Hartley Neita, Contributor
SINCE I retired from the daily '8 to 5' routine of work, I often visit friends at their workplace for a cup of mid-morning coffee, or to interview them, or for a quarter-hour of social chit chat. I also visit other friends who like me have retired, or who are home bodies.
One such friend - for over 40 years - was Pam Beaubrun, the wife of my friend Matthew, who is also one of my doctors. She was originally my late wife's friend. At the time I met her she shared an apartment with Ivanhoe 'Skit' Williams' sister, another of my wife's friends. I became the friend they telephoned whenever a lizard invaded their home.
Now, I did not mind the 'harmless' ground lizards. For them I walked boldly inside with a copy of The Gleaner, rolled into a paper stick, and brushed the troublesome little reptile away. (That's another use of this newspaper.) Croaking lizards, however, were another matter. I was and still am totally afraid of them. So when they told me that it was a croaker, I tipped-toe inside the house, my eyes darting from side to side as I shuffled to the dining room for a broom. Holding it at arm's length, I flashed it at the sneaky thing until it rushed outside through a window. Sometimes it disappeared and it took a long time to find. My reward was an apple.
APPROVAL
Years later she met a man and fell in love. The object of this romance was a doctor from the Eastern Caribbean and as young girls at that time did, she took him to my wife, for approval, which she got. She also took him to other friends and got theirs. He, of course, thought she was merely introducing him to Jamaicans to make him feel at home, not knowing that one negative nod and she would have chased him to the other side of the Caribbean.
In due course he became one of my doctors. Their home became a hospitality centre for friends. Both were professionals, she being a speech therapist. But she organized her time so that she could devote herself to a garden which gradually became a rainbow of colour, of reds, blues, yellows, pinks, oranges, mauves. The patio at the edge of the garden became a favourite place for relaxation, while sipping a glass or tipping a cuppa. Matthew, being an East Caribbean Carnival aficionado, injected Pam with the calypso beat and after Trinidad's annual post-Carnival bash their parties jumped with the sounds of The Mighty Sparrow and his inheritors. Ninety per cent of their extensive CD library were of calypso and soca, the music of Venezuela where her husband represented Jamaica as Ambassador during the nineties, and of other Latin American countries. Even there she entertained visiting Jamaican friends, literally ordering me out of my Caracas hotel to stay at their residence and enjoy Jamaican stew and gungo.
THE UPS AND DOWNS
In recent years when my routine became more liberal than in the past, I visited and sat with Pam watching cricket, and bemoaning the ups and down of West Indies cricket, the national and international news and the US political fiascos of 2000 and now, and lawn tennis. We were both devoted fans of Venus and Serena Williams. While they were recuperating from their accidents, the circuit of the Opens became dull. This year we watched their return to the courts and groaned as they fell to players they would have trounced with one eye shut two years ago.
Then tragedy struck. The diagnosis was cancer. Yet she still enjoyed the company of friends - and they were legion. For me she always had a glass of coconut water. She still drove to the supermarket, walking between the shelves and engaging friends with banter and fun. It was only in very recent months she retreated to her bedroom with no lizards for me to chase away. Propped by a pile of pillows she was the cheerful Pam of years. Two weeks ago, with another friend Fay Harrison, I saw her for the last time. How're you feeling? Just uncomfortable like gas in my chest. Fay went to the kitchen and brewed a cup of ginger tea. Tea is tea and ginger is ginger, she chuckled; only in Jamaica do we combine both. I had planned to visit and watch the Serena Williams/Maria Sharapova match in the WTA Championships in Los Angeles last Monday with her. A telephone call told me she would not be watching it. Farewell, friend. I will now have to buy my own coconut water.
