From Flying Fish to Kippers

FROM FLYING FISH TO KIPPERS

By

MARGARET KNIGHT

Published by Sheraton Media at Smashwords

Copyright Margaret Knight 2008

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‘From Flying Fish to Kippers’ is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely co-incidental.

Cover illustration composed by Michael Goodman

Smashwords edition published by

Sheraton Media

Christ Church ,Barbados

sheratonmedia@hotmail.com

CHAPTER ONE

I am a West Indian girl. A Bajan girl, from the paradise island of Barbados, the most easterly of the Caribbean chain of islands. I'm not particularly interested in hearing, oh, but your ancestors were from … I don't give a toss where my ancestors came from. What does it matter anyhow, since my grandparents - on my father's side - and my maternal grandmother, were born in Barbados. My maternal grandfather was born in Jamaica.

So when I get uprooted, and carted four thousand miles across the Atlantic to Mother England, I strongly object. This happened to me at the age of twelve, coming up to thirteen.

One minute I was a happy-go-lucky tomboy, climbing trees, riding a bicycle, swimming and diving for sea plates (some call them sand dollars), playing tennis and doing all sorts of out-door things, and next thing you know, the Yanks have dropped two nasty bombs on Japan, ending World War II, and the parents are booking passages to England. They are taking their two daughters - my sister, Rachel, and me, Patricia - to boarding-school in England.

I do not wish to go to a boarding-school in England, I declared to my mother. Couldn't say that to my father or I may have ended up getting a bit of a slap round the kisser. Formidable disciplinarian, my dad. Jovial at times, and liked his drinks when he was with friends. If he weren't my father, or perhaps if I were a lot older, I would say he was a funny old bird.

My mother was at the time sewing a white button on to one of my father's white shirts. She stuck herself with the needle and shouted, Oh, shoot, look what you've made me do. Little droplets of blood appeared on her finger and she sucked them off. Some dropped on the white shirt and that made her more cross. Now I'll have to give this shirt to Idaho to wash. Idaho was the young woman who did the household washing and ironing. She worked three days a week. She was a pleasant soul and I often teased her and called her potato.

Idaho is not here today, I said. And I will repeat, I am not going to any boarding-school in fuddy-duddy old England.

My mother jumped up from her chair, waved the white shirt at me and said, You will stop your rudeness this minute. You have no choice in the matter, anyhow. Go outside and climb a tree and leave me alone. She flounced off towards the bathroom, where I supposed she would nip the tiny blood stains off the old geezer's shirt.

Time rolled on, and so did the heavy black clouds in the sky. They dumped gallons of rain on Barbados and the thunderstorms were ear-shattering. This was not unusual for September.

One night, the lightning was so vivid that my father woke everyone up (except me, because I wasn't sleeping. I had the pillow over my head so I couldn't see the frightening lightning.) He came to my bed and shook my shoulder. We're all going downstairs to the drawing room, he announced. He would never admit it, but I knew he was dead scared of thunderstorms.

So there we sat - all four of us - in the drawing room, which was fortified like the inside of a citadel. Hurricane shutters on doors and windows. The heat was unbearable and there was a musty smell. A particularly vicious bolt of lightning, followed by an enormous crash of thunder, smashed the chandelier - fully lit - hanging from the ceiling and we were pitched into darkness. For a few seconds, there was a scorched smell in the air. Tiny shards of glass were everywhere on the floor. I squeezed my eyes shut and shoved my hands up to my ears, waiting for the next flash and crash.

Dad switched on his flashlight and with trembling hands, lit two oil lamps, resting on a nearby side table. The thunderstorm passed over us quickly, and thankfully we were soon able to go back to bed.

A new storm hit us around six o'clock next morning. This time, we were shepherded into the small breakfast room. This was to avoid the bits and pieces of glass, which littered the floor in the drawing room. Carmen comes in pretty early, so she can clean it up when she comes in. Poor Carmen, the cook - it was not her job, but rather the job of the housemaid, Velda. But Velda - a miserable, malicious creature - did not come into work until eight a.m. The parents loved Velda, because she gave them all the gossip she heard from other maids in other households in the neighbourhood. She also told tales on me. Never on Rachel. Rachel never did anything wrong - she was Miss Goody Two Shoes.

I'm not going to school. Flatout statement from me to my mother. The old man had just crawled into his car, ready for his two-mile journey to work, in Bridgetown. So I was safe. I was also a coward. Furthermore, I would have done anything not to have to go to school at St. Winona's. I hated the place. It was a Girls' School. A WHITE Girls' school. No blacks allowed. It didn't seem right to me.

Mum was sympathetic. Trixie, (that was my nickname), I know you're terrified of thunderstorms, but this one shouldn't last too long. Besides, you're safe in a bus, with its massive rubber tyres.

I held my head and groaned. A flash of lightning and a crash of thunder drove me under the breakfast table. Didn't my mother understand that in order to reach the bloody bus, Rachel and I had to walk down the length of our gap in order to get to the main road where the bus stop was?

Why couldn't Dad have waited for us and taken us in the car?

My mother tossed her head. He has to go to work, and you know he is always punctual. If he drove you and Rachel to St. Winona's, he would be late for work.

As it turned out, the thunderstorm rolled itself away over to the north-west, and Rachel and I squished our way down the rain-drenched gap and out the main road to the bus stop. It had stopped raining, but there was a pungent smell, and you could see the heat rising from the wet tar road.

The only good thing about that bus ride was that the bus was chockablock full of laughing, cavorting school children, and suddenly I was pulled on to the lap of a particularly good-looking Harrison College boy. I had been wedged in between him and another Harrisonian, with nowhere to put my arms, but squeezed on to my lap. One boy had noticed that the other boy kept touching up my leg. So he saved me by pulling me on to his lap. Rachel was sitting two seats in front, so she hadn't a clue what was going on. She would have told on me, for sure, had she seen.

The old geezer came to pick us up from school that afternoon, because there were heavy, threatening clouds in the sky once again. We were in for more rain and thunderstorms.

When we bundled out of the car and ran towards the house, through the rain, which had just started to fall, Velda came sidling up to my father and said, Mr. Herbert Reece call you. We all knew what that meant. Impending bad weather; maybe a hurricane approaching the island. Mr. Reece was the weather expert on the island at that time. He had weather instruments and equipment from which he got much of his information. But he would toss his head and say, "I mostly rely on the sky, and I often trust my own gut feelings. I can actually feel when a hurricane is approaching."

My father yelled for my mother, after he had telephoned and spoken to Mr. Reece. Herbert says there's a hurricane some two hundred or so miles east of us, heading our way.

I got quite excited. A hurricane! Lots of high wind, rain, pounding seas …

What are you smirking at? growled my father. You think a hurricane is fun? Well, let me tell you - I lived through one and I never wish to experience anything like that again. So you can wipe that smirk off your face.

I did. I brushed my hand across my mouth and pouted. One had to be very careful and circumspect when it came to dealing with my father, Oliver Ridger.

The next day was Friday. Last day of school for the week. My father got out of bed as soon as daylight made its appearance and the birds started to sing and coo and chirp. The stupid old rooster in the backyard crowed lustily. I soon put a stop to that. I always kept a few pebbles in my bedroom just for him. I would lob one or two at him whenever he began his racket. He sometimes flew up in the air and landed on top of an old shed, flapped his wings and crowed louder. He would cock his eye at my bedroom window, as much as to say, I don't care how many rock-stones you pelt at me, you can't get rid of me.

My father went from bedroom window to bedroom window, peering at the sky to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west. He shook his head and said, Lucy (that was my mum), I don't like the look of the sky. Furthermore, there is not a leaf on a tree moving, and the birds are very silent.

My mother said, You think Herbert is right - we're going to get a hurricane?

It looks so. I'm not going to work, and I don't wish the children to go to school.

Hooray! Yippee! No school for three whole days. In fact, maybe no school for a week or two.

Trixie is not to go climbing trees and rampaging on her bicycle. Don't let her go down the beach either. Set her some homework to do.

Spoilsport. I'll bet other children's fathers aren't like Oliver.

My mother did not reply. Or if she did, I did not hear her. What I did hear was a moan from her. Oh, dear, I suppose that means our ship to England will be delayed, and …

Lucy, the ship is not coming across the Atlantic; it is coming through the Panama Canal from New Zealand to Trinidad. I told you that already.

Hmm. Which things being so, how do we board the damned ship? I found Rachel sitting at the piano, trying to sight-read something on a sheet of music. I just heard Dad tell Mum that the ship we're going to England on is not coming to Barbados. It's going to Trinidad. So how do we board this ship - swim to Trinidad? I said that just to rile her up.

Rachel gave me a scathing look. You stupid ninny, we're sailing on another ship from Barbados to Trinidad.

You mean an inter-island schooner?

Rachel pounded her fists on the piano. You're such an idiot! Of course we're not going on a schooner. It's a Dutch steamship, I think.

Maybe if people told me things, I wouldn't be such an idiot, but they never tell me anything.

The day wore on and it was the hottest day I had ever encountered. Not a leaf stirred; not a bird sang or chirped. The sea was as smooth as a baby's bottom.

The old man kept going outside and looking up to the skies. He got so restless that he eventually picked up the phone, which lived on a window ledge halfway up the stairs, and called Mr. Reece. He made a face, but I couldn't read the expression because I was peeping at him through the leaves of the huge mahogany tree in the front yard. If he had known I was up in the tree, it would have been licks like peas in my backside.

Dad put down the phone and joined my mother, who was in the pantry dishing out yams, rice, split peas, okras and corn meal to Carmen, presumably to be cooked for the day's lunch, or dinner, or both. I hoped we were going to have cou-cou for lunch. It was made with corn meal and okras and it was usually eaten with flying fish. It was my favourite.

I climbed down from the tree and crawled into the house through an open window in the drawing room.

Ships' reports had started to come in about the hurricane, and other meteorologists had taken up the clarion call of warning. But the next day, Mr. Reece telephoned. The hurricane had taken a turn to the north and would probably make its way through the northern Antilles. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The old man's uptight face relaxed.

On Sunday, we all went to church at St. James's Parish Church to give thanks to God for sparing Barbados. Barbadians had a habit of saying, God is a Bajan. He won't let anything bad happen to us. Even at my age, I considered that an ignorant statement.

After church, I made my way up the beach to my friends' house. The family consisted of Mum, Dad, two girls and a boy - Barbara, Susan and William. Surname of Pound. I wished like hell that I had a brother. William was not a tree-climbing boy. In fact, he was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. He seldom played with Barbara, Susan and me. We swam a lot, or went for long walks up the beach. We climbed trees, and sometimes we took turns on the swing, which my dad had slung up on a sturdy branch of the mahogany tree. We also had a seesaw, which we tumbled about on.

I found Barbara and Susan on the beach. William was helping them push the little rowboat down to the water. They hailed me, and when we got the boat in the water, we all jumped in, and Barbara started rowing.

I'm going to England, I declared.

They both looked at me in astonishment. What for? asked Susan.

To school; a boarding-school.

Barbara made a face. That sounds awful. England is cold. What's more, the grownups are saying that it's all mashed up from Hitler's bombs.

I hung my head. I know. I'm thinking of running away, but I don't know where to run to.

Barbara shipped the oars and we drifted. "You could always stow away on an inter-island schooner. Maybe the Sea Fox. I heard the grownups talking about that schooner the other day."

I would be sea-sick and they would smell my vomit.

How long do you have to stay at the boarding-school? asked Susan.

I shrugged. Dunno. Five, six years, maybe.

Barbara started rowing again. We took it in turns to row and we got as far as Bats Rock, just short of Fresh Water Bay. I have to get back to lunch, I said. I think my parents are going to visit your house to say good-bye to your mum and dad sometime soon.

They both hugged me and said what bad luck that I was leaving them and going to that dump, England. I agreed.

How do you run away? I whispered to Carmen, after lunch. The parents had gone upstairs to have an afternoon rest. Rachel was in her bedroom, reading.

Carmen spun around and stared at me. What you ax me?

Shh! I put my fingers up to my lips. If you were going to run away, where would you go?

Carmen rested the saucepan she was washing on the side of the sink. You plans to run away? she whispered.

I shook my head. I don't wish to go to England.

Carmen looked up to the ceiling. "Lord, have mercy! Look what foolishness you talking. You can't run away, Miss Trixie. You think this is Amurka? This is l'il Barbados. Your father very friendly with the Police Commissioner. You better start thinkin' right, you hear?