Eden Burning

by Belva Plain

  “You mean you’re going to take a place like hers, nursing”—Agnes was scornful—“a pack of babies all day?”

  “It can’t be news to you that I want to teach, Maman.”

  “Yes, but I thought in Jamaica, maybe, since they’ve opened the University College. Certainly not here on St. Felice!”

  He smiled. “You’re sorry I came home, then?”

  “You know I’m not! I’m thinking of you; you’re too educated now for this measly little place. I prepared you for the world, I didn’t think you’d come back here!”

  “You came back, didn’t you?”

  “I’m different. I’m an ignorant woman.”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me, Maman.”

  In the morning he took the bus into Covetown, seated between a pregnant woman with two young ones on her lap and another woman with two crated hens on her lap. The rickety-rackety bus careened dangerously over the abominable road, past cane fields and villages of daub-and-wattle houses where the privy stood at the back of the yam patch and naked babies crawled among tethered goats. He regarded it all in partial amazement, as though he had never really looked at it before, and partially with plain acceptance, because it was just the old familiar way of things.

  The bus halted in the market square. He got out and walked down Wharf Street past the banks, the sugar brokers, and Da Cunha’s, before whose windows tourists stood pricing cameras and watches. The undertaker still advertised coffins made to measure. Climbing the hill toward Government House, he passed the library, smiling at the memory of that far-off boy who had sat there writing his “masterwork” about the Carib Indians. Boys’ Secondary came next. Father Baker’s office was in the left-hand wing. He went up the path and almost collided with Father Baker.

  The priest’s round face wrinkled with surprise and pleasure. “Patrick! Don’t tell me you’re back already! How are you? How are you? Come on and talk to me, let me introduce you to an old friend, Clarence Porter; but of course you know who he is, everybody does.”

  Patrick looked into the face of a sturdy black man in late middle age. “Forgive me, but I’m afraid—” he said, and was interrupted.

  “No need to apologize, young man. My work came long before your time, and if you’d known about it when you were at school you probably wouldn’t have cared, anyway.” And Porter took Patrick’s hand, giving it a rough shake.

  The teakettle was on the electric burner in the study; the cups were the same blue and white, stained tan on the inside, from which Patrick had drunk only four years earlier. Father Baker’s gown was still spotted. Cries floated from the playing fields beyond the windows as he questioned and Patrick replied. One might never have been away.

  While he was giving his account of himself, the big dark man—shades darker than a walnut—sat quietly. He wore a workman’s clothing; his hair was gray; his eyes were watchful. When at last there came a lull in the questions and answers, he spoke.

  “I was in England myself, many years ago. I could have stayed there, but I chose to come back. I’m glad you did, too.”

  “Clarence won’t tell you much about himself,” Father Baker began.

  “Who says I won’t? There’s no virtue in false modesty. I’ve done my share and I’m not shy about it!”

  “No more you should be. But let me tell it. Clarence has lived all over the world, Patrick. He’s been a chefs helper in Europe, a travel agent’s clerk in New York, a carpenter in Jamaica—”

  “And an inmate of five separate jails,” Clarence interposed. “Don’t forget to put that in.”

  “I won’t forget,” Father Baker said quietly. He turned to Patrick. “They were honorable incarcerations. Clarence was jailed for leading strikes against inhuman conditions. He organized the first island-wide union here on St. Felice forty years ago.”

  Patrick wondered, “How is it I never knew about a thing like that?”

  “To our shame,” Father Baker said, “we never taught and still don’t teach them in our schools. Not even at ours, which is supposed to be, and is, superior.”

  “Well,” Porter said, “it’s all ancient history. I’m taking it easy now. Just do a little carpentering when I feel like it, and go to union meetings, but leave the heavy business to the young.” He tipped his chair back on two legs. “Oh, if I could write, I could tell—but you’d need a lot of skill to get down on paper all the courage, the fear, and the bloody brutality of those first years. I can remember the deportations and the all-white vigilantes. I can remember when they brought the Royal Wessex Regiment out from England to calm the countryside—But enough of that. Tell us what you’re going to do with yourself now,” he concluded.

  The alert, remarkable eyes now fixed on Patrick made him self-conscious. But he answered simply, “I’m looking for a teaching post in a country district. Somewhere over beyond Morne Bleue in some little place like, well say like Gully, or Hog Run or Delicia.”

  Porter looked surprised. “You really want to rough it, don’t you? I grew up on that side till I was twelve and left home. They still went whaling over there in those days. Used to put lookouts on the hills; when they saw a whale spout they’d signal to the boats and the harpooners would give chase. But all that’s changed. Suppose you’ll have any trouble getting a post?”

  “Jobs are scarce, I know. But I’m well qualified. And I feel sure I can do some good. That’s why I want it so much, because I really believe I can.”

  “You’re an idealist, then,” Porter said.

  Patrick ignored that. “I have a friend—he’s my best friend’s father—Dr. Mebane. He’ll help me. He knows a lot of people.”

  “Oh, he knows a lot of people! The right people, too.” Porter’s irony was unmistakable. Nevertheless, he shook hands as Patrick stood to depart. “And if I can ever help you, in some other way, remember me. Or if you just feel like having a talk. My place is on Pine Hill, other side of the harbor, where the working class lives. Name’s on the gate: Clarence Porter, carpentry, it says.”

  “I should think,” Dr. Mebane observed, “that Father Baker or one of the other masters might take you on as an assistant. Or something. Teaching in a country school seems rather a step down for you.”

  “I don’t see it as such. ‘Give me the child before he is six’—don’t the Jesuits say that?”

  “You could do more to mold the mind in secondary school.”

  “How many of our children ever get to secondary school?”

  Dr. Mebane looked out over the harbor where two white yachts rode gleaming in the sun.

  “The pay is much less,” he said.

  “I don’t require much to live.”

  “You’re an idealist!”

  Patrick laughed. “That’s what Clarence Porter said yesterday.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “He was with Father Baker when I went to call.”

  “That figures. The good father is a sympathizer.”

  “Sympathizer?”

  “With labor.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “Of course. But there are ways and ways. Porter has always been an angry man. Too angry.”

  “There’s much to be angry about, isn’t there? Or sad. You know what, Doctor? There are times when I am so sad, when I think of our history, our long history in this place—”

  “I hope you’re not affected that way too often. You’re very young. If you can’t enjoy some lighthearted selfishness now, when can you? I detect a tendency in you to be too emotional, Patrick.”

  The clock struck the half hour. Its delicate ping! befitted the fussy room, the tasseled pillows heaped on the sofa and the dyed feathers in a glass vase on the bookcase. Once he had thought this house was the zenith of elegance; now he had learned better. It merely yearned toward elegance.

  “Besides,” Dr. Mebane resumed with vigor, “you have another history on this island. An English history, a French, or both. Their blood runs in our veins, too. And it�
�s proud blood: explorers, aristocrats, Huguenots fleeing the Terror.”

  Patrick was silent.

  “I keep that in mind whenever I sit in the Council or in any official capacity.”

  It is the pomposity of old age, Patrick thought. Even Nicholas had remarked it once, not unkindly, of his father.

  “Things are improving all the time and further than I thought possible. Federation is almost upon us. I was a delegate to the Representative Government Association at Roseau in Dominica in 1932 when all we hoped for was popular representation in the legislatures, an expansion of the suffrage. I have stuck with the movement ever since. Three years ago I was in Montego Bay—that was in February 1956—at the invitation of London to discuss the Moyne Commission report and to draft a federal constitution. So far have we come in these few years! I’m an optimist, Patrick, it’s the only way to survive…. You don’t want to go into politics with Nicholas? You’d make a fine team, the two of you.”

  “Politics don’t interest me in that way. I’m a teacher.”

  “Well, then, we’ll just have to get you a job, won’t we? But you’ll need some recreation, too; would you like me to put you up at the Crocus Club? We’ve just bought a boat for deep-sea fishing and—”

  “It’s too expensive for me, I’m afraid,” Patrick murmured.

  “It isn’t; you’d be surprised. Of course, the social business can get silly; it’s the tennis that really attracts me. Still, you do meet interesting people. The movers and doers.”

  “Thanks very much, but if I could be settled first at work, then—”

  “I’ll do everything I can, Patrick. I miss my son—you can take his place this next year. Then, when he comes back, I’ll have the two of you.”

  I am too critical, Patrick thought, going home. Mebane had his quirks, as who of us had not? That particular quirk about ancestry was one that Patrick had remarked in him a long time before. He ought to be grateful for the man’s friendship. And he was grateful. Yet, the doctor was a small man. Like his house, he seemed to have grown smaller since Patrick had grown up. He had remembered them both, the house and the man, as large and impressive. They were neither.

  He had been teaching for three months, living at Gully, a village hung halfway between a mountaintop and the sea, in a meager one-room house on stilts no better than the homes of his pupils. Sometimes, preparing the next day’s lessons by the light of a kerosene lamp, he was flooded with a sensation of virtue which he immediately stifled as being ugly, unjustified, and smug. For the most part he was still exhilarated; the minds of his appealing little children were the emptiest possible slates, and as his were to be the first marks upon them, he felt like a great experimenter, a messenger, literally, from abroad.

  One Saturday he went down into Covetown to do some shopping, stopped for a beer, looked for Father Baker, who was out, thought how pleasant it would be when Nicholas was back again, roamed some more streets, and found himself on the far side of the harbor in the section called Pine Hill.

  At one time, obviously, the hillside must have been covered with pines; now it was covered with flat-roofed bungalows, each with its fenced-in cement square that passed for a yard, some bougainvillaea vines, and some sort of vehicle in a shed—a Ford car, a light truck, or a Honda. It was a wage-earner’s neighborhood, in which the prosperity of an owner could be gauged by the tidiness of his possessions and the freshness of his paint.

  Suddenly Patrick remembered Clarence Porter. He walked on, searching among the names on the gateposts. Porter’s house, no more costly than those surrounding it, had a grass yard, bright blue shutters, and tubs of flowers on the front porch. Porter himself was sitting on the porch.

  “Remember me?” Patrick asked. “You said I might drop in for a talk sometime.”

  “Sure, sure! Come in. Draw up a chair. Anything special you wanted to talk about?”

  “To tell the truth, no. I guess I was just feeling a little lonesome. Wanted some adult conversation.”

  “That’s right, you’re with kids all the time now, aren’t you? Have a beer.”

  “Thanks, I just had one downtown.”

  “Have another.”

  Porter fetched the beer. Patrick began the conversation in the conventional fashion.

  “You’ve a nice house here.”

  “Built it myself. Built two, as a matter of fact. That yellow one up at the end of the street is mine, too. I rent it out. You get a good view from here, good breeze, same as they get on Library Hill, only it costs half as much.”

  Patrick acknowledged that that was so. Far below, the boats were dots in the harbor and Covetown’s business section was a cluster of white rooftops. He had not realized he had climbed so far.

  “My wife loved it, being up this high. She’s dead now. I live here with my daughter Dezzy. Name’s Désirée, but I call her Dezzy, which she hates.” Porter chuckled. “She works at Da Cunha’s selling things she can’t afford to buy. Maybe you’ve seen her—very tall, almost as tall as you, long hair.”

  “I don’t go to Da Cunha’s. I can’t afford it, either.”

  “Guess not!” Porter chuckled again. He struck a match, lit his pipe, and lounged back. “So! Dr. Mebane got you what you wanted, I see.”

  “Yes. I appreciate it.”

  “Aside from that, what do you think of him?”

  The blunt question was discomfiting. “Well, I’ve known him since I was thirteen. I was always welcome in their house. I was from Sweet Apple, you know; my mother had a little store there, still has; Dr. Mebane was very kind to me—”

  “Of course he was! Look at yourself! Your color, I mean. Has he invited you to join the country club?”

  “Yes. I’m not going to, though.”

  “My daughter couldn’t join his club. She’s too dark.”

  There was a silence. The man’s sense of injury was palpable. And Patrick said gently, “Perhaps she doesn’t want to, anyway.”

  “The funny thing is, she would love it. Just as she would love to buy the stuff on Da Cunha’s shelves. But that’s natural. Women always want things. I myself couldn’t care less.” He tipped forward and knocked his pipe out on the porch railing. “It all stems from the white man and his concubines! These light-brown people like to think about how they’ve descended from the aristocracy of Europe. They don’t want to remember Africa. A seat in the legislature, a collar and tie, being invited to a reception at Government House—that’s all it took to buy them off. And the British Colonial Office has done just that!”

  “Surely—” Patrick began, but Porter was not to be stopped.

  “Do you know how many of these so-called upper-class browns owned slaves themselves? They were cruel masters, most of them, as cruel as the whites. They had learned well, let me tell you. Why, even as recently as the nineteen twenties—Listen. I remember there was a white man, an Englishman who came out here with a company that was to put streetlights downtown, a socialist he was, serious red-haired fellow; he went around making friends among the blacks here, the working class; made a few speeches, harmless enough. One night a gang beat him up. After that, they got rid of him, shipped him back to England, and who do you think applauded, who was behind it?”

  “The planters, naturally?”

  “Of course, the planters, the powerful families, men like old Virgil Francis. But never think the Mebanes and their kind didn’t go right along. They’ve got their little vested interests, too, and the lower wages are, the more stays in their pockets.”

  Patrick said doubtfully, “But this is nineteen fifty-nine. People think differently now. I know that Nicholas Mebane isn’t like his father, if his father is altogether what you say he is.”

  Porter stared at him a moment. “I hope you’re right. I don’t know. I get heated up. I’m not very tactful, am I?”

  “Not very.” Patrick laughed. Porter’s vehemence was interesting, anyway.

  “I shoot my mouth off. I’m self-educated. I read everything. Father Baker h
elped me. He’s a man, a real man.”

  “Even though he’s white?”

  “Even though he’s white. He thinks a good deal of you, by the way. He tells me—”

  “I’d rather hear about you. About the early unions. I know almost nothing about them.”

  Porter looked pleased. He cleared his throat. “It’s a long story. But in a nutshell, this is it. We had small unions as far back as the eighteen nineties, mostly in the construction trades. They didn’t get far then because picketing was against the law. Also, a union could be sued for damages resulting from a strike. It took a world war, the first, and then a world depression to change things. You’re too young to recall the bloodshed in the thirties. Strikes and riots from Trinidad to St. Lucia, from coal bearers to sugar workers. Slow, slow progress. But it’s only the labor movement that’s put another meal on the table, remember that.”

  The man’s voice swayed Patrick, drew pictures in his mind. Sweet Apple, years ago, and the eight-year-olds working in the cane. Gully now, the children walking shoeless in the rain, bringing a lunch of lard on bread to school.

  “But,” he said, “when federation comes, economic progress will come with it. You condemn Dr. Mebane—and I do understand some of what you mean—but still, it is men like him who are bringing this great change about. With the end of colonial rule will come wider social justice. It’s bound to come.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps. Oh, I don’t want you to think I’m an embittered man, prejudiced against people because they have more money than I have or their skin is lighter than mine—I wouldn’t be talking like this to you if that were the case, now would I? But what I fear is this: We’ll get our political independence only to have a new class step into the Englishman’s shoes, and the workman will be no better off. Or not much.”

  The gate clanged. Against the glare of five o’clock sunlight Patrick could see only a tall, thin figure, obviously female, coming up the walk.

  “Got the soapbox out again, Pa? I could hear you halfway to the corner.”

  “Come in out of the dazzle, it hurts my eyes. This is Patrick Courzon, a friend of Father Baker’s. My daughter Dezzy. I told you, she hates being called Dezzy. She likes to be called Désirée.”