Caribbean (118 page)

In no other game played throughout the world was strategy and taking bold chances so much a part of the contest as in cricket; American tourists, of whom there would be a busload coming over the mountain today, never appreciated the wonderful intricacies of the game and the way a clever captain would first use two fast bowlers to chop up the pitch, then slip in a new bowler with a googly or a left-handed chinaman to take advantage of the roughened turf to take the batsman’s wicket. Nor could they see how adroitly the captain placed his nine fielders—not counting the bowler and the wicket keeper—so that one of his men was positioned right where the careless batsman was likely to pop up an easy catch.

If cricket had been a mania back in the early 1930s when Lord Wrentham’s XI visited the Caribbean, it was now a compelling obsession. Part of the excitement of this day’s struggle on the field at York grew out of the fact that several older men who would serve as selectors for the next West Indian team to play England would be watching carefully to see just how good the two brothers from Tudor were as bowlers and whether the well-regarded batsmen from York could defend themselves on a bumpy pitch. They would also be watching Harry Keeler, who had established himself as a superb
fielder at silly mid-on and a reliable batsman against all but googlies; he was a white man, but he had turned in his British passport for an island one on the reasonable grounds that “if I’m to live here the rest of my life, I may as well do it right.” This made him eligible to play on the West Indies team conscripted from all the islands. He was most eager to make the team, for although he did not wish to live in England, he would relish a return there as a test-team cricketer.

When Keeler and Sally turned off the mountain road and into town at a quarter to ten they saw that the tourist bus from Bristol Town had arrived as well as six other buses from the north end of the island and three from the airport. “I hope,” he said to Sally as they parked their car, “that no airplane from Barbados arrives at one this afternoon in trouble and needing ground support.”

Nothing in the British islands of the Caribbean was more important than cricket. Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados might disagree on the economy, airfares between the islands, the management of their one university, and what taxes should be imposed on Trinidadian gasoline, but when the time came to build a West Indies team for a tour of England, India, Pakistan or Australia, all differences were submerged and funds were mysteriously found to pay for the trip. Local prejudices drove the islands apart, cricket bound them together.

Today’s game was a brilliant affair, a sky-blue Saturday, with flowering trees in bloom, fruit abundant in the open marketplace, people of all complexions seated in the tiny stands or lying on the grass—and everyone caught up in the excitement of a one-day match. Cricket purists did not appreciate such condensed and often rowdy affairs; they preferred the more stately matches that covered two, three or even five consecutive days, for then captains could engage in intricate strategies, depending on weather forecasts and the likely effect on the condition of the pitch. In a series of five matches it was not uncommon for two or even four to end in draws. One of the beauties of cricket was to watch a resolute captain whose team faced almost certain defeat swing things about to deprive the enemy of a sure win by prolonging the battle until time ran out. In such circumstances, a draw was almost as good as a win and sometimes more exciting as men batted against the clock. A proper five-day match with a little rain to cause uncertainty was cricket at its best, but in the islands a rousing one-day struggle had equal merit but of a more noisy nature.

How stately the scene appeared when the eleven players from The Rest, who had won the toss and elected to bat last, strolled casually onto the field, their white cricket gear standing out against the carefully tended green playing area. The men, who represented eight or nine different gradations of color, were handsome, at ease, smiling at their friends in the crowd; but how the tension grew when the opening batsmen from Bristol Town, protected by heavy leg pads and batting gloves, strode out, bats dragging behind them, to make their stand against The Rest bowlers!

One of the two umpires was always Canon Essex Tarleton—with ruddy face, white hair and a rotund body that looked like a Toby jug. When he marched onto the field, with a dignified waddling pace, there was decorous clapping, for he was a much-loved figure who reminded them of John Bull, and of other aspects of England which they still treasured.

What made him especially memorable was his garb, for cricket umpires traditionally wore their trousers and white shirt under a linen duster that reached halfway down the calf, but the canon (an honorary but inaccurate title awarded him by his shipmates aboard a wartime cruiser) wore instead of the duster a heavy ribbed sweater made of natural wool from the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland. As soon as the day heated, which was early in the West Indies, Tarleton removed his sweater and tied its arms in a tight knot about his ample belly, so that the bulk of the sweater covered his rear. Many photographs were taken of his umpiring, and most showed the heavy sweater drooping from his waist.

In cricket, at the climax of a close play, the umpire was not required to render a decision unless there was a formal appeal, and this took the form of a shouted question: “Howzzat?” There was difference of opinion as to whether the curious word meant “How was that?” or “How is that?” but when six or seven fielders shouted at the same time “Howzzat?” Canon Tarleton came into his glory, for he stood as tall as he could, stared at the supplicants, and delivered his judgment, which was never appealed. His word was law.

Keeler’s side batted first, but neither he nor his fellow batsmen accomplished much. One of the Tudor bowlers tricked Harry with an off-breaking fast ball, which he popped up for an easy catch by silly mid-off for a score of only 13. Bristol Town was in poor shape at the lunch break, when Sally broke out a small feast which players from both teams shared in easy companionship. “I think we have you
on the hip,” one of the Tudor men warned Keeler. “They tell me those two chaps from the airport are powerful batsmen.”

“We’ll see,” Harry replied. “And if it looks bad for us, Sally here will pray for rain.” In that case, no matter how poorly Bristol Town did after the lunch break, the match would be a draw.

Bristol did quite poorly, the Tudor brothers proving that they were bowlers of almost test class, all out for 133, leaving The Rest with ample time to win.

They sent in a cautious batsman first, paired with one of the good players from York, and although the cautious man went down quickly, the more experienced player hit out strongly and scored well. But when the next batsman came in, one of the tragedies of cricket unfolded. To score a run,
both
batsmen had to run, at the same time, exchanging creases, and it sometimes happened that a poor batsman would be too daring in his decision. He would try to run when the odds were against him; his partner, starting out of his safe area just a little late, would be thrown out through no fault of his own. Cricket being a gentleman’s game, the good batsman did not in this moment of frustration thump his inept partner over the head with his bat, but he would have been justified in doing so.

That is what happened: the poor batsman was safe, the good one out. So The Rest lost two wickets in a hurry, but then one of the radar men from the airport came to bat, and it was obvious after his first few runs that he had played a good deal of high-quality cricket in the English counties. He was good, and it looked as if he might notch a century when Harry Keeler made a remarkable play. The airport man hit a well-placed ground ball which rolled rapidly out toward the boundary. If it escaped the fielders, it would be a four, and even if someone from the Bristol Town side did run it down, two or perhaps three runs would be scored. So the batsman and his partner set out confidently, but Harry, running at startling speed, overtook the ball, reached down without stopping, grabbed it with one hand, and with unbroken motion threw it with great force right into the hands of the distant wicketkeeper, who deftly ticked the bails, the two wooden crosspieces atop the wicket, into the grass. The play was very close. Did the runner reach safety before the bails went flying, or had the ball beaten him? “Howzzat?” shouted the Bristol men, and Canon Tarleton stood impassive. Then, after a dramatic pause, he signaled the runner out. A cheer went up from both sides in tribute to Harry Keeler’s mighty throw which had dismissed The Rest’s leading scorer.

The play did not aid Bristol much, because the other airport man teamed up with a strong batsman from York, and runs were added at a pace that seemed to doom Bristol. Keeler came up with another dazzling defensive play, a falling dive parallel to the ground to make a one-handed catch off the York batsman, but another stubborn man took his place, and with help from the high-scoring airport man, The Rest scored the necessary 134 well before quitting time.

A visitor from Barbados, an elderly black man who had as a youth once toured England with Sir Benny Castain, took the trouble to find Keeler at the end of the match: “I’m John Gaveny, selector from Bridgetown, and I must say any team could use a world-class fielder like you,” but before Harry could feel elation, Gaveny added: “That is, if he could be relied upon to put together twenty or thirty runs.”

Harry and Sally were among the last of the Bristol Town contingent to leave York, and after darkness fell at a quarter past six like a curtain in a theater crashing down, they stopped at one of the niches carved in the side of the mountain for the passage of buses and kissed with some ardor. When they reached home, Sally said: “Come in and have supper with us,” and they found that the housekeeper had waiting for them and the commissioner a bubbling stew made of island vegetables, potatoes brought by ship from Ireland and beef flown in from Miami. After asking how the game had gone, Commissioner Wrentham said: “Those brothers from Tudor, if they can master a change of pace, they’ll be on the test team for sure,” and Sally said: “If you’d seen Harry’s defensive plays, you’d put him there too.” After supper Wrentham said: “I have work at the station,” and he left the young lovers alone, satisfied on all counts: he had raised a splendid daughter who was being courted by a man worthy of her.

But the courtship, so appropriate from every outside evaluation, did not go smoothly, because two weeks after the cricket match, Laura Shaughnessy, from the governor general’s office, said to Sally: “Let’s take tomorrow off. The Rastafarian wants to see the north end of the island, and I said I’d take him in my car.”

For Sally, what had started as a casual excursion turned out to be a day of tremendous significance, when values were up for review. It would prove to be totally different from the genteel ride with the Englishman Keeler to the cricket game at York. That had been essentially
a trip back to England, with a break for tea, and an almost fanatical observation of the little niceties of the game.

Today would be a harsh, almost brutal ride into the realities of a new black republic with its dominant African heritage extruding at a dozen unexpected points. Laura, several shades darker than Sally, drove her small car with Ras-Negus Grimble hunched up beside her in the front seat and Sally tightly packed into the rear.

The difference between the two excursions started immediately, for instead of taking the mountain road south, Laura headed north, and as soon as they left the town, the Rastafarian took command, as if he were a young king and they his concubines. What he wanted to see was the lay of the land, its capacity for agriculture, the crops it was already growing, and how the little farms that peppered this apparently empty part of the island were positioned. Twice he ordered Laura peremptorily: “Stop! I want to visit that farmer,” and when he left the car to talk with the black people occupying the hut he spoke about crops with such obvious authority, that Sally thought: I’ll bet his ancestors inspected their fields that way in Africa.

When they were about two miles south of Tudor, Sally accompanied him on a walking visit to a third farmer whose fields were off the road, and was amazed at the turn their conversation took. “Can you grow a good ganja on your back fields?”

“Never tried.”

“If I brought you number-one seed, would you try?”

“How I gonna sell ganja, suppose I grow it?”

“Great Babylon Americans hungry for ganja. Very good price.”

“We don’t grow much here All Saints. Don’t use it much.”

“All that’s going to change. Remember. I told you. Great God Haile Selassie say so.”

On the short hop into Tudor, Sally asked: “Isn’t ganja what is usually called marijuana?”

“Ganja is the sacred herb of Rastafari. Opens all doors.”

In Tudor he was electric, moving about among black people, who were overwhelmed by his tremendous locks, his colorful shirt, the secure manner in which he conducted himself. Sally noticed that he tended to keep away from people of light color like herself; his message was for the black farmer, the black storekeeper, the woman who washed clothes, and it was always the same: “Black people gonna rise all over the Caribbean. God comin’ back to earth in Ethiopia, reconquer the world for us.”

When his listeners asked about the messages on his shirt, he pointed to the picture of Haile Selassie and told them: “Great ruler. He conquer all Africa.” He told them that his lion was the one mentioned in the Bible: “Lion of Judah. Come to give us total power.” He also explained that the pope in Rome would soon be destroyed because he was the spirit of Babylon, but the Great Babylon itself was America, which would also be destroyed. He further predicted that very painful punishments would soon overtake Queen Elizabeth II: “She the daughter Queen Elizabeth I, who send her captain, John Hawkins, to Africa to bring your mammies and daddies here as slaves.”

When the people stopped to listen to his ranting, intermixed with long passages of incomprehensible Rastafarian jumble, he dropped his voice and ended with great seriousness: “America the Great Babylon overseas. Who the Great Babylon here All Saints? The police.” Always when he said this, he stopped, stared at his listeners with a fierce glance, utilizing his height and the fearful appearance of his hair and beard to terrify them. Then he would drop his voice to a whisper: “Great Babylon must be destroyed. The Bible say so. Revelation.”