condescension, as if this was a duty he must reluctantly discharge. Suddenly his head was in the car. After briefly praising his own skills and credentials, he began to give us a guided tour of our destination. He spoke uninterruptably, like a machine-gun. 'The-trop-i-cal-for-est-it-like-a-bot-an-i-cal-garden-it-have-all-kind-of-spec-i men-there-they-got. . .' I can't tell you how long this seemed to go on for. Gravely hungover from the Street Party, my wife and I stared at each other, thinking of the patio, the plunge pool. 'The-St-Lu-cian-par-rot-does-be-fly-ing-a-bout-all-o-ver-the . . .' Every time I urged the car forward he appeared to wriggle in deeper; by now he was practically sitting on my lap. With bulging eyes he told us of the dangers we faced if we went on to Soufrière without him. Youths would harass us, would chase the car, would try to pass themselves off as guides. In other words, we should hire someone like him: otherwise we would have to hire someone like him - and who could possibly want that?
We didn't, but two hours later I was beginning to wonder. I had another head through the window now (bobbing, panting), telling me the same things. And it made no difference that we were travelling at thirty miles an hour.
The sights got seen in the end, under the auspices of Jeremy, one of the boys from Anse Chastenet. After the Diamond Falls he took us to visit his grandparents. A yard zigzagged by chickens, puppies sleeping on the porch, the timber house steaming from the recent rain. We settled in the good-sized room whose balcony gave on to the valley. Out here, in the heat and the wet, you don't fade into the genderlessness'of white old age; you stay manly or womanly, to the end. 'I am the oldest driver on the island!' announced the grandfather. I speculated. 'You mean you drove the first car?' 'No! There older drivers than me. But they all dead!' The grandmother swayed and nodded. Now she smiled in judicious assent to the proposition that Bob Marley got cancer because he rolled his ganja in newspapers. On the wall were greetings cards, a row of cobwebbed paperbacks, an idealised portrait of JFK at the White House. We went back to the car with gifts of oranges and avocado. We left a packet of cigarettes. And of course Jeremy would be getting an extra big tip.
In the eighteenth century France and England played patball with St Lucia. 'Helen of the West Indies' (beautiful, much fought-over) changed hands a record fourteen times until the English won the Battle of the Saints in 1782. The indigenous Caribs were wiped out; African slaves were imported, then contracted labourers from East India, Universal suffrage in 1951, independence in 1979: the dates are shamingly recent. St Lucia is so young that it makes the visitor feel old (and worn, and sinful). Holidaying is easy here, but travel is harder, more accidental. 'A few more jobs, and it be paradise,' said Jeremy. Like Antigua, St Lucia is on the way up. Capitalism looks on and cracks its knuckles. How far do we want it to go?
The sunsets get a mention, but the brochures undersell the Caribbean sky — its thrilling rapidity of change, the way its brushstrokes seem only a corner of some dreadfully vast canvas, the weird vapours of the grey as the rain moves in off the sea. Often it resembles a thermonuclear explosion, caught in a phase of abstract harmlessness. The skies stimulate travel — mental travel. And unlike the island they will always be there.
Departures, 1986
J. G. BALLARD
England's least conventional writer lives his life against type: in a little Shepperton semi, among the sculpted hedges, the parked Escorts, and the neighbouring houses with their fond appellations — Fairview, Gladecourt. Here in the deep innocuousness of garden suburbia, James Graham Ballard, the glazed SF stylist, the counter-cultural adventurer, the poet-technologian of our modern setting, calmly counts out the days. He has always been a vivid exponent of
We didn't, but two hours later I was beginning to wonder. I had another head through the window now (bobbing, panting), telling me the same things. And it made no difference that we were travelling at thirty miles an hour.
The sights got seen in the end, under the auspices of Jeremy, one of the boys from Anse Chastenet. After the Diamond Falls he took us to visit his grandparents. A yard zigzagged by chickens, puppies sleeping on the porch, the timber house steaming from the recent rain. We settled in the good-sized room whose balcony gave on to the valley. Out here, in the heat and the wet, you don't fade into the genderlessness'of white old age; you stay manly or womanly, to the end. 'I am the oldest driver on the island!' announced the grandfather. I speculated. 'You mean you drove the first car?' 'No! There older drivers than me. But they all dead!' The grandmother swayed and nodded. Now she smiled in judicious assent to the proposition that Bob Marley got cancer because he rolled his ganja in newspapers. On the wall were greetings cards, a row of cobwebbed paperbacks, an idealised portrait of JFK at the White House. We went back to the car with gifts of oranges and avocado. We left a packet of cigarettes. And of course Jeremy would be getting an extra big tip.
In the eighteenth century France and England played patball with St Lucia. 'Helen of the West Indies' (beautiful, much fought-over) changed hands a record fourteen times until the English won the Battle of the Saints in 1782. The indigenous Caribs were wiped out; African slaves were imported, then contracted labourers from East India, Universal suffrage in 1951, independence in 1979: the dates are shamingly recent. St Lucia is so young that it makes the visitor feel old (and worn, and sinful). Holidaying is easy here, but travel is harder, more accidental. 'A few more jobs, and it be paradise,' said Jeremy. Like Antigua, St Lucia is on the way up. Capitalism looks on and cracks its knuckles. How far do we want it to go?
The sunsets get a mention, but the brochures undersell the Caribbean sky — its thrilling rapidity of change, the way its brushstrokes seem only a corner of some dreadfully vast canvas, the weird vapours of the grey as the rain moves in off the sea. Often it resembles a thermonuclear explosion, caught in a phase of abstract harmlessness. The skies stimulate travel — mental travel. And unlike the island they will always be there.
Departures, 1986
J. G. BALLARD
England's least conventional writer lives his life against type: in a little Shepperton semi, among the sculpted hedges, the parked Escorts, and the neighbouring houses with their fond appellations — Fairview, Gladecourt. Here in the deep innocuousness of garden suburbia, James Graham Ballard, the glazed SF stylist, the counter-cultural adventurer, the poet-technologian of our modern setting, calmly counts out the days. He has always been a vivid exponent of
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