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Title: Jamaica
Author: Fleming, Ian [Ian Lancaster] (1908-1964)
Date of first publication: December 1947
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Horizon, December 1947
   [Vol. XVI, No. 96]
Date first posted: 26 January 2015
Date last updated: 26 January 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1230

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  _IAN FLEMING_

  WHERE SHALL JOHN GO?
  XIII--JAMAICA





MY DEAR JOHN,

You are one of the million or more English citizens who intend to seek
fortune and freedom abroad and I would like to encourage you because I
don't believe we can go on borrowing money indefinitely to feed
forty-eight million people.  But I know you are vacillating between
various corners of the world which have these essential virtues:
English-speaking, sterling area, good weather, food, friends and
'freedom' (whatever you mean by that).  I also know from your letters
that although you have considered many refuges which have these
blessings, you are alarmed by the social ambience of all of them.

On the one hand you are appalled by the tea-and-tennis set atmosphere
in many of the most blessed corners of our Empire.  You smell boiled
shirts, cucumber sandwiches and the L-shaped life of expatriate
Kensingtonia.  At the other extreme you fear the moral 'dgringolade'
of the tropics, the slow disintegration of Simenon's 'Touriste de
Bananes'.  In your imagination you hear the hypnotic whisper of the
palm trees stooping too gracefully over that blue lagoon.  You feel the
scruffy stubble sprouting on your chin.  The cracked mirror behind
Red's Bar reflects the bloodhound gloom of those ruined features which
contort painfully as you cough into a soiled handkerchief.  You know
you'll be dead before the next monsoon.

So it is in your mind's eye, and so it might easily be if you plumped
for tropic sloth and had not the leather morale of a Scottish
missionary.

But a middle way between the lethe of the tropics and a life of
fork-lunches with the District Commissioner's wife can be achieved and
I believe you will achieve it in Jamaica.  In a desultory fashion I
have examined a large part of the world--most of Europe, some of Canada
and Australia, bits of Africa and a few islands, including Hawaii,
Capri, Cyprus, Malta and Ceylon.  America, including San Francisco and
Florida.  Even two short periods of work in Moscow (like the Gorbals
but much larger and much, much duller when you've finished
sightseeing).  After looking at all these, I spent four days in Jamaica
in July 1943.  July is the beginning of the hot season and it rained in
rods every day at noon, yet I swore that if I survived the contest I
would go back to Jamaica, buy a piece of land, build a house and live
in it as much as my job would allow.  I went back in January '46, chose
a site, designed a house, chose an agent and an architect and by last
December all was finished.  This year I had five weeks' holiday in the
new house and I wish it could have been six months.

I live on the North Shore, opposite an invisible Cuba, on the eastern
corner of a tiny banana port called Oracabessa (Golden Head).  My
neighbours, both coloured and white, are charming and varied.  I have
no regrets.

Jamaica, one of our oldest colonies and the most valuable of our
British West Indian islands, is slightly smaller than Northern Ireland.
It contains 1,250,000 souls, ten per cent of whom live in Kingston, the
capital.  At a _very_ rough guess, I should say that there are 50,000
white inhabitants or constant visitors, and another 100,000 who would
seem white to you or me.  No more statistics.  You can find them all in
the Encyclopdia, Whitaker, the Handbook of Jamaica or the Handbook of
the West Indies.  One of these will be in your public library.  From
your subscription library, you can borrow any amount of travel books
and novels about Jamaica (_High Wind in Jamaica_ is mostly about Cuba),
and you will note extensive literary associations with 'Monk' Lewis,
Beckford of Fonthill and Smollett.  You may also care to explore
accounts of the Trial of Governor Eyre, for the Jamaica Committee for
his prosecution included John Stuart Mill as chairman, with Huxley,
Thomas Hughes and Herbert Spencer as members.  Carlyle was chairman of
the committee of defence with Ruskin and Tennyson in support.

Cyril Connolly spent part of his 'blue' or post-graduate period here
and Augustus John is amongst its many portrayers.

An atlas will show you that the island looks very like a swimming
turtle--side view--with a range of mountainous hills stretching along
its middle from its tail to its eye.  At its tail, where also Kingston
the capital lies, is a real mountain, the Blue Mountain, 7,000 feet
high, which grows the finest coffee in the world (with the same name).
You will drink this coffee cold-distilled.  That is, the coffee,
freshly ground, is percolated over and over again with cold water until
a thin black treacle is produced.  This is very strong and contains all
the aroma which, by roasting, would otherwise be lost on the kitchen
air.  A third of a cup with hot milk or water added will spoil you for
all of the more or less tortured brews you drink in England.

The Blue Mountain precipitates a good deal of rain at the Eastern end
of the island and this end is therefore wetter and perhaps even more
fruitful than the rest; but the spine of mountainous country which runs
the length of the island has the same beneficial effect and gives
Jamaican weather a variety which is stimulating and extremely healthy.
(I can assure you that sun and calm blue seas and brassy heat can be
more wearying and exasperating than the grey but ever-changing porridge
in which you live and make sour moan.)

Another pleasant peculiarity of the weather, which has some simple but
immaterial cause, is that at nine o'clock on most mornings throughout
the year the 'Doctor's Wind' blows lightly in from the sea until, at
six in the evening, the 'Undertaker's Wind' comes on regular duty and
blows, from the centre of the island, the stale air out again.  (Your
room, or your house, should face so as to take advantage of this
benefice.)  On most nights of the year you can sleep with a light
blanket if your room is fortunately placed on the island, but it will
be clear to you that one cannot generalize about the weather or the
temperature on an island with mountains all along its spine.  This also
applies to the humidity which, in the hot season, can be considerable
at some corners and some levels, but unimportant at others.  You must
just find these things out for yourself and not listen to generalities.

As you can imagine, the landscape varies with the altitude.  In parts
the uplands, with their stone-walled meadows and Friesian cattle,
remind one of Ireland or the Tyrol--except for the orchids and the
backdrop of tropical trees and the occasional green lightning of
parrakeets or Bengal flame of a giant Immortel.  Then you drop down,
often through a cathedral of bamboo or a deep-cut gully of ferns, into
a belt of straight tropical vegetation--palms, cotton trees and
Jamaican hardwoods such as ebony, mahogany, mahoe, red bullet and the
like.  Amongst them grow thick the tribe of logwood, and dogwood.
Indigo comes from logwood and the bees make particular honey from its
yellow blossom.  (There is another variety of dogwood called
'Bitchwood', but this is politely referred to as 'Mrs. Dogwood'.  I
will tell you more of this likeable Jamaican _pudeur_ later on.)

You will pass through meadows of sensitive plant (local name
'Shamelady') and pick some of the 2,000 different varieties of flowers.
There are innumerable butterflies and humming-birds and, at night,
fireflies of many kinds.  In the distance, the sea will be breaking in
silver on the reef and, because of the phosphorus, you will look like
an Oscar if you bathe in some of the bays after dark.

The lowlands, and the valleys which comb the flanks of the hills, are
all sugar cane, citrus, cultivated palms and bananas and various
fruit-vegetables like mangoes, bread-fruit, guavas, sour-sop,
naseberries and the like.  The cattle here will be mostly sleek Indian
herds, imported (and now thriving), because of their tick-resistance.
Another import you will see every day is the mongoose, brought in to
kill the snakes.  He has killed them all and has long since started on
birds' eggs with disastrous consequences to all who build their nests
in banks and near the ground.  The only bird you will see too many of
is the carrion crow, protected because he scavenges impeccably and with
hideous magic the dead dog in the forest and the fish spines in your
'yard'.

The coastline is very varied.  Coral rocks and cliffs alternate with
'South Sea island' coves and bays and beaches.  The sand varies too,
from pure white to golden to brown to grey.  The sea is blue and green
and rarely calm and still.  A coral reef runs round the island with
very deep water beyond and over the reef hang frigate birds, white or
black, with beautifully forked tails, and dark blue kingfishers.
Clumsy pelicans and white or slate grey egrets fish at the river
mouths.  There is every kind of tropical fish from big game to
breakfast.  The latter are caught in seines or boxnets.  All varieties
of shellfish, of course, and beautiful sea-shells from conches to
cowries (better on the South coast beaches like Negril and Black
River).  Black crabs are a great delicacy and are eaten highly spiced.
Every now and then they march inland in herds (cf. lemmings in reverse)
and if your house is in the way they march through it or over it and if
your body in your bed is in the way, they march over that too, and your
face.

On your drives (New Standard, drive-yourself, costs about 10 a week)
you will come upon many of the famous Jamaican 'great houses',
particularly if you leave the excellent main highways and venture along
the quite viable parochial roads.  Such are Cardiff Hall, just sold by
the Blagrove family after unbroken tenure since Cromwell gave it to an
ancestor; Bellevue Plantation belonging to the Bryces; Harmony Hall in
its fine palm-grove; Prospect, belonging to Sir Harold Mitchell; the
ruins of Rose Hall (read the _White Witch of Rose Hall_, by De Lisser,
hot-blooded sadism and slaves set in the 1850s) and many others.

A curious part of the island is the Cockpit Country 'known', the map
says, 'by the name of Look Behind'.  When taxes were introduced (?1790)
the Maroons, the Spanish negro inhabitants of this province, would not
pay.  The Governor sent a company of redcoats up into their hills to
enforce payment, but the Maroons repulsed them, set up their own
government and refused allegiance to the Crown.  They still refuse it,
and are the only corner of the British Empire to do so.  Their
'colonel' is a coloured man who with all his 'government', wears a Sam
Browne belt as a badge of office.  He does very little governing except
to maintain the rights of his people _vis--vis_ the Governor.  His
people work and mix with their neighbours, intermarry and go and come
as they please.  But, since they pay no taxes, no roads have ever been
built in the province and there are no public facilities such as post
offices and social services.  The terrain has never been surveyed and,
if you look at the map, you will see a large white patch with the red
veins of the roads coming to a full stop at its perimeter.  There is
nothing more to it than that, and the inhabitants are quite
uninteresting, but it's pleasant to live in a Colony where a touch of
zany persists.

A most remarkable feature of Jamaica is the abundance of mineral
springs and baths.  Some of these are already modestly developed and
commercialized but only to the extent of some fifty bedrooms at the two
main spas--Bath and Milk River (there will be 500 in twenty years).
Milk River has the highest radio-activity of any mineral bath in the
world---nine times as active as Bath, England, fifty times as active as
Vichy, three times as active as Karlsbad and fifty-four times as active
as Baden in Switzerland.  While you are curing your rheumatism or
sciatica (or just having an aphrodisiac binge) you can fish for tarpon
or shoot yourself a crocodile suitcase, all at fourteen shillings a day
(crocodile one pound extra).

As an amateur speleologist you will like the caverns and sinkholes
which abound in the limestone hills.  Up to a mile long, few of these
have been explored and many are doubtless stuffed with pirate treasure
including Sir Henry Morgan's hoard and the saving accounts of rich
visitors from Columbus onwards.

The local music is Calypso, not as inventive as the original Trinidad
varieties, but with the same electric rhythms.  You can hire a good
trio for upward of ten shillings an evening and they will play happily
(happier with some rum) until the small hours.  There are cheerfully
unprintable versions of most of the songs, but you won't notice the
words unless you master the Welsh intonation of the Jamaican voice and
the occasional colloquialisms.

Bad or indecent language is almost absent from the native vocabulary.
Thief, liar, badman are about the strongest words you will hear and
these will mean real hate or rage.  'Will you do me a rudeness?' means
'will you sleep with me?', to which a brazen girl will reply 'you
better hang on grass, I goin' move so much'.

Despite your visit to the Milk River, you would be very ill-advised to
try any 'rudeness' with the local beauties.  It would be unpopular with
both coloured people and whites.  For other reasons I would advise you
to give a miss to the stews of Kingston although they would provide you
with every known amorous constellation and permutation.  One of the
reasons why our Atlantic Squadron is based on Bermuda instead of
Kingston (the Americans wanted us to contribute to the defence of
Panama) was the veto of our naval health and welfare authorities.
Kingston is a tough town--tough and dirty--despite all the exhortations
of _The Daily Gleaner_ (my favourite newspaper above all others in the
world) and the exertions of the quite admirable Jamaican police force.

Apart from the shortcomings of Kingston, the only serious drawbacks to
the island are the mosquitoes, sandflies, grass-ticks and politics.
None of these are virulent hazards.  Mosquitoes will only be met near
swamplands and rivers, where they will force you to use netting and
DDT.  Sandflies are quite damnable on some beaches.  They are tiny
midges which bite hard and I can only advise you to use Milton on the
bites and avoid some beaches.  Grass-ticks will fasten on to bare skin
if you walk thoughtlessly in cattle country.  They will cause you
intense grief.  It is most unlikely that you will try much
cross-country walking owing to the nature of the country and the heat.
If you do, wear high boots or tuck your trousers into your socks.

Politics; Well, it's the usual picture--education bringing a desire for
self-government, for riches, for blacker coats and whiter collars, for
a greater share (or all) of the prizes which England gets from the
colony, for motor-cars, race-horses (a Jamaican passion), tennis clubs
and tea parties and all the other desirable claptrap of the whites.
Two men are fighting each other to take over the chaperonage of
Jamaica.  Bustamante (a gorgeous flamboyant rabble-rouser, idol of the
labour unions) and Manley, K.C. (the local Cripps and white hope of the
Harlem communists.  Brilliant and perhaps wise, he controls the black
coats and white collars and has the right wife to help him.  Between
them they are the intellectual focus of the island.)  You would like
both of these citizens although they would both say that they want to
kick you out.  Neither has an able deputy and it is impossible to say
who will succeed to and perhaps fuse this forked leadership.  Holding
wise and successful sway is the Governor, Sir John Huggins, with an
admirable Colonial Secretary, H. M. Foot, brother of Michael and the
rest of that remarkable brood.  Lady Huggins, 'Molly' to the whole
population, is a blonde and much-loved bombshell who wins tennis and
golf tournaments and wrestles with the Colonial Office about the rights
and concerns of all the women of Jamaica.  Heaven knows what the island
will do without her.

I do not believe that you will find Island politics a grave danger in
the future or that you will get your throat cut in the night as some
Jamaican penkeepers (landlords) will have you believe.  I expect that
Jamaica should slip fairly quietly into a Caribbean Federation (perhaps
with Dominion status) and that the liberality and wisdom of our present
policy will take the edge off passions which were high some years ago.
There will always be a racial simmering and occasional clashes between
coloured and white vanities, but personally I rely on liking my
neighbours at Oracabessa, on a dog called Himmler and on a Spanish tomb
in my garden which is full of 'duppies' (local ghosts).

Well, those are the hazards of Jamaica and I think you will agree that
they compare quite favourably with the more civilized risks--spivs,
road-death, flu and vitamin deficiency--which infest your English life.
(I have cancelled out Russians and atom bombs against the Jamaican
hurricanes which may, in the autumn, blow you over and your roof off at
about five-yearly intervals.)

Food is delicious and limitless, but the cooking uninspired and
'english' unless you fight against it.  Unbounded drink of all sorts
(rum at six shillings a bottle up, Dutch liqueurs from Curaao, French
wines from Martinique and Guadeloupe, gins and whiskeys from England)
and infinite cigars rolled in Havana or Jamaica thighs.  New motor cars
from England, America and France, and excellent textiles from Britain.
(Good tailors and seamstresses will make you anything in one day to
three, but best give them a model to copy.)  There are no permits or
coupons and prices are reasonable (cheap outside Kingston or Montego
Bay).  Servants are plentiful but varied and are twelve to twenty
shillings a week.  They require exhortation and a sense of humour,
which the majority appreciate.  Hired labour will cost you three
shillings a day (female) and four shillings a day (male) and
furniture-makers are many and good.  All labour requires exact
instructions, constant reminders and an absolute veto on making things
look 'pretty' (food, furniture, gardens, clothes).  There is too much
cruelty to animals, which are regarded as strictly expendable.  Drivers
tip their whips with heavy wire and attack the tender parts of their
beasts with malignant and unerring precision.  There is, of course,
plenty of heavy drinking, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights,
after pay-day, and there is some smoking of Indian hemp, or Marihuana
or 'ganja' as it is called locally.  (If you are caught at this, or at
cockfighting, you will get about twelve strokes of the Tamarind switch,
which I fancy is more painful than it sounds.)

Local black magic (obea) is scarce and dull but credited by most.  It
consists largely of brewing love potions and putting on hoodoos.  If
you find a white chicken with its head cut off lying on your doorstep
you have, or should have, had it.  But the Jamaicans are most
law-abiding and God-fearing and have a strictness of behaviour and
manners which will surprise and charm you.  Don't mistake me, these are
no angels.  The people go to law constantly over trivialities to give
their neighbours evidence of their social advancement and often for the
simple fun of hiring a white man.  They fervently adhere to one of the
many religious denominations as you or I might join a club, and when
they go to church it is to swing 'Rock of Ages' and go right to town
with 'Come all ye Faithful'!  (The Salvation Army plays their jazz
straight.)  Nevertheless and for whatever reasons, law and the church
are a great counterweight to the human extravagance which the hot sun
breeds.  I think you will appreciate the fairly solid civic framework
which contains this tropic luxury.  It is just enough to raise in you
that moral eyebrow which the heat might otherwise have drugged.

I have not talked about the intellectual and artistic life in Jamaica
because I am not particularly intellectual or artistic and I might
misinform you.  Nor have I mentioned the sort of people you may meet
and make friends with in the island for there is the whole gamut, from
Lord Beaverbrook to a glorified beachcomber with a fixation on swans.

Now, John, while I strongly advise you and your friends to come here
for a holiday I cannot urge you to immigrate because I haven't done so
myself and I really don't know how you would all stand up to it, what
you would do when you got here, or what all your standards of living
are.  Jamaica is a small world with few industries which can afford
learners.  If you are all competent in your trades and professions
(outside the middleman professions) you should be able to find a niche,
but you must have enough money to live on while you look round and
enough for your return passage if you don't succeed or don't like it.
Remember that unless you are exceptional, you will be competing with
coloured people in the lower ranks of all the jobs, and you will find
this difficult and perhaps exasperating.  If you are thoroughly
competent, with really solid references, you may find a short cut
through friends, or friends of friends.  But, to begin with, work will
be very hard and earnings small.  Later, I guess you should do well
since I am sure many new industries will come to Jamaica and much
foreign capital and, if you are on the spot, you may get into one of
the new enterprises.  But don't forget, nearly all offices are in
Kingston and I am not at all sure how you would like living there.

If you have your own resources, both material and spiritual, I think
you could live a happy and modest life on 500 to 1,000 a year, with a
house, servants and all the rest.  It will cost you about two to three
thousand to build a house.  The land will be about ten to a hundred
pounds an acre, depending on situation.  You _must_ have a good water
supply and a clear title.  Rents vary all over the island.  Income Tax
is much the same as in England, but I fancy rather easier on the lower
brackets.

If you come for a holiday, come between November and June.  The other
four months are hot and rainy.  You can fly direct by British South
American Airways in two days (130, single).  If you are very lucky you
can travel in a banana boat, which is the cheapest way.  The easiest in
these days would be to get across the Atlantic by ship or plane and
then fly down via Miami (three hours to Jamaica).  Order your rooms in
advance through a travel agency, but take a chance if they say 'full
up'.  You can send any amount of money to Jamaica by ringing up your
bank and telling them to do it.

Well, that's enough, John.  I can't think of anything else and if you
want to know any more you must read some books or write to the Jamaica
Hotels Association, Kingston, or one of the other addresses you will
find in the Handbook of Jamaica.  You could also get in touch, but very
politely, because they are not a travel agency, with the West India
Committee, Norfolk Street, London.

Come soon and bring Ann and the children.  The schools are excellent
and the new West Indian University is just going up.  I will give you a
feast.  The menu will be; Booby's Eggs, Black Crab, Roast Stuffed
Sucking Pig with Rice and Peas, Guavas in Syrup with Cream, Blue
Mountain Coffee, Yellow Chartreuse (pre-war).  Pork-Chop's trio will
play 'Gimme a shilling with a Lion upon it', 'Linstead Market', 'Iron
Bar' and 'Saturday Night' and we will watch the fireflies and listen to
the distant surf on the reef.

Tell the others,
    IAN.






[End of Jamaica, by Ian Fleming]
