by Andrew Garve
Martin was unimpressed. “A quite spontaneous movement, I suppose? Was it the people who swept Dr. Stockford away?”
“Dr. Stockford made his position impossible by stubborn agitation,” said Garland. The blue eyes drilled. “Resignation was the inevitable consequence.”
Martin smiled. “If that’s intended as a warning, I’m afraid it’s wasted on me. At the moment, I’m much more scared of keeping my job at Tacri than losing it.”
“It wasn’t intended as a warning, of course,” said Garland, more amiably. “There’s plenty of room for differing opinions as long as we have a little discretion. But Dubois is right. I don’t know about the people, but the politicians here are very powerful and—with all respect to your relatives, Dubois—they’re usually against everything that makes sense. God knows I hold no brief for them, but they can’t be ignored. They think that a leprosarium on the mainland means risk of contagion, and they’ve got the ear of the masses.”
“But we all know it means nothing of the sort,” said Martin.
“We know,” said Dubois, “but we can’t hope to persuade the people of that.”
“Have you tried?”
“It’s been constantly emphasised in reports,” said Dubois, “that leprosy is not a particularly contagious disease.”
“In reports! Who reads reports? Have you tried getting down to the people? Couldn’t you enlist the support of the schools and the churches, use the radio and the newspapers and posters and so on? Present the facts in the simplest possible way? I should have thought that would have done the trick.”
Garland shook his head. “I’m afraid you’ve got a lot to learn about Fontego. You don’t appreciate how deep the prejudices are.”
“I can imagine,” said Martin. “It’s hardly a new thing where leprosy is concerned. I’ve found it wherever I’ve been. You simply have to break down the prejudices—if necessary, override them. This isn’t a matter where you can afford to defer to popular superstition. Once there’s an accomplished fact, the people will soon find out they were wrong.”
“You can’t force things on the people these days,” said Dubois.
“Why not? I take it the Governor still has some authority?”
Dubois looked pained. “We are well on the way to responsible government,” he said.
“I see no sign of it,” said Martin shortly.
Garland intervened. “I don’t think this discussion is going to lead anywhere,” he said. “I respect your views, West; I think you’re ninety per cent right about Tacri. But Dubois is certainly right about the political aspect—it’s extremely tricky. There are plenty of ugly feelings about already in the Colony, and we don’t want to make the situation worse. I’m not a politician, thank God, but I can sense the mood.” He contemplated Martin’s indignant face with a slightly sardonic smile. “If you feel that you’d care to raise the matter personally with the Colonial Secretary you’re welcome to do so, but I don’t think you’ll get much change out of him.”
Martin gave a non-committal nod of acknowledgment. “I appreciate your permission, anyway.”
“The fact is,” said Garland, “that, politics apart, we’ve gone too far now with this Tacri project to reopen the subject. The contractors, a very enterprising firm, are ready to start work. Tacri has been a blot on the Colony for years, and as I told you, it’s been the very devil of a fight to get the plans through. Dubois will bear me out. At last the money’s been voted—three-quarters of a million pounds. If you start advocating an alternative scheme at this stage the whole thing may be thrown into the melting pot again and those poor devils on Tacri will go on stewing for another decade. As it is, in three or four years we should be able to make the place fairly comfortable.”
“I’m entirely unconvinced,” said Martin, “but I see your point. Anyhow, I’ll study the plans carefully.”
“In the meantime,” said Garland, “what about some cocktails? My wife is looking forward to meeting you, I know. You’ll stay to dinner, won’t you? She’s expecting you.”
“It’s very kind of you both,” said Martin.
Chapter Three
Celeste Garland stood back to admire a great bowl of exotic flowers she had just arranged, and held the pose as she heard her husband and Martin enter the drawing-room. Behind her head a panel of tropical wood, gleaming with a dark brilliance, made the perfect background for her upswept blonde hair. She was wearing a low-cut dinner dress of white piqué. A stiffened sheath of the same material encircled her shoulders, curving down into the bodice with a line of exquisite simplicity, reminding Martin in a vague way of arum lilies. Against the whiteness of the dress her skin had a warm bronze flush—not the acquired tan of the Hollywood beauty but the deep rich glow that spoke of southern blood. Her eyes were brown with golden lights. She was quite arrestingly lovely, Martin realised, and her dress was a work of art. He wondered for a quick moment if the Secretary of Health had a large private income. It looked as though his wife might be an expensive item in his budget.
Garland kissed the cheek of Celeste prettily offered to him and presented Martin. Her eyes flickered over his face and she gave a welcoming smile. He heard her voice, rich and low, murmuring some polite phrase.
“Shall we sit in the garden?” she suggested. “It’s just beginning to get cool. The others will be here soon. Dr. West, what would you like to drink? Have you got used to our reki yet, or would you prefer a civilised cocktail?”
“Could you manage a gin and something?”
“Of course. Salacity makes a wonderful Martini.”
Her visitor looked startled. “I beg your pardon!”
Celeste laughed—an attractive chuckle. “That’s the maid’s name, believe it or not. Salacity Brown! I suppose her mother heard some hot gospeller use the word and liked the sound of it. The Governor’s wife thinks I ought to call her Sally, but I wouldn’t dream of it.” She smiled at her husband’s faint air of disapproval. “So you’re going to live on that horrid island, Dr. West. I don’t know how you can bear the thought. Won’t you be dreadfully lonely?” The warm brown eyes rested on him with a speculative look.
“I expect I shall be much too busy to feel lonely.”
“Oh dear,” said Celeste, “are you another of these active conscientious people? Adrian’s like that—he’s always rushing around like a Boy Scout.”
“Not always doing good deeds, I’m afraid,” said Garland lightly. He was watching his wife, watching the way she looked at Martin. The old jealousy smote him. She was always the same with anyone new, if he were at all presentable. It was just her manner, of course—it didn’t amount to anything serious. It couldn’t, in the small white circle of Fontego—not without gossip. All the same, he felt glad that young West was going to Tacri. Young men were a damned nuisance. Garland couldn’t ever forget that he was twenty-five years older than his wife.
The tropical night was just beginning to fall as Celeste led the way on to the terrace, where deck chairs and little tables were set out in the light of carefully arranged lamps. The air was cooler now and deliciously scented. From the bottom of the garden came the gleam of water.
“It’s a pity it’s too dark to show you the grounds,” said Celeste. “You must come along in the daytime—the garden is quite lovely. The hibiscus is a picture, and we have two enormous mango trees and some wonderful shrubs that I haven’t seen anywhere else.”
“Is that the sea at the bottom?”
“It’s a sort of lagoon,” said Garland, “very shallow, but it gives us a pleasant bathing beach of our own. That’s one thing we can always do here—swim.”
“I think you’re fortunate to live in such a delightful spot,” said Martin. He lay back in his chair and felt at peace. The familiar evening orchestra of frogs and cicadas was well into its overture, and fireflies were dancing among the bushes. This was easily the pleasantest time of day in the tropics—better even than the crack of dawn.
“I like the place myself,” Ga
rland was saying. “The only thing I miss in these parts is a smooth green lawn. I suppose we all do. I’ve experimented with a dozen different sorts of grasses, but they all come up coarse. Ah, here are the drinks.” A black and smiling Salacity placed a tray on one of the tables and Garland handed round the glasses.
“A garden like this must need a tremendous amount of attention,” said Martin.
“It needs more than it gets,” said Celeste. She was lounging gracefully in the corner of a long rustic seat, one bare brown arm stretched invitingly along the back. She glanced at her husband. “Johnson Johnson’s quite useless. He’s much more interested in his banjo than he is in the garden, and I find him asleep in the oddest places.”
A tolerant smile crossed Garland’s face. “He’s not too bad. We were lucky to get him. You know what the servant problem is.” He turned to Martin. “These chaps were all spoilt during the war. They were paid fantastic wages for doing practically nothing, and now they just won’t work. Johnson Johnson is a poor relation of Dubois—that’s how I got hold of him.”
“A deplored relation, I should say,” remarked Celeste. “But Dr. Dubois takes his family responsibilities very seriously. He sounds exactly like an old patriarch, always talking about ‘my people.’ Why doesn’t he get married, Adrian?”
Garland shrugged. “He will, I dare say, when it suits his plans. He’s a cautious chap. By the way, I remember now he’s going to bury one of his relatives tomorrow morning. You ought to see a funeral here, West. It’s quite a sight.”
“I suppose that means that Johnson will want the morning off too,” said Celeste. “And he’ll spend all the rest of the day sleeping off the effects.”
“You’re prejudiced about him,” said Garland. “He has his points—he’s one of the luckiest men with a rod I’ve ever come across. Do you do any fishing, West?”
“I haven’t done a lot. I’ve always been too far from water.”
“We must take a trip sometime. You’ll need to get away from Tacri occasionally. I’ve a little ketch over in Darwin Bay, on the other side of the Base. It’s a fine spot for mackerel and snapper. I don’t get over very often, but I enjoy it when I do. The essential thing in the tropics, as you know, is to take plenty of exercise.”
“I told you he was a Boy Scout,” said Celeste. “It makes me hot just to watch him. You should see him playing tennis. I’ve never known such energy.”
Garland laughed, but Martin had the impression that he wasn’t too well pleased by his wife’s teasing.
There was the sound of cars pulling up in the drive. “Now you’re going to meet the social life of Fontego,” said Celeste to Martin. She gave him an amused intimate smile, as though they already shared a secret, and rose to greet the newcomers. Martin was presented to a plump woman of about fifty; this was Mrs. Sylvester, wife of the Office of Works Secretary. Sylvester himself was a slim grey-haired man with an air of calm self-assurance. There was a much younger man named Carew, who was the Secretary of Education; his wife, a small pretty girl with auburn hair and a Scottish accent; and another man named Forter, who was a member of the Executive Council.
Salacity came pattering on to the terrace with more drinks, and for a moment there was a general buzz of conversation. Then Mrs. Sylvester’s resonant voice rang out as she called to Celeste. “Darling, did you hear about Susan’s smash? I always knew that girl was asking for trouble, driving the way she does.”
“No, what happened?” asked Celeste with languid interest. “Is she hurt?”
“Nothing to speak of. Her right hand is cut rather badly, but that’s all. She was extremely lucky. She was driving along the Cobra Lane—at not more than forty, she said, but you know what she is—and one of those awful taximen came hurtling round the bend on the wrong side, as usual. The next thing Susan knew was that she was buried in sugar cane, and there was blood and broken glass everywhere.” Mrs. Sylvester’s voice ended on an almost exultant note.
Garland said: “You haven’t met Susan Anstruther yet, have you, West? She’s the Colonial Secretary’s daughter—a charming girl, but a bit reckless with cars. These taxi fellows are a menace, of course, even when they’re sober.”
“They’re a race apart,” said Celeste. “They all have a sneering look, and they all wear little black moustaches and dirty straw hats. I believe they’re all one family—a race of demons, with one big black taximan as their father, who makes them give him all their takings.”
“Anyone who drives in this Colony takes his life in his hands,” said Forter. He was short and bald, with little twinkling eyes. “The roads aren’t exactly built for speed.”
“Come off it,” said Sylvester, helping himself to salted almonds. It was Sylvester’s department that built the roads.
“What always puzzles me,” Forter went on banteringly, “is why you never finish off the edges of the roads. They’re always left anyhow, and they crumble away until there’s barely room for two cars to pass.”
“It’s a simple matter of cash,” said Sylvester, quite unperturbed. “If you chaps in office will vote the money for us, we’ll make decent roads.”
“Seriously,” said Forter, “there’s one thing you ought to attend to, Sylvester—that bridge over the Silver River on the Main Trunk Road. It’s just not good enough with all the airport traffic. It gave a distinct wobble when I drove over it yesterday. The Trunk is the only fast road we’ve got in the place, and I think it ought to get priority.”
“That’s only a temporary bridge,” said Sylvester.
Everybody laughed. “One of the things you’ll discover here, West,” said Garland, “is that almost everything is temporary. The Colony has a genius for starting things and not finishing them—particularly the Office of Works, eh, Sylvester?”
“What can you expect,” Sylvester broke in, “when you collar a cool three-quarters of a million for a new leprosarium?”
“Now there, Sylvester, I agree with you,” put in Forter, who ran one of the Colony’s big factories when he wasn’t serving on the Council, and like the rest of the business community was always in favour of reducing public expenditure. “With due sympathy for Dr. West, of course, who’s got to live there … Anyway, it’s an absurd place for a leprosarium, as I said in Council. Do you know how much it costs to run the visitors’ launch service? Literally thousands! Personally, I’d sooner see the place rebuilt over here—it would pay in the long run.”
“Me too,” said Sylvester. “Building costs three times as much on Tacri as it does on the mainland.”
“But we don’t want that ghastly place here,” cried Celeste. “All those horrible people rubbing shoulders with us! Ugh!” She gave an exaggerated shudder, and her own beautiful shoulders shrank back as though already warding off contamination.
“They wouldn’t actually do that, you know,” said Martin mildly.
Garland caught his eye and smiled grimly. “It looks as though your propaganda will have to start in my home, West.”
“I’m sure Dr. West wouldn’t start anything so dull,” said Celeste with a provocative glance at him. “And anyway, why do we always discuss such dreary topics?”
“You shouldn’t have married a department, my dear,” said Mrs. Sylvester. “That’s the mistake I made. I get so tired of hearing about improving this and improving that. It isn’t as though it does any good. You’ll never make anything out of these black people. They’re a good-for-nothing lot. All they can do is breed like rabbits.” She turned accusingly to Dr. Garland. “Now if you spent that three-quarters of a million on birth control clinics instead of a leprosarium, you might get somewhere.”
“You know perfectly well they’d never use them, Marion,” said Celeste with a laugh. “Remember what happened to Lavinia.”
Martin, who was making a whole series of mental notes, said:
“What happened to Lavinia?”
Mrs. Sylvester explained. “Lavinia is a Miss Hollis, a most respectable maiden lady with a passion for good
works. She keeps house for her brother, who works here, but she interests herself in the social welfare of the natives. Well, she was visiting a hospital and in the maternity ward she got talking to a black woman who’d just had her fourteenth child. Lavinia tactfully suggested that the woman ought to do something to prevent her family growing any bigger. It wasn’t easy to get the idea across, and Lavinia had to go into quite a bit of detail. The black woman looked terribly shocked and said, ‘Dat may be o’ right fo’ de likes o’ yo’, ma’am, but I’se in Holy Wedlock.’”
There was a general laugh. Celeste said, “Considering the way you feel about them, Marion, you manage to imitate them awfully well. You know, Dr. West, there’s a common belief that English is spoken here, but it’s quite a mistaken one.” She glanced mischievously at the Education man, Carew, who was sitting quietly listening. “What is the language you teach them, David?”
Carew smiled. “We do the best we can with the raw material we’ve got,” he said.
“I suppose there’s the usual shortage of good teachers,” remarked Martin sympathetically.
“There is indeed,” said Carew. “There’s a shortage of everything, of course, but particularly of teachers. And half of those we have are quite unqualified—little more than uneducated kids themselves. If the teacher doesn’t speak properly, obviously you can’t expect the children to.”
“Tell Dr. West about the Inspector and the cat,” put in little Mrs. Carew in her musical voice.
Carew smiled reminiscently. “It was last week,” he said. “One of our Inspectors was sitting in at a lesson and the subject was the domestic cat. When the lesson was over he thought he’d test the children on it, so he asked. ‘How many feet has a cat?’ The children just gaped at him and didn’t say a word. He repeated the question and still no one answered. The Negro teacher was getting quite restive, and suddenly he called out sharply, ‘Chillun, how much foots puss have?’ Immediately a forest of hands shot up.”