A Trip to the Beach

by Melinda Blanchard

  Digesting that new bit of information, Bob offered, “We’d be happy to help you find a stove. We’ll let you know what we end up doing. Thanks for your help.”

  “And a great lunch,” I added.

  On the way back to the hotel, we met the little truck still inching along with its giant load. It hadn’t made much progress.

  “This guy’s really making a day out of his lumber purchase,” Bob said.

  “Island time,” I said.

  At the front desk, we thanked Patricia and Rosalind profusely for sending us to Cora Lee’s. Agatha was at the desk too and joined the discussion, now centered around planning a trip to St. Martin the next day. Her skirt was tight and short, exposing gorgeous legs that stretched to the sky. She reserved a rental car and gave us directions to Cole Bay and Phillipsburg, which, she explained, were on the Dutch side of the island.

  Since our lumber search had been in vain, we opted for an afternoon enjoying the hotel. Once settled in our concrete bunker of a house, the luxury of Malliouhana, its pool, its food, and its service would be a memory. We changed into bathing suits and stretched out on lounge chairs next to the waterfall that pours over rocks from one pool and into another.

  I studied the deep green lawns and swaying palm trees, wondering how much water it must take to keep everything so healthy on an island with so little rainfall. Splashes of red, purple, and orange bougainvillea cascaded over a white semicircular wall surrounding one side of the pool area. A terra-cotta path meandered past the wall and disappeared toward the villas scattered along the cliff. Next to my chair, a pink oleander bloomed happily, exploding with flowers in the relentless sunshine.

  Where do they get all these plants? I wondered. They must have their own nursery, and probably an army of gardeners too. I let the sun work its magic while the sound of the water lulled me to sleep.

  The next morning we were at the ferry terminal at seven-forty-five to make the eight o’clock boat. After paying our $2 departure tax, we sat down in the plastic chairs and waited. We watched the clock on the wall as eight o’clock came and went.

  Island time lesson, number one: Anguilla schedules are about as dependable as the weather in New England. Bob asked the woman collecting the tax what time we would leave.

  “Eight o’clock boat broke,” she said. “Nex’ boat, eight-thirty.”

  By eight-thirty, the ferry terminal was jammed with people. A few tourists were going over to explore St. Martin for the day, but mostly we were surrounded by locals chattering a mile a minute. I tried to understand some of the conversations around me, but when Anguillians talk amongst themselves, the English language takes on a new rhythm and sound. Every now and then I caught a recognizable word or phrase, but it took more concentration than I was willing to give it. Instead I sat patiently, surrounded by people who might as well have been speaking Swahili. Living in Anguilla is going to be an experience, I thought.

  At eight-forty-five two full boatloads of people piled onto one boat. We stood in the aisle and tried to keep our balance as the miserable ferry churned its way across the channel. Women were holding children in their laps, most of them blissfully content as the boat ride rocked them to sleep. Several older women looked frightened and grasped the seat backs in front of them for security.

  Tabitha, a ferry in the loosest sense, was a steel cargo boat fitted with rows of old airplane seats. The cabin was totally enclosed and the windows and doors were shut. I immediately felt claustrophobic, but outside there was no place to sit or even stand. I was trapped. The engines were so loud, neither of us could hear a word the other was saying, and the vibration of the floor and the smell of diesel fuel made the trip very unpleasant. The decorating job, however, kept us smiling. Blinking Christmas lights were strung all over the ceiling, and a VCR hung from the wall, entertaining the passengers with an old Eddie Murphy movie. The sound was completely inaudible over the roar of the engines. The most curious element, though, were the plaid curtains. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to create a certain ambience by covering the windows. To me, the best part of a boat ride is the view. Clearly, the locals saw the trip to St. Martin as no more than a taxi ride and had little interest whatsoever in the spectacular scenery behind the curtains.

  The trip took thirty minutes, and by the time we stepped onto the pier in Marigot, I felt seasick and had a splitting headache. I sat down on a bench to recover while Bob went to locate the car rental agency. The car was a gem. Its front bumper was missing, the windshield was cracked, the passenger side was dented and smashed, and the door handle was gone.

  “Great car,” I said as Bob opened my door from the inside. “Was this Hertz or Avis?”

  Bob smiled. “The contract just says Car Rental Agency.”

  We crept along through the one-lane streets past patisseries and bistros. We passed la poste, where lines of people stood holding baguettes they’d purchased earlier, and blocks of duty-free shops selling perfume, cameras, and jewelry.

  It looked more like the French Riviera than the Caribbean—tall, skinny blond women hurried along the sidewalks in tight little dresses revealing as much of their tanned bodies as possible. Sleek-looking men in gauzy shirts and blue jeans also bustled past, many with a cell phone glued to one ear. Not at all like Anguilla. Instead of St. Martin, we could have landed in St. Tropez.

  We plodded out of Marigot’s traffic and were abruptly propelled onto St. Martin’s version of the autobahn: a three-mile stretch of relatively straight country road with one lane traveling in each direction. At seventy miles an hour our mangled Toyota developed a severe wobble, warning us we had reached top speed. Bob felt as though he were in the Indianapolis 500 as other cars passed us in a wild race to some imaginary finish line. As drivers overtook us from behind they would flash their lights and blow their horns, and if they saw just a little bit of open road, they’d fly by as if we weren’t moving.

  “How can this island be so different?” I asked. “We’re only seven miles from Anguilla, and look at this place. The traffic is worse than the New Jersey Turnpike.”

  “Thank God they all want to stay over here,” Bob answered. His white knuckles gripped the steering wheel as we sailed past the sign welcoming us to the Dutch side of the island. Coming down the hill into town, the traffic slowed to a snail’s pace, and a line of cars disappeared from sight. We parked illegally alongside the road with hundreds of others and walked the rest of the way.

  Unlike Anguilla, St. Martin has no duty on purchases, making it a popular stop for cruise ships. On this particular day Bob and I counted five giant ships anchored in the harbor. A frenzied mob of sunburned shoppers had been shuttled ashore and turned loose. Hordes of tourists equipped with cameras pushed and shoved their way through the grimy streets, determined to find the best price on everything from T-shirts and Cuban cigars to Rolex watches. We fought our way through the crowd, in search of restaurant supplies and building materials.

  We bought plastic dishes, an inexpensive set of pots and pans, some glasses, and cheap silverware, allowing us to set up housekeeping until our things arrived from Vermont. I bought an ice cream machine for $19.95, thinking it would be fun to start testing ice cream and sorbet recipes for the restaurant. Our search for building materials, however, was hopeless. After four frustrating stops at overpriced and understocked lumberyards, Miami felt closer and closer.

  The high point of St. Martin was lunch. Though the Dutch may be excellent merchants, there was no doubt in our minds that the French side was the place to eat. We drove back over the hill, then raced down the autobahn and back to Marigot.

  Walking along the narrow streets, we wandered into a marina filled with sailboats and powerboats. Their gangplanks rested on the dock, affording their owners easy access to the dozens of restaurants and shops along the water. Menus were posted on easels, and we moved from one to the next, pausing at a small café called Tropicana. All twelve of its little cloth-covered tables were full, but the charming maître d�
� assured us that his best table in front was about to become vacant; if we could wait five minutes, he would get it ready. Just being around this tanned, gorgeous young Frenchman made us feel exotic and foreign. We turned and leaned on the railing to watch the boats. Our stomachs growled.

  A bronzed boy with shoulder-length straw-colored hair climbed down from the pier into a rubber dinghy. No more than twelve or thirteen years old, he untied his little boat, started the engine, and sped out of the marina. As we watched, I thought how different Jesse’s life of ski racing would have been had he grown up by the sea instead of in the mountains.

  “I wonder if that boy goes to school or just lives on a boat,” I contemplated out loud.

  “Madame, monsieur, s’il vous plaît,” we heard from behind, and gratefully settled in at the promised front table.

  We shared a salad of well-chilled baby greens topped with warm, slightly melted rounds of goat cheese; the contrast of temperatures elevated the word salad to a new level. The sun glistened on the white sailboats and the heat blazed on the sidewalk just beyond our table, but we remained cool under our little awning. As we mopped up the last crumbles of cheese and drizzles of vinaigrette, our host presented us each with a daily special. The roast chicken was an entire half a bird, brown, crispy, and smothered with shallots sautéed in red wine. A huge bowl of pommes frites was placed in the center of the table, and to this day, I believe Tropicana makes the best in the universe. Deep golden brown and slightly crispy on the outside, they have a center of velvety potato that tastes as earthy as the ground from which they were dug. They were perfect.

  “I feel like we’re living in heaven,” I replied. “Let’s come for lunch once a week.”

  “I hope we find some restaurant equipment at PDG,” Bob said, remembering we weren’t on vacation. “We also need to buy a bed so we can move out of the hotel.” We shared a tarte tatin piping hot from the oven for dessert, the apples rich with fragrance, their perfume almost ethereal. Ready for a nap, we reluctantly went in search of PDG.

  The directions were a little sketchy. We had a map of St. Martin, but Cole Bay is a maze of roads that wind their way between warehouses and auto dealerships, around boatyards and little houses. Agatha and Rosalind had tried to tell us how to find PDG, but Anguillians have their own terminology for direction. The word above means east and below means west. So our directions read something like this: “Drive below till you reach an upstairs building with motorcycles. Turn and go up to the bakery. Go above at the bakery, then below where the old tamarind tree was. PDG right there.”

  We found the motorcycle building (a Harley-Davidson dealership with two stories—hence, an upstairs building) and turned to the right. That was easy because there was no left, but finding the bakery and a tree that was no longer there proved hopeless. Around and around, all roads led back to the motorcycles. Eventually we turned down a new street and triumphantly spotted PDG boldly marked on the side of a warehouse.

  Jon, the owner and a transplant from Holland, was knowledgeable about outfitting a kitchen, but his inventory was too casual for what we had in mind. We examined his dinnerware selection, looking at sturdy dishes like those you might see in a diner and thick-rimmed wineglasses not at all suitable for the Lafite Rothschild Bob intended to serve. We looked at plastic ashtrays, blenders, bus tubs, and poultry shears. Most of the things we liked were in catalogs and needed to be special-ordered from the States.

  “You want to check the flights to Miami or should I?” Bob said back in the car.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “It’s risky to order everything from catalogs.”

  We had spotted a furniture store called La Casa near the Harley-Davidson dealership and on the way back stopped to look at beds. I hated to spend the $1,000 on a mattress and box spring with no brand name, but we needed to check out of the hotel.

  “How can we get it to Anguilla?” I asked the stout saleswoman.

  “No problem,” she said. “We’ll deliver it to the Lady Odessa.”

  “What’s the Lady Odessa?”Bob asked, curious.

  “It’s the freight boat that go to Anguilla. We deliver things to it all the time. It come over to Marigot every morning and waits at the dock until ’round two o’clock. Anything you need from St. Martin can be delivered to them. You does pay the cap’n once he reach Anguilla—it probably twenty-five or thirty dollars for a bed.”

  “Is that the boat I’ve seen loaded with goats and cases of Heineken at the ferry dock?” Bob asked.

  “That’s the one,” she said.

  We thanked her and drove back to Marigot, not looking forward to another ferry ride.

  The trip back was nothing like Tabitha. We sat outside on the top deck of the Deluxe, and the glorious day caressed us from all around. Transported from St. Martin’s lush, green mountains back to our own island paradise, we watched three Anguillian fishing boats race each other on either side of our ferry. The small, open boats were flying over the sea, each maneuvering from the top of one wave to the top of the next in an exhilarating splash of blue. The wind tore through our hair, and salt spray occasionally blew over the boat, sprinkling us and forming rainbows against the backdrop of St. Martin. As we approached Anguilla I could see the pristine white domes of Cap Juluca, the long white stretch of Rendezvous Bay, and the three West Indian cottage-style peaks of the ferry terminal. A thick grove of palm trees lined the beach to the right, and the water looked more green than blue as we neared the shore. I took in the beauty of the harbor and wondered why more people didn’t live here. Why would anyone choose to live surrounded by concrete and traffic rather than fishing boats, water, and palm trees?

  Back at the hotel, our island advisors were all behind the front desk. We reported the day’s events and Bernice, Joshua’s daughter, confirmed Miami as our next course of action.

  “Dada brings in containers from there all the time,” she said. “Why you don’t go call and ask him how to do it?”

  While Bob made notes of Joshua’s instructions, I sat on the balcony and summarized our position. We were thousands of miles from home, investing our life savings into reconstructing a building on someone else’s land. We had not yet been granted our license and work permits from the government, and money would be tight. We were being impulsive, and I knew it. But Anguilla’s allure was so seductive, we would do whatever it took to make it work.

  Bob joined me on the balcony and recapped Joshua’s conversation. “They load everything in Miami into tractor-trailer bodies, called containers, and stack them on a boat. We have to call Sheila Haskins, the Tropical Shipping agent, to make the arrangements. He also gave me prices on freight, and it’s not inexpensive; a twenty-foot container from Miami to Anguilla is twenty-seven hundred dollars, and a forty-footer is forty-two hundred dollars.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go to Vermont, pack up our things, and call the movers. Then I’ll go to Miami, buy everything we need, and ship it down. You can stay here and keep pushing for our work permits and alien land-holding license.”

  “You can’t do all that yourself,” Bob said.

  But I was determined. “Look, if we both go, I think everything here will stop. Out of sight, out of mind. Bennie means well, but he’s a busy guy, and if somebody doesn’t stay on top of this, I’ve got a feeling it won’t go any further.”

  “You think you can buy the lumber?” Bob was giving in a little.

  “I’ll just take your list into Home Depot—they’ll price it all and deliver it. It’s easy. Besides, they do have phones in Miami, you know. Also, what if you need to measure something else on the building or make a change to the plans? Wouldn’t it be better if you were here?” I knew that would cinch it.

  “Okay,” Bob conceded. “But if you can’t do it alone, I’ll come up to help.”

  “We’ll save on plane fare this way,” I added. “Also, if I get everything in Vermont shipped quickly, maybe you can unpack and organize the house before I get
back.”

  We stood on the balcony, holding on to each other, staring out at the sea for a very long time.

  At the airport the next morning, I was bluntly reminded of my status here by a small sign:

  DEPARTURE TAX

  Belongers: $10.00 E.C.

  Non-Belongers: $25.00 E.C.

  I said goodbye to Bob after reviewing the lists a final time, and caught one last glimpse of him waving as the plane lumbered onto the runway. I stared out the window as we took off, picking out Joshua’s house and then the sleepy harbor at Sandy Ground. Spotting the restaurant, I mashed my head against the window trying to see it for as long as possible. The color of the water looked like a painter’s palette—blues and greens mingled with white where the waves broke over the reefs or hit the shore. When Anguilla disappeared from view, I pulled out a pad and pen and made a list of things to do in Vermont.

  I packed our house in record time. After three eighteen-hour days, a forty-foot tractor-trailer loaded with everything we owned pulled out of our yard, destined to become a container in Miami. I stood for a minute in our empty living room and looked out at the view. Our spring green fields rolled away from the house to the edge of the woods. Across the valley, the historic white clock tower at Dartmouth College was nestled in the hills. In the distance, Mt. Ascutney rose majestically over the Connecticut River. I listed the house with a broker, said goodbye to several neighbors, and drove down our hill for the last time, trying not to look back.

  With a generous bag of Chinese food, I drove to Betsy and Gary’s house for a farewell feast. Over the years Betsy had become my food ally. Together we had baked pies, canned peaches, and put every restaurant within a hundred miles through its paces.

  They were in rare form. Over a dinner of ginger chicken with string beans and soft-shell crab with black bean sauce, Gary bitched about taxes and Betsy, perpetually stuck in the sixties with her long black hair, rumpled sweatshirt, and fuzzy clogs, rolled her eyes. I was going to miss them. I caught myself staring out the window of their old farmhouse at the herd of Black Angus cattle and realized it was the end of an era.