I believe, because he happened to be a cousin of mine and tended to hang around with me (us). There was also one member of the gang who was a fifth-former, but was permitted to take A-level Art (at which he was brilliant) and simply assumed that he was entitled thereby to be a member of the gang. Here are brief descriptions of the members of the gang (and therefore the authors of the stories):
[Victor Vibert Nunes – Head boy of the College, leader of the group: serious and scholarly with strong organizational and planning skills; his birth certificate describes him as a ‘mixed native of Guyana’ and he claims that a measure of Amerindian blood is part of that mix. Good at languages which he took at A-level.]
Desmond Stewart Arthur – Desi lives for literature, at which he excels; has written plays which have been performed at college; sensitive, loyal and probably homosexual. He’s like a brother to Hilary Sutton and is specially fond of Nickie Calistro.
Geoffrey Anselm deMattis – Of Portuguese extraction but with dark brown skin; mischievous, inclined to be chubby and brilliant at the sciences. With a surname like his it was in the nature of our Catholic high-school wit to nickname him ‘Nunc’ deMattis. Nunc is an only child with wealthy parents who have more-or-less adopted the gang which is always over at his house.
Hilary Augusta Sutton – ‘High brown’, upper middle-class convent girl from an old Georgetown family which lives in a large wooden house with a tower. She tends to be touchy about class and propriety. She did Maths and Physics in our science sixth.
Jamila Muneshwar – Indian with smooth, beautiful, very dark skin (almost purple, like a jamoon, which is her nickname). She is the daughter of a prominent surgeon and did History and Geography in our sixth form.
Hilton Aubrey Llewellyn Seaforth – Called ‘Prince Hal’ because of his initials; deputy head-boy, tall and dark with stately, aristocratic bearing. Aloof and monumentally calm, Hal is the son of a head-teacher and afraid of no-one. Brilliant at History and Languages and is expected to win a scholarship.
Valmiki Madramootoo – Indian, son of a wealthy businessman who owns several cinemas and nightclubs. Light-skinned, grey-eyed, handsome and epicurean, Val is our expert on films, food and fashion. He did Literature and Modern Languages.
Terrence Gregory Wong – Known as ‘Tennis Roll’ because of his predilection for tennis rolls with cheese. Short, porcupine-haired, Chinese, T. Roll is playful and somewhat naive, though brilliant at Maths and Physics. He is impulsive and always falling in love.
Mark Andrew McWatt – First cousin to V.V. Nunes, Mac is in the lower sixth. The son of a District Commissioner, he knows a lot about the interior and the rivers of Guyana and has been writing poems about these. He is taking Literature, Latin and History.
Alexander Joseph Fonseca – Still a fifth-former, he’s the baby of the group and diminutive to boot (hence his nickname: ‘Smallie’). He makes up for his small stature by being loud and assertive; he’s a prodigious and gifted artist with a foul tongue and a vocation to the priesthood.
John Dominic Calistro – Came into our Sixth form from a school in the interior. During term-time he boards in the home of V.V. Nunes, his cousin, since his parents live in the interior. He’s known as ‘Nickie’ and is always telling stories about his large, half-Amerindian family: parents, uncles, cousins, all of whom live in one huge house. Superstitious, fun-loving and illogical, Nickie did English, Geography and History. The smallest amount of alcohol puts him into a deep sleep.
[I was tempted, at this distance from the sixties, to alter the above brief ‘portraits’ by removing the ethnic references which now seem at least gauche (by most standards, though mild perhaps, in terms of the rampant racial polarization in contemporary Guyana), but I decided that they help date the document and give, I think, an accurate indication of the preoccupations of Georgetown society at the time. Also, I did not want to appear to be quarrelling petulantly with Victor’s descriptions.]
THE COURT CASE
[written in March-April, 1967]
Rather than recount at length the events that took place at the Sports club of the Imperial Bank on Friday 9th July, just over a month after independence, I have asked my cousin Mark McWatt to make his story a narrative of that evening’s happenings and this will be the last ‘story’ in the collection. The reasons for my choice of the author and the position of this story will become evident at the end of the book. [I have no idea what Victor meant by this remark: I did not write my assigned ‘story’ until five years after he had disappeared and I often wonder what he imagined I would say in it]. Suffice it to say that the gang of students listed above met at the club to celebrate both the end of A-level exams and the country’s independence which they could not properly celebrate at the actual time because they were busy studying for the exams – and, due in part to an excess of alcohol and high spirits, they vandalized the club, defacing walls and destroying property. Nine members of the gang were charged with wilful damage of the Bank’s property, although the Bank declined to press charges and it appeared as though a number of parents were involved in ‘arranging’ for the court case that followed a week later. [I was surprised to find that Victor had written this last sentence, because he had always insisted that the court case was genuine and our obligations were clear, while most of the rest of us were convinced, even at that time, that the whole thing was a charade cooked up by some parents and their friends in the judiciary and legal profession to throw a scare into us and to teach us a lesson]
On Saturday morning (17th July) we all turned up in the courtroom of Mr. Justice Chanderband [this was, of course, long before he became Sir Ronald and ascended to his sinecure in the Hague], along with Willow, our Literature teacher and Aubrey Chase, a lawyer and cousin of Hilary Sutton. There was also the police sergeant who went to the club on the night of the vandalism and who served as prosecutor. The judge began by making us all recite our names and addresses, including Mac and Smallie, although they had not been charged since they had gone home early, before any damage was done. Then the charges were read and the sergeant was asked by the judge to expand on the actual damage done:
‘This graffiti, the defacement of the upstairs wall... Can you tell the court, Sergeant, exactly what was written – or rather painted?’
‘Yes, Milord,’ and he opened his notebook and read: ‘There was a two-line sentence as follows: ‘Sir Eustace is an anachronism and Lady Dowding is a tight-assed termagant’ (Sir Eustace, as your lordship is no doubt aware, is the English manager of the Imperial Bank); this was followed by a single word, ‘latifundia’ and then another sentence ‘Don’t pick the blue hibiscus’; finally there was a large blue hibiscus painted on the wall.’
‘Anachronism’, ‘termagant’, ‘latifundia’: were these words correctly spelt, Sergeant?’
‘I believe so, Milord.’
‘Not your run-of-the-mill graffiti artists, eh Sergeant? At least this new country can boast of literate vandals...’ and the sergeant chuckled politely.
All of our other misdeeds that night were recounted in detail: the emptying of over forty bottles of whiskey and other spirits from the bar into the swimming pool, the tipping of a large concrete planter, full of soil and red geraniums, into the pool and the tying up and gagging of the barman,
