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The party was occurring in Michael Manley’s own constituency in East Central Kingston, and the great man himself was rumoured to be there – or at least to have put in a palm-pressing appearance. Pioneer Farm Road, its epicentre, was a five hundred yard strip of shops, mainly convenience stores selling everything from firewood to skin-lightening lotions, and whose lampposts had been hung with kerosene lanterns and fairy lights. In the middle of the street, a DJ in sunglasses and a Bob Marley T-shirt played reggae at high volume. The entire strip was packed with young people, mostly underdressed, drinking, smoking or gesturing wildly to each other. Some were armed. A few were dancing. Empty oil drums doubled as charcoal burners for cooking snacks. Every so often a car drove through the crowd at a crawl, with a man at the wheel, and three or four heavily made-up women in the back, grinning and sipping cocktails like they were royalty. On the party’s perimeter, bouncers grilled entrants for party affiliation. Only if someone could vouch for you were you allowed in. Ruby didn’t hear who performed that service for Collins, but he wasn’t detained.
Despite the superficial revelry, there was an underlying sense of anxiety. Much of the talk – at least the conversations she overheard – were about the JLP and if and when it would attempt to gatecrash. And after that, who was ahead in the polls. As Collins explained, the victory of your party here was about much more than abstract national interest. If you supported the winning side, you stood to inherit jobs, junkets and contracts; if not, then at best you stood to remain in underprivileged stasis. At worst, you might lose everything. “Not democracy as we know it,” he commented.
He bought her a savoury patty from a stall manned by a father and daughter in identical orange bobble hats, and with a handwritten sign next to it that read: ‘Leroy’s People’s National Patties’. They stood against a shop window and ate. She wondered what they were doing here, really. She’d got enough of a sense of the violence in the country now.
“Do you want to dance?” he asked, when they’d finished eating.
“What’s the point?” she asked.
“It’s about fitting in.”
“By my reckoning, only about ten per cent of the crowd is dancing. It’d make us stand out.”
He smiled thinly. “You’re quite boring, really, aren’t you?”
“And you’re not very bright. What else could we do to make ourselves fit in? I know, let’s just walk together. I’ll take your arm if it keeps you happy.”
He offered his elbow. “Yes, let’s just promenade like a couple of octogenarians. What kind of music do you like, Ruby? And don’t say ‘Beethoven’.”
“I’m not into music.”
“Come on, you must like something.”
She sighed. “Boney M.”
“Okay. Boney M. Yeah, okay.” He was obviously keen to accept the olive branch, slim though it was. “Although I do think Love For Sale qualifies as the most disturbing album-cover of all time.”
“What’s your favourite?”
“I don’t really have a ‘favourite’, as such. I like jazz.”
“Proper or squiggly-wiggly?”
“Squ - ? I don’t know what you mean.”
“People who play actual tunes, or people who just go awol with musical instruments.”
He laughed. “Boy, you’ve got a real chip on your shoulder, you know that?”
“I’ve just exchanged an expensive suit for a threadbare sarong and a sleeveless top. I’m entitled to a little disenchantment.”
“We’ll get it back for you, I promise.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“About?”
“Your sort of jazz.”
“Ornette Coleman. John Coltrane.”
“I’ve no idea who they are, so that’s not an answer.”
“‘Squiggly-wiggly’. Can I buy you a drink?”
“How much money have you actually brought?”
“Enough.”
“Nothing too potent. I intend to keep being boring.”
He was just about to go into a shop when he apparently spotted someone through the crowd. He blanched and tried to reverse, grabbing her hand at the last minute in a weak attempt to draw her along with him. When she looked in the direction he was backing up from, she saw four large men in T-shirts, sweatbands and jewellery, pushing through the crowd towards him. They didn’t look hostile. Quite the opposite. They looked like he was set to be the highlight of their evening.
“It’s Glenford’s boy!” one of them exclaimed.
They were big enough to be American Football players. When they reached him they started slapping him affectionately on the upper body, rubbing his hair and shaking his hand. They seemed to think him being ‘Glenford’s boy’ would be of interest to the crowd, so they called it out like they were PA systems. Everyone seemed to sit up, like they really were interested.
“This is your girl?” one of them said, turning to Ruby. “Wow, you really done well for yourself! You really, really done well, man! Hey, everyone! This is his girl!” He thrust his hands under her armpits and picked her up for the crowd’s approval like she was a rag doll. “This is his girl!”
Everyone cheered. By way of tribute, the DJ took off the record he was playing and replaced it with No Woman, No Cry. Everyone cheered again.
The man put her down and completely forgot about her. He and his three friends only had time for Collins. They’d reached Stage 2 now: asking him how he was. Which still involved slapping him and tousling his hair. He looked completely at sea. She had no idea what was happening, except that it probably wasn’t dangerous.
At that point, she had another odd experience, so close upon the last one that she wondered if she’d passively inhaled too much ganja. Ten feet away from her, leaning against a fence post and looking like she’d been there all evening, was Millicent. Dressed in Ruby’s skirt-suit and shoes. They made eye-contact - although she guessed Millicent had been casting glances her way for a long time now - and Ruby raised her hand. She felt herself waving like she was in a dream. Not necessarily a bad one, rather a philosophical-French-cinema-of-the-1960s one.
This was Millicent’s cue to come over. Ruby had to admit it: they looked alike. They even walked alike. Uncanny.
Suddenly, two other women appeared, both about Millicent’s age. They looked quizzical and hostile, like who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing in our beloved Kingston, Jamaica?
“This is my cousin from England,” Millicent said casually, linking arms with Ruby and turning to face the other two. “Ruby, she’s called.”
One of the two women put her face next to Ruby’s and said something incomprehensible. Neither Spanish, nor Portuguese.
“Don’t speak patwa to her, stupid,” Millicent said. “She’s not a peasant, she’s from Great Britain. She doesn’t understand you.”
It was probably time to build bridges. “Pleased to meet you,” she said to the women. “I’m really having a good time. Ruby Parker.” She offered a handshake.
They laughed. “You don’t look like you come from England,” one of them said. “That’s not how they dress in England. Not that I’ve seen.”
“Sure talks like she comes from England,” the other said. “You sound like Mrs Thatcher, baby. That’s how she talks.”
“Who’s Mrs Thatcher?” the other asked.
“We swapped clothes for the evening,” Millicent interrupted, in an attempt to change the subject. “Me and Ruby.”
The two women looked at each other like enlightenment had finally dawned. “Ahhhh!” they said together. For some reason, this seemed to signal the end of hostilities. They pecked Ruby’s cheeks and caressed her shoulders, and stroked her hair in a kind of tactile welcome to the gang.
“Poor Ruby’s even got Mrs Thatcher’s clothes!” one of the women said.
The other one – the one who didn’t even know who Mrs Thatcher was – howled with laughter and both women bent double.
Millicent looked mortified. She turned to Ruby. “Is Mrs Thatcher a good look?” she asked.
“Not necessarily for a young person,” Ruby replied.
“What the hell you got these clothes for, then?”
“I didn’t set out to look like Mrs Thatcher.”
“What, so you’re saying you look like Mrs Thatcher by accident?”
“I don’t look like Mrs Thatcher.”
Millicent put her hands on her hips and thrust her jaw out. “No, that’s right. You did. Now I do.”
“Why do you think I’m wearing your clothes? Those aren’t suitable for a party.”
“Why you not say?”
“I didn’t know you were coming!”
They faced each other down for a few moments. Millicent’s friends looked like they thought a fight might be on the cards. When the verbal sparring halted, they burst out laughing again.
“Millicent, what you getting yourself in a hex for?” one of them said. “Nobody here knows who Mrs Thatcher is! Nobody cares! Nobody except Rita here, and she don’t count.” She turned to Rita. “How the hell you find out who Mrs Thatcher is, anyway?”
“How should I know?” Rita replied. “I can’t remember everything about my whole life!”
“So you wearing Ruby’s clothes,” the first woman asked Millicent, “and she wearing yours. That right?”
Millicent shrugged. “Yeah, Maizie. That right.”
“Say why?”
“Because we thought it would be fun,” Ruby said. “We’re cousins. That’s what cousins sometimes do.”
“Really?” Rita said.
“In England,” Ruby replied.
The women looked at each other like a new level of understanding had now been achieved. “Ahhhh!” they said together. “Come on,” Rita said. She grabbed Ruby’s hand. On the other side, Maizie grabbed her elbow. Millicent rolled her eyes, like she knew this had been on the cards all along, and she had no choice but to tag along.
They took Ruby into a shop called Williams News. Tightly packed shelves, most of them covered with makeshift wooden panels to prevent theft, with two men apparently guarding the rest against shoplifters. At the back, an open cellar door with a stout old woman wearing an angry expression standing sentry. Rita gave her something and preceded Ruby down a flight of steps into an oil-lamp gloom. Millicent and Maizie took up the rear.
The cellar air was thick with cannabis smoke, perfume and rum, so dense that at first Ruby thought she was going to have trouble breathing. At the end of the descent, she found herself inside a damp cube about the size of an average kitchen with a wet stone floor and a wooden shelf that ran at stomach-height round three of the four walls. Eighteen or twenty women stood applying make-up and looking in one of a dozen free-standing mirrors lined up along the shelf, or adjusting each other’s clothes and laughing. Some were smoking joints or actual cigarettes. Some stood with drinks, sipping ruminatively. One was crying; another had her elbow round her neck. One looked blank. Another sat on the floor, head in hands, her party dress pulled up to expose her underwear. Everyone gave her wide berth, then someone collapsed on top of her. Both women recovered, and to Ruby’s surprise, the head-in-hands woman jumped up and laughed.
Maizie pushed through a clutch of talking women and returned with two glasses of rum, one of which she gave to Millicent, the other to Rita. She did an about-turn and came back with two more: one for herself, one for Ruby.
“Drink up,” she said. “Everything down here’s on the boss!”
“Who’s the boss?” Ruby asked.
They ignored or didn’t hear her. They downed their rums in one, and turned on her. She followed suit.
“Now weed,” Rita said. Out of the crowd, someone passed her a joint. “Mrs Thatcher,” she said, as if she was toasting her health. She inhaled heavily and passed it to Ruby.
“Er, Mrs Thatcher,” Ruby said. Hobson’s choice, but blending in with the natives was what she was supposed to do. She inhaled heavily and spluttered.
Everyone laughed. “MRS THATCHER!” they all yelled.
Three more rounds of the joint and another rum and they climbed the stairs back to the surface. The old woman by the cellar entrance ignored them as they came out, even though Millicent and Rita called her Mrs Thatcher. Ruby didn’t feel high or drunk: she felt slightly ill. The four women rolled out of the shop entrance and onto the street. They were pounced on by men looking for someone to dance with. Collins appeared out of nowhere, apparently having shaken his admirers. He looked frantic.
“Where have you been?” he exclaimed. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“You left me,” she replied. “I didn’t leave you.”
Millicent, Rita and Maizie were all dancing with men now, looking as if they were having the best time ever. Ruby suddenly felt light headed.
“I had the DJ put this on for you!” he shouted, above the noise.
She wondered what he meant, then she heard. Boney M. Brown Girl in the Ring.
“Come on!” he yelled. “Let’s dance!”
What could be more calculated to help her blend in than a bit of dancing? She’d done all the hard work – going down into the cellar and getting drunk and stoned – so it’d be stupid not to go the final two inches. True, she’d never really danced before; she should really have practised; she should have known she’d have to do it someday, but then she’d had no expectation of being re-hired by MI6. How hard could it be?
She cleared a little space for herself opposite Collins, who was already in full swing. Then she kicked her leg out and fell over.
He helped her up and she began again. Gradually, everyone else stopped what they were doing – dancing or walking or kissing – and formed a little circle to watch her. They thought they knew how to dance in Jamaica, but there was nothing the British couldn’t teach the world. Even today, in 1980. Britain may not have an empire any more, or an economy, or much of a reputation, but it did have the universal language of dance. From this little patch of East Central Kingston, she could feel herself spreading it to the four corners of the globe.
Finally, even Collins stopped moving and stopped to watch her. Of course he did – how could he not? This was the dance. She was the Lord of Dance. She’d danced on the Sabbath when the world was begun, she’d danced for the moon and the stars and the sun.
A few people came into the little ring everyone had cleared for her and tried to imitate her. Everyone was having the best time ever. She should have joined the diplomatic corps, really. She could easily bring about world peace just by dancing to – yes, it was Rasputin now. East-West relations perfectly summed up in the most profound song ever written.
A few minutes later, Collins looked concerned. He didn’t seem to be enjoying her performance any more. He had that you’re making a fool of yourself look on that she recognised so well because she’d often turned it on others.
“Freeze!” the sound system blared out. “I’m Ma Baker. Put your hands in the air and gimme all your money!”
Suddenly, fireworks went off. Or that’s what it sounded like. Then Collins grabbed her and pulled her down and dragged her behind an oil drum. “Don’t touch it!” he yelled. “It’s red hot!”
All around them, people screamed and ran for cover. The glass of two shop windows shattered as if they’d been bombed, and fragments flew everywhere. Collins threw himself on top of her, to shield her. Six or seven men stood opposed in the middle of the street, emptying their revolvers in each other’s directions. A car careered by, veered off the road and ran into a tree. No one paid it any mind. Most people lay on the ground or tried to crawl along with their hands over their heads. More men with guns arrived out of nowhere and joined the firefight, and suddenly it was over. An eerie silence. When Ruby looked up, the first thing she noticed was that three people hadn’t run for cover. They lay still in the middle of the road, looking broken.
One of them wore her suit.
