Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

  He looked again at Julian Fleury, inquiringly, but the older man shook his head.

  “I’m sorry. I’d like to be able to help you but I can’t. It’s a surprise to me. I didn’t know the two had met other than casually.”

  “Can anyone else help me?”

  No one could.

  “I’d be very grateful if you could make inquiries,” he said. “I’ll do my best to find out myself, but my own information will not be coming from an impartial source.”

  He said it with a smile. It was the only indication he had given that, for him, this was a family affair.

  The Governor asked Grainger to stay behind when the meeting broke up.

  “Don’t think I don’t realize that this is very difficult for you,” the Governor said.

  Grainger made no reply. He waited for the Governor to continue.

  “This is your first important case as Attorney General. It is of great importance in your career. I recognize that you couldn’t have had an unluckier beginning.”

  Again the Governor paused, but again Grainger remained silent. He knew the value of saying nothing till one had made up one’s own mind.

  “This is your test,” the Governor went on. “People are undecided about you. Many consider I made a mistake in appointing so young a man. You will be judged for many years by your conduct of this case. I know that you are in a difficult position. Whichever way you act, you will be criticized. You know that of course already. But I want to assure you of this. You have my complete confidence. Whichever way you decide to act, you have my support. I shall back you up. I have appointed you to this post and I stand by my own appointment. The colonel of a regiment fights the battles of his junior officers with the ‘higher ups.’ A colonel may abuse one of his company commanders in the orderly room, but he’ll fight that officer’s battles against the brigadier. Don’t forget that, my boy.”

  “I won’t forget it, sir.”

  3

  Grainger usually lunched off a sandwich at his chambers. He had not yet found himself a flat and one meal a day in the atmosphere of his family was as much as his patience could take. His home had become a strain. Every week he became more conscious of the vast differences between his parents and himself. His years in England had made him foreign to them. They could not share his ambitions. But today was different. He needed to see Muriel.

  She rushed to meet him, her eyes swollen and dark rimmed.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you afterward.”

  Or at least he could tell her partially. She would be of more help to him if she was not too completely documented.

  “You’ll be seeing David, won’t you, this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “There’s something I want you to find out for me. I want to know what the feud was between Maxwell Fleury and himself. I also want to know what Maxwell said to make David lose his temper. You know what happened, don’t you?”

  “Please tell me. I don’t know the details.”

  He told her roughly. He did not want her to know too much. He did not want David to know how much he knew. He did not tell her that David had shouted to the crowd that fatal “Let him have it, boys.”

  She listened with a strained, uncomprehending look. She could not believe that this was happening to her David. Twenty-four hours ago she and David had picnicked on the beach. He had been tender, adoring, utterly absorbed in her, regretting that he had to go out to this boring meeting. He had promised to get back quickly, to take her to the second showing at the cinema.

  She had waited and waited, first impatiently, then angrily; then anxiously. At last the appalling news had reached her. She could not believe that it had happened. Only six hours ago they had been on the beach, her head lying in his lap, his fingers stroking her cheek, running through her hair: such peace, such utter peace. Yet with the undercurrent of excitement, the knowledge that with one gesture he could set the blood pounding through her veins: she was his to do what he wanted with; she longed to be his utterly, yet she had been grateful to him for letting her savor this calm tranquillity a little longer. She looked at her brother with incredulous bewilderment.

  “Nothing can really happen, can it?” she asked imploringly.

  He shrugged. “It’ll be for the jury to decide.”

  “But can’t you stop it? Surely you must know that he never meant it. That it was all an accident.”

  “I hope that was all it was. Have you ever heard him mention Maxwell Fleury?”

  “I can’t say that I have. He never talked about politics to me.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “Love, half the time.”

  “And the other half?”

  “About how we’d live. The house we’d have: the parties we’d throw.”

  Her brother nodded. Muriel had been a sounding board. Boyeur had built himself up while he talked to her. He had identified her with his ambitions. Muriel was the right person for him. She thought him marvelous, seeing him as he saw himself.

  “Nothing can happen, can it?” she repeated.

  “I hope it can’t. It’ll be a help if you can find out what the trouble was between him and Maxwell.”

  4

  In two other houses, the case was being discussed on personal grounds, but in a very different way.

  Humphrey Norman was discussing it angrily, with a sense of personal injury.

  “I know how it’ll be,” he said. “Grainger’ll find some legal quibble. You know what these lawyers are. And Boyeur’s going to be his brother-in-law. They’ll cling together, you see: you don’t get one of them letting another down: at least not where a white man is concerned, and whoever thinks of the Fleurys as being anything but white.

  “H.E.’ll realize now what a mistake he made in appointing Morris. Why couldn’t he have chosen Baily; or if he wanted a colored man, one of the senior fellows. Carmichael for example. It’s always the same. These men come out from England thinking they know everything. They meet a few intelligent colored men and fancy that there’s no difference between an African and a European except the color of his skin. H.E. meets the West Indian cricketers and imagines that the laborers in the cane fields are no different. Morris’ll fix it. You wait and see. He’ll find some loophole, and the last chance of developing Santa Marta as a tourist resort goes down the drain. You mark my words. That’s how it’ll be.”

  Mavis listened in silence. She had heard her father talk in this strain a thousand times. She was resigned to this kind of rhetoric. But she listened now with a mounting irritation. Grainger wasn’t like that, she told herself. He was a man of honor. He would do his best to see justice done. He was young, he might make a mistake, but he was honest. If there was one thing in the whole world of which she was certain, it was that.

  In the Fleurys’ house, too, a daughter was listening with impatience to a parent’s tirade, but Jocelyn’s irritation was not against her father, but her mother. Her father sat, with a tired, drawn expression, listening or appearing to listen.

  “They’ve killed my son,” Mrs. Fleury said. “First Arthur and now Maxwell. The Germans had to pay for Arthur’s death. I never felt any sympathy for them when I read of their towns being bombed. It served them right. They started it. It was their doing. It’s the same now with this David Boyeur. He didn’t kill Maxwell himself, but he was responsible: just as Hitler and Ribbentrop and Goering were responsible for Arthur’s death. You’ve got to see that justice is done, Julian. I rely on you. I trust you.”

  Her voice grew shrill. She was very close to hysteria. Vengeance won’t bring her son back to life, thought Jocelyn. Why not mourn her son in private, decently.

  5

  Bail had been refused to Boyeur. It was not considered safe in the public interest to set him at liberty. There might have been rioting in Jamestown, but he was allowed to receive visitors, without police supervision. He had had his clothes sent round to him, and
he looked smart and spruce that afternoon for Muriel’s visit. He strode into the reception room as though it were a drawing room. His ease and confidence surprised and reassured her. At the same time it abashed her. She had arrived full of sympathy, intending to offer consolation, but that role was quite unsuited to her lover’s manner. He was his usual ebullient commanding self, prepared to treat the whole thing as a joke.

  “Isn’t it absurd? Fancy arresting me. You might as well arrest a man standing on a balcony while a free fight takes place in the street below. I had nothing to do with it. How could I have? I was on the table the whole time. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t see what was happening. One moment he was down there, struggling, hitting out right and left, the next moment he was dead.”

  “You didn’t see who killed him?”

  “How could I? There were twenty all at him at once.”

  “But wasn’t it a blow with a cutlass that actually killed him?’”

  “So they’ve told me since.”

  “But surely you saw that. A cutlass, after all—”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But when things are happening as fast as that, everything’s unexpected. You aren’t looking for anything like that. Have you ever seen a car smash?”

  “I haven’t, no.”

  “Well, I have, twice, and each time it was the same. It happened so quickly that I didn’t know what happened. I couldn’t have given evidence in a law court; I was walking along the pavement, thinking of something else, I heard a shout, I looked up, there was a scrunch of brakes, a crash, and there was a woman screaming. I couldn’t say whose fault it was. Any more than I can say what happened last night. It’s absurd of them to have arrested me, and to have refused me bail. I wish that brother of yours was a lawyer still. If I had him to plead my case I’d soon be out of here. As it is, I shall be out by tomorrow probably. We’ll go picnicking. Wasn’t it lovely yesterday?”

  His assurance, his confidence, unarmed her. Her instinct told her to relax, to let him talk of love, and of their future. She longed to hear those rich tones in his voice. But she remembered her brother’s warning. She had a duty to perform.

  “Why did you knock him into the crowd?” she asked.

  “I didn’t knock him. I pushed him. The table was very small. He lost his balance.”

  “You didn’t know him at all well, did you?”

  “Hardly at all. Where should I have met him? He was no good at cricket. I’ve met him at G.H. once or twice, that’s all.”

  “He wasn’t an enemy of yours?”

  “Of course he wasn’t. I can’t say I liked him much. Surly, stuck-up fellow. I hardly knew him. Why are you worrying on that score?”

  She felt lost and helpless. She did not know what her brother had in mind, but she had faith in him and great respect for him. He must have a reason for having asked her to probe this problem.

  “I’m sorry. I was curious,” she said. “The story I’d heard was that Maxwell Fleury jumped up on the table and began to abuse you to the crowd, then he whispered something to you yourself, and you hit him hard in the face and he fell off the table.”

  “Is that what they are saying? You know how things grow, how each person who tells a story adds something to it. Yes, he did start abusing me to the crowd, and he did whisper something to me.”

  “What did he whisper?”

  “I can’t remember. It’s unimportant. I saw that silly looking face under mine, and I pushed it away. You know the way one does in rugby football, handing someone off. I didn’t punch him.”

  “And you don’t remember what he whispered?”

  “I’ve told you I didn’t. It’s unimportant anyhow. The whole thing’s silly. I’ll be out of here by tomorrow. Nichols was here this morning. He’s the best lawyer in town after Grainger. He quite agreed with me. Don’t worry about it any more. I still may be able to make tomorrow’s picnic and if I can’t, well, think of all the picnics there’ll be waiting for us when I get out. I shall be so impatient, I shall want to eat you up. You don’t know what you do to me when you look at me like that. You’ll learn though. I’ll be teaching you.”

  The deep tones had come back into his voice. She drew a long slow breath. Her knees felt weak again. She could not go on pestering him with questions about this silly case.

  Her brother looked serious that evening when she recounted her interview with her fiancé. But he did not let her guess where the cause of seriousness lay.

  “‘Pushed not punched.’ And he can’t remember what was whispered.”

  He did not like it. He needed Whittingham’s advice.

  “Boyeur’s trouble is his vanity,” he told Whittingham. “He’s so vain that he’ll cut off his own head rather than appear ridiculous. There’s a lot more behind this than we can see. Maxwell Fleury was a problem too.”

  “He was a very peculiar man.”

  “I can scarcely remember him as a boy, our paths were different. But when I came back here a few months ago I couldn’t help feeling that he justified everything that I had read in England about the no-good, effete, standoffish Sugar Baron type. He was arrogant, he was surly, he was anti-blackman and he wasn’t any good at his job. Then suddenly he changed.”

  “As you say then suddenly he changed.”

  “He became affable, cheerful, a good mixer. And he also, so I have been assured, began to run the Belfontaine estate efficiently.” “Did you notice when this change began?” asked Whittingham.

  “About three months ago.”

  “That’s right. I remember the actual day: It was the day that article of Bradshaw’s appeared about the Fleurys having colored blood. He came into the club, a few minutes after Carson had had that ridiculous scene with Leisching. We all wondered how he would take it. It was hard to see how a man like Maxwell would fail to hit the wrong note. To everyone’s surprise he disarmed everyone: he was easy, gracious, charming. Then three days later he made an election address at Belfontaine that won the seat for him. Two days earlier he had been shouted down. He was a changed man.”

  “Do you attribute that change to Bradshaw’s article?”

  “It must have had some effect.”

  The two men looked at each other. Until he had become Attorney General, Grainger had seen very little of Whittingham. Even now he only knew him on the surface, as a noisy, genial bore, who in spite of his manner happened to be remarkably efficient. He had little idea of what he was like under the surface. He had the feeling very strongly now that Whittingham was holding something back.

  “Have you any idea yourself as to the reasons for this feud?” he asked.

  Whittingham shook his head.

  “I’ve none at all.”

  “I think his father was telling the truth, don’t you, when he said that he knew nothing?”

  “It seemed to me he did. Why are you so anxious to clear up this point?”

  “If Boyeur was provoked beyond a reasonable point, then I’m not sure that a prosecution would be justified. Maxwell was getting what he deserved. It may have been an accident. Maxwell may have been to blame. But if on the other hand, Boyeur having worked the crowd up to a pitch of hysteria knocked Maxwell over into them and shouted, ‘Let him have it, boys,’ it’s like a lion tamer keeping his lions short of food, then pushing a man into the cage.”

  “I see your point.”

  “It’s very important that I should know how much Boyeur was provoked.” He paused, he looked at Whittingham inquiringly. But Whittingham did not help him out. He’s like a clam, Grainger thought. Even though he is so garrulous.

  “I suppose it would be against etiquette if I went down myself and saw him?” Grainger said.

  “You know the answer to that better than I do.”

  “Do you think it would matter if I did?”

  “I don’t know who’s going to complain.”

  Grainger went down that evening. Boyeur looked shy and apprehensive though his manner was flippant.

 
; “Have you come to let me out?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “So I shan’t make the picnic tomorrow afternoon.”

  “No, you won’t make the picnic.”

  “Too bad.”

  “There are one or two things I want to ask you.”

  “Fire away.”

  “When Maxwell Fleury held his first election meeting, you organized a demonstration that made him look ridiculous. Why did you do that?”

  “He was on the other side.”

  “A number of candidates were on the other side. Against how many of them did you organize demonstrations?”

  “That was the only one.”

  “Why did you pick on him?”

  “He was a bumptious bastard. Why should he interfere in politics? It was no business of his.”

  “At Carnival, his car was put out of action and his fields set on fire. Do you know anything about that?”

  “I know a great deal about a great many things.”

  “Were you responsible?”

  “I can’t help it, can I, if my friends dislike my enemies?”

  “So you admit he was an enemy.”

  “Not at all. But they may have heard me say he was a bastard, and that’s enough for some of them. I have a business keeping them in control. I don’t know what would happen if I wasn’t there to watch them. The sooner I’m let out the better, if you want to keep this island quiet.”

  “You don’t seem to have managed to keep it very quiet last night.”

  “That was Fleury’s fault.”

  “How so?”