A Family of Islands

by Alec Waugh

  Epilogue

  1

  The end of one story is the beginning of another. The Victorian novelist, after the peal of wedding bells had faded from the village steeple, would round off his three-decker romance with an epilogue beginning ‘And now dear reader, you will want to know what happened to the other characters in our story . . .’; and it is not perhaps inappropriate that this history should conclude with a brief résumé of the chief events during the last sixty years.

  For the British and French West Indian colonies, the first half of the twentieth century has been a period of slow growth and change, with the administrative power passing out of the hands of the white plantocracy, and the descendants of the African slaves coming to recognize their former prisons as their own proud heritage. Martinique and Guadeloupe are now departments of France, as much a part of France as Normandy and Provence, equal in status with the Var and Seine-et-Oise, sending their own representatives to the House of Deputies and the Senate. Jamaica and. Trinidad, on the other hand, have become independent countries within the framework of the Commonwealth, while at the moment of writing (October 1963), Barbados is in process of merging with the Windward and Leeward Islands into an independent federation, also within the boundaries of the Commonwealth. These changes have been brought about without riots and bloodshed, through constitutional procedure. The account of how it has been achieved in the British islands has been fully and effectively told in the concluding chapters of Sir Alan Burns’ history, which is, in its full, wide scope, required reading for any student of the area. Year by year, decade by decade, it may well have seemed that nothing very much was happening in the islands, but in the long perspective of half a century, it can be seen how much the stream of progress was effecting.

  Change deals gently with tropical countries. The rhythm of the weeks follows an unaltering sequence. There are the months of heat, when day after day an unclouded sun shines out of a metallic sky; when the grass withers and goes brown; when the earth crumbles and splits under its unbroken radiance; when eyes grow dazed under its steady glare; when each night, as you toss tired and damp and sleepless under the transparent lawn of the mosquito net, you can visualize out of your memory of the past the exact course, detail by detail, of the hours that await you when light has returned in unwavering brilliance to the horizon’s rim.

  By an hour’s measure you can judge the coming of the temperate months. And by an hour’s measure you can judge the return of the wet months; when the skies are grey, when the rain thunders with a steady drumbeat upon iron roofs and stone-faced gateways; when the dead palm fronds are torn from their browned roots and swept whistling to the ground. With the succeeding seasons the green shoots of cane strengthen and grow tall; the soft, green coconut grows brown and hard; the sweet, cool milk within it sours, thickening into the hard rind that the traders dry and ship.

  Along the hills, the scarlet flower of the immortelle protects the cocoa plant. And as the seasons and the crops succeed, to man, cherishing, guarding, guiding that succession, drawing his sustenance and profit from it, life has a seeming permanence. The forces of nature at work upon the fields and hills are part of an eternal process. Cities, which are the expression of man’s changing taste, in cold latitudes with their long record of man’s struggle against nature, wake in a man’s heart the sense of man’s importance, of human destiny, of the value of personality. But in the warm countries of rapid growth, where the earth is fertile and abundant; where man is born to plenty; where man’s function is only to direct, with the minimum of effort on his part, this facile opulence to his use, it is easy for man to accept the Nirvana of unchangingness; difficult for him to recognize the currents and the drifts of change.

  Each individual island has had, however, over this period its own special landmarks. Although the area is considered climatically one of the most pleasant in the world, there remains the constant menace of the hurricane. Every West Indian child has learned the doggerel:

  June too soon,

  July stand by,

  August you must

  Remember September,

  October all over.

  Every prudent West Indian family sets itself on its guard in August. The earliest records enumerate the warning signs – the heavy atmosphere, the red aspect of the sun, the rumbling subterranean grunt, the stars shining through a kind of mist that makes them seem larger though less bright; the north-west horizon clouds, and often there is a sulphurous exhalation from the sea. In spite of the weather being calm, there is a heavy swell on the sea, and sudden changes of the wind from east to west. Horses neigh, cattle bellow, there is a general restlessness among the animals, and a faint rise in the barometer before its steady fall. In that way, before the existence of meteorological stations, the islanders recognized the approach of danger. Most of them in their lifetime have been the witnesses of a hurricane; can describe how they had noticed the first fine wisps of cirrus clouds, with the air calm and sultry, till they were dispersed by a gentle breeze that was soon supplanted by the full fury of the gale. Each island dates personal events in relation to the particular hurricane that has struck it.

  Nor must it be forgotten that the islands are of volcanic origin. St Vincent has suffered greatly from the devastations of Soufrière, and it was during this century that Martinique endured one of the worst tragedies in the history of the world. On May 8, 1902, within forty-five seconds, the entire city of Saint-Pierre was destroyed.

  The story has been often told. For years the inhabitants of Saint-Pierre had joked about the rumblings of the extinct volcano in whose shadow their city had been built. There was ‘old Father Pelé muttering in his sleep’, they would say. They ignored the warnings that they were given during that last doomed spring. Smoke plumes rising from the crater’s mouth encouraged the young people on Sunday afternoons to clamber up its steep sides and peer over the edge, just as their grandparents had done. Even when cinders were mingled with the smoke, and the vegetables that the women brought from the hills to market were dark with ashes, even when the rumbling noises became explosions, and the river to the north of the city was swollen with a torrent of boiling mud, tearing down the Guerin factory, even then the inhabitants, as a whole, refused to believe that there was any danger. That old monster of the mountain! What harm could he do now? Had he not growled and grunted in his sleep longer than any Carib legend could recall?

  Dramatic irony hangs over all that happened during those last days. The authorities in Fort de France, disturbed when a few timid families began to desert their homes – it might cause a housing problem in the south – sent a committee of scientific experts to make a report on the spot. The committee confidently announced there was no cause for alarm, and on the afternoon before the disaster, the governor drove out from Fort de France to take up residence in Saint-Pierre, to allay the fears of the inhabitants and to prove by his presence his complete faith in the verdict of his experts. The next morning was Ascension Day. He did not want anything to interfere with the town’s traditional enjoyment of its jour de fête.

  It was on a grey afternoon that be arrived. A film of dust lay over the red-tiled roofs, over the plane trees of the Grande Rue, over the moss-grown runnels. Many windows were shuttered and the shops were closed. The front page of the local newspaper was mainly concerned with the eruption. There was a scientific leader explaining why it was not serious There was a catalogue of the subscribers to the fund for those whose homes had been destroyed. There was a list of those who had been killed when the Rivière Blanche was flooded. There was an article about the governor’s visits. But there was no atmosphere of gloom, and when night fell and the avenues were bright with lamps, Saint-Pierre was her habitual gay-hearted self.

  That night there was a heavy thunderstorm. For hours the rain lashed over the amphitheatre of the city’s hills. But it was into a sky blue and cloudless that the sun rose next morning. The rain had washed clean the roofs and plane trees; the stale smell of grit had vanish
ed from the air; from the jardin des plantes came the scent of flowers. The market was filled with chattering groups. On all sides the business of preparation for the fetê had started.

  The governor, taking his coffee on his balcony, was very likely thinking how in a few hours’ time under the high sun there would be the rich parading of the streets, the bright dresses, the carnival masks; the laughter, the dancing and the music. And then, shortly after eight, two loud explosions thundered from the hills, and sailors from the decks of the ships at anchor saw a large white cloud emerge from the crater of Mont Pelé – it looked as though one side of the mountain had fallen away – and roll upon the town like an Alpine avalanche, engulf it and then swing out to sea. Of the ships at anchor only one escaped – the Roddam. She was under steam, ready to sail, and her captain managed to slip her cable. Her deck was covered with lava, she nearly capsized under the impact, her ropes were charred, members of the crew lay dead among the ashes, but she managed to limp her way across the channel to St Lucia, bearing the sole eyewitness account of the disaster.

  A European cannot picture in terms of any tragedy that is likely to come to him what that tragedy meant for the survivors of Martinique. It did not mean simply the death of twenty-eight thousand people or the loss of property and possessions, the curtain for many years upon the prosperity of the island. It meant the cutting of their lives in half, the loss of half their friends, half their families, half their possessions. In 1929, in Fort de France, a man on the brink of fifty talked about it.

  ‘I left Saint-Pierre on the seventh,’ he said. ‘I was to be married on the ninth. I had come into Fort de France, leaving my fiancee behind to make some last arrangements. I cannot express the excitement with which I woke on that morning of the eighth. I was twenty-four. She was three years younger. It was the first time that either of us had been in love. And that was the last whole day, I told myself, that I should ever spend alone. It was so lovely a morning, too. Bright and clear. And after one of the worst nights that there can have ever been. Thunder and lightning and unceasing rain. The sunlight was a happy omen. Never had I known, never shall I know, anything like the happiness with which I dressed and bathed and shaved that morning. And then, just as I was finishing my coffee, there came those two explosions. They were terrific. They shook the entire island. But I wasn’t frightened. Why should I be? What was there to connect them with Pelé? I went on, as the rest of us did, with what I had to do.

  ‘For a while that morning, life went on in Fort de France in its ordinary way. But soon you had begun to notice a worried look on people’s faces. The sky was dark; a thin dust in which pebbles were mingled was falling over the town. Rumour had started. There was no news coming through from Saint-Pierre. The telephone line had been cut suddenly in the middle of a message, at the instant of the two explosions. Since then there had been silence.

  ‘You know how it is when a rumour starts in a small place. The most fantastic stories get about. A porteuse from Carbet had reported that a fisherman had seen flames behind Saint-Pierre, and no one asked how a porteuse could have done the twenty-eight kilometres from Carbet in two hours.

  ‘I tried not to feel frightened. It was absurd to be frightened. No one had been frightened in Saint-Pierre the afternoon before, when I had left it. Earlier they had been frightened, yes; when those cinders had been falling in the streets, when lightning was flickering about the crater’s mouth; when the day was dark with clouds; when the sugar factory by the Riviére Blanche was being swept away by boiling mud. They had been frightened then. But the scientists had told them there was no need to be afraid. The governor and his wife had come out there themselves. The cinders had practically stopped falling. It was old Pelé amusing himself again.

  ‘That was what I told myself. But you know how it is when panic catches hold of a place. By eleven o’clock our nerves had gone. Three hours and still no news, with the wildest rumours flying round; not one of us could work. We sat in the club, forgetting our rum punches, one thought only in our minds. I shall never forget that morning: the suspense, the terror, the uncertainty. Midday, and still no message had come through. The boat that had been sent out to make enquiries had not returned. We sat and waited. It was not till one o’clock that we knew.’

  He paused and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It’s twenty-six years ago,’ he said. ‘That’s a long time. One can forget most things in that time. One thinks one’s heart is broken. But it mends. One thinks one’s life is over. But it isn’t. One goes on living. One makes the best out of what’s left. I’ve not had a bad best, either. I’ve had a happy marriage. I’m proud of my children. I’ve made a position. But,’ he again shrugged his shoulders,’I don’t know that since that day I’ve felt that anything mattered in particular.’

  It was believed at first that there was not a single survivor, but on the third day a search party heard yells from beneath the bank of rubble that once had been the prison, and they discovered in an underground cell a felon who had been imprisoned a few days earlier for a minor misdemeanour. He had been scorched by the hot air that had passed over his head, but he had not been seriously hurt. He had been woken by the noise, but he had no idea what was happening. He was hungry and indignant, demanding of his rights. The remainder of his sentence was remitted as a compensation for his three days’ discomfort, and he subsequently was exhibited in a circus in the United States as sole survivor.

  2

  The outbreak of the First World War had little effect upon the Caribbean except that it produced an era of prosperity by sending up the price of sugar. Germany possessed no Caribbean colonies, Britain and France were allies, and the Netherlands and Denmark were neutral, so that no campaigns were launched as they had been in the Napoleonic Wars. The only form of belligerence that Germany could take was through her submarines in the Atlantic, and that did not affect the day-to-day routine of life.

  The only island to become seriously involved was the one island that could have been expected to stand outside and above the battle – the independent republic of Haiti. During the first decade of the century, the ramshackle conditions described by Hesketh Pritchard had steadily deteriorated. The currency was debased. The interest was not paid on foreign loans. The island, rich though it was in natural resources, meagre though the standard of living was that it maintained, was not able to pay its way. The cultural links with France had been maintained in spite of the political break, and many of the richer families sent their children to Paris for their education. There was probably more intellectual conversation in Port-au-Prince than there was in Fort de France, and Haiti produced its poets – in particular Oswald Durand – but this small educated class was not strong enough to keep power within its hands. It could not keep pace with modern methods of business, government and finance. The gangsters, the opportunists, the racketeers obtained control; and brigands in the hills sold their services whenever revolution threatened.

  The speed of deterioration quickened. In August 1911 the eighteenth President was deposed by a revolution. By March 5, 1915 he had had six successors. Three were deposed by revolutions, one was blown up in his palace, the fifth was poisoned. The United States observed this deterioration with, in diplomatic phraseology, ‘grave and growing concern’. It could not welcome anarchy on its doorstep. It had financial commitments in the island. American lives and property might be imperilled. Moreover, it was afraid that some European power would intervene to protect its interests. Germany had in 1912 sent a gunboat to collect the interest on a loan. Germany was also taking steps toward acquiring a customs control and building a naval base at Mole St Nicolas. It was at this point by no means certain that Germany would lose the war. She might well, at the eventual peace conference, demand a special status in regard to Haiti. Such a prospect was far from being agreeable to Washington. The Monroe Doctrine was at stake. Washington was prepared to take action on the first major provocation. That provocation was soon to come.

  On Nove
mber 7, 1914, Davilmar Theodore was elected President for seven years. He was destined to rule for three and a half months. Conditions in the north were chaotic, and the American bankers there were afraid that the gold assets in their banks would be confiscated. They requested Washington to send troops to carry this gold to safety, and shortly before Christmas, five hundred marines landed and took half a million dollars in gold back to New York. To enforce order, Theodore sent to the north as his delegate General Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, a man with presidential hopes. After a cursory examination of the situation, this officer informed the authorities of Cap Haitien that a revolutionary army which he was not strong enough to resist was threatening the city. The army entered the city unopposed and proclaimed Sam the wielder of official power – chef du pouvoir executif

  Sam was now ready to launch a revolution. For several months a US warship had been patrolling Haitian waters in defence of foreign interests, and it was in keeping with the comic-opera atmosphere of the average Haitian revolution that the American admiral of this ship should instruct Sam as to how his revolution was to be conducted. The admiral had no intention, he asserted, of questioning the sovereignty of the Haitian nation or of maintaining any but a neutral attitude toward the contending factions. He must, however, insist that no fighting take place in the town of Cap Haitien and that contending factions fight their battle well clear of the town.