Eden Burning

by Belva Plain

  At executive meetings he ran through his list.

  “Whoa, not so fast!” Nicholas rebuked one day. “We’ll get there eventually, you know.”

  “Yes, but when?” Patrick felt himself pressing.

  “The money,” Nicholas said, with emphasis. “Money. We haven’t got it.”

  “But there’s the World Bank loan. And you’ve just raised taxes. I’m not sure I understand why things are all that tight.”

  Nicholas winked around the room. The committee was a tight group, personally close; it was permitted to make teasing comments about each other.

  “Money management, as I understand you, is not one of your talents, Patrick.”

  There were smiles and chuckles, so that Patrick, too, had to smile. Everybody knew that Désirée handled the money in his house, ostensibly because he was too careless to pay bills on time; he sometimes thought, though, that it was really because she spent everything as fast as it came in and had to rob Peter to pay Paul.

  “No, you’re no financier,” Nicholas repeated, moving on to the next topic, a discussion of ways and means to “beef up” the police force on the streets of Covetown.

  For a moment Patrick hesitated. Still unused to his role, it was an effort to speak up. But he did.

  “The town’s already full of police, it seems to me.”

  “We need them, don’t we? We’ve too many pickpockets. They’ll frighten tourists away if we get a reputation for being unsafe.”

  “The kids have nothing to do. You remember, we spoke about playgrounds—”

  “Well, we’ve been giving them some, haven’t we?”

  “Only three in the lower parishes and the last one’s still waiting for equipment.” He went on thoughtfully, “Anyway, playgrounds aren’t the real answer, are they? It all goes back to the economy. Everything does. And these aren’t the nineteen sixties anymore.”

  “Exactly. That’s why we need to encourage tourism and immigration. To do that, we’ve got to have law and order.”

  “Tourism and immigration aren’t the whole answer, since you mention it. I’ve been wanting to talk about it, as a matter of fact. These people come flocking in for cheap land; they speculate and chive the prices up.” Having once begun, his thoughts and his words flowed easily. “We shouldn’t sell to speculators anyway, only to people who plan to stay and contribute to the country.”

  He thought he saw glances and lowered eyes. A sudden sensitivity to the change in atmosphere caused his skin to prickle.

  “Hotel construction creates employment,” Nicholas suggested mildly.

  “Only temporarily. And for monsters like the Lunabelle and those others? No way! That’s the kind of investment we don’t need. They’re wrecking the bay with all that dredging, destroying the natural marshland to make fancy beaches. Destroying the reefs, which kept the beaches from eroding in the first place. But they don’t care. It’s today’s quick buck they’re after and to hell with the next generation! Dumping raw sewage into the bay! When the wind’s right you can smell the stink a mile away.” And he looked around for some nod, some sign of agreement, but there was none; seven or eight faces circled the room, staring ahead without expression. “Look,” he pleaded. “You all remember when the bay was full of lobsters and groupers. Now you have to go miles offshore for large fish. Pollution and spear fishing have done that. They’re wrecking the seas. I’ve seen what’s happened elsewhere and I’ve read Cousteau.” About to finish, he thought of something else. “Go to the window and tell me we aren’t on the way to ruining one of the most exquisite seascapes one might hope to see anywhere in the world! Remember what they did to Diamond Head in Honolulu? You’ve seen pictures—”

  “You’re jumping from fish to reefs to hotels,” Nicholas interrupted. “We can’t keep up with you.”

  “I’m not jumping. They’re all part of the same picture.”

  There was a silence. Then Nicholas spoke, “Will anyone move that we take the previous remarks under serious consideration?” The motion having been made and passed, he added, “I shall appoint a committee to study land use with a view to preserving the character and ecology of St. Felice.”

  Three months later the sale of property for another bayside hotel was made public. Patrick went at once to Nicholas.

  “I don’t understand. I thought there was to be no more construction around the bay, at least not without discussion.”

  “We had discussion, a couple of hours’ worth, at the last meeting, the one you missed.”

  “I missed?”

  “Yes, I called an emergency executive committee meeting while you were visiting your mother in Martinique. I ordered the minutes to be sent to you.”

  “They were never sent, and to my shame I haven’t been in Martinique in months.”

  “Queer! Well, someone was certainly misinformed. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. And I do understand how you feel about aesthetics. It’s just that we’re badly in need of capital right now. I think I can promise that this sort of thing won’t happen again, though.”

  Humiliated and indignant, Patrick nevertheless reined himself in. No sense jumping to conclusions! Nicholas wouldn’t trick him! It was almost paranoid to suspect that he would.

  Yet he left with the odd feeling that he had been placated, as one diverts a demanding child.

  Désirée was stirring something at the stove. He could tell by her back and her stiffened shoulders that she was disturbed.

  “I was at Doris’s this afternoon. Nicholas must have had some sort of business going on at his house. The men were leaving just as we drove up.”

  He was startled. “Meeting? The executive committee, you mean?”

  “No, of course not, although I did see Rodney Spurr and Harrison Ames. I didn’t know the others. There were even some white men. One of them was that very heavy, short man who built the house on the cliff, the one with all the glass, you know.”

  “Jugen. He’s making a lot of investments here, they say.”

  Désirée turned around. “Doris made me promise not to tell you, but Nicholas has been saying you don’t cooperate.”

  Patrick was aghast. “Don’t cooperate! What the devil does he mean by that?”

  “That you—heckle.”

  “Heckle!”

  “I hope you’re not making any trouble, Patrick. You’ve been friends all your lives.”

  “And what sort of trouble would I be likely to make? Or do I ever make?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes you do climb on your soapbox, though. You can be very stubborn when you’ve an idea in your head. You never give in.”

  “You mean I stand by my convictions? May I drop dead if I ever stop!”

  “Don’t get so excited! But you are stubborn, you know.” Désirée’s red mouth pouted. “For instance, why wouldn’t you let me go to Europe with Doris that time? Quite frankly, she thought it selfish of you and so do I. I’ve never been anywhere and—”

  “I couldn’t afford the trip, that’s why!”

  “I thought surely with you being in government we’d have things easier. But it’s really no different from when you were teaching or working on the Trumpet.”

  “I didn’t join the government to get rich.”

  “Well, you could at least have let me go once with Doris!”

  “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you take charity!”

  “Charity! Your best friend! It would have been doing Doris a favor. She wanted me to go. And they’ve loads of money, anyway. It wouldn’t have meant a thing to them!”

  “Loads of money,” Patrick repeated, thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Dr. Mebane wasn’t all that rich and he had four children to divide among. I don’t know.”

  “Nicholas is making money on his own! He’s investing in hotels and beach front property all over the island. That new nightclub that opened off Wharf Street, the Circe—he owns half of that. Didn’t you know? That new hotel they just announced—that’s his!”

  Patrick
sat down. He was quite still.

  Désirée continued in the high, petulant voice of Doris Mebane. “Why can’t we get some pleasure out of life? Stuck in the same rut, when you could be getting ahead, like Nicholas?”

  He answered coldly, angrily. “When do you plan to grow up? Or do you, ever?”

  Her eyes filled and he was instantly sorry. She hadn’t deserved his temper. This, today, was her first complaint. Although she had never had much of anything compared with many of her friends, she had, he was well aware, stifled her wants and been cheerful with the little he had been able to give her. Now, in their new situation, she must be feeling a certain bafflement. Doris’s husband could provide things, while her own husband couldn’t and didn’t seem to mind that he couldn’t. He wished he could explain it to her, but his own confusion dizzied him and he was silent.

  With a full heart he went to bed, to lie long awake. So that was what Nicholas was doing! It was, very likely, what they were all doing and why they were silent whenever he spoke. They knew he wasn’t with them. So he stood alone! To whom could he talk about it, where to turn? He felt a bewildered sense of betrayal. It would have been comforting to confide in his wife, but he did not dare. Her tongue was too loose, too innocent. The only human being he could talk to, when you came down to it, was Kate Tarbox.

  On his walks home from the center of town he had to pass the office of the Trumpet, where from time to time he stopped off. He missed the place. It was so alive, with the news of the world flashing in, the typewriters clacking and the telephones ringing. And there was always Kate at the editor’s desk. He’d used to catch himself, when he worked there, staring at her from across the room. She had the kind of face that is known as mobile, meaning, he supposed, that you could so easily read its moods as the light of humor moved across it, or as stern disapproval closed the lips, or as some lovely contemplation opened the eyes into a wide, soft gaze.

  Sometimes, now, he would accompany her on the homeward walk to the corner of her street.

  “You look glum,” she remarked, as they climbed the hill, the day after the talk with Désirée.

  He told her, half reluctant to reveal himself and half relieved to express what he had been stifling.

  “I’m troubled,” he concluded. “I feel as if I’m standing alone in the center of a circle, with everything vaguely falling away, and I can’t reach Nicholas, I don’t know why.”

  “Why don’t you tell him what you know?”

  “I can’t. I promised Désirée. I don’t suppose it would make any difference, anyway. It’s not my business, is it, how a man invests his money?”

  “This is your business. This is different and you know it. It smells bad to me.” They stopped and Kate ticked off a list on her fingers. “Look. We were going to electrify the villages and put in a sewer system. On the north side they still dump night soil in the ocean every morning. Nobody talks about it, but we all know they do. We still collect water in cisterns and on rooftops. Nicholas spoke again and again of desalinization plants and hydroponic gardening and canneries. Oh, it was all so energetic! Our roads are terrible. We have more cars and more accidents. I know everything can’t be done at once, but I’d just like to see some slight movement toward a beginning.”

  “I don’t understand Nicholas,” he repeated. His voice was hollow and sad in his own ears.

  For a moment Kate seemed to be making up her mind. Then she said, “I want to show you something. Have you got an hour to spare, right now?”

  “I’ll spare it.”

  “You’ll have to get your car. Have you ever been at the Lunabelle Annex?”

  “Over the causeway, you mean? No.”

  “Over that little bridge you have to walk across, where the new cottages are.”

  At the remote end of the Lunabelle’s beach, out of sight around the point and half a mile from the main building, they stopped the car. Tall grasses grew between the ruts of a secluded, sandy lane.

  “Not used very much,” Patrick observed.

  The footbridge spanned a narrow channel. A circle of quaint, peak-roofed cottages bordered the white beach along the little island’s rim. The backs of the cottages looked upon an oversized blue pool, amoeba-shaped. Parasols and expensive chairs stood on the silky lawn between the flower beds. It was very quiet. Only one couple, lying in the sun, looked up briefly as Kate and Patrick appeared and then went back to concentrating on the sky.

  “Out of season,” Patrick said.

  “It’s never crowded. This isn’t for the public, you know.”

  “Isolated. One couldn’t guess it was here.”

  “Exactly. Come, maybe there’s an open door. Or we can peek in.”

  All the sliding glass doors were locked. But one could clearly see inside to rooms in which white velvet rugs lay on pink terrazzo floors and wide beds bore gilded carving; in one a lace robe had been left lying on a chair. A nineteenth-century, or possibly a twentieth-century, bordello must have looked or maybe still looked like this, Patrick thought, but did not say it.

  “Bizarre, isn’t it?” Kate asked, as they walked back between oleander hedges to the car.

  “Yes. Who are these people?”

  “You can’t guess?”

  He had some uncertain thoughts, but waited.

  “The mob.”

  He stared.

  “I can’t prove it, although I suspect it strongly. More than suspect it. These men come down here from the states, bring their girls, do their business, and make their payoffs here in private where the government protects them.”

  “Payoffs for what?”

  “Dope, I think,” she said seriously, and as he still stared at her, she went on, “Why should you be surprised? Central America is ridden with it.”

  He couldn’t answer that.

  “You’re crushed because it’s Nicholas.” She touched his hand. “Of course, I could be wrong.”

  “You’ve got to be wrong,” he said. “You’ve got to be.”

  On the broad side lawn of Government House they passed a unit of police deploying, smart in their new gray uniforms with scarlet caps and scarlet trouser stripes.

  “Stop a minute,” Kate commanded. “What do you see?”

  When he did not understand immediately, she asked, “You mean to tell me you haven’t noticed them these last few weeks?”

  “The style, you mean? Nicholas likes a certain amount of ritual and display,” Patrick offered, almost sheepishly.

  “That’s not what I meant. Look again! When did we ever have so many police? Every one of them over six feet tall! They’re tough, and they’re all new men. There’s not one old familiar face, the faces we all knew. I wouldn’t be surprised—” she said and broke off.

  “Surprised at what?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Women are so damned exasperating! Will you please finish what you started?”

  “Frankly, I’m not sure I should have trusted you today.”

  “Well, thank you! Thank you very much! If that’s the way you feel, don’t bother to talk to me at all. Please don’t.”

  “Don’t be huffy. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I meant that you’re a very loyal person, and very close to Nicholas in spite of the things you’ve been seeing. How can I know what your conscience, nagging at you in the middle of the night, will tell you to do?”

  He softened. “Kate, anything you’ve ever said to me has gone no farther. You ought to know that.” It was the first time in a long while that he had made mention, however oblique, of Francis Luther.

  She flushed. “All right, then.” She looked around and lowered her voice, although the car was moving. “There are rumors that a national police force is being gathered. They’ve even got a name: the Red Men.”

  “Well, wouldn’t that be more efficient?”

  “Don’t be dense, I’m speaking of a paramilitary force. Arrests in the night, mysterious disappearances, bodies dumped along the roads. Know what I’m talking
about? You ought to know. It’s the history of the twentieth century, isn’t it?”

  Shock went through him, down to his knees. “You can’t be serious! Who told—” He broke off. “Excuse me. Of course you can’t reveal it.”

  “Of course I can’t. Let’s just say I have—sources.”

  For a minute or two neither of them spoke. The car had stopped at Kate’s house, but she made no move to get out.

  “Patrick. I’m terribly afraid.”

  “It may not be what you think,” he suggested softly.

  “If I had any guts I’d put it all in the Trumpet. But I have none, that’s the trouble.”

  “Kate! Are you out of your mind? Don’t you dare!”

  “You see, you do believe what you’ve been seeing, or you wouldn’t say that. In a free country, the press has nothing to fear, has it?”

  He didn’t answer. Here were the old streets, the listless leaves, gray with dust, the muffling, sleepy summer heat, so long familiar, now as threatening as some queer, twisted alley in a foreign place where nobody speaks one’s language.

  Then he brought himself up short. This was jumping too hastily to conclusions! For all her intelligence, Kate was still a woman; women exaggerated; they were always drawn to the dramatic and the thrilling. He was about to say so when Kate spoke again.

  “About Will—keep an eye on him. Tell him not to get mixed up in politics right now.”

  “Why, what’s he doing?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I can’t say anymore. Just tell him to be careful.” And leaving Patrick with that enigma, she got out of the car.

  Feeling faintly irritated by all the mystery, as well as with himself for his own fears, he drove away. It was market day downtown. Schooners from out islands were unloading woven baskets filled with iridescent pink and silver fish, as they had been doing for centuries past. But on the other side of the square a dozen or more young men and women waited in front of the airline office ready to depart for England or America, where they would drive the busses and collect the garbage: a better life, apparently, than they had waiting for them at home. He sighed and came back to his own affairs.