My father's bookcase

Melville Cooke, Contributor

FOR years it was the centre of my life, the place I would go to every day. It shaped my thoughts, my self-expression, my being. While there are many things I recall about my home in Wilmington, St. Thomas, none stand out as clearly as this.

It was made from wood, two shelves behind sliding doors occupying most of its length. It was completed by a cupboard, a piece of brown formica partially peeled from the door reminding us that it needed a handle. It never got one. On those shelves, packed two deep, were books. Many books. Mostly novels. It was my father's bookcase. I have never thought of it in any other way.

I have never thought of it as my mother's, although she did her fair share of reading as we all did. It was my father's and many evenings he would sit on the back verandah lifting his current novel to catch the last rays of the sun coming over the mountains, before he would have to fall back on lamplight.

We had no electricity, something I am as proud of now as I was ashamed then. It was Home Sweet Home, moths buzzing around the lampshade as the rustle of a turned page as familiar as the crickets outside and Neville Willoughby on the radio. I cannot remember a time when I was not reading novels from that bookcase. I cannot remember a time when I could not read and read well.

WAG Cooke was inscribed on the flyleaf of many or most of these books. It took me some time to associate that name with my Uncle Alister, the proverbial uncle from town. He would arrive from far-away Kingston in a high-pitched whine of what my boyhood imagination fancied the fastest car in the world, a cream Fiat 121, and later in a silver Ford Granada among others. But it was that Fiat which was the car, the gear change at the bottom of the slope just before cars passing by came into view announcing Uncle Alister coming!

Favourites

He would always bring books. And they were appreciated in a home with a boy who was reading Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity before he was 10 maybe even before he was nine. I read everything in that bookcase, most of them twice. I read my favourites several times, knowing what was coming but enjoying the journey there anyway. To this day the feel of a novel is one of the most comforting sensations I know and I pick out the best cover design on the book racks in pharmacies I visit.

E-Books don't stand a chance with me. I read everything. Westerns, mysteries, thrillers, action, Mills and Boon (Certainly not from Uncle Alister. I think those were Annette's), historical novels, a huge Grimm Brothers fairytale collection that made the bookcase courtesy of Uncle Trevor - and a pamphlet for growing girls. Forget the one for growing boys. This illustrated pamphlet was my introduction to the female body and served not only as my first Playboy, but also the foundation of the tall tales I would tell about my sexual prowess in first and second form at Munro College.

In retrospect, I don't think I was as convincing as I thought then. And it would be many a moon before I would get a chance to move from theory to practical. But reading around your subject does help. I met humorous authors like James Herriott, the writing vet, through All Things Bright And Beautiful and All Creatures Great and Small. I met Gerald Durrell and PG Wodehouse in the same humorous vein, the latter contributing Uneasy Money to my stock of laughter.

Tales of heroism

Alistair MacLean dazzled me with his tales of heroism and adventure; Louis L'amour took me through the batwing doors of many a saloon and along the dusty trail of many a cattle drive. To this day I wonder if the Sackett family is real. Agatha Christie led me into mazes of intrigue with Hercule Poirot, the intrepid Belgian detective.

I read The Thin Red Line at least 12 years before a movie of that name was made. Shane visited me in the hills of St. Thomas and in later years Tom Clancy carried his Hunt For The Red October into my backyard. One of my favourite books was Bakers Hawk. I do not remember who wrote the novel, but it was a story about a boy who befriended a man who was an outcast in the community. The man tamed a hawk and taught the boy how to make it land on his arm. They separated when the man was chased from the community, but reunited several years later quite by chance. I must have read that one 20 times.

There were other animal books, including Black Beauty, one about a boy who made friends with a bear, White Fang, which curiously was borrowed from the library. And there were the books I was banned from reading, including one starring Tambour, an African slave renowned in the U.S. (New Orleans?) for his fighting skill, the size of his penis and ability to use said organ. On white and black women, but especially white. Like most bans it did not work and I spent many days open-mouthed at Tambour's skill in ring and bed and wondered if I would ever measure up. I am wondering still.

Many of those books went to Munro, Dorm Four, Extension Dorm, Dorms Three, Two and One of Coke-Farquaharson House swallowing them never to return.

The bookcase is gone now and so is the house, stripped to its walls. Some of the books made it out of St. Thomas, but I can't put my hands on 10 now. I have read books from many other places, including the St. Thomas Parish Library and the Harrison Memorial Library at Munro. I have been instructed in English by several excellent teachers, some of whom were never my teachers officially. Mrs. Keane, Mrs. Cousins and Mrs. Marshall from Lyssons All-Age, Mr. Lowrie in Sixth Form at Munro. But my foundation is my father's bookcase.

Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.

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