Danny Boy arrived early in the morning as promised but there was an absence of materials in his hands.

-You are going to wash walls today right?

I asked the question brightly.

Danny Boy said he was travelling home by bus because his girlfriend was working late and so he couldn't carry everything.

-I walked with this.

He showed me his schoolboy rucksack which I presumed contained lunch. 

-I need to use your cloths and buckets.

-Danny, I'm a tourist.  I've only been here five minutes.  I don't have cloths and buckets.  I thought you would bring your materials.

I was trying not to lose my rag.

-My girlfriend couldn't drive me this evening.  I have to take the bus.

Clearly there was something I wasn't understanding here about the hardship of getting on a bus. Danny Boy looked positively mournful.  For my part I've worked nights and early mornings all my life and by whatever means - you just get there.  It's called will and ingenuity.  I tried to imagine my Polish builders I last used in London complaining about taking their supplies on public transport.  It was incomprehensible.

I had already pressed my landlady to the limit and I thought if I asked her for a bucket she might tip one over my head.  I decided it was better to look elsewhere for bucket-borrowing.  I called my sane and lovely friend, Reenie, who has guest apartments just over the hill.  She doesn't really do long-term lets or so I thought.  Otherwise I would have stayed there instead - in a heartbeat.

Danny Boy was listening so I kept my situational sketch non-accusatory and mild.

-The very nice painter has arrived to properly prep the walls but unfortunately he forgot to walk with a bucket.

Reenie laughed because she gets me.  She would be able to read between the lines.  I had already apprised her of my current situation (flat a mess, dirty tobacco-coloured walls, landlady reluctant to fork for anything etc).

-Okay.

More chuckling.

-I will leave a bucket out front.

-Thank you.

My appreciation was heart-felt.  I was now on day 11 of my new Bajan life.  It was not going as planned and I had yet to feel comfortable enough to do any writing work at my desk.

I rode my bicycle up and over the hill, hooked the bucket and rode back.  I had already decided to donate my surplus of London wash cloths to the cleaning.  I gave Danny the bucket and he started to mix water with washing-up liquid from the sink.

-Do you think that's best?

I was beginning to realise I might have to keep an eye on this guy.  The same Polish builders I mentioned earlier, in London, never need micro-managing and when I met Danny Boy he seemed so plausible I thought I could also turn my back.  I  just hoped the end result was going to be up to standard.

-This is best to use.

Danny Boy was squirting liberal amounts of washing-up liquid into the bucket.  I liked his confidence.

-You are going to wash the walls and then rinse?

-Yes please.

I could live with that.

Danny Boy got to work and around the edges of his industry I continued unpacking.

Normally I would be unpacked and in a full schedule within 11 days of landing permanently in a new place.  I have taken up new lives several times in the overall trajectory of my life and usually I am very quick to organise.  I moved to London when I was 19 years old and that would always be the humdinger because I knew no-one and had nothing but nerve.  My resources were both limited at the time and inexhaustible.

I tried living in Vienna when I was 30 but that was on the back of a stormy love affair so that didn't work. I also moved to Cornwall to write a few years after Vienna and I didn't like the predominant culture. Barbados has weather - glorious weather - and my internal resources now were wide.  I was vexed by all the hassle to be sure but miles away from throwing in the towel.

I got to unpacking and Danny Boy and I began to chat.  I still kept a weathering eye on what he was doing.

My landlady Mariette came to visit and she seemed reassured by his work ethic which thus far looked fine.  Danny Boy was spreading water and washing-up liquid all over my walls and doing so with some vigour.

I got part of my deposit back from Mariette - we did it off to one side and in a corner as if we were dealing drugs - and then after she left I gave a 50% advance to Danny.

I felt better at the end of my Day 11 and Danny Boy's Day 1.  My walls looked both squeaky clean and a tad soapy.

- I think you may need to rinse them more Dan.

We were now calling each other friendly abbreviations of our first name - or close enough - as he seemed to think I was Jan or Jen for Jenny.

-Tomorrow I will rinse.

Danny Boy was decisive in his delivery.  

-It will take me two hours to get home by bus.

This transport estimate didn't sound right but I said nothing more.  I tried to let the soaped aspect of my tobacco walls calm my mind.  I had already set my computer up and that evening I turned to it with focus.  I knew what I had to write, I just wasn't sure yet what I needed in the moment to switch some current on.  I thought Barbados with all her sun and unknowingness might do it.

Day 2 for Danny Boy and Day 12 for myself seemed to hold more promise.  Danny Boy brought a step ladder which he had tied to the roof of his girlfriend's car and he told me that by afternoon he would have begun painting.  As arranged I had paid for the paint in advance and that morning on the way to my flat Danny had collected it.

I had errands to run and I trusted him so I turned my back on what was happening and I went to Bridgetown on my bike.  The sun was a banner and a song and I felt straightforwardly happy cycling. On the way back I experimented with thinking about this apartment as home and when I came inside there seemed to me to be some impovement.  The walls looked washed and rinsed as far as I could tell - the flat was still dark  - plus Danny Boy had taken up a painterly position in the main room.

-Do you have dust sheets Dan?

I was looking at Mariette's furniture.  Granted it was shabby but it was currently green.  Danny was preparing then to sweep his fresh-dipped paintbrush onto the wall alongside.

-We don't use dust sheets.  Just clean up at the end.

I presumed that 'we' meant himself and other Guyanese.  At one stage they flooded into Barbados looking for work and the general attitude was that they worked harder than the Bajans.

The idea of no dust sheets sounded a little questionable but by now I liked this guy.  I wondered if my Polish painters - who sealed everything with plastic sheeting and tape before they so much as flipped open a paint can - were perhaps overly cautious.  Or simply more rambunctious than Dan the Man.  Danny's approach to work was steady but also leisurely by UK standards.

I let him get on with it and parked myself at the other end of the flat.  I was still cleaning mould out of cupboards and bleaching everything twice just to get a space I could decant my clothes into.  I visited Danny one hour later and I saw that the white was nice and bright.  I also saw paint in his hair and then I looked down at Mariette's green furniture.

-Danny!  You've got paint on this.

-Have I?

-Yes! Look.  I think you need dust sheets.

-It's not the way we do it.  We just clean up at the end.

I looked rather doubtfully at the green fabric which had tiny white dots on it now.

-Is this paint going to come off with water.

-Oh yes.

I could feel myself getting stressed and I thought I better just leave him to it.

The next three days are hard to describe.  I could blame it on the intense Barbados sun.  Nothing was the way I wanted it to be in this place and I kept hoping that somehow the paint job upon completion would set the record straight.  I saw evidence to the contrary (paint on the cooker, paint on the seat of my bike) and I just had to trust that Danny Boy knew what he was doing.  He seemed comfortable and so I hoped all would come out right.  Perhaps if  I wasn't floundering already I would have been more on it.

It was on the last day of his projected five days that I really began to calculate the area remaining to be covered multiplied by the number of paint cans left.  That was when Danny and I came a cropper.

-Dan, you aren't going to have enough paint.

Danny Boy stopped working and surveyed me with a frown.  I could see tiny flecks of white paint on Mariette's ugly beige rug.

-You should have rolled that up.  Look!

-It will come off with water.  I am doing it at the end.

-You're not going to finish today Danny.

-There is something wrong with these walls.  The amount of paint I told you to buy was correct.  They absorb too much.

Oh, I thought - Jesus.

Then it was all too much for me.  This paint-flecked apartment, the half-painted walls, Mariette's furniture which I should have protected and Danny's insistence that it would be all right.

-How many more days is it going to take you?  I am using my deposit up as it is.

Danny was unruffled.  

-I need one more day.

-Okay.

I said it with resolution.  I just needed the job done.

-But I cannot come tomorrow.

-What?!

-I promised my girlfriend's cousin I would work with him for the day.

-Danny you have to finish this job!

-I promised him.

-What about the paint all over everything?

-I will start to clean that now.

-What?  And then paint more again after and resplatter everything once more? Please bring dust sheets and please come tomorrow.

-I don't use dust sheets and I cannot.

At this stage the look I gave him must have been incredulous.

-Your girlfriend will be here in one hour.  You're never going to clean the paint up in one hour's time.

-She will wait in the car.  She has her mobile phone.

Yeah, right.  Texting.

You can guess the rest of this story.  Danny discovered that his splatter-paint efforts would not come off.  He began to suggest things like taking off the sofa cover and washing it.  I surveyed how much of the flat remained to be painted and I realised I could not tolerate his presence for one day more.

-You need to finish today Danny.  I will clean this shit up later.

He looked reprovingly at me.

-You shouldn't swear.

Then his piece de résistance.

-My girlfriend says you are rude.

I thought you couldn't make this stuff up.  Which girlfriend?  The one who has never met me and sits texting in the car.

-If you don't finish this job today Danny I am not going to pay you anything more.  You can walk and I will get someone else to do it or you can finish.

Danny's girlfriend arrived at 6 pm and since she considered me rude I thought I would even the score.  Anywhere you go in Barbados you get offered a nice glass of tap water which is drinkable because of the way it is filtered through coral.  I didn't go out to the car and give her one.  She wasn't even going to get a female-friendly offer of a toilet.

Now Danny and I were both upset.  He told me he was going to see his girlfriend in the car.  Then he came back inside after 10 minutes and re-started his work but I knew he was up to something.

A moment later Mariette arrived.  Danny, who had her number in his phone regarding paint, must have called her from the car and spun some line about Jeannie not paying him.  Mariette came tentatively into the apartment and I just wanted to lie on the floor and weep.  All of the above having come about because this place was a dump and I was simply trying to improve it.

My desire to cry was soon superseded by rage.  How dare my painter call my landlady.  I had to bottle this though because Mariette was a longer-term relationship - or so I thought - and she was now looking with justifiable concern at the paint splatters on woodwork, furniture and floor.

-I am very sorry.

I knew I had to take some ownership here.

-I asked him to use dustsheets repeatedly.

I glared at Danny Boy and thought what's he going to say now.  Will he tell my landlady that I said the word 'shit' in front of him?

Mariette looked aghast at everything and I reassured her that all would be sorted in the next day or so.  There was a very nice Guyanese cleaner whom Mariette used and what I thought to myself was I will employ Joanne.  The expenditure on all this was getting out of control but surely in one day Joanne could get this apartment paint-free and mould-free also.

Mariette left looking unhappy and I rounded on Danny in a fury to deliver two sentences more.

-How dare you call my landlady.  You are really off the map.

I went to the other end of the apartment and began the clean-up.  Danny Boy painted in darkness until 10 pm without food or water and we didn't say one word.  I could see Batwoman in the car waiting for him and the ember light of her mobile phone.  It is dark in the tropics at 6 pm and anyway my flat is badly lit by design.  He might have been painting soft and hard zebras stripes for all I would know.  I would have to wait until morning when a few shafts of sunlight would come in.

When he was done I put the balance of the money in his hand without a word.  Then I very firmly held the screen door open.

We still had Nasreen in common and maybe Danny stumbled a little when he thought that.  Even in the half-light I could see the paint job was amateur and uneven.

Danny looked half-apologetic.

-After I finish helping my girlfriend's cousin I could come back...

-Danny you are never coming in this flat again.

And that was the end of my sad painter, Danny Boy - bucketless and on the bus to nowhere.