Senor Nice (22 page)

Howell constantly praised the virtues of the herb. It was the sacrament, ‘the healing of the nations’. By smoking it, a Rasta could arrive at the spiritual plane of consciousness. Ganja smoking heightened intellectual powers, speeded up focused thinking and prepared the user for meditation, prayer, the gaining of wisdom and communal harmony with others. Spliffs helped people forgive, relax, be calm and forget. Howell quoted numerous Biblical passages to support his enthusiasm for the herb: ‘He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle and herb for the service of man’ (Psalm 104:14), ‘Smoke went up from His nostrils’ (Psalm 18:8) and made much of reports that ganja had been found growing on King Solomon’s grave. Howell referred to ganja as ‘wisdom weed’, an elixir of divine origin.

Ganja grown in Pinnacle quickly found its way into the Kingston ghettos, where the most prolific users were musicians. When the Rastas were eventually forced out of the security of their commune, they moved into the same impoverished neighbourhood. Sharing a love for African rhythms and ganja, they collaborated.

Music and ganja are the archetypal tools of communication: each brings about similar physical responses in different people at the same time; each draws groups together; and each creates a sense of unity, enabling people to bond and resonate with one another. Ganja fosters musical creativity and heightens the enjoyment of listening. The most inspired, innovative and pleasurable music of the last century was created by stoners, be they jazz-age swingers, cool beboppers, cosmic hippies or Trench Town roots rockers. The effect of
ganja on music appreciation and creativity is almost universal and does not fade with repetition.

Having given this matter much thought, I think there are two explanations: so-called short-term memory loss and time deceleration. When I am stoned, time seems to slow down. In other words, my thinking speeds up. Musical events pass by me at a much more leisurely rate, enabling me to appreciate details and delights I would miss during a straight audition. As for making music when stoned, improvisational jazz has depended on short-term memory for its evolution. When I am stoned, my memory is quickly re-established, suggesting that what has happened is not a loss of short-term memory or a damaging of the brain mediating it, but a different manner of using it. I merely lose track of trains of ideas that are normally being recorded in short-term memory because my perceptions need far more attention than they normally do. My consciousness is heavily involved with matters far removed from mere utilitarian attention to continuity of logical or linguistic thought processes. My experience is so interesting and attention-consuming that I ignore, not lose, my short-term memories. When the virtuoso performer abandons his calculated intents, the result is not nonsense but often his finest creation. Forgetfulness is the catalytic germ of spontaneous creativity.

Feeling happy and blessed, Leroy and I said goodbye to Mo, who gave me another spliff for the road. We drove towards Jamaica’s north-east coast on a series of secondary roads through Friendship, Clapham, Lucky Hill, Windsor Castle, Montreal, and other strangely named places. At Show Meself Corner, I decided to light Mo’s spliff. Leroy shot me a slightly disapproving glance. I made sure the ash and smoke went out of the window. A few miles from the shore, Leroy stopped the car on a deserted main road.

‘Llanrhumney, mon.’

The countryside was green and beautiful with gentle hills
and meadows, reminiscent of certain parts of Wales, but unlike the Cardiff suburb whose name it shared.

‘Are you sure, Leroy? There doesn’t seem to be anything here either. There’s not even a sign saying it’s Llanrhumney.’

‘Mi one hundred per cent sure, Mon. One hundred per cent sure. Believe mi.’

‘Have you checked it out and knocked on all the doors? I assume there are some around here.’

‘De is one, just one, an’ belong to di house by di wood. Mi stop de yesterday and mi chat to Marvin, di caretaker. Im know bout Henry Morgan an im know where Henry Morgan treasure buried. Mi just call im from Tuff Gong place. Im a wait fi wi over de.’

We walked over to a building half of which was a ruin and half of which had been recently renovated. Marvin, smiling broadly and wearing just a pair of jeans and a baseball cap, was sitting on his tractor, which he started as soon as we had shaken hands. Leroy immediately jumped on to the back of the tractor and, with one hand, pulled me up alongside him. The tractor lurched forward and sped towards the wood. Leroy leaned over, pulled out two machetes and gave me one of them. Sharp and lethal, it gleamed in the sun.

‘What the fuck do I need this for?’

‘Just follow mi, mon, and do what mi do.’

Reaching its cruising speed, the tractor tore into the wood. Without warning, Leroy raised his machete into the air and took aim at Marvin’s head.

Leroy was going to kill him! I couldn’t stop him – he was too big. His killer eyes glared into mine, commanding me to raise my machete. I had seen those eyes before in the exercise yards of maximum-security penitentiaries. Leroy had led riots against guards and stopped fellow Jamaicans from carving one another to bits. He was one heavy motherfucker. There was no way I was going to slice off Marvin’s head, but if I didn’t, I might lose mine. I might lose mine anyway. I had obviously
got caught up in some vicious posse feud and had unwittingly provided Leroy with the means of getting his target alone, unarmed, in the middle of nowhere with two machetes behind him. Obviously, Leroy would kill me next, and anyone who subsequently discovered the carnage would reasonably infer Marvin and I had killed each other in a machete fight while squabbling over Henry Morgan’s treasure. Leroy had been a senior police officer and would know all about presenting the right clues. No wonder he had found out exactly how long I was staying and which flight I was meant to catch back tomorrow. All my friends had told me I shouldn’t bother with people I had befriended in prison; they were all bad. Why hadn’t I listened? Never mind, it would soon be over. I might meet some nice angels.

The machete flashed down, whistled through the air and chopped through a cluster of branches.

‘Come on, mon. Help mi chop down di bush. If wi don’t, di tractor stop, and wi stuck ina di mud.’

More relieved than is imaginable, I slashed away at the overhanging vegetation, helping Marvin’s tractor to get through.

‘Leroy, I thought you were going to kill me and Marvin – chop our heads off.’

‘Yo is stoned, mon, too fucking stoned. Mi tell yo dat de Rasta weed too strong fi yo.’

‘But I saw that murder look in your eyes, in your face. You were going to kill.’

‘Dat ano me, mon. Yo just see a duppy. Now yo af learn your lesson.’

‘I don’t believe in fucking duppies.’

‘Shit! So yo woulda rather believe mi, yo big friend, woulda kill yo. Mi, who save yo arse all di time ina di Yankee prison woulda kill yo ina Jamaica. If mi ever see yo a come fi kill mi, mi know it woulda be a duppy. Shoulda be di same fi yo.’

‘All right, maybe I am a bit stoned. And a bit jet-lagged. I
didn’t sleep that well last night and the tractor is making me feel slightly sick.’

Leroy stared hard into my face. There was no need for him to say a word.

‘All right, I’ve seen a duppy.’

Despite our efforts, the tractor stopped in a few inches of mud halfway across a narrow river. Marvin reversed the tractor out of the river for a few yards and then drove down into it again, but stuck at exactly the same place. Marvin asked us to get off and repeated the procedure, charging in with full revs. This time he made it. Leroy and I waded through, got back on the tractor, and motored slowly up a slight grassy incline. Near the top the hill got steeper, and we abandoned the tractor and walked to the summit, which was covered with stone walls reduced to ruins a few feet high with some old cannon and other rusty bits and pieces. There were several small caves with boarded-up entrances. Marvin motioned me to follow him. Large red letters stood out from one the walls. C-A-R-T-R-E-F spelt the Welsh word for home. I felt weird.

Leroy went for a walk as Marvin explained to me how this had been Henry Morgan’s main home in Jamaica. The land was well irrigated and fertile, and the summit served as an excellent lookout. The boarded-up tunnels supposedly went in labyrinthine fashion all the way to the sea, and still housed plenty of precious artefacts, but they were hard to find and even harder to transport, as many of the caves had collapsed, and there were more than a few duppies down there to keep people away. The treasure was all there and would remain so. Leroy returned with a chocolate pod and some fleshy red pear-shaped apples which tasted of delicate flowers.

The tractor trip back was much easier and thankfully, uneventful. Marvin passed out some welcome Red Stripes, and Leroy discreetly gave him some money before we got back into the car and drove away from Llanrhumney. Dusk was stealing into the hilly creases, filling them with purple
haze. The sun cut itself on a sharp hill and bled into the valleys. Long shadows of hilltops flew into the fields like stalking owls.

I had expected to be thrilled by the experience of following in Henry Morgan’s footsteps and visiting the land in Jamaica he had chosen to remind him of his Welsh birthplace, let alone discovering the possible whereabouts of his treasure. I know expectations are rarely fulfilled, and when they are tend to be anticlimactic, but perhaps my unease was because Henry had lived there during his dotage, his period of disillusionment and paranoia, when he was surrounded by the ghosts of vanished thrills. He should have spent his last years in Wales, where the blood of his ancestors had soaked the soil to keep it Welsh for always. Or perhaps my unease was because of the duppy assassin who looked just like Leroy.

After driving for fifteen minutes, we saw the sea and came across a sign for Oracabessa.

‘Hey, Leroy, isn’t this where UB40 live?’

‘Ya mon. Di house no de far from ya.’

UB40, a Birmingham group who topped the charts during the early 1980s, brought me so much comfort and credibility while I was languishing in TV rooms in American prisons with the gangsters and the gang stars. Even the most die-hard Jamaican reggae fan or Chicago street gang hip hop devotee could never knock UB40, their music, or their incredible integrity and tenacity in ensuring the original Jamaican composers of their songs were financially rewarded. To the average United States penitentiary inmate, nothing else British was worth a fuck, except Lennox Lewis. Shortly after I was released from prison, UB40 – without having any idea how much they had meant to me – sent me copies of all their albums. When I started doing my spoken-word shows, their friends and family would invariably be in the Birmingham audience.

‘I don’t know them well personally, Leroy, but I’m sure if I knocked on their door, they would let me in.’

‘Mi check yesterday an nobody no di de.’

‘You checked a hell of a lot yesterday, didn’t you?’

‘Ya, mon. Because yo af just two night. Mi remember yo say yo wan see some live reggae. Tonight, wi ago a di hot spot. Yo remember yo meet Beano over Morgan Hotel? Lickle more wi go check him.’

We drove west along the coast road to Ocho Rios, a cruise ship pit stop populated by higglers – tourist fleecers – musicians, ganja dealers, cocaine dealers and others who love life and are intimate with death. Rows of detached mansions and renovated plantation houses sat next to luxurious condiminiums. We pulled into a driveway leading to a cross between a stately home and a motel. A friendly guard lying on a deckchair smoking a chalice full of ganja smiled and waved us through. Beano, wearing a metallic blue shirt, Savile Row-style thin black trousers and even more gold jewellery than last time, danced out to greet us.

‘Leroy and Niceman. Wi start party now at my place before wi hit de hot spot. Mi hear dat yo like Front-end Loader, Niceman? Mi soon come.’

Prescot appeared with a tray of Front-end Loaders, the guard brought me a chalice, and Beano played a Black Uhuru album. I began to get seriously spannered.

‘Would you like to accompany me for a short walk, Niceman? I’ll show you the grounds,’ invited Prescot, who led the way out through a garden gate.

We walked down a grassy lane past the back of some beautiful but modest houses.

‘Several well-known artists and musicians live in this row,’ said Prescot.

‘Who’s the most famous?’ I asked.

‘That would have to be Mr Ranglin, Niceman.’

‘Mr Ranglin? Not Ernest Ranglin, surely?’

‘Exactly so. The great man himself.’

‘I don’t believe it, Prescot.’

‘It’s easily established, Niceman. We can call in on him. Beano told me he is at home this week.’ Dressed in a loose light shirt and green trousers, a kindly-looking elderly man with a radiant face was leaning on one of the gates. Prescot approached him and suddenly switched his speech from precise English to patois. ‘Misa Ranglin, meet mi fren. Dem call im Mr Nice.’

I was shaking hands with Jamaica’s BB King. Born in Manchester, Jamaica in 1932, Ernest Ranglin taught himself the guitar by studying books and attending events featuring Jamaican dance bands. At sixteen, he was Jamaica’s rising star, touring locally and in the Bahamas. Chris Blackwell saw Ranglin play in Montego Bay and contracted him to record Island Records’ first release. When the tough urban sounds of American rhythm and blues began to supersede traditional mento, it was Ranglin who first combined the two to produce ska and provide Jamaica with a new sound. In 1964 Chris Blackwell invited Ernest Ranglin to London, where he played at Ronnie Scott’s and became its resident jazz guitarist for nine months. At the same time he created the first worldwide ska hit, ‘My Boy Lollipop’, for Millie Small and was voted the number-one guitarist in the world. I saw him play during this period. He was brilliant and unforgettable, and he is still playing and recording.

‘Ah yes. Beano told me about you, Mr Nice. I’ve borrowed the book you wrote from him. Great story.’

There were all sorts of questions I wanted to ask Ernest, such as did Rod Stewart really play harmonica on ‘My Boy Lollipop’? I was too shy to do so and settled for a photograph with the legend.