Kristens prince, p.5
The House in Bacolet, page 5
Buster squinted at the church roof, then frowned hard at some measurements he’d made in his notebook and said nothing. Before he closed the book, I thought I heard him mutter something about loadbearing walls. He climbed heavily into his dusty red pick-up. ‘I will call wit’ a estimate.’
Horatio and Julia returned in the Mazda shortly afterwards. He’d taken her downtown to look at curtain material.
‘That Buster Watson’s pick-up I see comin’ outta here?’ Horatio said from the car, and I noticed his lip curl.
‘You have a problem with that?’
‘I ent tell yuh I could find yuh good workmen?’
‘Well, you can still bring your guys in, Horatio.’
‘Uh-uh. Buster have his own gang. Where yuh find him?’
‘Ramkissoon-Singh –’
‘That schupid Trini-Indian?’ Horatio sucked his teeth. He shoved the gears into reverse with a harsh grating, then drove off down the drive. Through the dust, I made a face at Julia.
‘Christ! What is it with him? We need a professional builder; he’s a bloody taxi driver!’
Julia just stared at me. ‘I can’t believe you, Hugh, after all he’s done for us!’ She turned and walked off into the house.
‘Julia! Hey, we’re not going to fight about this, are we?’ No reply from within. Great. She always seemed to take his side. It had started the very first night, the two of them high-fiving over the roti. And the next day, I’d woken on our first morning in the house to find the bed empty, Julia already out on the terrace, letting him smear that disgusting green mess on her. Her bites are still swollen; they could go septic. She scratches away and insists they’re not itchy and refuses to use the antiseptic cream I’ve bought her. Yuh doh need no drugstore. Ev’ryting in nature. He’ll have her off her steroids next, drinking down one of his bloody bush concoctions.
JULIA
Darling,
We’re still not connected so I’m writing this in a little café with wifi down by the port. We’ve been on the island almost 6 weeks now and getting into the swing of things. They’re pretty slow! Mind you, we’re trying to go with the flow (even Dad) and adopt their laidback way of doing things. Still haven’t been able to bank our cash or activate our local card! First it was Independence Day (big deal here, everything closes), and Dad’s been back twice to demand they reissue the PIN. Still waiting…
It must be nice to have the place to yourselves without me and Dad there. Hope things are going well for you and Simon. Give him our love.
Remember I mentioned the character who picked us up at the airport? He of the big Yankee car. Well he’s still our driver, but we now squash into a tiny blue Mazda (we haven’t had a chance to see about a car of our own yet; you have to take the boat over to Trinidad apparently). He’s been very useful, our homme à tout faire. We have a factotum! Dad’s a little wary of him, but you know how your father can be. And Horatio (yes, that’s his name!) can be a bit pushy. He keeps saying ‘Gimme a hundred dollars to gas up, Doc!’ (Dad hates him calling him that). The thing is, we reckon a lot of our petrol goes on his moonlighting, ‘pulling bull’ they call it. We haven’t said anything; it’s a bit awkward. We’ve actually appointed him our foreman, though the contractor and H. seem to be at daggers drawn. We didn’t know how much to offer H. He’s got no building experience. Give too little and you insult, too much and they think they can rip you off. All he said was, ‘Whatever y’all decide,’ in his sexy island drawl.
Oh dear, I’m making it all sound very problemy. It’s actually glorious here. Blue sea, coconut palms! We haven’t met anybody to speak of yet, but we’ve started swimming down on Bacolet beach. It’s a small sandy crescent on the rough Atlantic side. Mostly we have the beach to ourselves. At times you wish there was someone else there! Horatio’s got me on this bush tea of his (I’m not telling your dad). Dr Arshad was right; the climate here really does help. So, no regrets (yet!). Tell us we’re not insane to have done this, darling!
Can’t wait to see you out here, Letty. When?
Lots of love, Mum xxx
PS. BTW phone signal at house awful. Will post proper letter as used to before internet! Anything urgent call landline, will call back.
Love Mum (and Dad of course) xoxo
PPS. Franklyns say the house will be slow to sell so hopefully you & Simon can see out the year there. Don’t want to uproot you in finals year but you may have to put up with a viewer or two!
HUGH
The louvres of the front jalousies had been forced. Splintered wood lay on the terrace floor and the open doors creaked on their hinges. It was early evening; Julia and I had just come back from a swim down on Bacolet.
Inside, everything looked as we’d left it, even the Fernandes rum bottle stood untouched on the kitchen table. Julia dashed into our bedroom. I ran over to the small desk with the sticky drawer in the main room where we kept the laptop and the bank card, with the thousand pounds in notes under the drawer’s paper lining. I found the drawer pushed in, closed. When I tugged it open it felt unusually light and slid out with a dry squeak, upsetting the desk lamp. I could see only the blue and yellow bank card. Feverishly I tried to catch at a corner of the drawer’s paper lining, as if the laptop could be under it.
Julia’s feet pounded back down the boarded passage. ‘Nothing’s been touched in our bedroom,’ she said, breathless.
‘My Mac’s gone!’
‘What!’
‘And the cash. Did you take it, put it somewhere else?’
‘Of course not. I thought you hid it –’
‘It’s gone!’ I said. ‘Some bastard’s come in here and stolen our money!’
Julia came over to the open drawer. ‘What all of it?’ she said, lifting the paper lining, needlessly.
‘Yes of course, all of it.’ I paced the room, beside myself. ‘And the bloody Mac; none of my files are backed up. I’m supposed to be writing a paper…’
Julia sank down on the sofa. ‘What burglar leaves a bank card? And closes the bloody drawer behind him!’
Later, the police arrived. Colonel Dalrymple, the chief inspector, was an impressive man, straight backed, impeccable in his grey uniform, his black shoes polished like mirrors. He examined the scene of the crime with imperious eyes but said little. He seemed as interested in the alterations we were making to St Mary’s.
‘Dust fuh prints nuh, man,’ he finally instructed one of his officers.
We were then required to accompany the police down to the central station with Dalrymple’s driver. There, after much form-filling, passport numbers, mothers’ maiden names, our date of arrival on the island, Colonel Dalrymple subjected us to a barrage of questions about the nature of the stolen items, the laptop serial number, its estimated value.
‘Any idea who it could’ve been?’ he asked. ‘Have yuh taken up with any locals, someone yuh met limin’ on the beach?’
Julia and I hesitated, both willing the other to say what needed to be said. We had indeed taken up with or, rather, been taken up by a local. He’d admired the laptop, this local, seemed very impressed with my ‘bad boy Mac’. He certainly knew where it was kept. Whoever it was hadn’t taken the bank card. We’d told Horatio we’d need his wheels to take us back to town to activate it once the PIN arrived. Only someone who knew the card hadn’t yet been activated would have left it.
‘We’ve had the builders in,’ Julia said. ‘A Mr Watson.’
‘Yuh mean Buster?’ Colonel Dalrymple grinned. There was a large gap between his front teeth you could have put a coin through. ‘Buster’s my brother-in-law,’ and he gave a wave of his hand. He passed the papers he’d written our answers on to a woman police constable who typed them up on an ancient Olivetti. We waited on a hard bench in the lobby beneath the squeak of a flyblown ceiling fan. There was nothing to do but watch the officers coming and going in their hot, grey uniforms. They teased each other and laughed at things we couldn’t catch. No one showed any concern for our predicament; they’d seen it all before. We heard the duty clerk on reception complaining to her colleague, ‘But why dese tourists so careless? Every day is de same ting. I los’ muh wallet, dem tief muh purse. Dey cyan look after theyselves or what?’ And then a long, contemptuous sucking of the teeth.
Who could it have been? One of the workmen? Buster himself? He certainly had the crowbars to splinter those jalousies. Our contractor treated the house as an open site, casting fisheyes up at the high ceilings, wandering so freely through our rooms with a tape measure that Julia had taken to locking the shower room door. But for all the violence of the break in, the place hadn’t been turned over. Whoever it was, knew what they were looking for and where to find it. And taken the trouble to replace the drawer liner, and leave the bank card. A meticulous hand had pushed that stubborn drawer back so that it was flush. Neither of us wanted to admit the obvious suspect. We tried to dismiss it. But the suspicion once hatched was not so easily ignored. It remained there at the back of our consciousness, unsettling, disturbing, like something dark and foul seen through translucent blue waters at the bottom of a hotel swimming pool.
The Chief Inspector came out to the lobby with the typed statement. ‘Read it through carefully, an’ if you agree, sign in triplicate, please.’ While we signed, he asked why we kept so much cash around the house. It seemed churlish telling Dalrymple we‘d been unable to bank our cash in the absence of a competent employee. Part of it was not wanting to appear the complainy foreigner. We’d made a massive effort to acclimatise to the slower pace of the island, go with the flow, as Julia kept repeating. Look where it had got us
‘Money’s pretty untraceable, Dr Pennington, but we’ll do our utmost to find whoever stole yuh device an’ inform yuh jus’ as soon as we do. We goin’ catch the fellah, we goin’ to give this our bes’ shot. These things happen, eh. Don’t let it spoil yuh stay.’
It was said with an easy assurance we wanted to believe but couldn’t. Not if the investigating officer was related to a suspect. And it wasn’t as if finding the thief would get our thousand quid back. Don’t let it spoil yuh stay. As if we were on holiday. Part of me wished we were: two glorious weeks in the Caribbean, then back home to Putney normality.
‘Humphreys!’ Colonel Dalrymple called to a thin young officer in a uniform too large for him. Humphreys was slouching beside the duty clerk behind reception, his head cocked to the tinny sound of his phone – cricket from Queen’s Park Oval. ‘Carry dese folks back dong fuh me nuh.’
When Julia and I told Horatio, we both looked for some giveaway flicker on that remarkable face. But he seemed stunned, shaking his head, repeatedly examining the empty drawer. ‘Yuh keep so much cash in the house, Doc! I coulda tell you where to hide it good. That Mac too-too shiny, boy; it ketch some badjohn eye! I ent tell y’all to get some kinda security?’
Since the break in, Horatio seemed to have adopted an almost triumphant air. He’d warned us to get a dog, what did we expect? How might it have happened? We went over the details endlessly and tried to make them not add up: his interest when he first saw the Mac. Hoo-eee! All those questions about its specs. Yes, he’d seen me take it from that drawer. And informed one of the workmen? Maybe, but not Buster; he couldn’t stand the fellow, so that ruled out any collusion between them. Then again, he’d been furious I’d hired the contractor, so, had Horatio orchestrated the whole thing to discredit Buster? Possibly. He knew Julia and I would be down on Bacolet beach that afternoon. It was his idea we go; there was a chance we’d spot dolphins he said… It was no good, the foul dark thing remained there, as if shifting in the unseen currents at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Buster’s gang met the news of the break-in with sorry headshaking. Julia and I searched their eyes for the slightest unease. Buster himself, when informed, was inscrutable; he looked dully at the violated wood of the jalousies, his pop eyes only calculating the cedar needed to replace it. His joiner, Woody, an older man with a gold tooth, sucked his teeth as he examined the jalousie. ‘Dis badjohn fellah break in? More like he tryin’ tuh break out. Look, is from inside de wood mash up, for true.’
The old carpenter’s comment set me off imagining the thief inside the house trying to make it look like a break in from the outside. However hard I tried, my mind cast only Horatio in the starring role. We lay discussing it in bed that night. Julia said I was wrong to suspect someone who’d helped us so much.
‘I mean, think where we’d be without him, Hugh!’
‘Maybe a thousand quid better off?’
She turned on her lamp and stared at me horrified.
‘All I’m saying is that whoever it was knew to lift the lining of that drawer.’
‘And why would it be Horatio?’
‘Maybe you told him.’
‘You really think I’d tell him?’
‘You tell him all sorts of stuff; I’ve heard you.’
Julia sat bolt upright in the bed and faced me down. ‘Oh, and just what stuff have you heard me telling him?’
‘The point is–’
‘What have you heard me telling him?’ she repeated.
‘He doesn’t need to know about your condition, Julia.’
‘I’ll tell him about my bloody condition if I want to!’ She was hissing at me, her eyes flashing. ‘You had no right to be eavesdropping on a private conversation! Anyway, you tell him all sorts of things! He seems to know all about the faculty politics and why you left the university.’ She jumped up and stormed out of the bedroom.
I heard her filling the kettle in the kitchen – making herself a calming cup of herbal tea, I supposed. I should have kept my big mouth shut. It really wouldn’t do for Horatio to start coming between us.
Two of St Mary’s windows still had their original stained glass, thick with cobwebs. One window, arched in gothic style, was on the left-hand kitchen wall. The other, small and round, was high above the old enamel sink where, from the pattern of poorly plugged holes in the boarded wall, it seemed a large crucifix must once have hung. I imagined the red and blue light streaming through the round window, dappling a white altar cloth, a silver wine chalice, a salver holding communion wafers, and falling upon the expectant upturned faces of the congregation kneeling at the communion rail. The round window showed the Annunciation: a winged Creole Gabriel appearing to an awed White Virgin, a mädchen with straw-coloured hair, her blue gown heaped in leaded triangular sections against a glowing background. Julia found it odd that the figures had been executed in two curiously different styles: Gabriel was pure icon, the dark eyes flat and baleful in the tradition of Ethiopian Coptic art. The Virgin, startled out of her skin at the unearthly apparition, was entirely more modern, her elongated European face in the style of Grunewald or Modigliani. It would be an interesting Christchild those two produced.
Horatio came up one scorching afternoon. It was too hot outside, so we were sitting in the kitchen with a fan after lunch. I’d lit up a cigarette and was looking through Ramkissoon-Singh’s claim forms. Julia got us all cold beers, and Horatio asked if I’d managed to plant the samaan tree we’d brought back from the nursery. He told us about a parasitic plant that attached itself to full-grown samaan trees, sending its suckers deep into the cortex through the tree’s thick bark, and feeding off its host’s life juices. Once it had established itself in the samaan’s branches, the greedy parasite sent out giant red blooms, then dropped a looping curtain of vines down to the ground in search of further sustenance. He promised us a trip one day into the rain forest to show us.
When Horatio noticed the insurance policy in my hands, his eyes clouded. ‘Y’all goin’ in for that schupidness?’
‘We’re entitled to claim for loss and damage,’ said Julia.
‘So what y’all goin’ do? Sign insurance papers an’ wait for dem badjohn fellahs to come back? Yuh cyar eat snapper if it done slip de net, man!’
I imagined this was a local take on shutting the stable door. I was irritated by his folk wisdom. ‘Better late,’ I said, and returned to the small print of the policy. Horatio banged his bottle down on the table; the sudden report made us both flinch.
‘I tell yuh a’ready!’ he said. ‘The best insurance you people can get is a pot houn’! Yuh ready now?’
There it was, out in the open. I-told-you-so. We’d sensed it in him since the break-in.
‘Look, what’s this all about?’ I said. ‘Break-ins and stolen cash and now this talk of a dog from some guy you say you know!’
‘What the –?’ Horatio’s eyes narrowed at me.
Julia spoke quickly. ‘Horatio, we’ve been over this dog business already.’ She stared down his defiance. ‘In the meantime, Hugh’s simply putting a claim in.’
Horatio sat back in his chair. When he spoke it was to Julia, and his voice was low. ‘Badjohns here ’fraid dogs, Julia. I only lookin’ out for y’all, y’know.’
‘And we appreciate your concern, Horatio.’ She was forever cutting him more slack. He totally played her.
‘’Cos, see, I know a fellah have some pups, the father part ridgeback – ’
‘No, Horatio, we’ve decided.’ For once Julia tried to stand her ground – she actually stood up.
‘Yuh want dem badjohn fellahs to come back?’ His eyes were flashing again. We glanced at each other and Julia must have read on my face the fear and uncertainty I saw on hers.
‘We’ll have to think about the dog,’ I said.
Later, Julia and I discussed the issue; we reckoned on balance we’d done pretty well to hold out so long. The answer was to form a united front. At least he was now only talking about one dog not a coupla pothouns. We tried to make light of it. He’d obviously got some friend lined up with this part ridgeback. Was a ridgeback even a good thing? They were huge, weren’t they?
‘Why the name pot hounds?’ Julia wondered.
