41 Lunch at Jim's

The next morning was bright and clear with a deep blue sky and, since Jim’s house is up the hill and on the opposite side of Our Granny’s from the Village, I had to take the road all the way along Her front wall. The sun was hot so that, even though I walked slowly and tried to keep to the shade on the opposite side of the street, I could feel the sweat inside my shirt trickling down my back.

Jim’s entrance consisted of a wrought iron gate that blocked the road running next to Our Granny’s wall. It was about ten feet tall, shaded with an arch of purple bougainvillea. I pulled on a bell rope and heard a clanging inside where the road followed the curve of the wall around to the right and out of sight. As I waited outside, I had just time to reflect on the workmanship with which the gate was constructed. Wrought iron is scarce on the island and I could see that it had been made by a highly skilled craftsman.

Almost immediately, a servant wearing a loincloth came to answer the bell and, having verified my appointment, he opened the gate and led me on down the road. On the left side, opposite the wall was a hibiscus hedge covered in bright red blooms and, rising behind it, an avenue of palms, fine specimens of Archontophoenix Alexandrae. They are exotics and the only other example on the island I knew of was one planted by the Americans. These were younger, I guessed about thirty years old, and already impressive.

As we rounded the bend, the road opened out onto a grassy terrace. To the left, nothing but the sea and the sky, deep blue beyond a low wall. To the right, a thatched house with a shady veranda. A stream ran across the lawn from a spring near Our Granny’s wall, feeding a rocky pool in which some young men and girls were swimming and lounging and then making its way down the lawn towards the sea.

A man of middle height with a shock of white hair came towards me and shook my hand. His leathery skin was tanned the colour of teak, and shining from frequent application of cocoa butter.
“Manaku Jim,” he introduced himself, “and you must be Tommu, the famous tree planter.”
“I didn’t think you’d have heard of me, Sir.” I replied.
“I hadn’t, before last week,” he laughed, “but these days it’s best to know who one’s guests are, isn’t it?
But what’s this ‘Sir’? Call me Jim. Only my enemies call me anything else.”

He led me over to a bar on the veranda.
“What will you have to drink?” he asked as he reached into a dish of fruit, placed a pyramid of watermelon and some cubes of pineapple into his own bowl and added a generous measure of spirits.

“We have a selection of corn whiskey, rum and white cane spirits as well as beer and too many types of fruit juice to be worth trying to remember them all.
Here, Kara,” he called to a girl who was lying by the pool, “see that our guest has whatever he desires.”

“It’s a bit early for me, I think.” I said to her as she came over to the bar, “I’ll just have some pineapple juice if I may.”
“You may have anything that you want.” She smiled at me.

“So, Tommu,” Manaku Jim resumed, “What do you think of our set-up here? It’s taken me a while, but I’m just about getting it into shape.”
“It’s beautiful! It reminds me, somehow, of the way the Village was before the fire and the war; but how do you handle security? It seems so, er, so open.”
“Less open than you might think,” Jim responded, “Come down and I’ll show you.”

We made our way across the lawn towards the sea and, as we approached the low wall,
I realised that we were standing on the edge of a cliff. Looking down I could see the spray of waves breaking on the rocks, hundreds of feet below, with sea birds flying in and out of their nests on the ledges.

“You see, Tommu,” Jim smiled, “all we have to do is shut the gate and we’re in our own private world. The security next door is the best on the island and no-one can get to us from the sea. Now let me introduce you to some of the boys and girls.”

I looked round towards the house and, with something of a shock, noticed that one of the girls lying in the sun next to the pool was wearing no clothes at all. I carefully directed my gaze elsewhere as Manaku Jim led me over to a group of men and girls.
“This is Rombo, our star quarterback,” he said, “I’m sure that you know all about him, and this are Sato and Gomal, the heart of our defence.”

“Pleased to meet you.” I shook their hands, with the strange sense of uneasy awe and guilt that comes with meeting celebrities that one has never heard of.
“And this is Dana,” he introduced one of the girls, “I would tell you that she is the most beautiful girl on the island, which of course she is, if it didn’t do an injustice to the other ladies here. I have all the most beautiful girls on the island here with me.”

He walked over towards the corner of the veranda and the whole group followed.
“Now you need to meet Horrie.” He said, as we rounded the corner to find an Orang-utan chained to a staple in the wall. The animal was seated in the shade, in the centre of a patch of bare earth that its movements had worn out of the lush grass of the lawn.

“Hi, Horrie,” Jim greeted it, “this is Tommu, who has lived in your part of the world.” The monkey looked bored and threadbare and Jim handed it his bowl of drink, which it consumed noisily.
“They love the fruit, but you have to be careful not to let him drink too much,” he commented, “He’s amazingly strong. Gomal here is probably the strongest man I know but Horrie could snap him like a match stick. Not so, Gomal?”
“Eey, yes, he amazing strong.” Gomal grinned.

Jim led the group back to the front of the house and beckoned me to sit with him on a cane swing positioned in the shade of an umbrella of dried palm fronds.
“Now, Tommu,” he said, “I understand that you want to ask me some questions. What would you like me to tell you?”

I explained something of my ambition of providing a record of the creation of the Village and its history and to preserve some of the recollections of the people who had been involved.
“Perhaps the easiest place to start,” I continued, “would be with Our Granny. As her closest living relative, I thought you would have a unique perspective on her achievements.”

“Well, I can try and remember things.” Jim was thoughtful, “but you probably need to understand that I was never that close to my mother. She was always very occupied with the organisation of the island.”
“Your mother?!” I tried to hide my uncertainty, “I understood that she was your biological grandmother?”

“People tend to think that,” Jim laughed, “because I was brought up by my brother, Apu, and his wife, but actually, Shilda was my mother. My father was an American airman and I was born after he had been recalled to his home in America. As a result, it was easier for everyone that Apu looked after me. I spent a lot of time with my real mother, but most people have the impression that Apu was my dad.”

“You called her ‘Shilda’?” I looked at him. “How is that when there is so much debate about her name day? There are huge arguments about whether it is at the southern or the northern passage of the sun and neither is the name day for ‘Shilda’.”

“That is also quite simple. In the early days, when the idea of a national celebration was first thought of, it needed to be on a day that everyone could recognise and the day on which the sun passed overhead was chosen. Sometimes the sun was on its way south and other years it was passing northwards. At the start, no one thought it was important.

It was only later that the feast became associated with my mother’s name day and, of course, the disputes over her name began but by then it was too late to do anything. Her actual name, though, is Shilda and we always had a private celebration on her real name day.”

“That is quite astonishing, Sir, er, Jim.” I said. “Now, I wonder if you can throw some light on another puzzling question?”
I took the photograph from my notebook and handed it to him.
“Can you say which of the people in the photograph might be Our Granny?”

Jim took the photograph and held it out in front of him at arms’ length. He squinted at it and turned it upside down, then round the right way up.
“It’s not very big, is it?” he said. “I suppose this could be her on the left. Or perhaps this other one next to her. Maybe one of them is her sister.”
“Do you think that the man is your father?” I asked.

“That I couldn’t say,” He moved the picture closer and then held it as far away from him as his fingers would allow, “even if my eyes still worked properly. He left the island before I was born. He was an airman, you know.”

“What about these?” I asked, handing him the sketches and the portrait. “Do any of them look like her?”
“At least these are big enough to see.” He said, “When were they drawn?”
“Just before the fire, about five years ago.”

“Well they’re far too young,” he went on, “that’s one problem. My mother was forty when I was born and I’m sixty now, so five years ago she would have been about ninety five. The oldest of these must be of a woman in her fifties and Shilda never looked as severe as she does.
I always remember her smiling. This idea that ‘Our Granny wants us to go out and kill people’ is a pure invention of that windbag, Lomu.”
“Just to let you know,” I said, “I will not be writing down that remark.”

“Oh, write what you like.” Jim answered, “what I’m telling you is unofficial and I would have to deny it. If I were ever asked officially I would have to support Lomu, but I don’t care who knows what I really think of him. There’s nothing he can do about it.

Looking at the other two pictures,” he continued, “I can’t believe that whoever drew them had ever actually met my mother. This sketch looks pretty vacant and the coloured one...
I can tell you that if I met her she’d have an instant invitation to my parties here.”