by Alec Waugh
“I’m thinking of opening a book,” Carson was continuing. “Four to one against Mavis Norman, six to one against Doris Kellaway. What odds are you taking on your daughter?”
By the buffet table the Governor, momentarily alone again, took a slow look round the room. Everything was going well. The right amount of noise, but not too much of it; the party had not split up into racial groups. Mr. Romer should be impressed. Euan looked happy. He had kept an eye on him; he had felt very proud of him, watching him move from group to group. Euan had grown up a lot during these last two years. He had a new manliness, a new assurance. They’d have more in common with one another now. He reminded himself that his subalterns had always thought of him as a kind of uncle.
His eye moved on. Was there anything he had overlooked, any professional aspect of the occasion that he had missed? Yes, he remembered now; something he had wanted to ask Fleury. He went across, detaching him from Carson.
“How well do you know Preston?”
“Not intimately.”
“Well enough to drop in upon him casually?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Good.”
Preston was another postwar colonist, a man in his middle thirties, of simple origin, an articled clerk before the war who had reached the rank of major in the R.A.O.C. through his familiarity with balance sheets. In that capacity he had met in the Middle East and married a W.A.A.F. who was definitely “county”; seeing few prospects for himself in England, he had invested his war gratuity and his father’s life insurance in a plantation here. At one point his boundaries touched Fleury’s.
“You know that there’s been trouble on his place?” the Governor said.
“I’ve a rough idea about it.” It was a typical village squabble. Some cattle of Preston’s had escaped through a gap in a fence onto a neighboring estate, a colored man’s, and trampled down some sugar cane. Preston had admitted the trespass, but there had been an argument as to the amount of compensation. The case had been brought before the magistrate, Graham, a white government official, who had fined Preston fifteen dollars. Preston on grounds of principle had appealed against this verdict.
“I’d like you to have a chat with Preston, and let him air his grievances,” the Governor said. “Graham wants to avoid trouble. I’ve talked to Whittingham and he agrees with Graham. ‘Keep them happy, let them think they are running their own show, but keep the reins within your hands.’ That’s what he says. A typical policeman’s point of view. I see their point, but Graham and Whittingham have been here all their lives; they don’t want trouble. Appeasement’s their line, and it isn’t mine. They may be right, in this case; I don’t know. If I chose to put in a word with Preston, I could stop the appeal, but I won’t unless I’m sure he’s being tiresome. If you’d give me your angle on the case, I’d be grateful.”
“I’ll do that certainly.”
“There’s no hurry. The law’s delays. The appeal won’t be heard for at least two weeks.”
“I’m going out one day next week.”
“Fine.” He paused. He laid his hand upon Fleury’s shoulder. “I can’t tell you what it means to me to have you here. Somebody I know and trust. One never forgets one’s early hero worships, you were my first captain; you gave me my school colors. I shall never forget your saying to me after that Winchester game when I’d missed that easy catch, ‘Don’t worry, Jimmy, you’ll get a century at Lord’s.’”
Fleury smiled. He himself had forgotten the incident altogether till Templeton on his arrival had reminded him. He had given half a dozen “colors” during his year’s captaincy. Yet he remembered vividly being given his own colors and still retained a veneration for his captain; though he was now an obscure solicitor in a small West country village, he still thought of him as his senior because he had been a prefect when he himself was a fifth former.
“We must have you all up to dinner one day soon,” Templeton was continuing. “The others can play bridge and we can talk about old days. I’ll get Archer to fix it; where is that A.D.C.? Oh, there he is bringing our editor across; I’ll leave you to him.”
Fleury had had one session already with Romer, and he was in no spirit for a second, but there was, he saw well, no hope of avoiding it. Romer was advancing on him with an air of purpose.
“I think I’ve got it straight,” he was saying. “Let me see. This island is under the control of a governor, who is himself under instructions from Whitehall. The governor is advised by his legislative council and all legislation has to be passed by that legislative council.”
As he spoke, he watched Fleury closely, seeing him in the light of what the Governor had told him. He was looking at a man of sixty, tall, thin, bald; with a sallow skin, thin lips, a thin pointed nose, and a short clipped gray mustache; Fleury’s face was lined and tired, but it had an air of authority, self-confidence, and breeding. This is the kind of Englishman that I’ve read about, Romer thought. The man nobody sees, who’s behind the scenes. Never shows himself in public, carries on with his job as a private citizen. Yet in a way we can’t understand in America, he influences everything that happens: he has position and prestige with the big men, don’t ask me how. They need him on their side, and can’t get far without him. Just the man to know what’s cooking in a place.
“That’s right now, isn’t it?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“There’s another concern called the executive council which carries out the laws passed by the legislative council, but can’t pass any laws itself.”
“That’s right.”
“And the legislative is composed of six members nominated by the Governor and six members elected by the people. The Governor has a casting vote, so G.H. runs the island.”
“That’s so.”
“And there was a limited suffrage wasn’t there.”
“At the last election there was a literacy test and an income test.”
“So that up to the present this has been an oligarchy.”
“You could call it that.”
“But I have heard some talk about a new constitution.”
“I’ve heard about it too.”
“From what I’ve heard, under this constitution and with universal suffrage there will be nine elected members on the council, so that through their elected members the people will control the island. That’s so, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure of the exact facts about the new constitution, but that is roughly what I’ve heard.”
“If that’s the way it is, then sir, it’s what I call democracy.”
Fleury smiled. Democracy; he had heard that word so often since President Wilson had talked about making the world safe for it. All that talk in the second war about democratic principles. Russia had been called a democracy then, and so had China. What more did democracy mean in the long run than that a different group of professional politicians achieved their personal ends behind a different cover? In England and America the word might, the word did, have a significance, but what could it mean here to the laborers in the cane fields; they followed a herd instinct. The new constitution would look fine on paper, but its passing would only make it more difficult for those who recognized the islanders’ real needs to get those needs fulfilled.
“Do you think His Excellency will promulgate this new constitution?” Romer was inquiring.
“I’ve no idea.”
“He’d certainly be setting this part of the world a fine example if he did. Will he meet opposition?”
“I fancy so.”
“Who from?”
“From several sections. It’s not only the white planters who are afraid of letting these people have their heads too soon. Many responsible colored men are nervous too, the lawyers, the officials, the police.”
“But surely, Mr. Fleury …”
Fleury interrupted him. It was late and he was tired; he had had a long and trying morning going over the estate accounts with Maxwell. He had had enoug
h of being tactful. He said without violence, in a calm level voice, exactly what he thought.
“You’ve got to remember the background and history of these peoples. They were taken from their own countries and shipped here as slaves; they came from different parts of Africa, they are a mingling of different tribes and races. They had only one thing in common, a sense of bitter injustice against their masters. That sense has never died. A great crime was committed. And it is not only the victims of a crime that suffer. Its perpetrators do as well. The planters had a deep-rooted sense of guilt which made them vindictive first toward their slaves, afterward toward their laborers. They were frightened. They were so few, the slaves were many. All through the eighteenth century there were slave revolts. There were revolts even after emancipation. And emancipation is only a hundred years old. Two and a half centuries of an organized slave trade preceded it. The hatred, the fear, the longing for revenge still simmers underneath the surface. You can’t tell at what point they will explode. There’ve been troubles all down these islands since they were first colonized. I’m not saying that they’re serious outbursts nowadays, but property is destroyed and lives are lost. You can never tell where the explosion will come; the slightest thing will set it off, here, or in Grenada, or St. Kitts. But I’ll tell you how I feel, how a large section of us feel right through the islands. That we’re sitting on a keg of dynamite.”
He spoke quietly; and because he spoke quietly, Romer was impressed. Romer made no reply. But his brow was furrowed. An idea had struck him. It might be a good plan to have a man down here, to be on the spot when the keg of dynamite exploded.
Chapter Two
1
By ten past seven the last guest had been bowed out of Government House, but the party was still alive in the form of scattered groups. Rum swizzles and whisky sodas had only been served for an hour. West Indians need two hours of sundowners before they are ready for the dinner which will be succeeded by an almost immediate retiring to sleep and Jamestown possessed five establishments where conviviality could be continued.
Each establishment had a distinct and separate personality. There were two hotels, the St. James and the Continental. The St. James was patronized exclusively by whites: its bar did good business, but its rooms were often vacant and its dining room was like a mausoleum. It owed its prosperity, such as it was, to outside catering. It provided picnic lunches, wedding teas, and canapes for cocktail parties, and it sold wine and spirits by the case to selected customers at a lower rate than they would have had to pay by the bottle at the stores.
The Continental was much livelier and catered for all sections of the community. Visitors needed to book rooms in advance. Planters patronized the bar, usually without their wives. There was no formal dining room. Breakfasts were served in the lounge. At lunch and in the evening, snack meals could be had at the bar, on a buffet system. Most of the Continental’s regular clientele were in low income brackets and took their meals with their friends and relatives.
In addition there were three clubs. The Jamestown was for men only, and no color line was drawn. It was in the center of the town, near the Fleury house, and had been built at the same time. Red brick, red tiled, rectangular, a relic of colonial France, it had been furnished with taste from the auctions of many estate houses. There was old mahogany and silver, its walls were decorated with eighteenth century prints of the Antilles; it had a bar, a billiard table, a writing and a dining room. It was crowded before lunch and lunches were served if ordered three hours in advance. Most of the business of the town was transacted there informally. It was less frequented in the evening and it closed at nine. No dinners were served. Its members were usually to be found after work with their wives and families either at the Country Club, which owned two tennis courts, a croquet lawn, and a card room, and to which no one was admitted who could not pass as white, or at the Aquatic Club which was on the shore a mile out of town and to which no one who was not definitely dark could be elected.
In accordance with their separate positions in the social hierarchy, the guests at the Governor’s cocktail party dispersed themselves among these institutions.
The Fleurys went to the Country Club. As they came onto the porch, Sylvia hesitated; a year ago she would have gone to the end of the veranda with Jocelyn and Mavis, to form a rallying point for the younger set. But as a married woman her place was in the bridge room or the matron’s circle. She had felt very grown up and grand, the first time she had said, “I’ll leave you children to discuss your beaux, me I’m for bridge.” By the calendar Mavis was the elder by two years, but in experience she had been ten years older and it had amused Sylvia to have now a senior status. But that was twelve months ago; she would have given a lot now to have joined in the gossip about Euan Templeton with Jocelyn and her sister. But the end of the veranda was, on a night like this, no place for her.
She paused beside a cluster of middle-aged married people. Mrs. Hartley, the wife of the electrical adviser, was raising her voice in resentful, grumbling self-pity. She was a recent addition to the community. Her husband with three other technicians had been brought out from England on a short term contract to advise and assist local labor. The men had proved successes but their wives had been a problem, in particular Mrs. Hartley. Her house was three miles out and her husband usually had the car.
“Morning after morning, it’s the same,” she said, “no one drops in to see me. There isn’t anyone to drop in and see me. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m used to neighbors. What does one find to do? At home I was always busy. I enjoyed the shopping, gossiping in a queue, wondering what you’d find at the counter when you reached it; shopping’s so awkward here, doing all the buying from one shop, not knowing how it’ll work out. In England you knew exactly where you were, you had your ration book, you knew what each thing cost, and how much of it you could have. But here where you can buy all you want … No really, I can’t get used to it.”
It was the kind of conversation Sylvia had made fun of twelve months ago. “Wives’ talk” they had called it, she and Jocelyn. Now she was a wife herself. She turned into the card room. She did not particularly care for bridge, but it had the merit of being a silent game.
From her seat at the bridge table she could see the girls at the far end of the veranda. She could imagine their conversation. Mavis and Jocelyn had been joined by Doris Kellaway, the daughter of one of the chief sugar planters who had recently been co-opted to take Sylvia’s place. Doris was dark-haired, pale skinned: her genealogy obviously included an African ancestor, but in Santa Marta the phrase “passes for white” had supplanted the denigrating “touch of the tarbrush.” She was pretty in a neat, trim way. She was only nineteen and had been flutteringly excited at becoming “an inseparable.” Mavis for years had been the object for Doris of a schoolgirl crush. Doris thought her marvelous. No wonder the men fell in love with her. She wanted to dress like Mavis, talk like Mavis, live like Mavis. From fifteen on, she had daydreams about Mavis, picturing scenes in which she would save her life, in which Mavis would be in desperate trouble from which she alone could rescue her. She could still hardly believe that she was an associate of Mavis’. Sometimes she would sit in entranced silence in awe of her own position. At other times she talked too much.
She was talking too much now.
“We’re in for the time of our lives,” she was asserting. “Think of all the parties there’ll be given for him. H.E.’ll have to exert himself. Did you notice Euan’s tie, and the material of his suit? I’ve never seen one like it. It looked like shot silk. And he’s so good-looking.”
“I wouldn’t say good-looking. I’d say nice-looking,” Mavis interrupted.
They discussed what he was like inside himself. They compared what he had said to each.
“He asked me how we spent the day here, what our routine was,” Jocelyn said.
“I did better than that,” said Doris. “He said he was delighted that there were so many
pretty girls.”
“Girls, in the plural? I don’t think you did so well. He wanted to know what I did, me myself.”
“Did he ask you to do anything?”
“As a matter of fact he did. He asked me to arrange a bathing party for tomorrow.”
“He did? Then that’s why he didn’t ask any of us. He knew he would be seeing us tomorrow.”
“How did he know that? He didn’t know that I’d be asking you.”
“He must have had the sense to know that we wouldn’t let you take him out without us, as early as this anyhow.”
They laughed in unison. They might be “the inseparables,” but they were rivals.
“Who shall we take along with us?” Jocelyn asked. “That A.D.C.?”
There was a pause; a dubious pause. No one was completely ready to say exactly what she thought about the A.D.C.
“I suppose he’s all right really,” Doris said.
“I suppose he is.”
There was another pause. The ground had been broken and they were almost ready to say what they really thought. “I wouldn’t say he was actually wet,” said Doris.
“Nor’d I, though he does write poetry.”
“What is there that we don’t like about him?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘like’; ‘trust’ is the word I’d use.”
“You’ve got something there.”
“He’s a dark horse.”
“I wouldn’t mind that if I knew …” Mavis hesitated. “He never looks at one in a very interested way. At the same time …” again she hesitated. “All the same I don’t think he is, do you?”
She was shy of using an actual definition, but they all knew what she meant. They shook their heads.
“If he was, one would know where one was. But I’m sure he’s not,” said Mavis.
