Travels with Myself and Another (10 page)

A black man with white hair and moustache, a white topee and rose-coloured dark glasses received me in the name of His Britannic Majesty. He was Mr Samuel Flax, the government agent for this island. He gave me a can opener as I had left mine in the Social Inn and guided me to the loveliest cove I had seen anywhere in the world. “Oh Moddom the war is very hard,” said Mr Flax. “We don’t get no flour and such practically. And those poor men what gets torpedoed. Yes Moddom we can only hope the Almighty will watch over us.”

The war seemed too far away to be true, no work for the Almighty on Virgin Gorda, and this cove was a place where nothing had changed since time began, a half circle of white sand, flanked by huge squarish smooth rocks, the rocks overlapping to form cool caves and the water turquoise blue above the furrows of the sandy sea bed. George slashed open some coconuts for me to drink. Mr Flax warned me against touching the leaves of the Manchineel tree if my skin was wet because I’d get blisters big as a two-shilling piece, and they left me to one of the three greatest joys in life, swimming naked in clean tropical sea.

At ten that night, we sailed. The moon was up, new and clear, and the sky was soft black, dusted with stars, the sort of sky guaranteed to engender romantic love affairs on cruise ships. We were heading out into the Anegada Passage, mystical name, and famous as a hunting ground for submarines. This was the longest lap of the journey, ninety miles between Virgin Gorda and Anguilla. Though feeling a certain distaste for the hatch cover mattress, I was thrilled by the beauty, the silence, the great sense of space, and excitement: we were in the real war zone, who knew what might not happen. Then the rain started and I cowered beneath my umbrella and it was surprisingly cold. The night took on the most unpleasant quality of nights which is to be long. At sunrise, Virgin Gorda looked within swimming distance. At noon it was still as close. Wind barely flapped the sail.

The special motion of the
Pilot,
when becalmed, was a bumping jig in one place. Being becalmed sounds like floating on a lilo in a swimming pool. Not so, anyway not so aboard the
Pilot.
Jig isn’t exactly right either, the boat bumped and rolled simultaneously.

The day before, with the wind to blow off the smell, I thought the crew’s mealtime rough stuff. Gawge, the cook, set up a charcoal brazier alongside the dinghy, doubtless because the dinghy would prevent the brazier and pots and food from sliding off the deck. He then cooked a pan bread called Dumb Johnny Cake, tea, and rice with fish and onions. In the windless heat, sun burning on my umbrella and the brazier burning beside me, the smell of fish and onions added to the rolling jig made me feel excessively queer.

I had not foreseen seasickness and had been actively seasick only twice that I could remember but remembered it well as one of the worst ails that flesh is heir to. I never reached the active stage; I stayed permanently queasy. Numb nausea reduced my hopes to a single aim in life: get off the
Pilot.
This was years before I understood the spiritual and medicinal value of liquor; when alone I carried none.

“George, how long is the longest you’ve ever been becalmed?”

“’Bout ten days, as I recall.”

Already I knew why the survivors in Puerto Rico spoke of men going wacky, wanting to jump out of the lifeboats. How had they endured ten days, eighteen days, with no protection from this cruel sun, adrift in smaller boats, exhausted by ceaseless motion, rations cut or finished, a mouthful of water a day for tormenting thirst?

“George, if we’re becalmed five days I’m going overboard. I won’t wait ten days.”

He laughed. “Doan talk silly, Missus, we ain goin sit heah much more.”

“George, are you almost finished cooking?”

“Yes’m. Takin dere dinner to de boys.”

But the smell lingered on.

Far to the north, wind clouds streaked across the sky. Three sharp black birds, looking like Dorniers, flew high above us, their wings spread wide and unmoving. I called to Irvine at the tiller, “What birds are those?”

“Doan know de name. We jus calls dem hurry-cane birds.”

Usually the men talked among themselves in Caribbean English, an indecipherable tongue. For me they used their version of the King’s English. When they talked it sounded as if they were barking at each other and every sentence rose like a question at the end. Now, with the sail not even flapping, they slept in the hold; Irvine nodded over the tiller. I had books and could not read, the ceaseless pitch made letters jump on the page and a cracking headache joined the queasiness. I watched the sea, hoping to see a far-off convoy, a patrol plane, anything to break the monotony, and was cheered by four flying fish.

Towards mid afternoon, I began to be bitten by ants, swarms of tiny translucent red ants which appeared from nowhere. At dawn I had found the squashed body of a very big spider on my pillow and immediately searched the dinghy in vain for its mate; it looked like a junior tarantula, hairy-legged but grey not black. While I could still move, it seemed a good moment to clean up the shipboard insect life, heavy clicking cockroaches in the deckhouse and these infuriating ants. I crawled from the dinghy and staggered to the deckhouse to get Flit; the deckhouse was my storeroom and bathroom, home of the Superware Sanitary Pail and a bucket of sea water for a sloshing shower.

While I was spraying Flit, a moment’s breeze, no more than a whisper of wind, picked up my umbrella which I had stupidly left open in the dinghy, and carried it off. I watched it sink, billowing like an old-fashioned lady’s bathing suit, and blinked back tears. I might have lost my last friend on earth. On top of queasiness, now I would burn a painful tomato red, blister and peel, the new skin all set to burn again. “Noice umbrella too,” George said, with sympathy. Deep in a slough of self-pity, I told myself that the drowned umbrella was too much. Why, why, since I worship the sun hadn’t I been born with the right skin? The protest of childhood is, “It’s not fair.” It’s not fair, I thought, aren’t ants and nausea and this immovable boat enough? Close to blubbering over my umbrella.

I had no idea a day could last so long. Though different from the endless days in China, it was not inferior to them.

A breeze sprang up in the night. Again the heavens opened to pour rain, but we were moving. The crew took turns resting on stones in the hold. I lay in the dinghy, wet and cold, urging the wind to keep it up, that’s a good wind, blow, blow, don’t stop for God’s sake. Incantations failed. We were out of sight of land in the morning, becalmed again. Carlton was gloomy. I was gloomier but thought it bad for morale if the passenger showed signs of dismay.

“Doan like it,” Carlton said.

“Why?”

“Jus doan like it.”

“Do you think there’s a hurricane starting somewhere?”

“I can’t reely tell.”

“Then what?”

“Doan know when we’ll get dere. Aint hardly moved all night. See de breeze gone down again now?”

I tried to make a half tent with one blanket laid across the dinghy but smothered, drenched in sweat. I thought I’d walk around the deck for a nice change, and nearly went overboard on my unsteady legs. The crew retired in silent boredom to the hold, except for the man at the tiller which wasn’t steering us anywhere. I sat on the floor in the deckhouse but hadn’t been able to kill all the cockroaches and they revolt me. Back to the dinghy where I brooded on my secret dream for this journey.

Sailing by night in these submarine-infested waters, close to a little island, I would see a periscope rise from the Caribbean, followed by the shark sides of the underwater killer. Submarines had to surface to charge their batteries. (I didn’t know then or now what I was talking about.) They needed fresh water, they would have to send a boat ashore to fill their casks or whatever submarines used. Blind from headache and queasy sick, frying red, I rolled like a sausage on the hatch cover as the
Pilot
rolled, and taunted myself. What had I intended to say when this memorable event took place?
“Guten Abend, Herr Kapitän, wie geht’s?”
I hoped a submarine would heave out of the sea and sink us, right now. Only two days and two nights of this and I was a basket case.

Why weren’t the gaunt sailor survivors gibbering insane when finally they reached land or were finally picked up at sea? I would have written better of their ordeal after this minor trial on the
Pilot
than I had after meeting them in Puerto Rican bars where I tried but failed to imagine what they had gone through. I guessed that the moment when the torpedo struck would be like a direct hit by heavy artillery on a building. But that was as far as I could follow their stories, only to the actual moment of impact; I knew something about explosions.

My imagination could not feel the aftermath, lifeboats, when survivors compared the number of days they drifted before rescue. Now I could sense those agonizing days and thought it infinitely more terrible to be attacked by a hidden enemy on the sea than anything that happened on land. On land, if still alive, you could crawl or be dug out or carried to help, not wait helplessly for days, weeks on the water, never knowing what the end would be. How many died in the lifeboats from exhaustion, their bodies parched, how many died of untended wounds? The survivors had not spoken of this.

It is true that we need a root of personal experience from which to grow our understanding. Each new experience plants another root; the smallest root will serve.

Irvine, again at the useless tiller, said, “Got to get dere sometime, Missus.” He was a kind man.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Got to. Boun to.”

Again at night rain whipped the sea. If drifting in a lifeboat, this rain would seem truly heaven sent, and be collected in anything that held water. After the burning day, it seemed an extra unfairness to shiver under a soaked blanket in wet clothes. But I was past caring, slumped in the lethargy of compounded discomfort and boredom that is the trademark of the genuine horror journey. I could hear the men grumbling and snoring in the hold. The motion of the
Pilot
felt unchanged, roll and bump, roll and bump.

I must have dozed when wind caught the sail and was wakened by Walteh, at the tiller, calling, “Cahltin, come an see! Anguilla dere ahead!” The night was starless black, yet they saw the land, a blacker line against the sea. We weren’t going to arrive on Anguilla at speed, but the sight of land restored hope. When we anchored at eight in the morning Carlton said in a solemn voice, like Columbus discovering the New World, “At last we reached.” It took three nights and two days to sail ninety miles across the Anegada Passage, that perilous war zone, and for thrills we had three hurry-cane birds and four flying fish.

Carlton’s mother-in-law lived on Anguilla. We climbed up a hill which moved beneath my feet and along a rocky path, also heaving gently; I might still have been on the
Pilot.
In the door of a tumbledown shanty an old black woman, wearing wrinkled cotton stockings and a faded cretonne sack fastened by a safety pin, greeted me, welcoming the homeless and sick into her castle. “I am Mother Stoughten,” she said. “We are all strangers in a strange land.” She sounded as if reading aloud from the Bible, and was lovely. A tin washtub and a bucket of water provided a bath in the spare room. Mother Stoughten sent a child to borrow boards from a neighbour so that I could rest on the spare bed, an empty iron frame. From another neighbour she borrowed eggs and two cups and presently fed us a delicious breakfast of eggs and dry heavy bread and black tea.

“Dear boy,” Mother Stoughten said to Carlton, “Do you not know the anxiety which you are causing, knocking about in this month?”

Carlton muttered something.

“It is most reckless.”

“Won’t have no trouble,” Carlton said into his cup.

“Ah well,” she sighed. Then, as Carlton came from the great world, Tortola being a centre of civilization compared to Anguilla, she said, “What news is there of the war?” She spoke always with that cultured accent which now sounded more like reciting fine poetry.

“Bout de same,” said Carlton.

“Have they reached the Marne as yet?”

“No’m.”

“Good-oh,” said Mother Stoughten happily.

A magazine photo of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret was tacked to the wall, two blonde little girls with their arms twined about each other, and a correct coloured photograph of the King and Queen in crowns and ermine. “We must hope the war will soon be over,” Mother Stoughten said. “For the sake of all the poor people. I trust the Royal Family is keeping well. After you have rested, my dear, our Magistrate will wish to receive you.”

I was puzzled as to why Anguilla required a Magistrate. The population seemed to be concentrated in a dozen shacks, similar to Mother Stoughten’s, strewn around paths in the immediate greenery. Since there was a Magistrate, protocol demanded a visit. The Magistrate lived in a large bare house on a bare hill and was a black doctor who had trained in Scotland. He was poor in furniture but rich in lithographs of shaggy mountain goats or maybe sheep and bluebells, labelled Glen Nevis, and views of Edinburgh Castle and group photographs of himself as a young man, wearing a Scotch tam o’shanter among white friends in kilts. His sitting-room cried aloud homesickness for that distant cold country.

He invited me to early lunch, warning me it would not be good. Apparently the people here did not grow vegetables, perhaps vegetables had never been part of their diet. For fruit, they had mangoes and bananas which grew themselves. Their constant concern was a shortage of flour. If flour came at all, it came on casual trading sloops like the
Pilot.
When they had meat, it was apt to be local goat and very tough.

We ate goat and rice and, as a special treat, tinned peaches for dessert, while the doctor spoke of Scotland. After lunch, elegantly courteous like Mother Stoughten, he escorted me back to the pier where Carlton waited. Beached alongside the pier lay two lifeboats, a steel craft with motor and an awning arrangement from the American freighter
Thomas McKean,
and a large open rowboat, which is what all old lifeboats were, from an English ship. The Americans had landed here after eight days, bad enough; the English had been drifting on the sea for twenty-three days and the Magistrate-doctor said they were terribly sick men. We looked at the boats in silence. Anguilla was as far out of the world as you could get but the war had washed up on their shore and the effect was dreamlike, fantastic, incredible, as if the sky had rained rocks.