camera, just in case, and Dr. Minnow ushers her to his car. It’s a maroon Fiat with an ominous dent in the left fender. When Rennie is strapped in, Dr. Minnow turns to her with a grin that verges on slyness. “There are things more useful for you to see,” he says. “We will go there first.”

They drive, alarmingly fast, along the main street, away from the bankers’ end. The road ceases to be mostly paved and becomes mostly unpaved; now they’re in the market. The signs are still up here and there but the orange-crate platforms are gone.

Dr. Minnow hasn’t slowed down as much as Rennie thinks he ought to. People stare at them, some smile. Dr. Minnow has rolled down his window and is waving. Voices call to him, he answers, everyone seems to know who he is.

Palms press flat against the windshield. “We for you,” someone shouts. “The fish live!”

Rennie’s beginning to be worried. The crowd around the car is too thick, it’s blocking the car, not all of these people are smiling. Dr. Minnow honks his horn and revs the engine and they move forward.

“You didn’t tell me you were still in politics,” Rennie says.

“Everyone is in politics here, my friend,” says Dr. Minnow. “All the time. Not like the sweet Canadians.”

They turn uphill, away from the centre of the town. Rennie grips the edge of the seat, her hands sweating, as they careen along the
road, barely two lanes and switchbacked up a steep hill. She looks at the ocean, which is below them now, too far below. The view is spectacular.

They bump at a forty-five degree angle through an arched stone gateway. “Fort Industry,” says Dr. Minnow. “Very historical, built by the English. You will want to take some pictures.” There’s a field of sorts, rutted partially dried mud with a little grass growing on it, and a number of tents, not tents really, pieces of canvas held up by poles. Dr. Minnow parks the car on the near side of the tents and gets out, so Rennie gets out too.

Even outside there’s a smell of bodies, of latrines and lime and decaying food. There are mattresses under the canvas roofs, most without sheets. Clothing is piled on the beds and hangs from ropes running from pole to pole. Between the tents are cooking fires; the ground around them is littered with utensils, pots, tin plates, pans. The people here are mostly women and young children. The children play in the mud around the tents, the women sit in the shade in their cotton dresses, talking together and paring vegetables.

“They from the hurricane,” says Dr. Minnow softly. “The government have the money to rebuild their houses, the sweet Canadians send it to them. Only it has not yet happened, you understand.”

An old man comes over to Dr. Minnow, an older woman, several younger ones. The man touches his arm. “We for you,” he says gently. They look sideways at Rennie. She stands awkwardly, wondering what she’s supposed to do or say.

Across the field, walking away from them, there’s a small group of people, white, well dressed. Rennie thinks she recognizes the two German women from the hotel, the old couple from the reef boat, binoculars pointed. That’s what she herself must look like: a tourist. A spectator, a voyeur.

Near her, on a mattress that’s been dragged out into the sun, a young girl lies nursing a baby.

“That’s a beautiful baby,” Rennie says. In fact it isn’t, it’s pleated, shrivelled, like a hand too long in water. The girl says nothing. She stares woodenly up at Rennie, as if she’s been looked at many times before.

Should we have a baby? Rennie said to Jake, only once.

You don’t want to limit your options too soon, said Jake, as if it was only her options that would be limited, it had nothing to do with him. Maybe you should postpone it for a while. You want to get the timing right.

Which was true enough. What about you? said Rennie.

If you don’t like the road, don’t go, said Jake, smiling at her. I’m not too good at lifetime goals. Right now I like the road.

Can I have a baby? Rennie said to Daniel, also only once.

Little boys say
Can I
, said her grandmother. Little girls are more polite. They say
May I
.

Do you mean right now? said Daniel.

I mean ever, said Rennie.

Ever, said Daniel.
Ever
is a pretty big word.

I know. Big words get you in trouble, said Rennie. They told me that at school.

It’s not a question of whether you can or not, said Daniel. Of course you can, there’s nothing physical that would stop you. You could probably have a perfectly normal, healthy baby.

But? said Rennie.

Maybe you should give yourself some time, said Daniel. Just to adjust to things and consider your priorities. You should be aware that there are hormonal changes that seem to affect the recurrence rate, though we don’t really know. It’s a risk.

God forbid I should take a risk, said Rennie.

The girl pulls the baby off her breast and switches it to the other side. Rennie wonders if she should give her some money. Would that be insulting? Her hand moves towards her purse, but now she’s surrounded by a mob of children, seven or eight of them, jumping excitedly around her and all talking at once.

“They want you to take their pictures,” says Dr. Minnow, so Rennie does, but this doesn’t seem to satisfy them. Now they want to see the picture.

“This isn’t a Polaroid,” says Rennie to Dr. Minnow. “It doesn’t come out,” she says to the children. It’s hard to make them understand.

It’s noon. Rennie stands under the violent sun, rubbing lotion on her face and wishing she had brought her hat. Dr. Minnow seems to know everything there is to know about this fort, and he’s going to tell it all to her, brick by brick, while she dehydrates and wonders when she’ll faint or break out in spots. What does he want from her? It must be something. “You shouldn’t take the time,” she’s protested, twice already. But he’s taking it.

The number of things Rennie thinks ought to happen to her in foreign countries is limited, but the number of things she fears may happen is much larger. She’s not a courageous traveller, though she’s always argued that this makes her a good travel writer. Other people will want to know which restaurant is likely to give you the bends, which hotel has the cockroaches, she’s not the only one. Someday, if she keeps it up, she’ll find herself beside a cauldron with an important local person offering her a sheep’s eye or the boiled hand of a monkey, and she’ll be unable to refuse. The situation has not reached that point. Nevertheless she’s a captive; though if worst comes to worst she can always get a lift back with the other tourists.

Now Dr. Minnow is speculating on the methods of sanitation used by the British. It’s almost as if they’re extinct, a vanished tribe, and he’s digging them up, unearthing their broken Queen Anne teacups, exhuming their garbage dumps, exclaiming with wonder and archaeological delight over their curious customs.

The fort itself is standard Georgian brickwork, falling into decay. Although it’s listed in the brochure as one of the chief attractions, nothing has been done to improve it or even to keep it in repair. Below is the muddy open space cluttered with tents, and beyond that a public toilet that’s ancient and wooden and looks temporary. The only new structure is a glassed-in cubicle with an antenna of some sort on top.

“They have a high-power telescope in there,” Dr. Minnow tells her. “They can see everything that comes off the boats. When it is not so hazy you can see Grenada.” Beside the cubicle is a square hut that Dr. Minnow says is the prison bakery, since the fort is used as a prison. A goat is tethered beside the toilets.

Dr. Minnow has scrambled up the parapet. He’s remarkably active for a man of his age. He seems to expect Rennie to climb up there too, but it’s a sheer drop, hundreds of feet to the sea. She stands on tiptoe and looks over instead. In the distance, there’s a blue shape, long and hazy, an island.

Dr. Minnow jumps down and stands beside her.

“Is that Grenada?” says Rennie.

“No,” says Dr. Minnow. “Ste. Agathe. There, they are all sailors.”

“What are they here?” says Rennie.

“Idiots,” says Dr. Minnow. “But then, I am from Ste. Agathe. The British make a big mistake in the nineteenth century, they put us all together in one country. Ever since then we have trouble, and now the British have got rid of us so they can have their cheap
bananas without the bother of governing us, and we have more trouble.”

He’s watching something below them now, his head with its high-bridged nose cocked to one side like a bird’s. Rennie follows his gaze. There’s a man moving among the refugees, from group to group, children following him. He’s handing something out, papers, Rennie can see the white. He’s wearing boots, with raised heels, cowboy boots: when he pauses before a trio of women squatting around their cooking fire, a small child runs its hands up and down the leather.