Ok, Harry: Jack's community
Quest
Jack and Hannah Ormerod and Lucia, Delphine & Fin
Sun 19 Jun 2016 21:55
Hi Everyone,
Grenada is turning out to be the lushest place we’ve been to. Lush being the wrong word since Gavin and Stacey and all South Waleans stole the word for describing nights out but I can’t think of another one right now. Since the rainy season’s been ramping up, almost every single tree you see is dripping with fruit. Mango trees are exploding, avocado trees have enormous avocado bombs ticking away, pineapples grow like spiky hairdos out of the ground, cocoa pods are nobbly giants’ ears out of every part of the tree, there are breadfruits and papaya on surrealist-looking trees which Salvador Dali would have taken as his personal friends. Even the wild sea grape growing at the edge of normally nutrient-poor beaches is edible and apparently delicious. We've heard that a quarter of all of the world's fruits are found on this island. Despite this, Jack’s been unsold on Grenada ever since we got here. At first he blamed it on work pressure, then he started saying he didn’t like the vibe here. ‘I prefer Antigua,’ he kept saying, ‘it just doesn’t feel that friendly here.’ Being such a sensitive judge of character, I couldn’t tell the difference at first but as we’ve been here longer, I see what he means. When you first meet a Grenadian, there isn’t always a straightaway warmth. What you get is usually a sort of removed deference, a politeness but not an easy smile, a tic of detachment for sure. Grenada was one of the last colonised islands in the Caribbean, being the very last island in the Windward necklace chain, fiercely defended by the Caribs. When Grenada was finally taken over by the French, many Caribs responded by simply jumping off cliffs in the North. Even now the place is called Carib’s Leap. Before we got here, our friend, Betti from Big Bully said that we’d see the Caribbean becoming 'proper Caribbean' down south but we didn’t expect this accompanying change in the people. Like fierceness is still in the soil.
Jack wasn’t sure. At all. ‘I think we should keep moving,’ he said as we sat waiting on anchor to haul out in Grenada Marine. ‘Or maybe go home to Borth for the summer and come back in November. Like everyone else does.’ My heart skipped four beats. Borth? Without dance school and regular school. Without my car? All our stuff still on Quest? If I’d had cat claws, I would have dug them in to the saloon sofa right then and there. The one thing I’ve learned with this travelling malarky is that the hardest bit is the beginning, just after you’ve checked in. You got to hold on. So I went to bed with a lock and chain hidden under my pillow, we hauled out and I held my breath.
Two days later, the first person who turned up to work on Quest started climbing the ladder, announced he’d forgotten something and disappeared for an hour. Finally, Jack climbed down and came back a few minutes later with his first hostage, a worried-looking foreman. ‘I’m not a bastard,’ Jack said pointing his finger and looking just like a bastard, 'but I don’t like to be messed around and I don’t want to pay for people to call their girlfriends.’ The foreman nodded vigorously. ‘Got you.’ Later the mechanic, Pascal arrived, a bull of a man who somehow fit down the girls’ wardrobe and changed the seal on the propellor. He was never going to be very talkative. The next day, Cocoa T came. Cocoa T is slim and unobtrusive, dreadlocked and ties his hair back in a big white handkerchief. Slow and steady, calm and careful, never a panicked look or a shaky breath, Cocoa T removed the stairs to the cockpit and for three days, he and Jack bonded over metal and pistons and different kinds of engine oil. Afterwards, Jack was looking a bit better. A bit like his old self.
Then the piece de resistance; the Grenville Posse turned up at Quest. Grenville is Grenada’s second city after St. George’s. City might be a bit of an overstatement, you could say Wales’ Swansea to Cardiff with a strong dash of Tregaron thrown in. It is where Grenada’s most agricultural land is based, on the eastern Atlantic side, wetter and even more productive than down here in the South which seems hard to believe. What, do they have like 75 harvests a year? Tourism is down to a minimum, except for Caribbean glamping-type adventures and rural retreats. You can imagine the people from Grenville. Homespun, country, real. They might eat a soft tourist-lover for supper and then go out and pick some cucumbers. Plant some spinach. That kind of thing.
So those two guys from Grenville came to Quest with cheeky smiles and a large roll of wiring cable and I saw Jack’s face light up. It was a hot, hot day and the girls and I retreated to the cafe to do our school. Every once in a while I’d go back to Quest to check on things, find a marker, get a pencil sharpener, etc. Every time I’d hear the laughing before I even got back inside. Oh yeah, these country bumpkins are Jack’s people. When I got down the stairs I could see one was demonstrating Soca moves to be used in carnival while the other was laughing with his head stuck down a hole in the floor. ‘How was it?’ I asked Jack when they’d gone. He shook his head. ‘We were standing outside when one of them called out, “Bandit!’ to one of the crane guys. The crane guy didn’t look up so he called it again and then called it louder. The guy just kept walking with his head down. "Why did you call him bandit?” I asked. He said, “Because he’s a thief and thieves don’t like to be called thieves.” Jack smiled. 'I like those guys.'
The next day this same electrician came back to Quest with a small bag in his hand. He passed it over to me and I looked inside. There were three dark balls the size of ping-pongs and some semi-dried bay leaves and pieces of cinnamon bark. ‘I’ve brought you some cocoa tea to make,’ he said seriously. This was the same drink Lulu and I had drunk at our visit to the chocolate factory with my mum, the elixir stuff that was akin to the melted chocolate running through Willy Wonky’s river. The girls and I stared at him from the middle of our maths lesson. The chocolate factory we visited is near Grenville. Without further ado, he reeled off a series of fairly complicated instructions. Measurements, times. ‘I’ll be back to check you did it right,’ he said and left.
It was another hot, hot day but this time the girls and I stayed on Quest. Jack was running around co-ordinating different projects and needed me to be around. The fans were all on full strength but still, it was hard to breathe, let alone learn. Eventually, I put the books down. ‘Let’s make this cocoa tea.' The girls looked relieved and we started making it, remembering his carefully delivered instructions. Not very long after, the air around us began to waft with chocolate and spice. We made it exactly how he said. The first person to come aboard was none other than Cocoa T. 'I used to drink my great-grandmother’s so much, they called me Cocoa T,’ he admitted. ‘Would you like to try some?’ we asked as he was lifting the hatch to the generator. He nodded and necked it back. We waited eagerly for feedback. He noticed we were all looking at him. ‘Nice,’ he said. At the end of the day the guy from the Grenville Posse came back and drank the very last cup that Jack had made us save for him. ‘It’s the best first-attempt I’ve tried,’ he said. ‘Better than your Mama’s?’ Jack asked. His teeth gleamed in the late afternoon sun. ‘No.’
Love from Quest and her crew