McDonald Dixon reviews Rick Wayne’s Lapses and Infelicities

Rick Wayne’s eclectic prose meanders throughout 600 pages of this book is reminiscent of the old Castries to Vieux Fort road, at a time when the journey was a butt-peeling two-hour drive. That was before crown agents intervened in the 1970s and straightened out the hairpin bends—with the exception of Morne Road at the right-angle suicide spin below Government House. A rich, lively rhetoric reminiscent of Gore Vidal’s Washington D.C. and, to a lesser extent, Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, particularly as Rick paints his livid caricatures, brush stroke after brush stroke, to people the work.

‘So now, in the all-revealing light of time’s torch, come with me as I revisit October 1994, shortly after Saint Lucia’s prime minister rescued a failed politician from his more or less permanent residence at a village rum shop and relocated him to New York.’

‘Barely had the commencement date been announced when a programmed Labour Party robot who on the occasion described himself as a building contractor, filed a Notice of Motion for an order to prohibit the attorney general —cited as respondent –—from holding the Commission of Inquiry.’

‘The day’s emcee was introducing the event’s first speaker following the opening prayer when all eyes turned from the podium to focus on the apparition standing in the convention hall’s only doorway. If he was to the majority of the congregation a mysterious stranger, still there could be no denying the apocalyptic tone of his placard’s scrawled message …’

Sounds like a work of fiction? It is not. To the uninitiated, this book could well pass as a novel. Then again, that would be a dangerous assumption, even as history is sometimes as incredulous as the truth. This book is contemporary political history of Saint Lucia after Independence, covering the action of the first thirty years in the life of our small nation. To begin, it is extremely difficult beyond reportage, to write contemporary history and to interpret the facts as they manifest. Biases and personal flavors will come to the fore. After all, we are human and our feelings will permeate through the woodwork.

There will always be among the readers, as in government, sympathizers and opposition. There will be the miscreants that will twist facts with the agility of steel benders and also the usual suspects who will agree with every written word. Rick Wayne has, since his return to Saint Lucia, worked with all sides, in and out of Government. As he so aptly states it, he has been “inside the belly of the beast.” He understands its machinations. He writes naught that is without supportive evidence. The author provides it in a series of episodes, as in newsreels. He makes his case. But in forthright forceable language that commands the reader to sit up and listen.

‘The pampered first son of a popular Seventh Day Adventist city barber, he had started out with much promise. At seventeen, he was a star athlete, nicknamed ‘the flying darkie’ by football fans for his prowess between the goal posts.’

Before Lapses, there was “It’ll be Alright in the Morning,” followed by “Foolish Virgins.” They corroborate various bits and pieces of testimony through the voice of other characters, where applicable, if only in modus operandi. Countless articles have been published in the STAR newspaper under Rick Wayne’s name.   Few have been challenged for veracity. Is it the truth that we’ve read in his latest offering? I don’t know. Is it contemporary political saga? Yes it is, and what a hell of a story it makes! Everyone is entitled to his peculiar brand of fetish. Rick Wayne’s is politics—and he wallows it!

Lapses and Infelicities will mean different things to different people. Incidentally, the book’s title was inspired by Kenny Anthony’s defense of allegations leveled at some of his policy decisions, in particular the Poverty Reduction Fund scandal. No need to go further into this, I can guarantee it’s all in the book. Also, there is the long forgotten UN Scandal, Labour’s fall from grace in 1982, the UWP’s defeat in 1997 and the rise of Kenny Anthony as a formidable politician. If it is possible to block one’s mind from the grand events still shaping our political landscape and assume an approach bereft of bias, it could quite easily be forgiven as one of the most hilarious pieces of contemporary political satire, to be found   only in calypsos. The sequence on page 347, between the author and George Odlum, before and after the announcement of the 1997 election results, is at once hilarious and bizarre.

‘I was never quite certain about George Odlum’s chances in Castries Northeast. One minute the tea leaves promised sunshiny weather; the next, rain. To be absolutely candid, his public meetings never drew anything close to the numbers that once had travelled miles to join his mostly illegal public demonstrations, ominous possibilities be damned. Despite the sweat poured into his campaigns, the response to him personally, not necessarily to his guest speakers, was relatively lukewarm, conceivably a consequence of familiarity—if not his chameleonic characteristics. Shortly before the ballot count started, I sat with Odlum in a dimly lit far corner of his campaign headquarters while a half dozen of his gofers made short thrift of leftover lukewarm beverages and suspect cheese sandwiches donated by persons unknown. He did not appear confident but something told me he was merely indulging his thespian inclinations. After a time, I said, ‘Hey, George, c’mon, let’s get some air.’ We exited the room, walked listlessly down some concrete steps to the near deserted L’anse Road, strolled around the block in eerie silence. Then I asked: What’s bugging you, man? For crissakes, cheer up. The fat lady’s still in make-up. The show’s not yet over. We gave it our best shot. “It’s now out of our hands. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed.’

‘No big thing,’ he said. ‘Just another election, right?’

‘No big thing, indeed. Nevertheless, I said: ‘If things don’t go as expected, you’ll still be OK. It’s clear the party is winning bigtime. Kenny won’t turn his back on you!’ By the time we returned to base, the wind of change had blown away the earlier gloom. Now his campaign headquarters was a zoo. More supporters than had ever attended all his rallies put together were now hanging from the rafters, shouting from the balcony, messing with the refrigerator, blowing red plastic whistles, demanding that Brother George join the carnival-like jump-up outside. Small wonder that he was soon taking full credit for the Labor Party’s victory in the Castries basin. From his own vantage, he had done for Philip J. Pierre, his brother Jon Odlum and Sarah Flood what only a year earlier he had been unable to do for himself.

There are the crude aspersions that represent the building blocks of Caribbean politics and substitute most times for debate. Saint Lucians will recall some of the members of Vaughan Lewis’s Chinese Cabinet that never was: Tu Ju Su, Phuk Em Yung, Fan Chou Moon and Lim Ping. They hold no real value, except to an audience present only for the night’s entertainment and more often than not have no effect on election outcomes. However, our people have long since been honored for plumbing the depths of their creative ingenuity to father these figments of the imagination and clothe them in the personalities of real men with a credibility far greater than their living accomplices can exude. Then there is Rick Wayne’s own nefarious wit that stings like a gloved hand to the solar plexus.

‘In the distance a familiar voice sounded: ‘Brothers and sisters, I call on you now to stay cool. Protect your revolution!’ A perplexed Allen Louisy muttered under his breath: ‘Dear God, what the hell is George up to now?’ If God knew the answer, he wasn’t sharing it. Besides, Odlum was as much in the dark about his next move as was anyone else. Without a script and with no idea whatsoever how this particular production was supposed to play out, the ridiculously costumed revolutionary had little choice but to improvise…’

The storyline weaves from chapter to chapter with the ease of film. Light on the eyes, seldom pedantic, often jocular. Rick Wayne no doubt had a novel in mind when he wrote this book. But novels are works of fiction and the closest this work comes to fiction is where the legendary ‘yo dit’ appears, which is seldom. Of course, the author is entitled to his own assumptions and I am not prepared in this brief review to challenge his truth. I am not equipped to hunt down the mundane and if asked whether I believe everything in the book, I would offer no comment. I enjoyed it immensely and would recommend it to every potential applicant for the post of politician. One message is quite clear: beware the duplicity of pretending to serve the people while draining their pockets. This is a book all nationalistic Caribbean people should read so as to better understand that all the divisions they so vociferously support, ripping the veneer off the mahogany that is our little societies, are nothing more than egos basking in a moment’s glory. The real power rests with the people, free and indivisible under God. Thank you, Rick Wayne, for this poignant exposé of our times, laying bare for all to see, the cancer that is our politics.

The book Lapses and Infelicities is available from the author. Email: rick@stluciastar.com.