Goodbye Bay

CHAPTER 1 - AN ARRIVAL

I arrived in Macaima in September, 1963. Petit Careme season. The island was one year a nation, free to practice what it meant to have a flag to hoist and an anthem to sing. We had a prime minister, a government sitting inside the Red House; our Governor General became a citizen. That year, too, we had retrenchment in the oil sector and disgruntled sugar workers triggered a series of union-led strikes not seen since the Water Riots. The PM, in an effort to take control, ordered a Commission of Inquiry to sniff out subversion in the ranks of the trade union movement. That September, four girls died in the bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, and hurricane Flora mashed up Tobago. In October, Mandela went on trial in South Africa; Cuba was in the midst of the missile crisis; nine Vietnamese monks were killed for flying their Buddhist flag; Martin Luther King delivered his I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial; John F. Kennedy was assassinated; C.L.R. James published Beyond a Boundary; the Mighty Sparrow was crowned king of Carnival with "Dan is de Man"; the Beatles and Doris Troy had number one hits with "Love Me Do" and "Just One Look"; Elizabeth Taylor starred in Cleopatra; a woman was arrested and released without charge for selling souse and black pudding on a pavement in San Fernando; and a man was murdered on his hospital bed.

It was Sunday, midmorning. The village was deserted. I had no clue what I was coming to, but Macaima was where I had landed the job as temporary postmistress. People from town would be quick to ask: Macaima, where on earth is that? No place on this island call by that name. Maybe so, but I was there. See me, Annabelle Bridgemohan, who had spent all my life in bright-lights Port of Spain, waiting on a junction for a Mr Elton, whom I had never met but who had promised to get me settled in the rental where I would spend the agreed-upon year.

I had done a three-year stint at the Port of Spain head office, though it seemed like an age. I needed more than a change of scenery or pace; whether Macaima would give it I hadn't a clue. Life is a decision to live my mother said to me when I told her I had accepted the Macaima post. She collected maxims like that. Maybe she had discovered what they meant. I did not want to live her life. When I landed the job at head office, the first thing I did was to rent a one-bedroom apartment on the edge of the city; small, but it was my space.

Until my arrival on Macaima Junction with nothing but my two suitcases, I hadn't realised that those words were still mine to learn. I was twenty-four and adrift. My relationship with my boyfriend Miles had come to a painful end; he had become increasingly bitter about my decision to end things between us and what he considered my unforgivable crime in choosing not to have our baby; my friend Thea had left the island for graduate school in the States and I could no longer put up with the conspiratorial climate in the office as management tried to fend off unionisation with divide and rule tactics. When I arrived in Macaima, I felt no more real than a ghost left over from another life.

*

Neville, the driver I had hired for the trip, pulled up alongside a shop on the Macaima junction and parked under its eave to escape the sun. He stretched in his seat, pushing against the backrest so much that I had to shift my legs sideways. He glanced back with slight amusement, his arm extended along the backrest.

- Miss, yuh sure is here you suppose to wait for. What he name again?

- Mr Elton. Yes. He said the shop on the junction. So I guess this is it.

- Well it look like he forget. This place deader than midnight grave.

- Give him a few minutes more. He said he would be here.

The repeat was more for my benefit than Neville's. He looked doubtfully at the empty road ahead and then at me.

- Okay, but I have to head back.

I sighed.

- Doh stress. I operate professional. I not going to leave you here stranded. Where is here again?

He didn't wait for an answer and seemed happy to fiddle with his radio. Static crackled. It was not long before he gave up and dozed off. With nothing else to do but wait, I tried to map Macaima's layout from what I could see. The junction was not a full crossroads, but a Y, formed by the arm of the road that broke off from the main road and travelled up into the hills. It was obviously the hub around which everything was arranged: shop, hardware, warden's office, post office, police station, and school - all sporting weather-beaten string pennants in the national colours, leftovers from the Independence Day celebrations. Everything looked, as you'd expect, closed for the day, including Johnny's Shop and Bar. The signage was sprawled across wooden, double doors and competed for visibility with all manner of advertisements: Coca-Cola, Guinness, Bata, Nestlé's Sweetened Condensed Milk, Trinidad Orange Juice, Holiday Foods, Solo - so the shop name could only be read when the doors were closed. Maybe it didn't matter. Competition can't have been a concern.

Everywhere burst with the verdant green of the wet season. Dog-bark and cockcrow, a ground dove's mourning call, tree-speak, river and sea-wash produced the sense of being looked at and listened to. I focused on the deserted road ahead, drawn to the point of light at the road's turn, where it disappeared. From the distance of the shop, you couldn't be sure whether the road curved inland and continued on or came to an abrupt end. At that point, the sky brightened so intensely it both attracted and disturbed the eye. The village was coastal and its elevation drew the eyes to the sea's expanse, a borderless zone that gave the illusion that the land was continuous with sky.

I did not see when the man appeared at the junction. He leaned against the dazzle of galvanized sheets that partitioned a gateway at the side of the shop, apparently waiting for something or someone. It was not long before I discovered what: a package passed through a square opening cut into the sheeting. The man put some bills into the hand of whoever had served him and said something as he stuffed what looked like a flask wrapped in newspaper into his back pocket. The exchange awakened Neville, who assessed the scene from his rearview mirror and slapped the dashboard knowingly.

- Big Sunday, but he too thirsty to wait!

Neville turned so that he could face me with that slight glow of amusement on his face I had come to recognise. He tapped his wristwatch. Time was up. The face of the shiny silver Timex with a black band was gently rubbed clean on the sleeve of a cotton shirt, densely populated with colourful parrots. Along with his black slacks, it was no doubt his self-prescribed uniform. I had learnt, on the way in, that he also worked the airport. Money was good driving tourists to and from their hotels for greens.

- Time to head out, Miss. I on the clock.

I looked about the junction. The man who had made the purchase was casually looking our way.

- Is not my business, Miss, but I hope yuh didn't come quite here to take flambeau to see in daylight what already in plain sight.

He grinned sheepishly.

- Why would you say that? You don't know a thing about me.

- Is only joke I joking.

Neville shook his head and focused all his attention on wiping, yet again, the Morris's already immaculate dashboard. I had overreacted, but I didn't want to give him the impression that he could voice his assumptions and opinions without rein. One thing I had learnt from Thea was to draw the line when it came to what she called protecting the sanctity of your soul case. And she was right. I second guessed all my gut reactions - a symptom, she joked, of unclear politics. Already I missed her, but the plans she had for her life meant leaving the island to further her studies; and I had been, at the time, committed to my relationship with Miles.

The man who had been at the galvanized gate was now perched dangerously on a broken chair he had propped up against the shop, making himself a brazen spectator of our waiting. Neville was growing restless. The plush crimson fabric of the seat-cover, which had irritated my legs and arms for the entire journey, was fast becoming intolerable. I shifted to the opposite side of the car. Neville noticed and ventured another more cautious question.

- You want me to ask if he know about your concern?

He indicated the man on the chair. I looked at the man, now clouded in exhaled smoke.

- I sure Mr Elton will be here.

Neville checked his watch. I was pushing my luck but I had picked up that Neville was not unreasonable.

- Okay, but five minutes is all I have.

*

Punctuality was important to Neville's service. His newspaper ad had offered in bold type: Prompt, Reliable Transport. Any Place. Any Time. As promised, he arrived exactly at ten o'clock and parked his black Morris at the front gate. When I emerged from the house and shut the door behind me, I could see his curiosity piqued as he moved briskly to relieve me of my luggage, making sure that I was well settled into the backseat before taking his place at the wheel. He glanced at the front door expectantly and then back at me.

- Like yuh travelling...