Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

  “I’m going out for a little while,” he called. “I’ll be back in an hour, but don’t put those kidneys on until I come.”

  He walked to the stone stairway. The sun was very near now to the horizon. The clouds edging it were lined with orange; the sky was slashed with a succession of pale greens and blues and lavenders. His last sunset was certainly putting on a show for him. This isn’t true. This can’t be happening, he told himself.

  He parked his car, a hundred yards from the meeting. He did not want his arrival to be observed. He stood at the back of the crowd. Boyeur must have been speaking for about twenty minutes. His voice had loudened and grown hoarse; his audience was shouting applause at the end of every sentence. He was like a bandmaster, with arms outstretched, his fingers spread apart, conducting the outbursts, spacing them, now calming them, now exacerbating them. The crowd had become a single person, obedient, mesmerized, his to do what he chose with.

  “The planters have declared war on us,” he was crying. “They have refused our demands, our just demands. We must return war with war. They forced us to strike. Because of them, the strike has lasted two whole weeks. Our funds are not exhausted. Our funds will last us for many weeks. But in order that they may last for several, we must use them carefully. If you were shipwrecked on an island with no chance of rescue for a month, what would you do with your food; you would divide it, would you not, so that it would last a month. So much a week, so much a day. You would not say, ‘I am used to having so much food each day I must have this and that tomorrow.’ If you did that, all your food would have been eaten before the ship arrived. For ten days you would have had no food. Many of you would have starved to death before the ship arrived. The food would have to be divided out, so much each day. And that is what we must do with our strike funds, divide them, so that no matter how long the strike lasts we shall have funds to fight the planters. They cannot hold out forever. Time is on our side. No one will tend their cattle, cut their cane, pick their cocoa, slice their coconuts. We may be hungry for a little, but they will be ruined and the land will become ours. We have worked the land: because of us the land is rich. By right the land is ours. Soon the land will be ours by law.”

  Boyeur paused and the screams became vociferous. As Preston prophesied, Maxwell thought, he’d cut down the strike pay so as to get quick results. He needn’t have, but he hadn’t the temperament for waiting. He wanted immediate action. Well, he’d get it. More than he expected, more than he bargained for.

  Maxwell was acutely conscious of the crowd’s mounting tension. His own temperature rose to meet it, in an adverse sense. His hatred for Boyeur was as electric as the crowd’s hatred for the planters. Boyeur was wearing a white and blue tropical corded suit, in the latest style of which a few models had recently been imported from America. His shirt was white; he had a long thin-ended blue and white polka dot tie. He looked very elegant and handsome: very virile too. He was a natural leader: a man whom men would be proud not only to follow but to suffer for. He was an enemy worth bringing down, even if his own downfall was entailed. Samson leaning on those two pillars.

  “The planters, those Sugar Barons, have declared war on us,” Boyeur was continuing. “In war there are no rules. You make your own rules. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Do not spare the enemy who will not spare you. Things are allowed in wartime that are not allowed in peacetime. In peacetime you may not steal, you may not plunder. But in wartime it is not stealing, it is not plunder to take the goods that an enemy is not strong enough to defend.”

  A shriek of applause went up. Yes, this was it, Maxwell told himself. Incitement to violence, incitement to robbery: there was no doubt of that. In the same way that West Indian politicians in a legislative assembly would indulge in violence that would be unheard of in Westminster or Washington, so does a West Indian demagogue on the platform speaking to his followers use language that in Europe and America would demand police intervention.

  Was there a policeman here? Maxwell wondered. Probably there wasn’t. Local police had the sense to keep away from trouble. But there must be witnesses. Someone who would testify tomorrow. He was still outside himself, watching himself, thinking in terms of Jamestown, of Whittingham, and of the club.

  “War is war,” Boyeur was repeating. “There are no laws in wartime.”

  Another minute or so more, Maxwell told himself. Hysteria was mounting round him. Hysteria was firing his veins. It was going the way he had planned. “Something instantaneous. Something that didn’t give him time to think.” He’d settle his own business and Boyeur’s too, and Whittingham’s into the bargain. Another minute, only a minute more.

  “The land is yours, the houses upon the land are yours. In wartime, you have the right to plunder, to destroy. In wartime you bomb open towns, drop atom bombs upon civilians. A strike is a war. Treat these fields, treat these houses, treat all that belongs to these Sugar Barons as in the war we treated the houses and the fields of the Japanese and Germans; take what you need, destroy what you cannot use. It is yours, yours, yours; to take or to destroy. Yours, yours, yours.”

  A scream answered each shouted “Yours.” This was the moment. Something instantaneous. He drove his elbows sideways into the ribs of the laborers at his side. “Out of my way,” he shouted.

  His voice drowned the hubbub. With his elbows working fast, to left and right, he forced his way toward the table on which Boyeur stood, and jumped upon it. It was a long trestle table, such as is found in Army barracks, fifteen feet long and a yard wide. For a moment he faced Boyeur. There was astonishment and indignation in Boyeur’s face. “You here,” he said.

  Maxwell laughed; the blood was pounding in his veins. He had done that something instantaneous. He had no time to think now, only to act. He had reached the point of no return. He had to go forward. Beyond Boyeur’s shoulder he saw the local constable coming out on to the veranda of the police court. So he had his witness. All was well then.

  He turned from Boyeur and faced the crowd. There were some hundred of them, staring up at him with stupid gaping mouths.

  “Don’t you believe him,” he yelled at them. “There are plenty of funds. There is all the money that is needed. But he doesn’t want you to have it. He wants to keep it for himself. He wants to spend it on himself, on his clothes, on his women: on that fast sports car over there. Look at him. Look at those clothes. Where does the money come from? From you. Can you afford clothes like that, of course you can’t. But he can, though he is one of you. How can he afford such clothes, such a car, such women? Because he has your money; the five cents that you give out of your pay each week. That’s how he buys that car, those clothes. That’s where your money goes. Now when you need your money, you have not got it: because he has spent it, on himself. Look at him now. Look….”

  “Stop. Listen.”

  Boyeur pushed himself forward to the edge of the table; with his arms outstretched he appealed again to the inflamed temper of the crowd.

  “Don’t listen to him, don’t believe him. He is one of your enemies. A planter. One of the Sugar Barons. He and his type have lied to you all their lives. They have tricked and robbed you. They stole you from your families in Africa. They brought you in slave ships across the ocean; out of every ten, three of you died in every crossing. They kept you in chains, they beat and tortured you. And when honorable men in Europe and America demanded that those chains be broken, they kept you still in slavery by paying you starvation wages. You had no rights, no property, no votes. They denied you human justice.”

  It was the familiar jargon of the West Indian demagogue. Maxwell made no attempt to interrupt him. Let Boyeur work upon the mob, and he, in his turn, would goad Boyeur, as he had in the Leg. Co. to the act of final folly that would be his undoing.

  “This man has pointed at my clothes, at my car. But I point at that house of his upon the hill. How much did that cost? Think of the bricks brought out from England. Think of the furniture inside; the g
lass, the silver. Think of the rich food that has been eaten there, the sparkling wine that has been drunk there: think of the jewels and the silks that have been worn there by the Fleury women. How long has that been going on, for two hundred years: for seven generations. Think what that means in money, in two hundred years. And where has that money come from? From you, from your parents, from your great-great-grandparents, from their toil and sweat. Wrung from them, day by day, hour by hour, by their labor in the cane fields under the cruel sun. That was how Belfontaine was built, how the life at Belfontaine was paid for, out of your toil, your labor.”

  He paused at each full stop. And each time he paused a scream went up from the crowd. He had got them where he wanted them. Their eyes gleamed, their faces glistened; they waved their arms, brandished their cutlasses. Maxwell had seen them look like this at Carnival, but at Carnival they were mad with happiness, with good will; now they were inflamed by hate. They were Boyeur’s chattels. A little longer, Maxwell thought, a yard or two more of rope. The contagious excitement of the crowd had caught him. The old black fury was upon him. He looked with loathing and disgust at the docile upturned faces. What slaves they were, following the loudest voice.

  “He calls himself one of you,” Boyeur was shouting, “because he has one minute particle of African blood in his veins. His grandmother came from Jamaica. She was slightly dark: but what is that minute trickle of colored blood compared with the long broad river of Fleury ancestry?”

  Maxwell smiled wryly. A small particle indeed: so small that no one had ever known of it till Bradshaw broke the story, but small though it was it had been enough to bring him all this trouble. If he had been wholly white would that blind fury have taken control of him when his hands had fastened upon Carson’s throat; that blind ungovernable fury that had made him throw Sylvia into the mosquito net? At certain moments he was a beast, not a man. It was in his blood to be. A thin, thin trickle but it had forced this desperate remedy upon him: had made him capable of swallowing the bitter draught of this desperate remedy.

  “He says he is one of you,” Boyeur was shouting. “He told you that at the election, and tricked you into voting for him; but he is not one of you: Look at him. He looks a white man. He is a white man in all that counts. He is on the other side. He is …”

  Maxwell pushed forward. It was time to interrupt, time to goad the crowd, as he had goaded Boyeur. He had clenched his fists. He was held by the wild fury, but he was in control of it. It was a white hot passion that he could exploit for his own purpose. He looked with loathing at the gibbering faces. It was because of his kinship with them that he was in this trouble.

  “He’s right,” he shouted. “I’m not one of you. I’m on the other side. I belong to the white people. But I have that fraction of colored blood in my veins, and because I have it I can understand you. I know what you are worth, I know what you are good for, I know and I can tell you. You were brought here to work as slaves: you were slaves most of you in your own country first. That’s what you are; slaves. That’s what you still ought to be.”

  A roar of fury greeted him. The shriek delighted him. It was what he wanted.

  “You are idle, stupid, ignorant. You’ll only work when a whip’s cracked behind you. You can’t think for yourselves, you follow any master: the man with the loudest voice. You all voted for me at the elections, now you listen to this cheap popinjay.”

  Shriek after shriek greeted every pause. He was following Boyeur’s technique, pausing at each full stop. They were out of all control. Another minute, he thought, and they’ll be ripe. I know them.

  “Slaves you were and slaves you should be. Slaves you are, following a thing like this.”

  He turned and swung round facing Boyeur. You must keep your head, he warned himself. Picture the witness standing up in court. You’ve got your witness watching from the darkness of the station. This mustn’t be reported as a brawl. All the responsibility must lie upon the other side.

  He glanced back at the angry faces.

  “The white people flatter you,” he shouted. “They tell you that you’re as good as they are. They give you a vote, they give you self-government, they finance your projects. I know how wrong they are, because I’ve that small dark part of you inside me. You’re idle, dishonest, stupid; listening to the loudest voice. Take no notice of what this man says. Get back to work while you still have the chance. Before troops are landed and you’re sent back in chains. Don’t you forget it, you’re still slaves at heart.”

  The crowd was like a cageful of beasts at feeding time. Now, he thought, now’s the moment. He swung round to Boyeur. Boyeur had lost control, just as the crowd had done. He only needed the final prick of the goad. Maxwell leant toward him. No one but Boyeur must hear what he said. There must be no extenuating circumstance. He dropped his voice.

  “You,” he said, “whose girl walked out on him the moment a white man raised his little finger. How long do you think you’ll hold that Muriel of yours? Only till something better comes along. Someone with a better skin.”

  He hissed the final word. He saw Boyeur’s face contort, saw his right arm swing back. He made no attempt to duck, to guard himself. A blow struck without provocation, against unclenched fists.

  The blow struck him below the eye. His cheek bone cracked. He staggered, off his balance, he put back his foot. It missed the edge of the table and he fell. He flung out his arms, and his hands clutched at a bare, damp shoulder, his nails gripped for a hold.

  This isn’t true, this can’t be happening, he thought.

  He was half stunned, he was only kept from fainting by the sharp excruciating pain below his eye. His fall was broken by a human wall: as his feet were grounded, he struck out. A huge hard knuckled fist crashed against his ear. He would have fallen had he had room to fall.

  “Let him have it, boys.” Boyeur’s voice rang clear, breaking through the fog of pain that obscured Maxwell’s senses. Maxwell gloated at the sound of it. Ah, that was what he wanted; the final testimony: Boyeur’s score was settled and so was Whittingham’s. The blows crashed in on him from every angle of the narrow ring that hemmed him. He swayed from one side of the circle to another, his equilibrium maintained like a top’s as he spun from one blow to another. His knees were weakening. He was half-conscious; no human frame could endure this. Boyeur brought down, Whittingham foiled; Sylvia saved, their child’s honor saved.

  Sylvia, he heard her voice with its new note of tenderness. He felt her head’s weight upon his shoulder, saw her hair scattered on the pillow. Why had this had to happen? Why, why, why?

  Through half-dimmed eyes he saw the red glow of sunset on a cutlass, saw it and saw nothing more.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  1

  “Maxwell Fleury is dead, killed in a strike riot. David Boyeur is under arrest. The Governor has declared martial law and the strike is broken. A British Man-of-war is anchored in the harbor.”

  Carl Bradshaw sat back in his chair and reread the opening paragraph of the last article that he would transmit from Santa Marta. Nothing that he had written in his whole life had given him greater satisfaction. Here was the evidence of his reestablishment. His prophecies had come true. How often could a journalist make that boast? He was returning to Baltimore on his own terms. The future stretched before him, rich and bountiful, with autumns in New York, winters in Florida, the spring in Paris, summers in Cannes and Venice; pauses in London, on the way back and forth. He could not ask more of fate. He did not consider its rewards unmerited. The cards had fallen luckily, but not everyone knew how to play a winning hand.

  He resumed his article. He was spending a week in Virginia before his return to Baltimore. The plane that dropped him off in Miami could carry on the article. He had to mail it before six o’clock. It was his last article and he meant it to be his best. Since it was his last, he could be outspoken in a way that he had not been able when he was a resident. In all human probability he would never set foot ag
ain in Santa Marta. He would never see any of its inhabitants again. He could say what he liked about them. There was no need for discretion. He would not need to consider anybody’s feelings. He could tell the truth.

  “The news of Maxwell Fleury’s death reached Jamestown at seven o’clock by telephone from the local constable who witnessed the incident,” he wrote. “The Governor took the action to be expected of a general. He mobilized the police and drove out in person to the scene. David Boyeur was in the police station. The Governor carried a warrant for his arrest, and Boyeur was brought back in handcuffs. Boyeur was placed in the front of an open jeep, so that everyone along the road could see him. Before he arrested Boyeur, the Governor declared martial law, announced that the strike was ended and ordered all field laborers and longshoremen to report for work next morning. It is doubtful whether he had the legal right to do this, and it is possible that on some of the estates the peasants might have refused to return to work. But at four o’clock this morning a British destroyer steamed into Jamestown harbor.

  “The arrival of the ship, coupled with the arrest of their leader has convinced the proletariat that the authorities intend to be obeyed. Men of African descent recognize the argument of force; they are also highly superstitious. They regard the arrival of an ironclad within ten hours of the riot as a miracle. Actually the ship had been cruising for the last week within a few hours’ range of Santa Marta in case of emergency.”

  If this had all happened fifty hours later, Bradshaw thought, he would have missed the very story that he had been sent here to get. A lucky break. But luck went to the deserving.

  That morning he had obtained an interview with the Governor. Templeton was anxious to have the facts of the case widely known.