Caribbean (121 page)

When Keeler passed the papers back, Wrentham asked: “How does that strike you?” and the Englishman replied: “I’m scared on two counts. That incident yesterday with Mrs. Gottwald could have proved devastating to our tourism, and will if it’s repeated. And I’m beginning to see intimations that the Rastafarian’s evil hand is surfacing in many surprising areas.”

“What should we do?”

“Deport him.”

“That’s not so easy. There are rules now. A judge would have to issue an order, and a black judge doesn’t like to do that against a fellow
black. Too reminiscent of the old days when whites said who could live where.”

“Then let’s see if we can establish any kind of relationship between the man yesterday and the Rastafarian. If we can, you go into court and ask for a deportation order, and have the judge summon me to confirm that our tourist industry might be shot to hell if he’s allowed to run loose any longer. Or, if we find him connected in any way with ganja …”

Three months passed, during which neither Colonel Wrentham nor Harry Keeler was able to devise a tactic for handling the difficult Rastafarian they had on their hands. In the meantime, the problem had taken a dramatic turn into wholly new channels, and now both Canon Tarleton and his wife were involved. One Thursday morning in late March they were seated in their rectory trying in vain to comfort a young woman member of their church who was totally distraught. She was Laura Shaughnessy, the fine-looking granddaughter of an adventurous young Irishman who had come to the island in the last century, had quarreled with the Catholic priest and joined the Church of England, and had taken a black wife, producing a large brood of children and grandchildren who brought honor to his name.

A trusted employee in the governor’s office, she had her pick of suitors, and the Tarletons sometimes discussed whom she might marry. Mrs. Tarleton felt that Laura was a bit too bold in accepting dates with the young officers from the cruise ships, on the logical grounds that “such affairs never lead to anything,” but the canon defended her: “She’s a lass, and a bonny one, who’s trying to find her way. Watch, she’ll marry the best young man in these parts,” and when it became obvious that Harry Keeler might very well stay on the island, Tarleton predicted: “Don’t be surprised if Laura grabs him. Perfect pair.”

It hadn’t happened, and now Laura sat before them in tears. She was pregnant, had no desire to marry the man involved, whoever he was, and was desolated by the options that faced her. But she had come to the right pair of people for counsel, because Mrs. Tarleton assured her: “First thing to remember above all else, God has always wanted you to have children, perhaps not in this way, but you are now engaged in a holy process, one of the most magnificent in the world, and you must find joy and fulfillment in it.”

“But …”

“All that comes later, Laura. Believe me, and I speak as a woman
with children and great-grandchildren of my own, that God smiles on you at this moment. You bring Him joy in being fruitful, and, Essex, I wonder if you would lead us in a few words of prayer?”

Joining hands with his wife and Laura, he prayed that God would bless the child in the womb and bring it to a productive life. He spoke of the joys of motherhood despite temporary difficulties, and he assured Laura that God, the Tarletons and all sensible people supported her at this moment. Then, still holding on to the young woman’s hand, he said reassuringly: “You must understand, Laura, that my wife and I have held meetings like this many times in the past. This is not the end of the world. It’s a problem to be faced, and like all such problems, there are reasonable solutions.”

Together the Tarletons explained that she had several specific options. She could have the baby here in All Saints and let the scandal expire, as it would in a short time, but that might make it difficult for her to find a husband locally; in such cases the girls almost always had to marry down in the color hierarchy. “But they always find husbands if they’re basically good girls,” Mrs. Tarleton said, and her husband added: “And you are.”

Or she could do what many had done in the past—leave All Saints right now, take a job, any job she could find, in Trinidad or Barbados or Jamaica, keep a very low profile, have her baby, put it up for adoption, and about two years thereafter come back home, marry and settle down. Mrs. Tarleton said: “You would not believe how many have done that, and three of them right now are leaders in our church. And do you know why? Because God blessed them from the start, just as He blesses you.”

They explored other possibilities, but in the end the canon returned to the one that lay closest to his religious belief: “Beyond all doubt, Laura, the best route, the one that God has always wanted you to take, is to marry the young man and start a Christian …”

She cut him off: “Impossible.”

“Why?” both Tarletons asked, and she said grimly: “Because he wouldn’t marry me, and I would never marry him.”

“Who is he? I’ll talk to him.”

“The Rastafarian.”

“Oh my God!” Reverend Tarleton cried, for he had only yesterday received from the church in Jamaica a report on Ras-Negus Grimble, and the information still burned in his mind:

Turning to his wife, he asked, “Should we show her the letter?” and she replied: “I do believe we must,” so without comment he handed it to Laura and watched her handsome face as she read it, observing that her expression passed from shock to anger.

Then Laura slowly folded the letter neatly, used one corner to tap her front teeth, and very quietly asked: “As a man of God, where can you send me to have an abortion?”

Neither of the Tarletons drew back from the responsibility implied in this terrible question. Instead, the clergyman took Laura’s hand and said: “It would be better, my beloved daughter, if you had the child. But twice in my ministry I have been forced to advise otherwise. Once when a girl was pregnant by her father, again when a child of fourteen was pregnant by her idiot brother. Today you are pregnant by the devil, and you must go to this address in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and now, let us pray.”

This time they knelt, and he said simply: “God in heaven, who has watched this meeting from the start, forgive the three of us for departing from Thy teachings, but we are faced by wholly new problems and are honestly striving to do our best. Bless Thy servant Laura, who is a good woman and who has ahead of her a life of great potential contribution, and please bless my wife and me, for we did not seek this problem, nor did we resolve it carelessly.”

As Laura rose to leave, both Tarletons kissed her, and he said: “If
you should need airfare to Trinidad, we could help,” but she said: “I can manage.”

The presence of the Rastafarian posed a dilemma to another person—Lincoln Wrentham, eight years older than his sister Sally and proprietor of the Waterloo. During the first month of Grimble’s stay in All Saints, Lincoln had been only vaguely aware of his presence. He had seen his tall and distinctive figure once or twice moving rather furtively about the back streets, and after the incident with the American tourist woman from the
Tropic Sands
, he heard that it might have been the Rastafarian’s preaching that had triggered the affair. As a man whose business now depended in large part on a constant new supply of American travelers, he was so concerned that he sought a meeting with Harry Keeler, at which he demanded action: “You’ve got to do something about this fellow.”

Harry nodded, but then pointed out: “Isn’t that more your father’s job than mine?” and Lincoln had to agree, so he went along to his father’s office, and there he was pleased to learn that the police were keeping a sharp eye on the Jamaican. “Any agitation, troublemaking, off this island he goes,” Commissioner Wrentham assured his son, and there the matter rested. But sometime later, while Lincoln was tending bar at his café, he overheard two patrons talking about the Rastafarian, and one said, “I think he’s dating Sally from the prime minister’s office,” and Lincoln drew closer to eavesdrop, but the men did not refer to his sister again.

He was sufficiently disturbed to stop by his father’s office to ask if he knew anything about Sally’s possible involvement, and was told: “No, Sally’s been going to different affairs, cricket matches and the like, with young Harry Keeler, and I’m very pleased about it. The Rastafarian? Sally’s not the type to fool around with him.”

And there Lincoln’s investigation ended, but the confidence that he and his father expressed about Sally’s level-headedness was ill placed, because at the very time they were talking she was deeply involved with Ras-Negus, not like her friend Laura Shaughnessy as a bed partner, but rather as one interested in probing the depth and significance of his vision about the future of the world’s black people, and especially those in the Caribbean.

She met with him after work, sometimes talking till near midnight, at other times just closing her eyes and listening to his rendition
of some Bob Marley reggae, with the booming of the empty box echoing in her ears as Ras-Negus thumped it. But almost always, whether the session had begun with talk or music, it ended with them chanting “Four Hundred Years.” Regularly he tried to make love with her, but her earlier experience in the back of Laura’s car had ended any involvement in that area. What attracted her and kept her coming back to argue with him was his extraordinary views about life in general, his conviction that blacks could run their own affairs, and his certainty that domination by the white race was at an end. His Jamaican experience had not allowed him to know that about half the world was neither Caribbean black nor English-American white, but an Asian yellow. Still, the intensity of his thought regarding the little world of the Caribbean gave him authority, and Sally wished to share in it.

She had been reared without racial or social prejudices. After all, her grandfather, Black Bart, had been knighted for his exceptional leadership during World War II and it was rumored that her father, the commissioner, was being touted as the next governor general, so she watched in her own family the liberation and acceptance of blacks and browns. But what they would do with their freedom was another matter, and of late she had often wondered whether a minute island such as All Saints with only a hundred and ten thousand people, fewer than a small American or British city, could exist for long unless it associated itself with eight or nine islands of similar size to form a federation. And if they did, which seemed highly unlikely, on what would they subsist? What industry could thrive in such a small arena, except perhaps tourism, and was that a viable base for a society?

These were heady questions, and one might have thought that she would have gone to her friend Harry Keeler for answers, but she did not for good reason: she had already talked with him about these matters, and whatever he said was strongly colored by England’s empire experience, so that all she would be getting from him was standard white-man’s thinking. Nor could she talk seriously with her father or brother, because they had been conscripted into a subtle continuance of the white man’s rule, her father through his appointment to high office with a promise perhaps of a higher one and her brother through his reliance on tourists to keep his café profitable.

What she really wanted at this moment in her life was a solid six hours with Marcus Garvey, the wild black philosopher of Jamaica, but he was long since dead; or with Frantz Fanon, the equally wild
leader from Martinique, but he also was dead. These men would have understood both where she stood at this point in her life and where she wanted to go, but their teachings did not give specific answers to that galaxy of new problems that had arisen since their deaths. In their place she had the Rastafarian, whose savage vitality provided a much lower level of intellectualism. She was more than aware that to compare him with either Garvey or Fanon was preposterous, but she also realized that there might be subtle truth in something he had once said: “I am John the Baptist of the Leeward and Windward Islands.” She thought it doubtful that he could be the forerunner of any serious religious movement, but she was not so pessimistic about his ability to inspire political action or at least reassessment, and she needed to hear more of his thinking.

So without ever making a conscious choice, she began engaging in a tricky game, though she wasn’t devious. During normal encounters at the office and in the ordinary social events that came along each week, she encouraged Harry Keeler, in whom she was so interested that she was seriously considering marriage, but late at night or on evenings when Harry was engaged in government business, she sought out the Rastafarian for more discussions. Repelling easily the sexual advances he kept making and letting him know exactly what her interests were, she found his reactions to island problems sensible and refreshing so long as they did not involve religion or sex.

One morning as she dressed she thought it would be profitable if she and Laura Shaughnessy invited Ras-Negus to tour the southern end of the island with them as he had the northern, but when she went to ask Laura to join her in extending the invitation, she learned that her friend had left the island on an extended visit to relatives in either Jamaica or Barbados.