13 The Root Canals of Hortense Bowden -2

So are you a good girl these days, my dear? Gossip informs me Mrs. Brenton has introduced

you to her church. Very interesting, these Witness people. But are they prepared, I wonder, for this

new mulatto member of their flock?

Hortense remembered well the feel of that fat hand landing hot against her mother; she

remembered kicking out at it with all her might.

Oh, it's all right, child. The Captain told me your little secret. But naturally secrets have a price,

Ambrosia. Just as yams and pimento and my tobacco cost something. Now, have you seen the old

Spanish church, Santa Antonia? Have you been inside? It's just here. It's quite a marvel inside, from

the aesthetic rather than religious point of view. It will only take a moment, my dear. One should

never pass up the opportunity of a link education, after all.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. Outside

of Ambrosia there was much , white stone, no people, an altar peeling gold, little light, smoking

candles, Spanish names engraved in the floor, and a large marble madonna, her head bowed,

standing high upon a plinth. All was preternaturally calm as Glenard began to touch her. But inside,

there was a galloping heart-beat, the crush of a million muscles that wanted desperately to repel

Glenard's attempts at an education, the clammy fingers that even now were at her breast, slipping

between thin cotton and squeezing nipples already heavy with milk, milk never intended for such a

rough mouth. Inside she was already running down King Street. But outside Ambrosia was frozen.

Rooted to the spot, as feminine a stone as any madonna.

And then the world began to shake. Inside Ambrosia, waters broke. Outside Ambrosia, the floor

cracked. The far wall crumbled, the stained-glass exploded, and the madonna fell from a great

height like a swooning angel. Ambrosia stumbled from the scene, making it only as far as the

confessionals before the ground split once more a mighty crack! and she fell down, in sight of

Glenard himself, who lay crushed underneath his angel, his teeth scattered on the floor, trousers

round his ankles. And the ground continued to vibrate. A second crack came. And a third. The

pillars fell, half the roof disappeared. Any other afternoon in Jamaica, the screams of Ambrosia, the

screams that followed each contraction of her womb as Hortense pushed out, would have caught

somebody's attention, brought somebody to her aid. But the world was ending that afternoon in

Kingston. Everybody was screaming.

If this were a fairy-tale, it would now be time for Captain Durham to play hero. He does not

seem to lack the necessary credentials. It is not that he isn't handsome, or tall or strong, or that he

doesn't want to help her, or that he doesn't love her (oh, he loves her; just as the English loved India

and Africa and Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly) all those

things are true. But maybe it is just the scenery that is wrong. Maybe nothing that happens upon

stolen ground can expect a happy ending.

For when Durham returns, the day after the initial tremors, he finds an island destroyed, two

thousand already dead, fire in

the hills, parts of Kingston fallen into the sea, starvation, terror, whole streets swallowed up by

the earth and none of this horrifies him as much as the realization that he might never see her again.

Now he understands what love means. He stands in the parade ground, lonely and distraught,

surrounded by a thousand black faces he does not recognize; the only other white figure is the

statue of Victoria, five aftershocks having turned her round by degrees until she appears to have her

back to the people. This is not far from the truth. It is the Americans, not the British, who have the

resources to pledge serious aid, three warships full of provisions presently snaking down the coast

from Cuba. It is an American publicity coup that the British government does not relish, and like

his fellow Englishmen Durham cannot help but feel a certain wounded pride. He still thinks of the

land as his, his to help or his to hurt, even now when it has proved itself to have a mind all of its

own. He still retains enough of his English education to feel slighted when he spots two American

soldiers who have docked without permission (all landings must go through Durham or his

superiors) standing outside their consulate building, insolently chewing their tobacco. It is a strange

feeling, this powerlessness; to discover there is another country more equipped to save this little

island than the English. It is a strange feeling, looking out on to an ocean of ebony skins, unable to

find the one he loves, the one he thinks he owns. For Durham has orders to stand here and call out

the names of the handful of servants, butlers and maids, the chosen few the English will be taking

with them to Cuba until the fires die down. If he knew her last name, God knows he would call it

out. But in all that teaching, he never learnt it. He never asked.

Yet it was not for this oversight that Captain Durham, the great educator, was remembered as a

fool Irwoy in the annals of the Bowden clan. He found out soon enough where she was; he found

little cousin Marlene amongst the throng, and sent her off with a note to the church hall where she

had seen Ambrosia last,

singing with the Witnesses, offering thanks for the Judgement Day. While Marlene ran as fast as

her ashen legs would carry her, Durham walked calmly, thinking the last act was done, to King's

House, the residence of Sir James Swettenham, governor of Jamaica. There he asked him to make

an exception for Ambrosia-, an 'educated Negress' he wished to marry. She was not like the others.

She must have a place with him on the next outgoing ship.

But if you are to rule a land that is not yours, you get used to ignoring exceptions; Swettenham

told him frankly there were no spaces on his boats for black whores or livestock. Durham, hurt and

vengeful, inferred that Swettenham had no power of his own, that the arrival of American ships was

proof of that, and then, as a parting shot, mentioned the two American soldiers he had seen on

British soil without permission, presumptuous upstarts on land they didn't own. Does the baby go

out with the bathwater, demanded Durham, face red as a pillar-box, resorting back to the religion of

possession that was his birthright, is this not still our country? Is our authority so easily toppled by

a few rumbles in the ground?

The rest is that terrible thing: history. As Swettenham ordered the American boats to return to

Cuba, Marlene came running back with Ambrosia's reply. One sentence torn from Job: I will fetch

my knowledge from afar. (Hortense kept the bible it was ripped from and liked to say that from that

day forth no Bowden woman took lessons from anyone but the Lord.) Marlene handed the sentence

to Durham, and ran off into the parade ground happy as a clam, in search of her mother and father

who were injured and weak, on their last legs and waiting for the boats like thousands of others.

She wanted to tell them the good news, what Ambrosia had told her: It soon come, it soon come.

The boats? Marlene had asked, and Ambrosia had nodded, though she was too busy with prayer,

too ecstatic to hear the question. It soon come, it soon come, she said, repeating what she had learnt

from Revelation; what

Durham and then Glenard and then Mrs. Brenton had taught her in their different ways; what

the fire and earth-cracks and thunder attested to. It soon come, she told Marlene, who took her word

for gospel. A little English education can be a dangerous thing.

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