The Moon Is Following Me by Cecil Browne

Author:Cecil Browne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

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One Saturday afternoon in April 1967, Mrs Goodridge received a letter from her husband in England. Halfway through reading it, a massive headache came on.

‘Meena!’ she screeched to the young girl who lived with her, ‘Meena!’

‘Here, Mrs Goodridge.’

‘Close up the shop!’

‘Yes Mrs Goodridge.’

‘Shut the windows in the front room!’

‘Yes Mrs Goodridge.’

‘And turn off the fire under the pot!’

‘What happen, Mrs Goodridge, hurricane coming?’

‘Hurricane? What hurricane?’

‘You shutting up the shop so must be big storm or hurricane.’

‘Don’t bother about that girl, just do as you’re told.’

‘Yes Mrs Goodridge.’

With a low sigh Meena drew in the heavy wooden doors of the shop, bolted the windows, then dragged herself to the kitchen to turn off the gas. Ten minutes later, at two in the afternoon, Mrs Goodridge went to bed.

Mrs Goodridge lived in Dubois. Perched precariously on a hill, away from the main road that still clings to the coast, from the lowest point in the village you can see as far as Bequia to the south and St Lucia to the north.

Rain was their greatest worry. Two years earlier a storm had washed away chickens, cattle and goats and a sandy section of the lower village, depositing them unceremoniously on Pennington Valley below. So, like a tree that might tumble under a single chop at its root or lower body, the people of Dubois always felt one storm away from a landslide.

The British army had a base there in the eighteenth century and, every now and again, while preparing the foundations of a new house, bones would surface. A large sunken skull unearthed in Mr Griffith’s back yard one Christmas season had provided speculation and conversation for the month of January. Dubois was like that.

Mrs Goodridge loved her village. Sparsely populated, its three hundred or so inhabitants were wary of strangers. Visitors without the proper name or a convincing description of the person they were seeking were greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and instructed to ask elsewhere.

Two miles of partially concreted track away from the main road, on a steep incline that didn’t give, people only went to Dubois to see relatives or on business: fishermen from Layou with fresh sprats or jacks, Mr Warner, the baker from Sandy Bay with warm bread, Mrs Woodley from Calder with medicines for all ailments. On a quiet Saturday few said, ‘Let’s take a walk up to Dubois, nuh.’ If Tuesday dragged no one suggested that, ‘There’s a netball tournament in Dubois, might be worth a peep.’ Where other villages vied to be heard, Dubois slept contentedly. It suited Mrs Goodridge perfectly.

When she woke up on the Sunday the headache had gone. But, as she opened the shop promptly at eight, she felt anxious and jittery. Her husband had been in England for twelve years, why didn’t he just stay there?

She was so lucky, she used to boast to her circle of women - Martha Roban, the midwife, Lacy Neverson, the preacher and Millicent Boucher, who sold flowers for weddings and funerals.

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