Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

  What was going to happen to her, she asked herself. She was young, she was warm blooded; since that silly business with young Templeton she had avoided complications, but it couldn’t last; she wouldn’t want it to. She was not that type. She knew herself too well. Sooner or later it would all begin again.

  Where was she headed? What could she look forward to? What was she making of her life? She was not the career woman, not the “good works type”; she was meant for marriage; to merge her life with a man’s, make a home for him, bear his children, create a background for him, help him to play his part in the world’s work. Did that sound dull and sophomoric in this modern day? It might do, but it was what she needed. And what chance did she stand of finding it out here? There were so few men and she was bound to one type of man, one class of man. In Europe you weren’t bound by class. The son of your father’s chauffeur might become a first-class engineer, earning a large salary, on his way to prestige and prominence; your engagement would make people say, “How things are changed. Her father’s chauffeur. What a democratic age. Fair chances for all. A good thing too.” But here your father’s chauffeur was a colored man, so his son was out, no matter how brilliant he might be. There was no choice here.

  Five years ago she had spoken lightheartedly to “the inseparables” of having all the fun that came your way and relying on one of your escapades turning out seriously. But she was eighteen then. Now she was twenty-three and time was hurrying past. The writing on the wall. The months had gone by, the escapades had proved short-lived. A boat had sailed. There had been letters and cables for the first two months: then a long pause and a card at Christmas, promising “a real letter soon.” Then silence and a press clipping with a note attached, “As you see I’m going to be married soon. Please wish me luck.” That or something like that: except that once, with Rickie; well, she’d got over that.

  And that’s the way it had been. And that’s the way it would be; and when someone really eligible turned up, she’d let him slip through her fingers. Not that she’d regretted that: Euan wasn’t right for her. She’d known that inside herself from the start. And if she married the wrong man she would be impossible; she’d tromper him right and left. All that sophomoric talk of marriage held good for the right marriage with the right man; a man whom you could honor, whose work in the world you could respect; someone whom you could serve. Where could she find that here, encased as she was by this rigid protocol of color?

  She looked away from Muriel. Whatever might lie ahead, her present job was to be a good guest and entertain the guest of honor.

  “We’ve hardly exchanged a word,” she said to Boyeur. “What are your plans? Is there a house you’ve got your eye on yet?”

  Sylvia, too, looking across the table, noticed and was touched by the look on Muriel’s face. The kid was in love all right. She recalled her own engagement party. She hadn’t been in love then, not as she knew love now. Had an experienced woman looked at her and wondered: saying to herself, “There’s one who’s missed it.” Would that same woman looking at her during these last weeks have changed her mind thinking, “Something has happened there.” She felt different, she must look different. Surely she had been transfigured, in the way Muriel had.

  She looked away from Muriel and as she did so she realized that Maxwell had been looking at her. He smiled as their eyes met, warmly, tenderly, adoringly. As she smiled back her lips framed a kiss. It was he who had achieved that transformation. It was a debt that she could never repay to him. He had revealed her to herself.

  Maxwell half closed his eyes. It was the first time that she had looked at him like that across a table. Four months ago he had not believed it possible that she could look at him in such a way. Four months ago he had been blind with jealousy, ready to fancy Carson was her lover. How incredible that seemed. In another four months would it seem as incredible that he had fancied Whittingham suspected him as a murderer? Here he had been fretting himself into sleeplessness because he had suspected that the party was a trap concocted between H.E. and the policeman. Instead of that it was a trap for Boyeur. The old boy would give him the works after dinner, he supposed.

  3

  Maxwell had guessed correctly. The Governor did not move down to take the seat that Mrs. Fleury had vacated, he beckoned Boyeur to his end.

  “Come here on my right, David; Maxwell, you move up. And pass the port round, Julian.”

  The Governor paused, looking round him; there was silence. He was about to execute tactics that he made use of when he was a colonel, when two young officers had quarreled.

  “Look here,” he said, “you two are at outs, I gather. I don’t want to interfere with your private matters. I don’t want to know the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of it. There are rights and wrongs on both sides. There always are when two decent young fellows are concerned; and your private quarrels are none of my business, normally, but they are in this instance because they concern the welfare of the re——colony.”

  He had almost used the word “regiment,” the scene was so familiar. Archer, noticing the slip, felt guilty and apprehensive. These tactics would work well enough in a regiment: invite the two young officers to your house, along with one or two of their seniors, treat them as friends, make them feel important, yet at the same time overawe them, give them a sense of duty and obligation. Such tactics would work admirably with regimental officers who had been groomed by a Public School and Sandhurst to this kind of discipline. He doubted if it would work with these two West Indians who had a basic hereditary distrust of themselves and of their neighbors. He looked at Maxwell and at Boyeur. Their expressions were impassive. It might be working. It might seem to have been worth trying, but he remembered Margot’s warning. He would rather trust her instinct than the experience of a high officer of state.

  “The colony needs you, both of you,” H.E. was continuing. “You’re the two youngest councilors. You have great influence, great futures. The fortunes of the colony depends on you and on young men like you. You set the others an example, and we cannot, I insist, we cannot have a repetition of last week’s performance in the Council. You will, of course, David, have to make a statement at the next meeting of the Leg. Co. That’s a matter of form, the mere drill of the thing, but that’s beside the point, that’s a minor matter of routine: what I want now from you both is a promise that you’ll try and forget your quarrel. I don’t want you to promise to become bosom friends right away, though I do want you to respect each other’s point of view, to recognize that each in his own way is working for the island’s good, for I know that you both are; what I want you to do now, in earnest of that, is to shake hands across the table.”

  It was by no means unimpressive, Archer thought. The General was himself an impressive figure, particularly here in his white tunic, with his row of medals, his crown and crossed swords on the shoulder, at the head of this long table in the high-backed chair with the royal portraits above the mantelpiece.

  The Governor looked to his left hand and to his right.

  “David, Maxwell.”

  It was in part a question, in part an order. Automatically the two young men stood up, their hands stretched across the table; as their eyes met, the A.D.C. would have given a great deal to have been able to know what manner of expression the eyes of each held for the other. Their profiles told him nothing.

  “Fine. That’s settled now,” the Governor said. “Keep that port moving, Denis. I don’t know what an A.D.C.’s for except to keep the port in motion. One more glass, everyone, and we’ll join the ladies.”

  4

  A quarter of an hour later the Governor pushed back his chair. Archer shepherded the guests. “The lavatories are at the end of the passage, or there’s the garden.”

  Maxwell was the last to leave the dining room. He turned into the garden. Boyeur was facing a hedge of crotons a few yards away. Maxwell was subject to an irritating and embarrassing disability. He was often unable to relieve himself in publi
c. This disability was a great inconvenience to him at the races when queues were formed behind an open drain. He walked past Boyeur to the end of the hedge and faced in the opposite direction.

  Swine, Boyeur thought, turning his back on me. That settles him.

  Maxwell walked across the lawn to the garden wall. The air was soft and scented with jasmin. A large Dutch cargo was at anchor, its portholes were reflected in the water. It was its maiden voyage, and the gangway was festal with electric bulbs. The dark hills above the carenage were sprinkled with lighted windows; there was no moon, but the sky was cloudless: he could see the white wash of breakers on the reef. Men who had traveled far had told him that there was little as lovely in the world as this. He stood there, his mind a blank in unreflecting enjoyment of its beauty. From the drawing room came the sound of music. A gramophone. Perhaps they were dancing. He must be getting back; through the uncurtained windows he could see Sylvia’s blonde head in profile against pale green panels. He remembered how across the table her lips had framed that kiss. No shame must ever come to her through him. If the law’s hand was about to fall on him, he would know how to avoid its clutch.

  There was no dancing after all. Not enough young men, Maxwell supposed. The gramophone had been turned on softly, so that conversation could be continued through it. Jocelyn and Archer were together and he joined them.

  “Do you write novels as well as poems?” he asked.

  “I’ve done some short stories. I’m meaning to get down to a novel soon.”

  “Your characters commit suicide, don’t they?”

  “Now and again, of course.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “It depends where they are. If they are in Canada, I’d make them walk out into the snow. That’s painless, almost pleasant I believe. But that wouldn’t be a good idea if I were writing a West Indian novel.”

  “If you were going to commit suicide yourself, how would you do it?”

  “The easiest way, with sleeping pills.”

  “What about taking too many? Isn’t there that danger?”

  Archer shook his head.

  “Not with pheno-barbitone. That’s the merit of it. Morphia can trick you but not pheno-barbitone. Thirty grains and home you go. Of course if you’ve been in the habit of taking it regularly, you’d have to give yourself a larger dose. ‘Mithridates, he died old.’ “

  “But everyone would know that you had taken it.”

  “Naturally.”

  “That might defeat your point. It would cause scandal for your family. The whole point of the suicide may have been to avoid scandal for your family. Suppose, in a novel, one of your characters wanted to commit suicide so that no one would suspect that it was suicide. How would you make him do it?”

  “It would be easy if he was a man,” Jocelyn interjected. “He could book a passage on one of those Dutch cargo boats that take only twelve passengers and don’t carry a doctor. He could take sleeping pills and be found dead in the morning. No one would know what was wrong and they’d have to bury him right away. He’d be reported ‘died at sea.’ “

  “Why couldn’t a woman do that?”

  “They won’t take a woman passenger on that kind of boat, unless she’s with her husband or another woman. If she is, that makes complications.”

  Archer looked at her with surprise and interest. She must have thought about suicide a lot. He, as a writer, had to know something about the various fates that might befall his characters. He had to know about suicide and illness and law court procedure. She had not got to. She must have considered suicide as a serious personal problem. She would only consider suicide seriously in relation to herself. “If it comes to the worst, how shall I get out of it?” She must have been desperately unhappy before Euan had turned up. She must…

  He checked. A sudden thought had struck him. The Dutch cargo boats with limited passenger accommodation had only been running this last month. The boat now at anchor was on its maiden voyage. The first ship had called two weeks ago. They worked on a fortnightly schedule. There were no other such boats. That had been one of the problems since the war for the smaller islands. There were no direct services to Europe. You had to pick up a French Line boat in Trinidad, or an Elder-Fyffe banana boat in Jamaica. It must have been in this last month, perhaps in this very fortnight that she had been thinking, “Men are lucky. A man could go in that boat and take an overdose of pheno-barbitone and no one would know. Found dead at sea.” Why had she thought that, now, when the future was spread out for her so brightly? She ought not to have a trouble in the world and yet she was brooding about suicide. How little one knew about other people. Perhaps one should always write novels in the first person; then one could confine oneself to what one knew. Better not to attempt to identify oneself with another character, seeing through his eyes, speaking through his voice; best to admit as one told one’s story that one relied on guesswork. You could report on what your characters said, how they behaved, what they were, how they looked, but the why and wherefore were beyond your scope. If you wrote in the first person you could avoid the responsibility of omniscience. Surely…

  He pulled himself together. Off again into a daydream. The writer’s occupational liability. This was no time for ruminating on the craft of fiction. He was an A.D.C. and his present and immediate job was to see that the party fulfilled its function. And there as the proof that he was not doing so, was David Boyeur, glum and silent on the wing of a group of four, who were talking inward to their apex. He excused himself and went across.

  For a minute or so he too sat silent while Mr. Norman enlarged on the necessity for more tennis courts as a bait for tourists: then he touched Boyeur’s knee.

  “I wonder if you’ve seen the G.H. collection of West Indian prints. They keep them upstairs. I can’t think why. They might amuse you.”

  He took Boyeur up to the Chief Guest bedroom. They were eighteenth and early nineteenth century color prints. They had a charming period quality. They had not the accuracy of a photograph but they had “the feel of the place.” There were one or two of Santa Marta. There had been much construction since the drawings had been made; a swamp had been reclaimed, wharfs had been built; the hillside had been dotted with new bungalows, but there was no doubt that it was the carenage. With a modern photograph you might have had to look more than once.

  Boyeur peered into it, noting this change and that, pointing out this inaccuracy and the other. The fort was not as large as that, the bay was not as narrow. “And look at the church, the spire’s half that height.”

  Boyeur took a pride that was touching in the island of his birth. He resented any distortion of its landscape. He examined a print of Trinidad. Yes, the Queen’s Park Savannah was well enough, but it was too big. It lacked the coziness of Jamestown.

  Archer could not help liking him. There was something ingenuous about him. It was the first time he had been alone with him. He wondered if Boyeur knew about himself and Margot: he presumed he did. No one at the Country Club might suspect, but it would be common gossip at the Aquatic. He did not feel embarrassed. On the contrary, he felt that they could talk in shorthand, he and Boyeur. He wondered if there was anything that he could say to make Boyeur feel better about the evening. But he remembered Margot’s warning. “If you have any doubt when you’re dealing with Boyeur about what’s the right thing to do, do nothing.” He trusted her instinct. Best say nothing.

  He pointed to a print of Antigua.

  “That’s my favorite of the lot,” he said.

  It showed a red brick, two storied estate house, beside a windmill, against a background of low, rounded hills with a team of Negroes bare to the waist cutting the cane with thin, long, curved cutlasses, while long-skirted Negresses with bright shawls and headdresses piled the stalks onto a cart. In the near distance were the low barrack-like slave quarters, with naked children tumbling over each other on the steps and a woman suckling her child. It had a pastoral charm, an air of happines
s like a Morland farm scene.

  “On a well-run plantation they did not have too bad a time,” he said.

  “Probably a better time than they have now. They had no worries. They were looked after. A wise farmer looks after his own cattle. But it can’t stay that way. They’ve been given freedom. They’ve got to use it. They’ve got to be taught to use it. They’ve got power now. They’ve got a vote. They’re the top dogs. They’ve got to realize it. That’s what I’m doing for them, showing them how powerful they are. The right to strike. That’s more important than a vote.”

  He spoke, so it seemed to Archer, with a mulish, stupid stubbornness. None of it hung together. One thing alone was clear. Margot had been right. It was best to do nothing with Boyeur if one had the slightest doubt of what was the right thing to do. But perhaps the old boy had had no doubt. That might well have been the trouble. He saw everything in terms of the cricket field.

  “A slave mentality. That’s what’s wrong with these people,” Boyeur was continuing. “They were slaves, the half of them, in Africa before they were ever shipped here. They don’t understand freedom. I’ll give you an example. Find a man who’s never seen a revolver fired. Give him a revolver. Tell him that if he pulls the trigger, there’ll be an explosion, that a bullet will fly out that can kill anyone it hits. He’ll nod his head, say ‘yes, yes’ in agreement. But he won’t understand what you’re talking about till he’s seen a revolver fired, till he’s seen the damage it can do: till he’s seen someone fall down with a wound in his shoulder, bleeding. We’ve given the Negro the equivalent of a revolver, but he hasn’t seen yet what damage he can do with it. The vote, the right to strike; teach him his power. That’s what we’ve got to do.”