The Night of the Rambler

by Montague Kobbé

  Before the sun had lifted over the clouds gathered in the distance, right where the sky meets the sea, still during twilight, between night and day, every person in Anguilla knew foul play had taken place in the wee hours of the night. Spontaneously, a continuation of the previous day’s mourning was staged, and the banners were fished out from the yards, and the coffin was reassembled, and new garments were chosen by those who had so much, and the ones who didn’t took every step to make their black dresses, their dark trousers, their white shirts or blouses look as if they had not been worn all day, such that well before seven in the morning the crowd gathered outside the Landsome House was so large, it seemed as if it had never dispersed at all.

  Except something was missing from the previous day—there was none of the expectancy, none of the vibrant excitement there had been. Absent, too, was the soft tune of “God Save the Queen,” replaced, instead, with a good degree of restlessness and a pervading sense that, coffin or no coffin, mock funeral, general strike, civil disobedience, and all the rest, it was already too late, as, indeed, it had been for the past two and a half months, since that fated meeting, belatedly called toward the end of December 1966, when Anguilla’s destiny had been decided without so much as the presence, let alone the consent, of the island’s representative, Aaron Lowell. Ever since that moment, Anguilla had been sentenced to rest in peace and desolation under the thumb of Robert Bradshaw and whatever shape or form his successor in the future might take, doomed to remain for the rest of its days an unrecognized colony of a “sister” island that could hardly be made out in the distance on the clearest of days, of a “neighboring” isle that was separated by five other islands, thus perpetuating an association rooted in the incongruous, incompetent, ignorant practicality of a colonial administration utterly disinterested in the state of affairs in Anguilla, now as then.

  It might have been a lack of energy, or perhaps no one had the eloquence to express it in such words, or perhaps, even, no one was fully aware of the historical chain of events which, since 1825, had conspired to produce the situation in which Anguillians, clad in their darkest clothes, found themselves. So, perhaps the thought was not articulated in full, but the magnitude of the event, the scale of the treason, escaped nobody. Anguillians mourned their own death in stunned silence the rest of the day. But too much of their spirit—more than just energy—had been sapped by the latest blow for anybody to be ingenuous enough even to think about performing the same nonsense the following day. So it was that on Tuesday, March 1, peace returned to the streets of the island and a semblance of normality fell upon The Valley. Only just a semblance, though, because things were far from back to normal on that Tuesday morning and on any of the many mornings to come, because Anguillians felt betrayed, yes, but Anguillians also felt impotent and helpless and angry and played and at some point, everybody knew, something had to give.

  Therefore, nobody was particularly surprised when, seven days later, the warden woke up to a sweltering heat inside the Landsome House, and to a distinct smell of charcoaled wood, and a dense cloud of black smoke that hardly allowed any oxygen to filter through his pituitary membranes and reach his lungs, such that the warden—choked, bright red eyes bulging out of their sockets, drenching his face in tears, throat tied in an impenetrable knot that presaged the very worst—abruptly stirred from his sleep and, invigorated with the resolve and the final thrust that spells alarm in an asphyxiating body, pulled himself out of bed, and, without bothering so much as to open his Demerara windows, threw himself, head and shoulders first, out of the top—second—floor of his lodgings, pulling off a perfect forward flip as he traveled down the fifteen feet that separated him from the ground. The pathetic whimpering that could still be heard close to an hour later, as the futile efforts by a fire brigade that consisted of simple civilians rushing to and from the Old Valley well with buckets that were roughly half-empty of water by the time they reached the Landsome House, was attributed to the left ankle the warden had sprained while saving his life, which he would be unable to treat in Anguilla, simply because there was no hospital.

  No one was surprised when they saw the warden, clad in the same pajamas he had worn to raise the flag of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla for the first time, just eight days earlier, desperately running—or leaping, rather—for his life, and no one was surprised, either, when they heard the epicene sobbing that followed, out of terror more than pain, some suggested. But what really no one was surprised at all about was the fact that some angry young or old Anguillian had decided to take matters in his own hands and pay the British back with a pyrotechnical display that set the oldest building in Anguilla aflame.

  No one was surprised, and yet, at the same time, no one was particularly pleased or proud of the deed, either. As soon as the news of what was happening in the northern end of The Valley reached Island Harbour, Alwyn Cooke looked for his gray trousers and pressed white shirt to pay a visit, not to the injured warden, but to Rude Thompson, whom he suspected would be behind the act of arson. To Alwyn’s surprise, however, it was he who broke the news to Rude about the warden’s near-death experience, which was greeted with a cackle and an exuberant Yeeeee-ha!

  Alwyn Cooke was not amused by Rude’s approval of the methods and, indeed, questioned whether, truly, he knew nothing of the incident, yet Rude’s matter-of-factness returned to him as soon as his integrity was questioned: Is ’bout time someone teach dem English idiots a lesson, you know. I wish it was me come up wit’ de idea. But is not me goin’ say he ain’ done somepin’ he do, an’ it ain’ me goin’ take credit for somepin’ somebody else done.

  Alwyn was uneasy with Rude’s position, but he knew confronting him was not going to help, so Wha’s done is done, Rude—bu’ we cannot have people t’inkin’ in Anguilla is no law an’ dey kyan do whatever dem please. Is you started all dis violence nonsense, and before he could finish his sentence Rude Thompson reassured him, An’ if someone from East End have somepin’ to do wit’ dis, I will know, you know.

  But days came and went, and Rude Thompson did not know a thing, because whoever caused the wooden structure of the Landsome House to go up in smoke was either too frightened of the consequences or not terribly proud of his actions, because he or (rather unlikely) she was not letting anybody know that he had done it, and in an eminently boastful society such as Anguilla’s (then and now) that usually means something isn’t quite right. Hence, after being left out in the dark for four days, Rude went to Gaynor Henderson’s doorstep to ask him straight out, Who de hell done dis foolishness? This was the first time Rude heard the prevailing rumor that the Landsome House fire had been caused not by arson but by the carelessness of that darned warden, whose habits had remained unchanged since he had first been sent in exile by the Crown’s foreign office, still wearing the same satin pajamas to sleep, to which all of Anguilla had been privy following his more clumsy than great escape from the fire four nights earlier, and still, too, dining on his own at a fully set table with the steel cutlery carefully placed on red acrylic tablecloths, as if it were a set of Christofle knives and forks, and the full regalia of cheap china spread out on the dining table with the same elegance as if we were speaking of Spode plates, and a pair of copper candlesticks that sometimes had nothing finer than tea lights, though on the night in question, it was rumored, the warden had received a package straight from England with a box of long, thin candles, twelve of them, which had so excited him that he immediately lit two of them in the dining room and, straight after dinner, carried two more into his room.

  De man fall asleep wit’ a book in he hand an’ next t’ing he know de curtains catch fire, de whole house covered in smoke, an’ he havin’ to jump out de window to save he life.

  The warden had not helped his cause with the Anguillian people, and whether or not there was any degree of truth in this tale is completely inconsequential to our story, but no one ever stepped forward to claim any knowledge or involvement in the burning down of the Landsome Hous
e on March 8, 1967, and the only thing ever to come out of it was the warden himself, who hobbled onto a plane and flew to Antigua for treatment, never to return. Anguilla, meanwhile, lost yet another guise—another symbol—of authority, and was left to drift more or less boundlessly.

  The situation, now beyond desperate, remained idle—stagnant—for several months. Aaron Lowell, a figure as helpless as he was powerless, seemed even more hopeless than usual in his efforts to communicate with a British senior official, who, constitutionally, no longer had any jurisdiction, any power, nor any interest at all, for that matter, in any affair whatsoever involving Anguilla. Sol Carter, Rude Thompson, and Alwyn Cooke met often during this time to discuss the possibilities, to work out a plan of action, to give the impression, at least to themselves, that they were working toward a solution. Then, finally, Rude Thompson could take it no longer. He descended upon his people, he questioned every soul he found in the streets of Anguilla, he demanded everyone get together to speak, to protest, to act, and all of a sudden a meeting was officially called to take place at the park in The Valley on May 29, 1967.

  For wha’ dis meeting? Sol asked, full of suspicion.

  We go figure it out right dere—de whole bunch of we. That was the best Rude could fashion for an answer, but it was enough to calm Sol’s greatest fears, and the word was spread at the pace with which it was always spread in Anguilla: the speed of light; and soon enough everybody knew about the meeting, and everyone was getting excited, and everyone wanted to take part.

  A massive crowd of people gathered in and around Burrowes Park, not really certain of why they were there or what they were going to do, other than to express their discontent, other than to protest against the present arrangement, other than to take comfort in the fact that each of them was not alone, in the fact that the vast majority of people on the island suffered in similar degree. Early on the afternoon of May 29, 1967, hundreds of Anguillians arrived at Burrowes Park to listen to their leaders’ appeals, alternatives, solutions, ideas, and a dialogue began with each of the speakers, with Rude Thompson and Alwyn Cooke, but also with less actively militant members of the community, who took the chance to jump under the limelight, to take center stage and voice their opinions. There was John O’Farrell, the Anglican canon from East End, whose pipe danced frantically between his lips as he entreated the people to look deep within their souls to find the courage to face the challenges posed to them by the Lord, for regardless of their will, their fate had already been written since eternity and for eternity in the Book of the Lord, and therefore they should not be stifled by fear of earthly punishments, for nothing, not fear, nor pain, nor hunger, nor the total neglect in which Anguilla had been left since ever and ever, would be able to prevent the divine edicts from being carried out and each of their destinies from being fulfilled. And as the generalized Amen was echoed in Catholics and Methodists and Anglicans and Evangelists among the crowd, the imposing figure of Gwendolyn Stewart, firstborn child of Connor Stewart from Island Harbour, emerged with her commandeering voice: I does wan’ to fulfill my destiny, Father, but how I kyan do dat an’ not eat I ain’ understandin’ yet. And suddenly it did not matter anymore who was on the wooden speaker’s box and who was on the floor, because the discussion had grown alive, it had gained a soul of its own, and it made the rounds all through the cricket ground that was the original design of Burrowes Park.

  But on this day, on May 29, 1967, Burrowes Park was anything but a sports ground, because the issues that were discussed within the stadium had nothing to do with wickets and runs but rather were fully concerned with the wishes and anxieties of the people of Anguilla, with their expectations and the way available to them to achieve them, with the future of the island and the well-being of its inhabitants. As a matter of fact, on that remarkable day, Burrowes Park was the closest thing the modern world might ever get to an ancient agora, where citizens would openly discuss the matters of their state and decide upon them through direct elections, and nobody in Anguilla might have known it at the time, and if they did, they might not have realized the magnitude of their achievement, but on May 29, 1967, as the afternoon dragged on and more and more people made their way to the park, and the discussions grew more heated and the opinions more agitated, more committed, more extreme, Anguilla put to practice a concept that for centuries had been studied and analyzed, that had been proposed, adopted, amended, discussed, theorized, developed, and redeveloped: the concept of Democracy.

  Burrowes Park became the center of the most democratic process witnessed in any contemporary society, as the swelling crowd contemplated the events that had led directly to the state of desperation in which they had lived for the past four months, with each person exercising a right that was there in practice, if not in law, giving his or her views and affecting directly, without the need for representation, the course of the day and of history. This was the situation when Alwyn Cooke, suddenly aware of the potential of this forum, took to the platform and spoke through a megaphone: Fellow Anguillians, is today we mus’ show St. Kitts how bad we wan’ break up wit’ ’em. Is today we mus’ determine how we go split wit’ St. Kitts for good.

  And before any possibilities could be explored, before the consequences of their actions could be measured, before, even, the meaning of the words sunk into the consciousness of the people, a slogan spontaneously devised by Rude Thompson, heckling Alwyn’s speech, grabbed hold of the collective imagination and spread like a wildfire from person to person, from one character dried out of any hope to the next, and the rumor grew into a chorus that demanded to Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out! and before anyone realized who ’em might be, Rude jumped right next to Alwyn and shouted into the megaphone, We ain’ wan’ no orders from St. Kitts! We ain’ wan’ no not’in’ from St. Kitts! and as the women looked at each other, and the men, and as the big dark eyes of one mirrored the enthusiasm of the other, the thought suddenly made itself clearer in the minds of some of the audience, and their eyes glowed with a dose of courage, and their fists got clenched in a sign of defiance, and the chorus now turned into a roar that was intoxicating, and the Kick ’em out! could now be heard as far away as the police station, and those who were not totally convinced by the resolution were persuaded by the general hysteria, and the few dissenting voices were drowned in the deafening unison of the chant, and those who were overcome by doubt or fear at the thought of outright rejection of the legal authority as stipulated by the new constitution were comforted by the thought, Wha’ dey goin’ do? Look how much people we be—or was that not a thought? Had Rude Thompson just uttered the words so many others were thinking that very moment? And, For real, wha’ dey goin’ do? Dey t’irteen, we some t’ousands, and no sooner had Rude Thompson announced that they should march toward the police station than the crowd was cut through the middle to allow him and Alwyn Cooke to make their way to the front, to lead the way toward the only bastion of Kittitian authority left on the island, to Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out! Kick ’em out!

  Inspector Edmonton was as baffled when he heard the news that the mob that had congregated at Burrowes Park had determined that enough is enough, that the police task force should leave the island, never to come back, that the time had come for Anguillians to take care of their matters by themselves, as, indeed, was Aaron Lowell, the man whom Alwyn Cooke had chosen to deliver the nonnegotiable message. As the river of people flowed out of Burrowes Park in the general direction of the police station, Alwyn Cooke called on Aaron Lowell to take charge of things, because You de man de people choose to represen’ dem. Now, you go ahead an’ tell Inspector Edmonton wha’ it is you people who elect you wan’ you to do. And Aaron Lowell could not muster the strength to come up with a response, and all he could do was hide his small black eyes behind a fit of blinking that had his eyelashes fluttering away, and Alwyn, No worry, nuh, man—we have de Lord an’ de people of Anguilla on we side: wha’ could hurt us now?

  And verily, Inspector
Edmonton had precious little at hand to deal with a crowd of this nature in Anguilla that day, and the only thing left for him to do was buy some time and try to stall the situation in the hope that the wildfire of popular courage would choke itself, or grow weary with the passage of the hours, and if the authorities in St. Kitts resolved to act with the urgency merited by the situation the following morning, then maybe, just maybe, something could be salvaged out of all this mess, so How yer expect me to get me men out of here dis time of day?

  And, indeed, it was almost five in the afternoon by then, and there were not enough planes to get all thirteen men out of the island simultaneously, and there would not be light for long enough to make two journeys to St. Kitts, and the last thing the people of Anguilla wanted was to send out just a portion of the contingent of policemen, for Bradshaw and his people to have all the details at hand to devise an attack on Anguilla overnight, so All right: you kyan stay tonight, but you leave tomorrow mornin’, before it turn to afternoon.

  Thus, an initiative that had begun as a collective exercise to figure out what to do next turned into a rigorous night-long vigil outside the police station. The vast crowd thinned out progressively as the night settled over the Anguillian sky, yet Alwyn Cooke, Rude Thompson, and, now, also Aaron Lowell presided over a group of people that was never smaller than one hundred, camped along the main road in The Valley. Contrary to what might have been expected, it was not a joyous, festive, or even exciting night, but rather a bunch of tense, anxious hours during which sleep was not even a possibility. Anguilla had taken its leap of faith, but the fall would last all through that night and most of the following day, and it was anyone’s guess whether they would be able to land on their feet, or land at all.