Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

  “The island is not genuinely self supporting,” Bradshaw argued. “Income tax, which is by American standards cripplingly high, and customs duties which are also high, pay for its administration and support the upkeep of Government House. But the money that supports the various welfare schemes comes out of the Imperial treasury. In time of war the West Indian islands are an asset to Britain, but in time of peace they are a liability. This is a fact that the proletariat does not realize. Do the leaders of the new oligarchy realize it? Does David Boyeur, for example? And many consider David Boyeur to be the key to the situation. David Boyeur …”

  There followed a pen picture of David Boyeur. The Governor read it with a mounting measure of appreciation. There was more to Bradshaw than he had thought. The fellow had got around, understood what he had seen. Up to a point Bradshaw’s view of Boyeur coincided with his own.

  “Boyeur is in his own field all powerful. He can organize a strike, and Santa Marta cannot afford a strike. If the cane is not cut, if the cane is not shipped, the island’s economy will be thrown out of gear. Boyeur has obtained more than one rise in wages by threatening a strike; but there is a limit to which the wages of a cane cutter can be raised. The price of sugar must be kept to a level at which it can enter the world market side by side with sugar not only from Barbados, St. Lucia and St. Kitts, but from Mauritius and Ceylon and Cuba. Boyeur has promised his followers that when he is in the Assembly, he will raise their wages another five per cent. Will he be able to keep that promise? Will he have the sense that is ingrained in every practicing politician of being able to go back on his promise once he is in power? Boyeur is young and vain. Has he learnt how to eat his words, without loss of face? A great deal depends on that.”

  Bradshaw then talked of some of the other men who were likely to get elected to the Council: the lawyers, the landowners, the men in trade. “They are sound, sensible men, or at least they appeared to be when they were in the minority, when they were in opposition, but it must not be forgotten that they have been trained for three hundred years to see their lot in terms of subjection to the white man. How will they behave now that they are in control, that they have the bit between their teeth?

  “There is another point, a final one, but a most important one. We must not forget the climate, which is something that is so often forgotten by those who are not familiar with the effects of climate. How many of the officials who administer the fortunes of a remote dependency from Washington, London, Paris, take into account that difference of climate?

  “At a first glance the West Indian climate seems one of the most beneficent on the globe. There is no winter, as we know it; there is no torrid heat; there are no diseases; malaria is under control; the trade wind blows throughout the year. The vacationist flying south from our frostbound northern streets will consider Santa Marta a terrestrial paradise. ‘Is it like this all the year round?’ he asks in amazement. The answer is, yes, it is, and that is precisely why for those who live here all the year it is not a paradise. For fifty-two weeks, one day is like another. There is rain most days. There is sun every day. Between January and December there is only an hour’s difference between the length of a day. The temperature varies very slightly. November is supposed to be the wet hot month: March is supposed to be the dry cool month. But landing at the Santa Marta airport without a calendar you could not guess in which month you were. There is the danger of hurricanes in August and September. But that is all. One day is like another, too like another.

  “This constancy of climate gets upon people’s nerves: it drives them to do things that in a cool climate they would never do. When we read of the brutalities that were inflicted by the old planters on their slaves, we ask ourselves how men can have been so foolish as to damage their own property; a slave was worth two hundred dollars when a dollar was twenty modern dollars. There is only one answer to that; the climate. Tempers are frayed. In a second men lose self-control. Two incidents took place today that prove how very near to the surface tempers are. They both concern white people. The first incident concerns the Governor’s son, who has come out here for a summer’s holiday at the end of his military service, before going up to Oxford in the autumn. He is a good-looking agreeable youth. This is what happened this afternoon outside the Court House.”

  He described Mavis’ behavior. “Would you expect such a girl to behave like that in England? The second incident is far more remarkable. It concerned a colonel, a career soldier now retired.” The incident was recounted, “When members of the white ruling class can behave like this, is it not natural to wonder what will happen when the demagogues of an undisciplined proletariat are in control. I sit, I repeat, on a volcano.”

  At the reference to his son, the Governor started, but he went on reading. He must let this sink in, he must think of something else. He turned the sheet. On the leader page an editorial was headed “Trouble in the Caribbean.”

  “On page 15 we print a highly significant article from Carl Bradshaw, our New York correspondent, who for reasons of health is now vacationing in the small British West Indian island of Santa Marta. When he took off, he had no plans to write, but the situation there has interested him so much that he felt compelled to write the article we print. We believe it will be appreciated. Some readers may contend that the domestic fortunes of a small British colony are no concern of ours. To that we would retort that anything that happens in the Caribbean is our concern. The Caribbean lies at our back door; by examining this present situation in Santa Marta we can better gauge not only the problems that await us in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, but problems that we cannot ignore in Jamaica, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. Anarchy in that area is a menace to our own security. We trust that the charming little island of Santa Marta will not become the victim of the explosion of which our correspondent has heard the rumblings. But even so his diagnosis of the various ingredients of these inflammable conditions has a meaning and a significance for us all. We have suggested to Carl Bradshaw that when his holiday is over, he should regard an extensive trip of the Antilles in the light of an assignment.”

  His Excellency grunted. That was sound enough, but obvious. Which was, of course, the object of an editorial, to state the obvious in such a way that it would appear profound: to sum up the news of the day in terms of the mentality, tastes, prejudices of that paper’s public, so that the average commuter reading it on his return from work would see his own ideas confirmed and expressed for him, so that he would close the day elevated in his own esteem.

  The Governor turned back to the double column article. He read the penultimate paragraph. He had flattered himself that he was well posted on the various facets of the island’s life. But he had no inkling, so it seemed, as to what was passing under his own roof, had no idea what was passing in his own son’s mind. Five weeks ago when he had seen that plane, circling in the sky, he had looked forward to the chance that the next months would give him of getting to know his son. But how much had he really seen of Euan; they had been in each other’s company half the time, but had they had one real talk? They had discussed the day’s events, the local gossip; they had talked of friends and relatives in England. Euan had described service conditions in what was euphemistically called peacetime conditions in the Middle East. They had discussed Euan’s career, and had agreed that it was wise to make no decision till he had a chance of looking round at Oxford. “That’s the great thing about a university,” he had said. “However much you learn or don’t learn, you’ll find out the kind of person that you are yourself.” They had talked easily; there had been no embarrassment, but had they once gone below the surface? As the colonel of a regiment he had prided himself on his ability to be “a father confessor” to his subalterns. But there was all the difference in the world between a subaltern and a son. What do I do now, he thought; knowing even as he asked himself that question that there was nothing, absolutely nothing that he could do. If Euan came to him for advice, he would meet h
im three-quarters way. But he could not force sympathy upon him. There was one thing, thank heaven, he could rely upon. Euan would never see the article.

  3

  There was a lunch party of forty guests that morning at Government House, for the retiring members of the Council, their wives and a few of the head officials. It was a buffet meal.

  “There’s no need for you to come to this unless you want,” Templeton told his son. “You might find it boring.”

  “I don’t think I shall. I usually manage to get some fun out of this kind of thing.”

  “You really are having fun out here?”

  “Of course. I sometimes can’t believe I’m here. I wake up and say to myself, ‘Another desert patrol tonight.’ Then I remember that I’m not there.”

  Euan certainly looked happy enough. No sign of a broken heart; probably it had only been a flirtation. Euan had been living like a monk for eighteen months. Maybe he had been too enterprising. At the moment there was nothing to be done.

  “Have you made any plans for Carnival?” his father asked.

  “We thought we’d go out into the country and see what it’s like in the smaller villages.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “The usual crowd. Jocelyn, Mavis Norman, Doris Kellaway.”

  The usual crowd. It didn’t look as though the scene outside the Court House, whatever its cause or nature, had broken up the family atmosphere of the inseparables. It was probably not anything to worry over.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said. “I should go out on the Tuesday itself if I were you, then come back here late in the evening to see the last parades. Mardi gras is something not to miss from all that I’ve been told.”

  He had been also told that there was a danger of trouble during carnival. It was the last fling before the long Lenten calm. The natives would be drinking fierce illicitly brewed rum for a week on end. With everyone “running mask” there were easy opportunities for the paying off of old scores behind the anonymity of a carnival disguise. In some of the islands, the precaution had been taken of insisting that all masks be removed by six o’clock. Once in the past a similar restriction had been placed on Santa Marta; but that was ten years ago. There had been no real trouble lately. Only a few broken crowns, a few car tires slashed.

  Colonel Whittingham was one of his guests at lunch. The Governor was glad of the chance it gave him to have a few unofficial words with him.

  “Do you think there’s any real danger of trouble during Carnival?” he asked.

  “There’s always that danger, sir.”

  “I take it that’s an official answer. What’s the unofficial one?”

  The colonel grinned. “You know what the police are, sir. They want to avoid trouble. They want to cover themselves. If there is trouble, they like to be able to say, ‘I warned you, sir.’ “

  “So you’d like to impose a curfew on the evening of Mardi gras.”

  “Frankly, sir, I would.”

  “Would you say that there was more likelihood of trouble this year than any of the last five years?”

  Whittingham hesitated. He would have liked to have said “Yes,” but he could not honestly.

  “It’s much the same as it always is,” he said.

  “In that case I don’t think it would be a very popular act for me, as a new Governor, to abandon the practice of my predecessors. By the way,” he added, “have you heard much talk about that scene at the club the other night with Carson?”

  “Half the talk I hear is about that one thing.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Leisching has put in an official complaint to the Committee. The Committee hasn’t met yet. They’re playing for time. They won’t do anything till after Carnival.”

  “Do they hope it’ll die of its own accord?”

  “That’s just about it, sir.”

  “From what I know of the German temperament that’s the last thing Leisching will allow to happen. Germans are very persistent when they consider they have a grievance. I take it the Doctor has.”

  “I wasn’t there, sir, but from what I heard, why, yes.”

  “I suppose I may have to intervene.”

  The policeman made no comment.

  It was simpler, the Governor reflected, to command a division against Rommel in the Western Desert than administer a small Crown Colony. Across the room, he saw Carl Bradshaw in conference with the Attorney General. He had asked Bradshaw, as an afterthought, as a corollary to that cable of congratulation from Baltimore. He walked across to him. “I hope you’re finding your holiday is having the results you hoped.”

  “I have rarely felt in better health, sir.”

  “It must be a great relief to be freed of the strain of writing two articles a week. I think you told me that that’s what your ration was.”

  “Two signed columns, a weekly article, and occasional news items.”

  “I can imagine how quickly those two articles follow one on the other’s heels. No sooner is one done than you have to start the next. You probably don’t feel free of that responsibility even here?”

  “Well, I…”

  The Governor ignored the interruption. He was enjoying the dramatic irony of the conversation. “I wonder if you ever met the Daily Express cartoonist Strube: I’m sure you must know his work. He created ‘the little man’ of the 1930’s. I sat next him once at a Saturday Night dinner at the Savage Club. He told me a curious thing. He was so used, he said, to producing a cartoon every day that when he went on a holiday, he dreamed one every night. Do you, Mr. Bradshaw, dream an article every Tuesday and Friday night?”

  “On the contrary, Your Excellency, I’m very glad to be able to say that I am deriving the fullest benefits from my holiday.”

  Templeton chuckled inwardly. Bradshaw had clearly no idea that his article had found its way to the house upon the hill. He did not intend to let him know. During his service in Military Intelligence he had learnt to let a suspect run free through the bazaars, if he were causing no great danger and one could watch his movements. One day he might find it convenient to administer a rude shock to Master Bradshaw. But in the meantime it was intriguing to wait and wonder what future rabbits Bradshaw would pull out of his hat.

  4

  No one is consistent. And when His Excellency had felt relieved at the knowledge that his son stood no chance of reading the article in the Baltimore Evening Star, he forgot that only a short time earlier he had been telling his A.D.C. that it was important to have the right kind of article about Santa Marta appearing in the American Press, since Harlem was to a West Indian what Mecca was to an Iraqi Moslem, and that Santa Martans were more affected by a paragraph about themselves in a New York paper than by a tribute from the Throne in a Christmas Day broadcast.

  When he had told Archer that, he had assumed that the articles that Wilson P. Romer would sponsor in the Baltimore Evening Star would eventually find their way back to Santa Marta. He had been right in that assumption. A large number of Santa Martans had relatives in the United States and the same plane that brought the Baltimore Evening Star to Government House, carried clippings of Bradshaw’s article to the offices of the island’s daily paper, The Voice of Santa Marta.

  The editor’s eyes widened as he read it. This certainly was something. The editor, Marcel Tourneur, was a colored man in the early thirties. His father owned a store and a plantation on the windward coast. The Tourneurs were one of the richer families. Marcel was very much the son of a rich man. He knew he could lead a comfortable life without overworking. He had never kept regular hours when he worked in the store, and when his father had put him in charge of the estate, he had spent most of his time in Jamestown. His father had bought up The Voice of Santa Marta entirely to provide his son with an occupation.

  The paper was an expression of its editor’s personality. It was the paper of a man with a sense of mischief and a sense of fun. It had a daily four sheet issue. Its front page carried gene
ral international news that was a precis of the B.B.C. news bulletin. The back page carried advertisements, the third page shipping news, lists of arrivals and departures; local cricket and football scores: reports of Police Court cases and of the meetings of the Council.

  The second page was the lively one. It was Marcel’s direct responsibility. He wrote the editorials. He chose the leading article from a London or New York paper. Whenever possible he chose an article that was likely to cause controversy.

  When the Baltimore Evening Star reached his office, Marcel whistled. This was too good to be true. His first impulse was to print it right away; to make a splash, to give it a build-up; to have posters printed. He could make a sensation with this piece. At the same time he had the same detective’s instinct that the Governor had. Let your prey run wild a little, give the criminal his head, don’t let him know that he is being watched. The second or a third article might be a good deal livelier. By waiting he might make a bigger splash. If he printed this article now he might scare Bradshaw into prudence. Much better for Bradshaw not to know that his articles had found their way back to Santa Marta. He placed the clipping in a drawer to which he had a key.

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  The sun on the morning of Mardi gras rose into a cloudless sky. Jocelyn, seated at her window beside her morning tea, looked forward to the day with mingled anticipation and anxiety. There might be awkward moments. It was the first picnic since the scene outside the court house. As far as she could observe, there had been no patching up. Mavis and Euan had met in groups, at the tennis club and at Grande Anse on Sunday. They had not avoided one another. They had talked naturally: there had been no sign of friction; but that had been in groups. It would be different today, in a small party, on their own.