On the Way Back

by Montague Kobbé

  We have a case here, Glen, I ain’ goan say no to dat. We even have a strong case. But we also have a long, painful process to win dis case we have. Dis ain’ goan be decided in weeks, you know. Dis might not even be decided in mont’s. Dis case you bring me here, dis case will drain us all. Glenallen Rawlingson wanted to hear a lot less about the length of the process and a lot more about the state of Nathaniel Jones’s oldest pair of shoes, but Deianira Walker had expected this reaction, continued to deploy the plan she had envisioned to make Glenallen Rawlingson understand that if de airline matters at all, den we should reach an agreement before goan to court. But however much the airline mattered, and, indeed, it did, Glenallen Rawlingson was far from satisfied with a course of action which concentrated only on the ownership of Dragon Wings. What Glenallen Rawlingson sought, what he really craved, could be more aptly described as payback, retaliation, restitution of personal, in fact, of familial pride. The discrepancy between Deianira Walker’s strategy to achieve her client’s expectations to the least detriment of Nathaniel Jones’s integrity, and what Glenallen Rawlingson considered to be enough humiliation to satisfy his ego, was the basis of a long negotiation between the two in an attempt to forge the terms of an arrangement which, under the circumstances, Nathaniel Jones would be crazy not to accept.

  The instincts which once upon a time, at the beginning of a hectic period of activity, had guided Nathaniel Jones to the doorstep of Deianira Walker’s office had provided Dragon Wings with the best lawyer for which they could possibly have hoped. Mrs. Walker’s services could not just be bought—they had to be earned. But something in Nathaniel Jones’s appearance had struck her as extraordinary, and she had seen even at that early stage the lucrative promise in their collaboration, so she had decided to help Mr. Jones in his project. It was a decision that would procure Deianira Walker and her law firm an immensely profitable business. Deianira Walker personally set up the legal scaffolding that held Dragon Wings together. She completed the registration of the airline at the International Air Transport Association. She negotiated with Anguilla Insurances to devise a policy which would protect the airline effectively and efficiently. She liaised with the syndicates and drafted the first contracts for pilots, supervisors, and other personnel. Deianira Walker had been forced to hire a specialist in aeronautical law and two assistants to cope with the paperwork resulting from the airline’s multiple negotiations. In other words, Deianira Walker had a vested interest in the survival of Dragon Wings, an important client for her boutique business toward which she felt attachment, if not indebtedness. This attachment, this unspoken bond of trust, extended to Nathaniel Jones, the white gentleman with the pale blue eyes who once upon a time had earned her services with his agreeable approach. So Deianira Walker kept Nathaniel Jones’s interests clearly present in her mind while she negotiated with Glenallen Rawlingson the terms of the arrangement she would propose to the Joneses—despite the fact that they were as yet unacquainted with the latest developments.

  Deianira Walker felt the emptiness associated with the ending of a love affair on that warm May afternoon when she went to Dragon Wings’s office in the Business Center. She had spoken to Nathaniel Jones on the phone earlier that day, had explained that she needed to meet him urgently to discuss a serious matter. Nathaniel Jones had expected to meet his legal adviser. Instead, he received a visit from Glenallen Rawlingson’s lawyer. Deianira Walker explained the situation in detail, felt her heart shrink as she saw Mr. Jones’s semblance melt to the ground.

  Mrs. Walker, I’m afraid I have nothing to say—you will need to speak to my attorney.

  She was disarmed by even the most obvious of possible answers. Mr. Jones, dere ain’ nuttin’ your attorney can do ’bout dis.

  Nathaniel ignored her as he walked toward his desk pointing his right index finger toward the door. Deianira left the papers on the nearest desk, made her way toward the exit. Before reaching the threshold she turned around, lifted her glasses from her nose, loaded her voice with uncharacteristic familiarity. Nathaniel, I had no alternative. I couldn’t warn you: it would have been unethical. De firm still on your side, you know, but I kyan’t represent you no more. I will send all de details of de case to my partner, Hubertus Warren. He will be in touch soon. There was a pause in her speech, a moment of lingering silence. Nathaniel did not raise his eyes. Off de record, as a friend, I guarantee you dem be de best terms you will be able to negotiate. You’d have to be a madman not to take dem, an’ I know you ain’ dat. Farewell, Mr. Jones. An’ good luck.

  VIII

  Sheila Rawlingson-Jones came home so late the Friday night that followed the debacle of March that, in fact, it already was Saturday morning. Nathaniel Jones had been kept awake by lingering preoccupations, by thoughts of gloom, by the sort of financial and entrepreneurial worries that had crowded so many of his recent nights. Insomnia was no novelty for Nathaniel. He had not stayed up waiting for Sheila—he would have been up even had she lain by his side all night—but the delay in her arrival added anger, malice, jealousy to his already-fragile frame of mind.

  Sheila Rawlingson-Jones came home so late the Friday night that followed the debacle of March that, in fact, she arrived with the break of dawn. She knew Nathaniel would be awake, so she removed all trace of guilt from her demeanor before she faced him. There was no greeting, just a spiteful grunt. Where have you been? Nathaniel regretted his words as soon as he uttered them. He had understood long before that the dynamics of a relationship with a woman half his age required certain concessions that would not be pertinent under other circumstances. One such concession involved tolerance and allowing each other enough space to act according to their respective ages. These were things Nathaniel Jones understood rationally, and wanted to put to practice, but sometimes, almost always, it was difficult to be reasonable when you were also jealous. So Nathaniel Jones met his wife with unscrupulous scrutiny at the start of the morning after the Friday night when he had been kept up by his worries and she by Arturo Sarmiento. Dancing was Sheila’s plain and truthful answer, her skin covered in a coat of dried sweat, her eyes bloodshot, her clothes oozing the scents of the night, the smoke, her bodily odor, and the trace of the men with whom she had danced. None of that was any different, really, to most other Friday nights—the time when Sheila religiously sought relief in an environment which Nathaniel had come to avoid at The Velvet—except for the late hour. But that key difference in the handles of the clock tore through Nathaniel’s defenses and made him want to know exactly what his wife had been up to. Dancing? Till sunrise? The question feigned a trace of interest which miserably failed to disguise the jealousy that prompted it.

  Sheila knew there was no need to lie—the easiest way out would be telling Nathaniel the truth. But the truth was precisely what Sheila did not want him to know, because she had enjoyed Art’s company in a way which she had not experienced with Nathaniel for months. So Sheila made up some story, invented some farfetched plot, mentioned some people she knew she could trust. She knew as soon as she spoke her words, as soon as she devised her lie, that what she had done that night, even what Nathaniel suspected she had done that night, would hurt him considerably less than the lack of honesty in her reply. She also discovered for the first time that she did not care. The silence that followed was so laden with emotions it became unbearable. Until I’m your husband, Sheila. Something was supposed to follow such statement, but Nathaniel cut his own flow midsentence, as if he had suddenly been made aware of the pointlessness of his assertion. Sheila walked away, toward the bedroom, without saying a word.

  Once Sheila experienced in full the tension that threatened to tear down the home she had built with Nathaniel, the burden of everyday companionship with the same (old, white) man seemed heavier than ever. The domestic battle that ensued was as cold as it was palpable. Silence reigned at home, and the double bed that lodged their distant nights had never seemed as wide as now, when each made one side of it their own, opening a rift be
tween them where no one was safe. Viewed with the specs of time and tainted by the largest domestic crisis the couple had endured in their relationship, the good old times seemed never to have been good enough to warrant this ordeal. And certainly compared to the natural ease with which things—simple things: conversation, a drink, a dance—had flowed with Art on Friday, the situation at home seemed excessively tortuous.

  Sheila had not decided whether or not to meet Arturo on Wednesday before the contempt that invaded Nathaniel’s den of love made her turn away from him to look for something, anything, to bring back some joy to her life. For the first time since Nathaniel’s hundred-day siege, she found herself questioning the merits of her marriage. Up to that point the isolation and the condemnation that she had always known would be sparked by their union had been shared, had been endured by the two together. But now for the first time she saw in Nathaniel not an accomplice in her crime but the source of her heartache. The problem was emphasized when she added to it the fact that Nathaniel was the only solid element left in her life, because she had sacrificed everything else for it. Sheila felt more painfully than ever the breach caused by her decision to opt for the old white man who had seduced her with his experienced devotion ahead of the friends and family who had offered her an uncertain yet promising future on the island. Sheila Rawlingson-Jones had carved a moat around Nathaniel’s den of love, and now that it had become her prison she was desperate to find a way, any way, out of it.

  So Sheila met Arturo Sarmiento on Wednesday night, after dinner, for a drink that did not go down in a hurry, and though there was time for a second drink, that was as far as they would take it: a pleasant conversation and a nice time. Little—nothing, really—in Arturo Sarmiento’s reckoning, but the world for Sheila Rawlingson, because when she arrived to the rendezvous she was aggrieved, stressed, desperate, but she was able to vent her anger, complain about work, bicker about her marriage with Arturo, her friend, and while he could tell immediately he would not take her home that night, he still held out hope for the future. For the first time in weeks, Sheila felt at ease.

  I gotta go, nuh. When you next free?

  Art’s expression lit up with joy. Monday afternoon. Meet you in Shoal Bay for ice cream.

  The weather was sublime that Monday afternoon, and Sheila was happy to see Arturo Sarmiento again, and this time he did not allow the conversation to dwell on Dragon Wings, and while the sun set on the sea just off the northern tip of the island, Art and She walked toward the western end of the bay, facing the orange sun, licking their ice creams, laughing away, knotted in a friendly embrace. Listen, nothing in my contract says I can’t meet you when I’m on the rota to fly the following day. What are you doing tomorrow? Sheila’s heart skipped one beat before filling with gladness. She knew she should decline but she didn’t want to. She knew she was not giving her marriage much of a chance, but she felt she had already given her marriage enough. She didn’t think it then, maybe she never consciously rationalized it this way, but Sheila felt she had already given Nathaniel everything she could.

  She met Art every day for the following week. This was the period of courtship, the week during which the groundwork was laid in her heart, in his, for the betrayal that would ensue. Eight days later they still had exchanged no more than a brief kiss—late on a Friday night, which, in fact, had been a Saturday morning—but they had grown so close to each other that Sheila spent her days thinking of him, while he spent his nights dreaming of her.

  Sheila Rawlingson-Jones was progressively but quickly estranged from her husband, from her business, from her own life. She had already given up all interest in Dragon Wings by the time Nathaniel and Dragon exchanged insults in the Business Center during an extraordinary meeting called after the debacle of March to reconsider the airline’s ambitious plan of expansion, and she found no sympathy in her heart for Dragon when he garnered absolutely no support at all from the rest of Dragon Wings’s board of directors in his efforts to steer the company in the direction of consolidation. If Sheila took no part in those discussions, if she revealed no emotion when Deianira Walker soon informed the company that its bid for Air Tampa’s Short 330 had been successful, it was because she simply didn’t feel like she was a part of any of that, she simply didn’t care anymore. So, by the time the writing could be perfectly made out on Dragon Wings’s wall, by the time Nathaniel Jones called for yet another extraordinary meeting of the board of directors to announce the extent to which the airline had come to be under financial pressure, Sheila no longer felt affected, because to all practical purposes she was no longer a Jones.

  Then, one Friday evening, Sheila went to The Velvet much earlier than usually, found Arturo Sarmiento looking somewhat crazed or desperate, waiting for her. He noticed her immediately, came to greet her outside the club. Before she could say a word he led her toward his car. Come with me. Arturo Sarmiento turned the corner, pointed his car in the direction of his house, steering with his left hand while his right carved a rudimentary path from her knee upward, dug deep between Sheila’s thighs, lifted her skirt, roused her urge. He almost choked her on the short walk from his driveway to his door. Once inside he lifted her strapless top hurriedly, almost urgently, and drove her back against a corner. She tried to make some room, to push him away, to bring back normality. He pinned her right wrist against the wall while he undid his pants with his right hand. Sheila was startled by his use of force, by what she saw was an uncharacteristic display of brutishness. Her wrist began to hurt, but before she could complain his hand was already pulling her underpants aside, reaching her rump, firmly holding her left buttock, digging his nails into her before lifting her from the ground. She instinctively put her leg around him as a violent thrust let him inside. His hand squeezed her tight, his arm pulled her down, his every impulse shoved her lower back against the wall, sending a shiver up her spine. She felt him pulsate inside, growing larger, sturdier. She grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back. He caught her left nipple between his teeth, and as she began to ride him he voiced his relief. His right hand joined his left as he pulled her down one final, brutal time. Just then he felt her grip around his waist tighten, her riding get more arduous, her long nails drawing blood on his back, her fleshy lips searching for his lobe, her perfect teeth digging inside his neck.

  Sheila never made it back to Nathaniel’s home. She spent a miserable week living with her brother Jamaal, devising a plan to escape the island with Arturo Sarmiento. Is somet’ing I gotta do before we can go. Sheila could not leave Anguilla for good without spending some time with her beloved grandpa. So she kept her ploy from her family, and she begged for forgiveness, and she recognized her mistakes, and she accepted her guilt, and she returned in shame to her parents’ home where she spent six days distanced from the world, talking only to the old man she had come to bid farewell. On the seventh day she sat in her room through most of the night, writing a letter in which she offered some explanations; she asked for, if not forgiveness, at least understanding, and most importantly she expressed her undying love for the most important man in her life: her grandfather.

  It would not be long before the remaining two Joneses had to plan their own exit from Anguilla.

  IX

  The Caribbean is a subtle place. Everything is tenuous, delicate, fragile in the Caribbean. In fact, the Caribbean, as such, does not even exist: there is no homogenizing trait in the Caribbean. No feature is shared by the islands between Cuba and Trinidad. Or perhaps one is: the sea. The beautiful Caribbean Sea: as large as blue, as threatening as picturesque, generous and, there as you see it, unforgiving. People in the islands live by the sea; not only do they live close to the sea, but they are also dependent on it. The sea becomes a sort of power, an almost divine power which takes and provides, perhaps not consciously, perhaps not even willingly, but which takes and provides nonetheless. By sea arrive most provisions; the sea is the major source of food; the sea is the main basis of tourism, the largest industr
y in the region. Unwittingly, yet irreversibly, people in the islands are all children of the sea.

  I wonder what it is that Nathe has to tell me. He sounded agitated over the phone. He must be feeling the pain of Sheila’s betrayal, now that he can look at it with some perspective. Fourteen days since she left. Fourteen days without Sheila Rawlingson. Mind you, she left home long before that. Sheila Rawlingson, gone with my friend. What friend? I never could reestablish my friendship with Arturo Sarmiento. Something had changed. Something has changed. I wonder if it was me or him. I wonder why she left. The most beautiful woman in the world, and she seems unable to find happiness. The most beautiful woman in the world. An absolute storm. A hurricane.

  Just like the sea, hurricanes are an essential part of life in the islands. Hurricanes in the Caribbean are not a living threat; they are not just a genuine possibility of disaster. They are, rather, an imminent certainty waiting to happen. Life in the islands is shaped by, and around, hurricanes. Business plans, construction methods, memory, even life expectancy are all shaped by an instinctive acceptance of loss that is produced by periodic devastation—a devastation that Anguilla has not experienced for years. Caribbean time varies from island to island, depending on the gap between one hurricane and the next. Centuries—millennia—have no place in the islands. For this generation of Anguillans, the latest reincarnation has lasted over a decade; because with every wave of destruction comes another resurrection. For the present generation of Anguillans, events are ordered around Hurricane Luis: in the year of our Lord 5 A(fter) L(uis) the island was hit by the first prophet of the new advent: Hurricane Lenny. For members of the older generation, chronological reference revolves around Hurricane Dona; if you live a few hundred miles northwest, replace Luis with Katrina; a few hundred miles south: Hugo.