by Alec Waugh
There was the Brigadier for instance. A gunner who had spent most of his service in India, he resigned his commission in 1937 anxious to have two years’ travelling before the war whose imminence was clear to him. Seychelles struck him as the likeliest place to settle in. As soon as the second war was over he came back.
He was a large man, stoutish but not fat, in the later fifties. His white stockings fitted over his calves without a wrinkle; his shorts were starched and stiff; the last quarter-inch of his short sleeve was punctiliously ironed back. He was the only Englishman in the colony who wore a solar topee. It was spotlessly white.
There is no hotel in the accepted sense of the word at Praslin. But there are a number of furnished bungalows along the coast that you can rent by the day or week. Maid service is supplied but you take your own cook with you. The best of these bungalows was rented by the brigadier. It consisted of two rooms divided by a passage, with a veranda at either end. He had given it an air of being lived in, but it was definitely not a home. He was, as far as I know, the only man in the colony who did absolutely nothing. He had no civic duties, he had no property, he collected nothing, he had no hobby, he had no vices. The C.I.R.O.’s boy made the most careful investigations and discovered nothing untoward. He was temperate; every evening of our stay he was either our guest or we were his. He drank two whiskies before dinner, and that was all.
On the one occasion when we dined together, he drank a single glass of wine and took a brandy with his coffee. He did not sail or fish or shoot. His exercise was walking. There is, as I said, no club in Praslin, but once or twice a week a French colonist bicycled over to play chess with him. He played with caution, devoting five to ten minutes to every move, whereas his opponent was a slapdash player, a persistent attacker, an improviser unwilling to plan farther than two moves ahead. Their friendship survived the strain of their respective styles.
A great deal of the day the Brigadier devoted to reading: his favourite literature being Time, the Economist, and Illustrated. During his military career, he explained he did not have enough time to think and read. He was making up for it now. For days on end he would have only his man to talk to and he enjoyed the opportunity of a talk. He had a firm military voice. He had an affliction of the left eye, the lids being joined in their centre by two threads of mattery yellowy skin. And when he fixed you with his right eye, the effect was minatory. But he was not by any means a violent man. On the contrary, he qualified his most dogmatic assertions with a conciliatory ‘in my humble opinion’, or a disarming ‘of course I know I’m not intelligent’. He was a good listener. He would ask you your opinion, and when you had given it he would sit with his eyes half closed, his head lifted, ruminating over what you had said. ‘That is most interesting,’ he would say.‘I have so few opportunities here of exchanging ideas with anyone.’
His opinions were, however, definite. We were discussing a young Seychellois of good family who was an unregenerate ne’er-do-well. ‘Only one thing to do for that kind of fellow,’ the Brigadier asserted. ‘Hitler was right: exterminate them. No good wasting good money on trash; too many people in the world already. Psychiatrists and all that rubbish. Some colonels used to say, “If you’ve got a troublesome fellow in your company, make him a lance-corporal.” Nonsense. I never did. I waited for the fellow, caught him at it, then I jumped: break ‘em. That’s the only course. Bad blood always outs. You train racehorses, don’t you? It’s the same with men, in my humble opinion; rotten parent, rotten son. It always follows.’
It was difficult to argue with him because he jumped so quickly from one topic to another. I suggested that some of the greatest men had been unfortunate in their fathers. He nodded. ‘Were they? Now that’s most interesting. I’m not an intelligent man. I want to learn, want to exchange ideas; what great man would you say had bad blood in his veins?’
To my chagrin I found that I could think of no one. I suggested Dickens, not feeling that I had chosen a fortunate example, but already he was off on another tack. ‘If you ever find a shifty streak in a public figure, you can be certain that it’s bad blood coming out. Look at that Labour fellow—a Spanish Jew, you know?
The man in question could scarcely be called that since the alien streak had entered his blood three hundred years ago. But the Brigadier was not to be denied.
‘That doesn’t matter; it was there, waiting; biding its time. At last it’s made its pounce. Look at all those company directors who evade income tax by taking salaries for posts they never fill.’
I do not know whether this was an extension of his anti-Semitism or whether I was receiving the benefits of his study of economics, but before I could decide he had switched again:
‘I don’t know why people should worry about laying up fortunes for themselves. Why can’t they trust in God.’
That switch certainly surprised me, though I had noticed during the Second War that a high proportion of high-ranking officers were fanatically devout. I asked if he was a Roman Catholic. But he shook his head. No, no particular denomination. He never went to church. You didn’t need to if you were on good terms with God. ‘Just ask Him for what you want. You’ll always get it. Provided you ask for the right things.’
I asked him what he meant by the right things. ‘The things that are right for you to have.’ To that there was no answer.
The most unexpected character in Praslin was not, however, the Brigadier. The C.I.R.O. was making an official visit to hear any complaints his recent assessments had occasioned. ‘We might go and see Campbell,’ he said. ‘He’s quite a person. He should interest you.’
I had heard of him and I was glad to go.
A married man in the early fifties, an ex-official in the South Kensington Museum, he had been seconded during the war to Delhi, to the India section of the Ministry of Information. He had now retired on a pension. In one sense he was a beachcomber. But he was by no means ‘typical’; he was working a plantation; had rebuilt the plantation bungalow, and furnished it with pictures and books from England. Though he enjoyed a glass of wine, he was not a heavy drinker. Though he came over to Victoria every two months and spent the greater part of his time in the club, he had no special friends. He was not stand-offish, but he was impersonal. He had the reputation of being highbrow. He was respected rather than liked. I was curious to meet him.
His house was on the other side of the island, not far from the hospital above Bay St. Anne. Having chosen a remote island, he had certainly chosen the most remote section of it. There was no means of reaching it except on foot. He was wise in that, I supposed. If you are going to retire it is as well not to be reminded of the world from which you are an exile. We had sent over a letter the day before, warning him of our visit. He had been out when our messenger arrived; but he had sent a message the moment he returned inviting us to tea.
We found him awaiting us on his veranda beside a silver tea-tray. He was wearing cream-coloured linen shorts, sandals, and a white silk shirt. He was sunburnt, dark-haired, and had a very thin moustache. As he rose out of his chair I noticed that he was even shorter than I had expected. He was plump, and his walk was a mixture between a glide and waddle. He looked at me somewhat curiously when we were introduced. ‘Was it you or your brother who wrote The Loom of Youth? he asked.
‘I did.’
‘And which of you wrote the book on Campion?’
‘My brother.’
‘That was a first-rate book.’ Then he turned to my companion.
‘I’ve desolating news for you. This is your last chance to prey on me.’
He spoke in a precise, modulated voice.
‘What am I to take that to mean?’ asked the C.I.R.O.
‘I’m leaving, going back to England.’
‘On leave?’
’For ever. I am disposing of my property. I’m delighted that you should have come out here. You can assist me on several points. But let’s leave that till after tea.’
He had a silver kett
le which he boiled himself. ‘You can’t trust even a Sinhalese to make you proper tea,’ he said.
When I visited Lipton’s tea gardens, I heard experts discuss the way in which tea should be made. I noticed that Campbell satisfied their demands—cold water in the kettle, the teapot and the teacups heated; one spoonful for each person and the one extra for the brew; the water poured the instant it was brought to boil; the stirring and the five minutes’ wait. It was certainly an excellent cup of tea. It was accompanied by hot cakes and savoury sandwiches. It reminded me of Sunday afternoons in Cadogan Square a quarter of a century ago, and a grey-haired lady in a high-held whalebone collar; there was the same air of ritual. It was a full half-hour before he was ready to get down to business.
‘Perhaps Waugh would care to look round my books while we talk our shop,’ he said.
I could understand why his fellow-members in the club were a little restrained in their affection for him. He was not patronizing, but he had a grand seigneur air.
I walked over to his shelves. A small library is more revealing than a large one when, as in a case like this, it is the result not of haphazard purchase but selection. One has often played the game, ‘If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what twelve books would you prefer to have washed up beside you?’ but the choice of the five hundred books that a man takes out with him to a lifetime’s exile is much more revealing.
Not that this particular selection was original. There were the standard classics—Shakespeare in the Temple edition; the Oxford edition of the chief nineteenth-century poets; the Oxford Book of Verse; a few Russian novels; Georgian Poetry; Poems of Today. The novels included Antic Hay, The Green Hat, The Prancing Nigger. The kinds of novel that a young man would have bought in the early ’20s. There were no erotica, not even among the paperbacked French novels, though I did notice a copy of Si le grain ne meurt. …
I walked out on to the veranda; coconut palms and granite boulders and the sea. There was nothing distinctive about the view. There was no reason why Campbell should have picked this site. My own view from Northolme with the perpetual backcloth of Silhouette was worth a hundred of it. From the other side of the veranda a voice called out, ‘We’re through now. What about a drink?’
I crossed to where the income-tax expert was gathering his papers. A trim narrow-shouldered girl in an ankle-length white skirt had brought out a tray of drinks: the figure turned and I saw it was a boy; a Sinhalese, wearing a long-sleeved embroidered tunic with a high collar buttoning tightly at the throat. He wore his hair long with a tortoiseshell comb projecting like twin horns above his forehead. ‘What’ll you have? Something with gin, or whisky?’ Campbell asked.
‘Whisky, if you’ve any soda.’
‘Of course I’ve soda.’
I looked at him with curiosity. Why on earth, once he had made the break with England, was he going back? ‘Is it an impertinence to ask you why?’ I said.
‘By no means, it’ll soon be common knowledge. My wife was killed in a motor smash. I’m going back to look after our two daughters.’
It was such an unexpected admission that there was no comment to be made. I waited for his amplification. ‘We’d drifted apart before the war,’ he said. ‘Then when the war came, well, I was away five years, and once the strings are cut…’
‘But why come out here? Why not live on in England?’
He shrugged. ‘You know how income tax works out, how a husband and wife’s income are joined and taxed as one. You can’t lead two separate lives upon one income. You could before the war. You can’t now. My daughters and my wife had become a team; I’d always been more of an uncle to them than a father. A complete break seemed wisest. I saw no reason why I should go through the squalid business of a divorce.’
‘And having decided on a break, I suppose you thought that the further you could get away the better.’
He shook his head.
‘Not altogether. The less I spent of the money that’ll one day be theirs, the better.’
‘But now your wife is dead …’
‘Now of course I have to go back and take up my responsibilities.’
He said it in such a way that ‘take up my responsibilities’ was put into inverted commas.
‘When are you leaving?’
‘On the next eastbound boat.’
‘That’s the one I’m taking.’
‘Good; then we’ll see something of each other.’
He looked at me again with the appraising look that he had assumed at our first meeting. ‘I’ll enjoy that,’ he said, ‘though it’s the last thing I could have foreseen myself as saying thirty years ago.’
Authors get used to having odd things said to them, but this was more than usually unexpected.
‘May I ask why?’ I said.
‘That first book of yours. I disapproved of it. Subjects like that are better not discussed.’ My first book as I have already explained in my Foreword, written at the age of seventeen, was a Public School story. It dealt in one chapter more realistically than was then considered prudent with the consequences of herding together in monastic seclusion boys who are almost men and boys who are almost children. It caused a succès de scandale at the time. Its scarlet passages seem very tame today.
‘If you believe that, you’ve got one or two rather unexpected books on your own shelves,’ I said.
‘For instance?’
‘Si le grain ne meurt.’
‘Oh, so you noticed that.’ He flushed. He paused. ‘One’s opinions alter. I said thirty years ago, remember.’
I looked at him thoughtfully. There was something odd about him, something that did not ring quite true, something that did not quite add up. That story about his coming to live in Seychelles because of income tax. It seemed contrived.
Three weeks later I stood beside Campbell on the upper deck of the Kampala. We had embarked the night before. We were due to sail in half an hour. It was a grey, sunless morning, the peaks of Trois Frères were shrouded. Rain drifted intermittently like a series of gauze curtains across Victoria. Sailings at daybreak after a late night’s pouring on the boat are an anti-climax. The familiar life of the town had started. We could see through glasses the bustle of early traffic along the esplanade.
No one was noticing the Kampala. As far as the island was concerned she had sailed when the last launch went. We were no longer a part of the life that we were watching.
The police launch left. The steps were lifted and the anchor weighed. The engines began to throb. I turned to Campbell.
‘Two months ago this must have been the last thing that you foresaw?’
He shrugged. ‘One’s a fool to look ahead too far.’
I asked what he was planning for his daughters. My own daughter was just sixteen. She was going to Switzerland the following year. I explained about applying for currency in advance. He scarcely listened. He was following his own thoughts.
‘I couldn’t not go back,’ he said. ‘But the infuriating thing is that if that last time I bathed I had swum out by mistake too far and the sharks had got me, my daughters would have been no worse off; probably better off. Their uncle could have looked after them. They’ve always spent half of their summer holidays with him. He lost his son in the war. His daughter’s married. He’d be delighted to have my kids. They know him better than they know me. They’d be better off with him. But because I’m alive, they’d not be happy there. They’d think they ought to be with me. It would look queer my being stuck out here, and that’s the one thing that children can’t stand, something that looks queer, that they can’t explain to their friends.’ He laughed, a short, wry little laugh. ‘It’s odd how often the best service one can do one’s friends and family is to disappear, to die under conditions that would confer no disgrace. There’s always something discreditable about a suicide.’
‘The Romans didn’t think so; they held that a man had the right to leave a party that had begun to bore him.’
‘I
dare say, but we’re not Romans.’
He spoke impatiently.
We had begun to move; in half an hour we should be passing Praslin. Rain was falling steadily. ‘Have there ever been times,’ he said, ‘when you have thought, “If I were to die now, everyone would be left with a good impression of me. Everyone would speak well of me. My family would be proud of me. But in the next fifteen years things may have happened to make them feel ashamed of me; I may have forfeited their pride and trust. If only I could make my exit now?” Have there been times when you’ve thought that?’
‘Is there anyone in the world who hasn’t?’
An idea for a story crossed my mind, of a man who has gone to seed in the tropics, who is afraid of going back to face the son who has made a hero of him; and who in order to preserve the son’s memory intact swims out to sea to meet the sharks. I saw it as a possible short story.
I looked at Campbell thoughtfully. Confidences are usually made late at night, after many drinks. But they are also made on grey chill mornings upon station platforms. Had Campbell realized quite how much he had admitted, how much he had betrayed? Did he guess that he had taken me behind the scenes?
‘What about that Sinhalese boy?’ I asked. ‘Are you taking him back with you?’
He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to him, the climate—who’d there be for him to talk to? He’s going to Colombo.’
I hesitated. There was something that had been puzzling me about Campbell all along. That story about joint income tax in England; there should have been a way round that. I had discussed it with the C.I.R.O. He thought there was.
‘The C.I.R.O. seemed to think that you could have filed separate declarations.’
‘My income-tax agent didn’t think so.’