So Many Islands

by Nicholas Laughlin

  The final was played in Stubbs. It was mid-August, warm, but not too hot, ideal conditions for cricket. Skipper Jardine could feel his heart thumping as the players’ vehicle pull up at the entrance to the ground, accompanied by two vans of fans to cheer them on. Don’t fear your rivals, he remind himself during the warm up. Play your best game. Play to win. If you fall short, no shame in that.

  Hibiscus CC was the opposition. Former champions, well-known for their all-round strength, and for fielding ‘ringers’ – first-class players disguised with long beards, heavy moustaches and shades. As Jardine walk out with their captain to toss, he get a taste of what he up against.

  ‘You country boys can’t really play cricket, you know.’ Wilf Straker, the Hibiscus captain, take Jardine by the right shoulder like friends going for a stroll in the Botanical Gardens on a Sunday. Wilf was a short muscular Kingstown man widely recognised as one of the best batsmen in the competition. ‘You scraped through to the final, but you fellas wasting our time – you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Come and ask me later,’ Jardine reply, casually removing Wilf’s hand from his shoulder.

  ‘When I play guys like you is like having fritters instead of rice and peas.’

  ‘Mind you choke on your pork today.’

  ‘I’m batting at four, and I haven’t even changed into my cricket clothes yet. My top three going to batter you fellas. I might not even get a knock.’

  ‘We have bowlers to clean up your batsmen, Wilf. If I was you, I would start getting dressed out here.’

  Wilf slap Jardine on the back then stop and point to a car by the exit. ‘See that black Audi over there?’ he ask.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘See who’s in it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Look again, Jardine. Carefully.’

  ‘Looks like a girl.’

  ‘Not just a girl, but my girl.’

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘Mistress. Guess how old?’

  ‘Fifty-five?’

  ‘Twenty-two. Guess how old I’ll be next birthday.’

  ‘Twelve?’

  ‘Thirty-six.’

  They were at the pitch now. It looked brown, firm, flat, good for batting. The kind of track Walcott batsmen pray for.

  ‘Thirty-six,’ Wilf flick a pound coin between his fingers. ‘And my sweetheart twenty-two. “End the match quick, honey,” she whisper in my ear and nibble it. “The quicker the game finish, the more time we have to play.” Don’t let your men detain me too long, Jardine, I have serious work to do.’

  ‘Then toss the blasted coin,’ Jardine say. ‘Before it land, your girlfriend might have disappeared with someone her own age.’

  Wilf launch the coin high into the air, and Jardine shout a confident ‘Heads’. When the coin settle after a long roll all Jardine could do was grunt in frustration.

  ‘Good luck, Skip,’ Wilf say, offering his right hand. ‘Between 250 and 300 runs today if my boys not on form, I reckon. If they’re on fire I feel sorry for you. You’ll be doing a lot of chasing, I promise you.’

  The track was flat, the bounce true. Even Stiffy couldn’t get the ball to swing or deviate. But he didn’t grunt, grumble or cramp. The Walcott boys didn’t wilt. True to form, Hibiscus’s top three batsmen arrived at the wicket with long beards and expensive helmets. They stroked the ball with the grace and ease of former island players. But reputations didn’t bother the Walcott men. Chasing, diving to save a single, holding their catches, their effort in the field delighted fans and neutrals alike.

  Little by little, the bowlers chip away at the Hibiscus batsmen. One side of the wicket was the bowling plan, and one side it was. Greedy and impatient, the Hibiscus men score briskly then perish. Batting at five, Wilf hit four straight fours before skying the ball and walking off in a huff. After the regulation forty overs, the Hibiscus CC innings closed on 241.

  ‘Well played fellas,’ Jardine say during the interval. ‘Well done. Well bowled, well fielded. 241 is a good score, but if we go about it the right way we can knock off the runs.’

  President Cleopatra, looking as stunning as ever, her hair greying at the temples, rap gently then enter the dressing room. She help to arrange kit and clothing, she squeeze the skipper’s right shoulder and link arms like they use to before he went to work on the leeward side of the island.

  ‘You fellas made us proud,’ she whisper. ‘A thousand supporters out there ask me to pass on that message. You’ve won the first half of the game, now bat like Walcott men and win outright.’

  But the Walcott players nervous. Each face tight, pensive, so President Cleo add, because she knew the players gave their best when relaxed, ‘I don’t normally enter the privacy of the dressing room, but don’t forget Cleopatra’s still thirty-seven and single. If Skipper Jardine capture the trophy, I give him permission to ask my hand in marriage a second time!’

  The men respond with a nervous chuckle, President Cleo wipe away a tear and, all emotional, she stride quickly away from the dressing room.

  Each man anxious to perform, to star, but at the same time, he can’t wait for the match to be over. Is not fear but uncertainty, the hollow feeling that could paralyse a man unless he take control of himself. Good thing the players know that the moment you step out onto the field, bat in hand, your pride accompany you to the middle and drive out the doubts.

  A good stand from the openers, and the Walcott CC men feel comfortable, they’re in gear. Numbers three and four perish quickly, but Jardine solid at five, slow in scoring, careful. The match tight. Player or spectator, no one could doubt the quality of the Hibiscus CC bowlers. Swing, seam, pace, spin, no department weak. And their fielding! They forever shying at the stumps, two men back up every throw. To beat them, Walcott CC would need luck and skill, their fans sense, and even that might not be enough.

  Over after over the Walcott men scramble singles, turn twos into threes, and caress the odd sumptuous boundary to stay in the game. Tension in the crowd, worse on the field. After a flurry of runs, a wicket would tumble. The all-rounders lash out, the scoreboard get busy again. Ten overs, twenty, twenty-five, and the game still in the balance.

  ‘Stay at the wicket,’ Jardine beg each new partner, ‘once we out here we have a chance.’

  But like Hibiscus in their innings, each batsman shine for a while then bow out, leaving the responsibility to the next one in. The occasion getting to them, 241 seemed like double the number. So, after three hours, at 218 for 9, the last man, Humphrey, stroll to the wicket to join the skipper with his customary elegance and nonchalance, bat under his arm. Wilf amble over to Jardine, a sarcastic grin on his face.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you had a Test player in your team!’ he whisper. ‘That man have so much style I’ll have to bring back my quickies – Dexter’s sharp, not true?’

  ‘Do what you want,’ Jardine reply, his throat dry, his lips coarse. ‘Bring on Dexter, Redman, or the paceman you imported from Antigua – you already lost the game.’

  But deep down, the butterflies fluttering so violently, Jardine finding it hard to keep his composure. How to get the runs? Where to find gaps in the field?

  On top of that, there was Humphrey. Fielding was his strength. If he pulled off a magnificent catch, he was in heaven. Tactics, state of the pitch, those things didn’t concern him. How to guide him now, Jardine wonder, what to tell him? Better not to say much to him, he decide, best to let him play his way.

  Dexter’s run-up long and intimidating. He hurled the first ball down at a ferocious pace. Far too quick for the number eleven, the ball was in the keeper’s gloves before Humphrey begin his swing. Hush all around the ground, the silence of spectators fearing a batsman might be out of his depth. Hush, and sharp intakes of breath.

  Though he didn’t understand nerves, Leno experienced enough to know that faced with a genuine quick bowler you have to watch the ball carefully, to concentrate hard, to get the reflexes doubly sharp. So to the second ball
he was earlier in his swing, front foot out, bat coming from behind his right ear. He achieve a connection, thin, but firm enough to send the ball swirling over third man for four.

  ‘I’m seeing it,’ he shout down the wicket to Jardine. ‘Don’t worry, Skip, I’m seeing it!’

  Jardine smile inwardly. Humphrey was a law unto himself. With a little luck, he could hold his end for three overs, and the match would be theirs. Jardine pray for Walcott CC, he pray for Humphrey. He pray that he himself didn’t mess things up.

  The next over they scamper two twos, then the silence in the crowd reappear as Humphrey prepare to receive again.

  ‘How you feeling?’ Jardine ask Humphrey as Wilf take his time setting the field.

  ‘Well, it’s like this, skip,’ Humphrey reply with a calmness Jardine wish he could emulate. ‘Cricket is a simple game. You fellas know all the technical stuff. Me, now? Wherever the ball pitch, I’m going after it.’

  ‘Defend if it’s on the stumps,’ Jardine suggest quietly.

  ‘Not one of my shots,’ Humphrey reply, cool as ever. ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Jardine pat him on the shoulder and smile, for nothing seem to faze Humphrey. ‘Play it how you see it.’

  Jardine return to his end, glance up at the scoreboard, and pray once more as the next over begin.

  A swing and a miss, a cover drive, a swish a fraction too early, a thump to fine leg, a hook to wide long off, a clip to midwicket: second ball, four; fifth and sixth, four again. Three fours in the course of one over. Humphrey unsettle Hibiscus and bring the game within reach! Hush turn to disbelief, the Walcott CC supporters go mad. They shout from the boundary, they turn up the music, they break out into a wild dance.

  ‘Walcott! Walcott!’ they sing. ‘The trophy belongs to us.’

  But when the singing and dancing subside, the tension return. The final over, four runs to get, one wicket to fall.

  ‘Long way to go still.’ Wilf skip over just as Jardine preparing to receive the first delivery. ‘Your hitter give you an outside chance. What a pity the captain going to disappoint the fans by getting out.’

  ‘You had your turn with the bat, Wilf.’ Jardine resist this attempt to rile him. ‘Now sit back and watch.’

  ‘Dexter was taking it easy on your number eleven because the ambulance service in this part of the country not so great, but is you and Winston now. Let’s see if you can handle real pace.’

  The other opening bowler, Winston Best, was stiff, extremely quick. ‘You’re rapid, Winston, you’re the best,’ Jardine could hear the fielders shouting encouragement as Winston wait at the end of his run, like a 747 revving up at the top of the runway. ‘One ball, stumps flying, game over!’

  From his first spell, Jardine knew Winston was truly express. But he was mostly straight. A cartwheeling stump was his favourite sight on the cricket field, so he attacked the wicket five balls out of six. With four runs to win Jardine had to keep running his tongue over his lips, he could smell his sweat, he could feel the shirt clinging to his back.

  How to go about getting the runs? he ask himself. Play the first few deliveries cautiously, then go for a boundary? No, that would be a mistake. He would be like Humphrey, he decide. He would be bold. If the ball was there to hit, there was only one thing to do.

  Heart thumping furiously, he watch Winston Best approach, a smooth rhythmical sprint and then a final leap. The ball was full, quick, straight, aimed at middle stump. A dangerous ball. Miss it and the game over. It came to Jardine like a missile, homing in on the target, but as if in slow motion.

  Jardine watch it. He wait. He wait. He wait, until wait any longer and the stumps would scatter. He didn’t swing like Humphrey. Offering the bat-face to the ball, pushing, not hard, in case there was any last minute deviation, he knew he had done all he could to protect the stumps. Over thirty years of cricket were in that simple block.

  The sweetness of the ball thudding onto his bat was like a spurt of electricity through his arms and legs, through his entire body. Then everything fall silent. It was like the world was at a temporary standstill. No sound, no movement. Then as the ball speed past the bowler he hear the crowd erupt and the world seem to get rolling again. A second later he feel Humphrey lifting him in the air.

  The Walcott fans invade the pitch and carry Jardine and Humphrey off in triumph. They sing, dance, drink, they wake up the neighbourhood. Delfreda was waiting with a kiss for Humphrey by the boundary, long and lingering.

  Resplendent in a loose turquoise trouser suit, her shapely figure reined in, President Cleo wrestled him away from his wife.

  ‘He’s my boy for now,’ she grinned, as she planted a large kiss on him.’ You can have him later.’

  Releasing Humphrey, she seize Jardine by the neck and kiss him so hard his eyes water.

  ‘And you are mine once more, Gilbert Dessalines.’

  On the way home in the minivan, Humphrey lead the singing and drinking and dancing. President Cleo cry like a girl leaving home to set up with a vagabond against her father’s wishes.

  ‘I’m thirty-six next week,’ she said, sipping a small rum to recover her composure, ‘but I want you boys to promise to keep Walcott CC going for the next fifty years!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said the men, raising Carib beer, Red Stripe and Hairoun.

  ‘And a special toast to Gilbert Dessalines,’ she continue. ‘Today he performed like the man Cleo used to love!’

  She took Jardine’s hand shyly under the seat and the skipper knew she was serious.

  Ten miles from home Humphrey say, ‘I’m coming off my long run tonight, you know, fellas. What about you all?’

  Jardine smile to himself as Humphrey explain chapter and verse to the players and Cleopatra wrap herself deeper in his arms. Perhaps it was time to follow Humphrey.

  ‘Me too,’ he whisper. ‘I think it’s time I try out the long run.’

  ‘When we are married, Gilbert,’ President Cleo yawned, before dozing off again. ‘You have to wait till we’re married. Thirty-five is a good age for a woman.’

  Roses for Mister Thorne

  For the Fallen (June 1980)

  Jacob Ross

  Grenada

  Anni pushed a reluctant hand towards her little plastic radio and cut off the outraged voice of Mister Thorne. She would have liked to listen to his whole speech but she had work to do. Her yams were strangling the sweet potatoes, and today she was going to tame them.

  Out in the garden, though, her head was full of Missa Thorne: his talk of Bloody Thursday – the bomb-blast that was meant to kill him, and the retribution he’d let loose on the Counters who’d placed the device beneath the stage on which he stood.

  His words brought back pictures of the three girl-children they’d made posters of, and spread throughout the island, their destroyed bodies splayed on the grass like gutted fish.

  She felt again the quiet that had fallen on the island, and the loveliness of that afternoon eighteen months ago: a clean blue day; the air over Old Hope sweet and humming because during all that week the mangoes had been throwing out their blossoms.

  Missa Thorne was returning to The Park next week, he said. He would rally the thousands around him again; he was going to stand on that very same stage and speak, so that all the Counters on the island knew-and-understood that the Revo was not afraid of them, and if they tried it again the Revo would give them heavy, heavy manners.

  Voices broke through her thoughts. On the road below, Slim, the young fast-talking militiaman, stood among a buzz of young people. He was fingering his red beret with one hand, the elbow of the other making jerky movements above the pistol on his hip. They’d already cut away the overhanging trees, fed the leaves and branches to a snapping roadside fire. The girls had tied back their hair with the flag of the Revo – a white square of cloth with a blood-red circle in the middle. Small outbreaks of laughter rose above the slap of machetes and the grate of spades.

  She was wond
ering what the hell them find so funny this time-a-mornin’ when Slim pulled back his shoulders and raised a long brown arm at her. ‘Crazy-Anni, how you this morning?’

  Even from this distance she could see the broad spread of the young man’s teeth.

  She muttered something nasty and turned towards her rosebush.

  It stood on its own mound in the half shade of her cocoa tree, its roots covered with a layer of sea kelp, compost and manure. She’d protected it from the spite of wind and rain and direct sunlight with a ring of coconut fronds.

  And to think that once this perfect rosebush almost died – that July morning of heavy dew which had caught her unawares and blighted the leaves with black spot. She’d taken the bus to St George’s to see the man in the Agroshop who knew everything.

  ‘Cut it back,’ he said. ‘Hard! You’ll be hurting it to save it.’

  He’d handed her a tiny bag of Epsom salts. ‘Tonic. Magnesium. And don’t forget a few spoonfuls of gypsum and a sprinkling of sulphur.’

  Now here it was, bristling with thorns, its leaves dark and glossed with health; the petals, furled tight like an infant’s fist, straining against the sepals that held them in.

  This rosebush was Missa Thorne’s. She would take it to him next week because he’d asked for it.

  * * *

  He’d come to Old Hope the month before the bomb. She was bending over the vermilion tendrils of her pum-pum yams when the thundering of engines straightened her up and pulled her gaze down to the road. The grate of wheels on gravel. Men’s voices.

  Something in her quickened when she saw soldiers stepping out of two green jeeps. Between the jeeps, a long black car, so brightly polished it looked silver in the hot light.

  A brown man in a blue suit stepped out of it. Another in a white waistcoat stood at his side. Their eyes were on the path that led past her place to the new co-operative farm further up her hill.