Winston McNeil's Island Roots Uncovered

Winston McNeil was pissed off. He had been sacked from yet another job in the tourist resort of Runaway Springs. This time it was for taking home a half finished bottle of port one of the rich white hotel guests had left in their room when they left. Now all three of the main hotels had sacked him he was unlikely to find another job at the resort. He would, reluctantly, have to try to get a job back on the sugar plantation, where he was brought up.

Before leaving Runaway Springs he decided to pay a visit to the Free Library to check the papers for job adverts. It was a hot day and it would be a long walk inland to the plantation and his mothers shack. He would wait a bit until it was cooler. The ceiling fan slowly turned, slightly cooling him as he put the papers back in the racks. Turning round he spotted a book left on the table by a slightly older, well dressed, man who had just left. It was a book on the history of the island of Saint-Marie. Winston sat back down and idly turned the pages.

There were chapters on the island's 'discovery' by the Spanish and on the later disputes between the French and the English over its ownership. There was a picture of an early sugar planter wearing a queer curly white wig who had hanged for piracy. Winston became more interested as he started to read about the importing of slaves from Africa to work the plantations. His ancestors.

He was still reading an hour later. He wasn't a fast reader. He read with horror and anger about the treatment of the slaves. He read of how one ship embarked 600 slaves in west Africa yet only landed 400 in a saleable condition when it arrived at Saint-Marie.

Although he had been brought up with songs about his ancestors being brought over from Africa, his anger and resentment grew as he read in detail how native African traders would seize men, women and children from villages of a different tribe, slaughter those too young or too old to work then march the rest of them to places on the coast where they would be coated with palm oil to make their black skin glisten before selling them to the white skinned 'merchant venturers'. But eventually many of these native traders were unfortunate enough to find themselves seized as slaves too!

Winston had to leave when the library closed for the day. It would be dark in a couple of hours. Although he had been evicted from the workers' bunkhouse there was no rush for him to get back to the plantation. He would be quite happy to sleep under a palm tree just beyond the limits of the hotel beaches.

As the orange sun set below the roofs of the town Winston sat watched the tourists, some drunk, cavorting on the beach. He watched slim bikini clad girls teasing their boyfriends, and their friends' boyfriends, at the edge of the surf. He lay back and watched other girls, presumably single, drunkenly flaunting their lithe, or in some cases not so lithe, bodies before any passing male.

He remembered Anna, a rich, single, young American who he had had to help back to her room. She insisted he come in to 'make sure I'm safe 'cos I'm a bit tiddly.' Even though it was against the rules for the local black staff to fraternise with the guests Winston felt obliged to comply with her pleading. The assistant manager happened along just a couple of minutes later at the moment when Anna was drunkenly trying to pull Winston's shorts off him - that was

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THE END