Tobago love

Go to Tobago, they said. It will do you the world of good, they said. You’ll rest. You’ll relax. You’ll reset.

Always willing to try new things, I took their advice.

Tobago I know. Taking advice is less familiar ground. I go to Tobago.

Specifically, I go to Tobago with a friend. We’ll call her Mariam, because that is her name. Mariam is staying at the house of one of her friends. It comes with lots of trees, a blind dog, a sliver of a view and a snake called Floyd who lopes about the front fence heedless of Mariam’s shrieking terror of him.

Mariam is good at lots of things, but dogs, snakes and surviving the lack of a view do not number among them. All day long it’s either, “Floyd, I’m coming out now, go play with your little friends. Next door.”

Or, even more frequently, “I can’t see the sea from here, can you see it from where you are?” Examples of times I’ve been asked this include: while standing next to her and when in the shower.

Tobago is one of Mariam’s many homes. I spend some time trying to decide if this is very lucky or not. I am drawn to the idea that you can be intimate with many countries. That you can speak more than one culture, as it were.

Does this make understanding people in general easier for her? Or does not having one home, and only one home, make you feel unanchored?

It’s hard to spend too much time on one thought because Mariam has two speeds: lounge and unhinged. I see an unhinged time looming.

She knows – no, she really, genuinely believes she knows – the route taxis of Tobago well and that is how we will get around.

Not for the first time in my life, I have no say in the matter.

The problem is that the taxis do not necessarily bend to her wisdom. Directions for getting a taxi to anywhere: stand right here. Sure, but how will I know where “here” is if she’s not there?

I have tenderness for Tobago. As a teenager it was where I found myself in the most trouble for leading others astray. I was forever dragging people around rocky places and barred-off bits of coastline. All this I would have to confess pathetically to my mother.

The only thing more dispiriting was her certainty that I was incapable of getting into any kind of nonsense other than the swimming kind.

“Stop trying to get other people’s children killed.”

“Yes, Mummy.”

So, understand, I think of Tobago, if not my mother, as charming.

Until mere days ago, when the sea tried to kill me. No near-drowning, it just wanted to beat me as though I needed to learn a lesson. It was rough and the current was strong. I couldn’t get in more than three feet deep. I was tumbled and thrashed and dragged. Dragged along sand sharp like broken glass.

And for reasons best known to the sea, all I did was keep saying, “We have no quarrel. What’s wrong?”

Because the sea never does me wrong. Never. Sea is for healing. But the sea had it in for me that day.

The second attempt on my life was a sad garden-variety attempted fruiticide.

Mariam is very giving. She will share and then she will share some more. Even with her Floyd fears, she looks lovingly at the vine trailing all along the fence and gathers the bounty of the garden, which she presents to me.

Death. Yellow and pink death.

My allergy to passion fruit is sure and quick. Just the scent of it triggers very bad things.

A small squeak escapes me and I flee. Does she harbour a secret longing for my demise?

In the end, it was a bluebird who would do me in. I found it trapped in the kitchen and opened a window for it. The bird didn’t realise I was opening the window and just then stuck his head between the two sliding frames. When I got it out, it was stunned and still for a long time.

As the bluebird of despair took its time recovering and Mariam researched what to do with a bird in shock, I staggered around clutching my chest, convinced this was my end. Poisoned by guilt.

I won’t let this episode beat me. I can salvage this.

The brochure: Tobago love – sea spa treatments, phobia-relief therapy, healing with nature.

Call wherever taxis are to be found.