by Alec Waugh
Usually at Oxford, he had read very modern poetry. Pound or E.E. Cummings or T.S. Eliot, where the metres and rhyme schemes were unconventional, but now he was reading Victorians—Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold. He offered to stop when I came in. ‘No, no, please go on,’ I said. ‘I so seldom hear poetry read these days.’
He was half-way through Tithonus. When he had reached the end, he said, ‘Would you like me to change to somebody more modern?’ He had the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, which I had seen so often in my father’s hands. I was carried back to the bookroom at Underhill, with its two red lamps and my father sitting in his hard, tall-backed chair. Evelyn had written in A Little Learning of my father’s reading. In terms of my appreciation of poetry, I owe everything to it.
‘Is there anything that you’d like especially?’ Raymond asked.
‘Is “Andrea del Sarto” in the Victorian book? I can’t remember.’
‘It’s not, but I can find it.’
I closed my eyes as he read. ‘Here in this melancholy little house we built to be so gay with.’ When he reached the last line, I opened my eyes and looked across at Eileen. Her face wore the same brooding expression that my mother’s had when my father read to us. ‘This marriage is all right,’ I thought. I had never pictured their sharing poetry.
‘Let’s have “The Scholar Gypsy”, Eileen said. It was one of my father’s favourite poems. When he had given me at Sherborne a copy of his Reticence in Literature he had incribed inside it the verse beginning ‘A fugitive and gracious light he seeks’. I waited for that verse to come.
The sun was sinking now. The horizon was lit with red and orange. Fireflies darted above the crotons. Another ten minutes and it would be dark.
‘Only time for one more poem,’ said Raymond. He turned to the end of the Oxford book. ‘The very last poem, “Deus illuminatio mea” appears under the authorship Anon.’ My father told me that it was by R. D. Blackmore. It was one of his favourites. I had never heard anyone else refer to it. ‘In the hour of death after this life’s whim.’ I knew the poem so well that my lips framed the words:
‘When the will has forgotten the lifelong aim
When the mind can only disgrace its fame
And a man is uncertain of his own name,
The power of the Lord shall fill this frame.’
Raymond closed the book. ‘Let’s move down the verandah and look for the green ray.’
The part of the verandah where we had sat was shaded, but from the end of it we could see the enlargened orange globe already cut by the horizon. ‘In how many of your stories have you made your lovers look for that,’ said Eileen.
‘More often than I’ve seen it myself,’ I said.
We stood and watched, in the angle of the verandah.
‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing it tonight,’ said Raymond. He was right. A thin sliver of cloud was drifting towards its rim. It was sinking fast, but that sliver would have reached it before its complete immersion. Raymond sighed. ‘I’d have liked to have seen the green ray tonight.’
‘That cloud is making a far more dramatic sunset of it.’
‘I know, but I wanted to see the green ray tonight. I’ve a special reason, at least we have a special reason.’
‘Don’t worry about the green ray,’ said Eileen. ‘Let’s have that champagne.’
I looked first at her and then at him. I was puzzled. They were smiling at one another, in a special way, as though they shared a secret.
‘What’s all this about?’ I asked.
‘You’ll soon see,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a toast to make.’
We stood up to drink it. ‘To the future,’ Raymond said. We sipped at our glasses. Eileen raised her glass. ‘To our future.’ We sipped again. They then raised their glasses simultaneously, ‘To Overdale that shields that future.’
With this third toast they drained their glasses; and tossed them over their shoulders, among the crotons. I followed their example. ‘And now,’ I said, ‘you can tell me what it’s all about.’
‘You mean you haven’t guessed ?’
‘Most certainly I haven’t.’
‘And they say, that novelists know such things by intuition.’
‘Put the poor man out of his misery,’ said Eileen. ‘I’ll tell him if you don’t.’
‘You tell him then.’
‘OK. You’re the first to hear except the doctor who sent us that mouse test yesterday.’
‘Now I’ve guessed,’ I said.
‘Isn’t he bright?’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’
I understood now the slightly taut atmosphere of expectancy that I had observed over the weekend. Then they had not known. They were awaiting the result of the mouse test. Now they knew that she was pregnant. That explained the atmosphere of serenity that I had found that afternoon. Their future was settled now.
We drank the bottle slowly. ‘Will this make a big difference to your plans ?’ I asked. I knew it would. But I wanted them to tell me how it would.
He explained where and how it would make all the difference. ‘When we toasted the New Year,’ he said, ‘we were wondering whether we ought to go on living here. We had no idea of making a home here when we first came out. As you know, all we wanted was somewhere to be out of the way till the gossip had died down. I bought this place because it seemed a good investment. Then as I developed it, I began to get excited. Dominica is a fumiy place. It lays a hold on you, like a Voodoo Curse. But we couldn’t spend our whole lives here. It wouldn’t be fair on Iris. We wanted a child, but if we weren’t going to have one, we both felt we should go back to England, rent or sell this place and make a life for ourselves in England. It’s about time I found some solid occupation.’
‘It was such a waste of him, don’t you agree?’ said Eileen.
I did not answer that. I felt, as we had all felt, that it was high time Raymond started to do something. He had been waiting so long for the right thing to turn up. He was over thirty now. Everyone had said ‘There must be the right thing somewhere. He’s so wise to wait.’ But what was that right thing and where was it?
‘I can see what you mean,’ I said.
‘We agreed to give ourselves a year,’ she said. ‘If there was no sign of an infant in that time, we’d call it a day.’
‘But now that there is?’
‘Yes, as you say, now that there is.’
Raymond leant his head back against his chair; he half closed his eyes. ‘There’s a point now in building up a place like this: particularly if the child’s a boy. There is a future in this land for anyone who tries, in the right way. No one can look ahead too far. But it’s not impossible that a small country like England will find it more and more difficult to support a growing population; there should be a need for colonies producing food. The West Indies may be as important in the 1960s as they were in the 1760s. You don’t need reminding that in 1763 England nearly swapped Canada for Guadeloupe. In 1950 a school boy might well see a future here.’
‘If the child’s a girl?’
‘A girl who has been brought up here might well want to spend her life here. She might well find a husband who would see a future here. Anyhow, it’ll be worth my trying to make something of this place.’
Their future, anyhow for the next fifteen years, was settled, and who had so fortunate a fate that he would not be prepared to envy theirs? The sky had begun to darken; but a quarter full moon was shedding its radiance on the garden. There was no need to switch a light on, a smoking coil beside each chair checked the mosquitoes. The heavy sweet smell of frangipani enriched the air. The air had cooled and Raymond and I put on our jackets. Iris joined us. I wondered when she would be told the news that was to make so great a change in her life. I remembered how she had talked the other day about the unpredictability of fate. She sat on a cushion, leaning back against the railing. ‘Please read some more poetry, Uncle Raymond.’
‘
What would you like ?’
‘Something with a story. Why not “The Highwayman” ?’
That, too, had been a favourite of my father’s. How much of our family life, Evelyn’s and mine, had turned round poetry, and the red lamps in his bookroom. Ours had been a happy home, in large part due to poetry. Raymond was building just such another home for Iris and the children of this new marriage.
6
Carnivals repeat themselves. One is very like another. You either enjoy them a lot or very little. I, who as a boy was taken to Easter Monday fairs on Hampstead Heath, have always found them fun. I have enjoyed their formal informality. The local boys and girls have saved up for months to buy garish dresses. They are a riot of improvisation. Everything is there. Pierrots, pierettes, sailors, cowboys, men dressed as women, their paunches padded to suggest advanced pregnancy. The members of each separate group, known as a band would be dressed alike. Their small orchestras would collect alms. Sometimes the bands would parade apart; sometimes they would join with others, forming a solid phalanx seventy or eighty strong. Each band had its own sequence of calypsos. Sometimes everyone in the street would be chanting the same one. Often they resorted to one that I had heard there five years before; it celebrated a recent suicide:
Sophia go down to the river to dine
Wild wild Sophia
Sophia drink wine and iodine.
Wild wild Sophia.
Iris’ band was under discipline: the teachers took it in turn to parade with them; but though they indulged in no unexemplary fantasias, their youth and energy made them noticeable. We easily picked out Iris, in spite of her mask.
‘She’s an exquisite creature,’ I said to Eileen.
‘I think so.’
We ourselves, the elders, kept off the streets. We visited friends’ houses and watched from balconies. We frequented bars. Sometimes we danced together, in this and the other drawing room. We had hot dogs at this house, hamburgers at that. A couple of times I went to the hotel and rested. The day waned slowly. It had rained the night before and the streets were puddled. But today miraculously the skies were clear. Six o’clock drew nearer. We found ourselves on the balcony of one of the few Georgian houses that had survived the fires and the earthquakes by which time and again Roseau had been destroyed. It had a small garden at the back; its lawn was shaded by a mango tree. A narrow by-path led into the main street; by craning our necks we could see the revellers leaping and cavorting in the streets. The music swelled and loudened, sank, then rose again. I had had it in my blood all day: I found my feet moving to its beat. I suddenly, and to my astonishment, found myself acutely conscious of Eileen’s presence at my side. Her shoulder, as she leaned forward, was touching mine. She was wearing a heavy scent of which until then I had been unaware. Her feet, too, had began to move. My arm itched to go round her waist. ‘Now this won’t do,’ I thought. I put my arms behind my back, holding my right hand by the wrist.
‘They must have got themselves into a pretty state by now,’ I said.
‘I’d say they had.’
I had tried to make my voice sound natural. I hoped I had succeeded. My heart was beating. I was the slave of the music. Yes, this was carnival.
A couple turned out of the street and came down the path. They were hand in hand. The man looked young. He was tall and supple. His face was completely covered with a violently grotesque mask. He wore a long-sleeved football shirt. His hands were ungloved. His fingers were long and lean. The girl’s eyes were masked; her face was powdered; her arms white-stockinged. Her blouse and skirt were patterned, red and green and orange. A sash advertising Shillingford’s was knotted on her shoulder.
‘One of Iris’ band,’ I said.
‘Iris herself,’ said Eileen. The couple paused. They turned to face each other. They began to dance. Her back was turned to us. He with his mask could not have recognised us on the balcony; even if he could have, would he have cared? They danced, scarcely moving their feet, following the rhythm with their bodies. She raised her arms, she folded them about his neck. His hands slid over her shoulders, down her back in a slow caress, pausing at her waist. He held her close: his hips rotated to the music: she responded in a slow, slow roll. His hands lowered to her haunches. The dark fingers spread against her skirt, tightening their hold on her: they moved together like one body: sometimes quickening their pace; then slackening, till they were almost motionless, quivering against each other: then the roll would become fierce: with one hand he pressed her closer, with the other he caressed her now gentiy, and now fiercely; each finger separate in its touch. She flung back her head; his back was against the wall, giving him leverage. Quicker, quicker, quicker: more and more fiercely, his fingers on her haunches closed together, lifting the cotton skirt between them; fiercer, fiercer, fiercer, then suddenly a long shudder ran through them both; his hands loosed their hold. They stood motionless, like statues. She sighed, her arms slid from his neck. His hands fell to his side. They stood apart. Then turned towards the road. She took his hand as they walked towards the street.
‘She must never know.’ That was the first thing Eileen said. ‘She must never know we know. She could never be open with me again. No, she must never know.’ It was nearly six. We were due at the hotel. In ten minutes Iris would be back to shower and clean up: to make herself ready for the party. ‘We must be on our way,’ said Eileen.
At dinner Iris sat across the table. With her face washed clean of powder, she looked twelve years old. There was no glow about her: no withdrawn look, as though she were brooding over a secret. She looked in fact as I would have expected her to look ten hours before—worn out and exhausted by the noise, the dancing, the shouting: collapsed, as oarsmen are at the end of a long race.
Raymond and Eileen were both resolved to give her no indication that anything unusual had happened. They asked her the questions that might be expected of a parent; she answered them, not listlessly but without animation. Tomorrow no doubt she would start remembering… tomorrow.
A dozen places had been laid for dinner; but there were four or five others who had looked in for drinks, had lingered on, had been invited to ‘take pot luck’, and were now seated on chairs with plates upon their laps.
It was because of them that the party broke up earlier than was planned. They felt that they must not outstay a welcome that they had not in fact deserved, and when they rose, others took advantage of the opportunity to get back to the revels quickly. Raymond and Eileen were among the early leavers. ‘All this is new to us,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got blasé yet.’ As soon as they were back at the Paz, they sent Iris off to bed. ‘You need a full night’s rest, young lady,’ Raymond said. ‘You’ve got to be fresh for school tomorrow.’
She did not demur. As she stood on her toes to kiss him goodnight, it was impossible to believe that three hours back she had been rocking in that close embrace. She was such a child.
Raymond turned to me. ‘Are you desperately anxious to go out again ?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘You don’t feel that in the interests of copy you should go?’
‘I’ve all I need.’
‘Then let’s have a quiet drink upstairs.’
We had it in their room. They could not run the risk of being overheard.
‘Eileen’s made up her mind,’ he said, ‘and I agree with her. She’s taking Iris back to England, right away.’
I made no comment. It was no business of mine. But they wanted to have me listen. To see how their ideas sounded when told to a third person.
‘Eileen insists on this and I know she’s right. Iris must never know, it might set up heaven knows what inhibitions. She could never feel we trusted her. She would suspect that we were suspecting her, watching her, as of course we shall be. A thing like that, happening to a child like that, and with her responding.’
He paused: he looked at me interrogatively; half hoping that I should protest, suggesting that Eileen
as a mother had exaggerated what might have been relatively innocent. But I could not contradict her testimony.
‘I remember a passage in one of your books, Hot Countries, I think it was, when you described the Bal-lou-lou in Martinique. You said you could not describe it literally within the limits of current censorship. That is, isn’t it, the way it was.’
‘Yes, that’s the way it was.’
‘I blame myself,’ Eileen interposed. ‘I should have guessed that such a thing could happen. Juliet was only fourteen. And we’re in the tropics, the climate of quick growth. I should have been on my guard. Thank God that we’ve been warned in time, and can get her back to a cold climate.’
‘When are you going back ?’ I asked.
‘Right away.’
‘At the end of term ?’
‘No, sooner than that, on the same ship as you.’
‘The day after tomorrow?’
‘That’s it. As soon as possible. Don’t give her a chance to brood on it. Get that music out of her head: keep those dark figures out of her eyes: don’t let her see those couples dancing. She’s had a taste of it, she’ll want to try again. “The fly that sips honey.” If we get her away at once, she may forget that it ever happened: feel that it was something that she dreamed. She probably hasn’t the least idea who the man was. We’re in luck there. She doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know who she is. In a year’s time she’ll be thinking of it as something that she dreamed; but she must be taken out of this atmosphere. She mustn’t be reminded of it. Doesn’t that make sense to you?’