‘Maybe it’s my fault. I’ve been talking about the refugees on Nelson island. You know there are over five hundred, and they say three thousand have applied to come. Maybe already there, and on Sancta Trinidad. Such a strange coincidence. Me here and them, there. Imagine! I was saying at recreation that I would like to go and see them. Maybe there’s work to do. Cooking, feeding, looking after children, the old people and sick. For a short while, it was an idea. Maybe, this is what put the thought in her mind about vermin.’ The tears were streaking Thérèse’s face. ‘I heard someone say, “Well, your name is Weil.” But, when I turned, they all had their heads bowed, their fingers stitching away, maybe even a yellow star right under my eyes. I ignored it then.’
‘Are any of the sisters German?’ Vincent looked for some kind of logic.
‘I’m not sure. I can’t believe it, even so. This old thing, as Papa called it. I can’t go to confession anymore to Father Meyer.’
‘It’s quite possible. You know this kind of thing goes right back into the history of Europe, you’ve heard some of the calypsos. It’s part of our world.’
‘But you don’t think like that?’
‘No, but I was brought up hearing similar things about negroes. You know the history of these islands. Here, on El Caracol itself, the ruins near Perruquier Bay, the great house, the cotton fields. Chac Chac Bay, the Carib word for cotton. The bay, Chac Chac. The story that Theo tells me in the night. You don’t know those stories. Imagine them. You should hear him. You see a boy fishing, but to hear him in the night with his stories is to come near to that terror. A terror which went on here. Some would say not as bad as in other islands, but still terrible. Terrible things were done in these islands to the ancestors of our patients. You should know that story. It’s their story.’
Thérèse looked at Vincent as he seemed to grow angry.
‘They sing such contradictory words at times, sometimes insults, sometimes praise,’ Thérèse explained.
‘It’s the nature of the calypso.’
Theo was flitting in and out of the kitchen. There was a guest. He was making a fuss.
‘And what about tonight? Are you staying at the hospital?’ Vincent was looking ahead.
‘I’ll have to. I’ve missed the boat.’
‘We can get Jonah to take you. I’ll row you, if you want.’
‘But what will I say? I went to see the doctor, because he’s my lover.’
‘Your lover! Madeleine?’
‘Vincent. Don’t tease. We can’t keep denying what has happened, is happening. Each day as we work alongside each other. I know you. We respect each other. We don’t touch. But that doesn’t mean…’
‘I know.’ At that moment, the small brass bell was rung at the table announcing supper. Theo smiled as they came in. Three places were laid. Vincent was relieved. He would not have been able to cope with Theo role-playing again. He wouldn’t do that in front of Thérèse. ‘We can talk after supper,’ he whispered as he helped Thérèse into her chair.
While Theo was not role-playing the servant, he was still up all the time, dashing back and forth to the kitchen, for the pepper and salt, for the hot sauce, ‘Don’t burn you mouth,’ he giggled. Then, there was a glass he had forgotten. He hovered around Thérèse making sure that she had everything. At one point, straightening her veil which had got caught at the back of her chair. ‘Sister? Everything fine?’
Then, there was his grand entry with the two red fish. ‘Smelling good!’ Vincent exclaimed.
‘Absolutely delicious looking,’ Thérèse added her praise.
Theo beamed. The fish were still sizzling in the gravy made with coconut oil. The flavours were of chadon béni. ‘Like coriander,’ she breathed in the flavours.
Vincent smiled. He was proud of the boy. He was grateful for him, taking the tension out of the moment.
‘Yes, thank you, Theo,’ he said formally.
Theo dropped his head.
Then, they ate their snapper and bake in silence, Theo looking to see their enjoyment of his dish, but looking also for reassurance, looking after everything. Vincent saw that flash in his eyes. The visit had definitely excited him.
‘More fish, Sister? It sweet, eh?’
‘Thank you, Theo.’
Then, she insisted on helping him clear the table, and chatted with him in the kitchen.
‘I catch plenty fish yesterday! But I throw them back. Plenty crapeau fish. Crapeau fish not good to eat.’
Vincent marvelled at her ease with the boy, his with her. While Thérèse was in the kitchen and Theo was clearing away his glass and table mat, he said, ‘You like she?’ He said it in an impish way. Vincent was startled. Then Theo smiled.
‘She’s a good nurse.’
Theo smiled again, his impish smile. ‘I see it since first day you carry me to Saint Damian’s.’ Nothing slipped his attention. They had been so careful. Maybe it was because he himself liked her, and wanted that to be connected with Vincent somehow.
Theo disappeared upstairs. Vincent called after him, ‘Do you want to show Sister Thérèse your room?’
She raised her eyebrows. She did not know anything about the boy’s room. Theo waited at the top of the stairs. Then he called down to her, ‘You coming?’ She went up and joined him.
The sea crashed in. The wind had picked up, stirring the hot night.
‘This boy? His room. His room is our world,’ Thérèse exclaimed coming into the drawing room.
‘Yes, made up from the news bulletins. He’s been having an education in history and geography.’
‘The names made me homesick. The rivers are a bright blue on his maps,’ she laughed.
‘Of course, a completely imaginary world for him.’
‘What am I doing here?’
‘Here?’
‘I mean here, here, this part of the world, so far away. Why did I come here?’
Vincent looked dismayed. He had lost her. ‘Here?’
‘Yes here, here tonight with you. But also here, El Caracol. Why did I leave him?’
Vincent knew that she was talking about her father. In the end, these crises always came back to him.
‘If you had not left, your fate would now be as uncertain as his.’
‘But I would be with him.’
‘Perhaps not. Perhaps there would have been a cruel separation, you taken off to one place, him to another. Imagine that, unable to help each other then, and to know that you were both in desperate circumstances. But you don’t really know that anything terrible has happened to him.’
‘That’s the position now. He must wonder what I know about him. I keep wondering about him without getting any news.’
‘At least he knows that you are safe. He must be pleased now that you chose the missions in the end.’
‘I suppose. Who knows?’
‘Anyway, what’s the worse thing that can happen as a consequence of you coming here, tonight?’
‘Summoned to see Mother Superior, questioned, made to feel abominable.’
‘There, that’s not exactly the worse thing on earth.’ They laughed.
‘No, not the worse thing. But what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘What will Mother Superior say to you? She might complain to the medical board, have you warned or censored for consorting improperly with one of the sisters in your home.’
‘Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. What’s important is you and your position in the convent, at the moment, having to suffer these insults, this persecution.’
‘It feels like that.’
Their voices were low. A bat swooped out of the almond tree.
‘It’s your father, isn’t it, at the bottom of everything that’s difficult for you. You would be able to cope with the yellow stars, everything else if you knew he was safe.’
‘Papa. Yes.’
There was a silence as they looked at each other. Her face was like a moon to him, encircled w
ith white. He saw her again in the boathouse. He tended her ankle. He wanted to kiss her. He went through the history of their love, the geography of it. He had to undress her. He had to keep uncovering her. Should he take her to the boathouse tonight?
Thérèse emerged from her cave. ‘Yes. Papa. But what do you mean? It’s more than my father. It’s more. My father, like you, believed in the working class, in the international, not in tribes, not like his parents, solely in his own people. He belongs to everyone. But that can’t be how it is now.’
Vincent emerged from his reverie. His passion and his guilt were partners again.
‘The real worry is that you don’t know and can’t know what’s happening to your father. We hear snatches of what the conditions are like, but until those very infrequent letters arrive, we’ve no sure knowledge of what’s happening. Therefore our imaginations run riot. It’s worse in a way, not knowing, don’t you think? And yes, it’s always more than the individual.’ He tried to comfort her.
‘I only have what I can remember. I’m worried about the work camp near Paris.’
‘Drancy? Maybe he’ll get a chance to do good for the other prisoners. You always need a doctor.’
‘But why? What’s this locking up of Jews? In Germany yes, even before the war, but in France.’ She was terrified.
‘The occupation. History.’
‘History? One bit of news suggested it’s our own soldiers who come to the door in the early morning. People open up because they see the gendarmes.’
‘We know what has been taking place since 1933.’
‘Yes, my father talked about it.’
‘Was she, the embroiderer, the one who smashed my windows?’
‘Sorry.’
‘The one who stitches and embroiders my yellow stars, maybe she’s been at it for a while. You know? My shattered window, my night of glass.’
In the distance, they heard thunder. It came from over the hills, out in the ocean. They sat without speaking, each in their own thoughts. The fishermen were bringing back their stories of German U-Boats in the waters off the islands.
Cannes Brulées
They heard a splashing noise coming over the water as they sat talking on the jetty. ‘Like someone swimming,’ Thérèse said.
‘There, Madeleine.’
‘Fish jumping, yes?’
They both strained their eyes.
‘As large as a person,’ Vincent exaggerated.
‘There are sharks in the bay.’
‘Barracudas under the jetty.’
‘Urgh.’ Madeleine squirmed.
‘Dolphins in the gulf.’
‘And whales.’
‘Have you seen them?’
‘From the hills once, behind the convent.’
They looked out across the dark bay.
‘Do you know the story about the nun who drowned herself?’ Vincent began in a storytelling tone.
Thérèse was sitting on the bench with her legs curled beneath her. She looked at Vincent. Why was he asking her this? What story was he about to tell her? ‘No.’
‘Don’t you talk, you nuns, tell these stories about yourselves?’
‘No one’s told me. Why did she drown herself?’
‘She was in love with one of the patients.’
‘Mon Dieu! Poor girl.’
‘He used to swim across the bay to be with her.’
‘Like Sonny Lal?’
‘Like Sonny Lal.’ They echoed each other.
‘One night he did not arrive. They found his body a few days later washed up on the beach at La Tinta,’ Vincent continued. ‘The currents had taken his body around the point, and out into the boca, and then cast him up on the beach. Some days later, one of the coast guard found him lodged in the rocks.’
‘What about her?’
‘She wished to join him. Her body was found in the rocks below the cliff at Embarcadère Corbeaux. She had thrown herself off.’
‘No one talks about it. Convent secrets,’ Thérèse mused.
‘It happened a long time ago. She was about your age. She had just come from France, one of the original community.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘At the autopsy they discovered that she was pregnant.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Thérèse repeated.
‘The fishermen say they see her on the rocks. She’s trying to get to La Tinta to lie with her lover. So the story goes.’
‘These are fisherman’s tales. This is, what do you call it? Bush rum. I hear the men on the wards talking. This is babache.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You trying to frighten me?’
‘Maybe I’m trying to frighten myself.’
Fish were still jumping. There was another splash just off the jetty.
‘Frighten yourself. What do you mean?’ Thérèse asked.
‘Might be tempted to swim the bay to the convent.’
‘I can’t see your eyes. Come closer. Let me see your eyes.’ He moved nearer to her on the bench. ‘What did you say?’ She watched him intently.
‘I might swim the bay to be with you in the night.’
‘Would you die for me?’ she asked.
‘Die for you? I’m a strong swimmer. Sharks!’ Vincent smiled.
‘You don’t have to, I’m here.’
‘I didn’t think you would come here.’
‘Neither me.’
‘Could you swim the bay?’ She imagined it now.
‘I used to able to see your lights before the blackout restrictions.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘I never told you.’
‘I imagined you were always the one ringing the Angelus, your ballooning skirt, your feet lifted off the ground by the weight of the bell.’
Suddenly, there was the sound of someone shouting from the direction of Saint Damian’s.
‘What’s that?’ Vincent got up and stood at the edge of the jetty, straining his ears and eyes. The shouting died down.
Thérèse came and stood next to him at the edge of the jetty. They had grown accustomed to the darkness, and watched as the familiar contours of the island, now shadows, outlines. The geography of darkness, formed and reformed, pulsing.
They listened and stared.
Then, all of a sudden, tall flames leaping out of the darkness. They stared in amazement at this transformation. They heard shouts like they had done earlier. ‘Fire! Fire!’ The flames seemed to be near the hospital. There also seemed to be a huge fire on the jetty at Saint Damian’s, and flames as low down as the sea grapes, at the edge of the water, beyond Father Meyer’s house.
‘The Yanks won’t like this. Makes a nonsense of the blackout. There was a U-Boat off La Tinta night before last. Did you hear the Albacores?’ Vincent grabbed Thérèse by the arm. ‘Come, we’ve got to get to Saint Damian’s. What do you think is going on?’
‘What about the boy?’ she asked, suddenly seeing him in his room with his maps.
‘As we go up through the house, I’ll peep in on him.’ Then Vincent hesitated. ‘I’m sure, yes, he’ll be fine.’ He was unsure.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a fear I have. Theo and fire.’
‘Fire?’
‘Some other time. We must get to the hospital. A fire would be the very worse thing. Can you imagine? Can you imagine our work with those burns.’
‘Our records, research?’
Thérèse waited at the back door, while Vincent went upstairs to Theo.
Shouts could be heard in the distance. There was a glow in the sky, as if there was moonlight.
Vincent was back. ‘I woke him. I didn’t want him waking and coming into my room and finding that I’m not there. I’ve told him to try and get back to sleep.’
‘Poor boy. Is that still going on?’
‘Sleeptalking? From time to time.’
‘Maybe we should take him with us.’
Vincent was trying to find a hu
rricane lantern. ‘We must try not to light this, but just in case.’
They could hear an American jeep revving on the now enlarged donkey track the other side of the bush at the back.
‘We can’t go that way. Let’s take the dinghy. I’ll row.’
They returned to the jetty. Vincent pulled the dinghy towards the ladder. He jumped into the dinghy and began bailing out the water that had collected from a slow leak.
There were lights on in the convent. ‘Look, the fire on the jetty is bigger.’ There was panic in Thérèse’s voice.
‘You sit in the stern.’ Vincent fitted the oars into the rollocks and heaved off, trying not to make too much of a splash. Their knees touched.
There was the hoot of a jumbie bird. Its flight ended in a shadow on the dogwood branch at the edge of the water. Vincent was rowing close to the shore. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’ She put her hand on his leg.
The shouts from Saint Damian’s were louder. Their heads brushed the low branches of the dogwood trees.
‘Looks like we’re going to find a riot when we arrive,’ Vincent said, looking behind him, gauging his direction. He stopped rowing, pulling the dripping oars in. They rested in a cove just past Father Meyer’s house.
They sat in silence, being rocked by the sea. He wanted to kiss her.
They were beginning to drift onto the rocks. Vincent pushed off with one of the oars. ‘Must be the police launch, or Coast Guard further out in the bay creating this wake,’ he explained.
Their situation began to seem absurd. What might they look like to anyone, adrift in a dinghy in Chac Chac Bay?
‘Did you say she threw herself off the cliff at Embarcadère Corbeaux?’
‘What? Who?’
‘The nun who was in love and having a baby.’
‘Just a story.’
‘Was it? What an absurd flight to meet her lover!’ She watched the changing shapes in the dark water, and thought of the men who swam across the bay to be with their women, lovers, risking the current, the sharks, and the remous; that dangerous vortex able to pull you under with its fast currents. She thought of Sonny Lal swimming to be with Leela.
‘Look at where we are, Vincent. I’m afraid.’
He knew that she was not just talking about their present predicament. He saw the absurdity of their love. He thought of his patients. He thought of Theo, alone in the house. How to follow their obsession and carry out their responsibilities!
Night Calypso Page 25