Limekiller!

Noddy said, “Yes, come along. You’ve got quite a lot of good drinking to catch up on.” Noddy was portly and ginger-moustached and learned and cheerful. except when you were trying to crash his party. Which was not now. There were others who had come strolling out to meet them, to help with the tying up. To bring drinks. Just In Case. The Honourable Somerset Summerville, Secretary to Government, and a not-bad-poet in his own right and on his own time, was there. So was his wife. (“Yes,” the Honourable was now and then heard to say, “I was the typical Colored Colonial student in London, and so, typically, I married my landlady’s daughter. well. actually. granddaughter.!” And, actually, he had; the Dowager Lady Blenkinson did not of course let lodgings: she owned the whole street. And the next one. And the next one. and, as my wife already was an Honourable, why, I had no choice but to become one, too!” His wife showed neither amusement nor annoyance; she was wearing khakies, and was the authority on the orchids of the Hidalgo Littoral.). Also present was Ethelred Edwards, a master adzeman at Nahum’s boatyard, and his wife — he and the Hon. Mrs. Summerville were the only wives at the party (or picnic)… or, at any rate, the only women who had been “married in church” to the men with whom thev were currently affiliated. British Hidalgo was strong on being married in church. Divorce, however, was something else altogether. It was difficult. It was expensive. And it was, finally, irrelevant.

It was unlikely that people from classes as diverse as Nicholine and Adah, the Summervilles, and the Edwardses would ever, in King Town, be at the same social gizmadoo. But foreigners, somehow, or, anyway certainly some of them, were outside the peripheries of caste. And could act as a catalyst. Or whatever.

They walked to the yellow house along a sort of boardwalk. “What do you think of the looks of the land?” asked Alex. Bothjack and Felix said, almost together, that it “looked funny.” Brant nodded. ‘Just step on it,” he suggested. “After they cut down the mangrove, they burned it off, and — well, just step on it. Go ahead. Won’t bite you.” Somewhat gingerly, the newcomers did. The signs of the burning-off were still visible, and it felt soggy beneath their feet. It, in fact, quivered. The effect was somewhat unsettling; Jack and Felix were glad to step back onto the boards.

“It will dry out, eventually. and then, to help it out, they’ll fill it with sand and with pipeshank. Those vertical planks you see will be helping it drain. It was dryer, once, the men have found signs that people had lived here before. old nails. old pieces of timber. old bones…” he rolled his eyes toward Felix, Felix shuddered, Alex laughed. “Old turtle bones. Rare and protected now, when I’m not catching them. they used to be common as fish.”

Rare? increasingly so. Expensive. accordingly. Protected? somewhat. Alex. somehow. was never caught catching them in legally protected areas, so it followed. didn’t it? that he had caught them in legally unprotected areas. And sold them. when he sold them… at great prices to such places as that stately old guest house the Queen Adelaide, and to the Empire Hotel and the Tropicalia Inn. Felix, perhaps uncomfortable about the turtles, asked if there were any interesting mammals. “. on Gallans or Galliard or whatever its name?”

The caye, whatever its name, probably had no mammals at all except perhaps for bats which perhaps ate the silver-pale hog-plum or the pale yellow governor-plum. But it hospitted the pelican, locally called the stork, which, bill empty, it did resemble. The insect-like hummingbird was there, though not in great numbers, for there were not many nectar-yielding flowering plants on that sombre islet. Plovers and sandpipers sometimes strolled the small stretch of strand and sand, and the shrieking gull and the tern were sometimes there. and the carrion-buzzard (“the corby”) furtively patrolled the place with its ugly croak and its filthy feathers. The dead air weighed them all down.

The newcomers rounded the angle of the boardwalk, the yellow house stood there on stilts before them, one story in all, and, from that first glance, one which led you in through the open door and came to a quick conclusion: one room in all.