A Trip to the Beach

by Melinda Blanchard

  If we came to a slow crawl in an endless line of cars, or if traffic was stopped entirely, Rawldy was usually at the front of the line. Island time, we’d remind ourselves.

  Bob and I settled into the leisurely pace, breathing deeper and walking slower. Always in shorts and sandals, we pictured friends up north coping with sleet and slush. Accustomed to the bright blue sky and mornings of intense yellow sunlight, we even began to find a welcome relief in the occasional rain. Tourists, on the other hand, had not come for rain. A morning drizzle was tolerated in good spirits by most—after all, what’s so bad about spending a morning on the balcony reading a good book? A little respite before an afternoon of sun could easily be accepted.

  An entire day of rain was pushing it, though, and two consecutive days brought out the cranky side of visitors. “What’s with the weather?” they’d ask Bob in the dining room each night. “Does it always rain in Anguilla? We went to St. Barts last year and had perfect weather.” He’d explain that St. Barts was only fifteen miles away and usually had the same weather as we did, and actually, it was even a little rainier there because of that island’s mountains. He assured them that if it was raining in Anguilla, it was most likely raining in St. Barts as well.

  Far worse than the occasional shower, however, were Anguilla’s infamous Christmas winds. Anguilla’s weather is usually constant, with an average temperature of eighty degrees and annual rainfall of thirty-five inches. It’s the most northerly of the Leeward Islands, with a gentle trade wind blowing from the east. But just as Provence is visited by the cold, relentless wind of the mistral and California has its Santa Anas, Anguilla was occasionally plagued by the Christmas winds, which sometimes lingered into January. The trade winds, usually from the east, would shift around to the west, pick up speed, and turn into a gale. Glasses and flowers blew off tables in the dining room, and we would have to lock all the shutters, closing out the gardens and fountains, making the restaurant feel cramped and claustrophobic. Rain pounded against the building in cold gusts and seeped through the louvers, soaking tablecloths and seat cushions on the western side. Customers were hostile. Cancellations and no-shows were rampant, and tempers were short among the soggy souls who did turn up.

  After a week of Christmas winds, the entire island sank into a melancholy funk. The open-air restaurants closed, taxi drivers had few fares, and disappointed guests were forced to stay in their rooms.

  Even the Blanchard’s kitchen crew sulked. Bug came to work in a wool hat. “Too mucha water,” he grumbled. “I gonna build an ark if this keep up.”

  But ten days after the winds began, they blew themselves away abruptly one night during dinner. As we cautiously opened the shutters the mood in the restaurant turned cheerful. The next morning dawned crystal clear, the sun started to dry the island out, and a wave of contentment swept over our thirty-five square miles of paradise. Tourists went back to lolling on the beach and told horror stories about the weather to naive new arrivals. Anguilla returned to normal, and Bug put aside his boatbuilding plans.

  Crisp Thai Snapper

  One of our best-selling items on the menu turned out to be the crispy crusted snapper with a Thai citrus sauce. Luckily, it was also one of the easiest dishes to prepare, so anyone in the kitchen could help as orders came in.

  For the snapper, just spread a thin layer of coarse-grained mustard on each fillet. Then press a layer of shredded (uncooked) Idaho potato firmly on top of the mustard. Sauté in a little olive oil, potato side up, for about two minutes. Turn over carefully and cook until potato is crispy and brown.

  The sauce is just as easy. For four servings, whisk together 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice with 1/4 cup honey until the honey dissolves. Add 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 teaspoons minced ginger, 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic, and mix well. Whisking constantly, add 1/2 cup vegetable oil in a slow, steady stream until well blended.

  Conversation in the kitchen one night centered on the news of the first cruise ship to arrive in Anguilla. “She a new brand boat,” Shabby said, glowing with excitement. “From Germany. She gonna leave Santo Domingo and come every other Sunday. We all gonna have to learn German ’cause next year we be full of German tourists. Once these people see how beautiful it is here, they’ll go home and tell all their friends ’bout Anguilla.”

  The taxi men who came through the kitchen that night were ecstatic about the new ship. I gave Nell a Caesar salad and Teddy a piece of cheesecake while they made their case. No more hanging out under a tree waiting for business, they said. They were ready to provide island tours for the masses. A few even debated ordering larger vans to accommodate the anticipated hordes of people. Merchants were going to set up temporary stalls for T-shirts and gifts, and the beach bars in Sandy Ground prepared special lunch menus in German.

  Twelve hundred people arriving on this tiny rock was big news indeed, and though many islanders saw it as a real breakthrough for business, there were skeptics as well. “Who will clean up their litter on the beach?” people asked. “Whose bathrooms will they use?”

  But to me, the most important question raised was “What about all the tourists who come to Anguilla to get away from cruise ships and crowds?” The debate intensified, and we heard the pros and cons repeated all over the island. Everyone had an opinion.

  The first big Sunday arrived, and we joined the crowd of locals perched on the cliff overlooking the sleepy harbor of Sandy Ground. There it was—a white monster of a boat that appeared to be half the length of the entire bay.

  “It’s huge,” I whispered to Bob. “It’s like an invasion.”

  “Mel,” he said, “you can’t deny the people here their right to expand their economy. Think of what this could do for the taxi drivers alone.”

  “But I’m worried about the tourists who love that there are so few people here; they’ll stop coming. It’ll make Anguilla more like St. Martin.”

  I caught bits and pieces of conversations around me in the crowd as everyone eyed the giant vessel. Some looked on with admiration, others sounded apprehensive. We decided to drive down the hill into Sandy Ground to get a firsthand look. A banner hung from posts on the beach: WILLKOMMEN AUF ANGUILLA.

  But where were the twelve hundred tourists spewing onto the beach, and why were the taxi drivers still just hanging around? Only a few cruise passengers chose to come ashore, and they were examining the T-shirts for sale; other than that, not much was going on.

  Over the next few weeks local enthusiasm for the German cruise ship faded. Bob and I felt bad that hopes had been dashed and plans for German lessons were no longer in the offing. Secretly, though, we were relieved. The cruise ship experiment ended after the initial trial run, and Anguilla, for the time being at least, remained a quiet hideaway.

  Our lives had settled into an Anguillian rhythm during the day. Each morning on the way to the restaurant Bob and I waved to Elbert the goat herder. We put in about four hours of prep work in the kitchen along with Marcus, who always arrived a little late. Marcus had no concept of time and no structure in his life except for the few hours a day he worked with us. We’d given up trying to make him come on time, and since he continued to break most pieces of equipment he touched, his duties had been restricted to shucking corn, peeling and chopping potatoes and carrots, and washing pots and pans. Sometimes Marcus was so late that we were just finishing our work as he arrived. Rather than wait for him to do his job, we left him there to lock up when he finished.

  After cooking each morning, Bob would drop me off at home to do my ordering, pay bills, and add up the receipts from the night before. I juggled phone calls from London, New York, and Düsseldorf, taking dinner reservations from people I’d never met. They’d either heard about Blanchard’s from customers who had just returned home or read about us in the articles that were starting to appear in various publications.

  Bob would head for The Valley in search of the inevitable missing ingredient. I’d send him on a mission to find tomatoes or perhaps some cream
. If a boat had just come in, the undertaking was relatively easy—two or three stops and he might have what we needed for that night’s menu. More often than not we would either do without or make a quick trip to St. Martin.

  Lunch became the high point of our day as we rotated our way through all the restaurants on the island. Sitting at the beach bar at Cap Juluca with a swordfish sandwich topped with grilled onions and local hot sauce, or at Uncle Ernie’s eating grilled chicken and ribs, we felt as if we were on vacation for an hour or two each day. Uncle Ernie’s was just the sort of place we’d had in mind when we first thought about opening a restaurant on Anguilla: two Weber grills, three tables in the sand shaded by Heineken umbrellas, and chicken, ribs, or fish with fries for $5. Ernie served lunch only and had an easy life. I often wondered how different our lives would have been had our rent allowed us to have a simpler business. We’d probably be bored.

  An afternoon nap became an essential part of our routine if we were to make it through dinner without yawning. We’d sleep from about two to four, and then our alarm clock would remind us it was time to confirm all the reservations that had been left on the answering machine. By five o’clock, we were back at the restaurant, getting ready for another curtain call.

  Every Saturday Roxana’s parents earned some extra money by setting up a tent by North Hill Road and serving lunch to passersby. Vi, Roxana’s mother, and several of her friends from church spent two days preparing bull-foot soup, salt fish, conch stew, johnnycakes, and sweet-potato dumplings; her husband, Bernard, organized the tables and chairs, grills, and ice coolers.

  I consider myself an adventurous eater, but it took some coaxing from Garrilin and little Roxana before I sampled the bull-foot soup. The two of them laughed when I grimaced and told them all I could imagine were giant brown bulls with hooves the size of footballs. But I joined them at the tent one Saturday specifically to try the sweet-potato dumplings. Roxana rubbed her tummy and said, “Mel, you gonna love these. Everybody in Anguilla love these.”

  As Garrilin brought our dumplings to the table, she confessed, “Mel, you seen these leaves before.”

  I couldn’t imagine what she meant.

  “See, the potato wrap with sea grape leaves. Bernard and Roxana pick these from in front of Blanchard’s. They your leaves.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “We have lots more they can have.” I looked at the green bundles. They were bigger than I’d expected—about six inches long and almost three inches around.

  “These are huge. Are we each really eating a whole one?” I asked Garrilin.

  “They big, yes. Each one weigh a pound. But you gonna love it, man.”

  “Tell me how they’re made,” I said.

  “We take two, maybe three leaves, dependin’ on size, and roll them around the filling. Our sweet potato not like yours, you know. It white inside. Anyway, then we chop up the boil potato with spice and butter and nutmeg. If the potato ain’ sweet enough, we add a little sugar.”

  “What kind of spice?” I asked.

  “You know. Spice. We grind up those little brown sticks—they look like bark.”

  “You mean cinnamon?”

  “Yeah, man. I forget you call it cinnamon. We jus’ call it spice.”

  Roxana interrupted, “Garrilin, you forget to boil the leaves. Mommy boil the leaves before she roll ’em.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Garrilin stood corrected. The sea grape leaves were too stiff right off the tree, so they had to be boiled to make them pliable, she explained.

  “Then,” she continued, “we take strips of cloth—usually from ol’ sacks a flour—an’ we tie the leaves ’round the potato so they hold when they cook in the water. That all we do.”

  I carefully unwrapped my dumpling, hating to pull apart such a perfect package. Three big leaves unfolded like a flower, revealing the sweet, steaming log inside. The spice, as Garrilin had called it, made the white potato brown, and it was smooth as silk on the outside with a few tiny ridges formed by the edges of the leaves.

  Had I not known it was a potato filling, I’m not sure I would have guessed. I’m a big fan of cinnamon, so I loved the flavor, and the texture was like a firm bread pudding—another one of my favorites.

  While I was eating, Garrilin went back to the food table under the tent and brought back more things for me to try.

  “Here, Mel,” she said. “This pigeon pea soup. You see the peas dryin’ out in people’s yards or on cisterns—anywhere they have space. We dry the pods in the sun and use ’em in rice or soup. Everyone in Anguilla eat peas in somethin’ most every day.”

  I had eaten rice and peas at Cora Lee’s often and was familiar with the fact that what were called peas here would be beans back home. Tiny brown flecks, similar to lentils, floated in a broth with carrots, onions, and celery. There were dumplings in the soup as well, these made from flour, cornmeal, and water, and shaped into two-inch torpedoes that reminded me of matzoh balls.

  “Where’s Mac today?” I asked.

  “I dunno wha’ keepin’ he back. He say he meet us here. Musta got a puncture in he tire.”

  Then came the moment of truth. Garrilin placed a bowl in front of me. She and Roxana fell silent. There was no way I could get out of giving it a try. “It’s just the name I don’t like,” I explained. “I wish I didn’t know what was in it.”

  “Try it,” Roxana urged.

  I’ve never been able to refuse the pleas of a six-year-old with big black eyes, her long lashes fluttering a little flirtatiously. In the end, the bull-foot soup was quite good—a bit like beef and barley, but instead of the barley, it had more of the same flour dumplings as the pigeon pea soup. There were red and green peppers, lots of onions, and a few pieces of the dreaded bull foot itself. It was very good, I admitted, but the name would probably still keep me from ordering it too often.

  At work that night Garrilin announced in the kitchen, “Mel eat like we today.”

  Bug said, “She comin’. She comin’.”

  Chapter 10

  Marcus lived with his uncle Julius, a fisherman from West End whose lackadaisical lifestyle served as a sharp contrast to the atmosphere at Blanchard’s. Because he was the only member of our staff who worked in the morning, Marcus wasn’t as much a part of the Blanchard family as the others. Bob and I liked him, though, and felt something of a parental responsibility toward him in spite of his less-than-perfect performance as an employee. He walked with a playful bounce in his step and always seemed to be smiling. No job was too menial for Marcus, and in fact he often volunteered to do additional mopping or scrubbing when he saw the need. His enthusiasm made up for the broken equipment and his lateness.

  On more than one occasion we stopped by the restaurant while Marcus was still cleaning up and found several of his friends in the kitchen watching him work. We felt a little uncomfortable about our kitchen being used as a gathering place and asked Marcus to meet his friends when he was done.

  “I ain’ got no trans,” Marcus said. “They jus’ here to give me a liff.”

  There is a code of silence that exists in every workplace when it comes to turning in another employee, but in Anguilla, telling the boss that a co-worker is doing something wrong is almost a violation of national honor. Informants can be permanently ostracized. So when one of our staff came to us to talk about Marcus, we recognized the risk he was taking.

  He arrived at our house early one Sunday morning and made us promise not to tell Marcus—or anyone else—that he had come. After Bob and I solemnly swore ourselves to secrecy, he took a deep breath and blurted out his news.

  “Marcus dealin’ drugs from the kitchen.” He paused, waiting for a reaction, but we were dumbfounded. “You gotta get ridda he,” we were cautioned. “He a bad dude, an’ if the police catches him dealin’ drugs at Blanchard’s, you in trouble too. One a he friends a big dealer. Marcus work for he.”

  “Damn that Marcus,” Bob said. “I can’t believe he would do this to us. Do you think t
he rest of the staff knows about this?”

  “Everybody know ’cept you.” He looked at us apologetically, as if he had just insulted us. “He gonna bring the whole place down if you ain’ get ridda he.”

  “Look,” I said. “First of all, I want to tell you how grateful we are that you came here to tell us about Marcus. I know how difficult it must have been for you to make that decision, and it means so much to us that you did.”

  “You’s good people, and Blanchard’s is too important to the rest of we. I had to say somethin’.”

  “We’ll let him go tomorrow morning, and we will not mention your name to anyone,” I promised.

  “Poor Marcus,” Bob said.

  “Poor Marcus, nuttin’.” Our informant was disgusted. “He a bad dude.” With that he got up to leave, and as we thanked him again for coming forward, he repeated, “Marcus a bad dude.”

  He drove away, and I immediately said, “Bob, we have to get some advice on how to handle this. I know we have to let him go, but what if we fire him and he complains to the labor department? We don’t really have any proof, and we could end up in big trouble. I think we should call Bennie and see what he thinks.”

  “Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of that. Just what we need. We try to fire a drug dealer, and the labor department comes down on us because we can’t prove it.”

  I caught Bennie at home just as he was leaving for church. He knew I wouldn’t be calling on Sunday morning unless it was important, so he insisted I give him a full report. “It’s very easy,” Bennie said when I finished, relishing his role as our advisor. “You do have to fire the boy, but you must notify the labor department before he has a chance to go in and make a formal complaint. Write a letter to him explaining why you are letting him go. Tell him you cannot tolerate any chance of drug activity at your place of business, and therefore you are not giving him the usual required notice. Send a copy to the labor department, asking them to keep it on file. That’s all you need to do to protect yourself.”