‘I like libraries. Just because I work in football doesn’t mean I don’t read. I might have worked a bit harder myself if I’d known you. You might have inspired me. I think I had it rather easy in comparison with you. It must have taken a lot to get yourself there from somewhere like here.’
‘I’ve no complaints.’
‘No, you’re not the type to complain. I like that, too.’
‘Anything else? You’re doing well. And I’m in the mood for compliments.’
‘You like to hear them, I guess. But I doubt you take any of them that seriously. It strikes me you already have a pretty good idea of who and what you are. Someone else’s affirmation isn’t of much importance to you. And you can take that as a compliment.’
‘That’s three in a row. Means you get a prize.’
‘Oh, what’s that?’
‘You get to buy me another drink.’
We talked some more, and then Grace said she should probably go.
‘I’ll walk you down to the ferry,’ I said, signed the bill and stood up, expectantly.
‘Good manners, too,’ she said. ‘How I’ve missed that in a man.’
‘You can thank my mother.’
Grace stayed put in her chair.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘I only said I should go,’ she said. ‘Not that I am going. There’s a subtle difference between the preterite form of “shall” and the present progressive tense. Especially when it comes to sex.’
‘That sounds like a lawyer’s argument.’
‘It is. But as it happens I’m a little easier to persuade than an English jury where you’re concerned. Then again, I am biased. I didn’t expect to like you. A lot.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t look so shocked, Scott. I’m a single woman. And I’m not in a relationship. Nor likely to be either. The men on this island leave a lot to be desired. At least by me. I’m not about to share everything I’ve worked hard to get for myself so that I can support some lazy good-for-nothing who stays home, drinking beer and watching cricket on television all day. I have the example of my mother and my father to know that’s not for me. Slavery may have been abolished but believe me, it still exists in thousands of homes all across the Caribbean. Uncomplicated sex suits me just fine for the moment. Of course, if you’d rather not then just say so. I won’t be offended. Like all lawyers I have one safe place to keep the cash box and important documents, and another for my feelings.’
I sat down again and took her hand. ‘Just one thing. Even if you don’t always understand them you’ll have to allow me the odd sporting metaphor in bed. You see, for any Englishman, football, not poetry, is the gold standard for metaphors about sex and love. Without football no Englishman would even know how to make love. And I always sing when I’m winning.’
19
There were several things about Guadeloupe that reminded me strongly of France: the autoroutes, the cars, the number plates on the cars, the postal vans, the occasional Casino, and the airport, of course, which, like the road to England from Scotland, was perhaps the island’s most impressively modern and inviting feature. But as soon as we left the airport and the main highways things turned more ramshackle. Nature was rampant, as if the lush tropical vegetation itself was in the process of staging some irresistible green revolution against the march of civilisation — although on Guadeloupe civilisation was less of a march and more of a slow, barefoot, sideways shuffle. Indeed, the island seemed to be trying to push mankind and all of his pathetic and unwelcome structures back into the sea from where they had originated. Palm trees grew out of abandoned buildings and bushes flourished on rooftops like hundreds of eco-friendly satellite dishes. Old wooden planters’ mansions on fire with banana leaves and which were little more than tottering façades, looked like the forgotten sets from a Hollywood movie. As your eyes passed over their once elegant lines you half expected to see Stanley Kowalski appear on the street and drunkenly howl ‘Stella!’ with frustrated desire at one of the padlocked upper doors and windows. And if all that wasn’t enough for the islanders to contend with, there was the occasional earthquake as well — the most recent a 5.6 magnitude less than two months ago.
Pavements that were greasy with dirt and cracked with the relentless heat of the sun looked like trays of toffee and were almost as sticky. Fence posts and gates collapsing because of the damp and the voracious appetites of many insects resembled driftwood that, at any moment, might find its way back into the sea that seemed never very far away. There was salt in the hot air and on almost everything else, like a hoar frost. Large pelicans wheeled across the sandy beaches like pterodactyls before dive-bombing the waves for fish and one had the feeling that at any moment a dinosaur might have lumbered noisily out of the trees, crushing several shacks underfoot before eating a small 4x4, or perhaps a dozing Rasta man. Crickets whistled away in the bushes like the wheels of a dozen rusty wheelbarrows. Dogs dozed in doorways and on street corners with only the twitch of a flea-bitten ear or the slight ripple in a ribcage to persuade you that they were not fresh roadkill.
In the central square of Pointe-à-Pitre there was a spice market that was about as picturesque as a cheap tea-towel and just as small, where none of the so-called traders seemed to care very much if anyone bought anything or not. I’ve seen more obvious enterprise in a hospice for the chronically ill. Here and there were a few traces of former French elegance; a fountain, the bronze statue of some forgotten Gallic hero, an ignored wall plaque; otherwise a guillotine might have seemed more in keeping with the look of the place. It was indeed like a Devil’s Island without Papillon, a penal colony bereft of convicts, although the many aimless French tourists who had recently disembarked from the two cruise ships now docked in the harbour of Pointe-à-Pitre seemed as if they might have been sent there as a punishment. With their pale skins, backpacks and ugly, shapeless sportswear they had the bewildered look of men and women who were uncomfortably far from home and true justice. Certainly there was nothing attractive in the shops of this unlikely capital that might have made any of them glad to be here. Even the local graffiti seemed to lack style.
But while the island and its buildings were less than attractive the same could not be said of the indigenous people. With the exception of a bearded lady I saw eating garbage off the street and the fat hookers inhabiting the shanties on the western edge of the town, the Guadeloupeans themselves were altogether more noble in appearance. Some of them were astonishingly beautiful and looking at them it was easy to understand how it was that this island of less than half a million inhabitants could have produced such fine-looking men as Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, William Gallas and Sylvain Wiltord. All of the islanders spoke French but to each other they spoke Creole, which is a mixture of French and Spanish and as different from normal French as Welsh is from English. I can speak both French and Spanish and yet I couldn’t understand a word of Creole — it made me glad that Grace had insisted on accompanying me. There was that and the fact that she was great in bed, which may have been the best reason why we decided to check into a local hotel and base our search from there, at least for one night.
‘The Auberge de la Vieille Tour doesn’t begin to compare with Jumby Bay or any of the better places on Antigua,’ explained Grace as we arrived at the hotel in Le Gosier, to the east of Pointe-à-Pitre, ‘but it’s the best of a bad lot. Believe me, we could do a lot worse. I’m told that there are times when the food here is almost edible. Besides, it’s quite close to the spot where we’re going to commence our search for Jérôme Dumas.’