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early, after a meal of a dryish pork-tasting thing that Duchess Dora sharply told me was a greatdelicacy, for it came from Grenada, sent by Dr Gairy himself, and it was armadillo. There was coffee on the verandah, and the groaning of the wicker rocking chairs, and our three faces in the light of the old Venetian lamp. Sanjay told me of his plans for new crops on St James. ‘It’s eggplants in the north,’ he said. ‘And we may try some tobacco.’ He sounded as if he couldn’t make enough plans for the exotic place he had come to. But Duchess Dora sat very quiet and pale by the coffee tray. Her airs and graces had tired her out, I thought then, uncharitably.
    *
    The picnic had that same sad kind of feeling – to me anyway – as the evening before when Duchess Dora went listlessly back and forth in her chair on the verandah. It may have been the music from Sanjay’s tape deck coming out over the lagoon. After all, we were in the late sixties then, and everything was rotting with sadness and protest and self-pity and loneliness. And there’s something about the tropics that makes you feel so lonely anyway. But that’s just me again with my left-out feeling – for I could see Teza smile at Ford, and soon she was lying right up close to him on the rug on the sand, while Duchess Dora pouted with disapproval and Sanjay poured us rum and sliced open coconuts for the chaser.
    I remember there was a sort of little creek at the side of the lagoon farthest from the house. Cinnamon trees and tall palms shielded it from view. Sanjay took me there. ‘This is my favourite place, Holly,’ he said. And he took my chin in his hand and held my face as if trying to decide whether or not to add a finishing touch. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Holly,’ he said.
    This, I can tell you, is par for the course. Married men, and they tell you later why they won’t be able to see you after all. I can tell the dudes who come off a yacht for a bit of fun inone glance, and I can count the number of drinks they’ll need before they say there’s nothing doing. But the profits swell the till, and the Bar is lumped in with the store, so it all adds up. At least it used to before I looked in the accounts book last week and my eyes nearly jumped out of my head. ‘Holly, you should put more water with it,’ I said. But there the figures were.
    If I remember fuzzily, it’s because it gets on my nerves to look back to that day at the lagoon, with Sanjay holding my face and then turning away as if he was angry with himself – and so I think, only think, some small kids appeared, paddling in the creek. Yes, I guess they must have, because there was a sudden burst of rain and they all screamed and Sanjay squatted down near them. I remember noticing his broad back. His smooth hair wasn’t so smooth that day, and it was falling in his eyes, so he didn’t look so much like a polo-playing , wife-murdering Englishman. He’d made a small pier that stuck out into the creek and there was a model boat tied up there. The kids – now I see them, about five or six of them, white and pale brown and blackest black, and heaven knows how many of them with Allard blood from the old slave days, and Barby, the albino Negro from The Heights, just a tiny boy then with a white frizz of hair and his poor skin burning so badly from the sun. There was this quick downpour of rain, as I say, and Sanjay called to the kids to come out from under the manchineel trees. They got a poison sap, and rain coming through the leaves can burn you bad. Some of them started screaming; I reckon there’d been some harm done already.
    ‘I made this boat,’ Sanjay said when the kids had scattered over his pier. ‘It’s a galleon, sails and all.’ And he fiddled with a string and sure enough a fine set of sails unfurled.
    I was in no mood, however, for model boats at that moment. On top of which I could see Duchess Dora, who had doubtless scoured the bushes at the back of the property,