With my installation in a house near to the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies, and helped in my orientation by woman chosen for me for her political loyalty to the Democratic Labour Party, the party now in power, Harold would come often to lunch, cou-cou and Bajan stew made by my maid, in such lip-smacking deliciousness, unsurpassed by any other maid in the entire country.
It was a leisurely lunch. Two and a half hours. When my chauffeur parked the small car in the space reserved for the general manager, when the dust in the parking lot had risen and blinded our vision of the entrance, and when it cleared, the same businessman was sitting in the same chair, waiting to be taken into the studio, to record his advertisement, which had been discussed and which was supposed to be aired that same evening, during the seven o’clock television news.
“Are you still here?”
“Still here.”
“Who are you waiting for?”
He called the name of the staff member.
“How long you been waiting?”
“Three hours, Tom.”
I knew I was back home.
I took him into my office.
The worst was to come. The staff, from the heads of the radio and the television departments down to reporters and directors of news, all resented my management. The union steward set in motion a campaign designed to undermine me; and the stupidity of it was such that I ignored his machinations. It was the first of many mistakes I made. Another mistake I made, this one more disastrous, was based upon my ignorance of social custom and the effect social custom has on class, and colour, and status. I decided I had to meet every member of staff from the janitor up to the assistant manager, in a social atmosphere, the two of us, to assure every one of my employees of the fairness of my treatment, and the protection of their rights. I decided to take some of them to lunch at a restaurant, and some to my home. I thought it was a wonderful experiment. But as I said, I had forgotten the ingrained class and colour prejudice that lurked in all aspects of social behaviour, after all these years still, in Barbados, from the 1930s right up to the 1970s. My mistake was applying a Canadian mould to the unsettled, shifting volcanic mentality of the Barbadian.
The first demonstration of annoyance came from the leading announcer, a woman. She resented the fact that the general manager would invite a junior staff member in the radio department to his home, to lunch, before he had first invited someone of her status. And the volcano erupted in whispers of disbelief that were not heard outside the clique of the aggrieved announcer. Things became worse: the union began thinking of a strike; and thinking of strikes, the animus turned to the contemplation of assault, the atmosphere at the station became tense, and there developed a tinge of animosity between myself and the staff, particularly those who were in the camp of the woman who resented the luncheon arrangement initiated by me.
Things grew worse than I had imagined possible. The prime minister heard about this, and what he heard, in more detail than my own spies were able to uncover.
“There are threats on your life,” the prime minister said.
“You gotta be kidding!” I wanted to tell the prime minister. But you can’t speak to a prime minister in this manner of disrespect.
So, my disbelief remained silent.
“Go the police inspector and get a gun.”
“A gun?”
“Get a .38.”
My speechlessness was barely able to contain my astonishment. The last time I had held a real gun was at the disastrous Cadet Corps Camp at Walkers, in 1950, at this time, about twenty-five years before; and the gun I had used; lying on the damp sand, behind a wall of bags filled with heavy, wet sand, lying on my stomach, holding the machine gun, following the instructions of the regimental sergeant-major, a gravelled-voice Englishman with a Cockney accent: “Squeeze the bloody trigger, boy! Squeeze the bloody trigger!”; in a euphoria of self-importance, becoming a real soldier, which was my ambition to become at that time; following in the cut-down brown polished boots, now made to look like shoes, of Second Lieutenant Frederick “Sleepy” Smith, who taught me Latin, who taught me to like Latin and Virgil, and made me “sing of a man and a hero, who first sailed from the shoes of Troy …”; and before that two weeks of pretending to be real soldiers and seeing my ambition crystallize like the breaking of morning so close to the sea, in tents on the soggy sand the colour of coral, the guns I used in training, in drill, in parades for the King’s Birthday, for Victoria Day, for the new Queen’s coronation and following birthdays, were the rifles chiselled and sawed by the school carpenter, made of board; and then the relics of the Boer War, .303s that had their firing pins pulled out like rotten teeth. We could not, with this precaution, shoot out our small, still unriped testacles, by accident.
“Yes, Tom,” the police inspector said. I was in his office, at Central Police Station, in the Main Guard. Years before, corresponding with my days at Combermere School for Boys, I would be in this same Main Guard, delivering my stepfather’s “food.” He was a private then. And he rose in the ranks, to become a lance corporal, which was his final rank when he left years later, on the brink of retirement. The inspector knew who I was: not only general manager, but “Lance Corporal 434 Luke’s little boy”; and “Jesus Christ, Tom, welcome back home. Now, the gun the prime minister want you to have …”
The inspector called me by the nickname I am known by in Barbados. The way he used it made me comfortable; and took the seriousness out of the meeting and the cause of the meeting. “Tom, Tom the piper’s son, stole a pudding and away he ran…”
“You ever fire one o’ these, before?”
“No, Inspector.”
“You want me to show you? Incidentally, wha’ kind o’ gun you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sure you know how to use one o’ these?”
“I was in the Cadets.”
“This isn’t no board-gun, Tom. This is a .38.”
I held the .38 and was shocked by its weight, and its ugliness, and its danger, and the sudden thrust of blood in my veins and in my head, and the violence which the spasm made me think of; and I was a New York cop, with a gun holstered under his armpits so that its ugly bulk would not be seen under the ill-fitting jacket, and I wondered who I would shoot first …
I put the .38 into the waist of my trousers. I did not have a holster.
“Oh shite, Tom! You want to lick-out your two balls, in case there’s an accident? Wear it some place else … in a safer place.”
I was ready to go, and I wished the inspector well; and he wished me well; and good aiming; and my chauffeur was bringing the car around under the trees which bore yellow berries and dropped them on your head, and you then pressed them, to a small report, under your shoes; and as I held my hand on the rear door, the inspector came out, smiling, enjoying himself, at my expense.
“You forget these, Tom!”
In his hand was a small box.
“You going need the bullets, man.”
My unpopularity spread to the point where I became the subject of a song by a famous calypso singer, Sir Don. The song, titled “Tom Say,” became a national hit. I reproduce the lyrics below.
If I only acting and you are shivering in your shoes
Dotting your i’s, crossing your t’s, and minding your p’s and q’s.
When they really appoint me, you can imagine how it will be.
I have come to change the system, just you wait and see.
Chorus: A Barbadian-language station (Tom say), every man, Jack (under)
My administration have to get in at eight o’clock
The weatherman from television must wear a shirtjack
I know you don’t like me and you discuss me behind my back
My name all is in the paper and you’re trying with all your might
To run me back to Canada, but I don’t care whether he have the right
Regardless how you bad-talk me, I am putting it to you
Chorus
You can ask anyone who know me, anyone who know where I’m from
They will tell you that you’ve got to show me the ball that shoot down Nelson
When I make a final decision, only heaven could change my mind
But you’re butting against a rock stone when you butt up to me this time
Chorus
You must be seeing my chauffeur driving, how I sit down in the back
How impressive I just be looking, do you envy me just for that?
Now let me tell you I am a hard seed, loaded with sex appeal
And all the women have agreed I can do whatever I feel
Chorus
The controversy continued to rage over my suitability as general manager and my daring to instill discipline and improve the technical efficiency of the presentation of news, the dress, and the image of the presenters on the television news, all part of my intention to “Barbadianize” the radio and television station. I was getting fed up. I was realizing that I should have taken the advice of my friend, William Ashleigh McMurtry, who had advised me not to accept the appointment. It was in the roof bar of the Park Plaza Hotel, when the bar took up almost all of the space on the roof, and was, as such, filled on Friday afternoons with successful writers, meaning writers of advertising copy, and advertising executives, when for sinking a ball in the putting competitions rewarded you with a bottle of champagne, which social activities were staged, until too many young women, forlorn through broken love, took the shorter route to happiness and jumped off the roof. But that Friday afternoon, Bill said that I had left Barbados too long, more than twenty years now, and to return after such a long absence would be a big mistake. “It will never work out,” he said. “You can’t go back home again!”
With the ugly revolver in my waistband, ignoring the caution of the Inspector, I would walk through the television studios, with the handle of my .38 visible, each time I thought I needed to remind the staff who was boss, pulling back the tunic of my shirt jack suit to let them see that I was armed, that I “carried a piece” … all my friends who were Cabinet ministers, and especially my friends in the Loyal Opposition, either carried their “pieces” hidden under the tunics of their shirtjack suits, or in their glove compartments. One carried his revolver, “an American piece,” in his briefcase bought in America.
On this Friday afternoon, I am home in the master bedroom, whose window opens on to the backyard turned by me on weekends, into a kitchen garden, with a few beds of roses. Rose bushes begin from the porch under which the car is parked; on that whole side, right round to the back, under the bedroom window. I am in a deep trough of slumber caused by exhaustion and by the humidity, and I go off into a sweet pleasant dream, and Miles Davis’s trumpet is carrying me on a peaceful wave of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and all of a sudden I am outside my bedroom in the dream that is in Toronto, and the humidity turns to a chill, and I am not on green, thick grass, I am in a snow bank and the snow is thick; and I am barefooted. My legs begin to get cold. My body is cold. I am shivering. I am dressed in blue pajamas, blue with white stripes; and I am once again in the large queen-sized bed, pulling the sheets up to keep me warm; and I see the muzzle of a gun, and when I look carefully, when my eyes filled with rheum, clear, it is not a muzzle of a gun. It is the cock of the pipe of the garden hose. And water, in full cold force, is coming at me like bullets from a machine gun. The water clears my head, and brings me back from the snow and cold of the dream, to the bed now soaked, and just as cold.
My gun!
I jump out of bed, and rush outside, without the gun.
I rush back inside for the gun. In drawers, under the bed, under the pillow, in the desk … I found the gun.
I rush back outside, tearing skin from my face in my collision with the rose bushes, and I am shouting. “Who’s there? Halt! Who goes there? I’m going to shout you! Who’s there?”
I have to go back inside the house. I have forgotten the bullets. I have never loaded the gun. I have never walked with bullets in the gun. I have never walked with bullets in my pockets. And I cannot remember where I put them.
So, I stand on the wet grass, and I imagine that I hear footsteps running down the hill behind the house; and I imagine that I hear a car starting up, down the white gravelled road; and I wait for the car to drive past my house; and I wait with the unloaded gun in my hand, for the car to pass. There is no other way for the car to go. And the car comes slowly toward me, and no dust and no pebbles in the road, rise from the tires and from the slow speed.
“Hello, Tom, what are you doing with that in your hand?”
It is my neighbour, the barrister-at-law. “I going to the supermarket.”
And he drops me at the supermarket. And he bought a bottle of Mount Gay Rum and I bought a bottle of Bombay gin and two steaks. And I forgot about the intruders. Or was there only one intruder?
It is another Friday, and things have got even worse. The Cabinet met on Thursday. Cabinet meetings are confidential, the most confidential occurrences in the country. But word leaks out that the general manager of the broadcasting corporation, Tom Clarke, the name I am known by back home, will be fired. I scorn the leaked information. I went to school with every member of the Cabinet; and the school tie in Barbados is thicker than blood.
The prime minister’s car drives up in the yard of the broadcasting station. Word spreads. Whenever the prime minister drives up in the yard, in his maroon beaten-up Mercedes-Benz, woe is in the clouds over the yard and the buildings, and word spreads faster than a fire in a cane field. Somebody is going to be fired. Someone is going to be sacked from the Cabinet. Somebody is going to be scolded. Something tragic is going to happen. Even, sometimes, a prime minister of another West Indian country is going to be called “a bandit”; or the United States is going to be called an “imperialistic, bandit country.”
You are cautious to call a prime minister your friend, even though the relationship you had with him started out friendly; the prime minister visiting your house in Toronto whenever he was in Canada bargaining and exchanging memories with Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada at the time, the two of them (along with Fidel Castro, and Forbes Burnham, first president of the Republic of Guyana) having attended the London School of Economics at the same time; you are cautious even though the prime minister comes into your study, selects books he would like to have, would like to borrow, “I taking these, Tom. You could always get another copy, around the corner, tomorrow morning!”; even though he would eat with us, and sometimes, he and the minister of foreign affairs, Sir Cameron Tudor, would join talents, and cook in a suite in the Park Plaza Hotel, for years and years the hotel frequented by Barbadian officials; even though the prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs were driven by me, in the old Mercedes-Benz, down Spadina Avenue, south of College Street, to Kensington Market, and I watched the two men put their hands in the brine barrel, and twirled it round, to select the right pieces of pig tails to cook with their peas and rice, the minister of foreign affairs taking advice from the prime minister; even though he and I visited the President Lyndon Johnson Library the morning after his lecture at the University of Texas at Austin, telling me in all seriousness, “Johnson was the best president the States has ever had. History will prove me correct”; even though I did not take him seriously; even though these anecdotes were the ribs in the structure of our relationship which began when he had first returned to Barbados from England and the Royal Air Force and the London School of Economics, and Lincoln’s Inn, and was the junior barrister-at-law at the bar, and, as such, had to take a murder case with no possibility of victory in his defence of the man condemned to hang by his neck, even before he stepped into the dock to hear his history, and was saved by the inexhaustible summing up … the other junior barrister-at-law, Julian Marryshaw, saw the guilt in the brief of another man brought up f
or murder, and saw the futility of wasting too many words, and addressed the jury in his summing up, for one hour, fifty-nine and a half minutes, and in due diligence associating time spent with the evaporation of innocence, found the man guilty, and he was taken from “that place, to a place and hanged by his neck until he was dead, dead, dead. Fifty-nine and a pivvy of minutes it took Julian Marryshaw, LLB, Barrister-at-Law, Gray’s Inn. But “The Skipper,” “Dipper-Barr,” talked for three days, wore the attentiveness of the twelve men, the peers of the condemned man, in the grip of his longevity and legal mastery of English law.
So, even though this was our history, the Friday afternoon when he entered my office, without knocking, just pushing the door open. The door was already open; ajar.
He addressed me as Mr. Clarke. Tom I was to him, on occasions when things between the two of us were good. Austin, when things between us were not so good. But Mr. Clarke was reserved for reprimand, criticism of my broadcasting policy, to remind me who was who, and who was prime minister.
I knew then that something had happened to my support from friends in the Cabinet. Erosion had taken place. Perhaps, they had been helped along in their change of heart and, my constituency dissolved by the same usage of longevity and mastery of law that he had used years before to get the murderer off.
“Mr. Clarke, can I have a gin and Kola Tonic?”
I knew the gin he liked. I knew the Kola Tonic he liked. I knew the proportion of gin to Kola Tonic he liked. I knew the amount of ice cubes he liked in his drink.
He was holding his leather briefcase on his lap. He was running his right hand over its rich, cured leather. The noise of the ice cubes in the crystal half-pint tumbler was the only sign of life in the stifling office. My stupidity and my amateur comprehension of diplomacy made me speak first. And the moment after I opened my mouth, I knew the battle was lost.
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