Located at the water’s edge on the French side of the island, in a six acre compound overlooking the soft green hills across Simpson Bay, was another of Castlemain’s homes, or retreats as he liked to call them. There he was far from the duties that encumbered him twenty-four hours a day during most of the year. He could reflect on the condition of the world, he could also meet the kind of people he would not like to be seen with in public, they included those who carried out certain unpleasant tasks that had to be taken care of from time to time.
“It was a wreck when I bought it, completely overgrown, when we came to see it with the agent - couldn’t even find the entrance,” he liked to tell visitors.
The house was in a typical wood-frame West Indian style. It was set on a rise; about fifteen metres above the sea, a path sloped gently down to shore, though there was practically no beach, rather a flat narrow rock floor covered with the natural debris that drifted in on the sea. The dense vegetation ran almost to the waters edge, separated only by a raised stone path that led to the wooden jetty that zigged and zagged out to deeper water, where his friends and acquaintances could arrive discretely by boat.
The main entrance was at one end of the rectangular shaped house, on the landside, it was used mainly by the housekeeper and trades people. At the other end was a swimming pool, built onto a terrace that jutted out from the flank of the rise. The pool was kidney shaped, of modest but adequate size, and to one side was a bar decorated with tropical flowering plants. A stairway led up to the bedrooms from the pool area, that opened onto a balcony that ran around the entire house, so that the extraordinary view and perfume of the tropics were never more than an instant away.
Castlemain and his guests mostly used his motor launch to go into town or visit friends, not only was it practical, but it was refreshing and there was a sense of escape during the fifteen or so minutes that were needed to cross the bay. His side of the island was Saint Martin, the French side; the other half was the Dutch side Sint Maarten.
Apart from the immediate vicinity of the house, the vegetation was left almost totally natural, three or four times a year the gardener removed the dead undergrowth to avoid fires and comments of neighbours, who would have preferred a more orderly landscaped view.
Castlemain had chosen rather simple but gay local style furnishings in contrast to the sombre style of his Irish country home. He preferred his Caribbean island retreats to the heavy atmosphere of his family estate in Ireland, which consisted of one thousand six hundred hectares of woodlands and fine farmland that lay in the north of County Meath at the heart of Ireland. The estate was dominated by a great house, built in the latter part of the eighteenth century, its neo-classical stone facade crowned with a blue slate roof, sitting in a dell overlooking a small lake.
There were besides the ballroom, two libraries, twenty-two rooms, kitchens and quarters for the domestics and hired help. The permanent staff of nine persons looked after the every day affairs, but for receptions as many as forty additional staff was necessary, as was the case for their traditional New Year’s ball.
Castlemain employed an estate manager as well as a permanent secretary resident at Castlemain House who looked after his personal and family affairs.
Not only did David Castlemain enjoy the leisure of life that his position gave him, he expected respect from those around him, he felt it was due. His awareness of the social position of his family had been transmitted to him by past generations, in spite of his affable good manners he tolerated no truck from such upstarts as Kennedy, whom he saw merely as a useful hands to execute his instructions.
He was the decider, he was in control and above all it was he who took the credits and rewards, wherever they came from. In short he was nothing less than the seigneur exercising his hereditary rights. As time passed and his financial power extended from Ireland to England, the Continent and beyond, he slowly but surely became authoritarian and autocratic. The power to bestow his favours through his bank fed his obsession and desire for power and position.
His strict upbringing had given him the taste for the adventure and excitement that he later experienced in South America. Since his father’s death, his obligation to duty in the staid world of banking left him yearning for escape from the boredom of his stifling Dublin business environment. He was born into wealth, it was a natural condition to him and as the heads of previous generations of his family he had never known anything different.
He carefully balanced serious business interests with a careful dose of exoticism, new business ventures, the Caribbean with his yacht, his unusual and sometimes doubtful friends. He liked taking personal risks that made the adrenaline flow, but he took care not endanger his long-term business interests.
He was not blind to the source of certain funds that flowed through the banks that his family owned in the Caymans and Antigua. He, as a respectable member of the banking community, controlled his interests through a maze of trusts and holding companies that cascaded through the secrecy of Switzerland, Monaco and Liechtenstein.
As for other old wealthy banking families the rules had been established over generations in the thickly carpeted offices of the banking establishment in the City of London, where a different set of rules applied to the rich.
Castlemain was intolerant of those who tried to upstage him, he was the one who thought and decided, all those in his service were there to implement his ideas and execute his instructions. Those who bucked the rules quickly found themselves on the street, with little hope of ever finding employment in another banking establishment.
Chapter 21
The Money Rolls In
Offshore Islands Page 20
