Limekiller!

Major Deak moved off and the Honourable Mrs. Whatsis stopped rummaging in her shoulder-bag or was it a knapsack, it looked roomy enough and durable enough to pack a waree or a wild bush hog in, assuming it to have been cleaned and quartered and cut up into chops, chines, and hams. The Black Arawack were very fond of the cheaper cuts of pig, referring to their favorite cuts as pigtaili and pigsnoutu. But neither they nor those were present. “Don’t know what I’m looking for,” she murmured. ‘Yes, I do. But it’s not in here. Somerset!” she adjured her husband, who looked up with a yes-my-dear expression on his lean and naturally tan face. “I think perhaps you ought to tell these people what you were telling me about the caye. you do recall, don’t you? the night after Sir Joshua prorogued the Assembly and we discovered that Mrs. Hodkins had stolen the cheese again. The caye, Somerset!” and, leaving her Honourable husband neither time nor chance to reply, swept on. “She’s a good housekeeper, a fine cook, and an absolutely splendid laundress, my sister Alice once compared her to Queen Elizabeth’s Silk Woman, of course one understands the first Elizabeth, I do think that was so squalid of the King of Spain to have kept a spy in the Virgin Queen’s laundry to see if she were still capable of having children. But she does „tote’ as the Americans say. Somerset?”

Limekiller, slightly dazed, nevertheless understood that it was not the first Elizabeth who had chosen to make off with the cheese. The Honourable Mrs. did not often speak at length, socially, but when she did, she spoke.

The Honourable Minister to Government carefully put his glass down. He gave a glance over his shoulder. “Where is Major — Ah. Down there. I am not quite sure that I wish him to hear this. Of course he must be told eventually. Well. What I said to my wife is this. This present attempt to develop this caye is not the first, you know. No, it is not. The United National Investment Association — what? Oh, yes, one of the Harrisite groups, remarkable man, Aurelius Harris, pity that those remarkably large hands were so remarkably sticky — mm, yes, the UNIA had bought this caye from the Crown, cash down, and planned to build an hotel here; my uncle George was one of the board of directors, a remarkable farseeing man, foresaw the tourist possibilities of such a place, and it was he who told my father about what they found. I was just a youngster at the time, but naturally I was all ears. The story seems to have quite faded away, but I well remember it, yes. ”

Jack, either still dazed or dazed again, trying hard to make the connection between Queen Elizabeth I and Aurelius Harris, of whom he had barely heard; Limekiller wondered if the Honourable Lady had learned discursiveness from the Honourable Minister, or if it had been the other way around, or if a mutual tendency had first attracted them to each other. Be that as it may..

Time: the late Nineteen Twenties. Scene: Galliards or whatever name Caye. Cast of Characters: A band of men, Nationals, delving and digging with shovels and spades and buckets in the mud and muck of the quaking soil, in the partially dried and partially drying soil, in the wet and mucky and boggy soil, had come across some heavy timbers. What kind? Some said, teak. Yes: teak. Despite a total absence of elephants, teak did grow in the hospitable soil of what was once called His Majesty’s Settlement of Woodcutters on the Bay of Hidalgo. Hard to cut, teak? Damnably hard to cut, teak. But that didn’t mean that they didn’t cut it. Teak. Others said that the timbers were mahogany. Would mahogany have been brought over from the mainland to a “pure mangrove bluff,” as these caves were called? Surely not to make furniture? No. Surely not to build a boat, for example? Nothing surely about it. For building purposes the wood of choice hereabouts had always been pine, the tropical hardwood pine. In fact, it was so choice, that one could not always obtain it. Jack well recalled a local builder of rowboats and skiffs telling him that he had gone looking for boat wood, and, “Wanted pine, you know, mahn: cou’n’t git it. Had to take mahogany,” a sad shake of the head. And, for that matter, he well knew that when Lemuel Cracovius the dentist had built a second house along the Spanish River he had built it out of mahogany, that being at the time cheaper than pine, European market had been depressed; had built the entire cottage out of mahogany, Lemuel: and then he had painted it green. Protective coloration, John, his only explanation.