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'Soul Tourists' - StoryLETTER FROM THE COURT OF JESSIE AT ÖLÜDENIZ
Ölüdeniz Camping is Turkey’s best kept secret tucked away behind a lagoon. It’s reached via a winding road from the main beach which arcs towards mountains spread with shrubs like blankets of bobble-stitch. The main beach has a family hotel, a couple of bars, some bungalows, a grocery store. Here at camp there are six, one-roomed log cabins, camping ground and a tiny stretch of sand strewn with rocks. On the other side of the lagoon is a sandy peninsula where, hidden behind trees, the ‘dreaded tourists’ descend every day to sunbathe.
Cabin No 4 has been the centre of Court all summer. Two beds either side with our luggage underneath. It’s positioned in front of a path of hardened earth lined with eucalyptus trees which provide shade. The lagoon swells a few feet away. It should be paradise.
Friedrich, a computer engineer, and Christa, his housewife, are the first to arrive for an audience at Court this Saturday evening. A rather bovine middle-aged couple, they’ve driven their mobile home (size of a coach) all the way from Hanover. There are metal bars on every window, a monster fridge full of Carlsberg and Heineken and a freezer stuffed with frozen German vegetables, meat and milch. Their Alsatian dog, Caligula, sits unleashed outside their door until they return.
They bring eight cans of lager, and laughter at every single joke Jessie cracks.
Gülten and Yelmen, retired schoolteachers from Marmaris, are next. They position themselves as guests of honour either side of the throne. They’ve been coming to this spot ever since it was a farmer’s field used by hippies the Magic Bus used to take from London to India for a dose of spiritual enlightenment, man. Yeh, like, groovy. I can’t imagine these two as the hashish-smoking hippies they claim they were, but I guess most people do get more staid as they get older, everything fixed rigid – their opinions, hearts, their lifestyles. Look at me - Stan the Philosopher – the one who broke free
Tonight they bring burma kadayif – shredded wheat with pistachios and honey. Gultan smiles at Jessie’s lip-smacking delight, then shakes her head with what can only be described as pity when I decline, as always, her diabetic little bombs of sugars.
Every morning I go to the camp shop and buy some bread and milk. I then watch Jessie eat half a Turkish loaf oozing chocolate spread while I make a fresh fruit salad. She must have put on over a stone in weight. Next, I air my bedding, and hers. I don’t want to share bed bugs.
The two Alexs: young and old, fat and thin, hairy and bereft of, are newcomers. Jessie met them on the beach yesterday. They wear black signet rings and speak of the hardships they escaped in the USSR. Now living in New York, they buy kilims, alabaster carvings and Meerschaum pipes shaped into turbaned pashas, for their Eastern Eye shop on Fifth Avenue.
They bring a bottle of Vodka and a box of Ferrera Rocher chocolates, for Jessie. She thanks them with an exuberant performance of Bloody Mary, again. Bali Ha’i may call you, any night, any day. In your heart you’ll hear it call you. Come away, come away.
The three university students from Rotterdam scuttle over: Toos, Wieneke and Anja, who want a bit of Turkish, and get it most nights at the Turkish Delights Disco on the main beach. They bring roll ups, hangovers, caustic wine and girly gossip.
The highlight of my week is going to the bazaar in Fethiye. I’ve become rather proficient at haggling. While Jessie is brought a stool, mint çay in a miniature glass, and invariably an offer of marriage by some balding market trader, I wander between sacks of beans, nuts, barley and the most dazzling array of spices known to man, exercising my favourite Turkish words - Cok pahali – very expensive.
The Cow Lady, who won’t give her name, submerged in layers and scarves, tends cows in the grazing ground up the road. She says to Jessie, ‘You güzel’ and nods at me to concur. I was reading my Complete Works of Dickens one afternoon, she picked it up, weighed it in her hand and decided with much gravity, ‘This, good book.’
She brings the exoticism of having a real peasant in our midst, and a sack of oranges, which she dumps at Jessie’s feet.
My, shall we say, nemesis-in-waiting, is Sunita from Tooting Bec. She’s on her way to India where she wants to find her roots, and arrived a month ago intending to stay a weekend – the longest one in history. She recites poems by someone called Audre Lorde to Jessie, who milks it. Sunita has pitched her tent directly opposite our cabin and gives me the evil eye. When I complain, I’m brushed off with, ‘She’s harmless. A nice kid. Don’t be such a spoilsport.’
Sunita brings a half-drunk bottle of raki, slurred speech and a hopeless crush.
The Court sits in a semi-circle around the throne. They are enraptured by anecdotes about army bases in Germany, Rod’s little scam, Nancy Pants in working men’s clubs, the time Matilda was flooded out to sea in Spain, with Jessie clinging on to the roof rack.
Osman, a restaurant owner from Ankara, has a mop of curly black hair and wears shorts and yellow Wellington boots. He brings a red rose for Jessie between his teeth and she sings Summertime for him. Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are drooling and my lover’s on her high horse. I should know the words inside out by now.
I have a bottle of raki myself, which I’m quickly depleting. It’s secreted under my chair.
When we arrived Jessie became a social hit and she’s been riding the wave ever since. I’m sure my ghosts have been scared off by the noise. Every day is show time. What a difference to Spain. It begins with pleasantries exchanged after breakfast when she goes on walkabout and ends up with these gatherings. I sometimes wonder if it’s all an act to show me how everyone thinks she’s wonderful. Or are they, shall we say, her emotional bodyguard, protecting her from getting close to me again.
As they gather around tonight, it sinks in that it’s not a court at all, they are Followers of the Cult of St. Jessie. (I hope she’ll lead them in a mass suicide one day soon.)
Somehow, we’ve slid back. Everyone who passes through has been to the warm mineral pools of Pammukale. I usually ask them to describe it in great detail. If I take too long at the toilet, she no longer looks anxious, but askance. Even so, I feign constipation on a regular basis. This prompts her to feed me soaked prunes. When I feign an allergy to them, she buys senna pods from the bazaar.
St John, pronounced Sinjun, as he tells everybody, went to Eton and Oxford, as he tells everybody, is a scientist for Glaxo in Istanbul, as he tells everybody, pausing to monitor the impact. He brings the British Class System, and his boyfriend, Mohammed.
We have what is called a transient population here. Antipodeans, Scandinavians, Americans, all manner of Western Europeans, and Yugoslavs. Sometimes there’s as many as twenty paying homage.
Oh and there’s someone else here too. Whatsisname? Ah yes, I know, that nondescript little fellow called Stanley, sitting out of the loop and getting quietly limpid.
Night was seeping into my pores. The lagoon and sky had turned the shade of violet last seen in the young Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes in Cleopatra. The eucalyptus trees above suddenly looked like blurred willow trees which should be hanging over a swamp. Bats began to swoop from one tree to the other. I did my nightly duty by lighting some candles which hung in little baskets from the cabin. The rest of the camp was sitting outside as well, or else they were getting ready to go out. Some were putting young children to bed or letting them run noisily around. The Turkish pop music in the cafe had just been raised a notch, unfortunately.
I turned back to hear Jessie sounding off about money. About how we believed the point of it was to enjoy it today because a bus could run you over tomorrow. It wasn’t the royal we. It was the - I’m speaking for him - cringe-making we. I’d put up with it all summer.
‘Jessie, I don’t agree with you,’ I projected with the authority of a Shakespearean actor playing King Lear, surprising not only myself. ‘Yes, spend and enjoy money within limits, but I believe it is also important to save and invest for the future. It is a universal law that like attracts like, if you see what I mean. Making money out of money is a way to build wealth...’
‘Now, now,’ she interjected. ‘You’re not still in the boring old bank now so chill out.’
Everyone laughed. The raki was burning me up.
‘Well as I’m the one who has bankrolled our extended Turkish sojourn and therefore provided this great opportunity for you underlings to sit with the Queen of Tonga. I think it’s about time you brought me some gifts too.’
I have to say, it was my Ground Swallowing Stanley Moment, which I had to style out or else go walk in the lagoon with two rocks tied to my feet. So I looked from one to another, as if to intimidate, starting with Jessie, who looked outraged.
Gültan and Yelmen each put an arm around her shoulders in solidarity. Friedrich looked somewhat proud, as if I’d finally spoken up for the whole of mankind. Christa shook her head as if she despaired of the whole of mankind. The two Alexs seemed to have just noticed me for the first time, and young Alex was giving me the eye. I was almost sure of it. The Dutchies gave me the kind of filthy look which demoted me to something excremental moulded into human form. The Cow Lady, picking up on the atmosphere, put her hands to her chest in horror, as if I’d just confessed to sullying a village full of virgin girls. Sinjun shouted, ‘Oh drama, drama! Have we got an umpire?’ And so on.
Sunita took the opportunity to try and sit on her intended’s lap and force Jessie’s arms around her until Osman, humming a waltz, took a grateful Jessie by the hand and pulled her up into a dance, sending Sunita crashing off balance to the floor.
Jessie said over her shoulder, ‘If it wasn’t for me he’d still be listening to garden sprinklers every Saturday evening.’
The oracle had spoken.
I went into the cabin with as much insouciance as I could muster, and slammed the door.
Wish I were somewhere else Love,
SUMMER OF 1989: COURT BUDGET
MONTHLY EXPENDITURE Description Amount Total Monthly Expenditure £110.00
INCOME
REAL BUDGET NOT FANTASY ONE
Love (unconditional) £REE
Jessie 1000% Total Monthly Income £NCALCULABLE!
Signature: Jessie Barclay, PhD, Univ. Hrd Knks (Orphan)
All I can say is that I need some, yes I know it’s a dirty word, space. Yours as ever
Out onto the empty beach of Ölüdeniz. Sand sucked up waves like an asthmatic craving oxygen. Two fishermen staggered up the beach under the weight of baskets of fish which threatened to topple them. Turning left to walk up the mountain, past a sunken grove littered with oranges so ripe they were rotten. A few isolated stone cottages secreted in between trees. Then rising, steeply, rising into morning,. Turning back to see the beach so far down below that waves dashing the shore were white race horses competing at the finishing line. Reaching the top, out of breath, the road deserted in both directions. A scarecrow crucified in a field, in the distance a lone whitewashed bungalow with wire rods sticking out of the flat roof.
During the climb Stanley’s mind began shedding its debris. By the time he reached the top he felt lighter. He sat down on a boulder at the bus stop. For the first time in months he was looking forward to something.
The dolmus¸ rolled up packed with elderly women wearing long dresses and shawls, bearing baskets to sell at market, or backpackers departing early for their next destination. The only seat available was next to a stout woman whose crinkled brown hair was tied into a loose bun, topped by a straw hat trimmed with lemon and lime-coloured petals. He scanned the pearl earrings, coral necklace, the unusual jade dress flared at the sleeves, beribboned at the waist. She lifted her skirts to make room for him.
‘Come sit, dahling. Constantinople is a long way away and we want you to be cosy.’
So is Katmandu and Timbuktu, Stanley thought, before replying, ‘I’m only going as far as Istanbul, actually.’
His companion chuckled, ‘Constantinople and Istanbul are one and the same, although the former is the parent of the latter.
Intrigued, he studied her profile under the guise of looking out of the window. She seemed ageless, blessed with a prettiness suffused with the kind of dignity not bestowed at birth, but which one had to earn.
‘Would you like an apple?’
My mother told me never to accept gifts from strangers, he almost quipped, before nodding his assent. He had had no breakfast.
‘It is true. I am a stranger.’ she replied, even though he had not spoken aloud. Or had he.
On her lap was a basket covered with a white napkin. She withdrew the type of small, hard, flawed fruit he hadn’t seen since his childhood. It neither looked plastic, or tasted watery.
‘I have been making this trip every summer for as long as I can remember. This part of the world is very dear to my heart. In the winter I fly home to Jamaica, to be with my mother.’
Stanley had thought her accent familiar, which he now he recognised as the genteel lilt of Jamaica’s middle classes, that subtle inflexion which the mother country’s schoolteachers could never iron out completely. His parents would mock her as one-a dose hoity-toity Uptown Browns.
‘My parents are Jamaican too. Rather, they were.’ He felt so comfortable with this woman that he was feeling more chatty than he’d been in months. ‘I’m always recalling things they used to say. Sometimes I can hardly separate their thoughts from mine, they just jump in and deliver some opinion or wisdom. Much the same as they did in life.’
‘That is the Jamaican way, as you know.’
‘Do I? I don’t really. I’m a Londoner and, well, it might sound pretentious, but these days a citizen of the world, so to speak, or of Europe, at least. Hey, maybe we’re related.’
‘I very much doubt it, my dear, unless your parents lived to be two hundred years old.’
She turned to directly look at him for the first time. Her eyes glistened like spoonfuls of raw demerara sugar. Yet they had no soft centre – no pupils. He sunk into his seat and slapped his forehead with his palm. Bombaclaat!
‘And if you wish to converse with me, kindly refrain from such profanities. I am sure your father did not raise you to talk like a Jamaican roughneck.’ Just as Stanley was going to reply that his father would slap him upside his head if ever he spoke a hint of the patois his father spoke all the time, she continued,
‘My father was an army officer from Scotland. I never did meet him but I am proud of my Scotch blood. Now, my Creole mother was a free woman, a doctress, who kept a boarding house on East Street and it was she who passed on the science of herbs and midwifery which had been handed down by the slaves. This I supplemented with the medical knowledge taught me by the European doctors.’
‘May I ask your name, ma’am?’ He did not know how the ma’am came out but it seemed appropriate.
‘You may. I am Mrs Mary Jane Seacole.’
Her tone was somewhat self-reverential.
'Indeed, the very one. Yes, I am she.’
He thought of feigning recognition but he’d concluded very early on in life that lying was ultimately a very stressful exercise he’d concluded very early on in life. Not the actual lying itself, but maintaining the pretence.
‘Should I have heard of you, Mary?’
He immediately knew he should have because she delivered the kind of fruity, rubbery tchups! more associated with a Trenchtown market trader than an Uptown Brown.
‘Mek I tell you somet’ing,’ she slipped in patois. ‘During my time everyone had heard of me, and so they will again and, you must kindly call me Mrs Seacole, young man.’
She then regained her composure, as if she had never dropped it, and lifted a corner of the napkin and brought out a brittle, antique book. This she passed over.
‘Be careful or it will come apart. It is the first edition of my autobiography ‘The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands’ and it is exactly one hundred and thirty-two years old this very day.
An older, hardened, more masculine Mrs Seacole was pictured on the cover. Stanley likened her to a rakish buccaneer, with her wide-brimmed black hat tilted back at an angle, a neckerchief, a black doublet.
‘You wrote this?’ He ran his hands over the book.
‘Is that not me on the front? I was most famous after the war, most famous. I received many medals of honour.’
‘I guess I should have heard of you then, Mrs Seacole. That’s me all over. I know nothing.’
‘Allow me to elucidate. It all began when my husband, Edward Horatio Nelson, godson of Lord Nelson, of whom you are no doubt familiar, passed away shortly after our marriage. Unfortunately tragedy struck twice.’
She took the book out of his hand and read aloud, ‘I had one other grief to master, the loss of my mother, and then I was allowed to battle with the world as best I might.’
‘I understand grief,’ Stanley said, almost to himself, that it was private, not to be talked about without a great deal of pain.
‘You will be able to talk freely about your parents in time. When there is more distance.’
‘Yeh, right, like two hundred years?’ he snapped, unable to censor either his thoughts or his words with this woman.
‘If it takes that long, so be it,’ she snapped back. ‘And by the way, you are a very impertinent young man.’
‘Sorry,’ he apologised. ‘My mind’s not my own these days.’ He raised an eyebrow at her.
Mrs Seacole continued to read, ‘As I grew into womanhood, I began to indulge that longing to travel which will never leave me while I have health and vigour. I was never weary of tracing upon an old map the route to England; and never followed with my gaze the stately ships homeward bound without longing to be in them, and see the blue hills of Jamaica fade into the distance.’
Looking out of the window, she viewed the landscape of barren rocks for the longest while. Stanley attempted to bring her round. ‘I’m a traveller now. I don’t know where I’ll end up but the ride can be so exhilarating. It’s like I’m walking on a map of the world and the white cliffs of Dover have faded into memory.’
He’d never seen the white cliffs of Dover but it was a romantic image and it worked, she turned back to him.
‘A little suffering is necessary, because it can make us search our souls very, very deeply.’
She raised an eyebrow at him.
‘Isn’t life funny like that,’ he blurted out, for want of anything more meaningful to say.
‘No it is not,’ she reprimanded. ‘Life is a very serious matter. Especially when it no longer fills you up from the inside, but has abandoned you to watch it as an observer who can sympathise but no longer empathise.
‘Now, let me continue. How I longed to escape the suffocating restraints of slave society in Jamaica. As soon as it was possible, I left, even though I knew that as a woman travelling alone, I eschewed respectability in the eyes of my countrymen. In Panama, where I was fondly known as Aunty Seacole or the Yellow Doctress, I tended cholera victims, surviving all manner of hoodlum nonsense and the ghastly disease itself. I had previously tended the English on Jamaica who were dying from yellow fever. Those poor unfortunates had little resistance to it.’
He interrupted her flow, ‘How could you help those who were there to profit from slavery. They were the lowest form of humanity.’
‘While I do not have to explain myself to you, I will tell you this, it was my duty as a healer to help those who needed me. And you are a very judgmental person, I do believe.’
As Stanley had never been accused of this before, he was taken aback. Was she right? Instant appraisal? Instant dismissal? Had he been wrong about Alessandro? Was he really just like his father? Lashing out with his thoughts, if not always his tongue. Was he judgmental about Jessie? Was no one ever good enough for him? Was he just a self-righteous prig? All of this raced through his mind in seconds.
Mrs Seacole took his hands in hers’ and rubbed them. They did not pass through him. Here, he thought, is a woman of substance.
‘Stanley,’ she said.
Of course, she would know his name.
‘You are too hard on yourself. It is easier to understand life on earth when you are no longer concerned about your own survival.’
He rested his head against her shoulder as he had done with Pearline, until, that is, Clasford told her that if she continued mollycoddling him, she would make a woman out of his son. One more file catalogued against his father in his huge library of resentments. No wonder he had been so unhappy. It was time to torch the library to the ground.
‘In 1854 I heard about the Crimean War and a passion to embark on that lengthy journey lodged itself in my heart and would not budge. I set sail for England and made many applications to the War Office and nursing agencies without success. I sought out Florence Nightingale’s office where I was interviewed by one of her staff... and I read in her face the fact that, had there been a vacancy, I should not have been chosen to fill it...
‘...and one cold evening I stood in the twilight...did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs? Tears streamed down my foolish cheeks, as I stood in the fast thinning streets; tears of grief that anyone should doubt my motives...
‘What do you think I did, young Stanley? Why, I sent myself, did I not. I shall not dwell on the vicissitudes of my journeying except to say that the journey took me to Gibraltar, Malta, on to Constantinople, and thereon by boat to Scutari, where I was most excited at the prospect of finally meeting Miss Nightingale. When I arrived at her hospital, safely behind the trenches, her secretary eyed me with much surprise, Miss Nightingale has the entire management of our hospital staff, but I do not think that any vacancy....
‘I stood my ground so they eventually had to take me to meet her. A slight figure in the nurse’s dress; with a pale, gentle, and withal firm face. She asked what I wanted. I requested a bed for the night and my services to nurse the sick. The former was offered. The latter denied. I would have worked for the wounded, for bread and water.
‘Did I turn back? I tell you, fer true¸ Mrs Seacole here had a job of work to do and a job of work she would do. The very next day I crossed the Black Sea to Balaclava where I was met with the sight of hundreds of wooden boats shuttling back and forth carrying the dead and the wounded. It was an awful sight to behold. Some of the soldiers recognised me from their postings in Jamaica and we exchanged greetings. It was not long before I had overseen the building of The British Hotel at Spring Hill with my business partner, a Mr Day. It was a clean haven for invalids, I dispensed medicines and toured the campsites at the Front where the soldiers were treated as the loved sons of Mother Seacole.
Do you know what was written of me in the distinguised Punch magazine? Oh, I will tell you,
That berry-brown face, with a kind heart’s trace
‘You must have been a genuine trailblazer, Mrs Seacole. A tour-de-force, a veritable rocket of tenacity, a messianic...’
‘Yes, yes,’ she interrupted with impatience. ‘Do I detect a tendency on your part to hyperbole, or perhaps you are mocking me because you are a very impertinent person. For myself it was very straightforward – I was simply following the Good Lord’s calling. I was simply doing my duty.’
‘My girlfriend Jessie, the one who brought me here, as she keeps reminding me. Well, she imagines herself an adventurer.’
‘Did your friend carry you on her back?’
He laughed, ‘She’d say so, metaphorically-speaking.’
‘Nonsense! You brought yourself here and you gave her the companionship and support she needed to undertake this journey.’
This was the opening he needed. He jumped in and began to sound off, counting with his fingers. ‘She’s like a benevolent dictator, got to be the centre of attention, doesn’t listen to me, got to do things her way...’
‘Would you be on this trip if she had listened to you? If I had listened to people I would never have left my tiny island.’
‘You don’t understand. No opinion counts but her own. I can’t even go to the loo without getting a grilling. It’s a nightmare!’
‘If it’s a nightmare, may I ask why you remain with her? Surely you are with her because you it is your choice. Therefore you must stop complaining.’ ‘I don’t know why I’m with her anymore!’
There, he’d blurted it out. He knew it was a betrayal.
‘But I can’t just leave because I’m sort of committed. Not married, we don’t bother with that much these days.’
‘I am fully aware of your society’s mores and lack of morals, young man. Now you must answer me this, if your father was alive would you be here now?’
‘No way! I would never have contemplated leaving, even before he needed my help. He’d have called me a vagabond, a waster.’
‘While my mother would have wanted me in Jamaica too. If she had lived longer, I would never have had such a remarkable life. Ask yourself this question. If I stay with this Jessie, what will I be like in ten years time?’
He hesitated, although the answer required no meditation.
‘Crushed,’ he mumbled.
‘To be avoided, is it not?’
She smiled at him for the first time since they’d met, as if she’d accomplished what she had set out to achieve.
She had no teeth. Her mouth was a black hole. Stanley tried not to stare.
‘I think you were way ahead of your time, Mrs Mother Aunty Yellow Doctress Mary Jane Seacole.’
‘I do believe you are correct, you impudent rascallion! It is truly of some sadness to me that I was not born in your time.’
She sighed, rubbing her chest.
‘Do you know that after the war a fund was set up for me by Crimean veterans who wrote to the very distinguished Times newspaper rallying support for me. While the benevolent deeds of Florence Nightingale are being handed down to posterity with blessings and imperishable renown, are the actions of Mrs Seacole to be entirely forgotten...
‘A Grand Military Festival benefit was held for me over four nights at the Royal Surrey Gardens. It was attended by forty thousand people. Oh my dear, I was lionised, my boy, I was lionised.’
© Bernadine Evaristo |
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