But the whole thing unsettle me, and I start think ’bout what would happen if I should end up marking off the days on the wall of some Kingston jail cell and mopping the floor in the penitentiary. I think well the boys alright, they been making good money all these years, but Merleen only got her little job at the vacation company and Margy nothing more than an employee at Yang Cosmetics.
I tell Merleen to come have lunch with me up in a hotel in New Kingston. The restaurant quiet so I choose a table in the far corner behind some tall potted bamboo.
‘I was very young, and he seemed so mature.’ And then she laugh. ‘Well, I suppose he would seem that way, being old enough to be my father.’
I just smile. Merleen turn into a fine woman. She gracious, and composed.
‘I thought he knew everything there was to know. I thought I was going to be cared for, protected, educated, groomed if you like. I thought he would make something of me.’ She stop while the waitress put down the teriyaki chicken and rice in front of us.
‘I felt sort of honoured. Foolish, wasn’t it?’ And then she laugh again.
‘That wasn’t foolish. Yu was a child. And he was a grown man.’
‘A grown man who came here and captured something young and innocent, something in its infancy, and he took what he wanted from it and when he was done he left us to fend for ourselves, John and me. Independent if you like.’ And she smile. ‘Rather like an English Pinkerton and Chinese Butterfly.’
Well now she completely lose me, but I get her drift because she and me both know she not just talking ’bout her and Meacham, she talking ’bout the British and Jamaica.
When we finish eat and deal with our business I walk with her down the stairs into the lobby and through the side door, past the empty swimming-pool loungers that the tourists should be sunning themself in and the empty chair under the almond tree where they should be reading their book, and we make our way past the rubber trees and coconut palms, and along the path following the pale blue flowers on the plumbago hedge into the hotel car park. The air still damp from the morning rain.
Next day I ring Margy and tell her that I going take a trip to see her next time she in Port Antonio. Then Finley decide we all going go because Port Antonio is really beautiful.
The day before we supposed to go Milton tell me that all the rain we been having the past two weeks cause so much flooding the government declare five parishes disaster areas and they busy evacuating people from them homes.
‘Communications is down and the road system not looking so good under the strain. Plus the Gleaner say we facing huge agricultural loss and all sorta health hazards from dead livestock, and damage to water supplies and sanitation.’
Milton talking just like he quoting the newspaper to me.
‘So yu think we should call it off? Yu want me fix another time to go see Margy?’
Him stick his thumb in him belt that he always wear now ever since that thing with Clifton Brown, and say to me, ‘No, man. I just telling yu, that’s all. We still going drive over to Port Antonio tomorrow. No problem.’
Me, Finley, Hampton and Milton set off the next day, Milton driving. The water in the road so bad that when we coming down Mountain View Avenue a motorcycle stall in front of us and when the rider put down his foot the water come over his ankle.
Once we outta the city we come face to face with this rural mass that is still Jamaica. The donkey carts; the roadside higglers with them wooden carvings and conch shells; roasted sweetcorn for sale, or three wet fish on a string; multicoloured timber huts in blues and pinks and yellows with them rickety makeshift roof, or some piece of rusting corrugated-zinc sheet; fruit trees growing wild – mango, avocado, ackee, breadfruit, jackfruit, pawpaw, naseberry, soursop, bananas; pineapples laying on top; yams and sweet potatoes in the ground; the banana plantations stretching out on both sides of the road, with them little blue plastic bags that they wrap ’round the bananas to protect them from disease.
Plus with the road not so good anyway and with all this rain, the thing turn treacherous. Potholes full of water and covered in a sorta white slime that wash off the grit and hardcore they scatter down in a effort to patch everything up.
And I think to myself how is progress and prosperity going catch up with a place like this? Especially when every time we take one step forward the rain or the hurricane come to drive us ten steps back.
When we get to Poor Man’s Corner the River Yallahs completely take over the road, gushing fast from left to right and plunging down a steep embankment in this muddy reddish-brown waterfall. Milton stop the car. When the big station wagon behind us overtake and slowly power its way through the water, the spray reach up above the top of the windows.
Milton decide to take a chance. He nudge the car forward trying to keep a steady speed so the engine don’t stall, but when we hit the deepest part halfway across, him slow down and it worry me. We make it alright though, and when we reach the other side Milton laugh and say, ‘Man, even I was sweating then.’
At Green Wall a dead cow lay in a bus stop, all brown and bloated, and frothing at the mouth.
At Morant Bay I ask Milton to drive up to the courthouse where Paul Bogle and his followers stage the demonstration in 1865, and where the volunteer militia fire on the crowd and spark the uprising. What amaze me wasn’t just that the building still standing there, with its red brick and whitewashed stone, but it still functioning as a courthouse. So as I climb up the semi-circular stairway to the upper balcony I begin to hear voices and realise that a trial is actually in motion. And even in this heat the barristers still dress up in them wigs and gowns just like they do it in England.
Above me the round white turret perch on the top of the roof. Below me the statue of Paul Bogle, machete in hand, and the commemoration plaque which read:
Here in the front of this courthouse on 11 October 1865, Paul Bogle of Stony Gut led his people in a protest at the injustices to the poor in the courts presided over by the planter-magistrates. It was the start of what became known as the Morant Bay Rebellion. Paul Bogle, George William Gordon and hundreds more were brutally slain. Behind this building is buried the remains of many of these patriots whose sacrifices paved the way to the independence of Jamaica. We honour them.
It was early afternoon by the time we reach Port Antonio, the blue sea on one side and the lush green hills on the other. The Blue Mountains in the distance and yet so close I could almost smell the coffee. We climb the hill to San San. When we get to Margy’s house, Milton ease the car down the steep driveway into the carport. Margy’s housekeeper come to the door to greet us.
We follow her through the dim, cool house and step out on to the rear terrace into the brilliant, dazzling sunshine. The deep blue of the Caribbean stretch out before us, the abundant green of the surrounding hillside, the white sand beach of San San Bay, with the twin harbours of Port Antonio and Navy Island in the distance. I could feel the sea breeze on my face and taste the slight salt in the air. And somewhere in my own head I hear Harry Belafonte singing ‘Island in the Sun’.
Margy come up from the lower garden, standing on the top step with her short thick wavy hair trembling on the breeze.
‘Let’s go straight to the factory, I want to show you something. It won’t take long and we can have lunch when we get back.’ She reverse out a big four-by-four and we all pile in.
Margy excited ’bout everything she showing us and how she change this and improve that, and reduce the waste and increase the product line. She talking fast and she pleased with herself. It don’t mean nothing to me except, when I look at the accounts, I know the business doing good.
When we get back to the house she say, ‘I hope you like marlin. Port Antonio is famed for deep-sea fishing, marlin, tuna and kingfish especially.’
The fish pan-fried and simmered in a light curried coconut sauce. It really delicious.
‘This here is a long way from a airport,’ I say to her, ‘what with your constant hopping between here and New York.’
‘There is a helicopter shuttle service between Ken Jones Aerodrome and Kingston. The road from Kingston is so bad now the whole town is just relying on the cruise ships for its livelihood. What’s going to happen when the wharf falls down I don’t know because it isn’t looking too good and they don’t have the money to rebuild it.’
After coffee, I ask Margy to come walk with me in the garden. We go down the stone steps and follow the path past a load of fruit trees, and a huge crepe myrtle with its lilac flowers and dark green leaves. Then we pass hedges of poinsettia, deep magenta and pink bougainvillaea, and red and yellow hibiscus. We come to a stop at her poolside pergola that covered in wild orchids in pinks and whites and purples.
‘You really have a beautiful place here, Margy. I can see why you running back from New York every chance you get.’
‘I love it. I don’t think I could live without it. You know Errol Flynn once said he had never met a woman as beautiful as Port Antonio. And that’s saying something, isn’t it, coming from him? I don’t know how any Jamaican can live without Jamaica or the promise of it.’
When we sit down on the little bench I turn and I say to her, ‘I want to talk to yu ’bout the business. It doing good, very good, and all that down to your hard work and how yu so smart with all this cosmetics thing. I have lunch with Merleen, maybe you already know?’
‘Yes, she told me on the phone.’
‘Merleen going have her own vacation company now. And I want to do the same thing with Yang Cosmetics. I want yu stop being a employee and become a full partner so if anything happen to me yu going be alright.’
Margy look at me like she half surprised and half relieved because she must have guessed it from what Merleen tell her.
‘Thank you, Uncle.’
‘But you not going get your name come first like Merleen. Chin Yang Vacations don’t sound too bad, even though I still think Yang Chin would have sound better. But Lopez Yang don’t work. I think it got to be Yang Lopez Cosmetics.’
‘But it isn’t just cosmetics we do now. We have a whole range of bathroom and kitchen products as well that we retail out of our own stores not just outlets in department stores like we used to. That is what I was telling you and showing you earlier this afternoon.’
‘So what yu want call it?’
‘Plain and simple, Yang Lopez.’ She hesitate, and then she say, ‘Do you mean a fifty-fifty partner like you did with Merleen?’
And I say, ‘Yes. Fifty-fifty. The papers all drawn up, except for the name, and I going have the accountants sort it out and bring them over next week so you can sign them.’
‘So fast?’
‘No reason to wait.’
When we go back up to the house Margy go inside and come out with a parcel. It beautifully wrapped in a heavy stripe paper of green and brown and blue.
‘I got this for you in New York but I feel a little embarrassed giving it to you now after that conversation. Please believe that this was for you anyway.’ And then she hand the package to me and I take it from her and unwrap it.
She say to me, ‘The Flor de Farach was manufactured in 1958 and shipped to Tampa prior to the 1962 Cuban embargo. The shop’s proprietor bought the entire consignment and now he is selling them in this wonderful shop on the corner of Fifth and East 46th Street. When I bought them he said I wasn’t just buying a box of cigars, I was buying a piece of history.’
When I open the box it got layers of packets of little Farachitos. I lift out a packet of five and sorta look it over.
‘I know you get Cuban cigars here all the time but these were so tiny and cute I thought even Gloria might approve.’ Then Margy look at me all expectant and say, ‘Try one.’
So I take one out and unwrap it. When I smell it, it got a sweet nutty aroma. I light it and I take a puff. Margy look at me like as to say how is it?
Well, I think Margy good enough to go buy me a present so I not going say nothing ’bout the Americans and their Cuban embargo. I say, ‘It taste like the beginning of something new. Something sweet and adventurous. It taste like freedom.’ And she pleased with that.
When we leave Margy’s I just say to Milton, ‘Let’s go to Ken Jones Aerodrome and jump on a helicopter back to Kingston, and you can come pick up the car some other time.’