Aman­da Smyth's third nov­el, For­tune, is set in colo­nial Trinidad dur­ing the roar­ing twen­ties-based Dome fire in 1928 on a for­mer co­coa es­tate in Siparia when 17 peo­ple–oil in­vestors and their fam­i­lies–died watch­ing an oil well spurt 'black gold'. It is the work of a nov­el­ist much at the height of her pow­ers that you re­main drenched in the sto­ry long af­ter you put the book down.

Pub­lished by Peepal Tree Press, Smyth's nov­el has all the el­e­ments of a Greek tragedy. Ed­die Wade, an oil­man of raw phys­i­cal­i­ty. Am­bi­tion sniffs oil in Trinidad and re­turns to make his For­tune.

It is Trinidad of the 1920s, oil spurts, the first plane flies to Venezuela, cin­e­ma ar­rives, gin­ger­bread hous­es have sprung up, the Cad­bury broth­ers in Eng­land have stopped im­port­ing co­coa, pover­ty is on the rise, there are wa­ter ri­ots.

It be­gins with Ed­die Wade, a charis­mat­ic and am­bi­tious 'fresh­wa­ter Yan­kee' with ex­pe­ri­ence in oil in the US, per­suad­ing Son­ny Chat­ter­jee, a flail­ing farmer whose an­ces­tral land is float­ing in oil, to al­low him to drill there. Ini­tial­ly re­luc­tant, Ed­die breaks down Son­ny over a se­ries of vis­its main­ly be­cause Son­ny's wife, Si­ta is un­hap­py about their re­duced cir­cum­stances due to falling co­coa prices. Af­ter one of his vis­its to Son­ny's es­tate, Ed­die's truck breaks down, and Tito Fer­nan­des, an old­er busi­ness­man stops, gives Ed­die a lift in­to town and over time, of­fers to in­vest in Ed­die's drill on Son­ny's land. He in­tro­duces Ed­die to his wife, Ada.

Tito is gen­er­ous and ex­pan­sive but al­so tor­ment­ed to the edge of sui­cide af­ter hav­ing un­wit­ting­ly sanc­tioned the mur­der of his ex-fi­ancée's new lover. Tito’s beau­ti­ful and decades-younger wife, Ada, who he adores, and guards watch­ful­ly, is his Achilles heel. Ada, im­pul­sive, sti­fled in Trinidad, un­der Tito’s con­trol­ling eye, is sus­cep­ti­ble to Ed­die's con­sid­er­able charms, and Tito is painful­ly aware of this.

The rest is a kind of in­evitabil­i­ty, a tale beau­ti­ful­ly told of love, lust, greed, be­tray­al, over­reach­ing and des­tiny.

In St Claire, as the char­ac­ters draw close, wait­ers and maids serve cham­pagne, women with crim­son paint­ed mouths dress in provoca­tive sil­hou­ettes and fox­trot, and the men chew on their cig­ars. The sto­ry piv­ots on a very ur­ban scene when Tito spots Ava out­side a ho­tel where Ed­die of­ten boards and fi­nal­ly un­der­stands the full ex­tent of the be­tray­al.

These press­ing hu­man de­sires of Smyths' char­ac­ters are echoed in a land­scape of Trinidad drawn by her in a man­ner so tech­ni­colour it is cin­e­mat­ic.

The close re­la­tion­ship be­tween hu­mans with beast and land is ev­i­dent from the time Ed­die runs over a dog and sees it suf­fer­ing, so he runs over it again, crush­ing its skull. Lat­er he kills a snake, re­moves ba­by snakes and throws them in a buck­et for a cook up.

De­sire, greed and be­tray­al are en­twined with the land­scape drawn in­tri­cate­ly as a fres­co. It brings a spec­tre of death and dan­ger, siz­zling heat, hu­mid­i­ty, rain, mud, swarms of sand­flies, dead­ly scor­pi­ons, mos­qui­toes 'fir­ing high-pitched sirens', a cut-down silk cot­ton tree that looks like a woman in grey rags. There is im­mense beau­ty too–with clus­ters of 'pink wet fun­gus on leaves', 'the dawn sky is streaked as if a dye ran through it', sun­sets are 'cracked with gold'. The rain is like 'jab­bing nee­dles that break the rivers' skin'.

Amanda Smyth

Af­ter Ada and Ed­die make love, Ada, stunned by her own in­fi­deli­ty, comes home in the rain and stands in mud and wa­ter that is knee-high be­fore go­ing in­doors as if seek­ing both bene­dic­tion and for­give­ness. For­tune leaves you with time­less hu­man ques­tions of whether the wages of sin is death or the heart wants what it wants and flies un­stop­pable to­wards its des­tiny.

How do you en­twine oil, Trinidad's land­scape and the hearts of men in this nov­el?

This is a love let­ter to Trinidad. I come and go and not be­long. Sit­ting in a house in Leam­ing­ton, Trinidad’s land­scape sym­bol­is­es what I love and the con­nec­tion I have to Trinidad. I saw the land­scape as an­oth­er char­ac­ter. The land is a can­vas on which their long­ings play and are mir­rored back to them. The char­ac­ters see it dif­fer­ent­ly, but the earth couldn't care less. A mi­nor char­ac­ter, Scot­tish, finds Trinidad ter­ri­fy­ing. She sees dan­ger every­where–peo­ple drown, swept in­to a whirlpool by the wa­ters by a riv­er on the coast, in African bees, in fly­ing gal­vanise dur­ing a storm that slits off a neck of a lo­cal. She sees it as a place to die.

Ada feels trapped in Trinidad at times. The way every­one has eyes on every­one else. But the land­scape lib­er­ates her. She takes Ed­die to the Bam­boo Cathe­dral and feels the bene­dic­tion of a church; the sea breeze frees her.

Ed­die sees the land as a means to fill his pock­ets, oil, gold, and he will do any­thing to get it, but the land will have none of it. It will do what it wants re­gard­less of hu­man wants and de­sires.

Son­ny feels a guilty loy­al­ty to his fa­ther’s land be­ing drilled for oil. When the silk cot­ton tree is cut down, he cries as of­fer­ings to the spir­its are scat­tered.

Tito talks about lov­ing Trinidad. I know Tri­nis like that–they are nev­er go­ing any­where. You go away to come back, but he is not that dif­fer­ent from Ed­die. He, too, wants to plun­der the land.

What prompt­ed you to write about this ex­plo­sion?

Ini­tial­ly, I just want­ed to write about an ex­plo­sion. I was in Trinidad dur­ing the 2005 Lon­don bomb­ings and would have been on that train as it was my route to work. I thought of the peo­ple who missed the train, were late, of des­tiny, and whether our lives are fore­cast­ed, plot­ted or ran­dom.

My mom, who lives here, said if you want to write about an ex­plo­sion, go to the Dome.

Her part­ner's an­ces­tor should have died there, but he strug­gled to get his coat on, and the car dri­ver drove on. All the peo­ple in the car died. The late his­to­ri­an An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh said, ‘Come to my house, and I’ll take you there.’ And he did.

My great grand­fa­ther put mon­ey in that well in Siparia. He was a Fer­nan­des. I based Tito on him, so it end­ed up be­ing a per­son­al sto­ry on how a chance en­counter with some­one whose car breaks down can seal your fate.

How close have you kept to the orig­i­nal?

Fa­ther De Ver­teuil wrote about the ex­plo­sion in four beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten pages.

In Trinidad's ear­ly days of oil, cor­po­ra­tions and small in­vestors were sniff­ing for oil. The land in Siparia was float­ing on a bed of oil. You could push your um­brel­la in and see it come up like mo­lasses. In­stead of hav­ing to drill 2,000 feet, they were hit­ting big fun­nels of oil at 400 feet.

The orig­i­nal in­vestor had bought him­self a beau­ti­ful Mer­cedes with his oil mon­ey among the first, with an ig­ni­tion which he took to cel­e­brate the oil gush­ing from the well in Siparia that night with his high-so­ci­ety friends.

While it got dark­er and dark­er, they were pic­nick­ing and drink­ing cham­pagne not know­ing the oil and gas were leak­ing.

That night the equip­ment wasn't work­ing. They couldn't fix the blowout pre­ven­ter, but they kept drilling. When they dis­cov­ered the leak­age, they plead­ed with peo­ple from Apex or Tex­a­co who saw it hap­pen­ing and had the equip­ment, to help, but they were fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive, fu­ri­ous they didn’t have a share and re­fused to help.

There was no moon, and they switched on the car lights for­get­ting about the ig­ni­tion. The fire burnt for three days and took them all out.

A big oil com­pa­ny let 17 peo­ple die. That's what oil did to peo­ple.

My orig­i­nal idea was to have 17 points of view, but it changed as I start­ed to write.

The sad­dest thing is one in­vestor, Ralph Sam­my re­lat­ed to my mom's part­ner, had two daugh­ters and a wife. One daugh­ter was in a board­ing school in town. He went to the Dome with his wife and daugh­ter, Flo­ra. The daugh­ter at board­ing school was asleep and woke scream­ing just around the time the ex­plo­sion took place. The nuns didn't know why. Short­ly af­ter­wards, her un­cle came and drove her to Siparia, point­ed at the fire and said, ‘they are all dead, your moth­er fa­ther and sis­ter.’ She nev­er cried about it un­til her 70’s when she read Fa­ther De Ver­teuil ac­count at which point she sobbed.

How do you do the me­chan­ics of an oil drill with such ease?

I read about it in tech­ni­cal books, ac­tu­al me­chan­ics of ear­ly oil drilling, and a draw­ing on my wall, a di­a­gram of a der­rick and how it worked. The en­gi­neer­ing terms were love­ly. di­a­mond bits, der­rick floor, blowout pre­ven­ter. In those ear­ly days in oil, they ex­per­i­ment­ed, test­ed new pre­car­i­ous ways of drilling. The in­vestors were greedy, self­ish, reck­less, not both­er­ing with safe­ty equip­ment. They just want­ed the oil, the mon­ey, and to get out.

What do your char­ac­ters want from oil?

The women, though not as present, are the voice of truth and Son­ny Chat­ter­jee s wife, al­though she likes gold and ma­te­r­i­al things, hates drilling on their es­tate, wants out, and once ex­claims to her hus­band, 'You can't eat oil.’

Ada wants to feel ful­ly alive, and it has noth­ing to do with the mon­ey or oil or the big house–it has to do with be­ing in love with Ed­die while al­so lov­ing her hus­band.

The men–Ed­die and Tito and Son­ny–are all ego-dri­ven, greedy, want­i­ng more mon­ey, more oil, more...throw­ing them­selves in­to this project that's a mess, chas­ing it down, rush­ing to dis­as­ter.

For­tune is pub­lished by Peepal Tree Press 2021. It is list­ed as among the best his­tor­i­cal fic­tion of 2021 by The Times. The of­fi­cial launch of Smyths For­tune is on the 21st of Ju­ly at 2 pm TT and 7 pm UK time. Log on to Eventbrite for free tick­ets.

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