And, when I was in Trinidad, I did the longish drive one day to the north-easternmost point of the island, Point Galera, Galley Point. Columbus gave the name. An asphalt lane led off the main road to the Point itself. After the forest of the last few miles, the lane felt high and exposed. The light was harder; the asphalt looked very black; you could hear the wind and the sea. Half-stripped old coconut trees were on one side of the lane, untrimmed bush on the other side, with many young guava trees (no doubt seeded by birds, always overhead), and with a wind-blown drift of browned newspaper and bleached, flattened cardboard packets. At the end of the lane was a disused lighthouse. A little way up its cracked white bulk it was marked—in raised plaster or concrete—with a date, 1897, a simple diamond shape, and the letters VDJ. The letters stood for “Victoria Diamond Jubilee.” It was a double celebration: 1897 was not only the year of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria; it was also the centenary of the British conquest of Trinidad from the Spaniards.
