Small Island (22 page)

I had waited two years since the war’s end for a ship that could carry me back to the island of Jamaica for a hero’s return. Standing through victory parades in England, countless men had slapped my back, joyfully telling me that I could go home now. No more shivering with winter cold – my teeth would have no reason to chatter. Let me forget the dreadful sausage and boiling potatoes. The barracks and the Naafi. And, no, thank you, I do not want another cup of tea. Bring me back sun and lazy, hazy heat – curry goat, spice-up chicken, and pepper-pot soup. Let me meet pretty black-skinned women, round and shapely, ready to take my arm with pride. Let me look upon faces who knew me as a small boy. Come, let me suck me teeth again among kin.

But instead of being joyous at this demob I looked around me quizzical as a jilted lover. So, that was it. Now what? With alarm I became aware that the island of Jamaica was no universe: it ran only a few miles before it fell into the sea. In that moment, standing tall on Kingston harbour, I was shocked by the awful realisation that, man, we Jamaicans are all small islanders too!

As if Mummy had been shaking out her apron strings I found that all my sisters had been scattered, four of them married and journeying to America before the wedding flowers had even lost their bloom. The three with no rings on their fingers had found Canada beguiling – one nursing, one teaching and one a hopeful who-knows. In Chicago Lester was a big man in construction. Excited as a child before Christmas, Mummy was eager to make plain that Lester had no reason to return to this small island. For despite the young boys who came hurrying from all over the district – eager to set their eye on me, a real soldier, returning from war, to have me bark fierce commands that they, enthusiastic, struggled to obey while parading round with their makeshift guns – Mummy and Auntie May looked pity on me for the misfortune of finding myself once more back in their yard.

The shortages of war and money for celebration took a monstrous bite out of their business. Mummy and Auntie May no longer spent their days on cakes but had now turned their talents to the decorating of their hats. These hats were being readied for a journey that would see them visiting all their exiled offspring in America and Canada. Flowers and fruits, bows, feathers and net were expertly attached to plain and old hats so these two blessed women might attend christenings, church services, graduations, house parties or weddings in full hatted dignity. Cheerful, they declared that this lovingly prepared-for trip around North America was a mission that could take them a long, long, long time. While Daddy, frail and old, rocking on the veranda, sipping a sorrel drink laced so potent it could kill a bull, dozed drunkenly, unaware he was about to be abandoned.

‘So what, you no study the law yet, man? Me think you come back a judge.’ Despite his words it was obvious Elwood was pleased to have his boyhood friend home. ‘You no tell me the Mother Country no keep their word? Cha, nah, man, you wan’ me believe the English are liars?’ He laughed so hearty at his own joke, I observed that he had lost several teeth since I last looked down his mocking mouth.

Now, what taunt would my cousin have found if I had told him what had occurred when I had endeavoured to study the law while in England? The Colonial Office had rehabilitation courses designed to see us West Indian RAF volunteers prepared for Civvy Street. Man, I know a chance when it is before me and here was one ripe for picking. Come – the law was on the list. I did not place it there, they did – up there among accountancy and medicine. I made my application. But, let me tell you, so many heads shook I began to think all at the Colonial Office had a nervous tic. Tongues tutted that this common aircraftman should have ideas so high above his station. ‘The law!’ Their eyes laughed as they looked this Jamaican dreamer up and down. My cousin Elwood’s wicked giggling would have done him a mischief if I told him what they offered me instead. Bread-baking. A good profession, plenty jobs. Cha! Bread-baking! How could I tell Elwood this tale without this returning RAF man appearing a complete jackass?

‘You come back at the right time, man,’ Elwood told me. ‘You stop run round to those fool-fool English – we gon’ lick them. Nothin’ gon’ stop us now.’

As a growing boy, I thought Elwood my brother. Cricket in the dirt, climbing in trees, fishing in the river – no childhood memory appears without him. We were ten when his mummy, Auntie Corinne – trailing sweet perfume and dangling the deeds to a little plot of land near Kingston – arrived, telling everyone she now had the money to take back her son. It was a long moment that had me, Elwood and Lester worrying which one of us she had come to snatch. Elwood cried a puddle to find his mummy was not his mummy but his aunt, his brothers were his cousins and instead of the seven sisters he had none. Only Daddy had a word of comfort for the poor wailing boy – he told him that he could now rest easy because he was certainly not Jewish.

‘They think they keep us happy with this pickney constitution,’ Elwood told me. ‘We grown men. No more likkle crumbs from the table. We sit and feed ourselves now, man.’

While I was busy with war Elwood had lost most of his coconut, banana, guava, ackee and pimento to a hurricane. This tempestuous wind carried off his livelihood to land its harvest in who knows where? Cuba? The stumps of banana trees still left secured in the earth caught Panama disease. The coconut trees whose leaves still stretched in the sun developed lethal yellowing disease. During the days his mummy watered these feeble plants with an obeah woman potion, while Elwood sat an evening vigil over them among the rat-bats. But still they died.

‘Manley get us the vote,’ Elwood said. ‘But him know you caan eat a likkle cross on some paper. To put food on de table we mus’ govern ourselves. Gilbert hear me nah – no more white man, no more bakkra. Me say get rid a Busta too. Him too licky-licky to the British. Jamaica mus’ have jobs. Man mus’ work.’

Elwood had had to find work, any sort of work, to keep him and his mummy from the devil’s jaw. Burying cattle, digging gullies, fixing up damaged houses, loading ships. And hear this – even serving the English tea and dainty sandwiches at the cricket club. Bedecked in white uniform my cousin had had to incline his head in submissive civility while raised hands clicked their fingers for his service. Yet nothing could shake Elwood’s obstinate faith in Jamaica. Nothing could infect his dogged delight in his beloved island.

‘Man, you come back at the right time,’ he said. ‘You ready to work? Let me tell you, Gilbert, forget the law. Come, I have a likkle business notion for you, make us plenty money.’

He handed me a ragged, worn-out copy of a book, Lawson’s,
Honey Craft for Pleasure and Profit
, its title in faded gold almost unreadable. Elwood’s exhilaration dimmed only a little when I eager said, ‘Man, good idea! Jamaica will need this – publishing and printing our own books.’

‘No, man – tending bees.’

‘Bees?’

‘Plenty money in honey,’ he told me.

Oh, how the words tripped from Elwood’s impassioned mouth. Tumbling and twisting over each other they juggled to cajole me that this was a chance that simply could not be missed. Demonstrating his one hive, which sat lonely behind the house, its wooden walls vibrating with a dark cluster of quivering bees, ‘It more of a business expansion,’ he explained. ‘I know where me hand can lay on plenty more.’ Urging me to dip my finger into a little jar of golden honey, he said, ‘Taste – tell me it not the sweetest nectar ever pass your lip.’ Arm on my shoulder, mouth close to my ear, he tell me, ‘Me have a man not far – everyt’ing him sell. Him gon’ live in Scotch land or some fool place. Him have twenty hive – brood chamber and plenty frame each. Everyt’ing there – bottle feeder, smoker, veil. And every one bursting a bees. Young queen and everyt’ing. And so many jar it look like factory. Him make ’nough money get him backside far from here. Gilbert, I can see the Lawd smiling on us and pointing Him finger on those hives.’ He gripped me tighter with one arm while the other he used to point at the air. ‘Come, money flying around us, all we mus’ do is catch it.’ I looked on nothing as he told me he would need my demob money to make the purchases. ‘Man, it jus’ for all the likkle bits and pieces.’ Elwood was to look after the bees, Auntie Corinne was to take care of the cleaning and filling of jars, and me? ‘You do the business, man. First it pay you back plenty time over, then everyt’ing split between you and me. Me teach you everyt’ing me know. Soon we build up. This only a beginning, you see – soon we sell to all the shop on the rock.’ And he nodded gravely when adding, ‘An independent Jamaica will need men like us.’

Come, tell me, how long did it take him to win me? ‘Is a businessman you will be, Gilbert. Not a lawyer, no, sir, not a judge – but, mark you, not a farmer. A businessman – done up in fine suit and everyt’ing.’ You would think I gave Elwood the keys to life itself when I handed him the money. Were they tears in his eyes or was it just the smarting of the woodsmoke in the evening air? ‘Me no mess with ya, Gilbert, you me brother. Me gon’ see you a prosperous Jamaican man. Come, nah – soon we click our finger and a white man come running.’

Sitting high on a cart being pulled by a mule it occurred to me that perhaps I had accidentally woken to find myself back in the dark ages. It was Elwood suggested, ‘We can take the mule to pick up the hives. Save us money, man. More profit for you and me, eh?’ Old women bent on leaning-sticks were waving as they overtook us on the road, while this wretched mule, under a glory of flies, found something tasty to nyam on the ground before it, or dally undirected to take in a view or just stopped to muse perhaps on the meaning of life. A year before my return Elwood had swapped his old truck for this draggle-tailed creature. He was pleased with the deal – a whole mule for a broken-down truck that had to be removed from the farm in several hundred rusting pieces. However, it soon transpired that this one mule was in fact two creatures. At the front end, by its slow blinking eyes and black fat nostrils, you could pet its placid, docile head and feed it from your hand. But should you find yourself at its rear end you would meet a kicking, bucking wild beast there. Auntie Corinne was convinced a fiendish duppy had made its back legs its home. But perhaps its duplicitous character was because this mule, who I took to be male, had been given the name Enid. So while I sweet-talk Enid’s front end, Elwood attached the cart before the back end realised. But we had been gone two hours and could still see the roof of the farm we had left, before Elwood yielded, saying, ‘Come – me have an idea. We go see Glenville to get a use out of his truck.’

In the RAF in England I had shovelled coal with hands itching with chilblains until my palms were raw meat; I had pushed, pulled and dragged whole aeroplanes through mud; I had lifted mechanical parts that were bigger than a man yet still I had breath in my body to hum a song as I worked. But here I huffed and puffed like an old crone and grumbled, peevish and petty, like a lordly city boy, because, man, I had never known hard work like it. I was fooled by Elwood – I thought my gangly, skinny cousin would snap in two if the load was too heavy to lift. But any exertion made his stick body swell, rounding and erupting with robust muscle sturdy as a stallion. I had no chance to keep pace with him when every bone in my body just cried, ‘Gilbert, come nah, man, let us lie down now – we hurt.’

We lashed all the hives with rope to move them. Careful as lifting a bomb we delicately placed these flimsy, weighty wooden boxes on to the borrowed truck. Elwood whispered, ‘Hush, hush, soon come – not long now,’ to the curious bees inside. Unloading them he shouted rude at me, ‘Careful, man, watch it, easy, boy, easy.’ Any time, he warned, any time the bees could swarm. We laid out these buzzing boxes – Elwood heedful to make every last one lay straight on the stony land, bending low like an artist to test the angle of each against his thumb. ‘Bring me wood, Gilbert . . . get me stone nah . . . lift . . . hold it . . . hold it . . . no . . . back . . . stop.’ Twenty-two hives were placed with the same care. It took us hours and Elwood, looking on the rows of shabby grey weather-worn hives, proudly proclaimed them a kingdom of bees, (come, I thought them more a shanty town). Veiled as a bride, Elwood lifted a frame from a hive that squirmed with a confused layer of black bees. While I, defenceless and nervous, stood still as death, desperate to believe his assurance that an unmoving body will not be stung. Blowing smoke to calm the tormented ones, he checked that none were too crowded, none were too hot and a queen still ruled over every box.

In the evening light I sat to eat a mango alone under the refuge of the guango tree. Worn out – most of my muscles still twitching from the unaccustomed activity and yet too tired to sleep. Luminous white smoke from fires drifted ghostly through the dense green. Enid chomped loud on his favourite crabgrass. I could hear Aubrey in the neighbouring farm whistling to call his cows to take them to their night meadow. A black dash of crows flew home against the sky. A tree lizard scuttled up the bark licking grubs with its lightning tongue. Cicadas hissed rhythmic as cymbals. The sparks of fireflies buzzed my head like thoughts escaping, while dots of bees returned to the hives, oblivious they were now working for me. This was a beautiful island. As sweet with promise as the honey that would soon flow from the combs. I stuck my fingers into the soft earth that yielded under them. If I held them there long enough, surely this abundant country could make me grow.

Tell me, who could blame Enid? My belly had been grumbling impatient for some time – tormented by the sweet fragrance of the chicken Auntie Corinne was frying and the cornbread she was baking. Elwood glanced up from his newspaper when the mule, smelling the food, brayed with the pierce of a baby’s cry, to be fed. Useless, he slowly said, ‘Enid, soon come, nah, man.’ The fence that confined the mule was flimsy. How many times had Elwood and I looked to each other to promise, ‘We must fix up that enclosure’? Tomorrow, the next day, perhaps the day after that? Let me tell you, it was Enid’s furious back end decided this neglect was enough. How long did it take Enid to break down the fence? We did not hear as Auntie Corinne had just laid before us a plate of succulent, spiced fried chicken. She slapped both our hands from the meat and followed that with a grumpy order for us to wait before returning to the kitchen. Elwood and I were quietly busy: a wing each of the too-hot-to-hold-chicken in our hands, we were pulling at the flesh using only our teeth, fanning our mouth to cool while all the time watching for Auntie and telling each other to shush. We only heard Enid when Auntie Corinne screeched crimson for us to come. The mule had entered the field with the bees.