My Place in the Bazaar

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My Place in the Bazaar Page 25

by Alec Waugh


  ‘Why don’t you? It’s not too late to change your mind,’ she said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’m on a job. I’ve got all the dope I need on Dominica.’

  ‘You know it well then.’

  ‘As well as you can know any place where you haven’t lived.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It’s a funny place. It’s an island of contradictions and of contrasts. Its mountains are its pride and beauty. When the sun shines you wonder how green can have so many shades, but half the time you can’t see the mountains because of cloud; the mountains attract the rain, and the rain makes the valleys fertile; the best fruit in the world is grown here, but the rain washes away the roads and the peasants can only market their produce by carrying it to the coast upon their heads. One thing cancels out another. The island’s always in the red. It’s a curious place. It attracts misfits and eccentrics.’

  ‘Misfits and eccentrics.’ She repeated the phrase in the same way that six years back she had repeated the phrase ‘an island in the desert’ as though it were the clue to something.

  ‘When were you there last?’ she asked.

  ‘Two years ago.’

  ‘Did you meet a man called Douglas Eliot?’

  ‘Indeed I did.’

  In a way he was a typical Dominican, an ex-Army officer on the edge of thirty who had come out with a pension and a small private income and large plans to make coffee pay. The plans came to nothing, but he stayed on. He was tall, blond, with a florid complexion and large features. He walked with a roll. He looked and probably was an athlete who was letting himself grow flabby. I had enjoyed his company. He had been a prisoner in the Second War; I had been one in the First. We compared experiences, we discussed books about prison life. I asked him if he’d read E.E. Cummings’s The Enormous Room. ‘No,’ he said, but he knew Cummings’s poetry. He had read a surprising amount of modern poetry. We were talking about Dylan Thomas when someone interrupted us.

  ‘What’s he doing there?’ she asked.

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘He wasn’t then.’

  ‘Any entanglement?’

  ‘Nothing of any consequence.’

  ‘What does he do all day?’

  ‘His place has an acre or two of ground. That means some daily chores. He plays a little tennis. He’s in the club every night.’

  ‘Is he drinking?’

  ‘Everyone drinks in Dominica. He does his share. Why are you so interested?’

  ‘I briefed him for the Commando mission that he got captured on.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was a Commando.’

  ’No? Well, he might not mention it.’

  She said it on an off-hand note, but it had an undercurrent of something I could not place. I had never seen her so absorbed by anything.

  ‘It shouldn’t be difficult to find him, should it?’ she continued.

  ‘The easiest thing possible. He’s at the Paz every morning by eleven.’

  ‘What’s the Paz?’

  ‘A bar attached to a hotel. You might call it “The Beachcombers Arms”.’

  ‘Will you take me there tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course. It’s where I’d have gone anyhow.’

  My ship sailed for St. Vincent in the afternoon. The Paz was the likeliest place for me to pick up the threads of gossip.

  We dropped anchor next morning soon after eight.

  It was not actually raining when we went ashore, but the sky had a sodden look and mists lay low along the valley.

  ‘Is it often like this?’ she asked.

  ‘Too often. It’s what gets people down. They feel imprisoned, shut in by all these mountains that they never see.’

  She booked into her hotel, then we toured the town. Roseau with its low dun-coloured houses and its puddled streets looked dingy. Even the market-place was drab. Within an hour we had seen it all.

  ‘Let’s go to the Paz,’ she said.

  Though it was only a little after ten, already there were seven men at the bar. They were variously dresssed in khaki trousers, bush shirts and shorts. They were white or white enough to pass as white. In the centre of the line was a man in a gabardine suit that though unpressed was relatively clean.

  ‘That’s him,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Shall I bring him over?’

  ‘Please.’

  I walked across. I let my hand fall on his shoulder. He lifted his head, blinked, tried to focus me. I introduced myself. ‘Of course, it is. Why, what the hell,’ he said.

  ’Will you have a drink?’ I asked.

  ‘Why not.’

  Because he was fair-haired, it was not immediately apparent that he had not shaved that morning. His polka-dot red tie was knotted so high that its first inch was crumpled. He was not so much grubby as ill-kempt. He smelt, but not offensively, of rum. Two years ago he had looked flabby. He was bloated now.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ I asked.

  ‘The wine of the country. Rum and water.’

  I gave the order to the barmaid.

  ‘There’s someone here who knows you. Would you like to join us?’

  He swung round on his stool, glanced, then stared, then started.

  ‘Why, so there is,’ he said. He walked across to her. ‘Why, look who’s here,’ he said.

  They did not shake hands. They looked at each other very straight.

  ‘The small back room near Baker Street,’ he said.

  ‘The small back room near Baker Street,’ she echoed.

  There was a sudden dramatic tension in the air. I remembered that the London Headquarters of her outfit had been near Baker Street.

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ he said.

  ‘Nor’ve you, at least not much.’

  ‘We can cut that out, can’t we?’

  ‘I spotted you at once.’

  ‘That’s a relief, anyhow.’

  His voice had a half-sneer to it. The barmaid brought the drinks and he sat down. He put both hands to his glass. They were long, narrow-fingered, wide, short-nailed, well-cared-for hands.

  ‘Only my second today. I’m never quite normal till I’ve had my third,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what had happened to you,’ she said.

  ‘The Germans got me.’

  ‘I knew that; but afterwards.’

  ‘They put me in a prison camp.’

  ‘And then?’

  ’That was all there was to it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What else could there have been to it.’

  ‘I don’t know. I wondered.’

  ‘What could you have heard to make you wonder.’

  ‘Nothing. I just did wonder.’

  ‘You’ve not been sent here by those boys in Baker Street,’

  ‘How could I?’

  ‘Aren’t you with them still?’

  ‘I don’t even know if they exist.’

  ‘What happened to you, then.’

  ‘I was posted to Baghdad. I was there two years. Then Daddy died. I came home to look after my mother.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  She told him what she had told me. There was a pause. He seemed to want to say something, but thought better of it. She took up the lead.

  ‘That small back room near Baker Street. February 1944. Six years and it seems yesterday. I’ll never forget the way you looked when you came in; so buoyant, on top of everything.’

  ‘And so I was. Is that so surprising? After all those months of training to have the chance I’d prayed for, a genuine commando mission: to be dropped behind the lines in France. And it all turned upon this interview. Did you guess how desperately keen I was to make a good impression?’

  ‘That’s why they chose me for that job, because I could spot those whose hearts were in it.’

  And as part of that job, she had taken, as I had for min
e, an interrogation course. We had both learnt how to extract the truth from prisoners and from suspects. I knew what she was doing, creating a mood in which he would find himself making admissions without knowing it.

  ‘You were the exact type that we were looking for,’ she said.‘I knew that from the start. There wasn’t any real need for an interview, but I was having such a good time gossiping.’

  ‘Don’t you think I was too.’

  ‘Do you remember saying …?’ She had started him on a trail of reminiscence, leading him to recall this, to recall that. I might not have been there at all. I signalled to the barmaid for another round. He barely acknowledged its arrival.

  ‘How long did we go on gossiping?’ she said.

  ‘Over forty minutes.’

  ‘And with all those other candidates outside.’

  They laughed together. He was utterly relaxed, and off his guard. The tension gone. She had done a lovely job, got him where she wanted him.

  ‘Do you remember your promise that if I came back safe, my first night home you’d dine with me?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’

  Their voices had grown soft. His face wore a brooding look. He had become in memory the volunteer of twenty-five on the threshold of high adventure. What had happened in six years to turn that brisk young officer into this rum-sodden beachcomber? Why had the bright steel rusted?

  ‘As I walked away up Baker Street,’ he said, ‘the sun was shining. It was one of those miraculous February days when summer seems round the corner. The world lay at my feet. In a week I should be across the Channel. It was a short mission, a few messages to be delivered, a few reports to be received; by the end of the month I should be back, dining at some corner table. Life was a shop window waiting to be rifled.’

  He paused and shrugged.‘I haven’t felt that way since,’ he said.

  ‘Was it all that bad in prison?’

  ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t that.’ He checked. He looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘You really haven’t heard?’ he asked.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘What happened afterwards.’

  ‘What could I hear?’

  He shrugged, laughed ruefully.

  ‘And I’d supposed you had. I’d assumed you had. That you must have, being in that racket. I’d wondered how you’d felt. I dreaded to know. Yet I ached to know. It was the one thing that mattered, how you felt about it, how you judged me. And now to realize that you’d never heard.’

  ’You’d better tell me, hadn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I had.’

  He leant forward across the table, on his elbows, his glass between his hands. Yes, she had got him where she wanted him. He was hypnotized. I felt I had no business there, but was afraid that if I moved I should break the spell.

  ‘Have you read Odette? he said.

  ‘No, but I know about it.’

  ‘You know what the Germans did if you had any information they could use. Well, I broke down under it.’

  It was the most sensational admission I had ever heard, and it could not have been made less dramatically; there was no self-pity in his voice.

  ‘I’d always thought that when the pain became too great you just passed out,’ he said.‘I didn’t, and my nerve broke.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Nothing. I’d served their purpose. I’d told them all I knew. I was a prisoner like any other.’

  ‘No special treatment?’

  ‘I could have had, I suppose. But they didn’t press me. I was a coward, not a traitor. I wouldn’t broadcast for them. I was sent to an ordinary camp. You can imagine how I felt after the D-day landings, wondering how many Englishmen I’d killed. I wanted to get away by myself, and of course I couldn’t. I wanted to get drunk, but I was only allowed to cash small cheques. I could only afford to get drunk once a week.’

  ‘And after the war?’

  ‘Something I’ve never understood. When the Germans collapsed, I started to worry on my own account. I’d got over my sense of guilt, or at least the acuteness of it. What was done was done and we were winning. In a few weeks I should be back in England. I began to wonder how much was known about me. Surely something must be. I’d given away valuable information. References must have appeared in Intelligence reports. Some of them would fall into Allied hands. I was really frightened.

  ‘Can you imagine how I felt back in England, being fêted as a returned hero, having to lie and lie? Each week I read about some new traitor who’d been arrested; someone who’d talked over the wireless or given away information. Sooner or later they’d get round to me. I pictured the disgrace, the court martial, the prison sentence. I toyed with the idea of suicide. I avoided my old friends; I sat in a dark corner of my club drinking the afternoon away. I’d talk to strangers in a bar. I made no effort to find myself a job. I laid in a store of sleeping pills instead. And then the surprise came —a letter from the War Office, awarding me the honorary rank of captain in recognition of my exceptional services, and an annuity of £500.

  ‘It was a mistake, of course. But I’d have been a fool not to turn it to account. I’d no need now to hunt myself a job. That pension with the small private income that I had would let me escape from England, away from my fellow countrymen and all their talk about the war and what they’d done in it. I got my atlas out. The West Indies were a long way off. The war had scarcely touched them. There’d be very few ex-soldiers there. If there had been no currency regulations, I’d have gone to a French island, Martinique or Guadeloupe. But Dominica’s not too bad a substitute. And that’s what put the water into this coconut,’ he concluded.

  He had told his story quietly, calmly, his eyes fixed all the time on her, completely indifferent to my presence.

  ‘What about your music? You told me that you wanted to become a pianist,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘That’s another reason why I decided to come out here. I wanted to forget that ambition by making it impossible.

  A piano won’t stand this climate. Insects eat the felt.’

  ‘So you don’t do anything?’

  ‘Nothing that I’d have called anything ten years ago. I’m thirsty.

  Won’t you change your mind and have a real drink now?’

  She shook her head. ‘Too early, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Too early. I’d have thought too late. I can’t drink alone. I’ll rejoin my friends.’

  He rose and held out his hand, his long, well-tended hand that alone had survived the change.

  ‘I’ve always hoped we’d meet again,’ he said. ‘I’ve often thought about that small back room near Baker Street, and the man I was that day. You are the last person who ever saw that man; I’m glad to have got this off my chest. You’re the only person in the world I could have told it to. I’m glad you haven’t changed, that nothing’s happened to make you different. I wished I could have made that date. Good luck.’

  He moved over to the bar, perched himself upon the stool and caught the bar-girl’s eye. He didn’t give an order. She took his glass and filled it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Lily said.

  We had been barely an hour in the Paz, but Dominica, in that short time had staged one of its transformations. The sky had cleared. The clouds had lifted from the lower mountains. The puddled streets were glistening in the sunlight, the dun-coloured buildings wore a gleam of gold.

  ‘Let’s take a drive,’ I said.

  We drove out to the Morne, a high hill behind the town. There was a seat there, and we left the car. Below us stretched the broad green valley with its neat rows of lime trees divided every twenty yards by the tall thin galba trees that stood as wind-breakers. It looked very fresh and clean after the rain, and Roseau had lost its lack of colour with the general effect of amber relieved here and there by the bright scarlet of the tulip tree and the vivid canary yellow of the Poui.

  ‘Do you see how this place could grow on you?’ I asked.

  She nodded. Duri
ng the drive out she had scarcely spoken.

  ‘What did you make of all that?’ she asked.

  ‘Did he really look the way he said in ‘44?’

  ‘Yes, just like that.’

  ‘That talk about a date, was it all on his side, or did you feel something too?’ She pursed her lips.

  ‘I lied when I told you that I came out here with the idea of settling. I didn’t. I heard he was here. I came out to see him.’

  I had the sensation of something under my heart going round and over, an acute sense of sympathy and fellow feeling. Basically her life must be all wrong. Otherwise she wouldn’t have let herself vegetate in a Wessex village, otherwise I should not have noticed those signs of strain. It was pathetic to think of her, wondering during those long slow passing years whether that bright young officer met for forty minutes in a small back room near Baker Street might not be the solution to her problems; to think of her corning all that way, and to find this; now she had nothing left.

  I sought for the right words of sympathy; sought and could not find them.

  She spoke first.

  ‘Did anything in that story strike you as odd?’ she asked.

  ‘That pension did.’

  ‘I thought it would. Exceptional services indeed. I’ll say they were. They were worth five divisions to us, at the least. You saw something, didn’t you, of “deception” when we were in Baghdad?’

  I nodded. ‘Deception’—the giving of false information to the enemy, was a highly organized industry in World War II. Myself, I only touched its fringe. But I saw enough to recognize how intricate a game it was. We once found an enemy agent with a wireless transmitter. We put him behind bars and continued to operate his set, sending misleading information to the Germans. The Germans discovered we were doing this; so we had to start sending a different kind of information. We had, in fact, to start telling them the truth, because they would not believe it. Had they discovered later that we knew they knew, we would have returned to telling lies. It became most involved. But, as I said, I only touched the fringe. She was right inside it. I waited for her explanation.

 

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