‘So Frida’s more along the lines of light relief, eh?’ Sheila smiles.
‘I been asked to write a book – part autobiography, part self-help bible for bolshy radicals. Publishers want an activist’s version of P.J. O’Rourke’s Holidays in Hell. You ever read that thing?’
‘Yup.’ Sheila nods, enthused.
‘Huh …’ the woman mutters (plainly unimpressed by the positivity of Sheila’s response). ‘Piece of supercilious right-wing balderdash.’
‘Pretty funny, though.’ Sheila shrugs.
‘People think I’m funny, but I never really see it myself,’ the woman mutters. ‘They say my son is funny, but I never found him funny, neither. He’s weird – real weird – but funny? Nuh-uh.’
‘Perhaps it’s simply your natural candour?’ Sheila suggests.
‘Thing is I’m struggling to get started’ – the woman pointedly ignores Sheila’s insight – ‘can’t tell what to put in and what to leave out. My lover give me this thing for inspiration’ – she holds up the Kahlo book – ‘but it’s all over the place …’
She violently shakes her head again. The glasses stay in situ.
‘Well what kinds of autobiographies do you like?’ Sheila wonders.
‘Never actually read one cover to cover.’
‘Oh.’
‘Never had the luxury,’ the woman confides, ‘always had something way more profitable to do with my time.’
‘Hmmn. Could seem a little arrogant,’ Sheila gently chides her. ‘I mean to try and write something which you expect other people to read without doing any of the basic groundwork yourself …’
‘Who you calling arrogant?!’ the woman hisses, furious (several diners turn around again).
Sheila bounces back in her seat, her tongue stumbling over an apology, as the woman commences to cackle (evidently delighted by the extremity of Sheila’s reaction).
‘Of course I’m arrogant, Wendy!’ She claps her hands together, gleefully. ‘How else I gonna survive out there? Eh?’
She then shakes her head, perhaps a little more forcefully than is required.
‘You can keep those if you like’ – Sheila indicates towards the Wedgees (refusing to be provoked) – ‘I have a spare pair at home.’
‘I don’t want to keep them.’ The woman scowls, starting to remove her glasses, offended. ‘I can buy my own. I was just trying them out.’
‘I have a second pair at home,’ Sheila persists. ‘I bought them for my mother but she had laser treatment and gave them back.’
‘Well if you put it like that …’ The woman grudgingly accepts the offer, then, after a second’s thought, ‘You can have this in exchange.’
She removes some loose, printed papers from between the pages of her book, closes it and pushes it across the table towards her. ‘It’s a review copy. Not even in the stores yet.’
‘But wasn’t it a gift?’ Sheila automatically resists.
‘Who cares? I’m not even reading the damn thing,’ the woman confesses. ‘Look – I had some work-related papers hidden inside.’ She grins.
‘Why are you hiding them?’ Sheila wonders, intrigued.
‘I’m on a six-month break. A holiday from trouble. I promised faithfully not to get involved in anything.’
‘Promised who?’
‘My man.’ She shrugs. ‘My son.’
‘So what are the papers about?’
‘They’re a “spirited defence” of Responsible Tourism.’ The woman rolls her eyes, drolly.
‘You mean like eco-tourism?’
‘Lord have mercy!’ The woman shudders, theatrically.
‘There’s a problem with eco-tourism?’ Sheila’s bemused.
‘A problem?’ The woman looks astonished at Sheila’s evident naivety on the issue. ‘Okay, in brief’ – she knits her fingers together and leans forward on the table, fixing Sheila with her steely gaze – ‘I think we all accept that global tourism is one of the major threats to cultural and biological diversity in the “third world” right now, if not on the planet as a whole,’ (she doesn’t wait for Sheila to respond), ‘and that transnational organizations are only the tip of a giant iceberg – corrupt governments, airline monopolies, Bretton Woods, a Western culture that hinges on notions of entitlement and excess – they all play their part. But the way I see it, the eco-tourists are just as bad – worse, even. Their dogged pursuit of paradise on earth? Pure hokum! These folk are way more complacent, more dangerous, more downright despicable than the “real” shit-heads by a mile! Why? Because they’re even more deluded. At least the shit-heads know what they want – cold, hard cash, at any price. The eco-tourists think they can fly and gawp and consume with perfectly clean consciences for a few extra dollars and some bogus assurances. But let’s face it … uh …’ The woman grasps for Sheila’s name and then realizes that she doesn’t know it.
‘Sheila,’ Sheila interjects, holding out her hand.
‘Let’s face it, Wendy, they’re just another cog in the same, corrupt system. They’re not helping anyone or changing anything. It’s superficial, not systemic.’
Sheila nods, still holding out her hand.
‘I’m a Deep Ecologist,’ the woman continues, ignoring the hand. ‘You ever hear of Deep Ecology, before, Wendy?’
‘It rings a vague bell,’ Sheila avers.
‘Left Biocentrism? Environmental ethics blended with left-wing causes?’
‘Absolutely …’ Sheila nods.
‘We oppose economic growth, capitalism and consumerism,’ the woman brusquely continues. ‘I’m Victoria,’ she finishes off, ‘Victoria Wilson. Vicki Wilson to my friends.’
‘So how’d you get involved in all this stuff?’
Sheila uses the rejected hand to pick up her coffee cup and take a sip.
‘I just opened my eyes and took a good look around me.’ Victoria shrugs.
Sheila puts down her coffee, picks up her sandwich and takes another bite.
‘I grew up in Jamaica,’ Victoria expands. ‘When I was sixteen I began working, part-time, in this Anglo-American-owned holiday resort – part of a big franchise. Couldn’t get a job anywhere else … Didn’t take long till I started to notice the glass ceiling for local employees. Everybody in management positions was shipped in from abroad. Same deal with all the items sold in resort stores – even the food served in the restaurants was shipped in from Florida or someplace. It was basically just a new, more subtle kind of colonialism in which our “paradise” culture was superficially celebrated – patronized, boiled down into a series of offensive, easily digestible clichés – and profoundly degraded: local people were banned from the beaches, paid pitiable wages and forced to live in makeshift “service” villages while all the profit they made – and I mean all the profit, every cent – was filtered clean away from the “host” island, straight back to the multinational mothership.’
‘Almost like a modern apartheid,’ Sheila muses, through further mouthfuls of her sandwich.
‘“Almost”?!’ Victoria clucks, outraged. ‘They exploited our resources – because that’s all we were; all our country was – all our country is: a series of “resources” to be pitilessly consumed. They paid no heed to local people, our well-being, our culture or our environment. They’re just cancers, devouring everything that’s good and pumping out filth and disease by way of exchange – poisoning our seas, our rivers, our soils, poisoning our people’s minds, creating a deep sense of disenfranchisement, nurturing feelings of inadequacy and frustration and hopelessness and envy. They’re carcinogenic. They’re the devil incarnate. They sicken me.’
A short silence follows.
‘It must feel good to make a difference,’ Sheila finally volunteers. ‘I always dreamed of making a difference. But it’s so much harder than you think – I mean to break through all the red tape, the petty interests –’
‘It’s not hard,’ Victoria interrupts, flapping her hand, dismissively, ‘it’s only hard if you play by t
heir rules, if you think you can change things, piecemeal, from within. That’s a fool’s approach – pissing in the wind – a criminal waste of valuable energy.’
Victoria takes another bite of her flapjack.
‘In the Church we tend to value the virtue of obedience,’ Sheila explains, ‘to encourage a state of humility …’
‘You think Jesus Christ was obedient, Sister,’ Victoria snorts, ‘or humble? Hah! Shows how much you understand theology!’
Sheila shifts in her seat, uncomfortably. ‘I hear what you’re saying, and I respect your opinion, but I can also see the virtue in compromise. It’s often a harder, more flawed, more frustrating route – I mean there’s this aggressive streak in me which really needs confining …’
‘So don’t confine it!’ Victoria’s exasperated. ‘Act on gut instinct!’
‘That’s what my husband’s always saying’ – Sheila shakes her head – ‘but it’s part of my journey to confine it – a test of my faith.’
‘So nuns can get themselves hitched in this country?’ Victoria exclaims, mugging astonishment.
‘You’ve never felt the urge to improve yourself?’ Sheila asks, scowling.
‘Why tie yourself up in knots?’ Victoria demands, contemptuous. ‘Why over-think everything? That’s definitely a privilege of the West – life’s so easy you need to be inventing problems!’
‘You’re absolutely right, of course,’ Sheila immediately concedes (taking this one square on the chin). She shakes her head, almost forlornly, and smiles. Victoria suddenly – unexpectedly – returns the smile, almost as if she’s seeing Sheila – her essence, her sense of inner conflict, her humanity – for the very first time. The encroaching storm clouds lift from her face. Her eyes glow like two silky dollops of heated molasses. Sheila finds herself reddening slightly under the unexpectedly intense spotlight of this odd woman’s approbation. She takes another bite of her sandwich to disguise her confusion, eventually murmuring, ‘Although if I can offer a small word of warning: I’m not sure if absolute certainty always makes for the greatest autobiography …’
‘Huh?’ Victoria’s smile instantly sets. The long shadows return. ‘How so?’
‘Because people need to empathize. I mean if you want this book to be inspirational – a kind of political call to arms – there needs to be the odd chink in the armour …’
Victoria ponders this for a moment.
‘I suppose we might call it the “handrail through the womb” moment,’ Sheila adds, as an afterthought.
‘Urgh – the handrail!’ Victoria grimaces. ‘Trust me, I had plenty of those in my time. But definitely nothing I feel the need to share. That’s the bit I don’t want to think about. That’s the bit I never want to think about.’
‘And that’s precisely why you’re blocked’ – Sheila shrugs – ‘because the handrail moments provide relief – and meaning – and contrast. They make everything else – the stuff you can control – more vivid, more coherent.’
Victoria pushes her flapjack away (as if the flapjack is the harsh truth she doesn’t want to acknowledge). She remains silent for a while.
‘Perhaps you’re worried that if you commit some of these things – these handrail moments, these perceived “weaknesses” – to paper’ – Sheila pushes her luck still further – ‘that if you face up to them, in print – in public – then not only will you risk showing vulnerability – a dangerous quality in your line of work – but you may even start questioning your whole raison d’être, seeing your protests – your campaigning – in an entirely new light, as part of something more internal, a different kind of struggle …’
‘Nuh-uh.’ Victoria shakes her head. ‘Vicki Wilson was always bolshy – always stepping outside the boundaries, always slightly off-key – ask anybody. I was born breech, on Halloween. They had to cut me out from my mother’s belly. They heard me screaming before the doctor could finish his incision. Like the wail of a banshee my ma always tells me. Poor old boy was so scared he almost dropped his scalpel!’
‘Is that possible?’ Sheila’s incredulous. ‘I mean for a foetus to actually …?’
‘Nope.’ Victoria shrugs, laughing.
A brief silence follows. Victoria pulls her plate back towards her and prods at her flapjack with her index finger. Sheila finishes off the first half of her sandwich in one large mouthful.
‘I always dreamed of being a writer,’ she starts off, once she’s swallowed.
‘You dreamed of being a lot of things,’ Victoria grumbles, ‘why’d you end up as none of them?’
‘Good point,’ Sheila acquiesces, with a woeful chuckle, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin.
Another short silence and then, ‘I was fifteen,’ Victoria starts off, haltingly, eyes lowered, pushing her flapjack around the plate, ‘just dropped out of school, spending the hours drinking, smoking ganja, dating the son of a local gangsta, not a sensible thought in my head, and my big sister – not me – is working at the local resort, finding lost balls, caddying on their golf course …’ Victoria grimaces. ‘She’s real ambitious, though, funding her own way through university – Applied Sciences; wants to become an engineer. That girl was always clever with her hands, always fixing shit, always making shit … Anyhow, one day she meets this white boy – English boy – pretty handy with a putter – earning a few dollars giving golf lessons at the resort. Beach bum. Long, bleach hair. Musical – keen brass player. Finds out our family is related – my mother’s side – to Francis Johnson, the famous band leader. In fact Aunt Hulda still teaches the keyed bugle in Freetown. He begs an introduction. Starts taking a few lessons. And somewhere along the line we bump into each other – don’t ask me how – I barely remember – and it’s crazy: fireworks! Three months down the line, I’m pregnant. The day I find out, this boy is off on the other side of the island playing in some big-money tournament. The next day he wins the damn thing. The day after that he ups and flies home. No letter, no phone call … And best of all, my big sister leaves with him. They been together ever since.’
‘As a couple?’
Victoria shrugs.
‘But he knew about …?’
‘She told him. Apparently he just laughed. Brushed it off. Didn’t believe it was his. Gave me two hundred dollars for an abortion. Left it in an envelope with the folk on reception.’
‘How awful!’ Sheila’s appalled. ‘Did you actually follow through with it?’
Victoria shakes her head. ‘I’m waiting for my appointment at a local clinic and the doctor is running late for some reason. There’s a pretty, beige girl sitting three chairs along with a septic wound on her finger. She’s a Borrincano –’
‘Bori …?’ Sheila interrupts.
‘From Puerto Rico. Turns out she injured her finger releasing a hawksbill.’
‘Is that a kind of bird?’
‘No, a turtle. It was trapped in a fishing net. She’s a marine biologist, an ecologist. Anyhow, to cut a very long story short, we started to chat and …’ She shrugs. ‘Marisol picked me up, brushed me down, read me the riot act and completely turned my life around.’
‘You kept the baby?’
Sheila’s eyes are suddenly prickling (this tale is – to all intents and purposes – her tale).
Vicki nods. ‘Marisol was a strict Catholic – ten years older, well educated, politically savvy. She was in on the ground floor with the WAGM – spoke at one of their first, international conferences –’
‘The WA …?’
‘World Anti-Golf Movement. This huge course had been built on a string of coral islands just adjacent to one of her main research posts. The impact of the thing – water depletion, toxic contamination of the reef with pesticides, fungicides and weedicides, the adoption of landscaped, foreign eco-systems and plants, the raft of new diseases this brought to the indigenous surrounds –’
‘You bonded over your hatred of a common enemy!’ Sheila interrupts, grinning.
Victoria scowls, irritat
ed. ‘Marisol opened my eyes – taught me to look at the world from a completely fresh perspective – became my mentor – encouraged me back into part-time education – helped organize a USAID scholarship – supported me all the way through law school. It wasn’t just a matter of –’
‘But if it hadn’t been for that golfer …’ Sheila persists.
‘You think I should be grateful?!’ Victoria snaps.
‘No. No …’ Sheila realizes that she needs to tread carefully, here, ‘but you should always be honest – especially with yourself, and with your reader, by extension.’
Victoria sucks on her tongue, annoyed. ‘Why? So it can look like everything I am, everything I believe in, everything I’ve achieved in the Deep Green movement, against all the odds – as a poor, young, black woman and a single mother – was just part of some … some petty, little teenage vendetta? Nah-ah. No way. Because – trust me – this man doesn’t deserve the credit – none of it – nor the publicity for that matter.’
‘Okay … okay …’ Sheila gently concedes the point, then carefully considers her response for a second, her eyes soft and unfocused. ‘Okay, so how about – purely on pragmatic grounds, for the sake of the book, and your blood-pressure – you try and put a slightly different, slightly less defensive spin on it …’ She pushes her sandwich aside, decisively (as if thereby creating an open arena for free, intellectual exchange). ‘Stop seeing that particular phase of your life as a private humiliation, a personal disaster, a critical mis-judgement on your part and start seeing it as … as a message, a kind of fable; something with universal relevance; a metaphor, a sort of … of paradigm, almost. You were the island that he conquered and then exploited. Your baby was the waste to be casually disposed of … Yes, he was a pig – of course he was, it’s patently obvious – it goes without saying, and because it goes without saying there’s really no need to say it, or to think it, or to feel it, even. So rise above. Take the higher path. Be magnanimous. Maybe go one step further, and admit that the experience actually taught you something. It was a hard lesson, sure, but it was a true beginning. He was the piece of grit in the mouth of an oyster that turned – with Marisol’s guidance and your raw determination – into a pearl.’
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