Chapter
4
Prospero, Caliban and Doctor
Faustus
“It sounded like you had
quite a tempest, Miss Molly,” said Prospero.
Tempest? That sounded odd. Why
should he call the storm a tempest? Then I realised.
That was where I had heard that name before: in
a Shakespeare play called The Tempest. He was
making a joke. I laughed.
“Do you know the play?”
he asked as if he had been reading my thoughts.
“Do you know why people hereabouts calls
me Prospero?”
I shook my head.
“They calls me Prospero
because I’m one of the originals. My ancestor
was one of the crew of the Sea Venture wrecked
here in 1609. All that ocean and they had to hit
the only piece of coral for hundreds of miles
around. They wuz going to the New World to make
their fortunes and they ended up here in the middle
of bloody nowhere. When old Will Shakespeare back
in England heard about us it gived him the idea
for a play. Remember the face that launched a
thousand ships?”
“That was Marlow,”
said mum who knew things like that.
“By Hell it was too Mrs
Joy. I gets my Marlow and my Shakespeare all mixed
up I do.”
He paused and rubbed his chin
with the three-fingered hand. “Not to worry…
He couldn’t sail again, this ancestor o’mine
even when they made new boats from the wreck.
The storm had been that bad - that tempest –
it made him afraid.” Prospero’s eyes
shone with a distant look as he spoke. “He
would rurther be stuck ‘ere than sail again.
So stay here he did and when other people came
he found a wife and they had children.
“Now half the bleeding
island is ‘is kin - the owners mixed with
the slaves so much in those days - but they say
that I’m the one most like ‘im, them
that knows. My father was like him too and he
wuz called Prospero too. I can hardly remember
my mother. My father was on ships all his life
and met her somewhere on his travels. She was
a poor island woman they says. I don’t knows
where I was born. My father never hung around
long enough to explain. He took me away from her,
said we were going on a holiday, and brought me
to my grandparents here on Bermuda. Then he joined
the next ship that came into port and that was
the last any of us saw of Prospero senior.
“Prospero. You’d
think with a name like that I’d be a prosperous
man. I wish. That name nivver did me any good.
We nivver had nuffin’. Thank Neptune I learned
me a trade. I make sails and I kin sail boats
too. I’m not scared of no tempest. I’ll
git this boat straight for yeas. You dun worrying
now. And don’t you worry about old man Johnson
neither. I’ll fix him proper. You see if
I don’t.”
That evening I was fishing for crabs with the
Grant boys by the quayside. We had some handlines
that old Burt had made for us back in Whitby.
“I think I like Prospero,” I said,
hoisting the tiniest crab to the surface. As it
came out it released its grip on my fish bait
and plopped back into the water, its spindly legs
wriggling from side to side until it found a piece
of seaweed on the harbour wall and crawled out
of sight.
Badger was not so sure. “He
gives me the creeps,” he said.
“He seems harmless enough,”
said Pat.
Badger didn’t like Bermuda.
Maybe it was because of the storm and how we came
to be there but he said he it had an odd atmosphere.
“It’s as if we were in a time warp.
I mean what are they doing with that ducking stool
and those old stocks by the harbour?”
He had a point. It did seem strange.
The local history society had rebuilt these wooden
relics of the 17th century in their original positions.
“They knew how to handle women in those
days,” said Pat. I kicked him hard where
boys don’t like to be kicked.
He doubled up on the stone floor.
Coughing and gulping for breath, he said: “What’s
up? You in need of a humour transplant today?”
“You shouldn’t have
called me a bitch. Women have long memories. Now
I guess we’re even.”
There was not much to do on Bermuda.
After a week of sea, sun and sand we were all
keen to get moving again, even Vince who had fulfilled
his ambition to create the biggest sand castle
on Bermuda that first day on the beach. For the
rest of the town there was a tiny aquarium, a
few shops, a lot of hotels, golf courses, quite
a few offices and not much else. All the businessmen
looked just as they did in any big city from the
waist up. But below their waist they wore knee-length
shorts and long socks. “They look like they’re
spoilt for choice between business and beach.
I suppose they are in a place like this,”
said mum.
Most of the time we spent sitting
with Prospero outside his tiny stone house near
the quay, listening to his tales. We gathered
there every day to play with Caliban, Prospero’s
monkey, and to feed grapes to Dr Faustus, his
bright blue Macaw, just like the bird in the aviary
at Whitby. Pat taught it to say “pieces
of eight”. By the time that one week had
stretched to two weeks Dr Faustus had also learned
to say “bugger off” which was Pat’s
idea of a joke.
Prospero was not amused. “Now
then my lovely,” he said to the bird one
afternoon as he came back from the quay.
“Bugger off ,” said
Dr Faustus.
“Damn you kids,”
said Prospero and chased us down the street. Even
Caliban joined in the fun, throwing a walnut at
Prospero as he turned away. The nut bounced off
Prospero’s head.
“Damn kids, upsetting old
Prospero’s pets. They shouldn’t ought
to do that,” he said, muttering and rubbing
his hand on the back of his head.
We were sleeping on the Endeavour
again. The hotel was too expensive to stay more
than a couple of nights. I wasn’t on speaking
terms with Badger. That was a shame. We had fallen
out over a hole in the sand. He had dug a hole
in the hard sand on the beach so he could fill
it with sea-water and I had started pelting him
with the gluey piles of wet sand on the edges.
He pelted me back and a blob of sand went straight
into my mouth. There is nothing worse than sand
in your mouth. No matter how much you try to spit
out there is always one more bit of grit stuck
under your tongue. It was horrible. So I punched
Badger in the eye. I hadn’t meant to do
it. It was one of those reflex things. It just
happened. For once Pat was the peacemaker. Badger
was shaping up to slam me one when Pat broke us
apart.
“Men don’t hit ladies,”
said Pat.
“Just try it,” I
said to Badger’s face. I turned my back
and walked away. “If you were a bloke….”
said Badger but he wasn’t the fighting type.
He looked ugly when he was angry. Had I really
wanted to kiss that? Surely not. Vince had been
paddling in the surf and came up the beach to
find out the cause of the argument. “Never
mind bro,” he said. “You could have
gobbed her. Wow, that eye’s a beaut.”
There was good news from the
airport. A new mainsail had arrived from the US.
The other had been too badly damaged for repair.
There was good news too from the hospital. Dad’s
leg was mending fast. “It wasn’t broken
after all,” he said when mum and I went
to see him. The ward smelled of antiseptic and
dad was at the end of a row of beds. He was out
of his bed and sitting on a chair talking to one
of the nurses who was massaging his bad leg. “I’ll
take over that thankyou,” said mum just
a little bit too primly.
“It was amazing,”
said dad. “The doctors were about to X-ray
the leg when this ood-looking chap appeared. Called
himself Prospero. Said he knew you all. Asked
to look at the leg. As soon as he touched it the
pain seemed to ebb away. It was fantastic. When
the X-rays came back there was nothing.
“But it was broken,”
said mum. “I could feel the break.”
“It’s fine. Just
a sprain,” said dad. “I can leave
tomorrow.”
When Bob saw that dad could walk
with barely a limp he decided we would sail the
next day. He and dad had been making new plans.
Dad would still need to rest and they were worried
that would leave them short-handed. “We
need some more experience,” said Bob. “You
kids, you all did well in the storm but this is
a big boat in a big ocean……
“Morning surs,” said
a voice from the quay. “Why Mr Badger, that’s
a fair shiner. You been walking into something?
Did I hear you saying you wuz shorthanded? Old
Prospero could help you out. He ain’t been
to sea in a long time and he’d like some
adventure.”
“That’s very kind
Prospero,” said Bob. “But I’m
afraid we couldn’t pay you. We spent most
of our spare cash on the boat and what we have
left we need to stretch over a year at least.”
“Oh that’s no problem
Mr Grant sur. I’d come for the fun of it.
I’ve been wanting to see old Nantucket again
for some long years now and this would be my chance.”
“Well we were heading for
Boston but I suppose….”
“Oh you don’t wants
to go to Boston. Nantucket’s the place.”
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