The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  Though even as I said that I was pretty sure that his mind was made up.

  ‘How do you think your father will take this ?’ I asked.

  ‘How did he take the news from Eton?’

  ‘Philosophically; he thought it was cruel luck.’

  ‘He doesn’t feel he’s been let down ?’

  ‘Heavens no, why should he?’

  ‘Some fathers would; they’d talk about all the sacrifices they had made, and this being all the return they’d got for them.’

  ‘He’d scarcely be justified in saying that.’

  ‘Indeed he wouldn’t.’ He smiled. Was there a wry twist to that smile: a wish that he had had the kind of father who would have been justified in saying that—the father that in fact the majority of young men do have, that I had had myself?

  ‘How’s your mother taking it?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s not realised all its implications yet. She’s a lot on her mind, you know.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Derrick, in the first place. A constant invalid. A husband who isn’t a husband.’

  ‘How is he?’

  He shrugged. ‘He has his good days and his bad days. He’s brave about it. He doesn’t grumble. He pretends to be absorbed in his various hobbies. His stamp collection: crossword puzzles, football pools, television.’

  Not much of a life, I thought. .. but still. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘How shall I put it—when you become incapable of something you don’t miss it. The need goes with the capacity. Twenty years ago cricket was half my life. I don’t grudge its going. Perhaps it’s like that with him.’

  ‘It’s dull for my mother, though.’

  ‘At least he keeps her busy.’

  ‘Is there a housewife now in England who isn’t busy? No, it’s not too bad for her. And there’s the grandchild. A delightful poppet. Then Iris. She writes every week. My mother plans to go over in the spring.’

  ‘There’s you as well.’

  ‘Oh yes, there’s me.’ Once again that smile that might be wry, flickered across his lips. Had this unusual household, with so many involved cousinships, made him feel lonely and unwanted? He wasn’t the self-pitying type: ‘When you talk about going into business, have you any particular side of it in mind ? Big business is a large, vague area.’

  ‘I know: that’s what I expect to learn at Harvard. When I come back, I ought to be able to see where I can be most useful.’

  He was talking very much as his father had talked thirty years ago. ‘I’ll bide my time,’ Raymond had said. ‘When the right moment comes, I’ll recognise it.’

  And we had been confident that Raymond would, because of his good looks, his charm and manifest ability. But the years had gone by and in the end it had all come to nothing.

  At breakfast Timothy Alexander told his father that he wanted to do his military service right away. He did not, however, mention his idea of not applying for a commission, nor of taking Harvard instead of Oxford. Later in the morning we went down to the pool. Raymond and I were suntanned, but Timothy Alexander’s skin was white from an English winter. ‘I’m going to take this slowly. I’ve been warned about sunburn. Not more than quarter of an hour the first morning.’

  He left his father and myself to linger by the rocks. ‘You had a long talk with the boy this morning,’ Raymond said. ‘I could hear your voices but not what you were saying. Did you say anything?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘During the last few days I’ve been thinking out a whole lot of things I might say, but when it came to the point it all seemed pointless. What could I tell him that he doesn’t know already ? He’s practically adult. He’s thought the whole thing out himself. If there’s anything that’s on his mind, he’ll tell us of his own account.’

  ‘That’s what I feel. We’ll behave as though it hadn’t happened. There’s a change of plans. Ours not to reason why.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  But though I had agreed with Raymond, I had a plan of my own worked out.

  Freemasonry flourishes in Dominica and three days later, I was a guest at the monthly meeting. At the banquet afterwards I managed to sit next to a Dominican in his late twenties who was one of the most effective batsmen in the island cricket side. He was tall, very dark, handsome. We had talked together once or twice on the cricket ground. I had felt an instinctive liking for him. He seemed exactly the right man for the project that I had in mind. If it turned out the way I wanted, I should be able to recruit his cooperation.

  It went the way I had hoped. Long before we had raised our glasses to the Tyler’s toast, I knew that he was my man. ‘Let’s have a final drink at the Paz,’ I said.

  We were both in a mellow mood.

  ‘I’ve a problem,’ I said. ‘I’ve an idea that you could solve it.’

  ‘Man, you tell me what it is.’

  ‘It’s a woman problem. I know that there’s no such thing in Roseau as a regular prostitute, but there must surely be one or two attractive females who would be ready in return for a financial consideration …’

  ‘Man, man, if that’s your problem then your problem’s solved. What type do you prefer?’

  ‘No, no, it’s not for me.’

  I explained the situation. ‘Raymond Peronne’s son has come out here. You may have seen him: he’s seventeen and a half years old. He’s very good looking. I’m his godfather and I feel responsible for him. You’ve read about the way it is in England at those boarding schools; they herd together for eight months of the year boys who are almost men and boys who are almost children. They never see a woman from the beginning of term until the end. Of course things happen. If a man says that he’s never had one of those experiences at his public school, he’s either a liar or he’s undersexed. Usually it doesn’t matter. The first time he goes to bed with a woman, he knows that that’s the works. He’ll never look at a boy again. But now and again there are complications. He acquires habits that he finds hard to break. Now I don’t say that that has happened to my godson, or that there’s a danger of it happening. But I want to make very certain that it won’t. So this is what I have in mind. There’s a dance next Saturday at Chancellor’s Hall. We’re all going to it. I want some girl to make a pass at him. He’s inexperienced; he’ll be shy. She’ll have to make the running, but if before the dance, she has a present of—what would you say, fifty Beewee dollars.’

  ‘Man, man, for fifty Beewee dollars …’

  ‘Too much?’

  ‘Much, much too much.’

  ‘Twenty, then, and another twenty afterwards, but he mustn’t suspect, he mustn’t have any idea that she’s been put up to it. That would spoil everything. He’s got to believe she’s fallen for him.’

  ‘She’ll make him believe anything for twenty beewees.’

  We arranged to spend the night in town, taking rooms at the Paz. I arranged for a dinner first at Kingsland House— of which Froude had written with such warmth in 1888, and where his host’s daughter, Miss Maggie, now ran a boarding house. I ordered mountain chicken and champagne to go with it. It was too early for mangoes but there was a delicious sour-sop fool. As regards guests I had not, apparently, been too successful. The men outnumbered the women two to one. But that was intentional. I did not want Timothy Alexander to be enslaved to duty partners.

  We arrived in high spirits, just as the dance was getting lively.

  As a dance it was much like all the others at that time in the smaller West Indian islands—nothing elaborate, no luxuries for tourists: there was noise, and a steel band, paper streamers festooned from the central electric light globes; reproductions of Royalty from the Illustrated London News upon the walls; rows of wooden chairs; a buffet; a bar. It was like any village hall in Britain upon dance nights, except for the fact that it was in the Caribbean, that faces were darker, blouses brighter, voices louder, except that it was all gayer, livelier, that everyone quite obviously was having a fine time. My spirits lifted. I love the Caribbean, I
love its people, I love their way of life. I felt at home here.

  I subjected myself to my share of duty dances. Then I moved over to the bar. I leant against the wall. I looked for Timothy Alexander. The floor was jammed. I took a long time finding him, then at last I saw him. A dusky cheek rested against his. She was shorter than he; six or seven inches shorter, but not so much shorter that her height looked incongruous. Her arms were bare. One lay along his shoulder. Her fingers touched his neck. Her fingers were long and thin. Her hair was straight; Carib stock presumably. I could not see her features. I shifted my position so that I could see his face. His eyes were closed. His hands were on her hips. Slowly but with mounting fierceness, her body undulated against his. She swayed with a slow deep rhythm, pressed close, pressed closer, one of her arms hung loose beside him. She swayed, swayed, swayed. She lifted the loose lying arm, crossed it behind his neck; she sank back on her heels, then lifted herself upon her toes, never breaking the rhythm, but tautening then lessening its pace. Couples on every side of them were held by the same fierce congo beat; their feet scarcely moved, but every vein, every nerve cell was responsive, captive, dominated; yet with each couple proud of, exulting in the dominance. I thought of Iris all those years ago.

  Two afternoons later I ran into my brother mason. ‘Man, did I do my job,’ he said.

  ‘What did she have to say?’

  ‘Was so good that she’d have paid for it, she said.’

  ‘Then perhaps she’ll give him a second session free.’

  ‘That’s what she’s doing at this very moment.’

  Seventeen years earlier at the altar, I had renounced on his account ‘the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world and all the sinful lusts of the flesh’. I felt that I had fulfilled my duty as a godfather.

  15

  That was in 1953. In the autumn of 1956, the old man died.

  During those three and a half years I had kept in touch with the Peronne saga. I had seen Timothy Alexander during the early days of his basic training. He had looked very well and he had consumed a prodigious lunch. ‘How’s it making out?’ Tasked.

  ‘I’d hate it for a lifetime, but I don’t mind it for two years.’

  ‘What about that commission?’

  ‘I’m not applying for one.’

  ‘You still feel you’ll get more out of it that way?’

  ‘In the last analysis every enterprise depends on whether the man in the field, the man at the wheel is happy. By the time I’m through, I’ll have an idea what makes him tick.’

  ‘What about Oxford?’

  ‘I’m in touch with Iris. She’s sending me the Harvard papers.’

  ‘You certainly thought it out during that ten days’ trip.’

  I was to see him again shortly before he left for the USA. His eyes were bright with anticipation.

  ‘Oxford would have been so obvious,’ he said.

  I met Eileen a few times in London. I asked her if she was happy about Timothy Alexander’s plans. ‘It’s his own life,’ she said. ‘He knows best what’s best for him.’

  ‘You’ll miss him, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  It would be the first time she had been alone. Derrick had long since ceased to be a partner in her life. I asked her how he was. She shrugged. ‘He’s well enough. He doesn’t grumble. He doesn’t make a nuisance of himself. No one seems to know what’s really wrong with him. I guess it’s mental: delayed shock. Three years in prison, in that kind of prison.’

  ‘Does he ever come up to London ?’

  ‘What would be the point? He’d only embarrass his old friends. He’d rather they remembered him the way he was. He’s resigned from Boodle’s.’

  ‘You come up yourself though, don’t you?’

  ‘As often as I can manage.’

  ‘You haven’t changed.’

  ‘Not too much, I hope.’

  She was in her middle fifties. She had not put on weight. She was still attractive. Did she have a beau or beaux in London? I presumed she did. Her life wasn’t too unlike what Margaret’s had been thirty years before. I asked about Margaret. ‘Absorbed in the granddaughter,’ Eileen said.

  ‘I’m told she’s a delightful creature.’

  ‘She is, but tiny tots have never been my long suit. I left Iris with her grandmother, remember.’

  ‘And life keeps ticking over?’

  She shrugged again. ‘And I can tell you what it is that makes it tick. There’s never been a money shortage. We’re the one family I know of which you can say that. I don’t know how it’s come about, but no one has been extravagant. No one’s gambled.’

  ‘If Timothy Alexander goes into business, the pattern may change there.’

  She laughed at that. ‘If he does, I won’t be here to worry.’

  Raymond certainly was neither gambling nor indulging fantasies. He was losing money on his estate, but his losses were deductible against income tax. He could not have lived anywhere else on such a scale. At that time I was paying yearly visits to the Caribbean, and I made a point of including Dominica in each trip. One quarter of each visit I spent at Overdale. We had many good evenings, Raymond and I, sitting out on the verandah reading poetry, gossiping about old friends. He came over to England every year, but he did not enjoy his visits very much. He did not like going down to Charminster with Derrick around and rarely spent the night there. Not too many of his old friends still lived in London. White’s was full of ghosts. ‘It’s all rather ghoulish,’ he said, ‘waiting for the old man to die.’

  He had nothing to do in London. London had ceased to be a place for playboys. ‘I read an article by Partick Kinross the other day that was very much to the point,’ he said.’ “You can’t do nothing in London now,” he wrote. “There’s no one to do nothing with.” Out here there’s plenty.’

  ‘Is Dominica any nearer to getting in the black?’

  ‘It never will be. Always at the last moment some unexpected thing goes wrong. But the island still attracts eccentrics; mercifully, too, it attracts a few monied people who can afford to take a tax loss, instead of cutting into capital.’

  ‘John Archbold and yourself, for instance.’

  ‘Precisely. John Archbold and myself.’

  ‘How much is he down here?’

  ‘Three, four months a year.’

  ‘And is that what you intend to spend here, when you inherit?’

  ‘Probably. I suppose so. It’ll be easier in a few years’ time; there’s bound to be a proper airport soon.’ At the moment there was only a precarious hydroplane that carried a dozen passengers and on which it was very difficult to arrange a passage.

  ‘No place for Timothy Alexander?’

  ‘Oh no, Charminster will always be his base. He’s doing his wandering now.’

  Timothy Alexander’s decision not to go to Oxford had surprised him. ‘I suppose the boy knows what he’s doing.’

  I made no comment. I did not tell him that the news had not come as a surprise to me. It might have hurt his feelings to learn that his son had confided in me first.

  ‘I’ll be hoping to see him over there,’ I said.

  ‘I’d be grateful if you would. I’m writing to one or two people who might be useful to him.’

  ‘Myra, for example?’

  ‘Myra? … I suppose I should … But after all those years. I don’t know her address. For that matter I don’t know her name.’

  ‘I can give you both. She lives in Georgetown. She’s rather grand in Washington. Wife of a senator.’

  ‘Fancy your keeping up with her.’

  ‘She wanted to keep posted about you. Did you know that she was planning to come to London that first October? She wanted to see what you were like on your own home ground.’

  ‘I’d no idea of that.’

  ‘I fancy that you wouldn’t have stood much chance if she’d been satisfied with what she found.’

  ‘I don’t think I sho
uld.’

  ‘You might have done much worse.’

  ‘She’s done much better.’

  So we gossiped, night after night, visit after visit, in the cool of the verandah, with the fireflies flickering over the plants, and the bullfrogs croaking in the jungle.

  I was abroad when the old man died. I read the news in a London paper, four days old, on the day of the funeral. I wished I could have been there for it. Eileen and Raymond have both talked to me about it; so has Timothy Alexander, who could not get back in time to see his grandfather, but was there for the funeral. I feel as though I had been there.

  The occasion had its own tragic beauty; its chief poignancy lying in this, that though Eileen and Raymond both knew what was in the other’s mind, they left the essential words unsaid.

  It had been a very short illness, a chill on a cold evening that became pneumonia. Luckily Raymond was in England at the time. His father was in his middle eighties. He did not know that he was dying. He talked a lot about his grandson, ‘Mustn’t give up his cricket. Not too late for him to get a county cap … too late for his blue … too bad … one son, two grandsons, each good enough for a blue and not one getting one … the Army’s fault … these wars … young men have to go of course … came at the wrong time for each of them, these wars … two grandsons and one son … not a blue between them … a little luck and it would have been three blues … these wars, these wars …’

  It was a rich gold September; misty mornings, boughs dripping with dew, then amber sunlight upon yellowing leaves and reddening ivy. When Margaret was watching at the bedside—the two daughters-in-law took turns—Raymond and Eileen patrolled the tennis court. Each knew what was in the other’s mind. How different it might have been, how different it should have been. This would have been anyhow a sad, sad time for them, with the old man whom they had both loved, dying in that room that looked upon the copper beech that he had planted, a sad, sad time: yet even so it would have been the day that marked the start of their new life—as owners of this house that had come down to them from eight generations. It would be the opening of a chapter that they had been waiting to read for over twenty years. On the day after the funeral they would have been discussing the joint plans that in the old man’s lifetime it would have been unseemly to discuss. A dimension would have been added to their lives. That was how it could have been, that was how it should have been. Why wasn’t it that way?