The Last Colonials: The Story of Two European Families in Jamaica 9780755624577, 9781845110338

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For my sons Dominic and Luke, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, for as long as they are interested in their Jamaican connection. To my aunts: Linda, who shared her memories, and Dodie, who over fifty years ago tried to pass on her great love of words and the English language and did her best to suppress my natural tendency to use superfluous adjectives and exclamation marks.

'Jamaica... well Jamaica has such a rough road to travel that my heart is often troubled over it. But she has her laughter to make it bearable.' Edna Manley (Edna Manley, The Diaries)

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.

View of Falmouth, with harbour and shipping in the distance, at the time of my great-grandfather, Karl Stockhausen's arrival in Jamaica in 1844. From the : daguerreotype by Adolph Duperly, c.l840. 2. Margaret Brown, nee Grant, of Stewart Town (1839-1916) - my paternal great-grandmother. 3. Miriam Brown (1865P-1947) before her marriage to John Stockhausen in 1889. 4. A view of Stewart Town between 1835 and 1843, from a painting by J.M. Kidd. 5. Photograph of an oil painting of a Jamaican country cook c.l 890s - from my great-uncle Astley's book of Jamaican oil paintings by friends, compiled for his wife in 1900. 6. Linda Stockhausen (1898-1995) growing up in Stewart Town c.1915. 7. Lt Ivan Stockhausen (middle) with the Royal Flying Corps in Salonika and Egypt. He promised to send 'one of the Avro [a type of aeroplane] soon'. 8. Hope Glen in Elgin Road, Kingston home of Astley and Lilian Clerk. 9. Harold Stockhausen, my father, as a young man in Kingston, living with the Clerks at Hope Glen. 10. James Otway Clerk of Edinburgh (1811-74) arrived in Jamaica in 1834. He was a journalist, then proprietor and editor of the Trelawny & Public Advertiser, published in Falmouth.

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11. The verandah at Hope Glen - Dodie Stockhausen, Maria Gonzales y Moran of Cuba (later Mrs Cecil Hendriks), Cecil Clerk, his sisters Ena (my mother) and Evelyn-1920s. 12. Ena Holden Clerk (1905-70) - my mother before her marriage to my father. 13. Peta Gay (myself) and sister Leslie at Hope Glen - 1938. 14. Four Stockhausen children - John, Leslie, Peta Gay and Junior - 1938. 15. Frank Pringle, Aide-de-Camp to the Governor, Sir Hugh Foot, c.1953. 16. Counting Cosmic Rays with the aid of Geiger Muller counters in the Physics Research Laboratory of UCWI my brother John was carrying out research into the origin of cosmic radiation for his MSc. He is with his physics lecturer, Dr Barton. John was also representing UCWI, in the Long Jump and Hop, Step and Jump events, in the JAAA Championships - 1955.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, my heartfelt thanks to my husband Birger, who, more than 40 years ago, accepted that I would maintain an earlier love affair. When this turned into an obsession 25 years later, he not only coped with my Clerk tendency to abstract myself from the present, but then gave invaluable help with constructing family trees, drawing the map, editing the manuscript and choosing photographs. Without the generous help of my cousin Anna Maria Hendriks, this book would lack almost all Clerk family detail. Friend and genealogist Stephen Porter introduced me to the invaluable Mormon archives in Kensington and was the first person to point out the dangers of wasting time on wild-goose chases. He also kindly sent along hand-written pages of anything he came across on the Clerks and Stockhausens during his own research. These have proved vital in fitting together my puzzle. Dr Pamela Beshoff, friend and expert on all things Jamaican, was kind enough to check the historical aspects and offered muchappreciated suggestions and encouragement. Finally, I would like to record my deep gratitude to Randal Gray and his wife Mary. On the basis of the briefest acquaintance, he was prepared not only to cast a glance over my manuscript, but to read it with the keen eye and pencil of a historical literary editor and to give professional advice. His and Mary's interest has been a validation of 15 years of often long-distance research.

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FIRST GENERATION OF JAMAICAN-BORN STOCKHAUSENS

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Perhaps the best example, which sadly no longer exists, was the first great house of the Gothic revival, William Beckford's Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire. According to Kenneth Baker, William Beckford, the author of the eighteenth-century classic Vathek, devoted his life to spending the fortune that his family, including his father Alderman Beckford, twice Lord Mayor of London, had made in Jamaica from sugar and slaves. He filled his vast Gothic abbey with the most exquisite objects that only he, the richest man in England, could afford. They included a priceless collection of books, furniture, objets d'art and paintings (20 of them, including a Raphael, are now in the National Gallery in London). His wealth also protected him from scandal when details of his exotic sexual behaviour were exposed. He retreated behind five miles of 12-foothigh spiked walls around Fonthill, and focused his resources of taste and money on the creation of a fabulous personal vision.1 Philip Henry Gosse, the naturalist, who visited Jamaica in 1844, later wrote '... the beautiful Sugar estates throughout the island were half-desolate, and the Planters had either ceased to reside in their mansions or pitifully retrenched their expenses'.2 Full freedom was granted to the slaves in 1838. As Emancipation approached, the island had made desperate efforts to attract settlers from northern Europe, and by 1844 it might have been thought more morally acceptable for a young man, such as Karl Stockhausen, to try to make a successful new life in Jamaica. In addition to encouraging those people who could afford to buy estates, there were several schemes promising land, a temporary wood cabin and, for a year, a daily ration of food and rum to anyone willing to come to Jamaica. The House of Assembly in Jamaica hoped that by encouraging European immigrants to occupy the interior hills it would deny the freed slaves the possibility of acquiring these lands, and would force them to stay working on the large sugar plantations. In Europe, land in Jamaica was being offered very cheaply to the 'right sort of buyer'. Much of the very thickly wooded land in the plains had been cleared to make way for sugar-cane plantations and cattlepens but, where the rain forest met the sea and within the mountainous interior, very little had changed since the time of

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THE LAST COLONIALS

Columbus or indeed of the Tainos, the pre-Columbian indigenous population. On what basis Karl Stockhausen hoped to make a start I do not know, but he did settle in the beautiful, vulnerable foothills on the edge of the Cockpit Country, in the mountainous area bordering the fertile sugar plantations of the parish of Trelawny. The Cockpit Country was an area of about 500 square miles and was the most inhospitable region in the island, with caves and sink-holes and underground streams. Its green-hummocked landscape is almost impenetrable and surrealistically eerie. It had long been a stronghold, first for the Taino (once called Arawak) Indians escaping from the cannibalistic Caribs and later from the Spanish invaders, and then finally for runaway African slaves fleeing first from the Spanish and then from the British plantations. It was a 'Me No Sen, You No Come' land of the descendants of these freespirited people, called Maroons, who had fought against the British and who even today retain a certain amount of autonomy. The Spanish had called them cimmarones (wild ones). They were said to be descendants of the Coromantee, Asante and Fante tribes of Ghana in Africa, and were noted for being particularly brave and warlike. After many years of skirmishes and rebellions and two Maroon Wars against the British, in exasperation the latter gave in and granted the Maroons land and self-government in exchange for peace, and an undertaking by the Maroons that they would cease to harbour runaway slaves and would aid in their capture. After Emancipation, the Assembly hoped to create a buffer zone around this huge refuge in order to limit the spread of the Maroons' officially recognised territory and to discourage movement into it by the ex-slaves. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, many sailing ships, such as the Olbers with its three tall masts, had been carrying families from Bremen and other German ports to what they believed would be a better life in Jamaica. Most of these German settlers, including members of the Sauerlinder family, had arrived a decade before my great-grandparents. Some Germans who were already plantation owners tried to import German labour, but with disastrous results, since they were unsuited to the climate and the

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nature of the work. In all around 1,000 north Germans came to Jamaica between 1834 and 1838 and settled in various parts of the island, but many of them emigrated to the United States as soon as they could afford to do so. German craftsmen had been coming to Jamaica for some time and the Sauerlinders, who were cabinetmakers, are mentioned in a document on German immigration to Jamaica between 1834 and 1836, as 'having turned a good agricultural hand, despite hardship and never having tilled the soil previously'.3 A few of the descendants of these first German settlers, the only 'poor whites' in Jamaica, are in small pockets of in-bred, blue-eyed, blond-haired, dull-witted country people, unkindly referred to as having 'their toes still plaited in the earth'. The proposed ideal for the German immigrants (as for the new English) 'was to set an example of cleanly cottages, of decentlyclothed, hard-working and morally conducted families'. This was to be an example to the recently enslaved blacks, whom they had been imported to replace and in some cases oust from their coveted lands in the foothills. (See further in Appendix 1, an essay entitled 'The qualities most essential to a successful colonist', which I found in some old Stockhausen papers, among Deeds of Property and other documents dating back to 1856. It was typewritten and therefore probably translated into English at a later date.)

As Karl was heading for Trelawny, his ship would have approached the port of Falmouth, driven along the northern coast of the island by those same north-easterly winds that had carried it across the Atlantic. The passengers would have been able to acclimatise themselves gradually to the heat as they entered the Tropics, but nothing could have prepared them for the sheer beauty of the island. Between Ocho Rios (Columbus's Las Chorreas) and Discovery Bay (Puerto Bueno, further along the coast where the Spaniards landed), the sight of large and small waterfalls tumbling from the green wooded land into the transparent turquoise sea, alternating with small white-sanded coves, is still astonishing today. The town and port of Falmouth, Trelawny's capital, had been created at the height of sugar prosperity at the end of the eighteenth

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THE LAST COLONIALS

century. (This prosperity continued to some extent until the emancipation of the slaves in 1838, by which time there were 140 sugar plantations in operation in Trelawny. Falmouth was made a free port in 1809, allowing the duty-free import and re-export of goods, and in the years that followed it was still possible, though more difficult, to make a fortune from sugar and from Spanish-American trade.) The new town was built on land bought from Edward Barrett (a descendant of a member of England's conquering force in 1655, and the great-grandfather of the English poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning). Within ten years 180 houses had been built by rich merchants and planters, among them Barrett's own town house with his sugar-shipping wharf opposite. Many planters were also sugar and slave merchants, and it was convenient to have a town house in addition to their plantation houses. Because Falmouth had been established over such a short time in those prosperous years during the Georgian period, it was the most attractive town in the island and indeed, for some, in the British colonies of the New World. To add to Karl's pleasure, the pretty new church in the main street had a square tower with a redtiled roof very reminiscent of those in Germany. At the time of Karl's arrival, there were several residents in Falmouth involved in chemical experiments. This scientific activity was probably instigated by the sugar industry, but other experiments involved sulphuric ether used as an anaesthetic by Dr Lewis Ashenheim, a Jewish doctor, in one of the earliest operations performed on the island. David Lindo, also a resident, had his nitrogen test on fertilizers adopted by the American government. (He was an ancestor of Chris Blackwell, the well-known Jamaican entrepreneur and benefactor.) Karl bought land at Ulster Spring, the principal village in southern Trelawny, about 24 miles south-east of Falmouth, in a verdant valley of lush banana trees, on the edge of the Land of Look Behind. Stockhausen Hill, on the outskirts of Ulster Spring between German Town4 and Freeman's Hall, later appeared on maps of the area. (Freeman's Hall had been a successful sugar estate with its own adjoining factory known as Belisle, and was famous for its rum of the same name.) Olivier, one of the island's later

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Governors, included Ulster Spring among the places he loved most in Jamaica. He wrote of 'the miracle of the Promised Land that unfolds itself, smiling and golden, along under the dark, forest-clad buttresses of the Gibraltar Mountains ranging south on the left hand as you look from Ulster Spring Court House across the wasted Black Lands of Trelawny towards Wait-a-Bit'. Ulster Spring was on the fringe of the Cockpit Country. At 1,550 feet above sea level, the town was comfortably cooler than the sugar-cane plains nearer the coast; the temperature could drop to between 10° and 15° C. at night during the winter months. A nineteenth-century medical report from Maroon Town, at the same altitude on the other side of the Cockpit Country, referred to it as a healthy district, a favourite with landowners, where Negroes invariably lived to a great age without any illness whatsoever. The snag was that these foothills, available to newcomers, were difficult to cultivate. Nevertheless, Karl set to work planting sugarcane and coffee, and growing food for himself and - after his marriage to Wilhelmina in 1852 - for his family: five sons and one daughter, born between 1854 and 1865. Two years after his arrival in Jamaica there was an economic crash, followed in 1850 by a severe cholera epidemic. But 1865 was a tragic year for Jamaica: poverty, frustration and bitterness at the injustice experienced by the black and coloured population exploded into violence at the Morant Bay Courthouse at the eastern end of the island. 'Panic and horror were felt by the majority of the literate, vocal elements of the community (the planters, the mercantile classes, the professionals and the middle class), at the atrocities committed by the rebels'.5 But many of the privileged classes, and a large proportion of the black working class who had not necessarily supported the rebels, were appalled at the brutality of the Governor's retaliation. Karl Stockhausen also would have been concerned on learning that the German Custos of Morant Bay's parish and a member of the Council, 'a man of rank and learning, Baron Von Kettelholdt, was shot, hacked down and killed with great brutality. A Fiend in the shape of a woman cut off the points of his fingers and the mob shouted: "The Baron will write no more letters to the Queen

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against us." A black man (a local builder and political supporter of Von Kettelholdt) named Price, who sided with the white people, was cut down by the Baron's side - he fought bravely - he was a member of the Assembly (Vestry or local council); strange to say the Baron and he sleep in one grave.'6

Charles, the eldest son of Karl and Wilhelmina, was born in 1854. (Although Karl Stockhausen by then used Charles, the anglicised version of his name, I will continue to refer to Karl by his German name to avoid confusion with his son.) One does not often use the expression 'black sheep' in Jamaica, but Charles remains a bit of a mystery. In the notes in German in a family Bible, he is not mentioned by name - 'one son' was born on 7 March 1854 at 6.00 a.m. As a young man Charles left home for the island's capital, Kingston, and 'made his own life', according to my aunt Linda. He and his brother Frederick married two of the O'Meally sisters, the daughters of the Rev. Patrick O'Meally (Baptist Minister in Ulster Spring for 40 years from 1859), at a time when the Anglicans and the Methodists were said to have despised the Baptists for taking sides with the slaves. In our version of the family's history there are no male descendants through Charles Stockhausen in the third generation. I asked Linda why Charles had never been mentioned in our family and it seems that no one had liked him - something to do with a financial scandal. Since my aunt Linda's death in 1995, I have heard of a further possible cause for his ostracism: Charles Stockhausen left his wife and children to run away with one of his Sauerlinder first cousins. There was no contact with or mention of any Sauerlinder relations during my youth, and I never heard of or came across anyone in Jamaica by that name. The family remained close to Frederick, born in 1856. After his home in Dawes Road, Kingston was destroyed in the 1907 Great Earthquake, he moved to Canada with his family and their butler. Immediately after the earthquake, and before leaving the island, he became ill and stayed with his younger brother, my grandfather John and his family in Stewart Town in Trelawny. In 1910 Frederick and his son Frederick Jr left for New York one week before the other

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members of the family and the butler, who all went directly to Boston. There they all spent a week with friends before taking a train to Lewiston and then a boat across Lake Ontario to Toronto. The butler got a job the next day as a porter on the Canadian railways. The only son, unmarried Frederick Jr, died in the First World War. The three daughters were collectively known as 'the Jewels' because they were all christened with the names of stones. Only Beryl (Yates) was still alive when I started work on this book. She was living near Toronto, as they had all continued to do. Frederick Senior's birth was recorded in the family Bible notes in German, but from the next child onwards rather faulty English was used. Caroline Louise (Carrie), the only daughter of Karl and Wilhelmina, was born in 1859. She married Walter Runcie at the Ulster Spring Methodist Chapel on 2 September 1880. In the Church's Register of Marriages, her parents' address was given as Freeman's Hall. Carrie and her husband lived and raised their family of six children in Wilhelmina's home. Before the birth of their next child, Karl and Wilhelmina moved house. Wilhelmina wrote in English in the family Bible: 'Charles (Karl) Stockhausen moved with his Familie into his New House June 28th in the year of our 1860 Lord.' In May 1857 James Wauchope Fisher Esquire and his wife Isabella sold one acre and two rods of land, part of Freeman's Hall, Trelawny, to Charles (Karl) Stockhausen. The land was east of John Edwards' property and was notarised at Bryan Castle, the former home of Bryan Edwards, the historian, plantation owner and West India merchant. Karl paid £9 for the land on which, I presume, he built his new house. John Samuel Stockhausen, my grandfather, was born on 3 September 1861 and christened on 19 January 1862 in the chapel at Sawyers, a small town near Jackson Town, on the road north out of Ulster Spring. John moved to Stewart Town as a young man to learn how to become a merchant. He worked with William Kennedy, known in the family as 'Cork-legged Mass Ken', who was the grandfather of the founder of Grace, Kennedy and Co., now the island's leading import/export company and food manufacturer.

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In the 1880s, Stewart Town was still a reasonably sized market town with several thriving businesses. There were three churches Anglican, Methodist and Baptist - and the town was in two parts, the older part called Bottom. Kennedy's house and store were in Bottom, as were the Anglican Church and the house of Margaret Brown, my great-grandmother, and her daughter Miriam. The town's young single women and their mothers no doubt welcomed the arrival of John Stockhausen, a new eligible bachelor in a small town with a shrinking population. (In 1889, Kennedy also leased premises at Jackson Town - a house with a store underneath and a run of land of fruit and coffee trees behind - from a member of Margaret Brown's family.) Falmouth merchant Thomas Kidd of Scotland also lived in Bottom. Between 1835 and about 1842, his brother Joseph Bartholomew Kidd, the artist and founder member of the Scottish Academy of Art, visited Jamaica and produced many drawings of the town and the surrounding area, and indeed the whole island. They are considered to be among the best pictorial records of that epoch in Jamaica. John, aged 28, married Miriam Brown at St Thomas's Anglican Church in Stewart Town on the 25 April 1889, in the presence of Lilian Cooke, Miriam's childhood friend, and John's brother James. James, the fourth of Karl and Wilhelmina's sons, born in 1863, married Stella Constantine. They lived on her banana plantation at Highgate in St Mary. After three successive hurricanes destroyed three successive crops, they gave up and moved to a large house in South Camp Road in Kingston. This house, in which I was born in 1935, is one of the few old ones in South Camp Road still standing today, and is a few doors from Sabina Park, the home of Jamaican cricket and formerly the spiritual home of West Indian cricket. Aunt Stel and Uncle Jim Stockhausen, whom I vaguely remember with his trestle tables of peeled bananas drying in the sun, had two sons: Alan and Sydney and two redheaded daughters: Claire, who married a Scotsman, Jack Ralston, and Marjorie, unmarried nurse and midwife, who brought me into the world. Joseph, the youngest son of Karl and Wilhelmina, born in 1866, went to live in Duncans - also to learn how to become a merchant.

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Duncans is about 20 miles from Ulster Spring; Stewart Town is 14 miles from Ulster Spring and 13 from Duncans. The two brothers, Joseph and John, were close to each other all their lives. They were in the same sort of business and, apart from Carrie, stayed nearest to the family home in Ulster Spring. Whenever seen together they would be deep in conversation, heads bent close. Joseph married Margaret, the daughter of the much-married Margaret (Maggie) de Cambre. Her father was Portuguese. Joseph and young Margaret, also known as Maggie, had two children: Enid (my godmother) and Joseph Jr (Dr Joe, a gynaecologist). Joseph Senior soon did well enough to build Stockville, a large, elegant, colonial-style two-storied house in Duncans, the next town of any size going east from Falmouth on the main north-coast road. Stockville still stands in spite of hurricanes and earthquakes and is lived in by friends of the family. The Duncans Stockhausens are all buried in an enclosed family plot behind the Methodist Church on the outskirts of the town. Four years after the birth of their sixth child, Karl Stockhausen was thrown from his horse. Wilhelmina noted in her Bible: 'My dear husband Charles (Karl) Stockhausen dide [sic] May 6th 1869 left his wife with six children to lament thire loss dide very happy he did seek the Lord where he was to be found.' He was only 43 years old and had been in Jamaica for 25 years. We have very little information about my great-grandfather's life in Jamaica. It had been a struggle. We know that he produced sugar because my aunt Linda had been told that after the sugar-cane had taken its usual 12 to 18 months to mature, more often than not the hogsheads of newly made sugar were stolen before they could be sold. Linda could remember sugar still being made at her grandmother's property near Ulster Spring when she was a child. The canes were crushed by a mule-powered mill. Apart from his achievement in beginning to raise and educate a family in pioneering conditions in a foreign country, we do have one intriguing story that has been passed down to all branches of his family. He was highly regarded by the country people as a curer of ailments and solver of problems. When he died, the Maroons wanted to give him an 'Arawak' burial. People revered by them

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were not buried in the ground but placed in a cave with an opening, so that their spirit could go directly to heaven. I have been told, however, that Karl and Wilhelmina are buried in the Ulster Spring Methodist Church.

Chapter 3

Margaret Brown and her daughter Miriam of Stewart Town

In Ireland they say that you should never shake the family tree since you never know what might fall out. Jamaica has many tall trees with remarkable coloured flowers at their tops, but their fruits are often surprisingly pale and dull. We knew that these trees were dangerous, and sometimes impossible, to climb. Margaret (Grant) Brown, my paternal great-grandmother, and the ancestor to whom I am probably the most proud to be related, spoke of herself as having been born in Falmouth the year after 'real freedom' came for the slaves. That would have been in 1839. For many years after 1838, almost all unofficial reckoning of time was dated from 'real freedom' for the island's 311,000 black and coloured slaves. But even before 1838 nearly all people of coloured blood were free, and many such families had been so for several generations. Margaret was the daughter of Jean Grant, always known as Jean of Falmouth, and Scottish sea captain Grant. Jean Grant (whose other Christian name I believe may have been Catherine), was a woman of coloured blood and would have been partly descended from African slaves but, being of mixed blood, Jean would almost certainly have been born free herself. As a child, her daughter Margaret 'Maggie' Grant was sent to school in Falmouth, but preferred to be out of doors watching the sea-birds and the movement of ships in the port. Her father may have settled in Jamaica, but it is possible that, like many other sea captains visiting Jamaica at that time, he kept a local 'wife' and fathered children during his stays. Margaret had at least three sisters.1

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2. Margaret Brown, nee Grant, of Stewart Town (1839-1916) - my paternal great-grandmother.

MARGARET AND MIRIAM BROWN OF STEWART TOWN

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In Falmouth, young Margaret Grant assisted a doctor in his practice and learnt a great deal about medicine. She met and married a Scot, James Brown, who was an Inspector of Police and a philanderer. His work took him travelling all over the island, and Margaret settled in quiet Stewart Town with her only daughter Miriam. Margaret was determined that Miriam should have a serious education. She sent her to the very proper 'Miss Jackson's Academy for Young Ladies', where she learnt to play the piano and developed a taste for good books and French plays. Throughout her life Margaret thought of Falmouth as the 'metropolis'. My grandmother Miriam (Brown) Stockhausen often told her own children stories about her mother. Miriam and Lilian Cook (later to marry my great-uncle Astley Clerk of Hope Glen, Kingston) had been close childhood friends and neighbours in Stewart Town. When they were young girls, Old Mass Ken's (William Kennedy's) leg had to be amputated. A surgeon was sent for from Brown's Town, since Stewart Town had no resident doctor. Margaret, Miriam's mother, was asked by the surgeon to assist in the operation; she had become well known in the neighbourhood for her expertise in setting broken limbs between empty cloth bolts and for dispensing powders. The operation was to take place on Old Mass Ken's dining-table and, to keep her company while her mother was out, Miriam was allowed to invite Lilian to spend the night. My aunt Linda, in her nineties, could still remember her mother's description of their terror that night when, lying in bed with the sheets pulled up over their heads, they could hear in the street below a repeated toc-toctoc as Old Mass Ken's amputated leg walked by. John and Miriam's children especially liked being told the story of how their grandmother Margaret had left Stewart Town on horseback to visit her dying mother in Falmouth. It was probably at the time of the disturbances and riots that swept Jamaica when promises made after emancipation had not been kept and for many life was far worse than it had been under slavery. After the tragic events in Morant Bay in 1865, unrest had spread quickly to the rest of the island. When Margaret arrived at the outskirts of Falmouth, the road was blocked by an angry mob. In desperation she raised

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>

3. Miriam Brown (1865P-1947) before her marriage to John Stockhausen in 1889.

MARGARET AND MIRIAM BROWN OF STEWART TOWN

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her whip, shouting 'Out of my way. I must visit my sick mother who is dying.' A path was cleared and she rode through the rioters. On another occasion, word came to her that her roving husband Jim Brown was seriously ill at Alligator Pond on the south coast of the island. This would have been an extremely difficult journey across the island, either by buggy or on horseback, but she set out immediately and nursed her husband until he died. While Margaret was bringing up Miriam on her own, she had her own small business in Stewart Town. A fine horsewoman, she regularly rode into Falmouth to place orders for her supplies. On one occasion, while making the 18-mile journey, she dismounted to relieve a call of nature. Having placed her orders in Falmouth, she realised that her money-bag had disappeared. It couldn't be found and she never forgot the incident. Later in life she told her grandchildren: 'I may not have a quattie [penny ha'penny - oneand-a-half pence], but in case of emergency I might find a pound.' After the incident, when out shopping, she had probably adopted the Jamaican market woman's practice of keeping her paper money safely within her underclothes. My aunt Linda, Margaret's youngest grand-daughter, died in 1995 when she was 97. Sorting through all her old family papers, some of which had belonged to her mother and which I suspect Linda had never seen, I discovered traces of the real power and ability that Margaret Brown must have had and how important she was in the shaping of our family's future.

Chapter 4

Stewart Town - Second generation of Jamaican-born Stockhausens My grandfather, John Stockhausen, moved from Ulster Spring to Stewart Town in about 1880. Stewart Town had been established in 1815 by the son of the Hon. James Stewart, Custos of the new parish of Trelawny. It was at a crossroads, where the country people had traditionally met to barter and exchange news, and quickly became a prosperous market town for people from the surrounding plantations, villages and smallholdings who came to get supplies and to sell their produce. Many merchants had large houses there, but with the decline of the sugar plantations and of Falmouth's importance as a port, Stewart Town's prosperity was quickly disappearing. John Stockhausen's timing in arriving there was not unlike his father's timing in arriving in Jamaica, but he too may have been optimistic about the opportunities that the decline offered. John and his wife Miriam, my paternal grandparents, had seven children in Stewart Town between 1890 and 1900 and they all survived infancy. Ivan Lancelot, their first child, was born in February 1890. His father was 28 years old and his mother had just had her 26th birthday. Sixteen months later, his brother Eric Audley was born and then, less than two years afterwards, came a daughter Doris ('Dodie') Marguerite. It was probably at this time that the family moved from Bottom into a larger house in the newer part of town. In 1894 a third son, Owen Leicester, was born followed by two more daughters, Beryl Vida in 1896 and Linda Lilie in 1898. The last child, my father Harold Wauchope, was born on the 28th May 1900. Wauchope, a most unusual name in Jamaica, was that of a Major General killed in South Africa in the Boer War in

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4. A view of Stewart Town between 1835 and 1843, from a painting by J.M. Kidd. December 1899, but I have no idea why they chose it for my father. There may have been a connection with one of the few family heirlooms I have - a Meerschaum Calabash pipe, popular at the time of the Boer War - but I also see in old family papers that Wauchope (a name that, apart from my father's, I had never come across in Jamaica or anywhere else) was the middle name of the man from whom my German great-grandfather bought the land on which to build his house near Ulster Spring.1 Margaret Brown did not supervise the births of her grandchildren. Instead, Mother Davis, the local midwife, 'a brown lady and a loveable soul', helped them into the world. When Old Mass Ken, William Kennedy, abandoned his house, his Store and his leg in Stewart Town and moved to Falmouth, John Stockhausen was able to take over his business. He bought a large town house in the newer part of town, with a Store on the opposite

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side of the road. Both the Store and the house had land behind them and were ten minutes walk up a slight hill from Bottom. Some of the children had been born in their earlier home in Bottom, Isaac's House, which had belonged to John's mother-in-law Margaret. After the move, Margaret came to live with the family in the larger house, and they owned it until Miriam died in 1947. Margaret Brown was a great favourite with her grandchildren and had more influence on their upbringing than Wilhelmina Stockhausen. No doubt because of her strong character, but also because she was always there. It seems that she was not above a bit of spoiling. Church-going played a large role in family life. John Stockhausen and his elder sons went to the Methodist Church further up the hill, where John was a lay-preacher. However, all the children were christened as Anglicans, and John himself converted when an older man and then became an Anglican lay-reader in his wife's church. Margaret and Miriam were staunch Anglicans, and with the other smaller children went to the Episcopalian (Anglican) Church of St Thomas in Bottom. Miriam played the organ and trained the choir with anthems and songs for Harvest Festivals. There was always a particularly long service at Sunday Matins and, when they got into the family pew at the front of the church, Margaret would spread a linen handkerchief over her beaded bodice and allow Linda to put her head there and go to sleep until the sermon ended. (Over 80 years later, while on a group visit touring Jamaica, I was shown the family pew, long since deserted, by a very ancient Stewart Town inhabitant with tears in his eyes, who had been a boy at the time. He was moved that I should have come all the way from 'Inglan' to visit my ancestors' church and graves. I have no words for how I felt. He offered to take me to see the 'Big House' up the hill, but sadly I could not keep the group waiting any longer. They had been prepared to make the detour to Stewart Town and had shared my visit to the church with sympathy and understanding, for which I shall always be hugely grateful.) My great-grandmother Margaret was said to have had healing powers. When I first heard this I thought of her contemporary George Sand, the French writer and early trouser-wearing, cigar-

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smoking feminist, because she also had this gift. Both had their boxes of medicines: George Sand prescribed for everyone in her village of Nohant in the Berry in the centre of France and at Stewart Town, Margaret Brown with her box of remedies was known and respected by all the doctors in the Parish. 'The only person Doctor Wilson, a brown man from Brown's Town, ever broke a smile for was Grannie Brown.'2 Sometimes Margaret was obliged to charge for her medicines, since more value was attached to those with a price. She sold her worm powders, santonine and other simples in twists of paper for a farthing, a quattie, fippance or bit. (These small coins had been introduced in 1834 to provide the slaves - who were on their way to becoming wage earners - with small coinage. The quattie {YhA) was known as 'Christian quattie' because it was the coin most frequently found on the collection plate in churches. Its value was related to Spanish coins: a quattie being a quarter of a real, which was valued at sixpence.) People came to the family home to consult Margaret Brown as though she were a doctor, but she did not charge for consultations. She once got a letter from a man saying 'Although I am unknown to you, I have a pain in my abdomen'. I asked my aunt Linda how her father John Stockhausen, aged 37, could have afforded to buy a business and a large house, and his brother Joe to build an elegant new one in Duncans. Had they inherited money from their father Karl? She said: 'No man. It was all due to German damn hard work.' This was the only time she ever admitted to any German influence on our family. But I do not think that Linda realised what I have recently discovered. John had been enormously helped by his mother-in-law, Margaret Brown. Most of the land he owned in and around Stewart Town and Jackson Town had belonged to Margaret and her family; he had married into a family of business and property-owning women, who could not write - both Margaret and her sister Catherine Grant marked their legal documents with an 'X' for their signature. John, whom they trusted, was soon acting as administrator and executor to their wills and other legal documents. The Georgian-style town house that John bought was similar to those built in Falmouth in the early nineteenth century and was

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probably built soon after Stewart Town was created in 1815. It was on the Town Square, which was at the crossroads between the Dry Harbour (Discovery Bay) and Falmouth and Gibraltar roads. The house had been owned by a man called Korner (perhaps Codner), who had used the ground floor as a store - Jamaican parlance for shop. The family now used this for storage. There was a wide colonnaded piazza* at street level, with the store-rooms behind. The columns of the piazza supported the projecting upper storey. They lived on the light, airy first floor, with their reception rooms overlooking the Square. An open flight of stone steps by the side of the house led to the first-floor entrance. There were four bedrooms with enormous wooden four-poster beds, and the children when small slept several to a bed, crosswise. There was a large drawing-room with two chaise longues and a lot of beautiful old mahogany furniture, some brought from Falmouth in a mule-drawn cart. (The four-poster bed in which all the children were born was destroyed by a fire in the garage of Linda's home in Kingston in the 1960s: The laundress in the outhouse left the electric iron on and went home'.) The dining-room and bedrooms had mahogany tables and cupboards made by local carpenters. (John Stockhausen had a timber business in addition to his Dry Goods Store.) The house had an extremely high, wooden cedar-shingled roof - there were no ceilings. For better ventilation, the partitions between the bedrooms were not carried all the way to the roof. The children imagined old Korner's duppy (ghost) sitting up on the partition watching them. The floors were in dark wood and highly polished with brushes made of coconut husks. Philip Henry Gosse, the naturalist and author of Birds of Jamaica, writing about his visit to Jamaica in 1844, describes how the woods chosen for the floors were the most beautiful of the hardwoods - mahogany, greenheart, breadnut and bloodheart - and it was often the responsibility of several servants to keep the floors shining like the best drawing-room furniture. The only way to do this was on the hands and knees with cut halves of sour (Seville) oranges, squeezed and rubbed into the wood. Then halves of bristly coconut husks, one in each hand, were used to scrub the floors vigorously until the cleaners' dark faces could be

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seen reflected in the dark wood. To avoid leaving bare-foot marks on the polished wood, the cleaners would retreat balancing on the two husks clutched with the toes - or, if they remembered, two pieces of clean cloth. (When I was a child in the 1940s, this was still being done in our house in Kingston, but with wax, not bitter Seville oranges. We took turns to ride on Agatha Llewelyn's back as on all fours she polished our floors with coconut husks. We adored her and vice versa, and she was proud of the fact that she had been doing this (without riders) a few hours before her huge son Lloyd was born. She stayed with us in one capacity or another until I was an adult. She cried at my father's funeral in 1970.) The servants' quarters were in a detached block behind the house, where the land rose steeply up a hill. There were also several barbecues. These are large, flat, stone terraces used for drying coffee, cocoa and pimento, and a common feature of country properties. Further up the hill it was fairly wild, with coconut and other fruit trees, and at the top of the hill, flush with the ground on the other side, was a large rock the size of a small room. Maidenhair ferns grew out of the cracks, but Linda is convinced that the 'monolith' had some sacred man-made - perhaps Arawak - significance. She told me that she was sure that when she died, her duppy would be found there. I said that if her duppy could travel from Kingston to Stewart Town I saw no reason why it could not visit me in England. John Stockhausen also owned the land beside the Anglican Church and several acres at Try See, near another property called Manchester, all close to Stewart Town. He had some more at McAdam in Bottom, between the Market and Burial Ground, which included the remains of a beautiful old house. This had belonged to the merchant Thomas Kidd in 1875 and had been valued at £103 at that time. (In 1999, while I was inside the Stewart Town Church, one of the men in our party, the son of an England cricketer and himself an accomplished if veteran player, joined some small boys playing with improvised bat and ball on the ruined foundations of Kidd's house opposite. It is one of his favourite memories of Jamaica.) John also owned land at Woodstock and Vineyard, which were about half a mile from Stewart Town. There was also another

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'piece' of about two-and-a-half acres on the Brown's Town road. In Jamaica, small properties were often referred to as 'pieces', which probably derived from the sugar plantation vocabulary in which 'cane pieces' were land where sugar-cane was grown. At Try See 'piece', there was a house with a man to supervise the crops, in spite of which they were often stolen out of the ground before they were 'fit'. Then a woman called Jane Dale, a tambourine-playing Revivalist, came to live in the house there. John let her have it free of charge since she had nowhere else to live, and she kept it spotless. She would 'get the spirit' and come past their Stewart Town house at four or five in the morning beating her tambourine and chanting until 'father threatened to prosecute'. He was a Justice of the Peace and Linda could remember policemen bringing prisoners to the store to be formally charged. By the time Linda was five years old, in 1903, he had also acquired the Post Office, store and land behind it in Jackson Town four miles away. John and Miriam cared for it until their eldest son Ivan came of age. Charles McCardy managed this property for him, but John went down periodically to check on it. Margaret Brown had given most of these properties to her daughter Miriam by Deed of Gift in 1901/2. John Stockhausen had to declare under oath that the total did not exceed £150 in value and Margaret Brown had to swear that she had not been coerced into the gift. Much later, John also owned the Stewart Town Post Office and its adjoining land and also, I think, the land on which a Methodist Mission was built. He grew pimento, coffee, bananas, cocoa, breadfruit, yams and other food crops for the household and to feed their servants, but no sugar. The children loved the oranges, tangerines, mangoes and, especially, the guineps (from a tall tree, usually growing wild, which bore a fruit with a crisp shell that children cracked with their teeth; they then sucked the pulp off the seed). The land he had was considered more for recreation than profit, and he spent one day a week - usually a Thursday - on 'agriculture', overseeing and directing the workers on horseback. When he came home exhausted, Miss Mirie (as everyone called his wife) would have laid out clean clothes for him and prepared a hot bath.

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In 1913, the first People's Cooperative Bank was established in Stewart Town and in addition to his other occupations, John Stockhausen became its Manager. He was an extremely mild man, but hard working, and was always thin, picking at his food. My grandmother was a caring wife, concerned by his lack of appetite and that he worked too hard. She would often prepare him an eggflip, laced with rum, in the middle of the morning to keep up his strength. John's mother Wilhelmina, by then known as Grannie Stock, came from Ulster Spring to spend time with the family in Stewart Town at regular intervals. She seems not to have stayed with her other sons. She was strict and dull and had the spare room all to herself, to which she retreated to pray. To make matters worse, at her instigation there was much entertaining of Methodist parsons. She spoke English with a slight German accent and seemed to think that the children were laughing at her. She disapproved of their boisterous behaviour by turning pink. Though placid and wellmeaning, she had no sense of humour and left an oppressive impression. She is, however, remembered for being good at sewing on all the lost buttons for the family, even in an emergency and although it was thought to bring very bad luck in Jamaica - while the garment was still on. When not sewing on buttons, she might be found on her knees praying. Grannie Stock was grey-haired when my aunt Linda knew her, but may once have been blonde. I like to think that my ackee-seed eyes must have come from Grannie Brown, who could be tickled and teased. I now realize how impressive these two women were. Wilhelmina Stockhausen, who was left with six children under 15 when her husband died, managed to bring them up on her own in a remote part of a strange country and, with one possible exception, set them off well prepared to cope with life. Uneducated, Margaret Brown had been a successful businesswoman, bringing up a child on her own, and then appears to have been largely responsible for helping to establish her daughter's husband and their family.

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A considerable part of John Stockhausen's household was the extended family of servants in the 'backyard'. Mother Kelly was the cook. The huge kitchen had a brick oven and was separated from the house by a covered way. Although Mother Kelly went to her home in the village every night, she arrived in the kitchen every day at 5 a.m. to make the wood fires. The kitchen was her territory and you did not dare fool with Mother Kelly. She never came into the dining-room. An old-fashioned countrywoman, her long skirt was tied up in a roll around her waist with a dried plantain-leaf belt so that the hem was well clear of the ground. Her daughter Annie had disgraced her by being 'felled' (having an outside child) by a Portuguese named daSouza from Jackson Town. Annie had been sent there by John Stockhausen to work for the Post Mistress, Miss Katie Cooper, who was a friend of Miriam and Lil. The child, Stanley daSouza, was brought up by Mother Kelly and was the pet of the backyard. He was Indian-looking with straight black hair, which Beryl and Linda plaited. They called him Boysie. Most of the food that Mother Kelly prepared was grown on land belonging to the family. The coffee was dried on huge crocus (jute) bags on a barbecue at the back of the house, then the beans were roasted. Chocolate sticks were made from the cocoa beans. The beans were also dried on the barbecue, then the outer coat was removed and the beans beaten in a mortar. This is what the chocolate sticks were made from. Bubbles of fat formed when they were boiled to make a delicious alternative to coffee. All the children loved it. Wet sugar was bought from small settlers who grew sugar-cane. It came in kerosene tins and there was always one of these in the pantry standing in a tray of water to keep away the ants. Pimento, that deliciously pungent Jamaican pepper-spice, was dried on the barbecue. The children helped to shell it. Pimento berries were used for making Pimento Dram, a home-made liqueur. They were also added to the marinade for Escoveitched (Escabeche) fish - a breakfast favourite - and crushed for making Fricassee Chicken (a 'big house' version of Jerk Chicken). The leaves were used for making Bay Rum, a comforting medicated rub for fevers, which was also used as a hair tonic.

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5. Photograph of an oil painting of a Jamaican country cook c. 1890s from my great-uncle Astley's book of Jamaican oil paintings by friends, compiled for his wife in 1900.

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There were a lot of coconuts nearby on the hill behind the house. The plantains and bananas were grown at Try See. The plantains were cooked when both ripe and green; green bananas could also be served as a cooked vegetable and, as a dessert, ripe bananas were baked and served with fresh coconut cream. The fruits that the children liked best - star-apples, guineps, tangerines and other citrus fruit - were also grown on their properties, as were 'ground provisions', typical Jamaican starchy tubers - sweet potatoes, white, yellow and 'nigga' (white with a dark streak) yams and cocos. Sometimes there was fresh fish from Dry Harbour, but not often. Goat, mutton, fresh beef and salt fish were bought in local shops. Beef was corned at home. The children were never allowed to go into the 'native shops'. They had to be protected from being 'brought down', but they were allowed in William's. At first there were no Chinese grocery shops in Stewart Town but then 'a nice Chinaman called William came. He sold gorgeous marshmallows - a ha'penny for one of the Foxy Grandpa brand. The box had layers of them and once, in hot rainy weather, they all melted.' Linda had gone in with her ha'penny and was given the whole box: 'Unforgettable'. Linda was always curious about the workings of the kitchen and backyard. Mother Kelly would shout 'Miss Linda come outa di kitchen. Doan fas' wid me.' But she still managed to see how it was all done. Up the hill behind the house, she made mud-pies, imitating her mother's and Grannie Brown's bread-making. 'Miss Linda garn up di hill, Ma'am. Massa [my father] 'im garn ober hill.' Rosa, the children's nurse, was the favourite. She was 'brown, with hair not straight but not quite Negro'. She came young to the household, when Linda was a baby, and slept in the children's bedroom. She also sometimes acted as butleress, and set and served at table. Linda was not favourite material. She describes herself as being 'fiery and not nice', whereas Beryl, her sister, was gentle and 'nice'. But Rosa loved Linda who was 'unlovable', and she suspects that she was Rosa's favourite too. If Linda was given a sweet, she would run to the pantry to give Rosa a piece of it. She was devastated when Rosa died of typhoid when Linda was only 11 years old. Rosa was probably not yet 30.

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There were two washerwomen: Mother Miller for the heavy stuff - sheets, linen and towels - and Missis Hall for the finer things - dresses, laces and tablecloths. On Monday mornings Miss Mirie would count and list all the items in a blue exercise book. Starch from cassava or arrowroot would be 'drawn' with boiling-hot water, and 'blue' added to whiten the clothes. When there was a water shortage, the two washerwomen collected and tied everything up in the largest white sheets. These huge bundles were carried on their heads to Dornoch River, a mile away uphill, which had clean water. It came from the river that rose in Cave Valley in St Ann and ran underground for 36 miles before it emerged at Dornoch. It was there that the children swam over the flat stone riverbed called Barbecue. But when it rained in Cave Valley this water ran red. The women carried with them large bars of brown or blue soap, which could be a foot long. At the end of the week, the pressed laundry would be returned piled high on metal and wooden trays, and carried into the house on their heads. Busha was the houseboy and then the property manager. Later, when he had retired, he came into Stewart Town to buy homebaked bread from Miss Mirie. He was 'a cut above' the others and would sit on the barbeque at the back of the house and tell the children Anancy stories - Africa-inspired Jamaican folk-tales based on the cunning Anancy spider, and only tellable after dark. Austin also worked in the house and sometimes drove one of the buggies. He lived about four miles from Stewart Town. Frederica and Ida came later and eventually moved to Kingston with Miriam after John died. When they were too old to work, they simply lived on with the family until they died. The dates of their deaths are listed amongst the other family names. When John Stockhausen was alive and the children were small, the family had two four-seater double buggies and a single buggy. There were two coachmen, Henry and David, who drove them and cared for the horses. The children called David, Massa D. He was an ex-jockey and, unlike the other coachman, was extremely agile in spite of his peg-leg (he had been in a riding accident and his broken leg had been amputated). Their favourite horse was Jack. There was also Warwick, the shortest, oldest and tamest, which

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Linda sometimes rode. She 'would not have gone on Joe the chestnut's back for love nor money'. For special occasions these buggies were hired out to other people. In addition to the paid servants, Grannie Brown and Miss Mirie always had a 'slavey' to fetch and carry for them. They only had one at a time and it was usually a young boy, around 11 years old, who fetched wood, swept the yard and ran errands. Little girls did less work. (Stanley daSouza, who had 'nice hair' and brown skin, was privileged and did not have to work. Broad-faced Stanley was not recognised by his poor-white relations, the daSouzas of Jackson Town. But later 'he did well for himself - became a chauffeur in Brown's Town'). The 'slaveys' belonged to the yard. They collected windfall wood on the property and cleaned everyone's shoes. The children's lace-up shoes were taken off after school and given to the 'slavey' to clean for next morning. Mother Kelly would not tolerate having the 'slaveys' in her kitchen, but then the children of the family could not fool with her either. The family was strict but generous with the 'slaveys'. 'No pay - they were more like pets. They received kindness and food - the latter more important than the former.' They came in after Elementary School in the mornings, in time for lunch in the yard, and went to their own homes at night. I asked Linda what the 'slaveys' parents would have thought of the arrangement. She said that they were only too glad to know that their children were being decently fed. 'We played with them, but did not wrap-up. They showed respect. We were brought up to know we did not mix-up or we would have become like one of them - gone native.'

Chapter 5

Education of John Stockhausen's children

The older children in the family were taught to read and write by their mother before they were sent to the local church schools. I have one of their illustrated cloth Alphabet Books, imported from England, in which the letter 'N' is for Negro. Although her sisters were educated at home until they were seven, when Linda was five years old her mother felt that she did not have enough time to devote to her education, so she was sent to learn the basics from Miss Katie Cooper, the Post Mistress at Jackson Town. These were dark days for Linda. She was taken every Monday morning by her father for the four-mile buggy ride to Jackson Town. She hid her misery from him because she did not want to upset her mother, whose friend Miss Katie was. She missed home terribly and more than 90 years later admitted - she said for the first time - how dreadfully unhappy she had been. She slept on the couch in the strange house and the kind dog came to share it with her. Only Annie, the cook, was good to her. Annie had also been sent to Jackson Town. This was Mother Kelly's daughter, who was to be 'felled' by young daSouza. The daSouzas lived near Jackson Town and were friends of the Stockhausens, 'poor-white Portuguese, and not in our sphere but the only whites around'. Soon after the birth of her child, Annie 'went off her head and died'. In Jackson Town, John Stockhausen owned the Post Office near the market and this is where Linda lived with the Post Mistress, Annie and the dog. Behind the Post Office was one of their coffee walks, where Linda was meant to get exercise and fresh air. But it was eerie and dark and she was terrified.

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On Fridays her father fetched her home in the buggy. But after the weekend in Stewart Town, it was back into the buggy on Monday morning for the dreaded return trip to Jackson Town. She never cried. Life at Stewart Town was altogether different. Although they were not allowed to play with the local village children, there were enough of them in the family for most games. Grannie Brown drilled it into them that 'for want of company you pick up trumpery'. With no other white children in the neighbourhood, they had to be protected from being 'brought down by mixing too freely with ordinary people'. (Perhaps all Jamaican white families grew up with these ideas, and I try not to hold it against Grannie Brown, who must have been particularly sensitive on this score. Even in my own generation, nearly half a century later, this was never spelt out but practised nonetheless.) The message must have got through, because once when Ivan and Dodie were being taken for a walk by their nanny, some of the village children started to tease them. Ivan, aged seven, said 'Leave us alone. We are not Negroes, you know. We are Mamee's children.' The nanny found it a huge joke and he was never allowed to live it down - either by his family or the servants. But, as Linda said, this is the way they were brought up.1 The barbecues at the back of the house and the hill beyond were their territory. Once, to frighten the servants, they collected pieces of broken glass, then lay my father, the youngest and lightest in weight, on his back on the stone barbecue with his arms and legs outstretched. They outlined his body with broken glass and then carefully lifted him out by his arms and legs. That night their moonshine duppy shimmered in the light of the full moon. Sometimes, as a privilege and a treat, Linda was allowed to help in their store across the road, but only to fetch reels of thread - a gill reel (three-farthings each), a penny reel or a quattie reel. The largest were four-penny reels. She was not allowed to take money from the till-drawer under the counter and anyway was too small to reach it. Her mother would sometimes help in the store where blue denim cloth for men's shirts was sold, as well as lace and women's dress materials, and other 'dry goods'.

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6. Linda Stockhausen (1898-1995) growing up in Stewart Town c.1915.

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Although their father was always busy, on a Saturday or Sunday they would sometimes go with him in the double buggy to visit either his brother Joseph in Duncans or his mother and sister Carrie in Ulster Spring. Trips to Ulster Spring created great excitement. The drive there was beautiful; on the approaches to the steep hills called the Alps, they would all have to get out and walk so as not to tire the horses. Unlike her cousin Enid, who sometimes went with them, Linda looked forward to getting down to walk through this superb countryside. All the grandchildren loved going to Ulster Spring, but it seems that their mother stayed at home. Another treat for the younger children was being taken by their father to Falmouth. On these buying trips, the children would be left at Old Mass Ken's house while their father handled his business in the town. Mass Ken had not completely retired. He made and bottled guava jelly at home. There were rooms full of shelves of guava jelly, in glass jars with tin lids. The children's mouths watered, but although Mass Ken was a kind man he never offered a spoonful or a bottle to take home. I was amused to see in an article about Jamaica's stand at the 1992 Expo at Seville in Spain that guava jelly was the first item mentioned in connection with his descendants' exhibit. Both parents brought back books 'for the bairns' when they went to Kingston. These included French plays and Don Quixote. Miriam was an avid reader, so the shelves in the drawing-room were full of books. A great event for the family was when a wind-up gramophone with a huge horn loudspeaker arrived from Falmouth on the muledrawn cart, which brought supplies for the family and for the store. It was Miss Mirie who had the ideas for up-to-date additions to their family life. She had persuaded their father to order it. Records came too - Italian street songs and operettas. It was the first 'flatrecord' player in the area. Miriam was a clever wife. Their father presented it to the family as if it were entirely his doing - and their mother looked pleased and said nothing. Linda said that he was a gentle soul. 'There was never a wry word between my parents. But he did not have Harold's [her brother, my father's] zip or sense of humour.'

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The older boys all took the entrance examinations for Jamaica College, considered the best boy's school in the island, and were all awarded scholarships. A railway line between Ewarton and Kingston had been opened and, at the start of each school term, a roasted chicken would be packed into the largest buggy, along with the boys and the younger children, and their father would drive them the 40 miles to Ewarton for the schoolboys to catch the Kingston train. Real school started for Linda in 1905. Westwood High School, a secondary school for girls, had been founded in 1882, through the efforts of the Reverend W.M. Webb, the Baptist Minister of Stewart Town, and with the help of some Baptist ladies in England. Webb's aim was to provide a completely unsegregated private school for girls. It soon became non-sectarian with a board of trustees representing the various Protestant denominations. All efforts to establish schools on the island had failed until far into the nineteenth century, but their intention, of course, had been for the education of the children of colonists. No mention is made of a need to educate the children of slaves. In some of the few early Church of England schools, each pupil was allotted a personal slave. For two centuries, those who could afford it sent their children (often illegitimate as well as legitimate) 'home', that is to Great Britain, for their schooling, and many of these young Jamaican boys acquired a good education; several graduated from Oxford University. The girls presumably were taught nothing. [In 1740]... learning is here at the lowest Ebb, there was no publick school in the whole Island, neither do they seem fond of the thing. Several large Donations have been made for such Uses, but have never taken Effect... The Office of the Teacher is looked upon as contemptible and no Gentleman keeps Company with one of that character... 'Tis a Pity, in a Place like this, where the Means could so easily be afforded, [that] something of a publick Nature should not be done for the Advantage of Posterity... There are indeed several Gentlemen who are well acquainted with Learning, in some of its more valuable Branches, but these are few, and the Gentility seem to have a greater Affection for the modish Vice of Gaming than the Belles

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Lettres, and love a Pack of Cards better than the Bible. To talk of a Homer, a Virgil or a Tully or a Demosthenes, is quite unpolite, and it cannot be otherwise: for a Boy, till the Age of Seven or Eight, diverts himself with the Negroes, acquires their broken way of talking, their Manners of Behaviour and all the Vices which these unthinking Creatures can teach... Some of the ladies read, they all dance a great deal, coquet much, dress for Admirers - Tis a thousand Pities they do not improve their Minds as well as their Bodies: they would then be charming Creatures indeed. Then in 1817, ... there is no establishment provided by this Island for the education of sons of gentlemen. (Source unknown) Even in 1877 the Governor of the island was writing back to England about the need for secondary education. This he defined as being 'for the encouragement of education of a higher grade among those classes of the community which would value it, if placed within their reach, but whose means do not enable them to send their children to Europe for the purpose of obtaining it'. But within 20 years, enormous progress had been made. The Government followed the Wesleyan and other churches in establishing elementary and secondary schools in population centres where they were most needed. However, according to my aunt Linda, the Baptist Minister of Stewart Town had been deeply shocked when Miss Mattie, the dark-skinned daughter of a boasified (proud), highly respected local family, had been refused a place at the exclusive school for white girls in Falmouth run by the daughters of the Reverend William Knibb (the most distinguished of the early Baptist missionaries and emancipators in Jamaica, who had fought so hard for the rights of the slaves). Miss Mattie's case had been the main motivation behind Webb's founding of a private school where coloured middle-class girls would be welcomed, and in 1882 Westwood was the first of its kind in Jamaica.2

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The Baptists were disliked for snobbish reasons. They were considered 'black lovers'. In their turn, the Baptists hated the 'Anglish' Church of England for being the 'bakkra' (white people's) church. (The Baptists, and particularly their envoy William Knibb, had worked actively for Emancipation, whereas the Anglican Church was the church of the 'establishment', which included the plantocracy and petty officialdom.) Jamaica was and still is a complicated country. Linda's sisters, Doris and Beryl, were already pupils at Westwood when Linda arrived and, although she was always getting into trouble, she loved it there. The girls would be woken every morning by the cow horn. This was blown at 5 a.m. throughout Jamaica to awaken the agricultural labourers. In all West Indian islands this was also sometimes done by the blowing of a conch shell. Rosa, the nurse, would come to Linda's rescue as she tried to lace her hated high boots and get dressed. She would not graduate into low shoes for school until she was 13; until then there were frequent trips into Brown's Town to be measured by the shoemaker, Mr Fullerton. The shoemaker in Stewart Town was not considered good enough. On Sundays she wore ready-made shoes with a strap attached to the back and buttoned in front. Breakfast would be home-grown coffee with tinned sweetened condensed milk, and bread made by their mother, spread with butter either bought or made at home. They set off for school in the dark, carrying kerosene lanterns, which blew out in the wind - here again Rosa came to the rescue. Westwood was a mile away and when it rained they were taken by one of the coachmen in the buggy. (Byron, Linda's faithful manservant from 1965 until she died, told me that not long before her death a man turned up at her Kingston home in Lady Musgrave Road and said that he had sometimes carried the lantern for the daughters coming home from Westwood at the end of the day. He must also have been a child at the time.) When the children visited friends or the dentist in Duncans or Brown's Town, they were taken by buggy in the care of one of the coachmen, David or Henry. David wore a cloth cap, and drove the buggy with his peg-leg stuck outside. He told the children stories

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and they loved it when he was their driver; although Linda did not like it when he made her hold the horse's tail up in the air when it rained. To keep the children dry, David would leap down and fix metal brackets to the sides of the buggy to hold in place the thick, smelly oilskin protective sides. All their buggies had tops to which these could be attached in wet weather. One day on the Brown's Town road as they were passing Retirement, a property owned by a gentleman, a 'white man', called Mr Fox, David told them that Mr Fox was an 'outside' son of King Edward VII. He had a wife, and that day, strung along the fence, as the buggy passed, were numerous 'light-skinned' children. David slowed down and remarked: 'What a nuffly likkle Fox dem' (What a lot of little Foxes). But what all the children liked best were the Revivalist Meetings across the road on the Square. Sometimes, during the afternoon, a Brother or Shepherd would arrive and set up his lantern poles as the sign that a meeting would take place that night. He would be a visiting preacher from another village in the parish, ten or more miles away. Sometimes he would travel alone, but often he would have a following. These visits tended to coincide with a good breadfruit crop in a particular district. The preacher could always find free board and lodging in the village - but this would often also coincide with the loss of a pair of shoes or a shirt by his hosts. When the day's work was done, a crowd would gather slowly as people came into the Square. Women dressed in white with white turbans on their heads; countrywomen with their long coloured skirts caught up in a roll around their hips. Just before joining the others, they would pull the plantain bark sash from around their waists and give their hips a brisk swing and shimmy to shake down their skirts. If they had a pair of shoes they would bend down to put them on. Their heads were always covered - as much to keep off the 'night dew' as out of respect for the Shepherd. Many came with lanterns made of a tin can with kerosene oil and a burning wick on top of a pole. They would form a circle just opposite the children's house in front of the store's piazza on the other side of the road. By now the Stockhausen children would be leaning out of their dining-room windows trying to catch the words of the songs -

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Linda little guessing that they would play such an important role in her life. The children were not allowed downstairs, but Grannie Brown always sent out 'collection' with one of the servants. Their great hope was to see someone 'get the spirit' before they were sent to bed. One of the Sisteren (or perhaps even one of the Brethren) would whirl around to the drums or beat of the music and exhale in quick succession - 'huh - huh - huh...' With any luck, she would collapse on the ground with eyes turned up showing the whites and foaming at the mouth. The obligatory two boring Sunday services at St Thomas's Anglican Church could not compete with the Revivalist nightmeetings in the Square. But Harvest Festivals in the church were fun. All the country people brought in yams, coconuts, bananas and anything they could spare to decorate the church, and there would be clumps of sugar-cane tied to the altar rails and sometimes chickens scratching around the floor. When the limb of a tangerine tree, heavily laden with ripe fruit, was torn down by the wind, their father John gave it to the Anglican Church for their Harvest Festival decoration. Another happy memory of church was of Miss Katie Keen, the Sunday school teacher, 'a light-brown woman with blond hair', leading the Sunday school girls around the church singing 'Brightly, brightly waves the banner'. Linda was first in the line behind Miss Keen and tried hard not to laugh as the tall, furry feathers on Miss Keen's hat waved from side to side. Most Sundays for the smaller children were made even more tedious because, in addition to the two church services and Sunday school, after Matins the officiating parsons were often invited to their house for lunch. The Methodist minister, who came from Falmouth, had to be entertained and, since he was long-winded, lunch was kept waiting until he arrived with their father. The starving children were told by their Anglican mother, whose Morning Service had long since ended, 'while they are in the spirit, we are in the flesh'. The Anglican minister came also, but Linda said that the Baptist minister, the Reverend William Webb, who lived at Woodlands in

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Stewart Town, 'did not need entertaining because he lived locally. He was a Jamaica brown man, son of a local overseer; although Mrs Webb, his wife, had whiter skin. Her sister Mrs Arnet could pass for white.'

As a child my father, the youngest, was much alone. His brothers were away at boarding school and although the girls played with him and plaited his long hair, he seems to have preferred being alone on the hilly land behind their house. The servants called him Massa, as all the family and their servants continued to do throughout his life. He often wandered away, and when his mother wanted to know where he was she knew that they would say 'Massa gawn ober hill, Ma'am', for that was where he spent most of his time. It was probably there that he developed his great love for nature, especially for trees, insects, birds and different types of rock. He knew many stars and constellations by name. All this he tried to pass on to us when we were young, growing up in Kingston. In Stewart Town there was a deaf and dumb child who often came to the backyard to watch the children play. He was the same age as my father and they called him Dummy. I knew Dummy. He had followed my father to Kingston when he went to work there as a young man. No one knew where he lived in the city or how he had found my father, but he always turned up wherever my father worked, and polished and kept an eye on his car. At least once a month, he would arrive at our home in St Andrew (upper Kingston). Every time we moved house, which was often, my father would write our new address on a piece of paper and give it to Dummy. He could neither read or write, hear nor speak, but he always found us. And if he did not come we missed him. The cook would give him a good lunch where he sat on the kitchen steps. He spent the rest of the day in the backyard with the servants or watching us play, sometimes with grunts trying to make himself understood. My father and he communicated with strange sounds and signs. He would give Dummy some money and before dark he would set off for wherever he considered to be home.

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He once disappeared for several months, both from my father's office in downtown Kingston and from our home on Sundays. We were worried about him and indeed he had been hit by a car and taken to hospital. We watched him grow old and grey before his time - then he stopped coming. But by then my father was not much at home either.

Chapter 6

1907 Earthquake. 1909 Typhoid epidemic

On 14 January 1907, when Linda was eight years old and my father six, Jamaica experienced a terrible earthquake - the worst since the destruction of Port Royal in 1692, and all the more frightening because every Jamaican grows up with the story of Port Royal built into their memory of deepest fears and insecurities. Port Royal had once been Jamaica's most important seventeenthcentury town and was, at that time, considered the most beautiful seaport in the Americas. Wealth and trade flowed into the port as well as the spoils from buccaneer attacks on Spanish vessels carrying gold, silver and jewels back to Europe. These attacks were sometimes made with the Governor's approval when it suited English foreign policy, but continued even when it did not. Port Royal became the base for contraband trade with South America and was considered the storehouse and treasury of the West Indies. The town was also known for debauchery, drinking, gambling and prostitution and was referred to as the Babylon of the West. By 1670, it had 800 well-built, two- or three-storied stone or brick houses (300 more than New York) and a rapidly growing population. Two thousand buildings were squashed into this 'wickedest city on earth, when on the 7th June, 1692, while the island's Council was sitting in Port Royal, in the space of two minutes a violent earthquake plunged half the town into the sea, killing many of the most important colonists and over two thousand residents. Ships at anchor were sucked up onto the ruined town and the hospital and main church disappeared under the sea. When the water settled one could clearly see the houses underneath it. Most appeared to be

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intact although only the tops of the highest buildings could be seen above sea-level, amongst the chimneys and masts of sloops' (source unknown). Port Royal had become an island separated from the five-mile spit of land, which divided the open sea from the harbour of Kingston. Horrific eyewitness accounts spoke of the land opening and closing, swallowing some people up to their heads, which in the following days were eaten by dogs. Many others drowned by the inrush of water, and for days bodies were seen floating in the sea. One never gets accustomed to earthquakes. Slight ones are felt every few years in Jamaica, but each time Port Royal is always there in people's minds. They remember the story of Lewis Galdy, the Frenchman, who was swallowed by one earthquake shock, then spewed out again from the earth into the sea and miraculously saved by swimming until he was rescued by a boat. Of all nature's violent phenomena, and Jamaica has its share, earthquakes - even the thought of them - instill the most fear. (After living in Europe for more than 40 years, I still hate sleeping in a room with closed doors, and always make sure no obstructions lie in my exit path.) In 1907, Stewart Town did not have the worst of the earthquake, but Kingston, the island's capital on the south coast, was devastated. Ivan, the eldest son of John and Miriam Stockhausen, was working with the United Fruit Company in Harbour Street in Kingston. No news came through to the country for several days as the telegraph wires were down. The family was worried, so John packed their largest buggy with food, clothes and anything useful they could think of, and drove the 90 miles to Kingston. Seventeenyear-old Ivan had survived by jumping from a first floor window of his office building.

In 1909, when my father was about nine years old, his father drove him, before dawn, to St Ann's Bay, 25 miles away, to sit the entrance examination for Jamaica College in Kingston. Following in the footsteps of his three elder brothers, Harold was awarded a scholarship.

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His eldest brother Ivan had already left the school but Eric, 'the brilliant' one, had been asked to stay on as a teacher. Owen, at 15, would have been one of the older boys there when Harold arrived at his new school. All the brothers had been to the excellent local primary school in Stewart Town, run by a pillar of the Anglican Church. Prior to that they had been taught at home by their mother. She had taught Harold how to read, using the Daily Gleaner. He also went to a 'respectable, though coloured' tutor, who had several pupils in the town. In 1909, two years after the earthquake, tragedy hit the family itself. Beryl, the fifth child and second daughter, caught typhoid fever. She was 13 years old. Linda, then 11, was sent away to stay at her uncle Joseph Stockhausen's house in Duncans, in the hope that she would be spared. Word came to Duncans that the doctors said that Beryl was on the mend, but shortly afterwards she died. Linda was shattered; Beryl was her closest friend. Worse was to follow. The adored nanny, Rosa, also developed the fever and, barely three weeks after Beryl, while Linda was still at Duncans, she died. Poor Linda was devastated, her grief compounded by guilt at missing Rosa even more than her sister. After the earthquake, Ivan had been transferred to the United Fruit Company's office in Port Antonio on the north-east coast of the island. When Beryl died he wrote moving letters home that were full of encouragement. Strangely mature letters for a 19 year old, but as Linda says, 'He was a man.' At the turn of the century, Port Antonio was the main shipping port for bananas and the centre of a new industry, tourism. In 1871, a Yankee shipper, Lorenzo Dow Baker, had sailed into Port Antonio with a North American cargo of salt fish, flour and pork. He took on coconuts and 1,450 stems of bananas with which he cleared a profit of $2,000 in Boston. Returning to Jamaica, he bought up defunct sugar estates in the area, including one-third of Port Antonio's waterfront. He formed the Boston Fruit Company, which co-ordinated the supply, shipping and distribution of Jamaican bananas, and operated steamers to Baltimore, Philadelphia and other East Coast ports. Within ten years the Company was shipping nearly three million bunches of Jamaican bananas annually.

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Dow Baker had the idea of persuading other Americans to visit Jamaica on the outward journey of his empty ships, and for these first tourists, the first American-style hotel was built at Titchfield, on the promontory overlooking Navy Island and the two harbours of Port Antonio. (Among the few remaining family papers, there is a letter dated 14 January, 1910, addressed to Ivan from the Parochial Board of Portland, thanking him 'and several other gentlemen' for helping to fight the fire that destroyed the Titchfield Hotel and threatened the town of Port Antonio. It was subsequently rebuilt and may still be there today - a wonderful wooden structure with wide verandahs surrounding every floor.) In 1899, Dow Baker merged with some smaller Central American firms and became Managing Director of the Jamaica Division of the United Fruit Company of New Jersey; and so started what was to become the huge banana industry in Latin America and, on a much smaller scale, in the Caribbean.

In the early twentieth century, boats provided the main coastal communication in the island and the Stockhausen family in Stewart Town enjoyed their advantages. Supplies for John Stockhausen's businesses usually arrived through the port of Falmouth, but Ivan used United Fruit Company's boats for sending letters and presents for the family through the smaller ports of Rio Bueno and Dry Harbour (now Discovery Bay), which were closer to Stewart Town. The family home had never had ice, so Ivan arranged to ship several blocks on a banana boat calling at Rio Bueno. Before leaving Port Antonio they had been carefully packed in straw and crocus1 bags, and were taken by mule cart for the final eight miles of the journey to Stewart Town. He was the hero of the family long before he went off to fight and die in the First World War. The two Grannies were still alive in 1909. Ivan often sent messages for them in his letters, and wrote of his concern for Grannie Stock, who was probably not well at the time. He was devoted to his parents, family and servants, and loved by them all. Linda's first cousin Enid, daughter of Joseph Stockhausen in Duncans, began to take the place of Beryl in Linda's life. She also

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went to Westwood High School and during the week stayed at the home of her Stewart Town cousins. She was to have a very different life from Linda's. Although she too never married, instead of going to Kingston as a young woman to earn her living, she became a lady of leisure. After Jamaica College, her brother, Joe Jr, went to McGill University in Canada to become a doctor, then returned to Jamaica to practise medicine in Kingston, but Enid spent her life at Stockville, the family home in Duncans. After their parents died, Enid stayed on at Stockville, alone except for her maid. She did good works in the community and for the church, and made beautiful cakes and spun-sugar candy for charity and for her friends. Her nephew, Paul, asked me in 1992 if I knew why his aunt Enid had never married. It was tricky and perhaps tactless to ask unmarried Linda - but I did. All her adult life Enid had been in love with one of the grandsons of her grandmother (the muchmarried Maggie de Cambre), but they were too closely related to face the scandal and the possible risk to any offspring of the match. When Enid died she left her house, Stockville, for the duration of his lifetime, to her cousin, the man she had loved all her life. Linda also spoke of how he had nearly died on the day of Enid's funeral and how she, Linda, had saved his life. He had been rehearsing his eulogy when he collapsed in agony onto the floor, bleeding from the mouth, and quickly became unconscious. Linda knelt beside him and prayed, commanding him to recover. He was taken to hospital and, in spite of numerous tests, nothing was found to be wrong with him. Just how well kept Enid's secret had been was further confirmed when her other nephew, Bobby, recently took me to Duncans to visit their family burial plot behind the Methodist Church and to see Stockville. He told me a different version of the funeral story. In this it was the son of Enid's cousin, to whom he referred casually as a 'distant relative', who had collapsed inexplicably. Her nephews had been completely unaware of their aunt's secret. The family of Enid's love still lives in the house, her nephews having sold or relinquished their interest.

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Linda was in her early teens when, just before the outbreak of the First World War, the Fox Film Company came to Stewart Town to shoot several scenes for their silent movie Daughters of the Gods starring Annette Kellerman, the swimmer, diver and actress. Very close to where the children went swimming at Barbecue, and where their clothes were washed in dry weather, is a place called Riverhead. It was thought to be one of the island's most striking natural phenomena. At the foot of a cliff, a subterranean stream suddenly emerges after running underground for 36 miles, and what were the Cave and Quashie Rivers, here become the Dornock or Rio Bueno. In an old Guide Book, I found the following: 'The Parish gentry were invited to watch the proceedings and sat in deck chairs while the heroine took a 50-foot header into the pool from a platform rigged on top of the cliff.'2 Linda remembered the day vividly. She had told me about it before I read the book. Her mother packed a picnic and rode her horse, while Doris and Linda walked, to Riverhead; they spent the day sitting by the riverbank watching Annette Kellerman diving from a great height and being hoisted back up to the platform; a swing had been made to hang from a tree and time and again she was pulled up by this too. They never saw the film.

Chapter 7

1914-18 War: Ivan and Owen Stockhausen fight for England

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, my uncles Ivan and Owen Stockhausen were among the first Jamaicans to volunteer to fight for England against the Germans. In Frank Cundall's Jamaica's Fart in the Great War, 1914-1918, he wrote that 'Suspicion was naturally aroused as to the action of German residents in the island.'1 Some Jamaican families of German origin had changed their names, but our family (which by then considered itself British) had held on to theirs, perhaps because Grannie Stock had told them that it was a distinguished one to have in Germany.2 Owen joined the 2nd Battalion of the British West India Regiment. After training in Jamaica and some further training in England, in January 1916 he left England on the HMT Marathon bound for Alexandria in Egypt. Before leaving England he saw his brother Ivan, who was also with the West Indian contingent but was hoping to join the Royal Flying Corps. This he did in November 1916. On a postcard from England, Ivan told the family in Jamaica that he 'rather liked the place - except for the MUD'. Young men from Jamaica and the other Caribbean colonies arrived in England ready to fight but with no suitable clothes or preparation for cold weather. More than a quarter fell ill before their training was over; many had already done so on the long sea journey, which sometimes went via Canada to connect with convoys crossing the Atlantic. For many Jamaican soldiers it was the first time that they had been exposed to common childhood diseases such as measles, chicken pox and mumps.

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On 18 March 1916, the 2nd British West India Battalion, composed almost entirely of Jamaicans, was merged with, and became an integral part of, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. On 30 April 1916, Owen wrote home from Egypt to say that he hoped they would be home the following year. According to records of the campaign at the Imperial War Museum in London: 'They had an opportunity to show what they could do in the Expedition from October 1917 in the advance from the marvellous base constructed at Kantara, across the desert of Sinai, through Beersheba, Gaza, Judea, Ludd and Jerusalem, into Mount Ephrain and Sharon, then into Jerico and Amman through Samaria to Damascus and finally into Northern Syria, leading up to the withdrawal of Turkey from the War.' It must have been extraordinary for Owen and the other young soldiers from Jamaica, who had been brought up with these place-names as part of their church-going lives, to find themselves walking through these same biblical towns and desert lands. While part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force on campaign in Palestine, Owen kept a diary written in pencil in a notebook small enough to fit into his uniform pocket: August 9 th 1917 - Took train to El Arish accompanied by Redford and Bullock, and reached Balah at about 19:00 where we slept the night. Next morning left our kit bags at the information bureau and started out to find the 53rd (Division) Headquarters, and after much wandering about for a few hours found the place and got instructions how to find the trenches; marched a few more hours meeting Mr Kelly on the way and after having a drink with him carried on until we met a guide who took Redford and me to Sussex Headquarters and Bullock to the Middlesex. Redford sent to C. Company, I to B. Co. No.l Platoon. Was introduced to Plat. Sgt. Brewer. Went round visiting the trench sentries with him that night and took up my turn for duty as a Sergeant... Afterwards during our stay in the trenches, shared a dugout with Capt. Frost for a few days until he was transferred to

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Battalion Headquarters Staff, when Captain Dumner shared the dugout with me. August 25th - Left trenches and marched to Regents Park by the sea. August 26th - Marched to Bela, arrived at bivouac area at 2 next morning and after a day rest started intense training: weeks of severe strain. October 24th - Marched out of Bela and bivouacked late that night in Wadi Guzza, near Hezla. Rested there till morning of 27th when we marched out past Skalal Sebil and dug an outpost line near Wadi Ranafich [Hanafish]. October 30th - Advanced our line over Wadi Ranafich. Lay in reserve next day and marched to Beersheba on the morning of [Here Owen's diary peters out. The third battle of Gaza was fought from 31 October-7 November 1917. Beersheba was captured on 31 October.] November 1st - and in the morning marched back to near the viaduct at Herera station. November 2nd - Marched out to join up with the 10th Division then dug an outpost line; got relieved that evening and lay in the Wadi that night. November 3rd - Marched out due NE and Kent Queens & Sussex Middlesex came across enemy's outpost at 14:00; troops suffering from fatigue and lack of water. The Queens attacked from the right and the Kent on the left; Sussex and Middlesex in reserve. The Queens drove him off one ridge only to be caught in a sharp enfilade fire which cost many casualties including the Colonel who was shot in the chest. MG fire from Taube added to the list. Taube eventually forced to land in its own lines by our M.gunfire.

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While lying behind a ridge in reserve was hit by a sniper or stray bullet through the thigh, no pain only slight numbness; got dressed and bound up and helped by one of our RAMC. Got to the bottom of the hill, where I lay in the company (of) 5 or 6 others till next morning, waiting for conveyance to the dressing station. November 4th - Camel stretchers arrived early in the morning, had a rough ride for half a mile to the dressing station, amidst the wounded who were arriving faster than they could be received. My turn came at last about 6 o'clock in that evening. Started for Beersheba in a motor ambulance over a narrow unfamiliar tract in the dark: had a night of it: running into ditches and holes and having to be dug out. Had many a narrow escape from overturning and eventually the ambulance dropped into a deep ditch and couldn't be got out. Slept there till morning when another ambulance arrived and took us to the third dressing station. November 5th - Milk and biscuits and then went on to Beersheba Hospital. Spent a horrible day among the flies, watching the long line of wounded arrive and waiting my turn to go out. Before I left, Walters of my platoon walked up to my stretcher, told me that Battn had just arrived at Beersheba and informed me it was common report in the Bttn. that Ivan had been brought down in flames on the Salonika Front. Laughed at him, but felt awfully anxious. Left at dusk by motor ambulance for Imara. Rough ride, arriving at 35 Clearing Station late that night; hot cocoa much appreciated. November 6th - Spent in 35th, a very [dis]agreeable day. Left about 3pm by hospital train en route to Cairo. Only a few lines remain in Owen's war diary. He applied for a discharge from hospital on 9 November and was sent to a convalescent hospital near Cairo.

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On November 25th - took train to the base at Alexandria. Met a few of the old 2nd Battn. Boys. Spent a miserable period and was glad on [Again the diary stops in mid-sentence.] December 3rd — to take train [to] Battn. December 5 th - Arrived in Carm [KARM?] where the Battalion was stationed. December 6th - Moved with Hdqrs and D. Coy. to Beersheba and rejoined my Company. December 7th — Took over duties of A/CSM (Acting Company Sergeant-Major) from Sgt. Scott. 1918 -January 2nd - Left Beersheba with Coy and D. Coy and Hdqrs to KARM. January 3rd - D. Coy and Hdqrs left by train for RAFA. At the end of the war, Owen joined the Officer Cadet Battalion in Cairo. He 'got through the course all right, but we are not to get commissions. They are demobilising us at once and we expect to leave Egypt within a few weeks; from England my passage will be paid to Jamaica, so three cheers for old Jamaica.' He was discharged on 7 March 1919, having been granted a (temporary)

Of the British West India Regiment, 135 died of their wounds or were killed in action. Over 1,000 died of sickness, pneumonia or chest and lung trouble. The following entry appears in Frank Cundall's book on the war: Ivan Lancelot, the first born of John and Miriam Stockhausen, joined up in 1915, aged 25. He arrived in England as part of the British West India Regiment and was gazetted Second Lieutenant

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in December 1915. He became attached to the Royal Flying Corps (No. 17 Squadron) in November 1916; gazetted Flying Officer March 7th, 1917; gazetted Lieutenant (BWI Regiment and R.F.C.) July 1st, 1917. Killed in aerial combat in Salonika on October 3rd, 1917. He is buried in Plot VII Row B9 in the Struma Military Cemetery near Orljac, about 71 km from Salonika. The cemetery has graves of 928 soldiers and airmen from the United Kingdom and of one British Officer of the BWI Regiment. I have not been able to find any of Ivan's letters home, apart from the postcard announcing his arrival in England and an undated telegram saying that he had arrived safely in Salonika. The family were sent his monogrammed silver cigarette and vesta cases, and silver visiting card case with a few of his cards still inside. They were also sent his scorched photographs of his flying crew.

7. Lt Ivan Stockhausen (middle) with the Royal Flying Corps in Salonika and Egypt. He promised to send 'one of the Avro [a type of aeroplane] soon'.

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At the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon I was shown a similar sort of aeroplane to the BE2E in which he was shot down - a tiny thing, seemingly made of parchment and wire, with two tiny wicker seats, one behind the other. I was also shown the handwritten Casualty Cards (photocopies not allowed) with notification of him missing, and then of his death, by a message dropped by the Germans. He was shot down behind enemy lines during aerial combat, near Seres in Macedonia. Second Lieutenant C.V.M. Watson of the Lothian and Border Horse, attached to the Royal Flying Corps, was with him as an Observer. He also died. The Struma River flows through Bulgaria southward to the Greek frontier and then south-eastwards into the Aegean Sea. From the Allied Base at Salonika a road runs north-east across the river Seres, and it was this road that the Right Wing of the Allied Army used for the movement of troops and supplies during the Salonika Campaign. The 'Struma Front' was the eastern half of the British Front. No. 17 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps was formed in February 1915 for service overseas. Based in the Western Desert, Suez and Heliopolis, they were equipped with BE2Cs, Bristol Scouts and DH2s for Escort duties. In June 1916, it was decided to withdraw No. 17 Squadron from Egypt for service in Salonika, where an Allied advance was pending. In July 1916 the whole Squadron was transferred to Salonika as the first Royal Flying Corps unit in that area and flew daily reconnaissance flights. Ivan Stockhausen became attached to No. 17 Squadron in November 1916 as a Flying Officer. From March 1917 the Squadron flew its own bombing raids in addition to its army work. The Allies were not strong enough to have any success, as the army carried the dead weight of men suffering from chronic malaria, but that autumn in the Struma Valley activity in the air was maintained with regular bombing attacks. Although the Allies tended to allocate inferior aeroplanes to secondary theatres of war, the Germans had no such policy. Major James Hawks, OBE, wrote about his time with No. 17 Squadron:

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In less than a fortnight I received orders to report to No. 17 Squadron in Salonika. A pilot took me up, and because I didn't realize he was stunting viciously, my attachment as an Observer in the RFC was sanctioned... An exciting time I had in all respects while an Observer with the 17 Squad. One experience was being shelled out of the aerodrome at Orljak... Six months as an Observer made me all the more keen to become a Pilot. To my delight I received orders to proceed to Egypt for training... I was sorry to leave 17th Squadron. The pilots taught me a good deal as regards airmanship and fortitude. I had the greatest admiration for the manner in which they stood the nervous strain without cracking... Later on the Squadron was issued with the SE5A type of plane and I was overjoyed when I heard they had chased every enemy aircraft out of the sky. I wished I'd been there to see it. (Imperial War Museum Library) The death of Ivan, the eldest son and brother, marked every member of the family for the rest of their lives. I have not been able to discover whether his German grandmother was still alive. In April she had been described as strong. She would have been close to her 90th birthday. Miriam, his mother, wore a locket with his photograph on a chain around her neck until her own death 30 years later. My aunt Linda, who was the last sibling to survive, had a photograph of Ivan in a silver frame on her dressing-table until she died in 1995, and on a bookcase in her bedroom was another large framed photograph of Ivan with his flying colleagues beside his aeroplane. In the small collection of his belongings I found a letter of sympathy, dated 9 February 1918, addressed to Ivan's father, John Stockhausen, in Stewart Town. It was from someone who relays a message sent by his own son then in Palestine. 'Poor old Stockhausen. I am really very sorry to hear of his death. I must say he was one of my most sincere friends. Give his people my sincere condolence and say that I feel sure that he died a most noble death. I am certain that he must have given a good account of himself before his end. Whilst I was at Alexandria I was told by men of the

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Flying School that he was one of the smartest instructors at Abyssia, and I know that lots of chaps had a very high opinion of him.' There is a plaque in his memory in St Thomas's Anglican Church in Stewart Town, and a joint one, with the other ex-pupils lost in the War, in the Chapel of Jamaica College in Kingston. With the death of beloved Grannie Brown in August of the previous year, the family lost two of its most important members in too short a time. The spirit seemed to go out of them all.

Chapter 8

The Clerk family Hope Glen, Kingston

By the end of the First World War in 1918, the younger generation of Stewart Town Stockhausens had begun to make their lives in Kingston. In 1893, my paternal grandmother Miriam's childhood friend Lilian Cooke of Stewart Town had married my maternal great-uncle, the poet and musician Astley Clerk, who lived in Kingston. He was later one of 15 (now maybe more) Jamaican poets commemorated in Poet's Corner at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Hope in the foothills of the Blue Mountains. Astley Clerk and his brother, my grandfather Robert, owned two large, colonial-style Victorian houses next door to each other in Elgin Road near Cross Roads, which was then still part of a pleasant residential neighbourhood in Kingston. (Elgin Road had been named after Lord Elgin, who was Governor of Jamaica from 1842-46. He was the son of the donor of the British Museum's Elgin marbles.) Astley and Lil's house, Hope Glen, was very large for a childless couple and it became a home-from-home for Ivan, Eric, Owen and my father Harold, while they were boarders at Jamaica College, an arrangement no doubt made by their mother with Lil. Later when they started to work in Kingston they continued to live at Hope Glen on a nominal rent-paying basis. Aunt Lil, as she was known to everyone, was an understanding and affectionate friend to them all. Their house was always full of young people - Lil's relations, the Stockhausens from Stewart Town and Duncans; and Robert and Evelyn Clerk's family and children from Glen Hurst next door, where the atmosphere was much less relaxed than at Hope Glen.

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8. Hope Glen in Elgin Road, Kingston - home of Astley and Lilian Clerk.

Robert Clerk, my maternal grandfather, was an ultra conservative, religious, stern, dull accountant with the habits and standards of a Victorian Englishman - apart from hawking and spitting into his spittoon, a habit which more likely came from time spent in Cuba. Robert and Astley were the younger sons of Robert Thomas Clerk (senior), Accountant and Auditor of Montego Bay in St James parish, and in 1861 Manager of Jarrett's Wharf in Falmouth. Their mother was Martha Jane (Sally) Campbell of Westmoreland and Falmouth. She was a white Jamaican, of Scottish descent, daughter of Duncan Campbell, 'Harness and Saddle Maker' of Falmouth in Trelawny. Martha Campbell was born circa 1838, and her father Duncan Campbell was born in 1813 or earlier. All this we know from family documents. The Sunday Gleaner magazine of 29 April 1990 mentions a Charles Campbell, who may have been a member of the same family. He was a wealthy dry goods storekeeper of Falmouth in 1809 and owner of Florence Hall, an estate near Falmouth, where he owned 262 slaves and 198 head of cattle. Romantic family speculation suggests that the Duncan Campbells of Falmouth may have been connected to Duncan Campbell, the important West Indian trader and ship-owner, a

THE CLERK FAMILY - HOPE GLEN, KINGSTON

. Harold Stockhausen, my father, as a young man in Kingston, living with the Clerks at Hope Glen.

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Scotsman with large interests in Jamaica, who had property in the parish of Hanover and elsewhere on the island before 1780. He offered Captain Bligh, who was married to his niece, a command in the West Indies merchant trade, and 'Before he [Bligh] left the Isle of Man he was able to move his family out of their lodgings and into one of the neatest Houses in Town for eight guineas a year.' It was Bligh who brought breadfruit plants to Jamaica for the first time in an effort to find an easily obtainable food source for the slaves. John, a son of Duncan, sailed with Bligh who 'plied the seas between the West Indies and England on Campbell's ships between 1783 and 1787'. There is an illustration of Lucea Harbour in Hanover captioned 'where Bligh worked as Duncan Campbell's agent for some months'.1 (Bligh was born in 1754.)

Unlike the skies, the picture of family forebears is always cloudy in Jamaica, obscured I suspect by the deliberate suppression of embarrassing facts. Robert Thomas Clerk (senior)'s grandson, Ernest, shortly before he died in 1998, told a cousin that his grandfather was the brother of Aurora Clerk, who had married Charles Gunter, J.P., of Welsh ancestry, a descendant of Sir Peter Gunter of Tregunter in the County of Brecknoch Knight in Wales, with a family traceable back to 1088.2 At least 15 years earlier, my uncle Ernest had sent me a Gunter family tree with Aurora Clerk's name underlined, but with no mention that she was my great-greataunt. I had only just begun to collect information for this book and had not learnt the dangers of waiting too long to ask questions. In the announcement of Aurora's marriage, she is curiously referred to not as anyone's daughter but as the sister of the late Alexander George Clerk, Solicitor of Montego Bay. In a notice3 of Alexander George Clerk's premature death in 1866, aged 27, again unusually, no father is mentioned: he leaves 'his aged mother, wife and other relatives' to 'long mourn the loss they have sustained'. There are indications of his being of a family of some means. In 1860 (aged 20) he was on the voters list, one of only 105 names for the parish of St James which at that time had a population of approximately 20,000. He also rose to be Senior Warden in the

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Friendly Lodge of Montego Bay. Robert Thomas Clerk (senior), and my grandfather, Robert Thomas (junior), were also Freemasons. All my research and detective work seemed to lead to James Otway Clerk of Falmouth as being the silent progenitor to all these Clerks, but perhaps the most convincing proof was seen, unexpectedly, during a visit to Jamaica in 1999. At the Barnet Estate Great House, now called Belfield, on the eastern outskirts of Montego Bay, I was confronted with a portrait of a rather stern, quite plain, woman who bore a remarkable resemblance to my grandfather Robert Thomas Clerk and to my uncle Ernest. I was so startled that I asked an English member of our group if he noticed anything unusual about the portrait. Without hesitating he said, perhaps rather ungallantly, 'Well, only that she must be a member of your family.' My mother had often mentioned that we were connected to the Kerr-Jarrett family of Montego Bay, and on the few occasions when we were together on the north coast of the island she would sometimes point to land on the eastern side of Montego Bay and say that it had family associations. I was a child and cannot now remember her exact words. At Belfield, I was told that the portrait was of Adela Isabel Clerk, wife of the Hon. Francis Moncrieffe Kerr-Jarrett, owner of the Barnet Sugar Estate and its Great House. She was the daughter of John Hibgame Clerk, whose parents were James Otway Clerk of Falmouth and Eliza Lemonius of Stettin, Trelawny. James Otway Clerk was born in Edinburgh in 1811/12. He emigrated from Scotland in 1834, and lived in Jamaica until his death in 1874. Described as a journalist, he was the proprietor and editor of the Trelawny & Public Advertiser published in Falmouth. There were two sons (possibly three) of the marriage: John Hibgame Clerk born in 1852 and George Otway Clerk in 1864. This younger son died in 1869 at Florence Hall in Trelawny. Daughters were seldom mentioned in old documents, but two more sons are mentioned in a Kerr-Jarrett family tree, one of whom also died young. James Otway was clearly hard-working and successful, but a great deal of property came to him through his marriage to Eliza Lemonius.4

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10. James Otway Clerk of Edinburgh (1811-74) arrived in Jamaica in 1834. He was a journalist, then proprietor and editor of the Trelawny & Public Advertiser, published in Falmouth.

Shortly after my visit to Jamaica in 1999,1 met a descendant of the Kerr-Jarretts in London. No further proof of the connection emerged, but I was given an extremely generous supply of information and photographs of the family. Once again, among the photographs one stood out by its resemblance to my grandfather. It

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was titled I.O. Clerk and I felt sure that this was the missing link. When I enquired where this man fitted into their family tree, I was told that during Victorian times, Js were often written as Is, and that this was a photograph of a painting of James Otway Clerk of Edinburgh and later Falmouth. It would seem that in the years between his arrival in Jamaica in 1834 and his marriage to Eliza Lemonius in 1842 (and possibly even afterwards), James Otway Clerk had a 'marriage', or otherwise longstanding partnership, with a woman of coloured blood. Of this relationship, three children were born: my great-grandfather Robert Thomas Clerk (senior) (1835/36), Alexander George Clerk (1838/39), and Aurora Moore Clerk (c.1842). Their mother must have been an exceptional woman to have held James Otway Clerk's interest and loyalty for so many years, and to have brought up her children so extremely well, without the social recognition of marriage. It seems that this branch of the family lived in or near Montego Bay as well as in Falmoth. Their characteristics are apparently different from those of the later legitimate line. The former are auditors and accountants, writers, orators, poets, musicians, inventors and psychics. The later legitimate line are wealthy property owners and planters, civil servants, administrators, and businessmen.

Of Robert Thomas Clerk and Martha Campbell's children, my grandfather Robert Thomas was the youngest and least interesting of three brothers. They were all born and educated primarily in Montego Bay in the parish of St James in the north-west of the island. There were also two sisters: Kate, who never married, and Llew (Llewellyn) who married Randolph Parkinson. Robert's brother Astley Gunter said that 'from a lad local subjects have ever appealed to me, and from a lad I was reared in an atmosphere of music'.5 His sister Llewellyn taught piano for years before she married, and all his brother Hopeton's children were musical. At least two Clerks (Astley and his nephew Leslie) had perfect pitch. The Kerr-Jarrett line claim to have no psychic or artistic tendencies.

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The eldest son Hopeton Gillies was born in St James and educated in Montego Bay. Then, after attending the Collegiate School in Kingston, he trained for the Ministry of the Presbyterian Church at the Theological College. He was sent to Africa as a missionary but after seven years returned to Jamaica and joined the Wesleyan Church. He brought back from Africa an interesting collection of art and artefacts later inherited by his brother Astley. Hopeton served the Methodists for the next 40 years and some of his children were born and spent their childhood at Harmony Hall, in St Mary. Now an Art Gallery and Restaurant open to the public, it is an interesting and amusing nineteenth-century building which was originally the property house of a small pimento estate. It became the local Methodist Manse at the turn of the century. Hopeton was later the Methodist minister in Falmouth, and it was there that Norman Manley, later Prime Minister of the Island and a close friend of Hopeton's son Leslie, found comfort during his youth after his mother died and the rest of the family moved to England. This was at Barrett House, 1 Market Street, Falmouth, the eighteenth-century town house of the Barrett family. (Now, still on lease to the Methodist Church, it is in almost total ruin and it is one of the saddest examples of Jamaica's disappearing architectural heritage.) Born in May 1868, my great-uncle Astley, 40 years after his death, was described in the Jamaica Journal (Vol. 18, No. 4, 1985-86) as being: a Jamaican patriot and cultural pioneer possessing a rare brand of courage with which he waged a sustained and impassioned war against the British status quo. He challenged and scored some victories over such contemporary bastions of British elitism as the Institute of Jamaica when their decision to withhold certain texts effectively curtailed his research on the music and musical instruments of Jamaica. This was reporting on events that had taken place in 1913. The gentlest of human beings, he would have been amazed to find himself described in this way, but equally amazed by the changes that had taken place in Jamaica, and that the Institute of

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Jamaica should devote those ten pages, and many future articles, to him and his work. He was also described as: a short and pudgy man, straddling two centuries, who nevertheless stood head and shoulders above most Jamaicans of his time ... His was a lone voice reverberating with an incessant rallying call to the children of the Motherland - Jamaica - over the din of colonialist sentiments and continental loyalties... He recognised and promoted a distinctly Jamaican culture long before such things were fashionable and at a time when the received English culture was the norm accepted by Jamaicans of all races. He was the Jamaican patriot's patriot and a cultural pioneer. The same article credits Astley with being the first to inspire activities and institutions that were to make possible the flowering of the Arts in Jamaica in the 1940s. His interests covered music, folklore, art, linguistics, poetry, philately, conchology, publishing and research into a wide range of subjects. He established the Cowen Music Rooms in Kingston (named after a child prodigy born in Jamaica in 1852, who is the only West Indian composer included in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians), where he organised musical competitions, held monthly concerts and started the Christmas Morning Concerts, which led to a long-standing annual Christmas event held at the Ward Theatre. Apart from editing and publishing musical magazines, he collected over 400 songs, scored, arranged, performed and published a number of Jamaican folk songs, sung bass, played the organ and piano, was a piano-tuner and teacher, composed songs for schools, arranged and conducted music for orchestra and choral groups and was generally the moving spirit behind most musical events on the island. His Rooms stocked almost every musical instrument, all carefully selected to withstand the climate. He also displayed his own collection of artefacts and a library of books related to all the Arts. The Cowen Music Rooms became a popular rendezvous and centre

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of cultural activity, since they offered the facilities of club, concert hall, publishing house, museum and library. But his greatest love was for Jamaica and all things Jamaican. Although not a political man, he made the clearest political statement among his peers in designing a Jamaican flag which he raised and saluted instead of the Union Jack, and in composing an anthem to be sung in place of 'God Save the King'. In this, and so often in his poems and songs, he proclaimed his resolution to any ambivalence in favour of Jamaica. This was exceptional for his time and even more so given the privileged social and racial status which he enjoyed in society... He had no malicious intent towards Britain. He merely felt, some fifty years before Independence, that Jamaica was sufficiently endowed with a distinct culture and history and with natural and human resources to justify her own flag and anthem. Certainly the notion that Jamaica should continue to be subject to Britain was totally unacceptable to him. Nearly all my information about Astley, as above, has been taken from the Institute of Jamaica's Jamaica Journal. Astley had received under their auspices (some thought belatedly) the Island's Silver Musgrave Medal in 1937 'for his efforts for the development of music and to maintain interest in the Folklore of Jamaica'. Whereas Hopeton and Astley, his two elder brothers, were prepared to admit publicly their African ancestry, my grandfather Robert looked like, lived and thought as a white colonial. In spite of their totally different attitudes, however, Astley and my grandfather were undoubtedly close. Otherwise why would they have chosen to live next door to or with each other for most of their adult lives? My memory is only of two old men in white linen suits, one tall, thin and unsmiling and the other short, round and approachable, often with a small child in tow and always fascinated by whatever Uncle Astley was doing at his large rolltop desk.

Chapter 9

Young Stockhausens in Kingston and Life at Hope Glen

My aunt Linda Stockhausen, as a young teenager, often visited Hope Glen during the Westwood school holidays. She looked forward to these visits because Kingston was far more exciting than her tiny home town. She and her cousin Enid from Duncans, an equally small town, would save their pocket money by walking into downtown Kingston from Elgin Road, an uncomfortably hot journey, so that they could buy ice creams (unobtainable in Stewart Town), at Kinkeads the Chemists in King Street. Owen had started to work with the Atlantic Fruit and Shipping Company in Kingston. He and Linda, when she started to work, and then Harold soon afterwards, became permanent members of the Hope Glen household, presumably now paying Uncle Astley and Aunt Lil a nominal rent. After a few years working as a secretary in a government department, in 1920 Linda joined the Kingston office of the Royal Bank of Canada where she was to work for the next 45 years. In 1992, when Linda was 94, she started to have slight health problems - dizziness and nausea. She was bemused at being visited by two doctors on the same day. It was a very long time since she had seen a doctor at all. I asked her when had she last been ill. 'Well', she said, 'I suppose it was when I had the Spanish Influenza in 1918, just after the Great War.' Soon after the Armistice, Jamaica, like almost everywhere else in the world, suffered the second horror: the Spanish Influenza epidemic, which claimed more lives worldwide than the First World War had done.

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Aunt Lil and my father Harold, who was then about 19 and also working in Kingston, were the first to succumb. They were both nursed by Linda. One night Uncle Astley, who was sleeping on a sofa, fell off and hurt himself. Linda went to his rescue, caught a chill and shortly afterwards realized that she would be next. She sent a telegram to her mother in Stewart Town asking her to come quickly as there would be nobody else to nurse the others and herself, and to bring long-sleeved nightgowns. At the crisis of her illness, Linda thought that she was going to die. For days she had been hearing the sound of the horse-drawn hearses on their way to the Catholic Church at the end of Elgin Road. Her mother was crying, and although Linda begged her to change her sodden nightgown, Miss Mirie was afraid to touch her in case the last fragile breath was shaken from her body. Starting at her feet, her body became progressively colder. She told herself 'When it gets to my heart I shall die'. Eric, now the eldest brother, had been offered a teaching post at Jamaica College as soon as his schooling was over. He was considered the most brilliant of the brothers, but an incident occurred that was to ruin the rest of his life. He fell in love and became engaged to a beautiful young woman, to the delight of both their families. Returning from a visit to her late one evening, he was walking past the main entrance to the British Army Garrison at Up Park Camp when he was approached by a prostitute. The frustrated young man succumbed - probably for the first time in his life. Ignorance or fear kept him away from doctors - or perhaps it was simply a lack of antibiotics in the 1920s. At the age of 28 or 30, he suffered a massive stroke. For the rest of his life - he died aged 69 in 1960 - he remained paralysed down one side of his body. He limped dreadfully and his eyesight and speech were severely affected. His brain remained fairly sharp, but he could never work again. He lived with his parents, and then with his unmarried brother and sisters until he died. As children we were told that Eric suffered from a 'social disease'. We had no idea what that was. My mother did not tell me the whole story until I was about 20 years old. In 1992, when I was 56 and my aunt Linda 94, she said '... poor Eric. What a sad life.

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11. The verandah at Hope Glen - Dodie Stockhausen, Maria Gonzales y Moran of Cuba (later Mrs Cecil Hendriks), Cecil Clerk, his sisters Ena (my mother) and Evelyn - 1920s.

He was hit on the head by a football, you know. It happened sometime before, but it was delayed concussion which caused the brain damage.' Dodie, the eldest daughter of John and Miriam Stockhausen, was a teacher. All their lives she was as plump as her sister Linda was thin. Her first job was at St Hilda's Girls School in Brown's Town, not far from Stewart Town, so she was not part of the Elgin Road crowd except during the school holidays. The young Stockhausens, once they had resigned themselves to the death of their brother Ivan, had great fun in the years after the First World War. Owen had bought a splendid motor car and at weekends they would either drive to Stewart Town to see their parents or go for excursions into the country. There would be picnics at Castleton Botanic Gardens, at one time the most richly stocked garden in the Caribbean. They would spread their lunch on one of the huge smooth flat stones on the nearly dry riverbed and bathe in the nearby mountain streams. On the river banks grew a wide variety of exotic plants, and unusual insects could be seen.

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Linda and my father Harold, the two most interested in the island's fauna and flora, were intrigued by the many imported curiosities. Sometimes they would go east out of Kingston, along the south coast road that skirts the Blue Mountains and John Crow ranges, to swim and picnic at Rozelle. This was a large grass-floored coconut plantation with waterfalls tumbling down into the sea. A beautiful place, I can remember it well from excursions with my father 20 years later, when I was five or six years old. Occasionally they went as far as Bath in St Thomas, an interesting village with a hot mineral spring and the island's first botanical garden, which had been started in 1779, the second oldest in the Western Hemisphere. It is only here, at the tops of some very tall trees, that Jamaica's rarest and largest butterfly, the dark Papilio Homerus swallowtail, is found. The first Island Botanist arrived in Jamaica in 1777, to establish and superintend two botanic gardens. The first was to be a European garden, which was not planted until much later at Cinchona in the Blue Mountains. Bath, the Tropical garden, still contains offspring of breadfruit trees, brought from Tahiti by Captain Bligh of the Bounty, to be developed as a cheap food for the slaves. In gratitude, Bligh was granted 1,000 guineas when the first plants had grown higher than 11 feet tall with leaves 36 inches long. The ackee - a staple ingredient of Jamaica's national dish Salt fish and Ackee - was taken by the Island Botanist from a West African slave ship in 1778. The mineral spring at Bath was discovered around 1699 by a runaway slave who claimed that it had cured chronic ulcers on his legs. Many other claims are attributed to its healing powers from 'dry bellyache eased by the first draught of water' to 'lowness of spirit and a depraved appetite'. The waters contain a high percentage of lime and sulphur and are medically recognised for treating rheumatic ailments and skin disorders. Bath in St Thomas quickly developed into a fashionable spa town, but it declined after the 1770s and never regained its popularity. For longer trips with overnight stays, Linda and Dodie would go alone with a group of their friends, often including teachers from St Andrew High School for Girls where Dodie was now Deputy

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Headmistress. With the only man being their professional guide, they climbed to the top of Blue Mountain Peak: 7,402 ft (2,278 m) high yet only ten miles from the coast in Kingston. The last three hours of the climb was up a rough track, but well worth the effort. When the mist lifted, between 10.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m., it was possible to have an incredible view over most of the island and as far north as Cuba. The vegetation high up in the Blue Mountains is quite different from anywhere else on the island. They saw epiphytes, mosses and ferns, grey-green moss hanging from the gnarled trees, dwarf species of orchids and the rose-like 'merianias'. Without their sisters, the young men went alligator shooting in the swamp lands of the Black River. Some people say that these are really crocodiles, probably because Jamaica's coat of arms features crocodiles, but as far as Jamaicans are concerned they will always remain alligators, hence Alligator Pond on the south-west coast. They also went hunting wild boar, but with not much success. With all his children now educated and living away from home (except for Eric after his 'accident'), their father John Stockhausen was able to spend less time working and to become more involved with the community. Both brothers made their contribution to the Parish of Trelawny. Joseph had been one of the prime movers behind the successful Water Supply Scheme for the Dornock river district. At the time it was said (in Trelawny at least) that its colossal engineering achievement had its second only in far away Australia. On a visit by the Governor of the island to the Parish, Joseph had made an impassioned plea for the scheme, which had touched the Governor's heart. In August 1926, a few days after the disastrous fire that destroyed the Falmouth Court House (said to have been the best building in the island, originally built in 1817), John and his younger brother Joseph were summoned to a meeting of the Parochial Board of Trelawny, of which they were members, to be formally informed of the event. It took three years to agree to a plan and to arrange funding for its reconstruction after the fire. John was acting as Vice Chairman of the Parochial Board of Trelawny, when, in 1929, the arrangements were finally approved for the controversial restoration of the court house.

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Even today purists of Georgian architecture are distressed by the roof of the reconstructed Falmouth Court House. In old family papers, I have discovered that the Board's greatest concern was to make the building fireproof. The suggestion of having the new fireproof roof run north to south instead of, as it originally did, from east to west was put by the firm of contractors, Henriques Bros. This would obviate the use of heavy timber, and be cheaper, as the three-part fireproof Celotex roof would rest on the three parapets. (I include these esoteric technical details to exonerate my grandfather from any blame! Having seen it recently, I can testify that the building is still intact and has weathered better than most of Falmouth.)1 My grandfather John, who had always 'picked at his food' with little appetite, died of 'stomach troubles' in 1939. His obituary in the Daily Gleaner referred to him as a prominent businessman of Stewart Town and one of the most well-known personages in the Parish of Trelawny.

Chapter 10

Robert Clerk and Evelyn Hendricks - Glen Hurst

It was through his friend Cecil Hendricks that my maternal grandfather, Robert Clerk, met Evelyn (Cecil's sister). The two young men were working as accountants on sugar estates in St. Elizabeth when Robert was invited to visit the Hendricks family home, an old coffee plantation called The Hermitage, in Bideford, near Malvern in the Santa Cruz mountains of St Elizabeth. Robert married beautiful Evelyn Beatrice Hendricks in 1903. She was the daughter of Charles M. Hendricks of Malvern and Agnes Alice Blair, also from St Elizabeth. Her grandfather Henry Blair had married Mary Blake: all of Scottish ancestry. Close friends offered to invest the Blairs' money, which was all lost. It is thought that Charles M. Hendricks, my greatgrandfather, was descended from one of two Hendricks brothers who came to Jamaica in the seventeenth century with Colonel Banister, the Governor of Surinam, a country on the northern coast of South America, formerly known as Dutch Guiana. Founded in 1651 by the English, Surinam was ceded to the Dutch in 1667 in the Treaty of Breda. England allowed the Dutch to keep Surinam, which had been captured by the latter, in exchange for the Dutch North American colony of New Amsterdam, which the English renamed New York. The family was originally called Henriques, and part of the Portuguese-Jewish community who found haven in Holland during the Inquisition. Some of this Dutch family later went to England, some to the United States and some stayed in Holland. It is rather difficult to draw any conclusions from this confusion, apart from a possible

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Henriques/Hendricks itinerary of Portugal -• Holland -• England -• Surinam -• Jamaica. It was only 12 years after Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica, and this influx of experienced English settlers from Surinam (1,200 people, including servants and slaves) made a great contribution to the early development of the island. The Hendricks family became involved in the export of logwood from Black River in St Elizabeth. Trade in logwood, which provided a dark-blue dye formerly used in the textile industry (originally the blue of 'blue jeans'), was hugely lucrative. By the end of the nineteenth century its export value had surpassed that of the traditional leading crops of sugar and coffee but, with the introduction of synthetic dyes, this trade quickly evaporated and Black River's commercial importance waned. In 1994, on an aeroplane from London to Florida, I sat beside a Jamaican who had been born in Black River. When I asked about the Hendricks family, of whom I knew very little, he said that he had been brought up by a grandmother who always spoke of the Hendricks family as being the largest landowners in the area. They were involved in the logwood business and their name was on a large building in the town. (He then told me that I was an upper-class Jamaican - 1 did not know if this was an insult or a compliment!) When Robert Clerk married Evelyn, her brother Cecil moved to Kingston and became part of the Clerk clan. He had first visited Kingston in 1891 when he was nine years old and his mother had taken him by ship from Black River to visit the Great International Exhibition in the island's capital, a journey of some 70 miles. All their relatives came to the dock to wave them off, thinking that they would never see them again. Evelyn, my grandmother, born in 1881, had been Head Girl of Hampton School for Girls in Malvern, not far from where the family lived. She had come first in the Island Examinations and was the favourite of the headmistress Miss Holden: hence my mother Ena's middle name. Evelyn stayed on at Hampton as a teacher until her marriage to my grandfather. She was described by my aunt Linda as being a true intellectual. Fortunately for her, Robert's unmarried sister, Aunt Kate, lived with them so that Evelyn was relieved of all domestic management

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responsibilities and could devote herself to reading and to her children. My mother, Ena Holden was born on 9 June 1905. Then followed Astley Campbell, Robert Cecil, Ernest Jocelyn and Martha Evelyn. When my mother was ten years old her mother died. Evelyn had fallen from her horse when she was about 15 years old and, soon after her last child was born, she began to suffer from dreadful headaches. A brain tumour was diagnosed and she risked going blind but the doctors in Jamaica were unable to help her. By the time my grandfather arrived with her by ship in the United States, it was too late. In a letter to Evelyn's parents, Robert wrote that she died the day after the operation. He told them of how she had clung hard to him on the way to the hospital and, with the irrelevant poignancy of the recently bereaved, of how she had just got a complete wardrobe of new clothes. Alone in Baltimore, Robert arranged to bring her body home to Jamaica, for burial at Half Way Tree. It was the most awful tragedy for the family. I do not think my mother ever fully recovered, and it must surely explain her father Robert's lack of spirit and his severity with his children. My mother's chronic anxiety seems to have started even before her mother died. Her first memory was of terror when some policemen came to their home and asked to see Evelyn. It was an enquiry about a dismissed servant, but the terror was never forgotten. She thought that they had come to take her mother away from her. Her next memory was of an incident after her mother died. It was the only naughty thing she ever did. Made by her father to wear high lace-up boots which were ugly, hot and uncomfortable, with the help of a sharp knife she cut them down to shoe size. She and her brothers and sister were made to go to church three times every Sunday. They all came to hate it in later life and my mother, apart from making sure that we were christened and confirmed, never once suggested that we, her children, should go to church. Sundays were purgatory for the young children at Glen Hurst. Her brothers had to wear suits and ties all day in the stifling heat, no rowdy games were permitted and voices could not be

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raised. The radio could only be played if hymns, sermons or sacred music were being broadcast. As she entered puberty, no one - neither her father nor her maiden aunt - warned her of what would happen to her. At the onset of menstruation, she thought that, like her mother, she now had cancer and would die. She was terrified but would not tell anyone about it. At last, after three days, a servant realized what was wrong and tried to explain. They did not mention it to her father, the aunt or anyone else. My grandmother Evelyn Clerk died at about the same time that my aunt Linda Stockhausen came to live next door. According to Linda, Evelyn was beautiful, serene, patient and tolerant; both good natured and brilliant. She also played classical music superbly on the piano. The young Stockhausens loved and admired her. Not surprisingly Robert Clerk's motherless children were attracted to warm and welcoming Aunt Lil and Uncle Astley and the young people who lived with them next door at Hope Glen. At some stage, Robert went to Cuba to join his brother-in-law Cecil Hendricks who was managing a sugar plantation there. At another stage, Linda believes that Cecil helped financially with music lessons and other extras in the upbringing of his dead sister's children. Cecil had become rich in Cuba by 1913, although he was later to lose it all. He married Maria Gonzales y Moran ('y Moran y Moran y Moran'), a Spanish artist who became one of my mother's closest friends. It was while in Cuba that Cecil decided to drop the 'c' from Hendricks. Cecil and Maria's children, although my mother's first cousins, were only slightly older than me and my siblings and were an important part of our lives. They also treated Elgin Road and later Park Avenue, the Clerks' subsequent home, as their second base.

In time my aunt Linda came to dislike both Astley and Robert Clerk. Some years after his wife Evelyn's death, Linda was horrified to receive a letter from Robert next door. It was a totally unexpected outpouring of love and other sentiments and ended with a proposal of marriage. She was disgusted and embarrassed,

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but mostly angry. He was old enough to be her father, and she had seen how unpleasant he could be with his children: once accusing his son young Astley, who had an adolescent pimple, of being 'diseased' - in those days a euphemism for syphilitic. She thought him a 'poop': narrow-minded, dull, boring, rigid and a hypocrite. When Linda told me all this, I think she forgot that I was his granddaughter. She was well past her 90th birthday and said that she had never told anyone before, except her sister Dodie. She wrote a curt refusal to his offer of marriage. He usually came home from work punctually at 4.30 p.m. By 5.00 p.m. he was not there; 6.00 p.m.: not there. Dinner time - still not there. She thought: if the old fool has drowned himself, they will find my letter in his pocket. He did, however, eventually come home, much to her relief This led me to ask Linda if she had had other proposals. She said: 'Yes, but I always seemed to prefer married men', then, after a pause, 'perhaps it was because I knew I couldn't marry them'. Why was she never tempted to marry? 'Damned old maid, man!' is what she replied. She did not say so, but the fact is that her choices were limited. So many young men died in the First World War, or from Spanish Influenza afterwards, that those remaining who might have been considered 'suitable' - that is, sufficiently white, educated, etc., were a rare commodity. Not only in Jamaica, but in the United Kingdom, there were many, many 'old maids' of that generation. Robert's brother Astley she disliked for more complicated reasons; her eyes seemed to hide something. Certainly there may have been friction over their Jamaican folk music interests. She once said that he disapproved of her approach to it, which he considered too vulgar and not academic like his. He was more concerned with the customs from which the songs had emerged, the pronunciation of the words and the harmonization of the melodies. (Arthur Benjamin, the British composer and a friend of Astley's, had told her that the Cudjoe Minstrels - the group she formed - should never be tempted to harmonize too much as it would take the life out of the songs.) Later Astley became jealous of her country sources, and then wanted to be involved and take credit for himself when her work became well known. But more about that later.

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There was something else though, which she described as his resentment because of her lack of recognition of him and her preference for younger friends. However, I think that perhaps it was because he sensed her disapproval. Aunt Lil and Uncle Astley were totally devoted to each other, but I have heard family gossip - not from Linda - that Astley had a longstanding affair with his secretary. He was often away and made many trips into the country in connection with his various interests. As Linda adored his wife, her mother's oldest and closest friend, that may well have been the reason for her dislike of him. Whatever the explanation, one day in 1939, shortly after his wife Lil died, he must have said something to Linda's brother Owen. As soon as Linda got home from work, Owen announced that they were moving out immediately. Earlier that year, their father John Stockhausen had died in Stewart Town. All the children had been summoned from Kingston and had been with him at the end. Afterwards their mother, Miss Mirie, moved to Kingston to share a home with her unmarried children. Astley Clerk was 70 when his wife died and the spirit went out of him. Nearly all the young people had left the two Elgin Road houses. Robert's sons, Astley and Cecil, had moved to England as young men to get away from their disciplinarian father. Young Astley joined the Metropolitan Police. He met and married Laura, a New Zealander, who owned a small restaurant, and he later became an antiques dealer specializing in clocks. His shop and home in Star Street, Paddington were crammed with antiques: with clocks on every stair-step leading from the shop up to their flat above. His son Christian is now a jovial university professor with a passion for the ancient cultures of the South Pacific, especially Melanesia. Young Astley's brother Cecil had been known on the country roads of Jamaica as 'Lindbergh' because of the way he flew across the island on his motor cycle delivering Gleaners, the daily newspaper printed in Kingston. The villagers ran out of their houses shouting 'Lin'burg comin', man' and stood by the side of the road to see him race past. A premium was offered for the first papers

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to arrive in the towns on the north coast, and the young bloods of Kingston competed with each other to see who would win it each week. In England he became an amateur racing driver known as Cyclone Clerk (pronounced Clark). In 1934, during one of their trips to England, Linda and Dodie watched him win a race 'in his wherri-ketter of a car'.1 He was an inventor with many patents to his credit: automatic gramophone record-changers, fountain pen filling systems and the carburettors at one time in all the buses in the north of England. His proud father in Jamaica had many of the smaller examples of his work on tables in his bedroom. Cecil had a scientific, rather than a business brain: other people made the money from his ideas. His family in Jamaica were not surprised. As a schoolboy he had been so absent-minded that sometimes he was late for school, having spent half an hour looking for the sock that he had put on top of the first one. In England, the Sunday Times in 1960 described him as: One of the few successful freelance inventors in the country... a one-time accountant, who works with a staff of five in a tiny office in Richmond. In his time he has designed chocolatemaking machinery, racing cars, chemical lavatories and transmission systems for tanks. But, despite his versatility, he finds it hard to keep going entirely on his inventions, and also works as a consultant machine-tool designer. At the moment his most interesting brain-child is a system that he claims could save London Transport 30 per cent of its annual fuel bill: using a flywheel to conserve the energy a bus normally wastes every time it stops. With his air of perpetual excitement, he is one of the rare people who actually conforms to the popular idea of what an inventor should be like. 'When I'm working on a problem I become pretty abstracted and don't bother much about food. My personal affairs go to pot, and if someone let off a gun in the room I doubt if I'd hear it.' Cecil was not a qualified engineer, and did not agree that an inventor needed to be a specialist engineer or scientist. 'You'd be

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surprised the number of times specialists have called me in, and I've been able to suggest something that was lying under their noses at the time.' When much older he was made an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University, where he did work on capturing the energy generated by waves in the sea. Typically, he ended his days in modest circumstances, and scavengers whisked all his work papers away from the unsuspecting widow of his second marriage before his body was cold in the ground. My grandfather Robert and his brother Astley sold their houses in Elgin Road and bought a similar large two-storied colonial wooden house in Park Avenue, nearer to Half Way Tree. They shared this with Ernest and Evelyn, Robert's two then unmarried children. Park Avenue became a meeting point for my generation and our Hendriks cousins. In the afternoons, there were often at least a dozen family and friends sitting in the eau-de-nil-painted wooden rocking-chairs on the front verandah. Uncle Astley had moved his life's work into one bedroom and a garage. I remember his bedroom before he died in 1944, a poor, sad and lonely old man. There was a piano, and the four walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with thousands of books, papers, stamp albums and manuscripts. Fortunately, the National Library of Jamaica has some of his manuscripts and music, his collection of 400 folk songs, his 200 poems, etc.2 But like so much in Jamaica, termites, chichi,3 fires and hurricanes have claimed the rest - mostly because we do not appreciate what we have until it is too late.

Chapter 11

Linda Stockhausen and the Cudjoe Minstrels

It was during the carefree years between the two World Wars that my aunt Linda's love for Jamaican folk-songs evolved into a lifelong passion. During the early 1930s, Linda, then a secretary with the Royal Bank of Canada in Kingston, and her sister Dodie, a teacher at St Andrew's High School, spent a holiday at Milk River Baths - a spa - in Clarendon near the south-west coast, known to the island's earliest settlers for its healing powers and for being 50 times more radioactive than the waters at Vichy in France. It was a gloomy place, and to cheer up the evenings the manager, Mrs Chambers, persuaded the young ladies to sing some songs. To everyone's amazement, the sisters launched into the Negro worksongs, spirituals and ring-game songs that they had heard and loved since their childhood in the country. Mrs Chambers suggested that they should form a troupe and give performances. They never seriously considered doing this, but it gave Linda the idea of writing down the words of as many of the songs as possible. She realized that white Jamaicans were dismissive of this music and, as the people who sang the songs were mostly illiterate, there was a serious risk of them being lost and forgotten, especially since the movement of people from the countryside into the towns was accelerating. During her weekends back at the family home in Stewart Town, Linda visited Miss Maggie James, who became her richest source and tutor and who seemed to have a limitless repertoire. Miss Maggie, 'a brown woman but a cut above, weighed about 2301b and danced as light as a feather', had taught Linda some of her

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favourite old Jamaican songs when she was a child, and she now returned to check the exact words and to make sure that she had got the tunes right, and to get Miss Maggie to show her the steps of the old Jamaican dances. All of this took place on the old stone barbecue in Miss Maggie's backyard. Linda could not notate music herself, and neither could her pianist friend Ivy Brown, but once Ivy heard a tune, she could pick it out accurately on the piano and never forget it. It was difficult to get Miss Maggie, who knew her family and had known Linda since she was a baby, to admit to the most authentic words, which were invariably vulgar. But Linda was determined to get them right, and anyhow they were far more amusing than the cleaned up versions. Miss Maggie's mother 'had soft curly hair hanging down to her shoulders, and was not at all black' (skin). But Maggie was ashamed of her own mixed blood. She was ambivalent about the songs and the more vulgar words had to be coaxed out of her; so Linda could never understand why she insisted on 'drawers' and not 'shift' in: One shif me ha' rat a cut it, Same place it cut, Mumma patch it, Same place it patch, fire bu'n it, Teacher lick de gal, tu'n right over.* *A rat made a hole in my only under-slip. My mother patched the hole. Fire burnt the same hole. The teacher made the girl bend over and smacked her. Sadly, since nobody had ever taken any interest in their songs before, most of the black and coloured people in the 1930s - apart from Miss Maggie who knew Linda well - thought fun was being made of them. It took all Linda's diplomatic skill to convince them of the importance of the songs, because they found this almost impossible to believe. So much of their culture had been deliberately suppressed that, not surprisingly, they were suspicious. Very few folk-songs seem to have survived the days of slavery. Dancing and singing were natural to the slaves, but they were

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forbidden to beat their drums and dance in the bush at night. For their owners, all drum-beating was associated with efforts to communicate with neighbouring plantations and possible slave rebellion. In spite of this, however, the slaves persisted in composing and singing their own songs. Unlike American Negro spirituals, Jamaican folk-songs are almost invariably cheerful. They are often humorous and vulgar and sometimes poke fun at their masters and supposedly betters. But they are never sung with a heavy heart. Linda's memory of revivalist songs was still fresh from the nights when, as a child, she had leant out of the dining-room window of their house in Stewart Town trying to catch the words from the 'meetin' across the road. Kate, the tambourine-beating revivalist from Stewart Town, who had kept them awake at night when she warned sinners of what their future held, was also visited by Linda. A Sunday afternoon spent sitting on a 'long bench' on the barbecue in Kate's yard, and helped by the handclapping of Kate's small grandchild, yielded some new words and many more songs. Another source was their cook in Stewart Town. Not Mother Kelly, who had now retired, but one who had worked with the family during two different periods, interrupted by a stay in Cuba. There was also the memory of Jonkonnu. These were groups of masked men who, since the days of slavery, arrived in the country villages and towns at Christmas time. The practice is said to have been based on West African secret societies. As a child, Linda had found them terrifying and would run back into the house at the approach of the dancers. Christmas was the only major holiday for the slaves and, although there was no connection between Jonkonnu and the Christian festival, in that season the dancers were allowed to move around the countryside. They were permitted and even encouraged to go up to the Great House to entertain the owner and his guests, but by the late nineteenth century they had been banned for being 'debased and vulgar and frightening to children'. In the early 1950s there was a revival and it was discovered that the tradition was still very much alive in the countryside. (In my Senior School Certificate Art examination in 1950 - sent, in the same way as all the other

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papers, by ship to England for correction! - 1 painted and described a John Canoe (as we tended to spell Jonkonnu) scene. It produced an unexpectedly good result for a hopeless artist.) In a John Canoe troupe, there was always a Cowhead or Horsehead, a King and Queen, a Devil, a Red Indian adorned with mirrors and feathers, a man disguised as a heavily pregnant woman, a policeman, etc. - all dressed up and masked. They danced and played fifes and drums and shook rattles, but sang no songs. Even when I was a child they were still meant to frighten as well as entertain, and the most terrifying for me was Horsehead. For Linda in Stewart Town, 30 years earlier, it had been Cowhead, who sometimes had the whole cow's skin draped over his body. Linda also began to write down some of the Anancy stories that she remembered being told in the moonlight on a Saturday night by Busha.

In 1925, the Jamaica High School for Girls was established by the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches. The former wanted a memorial to mark the centennial of their work in Jamaica, while the latter wished to start a secondary school for girls following their previous successes in education on the island. They found a spacious old residence, with eight acres of land and several outbuildings for later expansion, near Half Way Tree in the parish of St Andrew adjoining Kingston. The school opened with 21 pupils, ten of whom were boarders, and Linda's sister Dodie moved to Kingston to become its Second Mistress, or Deputy Head. In 1926 it became St Andrew High School for Girls and in 1930 a coeducational Preparatory School was opened. (Among the latter's first pupils was Michael Manley, later Jamaica's Prime Minister, from 1972 to 1980 and from 1987 to 1992.) 'St Andrews' was to play an important part in the lives of our family and in those of our friends and their families. In 1935, Dodie decided to produce a fund-raising concert at the School in aid of the Tuberculosis Sanatorium. She persuaded Linda to get together a group of their friends, family and several members of the school's staff to perform some of her collected songs.

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It was not at all the sort of audience Linda had hoped for: all pillars of the church. At that time the school was also used as a Presbyterian and Methodist seminary, so new, milder words had to be substituted for her painstakingly collected authentic ones, and the women had to be careful not to swing their hips. Back in Stewart Town, she collected several versions of country market-women's clothes. Long madras and blue denim skirts had to be long enough for a roll of the skirt to be tied up around the waist with plantain bark, yet the hem had to reach just above the ankles. She found white, lace-trimmed cotton under-slips and drawers, aprons with huge pockets, madras bandanas to be tied around their heads in Jamaica fashion, cottas on which to rest huge straw baskets, and lots of silver bangles and large silver hoop earrings. The men wore dark trousers and white shirts, the trousers held up with old neckties. They had madras 'kerchiefs around their necks and wore old felt hats. All faces were blackened with pungent-smelling burnt cork. To swell the ranks and provide a banjo player and a drummer, they press-ganged two yard-boys from the Elgin Road houses. This first group included my mother and father. As part of his costume, my father always wore a white cloth tied around his face with a wad in his cheek to suggest toothache. He played the bull fiddle - a heavy, old, closed, hardwood rectangular box with a circle cut out of one of the long wide sides. Nailed across the hole were heavy metal strips which he plucked with his fingers. It made a wonderful deep sound like a double-bass. This was in 1935, the year I was born, but even today I can remember well its sound from subsequent concerts. Several decades later, an article 'The Cudjoe minstrels - a Perspective' by Augustus Braithwaite appeared in the Jamaica Journal: When in 1935 a group of upper class citizens took the stage at the St Andrew High School for a sedate performance of Jamaican folk songs, few recognised the birth of a significant cultural movement. The Cudjoe Minstrels, as they came to be called some time later, were pioneers in bringing the music of the folk to a wider audience, giving it acceptance in respected

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circles. The group undertook to present their music in authentic form - with the expected 'cleaning up' of some lyrics. 'Minstrels', in the name of the group, and their practice of blackening faces before performing, suggests a conscious influence from the southern United States. But Miss Linda Stockhausen, founder of the group, as well as Mrs Grace Kearon, another original member, admit no such influence. Both explain that this was done in part to conceal identity but, more importantly, for the sake of authenticity. Clearly there was no attempt to parody. The crudely applied make-up was not comical (unlike the North American counterpart). The object was to create the appearance of Africans, 'just a bunch of market people'. The eyes, predictably, gave the disguise away. Linda Stockhausen states 'We had to be very careful, because we were pioneers. We wanted to be careful to let the audience know that it was not burlesque, that we were not ridiculing the people... One of the highest compliments that was ever paid to us was a comment that came from the gallery when we put on Manda Goes to Town at the Ward Theatre in 1940. Somebody said "Lawd! But dey know us dough, eh" (Lord! But they really know us, don't they?), and I felt that what we were doing was real.' (Jamaica Journal, Vol. 43) During the five year period between 1935 and the performance of Manda Goes to Town, the friends got together to perform for other charities. Their programme evolved to include Anancy stories, street preaching, ring games and dances. Sometimes at the concerts, a friend Philip Sherlock (later to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and head of the Institute of Jamaica) was the narrator or apologist, because what they were trying to do was so out of the ordinary. In a performance programme in 1939, it was stressed that they had seriously set themselves to collect these songs and to sing them

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because the songs belonged to Jamaica, they loved them, and they were convinced that Jamaican life would be enriched by their preservation. On two successive Saturdays in June 1940, Manda Goes to Town was staged to full houses at the Ward Theatre in Kingston. A contemporary critic wrote: 'Until then Jamaica's main theatre was thought of as the place where the best people went to see the best imitations of the theatres of New York and London... Miss Stockhausen and the Cudjoe Minstrels this year captured the music and laughter of Jamaican life... this was something completely new in dramatic work.' Manda Goes to Town was Linda's brainchild, but she said that the storyline and episodes were the product of the full company. It was about a young woman who leaves her village in the country to sample the freer life in Kingston. She finds no great fulfilment there and returns home before long, only to find her sweetheart on the verge of marrying someone else. Linda said: 'There was no real plot. It was a vehicle for stringing together various Folk expressions - Anancy stories, digging songs, Jonkonnu... all the Folk that you could get.' (One of my earliest memories is falling asleep during rehearsals of Manda. I was not yet five years old, but I was needed for the children's ring games and as a bridesmaid in the final wedding scene.) It had been put on for the benefit of the Red Cross War Effort. After Manda, the Cudjoe Minstrels gave no more performances but continued to appear at concerts for charitable causes. A few years before she died in 1995,1 asked Linda how she had managed, in addition to her full-time job, to write, produce and perform in the principal role as Manda. She did not find it extraordinary and when I asked who had promoted it, got the advertising for the programme, etc. she admitted that she had done all that too. Linda regarded Arthur Benjamin, the English composer, and Philip Sherlock, as godfathers to the Cudjoe Minstrels. The former gave his encouragement both privately and in the Daily Gleaner. Between his visits to Jamaica, his relationship with Linda continued

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by correspondence. He was the first person to put Jamaica folk music on an international plane, setting 'Mango Walk5 for piano and violin, and later full orchestra. As an early campaigner for the promotion of Jamaican folklore, Philip Sherlock called on the Cudjoes to illustrate his lectures. He encouraged Linda to write and lecture herself, and was responsible for having Folk introduced into the National Festival Competition after years of criticism for even suggesting it. The Daily Gleaner of 25 November 1940 reported that 'the Cudjoe Minstrels were largely responsible for the entertainment and contest, providing almost the only entries in the various classes... in the absence of other entrants they competed against themselves in solos and small groups'. In 1946 they were asked to broadcast on the radio. Dennis Gick was an erudite Englishman who operated ZQI, at that time Jamaica's only radio station, rather on the lines of the old BBC Third Programme. The following is taken from his programme's script: In the Jamaican folk songs are written the history and character of the people, their pleasures, sorrows and hopes. The songs are marked by peculiarity of rhythm, form and melody, created by racial temperament, modes of living and emotional education. The range is from searing satire to ribald ridicule, as in 'Gal you clothes (drawers) a drop', 'Big, big Samba Gal' and 'Brass head Jimmy'. As in the past, occurrences of interest were recorded in songs by Minstrels and Bards who handed down the history of the Celts; so in Jamaica we have 'Landan Tavern' and 'Linstead Market'. Our people do not hesitate to use conventional religious rhythms for their Work Songs, but not with any sense of irreverence. The following are Work Songs of the banana carriers: 'Bury me nana' and 'Moses, Moses'. Underlying the rough exterior of their life is an untutored simplicity, expressed in the following 'Cling, Cling', 'Jackass lang tail', 'Ju ju water'. Many famous composers have based important compositions on folk-tunes of their homelands. Stravinsky utilized a folk

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song for The Firebird, Dvorak a spiritual for the New World Symphony, and in our own time Arthur Benjamin has made memorable arrangements of 'Mango Walk', 'Cookie' and 'Mattie Rag'.

Whereas before white people had been shocked and had looked down on the Cudjoe Minstrels, and black people had thought they were being made fun of, following the pioneering efforts of Linda and Philip Sherlock in collecting and performing, lecturing and promoting, Jamaica's folk music was made increasingly acceptable and even became popular. Its status and survival were assured, and some recognised that a great debt was owed to these two people. After Manda Goes to Town, a critic wrote that all lovers of music in Jamaica would remain permanently indebted to the Cudjoe Minstrels. Other groups were formed and many of the old songs have now become part of the national repertoire. In 1953, however, Linda suffered a nasty rebuff. I was not aware of it until about ten years ago, when Philip Barker-Benfield, married to a close friend of mine, was staying with us in Mallorca and we were, as usual, talking about the old days in Jamaica. Philip, who was then working on the island, had been called in as an extra Aide-de-Camp during the Queen's State Visit to Jamaica in December 1953. Earlier that year, Sir Hugh Foot, the Governor, had asked Linda if she and her group would perform for the Queen during the Official Reception at King's House, the Governor's residence. A mutual friend, who relayed the informal message, said that it was because the Cudjoe Minstrels were considered the most authentic source of Jamaican folk songs. At first she refused. The group had not performed in public for nearly ten years. They were all old and rusty. The friend said, 'I don't think you quite understand, Linda. This is not a request. It's a Royal Command.' We started to rehearse in the evenings at 56, Lady Musgrave Road (Linda's home - only a few hundred yards from King's House). I was 18 years old and had last performed aged five. But we all

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remembered the words of the songs. The rehearsals were full of laughter over our memories of Manda and the other performances. It all went off fairly well, although we all thought the Queen was not particularly amused. Prince Philip, however, standing behind her seemed to laugh out loud at 'Teacher Lick de Gal, tu'n right over' when I was turned upside down (knickers intact!) and smacked. But there was something about the evening that left a nasty taste. Perhaps it was the unfriendliness of the other Folk groups performing. Sir Hugh Foot wrote a charming letter thanking Linda. Frank Pringle, the permanent Aide-de-Camp, whom I met during rehearsals at King's House and who became my first serious boyfriend, never once mentioned that anything was amiss. Apparently there had been an awful scene. The Queen had been appalled by the Cudjoe Minstrels blacking their faces and mocking the native Jamaicans. No one seems to have taken the trouble to explain the Cudjoe Minstrels to her. But now I think that she may have been more perceptive than the Governor and the rest of us, whatever our intentions. In 1953, Jamaica was no longer prepared to accept white people pretending to be black. 'Black was beautiful', and they were at last beginning to be proud of it. It was their culture and the songs were theirs. After the Queen's visit to Jamaica in 1953, Linda and the Cudjoe Minstrels and the contribution they had made were deliberately forgotten. But then, near the end of her life, the country at last woke up to what a huge service Linda had performed in saving part of its fragile heritage. She was awarded the Musgrave Medal for her contribution to Jamaican Folk Music. She felt too old and tired (bored, I think) to go to the Awards Ceremony. A string of researchers and journalists came to see her. She was polite to them all, but it was too late.1

Chapter 12

Harold Stockhausen and Ena Clerk - Third generation of Jamaican-born Stockhausens My mother never talked about her childhood and I was never sufficiently curious to ask. I was too busy living my own life, and now it's too late. She could not have been a happy child because, apart from those few sad, traumatic incidents mentioned earlier, she never spoke of her youth. I do not know the circumstances of her falling in love with my father. But in love she certainly was. All her life. Harold, my father, was five years older. As a schoolboy, boarding at Jamaica College, he had treated Hope Glen, next door to my mother's house, as his second home. Then when he started to work in Kingston, probably at 18, he, like his brothers and sisters, came to live permanently next door with her Uncle Astley, who was married to their mother's closest friend. My mother would have then been about 13 years old. Whether it was a schoolgirl crush that developed into love, or whether she was later courted by my father, I shall never know. Early photographs show her on outings with Harold and his elder brothers and sisters, but by then she was a young woman. After attending Wolmer's School in Kingston, she taught for a short time at Westwood High School in Trelawny, a few miles from the Stockhausen's family home in Stewart Town. In 1992 I met someone who had been her pupil there. She, like Linda, said that my mother was 'brilliant', but I do not know how good a teacher she was because she was said to stand in front of her algebra class and declare exasperatedly: 'But it's perfectly obvious.' My mother told me that when she was teaching at Westwood she had received a box of chocolates from an admirer. They were

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12. Ena Holden Clerk (1905-70) - my mother before her marriage to my father.

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completely rotten (as often happens to chocolates imported into Jamaica), and she had mentioned this to the Stockhausen family over the weekend. The following week, an even larger box of chocolates arrived at the school, this time from my father. When she opened them she discovered that they too were full of worms. I do not think she ever told him. There was a beautiful wedding photograph of my parents in the family album, now mislaid in Jamaica like so much else. He was elegantly dressed as usual, slightly dandyish, wearing brown and white co-respondent shoes. My mother wore an ivory crepe-dechine, calf-length dress - simple, straight lines. A cloche hat nearly hid one eye. She was holding a pale orchid and a prayer book covered in ivory. They married in June 1930, but never celebrated their wedding anniversary. My brother Harold Ivan (always called Junior) was born on 25 October of the same year and it was not until I inherited my mother's wedding ring when she died in 1970 that I learnt of the June date. The only person to whom I ever mentioned this was Linda, in 1992, 22 years after my discovery. She told me that Ena and Harold wrote a joint letter to his family in Stewart Town. In it Ena said that no blame should be attached to Harold. They were both responsible. Linda said that she always knew that Harold was not cut out for marriage: responsibility always floated past him. She said that he had always been an odd one - a brilliant brain but a loner. One could tell this even when he was a child and spent so much time by himself 'over hill'. Ena may never have told her stern father, Robert Clerk, of her predicament; although Linda was living next door at the time, she had no recollection of a drama at Glen Hurst. Many years after my parents had died - within six weeks of each other, although they had been separated for 15 years - Linda told me that she only regretted that her brother could never make my mother happy. She said that my mother did her best, but that Harold was odd, different. What my mother needed most of all was security - and that was the one thing my father was incapable of giving her. He was never

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a philanderer. But he drank. One of the few bits of advice that my mother gave me was never to think love could change anyone. She was never critical of my father, but said that he drank before their marriage and she had thought that when they were together he would change. After their wedding, they moved into a new bedroom upstairs at the back of Hope Glen, quickly added on for them by Uncle Astley and Aunt Lil. During the next five years, four children were born: Harold Ivan, Leslie Evelyn, John Harvey and Peta Gay. We were all adored by the childless aunts and uncles of two generations in both houses. The gardens were separated only by a sparse arelia hedge, so we ran freely between the houses; my sister Leslie had a tiny sliver of arelia twig embedded in her thigh for the rest of her life. My first memory is standing beside the arelia bush between the two houses in Elgin Road the day Aunt Lil died. It was in August 1938, a few weeks before my third birthday. This memory is so vivid that I can see it still and feel the sadness in both houses. Aunt Lil's death was shattering for Uncle Astley. Their love for each other during 45 years of marriage had been the most important part of his very busy life. He had recorded different stages in their relationship with his poetry - their meeting, their love for each other, the premature loss of their only child: Long, long ago, in the first dear days God nearly proved her His love, But He called it back in His wisdom deep Tenderly, sweetly, He lulled it to sleep, And 'tis there - somewhere - above Never a babe of her own has she, At least, none on earth to be seen But echoing loud in her palace home Are the voices of children that gladly come Acclaiming her Mother and Queen. (19 February 1924 - The Queen Mother')

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and finally: My God, my God I loved her much, and still I love; Her life was sweet in Thee, and precious unto me, ... I ne'r forgot Thy gift was only lent to me And now, I give Thy precious fragrance back to Thee. (21 August 1938 - 'The Lilie Transplanted')

I think most of the Stockhausens and Clerks shared the responsibility of bringing us up. Junior had remained quite speechless until he was well over two years old. His first words were 'mangodrop... Millisaw pickitup'. Milly was the maid. Everybody was impressed. But then, his uncle Mass Owen heard him say 'bloody' and washed the poor child's mouth out with soap and water. On another occasion he sat on the outside of an admiring group gathered around his new sister Leslie and was heard to say 'See Miss Posy's brother over here'. When I was about 20 years old, my mother told me that, one day when she was unpacking my father's suitcase (he had been away doing his job as a travelling representative), she found a condom. It was, I think, only a year after their marriage and she never came to terms with it, although, as far as I know, there was never ever any further evidence of 'philandering' in their marriage. But apart from her mother's early death, the event that most affected her was when John, her third child, was stricken with congenital pylorex stenosis. (I could say this mouthful when I was an infant.) He nearly died, because there was no operation possible for it in Jamaica at that time. Dr Moody saved his life by insisting that no matter how many times he vomited - and my mother said that it was terrifying because he had projectile vomiting, hitting the opposite wall - she was to suckle him again. She cried every time she changed his diapers since he was nothing but tiny bones. Dr Moody advised 'If you have no appetite, drink champagne.'

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John later told his wife that he had been treated with belladonna - and champagne, by the sound of it. He had to face the same problem when his own newborn son, Jeffrey, developed the hereditary condition, but by then an emergency operation was the automatic medical response. John grew up to be the golden boy. The tallest in the family at 6 ft 2 in, the cleverest, the best-looking and certainly the most successful. We each of us felt we were our mother's favourite child while knowing that John had the edge because of what they had been through together. I was born in a chair. It was decided that I should be born at Uncle Jim Stockhausen's house, next to Sabina Park Cricket Ground, in South Camp Road. His daughter Marjorie, my father's first cousin, was a trained nurse and midwife and she would assist at the birth. At the end of August 1935 my mother moved into their house. When her labour pains began she telephoned for Dr Moody to come. He was playing bridge at Newcastle in the hills overlooking Kingston and said he

13. Peta Gay (myself) and sister Leslie at Hope Glen - 1938.

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was sure that it was not nearly time yet, and if the pains started again, she should walk around or sit in a chair, but on no account was she to lie down. So that was why I was born in a chair and have a great love for cricket. Quite often when I was young they said that I had been picked up on the doorstep. I worried about that too, but not much. I was darker skinned than the others and had bright black ackee-seed eyes - a weird contrast to my blonde hair. I was also livelier. I was said to be gay like my middle name - gay in its true, not modern, sense. While living in Elgin Road, John and I decided that Baby Bubbles, Leslie's new beautiful blond doll, and Junior's equally new, large Teddy Bear would look much better black. So we spent many hours working on them with pieces of coal taken from the laundress's supply for her irons' coal-pot. We were in bad, bad trouble. In spite of many hours' rubbing with Lifebuoy soap, they never looked the same again. It was the pattern in Jamaica for families to live together all their lives, or until they married. At about the same time that Linda and Mass Owen left Hope Glen, moving into their own Kingston home with their mother from Stewart Town, my mother and father and their four children, leaving it a little late, also moved out. We went to live in an excitingly modern house in Ruthven Road with a large garden and three acres of land. Linda, Owen, Eric and Miss Mirie lived just around the corner from us. My generation now had the chance to know a grandmother. Miss Mirie was said to be like her own mother, Grannie Brown. Playful, with a sense of humour. My memory is of a kind little old lady in long, grey dresses and black buttoned shoes, her silver hair coiled in a bun at the back. She wore many long silver chains around her neck with lockets holding photographs of her dead husband and son Ivan and locks of their hair, a pair of small silver scissors and several pairs of pince-nez. She managed their home and servants for her children and brought a taste of the country into our lives, with strong, sharp home-made ginger beer and delicious, freshly baked brown bread.

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My father was the only one of her five surviving children who ever left the family group. When his marriage broke up in his 56th year, he moved back in with his brothers and sisters, none of whom had ever married. They simply built on an extra bedroom for him at the back of their house.

Chapter 13

Ruthven Road and Cross Roads Market

I think that the first years after leaving Elgin Road must have been relatively happy ones for my parents. There were lots of parties, and friends and family were often at our house. They were also out a lot. They were said to make an attractive couple: both tall, slim and elegantly dressed. My mother always wore her auburn hair in an up-swept style, done once a week by Elsa at Mrs Jeffrey's Beauty Parlour. It was held up with five or six combs and 30 hairpins. Once done, she did not touch it for days. She wore several hairnets to bed and trained herself not to move in her sleep. In his younger days, Alexander Bustamante, Jamaica's most colourful politician, founder and former leader of the Jamaica Labour Party and now a National Hero, pointed to my mother at a cocktail party and asked my father: 'Who is that high-tone1 lady over there?' Every year my father changed his motor car. Not necessarily for a newer one, but always for a more exciting and larger version as we children grew bigger. They were his passion. Several had 'dickie seats'. These were two-door coupes with additional comfortable leather rear-seating, for at least two more adults and several children, exposed by pulling down a handle outside at the back. There were special rubber-covered steps on each back wing to help climb up to them. He loved innovation and we were one of the first families on the island to have an enormous, white, electric American refrigerator with the huge circular motor on top. Up until then we had had an icebox. A mule-drawn ice-cart came to our house twice a week with

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14. Four Stockhausen children - John, Leslie, Peta Gay and Junior 1938.

blocks of ice covered with crocus (jute) bags. Half a block would be separated with an ice-pick and placed in the top section of the icebox and this would keep our food in the bottom part cool until the ice melted. The other half of the block would be broken up and put into tin buckets with bottles of tap water, ginger beer, homemade limeade and Red Stripe beer. At Christmas time there would be bottles of red sorrel, a spicy drink made from the flowers of a bush in the Hibiscus family. The four legs of the icebox stood in tins of evil smelling Jeyes Fluid to keep the ants and cockroaches from mounting up to the food. My father was immensely proud of our new electric refrigerator. The servants and children got into trouble for leaving water bottles unstoppered - for some complicated reason, beyond our understanding, it had to do with condensation. When our cook returned from market on Saturdays, the week's meat was laid out on an uncovered zinc tray on the top shelf. My mother, who was neurotic about hygiene (our tooth-brushes had to

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be angled away from each other in the mug), had all the fruit and vegetables washed in a solution of potassium permanganate before they were put on to the lower shelves beneath the uncovered meat. My father took us on board the first commercial aeroplane that came to Jamaica. Not to fly, but to see the inside. It was a Pan American Airways Clipper seaplane, moored on the water at the new airbase at Rockfort in Kingston Harbour. This was in the early 1940s when an air service was introduced between Panama, Colombia and Jamaica. I can still remember the thick carpets and deep comfortable armchairs. Perhaps this was what hooked my brother Junior on aeroplanes and airports for the rest of his life. From then on we children rushed outside every time a 'plane flew over our house and could identify their types by the sounds of their engines. Anything unusual was feared to be German. Both my parents, as far as I can remember, were involved with our early upbringing. Not of course in the hands-on European sense; there were always nannies to cope with the messy domestic and practical aspects. We ate our meals with our parents, but I suppose in my father's case that was only breakfast. He was at work in downtown Kingston at lunchtime and never ate lunch anyway even on Saturdays and Sundays. When we were very young we had dinner earlier than they did. The four of us sat at a round table on the wide back verandah with a huge bunch of bananas turning ripe over our heads. Dinner for us when older was at the big table with the grownups in the dining-room. Small children and adults were waited on at table by the butler, butleress or housemaid. Although our five-bedroom house in Ruthven Road had two bathrooms and three lavatories, all the bedrooms had hand-basins and we all had chamber-pots under our beds. These were emptied every morning by the housemaid. Once when our aunt Winnie from Mandeville was spending the night, my sister, who was sharing her room, used Winnie's slipper. My mother had a commode close to her side of the bed. This was a wooden armchair with a lidded seat over an enamel bowl. This and my father's 'chimmie' were emptied by the maid every morning, although there was a bathroom adjacent to their bedroom.

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Our servants - at that time at least five plus two gardeners - lived in a separate building a few yards behind our house. They had a life of their own which I always found more exciting than ours in the 'big house'. Clarisse Knight, our cook, was my favourite. She came from the country, somewhere near Stewart Town. I started having eczema on my hands when I was about five years old and in those days cortisone ointments had not yet been invented. Every Friday afternoon I was taken into downtown Kingston to visit a doctor, usually Dr Moody, and a new treatment would be tried. My painfully suppurating fingers would be pushed into boiling hot potassium permanganate - the same treatment the vegetables got, but at least they had it cold. Sometimes each finger would be wrapped in gauze and then soaked in nasty-smelling yellow sulphur ointment. Because my mother was afraid that I would contaminate the rest of the family, I had to wear muslin bags over my hands, even to go to school. When she told Clarisse to make sure that my knives, forks and crockery were washed and kept separately, Clarisse took me on her knee and said 'Come, Miss Ena... Look 'ere ma'am.' She pulled the bags off my hands. Took my oozing, sore fingers and rubbed them gently all over her black face. 'You wait, Miss Ena... Nuttin' go'in 'appen to me, ma'am... Der's nuttin' wrong wid dis chile.' My mother loved Clarisse too. When Clarisse came back from hospital after a 'female' operation, my mother spent hours in her room putting hot mustard plasters on her back to ease the pain. One lunchtime, near the end of the school holidays, when I was out in the backyard scrounging run-down (peppery salted mackerel cooked in coconut milk with scallions, pimento, cloves and scotch bonnet peppers and served with boiled green bananas), Clarisse said 'Free paper soon burn,2 Miss Peta. You want to come to market wid me dis Saturday?' She woke me up while it was still dark. Everybody else was asleep. She got me dressed and plaited my hair so tightly that my eyes ran and I had to stand on tiptoe to relieve the agony. We caught the first tramcar to Cross Roads and I stepped into a whole new world. Clarisse ignored me once we got inside the market, so I had to make sure that I kept up with her. Maybe she was ashamed to be

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seen with me. Maybe she found it a disadvantage in her bargaining. She did not introduce me to any of her friends or regular sellers, but they knew perfectly well who I was - although I suspected that she had always pretended to be shopping for herself. All those measurements on the back of the blue school exercise books, with the King and Queen on the front cover, now made sense. Each seller had her goods spread out on the ground in mounds, and beside them were tin measures of a gill, Vi gill, lh pint, pint. But spices and smaller quantities were sold by coins: quatties and bits. I had been accustomed to 'igglas' (higglers) who came to our house and were dressed half town/half country. But in the market they wore red, blue and yellow plaid madras bandanas tied round their heads, with sometimes a straw hat on top; denim blue full skirts with lace-trimmed white cotton petticoats underneath, worn with an apron on top. These skirts had huge pockets, but the money was kept wrapped up in a cloth and dragged up from inside the bodice at each sale, or the skirt hitched up while the hand sought change in a petticoat pocket where notes were kept. Spread out on the ground, sometimes on crocus bags, sometimes in straw baskets, sometimes on banana leaves, were yams, yellow and white and all the other sorts, sweet potatoes, yampis, cocoes, ackees, Irish potatoes, red peas, black-eye peas, gungo peas, small round green bitter susumbers, large round green breadfruit, plantains, cho cho, Indian-kale, callaloo, pumpkins, green bananas, tangerines, naseberries, star apples, yellow cashew fruit with their nuts still attached, knobbly sweet sops, smoother sour sops, mangoes of several types, tamarind pods and huge Nelson avocado pears. Some fruit you could not buy in the market. You had to have your own tree or pick them where you found them - guineps, otahiti apples, rose apples, horrid jack fruit and certain rare mangoes. The spices, peppers and coffee beans were also laid out in small piles on the ground. By this time, the sun was beating down and the delicious smells combined with that of the donkey and mule urine, which was never far away. The few men, smoking and drinking white rum out of unlabelled bottles, stood about near the animals which had brought the food to market. The huge double hamper baskets were empty

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and the mules and donkeys swished flies off with their tails, waiting for a lighter journey home. Some of the sellers had come into Kingston by bus with all their goods piled onto its roof. Chickens usually travelled inside with the passengers, but goats were left out on top. Some women with huge baskets on their heads had walked half the night. One of the few things I saw sold by men was coconuts, which were thrown up into the air and caught and chopped simultaneously with a cutlass to form a drinking hole at the top. After you had drunk the water, the man would chop the coconut in two and make a scraper for you with a bit of the husk so that you could eat all the sweet jelly coating the inside. They also sold jackass rope. This formed a huge coil like a very thick dirty rope and was coarse tobacco for smoking in a pipe or chewing. It was sold by the yard for less than six pence. Even though Clarisse had her regulars, she did the rounds of the whole market - mostly social calls but feeling all the fruit and vegetables and asking prices, 'kissing' (sucking) her teeth in disgust and moving on. Our last stop, after her baskets were full, was the covered meat market. Flies everywhere. There was no refrigeration, hence an awful smell. But we bought a whole week's supply of meat for a family of six, unexpected guests and several servants - all to be taken home quickly on the tramcar and laid out on the big round zinc tray under the ice-making compartment of the new refrigerator.

With three acres of land we could run wild, and we did. The large bit in front and around the house was kept neat, the grass cut and flowers and shrubs cared for. There was a beautiful ponciana tree about a 100 yards from the house at the front, under which we would sometimes picnic as a treat. Otherwise, foolishly, we always ate indoors in the same way as all so-called 'civilized' Jamaicans. Behind the house was where the fun started. One side near the house was boring - a vegetable garden for the family, where the servants also grew some of the weirder Jamaican varieties. But on

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the other side was a large, grassed, deep but gentle gully. My father called this and the land just beyond it, 'the pleasance'. We rolled down it, over and over, time and time again - but never too soon after lunch. On the far bank of the gully grew a huge tamarind tree. John was encouraged to pee there, as my father said it made the grass grow thicker. Beyond the pleasance was bush - thorny shrubs and trees. No attempt was made to tame it and it was a wonderful playground. The back limit of our property was fenced - but very breachable - and behind that was a large dry gully with rocks and sand. Just beyond that was the Knutsford Park Race Course - now New Kingston. We were supposed to take a nanny if we wanted to leave our land, but we considered that we had free rights to the Race Course and climbed up into the Stewards' wooden tower look-out boxes to see the views all around. Once I went alone as far as our back fence and climbed a very old divi-divi tree. I was working my way out along a high limb suspended by both arms when the limb broke between my hands disturbing a huge nest of red ants. They poured out down my arm and body. I was frozen with pain and fright, hanging by one arm, and screamed so loudly that they said afterwards that they must have heard me at Half Way Tree. The servants came running from the house and had to climb the tree and stand on each other's shoulders to get me down. On another occasion I did get into trouble - but of another sort. I was dressed for a friend's birthday party in a beautiful new, freshly starched and ironed yellow organdie dress made by my mother. I was wearing it for the first time. While waiting for the car to pick us up, or for the nanny to be ready to walk with us, I persuaded someone to push and push my swing high and higher. It was a particularly good one - suspended from a high branch of a very tall tree. When I thought the swing was at its highest point, I leapt down to earth leaving my new dress caught in shreds behind me. But, of course, we also had to go to school.

Chapter 14

Prep School and childhood 1940

The four of us went to the coeducational Preparatory Department of St Andrew High School for Girls in Cecilio Avenue. It was about three minutes walk from our house, and was set on the edge of the grounds of the main school. The modern one-storied building was surrounded by Lignum Vitae trees with small glossy green leaves and soft powdery blue flowers. At certain times, for just a few days, the trees would be covered with thousands of small white butterflies. The Spaniards prized the gum of this tree as a cure for syphilis - a disease described as the Arawaks' revenge. When the disease spread to the French Army, it was blamed on Spanish women, who were said to have caught it from the Indians whom Columbus had brought back to Barcelona. It would seem that Spanish men were blameless. (We did not, of course, learn this in either the Prep School or later in the High School.) My brothers and sister did very well in the Prep School, but I had immense trouble learning to read. This was particularly grim for me because I belonged to a family of readers. Leslie had been wearing glasses and reading books avidly since she was four years old. I envied the glasses as well. It became a worry to us all. Over 50 years later, my aunt Linda could remember the problem and told me that when it came to my turn in class I would whine 'I'm tired, Miss Whitfield.' Like everything else in my schooling, everyone - school staff and family, instantly knew about my progress or otherwise. My aunt Dodie, who was Second Mistress of the High School, was convinced that Miss Whitfield was a witless, hopeless teacher.

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Poor woman. She managed to teach everyone else, but in midstream she had switched from look-say to phonetic. Also nobody seemed to realize that I was slightly dyslexic. As I was approaching seven, Dodie asked Miss Anderson, the Headmistress of the Prep School, to take me in hand. Apparently I spent just two afternoons in her study, and emerged able to read. During my 11 years at St Andrew Preparatory and High Schools no aspect of Jamaica appeared in our curriculum. It was as though we were being taught in Britain. We learnt about the Tudor Kings and Queens of England, the wives of Henry VIII, obscure details of the Industrial Revolution and much other European history. We knew where to find the Pennines, the Cheviot hills and the granite formations of the United Kingdom, but the geography and history of the West Indies were ignored completely. Our globe was mostly proudly pink. Our teachers were also pink, with even pinker lumps on their blue-white legs where they had been bitten by mosquitoes. They also had colds, which we never had, and spat into their handkerchiefs. We did not feel sorry for them. If our mainly imported British teaching staff were curious about our island, they satisfied this privately, and they certainly never encouraged any curiosity on our part. Whether this was school policy or their lack of imagination, I do not know. Miss Gartshore, our Scottish Presbyterian headmistress in the High School, no doubt loved the island. Her father had been one of the founders of the school, and she had lived there long enough as a child, and then after her education in Scotland. But we never learnt a local song, yet every Old Girl from St Andrew's knows the Scottish 'Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing', and Robert Burns' 'Wee sleekit cowering timorous beastie'. Our four School Houses were named Grace Darling, Garret Anderson, Edith Cavell and Joan of Arc. The French would be surprised by the last. Of course, all our text books were sent out from England. At first our blue exercise books had pictures of the young King George VI and his Queen on the front cover. On the back, in addition to the multiplication tables, there were measurements in poles, rods

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(which we pronounced 'rood' like Miss Gartshore), furlongs, gills, pints, quarts and gallons, etc. Then much later, when they were supplied by the Gleaner Company in Kingston, we still had the King and Queen on the front but on the back cover was a sketch map of Jamaica with a few details of its area, counties and parishes, highest mountain and longest river, compressed above the multiplication and division tables. This was the closest we ever got to learning about our island at school. When I first went to St Andrew's Prep School in 1940, there were many different ethnic mixes, but mostly in shades of white; by the time I left the High School in 1951, however, two-thirds were shades of black. On my first day at school, I met Rose Cecile Parboosingh, who is still one of my closest friends 60 years later. We were in the same form and were quickly consigned to the back of the line for the daily trip to the hall of the Big School, where we gathered for prayers each morning. Rose Cecile and I had appeared for our first day wearing Indian flip-flop sandals. Mine were a present from Mr Jesvani, our exotic lodger. Mr Jesvani was part of the team of censors sent out to Jamaica during the Second World War. Their job was to read all letters arriving and leaving the island in the hope of detecting any subversive activity. He was Indian, tall, good-looking and, to us children, deadly strange. We thought he was a spy. Despite the War, he was able to give us amazing presents: a large elaborately carved wooden chest, lined with cedar, was sent from India for my mother and from then on this was used for our best table and bed linen; a hexagonal black ebony filigree table, its top inlaid with mother-ofpearl and ivory, also arrived at the house for us while he was there; as well as a huge supply of stock cubes - perhaps in an effort to put some flavour into our bland food. Rose Cecile was of Indian descent but she also had difficulty walking in the hard leather-thonged sandals with their rigid soles. I cannot remember how long we persisted in wearing them to school; our parents were probably prevailed upon. But during the slow, painful walks to prayers, Rose Cecile and I became incessantly talkative, inseparable friends.

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It was in that first school year that I discovered that boys were different from brothers. My mother referred to John-John Greaves as having a striking affection for me. He showed his liking by hitting me but, when invited to tea, locked us both in the bathroom and kissed me. We were five years old. At school, as I remember, I was only in serious trouble once. It was my last year in the Prep School; Rose Cecile, Andrew Bloomfield and I sat in the back row of Miss Neita's poetry class. Andrew whispered a poem that broke us up. Miss Neita, curious devil, insisted on knowing what was so funny. None of us would breathe a word. It was the last class of the day and we were kept in. Voluminous 'Nursie' in her white starched uniform came to fetch Rose Cecile and, no doubt not wishing to displease the busy Doctors Parboosingh waiting for their lunch, she was allowed to leave. Andrew admitted to having told us a poem but would go no further. When hunger and panic overcame us, Andrew said that he could not tell Miss Neita the poem but would write it down. In his lefthanded, crab-clawed writing, he wrote the poem for Miss Neita, doing his best to drag his fist through the wet ink. We escaped to catch our tramcar to Kingsway Road, where we were now neighbours. Unfortunately, my problems were not yet over. Miss Neita had been invited to tea at our house the following Sunday afternoon. I spent days in terror convinced that she would quote to my parents the dreaded words: In days of old When men were bold And paper not invented They took dried grass To wipe their raas And went away contented. In Jamaica, 'raas' is the basic word of some of the most obscene swearing: unacceptable in an educated adult and totally unforgivable for a child.

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It was probably after we had all started going to school that my mother began having the 'jitters'. During the holidays or when I was off school recovering from one of my frequent bouts of malaria, I would have to go with her by taxi into downtown Kingston to visit the shops, where she seemed to feel safer than she did at home. In Nathan's, Issa's and Hanna's, where she was well known since the owners were friends of the family, a chair, a fan and smelling-salts would be brought, while she chose embroidery materials and crochet threads. Often a taxi would be summoned to our house by telephone. It would arrive and wait in the drive or under the porte-cochere, with the engine running for ten minutes or half an hour, while she decided which friend she could visit. Sometimes just having it there settled her nerves and it would be paid off and sent away. (It was many, many years later when I suffered from agoraphobia myself that I realized just how devastating panic attacks could be.) My mother's nerves and apparent lack of physical stamina were probably aggravated by her self-imposed diet. She had perfectly good teeth but lived on pap: junket and milk custards, egg flips, fruit juices and minced beef, anything that did not require the effort of chewing. This was punctuated with doses of Eno's and Epsom Fruit Salts, Andrew's Liver Salts and Rennies. Always at hand were her fan, smelling-salts and sal volatile aromatic spirits of ammonia. (She died of cancer of the intestines, aged 65.) I suppose that it was also around this time that my father started to come home late. Sometimes my mother would track him down at one of his clubs - in those good old days he belonged to them all. Rather than interrupt his evening, we would be summoned to join him. Sometimes she would go alone, but often, I remember, we would have to change out of our pyjamas, be packed into a taxi and taken to his club. He would have several 'ones for the road', and eventually he would drive us, incredibly slowly and carefully, home. We were lucky because my father never became obviously drunk. He just got more and more gentle and polite and spoke in a quieter voice. He became kinder and even more considerate of his

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friends. (Guy Pringle in Olivia Manning's Balkan Trilogy has always reminded me of my father.)

Children in Jamaica do not have constant colds. They seldom get measles, mumps or chicken pox. Junior did have mumps but none of us caught it. However, we all had whooping cough when we were still living in Elgin Road. Every day Arthur the chauffeur drove us out to Cable Hut, a black-sand beach east of Kingston harbour, where we were made to sit on the sand and take deep breaths of ozone-filled air. I was the only one of us who had malaria. It began when I was six or seven and went on for years. Every few months it would start up and last for several days, sometimes weeks. My temperature would be below normal in the morning; after lunch it would start to rise, and by late afternoon it would be 105°F (40.5°C) or 106°F (41.1°C). The bed would shake along with my agiied body. It must have been alarming to watch. Dr Moody would visit on his way into his Kingston office in the mornings and again in the evenings on his way home. They tried everything - including enemas - at the height of the fever. My chief memory is the scorching heat as they piled blankets on top of me. Begging for just a sip of water or to be allowed to poke out even a toe, it's a wonder they didn't kill me. Sometimes I became delirious. Quinine was no help. It just blocked my ears and made them zing. Eventually Dr Moody announced a new pill - Atabrin I think it was. They were yellow and turned me yellow too; but they worked. I went on being yellow for some time afterwards. To cope with the sight of me when I wanted to wear a yellow dress to a tea party, my mother put a little bit of one of her paler lipsticks onto my yellow lips. Birthday parties were a feature of our lives. There were four of us and we had lots of friends - and in hospitable Jamaica we were usually all invited. There was competition to see who could offer most flavours of ice cream. These were all made at home of course, in wooden buckets surrounded by chipped ice and coarse salt, with

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the metal handle turned by the yard-boy until the ice cream was of the right consistency. My favourites were fluffy coconut-water ice, grape-nut, rum and raisin, and chocolate. The parties were usually held outside in the garden with games organised by the parents. These would be quite elaborate. During the War, we had a Sham Battle at Ruthven Road for Junior's birthday. The girls came dressed as Red Cross nurses with first-aid kits, the boys as soldiers and our pleasance was the battleground. For the many fancy-dress parties the costumes were usually made at home. Even when we had no social engagements we were always 'tidied' for the afternoon, which meant a bath and change of clothes, clean socks and shoes. My mother changed into an afternoon dress. Her favourites, in olive-green silk or crepe de chine, she called her livery. As her marriage cooled, my mother devoted herself almost entirely to our enjoyment. She did not drive, play golf or bridge. Apart from when she had the 'jitters', she was very happy to be at home. During the War and just afterwards we had a series of robberies. We had always left our doors unlocked and windows open at night and so for the first time we had to become careful. My father kept a 12-bore double-barrelled rifle, a huge thing, under his bed. Every night before going to sleep he would load it with two cartridges, then first thing in the morning he would take them out and put them in the highest drawer of his tall clothes chest. He did, by mistake, kill our neighbour the Commissioner of Police's Alsatian dog, which was prowling around our chicken-coop, but, thank goodness, my father never heard any of the burglars. There was a difference between thieving and taking (tiefin' and tekin'). My mother did not care for the latter but it was sometimes done with small things that were admired or needed by occasional servants, and they could not understand the objection. 'Is not tief I tief it, ma'am, is jus tek I tek it.' (I had forgotten about this until a Christmas Eve in France, several years after I was married, when we were invited to have rum punch and boudin blanc with Huguette Palmis, our Martinican cleaning woman, who lived nearby. Every

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bit of furniture in her one-roomed home was covered with something made by my mother for my bottom drawer. Huguette had always admired them while doing the ironing. Standing there, drinking her rum punch and eating her boudin, I could not complain. I never admitted to even noticing.) Another habit of a particularly kind and good housemaid we had when I was a child was to have exact copies made of my mother's favourite dresses and to wear them on her days off. The only burglar I ever saw was when we still lived in Ruthven Road. He had climbed up to the window of my bedroom and was fishing with a hooked piece of clothes' line. With the same method, he had managed to get a handbag and a pair of trousers from our house guests' bedroom. Another burglar, caught by the sudden dawn, had buried all our crockery in a newly dug vegetable patch. An astute policeman had noticed a cup handle and we recovered the lot - without one chipped or broken plate. At another time my mother had to visit a police station to bail out a young gardener who had been caught playing dominoes under a streetlight. We never had any problems with Obeah, Jamaica's witchcraft, although erratic Irene was certainly an Obeahwoman. I cannot remember if she was a housemaid, cleaner or laundress, because I do not think that my mother could tell her what to do or when to work. She came and went as she pleased. We first realized that she was an Obeahwoman when we were still living in Ruthven Road. My father had brought home for us some Paradise Plums - not a fruit, but a hard, flat, pear-shaped sweet, red on one side, white on the other, with a thin yellow layer through the middle, and very powdery with sugar on the surface. He had had them in a small brown paper-bag in his pocket and had absent-mindedly put some change into the same pocket. When he got home late that night he put the sticky money to soak in the wash-basin in his bedroom. When Irene caught sight of this in the morning, her black skin turned pale grey, she let out a hideous shriek, ran from the house and was not to be seen for months.

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From then on she would be away for weeks or months, even years, at a stretch, and did not seem to mind the loss of wages. When she was there, she would roam about the yard, barefooted and with her red skirts hooked up, talking to herself, searching out weeds and special grasses and wild flowers to make 'bush tea'. If she thought we looked a bit pale or we let slip that we had tummy-ache, she made us drink the most foul-tasting, bitter 'surrasi' tea. (Cerasse Mormordica charantia L. Throughout the West Indies it is used as a purge, a worm medicine, for colds, fevers, high blood pressure, a deterrent against cancer by checking the growth of tumours, for menstrual problems, and for birth control. It is interesting that Irene should have known its botanical name.) Surprisingly my mother never interfered and probably drank some of the stuff herself. Certainly she never objected to Irene's erratic behaviour and accepted her back into the fold whenever she reappeared. Some of the other servants would also disappear from time to time, saying when they returned that they had gone to their yard or to look after a sick or dying relative in the country. As most often they could neither read nor write, we never knew how they were informed that there was a problem; but they could sense when something was wrong and would leave immediately. In the countryside you would see small houses painted bright blue to ward off duppies and other evil spirits. The women wore deep Schiaparelli 'nigger pink' cotton underwear to ward off... What? We in the 'big house' laughed about Obeah but believed in it. You certainly would not fool around with an Obeahwoman. But some things seem quite natural in Jamaica, which in other countries would raise eyebrows. When I was a teenager I could get my mother to will my boyfriends to telephone me. She took a lot of persuading because she did not like doing it. Sometimes, when she knew that I was really desperate, she would agree and it did not usually take more than half an hour before the telephone rang. It is not the sort of thing foreigners understand. Of course, I never told my Jamaican boyfriends either, but Gordon MacGregor always said that my mother would know the exact instant of my losing my virginity, even though I might be on the other side of the globe.

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Even after living over 40 years in Europe, I still retain some basic 'primitive' instincts. Several floors underground at the cinema, I can often tell if it has started to rain. Many years ago, the night before it happened, I dreamt about the racing driver, Stirling Moss's crash at Brands Hatch in England. I was living in Paris at the time, and did not know he was racing; in fact, I had no interest in the sport, but I was so sure that I felt guilty about not sending a telegram warning a man I had never met. My sons also used to get upset when I knew that they had missed a class at school. I would start out by pretending that I had been shopping near the school and seen them, but usually ended up by admitting it was the old bongo drums. They preferred to think it was because they looked guilty. On Saturday nights in Jamaica, the sound systems blared out music - some local, but mostly imported. Of course, it changed after I left to mostly local - Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and all the other reggae stars. Sunday nights were different. You would hear the drums start up at sunset and continue until dawn. A lonely noise if you woke up in the middle of the night. This was the sound of Poca Mania. I never went to a meeting. Outsiders were not welcome. But we knew that they danced until the spirit took them, then rolled on the ground, eyes turned up and shaking as if they were having what I now know in quite a different context to be a very pleasurable experience. Some of the women who worked with us would get dressed up in white with white turbans on their heads and leave the backyard quietly on a Sunday night. It is hard to believe that the meetings were illegal, because the sound of the drums carried for miles; but everyone who went to 'meetin' was very discreet about it. The great mystery was the rolling calf with chains, but this was so scary that we were afraid even to ask about it.

Chapter 15

The Second World War Moving houses

I am not sure whether it was restlessness or financial restriction that made us start changing houses the way my father changed his motor cars. We spent about four or five years at 5 Ruthven Road and then during the next ten years we lived at 12 Kingsway Road, 13 Waterloo Road (just two houses away from my great friend Rose Cecile at number 9), then at 30 Upper Waterloo Road and after that at 2 Surbiton Road. They were all within half a mile of each other and of Ruthven Road. Some memories are associated with particular houses but, as our servants and friends remained constant, there is a certain amount of blurring. We found the moves exciting. It was the closest we got to travelling, and the main wish of every Jamaican is to 'goa-farrin' (to go abroad). In Europe, I have always been a bit embarrassed about my memories of the Second World World War. My husband Birger's memories are of spending nights in an air raid shelter built by his father in their garden in south London, the sound of V-2s and Doodle-bugs overhead, and of leaving his parents when he was evacuated to Wales at the age of four. In Jamaica we had occasional practice black-outs when, during his rounds, the Air Raid Warden, a neighbour from further down the road, came in to have drinks in the dark with our parents on our verandah. They would discuss whether they needed to extinguish their cigarettes. Gasoline was rationed and we were very impressed when cousins

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Jack and Claire Ralston (Uncle Jim Stockhausen's daughter) came to visit on bicycles. She had special weights pinned on to the hem of her silk skirt to anchor it. Since there were several American air bases on the island and Kingston was a regular port of call for their Navy, even the married women of island society perked up, hennaed and upswept their hair, and organised dances, picnics and other entertainments for the troops. Towards the end of the War, my father, who was then Managing Director of the Colgate-Palmolive, Peat Company in Jamaica, was asked to become Competent Authority or Trade Administrator for the Island. He was 'lent' to the Government by Colgate, and became responsible for the granting of all import and export licences, and for rationing. His office was in Harbour Street, next door to the Myrtle Bank Hotel on the waterfront of Kingston Harbour. Twice a week during the school holidays, the whole family would drive into Kingston with my father in the morning. We would spend the entire day at Myrtle Bank's magnificent swimming pool. We called it the Turtle Tank, and I think it cost 2/6d (two shillings and sixpence - about 1272 pence) for the family for the day. My mother would only allow us to swim on the two days a week when the pool had been cleaned and the hotel had brought in a new supply of sea and fresh water to refill it. She would lie on one of their polished wooden deck-chairs reading, crocheting or embroidering and counting our heads in the water. At lunch time, her sister Evelyn, who worked in an office in Kingston, and other friends would join her. It would be club sandwiches by the pool for us all or, from time to time, we would put our clothes on and be taken as a special treat to the hotel's elaborate smorgasbord. Anyone of any importance visiting Kingston stayed at the Myrtle Bank Hotel, so we collected many coveted autographs for our albums. I had Jan Pierce's, Richard Tauber's and Lauritz Melchior's. One of them, I cannot remember which, sang operatic arias for us under the Royal palms, while their usual residents, the ugly peel-neck John Crow Turkey Vultures, cruised overhead. My mother felt that we should have some idea of what the world was suffering. She filled empty Neo-chemical Food (a

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delicious sticky molasses-like tonic - one teaspoonful per child each day) bottles with sugar, labelled them with our names and said that that was our ration for the week. I have no memory of feeling deprived. We saw in American comics that children sold lemonade on the streets in aid of the War Effort. We made bottles of pickles with Scotch-bonnet and bird peppers, which we tried to sell to the neighbours. They must have been lethal, because I remember that after tasting them I had to put my fiery mouth against the icemaking compartment of the refrigerator, with disastrously painful results because my lips stuck to the ice. Jamaica had to fall back on itself as imports were severely restricted. My father was courted by the Lebanese, Syrian and Indian merchants who were desperate to be granted import licences. At Christmas my mother tearfully returned hams and other generous presents. My father had the reputation of being scrupulously honest. All the more tragic, therefore, was the scandal that followed. A friend who was his second-in-command was accused of taking bribes in exchange for licences. My father's honour was at stake since he was in charge, so of course he resigned. Ever after, I think, he was a disappointed and broken man. I do not think he returned to Colgate. After the War he set up his own import and export Commission Agency. At one stage his company was called Caird, Chandler and Co. (Jamaica) Ltd. Several charming English gentlemen came to dinner while they were negotiating their association with him. I visited one of the families when I first came to England in 1957. They took me to Choral Evensong in St Margaret's Westminster and then dinner at their home, and made me feel as welcome in their country as they said we had made them feel in ours. Even though I was subsequently told by several young men that my father had taught them everything they ever needed to know about marketing, I suspect that he spent most of the working day in drinking clubs - of which Kingston had many. His favourites were the Tally-ho and the Jamaica Club, and in the afternoons and evenings he would go to the Jamaica Yacht Club, Kingston Cricket Club at Sabina Park and St Andrew's Tennis Club, but I am sure

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that business was never discussed. Later the clubs became seedier and my mother stopped trying to track him down. As their finances dwindled, inevitably they lost a lot of friends especially the more recent ones. Their social life dried up as money became short. Fortunately, my brother John won a scholarship to Jamaica College, like his father and uncles before him. School fees for the rest of us were always paid at the last minute and the embarrassment began of having the telephone and electricity temporarily cut off several times a year. I do not know if my mother was right never to give in. We children shared bedrooms, and she took in family and others as lodgers to help pay the bills. I know that she was criticized by my father's friends for maintaining a comfortable home and trying to keep up a reasonable standing of living for us. They thought that it was because of this that he drank. She never criticized him, certainly not to us. When my eldest brother Junior was in his early teens, he wrote my father a letter of which I can remember the phrase 'dens of iniquity', but nothing more. I do not suppose that my mother ever let my father see it. She loved him. He hardly ever came home in time for dinner, but his place at the head of the table was always laid. Every night the cook would ask 'Shall I put this up for Massa Haral, Miss Ena?', and every night my mother would say 'Yes'. I do not think she ever fell asleep until he got home - which was often in the early hours of the morning. By this time he no longer belonged to the Yacht Club, St Andrew's or the KCC at Sabina Park. There were a few occasions when, obviously in a very nervous state, she woke us up, we dressed and were bundled into a taxi to join my father at the Glass Bucket Club, the main night-club on the island, where it was not necessary to be a member. He always seemed glad to see us all. A table and chairs would be produced with a good view of the floor-show. My father would leave his friends at the bar and join us and in the middle of the night we would watch Rajah Raiboyd, the magician and hypnotist from India, and other wonderful 'internationally famous' illusionists and night-club acts.

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I cannot remember bragging at school the next day, but we must have yawned.

Although my mother was neurotic about many things, she was not afraid of Jamaica's often violent weather. During the most terrifying electric storms, with forked lightning and horrendous claps of thunder, she was thoroughly serene - even laughed at the noise. We would gather on her bed, where she would distract us by counting our distance from the strikes. Even during bad earthquakes and the worst hurricanes, I cannot remember the least sign of panic on her part. When war was declared in England, my uncle Cecil Clerk, who lived near London, sent his English wife Winnie and their two small children, Evelyn and Robert, of four and two years of age, to his family in Jamaica to protect them from the Blitz. He immediately moved in with his secretary, whom he subsequently married. The Clerks opened their homes to Winnie and her children and my mother and she became good friends. ('Little Evelyn', my first cousin, told me recently that as their ship approached the island, their mother told them that she feared the family might be black and would try to kiss them.) Winnie was an incredible woman who died in Canada in 1992, aged 84, while making pastry for a luncheon party she was giving for her bridge group. My mother admired her enormously for being able to do all the things she herself found impossible. When Winnie realized that her husband did not want her back in England, she went with her two children to live in Mandeville, a town 60 miles west of Kingston, liked by English people for its cool climate and quiet ways, and known to them as 'the last resort'. She made a new life for herself there, working hard to bring up her children. She did her own cooking, which was considered eccentric, established a catering business and then set up a food canning factory. When bauxite was discovered in the Mandeville area, she took in young Canadian engineers as lodgers. She then built cottages on her land which she let to them. Her daughter, Little Evelyn, was my age and sometimes during

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the school holidays I would be put on a 'country bus' at the Parade in Kingston, and the driver would be told to drop me off at Winnie's house, a few miles beyond the centre of Mandeville. This was an adventure for me, and was surprising because as a smaller child I had shrieked so loudly when spending the night at a friend's house that my father was asked to fetch me home. The 'country buses' were full of market women returning to their villages all over the island. Their baskets were secured to the roof along with my suitcase. Their chickens, and sometimes in wet weather even their goats, travelled inside with us. I loved my visits to Mandeville - the cold air, the delicious novelty of wearing a sweater after nightfall, the different food and the secrets shared with Evelyn, who had a rich imagination and firm ideas of what her life would be about. Compared with my mother Winnie was a dynamo, working at something from early in the morning until late at night. She had a hot temper but was indulgent about the cat giving birth to kittens on our bed in the middle of the night. However, to my surprise, during a mild thunderstorm, Winnie crawled under her bed with her children, they all blocked their ears, and would not come out until I had told them that it was long over. Evelyn loved staying with us in Kingston. For her it was much more exciting than staid Mandeville, but what she especially liked about it was talking to my mother. She still remembers my mother's routine. After a leisurely breakfast, she would have a long tepid bath. With a large powder-puff she would dust herself liberally with Yardley's April Violets, get dressed, do her hair and face carefully and then, exhausted, retire to her bed (which would have been made up by the maid in the interim). She would lie on the bedspread propped up with pillows and cushions, surrounded by her books, magazines, fan, crochet and embroidery, ready to listen.

Chapter 16

Christmas in Jamaica

People in northern Europe can never imagine that Christmas in the hot tropical climate of Jamaica could possibly be 'Christmassy'. But it was all we knew and for us it was a wonderfully exciting time of year. During the weeks before Christmas King Street, the main thoroughfare in downtown Kingston, would be given a festive atmosphere with coloured lights and decorations. The street sellers on the pavements near the Parade would stock red Canadian apples in their glass-topped candy boxes. These were like high wooden desks, with sloping glass covers, which the fat candy sellers - always women - sat behind on high stools. Usually they sold peanut brittle and bright pink and white coconut candy, which for hygienic reasons we were never allowed to buy, but at Christmas their wares became even more tempting. Those sellers without desks carried wooden trays on their heads, covered in buzzing flies, tamarind balls and coconut candy, and just a few of the precious red Canadian apples. Others were haberdashers, calling out 'long-eye-needle, fine-teet-comb, rubba'. My mother's love of lists reached its peak at Christmas time. Sometimes she had a set of alternative lists in case there was no extra money for the celebration. Often she never knew until the very last minute, and after one frantic Christmas Eve's shopping trip, we piled all the parcels on to the ledge behind the back seat of the car, only to have two arms stretch in, behind our heads, from the open windows on either side of the car and steal our presents when we slowed down in Harbour Street.

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Some people claimed that they could smell the Christmas trees as soon as the boat bringing them from Canada turned past Port Royal into Kingston Harbour. We usually bought one of these imported fir trees, but during the War and 'hard-times' we would bring a leafless ebony in from the garden, paint it white and hang it with lights and decorations. The base of our Christmas tree was always shrouded with a swirling clean white sheet. For us that was snow. I can remember my disappointment in England when no one did this. Especially as there was never any real snow outside either. Late in the night of Christmas Eve, our parents filled four clean white linen pillowcases with presents, on each of which our name was written in pencil. In them we would always find a pungently fresh-smelling red Canadian apple - its scent a wonderful thing in the Tropics, and never since recaptured for me by any apple, in Canada or elsewhere. On Christmas morning, we would start tip-toeing into my parents' bedroom before dawn, hoping for permission to open our presents. All his adult life my brother John's forehead bore the scar of colliding with a door in the dark of an early Christmas dawn. Because my parents had had to spend so much time in church as children, sadly church-going did not feature for us as a family. But leading up to the Christmas school holidays, we had learned all the traditional English Christmas carols and we often acted in the schools' nativity plays. Easter was the only time of year my sister Leslie and I would go to church: dressed in white, sometimes with white gloves, on Good Friday and then again, more cheerfully dressed, on Easter Sunday. Christmas Dinner was at lunch time on Christmas Day. We often went to Park Avenue, my grandfather's home, and later to South Avenue when he moved there to live with the family of my aunt Evelyn, his youngest child. There would be a huge turkey stuffed with spicy breadcrumbs, a large baked ham stuck with cloves, rice and peas, and at least six other vegetables including candied sweet potatoes. This would be followed by a rich Englishstyle Christmas pudding, usually made by my mother and our cook. For this, dried fruit (carefully cut up by my mother) would be soaked for many months in port wine, cherry brandy and rum; then

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a few weeks before Christmas the pudding would be made, and boiled for many hours in a kerosene tin of water on a fire made over stones in our backyard. We boiled our hams in this way too. The Christmas pudding would be served with hot and cold rum and butter sauces, also made by my mother but mainly stirred by our cook. If one was lucky one would find a silver threepenny bit or a tiny silver 'favour' wrapped in rice paper in one's slice of pudding. Of course, since it was my grandfather's house, jackets and ties had to be worn by the men and boys. We wore bright - if possible new - dresses. After lunch, our part of the family would leave to visit the Stockhausens for tea, my mother reminding us on the way to try not to be kissed too much by the aunts and uncles. She thought that kissing was a guaranteed way to spread germs and to be avoided if possible. There would be more Christmas pudding plus cucumber sandwiches and the other usual tea items. Then more exchanging of presents. It was probably at Christmas that we got our first glimpse of Richard. Our bachelor uncle, Mass Owen, had gone to the country to recuperate from an illness, and the result was the birth of a child to the matron of his Nursing Home. I do not know if he legally recognized Richard, who used his mother's surname. Richard visited Owen at weekends but was kept away from us. Even at Christmas he never came into the drawing-room or on to the verandah when we were there. We occasionally glimpsed an attractive, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy a few years younger than ourselves. I cannot remember what explanation we were given for the presence of a little boy in the childless house, but it was enough to satisfy our curiosity at the time. If he had the full run of their house when we were not there, I cannot imagine what explanation was given to him for keeping himself invisible to us. I was relieved to be told by Byron, Linda's faithful servant, that Owen - whom I considered a dry old bachelor - had been a wonderful grandfather to Richard's children. Richard himself, even as an adult, referred to Owen as Granddad, and the boys at Richard's school had assumed Owen was his grandfather.

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I met Richard and his mother, who is now married for the second or third time, when I was visiting Linda in 1992. They were in Jamaica on holiday from their home in Canada. His mother told me that she had been one of my mother's pupils at Westwood High School.

Chapter 17

Moving houses Fulford's old house

Although our subsequent houses did riot have as much land attached to them as 5 Ruthven Road, my father's love of nature and the countryside attracted him to houses with access to open spaces: not so much for the view as for the ability to wander. The house at 12 Kingsway Road had a field behind it belonging to our friends the Buies and behind that there were the King's House lands, part of the Governor's residence and large estate. We felt free to climb through barbed-wire fences and explore, climbing trees, collecting butterflies or just wandering. We all spent hours roaming with home-made butterfly nets. We were taught never to net unnecessarily. My brother John and his friend, our neighbour Robert Hart, kept only one perfect male and female specimen of each butterfly. It was a great day when Robert, white in the face, ran into our backyard from the Buie's field with the first Purple Emperor that they had ever seen. It had been resting on a cowpat.1 Their ambition was to find the rare Papilio Homerus, the largest known Swallowtail, seen only in Jamaica. My father was fascinated by insects, mainly beetles, and was always taking rare finds to his friend Dr Bernard Lewis, who was in charge of the Natural History Department of the Institute of Jamaica. No one else seemed to use the King's House lands; not even to drive off the cows when they settled themselves under the trees we were in. We would be scared to come down and late for lunch, so my mother would have to send someone to find and rescue us. One morning John and Robert set off from behind our house bound for Jack's Hill in the range of mountains beyond the King's

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House lands. There were no maps or paths and both families had to send out search parties when they did not return home at sunset. Of course, no harm came to them in those safe old days. They were found wandering home by road in the dark, completely exhausted. These areas are no longer covered with beautiful trees and bush. They are criss-crossed by roads and totally built-up, but it was our glorious playground in the 1940s and early 1950s. (Our house in Ruthven Road, even if it is still standing, is now invisible from the road, hidden by several smaller houses built in front and beside it, with a road running to several more behind.) Sometimes on very hot nights when my father was 'on the wagon', he would take us for walks after dinner. Not into the bush, of course, but on the roads. He taught us the names of the stars and to recognize the constellations. There was never much traffic and we could spread out across the road and chant marching songs. Strangely, one was 'My father got drunk, and he packed up his trunk and he (pause for a right step) left.' When we moved into the Kingsway Road house, there was already an established garden. Leading up to the house from the lawn was a wide terracotta path, smooth enough to roller-skate on, bordered with pale blue plumbago hedges. At right angles to the path, edging the lawn, were white spider lilies, whose leaves were often covered with black-and-white striped caterpillars. They were probably the larvae of Black and Yellows, Battus polydamas, our tailless Jamaican swallowtail, because there were always plenty of these in the garden. I particularly liked Zebras (Heliconius charitonius), which were unlike any of our other butterflies in shape and colouring. They had wide, narrow wings striped alternately with bands of lemon-yellow and black. We also had many flowering shrubs, one of the loveliest being the poisonous yellow alamanda. Near the gate was a huge Flame of the Forest (or African Tulip) tree (Spathodea campanulata). Its firered flowers extended beyond its dome of leaves nearly 60 or 70 ft above us. Some of the curved sword-shaped unopened buds would fall to the ground after heavy rain showers. They were full of their own liquid, good for playing water-squirts and, when empty, for sailing as miniature vessels in rain-water puddles.

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One of our great joys after heavy rain was walking barefoot just outside our front gates in the warm puddles on the hot, wet asphalted road. The Harts lived in the prettiest and probably oldest house in Kingsway Road, set in large grounds. It had probably been a small estate house of a cattle pen (farm) or a small sugar plantation. Devon House on the corner of Kingsway and Hope Roads, which is now considered Kingston's showpiece (as well as being a museum), was bigger but more recent than the Harts' house. Even locked up, as it then was, Devon House was not impenetrable to us. Having climbed over the high wrought-iron fence, the caretaker rewarded our curiosity with a conducted tour of the eerie, huge rooms with their furnishings shrouded in dust-sheets. We thought the Hart boys had a much more exciting family life than we did. Both their father and their American mother drank too much but with great style. No Christmas passed without their tree catching fire - they would have been disappointed if it had not. The Hart boys were always dressing up in elaborate costumes, often made by themselves, to act out their own plays. Philip, the younger brother, was the more artistic. Both suffered from severe asthma and had to spend a lot of time indoors, so they had developed richly creative imaginations. Our parents were then also friends with theirs and sometimes on a Sunday night when our cook was off, Donald Hart, their father, would invite us all to dinner made by himself. This consisted of his opening lots of cans of different flavoured soups, which he would mix together with pepper sauce. The blend was carefully worked on and was always delicious.

Every day was punctuated by calls at our house from food sellers. When we were living in Kingsway Road many of these still came by mule or donkey-drawn carts. There was the daily visit from the Powell's Bakery mule cart, which had a closed box-room at the back. From this the day's bread for the family and servants would be bought. Sometimes during the school holidays, I would persuade the bread-man to take me along,

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seated beside him on his wooden bench and sharing the reins, visiting all the houses up to the end of our road. I would buy a bulla with my pocket money. This was a forbidden delicacy, slightly sweet, dry and sticky at the same time, and said to be made from the scrapings off Powell's Bakery floor, hence their dirty brown colour. Rusty nails had been found in them. Milk from Dairy Farmers also came daily by mule-cart. The Dairy and its ice-cream parlour and Powell's Bakery bordered the grounds and playing fields of St Andrew High School, as did the Glass Bucket Night Club. All 'out of bounds', but a constant temptation to pupils of all ages. Fish and lobsters came in a straw double-hamper bankra basket, strapped on to the back of a bicycle. Long before he arrived at our house, we could hear the fish-man's call of 'Feeesh, fresh feeesh... King feeesh... snappa... lobsta.' We always had curried lobster for dinner on Friday nights. This was later replaced by curried hard-boiled eggs. Special excitement was created by the arrival of the coconutcart. This was an open, short-sided cart, always pulled by a donkey. It would be piled high with huge shiny green coconuts, and had a tall coconut palm-frond sticking straight up out of the back, so that even if you had not heard the coconut-man's shout of 'Watercoconut, jelly-coconut, jelly-dough', you would see the palm-frond waving above the garden hedges as he came along the road. All the servants and children gathered around the cart when he came up our drive. Standing next to the cart by the kitchen steps, we would all drink cool coconut water straight out of the nuts. Then the coconut-man would chop them open with his machete and we would eat the jelly inside. The sugar-cane donkey-cart had sweet juicy canes laid out on the back and several upright canes tied together, which waved in the breeze. With a machete, the cane-seller would hack off the hard outer skin of the cane, and quickly make white fibrous fingers for us to suck, get stuck between our teeth, and spit out when we had extracted all the juice. A soldering-man also came on a bicycle, with several noisy pots and pans tied at the back. He would take our pans that needed to

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be repaired into the backyard and heat up his soldering-irons on the laundress's coal pot. The female food sellers came on foot. These were higglers who sold fruit and vegetables that they had bought in the market or from growers in the country. They often came long distances, walking barefoot with a graceful swinging of their low-slung bottoms and hips. They had delicate hands and were amazingly light on their feet, almost dancing as they walked. These women, invariably fat, carried huge loads balanced on their heads - vast straw bankra baskets filled with every imaginable fruit and vegetable. It was almost impossible to find them lacking something. They were dressed like country women, with blue denim dresses, white aprons and plaid madras bandana 'tie-heads'. Occasionally a detail of town dress might have crept in. I loved watching them preparing to leave, having had a 'cool drink' sitting on the back steps of the kitchen. They would stand facing the huge basket set on the ground in front of them, and wrap another bandana or piece of twisted cloth into a flat coil or cotta, which they would place on top of their turbaned head. They would then get a yardboy or two to help them lift the heavy basket up on top of the cotta, which had remained exactly in place while they bent down to receive the basket. Then with a strong shimmy of the hips to establish perfect balance, they would set off swinging down the drive.

After Kingsway Road, we moved into an old wooden house on Waterloo Road, only a few hundred yards away as the John Crow flies. We were just two doors away from my school friend Rose Cecile. Our houses had been built at the same time to the same plan: a wide front verandah with the drawing-room behind, with a long corridor running backwards through the middle of the rest of the house, the bedrooms off on both sides. The dining-room was at the back with the kitchen behind. This was of a very similar plan to the first floor of Georgian town houses throughout the island. Beyond were the servants rooms and the garage. This house was set on high (possibly brick) foundations, and under the back part of the house I set up a play-school, where I

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persuaded the servants' children to be my pupils. Also under here, one of our dogs gave birth to 11 puppies. Two died of mumps so, as a preventative measure, the others had bits of rag, pierced through a raw cashew nut, tied around their necks, a folk-remedy learnt from the servants. They were wormed with strong black coffee. Our old dusty turtle, which we fed with charcoal, either disappeared under the house forever or fell down the ancient disused brick well in the backyard, sadly never to be seen again. The house at 13 Waterloo Road was on a larger piece of land than 12 Kingsway Road, but whereas the latter was lush with green grass, flowers and butterflies and a more or less permanent cricket field on the front lawn, my memory of 13 Waterloo Road is of brittle, dry grass and drought. We had to use our bath-water to water the few miserable flowers. Behind the house and our land, but not belonging to it, was waste land stretching all the way back to the Constant Spring Road. Further up the Waterloo Road, the next neighbouring house was Terra Nova, a huge stone building set in large grounds, which belonged to the Blackwell family. They collected exciting guests, and we once saw Errol Flynn arriving for an afternoon visit. Their son Christopher, later the creator of Island Records, would continue in the family tradition of not accepting the ordinary out of life. For a few years we had the land behind our house all to ourselves. There were splendid trees for climbing and picking mangoes, guineps, cashews and ackees. It is now a crowded neighbourhood called Rest Pen, but my chief memory is of learning to smoke there, under a huge spreading 'ficus-berry' tree (I think it was probably a banyan). We could buy cigarettes singly or by twos in a Chinese grocery shop on the Constant Spring Road: Four Aces and Gold Flake. Fortunately, my first smoke coincided with my being made, by my brothers and their friends, to squeeze the B-B air rifle shots out of the lizards they had killed, so that the pellets could be used again. When I returned home green in the face and faint, I blamed it on the lizards. A lesser sin, apparently, than smoking. Until we could afford to buy cigarettes, we had experimented with smoking fern stems and cigar-shaped immature breadfruit. Never Jackass-rope or ganga.

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I cannot remember where we were living when my elder brother Junior (Harold) got sunstroke. He was around 12 or 13 and had been taken on a picnic by friends of our parents. They went to Lime Cay, a small coral island south of Kingston Harbour, and it seems that Junior spent the whole day either on the open boat or in the sea without protection from the sun. I can remember him being purple when he came home, having a high fever and afterwards having to have salt on his grapefruit. His nervous system seems to have been temporarily affected and he missed nearly a year of school, developed a stammer and had to be sent to recuperate in the country. My father arranged for him to stay with the Thelwells, who had taken over some of the Stockhausen family businesses in Stewart Town, and had bought or were renting the old family house. I remember we kept asking when Junior would be coming home. He returned after what seemed a very long time, bringing with him a desk which he had made himself with guidance from the local carpenter. It was decided that he should leave Wolmer's Boys School rather than return a year behind his friends. They sent him to Jamaica College, where he ended up in a parallel form to John, his younger brother, who was one year ahead of his own age group. It was a bad idea, since Junior was hopelessly nervous at exams and managed to fail them, while John went on to be joint-first in the island's Jamaica Scholarship at the end of Higher Schools Certificate (A-levels). An illustration of how Jamaica was changing is that it was decided, presumably by whatever Government or educational authority was involved, that white-skinned, blond-haired John should not be sent to University abroad, being unrepresentative of Jamaica. Instead he was awarded the Princess Alice Scholarship to attend the new University of the West Indies at Mona in Jamaica. My father was a close friend of our horrid dentist, Dr Fulford, who owned a large, very old, decrepit, two-storied wooden house on a huge bit of land at the end of Upper Waterloo Road. It must originally have been an old estate house, and the Fulford children cared for the large quantity of horses and cattle around it. Their youngest son, Sugar, had killed his best friend there with a hunting

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rifle - not deliberately. It scared me that the victim had been born on exactly the same day and year as myself. After the accident, the Fulfords built themselves a modern house on the edge of the property nearer to civilization, opposite the old Yellow Fever Burial Ground on the corner of West King's House and Waterloo Roads; and Dr Fulford offered to let the old house to my father. It was exactly to his taste - and, although I cannot believe that it was to my mother's, once again we moved house. We were older now and spent less time in the bush. My father laid out a tennis court and taught the gardener to paint the lines with white lime. There was no fencing, of course, so much time was spent looking for balls in the bush. To reach 'Fulford's old house', one had to cross the Sandy Gully. We were on an island between two spurs of one of Kingston's largest dry river courses. When it rained heavily we became completely isolated - for weeks after storms we had to negotiate sand and boulders with our bicycles. During the rainy season we would stay in bed until the last possible minute hoping not to be able to go to school. My father had Gore's Tobacco and Tile factory nearby make him a cement bird-bath on a pedestal. I remember telephoning him at his office to say which birds were using it. Our friends from that time still tell me now how much they loved that house and the wonderful parties we had there. Marguerite Earle (Stephensen), who now lives in Canada, says that there was always a warm and welcoming atmosphere. It was so isolated that friends often stayed for the night. On a recent visit to Jamaica I tried to see the house, but it had burnt down fairly recently. Our driveway was now a road called Annette Crescent - named after the wild Fulford daughter. There were several other roads and probably a hundred houses had been built on the land. Over the years, my father had accumulated some beautiful pieces of old Jamaican furniture. Some came from the old family home in Stewart Town. John's bed was a high double-bed like a giant cot, in dark mahogany, which had been made for several Stewart Town Stockhausen children to sleep in at the same time. It

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had large removable wooden slats under the mattress, and the spindle-barred sides, about 18 inches high, could be lifted off when the children were old enough not to fall out. Our dining-table of massive mahogany had five extra leaves in a mahogany stand and could seat 20 when fully extended. There were eight or ten mahogany chairs, two with arms for my parents, who sat at either end of the table. My father had seen a friend, who owned the Temple Hall Estate, cutting tobacco for his pipe on the table, which was in shocking condition. It broke his heart to see a beautiful object being ruined and he offered to buy it.2 My father spent a great deal of care and money having the table restored. I have heard that members of the Soutar and Crosswell families, who owned Temple Hall, now regret the loss of the table along with so much else of their family's heritage. No longer with our family, I only hope we have left it in safe hands. But my father's most treasured possession was the mahogany four-poster bed, with its bed-head and top-posts, from his family home in Stewart Town, and the beautifully carved bottom-posts later thought to be 'genuine Hepplewhite'. Visiting someone in the depths of the country, a business associate I think rather than a friend, my father noticed the gateposts as he drove through. He mentioned that he thought the gate was hanging on bedposts and could he have a closer look. The bemused owner, who was not interested in old furniture, agreed to sell the muddy, wooden posts to my father provided he replace them with proper gateposts and re-hang his gate. He thought my father completely mad.

The Hart boys, Robert and Philip, who still lived in Kingsway Road, continued to be close friends. Robert and John were in the same form at Jamaica College and from an early age I, like most of my friends, considered myself to be in love with Robert. At one of our fancy-dress parties - the first evening one - the theme was our ambitions. Robert came as a surgeon and I was dressed as a bride (in my long white bridesmaid's dress from our aunt Big Evelyn's wedding). My ambition was to go to University, get married, have children and live happily ever after. Robert and I made a pact that

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if neither of us had married by the time I was 25, we would marry each other. We missed it by a narrow squeak, but I suspect he made the same pact with all the other girls too. He became a successful thoracic surgeon in the United States and is, as far as I know, happily married. When we lived in Fulford's old house, to scare ourselves, we would often climb over the locked gates of the abandoned Yellow Fever Graveyard further down Waterloo Road. We would sit on top of the tombs telling ghost stories - it seemed to me that the boys always chose the darkest nights. Philip Hart told by far the best stories and would often lead us by hand-chain around the cemetery, stepping through the tangled bush, and over broken tombs and gravestones thrown into precarious positions by earthquakes and floods. One night we had an arrangement to meet him there at 8.30 p.m., at our usual tomb: a domed structure, about 4 ft high, on which we always sat to tell ghost stories. To our horror, when we had only been there a few minutes, the eerie playing of a violin could be heard coming from inside the tomb below us... Philip had removed some loose bricks and had climbed into the underground chamber with his violin. It was a sad place, this graveyard. We did not mock it; the graves were mainly those of young British naval boys, nearly all under the age of 20 - some even the same age as us. No ruined foundations were visible, but it was said to be the site of the first church erected by the English in the parish of St Andrew, which was considered by them to be the most pleasant part of the island. Its church records are the oldest in Jamaica. Among those buried there were soldiers who came out to conquer Jamaica with General Venables in 1655, and two infant children of Sir William Beeston, Governor between 1693 and 1701. Philip was Rector of Kingston Parish Church when he died from an asthma attack, aged only 49. He had just announced his intention to accept the offer to become head of the Institute of Jamaica. He never married.

Chapter 18

Leaving school

I cannot remember why we left Fulford's old house in Upper Waterloo Road. Perhaps we ran out of potted palms to cover the rotten floorboards in the drawing-room. Our next move was into a much smaller house, with very little land, but it was on the corner of Surbiton Road and Hope Road very near to Half Way Tree and to St Andrew High School, where I was in the last years of my short education. We passed 5 Ruthven Road on the way to school. Fortunately, because I now had a new bicycle and rode it to school, our school uniform's 'jippi-jappa' straw hats had been replaced by felt Dubonnet-coloured berets to match the colour of our pinafores. School rules insisted that, if the uniform was being worn outside the school grounds, the head had to be covered at all times. Even with the regulation elastic tape under the chin, when riding a bicycle our straw hats kept blowing off on to the back of our necks, making them an affront to school prefects and married teachers (the unmarried teachers lived safely at the school). We were known to other schools as Red Ants. My early promise as a track athlete had faded so I tried netball, hockey and tennis. Games were compulsory, but I was not keen especially since my aunt Dodie was also the netball mistress. In place of our pinafores, we had to wear Dubonnet-coloured pleated bloomers with our white short-sleeved blouses. I got quite good at persuading my mother to sign invented excuses. Plays were far more fun - when I could land a part - and rehearsals served as a plausible and valid excuse from games.

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My mother now taught sewing at the school. Hemmed in on all sides, I could get away with nothing. I found myself in trouble with Dodie for ordering several new text books in my Senior year. The school's second-hand bookshop, stocked with scruffy, torn, marked copies, was considered quite adequate. I did not realize how dire our financial situation was and, quite rightly in the circumstances, no one would have understood or sympathized with the intense pleasure I got from smelling and handling those untouched volumes fresh off the boat from the publishers in England. During the summer of 1950, I spent the school holidays up a mango tree. It was the perfect place to study for the Senior Cambridge examinations coming up in December. Cooler than the house, I made it comfortable with a few cushions placed between the thickest branches. Everyone was so amazed to see me working during the holidays that I was left in peace. We had two weeks of examinations. The question papers were sent out by ship from England in sealed packets - opened only in our presence. Our efforts were then sent back, also by boat, to be corrected in England (we believed by Cambridge University itself). We waited six months for the results, praying that the boat would sink on the way to or from England. My results surprised everyone, including myself - but especially Dodie. She had been my form and English mistress that year, which had therefore been a nightmare for me. I came sixth out of the 60 girls from St Andrew's who had taken the exam - and St Andrew's considered itself to be the best school on the island. I got Grade 1 and was first in the school in biology, geography and Spanish oral. I had started Sixth Form geography, physics and chemistry while waiting for the results, but wanted nothing more than to leave school. I went to see Dodie in her office. She made no comment about my results, although I had heard that she was delighted. She agreed with my decision to leave, saying that, with my Exemption from Matriculation, I would be able to go to Oxford or Cambridge whenever I wished at a later date. (This was inaccurate, since I had not done Latin in the Exams, but I believe she was being sincere.)

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I discovered shortly afterwards that she had been paying my school fees for the past two years.

I shall always be grateful to my mother for my completely carefree youth. Although she must have suffered agonies of financial insecurity, we never felt deprived. In Jamaica so much of our entertainment involved the beautiful natural surroundings and open hospitality that there was less financial pressure for material things - and those were modest compared to Europe. She made all my clothes, choosing the patterns and materials for my approval. She said that she enjoyed doing it and it seems that I was patient with fittings and appreciative of the results. (She gave up sewing for my sister Leslie who, it seems, was more difficult to please and who by that stage had moved away to work in Montego Bay.) My mother allowed herself one luxury: American glossy women's magazines, which in those days were geared towards the wife, mother and home-maker. Apart from the latest American fashions for my wardrobe, she found ideas for our parties. She refused to feel guilty about it since most of her friends smoked, played bridge and golf, and drove motor cars. Some of my friends asked her to help them with their embroidery and this she did with obvious pleasure. She liked nothing more than having us gathered around her talking and sewing, as she lay crocheting on her day-bed on the front verandah. She suggested that we form a Sewing Bee. Once a week we met at a different friend's house with our embroidery or whatever we were working on, and were given tea by the parents - although no parents ever attended. Typically, the teas became so elaborate that the boys decided to come along too and we soon forgot to bring our sewing. The spin-off from this, when some of the boys got their driving licences and could borrow their parents' cars, was Progressive Parties. We would start at one house for hors d'oeuvres, drive to the next for the main course and on to the third for dessert (never called pudding in hot Jamaica) and then to a fourth for dancing.

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There were also Scavenger Hunts, when each car was given a list of seemingly impossible items to collect (fish scales, stones of fruit out of season, a garter, a tortoise-shell comb, etc.). We always ended the evening dancing at someone's house. Then there were birthday parties or other special celebrations. There would usually be a buffet dinner, then games such as spin-thebottle, sardines, pass-the-grapefruit, elimination dances and Paul Joneses. We danced to American 78-records: Big Bands like Artie Shaw, Glen Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman; records by Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, and to the slightly out-of-date American Hit Parade. We had wind-up gramophones and some friends had modern automatic changers, where you could stack four or five records, on a bent spindle, above the one being played. On Sundays there would be picnics at the seaside, but the beaches near Kingston were not good so we preferred moonlight fishing parties along the Palisadoes Road. We were not yet allowed to drive across the island to the white sands of the North Coast, unless grown-ups were involved. We would go to the Liguanea Club on the edge of Knutsford Park Race Course, where some parents were members, to use the pool. In those days few people in Jamaica had their own swimming pool. Sometimes there would be a Rum Punch party on a Sunday, with curried goat and suckling pig for lunch. But David George wrecked all that. During a Rum Punch party for Junior's 21st birthday at our house in Surbiton Road, David challenged our cousin Nick Hendriks to a motor car race. Nick had just got himself a dark red Singer convertible. David George had his mother's new small Austin Seven. They left before anyone could stop them, which we would have done because David was a notoriously reckless driver. Within minutes there was a horrible accident. Less that half a mile from our house, they had hit a sudden wet patch on the Hope Road. They both skidded out of control, with Nick's only passenger, another cousin, Tony Clerk, being thrown over the tall spiked railings of St Andrew's Memorial Hospital. Nick was still in his car, but eight feet up in the air wrapped around a telephone pole. David George walked free from his mother's wrecked car. (Forty years

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later, another cousin wrote off his brand-new E-type Jaguar in exactly the same spot, and fortunately was uninjured.) Nick was taken to the new University College Hospital at Mona and for weeks fought for his life. We all gave blood (all except me, because of my history of malaria, and David George, who was too scared). Nick was never the same again. He could not return to his job at the Kingston branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce and eventually died in Canada from diabetes. David George never changed. He walked out on his first wife, Barbara Hart (Robert and Philip's elder sister), when she was pregnant with their first child and had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He said she was useless. However, it all caught up with him in the end. His second wife, sitting on his knee, playfully gave him a karate chop on the breastbone which killed him stone dead on the spot. I hate to admit that I had once found him attractive and had even gone out with him a few times. I was very young and he frightened me by saying that it was terribly dangerous for a man's health not to be able to satisfy his lusts. Fortunately, I was not frightened enough. From about the age of 14,1 was never happy unless I was in love - sometimes with more than one boy at the same time when I had difficulty making up my mind. My first real love was Tony Verity. We still lived in Fulford's old house at the time and to my mother's great amusement he turned up on his bicycle, asking for a glass of water. He just happened to be passing by. This meant crossing the Sandy Gully and riding up a very long unpaved driveway to our house. He did not ask to see me. I was not at home and he hung around for a few minutes, drinking his glass of water very slowly, and then rode away again. He was not part of our gang but of course I knew him by sight and to smile at. His family were involved with the theatre. His English mother was Margaret Lauder, the singer, and I knew his uncle Bob Verity, who was one of the moving forces behind local theatre and had somehow been roped in to help our Girl Guide troop with the production of a play. Bob was responsible for teaching me

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the importance of clear articulation, visibly amused by my 'while I enchant their-ears' (a scene from the Pied-piper of Hamelin). Tony invited me to a matinee at the Carib Movie Theatre. We went on our bicycles. I remember wearing a white cotton 'peasant' blouse with a wide scooped neckline, and a just below knee-length, blue and white polka-dot cotton seersucker ballerina skirt. During the film I lost a baby tooth. A canine from the front upper left. He was seated on my right. I managed to get it into my handkerchief without too much blood and put it in my pocket. I did not smile all the way home. You may wonder why I did not drop it on to the floor, but it was worth a shilling if the tooth fairy found it under my pillow. I cannot remember when I was first kissed, but I am sure it was not by Tony Verity. My first real evening party with dancing was when my brother John was asked to bring me along to his friend Hoppy Don's house. My social life blossomed after that, and I was in and out of love with Hoppy for years. In spite of unkind teasing about him from the rest of the family, my mother always said he would someday make someone a very good husband - as I am sure he has my friend Pat Martindale. It was one of my mother's principles that I should never start going out with someone whom I would not consider marrying. This was a subtle way of ensuring a pretty rigid form of prejudice. Although we naively professed that there was no colour prejudice in Jamaica, our large group of friends were all white or Jamaica white, into which latter category we ourselves fell. As colour was never discussed, or even mentioned as a description, the expression Jamaica white was new to me when I heard it in England many years later. It embraces all those members of old Jamaican families who considered themselves white or 'passed for white'. One did sometimes hear 'bad hair' meaning wiry hair, but this was used by everyone on the island, regardless of their skin colour. There was no prejudice whatsoever against Jews. Many of our friends had names such as Ashenheim, deCordova, Henriques and deLeon. They were never referred to as being Jewish and, in spite of their reluctance to attend parties on Friday nights, there was no suggestion that they were in any way different from the others. We

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were fortunately spared this other pointless prejudice, and it was not until I lived in France as an adult that I realized how some otherwise intelligent and rational human beings spoke of, and reacted to, Jewish people. I was too blinkered while still living in Jamaica to realize how extraordinary it was to live in a country that was 98 per cent black, and yet be brought up as though the island belonged to the other less than 2 per cent who were white or ' J a m a i c a white'. I say less than 2 per cent because the East Indians, Chinese, Lebanese, etc. were also almost invisible to us socially. Even more shockingly awful was not realizing that this was abnormal. Colour was never discussed, as a problem or otherwise. It did not have to be. It did not exist. Only once in our family, when I was a child, was an incident referred to, with bemusement, of how Junior, when aged five and first attending the Prep School, had brought home for tea the only black child in the whole school. It did not happen again. During my first year in the High School - it must have been just after the Second World War - there was great consternation among the teachers and parents. The Government proposed to legislate that all private schools should accept 50 per cent of their annual intake from scholarship winners in the State Elementary system. I suppose our parents saw it as the beginning of the end. The teachers, including my aunt Dodie, were convinced that the academic standards would plummet. At first there were rumblings to the effect that the scholarship girls were only good at parrot-learning. But soon this was proved wrong. We, the pupils, watched this influx of new children with great curiosity and then, to our total amazement, we were swiftly put in the position of having to compete to remain in the top half of the class. It would be interesting to talk with some of those new classmates now, and to ask if there had been any problems for them with the teaching staff or with the older pupils. I honestly believe there were not. But I doubt that I was sensitive enough to be aware of any potential difficulty at the time. Sad to say, this new mixing at school had no effect whatsoever on our own social life.

Chapter 19

Earthquakes and hurricanes

Big world events tend to pass a small island by, so Jamaica (before more recent violent times) used to relish any local drama. The Daily Gleaner reported daily domestic tragedies with banner headlines such as 'Cane Cutter Chops Common-law wife with Cutlass' and 'Rasta blames Ganga for Machete Massacre'. But what we most feared, and at the same time prided our island for, were cataclysmic natural disasters. Lying in bed on hot sleepless summer nights with our legs stretched out along the cool walls, we children often had whispered discussions as to whether we were more frightened by earthquakes or by hurricanes, or cloud-bursts, or the end-of-the-world with fire and brimstone as predicted by one of our nannies as a regular bedtime story. With regard to the weather, my mother's only grudging respect was reserved for cloud-bursts, although I think she was only three years old when her worst one occurred, with twelve inches of rain falling in half an hour. Whenever there was a particularly dramatic torrential downpour, she would say 'Hum...oh dear... this could be another 1908.' When we were in Fulford's old house I was terrified that our home on the island isolated by the two branches of the Sandy Gully might be swept away by flood water. But every time the earth rumbles, all Jamaicans relive the horror stories of Port Royal in 1692 - with the earth opening up and swallowing people, sometimes leaving only heads or arms sticking out to be eaten by dogs, and when two-thirds of the town sank

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under the sea. It is part of our folklore and a comfort during minor tremors. Even though Jamaica lies on a fault pattern, earthquakes are not frequent. I can only remember four or five during my first 21 years on the island, and only two particularly bad ones - much harder to forget than hurricanes. A sinister atmosphere precedes an earthquake - a yellow stillness, a hot whisper of silenced animals and birds. The sky becomes leaden-yellow and dark even in the middle of the hot tropical day. Then a low rumble, intensifying to shake and crack the earth and walls and floors. Everything seems to bolt and sway in all directions at the same time. In spite of the lucky Lewis Galdy, who was swallowed and then saved by being vomited out alive by the earth in 1692, it is too terrifying to run outside. But you must move - into doorways or under tables, they say; however, you cannot stay inside in case the house collapses or catches fire. You think it is all over, then it rumbles again. When the last after-shocks have died away, there is a pure, huge sense of relief: cathartic, an exaggerated version of what it feels like after a very shattering trip to the dentist. Hurricanes are quite different. There is an official hurricane season in the summer, although we knew that there had been hurricanes recorded in Jamaica in every month of the year. We would have several hours warning. There was an air of excitement and apprehension, but I cannot remember any great fear. All the windows had to be battened down, and my father never seemed to be there to take charge. The garden-boy would try to find nails and suitable bits of wood to strengthen the outsides of the windows so that they would not blow in or out. The baths would be carefully cleaned and filled with water and the emergency stock of candles, matches, flash-lights and tinned food laid out within easy reach. The servants who did not live in would be sent home to secure their own dwellings and to gather in their children, and our live-in servants would come inside the 'big house' for the duration of the storm. We would listen to ZQI Radio until they went off the air or our electricity failed. We did not have transistors in those days. A short

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time before the hurricane hit us the lights would flicker a few times and then go out. It would become very still, as before an earthquake. And then the noise. A howl in the distance gathering force, and then all hell broke loose. For several hours we huddled together in a room at the centre of the house, sometimes going to peer through one of the glass doors or windows on to the verandah. Leaves and broken branches would blow across the tiled verandah floor, and through the wild trees we could see 12-ft long corrugated zinc-sheets, torn from the roofs of the garages and servants' quarters, flying over the tops of neighbouring houses. Our own roof would start to leak as wooden shingles were torn off and, with saucepans, buckets and chamber pots, we tried to catch the drips. After several hours there would be an unnatural lull if we happened to be in the direct path of the eye of the hurricane. For half an hour or more there would be a deathly silence, but it was the rule never to leave the house at that time. During one of our worst hurricanes it was at this stage that my father came walking home, to my mother's great relief. Her concern was for his safety, not her own. Then, once again, the noise ripped through the quiet. This time the wind came from the opposite direction, but during hurricanes it feels as though the wind comes from all directions at the same time. It was considered very dangerous to go outside immediately afterwards. We would try to sleep for a few hours, because by this time we often had torrential rain. If there was still daylight, as soon as the rain held off, people would start venturing out. The roads were often blocked by fallen trees, electric light and telephone poles, the rubble of buildings and bent corrugated zinc-sheets. Our first concern was to make sure that no one was injured and if possible to walk to friends' and relatives' homes to offer help. Sometimes we had several days of rain following a hurricane, so a major problem was making houses, outbuildings and garages watertight - that is, if they had not blown down completely, in which case we would try to salvage what we could of their contents. Our houses had no cellars because of possible flooding, and no attics because of hurricanes. Storage tended to be in garages and

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outbuildings. Yet another reason why Jamaican family histories are patchy. As soon as roads were passable, we would drive out to view the damage. This, strangely, we enjoyed. I suppose because we had come through it alive. Fortunately, there were seldom any human casualties, and I suppose in those last colonial days one could still count on the Mother Country to help the island in emergencies. Many other people had the same feeling of cleansing and renewal. Those with cars would drive slowly towards Sandy Gully to see its transformation into a raging river (luckily we never had a hurricane when we lived near it), then on to Kingston Harbour to see the large boats and even freighters washed up on to the Palisadoes, the strip of land with the Airport and Port Royal, which almost encloses Kingston Harbour.

In early August, 1951, when we were living at 2 Surbiton Road, we had the worst hurricane that I can remember. My 16th birthday party had been planned for 3 September; it was to be a sort of 'Coming out' party for me. The Senior Cambridge results had arrived and I had decided not to return to school the following year, but instead to take a secretarial course. Thanks to the mango tree and my mother's insistence that I go to the cinema instead of revising on the nights before difficult exams, my success gave me the confidence to think that I was ready to face the grown-up world. Invitations had been sent out before the hurricane - all in Leslie's verse, individually appropriate to the invitee. I can still remember bits of them: Sweet Sixteen and never been kissed Come to my party and add to the list Of boys who've tried and always* missed (*Leslie wanted to put 'never', but I objected) The date's the third September A fine night for a spree So don't forget to remember To R.S.V.P.G.

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Throughout August we anxiously waited for our gas, electricity and telephone to be reconnected. We did not want to cancel because everyone was looking forward to it. Fortunately, we had arranged for a small band to come over from Mandeville to play for us, because the potential loan of a modern, sophisticated gramophone would have been useless without electricity. Our gas supply was reconnected after three weeks. Our back-up could only have been coal-pots, still used by our laundress for her irons, or kerosene tins over stones in the backyard. But in 1951 my mother would never have considered offering guests good authentic Jamaican food cooked in this way. Sadly, we never had it ourselves. Instead, we usually ate a poor imitation of pale English food made with unsuitable hot climate ingredients. Electricity arrived in Surbiton Road on the afternoon before the party. I can remember the jubilation, with Red Stripe beer all round for the Electricity Board men working high up the poles in the road. The party was considered a great success. Laid out on my bed afterwards amongst all the kind presents were at least six mirrored powder-compacts.

Chapter 20

Growing up

Before I had finished my secretarial course with the Catholic nuns at Alpha Convent, I was offered my first job. So I never did learn more than the most rudimentary accounting, and my typing and shorthand speeds were not impressive. However, the timing was fortunate because I had just been discovered by Sister Bernard drawing Clive deLeon, my latest crush, with his crew-cut hair and budding moustache, which the poor Sister took to be a portrait of herself. It was a good job, especially for a beginner, and was not in hot downtown Kingston. The office was in a large old house, surrounded by tall trees, further up the Hope Road, near Matilda's Corner. To get there I walked a few yards out to Hope Road from our house in Surbiton Road and within five minutes someone would give me a lift in their car. Using one's thumb was unnecessary and unheard of. My immediate boss was a young man of about 35, who had been an officer in the Colonial Police Service. Rather strict, but very correct. Lunch was by arrangement with the Liguanea Hotel, on the opposite side of the road, where we had our own table in the opensided dining-room set in their beautiful garden. After lunch I sometimes walked with one of the hotel's regular American guests. She was about 70 years old and had been blind since having measles as a child. She travelled alone, visiting Jamaica every year, and had an extraordinary appreciation of her surroundings. She could recognise and name all the flowers by their scent. Our work at the Colonial Development Corporation was paid for by the British Government. The purpose was to encourage and

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15. Frank Pringle, Aide-de-Camp to the Governor, Sir Hugh Foot, c.1953. manage development projects throughout the British West Indies. The canning of turtle soup and turtle meat in the Cayman Islands, for instance. Letters had to be written to an English project manager in St Kitts, telling him not to wash his feet in the workers' drinking-water tank.

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Our patrician English director was visibly surprised to find me as part of the Governor's party, to which he had been invited, at a dance at Liguanea Club. I had met Frank Pringle, the Governor, Sir Hugh Foot's aide-de-camp, when we were rehearsing for the Cudjoe Minstrels' performance for the Queen during her State Visit to Jamaica in November 1953. Frank's office, on the ground floor of King's House, was directly opposite the part of the garden where we rehearsed. He made enquiries as to who I was and then contacted my father's first cousin, Dr Joe Stockhausen, to find out more about me. This was much to Dr Joe's amusement, since he had only recently been quizzed about me by an English heart surgeon out in Jamaica on an Advisory Mission to the new University College Hospital. We had met while having lunch at the Liguanea Hotel where the University doctors lived. When Frank first spoke to me, I was of course flattered by how much he already knew about me. He was also amazingly goodlooking in his Army Captain's uniform. He was from one of the good old Jamaica country families and not too decadent to be considered quite a catch. It was amusing to see how my stock soared with my friends and acquaintances. The telephone never stopped ringing, and as Frank had to be with the Governor in his official capacity most evenings, I remember one week when I was out with a different young man every night. Three of the evenings were spent dancing at the Glass Bucket Club - a new experience for me as I was now 18 and allowed to go to night-clubs, where the best live music could be heard. One of the young men I went out with that week was Eddie Seaga, later to become Prime Minister of Jamaica. He had been a neighbour when I was much younger so we knew the family but were not friends. He was on holiday from Harvard University and turned up to fetch me wearing a navy blue pin-striped suit without a tie, and on his feet were white tennis shoes. This was long before the days of the ubiquitous trainer. My mother was not impressed and neither was I, although he did dance well in his bizarre shoes. I began to see more of Frank and less of the others. He loved

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being in our home and loved our cook's food, rather surprisingly considering how boring it was. My mother probably made a special effort because she was very taken with him, in spite of his rather careless table manners. Sometimes when the evening's official business was over, Frank would fetch me in his Rover. We would then drive to King's House, where we would exchange it for the Governor's huge Austin Princess - very heavy to push silently out of the garage and down the long King's House drive and big enough to sleep in, which I am afraid was probably his intention. It all came to a sad end because of the Victorian cult of virginity. It was instilled into us from an early age that this precious state must be safeguarded at all costs. If you were not a virgin you would have no chance of marriage, in fact you might not even get a job. I was 18 when we met; Frank a few years older. Of course, the subject was never openly discussed between us. He invited me to the New Year's Eve Dance of 1954/55 at the old Shaw Park Hotel (since burnt down), an unheard of luxury for someone of my age. We would stay with his friends, Sir Harold and Lady Mitchell at Prospect, their property on the border of St Ann and St Mary, not far from Shaw Park. Sir Harold Mitchell had been Chairman of the Conservative Party and principal fundraiser for Winston Churchill. My mother set to work on a beautiful white lace evening dress. Earrings were borrowed. I was nervous about the whole thing: staying with such grand people for a start - Winston Churchill had spent many holidays with the Mitchells; there would be a dinner party at their Great House before the dance; and I was to meet Frank's father for the first time. The drive across the island was by one of my favourite routes the lush, mountainous Junction Road, passing Temple Hall Estate and Castleton Botanical Gardens, along the course of the Wag Water River into St Mary. We stopped in for me to meet his uncle Charlie Pringle and his wife at Gray's Inn Sugar Estate, one of the many properties belonging to the Pringle family. We also called to see Sir Douglas Vaughan and his wife at Brimmer Hall, their old plantation Great House in St Mary. It was

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the most beautiful property I had ever seen. On the walls of their dining-room I saw, for the first time, a collection of old Jamaica prints of estate life in the early times - some were caricatures: tinted drawings of fat planters, leaning back in their chairs, surrounded by pretty slave girls, and calling for their Sangaree. The Vaughans, who had made a fortune from Vono-spring-beds for the Army during the War, also had an exquisite collection of old Jamaica plantation-house furniture. When we got to the North Coast, instead of turning up the road to Prospect Great House, Frank turned right into the drive of a beach house. I was totally shocked to discover that he and I would be alone. Apart from the insult of letting the Mitchells and his father think that I was 'that sort of girl', I felt that I had been tricked. He, poor chap, was taken aback by my reaction to what he obviously considered a wonderful opportunity in glorious surroundings. He kept saying that it was here in the beach house that Winston Churchill had spent his holidays and had considered it one of his favourite places in the world. We dressed in our separate bedrooms and drove up for dinner at the Great House. They were, of course, all much older than we were. They were kind and welcoming but I felt sure that they were looking at me with disapproval. I danced most of the evening with Frank's father and ended up telling him what was wrong. 'Oh, my, my', he said. 'Frank's a naughty boy. Don't let him make you unhappy, old girl. Stand your ground.' After the dance, Frank and I spent an unhappy hour sitting in his car in the driveway outside the idyllically beautiful beach house on the edge of the Caribbean. At dawn I went inside and slept for a few hours on top of the bedclothes in my pyjama top and my long crinoline petticoat. Was I a fool? After 13 happy months, it was the end of our relationship. (There was an unwritten and, even amongst ourselves, often unspoken code of behaviour for 'good' girls in Jamaica - but some of the rules might have been taken from the boxing ring. Laughing about it now, Hoppy Don says that the panty-girdle (which our mothers said 'all nice girls' wore so that their clothes

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would fit smoothly) was our last unbreachable line of defence. He then went on to say that the boys often wore jock-straps if they thought they might be dancing close that evening. What madness it all was.) But I have no regrets. Had it been otherwise I might not be here in London today writing this for my sons. For many years afterwards my mother kept, on a table in her bedroom, a framed photograph of Frank in his white Army dress uniform. After that, with a few exceptions, or with good friends or those who just liked to dance, I discovered that it was not possible to go out with anyone new more than twice or at the most three times. It was said that foreign men were easily bewitched by Jamaican girls. North Americans especially seemed to have worked out that the local virgins, by the age of 20, were ready to give up this state but preferred to keep their reputations intact with the locals. The English were naive gentlemen who were even more susceptible and often proposed marriage instead of 'a little rudeness'. There were a few broken hearts on both sides: there was at least one English Test cricketer and a leading heart surgeon who narrowly escaped. But there was no trap. All the girls wanted from them was a glimpse of the big outside world - not permanent exile.1

Chapter 21

Working in Kingston Getting to know Jamaica

Soon after I met Frank Pringle, we moved from Surbiton Road to a modern house on the Old Stony Hill Road, in the hills overlooking Kingston. Set on the side of a hill, we had a view of Kingston Harbour from the upstairs windows. It was larger than the Surbiton Road house but, as her children grew up and moved away, my mother took in members of her extended family to supplement my father's always uncertain contribution towards the housekeeping budget. Her unmarried brother Ernest lived with us for a few years - he was yet another Clerk inventor, who had run out of space in the house he shared with my grandfather - who was now quite senile and his married sister Evelyn and her family. Their backyard and garages were now full of experimental boats and cases of his amazing Med-rub - never properly marketed but considered a panacea by all friends and family. It was used for sprains, bruises, arthritis, rheumatism, rubbed on the temples for headaches and on the chest for colds. None of these claims were printed on the labels, which were pasted on by all the children, sitting at trestle tables in the garage. Some years earlier he had made the first water-skis to be seen in Jamaica, and had taught us all to ski, dodging sharks in Kingston Harbour. (In his 80s, he won a prize for a new type of mono-sail at an inventors' exhibition in Switzerland.) As soon as we started to work, we children, when living at home, also contributed to the household budget - more as a matter of principle, and rather symbolically, since our salaries were not yet a living wage. My brother Junior was working in Trinidad for

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16. Counting Cosmic Rays with the aid of Geiger Muller counters in the Physics Research Laboratory of UCWI - my brother John was carrying out research into the origin of cosmic radiation for his MSc. He is with his physics lecturer, Dr Barton. John was also representing UCWI, in the Long Jump and Hop, Step and Jump events, in the JAAA Championships - 1955.

British West Indian Airways. He had been with the airline in Kingston ever since leaving school. Leslie was in Montego Bay, working with John Pringle (coincidentally, Frank's first cousin Jamaica is an impossibly small place). She helped John to create Round Hill Hotel, which at that time was a completely new concept in the hotel world, with its luxury cottages individually

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owned by the rich and famous of the United States and Europe. John, my brother, was still at the University of the West Indies. He was getting further and further away from his ambition to be an architect and industrial designer, by winning a series of scholarships and awards in higher mathematics and nuclear physics. Stuart Scott, my immediate boss at the Colonial Development Corporation, had moved to a large firm of Import/Export Commission Agents, Bryden and Evelyn Ltd., in downtown Kingston. After a few months, he telephoned to ask whether I would come to work for him there. He had been given an incompetent secretary and was planning to have her transferred to another department. To add to his problems, she was the wife of the Commissioner of Police, his ex-colleague. The salary was better and I enjoyed the change to a larger staff - over 100 people instead of less than a dozen. The office was in a modern building in the centre of town. Mr Scott and I were in a corner of the building, in private airconditioned offices with Old Man Evelyn, and were responsible for the small export side of the business, mainly sugar. At the age of nearly 20, it was my first experience, apart from at school, of a colour-mixed community, although even Bryden and Evelyn had the reputation of being 'choosey'. Our working day was from 8.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. It was not until I worked in an English office in the City of London, where the secretaries spent most of their day titivating, having huge vouchered lunches, and drinking tea or instant coffee, that I realized how hard we had worked in Jamaica. I was with Bryden and Evelyn when it was decided by my aunt Linda and the Cudjoe Minstrels that, having regrouped and rehearsed for the King's House performance, we should give several charity concerts. The two following Christmases, in the late afternoon after work, we sang for patients at the Mental Hospital in Kingston, the British Army Garrison Hospital at Up Park Camp, the Tuberculosis Sanatorium and the Lepers' Home. It was strange to be as interested in your audience as they were in you. The lepers desperately wanted to touch us but this was not allowed, their untreated condition being considered highly contagious. It was a sad experience for us all. Some of the patients cried and it was difficult not to do so ourselves.

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For several years I was in charge of the Girl Guide Company for the daughters and friends of the resident British Army at Up Park Camp. But as the Army presence shrank so did my troop and I was not sad to see the end of it. I had always enjoyed being a Brownie and then a Girl Guide, but found it somewhat less fun taking groups of small girls off camping in the hills, erecting tents, building earth latrines and lighting damp wood fires, with the maximum permitted two matches, in order to cook our meals. I occasionally cheated and had a boyfriend come and drive me home for a quick bath, as the Guide Camp at Constant Spring was not far from our house on the Old Stony Hill Road. Jamaica's climate allows for sports all year round. We had always played tennis in a careless sort of way, never having had proper lessons. In the afternoons after homework, and later after a day at the office, it was often possible to get in an hour of tennis, but night fell so quickly that sometimes we had to give up in the middle of a game. We did not, of course, realize at the time how incredibly lucky we were. It was an idyllic youth: growing up on an island often equated with paradise, with not a care except to make sure that we made the very best of every moment. We loved the island physically, and never took its beauty for granted, but our group of friends never discussed politics, or the social upheavals that were taking place in Jamaica, because we were totally ignorant of them. Throughout that early part of my life I spent many glorious days at Sabina Park watching cricket - in the old days with my father and family, then with work colleagues in the stands; or with friends in the members' pavilion, with the thwack of the cricket ball in front and the thock of the billiard cue behind, everyone with an icy drink to hand. But the stands were by far the best place for feeling the game. Every ball was commented on, most often with great humour, and whole stands could break up with laughter. There was no throwing of Red Stripe bottles and the visiting cricket team's performance was appreciated and commented on with equal interest. But what counted in the end was Jamaica or the West Indies winning. During the time I worked in Kingston, I at last got to know more of the island. Many of the boys my age had gone away to University

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and I found myself in a group of slightly older friends. Amongst these were Gordon MacGregor and his friend Pat Simmons. I saw a lot of Gordon and one day he asked if Pat's new girlfriend Diana TildenSmith could come to live with us. I was at first reluctant but my mother met Diana and found another daughter. Diana lived with us for nearly three years and became and still is my closest friend. Her father had come to the island at the Jamaica Automobile Association's request to advise on the installation of the first traffic lights in Kingston. He was widowed, a retired Major in the Royal Engineers and a director of the Automobile Association in England. As it was a three-month assignment, he brought along his eldest daughter, but she fell in love with Jamaica and after three months he returned to England alone. Jamaica can have an extraordinary effect on some people: almost bewitching. This effect can be frightening and some cannot cope with it and either take to the bottle or run away. For others and Diana was one of them - the effect can only be described as falling physically and mentally in love. Our group of Kingston friends often went to Crop-over dances on the main sugar estates in the country: huge parties, with good orchestras, held in the open air with the wonderful smell of molasses, rum and burnt cane stubble mingling with the cool night air blowing down from the mountains, known as the Doctor Breeze. Sometimes the men would be playing a hockey match on the other side of the island, and we would all drive over for the weekend and make a party of it. David Bicknell (a first cousin of my Prep School friend John-John Greaves) was part of our new group and my favourite dancing partner. He seemed to have family with properties all over the island. We went for weekends at Brockenhurst near Mandeville with its wide, cool, wooden-railed verandahs and immense bedrooms all on the high first floor. A cricket match was arranged against his uncle's property team near Buff Bay in Portland on the north-east coast. Next morning we went swimming among the rocks in the freezing Spanish River. Diana and I, independently of David, spent a memorable weekend with the same uncle's divorced wife at Caledonia, in her extraordinary house near Savanna-la-Mar on the south-west coast.

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Whereas the new (to Jamaica) rich English, such as the Mitchells and Vaughans, had immaculately restored Great Houses filled with highly polished furniture, the old Jamaica-family plantation houses were full of decrepit charm and were in their own way far more elegant. Still, I was surprised when Welli Lyon-HalPs crumbling Caledonia was featured prominently with several pages of photographs, in the World of Interiors magazine in England about 15 years ago. Early distressed chic. During a long weekend, we went by car, mule and foot to stay in one of the old houses on the Cinchona Plantation and Botanical Gardens high up in the Blue Mountains. It was on a ridge that plummets from 5,500 ft to 4,500 ft, overlooking several river valleys, and for the last stretch of the journey you climb 1,000 ft in less than two miles, most of it along the edge of a terrifying, rocky precipice, but through wonderful scenery. Cinchona trees had been planted there in 1868 for the quinine in their bark, a treatment for malaria, but had failed commercially because of competition from India. It was then established as a 'European Garden' by an Englishman, to supply Kingston with flowers and vegetables. We stood in this garden in the early hours of the morning, wrapped in all the clothes we had brought, to watch Blue Mountain Peak in the moonlight. We rented abandoned Army houses in the hill town of Newcastle, 4,000 ft up on the Grand Ridge of the Blue Mountains looking down to Kingston in the plains. It was on the edge of the rain forest and we took long walks to Hardwar Gap to see the other side of the island, or penetrated the mysterious fern walks nearby. We would sometimes drive further north, down a dreadful road on the other side of the mountain, and picnic on the sands of Buff Bay on the north-east coast. Newcastle was one of the few places on the island where you never felt hot - it was almost possible to pretend that one was in England, then for me unknown, with its mists and fine drizzle. It had an interesting history and, in 1994 in London, I was shown the contents of a shoebox containing family memorabilia belonging to a descendant of the founder of Newcastle, Major General (later Field Marshal) Sir William Gomm, Lieutenant Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty's Forces in Jamaica between

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1840 and 1842. It contained, among other papers, letters and medals which had belonged to Gomm, including the instrument signed by Queen Victoria appointing him to his post in Jamaica. Immediately after his arrival in Jamaica in 1840, the new Commander-in-Chief realized that the soldiers would have to be moved from their barracks at Up Park Camp in the plains of Kingston. One soldier was dying every two and a half days from yellow fever. (Yellow fever, like malaria, is spread by mosquitoes but is far more lethal. At that time the connection with mosquitoes had not yet been made.) When Regiments were bound for duty in the West Indies, the Captains drew lots as to who should go. Being ordered to the West Indies was virtually a soldier's death sentence. In spite of the objections from the medical profession and the British Government, which wanted to cut costs by reducing the Jamaican Garrison by a third, Gomm located a site for an experimental barrack of 100 men 4,000 ft above sea-level at Newcastle. It had once been a rich coffee plantation with a temperature of 63°F, instead of the 83° to 93°F in the plains. When approval was still withheld in spite of 40 of his men dying in the four previous weeks, Gomm became depressed and horrified. In desperation, but knowing that he had the approval of the Governor, he decided to act. Men of the 82nd Regiment (which in the 12 months since arriving in Jamaica had lost 83 men from fever) assisted in the construction. By the time official permission came much of the building had been accomplished and the newly arriving 60th Rifles moved directly to the hills. He also moved to Maroon Town, in the hills of Trelawny, the stricken 82nd Regiment, which by June 1841 had lost 5 officers, 9 sergeants, 140 rank and file, 13 women and 22 children to yellow fever. Of the Rifle Battalion, who had arrived in good health, 130 were sent to Newcastle and the rest to Kingston. Within three weeks, 70 out of the 90 soldiers in Kingston got the fever, of whom 60 died. Of all the 400 men quartered in the plains, 100 had died; at Newcastle no case of fever occurred. Shingle roofed houses built of pitch pine were by degrees constructed to replace the temporary log cabins and tents. Transport for all provisions and materials was on pack mules, and all the men were employed in making a road 6 ft wide. 'Meanwhile,

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humming birds built their nests in coffee trees, whilst strawberries grew wild on the higher hills and orange trees produced fruit in abundance...' (taken from a letter from one of the soldiers lucky enough to be sent to Newcastle). It was calculated that Gomm saved 1,230 lives of trained men from a horrible death by fever, and Newcastle was his monument. It was these houses, built by Gomm and his soldiers, that we were able to rent cheaply for weekends.

We did have some disappointments, but very few - and even those we managed to enjoy and laugh about afterwards. Treasure Beach was a hot, dreary place on the south-west coast between Black River and Alligator Pond. We rented a desolate, uncomfortable mosquitoscreened house, on a deserted yellow sand beach, with sea too sinisterly dangerous for swimming. It was the only place I knew in Jamaica where it was impossible to be outside after dark because of the insects. Even the local population seemed unable to rise above their surroundings in the usual optimistic, laughing Jamaican fashion. They were sad, yellow-skinned poor whites, descendants of shipwrecks long ago. We stayed awake all night by telling jokes and stories on the screened verandah in the yellow light of flickering kerosene lamps - too superstitious and scared to go to sleep.

I spent several short holidays with my sister Leslie at Round Hill. She had been with John Pringle since the outset when he had first seen the hill, rising gently from a small cove on the Lucea road about eight miles west of Montego Bay, and had the idea of having shareholders with cottages instead of a conventional hotel. Round Hill quickly became a favourite winter address for the international jet-set. John always said that the recipe for success in Jamaica was to be 'a little bit rich, a little bit coloured, a little bit Jewish and a little bit queer'. Leslie lived in the Pringles' cottage with John, his beautiful wife Liz, who had been a Powers model in New York, and their daughter Shawn. Her work was her life. Sometimes when the hotel

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was closed for the summer, they would ask me down for a week's holiday. I would have the perfect crescent beach all to myself while they worked. Going for a picnic with the Pringles was a strange experience, because John packed enough clothes and food for a week, instead of for a day at Negril, 30 miles further along the coast. In those days there was nothing more to Negril than miles and miles of white-sand beach and coconut trees. By far my most enjoyable experience of the country, however, was rafting down the Rio Grande above Port Antonio. Several times during my last years in Jamaica I made the slow descent with friends, sometimes through swift rapids, on a long two-seater bamboo raft punted by a Maroon descendant from the surrounding mountains. Originally, bananas had been floated downstream on these rafts, and then when Errol Flynn, the Hollywood actor, bought Navy Island facing Port Antonio, he persuaded his friends to join him in raft races down the river. There were no longer any races and, on the unforgettable two or three hour journey, you might never see or hear another raft. There was nothing but the river, the lush forest vegetation, butterflies and birdsong.

Chapter 22

Bailiffs

I suppose I must have realized that our financial situation was getting worse. My mother's list-making became more frantic, but perhaps she herself did not realize how bad it was, because my father kept saying that his 'ship would soon come in'. I do not remember ever hearing her nag at him or complain, but then they saw very little of each other because of his eccentric hours. She had moved in to share my bedroom and he had also deserted their bedroom, often sleeping on the day-bed in the glassed-in upstairs verandah, with his copy of Shakespeare and a few green and white crime Penguins beside him. His drinking had also become worse, and for the first time he started to complain about the quality of the dinners that had been kept warm for him until 3.00 a.m. If we arrived home at the same time, he would peer into the car-windows as I said goodnight to my boyfriends. He became even more eccentric and one morning I woke up to find disturbing evidence of bizarre behaviour in an otherwise mild, rational man: the surreal sight of his uneaten chop from last night's dinner, hanging on a long piece of string, in our large glass-fronted dining-room window, overlooking the Old Stony Hill Road. Then, without warning, at 7.00 a.m. one day, two men arrived at our front door. They were bailiffs who walked through the house with pieces of white chalk, marking the furniture: our prized mahogany dining table £10, the chairs £2 each, sideboard £5 and so on. My mother's face was ashen. My father stayed in bed.

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As the men left, they passed my brother Junior's new Morris Minor motor car parked in the driveway. He had left me responsible for it while he was on secondment in Trinidad for BWIA, with strict instructions about driving it carefully. He must have had complete trust in me because, while he was still in Jamaica, he had allowed me to drive it down to work in Kingston many times before I got my licence. One day I persuaded a friend in the office to drive with me to the Driving Test Depot, near the Railway Station west of downtown Kingston, and to leave me there so that I could take the test and then, legally, drive the car away on my own. The bailiffs walked around the little car, admiring it, and then asked 'Is who dis car belong?' I said it was my brother's and that he was away working in Trinidad. They decided that since he was a member of the family, they would take the car - easier than sending for the other stuff. I begged and pleaded. They got into it and drove it away. My mother had learnt from the bailiffs that our rent had not been paid for six months. They had been sent by our landlady, a newly rich black woman. Why the colour of her skin would have made any difference I do not know, but my mother was convinced that had it been otherwise, the situation would have been resolved in a different way. My father did not seem prepared to talk about it. With my brothers and sister all living away from home, I was the only one left in the family to take responsibility for solving the problem, and I felt doubly responsible because they had taken the car. I had absolutely no idea where to turn. I did not want to involve the other people living in the house: my uncle Ernest and Diana Tilden-Smith, because their regular contributions were vital to its day-to-day running and I did not want to alarm them. Anyway, there was the question of pride. Pride also kept me from asking my father's brother and sisters for help. I knew he would never be able to pay them back. I was fairly sure that he had never repaid Dodie for my school fees. But my main worry was the fear that Junior's car would be damaged or sold. It was worth far more than the amount claimed by the bailiffs, and I had no idea where it was.

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Through the office Thrift Scheme I had been saving a part of my salary every month towards my first trip away from the island. I had been planning to visit friends in Toronto and Montreal, and possibly meet up with Diana in New York for a few days afterwards, all on the same round-trip ticket. These were my only savings, and I realized that the trip would have to be forsworn. I was still far short of the sum required, and time was running out. I did not own anything worth selling. My only option was to try to get an advance on my salary until the end of the year. The worst part was not wanting to talk to anyone about it. I was so ashamed that my family should find itself in such a situation. I had been working with Stuart Scott for nearly five years. He knew that I was serious and reliable, but it was not easy to swallow my family pride and explain to him why I was asking for such an unusual favour. I also knew that he would have to arrange it with the senior management of Bryden and Evelyn, and it was probably almost the equivalent of asking for the favour for himself. He was a good man and very fond of me. A few days before the expiry date given by the bailiffs, I asked a very good friend and exboyfriend Gordon MacGregor to drive me to the address written on the filthy scrap of paper, left with us what seemed a lifetime ago. Somewhere near Trench Town, under a shed thatched with scraggly palm fronds, we found Junior's car, dirty but undamaged. I handed over the money and drove it home. It had become such a fragile object in my eyes that I do not think that I ever drove it again. About four months later, a messenger come to my office one morning to say that my father was there to see me. He had never been to see me at the office before and I was alarmed. We both lived in the same house, but had avoided each other recently. It was my 21st birthday, but he had never paid much attention to birthdays either, often not opening his own Christmas and birthday presents until six months afterwards. He handed me an envelope with all the money that I had paid to the bailiffs, and said that he hoped that I would still be able to make my first trip away from the island.

Chapter 23

Leaving

At the end of September 1956, when I was 21,1 left Jamaica for the first time, determined to satisfy some of my typical islander's longing for the outside world. My first sight of 'foreign' was from the cockpit of a Trans-Canada Airlines Super Constellation, standing behind the pilot bringing the 'plane down to land at Tampa Airport in Florida. This had been arranged by my sister Leslie's boyfriend, who worked with Pan American in Kingston. Everything about my visit to Toronto, Montreal and then New York confirmed my expectations, but it was like lifting just the edge of an itching scab. As soon as I got back to Jamaica, I knew that somehow I had to leave again as quickly as possible and the destination had to be England, the source behind so much of what I knew and had seen so far in my life. Less than a year later, I left everything that I loved in Jamaica. Although I kept insisting that I would be away for three months, my mother seemed to know otherwise. She, who had always taken a close interest in my wardrobe and still made most of my clothes, showed no interest whatsoever in how I might be clothed during the approaching winter in northern Europe. Neither could I bear to talk to her about it. Not only was I leaving, but she was also going to lose Diana, who had become as close to her as another daughter. Diana had been in Jamaica for nearly four years - the last three spent living with us and, much to my mother's distress, she had fallen in love with a married man much older than herself. But perhaps my mother thought that by leaving Jamaica, Diana might forget about

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him. (Her old nanny in England thought that 'in that heat Diana's blood must have thinned to the point of danger'.) Diana and I left Kingston on the Reina del Mar in the middle of August 1957. After stops in Havana, Nassau, Bermuda, Vigo, Santander and La Rochelle, we landed in Liverpool on my 22nd birthday, 31 August 1957. I had no return ticket, no job, and exactly five English pounds to my name.

Appendix 1

Found among the Stockhausen family's Deeds of Property and other documents dating back to 1856. "The qualities most essential to a successful colonist" (a) Introduction - What is a colonist? Not a mere fortune-seeker who means to spend his money at home - nor yet an ordinary immigrant into country already occupied and civilised - rather one who settles in a new country intending to open up and develop its resources, making its interests henceforth his own derivation of term: Latin colonus, 'a husbandman' - agricultural type always first to settle and most needed in colonial enterprise, though usually preceded by the trader in opening up new countries - next come mechanics and craftsmen, with shopkeepers, doctors, priests. (b) Essential qualities of successful colonists (1) Courage Difficulties and dangers sure to be encountered success impossible unless these are faced in determined, fearless spirit. (2) Physical strength Sickly men useless, a drag on others adaptability to climate often essential - many lives lost of those unable to stand tropical heat or excessive cold leaders must also choose site of colony wisely, avoiding

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unsuitable places, e.g. marshy districts which produce fever, ague; cp. Botany Bay & Sydney). (3) Energy &c Perseverance Position of colonist in new country one of great hardship - obliged to begin at beginning - land must be ploughed before it can be sown - houses must be built - wells dug - forests cleared - roads made - rivers bridged, etc. - provisions often scanty - danger from natives. (4) Power of dealing with natives (where these exist) This often a most difficult problem - Virginia (e.g.) nearly perished through native hostility, and saved only by conciliatory tactics of John Smith - necessity of (a) resolute courage (natives take prompt advantage of weakness) - (b) fair dealing, justice, kindness (natives at first friendly, often alienated by frauds, untruth, kidnapping into slavery - (c) sympathy (cp. Frontenac in Canada and his handling of Indian tribes) -(d) caution (many lives lost through foolhardy confidence in apparent friendliness of the 'noble savage'). (5) Knowledge of conditions beforehand Usually impossible in pioneer work - but, if possible indispensable. (6) Sobriety Intemperance usually fatal to colonist - also criminality unfair to natives - introduction of European vices often depopulates the country - old saying that the Englishman brings with him "the gin-bottle and the Bible" so far as true, a national disgrace. (7) Good moral character Ruinous practice of colonising with convicts, e.g. Australia, Tasmania, French New Caledonia, now abandoned by Britain through protests of Australians, etc. - best type of colonist found in the men of the Mayflower and other Puritan settlers in America. Conclusion Who are the great colonising nations? Greece and Rome in the past; Spain and Britain in modern times - vast

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extent of British Colonial Empire goes to show superiority of natives of British Isles as colonists - America originally a British Colony - Frenchmen and Germans commonly anxious to return later to native land, thus not genuine colonists; or, if genuine, more or less reluctant - note however, French Canadians Dutch somewhat unprogressive and narrow. Probably most nations would admit Britain's claim to stand first.

Notes and references

Chapter 1 1 Jamaica Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4, Nov. 1985-86. Chapter 2 1 In the spring of 2002, it was possible to glimpse the result of some of this Jamaican wealth at an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery: 'William Beckford 1760-1844, An Eye for the Magnificent.' 2 Gosse's Jamaica 1844-45, edited by D.B. Stewart (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1984). This includes excerpts from A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica (1851), The Birds of Jamaica (1874) and colour plates from Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica by Philip Henry Gosse assisted by Richard Hill Esq. of Spanish Town. 3 Francis J. Osborne, S.J., 'German Immigration to Jamaica', Jamaican Historical Society Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 2, June 1973. Issued by the Institute of Jamaica. 4 Later, in the early 1900s, a group of Germans settled on the outskirts of Ulster Spring. Their village became known as German Town. Such names as Hohn, Stockhausen, Runsey (Runcie?) and Mayers were well known in the area. 5 Letter dated 23 October 1865, written by the Rev. Andrew G. Hogg, a United Presbyterian Missionary in Jamaica, to an official of the Missionary Society in Edinburgh, just 12 days after the Morant Bay Rebellion. (Unpublished until its appearance in the Jamaica Historical Society Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 6, Oct. 2000). Hogg was not a newcomer to Jamaica, having worked there since 1845, and was well acquainted with the Jamaican people. 6 Ibid. Chapter 3 1 In the eighteenth century, Europeans sometimes called these relationships with a Creole, 'Surinam Marriages', and there is no

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reason to think that they did not exist in Jamaica: '... (she) preserves their linnens clean and decent, dresses their Victuals with Skill, carefully attends them/they being most excellent nurses during the frequent illnesses to which Europeans are exposed in this Country, prevents them from keeping late Hours knits for them, sews for them etc of this habit even the Clergymen are not Exempt... while these Girls who are sometimes (Amer)Indians sometimes Mullatos and often Negroes, naturally pride themselves in living with an European whom they serve with much tenderness, and to whom they are Generally as faithful as if he were their lawful Husband to the great Shame of so many fair Ladies, who break through ties more sacred, and indeed bound with more Solemnity, nor can the above young women be married in any other way, being by their state of Servitude entirely debarred from every Christian privilege and Ceremony, which makes it perfectly lawful on their Side, while they hesitate not to pronounce as Harlots, who do not follow them/if they can/in this laudable Example in which they are encouraged by their nearest Relations and Friends'. From Stedman, John Gabriel. Edited by Richard Price and Sally Price. Stedman's Surinam: Life in an Eighteenth-Century Slave Society. An Abridged Modernised Edition of Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against Revolted Negroes of Surinam, pp. xxxiii @ 1992 (Copyright Holder). Reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University. Chapter 4 1 In the first generation of Jamaican-born Stockhausens there were five sons. In my father's generation there were eight sons. In my generation there were six Stockhausen sons, and in the following only three sons. As far as I know, there are eight living male descendants of Karl and Wilhelmina carrying the Stockhausen name. But then, of course, knowing Jamaica as I do, there may be dozens. (2001 - Harold Jnr, my brother; Jeffrey (son of my late brother John) - K & W's son John's descendants; Paul and Robert (Bobby), and Anthony and Joe Jnr (their sons) - descendants of Joseph; David and Colin - James's descendants. 2 Another irrelevant coincidence: while staying at Nohant with George Sand, Frederick Chopin composed and dedicated to the wife of Bodo Freiherr von Stockhausen his Barcarolle in F Major, op. 60. His Ballade in G minor, the first of four, had already been dedicated to him. Stockhausen, the Hanoverian minister plenipotentiary to the new King of France, Louis Philippe, was bracketed with the Rothschilds as the young composer's most devoted patrons. Stockhausen was from an old feudal family of Hanover, and owned a vast estate near Gottingen. In the 1830s/40s their medieval castle dating back to the twelfth century was in ruins, but his income from the estate allowed him to live at court

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as his parents had done. His daughters would have been Ladies-inWaiting if the Hanoverian empire had not collapsed. (Information from Harry Brewster, The Cosmopolites (Norwich: Michael Russell Publishing Ltd, 1994). 3 Piazza: in a letter to the Editor of Georgian Jamaica (the quarterly of the Friends of the Georgian Society of Jamaica in the UK) in March 1996, Oliver Cox, an authority on architectural restoration, offers an explanation for the word's use in Jamaica. It dates back to the building of the Covent Garden Piazza in London by Inigo Jones in 1639, when The arcades were so popular that the foreign word piazza soon became synonymous with the arcades instead of with the square.' In Jamaica its first written reference was in 1740, and although it is claimed to be still current, my aunt Linda was the only person I ever heard use the word to describe this very common feature of Jamaican town houses and commercial buildings. It is easy to understand why the style was adopted in Jamaica, since piazzas offer welcome shade for shoppers and strollers. When I was a child it was possible to walk the length of King Street, Kingston's main shopping street, entirely protected from the sun. Chapter 5 1 The rigid class snobbery in Jamaica at the beginning of the twentieth century was exacerbated by everyone's obsession with the colour of skin. In the Stockhausen household it is sad that the worst offender seems to have been kind and highly influential Grannie Brown. For a real change in attitudes, it was probably necessary for the island to go through Michael Manley's destructive social revolution in the 1970s, when Jamaica lost the majority of its educated and skilled population, who emigrated to the United States, Canada and England. Fidel Castro had warned Manley not to make the same mistake that he had made in losing Cuba's middle class. Those of the upper and middle class who stayed on in Jamaica have seen their children 'mix-up'. Many of those who emigrated have since returned. Jamaica, in spite of all its huge problems, has achieved a significantly large, active, successful and selfconfident black and coloured middle class. 2 A more plausible version of Linda's story is mentioned in Dan L. Ogilvie's History of the Parish ofTrelawny (Trelawny, 1955). He writes that the Misses Knibbs' well-established school in Falmouth was entirely broken up because they admitted as pupils the daughters of two native Ministers, one a Baptist and the other a Presbyterian, both of whom were recognised and respected gentlemen. As the ladies refused to dismiss these girls simply on the ground of their colour, the other girls were withdrawn and the Misses Knibb had to suffer some privation on account of their heroic attempt to stem the current race

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antipathy then prevailing, which strongly objected to a black or darkly coloured girl being educated with those of fairer complexion. Chapter 6 1 Crocus bags were sacks made from unbleached jute. The word crocus may be derived from the botanical name for the jute plant, Crochorus capsularis or C. olitorius. The Hindi word jute replaced it in English in the mid-eighteenth century. 2 Wright. Philip and Paul F. White, Exploring Jamaica: A Guide for Motorists (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969). Chapter 7 1 Frank Cundall, Jamaica's Fart in the Great War 1914-1918 (London: published for the Institute of Jamaica, 1925). 2 The name dates back to an old Hanoverian feudal family of the twelfth century. 3 At the end of the First World War, the difficulties of repatriation created enormous problems for the British Army, and, sadly for many of the Caribbean troops, it ended with a scandal, the extent of which has only recently been revealed, namely the Mutiny in Taranto, Italy. The eight British West India Regiment battalions which had seen service in France and Italy (though not in the front line, since the War Office had taken the view that coloured colonial troops could not be used to fight white Germans) were sent to a holding base in Taranto pending demobilisation. There they were joined by what remained of the 1st and 2nd battalions, who had been fighting against the Turks in Palestine and Jordan in 1918. Once there they were used as manual labour, were not allowed even day passes and were deprived of all recreational facilities. This discrimination, on top of that which they felt that they had suffered during the war, led to extreme resentment, unrest and eventually mutiny, with one battalion attacking their officers. After their surrender, they were severely punished: one soldier was executed by firing squad and 60 others were tried and sentenced to from three to 20 years in prison. The entire regiment suffered the humiliation of being disarmed. When those who had not received sentences were finally repatriated, they were accompanied by three cruisers to prevent unrest when their ships docked at ports in Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad. There was no heroes' welcome. (Having stayed on in Egypt Owen was, of course, not at Taranto.) Chapter 8 1 Philip Weate and Caroline Graham, Captain William Bligh: an illustrated history (Sydney/London: Paul Hamlyn, 1972). 2 Many members of the Gunter family were close friends of my mother's

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generation and I had always known that we were distantly related to them. My great-uncle Astley Clerk's middle name was Gunter. I own a small bonbonniere given to me about 15 years ago by my uncle Ernest, who had been named depository or heir apparent of some pieces of Gunter silver. (Aurora's Marriage Settlement contract in 1862 has her brother, the Solicitor Alexander George Clerk, as their Trustee.) 3 From Falmouth Post, 31 July 1866, P3C1: DIED CLERK 1866 DEATH IN MONTEGO BAY We regret to learn that MR A.G. CLERK, a talented and respectable Solicitor at Law, died in the town of Montego Bay (his native town) on the 27th instant, of congestive fever, after a short illness of 2 days. The death of this gentleman has caused a blank in the community which will not easily be filled up. Although only 27 years of age, he had attained a large amount of professional celebrity, and he was highly esteemed by all classes of his fellow parishioners, as a dutiful son, a fond husband, an affectionate brother, a sincere friend and a liberal giver of charity to the poor and helpless. His funeral was attended by a large number of persons, who, with his aged mother, wife and other relatives, will long mourn the loss they have sustained. In a further notice on 3 August, they give his full name Alexander George Clerk, Esq., Attorney at Law. 4 Eliza's father, William Lemonious, was a German-born doctor, who had settled in Jamaica after an odyssey through many countries. While a doctor in the Duke of Brunswick-Oels Corps of the Austrian Army in 1809, it was incorporated into British service. Several posts later, he found himself in Jamaica and in 1824 was appointed a Justice of the Peace and assistant judge for the Parish of Trelawny. During the slave rebellions of 1831 he volunteered to the army, and served in Trelawny, St Ann and Montego Bay. In 1835 he was commissioned by the House of Assembly to proceed to Europe and engage German immigrants for Jamaica. Between 1835 and 1837 he imported 800 Germans, and Seaford Town was founded for these Lemonious Germans. 'Lemonious enticed the Germans to settle in Jamaica with a more rosy picture of the tropics than they deserved,' Jamaica Historical Society Bulletin, Vol. 6, No. 2, June 1973. 5 Astley Clerk, The Music and Musical Instruments of Jamaica', Jamaica journal, Vol. 9, Nos 2 & 3, 1975. Chapter 9 1 For the reopening, my maternal great-uncle Astley Clerk contributed a piano stool and £10 towards the piano he sold to the Parochial Board for the reconstructed Falmouth Court House. (There was a Ball Room,

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with chandeliers, so I assume it also had Assembly Rooms.) Information obtained from D.L.Ogilvie, Falmouth Court House (Falmouth, Trelawny, 1930). Chapter 10 1 'Wherri-ketter' is used in Jamaica to describe anything or anyone slightly dishevelled or disreputable, or anything that gives the impression of having been thrown together at the last minute. 2 Even now, 80 years later, reference is still made to Astley Clerk in the Journal of the Institute of Jamaica. The most recent was of his research and reporting, c. 1920, on Arawak cave paintings. 3 Chichi, cryptotermes brevis, is a particularly dreaded type of small wood termite (different from the larger termites), which would attack wooden furniture and even paper - imperceptible until the tell-tale little round balls of wood, or whatever, appeared. Chapter 11 1 The Cudjoe Minstrels are mentioned in Edna Manley's, Edna Manley, The Diaries, (London: Andre Deutsch, 1989). Edna was the wife of Sir Norman Manley, founder of Jamaica's socialist party and the Island's first Premier, and the mother of the Socialist Prime Minister, Michael Manley. Leslie Clerk, my grandfather's and great-uncle Astley's nephew, had been Norman Manley's closest childhood friend. When Norman's sisters, to whom he was devoted, left for studies in England and he was on his own, his friendship with Leslie deepened and he became friendly with the whole family, whose home near Falmouth became his holiday base. Their friendship continued until Norman Manley's death in 1969. Edna Manley writes that 'he [Norman] and Leslie shared an interest in the mysteries of the human personality, and a love of music and reading. They were both athletic, good swimmers and often went bird shooting together.' 'In Jamaica he had a family - the Clerks - whose home meant a place of safety for him after his mother died and the rest had moved to England. They were a very unusual family for those days - all the girls had careers - mostly teaching or in the civil service - and one of the boys, Leslie Clerk, was Norman's lifetime friend.' 'They were a very musical family: piano and violin. They had an uncle Astley Clerk, who ran a store where pianos and other musical instruments were sold - he even wrote music. I think accompaniments for poems. So Leslie grew up in that sort of world, and because he had perfect pitch he almost automatically made a living tuning and caring for pianos. He had tuned pianos for all the visiting musicians and in those days they came regularly - Rubenstein, Brailowski, Moisewitsch,

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Arrau and the Memilien accompanists for Heifetz, the cellist Casals, Ginette Neveu, all sorts of people - and as he had a gift with people, he was very appreciated for himself as well as his work. I write of him because he was a very, very close friend and someone whose advice Norman took.' The Clerks were an interesting family and shared a unique gift, an absorption with ESP. Leslie himself had remarkable intuitive powers and a brother and sister had even more. The whole family was interested and made quite a study of it... The oldest girl, Grace, a strong, intelligent teacher of music, certainly had strange experiences, and so did Leslie. But Leslie had one unique gift that I personally had never met in anyone else. He could be handed an article belonging to someone he didn't know - a personal article like a ring or something that the person used a great deal. He would hold it in his hand quite still for a long time, and then he would begin to talk about the owner. Sometimes it would be recognizable character sketches, sometimes some activity involved - or a trend in the future. I have seen him almost change personality as he made a closer and closer telepathic, if you will, contact. He would look older and tired and even mischievous. He always had someone to write what he said - and in order not to have mind-reading, he always made sure that the article he was expressing was unknown to anyone present.' [Although Leslie was of my mother's generation, I saw him frequently as he had an intense friendship with another cousin, who was often at our house. I once saw him doubled up with agonizing stomach pains when someone asked him to hold a ring and say why their relative had died. He disliked doing it, but respected his gift. He later became a painter and a sculptor and he once described to me how he was often forced awake in the middle of the night to paint, with no control over what the brush did, and that many of his (extraordinary) paintings did not seem to have anything to do with himself.] 'Norman believed in a real way in Leslie's integrity - they were very close - but in his attitude to table rappings etc., he refused to allow himself to get mixed up.' 'They too, like Norman's family, read a good deal; and later became interested in folk music - and later still, launched the Cudjoe Minstrels, which was the first song and dance group I ever heard. In fact I think they were the original pioneers who ultimately became the stock entertainers for concerts, and for entertaining VIPs who were passing through, or when the Royal Family paid their routine visits. Norman was very interested in them. The group was largely made up of family and close friends, and at a critical moment would not have died out if they had been flexible and able to absorb new, young talent.' 'When Norman went into politics the friendship was often strained, but still very much intact, and N. still turned to him very powerfully in

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moments of crisis, for understanding and spiritual help. But finally something seemed to become too much for Leslie, and although they never broke their relationship, something began to become apparent Leslie was very much a product of his class and background. There were no black faces in the Cudjoes, and although Leslie, who was a typical 'light brown' Jamaican, had black friends, something began to appear in his conversation that hadn't been there before - and with the greater part of his family, he turned his back on Jamaica and left.' Permission granted by Carlton Books Ltd to reprint the above extracts and Edna Manley's words on page vi, from: Edna Manley, The Diaries, edited by Rachel Manley, published by Andre Deutsch Ltd, London, 1989. ISBN 0 233 98427 5. Chapter 13 1 High tone meaning white in Jamaica. 2 T ree Paper Burn' refers to the end of Freedom, when the slaves realized that even after the Abolition of Slavery in 1834, they would still have to continue working on the plantations for a further six years as socalled Apprentices. They felt that they had been cheated by the plantation owners, and sent petitions to Queen Victoria in England to gain their Full Freedom, which was eventually granted four years later on 31 August 1838. A hundred years later, this expression was still in current use, although of course I thought of it only as the end of freedom before starting school, and have only now learnt its historical origin. Chapter 17 1 Our favourite local pub in London, the 'Winston Churchill' in Kensington Church Street, is run by a jolly Irishman who displays his collection of butterflies on its walls. Having lunch there recently, I suddenly noticed a book on the chimney-piece called Jamaica and its Butterflies. Imagine my excitement on discovering in the foreword that one of the main sources of information for the book was Robert Hart, who had given his collection to the author. 2 Temple Hall was the first estate in Jamaica to grow tobacco commercially. They still produce some of the best Jamaican cigars. I was told by Dunhill's in London recently that they use Temple Hall cigars for their own-label brand. Chapter 20

1

On Sundays and Public Holidays, Jamaicans of all backgrounds travelled out to Palisadoes (now Norman Manley) Airport just to see aeroplanes take off and land. When the airport buildings were full, they

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would lean over fences or 'cotch' on the grass. It was the closest they could get to abroad. Before the vast influx of tourists, foreigners were welcomed and feted by Jamaicans, who were fascinated by any insight outsiders could offer into the rest of the world. They are quite unlike some of the smaller Mediterranean islanders, who show no interest whatsoever in anywhere else.

Bibliography and further reading

Books Abrahams, Peter, Jamaica: An Island Mosaic (London: HMSO, 1957). Aspinall, Algerton, The Pocket Guide to the West Indies (London: Sifton, Praed & Co., 1907, New & Revised Edition 1923). Beckwith, Martha Warren, A Study of Jamaican Folk Life (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1929). Binney, Marcus, John Harris et al,. edited by Marguerite Curtin, Jamaica's Heritage: An Untapped Resource (Kingston, Jamaica: The Mill Press, 1991). Black, Clinton V., A New History of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: William Collins and Sangster (Jamaica), 1973). Black, Clinton V., The History of Jamaica (Harlow: Longmans, 1988). Black, Clinton V., Tales of Old Jamaica (Harlow: Longmans, 1988). Brewster, Harry, The Cosmopolites (Norwich: Michael Russell (Publishing), 1994). Cargill, Morris, Jamaica Farewell (Secaucus, N.J.: Cinnamon Books, 1979). Cundall, Frank, Historic Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1915). Cundall, Frank, Jamaica's Part in the Great War, 1914-1918 (London: West India Committee for the Institute of Jamaica, 1925). Cundall, Frank, Jamaica in 1928 - A Handbook of Information for Visitors And Residents with some Account of the Colony's History (London: This edition published for the Institute of Jamaica, by the West India Committee, 1928). Originally compiled in 1895.

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DeSouza's Handbook and City Directory (Jamaica: c.1916). Dookhan, Isaac, A Post Emancipation History of the West Indies (Harlow: Longmans, 1990). Edwards, Bryan, The History Civil and Commercial of the British Colonies of the West Indies, Two volumes, 2nd Edition. Illustrated with Maps (London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1794). Ferguson, James, Traveller's Literary Companion to the Caribbean (London: In Print Publishing, 1997). Fermor, Patrick Leigh, Traveller's Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands (London: Penguin, 1984). Fleming, Ian, Ian Fleming Introduces Jamaica, Edited by Morris Cargill (London: Andre Deutsch, 1965). Foot, Hugh, A Start to Freedom (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964). Gosse, Philip Henry, Gosse's Jamaica 1844-45, Edited by D.B. Stewart (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1984). Jekyll, Walter, Collected &c edited by, Jamaica Song and Story, Anancy Stories, Digging Songs etc. (New York: Dover Publications, 1966). Helwig, Vin, Remembering the Tody - A Lifetime of Bird-watching in Jamaica (Quebec: Castenchel Editions, 1987). Higman, B.W., Jamaica Surveyed (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1988). Honychurch, Penelope N., Caribbean Wild Plants and their Uses (London: Macmillan, 1986). Kerr, Madeline, Personality and Conflict in Jamaica (Liverpool: University Press, 1952). Knibb Sibley, Inez, The Baptists in Jamaica 1793-1965 (Kingston, Jamaica: The Jamaica Baptist Union, 1965). Knibb Sibley, Inez, Dictionary of Place-Names in Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1978) Kurlansky, Mark, A Continent of Islands - Searching for the Caribbean Destiny (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1993). Madden, R.R., A Twelvemonth's Residence in the West Indies, during the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship, etc. In two volumes (Philadelphia, PA: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835).

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Manley, Edna, Edna Manley, The Diaries, Edited by Rachel Manley (London: Andre Deutsch, 1989). Manley, Rachel, Drumblair - Memories of a Jamaican Childhood (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishing, 1996). Nettleford, Rex, Mirror, Mirror - Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: William Collins and Sangster (Jamaica) 1970). Ogilvie, D.L., History of the Parish of Trelawny (Trelawny, Jamaica: Printed by United Printers, 1955). Pertchik, Bernard and Harriet, Flowering Trees of the Caribbean (New York and Toronto: Rinehart &c Co., 1951). Phillippo, James M., Jamaica - Its Past and Present State: Twenty years a Baptist Missionary in that Island (London: John Snow, 1843). Pinto, Geoffrey de Sola, Jamaican Houses - a Vanishing Legacy (Montego Bay, Jamaica: De Sola Pinto Publishers, 1982). Porter, Stephen D., Jamaica Records - A Research Manual (London: Stephen D. Porter, 1999). Radcliff, Virginia, The Caribbean Heritage - an Illustrated Guide to the treasures of 500 years (New York: Walker Publishing Co. and Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1976). Roberts, W. Adolph, Six Great Jamaicans -Jordon, Gordon, Love, Nuttall, Redcam, DeLisser -Biographical Sketches (Kingston, Jamaica: Pioneer Press, 1951). Robertson, E. Arnot, The Spanish Town Papers (London: Cresset Press, 1959). Senior, Olive, A-Z of Jamaican Heritage (Kingston, Jamaica: Joint publishers: Heinemann Education Books (Caribbean) and The Gleaner Company, 1987). Sherlock, Philip, Jamaica Way (London: Longman, Green, 1962). Sherlock, Sir Philip, Jamaica - The Way we Were (Kingston, Jamaica: Jamrite Publications, 1990). Shore, Joseph, Edited by John Stewart, In Old St. James - A Book of Parish Chronicles (Kingston, Jamaica: Aston W. Gardner & Co., 1911). Slesin, Suzanne etc., Caribbean Style (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994). Stedman, John Gabriel, Edited by Richard Price and Sally Price, Stedman's Surinam: Life in an Eighteenth-Century Slave Society -

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An Abridged Modernized Edition of Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against Revolted Negroes of Surinam. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Tanna, Laura, Jamaican Folk Tales and Oral Histories (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica Publications, 1984). Taylor, S.A.G., The Western Design - Cromwell's Expedition to the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica and the Jamaica Historical Society, 1965). Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade - A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (London & Basingstoke: Picador, 1997). Trollope, Anthony, The West Indies and the Spanish Main (New York: Harper and Brothers, Undated. Library stamped 1872). Wright, Philip and White, Paul R, Exploring Jamaica - A Guide for Motorists (London: Andre Deutsch, 1969). Wright, Philip, New and Revised Edition by, Lady Nugenfs Journal of her residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805 (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1966). Walvin, James, Black Ivory - A History of British Slavery (London: HarperCollins, 1992). Pamphlets and Magazines

Bennet, Louise, Jamaican Humour in Dialect (Kingston, Jamaica: Jamaica Press Association, 1943). Blain, Douglas, Falmouth in Peril: An Almost Unspoilt Town (London: Georgian Group Annual Report, 1989). Chen, Roger, The Jamaica Dictionary - A is Fi Aringe (Ontario: Periwinkle/Ray Chen, 1994). Cundall, Frank, Chronological Outlines of Jamaica History 1492-1926 (Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1927). Echoes of the Past, Jamaica-German Historical Research Group Newsletter (Kingston, Jamaica: August, 1982). Falmouth 1791-1970 (The Georgian Society of Jamaica, prepared by Publication Services Ltd. Printed by Phoenix Printery Ltd, 1990). Georgian Jamaica, quarterly of the Friends of the Georgian Society of Jamaica in the UK (London, Nov. 1993-Dec. 2004). Gosse Bird Club (Kingston, Jamaica: Broadsheets Nos 20 (1973) and 27 (1976)).

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The Jamaica Historical Review (various) and Bulletins (Kingston, Jamaica: Jamaica Historical Society, Dec. 1953 to Oct. 2003). Jamaica Journal (various), quarterly of the Institute of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: March 1971 to June 2001). Knight, Susan, ed., The Jamaica Alphabet (Kingston, Jamaica: Hampton and Brooks (Caribbean), 1990). Maxwell, Ken, How to Speak Jamaican (Kingston, Jamaica: Jamrite Publications, 1981). Ogilvie, D.L., Falmouth Court House (Falmouth, Jamaica: The Falmouth Amateur Printery, 1930). Trelawny Parish Church of St Peter the Apostle 1796-1996, Commemorative Magazine (Falmouth, Jamaica, 1996).

Index

Page references to photographs are in italics Alligator Pond, south-west coast 75 Alpha Convent, secretarial course at 152 Anderson, Miss (headmistress) 111 Annette Crescent 137 Asante tribe (Ghana) 8 Ashenheim, Dr Lewis 10 Atlantic Fruit and Shipping Company, Kingston 71 Automobile Association (England) 162 bailiffs 167-169 Baker, Kenneth 7 Balkan Trilogy (O. Manning) 115 Baptists 39,40, 41 barbecue, stone terrace for drying food 30, 33, 36, 87 Barker-Benfield, Philip 93 Barnet Estate Great House (Belfield) 65, 87 Barnet Sugar Estate 65 Barrett, Edward 10 Barrett House, Falmouth 68 'bastard baron' theory 2, 3 Bath, mineral spring at 74 Battus polydamas (Jamaican swallowtail butterfly) 131 Bay Rum 30 Beckford, William 7 Beeston, Sir William (Governor) 139 Belfield (Barnet Estate Great House) 65, 87 Belisle factory 10 Benjamin, Arthur 81, 91 Bicknell, David 162 Birds of Jamaica (P. H. Gosse) 26 birthday parties 115-16,143 Black River, St Elizabeth 78; swamp lands at 75 Blackwell, Chris 10 Blair, Agnes Alice 77 Blair, Henry 77

Blair, Mary {formerly Blake) 77 Bligh, Captain 64, 74 Bloomfield, Andrew 113 Blue Mountains 75; Cinchona Botanical Gardens 74, 163 Boston Fruit Company 48 Braithwaite, Augustus 89-90 British Army Garrison Hospital (Up Park Camp) 160 British West India Regiment, 2nd Battalion 52,53 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 10 Brown, Ivy 86 Brown, James 19, 21 Brown, Margaret (Maggie) (Granny Brown) {formerly Grant) (paternal great-grandmother) 14, 17-21,18, 23, 28, 29, 34, 101; healing powers 24-5; marriage 19 Brown, Miriam (Miss Mirie) (later Stockhausen) (paternal grandmother) 16, 20, 24, 28, 33, 34, 36, 38,49, 72, 82, 101; marriage 14; death 59, 60 Bryan Castle 13 Bryden and Evelyn Ltd (Import/Export Commission Agents) 160,169 burglaries 116-17 Bustamante, Alexander 103 Byron (manservant) 41 Caird, Chandler and Company (Import/Export Commission Agents) 122 Campbell, Charles 62 Campbell, Duncan 62 Campbell, Martha Jane (Sally) {later Clerk) 1, 62, 67 Carib Movie Theatre 145 Castleton Botanic Gardens 73 Cave Valley 33 chamber-pots 105

190 chemical experiments 10 chicken dishes 30 cholera epidemic, Jamaica (1850) 11 Christmas 87, 126-129; Christmas Eve 127; Dinner 127-8; Morning Concerts 69

churches and church-going 14, 24, 127 Churchill, Winston 155 cimmarones (wild ones), {see also Maroons) 8 Cinchona Plantation and Botanical Gardens, Blue Mountains 74,163 Clerk, Adela Isabel 65 Clerk, Alexander George 64, 67 Clerk, Astley Campbell (uncle) 79, 81, 82 Clerk, Astley Gunter (great-uncle) 1, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 80, 81, 82, 84, 95, 98; birth 79; marriage 19, 61 Clerk, Aurora Moore {later Gunter) 64, 67 Clerk, Cecil (see Clerk, Robert Cecil and Cyclone Clerk) 78, 124 Clerk, Eliza {formerly Lemonius) 65, 61 Clerk, Ena Holden {later Stockhausen) (mother) see Stockhausen, Ena Holden {formerly Clerk) (mother) Clerk, Ernest Jocelyn (uncle) 64, 65, 79, 84,158,168 Clerk, Evelyn (Little Evelyn) (cousin) 124-5 Clerk, Evelyn Beatrice {formerly Hendricks) (maternal grandmother) 61, 77, 78; death 79, 80 Clerk, Hopeton Gillies 68, 70 Clerk, James Otway 65, 66, 61 Clerk, John Hibgame 65 Clerk, Kate 67, 78 Clerk, Leslie 67, 180-2 Clerk, Lilian {formerly Cooke) 14, 71, 72, 80, 82; character 61; marriage 19; death 98 Clerk, Llewellyn {later Parkinson) 67 Clerk, Martha Evelyn (Evelyn) (aunt) 79, 121 Clerk, Martha Jane (Sally) {formerly Campbell) 1, 62, 67 Clerk, Robert Cecil (Cyclone Clerk) (uncle) 79, 83-4, 124 Clerk, Robert (maternal grandfather) 1, 61, 62, 65, 61, 80, 81, 82, 84, 97; marriage 77, 78 Clerk, Robert Thomas (snr) 1, 62, 64, 65, 61 Clerk, Tony 143 Clerk, Winnie 124,125 climate (Jamaica) 124,147, 161 Cockpit Country (near Trelawny) 8, 11

THE LAST COLONIALS

coconut-cart 133 Colgate-Palmolive, Peat Company 121 Colonial Development Corporation 152-3, 160 congenital pylorex stenosis 99 Constantine, Stella {later Stockhausen) 14 Constant Spring Road 135; Guide Camp at 161 Cooke, Lilian {later Clerk) see Clerk, Lilian {formerly Cooke) Coromantee tribe (Ghana) 8 Cowen Music Rooms, Kingston 69-70 Crop-over dances 162 Cross Roads market 106-8 Cudjoe Minstrels (group) 81, 89-90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 160 Cundall, Frank 52 Cyclone Clerk {see also Clerk, Robert Cecil) 83 Daily Gleaner 48, 91, 92, 147 Dale, Jane 28 daSouza family 35 David (coachman) 33, 41-2 de Cambre, Margaret (Maggie) (mother of de Cambre, Margaret 'Maggie', later Stockhausen) 15, 50 Devon House 132 Discovery Bay {formerly Dry Harbour), port 32,49 Dornoch River 33, 51 Dow Baker, Lorenzo 48, 49 drinking clubs 122-3 Dry Harbour (Discovery Bay), port 32, 49 Dummy (deaf and dumb child) 44-5 Duncans 15 duppies (ghosts) 26, 27,118 Earle, Marguerite 137 earthquakes: (1692) 46,147-8; (1907) 46-7; atmosphere preceding 148; see also hurricanes economic crash (Jamaica, 1846) 11 eczema 106 Edith Cavell (School House) 111 Edwards, John 13 Egyptian Expeditionary Force 53 Elgin Road, Kingston 61, 72, 80, 84, 98, 103 England 170 Escoveitched (Escabeche) fish 30 Falmouth Court House: destruction by fire (1926) 75; reconstructed 76 Falmouth (Trelawny's capital) 3, 9-10, 19-21 Fante tribe (Ghana) 8

INDEX

First World War 5, 52-60 fish/fish dishes 30, 74, 106, 133 Flame of Forest tree 131 Florence Hall 62, 65 Flynn, Errol 166 folk-songs 85-7 Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire 7 food and drink 30, 48, 74,106, 107, 115-16; Christmas Dinner 127-8; Neochemical Food 121-2; 'surrasi' tea 118 Foot, Sir Hugh 93, 94,154 Freeman's Hall 10, 13 Fricassee Chicken 30 Fulford, Dr (dentist), house of (Upper Waterloo Street) 136-7, 139,140,147 furniture 26,138 Galdy, Lewis 47 Garret Anderson (School House) 111 Gartshore, Miss (headmistress) 111 gasoline, rationing of 120-1 George, David 143,144 George VI (king) 111 Germans, emigration to Jamaica 8-9 German Town 10 Gick, Dennis 92 'Gilbraltar Mountains' 11 Girl Guide Company 161 Glass Bucket Night Club 123,133,154 Gleaner Company, Kingston 112 Glen Hurst (home of Robert and Evelyn Clerk family) 61, 79, 80 Gomm, Sir William 163,164 Gonzales y Moran, Maria 80 Gosse, Philip Henry 7, 26 Grace Darling (School House) 111 Grannie Stock see Stockhausen, Wilhelmina Karlotta Evida (formerly Sauerlinder) (Grannie Stock) Grant, Catherine (paternal great-aunt) 25 Grant, Jean (Catherine) (paternal greatgreat grandmother) 17 Grant, Margaret {later Brown) see Brown, Margaret {formerly Grant) (Granny Brown) (paternal great-grandmother) Gray's Inn Sugar Estate 155 Greaves, John-John 113, 162 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians 69 Gunter, Aurora Moore (formerly Clerk) 64,67 Gunter, Charles 64 Gunter, Sir Peter 64 Half Way Tree, St Andrew 88,109 Hampton School for Girls, Malvern 78 Harley Street (London) 6

191 Harmony Hall, St Mary 68 Hart, Barbara 144 Hart, Donald 132 Hart family 132,138 Hart, Philip 138,139 Hart, Robert 130-1,138 Harvest Festivals 24, 43 Hawks, James 58-9 Heliconius charitonius (butterfly) 131 Hendricks, Cecil (great uncle) 77, 78, 80 Hendricks, Charles M. 77 Hendricks, Evelyn Beatrice (later Clerk) see Clerk, Evelyn Beatrice (formerly Hendricks) (maternal grandmother) Hendriks, Nick 143,144 Henriques Bros, (firm of contractors) 76 Henry (coachman) 33, 41 higglers (food sellers) 107, 134 Hope Glen (home of Astley and Lilian Clerk) 61-70, 62 ;veranda 73 horses 33-4 House of Assembly (Jamaica) 7 Howard de Walden Estate 6 hurricanes 124,148-50; see also earthquakes icebox, use of 103-4 ice-cream 115-16 igglas (higglers) 107, 134 Imperial War Museum, London 53 Institute of Jamaica 68, 69, 70; Natural History Department 130; Sherlock as head of 90 Irene (Obeahwoman) 117 Isaac's House, Bottom 24 Jackson Town 14 Jamaica Automobile Association 162 Jamaica Club 122 Jamaica College, Kingston 39,47, 72, 136; Chapel 60 Jamaica High School for Girls 88 Jamaica Journal 1, 68, 70, 89-90 Jamaica's Part in the Great War (F. Cundall) 52 Jamaica Yacht Club 122,123 James, Maggie 85-6 Jensen, Birger (husband) 120 Jerk Chicken 30 Jesvani, Mr (lodger) 112 Jewish people, attitudes to 145-6 Joan of Arc (School House) 111 John Canoe troupes (see also Jonkonnu) 88 John Crow Turkey Vultures 121 Jonkonnu (groups of masked men) (see also John Canoe) 87

192 Keen, Katie 43 Kennedy, William (Old Mass Ken) 19, 23, 38 Kerr-Jarrett family 65, 66, 61 Kerr-Jarrett, Francis Moncrieffe 65 Kidd, Joseph Bartholomew 14 Kidd, Thomas 14, 27 Kingston: Atlantic Fruit and Shipping Company 71; Cowen Music Rooms 69-70; devastation by earthquake (1907) 46-7; Elgin Road 61, 80, 84, 98, 103; Gleaner Company 112; Jamaica College 39, 47, 60, 72,136; King Street 126; Mental Hospital 160; Rockfort airbase 105; South Camp Road 14; United Fruit Company 47,48, 49; Wolmer's Boys' School 95 Kingston Cricket Club, Sabina Park 122, 123,161 King Street, Kingston 126 Kingsway Road (childhood home) 120, 130,131,132,135 Kinkeads the Chemists 71 Knibb, William 40, 41 Knight, Clarisse 106,108 Knutsford Park Race Course 109 Korner 26 Land of Look Behind 10 Lauder, Margaret 144 Lemonius, Eliza {later Clerk) 65, 61 Lepers' Home 160 Lewis, Dr Bernard 130 Lewis Galdy 148 Lignum Vitae trees 110 Liguanea Hotel 152,154 Lindo, David 10 Llewelyn, Agatha 27 McCardy, Charles 28 MacGregor, Gordon 118,162, 169 malaria 114,115,164 Manda Goes to Town 90, 91, 93, 94 Mandeville, visits to 125 Manley, Michael (Prime Minister) 88,177 Manley, Norman 68, 180,181,183 Maroons/Maroon Wars 8,15 Maroon Town 11, 164 Mass Owen (see also Stockhausen, Owen Leicester) 99, 101,128 Mattie, Miss 40 Melchior, Lauritz 121 Milk River Baths (spa) 85 Mirie, Miss see Brown, Miriam (Miss Mirie) (paternal grandmother) Miss Jackson's Academy for Young Ladies 19

T H E LAST C O L O N I A L S

Mitchell, Sir Harold 155 Moody, Dr 99,100-1,106, 115 MorantBay 19 Morant Bay Courthouse 11 Mother Kelly (cook) 30, 32, 34, 87 Mrs Jeffrey's Beauty Parlour 103 music: folk 85-7, 92; reggae 119; see also Cudjoe Minstrels (group) Myrtle Bank 121 National Festival Competition, Folk introduced into 92 National Library of Jamaica 84 Negril 166 Neita, Miss 113 New Amsterdam, Dutch North American colony of 77 Newcastle 163-5 New Kingston (Knutsford Park Race Course) 109 New Year's Eve Dance (1954-55) 155 Obeah (witchcraft) 117 Olbers (sailing ship) 8 Old Stony Hill Road (family home) 158, 161 Olivier (governor) 10-11 O'Meally, Patrick 12 Oxford, University of 39 Palmis, Huguette 116 Pan American Airways Clipper seaplane 105 Papilio Homerus (butterfly) 74, 130 Paradise Plums 117 Parboosingh, Rose Cecile 112,113,134 Park Avenue (Clerks' home) 80, 84 Parkinson, Llewellyn (formerly Clerk) 67 Parkinson, Randolph 67 People's Cooperative Bank 29 Pierce, Jan 121 pimento 30 Port Antonio 48, 49,166 Port Royal 47: destruction by earthquake (1692)46,147-8 potassium permanganate, uses of 105,106 Powell's Bakery 133 Pringle, Frank (Aide-de-Camp) 94,153, 154-5, 156,157 Pringle, John 159, 165 Progressive Parties 142 Prospect Great House 156 'raas' (swearword) 113 racial issues 146 Raiboyd, Rajah 123 Ralston, Claire (formerly Stockhausen) 121

INDEX

Ralston, Jack 14 Red Ants 140 Red Cross War Effort 91 refrigerator, electric 103,104 reggae music 119 Revivalist Meetings 42, 43 Rio Bueno (port) 49 Rio Grande 166 robberies 116-17 Rockfort (airbase), Kingston Harbour 105 Rosa (nanny) 32,41; death from typhoid (1909)48 Rose Price family 6 Round Hill Hotel 159-60 Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon 58 Royal Botanical Gardens, Hope 61 Royal Flying Corps 52; No. 17 Squadron 58-9 rum-making 4, 6 Rum Punch parties 143 Runcie, Caroline Louise (Carrie) {formerly Stockhausen) 13, 38 Runcie, Walter 13 run-down 106 Ruthven Road (childhood home) 105, 130,131 Sabina Park, Cricket Club 122,123,161 St Andrew High School for Girls 74-5, 85, 133,141; Preparatory Department 110, 111,112 St Andrew's Tennis Club 122,123 St Hilda's Girls School, Brown's Town 73 St Thomas's Anglican Church, Stewart Town 14, 24,43, 60 Salt fish and Ackee 74 Sand, George 24-5 Sandy Gully 147 Sauerlinder family 8, 9 Sauerlinder, Wilhelmina Karlotta Evida {later Stockhausen) see Stockhausen, Wilhelmina Karlotta Evida {formerly Sauerlinder) Scavenger Hunts 143 schools: Hampton School for Girls, Malvern 78; Jamaica College {see also Kingston) 39, 47, 60, 72,136; Jamaica High for Girls 88; St Andrew High for Girls 74-5, 85,110, 111, 112; St Hilda's Girls 73; Westwood High 39, 40, 41, 50, 95-6; Wolmer's Boys, Kingston 95 Scottish Academy of Art 14 Scott, Stuart 160, 169 Seaga, Eddie 154 Second World War 112,120-9 servants 30, 33, 34,106

193 Sewing Bee 142 Shaw Park Hotel, New Year's Eve Dance at(1954-55)155 Sherlock, Philip 90, 91, 92, 93 Simmons, Pat 162 slaves, emancipation of 6, 7, 8 'slaveys' 34 South Camp Road, Kingston 14,100 Spanish Influenza epidemic (1918) 71 Spathodea campanulata (Flame of the forest tree) 131 Stewart, James 22 Stewart Town: family home in 5,12,14, 15, 22-34, 23; Church 27; People's Cooperative Bank 29; Post Office 28 Stockhausen, Alan 14 Stockhausen, Beryl Vida 22, 32, 41 death from typhoid (1909) 48 Stockhausen, Caroline Louise (Carrie) {later Runcie) 13, 38 Stockhausen, Charles {formerly Karl von Stockhausen) (great-grandfather) see Stockhausen, Karl (great-grandfather) Stockhausen, Charles (great-uncle) 12 Stockhausen, Claire {later Ralston) 14, 121 Stockhausen, Doris ('Dodie') (aunt) 22, 41, 73, 85,141-2,168; as Deputy Headmistress 74-5, 88,110; as netball mistress 140 Stockhausen, Ena Holden {formerly Clerk) (mother) 79-80, 89, 96,116, 124, 125, 142; childhood 95; hygiene, obsession with 104-5; list-making 126, 167; marriage 97,102; health problems 114; as teacher 95; death 97,114 Stockhausen, Enid (godmother) 15, 38, 49-50, 71 Stockhausen, Eric Audley 22, 72 Stockhausen, Frederick 3, 5,12-13 Stockhausen, Frederick (Jr) 5,12-13 Stockhausen, Harold Ivan (Junior) (brother) 97, 98, 99, 101, 104, 105, 115,123,136,143,158-9,168 Stockhausen, Harold Wauchope (father) 22, 38, 44, 63, 72, 89, 98,114-15, 122-3, 167; as Managing Director 121 marriage 97,102; motor cars, changing of 103,120; scholarship awarded to 47 Stockhausen Hill 10 Stockhausen, Ivan Lancelot (uncle) 5, 22, 47, 48, 52, 55-7, 57, 58; death 49, 55, 57, 59, 73 Stockhausen, James 14,100 Stockhausen, John Harvey (brother) 98, 99, 100,101,104,130-1,136, 160 research by 159

194 Stockhausen, John Samuel (paternal grandfather) 2, 5, 12, 22, 23-24, 26, 59; as bank manager 29; children, education of 35-45; land ownership 25, 27-8; marriage 14; Post Office ownership 35 death 33, 76, 82 Stockhausen, Joseph 4,14, 38,48, 75; marriage 15 Stockhausen, Joseph Jr (Dr Joe) 15, 154 Stockhausen, Karl (paternal greatgrandfather) 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9,10, 13,14; marriage 4,11; name change to Charles 4,12; death 5,15,16 Stockhausen, Leslie Evelyn (sister) 98, 99, 100,101,104,110,159,165 Stockhausen, Linda Lilie (aunt) 4,12, 32, 37, 38, 49, 71, 80-1, 85-94; at Royal Bank of Canada 71, 85; education 35, 36; Musgrave Medal awarded to 94; death 21, 91 Stockhausen, Margaret (Maggie) {formerly de Cambre) 15 Stockhausen, Marjorie 14 Stockhausen, Owen Leicester (Mass Owen) (uncle) 5, 22, 52, 71,99,101, 128; at British West India Regiment, 2nd Battalion 52, 53; at Officer Cadet Battalion, Cairo 56; war diary 53-6 Stockhausen, Peta Gay 98,100,104 birth 100-1; childhood 110-19; education 110-112,113,140-1; health problems 106,114; Jamaica, leaving 170-4; Kingston, work at 161-2 Stockhausen, Stella {formerly Constantine) 14 Stockhausen, Sydney 14 Stockhausen, Wilhelmina Karlotta Evida {formerly Sauerlinder) (Grannie Stock) 5, 11,13,15,16,49; marriage 4; Stewart Town visits 29 Stockville (Duncans, Trelawny) 15 Struma River/Front 58 sugar production 4, 6, 7,15 Sunday Gleaner, magazine 62 Surbiton Road (family home) 120, 140, 150, 151,158 Surinam (South America) 77,175 'surrasi' tea 118 Tally-ho (drinking club) 122 Tauber, Richard 121 Thelwell family 136

T H E LAST C O L O N I A L S

Thrift Scheme 169 Tilden-Smith, Diana 162,168,170-1 Trelawny 6-16; Parish of 3, 4, 75; Parochial Board of 75 Trengwainton (Cornwall) 6 Try See, Stewart Town 27, 32 Tuberculosis Sanatorium 88,160 Ulster Spring Court House 11 Ulster Spring Methodist Chapel 13 Ulster Spring (southern Trelawny village) 10,11 United Fruit Company Kingston 47 Port Antonio 48-9 University College Hospital 154 Up Park Camp 72,161,164; British Army Garrison Hospital 160 Upper Waterloo Road (family home) 120, 137,139, 140,147 Vathek (W. Beckford) 7 Vaughan family 156 Vaughan, Sir Douglas 155 Verity, Tony 144,145 von Kettelholdt, Baron 11-12 von Stockhausen, Baron Karl (paternal great-grandfather) see Stockhausen, Karl (paternal great-grandfather) von Stockhausen, Baron Karl (paternal great-great grandfather) 3 washerwomen 33 Waterloo Road (childhood home) 120, 134-5 Wauchope Fisher, James 13 Wauchope (Major General) 22-3 weather conditions (Jamaica) 124,161 Webb, Reverend W. M. (Baptist Minister of Stewart Town) 39, 40,43-4 Wesleyan Church 68 Westwood High School 39, 40, 41, 50, 95-6 Whitfield, Miss (teacher) 110 whooping cough 115 Wolmer's Boys School, Kingston 95 Worthy Park (sugar plantation) 6 yellow fever 164 Yellow Fever Burial Ground 137, 139 Zebra {Heliconius charitonius), butterfly 131