Senor Nice (8 page)

During the late 1920s, my father, at the age of sixteen, joined the Reardon Smith Line as an apprentice. It was the largest and longest-lasting of Cardiff’s great shipping lines, founded by Irishman Sir William Reardon (O’Riordean) Smith. Within ten years, my father had become the Merchant Navy’s youngest captain, and during the Second World War he served as a fleet commodore. I was born the day the war finished, but because of his continuing commitments overseas, I did not see my father until I was two years old. As a reward for his distinguished service, he was allowed to take my mother and me on his subsequent voyages.

My first memories of foreign places were of travelling through first the Suez and then the Panama canals. I was three years old, and my father had been appointed captain of the SS
Bradburn
, a merchant vessel circumnavigating the planet, picking up and discharging cargo wherever it could. I have often wondered why the two canals seared themselves on my memory cells while the other wonders of the world, such as Mount Fuji, the Rock of Gibraltar, ranges of floating icebergs and smoking volcanoes, just passed me by. I think it was due to being in a large vessel moving at what appeared to be a fast speed just inches away from the land.

The idea of linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas was first mooted during the time of the pharaohs, who ordered the digging of a canal through the eastern branch of the Nile Delta. Preventing the canal filling with sand proved to be too
difficult. Later the Greeks, followed by the Romans, re-excavated it several times but each time it fell into neglect. The canal was again cleared after the Arab conquest of Egypt. Work continued for scores of years but eventually the canal was again abandoned to the sand. During the mid-nineteenth century the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps signed a contract with the Egyptian government to dig a new canal via Suez. France was then at the height of its power, churning out the world’s best engineers, architects and scientists. The canal took just over ten years to construct.

Measuring just over a hundred miles, it is easily the longest canal in the world without locks, has several passing bays, and can be widened and deepened when necessary. Apart from the sensation of the ship’s apparently rapid progress, my only memories of the journey through the canal are of gazing at a boring flat sandy landscape and being annoyed with my mother for insisting I wear a vest in the stifling heat.

My recollections of the Panama Canal are far more stimulating. I remember big noisy cranes and derricks, colourful, lush and lively landscapes and cascades of water pouring in and out of enormous locks. Why does it need locks? Like the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal links sea level to sea level. While striving to work out the puzzle of these locks, as well as come to terms with the ever-increasing links in my mind between Wales and the Americas, the fated coincidence happened.

‘Could I speak to Howard Marks, please?’

‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Jeanette Hyde here, Howard, from the
Observer
travel section. We would like to send you on a trip again.’ I’d done a few gigs for the
Observer
and they were always welcome.

‘Excellent. Where did you have in mind?’

‘Somewhere in South America – Brazil, Panama or Argentina. Take your pick.’

This was wonderful. Here was the opportunity to follow up
my current obsessions with Latin American connections and Welsh rogues. I could research my ancestry as well as recapture my childhood. Brazil was tempting, but a visit there could wait a while; it had been Portuguese and, as far as I knew then, had no strong connections with Wales. Choosing between Panama and Argentina was tricky. I wanted to go to both immediately. It was a toss-up.

‘OK, I’ll go to Panama.’

Within a week I received my itinerary, and my heart fell. I called Jeanette. ‘Jeanette, there’s no way I can do this trip. I have to change planes at Miami.’

‘So?’

‘If I ever set foot in America, I’ll be banged up forever.’

‘Really! I thought you had served your sentence.’

‘Yes, I have, but I’m classified as an aggravated felon, which means I must never enter America, even to change planes. If I do, I am committing an imprisonable offence. Besides, despite having been deported, I am still on parole. Although the US authorities can’t enforce parole conditions outside their territory, if I turn up there and they find out I have taken drugs or associated with criminals since my release, I will have to serve the rest of my prison sentence, eighteen and a half years.’

‘I see. I’ll find an alternative route. It’s difficult because there are no direct flights to Panama from Europe. You might have to change in a South or Central American country or the Caribbean.’

‘No worries, Jeanette. I can live with that.’

A return ticket arrived in the post. I was changing planes in Jamaica. Fantastic! It was only an overnight stop each way, but it would be long enough to get a taste of rum, an earful of reggae and a lungful of reefer. And it was Henry Morgan’s favourite place in the world.

I called Leroy to give him my good news. ‘Hey, Leroy, it looks like I’m going to Jamaica next week.’

‘Yo na go widout mi, mon. Da place wi eat yo alive.’

‘I’m only transiting there, Leroy, on the way to and from Panama.’

‘Shit! Hail up Manuel fi mi.’

‘Who?’

‘Noriega, mon. Yo nu remember im ina Yankee prison?’

I had indeed forgotten the last Panamanian I had met was General Noriega. We were companion inmates of Miami Metropolitan Correctional Center, and our 3.30 a.m. rude awakenings by US marshals to shackle and take us to court sometimes coincided. Trained by former CIA chief George Bush (the old one), Noriega had switched loyalties and begun selling arms to Cuba and trafficking drugs with Colombian cartels. For the first time, the United States adopted the now familiar policy of invading an entire country to capture one opponent. Just months before I met Noriega, the USA had killed thousands of Panamanian nationals and dumped them in mass graves, burned residential neighbourhoods, crushed families in their cars with tanks, and left tens of thousands impoverished and homeless. As a result, Manuel Noriega became the first leader of a country to declare war on the United States since the Second World War.

I was looking forward to my first transatlantic flight since being deported from America, my first visit to Jamaica and my first visit to Panama for over fifty years. I had recently rented myself a bedsit in London’s Shepherd’s Bush in an attempt to have a life separate from my failing marriage and to lessen the impact of its perpetual emotional and financial haemorrhages. Bedsits are the homes I like best and the rooms, including prison cells, in which I have written most. My books, my sounds, my decks, my drugs and the kettle were close, begging to be used twenty-four hours a day.

I carefully packed, wondered whether I should hide a small piece of Nepalese hashish, decided against it, and scrupulously checked the suitcase to remove all evidence of my habit: no cigarette papers, no clothes with joint burns and no ripped-up
pieces of cardboard from which roaches had been fashioned. I threw in a few guidebooks to Central America and the Caribbean, a toilet bag of creams to prevent me burning and itching, my laptop connections and peripherals, and a random selection of shorts, sandals and summer clothes. I locked the door, took the tube to Paddington, tried unsuccessfully again to smoke at the sushi bar, and caught a mid-afternoon Heathrow Express.

I was eager to be off but my excitement swiftly evaporated when I read the notice in bold type on the airline ticket given to me at Terminal Three’s Jamaican Airlines check-in desk: ‘
YOU CAN HELP
. Report drug smuggling to U.S. Customs 1-800-etc.’ Why, I wondered, should anyone flying non-stop direct from the United Kingdom to Jamaica be requested to consider, let alone blindly assist, enforcing another country’s disastrous prohibition policies? But at least the Jamaicans hadn’t bothered to reveal the full telephone number. They probably knew that a few dozen goats were more effective and cheaper than US Air Force helicopters in discovering marijuana plantations.

At the security gates passengers were asked to hand in their cigarette lighters. Whether they were considered capable of being used as weapons or whether the airline simply wished to ensure that no one infringed the strict no-smoking rule was not made clear. Every seat was occupied and I was next to a couple of Jamaican children. One of them started playing a game on her mobile phone. A flight attendant asked her to turn it off, reducing her to tears. I wondered how human beings could even consider flying through space at 500 miles per hour in 500 tons of steel machinery which could be disabled by a mere text message.

After twelve hours of sleep, nicotine deprivation and a pathetically small ration of red wine, we landed at Montego Bay. Immigration was friendly but slow. We waited several hours for officials to put meaningless stamps on scraps of
paper. Their uniformed colleagues smoked and gazed blankly at the sea of surprisingly contented and patient faces. Everyone was delighted to be here. I was given a six-month visa. I was already beginning to regret I would be there for just one day.

The
Observer
had booked me into a hotel on Treasure Beach, a two-hour drive away. The smiling, dreadlocked hotel driver picked me out immediately, bundled me into the back of the car, and drove like the clappers through the pitch-black Jamaican night.

Swarms of vehicles zigzagged chaotically through laneless streets and alleyways. Laws, a highway code and other means of avoiding danger were entirely absent. ‘Drive on the left-hand side of the road’ obviously meant do so eventually, that is, make one’s way towards the left side. One-way street signs merely suggested that most vehicles should go in the same direction. Driving straight towards or into oncoming traffic was strongly encouraged. Unlit vehicles, arms gesturing randomly out of their windows, tore madly in any direction, emitting clouds of dense black fumes. Drivers changed lanes without slowing or looking, and scraped the road with capsizing bodywork, sending showers of sparks on to pavements crammed with sleeping, eating, TV-watching and trading communities, where the odd death or amputation was not a hindrance to business. People, donkeys and dogs reluctantly ambled off the road, avoiding injury at the last possible moment courtesy of screeching, corroded brakes.

We arrived at Treasure Beach, a string of loosely linked fishing settlements and the site of Jake’s Hotel, a ramshackle assembly of wooden cottages, concrete villas, bars, small pools and beach. I had read in the hotel brochure that Jake’s is to Treasure Beach as the university is to the city of Oxford, a focus of culture and clowning, but at 10.30 p.m. Jake’s was disappointingly dead. The driver took me to my cottage, the only light for miles. There was no wardrobe, no hot water, no
telephone. There was, however, a fully stocked fridge, a wooden writing table, an L-shaped stone bench, a large double bed under a rainbow-coloured mosquito net, and a CD player.

I walked out to the veranda, sat in one of the huge armchairs, gazed through almost pitch blackness at outlines of palm trees and shacks, listened to the frothy pounding waves, and sorely wished I’d had the balls to smuggle in enough dope for a smoke. Perhaps it is foolish to take coals to Newcastle, but a Welsh miner can only blame himself for freezing to death if he doesn’t. I raided the fridge and read the service directory and the covers of the dozen or so CDs. The music collection was first class. This was no surprise; the hotel is owned by Jason Henzell, son of Perry Henzell, the writer of the first great Jamaican film,
The Harder They Come
, and part of the Island Resorts chain owned by Chris Blackwell, founder of Island records. The hotel is also a personal favourite of Robbie Williams, who according to the hotel brochure wrote his massive hit ‘Angels’ during one of his stays.

Over a hundred recordings a week are released in Jamaica, a greater output per head than any other country. Jamaican musical rhythm and dance movements derive originally from West Africa, and the songs, including hymns, developed at sugar cane and banana plantations. When slavery was abolished, syncopated rhythm, gyrating hips, bodies dipping forward and bawdy lyrics became the hallmarks of Jamaican muisc and dance. During the early 1900s, calypso, whose greatest star was Jamaican Harry Belafonte, combined with tango and samba to produce mento, a purely Jamaican sound. American rhythm and blues then melded with calypso to produce another uniquely Jamaican rhythm, soca, and with mento to originate the far more popular ska, referred to in the UK as bluebeat. ‘My Boy Lollipop’, sung by Jamaican Millie Small, arranged by Ernest Ranglin and produced by Chris Blackwell, went to the top of the UK charts in 1964.

Sound systems on wheels began in the 1950s and spawned
the cult of the DJs, known then as toasters. During the 1960s, the ska beat slowed down and a dominant bass line emerged to produce rocksteady, a sound pioneered by Leroy Sibbles and the Heptones and brought to international fame by Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff.

Rastafarian influence resulted in song lyrics expressing black pride and protest. The Jamaican establishment saw this as subversive and the new music was banned from radio stations. However it could still be heard in rum bars and on juke boxes. Reggae emerged, the name derived from rex, the music of Kingston’s lion kings. Then came the Jamaican equivalent to the Beatles, the Wailers, a vocal trio comprising Neville ‘Bunny’ Livingston, Peter ‘Tosh’ MacIntosh and Robert Nesta Marley. At first they dressed as gangsters, or rude boys, wearing sharp suits and shades, but then found their true style with producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. To the world, Bob Marley is reggae, but the word was first used by Toots Hibbert, a direct descendant of an anti-slavery activist, in ‘Do the Reggay’ in 1968. Chris Blackwell’s Island Records produced a series of Wailers albums, introducing reggae to a worldwide audience and making Bob Marley the Third World’s first superstar. B-sides of popular discs were released with the vocals removed, leaving the heavy bass and drum tracks for toasters to add further instrumentation and their own lyrics, giving birth to the culture of dub poetry.