The Sea Grape Tree

by Gillian Royes

  Before he went to sleep, Shad had a word with God. First, a short thank-you for good friends like the boss and Danny and Miss Mac, people who would look out for him the way they had. Then a request that he be restrained from killing Horace–bumba claat–MacKenzie the next time he saw him, because he didn’t want to leave his children fatherless.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  * * *

  Fore!” Lambert shouted. A tourist couple in matching shorts looked up just as the golf ball landed in a patch of weeds beside them.

  “Damn!” Lambert spat, and stalked a few paces to one side.

  Next up, Danny placed his ball on the tee and spread his legs, rocking until he was comfortable. After shielding his eyes to peer at the distant flag, the man wrapped his fingers around the handle of his rented club. He rocked again from one leg to the other, settled, and drew the club back—his left arm straight as a board. When he hit the ball, it soared high and landed neatly in the middle of the fairway.

  “Damn!” Lambert murmured, glancing at Eric.

  The three men walked back to the golf cart and Eric climbed in behind the wheel, relieved he didn’t have to swing a club. When Lambert had invited him to join them at the course where he was a member, the bar owner had been tempted to say no. Instead, he’d volunteered to drive them from one hole to the other, because his back was acting up, he said. He didn’t want to miss the outing, but he hated golf. The few times he’d played in New Rochelle with Arnie, his office mate at the paper company, he’d embarrassed himself so badly he’d avoided the game thereafter. His rationalization was that only people with money had the stamina to learn golf. The rest, with the exception of Arnie, got depressed.

  At the next hole, the tenth, Lambert declared that it was too hot today and that they’d started out too late. By the fourteenth hole, Danny had become the clear leader, having parred three holes and even birdied one. While the two men chatted, analyzing their strokes, Eric stood to the side trying to remember what a par and a birdie were, eventually having his memory jogged by the men’s talk. At the sixteenth hole and limp with sweat, Eric stayed in the cart and wished his companions every par and birdie to get them through quicker, reminding them that there were other golfers behind.

  In the clubhouse bar at last, Lambert ordered a round of Red Stripes before they made their way to the patio overlooking the course.

  “The third hole,” Danny started as soon as they’d sat down, “the way you had to drive from the tee across that huge pond—that was crazy!”

  Lambert gave his big guffaw. “That’s the first thing every visitor mentions.” He turned to Eric. “You’re kind of flushed there, boy. You okay?”

  “The damn heat,” his friend answered, pulling sticky hair away from his neck. “I don’t know how you guys do it.”

  “It’s the melanin.” Danny laughed and left for the restroom.

  “How’s the project going?” Lambert asked as soon as the man had disappeared.

  “Shad is taken care of,” Eric said, and outlined the meeting two days before. “He’s going back to school with Miss Mac.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” his friend agreed. “He’s a good boots-on-the-ground man.”

  “Like I’m not?”

  “You know what I mean. He’s loyal, and you need somebody who can negotiate with the Parish Council guys in patois.”

  “And make sure that you keep construction within cost, right?” Eric said, swatting his friend on the arm.

  Lambert pulled the corners of his mouth back. “Would I cheat you? How long have you known me, man?”

  “Just kidding,” Eric said, only half kidding. “So what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About Danny.”

  “Plays a decent round of golf.”

  “As a business partner, man. He’s kind of a perfectionist, don’t you think? I don’t want to be in business with somebody looking over my shoulder all the time. I thought he was going to be a silent partner, so Cameron had said, anyway, but he seems very hands-on, you know. He has an opinion about damn near everything.”

  “I think he’s a good businessman.”

  “How so?”

  “You can tell a lot by how a man plays golf. Didn’t you notice how he wrote down every stroke he made? He kept notes on each hole, comparing the hole before with the hole he just played. He even wrote down my strokes.”

  “So he’s going to be a pain in the ass.”

  “He’s going to make sure you both make money, that’s what I mean. I think he’s a—” He broke off while the waiter served the frosty beers and Danny took his place at the table.

  “Great game!” Danny said, and clinked his glass with the other two men. “I’d love to do it again sometime.”

  “Definitely,” Lambert replied, holding his mustache away from his drink with two fingers while he took a sip. Below the clubhouse, the greens were in shadow and the sea beyond them navy blue. The disappearing sun was glinting off the ribbon of foam along the reef.

  “How’s Jennifer?” Eric asked Lambert.

  “She’s in Florida at her sister’s. Her mother is going down fast. She’s been in and out of hospital with this spinal cancer thing. It’s not going to be long now, the doctors are saying.”

  “Jeez, Lam—”

  “And I’m in the doghouse.” The contractor grimaced. “Seems I forgot Valentine’s Day, first time since we’ve been together.”

  “Valentine’s?” Eric said.

  “That’s right, last week Tuesday,” Danny weighed in. “Janet invited me to a friend’s party in Port Maria. It was crazy, man. They’d blocked off a street and the whole thing was in the middle of the road.” His fingers were dancing up and down on the wooden table. “There must have been a hundred people there, all kinds of people, and there was this deejay guy who kept yelling into the mike.” He shook his head. “The music was loud enough to kill every dog in the neighborhood. I know the neighbors couldn’t sleep.”

  “That’s a Jamaican party, for sure,” Eric murmured, his head still filled with Valentine’s, and that he’d forgotten it. Maybe Valentine’s wasn’t important to Simone and she wouldn’t be expecting anything, anyway.

  The first man to finish his beer was Danny. “What’s the next step with the job, guys?”

  “Permits,” Lambert said. “Now that you’ve formed the corporation and set up a bank account, we can submit the applications for permits. Then you folks have to appear before the Parish Council committees. They’re going to have a lot of questions.”

  “What committees?” Danny asked.

  “The Planning Authority’s committees, they have to approve the drawings—fire, health, and roads committees,” Eric said. “Then the whole thing has to be approved by the Authority at the end.”

  “Before we do that, I want to meet with the architect,” Danny said. To Eric he raised his eyebrows. “You’ve met with him, right?”

  “I saw the drawings and they looked fine. Lambert said he was a good—”

  “She,” Lambert chimed in. “I can set up a meeting with her right away. She called me yesterday and asked if there was anything we needed to change.”

  “Let’s do it,” Danny said. “I have a couple questions for her, anyway.”

  “Like what?” Eric said, chewing the inside of his cheek, back on the golf course and out of the game. “You never said anything about the drawings before.”

  “Like the size of the guest rooms. They seem too big to me.”

  “That’s the standard size for small hotels,” Lambert said. “I did the research. But we can talk to her abou
t it. Anything else?”

  “I was thinking we could use some of that empty land between the main road and the buildings to plant vegetables, you know. We could supply the kitchen with tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, herbs, that kind of thing—and save some money, have a kind of farm-to-table restaurant. And if we do that, we going to need a couple more workers and a shed for the garden tools.”

  Eric uncrossed his feet under the table and planted them on the ground. “I thought we could have a nice garden with flowers there, some frangipani trees, a lawn, maybe a fishpond. Guests like that kind of thing. I had Joseph put that in the budget.”

  “I saw it, but I was thinking—”

  “We can have both,” Lambert interrupted. “Flower gardens in the front where the guests can see them, and a vegetable garden behind. You have nine acres to play with—shouldn’t be a problem.” His companions sat back, the quashed argument still in the air. Discreet patio lights appeared around them.

  After a minute, Danny looked at Lambert. “I wanted to ask you—I’m driving into the Blue Mountains tomorrow and I’ve been looking at some maps, but I’m still not sure. What’s the best way in, you think?”

  While the discussion between the two continued about roads into the hills, Eric looked out at the dark sea, still pissed about the loss of his garden with its fishpond and benches. True, it made sense to grow their own produce—he hated to admit it—but it was one more sign that Danny wanted to be in charge. If he needed Eric’s experience, as Cameron had assured him, he wasn’t acting like it. He had a mind of his own about everything, even if he was twenty years younger and knew nothing about running hotels.

  A clap from Lambert made Eric start. “One more round, gents?” his friend was asking.

  “I guess I’ll have to,” Eric said, tugging at the neck of his T-shirt so he could breathe better.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  She tried and failed to focus on the many blues of the clouds and the mountain peak, her paintbrush hovering over the paper, her thoughts hovering over the man at her side. Danny seemed to have gone into some deep place while he painted.

  That morning, while she pulled up her skirt, wishing again that she’d brought more presentable clothes, she’d tried to think of everything they might need for the painting trip in the Blue Mountains. Would he remember mosquito spray? Probably not. Should she take bottles of water? Yes. Gym shoes, yes. A book, why not? When she’d finished stowing them in an extra bag, she collected the sandwiches Carthena had made for her and, laboring under her bags and boxes, had bumped into Ford at the front door. On his way to the Port Antonio post office in Sonja’s car, he’d dropped her at the bottom of the hill.

  “Remember to stay on the left,” she’d called while he was driving away.

  Minutes later, Danny had appeared in his rented car. At first, they had driven along the coast road, unable to find the road into the Blue Mountains. They’d stopped four times to ask pedestrians—including a woman carrying a live chicken—if they were on the right road. They’d eventually found it and wound upward, a cliff always on one side, only the occasional car barreling toward them blowing its horn.

  Soon they were getting valley views between the trees, the mountains browner here than around Largo Bay. Every few hundred yards there were fruit stands and above them, clinging to the side of the hill, were wooden houses with flights of concrete steps leading up to their doors.

  “Not very sturdy, is it?” she’d said, pointing to one. “Looks like it’d blow away in a good storm.”

  “Or wash down the mountain.”

  “I can’t imagine a whole family living there.”

  At a wide part of the road, Danny had parked the Toyota to allow them space to paint safely between the car and the cliff. He’d selected a spot under a large mango tree, so she wouldn’t need to wear her hat or sunglasses to paint, he’d pointed out. When they’d climbed out of the car, he’d exclaimed that he’d never known a road with so many curves. He was dressed today in brown khaki shorts and matching T-shirt, looking like a model in a fashion show for big men, and she was glad she’d worn a skirt, her legs now bright pink. They’d stood together on the edge of the cliff and admired the view for a minute before off-loading the easel and chairs.

  Today, she’d announced, she was going to paint straight onto the paper with no pencil. In answer, he’d laughed and picked up a pencil. Within an hour, she had finished one painting and started another, and he was still fitting color within the lines he’d drawn.

  “I love how you paint,” he said, swishing his brush in the water jar they were sharing.

  “Thank you.” She’d been wondering when or if he’d comment on her work.

  “It’s small,” he added, “but it has a lot of detail.”

  “Probably how my mind works.” A car roared up the hill past them and they could hear the engine climbing and fading away while they continued working and she thought about Danny liking her work, noticing the detail.

  It was early afternoon, a warm one and getting warmer, and soon sweat was forming under her breasts. Her companion’s scalp was glistening, one artery pulsing as he bent over his paper.

  “I want to ask you something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “How do you get your watercolors to bleed into each other like they do, without making a mess?”

  She had him squeeze out a color, water it down, and load the brush. Standing over him, her breast grazing his shoulder, she held his hand and showed him how to approach the edge of one color and nudge it with the brush. While her fingers were wrapped around his thick hand demonstrating the delicate stroke, she felt an exchange of electricity between their hands, almost like being shocked. He looked up at her—his gray eyes with their spokes and yellow rings inches from hers—and she knew he’d felt it, too.

  “I’ve got sandwiches,” she said, straightening. “Would you like one?”

  “Sure, what do you have?”

  “Only cheese, I’m afraid. I thought it would be safe for a long trip.”

  They sat munching the half-melted sandwiches, he finding it funny that the crusts had been sliced off the bread. Ladies’ sandwiches, he called them, but he seemed to enjoy them well enough.

  “I was going to buy us something to drink—” he said.

  “I have water, but they’re probably warm by now. A cold Britney would be nice, though.”

  “A what?”

  “A Britney? A Britney Spears?”

  “The singer?”

  “No, a beer. A Britney is a beer, that’s cockney rhyming.” A little thing, but it started them off with banter that ended the painting for the afternoon.

  “Stairs are called apples and pears?” he said, shaking his head. “Now I know you’re kidding me.”

  “I’m telling you,” she protested. “Cockney rhyming is a real language. Londoners created it. There’s books written about it.”

  “But why? They already speak English.”

  “It was a kind of secret code, probably to avoid the police or something.” She handed him a bottle of water.

  “You’re making this up, I know it. Nobody would say apples and pears instead of stairs.”

  “Nobody in America, maybe. Everything has to be bloody convenient for you—roads, spelling, shopping.”

  “Have you ever been to America?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, you’ll see. We get things done, and we like to do it fast.”

  “But, like painting, sometimes the difference is in the detail, and that takes time.”

  He picked up another sandwich. “Tell me more about this rhyming thing. Tell me another word.”

  “Let’s see. There’s cream crackered. That means knackered.”

  “I don’t
even know what knackered means.”

  “Knackered? It means tired.”

  “Where did you learn this stuff?”

  “We have a cleaning lady from the East End of London, a big, chatty woman. She comes and gives the flat a good spit-and-polish when we can afford her, and she started telling us about things in the kitchen. She calls milk satin and silk, and tea Rosie Lea. She uses it all the time, so we got to know what she was talking about. We’re starting to get good at it.”

  “You English are scary, that’s all I can say,” he said, laughing and slapping his knee.

  “Have you ever been there?”

  “No, but I want to go to Europe, travel all over, maybe rent a car and drive, you know, to France and Spain.” He took a long swig of water. “My mother went, though. She wanted a trip with her girlfriend for her sixtieth birthday, so I gave it to her. They had a blast, took some bus tour around. I think they met some guys on the tour and had too much fun. They’re still talking about it.”

  “So your mum isn’t married?”

  “No, never was.” Looking at the now-glary hills, he told her how his mother had gotten pregnant in her late teens, just after leaving school. He spoke without bitterness, his openness making her uncomfortable.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “One sister, two years younger than me. She’s married in St. Croix and has a couple kids. She never left the island. I think my grandmother wanted her to stay because they were close. She found me kind of difficult to handle.” He made a face. “Teenage boy, you know. I used to give her a hard time—stay out late, that kind of thing. My mother knew how to handle me. She knew what tough love was, I’m telling you.”

  A piercing, almost ringing sound coming up the valley made her lift her head. “What’s that, a car alarm?”

  He gave a big smile, showing his American teeth, all straight and white. “That’s a donkey braying. You never heard that before?”