The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

  I outlined its history for them. ‘The island hasn’t been out of the red for years,’ I said. ‘People have got depressed: all that ill-luck and all that rain, yet at the same time it does attract a remarkable collection of eccentric misfits, men and women who find something there that they find nowhere else. It has a special magic’

  ‘So that’s what you recommend for us ?’

  I nodded. ‘For your particular needs and for the moment, yes.’

  ‘And it isn’t as though we were going to spend the whole of our lives there, is it ?’ Eileen said.

  ‘We can always pull up our roots.’ He paused. ‘Let’s go back to England, see our respective lawyers, supply the required evidence—let’s be conventional and go to Brighton, to the Metropole, then find the most convenient sailing. This calls for a celebration. Let’s see what champagne they’ve got.’

  The Welcome had a non-vintage Moet. ‘We’ll need two if we can find the others.’ We found them, which made two bottles between six, the right amount for an aperitif-style celebration.

  Twenty-four hours earlier Raymond had been boring us with his devotion to Oswald Mosley; now he was asking us to toast his good luck on an extra-curricular adventure. We could join him much more whole-heartedly this evening.

  Next evening they drove into Nice to catch the Blue Train home. ‘We’ll expect you all to come out to see us there,’ he said.

  Well, and I might at that, I thought.

  It was on a Tuesday that they left. I kept my Sundays free for letter-writing. Within five days Raymond would have broken the news at Charminster. I sent a very brief note to Margaret. ‘So, there it is. And that kills the plan of Raymond and I opening for the Hall against the village. I’ll be back at the end of June, but only for a couple of weeks, I think. Do please lunch with me this time. I shall arrive with a diary innocent of dates.’

  My other letter was a longer one, to Myra. I felt that she needed to be warned. I wondered if it would be a shock to her. It was less than two months since he had been in New York; presumably he had spent his last hours with her. Would this elopement spoil the memory of those hours?

  Her reply gave me no indication if it would.

  It was written on one of those turn-over cards decorated with embossed initials that American socialites affect. Tt was dear of you to write. Am I surprised? Yes, I think I am, but men of that age do things unexpectedly. On Sunday I went to early service to say a prayer for them. I hope that it turns out well. He deserves it should. Do let me know next time you are over here, not only to tell me about Raymond.’

  A month later I waited for Margaret at the Jardin des Gourmets, a small French restaurant that had recently opened in Soho and was rapidly establishing itself as a cosy setting for a tête-à-tête. I was feeling nervous. I had no idea how the afternoon would end. I had no idea how I wanted it to end. Everything was different now. The plans that we had made for my coming down for a cricket weekend as Raymond’s guest belonged to another world. I arrived ten minutes early, I expected her to be ten minutes late. I ordered a carafe of white wine. I did not want to blunt my alertness with martinis. It was as well I did. I had started on the second glass before she arrived. She glanced at my glass, then at the carafe. ‘Not strong enough for me, I fancy. A sidecar, please and it’ll save time if it’s a double. I’m late, I’m sorry. Now we can order right away.’

  She did not, though, hurry over her choice of dishes. ‘This is my first meal away from that house for a couple of weeks. I need a good one.’

  She treated the first half of her cocktail as though it were her first glass of wine and she was thirsty, not a gulp, or a series of swift sips, but a steady swallow. Totted shrimps, chicken vol-au-vent, then raspberries and cream. Now we can talk,’ she said. ‘Tell me all about it.’ I told her all I knew. She listened carefully, interjecting questions. ‘But this girl herself. What’s she really like ?’

  ‘I find her a pretty decent sort.’ I explained why I did.

  ‘And Raymond himself, how does he feel about her?’

  ‘Does one ever know how Raymond feels, about anyone or anything?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s true. Takes everything for granted, always convinced that it will turn out right for him. Have you ever known him excited about anything?’

  ‘At Villefranche, before Eileen arrived, he bored us all about the British Fascists.’

  ‘He’s well out of that,’ she said.

  ‘How’s his father taking it ?’

  ‘Not at all kindly.’

  ‘He didn’t worry about that Oxford trouble.’

  ‘That was very different. Youthful high spirits. A divorce is another thing, with a woman three years older than himself, and with a twelve-year-old daughter.’

  ‘Did he bring her down?’

  ‘No. A great relief for the old man. He came down for lunch to collect his things. He didn’t take much away. Two suitcases and a wardrobe trunk; that was all he needed.’

  ‘He can always come back for the rest.’

  ‘I know, I know. It’s surprising all the same how little there’ll be left him to come back for. He never put down any roots.’

  ‘Did you have any talk with him yourself?’

  ‘A little. He asked me to sit in his room while he was packing.’

  ‘How was he?’

  ‘Couldn’t have been more charming. Only worrying about how it would affect all of us. Michael in particular. “It shouldn’t embarrass him,” he said, “and anyhow kids take a short-term view of things; after all, at Eton quarter of the others have parents who’ve been divorced, let alone uncles.” He didn’t seem to worry about his father much.’

  ‘His father never worried about him.’

  ‘Not worried, but cared in an impersonal kind of way. He identified himself with Michael’s father, and now of course he’s transferred those ambitions onto Michael, but at the same time he and Raymond were very close, closer in a way simply because he had no ambitions for him: more personal, if you get me, because he wasn’t involved himself. He wanted Raymond to be happy. He can’t be sure now he’s going to be happy.’

  ‘How do you feel about it ?’

  ‘Me, it doesn’t matter how I feel. It’s nothing to do with me, though it does make a difference, of course, how the old man feels. We’re dependent on his moods. He gets depressed at times. It’s hard work keeping him cheerful. And then there’s Michael. Raymond is his uncle. There are a lot of things that he could have done for him, advise him about clothes, clubs, things that matter so much in England.’

  ‘Raymond is still his uncle.’

  ‘What’s the use of an uncle in Dominica ?’

  ‘He won’t stay in Dominica all his life.’

  ‘Maybe not, but he’ll be there for two years. And such important years. Michael’s first half at Eton. Raymond could have taken his father’s place. And even when he’s back, we don’t know how Eileen’s going to fit in with us all.’

  I felt sorry for her. I remembered how Raymond that first time he had talked of her, had said, ‘Someone has to pick up the good hand in every deal.’ Was it such a good hand after all? Had Raymond considered for one moment the effect that his elopement would have on her? I doubted it.

  ‘Did he have a real talk with you about it ?’

  ‘We’ve never had a real talk in our lives. I tried to, once, after he’d had his row at Oxford. But it got nowhere. He’s self-sufficient. He doesn’t need anyone for himself. He can’t imagine anybody needing him. He takes each issue as it comes, on its own merits. “Take a short view.” That’s his motto. He’s the least ambitious man I’ve met.’

  ‘He used to talk about waiting for the right opportunity.’

  ‘He hasn’t for several years.’

  ‘He was worked up about Oswald Mosley.’

  ‘Oh, that . . . Forget it. I seem to have been going round and round this subject for the last month. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me about yourself. What are you writ
ing? Have you a new book this autumn? How was it in New York?’

  I told her about New York, about my apartment on Lexington and 36th, how for four months I had lived as a New Yorker.

  ‘And how did New York and the New Yorkers strike you?’

  ‘To me it’s the most exciting city in the world,’ I told her. ‘Every day something new, a new personality, a new way of seeing things. And the New Yorkers themselves, well, New York is them. They say New York isn’t America, but seven million Americans live there. That’s enough for me.’

  ‘Are you planning to go back?’

  ‘When I can. I felt a part of it. I want to remain a part of it.’

  ‘That’s going to make a difference to your writing.’

  She was the first of my friends to realise that. The few who had taken any interest in my visit—the traveller on his return is usually greeted with a few perfunctory questions, then a flood of information about what has been happening in his absence—those who had evinced any interest in my trip had seen it in terms of ‘a new market’. ‘What luck,’ they said, ‘you’ll sell your stories twice, both here and there.’ Not one of them had wondered what impact America itself and the American way of life would have on my whole way of seeing things.

  ‘If you can stay English at heart,’ she said, ‘yet have New York a part of you, you’ll be adding a dimension to yourself.’

  I felt singularly at one with her. This was not the kind of lunch that I had planned but it was a lunch. I knew, that I should remember all my life. It was, after all, nearly a year since we had met. A great deal can happen in a year; particularly to someone as attractive and available as she was. Was someone else filling the place I might have in her life? Why not? Anyhow we were sitting here now, before an emptying botde of white Burgundy, a sense of exhilaration in my heart and, I hope, some equivalent euphoria in hers. ‘We mustn’t lose touch,’ she said. ‘Are you likely to go to Dominica ?’

  ‘It’s always on the cards.’

  5

  In the meantime Eileen kept me in the picture.

  ‘Heaven only knows,’ she wrote, ‘when you will get this letter, but I am writing it on Christmas Eve, to tell you that I shall be thinking of you tonight at the midnight service; and thanking the Almighty for giving us such a good friend, who gave us such good advice. Where would we be, what should we be doing if it weren’t for you? How grateful we are. But where am I writing this, you will be wondering; in one of those boarding house hotels in Roseau that you mentioned, Cherry Lodge and the Paz ?—no, not at all, on the verandah of our own house, “Overdale”. Did you see it? I don’t expect you did. It’s a heavenly place. We fell for it at sight. I enclose some snaps of it. From the verandah you can glimpse the sea, or at least’you can when it isn’t raining. There are mountains on either side, they go straight up; yet they’re not so close that you feel shut in; right in front, below, there’s a deep gorge, a river with banana plants clambering up it’s side. It’s green, green, green. We’re a thousand feet up. That means it’s cool at night. Thick socks and a cardigan. And we’ve got solid club-style furniture, deep sofas and armchairs, so that after dinner you can almost feel yourself in England; England in May, that first week when one doesn’t need a fire.

  ‘We bought the whole thing as it stood; an American couple had lost their nest egg in the crash: bargain price; I’d have preferred to rent, but they wanted solid cash, on the nail. Never get a second chance like this, said Raymond, but I don’t think that’s what decided him. He’s not the calculating type: if he wants a thing, he goes for it: and he wanted this. “It’s a fine investment,” he kept saying, but that cut no ice. He wanted it. And why should I object? I can’t bear English winters. Christmas with the family, then off for the Spanish main. That’s our future programme, and what’s wrong with it?’

  * * *

  On a bleak March morning I read on a newsboy’s placard ‘Peer’s son corespondent’. Raymond already? Yes, it was. But only a ten-line paragraph, at the foot of a column. Raymond was not news; nor was Eileen’s husband, nor, for that matter, were the Peronnes. Peer’s son, that was all he was in a Pressman’s eyes. Was it all he would ever be? I wondered.

  Three weeks later another letter arrived from Eileen—‘I suppose you saw the announcement of our scandal. Quite a scandal, too, out here. Everybody thought that we were married. We travel as Mr and Mrs. What luck he hasn’t got a title. I don’t mind calling myself Mrs Peronne when I’m not. But I couldn’t call myself Lady something or other if I wasn’t. We’d warned the ADC, of course, and signed the book on different days, so that our signatures were a page apart. The Administrator was very nice about it. He sent the ADC round to explain that though he couldn’t invite us together to official functions, he’d be glad if we’d come round for a rum punch after church on Sunday. There were one or two others there. It all went smoothly. Seeing us there together made people assume that we were married. Now they know better; but in six months it’ll be settled. We don’t know where we’ll have the ceremony, or when. Even when the decree is absolute, we shall have to wait until the official papers turn up here, but anyhow it must be before next Christmas, and yes, I shall be relieved.’

  During the spring I was to receive letters from her, most times that a Lady Boat sailed north.

  ‘My friends ask me to tell them what it’s all about,’ she wrote, ‘“give us a daily picture of your day”, they say. But how can I do that? It would sound so dull, all that lying out on a verandah, reading or doing needle work; then those shopping trips into Roseau and the morning rum punch at the Paz, the afternoon siestas; then driving back to the club for tennis, and bridge and swizzles on the verandah; home, dinner, and bed almost at once afterwards, except for an occasional, a very occasional dinner party. It would sound so dull, the same things day after day, with the same people. But it isn’t dull. People who would seem dull in England aren’t dull here because they’re leading unusual lives. Because Dominica is interesting, so are they. Hasn’t Maugham said something like that about his Far East characters? At any rate we’re loving it, and so is Iris: there’s quite a good school here. Her French is getting colloquial. I’m sure that she won’t find she has lost anything, when she gets back to England …’

  She talked about the local characters. They were of two kinds; the local West Indians who had lived here for generations, with names that were well known throughout the islands, Spanish, some of them like the de Freitas, most of whom ‘passed as white’, and then there were the recent settlers from England and the USA; these two types formed the nucleus of the Dominica Club, which had about forty basic members and to which tourists and visitors were given short-term cards of membership. With several of these forty I was already acquainted. I was delighted to have their news.

  ‘I like the old families,’ Eileen wrote, ‘but the newcomers are frankly the more fascinating. They are eccentric; in the other islands they have a phrase “typical Dominica” which means... well, I’ll give you an example. There was a widower, whose wife had died in Australia. He started to dig a hole, so that he could pray at her grave. He dug with a cutlass, carrying the earth up in a calabash. He got quite a long way down. I’ve seen the hole. That’s what they call “typical Dominica”.’

  She told me about Stephen Haweis, then in his late fifties, an excellent painter who before the first war had been one of Gordon Craig’s followers in Florence. In the twenties, in a moment of caprice, he had bought an estate in Dominica. When the stock market collapsed, that small West Indian plot of land was his only tangible possession.

  ‘I asked him,’ Eileen wrote, ‘how he had come to buy it. He smiled at my question. “You know the beachcomber story of a man seeing a pretty native girl on a verandah and letting his ship sail on without him. It was a mango tree that brought me here. Its native owner was about to cut it down. The only way to save it was to buy the ground it stood on. I’d like to save that tree,” I said. He pointed it out to me “ across the valley.
It was not yet the mango season. I pictured it as it would be in a few weeks’ time, heavy with fruit. “Why on earth did they want to cut it down?” I asked.

  ‘He laughed. “It wasn’t any use to them. I didn’t know it at the time, but mangoes won’t bear above fifteen hundred feet. We’re over two thousand here. They’d have sold it as firewood. Charcoal fetches a good price. They were quite right, of course. I see that now.” He paused, then smiled. “I felt rather cheated when I found it out. As a man might who gives up his career for a girl who turns out to be worthless. They were right, but so was I, though I didn’t know it at the time. I’m glad I spared it. It’s enough to be beautiful; there’s no need to bear fruit as well.” ’

  There was a lot about Raymond in her letters. ‘He’s absorbed by the place,’ she wrote. ‘He wants to do something for it. He insists that something here could be made to pay; “such soil, such special flavours” he keeps repeating. He’s as you know, the most patient creature in the world. But he gets exasperated with the “je m’enfout-ism” of the Dominicans. They’ve given up hope. They let the rain wash away their roads, and then demand a subsidy from Whitehall. He’s resolved to make his estate successful, as an example to the others to show them that it can de done. You mentioned in your book that in the bush the small proprietors make bay rum with what you called Heath Robinson contraptions. Raymond believes it’s a very good bay rum. He wants to organise an industry. He’s bought up several acres and plans to install a plant. Seems ridiculous to me, as we shan’t be spending all that much of our time here, but I’m glad to see him occupied. I was afraid that he’d be missing his clubs and all those interests that Englishmen set so much store by. He doesn’t seem to, though.’