Black Marina (18 page)

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Authors: Emma Tennant

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But it was no good. The girl was pulling at me so hard I was reminded of poor crazy Pandora. We’re to go back into the jungle and see where she dropped the torch, then? I said to myself because I was too furious to speak. That’s a good way to spend Christmas Eve, Holly. Congratulations. And I saw Sanjay lying on top of her again and I could swear I heard the echo of her groans when she pulled me back into the trees,. ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I said and I stumbled after her. We’ll have to go back to the house to get a light without being seen, I thought, but the very idea of seeing Sanjay covered in that swamp mud from his lie with the girl under the roots of the tree, made me cold all over.

I should have seen there’d be no sending off of signals then. I followed Mari, and I saw her go down the newly hacked pathway to the creek, and I saw her kneel. It was a horrible thing, it could have been Pandora there. Her words … it was like two halves of a splintered mind coming together and the pieces fit and make a picture … and the picture is different for each of them and yet it’s the same. That mark … that white mark on Marina’s neck, showing up
there under that horrible great white moon … that red blotch on Pandora make her look like she cry all the time … the sudden rain that come down through the manchineel trees and bring poison-burn the day of the picnic at the lagoon.

Fear – and father – that was the part of the puzzle where the poor mad girl and Marina were joined. Fragments of fear, of envy and rage, of a mast sticking up in the creek’s muddy water, and the sails of the new ship that Sanjay their father had made.

Millie’s Letter to Her Daughter Mari

Me dear. You safe home now

since dem thunder claps

in darkness on verandah.

Dat corn-hair woman

come an take you, chile

an now you back to London.

You mine, chile.

London isn’t like we

village dirt road, I know

Marina: it a swamp

of drain’-lan’ what

grown a puzzle of streets

an’ not one come to my door.

No time can touch one

mango season in di yard.

But Mari you can go

college all day long.

An’ doctors free, chile.

 

ISLAND LANDOWNER SHOT DEAD IN US TROOPS’ INVASION OF
ST JAMES, GRENADINES

Sunday
Times
,
27 December 1983

 

James Allard, part-owner of the island of St James,
Grenadines
, is one of eight men reported to have been shot dead when US Marines made a surprise landing on the island. The landing took place at 1.30 a.m. on Christmas morning, sources in Barbados confirmed last night.

Information, understood to be reliable, of an expected invasion by members of Grenada’s Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement suppressed by US forces in October, proved to be without foundation. Inhabitants of St James claim, however, that a small fleet of unlit fishing craft was sighted off the southern tip of the island and that the fleet turned back for lack of an expected signal. In the event, the arrival later of US Marines caused an exodus from the village to the lagoon in the extreme south. It is not known whether the villagers took the American troops for Grenadians when they saw the boats approach or whether the singing, dancing St Jamesians were simply celebrating the holiday in the
traditional
manner.

In the ensuing confusion, the Marines shot and mortally wounded eight men before the fact that their supposed opponents were unarmed could be brought home to them.

James Allard, forty-eight, had lived on St James for
seventeen
years. His lease on the southern half of the island was due to expire in the New Year.

 
Mighty Barby’s Song

it woz in di expektashan

of a St James insohreckshan

dat we ran to Sanjay manshan

wen we check out di plan

but den wi see di lanlaad man

layin in di swamp head-doun

Tanty she mek mi andahstan

di men dem fire di aminishan

cos Yanki seh to kill Black man

but dem get di wrong impreshan

an kil a comrade in oppreshan

is Sanjay lie dere in concushan

di black mud it spread on he compleckshan

Copyright

This ebook edition first published in 2011
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

All rights reserved
© Emma Tennant, 1985

The right of Emma Tennant to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

The line, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’, from Philip Larkin, is reprinted by the courtesy of Faber and Faber Limited. The quotation from Alice Walker, from Meridian, is reprinted by courtesy of the Women’s Press.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978–0–571–28362–0 

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