Renting a house, buying some furniture, extending his tourist visa were the sort of bureaucratic formalities a man of resources like Nathaniel Jones could easily brush aside. It was the more mundane routine of life in paradise which posed the greater challenge to a man who had spent more than half of his life in the comfort of a metropolis. Thus, when Nathaniel Jones ventured out of his shell of luxury and experienced firsthand the reality of daily transactions in Anguilla, he was faced with a number of facts he already knew but had never up to that point had to deal with directly.
Nathaniel Jones knew that the battle against mosquitoes in a place like this never ended. He also knew that this was a particularly important battle for him to win, given the white proneness of his skin to swell up and bulge around every bite. By the time Nathaniel Jones was ready to give up his hope of having attained a geographical advantage in the shape of the inspired location of his house—on a green, at the top of a hill—he already felt like his body was a minefield which had been stampeded by a herd of mad bulls. Nathaniel’s lost battle turned into a plague he could not avoid, not least because all but two of the window screens in his house were damaged. In good old European fashion Nathaniel complained to his landlord. He had not yet understood that his seventeen requests had been ignored when Sheila Rawlingson walked into the house with Jarred Benn, the local window-screen engineer, reputedly one of the richest men on the island. By the time Nathaniel was finally able to sit in a living room around which intact screens were fitted he had so much poison in his blood that even mosquitoes no longer dared approach him.
Nathaniel Jones found it hard to learn to live the simple life that once, as a child of the war in a small alpine town in southern Bavaria, had been all he had known. He was furious to find out during a sleepless night of doubt and self-questioning that he had no hot water to shower with, because his boiler was a large, shallow metal tank placed over the roof of the house, fitted with solar panels that gathered heat during the day and released it in the evening, and the sky had been overcast for the past two days. Nathaniel’s fury was put in perspective three weeks later, when he came to grips (the hard way) with the reality that in the islands you don’t just run out of hot water, you run out of water altogether. Nathaniel’s hair still dripped shampoo, his body scaled with dried soap, when Sheila arrived with a case of drinking water. Nathaniel found it wasteful to use potable water to wash the soap and shampoo off his body since the water delivery company had promised to send a full truckload in a little while. On Sheila’s insistence he reluctantly poured three bottles over his hair and body, got ready to receive the driver from Alwyn’s Fast Water Delivery Service. He had to wait three days until the cistern in his house was replenished, wondering every time he used a bottle of the local Aronel water to rinse his hair whether the delivery truck would arrive that very minute. It didn’t. Three days later, when the driver produced the reasons for the delay, Nathaniel did not bother listening: he was learning slowly, but he was learning.
For a man of resources like Nathaniel Jones, adapting to the lifestyle of a place like Anguilla was more a matter of will than of intellect: he had willfully given up the cultural bustle and the opulence of a cosmopolitan city in favor of the peaceful tranquility of a simple life on a near-deserted island. These were the elements that Nathaniel consciously, calmly, tried to rationalize in the moments of utter exasperation that occasionally overcame him during the days and weeks that followed his recovery from the pangs of unrequited love and severe sunstroke. Because neither Nathaniel nor anyone else could have foreseen the degree of tolerance he would have to develop for the slow pace of Caribbean life, or the directly proportional distancing he would suddenly experience from the set of values that until not very long ago had ruled his every action, his simplest expectations.
In Anguilla, his joy at assessing the quality of extravagant winemakers would be heavily tempered by the restricted choice he could find even at Hibernia Restaurant’s wine cellar, the island’s most sophisticated, all the way out in Island Harbour. And then, of course, most cellars’ list would often not correspond with the actual stock in existence, such that even his moderated expectation would sometimes see its wings clipped by the privations of the province. Neither did neighboring St. Martin, a plentiful hub in relation to Anguilla, offer much solace in terms of products from obscure vineyards. So Nathaniel simply pretended not to care, tried to convince himself that all was fine, that if he could not complement his meal with the taste of the exact bottle of wine he wished to have, he could at least enjoy the sunset in the middle of winter in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt after swimming on his own in one of the most beautiful beaches in the western hemisphere. Except it was tough to accept this argument when the object of his desire was not an unobtainable luxury in a near-deserted island but a simple bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon purchased across the channel, only to find upon returning a few hours later that the wine—the whole purpose of the inter-island odyssey—was corked. Nathaniel’s learning curve took him through the process of understanding that minor matters like this were not worth a great deal of hassle on the islands simply because shit happens. Going back to St. Martin to complain about a bottle of wine turned sour would require more time, nerves, and strength than a whole new case would merit. And then again, there was still the soothing rumble of the sea, the amber coating of the moon, the intricate pattern of the stars.
Only that Nathaniel Jones had not stayed in this exasperating (inefficient) version of paradise for the stars, the moon or the sea. He had come in order to experience the beauty of the undeveloped world; he had appreciated the excesses of artificial exclusivity far less than he had enjoyed the flamboyance of tropical sunsets, and even after examining the negative aspects of the basic lifestyle led by the locals, he had envied it; but ultimately he had stayed for one and only one pair of svelte legs. Nathaniel Jones forgot most things—certainly most bad things—when he was graced with the presence of Sheila Rawlingson. And given that Sheila Rawlingson had adopted the role of guardian to her foreign visitor, he saw her most when bad things happened. Hence, problems that required the assistance of his ever-ready hostess proliferated in number and diminished in urgency: Nathaniel now needed a hand not only dealing with the bugs that swarmed his house but also sorting out the shelves in his kitchen cabinet and finding the right place to store his tennis gear. On the other hand, it mattered very little whether Sheila’s solution brought potable relief to the shampoo itching his eyes, or whether she replaced a vintage bottle of Austrian wine with a cheap selection of Australian Shiraz: to Nathaniel, the most ordinary bottle of table wine would taste like the best Châteauneuf-du-Pape if only shared with her.
Slowly, Sheila’s visits to Nathaniel’s home became more prolonged. Her days were suddenly planned around the times when she would call on the friend that everybody knew she had without knowing exactly who it was. And so, as the time she spent solving minor problems in Nathaniel’s house became less strictly defined, the solutions she came up with became progressively more intimate. Until the day, after running back and forth between her place and his for eight weeks, when Sheila found herself spending an entire afternoon at leisure in Nathaniel’s house, pretending to be doing something, convincing herself that she was being useful when in fact she was just lounging with the man she most enjoyed being with. She succeeded in fooling herself to the point where, once night fell, she was absolutely exhausted. Nathaniel was delighted to see her small brown eyes drowse in a slumber. He picked her up from the sofa, lay her down on his bed. Sheila Rawlingson slept all night spooned by the protecting body she was meant to protect.
The following morning, Nathaniel woke up long before his guest. He slipped into the trousers he had worn the day before, began to make breakfast. By the time Sheila woke up the table was already set up. Did you not sleep? Nathaniel looked tired, his eyes drooping with longing, dark rings crawling around them. A gentle kiss served as prologue to Nathaniel’s guidance of her hand but Sheila wa
s dexterous in the art of stripping herself and others. Nathaniel’s recurrent dream—fantasy—took the shape of reality. His anxiety turned into tenderness, her drowsiness into affection. The bed banished the frozen fright of hesitation from the two, encouraged their mutual quest for pleasure. Sheila sensed a tide of emotions rise inside her—it was more than desire, it was all she wanted. Her expert ease was stalled by a sudden sense of importance, her swift motions stammered with the clumsiness of nerves. Naked and observed, Sheila was disarmed by more than her nudity. Nathaniel saw the promise of a lustful day replaced with the signs of mature attachment. He endorsed the exchange. The first moment of intimacy between Nathaniel Jones and Sheila Rawlingson was a dilated experience of love. After that, he had to brew more coffee to go with the cold breakfast.
Sheila Rawlingson did not depart Nathaniel’s nest of love for a full week. In fact, Sheila Rawlingson did not leave Nathaniel’s house until the moment when—seven nights and one day later—he proposed to add a hyphen and a Jones to Sheila Rawlingson’s name. On July 28, exactly one hundred days after the promise to have a drink together sometime, Nathaniel Jones, right knee on the ground, stuttered, faltered, struggled as he formulated a question that needed no formulation because Sheila Rawlingson knew exactly what this meant. The trail of tears that bathed Sheila’s cheeks carved a path of fear as well as joy. Immersed as deeply as Nathaniel in an unusually intense relationship, it had not been beyond her capability of abstraction to imagine the present scene. In her mind’s eye she had already accepted Nathaniel’s offer. In Sheila’s dreams she wore a white dress in front of a crowded church that rejoiced together with her as they saw her give herself to the future. Sheila’s dreams always ended abruptly, shortened, thwarted, tempered by the dimension of her present, by the nightmare of silence, secrecy, and lies that for the past hundred days had accompanied a relationship that had made her so happy she now wished it to last forever.
Sheila bathed her cheeks in tears of fear and joy while Nathaniel tortured his aching knees by refusing to stand up until a word escaped the gasping breath of the woman who he already saw as his future wife. In Sheila’s dreams she had already accepted Nathaniel’s offer but the empty feeling inside her chest, her inability to catch her breath, the incontrollable sensation that she was falling from somewhere really high gave away the fact that this was no dream. This was reality, and reality was necessarily thwarted, hampered, shaped by a number of elements alien—in fact inevitably opposed—to her fairy tale with a white man twice her age. The words that granted Nathaniel Jones’s longed-for leave to lift his knee and stretch his leg were not the ones of certainty and acceptance he had hoped for. I does need some time. Let me t’ink ’bout it. An understandable if somewhat disappointing end to a perfect week, only tarnished by a speck of doubt.
Sheila Rawlingson departed Nathaniel Jones’s nest of love for the first time in seven nights and one day not to go home and speak to her family, not to show signs of life to her friends or siblings, but to seek help, guidance, and support at the doorstep of Father Rasheed, the old priest from South Hill who had baptized her, who had seen her grow into a devout Christian, who had first given her Holy Communion, and who had seen her become an independent member of his congregation after she had willfully confirmed her beliefs. Although Father Rasheed had lost sight of Sheila Rawlingson’s development as a person and as a Christian after fate had taken her so far away from her place of birth, she, like the rest of the children he had helped raise, like the rest of his flock, still had a prominent place in his heart.
So when Father Rasheed saw the hasty, anxious steps that delivered a visibly affected Sheila Rawlingson to his doorstep, he was overwhelmed by a mixture of feelings—relief, joy, concern—which did not allow him to think clearly. Sheila spent a long time explaining the situation before she brought herself to ask Father Rasheed to be an accomplice in her forbidden love, to tie the knot that no mortal could untie before she announced to the world the size of her folly. Father Rasheed advocated patience, communication, confidence. With every word of advice Sheila turned more desperate, more inconsolably lost, and Father Rasheed, softened by age, overwhelmed by emotion, My choild, I will always stand by your side, you know. By the end of a visit that lasted hours, Father Rasheed had anchored Sheila’s hopes with a promise he had never meant to keep.
Father Rasheed never meant to keep his promise to secretly unite a disparate couple in the name of the Lord, because the name of the Lord is sacred, irrevocable, and true, and anything done in the name of the Lord needs necessarily be done with pride, determination, and faith, and a secret marriage lacked at least two of those qualities. But Father Rasheed did mean to keep his vow not to tell anyone about his confidential interview with Sheila, because Sheila had asked him to, because Sheila had always shown sound judgment, because it was, after all, a family matter, and because family matters are better dealt with by the families in question.
But Sheila’s sound judgment was nowhere to be seen when, after a week of absence—meditation—she returned to Nathaniel Jones’s East End quarters, bringing with her a conditional yes and a proposition to accept Father Rasheed’s help, to marry on the sly. During a week of silence, Nathaniel’s home slowly turned from a nest of love to a cuckoo’s nest over which he flew over and over and over again, becoming progressively angrier, wearier. Sheila’s proposition was not only silly, it was unacceptable because it spelled failure every step of the way. Sheila had not even contemplated the possibility of Nathaniel disagreeing—after all, he had already posed the question and only her answer stood between them and marriage. If we’re going to do this, Sheila, we’re going to do it the right way. If? What if? When had if come into the equation? It took Nathaniel Jones the time Sheila Rawlingson needed to regain her composure to wear his dark suit, his red tie, his Italian shoes, his French eau de parfum. I’ve had enough of this stupid game. Take me to your parents’ house. Sheila could not find the strength to go against what she knew deep inside was the only sensible solution.
Nathaniel Jones came knocking on the Rawlingsons’ door on a Sunday at the beginning of August, in the middle of the largest celebration of the year, asking Sheila’s father—in the presence of the rest of the family—for his daughter’s hand. The ring on Sheila’s third finger was the first source of outrage. Then came the hysterical fit of an old lady in disbelief. Then came the youthful bashfulness of an old man spitting a tirade of threats and insults. Then came the madness of a young man so far beside himself that everyone feared he might kill someone.
One week later, amid the celebrations of carnival and such, Father Rasheed sealed the union of a disparate couple who had shown enough courage, pride, and determination to deserve the blessing of the Lord in a service which, if not secret, was as private as anyone could remember in Anguilla.
VIII
The paperwork for Nathaniel’s permanent visa sat on the desk of Akira Hart, Glenallen Rawlingson’s second cousin and childhood sweetheart. Akira was well aware of Sheila’s outrageous relationship with Nathaniel Jones, of the Rawlingsons’ reaction to his intrusion in their family. Just one day before, Glenallen had spoken to Akira, pointing out the importance of this particular application. That conversation had prompted a cascade of orders that had led to the singling out of one seemingly indistinct file in a mountain of documents. The scrutiny of Nathaniel’s application was an unnecessary detail: this man was to be denied stay.
Akira Hart sat in her office, behind her desk, rejection stamp in hand, browsing Nathaniel Jones’s application just out of curiosity, when the front door was thrown open by the full weight of Gwendolyn Stewart’s rotund body. Afternoon. Akira was startled out of her prying merely by the rarity of the sight. Her jaw dropped, her eyes lingered in expectation, her pulse accelerated. Akira would have asked Gwendolyn to sit somewhere, had she not been too afraid none of the chairs in her office would fit the size of her unexpected visitor. You shouda tell me you coming, Auntie Gwen. The effort to seem natura
l made her drop the stamp she held in her right hand. She never picked it back up.
Ever since childhood, Gwendolyn had enjoyed the privilege of an imposing presence, a commandeering look. Connor Stewart’s firstborn child, she had been appointed the role of matriarch by her father even before she displayed the judiciousness and determination that characterized her from an early age. Connor Stewart was a man of deep convictions and profound faith who only trusted the edicts of God’s design above his own judgment. When Connor Stewart’s wife Belinda, a plump and grounded woman who at seventeen years of age had all the poise of a grown adult, informed him that her belly was full with baby, he immediately knew she would give birth to the future chief of a family clan that would control all aspects of the island’s life. Better get used to it, woman, dis jus’ de first of foive boys I goan give you, you know. He wasn’t joking either, nor was he trying to intimidate Belinda. He was just being as plain and honest as he could be. Is foive pickney you wan’ have? Boy, I hope you figure out how you goan feed dem all, ’cause I ain’ goan be no poor-poor modder feeding me choild dust and mud, you hear? There was no doubt in Connor’s mind he would be able to provide for his family of nine, because five was the number of sons he planned to have, and added to them he wanted two daughters, one on either side of their middle son. He never listened when Belinda told him to mind his own business and let God do God thing and sen’ us what he wan’, a boy or a girl, until the day when Belinda went into labor, banning him from the house, telling him to stay away for the day ’cause if I see you too soon after dis I goan cut you head for true. When Connor came back to his own house in Island Harbour the following day, still smelling of the rum that had helped him through the previous night, the first thing he did was hold his naked baby in his arms and search for the stick between its legs. Boy, I guess dat mean God make we start from the back. Adamant that he was right, Connor gave his firstborn a name starting with the seventh letter of the alphabet.
On the Way Back Page 11