Shirley Spycalla’s Personal Account

When I was two, Daddy decided that he’d had enough of teaching and he made the decision to study law in England. We said goodbye to Trinidad and Daddy caught a London-bound flight on BOAC (now British Airways). Mammy, at the time pregnant with my brother Basil, and I took a smaller propeller plane up the islands to St. Kitts, where we were to stay with Mammy’s parents, Helen and Victor Brookes, at “Alandale” in Basseterre, the Brookes family seaside home.

Those aware of my shoe fetish today would be surprised to know that at the ripe old age of two, I hated shoes! In fact, on the flight up to St. Kitts when we were minutes from landing, I broke away from Mammy, ran down the aisle of the plane and hid my shoes under an empty seat. They were never found. Mammy was terribly upset, especially as she felt embarrassed to disembark at her home island carrying a shoe-less child. Years later, she told me that she hid my bare feet under a blanket!

“Alandale”

My brother Basil was born soon after we settled into “Alandale”. As a result of Daddy’s brief visits to St. Kitts from England, along came Victor who died shortly after birth from pneumonia, followed by Patrick – all born at home. In those days no one went to a hospital for childbirth. It was all home ‘birthing’, tended to by experienced mid-wives.

“Alandale” lay across the road from the beach. Until the late 19th or early 20th century, property owners owned the strip of beach directly in front of their homes. Today in the Caribbean, beaches are public property and no one can be denied access to them or ‘own’ a beach. Besides enjoying daily sea baths, the proximity to the beach lent itself to smuggling under cover of darkness by the various home owners.

The house itself, a century old and built in the style of the old plantation homes, was large and two-storied. It had two long front- facing verandahs, many small rooms, narrow passages, endless staircases, and a huge, dark cellar that had its share of spiders and cobwebs. The house was surrounded by enclosed grounds with a large flower garden and a long driveway at the front, a chicken coop, kitchen garden, and ruins of a huge stone kiln at the rear.

The Ghost in the Cellar

When I was four, our nanny Maude took me down to show me the cellar and, despite the cobwebs, I became fascinated with it. She showed me the old shower-stall that had been installed, generations ago, for use by the household staff. In addition to Maude, there was a housemaid and a cook.

Then, one day, my doll, Claire, lost her arm. I loved that name, so all four of my dolls were named Claire. I wouldn’t let Maude fix her arm, which was attached by a rubber band inside the plastic body of the doll, as I wanted to do it myself. I got the arm back on after several tries, but it was affixed backward instead of forward. At least Claire was whole once more. Then the idea came to me to take Claire down into the cellar and bathe her there.

Every day after lunch, Basil and I were put to bed to have a nap. Unbeknownst to Mammy and the rest of the household, I left the bedroom and sneaked quietly down the steep concrete steps into the gloomy cellar, clutching Claire by the arm. I could clearly hear the sound of the shower. At this point I should have turned back, but thought it might be Maude. Smiling wickedly, I decided I would poke my head around the wall and shout “BOO” at her.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs and peeped around the wall, I saw the outline of someone standing naked under the full flow of water. I shouted “BOO” and waited for her reaction. To my utter surprise the figure vanished completely and the flow of water dwindled to a stop. There was no one there!

Without further ado and with heart pounding, I fled back up the stairs and into bed, hoping I had not been missed. On the way upstairs I could hear the voices of the nanny, maid and cook coming from the kitchen, so it couldn’t have been any of them in the cellar. Needless to say, I never told anyone about it, nor did I ever go down into the cellar again.

Don’t Scare Children!

Why do adults think it is funny to frighten children? When they do, the fear stays with the child for the rest of his or her life.

Uncle Donald Brookes, Mammy’s younger brother, would cover himself with a white sheet, ride on a broom like a witch, and carry in one hand a dead spider, lizard, green grasshopper or black beetle. He would chase me round and round the house, up stairs and down, all the while uttering weird ghostly sounds. If I were a little older, it might not have been so bad, but at that young age my screams were real. I was severely traumatized. This fear of flying and crawling ’creatures’ bothers me today, even as an adult.

While attending the St. Vincent Girls’ High School in the 1950s and 1960s, the girls in my class discovered my fear of creepy- crawlers. One of them brought a dead crab to school and with a laugh, threw it at me. I screamed in horror, picked up a nearby chair and threw it at her then burst into tears. I was sent to detention!

Back in St. Kitts for a brief period in the 1970s, I was driving home peacefully; glad to be alive on such a lovely sunny day. Suddenly a huge red spider started across the windshield of the car. It was six inches across and it was on the inside of the glass! With a horrified gasp, I opened the door and leaped out of the car which kept on going until it was stopped by a hedge. Woe is me!

I still react in a panic when any of the dreaded creatures come into my house. On one occasion, I put on a nightgown without first shaking it out. I felt something move between the gown and my skin. With a piercing scream, I tore the nightgown right off and still yelling, ran through the house naked! It was a black beetle.

I’m serious. Take my advice – don’t scare children!

Story Time at “Alandale”

I was five, Basil three and Patrick a baby. Every morning after breakfast, Grandpa would call Basil and me to come down to the yard and help him feed the chickens and collect eggs. This was a fun thing to do, except we were usually barefoot and the coop was always ‘squishy’ with chicken poop.

As a reward for helping him, Grandpa would make us sit on the back steps and he would tell us ‘Anansi’ stories and Aesop Fables. We were told all about Brer Rabit and The Wolf, Brer Tucama and the Cocks, The Hare and the Tortoise, The Ant and the Grasshopper, etc, all very exciting stories to children.

Grandpa would start, “Once upon a time!” and Basil and I would have to shout “YES!” at the top of our lungs. “Not loud enough!” he would say, and he would start all over again until he was satisfied that we’d shouted “Yes” loud enough. At the end of the story, instead of “And they all lived happily ever after”, Grandpa’s final words always were, “And the lead bend and the story end!” We always shouted that in unison with him. These wonderful memories have impacted me up to this day. My greatest joy is in telling exciting stories to our guests during and after dinner and seeing the awed looks on their faces.

My First Car Ride

I cannot describe how excited everyone was when Grandpa bought his first car. It was a convertible, black of course, with a cloth roof that was rolled up behind the back seats and a boot that had backward facing seats also called trundle seats. Grandpa had to take a crank, insert it into a hole at the front and turn it around several times to start the engine. The car must have been manufactured in the early years of the 20th century when horse-drawn buggies were still the norm.

Suffice to say, a drive in Grandpa’s car was the highlight of our existence, especially when I rode in the trundle seat!

Granny at the Wheel

I cannot say that I remember any of this, or I would be an accessory to attempted ‘hit-and-run’. In those days women wore fully-gathered skirts Mammy told me that Granny would drive really fast. Whenever she saw a woman at the side of the road with full skirts, she would swerve the car towards the woman so that, in passing, the current of air would whip up the poor lady’s skirts! I shake my head and conclude that the Brookes’, from Granny down, had a weird sense of humour!

A Tractor Ride at Lambert’s Estate

One day, Daddy took us to his father’s estate at Lambert’s in Sandy Point. Our paternal grandfather, Andrew Dias, was from Madeira, Portugal. He had had three children with a local lady – my father and his two sisters – and many others we are gradually meeting. He was a short, stout, paunchy balding man who always wore a dilapidated felt hat and who had a penchant for drink. The rum shop on the estate was always fully stocked due to his ability to smuggle truck loads of alcohol under the noses of the local police.

On that particular day, while the grownups were at the main house, a set of village children, Basil and I were taken on a tractor ride through the cane fields and along the ridge where the land dropped off at a terrible depth. Going at a speed, one of the tractor wheels slipped over the edge so that it was hanging over into space. I leaped out of the back of the tractor and rolled away from it while the driver tried to balance the machine so that it wouldn’t go over the side. He eventually got it righted, but that could have been a tragic accident, had it gone over. That was a very frightening ride indeed.

Our Afternoon Walks

Basil and I left Alandale, one afternoon, on our usual afternoon walk with our nanny Maude. Normally she would take us to the Square to play, or pass by the playing field where our two uncles, Donald and Arthur Brookes, were playing football or soccer. I remember hearing loud shouts coming from the playing field and Maude screaming her head off that “Brookes scored! Brookes scored!” I gather that it was Uncle Donald who had kicked the winning goal against the Antigua team.

On another afternoon we strolled pass the local cinema and Maude saw that the matinee show was “Mighty Joe Young”. Obviously she must have wanted to see the movie, because she paid our fares and she, Basil and I went into the cinema. All these years later, I remember the black and white movie and the enormous size and strength of the ape, slowly turning the grand piano while a beautiful actress played the tune “Beautiful Stranger”. On our way back to the house, Maude asked us not to tell where we had been. We didn’t. It was our secret. Ah, the wonderful memories!

Aunt Iris’s Dog

Another of my chores was to feed Aunt Iris’ dog. It was a white and brown mongrel that was tied under a large tree in the yard. This was always a pleasure for me, as I was fond of the dog.

One morning, I put the dish of food down on the ground with a bowl of water and stood close by to watch the dog eat. No one told me never to pat a dog while it was eating. Stupidly I did just that. The dog leaped at me, teeth bared, claws out and attacked me. Luckily my screams were heard and someone came to my rescue. Sigh! In addition to my fear of creepy-crawling insects, I am still apprehensive about dogs! .

School Days in St. Kitts

At five, I started kindergarten at the Catholic Convent in Basseterre, located next to the church on the eastern side of The Square, now called Independence Square. Students wore, then and now, beige uniforms with a small green tie, white socks and black shoes.

During school recess, the children’s greatest joy was to go under the building and play in the dirt. There, we would look for “touché turtles”, also called “back-back turtles”, creatures shaped like miniature turtles. We had no idea if these creatures were dangerous or not. They were just fun to play with. When we poked them, they would scurry away and dig themselves back down in the dirt, and then we would dig them up again. Then we got caught by a nun and were forbidden to go back under the building again. We did anyway!

The young students were quite jealous of the older students. I remember looking on as the older girls were dressed in costumes, waiting to go onstage at one of the year-end school plays. One student was dressed as a ballerina with a golden tiara, white ballet costume with a frilly tutu and pink ballet slippers. I knew at that moment that I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up. In fact, I did start ballet classes that year in St. Kitts, continuing ballet studies in Grenada, New York and Barbados. As a teenager, I gave beginner ballet classes while I lived on St. Vincent in the 1950s, and beginner and intermediate classes here on Montserrat in the 1970s. But I digress!

One morning, as I crossed The Square on my way to the convent, accompanied halfway across by Maude, I saw a black dog standing in front of the church beside the convent. I froze. It seemed to be looking straight at me. Suddenly it entered The Square and started walking towards me. I looked backward for help, but Maude had already left to return to the house. Nearby there was a small grove of bamboo trees where we used to play hide-and-seek when Maude brought us for afternoon walks. I dashed among the bushes and hid, heart pounding, hoping the dog wouldn’t find me.

After a few minutes, I dared to peep out from my hiding place. There was no dog. After the frightening incident with Aunt Iris’s dog, I was convinced that dogs were to be avoided at all cost. Don’t get me wrong – I love cute photographs of puppies, but not live dogs!

A Thing about Shoes

That summer my grandparents received a visit from Miss Furlonge, a close friend from Montserrat, who came to stay at “Alandale” for two weeks. Recently I was told that she had been the aunt of Reuben Furlonge, a Montserratian tour operator known for his tasty ‘goat water’.

Miss Furlonge was a tiny person with a lot of tiny high-heeled shoes in every colour and style. These she kept in neat rows in the bedroom appointed to her. I was fascinated with her shoes and found myself drawn to them. Surprisingly, they were hardly any bigger than my own feet!

The minute Miss Furlonge went across to the beach to have a sea bath, I tried on every single pair and walked around the room, posing in front of the mirror. One day, I forgot to keep an eye out for her and she caught me red-handed. She flew into a rage, shouting at me never to try on her shoes again. I got punished; however Miss Furlonge’s beautiful shoes started me on a shoe binge from an early age.

White Shoes! Ugh!

As the feast of Corpus Christie drew near, Mammy bought me a beautiful white net dress with puffed sleeves, tucks on the bodice and around the hem of the skirt, and tiny pink embroidered roses with little green leaves. She also bought me a pair of black, patent leather Mary-Jane shoes and new white ankle socks.

With the straps of the Mary-Janes firmly buckled on my feet, I posed in front of the full-length mirror for hours, turning this way and that, until Daddy came home and found me. Annoyed, he ordered me away from the mirror and demanded that Mammy take the shoes back to the store. She did, but she exchanged the black shoes for a pair of white shoes in the same style. I would like to think that she commiserated with me because she also loved shoes.

At the Corpus Christie march around The Square and back to the church, I wore the white shoes with great distaste, hating them and everybody else too. My face was like thunder. I’ve never forgotten those shiny black Mary-Jane shoes. Today, although I have accumulated close to two hundred pairs of shoes, I refuse to include white shoes in my collection! Ugh!

Firing the Cook

There was a loud quarrel going on in the kitchen at “Alandale”. Being a child, I have no idea what it was about, but only knew that the cook was being fired. Mammy explained to me what ‘being fired’ meant. She also added that when a person is fired, they should be paid their final wages and made to leave the premises right away. Only thing is, Granny, being a kind person, gave the cook notice and allowed her to stay on until the end of the month. Bad idea!

One day, Granny approached the kitchen to talk to the cook who was preparing lunch. From a distance, she saw the cook seasoning a large pot of stew that was simmering on the stove. Unaware that Granny was watching, the cook took a dark object from the pocket of her apron and began to grate it into the stew. At that point, Granny stepped into the kitchen and asked the cook what she was putting into the stew. Flustered, the cook claimed it was black pepper. In fact, what she was busily adding to the stew was a length of dried stool – her own!

Apparently, in order to maintain a good relationship with an employer or lover, some people who practice voodoo or obeah add body fluids or dried feces to the victim’s food. It is believed that such an additive puts the victim into a compliant state. The victim becomes entirely fascinated with the ‘dark’ person, even to the point of marrying that person. Obviously, the cook’s purpose was to make Granny keep her on permanently, and it would have worked had she not been stopped in time.

Acts such as this are still performed today by persons adept in the art of voodoo or obeah. This is why many Caribbean persons refuse to eat food prepared by anyone other than themselves or by someone they trust.

Eerie Happenings at Brimstone Hill

This story was told to me by my cousin Hazel Brookes, who for a time volunteered with the Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park Society. She had to man the office at the fortress and was sometimes alone on the compound when there were no visitors.

Quite frequently Hazel would hear the sound of ghostly regiments marching across the citadel’s centre square and the voices of the commandant issuing orders to the men. Even though there was no one there, she would hear laughter and the sound of footsteps. Many other persons have also shared her experience.

The citadel at Brimstone Hill was erected between the 1690’s and the 1790’s, built out of the natural limestone found on the hill. Many battles were fought from the fort, as the British found themselves constantly attacked by the French for possession of the island.

The St. Kitts Government has spent thousands of dollars to maintain the fortress in its original condition, and it has always been a popular tourist attraction on the island. Bus loads of tourists don’t seem to have disturbed the soldiers from going about their duties as they did when they were alive!