Soca and a French Connection

Just at RP o’clock, another boat boy came by to ask if we’d like a ride to a restaurant. Which restaurant? we asked. The West Indies. Silly not to. We asked him to come back at 6. We asked him his name: Never Give Up, the name of his old boat. Or Shane, the name of his current boat. Sometimes Bootie...because he has a bit of a rep as a snappy dresser. Then he headed off to a small island at one end of Thompson Reef...a bar, we learned later.

Right on time, Never Say Die was back. He helped us aboard his boat and delivered us to a dock in town. He said he’d wait for us.

Clifton, we learned, is an interesting mixture of the very local and delightful, and the cruiser-targeting set. These folks aim to separate cruisers from as much cash as possible.

Well, Never Say Die was one of the delightful locals, in my opinion. He picked us up and then waited to be called to take us back.

The West Indies Restaurant is run by a French chap who was standing at the bar when we arrived. Did we want anything to drink? He was slightly stunned when we wanted dinner. It was 6 p.m. He recovered reasonably rapidly and obligingly sent us up to a pleasant dining room. A DJ at the far end of the room started spinning discs (that's coolspeak for "played music"). After a few old standards, along came Willie Nelson singing "You Were Always on My Mind". I snapped. Our waiter came to take our order and, when she was done, I told her to tell the DJ to play his music...music he liked. That we could survive reggae, soca, calypso.

Suddenly, all the waiters were bobbing and dancing, the DJ was dancing, one waiter was swinging her hips and singing along. I asked her what the song was. She told me. I asked what group it was. She told me. I was trying to commit all this to memory when she grabbed me by the hand and danced me over to meet Steve, the DJ. He sold me a disc of soca. Home-burned, of course. Fabulous stuff.

The food was very good. WW and Enn had conch...and I can't actually remember what fish Dana and I had, but I do remember a general aura of deliciousness.

After dinner, we started back to the dock where Never Give Up had left his boat. But there was no sign of him. The French chap, a rather lugubrious fellow, invited us to wait at the bar and poured us some fabulous aged Martinique rum. It was more a brandy than a liquor. Then we all bonded. We learned he was Jean-Charles and his baby sister, 14 years younger than he, was visiting. So we met Nathalie. She hadn't seen her big brother in 15 years. Then in came Vincent, Jean-Charles's son, but he was instantly dispatched to find Never Give Up. A second round of the delicious rum, we were almost family by now. Then Vincent appeared with Never Give Up and we were whisked away and duly delivered back to our onboard accommodations.