The Prize Rules Ch. 01

As she sat down in Robert's office, he smiled at her with a bit of a chuckle, "I have never met someone who is so driven as you, Eden. I admit that it is all too easy to listen to someone's concerns and then to let them drift just out of having a stack of things which require my attention. But you've never given me much time for that, young lady, and today, I hope that I have something for you by which you might see that your persistence has paid off. Now I only hope that it can pay you the dividends that you might seek."

He watched as her eyes opened wider and she drew her next breath, but then he held up his palm, "No, not money – well not enough to cause you to grow all that excited."

He reached to a corner of his large desk and grasping a stack of papers, he placed it in front of her. "I do hope that you came today prepared to write."

When she looked a little puzzled, Robert only laughed a little. "Well try to remember what it was that you've bothered me about for the last eighteen months. I sometimes find myself having to tell others that what they ask me about is not available in a small nation such as we are. But you have never been satisfied with only that answer, so after considerable effort, I've got some answers for you at long last."

He pointed to the map on the wall behind him. "A pretty big place, you might say. And yet, we are still little more than a British possession way out in the Caribbean Ocean. As such, we are very easily forgotten about. You were asking about serving in the Coast Guard – which we really have not got very much of, Eden. And even so, if we did, there wouldn't be much of a place in it for a young woman."

He kept smiling and Eden wondered about that. He usually grew a frown at some point whenever she asked about what she wanted.

"Tell me once more why you want this," he said.

Eden thought that he must have lost a few marbles or something for a moment, but then she began.

"There isn't much work here for someone like me," she said, "The cacao business is still flat on its face from the blight and the world is still in what you told me was a depression, so nobody has the money to buy our cocoa anyway if they are poor themselves. There's still no work in sugarcane and not a soul in the oil and gas business will let a woman work for them.

I know that because I have asked at every last one of them, and that's a lot of travelling around a little Caribbean island only to be told no. I have people in my family who are fishermen and I've worked for them even fishing for sponges if I had to."

She leaned forward to tell him something, an idea that she'd come to.

"The real reason that I am so bothersome to you, Mister Robert, is that I am trying to find my place on the island of my birth. From the news, it seem to me that there will be a war one day. You might not see it the way that I do, but I have seen the freighters and the tankers sailing from here.

Somebody needs Trinidadian citrus crops and Trinidadian oil, Mister Robert. Venezuelan ore and oil is shipped past us, twenty and thirty ships every day on its way to somewhere too. Trinidad needs either a navy or a coast guard."

She sat back in the big old oak chair for a moment. "Not everybody in the world thinks that we live on the moon. Someday, somebody besides a Chinese girl in Trinidad will think of this. If it is the wrong person, then war will come to this little island.

I see few prospects for myself here as it is. That is why I want to serve. I would prefer a job in a naval role, since I have experience being at sea. If you tell me that I cannot serve here because I am a woman, then you must tell me where I must go and I will go there instead.

I am not afraid of work.

I am afraid of starvation, Mister Robert sir, and the prospect of attracting a husband and becoming just like my mother scares the hell out of me, if you will pardon my saying it in that way."

She sat back again with a nod, "That is why I am here today; as I am every week since I start my last year in school. It time for me to fly and not walk with my head down any longer."

Robert laughed, nodding, "Miss Eden, I wish that there were a thousand more like you. With spirit like that, little Trinidad could rule the world."

She looked up, "Thank you, but it not Trinidad ruling the world which bothers me. Why did you want to hear all of this again?"

"I wanted to see if your fervour was still at the same level," he smiled as he pulled his chair closer to his desk and reached for the stack of papers.

"Here we come to the part where you put your mark to what you desire, Miss Eden," he smiled. "As it turns out, there are a few places in the world where there are others not unlike yourself who consider that war on some large scale is only a matter of time.

The Royal Navy is re-forming their Women's Royal Naval Service. It was only open to women from the British Isles, but I have had some success in bending a few ears for you so that a lowly colonial could be given a chance. And I've managed to find a bit in the way of funds to get you there for training and back."

Eden could have fallen over. "You – you have?"

"Start filling those things there out," he said, "It will take a while. Then we'll discuss your means of getting there and back afterwards."

He pushed his chair back as he looked at the clock on the wall for a second," I am going for a haircut. We'll see how far you have managed to go when I get back. Set any which have questions that you can't answer aside for later and we'll go through them together."

Eden set to it and it took the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Only some of it was the paperwork, however. Robert took a bit of time explaining things to her which she'd already guessed about.

"You're an islander like myself," he said, "I already know your sense of dedication and the level that you'd devote to this duty. But they do not."

He grinned a little, "Well, not yet, anyway. I don't think I need to tell you that you don't look or speak like they do and it will likely bring you in for some ... silliness – at best from some of your classmates there. I'm afraid that you can't expect all that much better from the instructors either. I don't know that it will be so, Eden, I just think that to believe that you can expect an easy ride would be a little bit unrealistic."

Eden recognised what he'd said, but on the whole, she found that she didn't care much.

"If I must go a third of the way around the world for this, Robert, do you think that I'd come home with my tail between my legs because I can't take it? I think that I might come to find out just how much of me they are able to stand."

He slid some tickets across the desk to her.

"You'll need to take a boat to Bridgetown, Barbados," he said, "Depending on the timing, you may be there for a couple of days while you wait for your ship to come in, so to speak. From there, you'll sail to New York and transfer to another ship which will bring you to England. I've got it all written out for you.

You'll be in training for about three months and then another three will be spent working in one of the naval shipyards there. I'm told that your accommodations are all laid out and I've written everything out on the sheet of paper that I've detailed for them. It gives addresses and telephone numbers and such things."

"Now," he leaned forward, "what I want from you is letters – one or so a week telling of your time there. As well, I'll need to know when you move about, so as soon as you are in a new place, as might often happen, I want you to dash off a note to me.

Besides giving me something to look forward to," he smiled a little, "I'll also know where I can reach you with details for your trip home. It might be just a retracing of your steps over there, or there might be something better in it. I can't say yet, since it's really another matter and there are many people involved – and it doesn't really relate to you and your travels. If I can make the pieces line up, then you might have a more interesting ride home for at least some of the way, that's all."

–––––––––––––––––––

On her way out of the building, Eden did really skip down the steps of the building that day. She almost had to restrain herself or she'd have run all the way to her home with her news. She was about halfway there when she suddenly thought of Cora-leen and knew that this wasn't all going to be big smiles.

Cora-Lee Dumphries was Eden's very best friend and had been ever since the girl's mother had decided to take her Venezuelan boyfriend and daughter out of the shanties and over to where more of the ethnic Chinese people lived outside of Port of Spain. She'd rented one floor of a large house from Eden's father and he gave her a good break on the rent for doing his family's housekeeping and laundry since his wife was ailing back then, never having fully recovered from birthing their fourth child.

Cora-leen's mother did such good work that word got around and soon she was making enough doing housekeeping in the neighbourhood to stay on after she'd broken up with Cora-leen's father. Since he wasn't drinking away her pay after that, she kept even more of her money. They were almost the only black people living in that predominantly Chinese part of town but everybody knew them and liked them and nobody gave a damn anyway.

Moving to Eden's neighbourhood hadn't been that much of a strain to Cora-leen's mother. She'd been friends with Eden's mother since they were teenagers. They'd just lost track of each other until the happy day that they met while Cora-leen's mother was looking for a better place to raise her girl.

But as they'd moved in, two little girls who didn't look anything like each other met out in the street and they fell for each other in a heartbeat, their friendship made in the blink of an eye and since Eden's family was large and well-known there, little Cora-leen won her acceptance there the moment after.

Her name was actually Cora-Lee, but Eden took a few tries to get it right and by the time that she had it, the name had already been changed because the mispronunciation had stuck among the other children. Cora-leen didn't mind, not to hear it the way that Eden and her family said it. She'd never been happier.

The pair became instantly inseparable since they lived in the same house anyway and it was often said of them that they lived in each other's skin. They'd shared everything growing up together and to say that they were close in the presence of anyone who even knew them a little was worth a laugh because it was a poor term and didn't fit them at all.

When the time had come to wonder together about boys, their first testing practice kisses with each other became the benchmarks which so far, no young man had been able to better, though the two girls kept trying to find one or two. They just joked about it fairly often.

When they'd decided to see what all of the fuss was about, it happened that Eden was without a boy at the time – so Cora-leen had shared hers so they could 'become women' together on the same night.

If that isn't close ...

Eden was very worried about leaving, though they'd spoken of it forever. In her heart, Eden was just at that stage where she knew that she was ready to leave her family and her home – since she did intend to come back after this was over, of course.

But leaving Cora-leen behind would be the worst and she knew that her dear friend would feel the same way about it.

–––––––––––––––––-

The day before Eden left, they were walking along their favourite beach together, often holding hands as they'd done since they'd had to in order to be allowed to walk across the larger roads in town by their mothers.

The beach where they loved to go was rumoured to be haunted by the ghosts of the Carib Indians who'd been killed when Antonio de Sedeño landed there with his army to subdue the Indians hundreds of years before. It wasn't the one where most of the fighting happened, but that was the story, anyway. They'd almost never seen another soul there and it was the best place to go to swim and just have fun.

At first, when they'd gone there as girls, their mothers hadn't known a thing about it and the girls realised that they didn't have any old clothes to wear for swimsuits, but that only held them back for a minute and they were in the water with nothing on at all.

When you're not rich, you tend to worry about things a lot less.

Afterwards, one or both of their mothers would take them and now, long after they were 'too old' to swim naked, they still did that anyway since they always had.

"Do you think you might miss me?" Cora-leen asked and Eden had just looked over. Their eyes met and there was nothing to be said. They both knew.

Eden stood on the shore a moment later, looking out over the ocean. Cora-leen pressed herself against Eden's back a little off to one side and she draped her arms around the closest person in the world to her.

"I'll miss you more than I'll miss this sun and this water," Eden said quietly, "and you know how much we both need that.

But ... I'm ready to go, Cora-leen. I have to go. There is nothing here for me, as much as I love my home. I'm off to make something of myself if I can and come back to try again. I don't want to think of what I'll have to try if it doesn't work for me."

Cora-leen leaned in to kiss Eden's cheek for a moment, "I know. I can have all the work I want just helping my mother. If your dream leaves you flat, just come back to me and we'll do the work together. I have my old motorbike now and ..."

She smiled as bravely as she could, "Even if we never find two men who are worth our time, we'll just take what fun we can find and we can always just live together."

Eden looked back for a moment, "You mean just us as spinsters? People will talk and we aren't like that – not really."

"No," Cora-leen smiled, "We're just almost like that when we're alone and neither of us has a man worth spit. I don't care. I'd be happy living with you."

"Well our parents are going to be some disappointed in us then, I'd have to say, though I can't think that I'd mind it," Eden grinned a little, since the talk was keeping them both a little higher than the rising level of tears that each of them felt coming to them.

They'd never had the thought that what they did together sometimes might be termed lesbianism in a clinical way. That certainly wasn't the way that they saw themselves. They didn't have an interest in girls; they were just really close and if there was nothing better – which meant a decent boyfriend, then a little rubbing and a lot of kisses with each other was better than being alone.

"You'll write me, won't you?" Cora-leen asked, and that question was the last drop in the trembling dam.

"I'll have to do a lot of writing according to Robert Kirkwall," Eden croaked, her voice gone suddenly rough, "He wants me to write him whenever I move to another place and in between. But I'll write you even more, Cora-leen. I don't know how I'll even manage anything without –"

For a long time afterward, the only two people on that pebbly beach were two young women who hung onto each other desperately as they cried and cried.

"Promise me something," Eden sniffled as they walked back with their arms around each other to put on their things for the somewhat iffy ride back on Cora-leen's ancient motorcycle, "Promise me that you won't come to see me off tomorrow. It's best that we say our goodbyes at the house. You're my dearest friend, and I know that once we start to cry, I'll never get on that boat."

Cora-leen nodded, knowing that Eden was right, so she whispered her promised agreement.

–––––––––––––––––-

1937 Barbados

Ten days after speaking with Robert, Eden was sitting on a bench in front of a little eatery in Bridgetown. She was still eager to go on to the next two steps, but she'd had a little time to think about things. She wondered just how much stick that she would come in for from the people where she was going. She knew that she'd be pretty far from the norm there and that she'd likely stick out like a sore thumb among them all.

She wasn't an idiot. She knew that colonialism only went in one direction. It was all designed to be to the good of the Great Mother – or Father, depending on who happened to be sitting on the throne there. What was all disseminated and passed down for consumption by the people of the colonial possessions was just a load of road apples.

They weren't a group of people working to any common good for the empire. It was all about feeding that empire – well, the center of it. So there was little in the way of commonality of spirit waiting for her there, she supposed. She imagined a bunch of Caucasians mocking her by pulling at the corners of their eyes and trying to imitate what they perceived – and did not know the first thing about – as the way that she spoke.

She pushed the thought away as she saw the stacks of the liner slide slowly into her view over the houses and shops on the other side of the road. That just had to be her ship, she thought. How many ships of that size called at this port?

Her first impulse was to go and retrieve her two smallish suitcases and run right over to board – after first making certain that it was her boat after all. But then she thought about things and decided to at least finish her lunch at a leisurely pace. There had to be some people disembarking and a look at her tickets told her that the boat wasn't scheduled to depart until the next morning at 9:15.

When she did wander along the quay, she kept looking up at the sheer size of the thing. She knew that it wasn't one of the huge liners and was likely not even one of the line's larger ones, but to a girl from a Caribbean Island, it was something.

After walking up the gangplank and speaking to the man who wanted to see her ticket, Eden found the deck where her berth was located and walked along that deck looking at the numbers on the cabin doors. She grew a little concerned as she neared the end of that deck without seeing hers. She looked down for a moment to check the number one more time just as a door a few cabins away opened. The numbers here were all even and hers was an even-numbered cabin.

As Eden was walking with her head down, she walked straight into a man who was walking in the other direction as he was looking back over his shoulder at a bit of a commotion between a couple of dockhands there below.

Their accidental meeting was the collision.

"Oh!" Eden said as she stepped back a pace and looked up, "I'm very sorry, I - ... "

She stared a little for a moment and then she recovered, "I guess that I wasn't watching where I was –"

"No, not at all," the man offered in an accent which Eden found had a very familiar sound, "The fault here is mine. I think there is a commandment written somewhere on this ship to crewmembers that 'Thou shall not trample the passengers, as it is bad for business.'"

He smiled and nodded, "Please excuse me."

Eden looked up at his bright blue eyes, rather full of good humour as they seemed to be and she smiled, "Well, if you are accepting the blame, could you please tell me where my cabin is? I seem to be having some trouble finding it." She held up her boarding pass and the stub of her ticket and the man nodded.

"I think that your cabin is just over there," he pointed, "After the set of stairs, the cabins all belong to the crew - those of us who are allowed to have them without needing to share.

Please, allow me to carry your luggage for you. It will make me feel like a gentleman without the bother of having to carry them for very far."

Eden laughed a little at that and she handed her suitcases over instantly.