Thursday, September 4th, and final preparations are well in train. Everyone’s out buying survival equipment: canned food, lamps, flashlights, batteries, yards of masking tape, neatly packaged squares of blue tarpaulin. Why tarpaulin? I wonder. As a Guyanese, with only second-hand reports of past hurricanes to go by - this would be my first actual experience of one — I naturally associated tarpaulin with improvised canvas bivouacs in the rainforest or the huge tents erected for massive, crisis-inspired, evangelical, outdoor prayer meetings, still popular in Guyana. Were Bermudians being overly pessimistic? (later, after the hurricane, I understood why when I saw dozens of square metres of tarpaulin - actually a kind of heavy plastic - tied, like bright blue flags, across damaged rooftops ) Joining the ranks of a shopping crowd during a hurricane alert is in itself a kind of preparation for survival, an obstacle course to be tackled in preparation for the storm and its aftermath. In spite of the long queues, the cars circling, waiting, looking for parking space, the hardware store managers transformed into generalissimos in command of well-drilled troops, ushering in and marshalling small, determined armies of shoppers intent on their lists of essentials, politely jostling each other in the rush to pluck desired items from dwindling shelves, everyone seems to have been infected with a shopping bonhomie. I can’t help the feeling that the consciously casual conversations are oddly undermined by the overloaded trolleys bulky with gallons of bottled water, plastic buckets and the inevitable cellophane-wrapped squares of blue tarpaulin. Perfect strangers hail each other like old friends (a Bermudian trait drawn, like the rainwater collected from their uniquely designed roofs, from the underground well of a Caribbean sensibility).

‘how’re you doin’ man ?’

‘O.K. for now, my brother.’

One grizzled old salt, kick-starting his bike, white hair tied back in a pony tail dangling from beneath his crash helmet, says to no one in particular:

‘I’m goin’ home, man.

All I gotta do now is check on

my beer supplies !’

But under the banter, the clever quip and the effortless repartee, there’s a sense of inevitability, of a possible disaster looming. The island lies in ‘hurricane alley’, and Fabian is enormous: it’s the largest and ugliest-looking hurricane to come this way for 50 years. And it has Bermuda in its sights. I think of Shakespeare’s the Tempest, set in Bermuda in the 17th century, based on the true story of the wreck of ‘the Sea Venture’ on its reefs during a violent storm. Now Shakespeare’s phrase, ‘the stille-vexed Bermoothes’ takes on an alarming immediacy. This is still a tempest-tossed island, the world center for shipwrecks. Right now we all need to be in good cheer. After all, doesn’t the Tempest end happily for everyone? (well, not really, I recall with some disquiet : not for the ‘monster’, Caliban, the island’s only indigenous inhabitant ) The local weather news is full of dire but sensible warnings and tips for survival. I switch to the BBC weather service. The weatherman dismisses Fabian as ‘a tropical troublemaker’ (a phrase that unexpectedly takes me back to the racially troubled Britain of the 1970’s) ‘...bit of a nuisance, really’. The CNN weatherman is less dismissive, but equally myopic. ‘Yup’, he says, indicating Bermuda, a dot at the center of a circle, like a bull’s-eye at which the monstrous Fabian seems to be taking aim, ‘this is a big one and it’s heading straight for the island of Bermooda! At the present time, however, Fabian poses no threat to the Yoonided States.’ He then goes on to discuss more pressing, domestic weather concerns. We’re on our own.

We busy ourselves with the job of clearing up the garden, removing anything that might become an airborne missile: Sam’s doggie bowl, the garden hose, even medium-sized stones. My apprehension grows. I check the shutters, the windows and doors, boarding up two spaces that look vulnerable (vulnerable to what? Flying trees?). The bathtubs are filled up and the lamps, flashlights and food supplies organized. The bathroom is to be our ‘safe place’ if the roof goes. My imagination is now beginning to conjure up apocalyptic scenes. Meanwhile the wind outside is slowly, leisurely increasing its speed. This hurricane is in no hurry. Sleep finally comes, apprehension at last overcome by exhaustion.

Friday 5th September. A perfect Bermuda day. A spectacularly beautiful dawn, the sky a clear, pastel blue with pink, fan-shaped cirrus clouds. These are colours you learn to associate with Bermuda. Pink sand beaches, a cerulean blue sea, pink churches, blue and pink buses, pink houses with blue shutters (there’s even a special colour called ‘Bermuda pink’). The distant sound of the surf on the south shore, much louder than usual, is the only ominous note.

We have a traditional Bermudian breakfast: codfish and potatoes with a tomato-filled sauce, hard-boiled eggs, bananas and avocado, tea and coffee. Might as well start this Day of the Hurricane with a good, solid meal, I suppose ( my apprehension growing again ). It may be our last. The wind is now gusting a bit, the trees beginning to sway this way and that as if uncertain of what’s to come. Fabian is certainly taking his time. I notice that there are few birds around.

A car lost in the mist of showers from Hurricane Fabian in Bermuda earlier this month. (www.BermyNET.com)

A beachfront home lay in ruins in Bermuda September 7, 2003 after Hurricane Fabian ravaged the British colony. Thousands of residents of Bermuda were still without power on the Sunday as residents cleared felled trees and debris from Hurricane Fabian’s devastating hit. (REUTERS/Jean Pierre)

A lone kiskadee tries to settle on one of the power lines swaying above the street, gives up and flies off. (Where do the birds go? Probably to sit out the storm in the underground caves that exist all over the island, away from the sea, where 35 foot waves are now predicted). The noise of the surf has become quite alarming. It sounds like someone sharpening knives on a grindstone. Lunch is automatic, a lacklustre affair. Soup and bread with some leftover rice and peas. It will be our last hot meal for some time. The wind has now taken on a new sound: a low hum rising to a chilling, high-pitched whine with every sudden whip-like gust.

By midday the gas and electricity are turned off. I take Sam out on his lead for his last visit out-of-doors. As we take a turn in the garden, he looks up at me, puzzled. He doesn’t normally get taken for walks, and this is an odd time for it, anyway ( he knows. Dogs always know when something’s not quite right ). A sudden gust of wind, like a blast from the jet engines of an airliner taking off, blows our hair straight out the wrong way and Sam comes up close, clearly disturbed. We head for the house in a hurry as the wind’s whine becomes a howl and the trees begin their dance. This isn’t a swaying movement, it’s a gyrating, pulsating, swirling dance, like some modern ballet ensemble going through a bone-shaking, complicated routine. By 2 o’clock the sky is a dead-looking slate-grey and the wind is, quite literally, screaming outside. Sudden gusts rattle the doors and windows like shock waves from exploding bombs. Fabian has arrived.

From my vantage point behind the glass rectangle in the kitchen door, I watch the trees in their wild danse macabre as the wind, looking now like blown sand ( it was a mixture, I was told later, of rain and sea water ) rips through the trees, the hedges, in increasingly powerful gusts, systematically scouring and lacerating them, breaking their limbs, gradually reducing everything in its path to their basic, skeletal armatures. It’s a fascinating, brutal thing to watch.

Like a power hose trained on the futile, helplessly flailing bodies of protesters, or like an execution that first humiliates the victim by slow torture. I see a jagged piece of plastic sheeting, torn from its mooring somewhere in the neighbourhood, lying in the garden. Part of a metal letterbox, its red flag broken and twisted, is caught in the dense network of twigs that used to be a hibiscus hedge. The ground outside the window is littered with leaves and a growing pile of the broken joints and knuckles of trees. Large boughs are torn off and flung headlong like human limbs, still alive, the white inner wood resembling raw flesh before bleeding begins. To the continuous howling of the wind the great, thick-leaved Poinciana across the street is being gradually reduced to a denuded, broken-limbed skeleton; the underlying reticular structure of its branches revealed, so simple now a child might draw it. Then the wild dancing of the trees suddenly becomes blurred, as if a theatre scrim has been placed in front of the scene. Was my breath fogging the glass ? I clean the glass with a tissue. No change. It’s the salt rain on the outside. A film of sea-salt has coated every window, creating that ghostly blur, like the landscape of a Bergman film.

But now the wind has changed, blowing from the opposite direction. Slowly it begins to lose its force, and though the hedges still shake and shudder with the sudden gusts, they’ve stopped bowing down to the ground. Sam and I tentatively venture out into the garden. The wind is still strong, so I have to plant my feet firmly on the ground, keeping a tight grip on his lead. But the air is fresh now, good to breathe. We feel like prisoners let out for exercise. The garden is a deserted battlefield cluttered with leaves, broken branches, debris, the storm’s detritus. I can only imagine what havoc Fabian must have wrought across the island. Already there are reports of roofs blown off, cars swept into the sea, boats flung onto the rocks, trees hundreds of years old ripped from the ground. It is going to be a mammoth task to clean up and begin again; to pick up the pieces of what had, just yesterday, been a relatively comfortable, uneventful life.

The hardy Vitex tree in the garden with its mushroom-shaped, thick-leaved canopy and delicate mauve blossoms is almost unrecognizable. Its twisted, tortured limbs now hang downwards, splintered ends sticking out in all directions like the metal struts of a broken umbrella. I feel a surge of pity for the tree and anger at what this hurricane has done : why does Nature destroy its own ? But then I notice that, in spite of the broken branches, the trunk is still upright and there are a few tiny mauve blossoms still visible on one of the surviving branches.