Limekiller!

Peter Pygore now said, and Limekiller could sense the effort he made to sound neither weary, scornful, nor patronizing, “ Jumby,’ John, is what in some other Caribbean places is called ‘Duppy.’”

Limekiller said, “Oh.” He had heard of that; that is, he had read about it. Back in Canada. One did not hear the word there, it was not a household word, exactly, like bath or chesterfield. “It’s a spook. sort of. you might say…”

“You might,” said Peter Pygore.

“You might,” said Verger Edward Ethelred. Added, “But I am an Anglican, and I do not believe in such things.”

“But what the funk does it mean, really?” Limekiller had, as it were en route, slipped the n into the word as a sop to Mr. Ethelred’s possible Anglican susceptibilities. “I mean

Pygore looked at him with tired, grey sunken eyes; eyes not made for such seas as these hereabouts. “It is said,” he gave the verb passive a gentle emphasis, “that duppy derives from ‘doppelganger,’ I believe…”

Another well-remembered voice; “Believe that, you’ll believe anything.” A finger swept up a bushy light-brown moustachio. A figure sat down.

“The matter immediately ceases to be mythological,” said Peter Pygore, immediately becoming slightly less weary-and-fain-would- lie-doon; “and becomes grammatical.”

“Hello, Professor,” said Limekiller. A professorial nod to him, to the verger, the umbrella was set in the corner; perhaps — it was trotted along, wet or dry — perhap, was Jack’s sudden enlivening thought, perhaps it contained a sword!

‘“The thing contained within the thing,’ or whatever the accepted gibberish is,” Peter said. “I had better rephrase it. Thus'. ‘I believe that it is said that the word “duppy” derives from the word “doppel- ganger Now what do you say?”

“I say I will accept it, put that way. But only,” Professor Brolly cautioned, “put that way.”

“How do you derive it, then?” — Peter Pygore

“Oh,” the professor leaned back his chair against the wall, “I really do not derive it. I believe. I believe. that it is almost certainly either an African or Amerindian word. And I would merely wish to point out the almost inevitable sequence and progression of the words duppy. jumby. zomby. ”

Pygore at once leaned forward, his face at once alive. “I. Had. Never. Thought. Of that.”

It was Professor Brolly’s turn to crow, and he took it. “I daresay not,” he said, equitably. “But I had.” It was a fairly mild crow.

Someone, the words and music of the immensely popular (God knows why) song Move Up Now, Jamaica (after all, this was not Jamaica and local enthusiasm for Jamaicans moving up, or, at any rate, across, into the Colony of British Hidalgo, was nil) blaring from a comer, now complained that the sound from the jukebox was “W’only sahft” — it was loud enough for Limekiller, who, pressed, would have declared his belief that it was loud enough for Moses. Peter, Paul, Silas. take your pick. and, certainly, loud enough for him. “Me pay me shilling,” the protest went on, “so why me no hear me music bet-tah?”

The proprietor demanded to be told what he could do. “I ask Electric Williams,” he said, “but he say he hahve to go fix light-switches, Government Hoess. So wThat I can do?”

The lover of loud music expressed his indifference if everyone in Government House went stone-blind before or after nightfall; but he had gone too far. “ Whattt? Governor not refuse de R’yal Consent, new tox on rum? Close you moet, mon!” Sir Joshua Cummings had not indeed precisely refused the Royal Assent to the proposed new tax on rum; he had merely said (in writing) that “past experience had shown that when such excise tax was increased beyond a certain level, the major effect was a proliferation of illicitly distilled spirits, with a loss rather than an increase of revenue to Government;” and had added his hope that the Legislature w'ould see fit to take this aspect of the matter into consideration; it had. For the time being.

The faded blue walls would not jump tonight.

Or would jump less.

Jump. the verb struck faint signals in Limekiller’s mind. But

— but, Haiti being a Roman country,” Mr. Ethelred Edwards continued something Limekiller had missed; “there is inevitable more superstition, I hope I May use the word without offense to anyone present he paused. briefly. but either there were no highly active members of Catholic Action at the table, or else Mr. Ethelred w;as simply too, well, big, he went on: “But as for such belief that a sorcerer, or, as I believe the Haitian word is, houngan,” for an Anglican, Mr. Ethelred’s accent was anyway remarkably good; “can raise a corpse from a grave-site consecrated to Christian burial and make himself master of such corpse and use him or her for a slave, and a very economical one because requiring no food: No sir! There is no such belief or tradition or superstition in this colony at-tahl!"