by Bill Napier
I tried to look nonchalant as I passed her again, but it was a wasted performance: she hardly bothered to look up from her magazine. Her apparent indifference scared me as much as her presence. Back in my seat I scribbled a note: Don't look round. Unwelcome company to rear of aircraft. Numbers uncertain. Pretend you don't know me. Suggest we clear off quickly at Montego Bay. I gave it an hour and wandered off to the front toilet, dropping the folded note into Dalton's lap without looking at him. When I passed on my way back he and Zola were sitting upright, alert and staring intently out of the window into the blackness. Debbie was a tougher proposition to reach as we were both in full view of Cassandra, but shortly afterwards Dalton walked to the back of the aircraft and gave me the tiniest nudge on the shoulder as he returned.
Nine hours after taking off, the big aircraft was crawling bumpily over the Jamaican coast, outlined by scattered lights seen here and there through dark clouds. Montego Bay was a big cluster of lights with a black bite taken out of it by a giant shark.
There were half a dozen queues at the immigration booths. I found myself wedged inside a cluster of immensely fat black women who were chatting boisterously. Over to my left, Cassandra was queueing behind a wedding party. Debbie, Dalton and Zola were separated but in the same queue to my right. A thick yellow line, like a starting line, separated the queues from the immigration booths. An exhausted child was bawling somewhere behind me.
Debbie was through. She had the sense to disappear downstairs towards the baggage area rather than wait for us. In front of me, two of the fat women were beginning to argue with the immigration official. Cassandra and I eyed each other up like a couple of gunfighters, our respective queues inching forwards. She gave me another cold smile. Now just the wedding party lay between her and the exit. Voices were being raised at the booth in front of me: there was something wrong with a document. My queue had stalled and Cassandra smiled some more.
But then my fat women were suddenly through and the wedding party was snarling up at Cassandra's queue. There was no time to gloat. I trotted swiftly down the stairs, my heart thumping in my chest. Dalton and Zola already had my suitcase on a trolley. Debbie had vanished.
'Where the hell. . . ?' I asked. We made our way quickly to the exit. Outside, the air was like a furnace. There was a little square and a chaotic scattering of small buses and taxis. There were limited places for concealment. But then Debbie was waving and we made our way to a taxi, its doors open. The driver, a man in his thirties, bundled our suitcases into the boot with agonising slowness. Debbie took the front seat while Zola squeezed in between Dalton and me.
'Ocho Rios, okay?' Debbie said, turning to face me.
'Ocho Rios,' I agreed. Clever girl: we had booked into Sandals in Montego Bay.
The driver said his name was Stormin' Norman and proceeded to demonstrate why. The coastal road was narrow, potholed and littered with stray cattle and goats, all of which he saw as a challenge. To the left, powerful yellow flashes were lighting up clouds. Not English wimp lightning, I thought: real tropical stuff. I couldn't hear any thunder, but then Stormin' Norman's radio was playing lively pop music at maximum volume. The roadside was littered with shacks, lit up from within by naked lightbulbs or the flickering blue of television sets. In Falmouth, the taxi slowed to a crawl and picked its way through a square choc-a-block with young people, some of them dancing, others banging pot lids together. A youth, with dreadlocks hanging down from a red and yellow cap, slapped at my window, grinning happily and showing yellow teeth. His eyes were wide with excitement. Stormin' Norman explained that some folks was getting steamed up on account of the election, but it was nothing like 1980 when there was eight hundred killed in shootouts. We cleared town and headed swiftly into the dark. The gearbox was making whining noises. I looked out at the palm trees and the tiny wooden shacks, and wondered what we would do if the car broke down.
After two hours of this, with my nerves getting increasingly ragged, Debbie said, 'Up there,' pointing at an illuminated roof poking over some trees. Stormin' Norman took us through a security gate and up a long winding hill to a sprawling resort hotel surrounded by high illuminated fencing, like a prisoner of war camp. After Norman's air conditioning, the heat hit me all over again. The shrill screech of insects came from the forest surrounding us.
There was a self-catering apartment to spare. We were too exhausted to talk. Dalton and Zola took rooms with single beds, Debbie made for one with the king-size double, and I was left standing uncertainly in the kitchen.
Debbie reappeared. 'Harry, you have no place to sleep.'
'That's all right, I'll just stand here.'
We found some blankets and I spread them on the settee. I stripped to my underwear and slipped under a sheet. The insect noises were like a hundred squeaky fan blades. In the dark, a solitary firefly flashed on the ceiling.
Another image forced itself into my mind as I sweated on the couch and listened to the night sounds. Cassandra at the airport exit, asking about the distinctive party of four - they've left a wallet, where did they go? - finding the name of the local taxi driver who had driven them off, making a telephone call; Stormin' Norman, who liked to talk, talking too much; the Yale lock being quietly forced in the early hours of the morning.
The half-dream stopped there as exhaustion overwhelmed me. The last thing I remembered was the firefly, bright and silent, heading for me like a little cruise missile.
CHAPTER 23
The sky was just growing light when Debbie, dressed in a diaphanous white negligee, glided into the kitchen like a ghost. 'Wake up, Harry!' A light went on and she began to clatter cupboard doors noisily. 'No coffee!' Clatter. 'No nothing!' Clatter. I pulled my trousers on under the sheet, suppressing my embarrassment.
Dalton appeared, wearing his Cool Jamaica gear. 'We'd better get away from here. They could trace us through Stormin' Norman.'
Debbie said, 'Surely that's just a fantasy.'
'Maybe. Would you like to bet your life on it?'
I said, 'I thought of it last night just as I was flaking out. They could be waiting for him to turn up at the airport this morning.'
'Or they could have got his phone number from the
tourist desk in the terminal last night. Maybe even his
home address.'
Debbie put her hands to her head. 'Holy Christ.'
'Get dressed, Debbie,' I said. 'We're going into town. And bring your purse.'
Debbie and I walked briskly past the swimming pool, out of the compound and down the hill we'd been driven up the night before. The air had been oven-like overnight, but now, with the tropical sun rapidly soaring into the sky, the temperature quickly rose into the nineties. Even the two-mile walk into Ocho Rios was exhausting and I began to feel lightheaded. At the edge of town a white cruise ship towered over the buildings like a giant in Lilliput.
We followed directions along the main street, already crowded and noisy, past craft markets, hagglers, tourist-junk shops. A mile along, beyond walking range of the cruise ship tourists, the town underwent a distinct change of character: it became a noisy, crowded, exuberant piece of Africa. We turned down a side street, stepping around a young man lying on the pavement, stretched out on a cardboard bed, and there was Sunshine Rentals, just where the receptionist had said it would be. An elderly, toothless Indian led us round to a back yard, kicked a squawking hen out of his path and waved his arm at a scraped and battered white Toyota, half covered with leaves from an overhanging papaya tree. Debbie rented it for the week and paid up front in US dollars. The man said it never give him no trouble but phone Mr Claybone if we get stuck.
Back at the resort, Dalton and Zola were waiting at the reception desk, baggage packed. Dalton's face was expressionless behind his cool shades; Zola was plainly anxious. We loaded the boot quickly while Debbie checked out. Then she took the wheel and drove us down the hill. Coming up the hill was a taxi. It had almost passed us before I recognised Stormin' Norman at the wheel. I
couldn't make out the people in the back.
'Did you see that?' Zola asked.
'Yes,' I said. 'You think he saw us?'
'I don't think so. But I'm not sure.'
We waited at the security gate while the guard chattered to a friend. Debbie hummed under her breath, her fingers strumming the wheel impatiently. Then the barrier was up and we curved swiftly onto the road. I said, 'Hit the boards, kid,' and Debbie sang a verse of what sounded like a Norwegian Girl Guide song.
Debbie drove swiftly, and Dalton navigated from the back seat. He took us through Fern Gully, dull even in the Jamaican sunshine because of overhanging trees. Then it was a straightforward road, if winding and potholed, through the middle of Jamaica from north to south. We passed bauxite mines, the earth orange, drove along gorges, through a dozen little towns and past a thousand ramshackle homes and roadside stalls. The heat outside was tangible and I was grateful for the air conditioning in the old car. In a couple of hours we were through Spanish Town and on to a broad road taking us into Kingston, on the south coast, with the Blue Mountains soaring beyond and the Caribbean Sea sparkling to our right.
Kingston was not tourist Jamaica. Kingston had no sundrenched beaches or palm trees. There were no resort hotels, with holidaymakers carefully screened from the locals by high metal fences. Kingston was a Caribbean port bigger than Liverpool and twice as busy, and its traffic was not so much exuberant as lawless. Debbie was surprisingly calm in the midst of the chaos, and even managed a delighted squeal when we passed the Bob Marley Museum. It was a useful landmark: we passed it twice more over the next half-hour. Finally I saw something I recognised from the Rough Guide to Jamaica: the blue and white facade of the Ward Theatre. The lawyer's office, I knew, was close to it. Debbie took the car round the side of the building and parked. Zola stepped out to stretch her legs while Debbie, Dalton and I went on a lawyer hunt. After the air conditioning of the car, the heat was like a sauna.
'You know where you are?' Dalton asked. He had put on sunglasses and merged totally with the environment.
'Kingston, Jamaica,' I said.
He pointed. 'You're on the edge of Jones Town. With Trench Town just beyond it. Six hundred murders a year. It's one of the most violent locations in the Western hemisphere.'
'Thanks, Dalton. I feel a lot better for knowing that.'
The notice was white-painted on a strip of wood:
Chuck Martin
Attorney-at-law
Underneath was another strip of wood:
Caribbean Sparkle
Agricultural Services Ltd
registered office
Some nail-holes in the plasterwork suggested there had once been more registered companies. Next to the notices there was a narrow flight of stairs, cool after the sweltering heat of the exposed street. A short veranda on the first floor was protected from the outside world by a heavy metal grille. There was an open door and a stout woman behind a desk. Debbie said, 'My name is Debbie Tebbit. I would like to see Mr Martin, please.'
'You have an appointment?' the woman asked, looking doubtfully over her spectacles.
For all that she was a mere nineteen, Debbie could put on an imperious air when it suited her. 'No, but I've come from England to see him.'
The woman said, 'Oh my goodness. Wait here a minute,' and disappeared through a back door.
In a moment a small, wrinkled, thin man with grey hair appeared at the door and waved us in. His office was like something out of a Dickens novel, all dark 19th-century furniture and bundles of papers, yellow with age. He peered at us curiously over half-moon spectacles.
Introductions over, Debbie opened the conversation. 'You sent my father some papers from a late client of yours.'
The lawyer nodded. 'That is correct, Miss Tebbit. A Mr Winston Sinclair. It would've been nice if you'd telephoned ahead.'
'There wasn't time.' The Tebbit touch was again creeping into her voice.
Martin asked, 'Has your father given you authority to discuss this matter?'
'My father died last week,' said Debbie in a matter-of-fact tone. 'I've inherited all his property.'
'Your father died? I'm sorry to hear that.' The lawyer made a good show of looking sorry over the death of a man he'd never met. 'But I'm forgetting my manners. Would you like a coffee, or maybe a nice cold Coke?'
'No thank you. I'd be grateful if you could tell us a little more about this Winston Sinclair. You see, we never knew this relative existed.'
Chuck Martin leaned back, took a metal tin from a drawer and a pipe from a rack. 'The truth is, neither did I until two weeks ago. The man was a poorist. He had no family that we're aware of. He lived alone on West Road in a one-room apartment. West Road is in Trench Town. Not even Jamaicans go there. The landlady found him dead in bed with an empty bottle of rum. She cleared his room and found the papers in a box with your father's name and address on it, and she brought it round here. That's all there is to tell.'
'He must have come from somewhere,' I said.
The lawyer smiled bleakly. 'Sure. The landlady said his skin wasn't Ghana-black. He had some white in his blood from way back. Sure, Winston Sinclair came from somewhere.' He opened the lid of the tin and started to pull dark tobacco into the pipe with his forefinger. I thought I was detecting a chip on the man's shoulder.
Dalton asked, 'And there's no way to say where he got the papers from?'
'Lacking evidence to the contrary, I'd say he inherited them himself.' Now he was compressing the tobacco, pushing it into the bowl. 'So how he got your father's name and address, Miss Tebbit, and why he should think he was related to the Tebbits, is a mystery to me.'
I said, 'The journal was a diary, Mr Martin. It was an account of a voyage to America in Elizabethan times. The writer was stranded in Carolina. How it got from America to here is an even bigger mystery.'
'Well he sure didn't walk. I guess the journal must have been picked up by some passing Spanish warship or slaver.' The lawyer touched the leg of his spectacles and looked at Debbie as if he was trying to focus them. 'What's your purpose exactly, Miss Tebbit?'
'Genealogy.' It wasn't exactly a lie. 'Our family tree goes back a thousand years on the European side. We just didn't know there was an American branch.'
'You've come quite a way to search for your family tree, Miss.' I wondered if the man believed her. He searched amongst the clutter on his desk and found a matchbox. For some reason he struck the match on the underside of his desk. He started to puff at his pipe. Blue smoke drifted around the little office and he leaned back with an air of satisfaction. 'Jamaica was under the control of the Spanish in Elizabethan times. If you want to chase this up, you could try our National Archives. I'd say it's a mighty long shot. The only people in Jamaica then were Spaniards and slaves and the Arawak Indians. I don't imagine your family is descended from any of them.' He smiled to show that he was joking.
'Where are these archives?' Debbie asked.
'Spanish Town, of course. No point in going there today, they'll be closed soon. But my feeling is it will be a wild goose chase. You may have come a long way for nothing, Miss Tebbit.' He was tapping down burning tobacco.
We thanked him and went back down the narrow stairs and out into the intense heat. Half a dozen young men were rocking the car from side to side and Zola, inside it, was gripping the seat in front. One of the youths, with yellow string vest and baseball cap worn back to front, leered at Debbie and said, 'How 'bout you climb aboard the big bamboo, white gal?' She gave him the Tebbit look.
Dalton had adopted a sort of Trench Town swagger; he approached the man close up, right in his face. I thought, We don't need this, they might have knives. But then Dalton was speaking in a soft, conciliatory tone. 'Bredda, nuh badda wid di war vibes, wha you say?'
The effect was magical. The young men stepped back respectfully, and then we were in the car and accelerating away, Debbie at the wheel. I turned to Dalton and gave him an astonished look. He grinned.
; 'I want out of here,' said Zola, tense and tight-lipped. I wasn't sure whether she was referring to the car, the city or the island.
'They were just fooling around,' Dalton said.
Debbie seemed to be driving purposefully. 'Where are we heading?' I asked.
'The Blue Mountains. I've booked us into a hotel. It's called Moonlight Chalets and it's just past a place called World's End.'
'Why there?'
'I read in Hello magazine that Mick Jagger uses it as a hideaway.'
'That's a recommendation?'
'Find World's End on the map if you can, Harry. If Mick Jagger can use it as a hideaway, so can we. It's nowhere.'
'So, you're from Jamaica, Dalton?' I asked.
'Actually Birmingham.'
The transition from bustling city to isolated mountain was surprisingly abrupt. There was a busy square, queues of people at bus stops, and then suddenly just a single-track potholed road rising steeply towards the Blue Mountains. Within ten minutes we were into Maroon territory; we could have been a million miles from anywhere. The descendants of escaped slaves looked at us morosely as we drove past their shacks.
The road steepened even more. At first there were low parapets, but even these eventually vanished. Debbie took us round hairpin bends with no telling what was coming in the opposite direction. Here and there, boulders were strewn over the road, the end results of heavy rain and landslides. I sat beside her with sweaty palms and a jaw painful with tension, while she took the wheels to within inches of thousand-foot drops. There was dead silence in the back of the car. Near the summit we ran into thick cloud and Debbie used headlights. At least now I couldn't see what lay beyond the edge of the road. Finally, out of the mist, as if from a Dracula movie, there emerged tall gateposts with a notice saying: Moonlight Chalets. It seemed about as remote, and hopefully as safe, as any place on the island.
