Trini Melange

By Bertille David-Allahar

Through the story of Lucy a woman born of rape, this narrative sensitively explores racism, poverty and oppression in a tumultuous cosmopolitan society which, redolent of genteel pretensions and human tragedy, searches for catharsis through annual carnival abandon.



Spanning 150 years from post slavery to post-colonial times, this shimmering yet gritty tale unfolds against the background of declining old cocoa and sugar plantations and gushing new oil wells in the tropical Caribbean island of Trinidad.



A fascinating amalgam of history and heart-wrenching drama skilfully woven together by author Bertille David-Allahar, this novel captures the odyssey of Lucy and other women of colour, through an intimate portraiture of awakening, endurance and coming of age in a stratified island society still haunted by the shadows of slavery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467871266

Bertille David-Allahar

Bertille Allahar has been working in the public and private sectors in Trinidad and Tobago in strategic planning and research for some 40 years. She holds a BSc. in Social Sciences from Southampton University, an MA in Labour Studies from Sussex University and a Diploma in Freelance and Feature Writing from the London School of Journalism. For many years she focused on feature writing on social issues and has been published in the local media in Trinidad and Tobago. Trini Mlange is her first novel.

Book preview

 1 

It was the last quarter of the nineteenth century in the Caribbean island of Martinique. A white French sugar plantation overseer named Jean Febeau lived in a wing of the great Maison Louis plantation house. Jean was a small neat man with straight, cropped, black hair and a long black beard. Sharp eyes. He held himself upright like a king. He was a Caucasian version of Haile Selassie.

Always at the crack of dawn he left for work on his well-groomed chestnut horse. His head was capped with a white cork hat. His shirt and trousers were immaculately white. His feet were encased in contrasting black field boots.

The horse followed its travel routine down the hill into the vast valley of interminable cane stalks. In the distance high above the green of the cane stalks was the majestic stone windmill. Its companion was the sugar cane factory. Both dark buildings were distinctive against the emerging blue of the morning sky. In the lightening skies above the early birds chattered excitedly with anticipatory joy. They winged their way in flocks in search of food. They separated as they alighted on the branches of tropical trees. To feast contentedly on mango minutia and guava iota.

Jean rode to the sugar cane fields to supervise the estate’s black and coloured cane cutters. Although slavery was abolished he carried a whip. It was the only method he knew to demonstrate his authority. He used it only on difficult workers who insisted on being lazy. He never enquired whether the workers were exhausted, hungry or ill. All he saw was their indolence and the bad example of their behaviour to the other workers.

Jean was married to an attractive coloured woman named Marie. She was a riveting ethnic admixture drawn from French Caucasians, African slaves and First Nation peoples. The last named were mistakenly called Amerindians by the so-called discoverers of America, who used India as their compass for new discoveries.

The mixed race couple originating from different social backgrounds lived lovingly. They were well-known, admired and respected. They were regular churchgoers who belonged to the Catholic Church and practised its tenets.

The couple produced only one child, their daughter Claire. She was strikingly beautiful, a racial mix that was the envy of whites and coloured alike. This tall big-boned shapely sapodilla brown girl walked proudly, aware of her good looks, aware that heads turned to watch her. She was proud of her thick black wavy hair which trailed to her waist. She revelled in her facial features. Her unique nose, with its Caucasian bone structure which broadened unusually at the base, her high First Nation cheek bones, her full lips and black eyebrows that arched perfectly on her smooth forehead. The eyebrows emphasized her large deep-set blue eyes. Yes, blue eyes. Her eyes were a marvel of her genetic jewellery. She quickened the heartbeat of many a man as she walked by. Equally she was the envy of many females who secretly wished they were endowed with such exotic good looks.

Given her father’s station in life Claire wanted for nothing material. After attending primary school she was apprenticed to an excellent couturier. She learned to make and then embellish elaborate garments with the finest original hand-worked embroidery. She was familiar with the elegant interiors of the homes of the wealthy French people. For they summoned couturiers to prepare custom-made garments for special occasions. Claire was content with her life and hoped one day to fall hopelessly in love, marry the man of her dreams, and settle down to marriage, childbearing and homemaking.

Claire fell in love all right. With a charming man of high status whom she met as a result of her work. He was a highly respected Caucasian medical doctor from France. His alma mater was the University of Sorbonne. He was stationed in Martinique for a two year period. He was more respected than Claire’s father because of his power to save lives. The only difficulty for Claire was his marital status. He had a wife whom he promised to leave when the time was right. Claire was so love-struck that her behaviour was beyond reason. She met her beau clandestinely despite her religious upbringing which forbade the sin of fornication. She became pregnant while still a teenager.

Claire hesitantly told her lover of her condition. He adjusted his refrain. He informed her that he was returning to France when his tour of duty was over. With his wife. He could give her some money. That was all. Claire was horrendously humiliated. She indignantly refused his gift.

Distraught, she told her parents of her predicament. Her father exploded. She had let him down badly. Had she considered the loss of his reputation? Was this her response to the training he had given her in maintaining the high moral ground? How could she disgrace him like this? What would his friends and church colleagues think? How could he overcome his shame? Febeau thought only of himself. He was unforgiving. He showed no appreciation of his daughter’s dilemma.

Claire’s unforgivable sin was conception of a child outside the marital state. From the prison of Jean’s Catholic perception, strict obedience to the Church’s decrees took precedence over human compassion within his own family.

Monsieur Febeau very quickly decided on a solution. His daughter had to vanish before it became apparent to the villagers that she was pregnant. He discussed his solution with his wife Marie. She objected. She felt they should support their daughter in her predicament. She pleaded with him to rethink but to no avail. Jean remained adamant that he had no recourse but to banish Claire from his home. Forever. Toujours.

Monsieur Febeau knew that scores of years ago a French community came into existence in the English-speaking Caribbean island of Trinidad. He knew this happened shortly after the French revolution. Several sugar planting migrants and their slaves from Martinique migrated there in search of a more prosperous life. The Spaniards offered favourable terms of land to Roman Catholics and several Martiniquans of that faith responded.

Within a few days Monsieur Febeau purchased a one-way ticket to Trinidad. Marie sorrowfully helped Claire pack a suitcase. Unable to bear the agony of seeing her only daughter depart from Martiniquan shores forever, she said her tearful goodbyes from home.

Marie grasped some slight consolation in extracting a solemn promise from her daughter. They would keep in touch by mail.

Claire’s father escorted her to the port of Fort de France to make sure she boarded the SS Paramin. He presented her with a wad of money. He bestowed on her no farewell hugs or kisses. Just a look of contempt which ripped her heart. From the steamer young Claire watched the fortifications of Fort Royal fade and disappear with nostalgia. Tears flowed silently from her saddened eyes as she rested her hands on her still flat belly.

Fellow passengers confirmed to Claire the existence of a French community in Trinidad living on Charlotte Street in the main city of Port of Spain. She disembarked alone on the Port of Spain docks and enquired haltingly for directions. She walked to Charlotte Street clenching her suitcase, her wad of money safely hidden in her brassière.

The doctor? Father of the child? He never contacted Claire’s family to seek his disappeared lover. He was glad to be relieved of this burden which could destroy his family life. Claire was only a pleasing sexual diversion. His promise to leave his wife was merely a means of gaining the young woman’s trust to prolong his sexual pleasure with her.

A Caucasian shoemaker from the village of Louisville in Martinique disappeared a few months after Claire’s departure. His name was Emanuel Bonnard. He had admired this beautiful exotic woman from a distance. When village gossip brought him knowledge of Claire’s banishment to Trinidad he travelled there. He found her forlorn, big with child. He embraced her wholeheartedly although she was pregnant for another man. Claire learnt to love this man who followed her unquestioningly to a strange land.

It was the phrases of the written word from Claire which gladdened Marie’s heart. Through them she discovered the contented life that her daughter enjoyed with the wonderful caring Frenchman Emanuel. Her gladness was soon shaded with intense pining.

A letter announced the birth of her first grandchild Hélène. She longed to feel the warm tiny body against her bosom, to see the innocent toothless smile with its pink gums, to hear the deep-throated gurgle of contentment, to watch the bright eyes stare in curious wonder at the huge face above. She pleaded with Jean to invite Claire and her child to return home at least for a visit. Jean angrily reminded Marie that Claire was banished from their home forever. Marie asked her husband disconsolately.

Tu ne veut pas connaître ton petite-fille?

Surely he too wanted to know his grandchild. His heart remained as hugely cold as an enormous glacier.

The written word informed Marie of Claire’s second pregnancy. Her sorrowful mood intensified. The likelihood was she would never caress this baby either. She pleaded with her husband, more desperately disconsolate.

Eh bien, Jean, tu n’as pas un coeur?

Jean loved his wife dearly. He was progressively troubled to witness her ruinous unhappiness. But his anger at his daughter never abated. Indeed, his infuriation doubled at the discovery that Claire was living in sin. It quadrupled on learning of her second pregnancy. Another child would be borne outside the holy state of marriage. He sternly told his tearful wife.

Je ne veux pas voir Claire. Jamais. Mais je permis qu’Hélène visite.

This decision represented a drastic change for Jean. He was aware of the village gossip that the child’s visit would provoke. He also considered a more lasting possibility. To keep the child permanently. He did not discuss this with Marie. Two ameliorating concerns fashioned Jean’s thoughts. Firstly, his desire for his wife’s happiness. Secondly, he felt it his duty to save his first grandchild Hélène from her increasingly sinful environment.

So it was that Claire’s first child Hélène travelled to Martinique. She was still a baby, crawling on arms and legs. Exploring the world of chair legs and scraps of food fallen on the kitchen floor. Hélène never returned to Trinidad. Jean decided that he and Marie could better provide their grandchild with a more satisfactory moral life than Claire. They tended to her lovingly as though she had been born to them.

Claire did not press for Hélène’s return to Trinidad. Her heartache for her first-born child never diminished. She grieved for the touch of her flesh soft as eider down. She longed to see her milk-white baby teeth peep from her gums. She felt however, that Hélène’s long-term chances in life were better in Martinique, living with her well-established grandparents.

 2 

Emanuel was enterprising. He started his own shoe-shop on Charlotte Street. Soon Emanuel and Claire rented a modest house with no steps on Henry Street. The front walls of their home literally adjoined the pavement. When the couple opened the wooden sitting-room or bedroom louvers they saw passersby eyeball to eyeball.

Claire was anxious to please her loving companion who wanted to father his own children. She became pregnant soon after the birth of her first child Hélène. Emanuel asked Claire to marry him on several occasions, but Claire declined. It was not worth her pursuit. As she saw it, marriage was created to raise offspring in a secure environment and to fuse family. Her father Jean disdainfully disposed of her in her time of momentous need. He valued the institution of marriage for the esteemed social status it conferred. He held it in higher regard than his own daughter.

Claire went to work. She had been cast out by a member of the male species, her own father at that. She had been abandoned by her child’s father. She was consumed with indignation at the thought of being dependent on any man, no matter how caring his outward manifestations.

She gradually made the acquaintance of a few wives of the wealthy French estate owners. Their residences were uptown beyond Oxford Street and into St. Ann’s. When the Peschier, Dumas and Garcin families wore her elaborate custom-made clothes she earned a favourable reputation. This spread to the Brunton and Lamont families who lived in luxurious homes in the lush rural Diego Martin valley. She hired assistants and fitted the rich French ladies for their carnival balls, weddings and Horse Racing Meets in country districts like Arima and Diego Martin.

Her reputation grew. The proprietors of the premiere retail shops in Port of Spain, Glendinning’s and Fogarty’s, purchased her garments for sale in their shops.

The self-employed couple, one a master shoemaker, the other an excellent couturier, earned a good reputation, lived modestly and always had work.

Their co-habitation prompted three children, Luanne first, then two boys, Michel and Noel. And always, despite giving birth to three more children, Claire suffered the loss of her first child Hélène. There had been insufficient cradling of Hélène at her nipple, feeling the sucking motion of the tiny mouth.

The couple broke from work on the Catholic religious holidays of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Corpus Christi. Claire took her children to church with her on those days. She celebrated life’s goodness at home by preparing sumptuous meals for her family. The couple also stopped working on two days which were not official public holidays. The Monday and Tuesday of Carnival which occurred just before the start of the forty-day Catholic Lenten season.

Claire remembered her introduction to the meaning of carnival. She was in Emanuel’s shoe-shop. Two of her husband’s poorer customers held an animated conversation about carnival. Both were labourers at the Port of Spain docks.

Boysie spoke first.

Boy, dis year I playing bat. W’en I in dat costume I does forget every worry I have. I does forget I black and poor. I does forget I have woman an’ chirren to mind. Not’ing don’ bodder me for dose two days. I in my costume, I drinkin’ meh rum an’ I dancin’ to de music o’ the tamboo bamboo all t’rough Port of Spain from mornin’ til night. Dat mas’ t’ing does keep me sane, yuh know.

Wayne responded.

Yuh right boy. I save meh robber costume from las’ year an’ I learnin’ meh robber speech good good. Every day I sufferrin’. Is only once a year I have dat happiness yes.

Emanuel intervened although he did not play mas’.

Emanuel spoke several languages. French and patois as a result of his Martiniquan background. Standard English from contact with the English-speaking community. Albeit with an engaging French accent. And Trinidad dialect.

Do you know carnival came from French people?

The men looked surprised.

Well let me tell you what I know. A long time ago slaves were owned by a lot of French white and coloured people who lived in Trinidad. The slaves were very unhappy with labouring all the time. They had no recreation and they needed to escape from being prisoners in the cane fields. So they found a temporary diversion once a year.

Boysie and Wayne looked bored. They wondered what anancy story Emanuel was telling.

When it was crop time they were afraid of being bitten by snakes and scorpions and other poisonous insects living in the cane fields. So they set fire to the fields and paraded the plantations dancing and singing with flaming torches to light their way. The slaves used African drums to wake up each other and to provide the beat for their merriment. They called the festivity cannes brulées or canes burning. But the British colonial rulers were very afraid that the slaves would use the African drums to lead to an uprising against their masters. So they banned the use of the drums.

Boysie intervened, convinced that this was indeed an anancy story.

Mr. Emanuel, you sure you have de story right? Is bamboo we does use to give de beat an’ make merry.

Emanuel was proud of his French background.

That is because French slaves were ingenious. To defy the British and continue the merriment they replaced the drum with bamboo. They called it tamboo bamboo using an English pronunciation. The real word is tambour, which is the French word for drum. They used bamboo to make drums.

Boysie spoke again.

So what is camboulay, Mr. Emanuel?

The Frenchman continued stitching leather while he spoke.

When slavery was abolished and the freed slaves came to Port of Spain they were still oppressed and they danced on the streets instead of in the fields during the same two day period. The pronunciation of cannes brulées was distorted and is now camboulay.

Emanuel observed the questioning disbelief in his customers’ faces.

Don’t you believe me Boysie? Wayne?

Boysie shrugged, doubt in his voice.

Well, is jus’ dat I hear a different story. I hear dis camboulay ting start in Port of Spain right after slavery wen dey announce emancipation. I hear it had black women who was mocking de white women by dressin’ up like dem wid plenty bustle an’ ting. Excep’ it was overdone. Dat is how Dame Lorraine costume start. An’ it had men who was stick fighters. De British…

Wayne joined in, excited. He was standing now.

De British was still in charge an’ dey didn’ like how de black people was mockin’ white people. So Captain Baker try to en’ de carnival wid bayonet an’ ting. But you know dem stick fighters was fightin’ better dan de police? De police had to run.

Boysie and Wayne laughed scandalously.

Emanuel had the last word. He spoke with authority.

Well, there’s one thing I know. History depends on who interprets the facts.

Emanuel and Claire eagerly anticipated the abandon of Carnival Monday and Tuesday. The revellers poured out into the streets from four o’clock on Monday morning when the dew still refreshed surfaces with its moisture. They danced in the morning, noonday and afternoon sun which kissed the streets with its fervent heat. They saw the shadows of their carnival costumes alter shapes. In tandem with the sun as it majestically traversed the sky from east to west. They stopped the celebration only when the cool of the Tuesday midnight hour heralded the solemn Lenten season.

The couple took their children to see the parade from the best vantage point at the corner of George and Prince Streets. There were so many revellers. Some danced in their black and brown vampire bat costumes. The wide-spanned wings covered the width of the street. The masqueraders mimicked bat behaviour. Midnight robbers with black flowing capes were canopied under huge wide-brimmed black hats. They churned out well-rehearsed robber talk. Firemen performing a special dance used long iron rods as stokers. Their musical accompaniment comprised tamboo (tambour) bamboo percussion.

The ritual accomplished so much for the revellers. It was a manifestation of the pure joy of being alive. A celebration of survival following the colonial oppression in which their ancestors were infused. A burlesque, a satire of established norms of high society. An anaesthetic numbing of the mind to forestall nervous breakdowns or total madness. Generally, spice to camouflage the unpalatable food which life serves.

 3 

It was the early morning of the thirteenth day of the month, a Friday. Claire was in bed, awake. She lay against the comforting warmth of Emanuel’s body. She listened to his gentle snore. Her urge to go to church was intense. Devotions were at six. She eased her way out of bed, careful not to wake Emanuel.

The cool breezes of the fresh young day gently refreshed her skin during the five-minute walk from her home to this Francophile church on Henry Street. Its origins were reflected in its magnificent slate roof, wooden canopy ceilings and stone exterior, all constructed in the late nineteenth century by French planters.

Religion was still the rock of her belief system inherited from her parents. Of course, she was banned from the confessional and receipt of the communion Blood of Christ. For her fornication, production of a bastard child, and cohabitation with a man while unmarried were grave sins according to the tenets of her faith.

Claire’s need for reconciliation with her father also led her to pray regularly in another church. That morning Claire’s mind was heavy with thoughts of her father’s damning silence towards her. On the spur of the moment, she left the Rosary Church and trekked to Our Lady of Laventille Church in the nearby hills just outside Port of Spain. Emanuel would know she was in church. He would ready the children for attendance at their primary school.

Claire’s nostalgia for this church stemmed from two reasons. Her own family lived on a hill in Martinique. Climbing this hill was a means of recapturing the memory of her home. Also, she was French and had been told that a Frenchman – Henri de Bourbon – laid the cornerstone of the building albeit with his Portuguese wife.

She climbed the steep narrow winding unpaved road. Everyone distinguished this tall beautiful hybrid woman with the blue eyes as she walked gracefully and rhythmically in her distinctive French apparel, her douette. From her narrow waist the gathered skirt fell ankle length. It bore a distinctive plaid pattern in colours of red, burnt orange, deep crimson, yellow and green. The skirt was complemented with a simple blouse which was the exact green of the skirt. Her head was wrapped in the same plaid cloth in the French peasant style with the decorative knot at the front of the head.

During her ascent towards the church Claire greeted the residents. They were leisurely doing their household chores in their homes.

Bon jour, Madame. Bon jour, Monsieur. Ça va?

Women swept the dust from their homes with cocoyea brooms made of dried fronds of coconut palm branches. They bent low with their backs almost perpendicular to the ground for these home-produced brooms had no wooden handles. They were simply tied at the top with string or elastic.

Once at the top of the hill, Claire paused. Her unusual blue eyes delightedly screened the tropical kaleidoscope from harbour to hill. She absorbed the calming blue and green shimmering waters rhythmically washing the coastline. The ships in the harbour reminded her of her anxious arrival there so many years ago. She scanned the well laid out small town of Port of Spain with its criss-cross streets many of which she traversed regularly. Before she entered the sacred portals Claire’s gaze rested considerably longer than usual on this scene. She knew not why.

Claire walked purposefully to the front of the