Senor Nice (20 page)

‘Apparently, he had something important to do in Kingston. You know Leroy.’

My concern lifted as I saw the name of the hotel, Morgan’s Harbour Hotel and Beach Club. At last there was some acknowledgement of the great man’s presence in the Caribbean. A large picture of Henry Morgan dominated reception. Ripples of excitement tickled my stomach.

‘We have a special room for you, Niceman – Room 105.’ Prescott took my case and escorted me to the room. ‘Recognise it?’

‘Not so far, no.’

‘Have you seen the film
Dr No
?’

‘Of course, but decades ago. Why?’

‘This is the room where the large spider attacked James Bond. Much of the film was made in this hotel. Downstairs at the bar James Bond tumbled among the crates of Red Stripe. You must remember that scene, Niceman?’

I didn’t.

‘Well, enjoy your stay. Here is my card. Call me if you need anything.’

Morgan’s Harbour Hotel and Beach Club stands on several acres of flat seashore studded with rocks and boasts a large but quiet marina where snorkelling, diving and wreck exploration excursions tempt hotel guests and passers-by. A breezy waterfront restaurant and salt-licked open-air bar, empty apart from a table of three, tempted me. I sat at the bar and ordered a Front-end Loader, a rum concoction guaranteed to liven up your libido. Night had fallen. Boat bells rang and lamps and fairy lights wavered through the wind. Some napkins flew off the tables. Two of the three other customers were clearly Colombian, complete with Bogota airport duty-free carrier bags, the third Jamaican. They spoke in hushed but confident tones. I assumed they were dope smugglers. Nothing wrong with that. Prescot was suddenly at my side.

‘Good evening, Niceman. If you wish to eat, I suggest you use Sir Henry’s Restaurant inside. It is getting windy out here. It usually does this time of night.’

Prescot motioned to the Jamaican diner, who quickly abandoned the Colombians and bopped, rather than walked, to join us. ‘Niceman, this is Beano.’

‘Peace, mon. You is Leroy’s bredren, yeah?’ said Beano in a monotonous gravelly whisper.

Displaying a set of gold-capped teeth, one with a sparkling emerald, and still bopping, he held out his fist, giving it the Jamaican twist. I did the same while touching his. He slipped me some ganja. Those years in the penitentiary occasionally came in handy. Wearing an army jacket with epaulettes, green army pants held up by a Rasta belt, leather shoes, no socks, a
leather military cap and a woollen jumper under his long grey shirt, Beano was the stereotypical Jamaican ganja baron. A gold watch, rings on every finger, a thick gold bracelet, mirror shades, several knife scars, a smoking joint and a rag hanging from his back pocket filled in the gaps.

Prescot led me away from the bar. Beano bopped back to the Colombians.

‘Beano is a good man. He is a member of our police force and a respected reggae concert promoter. He lives in Ocho Rios but is often here.’

Shows how wrong one can be, or how right. I guess police and politicians have to work with the ganja barons, whose generosity probably enables their offspring to attend the better schools.

Inside Sir Henry’s I asked for a plain lobster and any rum drink. The waiter brought over another Loader, compliments of the house. I drank it like water and ordered a third. A Frontend Loader comprises overproof rum, pimento liquor, molasses, clear syrup and various roots with names such as cock-stiff, strong back and genital root. Overproof rum is an integral part of Jamaica’s pharmacopoeia and serves as an antiseptic. It also cures colds and fevers and was used by Henry Morgan as a virility aid.

Henry Morgan was ceremoniously welcomed when he sailed into Port Royal with his treasure, but he had broken the 1670 Treaty of Madrid by which England and Spain had agreed to respect each other’s territories in the Americas. This had been signed just before he sacked Old Panama and Spain demanded the death penalty. Despite Henry suffering from a heavy fever, the authorities arrested him and put him on a leaky ship bound for London to face charges of treason. On arrival in England, he was immediately released on bail. At his trial there was no judge or jury, nor a single witness. Henry proved he could not have known about the peace treaty with
Spain, apologised for his ignorance and left the court a free man.

Henry Morgan drank at the inns, smoked tobacco in the coffee houses, gambled at the races, attended the theatre and journeyed to Wales. Nobility welcomed him at their homes, where he entertained them with swashbuckling tales of adventure and romance. King Charles II and Henry became great friends. The king assisted Henry’s wenching with court beauties, while Henry’s street credibility enabled the king to engage in clandestine orgies at dockside taverns, grog shops and brothels. Henry introduced the king to His Majesty’s best-known mistress, the Welsh actress Nell Gwyn. Henry’s health improved and he begged the king to let him return to Jamaica, the island he loved. Charles II responded by knighting Henry and appointing him lieutenant-governor of Jamaica.

On his return to Port Royal, Henry formed his own political party, and became judge-admiral of the customs, dishing out fines and confiscating selected spoils. He was the official first citizen of Port Royal and was acting governor – effectively dictator – of Jamaica for two years.

Port Royal was now the richest city in the world, and dedicated to the disposal of plunder and providing a good time. Wearing London fashion as they strolled down paved walkways, residents lived in luxuriously furnished cut-stone homes with fully stocked wine cellars, tiled roofs and sash windows. A synagogue, Quaker meeting house, Roman Catholic chapel, Presbyterian and Anglican churches evidenced Port Royal’s toleration of all religions.

It was also the wickedest city in the world, whatever criterion you used. There were more taverns per head, more brothels per square yard and more stolen goods than anywhere else before or since. Along the dockside narrow alleys were lined with dirty houses offering every brand of vice ever invented. Rations were frugal aboard ship, so their clients ate like horses and drank like fish. Gamblers engaged in
cockfighting, bull- and bear-baiting, dominoes and games of billiards. Taverns burned to the ground during orgies of dancing, swordplay and nakedness. Fornicating took place on an unprecedented scale, encouraged by the ‘House of Correction for Lazy Strumpets’ situated at the water’s edge. Tales of Port Royal’s decadence, drunkenness and wantonness circulated the world, and prophets warned of the town being razed by God as punishment for its wickedness.

Highly sexed, Henry had his own harem and saw nothing immoral in taking full advantage of attractive young women of all races, preferably virgins. As for buccaneering, although he made secret deals with pirates and occasionally got them out of trouble, Henry didn’t join their escapades. His offices ruled out undertaking any piracy, privateering or aggression against Spain. Deprived of Morgan’s leadership, the Brethren of the Coast were giving way to a new breed of pirate – rogues, cutthroats and other seafaring trash. Henry had no time for them. They had shown him their true colours in Panama: they were scum who couldn’t take losses or show gratitude for sharing in someone else’s good fortune. Henry was now getting into real crime by running a colony with the help of his mate the king of England. He took it easy and lay in his hammock on one of his plantations, drinking rum and inventing more cocktails.

One Front-end Loader might make you horny, but three or four just gets you blind pissed. I staggered drunkenly from Sir Henry’s Restaurant through reception, where Henry’s face smiled down at me, mocking my drunken gait, and went to my room. I lay on the bed listening to an orchestra of flies playing a symphony of boredom as they described labyrinthine circles and engaged in intricate airy dance formations, occasionally flying into my flushed face and cannoning off. In my alcoholic haze the flies seemed to dart and wheel around, performing three-dimensional figures which turned into thin black lines, crossing and recrossing in every direction. I lit up Beano’s
spliff, and the flies’ collective mind started writing a series of strange characters in the air, forming an elusive sentence – the secret of all secrets. Feeling like I had been sliced in two with only one half of me present, looking for something that did not exist, I fell asleep dreaming of James Bond’s spider and the last days of Henry Morgan.

Henry stamped out the use of Jamaica as a base for pirates and buccaneers, closing Port Royal to illegal craft, whether foreign or British, and imposed stringent checks on ships flying the flags of potential enemies of Great Britain. He issued an ultimatum to captains: seek pardon for your previous misdemeanours, promise never to indulge in such practices again, and buy cheap land in Jamaica – as he had done. Believing that Henry Morgan would take such a course only if there was money to be made by it, the pirates became plantation owners, Jamaica’s landed gentry. Roman Catholic James II succeeded Protestant Charles II. Despite James’s affection for Spain, he was an avid fan of Henry and continued to support him. A Dutch attempt to discredit Henry by exposing him as a former criminal ended, as Eddie Evans had pointed out in Kenfig Hill, with Henry Morgan the first person ever to be awarded monetary damages in a libel case. He had now reached the peak of his power but the challenges had run out. The thrill had gone. He developed swollen legs, a huge paunch, puffy eyes and yellow skin. He lost his appetite. Age brought nothing with it but a restless waiting, a wish for peace and a dull expectancy of a state that could not be imagined. On 25 August 1685, Henry Morgan died of alcoholic poisoning and tuberculosis.

My sleep lasted only a few hours. I woke up feeling more disoriented than ever before in my life. The wind had risen and was now accompanied by high-pitched howls. I opened the wooden shutters and confronted a grey disc with black lines like spokes radiating from a beak which snapped and clicked. Two wide-open bright orange eyes studded a wheel-like face.
The eyes blazed with wrath and a tail spread out like a fan.

The owl, symbol of wisdom in the West, symbol of foolishness in the East, and an omen of evil and portent of family death in the Caribbean, screeched horribly and flapped away above the choppy harbour water. Bats flitted in the dark, gnashing their tiny teeth. Mice and rats screamed and glared at me from their obscurity with small mean eyes. A pale luminous exhalation rose from the sea, assumed a human shape, floated slowly towards the hotel and roamed about the great trees. Terrified, I went downstairs into the garden. I gazed at the huge deep harbour, collected my thoughts and concentrated on its past.

On 7 June 1692, dawn penetrated Port Royal’s hot and sultry atmosphere. There was no wind, and the sea lay unruffled, flat like oil, clogged with weed. Ships filled the harbour, ready to unload their cargoes into the already overflowing storehouses. Revellers with heads throbbing from rum were ending a night of carousing and staggering to their beds. To them, dawn was the end of the day, not the beginning.

A thunderous noise sounded from the mountains to the north, and three shocks increasing in severity rocked the port. The land tilted, wharves and warehouses crumbled, a church collapsed to the ground, its bells jangling madly, and the cemetery, including Henry Morgan’s grave, slipped into the sea. People slipped from upper storeys and were crushed beneath tons of falling masonry. Trapped beneath falling walls and beams, they were suffocated by dense clouds of dust. Others fell into chasms that suddenly yawned out of the ground and were squeezed to death as the cracks closed like the pincers of a giant crab. Dogs ate the flesh of the faces of the partially swallowed, leaving shiny skulls grinning at the sky. Blood-spattered and broken-boned people crawled out of disappearing buildings. Looting started immediately. Slaves thanked providence or God and began killing their white
masters. Gigantic waves tore vessels from their moorings and swept them over the sunken ruins, masts mingling with roofs. One ship ended up perched on houses like Noah’s Ark.

In two minutes 2,000 people had died, rivers had changed their courses, old springs had vanished and new ones appeared, hills had slid into valleys burying plantations, and mountains had been distorted and bared. One of the earth’s biggest quakes had wiped out Henry’s Sodom and Gomorrah and taken his body away.

An event such as this is bound to leave a paranormal hangover. If Port Royal had no ghosts, then they didn’t exist anywhere. Calmed by my cold rationalisation of the irrational, I sat on an overturned boat, relit my spliff, and without any fear watched several more apparitions of smoke and vapour spout from the depths, hearing African, Spanish and Welsh whispers until dawn broke and swallowed them all. A thick silence hung in the salty air.

I walked out of the hotel, turned right and found myself in Port Royal’s deserted main square. A gleaming white church stood in the corner. The gates were locked, but most of the cemetery’s graves were clearly visible. One housed the body of one Lewis Galdy, a Huguenot born in Montpellier who fled from France to Jamaica to escape religious persecution. He became a successful Port Royal merchant and cockfight promoter. On the day of the earthquake Galdy ran out of his office as it keeled over and sank into the ground in clouds of dust, powdered lime and mortar. A great hole opened under his feet, swallowed him and closed. A minute later a second quake catapulted him out of the ground. Galdy soared through the air like a cannonball and splashed into the sea, from where he was rescued by a passing boat. His experience was unique and remains so. Predictably, Lewis Galdy became more religious and spent the rest of his days as a churchwarden.

Beyond the church was an old parade ground lined with barrack buildings and the historic Fort Charles, once commanded by Nelson. After an hour’s walking through streets with names such as Gaol Alley and Love Lane, I had visited every corner of today’s Port Royal, a tranquil fishing community. But there are two Port Royals: this diminished community and the city that slid beneath the sea. It is not easy to escape this other city, which preserves a sometimes tangible presence. Fishermen listen above the sound of the sea for the whispering chimes of church bells, some of which have been recovered and rest in Jamaica’s museums. The tops of buildings are visible above the seabed. Treasure seekers continually bring up bottles, tiles, pipes, wheels, pewter spoons, brass candlesticks, ceramics, guns and pieces of eight. Divers claim to have walked through the submerged streets of the old city and seen skeletons holding tankards sitting on stools around tables. There is a report of a cathedral with a mound of treasure on its altar, guarded by a ten-foot giant crab.