The Polished Hoe (36 page)

“But you continue. Tell me more about Trinidad and the Trinidadian women.”

“Well, we went down on a two-mast schooner, captained by a man who later end up in politics.” He settles himself in his chair. She settles herself comfortably in her chair. She pulls her shawl tighter round her shoulders. “I remember the Sunday evening,” he says, “that we sail-out from the Careenage, down by the Sugar Bond and warehouses, smooth as silk round the Pierhead, slowly out to sea. I had a feeling that Columbus and Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson, whose statute decorates the Square in the Upper Green, mustta had the same feeling when they was sailing the high seas. A feeling that I was on top, that I was conquering something or somebody. That I was moving along. Just moving along. From one place to a next.

“So, we turned the end of the Pierhead moving along from the Careenage; and although, as they say, we wasn’t under sails, meaning that the schooner we was travelling in, although it have two masts, no sails was unfurl yet, and it was only a lil schooner without even a inboard motor of the smallest horsepower. But it was the same sensation as sailing over the high seas in this schooner.

“I am sure that Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson, and those other sea dogs, must have had the same feeling of the power of moving along.

“We wasn’t going to discover Trinidad. Nor any o’ them lil Wessindian islands that we have scatter-’bout in the Carbean Sea. We were only going down there to help their police force work-out the ’vestigation problems they were facing in regards to the sudden disappearance from the Bimshire jurisdiction of Patel, aforementioned; and if there was any ‘corborating’ evidence that we could pick up. Plus, the sudden coincidence of death resulting from attempted strangulation of the needleworker woman, found at the scene.

“As I tell you, Patel had-went home to Toonapoona-Trinidad, to find a Indian-girl, a
doulahin
to married,
primer-facially
speaking.

“Or, in other words, he couldn’t get enough woman ’bout-here in Bimshire, amongst the local women, like the needleworker, so he went back to his own, to try his luck. Simple as that.

“Yes. If we were train’ like the
FBI
in Amurca, or the
RCMP
ees in Canada, or even Interpool, we would have known that taking the religious beliefs that Patel hold, in mind, plus his propensities for his own people, meaning
doulahin
and Indian culture, a man would do the things that we only find out after the expense of sea transportation, putting up in a guest house, inland travel by pirate taxis, food subsistencies, sport, and . . .”

“Did you play cricket against the Trinidad police whilst in Trinidad?”

“No,” he says. “If we had been train’ by Interpool, the
RCMP
ees, or the
FBI
; and if our ’vestigations was conducted scientifically, we could have solve the blasted Patel case without leaving the shores of Bimshire on a two-mast schooner that nearly sink two times, be-Christ, between here and the Gulf o’ Paria, near Trinidad. Pardon my French, Miss Mary-Mathilda.”

“But did you play cricket at all down there?”

“No, not that kind, Miss Mary. I am talking about the cost that the Bimshire Constabulary had to foot as entertainment for we . . . things like beers and rotis. Trinidad rum was so bad and inferior to Mount Gay, we didn’t touch none of their Vat-19 . . . and the price of a ticket to see a movie on Charlotte Street! Lord-Lord. Some o’ the fellars went to nightclubs looking for women, and to dance, offa our Entertainment Allowance. We didn’t play any cricket against the Trinidad police team.

“The minute we get out beyond where the fishing boats does-go, to catch shark and cavalleys, kingfish, barr’cuda and flying fish, and we look back and could see Bimshire disappearing, like it was falling in the sea, it was then that this feeling, like the feeling that Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson mustta had, came over me.

“My daughter tell me that going into Amurca by boat, and entering New York Harbor, the first thing you does-see is the Stature of Liberty. It is a feeling, she tell me, like no other feeling on earth.

“I compare seeing Bimshire falling slowly below the surface of the waves, going down slow-slow-slow to match the distance we was sailing away from she, I regard that as a sentiment similar to what my daughter describe of the Stature of Liberty, my oldest daughter, the domestic engineer up in Brooklyn. The other one went to Englund to be a nurse, where she passed-away. But leaving Bimshire, that Sunday afternoon . . . and we sing ‘For Ole Lange Syne,’ too!

“We sing the national anthem of sailors and mariners, sea dogs and buccaneers, of people leaving one port, challenging the high seas, to get to another port.

“And apart from seeing the Island itself slipping slowly into the sea, as we disappeared out o’ sight of land, the last monument I saw with my two eyes, was Lord Nelson stanning-up there, in the Public Square in Town, in the Upper Green, shining in the afternoon sun, with his right . . . right, or left? . . . with his right arm in his blasted jacket pocket, concealing the fact that somebody had cut-off that hand.
Oney!
Alias Lord Nelson. And that caused me to remember Napoleon Bonnaparte, a man, a Eyetalian who became Emperor of France, who is more closer to we down here in the Wessindies than Nelson ever could, from a family-point-of-view, namely and because of the fact that the woman he choose to married-to as his wife was one o’ we. A Wessindian woman. Josephine. From down in Haiti, or that-other Frenchified island, Sin-Lucia.”

“Martinique,” she tells him. “Martinique. Yes, Josephine! I came-across Josephine in a library book.”

“Land disappear. The sea start getting more choppy, and rougher; the fellars, meaning the police amongst the passengers, the sailors and the regular-paying passengers, including the captain who was also the navigator, start one pewking all o’ them, be-Christ, as if by pre-arrangements. Every man run from below, walk over ropes on the slippery deck, and rush to the gunwales and, with his head holding-over the side, start pewking pewk into the waves.

“It is the worst feeling a man, or a woman, could experience. Seasickness. I sometimes wondered during that trip toTrinidad if seasickness amongst the ship’s crew wasn’t the cause of the mutiny on the
HMS
Bounty?
You ever come across the Mutiny on the
Bounty
in one o’ your library books?”

“Once. In a library book.”

“Everything that I had-eat that Sunday, straight from Church— as I had to sing the descant of the carol, in the Choir before leaving for Trinidad—
everything
. I didn’t really want to keep my two eyes open whilst I was vomiting, but I couldn’t close them because I couldn’t help admiring the birds that followed we out to sea, far-far from land; so pretty; and the fishes and porpusses coming up outta the sea, and disappearing even before you could see them plain-plain; and a big-big boat to our left, moving like silk over the water.

“The
HMS
Cornwallis
came into my mind. And in the waves, not so rough yet, I counted the grains o’ white rice, the pieces o’ sweet potato, the individual peas from the pigeon-peas I had-cook with the white rice to give it flavour, even the pieces of pig snout that I had boil-down in the rice . . .”

“You didn’t chew your food properly, Percy. Forty-six times before you swallow a mouthful, Wilberforce say you have to chew your food.”

“I probably had-eat too fast that Sunday in-true, since I had to travel overseas on the Patel ’Vestigation.”

“You eat too fast.”

“Then I see this big ship following us. Nobody in my group didn’t have binoculars nor a spying glass. And I couldn’t borrow the captain own. This ship couldda been a enemy ship following us on the horizon, later to intercept us, and
bram!
, when you hear the shout, a torpedo in our arse! Like they do to the
HMS
Cornwallis . . .
pardon my language. . . .

“‘Oh shite!’ I say to myself. Pardon my French, Miss Mary. I conclude that they could be Nazzies in these waters. This is the route that ships, merchant ships and others, with Bimshire men on board, working as deckhands and in the boiler rooms, tending the engines, throwing coal on them big turbines, does be on. Ships bound for Europe and the various theatres o’ war. And ships coming from Chaguaramas in Trinidad; and the British Navy tekking men and ammonitions and things to the Allieds up in Europe, to the Ardennes, Calais, Tripoli, to Desert Fox up in the great African desert of the Sahara, to Sabastopool, them places in Europe, in Bremen, Frankfurt and Poland, and the Darnelles, places I come- across in books, to fight in the various axes and theatres of war, as Churchill define them in speeches ’pon the
BBC
. And I say to myself, as I am holding over the side of the gunwale of this two-mast schooner, bringing up my Sunday dinner, ‘Lord, don’t let a Nazzie submarine pass this way! Not now!’

“At night, we was in thick blackness. Lights turn off. And men, the crews and the passengers alike, talking in whispers, in case a Nazzie submarine lurking in the vicinity, and they pick up the noise of our talking, and the voices we are talking in, on their high-power radio transmissions, and find out that we are English, and not speaking the Spanish language and from places like the Argentyne or from Brazil, places that the Nazzies like to hide out in, and use for refuelling in.

“Quiet-quiet-so, we travelling in total darkness, darkness more thicker than the darkest dark-night on this Plantation, where we are tonight. And I discovered something from that experience of travel.

“The darkness that fall over land is nothing compared to the darkness that does-fall over the high seas and the ocean. In particular, a big ocean like the Atlantic, the one we was travelling on, even though it was just at the edge, and not in the great, real deepness, as if we was taking a passage from Bimshire up to Englund or a Lady-boat to Canada, by sea. But it was the same darkness.

“Then it was that I start to get frighten and wonder if the Captain, only a local fellar that I would see many times coming out of a rum shop in Nelson Street, if he had-remember the things he learn in Navigational School. Or, if he even went to Navigational School at all, to learn how to be a navigator of a big-big inter-island schooner with two masts.

“They don’t have no road signs on the high seas to tell a man tek this turn, this is Swan Street you entering; or that if you tek the next left, you nearing Baxters Road or Broad Street. Not when you out there in the darkness of the deep, yuh! And a compass is round in shape, and in circumference. It is like a circle. A point in navigation is therefore nothing more than a point. If the compass tell you that you pointing nor’-nor-wess, to use navigational language, the language of the deep, and of mariners and sea dogs, and if that compass was to shake a
lil
, just a pivvy, and that point get off mark, Jesus Christ, Miss Mary, we could have end up in the Argentyne, or in Brazil, in Saw-Paulo, or Buenos-Airs. Even in Caracas-Venezuela then, whiching, as you know from your library books, is only a skip-hop-and-a-jump from Trinidad, ’cross the Gulf of Paria.

“Matter o’ fact, whilst involve in the Patel ’Vestigation, up in Toonapoona, we discovered a monastery full o’ monks, as I told you about. But the biggest discovery, as I also tell you, was these real sweet mangoes . . .”

“Give me the Julie-mango anytime!”

“The Julie is only one! We eat mangoes like they was going outta style! Julie-mangoes, mango-veer, turpentine mangoes, zabecou, calabash, or hog-mangoes, and the one that I like best, mango-Rochelle.”

“Still, give me a Julie-mango!”

“But if the captain had fallen off-course, just a fraction of a point, a pivvy, from the course the compass and the sextant—is it a sextant, or a quadrant?—had given him, we could have ended up down in the Argentyne, and I would now be speaking to you in Spanish, with the rest o’ them Nazzies. Don’t laugh!

“During the War, as a member of the Police Force, we had to engage in certain important kinds of espionage. Undercover work. With risses. Cloak-and-dagger. Things like making sure lights-out is observe. Blackouts. Pasting strips o’ black paper over your motor-car headlights. Observing people that behave strange. Like listening too long to radios. Particular, radios with a short-wave band.
Private-sets.
They could be spies. And a lotta them was suspected spies. A lot o’ them ’bout-here, in a small place like Bimshire,
was
spies. Senning vital information. To the enemy. Axes and Fascist sympathizers. Secrets. Disclosing Top-Secret secrets. Nazzies and barr’cudas. So, we spend a lotta time sitting down. Sitting down on a hill, like Flagstaff Hill in Clapham, or Brittons Hill hill, below Flagstaff. And those of us assign to the Special Branch, down in Town, had to siddown night after night, in the darkness o’ night, with the dew falling, and in the cold, as if we were really up in Europe in the theatres o’ War, in the Darnelles, Tripoli, Sabastopool, Poland and Calais, in the First Whirl War, watching the horizon for perriscopes, in case a submarine flying the Swastika or the colours of the German Axes, was to surface for air and to take on water, or to blow up another merchant ship. Our superiors in the War Room Office in Central Police Station down in Town, which was out o’ bounds to ordinary policemen, told us what German submarines does do. We were on the lookout for German submarines, using our bare eyes. We have good eyesight in this Island. Proper vision. In this Island, we does see good-good-good. Twenty-twenty vision. And so, the minute we spot a perriscope, or any enemy activity at all, quick-quick-so, we raise the alarm! By blowing our whistle. I blow my whistle, and a next man, engage in similar espionage, yards away, hear me blow my whistle. And he blow his whistle. And so on, down the line. Down the line of the chain o’ command. And that way, in no time at all, our message is transmuted in code, and reach Espionage Headquarters, in the Special Branch. The information is then uncoded. Next, is put in our dispatches into a new, next code and transmuted by Morse code,
dit-dit, dot-dot-dot, da, da, da, da, da
. . . that is Morse code.