Dominica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 77

The old woman who had been arraigned for murder was acquitted (to the general satisfaction) the after-
noon we arrived back in Roseau, and condemned, I think, to a year's imprisonment. We were just in time
to hear the fine summing-up of the Puisne Judge of the Windward Islands.
The food in Roseau was pretty bad. After Martinique it was incredible that such disastrous results
could be attained with the same raw materials. Terrible pink soups appeared, and potatoes disguised with
Daddy's Favourite Sauce, on whose awfulness it would be unpatriotic to enlarge. But the puddings were
the most interesting, and as we laboured with them, washing down intractable mouthfuls with Big Tree
Burgundy, we invented names for them; a game that, in a perverted fashion, made us look forward to
their appearance. Carib Shape and Empire-Building Blancmange were followed by other marvels which
only the names of Crimean battles seemed to fit: Inkerman Mould, the Redan, Sebastopol Pudding and
Balaklava Helmet. These banquets were crowned by coffee that must have been made out of a bedstead
which had been hammered to powder.
But these experiences were unable to break the charm of Dominica and the Dominicans, and of the
little capital. The maid in Sutton House was tremendously old, kind and motherly in a starched cap, and
appropriately called Nanny, whom the faintest suggestion of a joke on our part would send off into trans-
ports of delight. Seeing that we looked a bit hangdog over our meals, she brought us a plateful of fried
frogs— cwapaud —which were very good indeed. It is a justly celebrated Dominican dish.
A strangely Victorian atmosphere pervaded the hotel. Heavy mahogany furniture filled the parlour,
and a framed reproduction of Bubbles hung on the wall beside a calendar for 1882. Torsos of members
of the Royal Family in ovals of laurel surrounded a faded and leafy prospect of Windsor Castle and the
river. Only the yellow and insect-tunnelled music on top of the piano— Hitchy-koo, Everybody's doing it ,
and There's a long, long trail a-winding —suggested a more recent period. After dinner a coloured girl
came in and sat down at the piano stool, and the room was filled with the sound of early rag-time. 'Every
night,' this flapper-like figure sang, 'Mister Moon comes syncopating'; then after a pause—
'You can't get away from it (stop),
Get away from it,
You can't get away from it at all.'
When she left, Nanny's hands were locked in rapture. She described to us Roseau in carnival time—the
songs, calypsos and fancy dresses, when 'all young fellows, they run maasked.' But some of the songs
were not fitting. 'The words, oh they make you blush!' she said, and gave her surprising squeak of
laughter. 'The songs is terrible . But the Carnival Improvement Committee change that next year.'
It was our last night in Dominica, and hearing that there was to be some singing in a public hall, we
hastened up the road, as there was an hour to spare before the St. Laurent arrived.
Dr. Chi-Chi was performing some conjuring tricks to a crowded audience. But after he had removed,
to deep sighs of wonder, the last egg from his mouth, he put on a paper hat like a bishop's mitre, and took
a shack-shack in each hand. The calypso band struck up. Dr. Chi-Chi, who had a sad and distinguished
face, was obviously of Hindu or Moslem origin. Flexing his knees slightly, and treading the measure of
the brazen beat of the band, he began singing a song which was composed in Dominica by the Pottes-
ville Calypso Bros. It was encored again and again, by an audience practically epileptic with laughter. At
about the fifth repetition, I went outside, and heard the siren of the St. Laurent wailing impatiently, so we