As Flies to Whatless Boys Page 19
Eventually we huddled together for our meeting. Taking a good deal longer than we’d expected, Mr. Carr again presiding as chair. Our problem, of course, was that standing directly between the shore and our crated-up Satellite stretched the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of the stone jetty. Rising a good five-feet above the level of the sand, a foot above the surface of the water at full tide.
Clearly we had but two options. We could move our Satellite round the jetty, in order to get it up onto the beach, or we could somehow move the crate over it.
After several hours of heated discussion, with a handful of not-altogether-idle threats—tensions escalating with the freshly retrieved bottle of Mr. Whitechurch’s whiskey—we came at last to a consensus. We elected the latter option. That is to say, we’d move our Satellite over the obstacle of the stone jetty, but by way of tumbling.
Mr. Wood, who conceived the plan, used his forearm to wipe an ample page clean in the sand, his pointer-finger as a drawing-pencil. He illustrated this tumbling action for us, later copied by Papee into his notebook—
By this time the tide was receding fast, leaving our Satellite sitting on the rust-stained sand in but a half-foot of water. Much to our favour. So after winching—and simultaneously shoving—our crate a strenuous half-dozen feet closer to the stone jetty, we secured ropes round the top part. Using Captain Maynard’s hand winch to slowly pull the crate over. Simultaneously raising up the back edge off the sand with bamboo levers.
After several stressful hours of shoving, jostling, and winching—not to mention a good deal of rather nasty cursing—our tumble was achieved. In but a split second, without any forewarning a-tall, the front side of our crate dropped down with a tremendous BOOD-DOOM onto the stone jetty. Followed by a soft, almost musical ping-pa-ding-ping of loose metal pieces colliding together inside the box. The falling crate almost crushing little Mr. Whitechurch beneath it, there still pulling against one of the ropes.
We looked round at each other silent, boobooloops again. Hardly believing it had taken us the entire afternoon to accomplish nothing more than the Satellite’s tumble. Because by this hour the sun was descending behind the mountains at our backs. So once again, exhausted-out, we decided we’d accomplished enough for the day. Retiring, content, back to our compound.
Thus it took us the whole of our second day to complete #2 of Mr. Wood’s plan. With the whole of our third and most strenuous day so far at Chaguabarriga—taking turns one after the next on Captain Maynard’s hand winch—dedicated to accomplishing #3.
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It was already approaching noon on our fourth morning when Papee—as usual the first to stir from out his sleep—stretched his foot down from his hammock to detect a peculiar wetness with his toes. His nostrils simultaneously assaulted by a vile, sulfurous stench.
He sounded out a cry of alarm.
The rest of us awakening, startled, looking round to see that overnight our compound had been flooded over by several inches of putrid-smelling water. Only a handful of still-dry patches poking out here and there above its mirrored ink-black surface. Including the mound at the centre of our compound with its bamboo pole, tattered flag fluttering listless above.
Son, the only thing I could think about was my hummingbird book—I’d fallen asleep with it here inside my hammock, otherwise it would surely’ve been ruined.
On the previous night a sinister moon had risen up above the compound. A blue moon, according to Mr. Carr. Yet that moon was coloured a most decisive green. So were the lot of us—we just couldn’t find no escape a-tall from its eerie rays. Even as we sealed weself up inside the bananaskins of our hammocks.
Surely that moon had something to do with all this water?
At last Mr. Carr spoke up, offering a kinda confirmation—
Extreme high tide, gentlemen, he says. I’m afraid she comes round every full moon. Raising up the pond o’ sweet water to our west, salt-lake to our east. The both o’ them meeting up precisely here.
With that Mr. Carr spat into the mercury-tinted water, sounding more pestered than perturbed. The rest of us staring at a few sad ripples radiating from his splotch of phlegm.
Mr. Carr adding as an afterthought—
Though I’ve never before seen her nearly this high. With a bit o’ luck she’ll recede again in a wee few hours!
Mr. Carr swung heself round to step down cautious from out his hammock. Dressed, same as the rest of us, in his merino vestshirt and tatty drawers. He bent over, fumbling beneath the murky water, locating his boots and stepping invisible inside them, one-by-one. Then he retrieved his trousers and canvas jersey from someplace beneath the water, wrung them out, and spread them cross the rope of his hammock to dry. He pulled on his soggy West Indian wife, wiping his forehead and shaking off his hands. Mr. Carr went off wading through the water. Dragging his invisible boots. The rest of us assuming he’d gone in search of a dry spot to use the toilet.
But he returned in a matter of minutes. Only now he came running towards us in a panic—great splashing lunges—muddy trail following behind in his wake.
He came to a halt. Mr. Carr looked shaken—on the verge of tears—his sunburnt face now the same mouldy-blue, cadaverous colour as the rest of his gaunt body—
Gentlemen, he says, breathing hard, his face and chest dripping. She’s risen up high as the gardens! All my hard work—my weeks n’ weeks o’ clearing n’ digging n’ planting!
Mr. Carr swallowed, his chest heaving—
We’ve got to do something to hold her back. Or drain her out!
Now he looked round at us, desperate. At all our sleepy, stonefaced expressions—
We’ve got to do something to save the gardens!
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It took us a good few minutes to mobilise, despite Mr. Carr’s urging. We went off traipsing through the shallow swampwater, dragging our invisible boots, dressed in our merinos and tatty drawers. After a considerable effort we arrived at Mr. Carr’s gardens, only to confirm for weself what he’d already reported. The water high as the low stone walls demarcating the northern edges of the plots, commencing to spill over them, into the newly planted fields. Some of these plots already flooded halfway up. Most distressing of all, a number of newborn, bright-green sweet pea shootlings had already been uprooted. They lay before us, floating cheerless as orphans on the black surface.
Mr. Carr dropped down to he hands and knees in the muck. Making a frustrated attempt to replant the shootlings in they former holes beneath the water. But after a few seconds they floated back up.
Mr. Carr stood, shaking he hands dry. Looking round at us with the forlorn expression of a wounded potcake. He led us along the front border of the flooded gardens, crossing over the previously dry riverbed, already a few inches deep. Mr. Carr called for a quick meeting on the high ground atop the plantains field. Beneath the solitary coconut palm John had bicycled up on our first afternoon at Chaguabarriga—already that day seemed donkey’s-ages ago.
This time, as opposed to the coconut palm’s cool shade, we stood in a patch of welcome sun. Warming weself and shifting leg-to-leg in little hops of our soggy boots. Like awkward warblers drying off they feathers after a summer sprinkling.
Meanwhile Mr. Carr, in the most persuasive language he could summon, laid out his twofold plan of attack—
First, he says, the previously dry riverbed bisecting gardens—and forming a natural runoff in the event of flooding—must be dug out considerably deeper. Second, the sea inlet feeding the drinking pond to the west of the compound must be closed off—with a chagua-packed stonewall—the swamp on that side subsequently drained.
Here Mr. Carr paused to catch he breath. The rest of us only staring at him confuffled, stonefaced—we hadn’t even woken up proper yet, much less to worry we heads deciphering-out his plan.
After a minute of silence Mr. Wood raised a polite objection to the second phase of Mr. Carr’s strategy. He pointed out that by cutting off and dr
aining the brackish pond, we’d effectively be depleting our only source of drinking water.
Mr. Carr assured him that the brackish pond had already been contaminated with seawater. And in any case, he explained, with the onset of the rainy season, soon to be upon us, we’d have a veritable river flowing through the gardens. Providing us with more drinking water than we’d ever need. And much safer water than we were presently consuming out the pond.
Now Mr. Carr crouched down, taking up a short stick, scratching out an illustration of his plan for us in the dirt—
According to he strategy the stones needed to construct the seawalls—and the bulwarks we’d build on both sides of the proposed channel—could be obtained easy enough by deconstructing the walls dividing the gardens. Those walls, Mr. Carr pointed out, were merely decorative. All we’d need to do was shift the stones. Half of us, he explained, could dedicate weself to this job. Whilst the remainder commenced to digging out the channel.
Mr. Carr looked up from his elaborate plan, pleased as punch with heself. Only to confront all our puzzled, still-confuffled faces. Still shifting leg-to-leg like warblers in our soggy boots.
Yet despite it all, Mr. Carr smiled. For the first time on that eventful morning of our fourth day at Chaguabarriga—
Gentlemen, he says, which of you would like to volunteer for which task?
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True to Mr. Carr’s word the floodwaters did not recede that day. Nor the following. On the contrary, the water inundating the newly planted gardens seemed to rise higher. Yet only a handful of us assisted Mr. Carr in he efforts to save them. They included Papee & me & Mr. Whitechurch. Also Mr. Wood and Mr. Hemmingway, together with they wives and children when they came ashore. John assisted as well—Orinoko and Esteban stuck in they mountain village till the path drained-out.
The other pioneers took up residence on the beach. This they discovered was the driest area of the estate north of the flooded gardens. Following Mr. Craddock’s lead they took they hammocks down from the inundated cottage, retying them beneath the grove of casuarinas a hundred yards up from shore. There, and on the beach, was where they congregated during the day. Sleeping the nights in the hulk of Captain Taylor’s schooner, which they found was dry & protected & comfortable enough.
Collecting up as much wood as they could find, the defector-pioneers built a large bonfire there on the beach. They attempted to bust apart the Satellite’s crate and use those boards too, but Mr. Frank had done such a sound job constructing it that they soon gave up. They moved the cast-iron pot from the waterlogged compound, setting it down atop the flames. The pot still containing a quantity of fresh turtle-stew, the animal harpooned by John just off the beach, early the previous morning whilst the rest of us were still asleep. This stew the defectors consumed with the last of Mr. Whitechurch’s whiskey, ganging up on Captain Maynard to get they hands on the final bottles.
Meanwhile the rest of us dedicated weself to constructing restraining walls round the western shore of the bay. In hope of staving off the still-rising floodwater. The short walls surrounding the inundated gardens were disassembled quick enough, stones dragged cross the flooded ground on a sled of John’s design: a wide plank with skegs and a loop of rope attached at the front to form the yoke, two of us fitting weself inside shoulder-to-shoulder to drag it along. Another group—these under the direction of Mr. Whitechurch—busied theyself digging out the riverbed running through the gardens. Continuing onwards with they bulwarked channel all the way to the sea.
But son, I couldn’t begin to describe for you how disagreeable were these labours. Undertaken in the most miserable conditions imaginable. Our waterlogged clothes filling up with every manner of muck and debris, whilst leeches and other unseen tropical insects festered upon our blood. Yet after nearly two days, according to Mr. Carr’s notched stick, the flood had not receded an inch.
Then, in the late-afternoon hours of our second day, we were distracted by a soft though clearly discernable sucking noise. Coming from someplace we couldn’t pinpoint. Now we looked round at each other perplexed, the sound growing bolder—broader—till it achieved a slow-and-steady hiss. All-in-a-sudden, before we scarcely had a chance to take it in, a wave three-feet tall came busting down the bulwarked channel. Almost flushing little Mr. Whitechurch, caught standing in the middle still holding his shovel, out to sea with it!
In a matter of minutes the whole of Mr. Carr’s gardens were drained. Just so. In a single breath. Only a few shallow puddles remained, turned to flaming mirrors by the setting sun. And by the time we managed to drag weself back to the compound—even refusing a seabath at the beach to avoid a nasty confrontation with those deserters—we found that our clearing, too, had drained out dogbone-dry.
Yet no sooner had we eaten our supper—and flung our bone-weary bodies inside our hammocks—when the rains began. Not the gentle, soft, pleasant kinda sprinklings we’d grown accustomed to, coming in the early-morning hours. That syncopated pac-pac-pac of fat raindrops falling on the wide sea grape leaves, whilst we lulled half-asleep inside our hammocks. This was a deluge: it pelted us all night long. Hard, steady, punctuated only by bouts of thunder and lightning. All of us huddled together beneath the piece of thatch at the far end of our cottage, arms wrapped round each other for warmth.
Towards daybreak it tapered off, finally coming to a halt. The morning sun appeared huge and hot, as we tumbled one after the next into our waterlogged hammocks. Steam rising up round us from the sopping dirt. All of us snoring-way almost before we could shut our eyes. Our dreams transporting us to that other, safer side of the sea.
Papee had overseen production at Stevens Millworks, the largest paper manufactory in all Britain, for nearly a decade. Ever since he’d moved our family from the Isle of Wight, back to East London. Because at that time Papee had been taken on by Mr. Stevens to fit out his new mill—a paper manufactory the likes of which nobody’d never seen before. Papee designed and built the mill’s fourdrinier machines. For nearly a decade he’d kept them running—it was due to Papee’s innovations that those machines achieved record speed: fourteen yards per minute.
In those days my father was renowned amongst papermakers, and not only in East London.
Then, when Britain was hit by the nationwide shortage of cotton rags, and even the queen’s beggars learnt a new fashion—that of going about the kingdom bare-arsed—it was Papee who made the switch to timber as the raw material for pulp. He was the first one to do it. And not just mulberry neither: a variety of woods and other plant substances—even grasses—that Papee travelled the English countryside in search of and experimented with to determine they precise beating-times and techniques—
Paper’s made in the beater, he always boasted. And there isn’t a papermaker in all Blighty knows the beater better than me!
In those days Papee used to take me along on some of his trips to the countryside too. But once Mr. Stevens and his foreman had all Papee’s collected knowledge at they disposal—and they’d already made good money selling off his secrets to the other manufactories—he was rendered redundant. Just so. Now my father was called in only on occasion. When one of the fourdrinier machines broke down, or the mill met with some other calamity. And it was fortunate for us, I suppose, that one of those same emergencies happened to coincide with the finish of the Satellite’s construction project with Mr. Frank. With its final crating-up in preparation for our departure. Because now Papee could pocket some of the funds necessary for our trip to Trinidad.
During those days he directed the biweekly meetings of our own East End branch of the TES heself. That is, unless Mr. Etzler or Mr. Stollmeyer showed up, which was rare as they focused they energies on the more lucrative branches. Mum and the girls generally went along to Papee’s meetings too, even after a full day at Suffolk Dyers. But son, despite that I didn’t have any responsibilities a-tall excepting my studies—which by that time I’d learnt easy enough to ignore—I didn’t give a pum about
those meetings. If Marguerite wasn’t going to Trinidad, then I didn’t want nothing to do with none of it a-tall.
Then, one night as I lay in my bed, half-asleep, I got an idea. I could attend one of the meetings—not in we own district, but in Knightsbridge. Where I knew the Whitechurches were members. I could deliver a note to Marguerite via she aunt. A note persuading her to come with me to Trinidad. Suddenly it all seemed clear and simple and easy enough—like if the feat was accomplished already! All I had to do was convince her that love meant more than her moral values. That her stern principles didn’t amount to nothing compared to the stirrings of she own heart.
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I sat up in my bed five nights straight struggling to compose this note. X-ing it out and rewriting it and X-ing it out again. I went through dozens of slips of paper. Ripped in two and crumpled up and tossed into the corner till they piled up tall as the mattress-self. Till inevitably, unavoidably, I came to understand the truth: writing is impossible. It’s unbearable. The difficulty of writing down anything a-tall. With any kinda accuracy, or meaning, or any kinda worth. Any kinda content. And son, during those five sleepless nights I came to understand something else: the depth of my admiration for Marguerite.
She had learnt to live with her condition, so well. She had turned a holdback into a strength. That was everything and it was nothing a-tall. There was something else, something more integral. Deeper, simpler, more profound: her honesty, her unflinching personal integrity. And yet she was so kind and gentle.
Son, during those five sleepless nights I learnt to care for her deeper than I could bear.
Now I realised I had to go to her. In person, somehow. I had to attend the TES meeting in Knightsbridge, and when it was done I had to follow the Whitechurches home. In secret. Till I discovered where Marguerite lived. Then I had to talk to her.