It all started with a dream.
Indeed, it was in fact there that he saw her for the very first time, or as folks a generation or two older than he would say, “it was when he first laid eyes on her”. Technically, this of course would have been quite impossible. But as he would often tell the story, it all started with a dream.
In his telling, she had been sitting at a table alone, having dinner when he entered the room. But his progress across the room was brought to an abrupt halt, by what he characterised as being stunned by the aura that seemed to emanate from her presence. He apparently, from his telling, just stood stupefied and very much like the play between a flying ant and a lighted candle, found himself drawn in to her.
He walked straight to her table, apologised for any disturbance that his intrusion may cause her and enquired as to whether she would be kind enough to allow him to join her. To which she, without a hint of demonstrated surprise or suspicion, gestured to him to have a seat, and he did.
He would later say that it was “as if she had in fact fully expected him to join her”.
In retrospect, certainly to the casual observer, it would have seemed as though they had been sitting silently for hours. She, eating in a fashion that suggested that she had made of this ordinary activity an elegant, though not elaborate art. He, very slowly drinking her in with each sip of the Cabernet Sauvignon which she invited him to share with her.
All of this before the first words were spoken, though by now quite a great deal had been said.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked in a manner that could be described as politely enquiring. “No, I am not a virgin,” she replied in a rhythm that suggested that she understood all of what he had tried to ask, and then she smiled and he thought for sure that he knew what would happen next. But as it turned out, he did not know what would happen next.
It was an action that seemed to have happened so incredibly slowly that he found himself lingering behind the actual movement on her lips long after the moment had passed. She had daintily dabbed the corners of her mouth. Then she had folded the ever so slightly soiled, lace-trimmed cotton napkin into a triangle, which she then gracefully slide slightly under the rim of the plate which still had at least half of the meal left on it. Then she stood, stepped around the table, took him by the hand and led him out into the night.
“She was simply beautiful and her beauty radiated from every fibre of her being.” This he thought as they made their way along the brightly lit narrow lane, hand in hand like two young lovers too connected to each other to notice that other people in the lane were looking at them with a kind of knowing look and whispering things to each other, and giggling like young children sometimes do when they are embarrassed or are what the old people would characterise as being “just too happy”. But clearly, they were too connected to each other to have noticed. But had he not been, he would have noticed that he was not alone in this regard, for everyone they passed felt the sheer beauty radiating from her.
They had walked and walked and walked.
And after an hour or two or maybe even three (he had completely lost track of time and had no sense of how much time had elapsed), navigating many of the several quaint little lanes and alleys, stopping to look into just about every single shop window, and later on at least two occasions stopping to buy ice cream, they arrived at the front of the home of a friend of his.
Initially, he was surprised by the fact that she led him there. He did not know she had known anyone that he knew, and here she had led him right to this gate. More interestingly there was a party being held there that night, a party to which he had been invited, and he found himself assuming that she must have been invited also. It was at this point that he said to her, “This is quite a coincidence.” She, smiling what he had come to recognise as one of her radiant but rather enigmatic smiles, silently mouthed, “There are no coincidences.”
The party, which apparently had been organised for no special reason other than to acknowledge and celebrate the fact of being alive, was now at the point where most of the revellers in attendance had had two or three drinks and were beginning to really relax and enjoy the music. The host, an intellectual type with lodes of acquaintances but limited friends and even more limited financial resources, had just, a couple days earlier, said to a few of those limited friends that it had been a long time since he had gone to a good party. And voilà, that was where the idea had its genesis.
And here he was now with aged-rum-infused expansive gestures, warmly welcoming his guests with glasses of champagne and an “As is pellucidly evident, a good idea needs very little encouragement, come on in.”
And in equally matching expansive gesture, they accepted, sipped and proceeded to join the others in both the rhythm and the spirit of the moment, on the wooden deck of the back patio, now claimed as dance floor. The first bars of Lord Kitchener’s “Pan in A minor” were playing as they entered; the disc jockey, as if sensing their arrival, had just put it on. Next came Black Stalin’s “Ah Feeling to Party”, and then Ras Iley’s “Inez”, and then as if to cool the tempo down a bit and allow the more aged as well as the more inebriated a moment or two in which they could, as they say, “catch their breath”, came All Stars playing their slow jam version of Scrunter’s “Woman on the Bass”.
And they danced.
Then came “Slave” by the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca-Cola” and Ras Shorty’s “Watch Out My Children” and Gypsy’s “Little Black Boy”.
And they danced on.
And then came Alison Hinds and Square One’s “Iron Bazodee”, David Rudder’s “High Mas”, and he and she danced on and on, completely in their own world. They danced as only people in love can, without really paying much attention to the others around them. And those around them could not help but notice.
Aged rum and champagne were the only alcoholic beverages available. No one complained. The golden sautéed garlic shrimp, the fresh raw pink oysters in the half shell paired with hot sauce and lime juice, and the delicately smoked marlin served on garlic bread also drew no complaints. The fare lent perfectly to the mood.
The mood was decidedly celebratory and, as the night progressed, guests in ever increasing numbers, in varying stages of dress, found themselves frolicking in the warm blue glow reflecting from the pool, with a few brave souls who could actually swim in fact in its water.
The pool, a rectangular affair, uniformly deep and without the usual shallow end, was in reality not purpose-built but rather a repurposed water catchment/water storage structure, originally built in the 1920s or 30s to supply fresh water to the house which had been built some years prior. This new repurposing, which was really still very much a work in progress, had been the work of the current owner, the host. At first it was used to grow fresh water tilapias and then one day for what appears to be no apparent reason he drained it and commenced the repurposing. His friends theorised that a human, indeed any human being, could only eat so much fish and that he clearly had had more than enough. He never refuted the veracity of their conclusion.
They partied on.
It seemed as though absolutely no one had left. The music was now decidedly more mellow and rather than dancing there were now conversations taking place, in gatherings both large and small.
He thought he had never experienced a night like this before, and what to him seemed absolutely certain was that he would not have another night like this again. That is unless she was a part of it. It was in the middle of this state of euphoria that he came to the conclusion that he absolutely needed her in his life. He wasn’t quite certain as to whether she needed him, but he reasoned that before meeting her he may have been able to muddle through, since meeting her his life would not be quite the same.
Dawn broke.
The aroma of fresh espresso filled the air—ahh! espresso—as did the familiar rich fragrance associated with bacon sizzling in a frying pan in the kitchen. Soon after the garlic bread appeared on the table, next to the calamari salad, and the buljol and the boiled green bananas and the bammie and the fat slices of avocado pear and ripe halves of yellow papaw like small boats and a small mountain of Julie, Bombay and East Indian mangoes and another of yellow fragrant golden apples. The table a palette of colour, suffused with the scents of rosemary and garlic and lemon grass and ginger and Scotch bonnet pepper, eased a different kind of energy into the atmosphere and created a kind of chattiness, a kind of unpretentious gaiety, as a simple cheerfulness spread like the gentle rays of sunlight across the morning.
Midday found everyone at the beach, they had gone there en masse after breakfast had turned into brunch and a couple more bottles of champagne had been opened. No one seemed particularly keen on ending the party. It was a good day to be at the seaside. The day was bright, the sun was hot, the sand was clean and reflected that yellow-white brilliance that tourist brochures about tropical countries often speak of. The sea was calm and flat and blue, and the breeze was gentle enough to cause the leaves of the almond trees to stir a bit.
The fire had been started and the coals now gave off enough heat to roast the lobsters and the red snappers that they had bought from the fishermen, whose boat had come ashore just about half an hour or so ago, while they were making their way down to this end of the beach.
And then at 1:30 in the afternoon, it happened.
And he, as if from a long way off, suddenly close, heard the voice. A voice that he recognised, though not immediately, say, “Young man, we do not have all day, you know.” And then all became silent, and then that voice again, but now in a slightly more irritated and pronounced fashion, “Now do you or do you not take Freda as your wedded wife?” It was then that he recognised the collar and his gurgle became a gush of yes, yes, yes. To which came the response, “Once is quite enough, thank you.” And then more pointedly, “You may now kiss your exceedingly patient bride.”
And he did and she smiled that same smile that he knew.