Pawley was delighted when he heard about the scene in the tree-house. He congratulated Douglas on the way he had handled Silvia, and then congratulated himself on his own perspicacity—he had always recognized that Douglas had the makings of a first-rate pedagogue (although it had taken courage, of course, to overlook certain aspects of his personal history). You could almost hear him purring.
Mrs. Pawley, however, resented the apparent success with Silvia, and was not delighted at all. She was still not speaking to Douglas. He had even detected her hand behind the delay in reimbursing him after the bungalow disaster. Pawley had explained that this was due to certain technical difficulties that prevented the payment being made from school funds; but his embarrassed manner suggested that technical was not strictly the right word. Douglas’s late return to the school the other night probably hadn’t helped matters with Mrs. Pawley. She was bound to have heard the station-wagon coming up the hill, and drawn her own conclusions about how he had spent the evening. The conclusions would have been the kind that made her angry. Now the news about Silvia made her more angry still.
At the staff meeting on Monday she raised the matter of the tea party. She objected to it on the grounds that tea was supposed to be drunk in the Great House and not taken outside, and that it was improper for John to entertain girls in his tree-house. It had also come to her notice that a member of the staff had been present at the party, thus implicitly condoning it.
Pawley had evidently not been briefed about this protest, and he seemed rather put out. He called for Douglas’s observations. Douglas observed that there could be no objection to tea being taken outside except the fear of broken crockery; and on this occasion the children had carried the tea in a tin and drunk from enamel mugs. As for the question of impropriety, if John was prevented from entertaining girls in his tree-house there should logically be a complete segregation of sexes during all free time, because there was nothing you could do in a tree-house that you couldn’t do better in the jungle, where there was more room. In which case the idea of co-education might just as well be abandoned. Pawley wagged his beard in tentative approval of these arguments, and referred the matter back to Mrs. Pawley. As Mrs. Pawley was not prepared to recognize anything that Douglas said as having been said at all, she shrugged impatiently and said, “I still think that no member of the staff should have condoned it without your authority.”
Pawley looked awkward about this, and shuffled the papers in front of him. Then he goggled at both sides of the table and said, “Shall we leave it, then, that there will be no objection to such proceedings in the future, provided that school crockery isn’t used?” There were no dissentients, and he passed on to another item on the agenda, which concerned a complaint from the children that salt fish and acki appeared too often on the menu. Salt fish and acki was the Jamaican national dish, but Douglas would have been quite happy if it had not appeared on the menu at all. Duffield didn’t like it either, and was obviously torn between a desire to support the motion, and a natural instinct to condemn it on the grounds that children should eat what they were given and be made to like it. He finally allowed the interests of gastronomy to outweigh the interests of discipline, and gave a guilty vote. The guilt passed from his face when he saw that Morgan was voting in favour of retaining the present diet. Morgan was the only defender of salt fish and acki, and the motion was therefore carried, and Mrs. Morgan was requested to modify the menu.
On Tuesday Silvia came to Douglas in the library.
“I’ve written a story,” she said.
She laid a pile of manuscript in front of him. There were fifty or sixty pages.
“What gave you the idea of doing that?” he asked.
“I just felt like it. I did it all in free time.”
He sent her away and started to read it at once. He knew it would be interesting, because he had never read a story by a boy or girl that didn’t give away a great deal about the writer. Whether the plot was worked out against a background of their own environment or against the imaginary background of Mars, it inevitably betrayed the child’s hopes and fears and ambitions and hates. Characters and stories were not created from a vacuum. They were conjured from hidden sources of the mind.
The background of Silvia’s story was drawn from the films, it was about grown-ups, and the principal character was a man—but nevertheless it remained, quite unintentionally, a story about herself.
The hero was called Julian. He worked in a department store in New York, where he loved one of the girl assistants and hated the manager. The manager was extremely ugly, as befitted a bully. One evening, after the manager had gone home, something cropped up that had to be reported to him at once. Julian went to his apartment and found the girl there. They were surrounded by bottles of champagne and all the other adjuncts of film debauchery. Julian threw himself at the manager to kill him, but the manager fought free and locked himself in a room, from the safety of which he taunted Julian with diabolical laughter. To avenge himself, Julian went back to the department store and set it on fire. Silvia, as the story teller, obviously felt this quite justified. Meanwhile the manager came out of his room, tripped over the carpet, hit his head on the fender, and was killed. It looked as if he had been murdered by Julian, who had been seen to enter the apartment. Julian was arrested, but managed to escape. He bolted from New York, and in due course found himself in Hollywood. He was spotted in a Hollywood restaurant by a film producer, and on account of his good looks was invited to play a leading role. He became a film star, adored by the whole world. Soon he fell in love with another film star. She was very beautiful, and their love was idyllic. The idyll continued despite their marriage. Then one of the employees of the department store recognized Julian on the screen. He was arrested, tried for the murder of the manager, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was taken from the court amidst the hostile yells of the crowd that had formerly idolized him. The story ended up with him breaking stones on an island gaol, under the eye of a brutal, whip-yielding guard. The title of this saga was The Road to Fate.
Silvia had probably chosen to make the hero a man in order to deceive herself that she was not writing subjectively; but it was obvious that she had vividly imagined herself in the role of Julian In the first part of the story Julian’s relationship with the manager of the department store interested Silvia far more than Julian’s love for the girl assistant—the love was only put in to satisfy the assault on the manager, and was rapidly forgotten. There could hardly be any doubt that the manager represented her father.
Julian had tried to kill the manager, but without success—because if Silvia had allowed him to succeed she would in effect, have been killing her own father. This was an evil from which she shrank. However, she had achieved the same end without guilt by causing him to die by accident.
Julian’s career in Hollywood was Silvia’s dream of happiness in very thin disguise. The adoration of the world represented her idea of success and her deepest wish: to be loved by everyone. The purity of Julian’s love also belonged naturally to her adolescent fancy. But just as Silvia was haunted by the fear of injustice and hostility, so Julian was haunted by the fear of exposure. Then came the arrest and the ultimate victory of injustice. The crowds did not understand the truth, and victimized Julian; and finally all the hostile forces—the crowds and the manager and Silvia’s father—were embodied in the single figure of the guard with the whip. It was surely Silvia’s perpetual fear of this unjust and brutal figure that had found expression in her rebelry. If Douglas had psycho-analysed her or had had access to her dreams, he could hardly have elicited a clearer statement.
Even so, it didn’t go deep enough. It was only a confirmation of what he had already guessed, and didn’t explain why she hated her father, who had been good to her or feared injustice. He was half afraid to delve further, for he was not a psychologist and he suddenly felt himself getting out of his depth. He held an
instrument in his hand which fascinated him, but which he had not been trained how to use. He wished there was someone in Jamaica to whom he could turn for advice; but he knew no one, and it was wiser to leave the instrument alone.
Yet it was not only the content of Silvia’s story that interested him. He was also interested in the writing, which for a girl of twelve seemed a considerable achievement. The background lacked verisimilitude and the plot was full of improbabilities; but she showed a facility for self-expression that had never been apparent in her careless essays or her speech. Her descriptions were vivid and original, and her analyses of emotions, although reflecting her immaturity, were carefully detailed. It was not difficult to tell when she had been writing directly from experience. When Julian first fell in love with the beautiful film actress, he didn’t know whether or not his love was returned. He took an old book and began tearing out the pages, saying, “She loves me, she love me not,” as children do when blowing fluff from dandelions. The last page informed him that she loved him not. He was not prepared to accept this, and concluded that he must have torn out two pages together by mistake, thus reversing the final verdict. This description was so human, and the behaviour so closely observed, that Douglas felt quite sure Silvia had done something of the kind herself. The passages in which she excelled were all of this nature. Her courtroom scene, from some half-remembered film, was absurd; but her account of Julian’s reaction to the derisive crowd—his determination to look scornful and keep his head in the air—was written excellently. It would have interested Douglas to know if Silvia had been aware that she was describing her own feelings during the period of her ostracism. Probably she had not.
When Silvia came to him to hear his opinion of the story he was tempted to explain some of her unconscious reasons for writing that particular plot: it might have helped her to understand herself. But now he funked the use of the instrument in hand, and he only discussed the work in its literary aspects. He gave her a modicum of praise.
She was eager for more, and for reassurances about her future.
“Do you think I could be a writer?” she said.
He told her it was entirely up to her—she probably could if she worked hard enough to that end. She wasn’t satisfied. She wanted to know that she was going to be a success. “But is the story really good? Do you think I’ve got talent?”
“It shows a tremendous amount of promise,” he said. “But you’ve a lot to learn. Talent isn’t any use unless you train it.”
She went away, and the next day brought a poem. It was imitation Wordsworth, scanned badly, was about the English countryside which she had never seen, and contained no original thought. He gave her a modicum of adverse criticism. She resented it, flushed, and became angry. He told her that if Wordsworth had tried to write about Jamaica in the style of Milton, he would probably have made a mess of it. She must find a style that suited her, and write about what she knew; and in doing so she would inevitably turn out a mass of bad stuff. She still sulked rather, and went off to try her hand at another story. It was a short one, because she was impatient for opinion, and it lacked many of the merits of the first; but it was still better than average. He praised her again and she cheered up. He was not yet satisfied that all her devils had been exorcized, it could hardly be expected in a month, but he was confident that sympathetic treatment was working where harsher methods would have failed. And once or twice he allowed himself to day-dream: in some house in England, where he was enjoying a comfortable old age, he was entertaining Silvia to lunch. She was now an eminent novelist, but she still retained an affection for the master from whom she had received her first literary lesson. They reminisced in amusement about the smashing of the bungalow and her other escapades. There was someone else at the table, joining in the amusement; but he had refused himself a licence to include Judy in this day-dream, so he tried to ignore her, and turning back to Silvia began to discuss her latest book.
There was a note from Judy at the beginning of the following week. It ran to four lines, and said that Louis was leaving on Thursday, and she was feeling quite resigned and not a bit suicidal. Nevertheless Douglas went down to Pawley to alter his day off. Pawley agreed at once. He would have probably agreed to a week off on double salary if he’d been asked. He had heard about Silvia’s burst of literary activity, and been so delighted that it was only a wonder he hadn’t written to the Governor to recommend Douglas for a knighthood.
On Thursday morning he drove down to Kingston and went straight to the flat. Louis was still there—he was catching a plane for Mexico in the early afternoon. Douglas arranged to meet Judy afterwards at the Myrtle Bank. He then set about saying good-bye to Louis. He found this an agreeable duty, but Louis showed convincing signs that it was breaking his heart. He wrung Douglas’s hand, and then accompanied him downstairs with an arm round his shoulder. On the way he told Douglas what a decent chap he was, and how happy he felt to be leaving Judy in his care. He then apologized for his behaviour at the Colony Club. Douglas said he saw no reason for an apology, but Louis wouldn’t be done out of it.
“I must have given you the idea that I’m ashamed of being a Jew. I’m not—I’m proud of it.” His eyes were watering already. “The trouble is that I’m too sensitive. I always have been. I feel things too deeply. It’s an awful drawback.”
“It must make life hell.”
Louis looked grateful for such profound understanding of his handicap.
“You should be thankful you’re not like that. You can’t imagine what I’m going to suffer, leaving Judy this afternoon.”
“Don’t leave her, then,” Douglas said.
He shook his head.
“No—I’ve thought over what you said, but I know I was right.” He coughed weakly and put his hand to his chest. “It wouldn’t be fair to her.” He wrung Douglas’s hand again. “But look after her, old chap. It’s all I ask you—look after her for me.”
He had a few purchases to make in Kingston, so he stopped at the shops. While he was in the stationer’s the mulatto from the milk-bar, who called himself a nigger, materialized out of space. He called Douglas Mr. Lockwood, and inquired after his health with the ingratiating concern that Louis might have shown. Douglas told him that his health was excellent and said good-bye and left the shop. The man was still with him at the tobacconist’s, where he informed Douglas that his own health had shown a marked deterioration of late owing to lack of food, which was due to the difficulty of finding employment, which was due to the economic state of Jamaica. There were certain people who blamed this sad state on England’s exploitation of her little colony, but he himself considered this a traitorous attitude towards the mother-country. He was amongst the few who realized what England had suffered in the war and how lightly Jamaica had escaped. He supposed that Mr. Lockwood must be particularly nauseated by those Jamaicans who did not understand what war meant, since he had obviously played a valiant front-line rôle. At this point Douglas gave him the ninepence change that he had received from the tobacconist, and the man vanished as mysteriously as he had come.
Douglas went into a bookshop and bought a novel and an American magazine, and then went to the Myrtle Bank. He bathed, had lunch, started to read the novel, then gave it up and started on a story in the magazine. He soon gave that up, too, and turned over the pages of the magazine, looking at the pictures and reading the advertisements. Louis’ plane was due to depart at three-fifteen. At exactly three-twenty a plane came over the harbour. It circled the town, gaining height, and flew off over the hills in the direction of Cuba. It showed no likelihood of crashing. Less than half an hour later, Judy appeared.
“Now,” she said, “what about helping me break into a dispensary for some sleeping tablets? Or shall we have tea first! I’m really too exhausted to bother about killing myself for the moment. I may not bother at all. It might inflate his ego too much if succeeded.”
“An
d he’s so sensitive about that sort of thing.”
She laughed. “Has he been telling you how sensitive he is too? He told me about it this morning. I think he was reading a book about a sensitive person last night.”
“Was he reading a book last night?”
“Oh, he loves books. He’s so cultured. Didn’t he tell you about his culture, as well?”
“He forgot that.”
“He must have thought you took it for granted.” She laughed again, and said unconvincingly, “isn’t he a horror? Can you imagine what I see in him?”
“The backs of his hands are fabulously hairy.”
“Yes isn’t it funny? Because his chest isn’t at all.”
“Perhaps he sticks it on with gum-arabic.”
After tea they went to the Carib. It was an absurd American film, with up-to-date slapstick behind the scenes of a television studio, but Douglas found it very funny and laughed a great deal, and Judy laughed too. If it had been the Marx Brothers fooling around with the television cameras, it would have been funnier still. They came out of the cinema in a good mood, and had supper at the Chinese place with the Chinese-Indian-Negress waitress.
“Perhaps she isn’t too young for you, after all,” Judy said. “You know what girls are in the tropics. And she obviously wants some white blood for the family collection.”
“I’d like to see her have a baby with a Russian-Eskimo-Javanese.”
“Have you ever met one of those?”
“Yes—except it wasn’t Eskimo, it was Icelandic. He was a man who lived in a boarding-house in London and studied law. He kept feeling nostalgic, only it was rather confusing because he never quite knew where he was nostalgic for. He died.”
“Of nostalgia?”
“No; he caught pneumonia in the English winter. It was probably the Javanese part of him that let him down.”
Judy laughed and said, “How wonderful to be talking rubbish again! Louis never talks rubbish. I’m so glad he’s gone.”
The Shadow and the Peak Page 19