July 5, 2017 issue
Authors' & Writers' Corner
Kamil Ali
The registered letter requested a personal interview to inherit the Estate of a deceased relative abroad. It did not give details but asked Miriam to bring ID for the appointment with Brenner Grouse, the lawyer representing the dead family member from the home country. She did not know of any rich relatives but had nothing to lose by impersonating the real beneficiary. On the appointed date and time, Miriam showed up for her interview.
The courtesy desk clerk handed her a questionnaire to confirm personal information. She completed it and handed it back. After a quick glance at the form, the clerk made a phone call. He told her to take the form and directed her to a large wooden door down the hall.
Her stiletto heels clanged on the tiled floor when she traversed the lobby. She knocked on the door and entered when a male voice inside asked her to come in. She entered and closed the door behind her, heart pounding with anticipation. She glanced around the huge boardroom. Apart from twenty chairs around a large table in the center, the room had no other furnishings or wall hangings except for a large flat screen TV on the far wall.
Brenner Grouse rose from a chair at one end of the table and beckoned her to the chair closest to him. He smiled but did not invite a handshake.
“Hello Miriam, my name is Brenner Grouse.” He sat down and opened a folder. “Can I have the questionnaire and ID, please?” She placed them in front of him and scrutinized him while he examined each one and wrote notes on a sheet of paper. “I represent, ‘The Company’, which your relative owned at the time of passing.” He slid the ID’s back to her. “As the last remaining relative, you are now the Chairman of the Board by default.” A smile lit Miriam’s face when Brenner announced the value of the Estate.
“This key opens the door to an office below us.” He dangled the key for her to take. “You’ll have a monitor like the one on the wall over there.” He nodded toward the TV on the wall without telling her its purpose. She glanced over at the TV. He told her that she would have twenty-four-hour room service.
“Sounds good so far?” He gazed at her. She stared at him in stunned silence. “I’ll walk you out.” He continued smiling but did not say another word. He walked to the door and opened it. “The elevator is further down the hall.” He pointed to it. “Good luck.” He slammed the door shut when she took her first step toward the elevator.
Brenner Grouse’s mood swings from amiable to businesslike troubled Miriam. She planned to fire him as soon as she assumed her position in ‘The Company’. She took two deep breaths to calm her annoyance at his attitude.
The elevator stood with its door open. She stepped in and the door closed. It started moving down before she had a chance to notice that it did not have a panel for floor selection. The descent lasted a lifetime before the door opened in a dark tunnel with a light at the end. Miriam stepped out. The elevator door closed. She strode toward the light, stiletto heels sinking in the soft earth and slowing her progress.
She came to a large rusty iron door. The loud clang of the lock and squeaky hinges allowed her entry. Mud floors and walls emitted a sickening musty odor that contrasted with the modern outlay of the lobby with its wafting aroma of air fresheners. Her gut churned.
Once she stepped into the room, the door slammed shut, plunging the room into pitch blackness. Miriam gasped and clutched her throat. It reminded her of prison doors slamming shut on inmates. She spun around and used her fingers to search for the doorknob in the total darkness. The door had none! Her heart pounded when she sensed movements in the room.
The hair at the back of her neck stood up when the TV flipped on by itself. Its fuzziness and static cleared after a few seconds. She shivered from a sudden chill when a face appeared on the screen. The same face had haunted her dreams for the past year, since her husband suffered a horrible death in a house fire.
She had survived when she escaped the blaze to save her own life. She suffered trauma after watching him scream in agony while the searing heat singed the skin and soft tissue off his face, leaving charred skull and teeth. The sickening smell of burnt flesh had made her gag while she stumbled out of the house.
“Why are you doing this to me?” She screamed at the face. “Leave me alone!” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “You are dead.”
“He didn’t die, Miriam.” The low metallic voice of Brenner Grouse emanated from the unmoving face. “Your husband didn’t die.” A low taunting chuckle made her blood curdle. “You were the one who died, Miriam.”
“Is this some kind of a sick joke?” She did not wait for an answer. “I saw him burn to death!” She screeched at the top of her voice. “What do you want from me?”
“Look closely at the face, Miriam.” The face zoomed in closer. “Can’t you recognize what you have done to yourself because of greed?” The face contorted into an eerie giggle. “This voice is your own conscience.” The voice and image riveted her eyes to the TV. “Can’t you see, Miriam?” It taunted her. “You are Brenner Grouse.” The face moved back. “Your obsession with wealth and material assets turned you into a murderess!” The screaming voice hurt her ears. Its loud laughter gave her goosebumps.
“I saw him die.” She whimpered.
“You witnessed your own death when the fumes from the ten-gallon gasoline container exploded in your face when you struck the match.” The voice leveled off. “The explosion woke him up and sent him scampering through a window.”
“Get me out of here!” She raised her voice to a threatening level. “If he didn’t die, I am no murderer!”
“But as your conscience and based on your intent, I cannot do that.” The voice sounded resigned. “You are now doomed to stay in your dark dungeon and stare at your disfigured face for eternity.” Loud laughter brought squeaks and hisses from creeping and crawling vermin trapped in the room with Miriam. “Greed walked with you in life and has become your downfall in the afterlife.”
Several large rodents nibbled at her toes. Snakes sank their non-venomous fangs into her knees and legs. The burning pain made her afraid to sit or lie down. She had to endure the torturous fatigue from standing.
“Oh, and the dead relative?” The voice took a deep breath. “None.” The giggles started again. “Hell is filled with trickery, just like its residents.” The loud laughter panicked the critters who launched renewed vicious assaults on Miriam.
extensive research
Dorothy Irwin, Ed., Years of High Hopes: A Portrait of British Guiana, 1952-1956, from an American family’s letters home, Hertford, Hansib Publications Ltd., 2016, pp.737.
A review by Clarence Trotz
Headmaster, Queen's College (1975-1980)
Years of High Hopes: A Portrait of British Guiana, 1952-1956, from an American family’s letters home relates the adventures of two young Americans, Howard and Marian Irwin, in British Guiana (formerly B.G.) from September 1952 to March 1956. Howard, a botany graduate of the University of Puget Sound in the US, was on a Fulbright grant to teach biology at Queen’s College (QC) and, together with his wife Marian, was accompanied by their five-month old daughter, Elizabeth. In Years of High Hopes the Irwins’ second child, Dorothy, who was born shortly before the couple left B.G, has used her publishing skills to edit and reprint journal entries as well as a vast collection of letters that Marian and Howard wrote home to their parents in the US. The letters reveal much about both Marian and Howard, and about political events and their aftermath in B.G. during 1953 and 1954. Through Dorothy’s very extensive research, the letters may be seen to illuminate not only personal aspects of biographical or autobiographical significance, but also wider, more public elements of Guianese social, political and cultural history. For Howard, B.G. offered prospect of fieldwork leading to a doctoral degree, and botanical research that proved to be a veritable treasure trove in virgin territory.
In September 1952, Howard assumed duty as biology master at Queen’s College, while Marian ‘kept house’ and looked after young Elizabeth. The family changed addresses five times, and these addresses serve as titles for five of the seven chapters of the book, so striking was the impact on the Irwins of their experience at each address. Incidents that the Irwins witness and people they encounter at each address also speak volumes about the mores of different social strata of Guianese society at that time. At one address the American family get a ‘taste’ of life among ordinary Guianese folk, at another they savour the behaviour of ‘higher-ups’ or more genteel folk, while at a third they see, at first hand, the consequences of political misjudgment and immaturity after B.G. gains limited self-government, under adult suffrage, only to have the Constitution suspended a few months later. Meanwhile, Elizabeth grows into a four-year old with a personality of her own, even trying to assist with household chores.
Marian’s comprehensive and vivid letters to her parents go into great detail about culinary and other domestic minutiae, including dealings with domestic help which she finds necessary, especially with young Elizabeth to look after. Elizabeth’s physical and psychological development, however, are never overlooked. Every now and then Marian allays American, parental fears about their (the Irwins’) personal safety and comfort, at a time of political upheaval in another country. Howard’s correspondence with his folks is less frequent, briefer than Marian’s, and concerned mainly with his job and other academic matters. Although his base is Georgetown, he pays field visits to St. Cuthbert’s Mission, Orealla, the Rupununi, and other locations in BG, and to Brazil; he also meets pioneers of aviation in the colony, US-born Col. Art Williams and Harry Wendt, and observes Kaieteur Falls in full flow! Howard displays many manual skills, and can be firm with Elizabeth when necessary, but his first duty is to Queen’s College. Both he and Marian pitch into the staging of school plays, and he tries his hand as bassist in a local orchestra. There is never a dull moment for the Irwins, especially for Howard, although Marian can sometimes be a little critical, once referring to B.G. as ‘this silly country,’ but mostly they (especially Marian) are complimentary, for example, feeling ‘fortunate to find themselves in Guiana’, or confessing ‘we are happy here and contented…’ and ‘so many of our set ideas are changing.” They especially notice the way Guianese of widely differing skin colour get along with one another, vis-a-vis Whites and Blacks in their own country. Perhaps their experience of race in B.G. might even influence their attitude to racial issues when Howard and Marian return to the US!
Some sixty years later, when Dorothy, born in October 1955, comes to edit Years of High Hopes, she entitles its opening chapter “The Past as Prologue” while, in the final chapter of her insightful volume, she describes accompanying her father on a re-visit, in 1994, to his old Georgetown haunts which she sees for the first time; and while it is fitting for Howard merely to reminisce, it is no surprise that his daughter seeks out the locus of her birth at 224 New Market Street, Georgetown.
Understandably, minor inaccuracies about Queen’s College escape the editor’s notice; but her bibliography is as extensive as are her well-constructed, explanatory notes at the end of each chapter. There is also an index of five pages, and an ‘Epilogue’ of thirteen pages which provides pen-pictures of individuals, many from QC, whom the Irwins met during their stay in B.G. A number of QC masters of the period are mentioned and, for QC alumni old enough to appreciate it, there are nostalgic pictures of scenes from 1950s Georgetown, and on p. 527, a picture of the QC 1954-5 teaching staff, among whom, in the front row, the young Howard Irwin occupies pride of place.