The Fatal Gift

by Alec Waugh

‘Nor’ve I. I’m getting worried.’

  He looked at me, thoughtfully.

  ‘How often do you hear from him ?’

  ‘At Christmas always, and when I send him one of my books.’

  ‘Does he talk about coming back ?’

  ‘Vaguely, but not as though he meant it. He keeps asking me when I’m coming out.’

  ‘When are you ?’

  ‘Heaven knows. The West Indies aren’t in my parish any more.’

  ‘You still go to New York, don’t you ?’

  ‘Every year.’

  ‘When are you going next?’

  ‘In March, to file my income tax return.’

  ‘In that case will you let the estate offer you a return ticket, New York—Dominica ? I’m worried about the old man. He keeps saying he’s coming back next year but he never does. I need to know what’s cooking. It would be most inconvenient for me to go out there and I doubt if it would be a good idea if I did. There may be something that he wants to conceal from me, that it would embarrass him for me to know. I want an independent report. You’re the one person who can go there without arousing his suspicions. You’ve got a perfect alibi. You can be going there in search of copy.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘You can write and tell him that you’re planning another West Indian novel; that you want to see how changed the islands are; and you’re particularly anxious to see Dominica because it’s the one island that hasn’t been affected by the tourist boom. It has so little to offer the tourist; no beaches; no luxury hotels. And all that rain. As a matter of fact you probably will be able to make some use out of your visit.’

  ‘It’s not unlikely.’

  ‘You’ve so perfect an alibi that you’ll be able to believe in it yourself. He’ll never think he’s being spied upon. But something must be the matter. I don’t know what it is. Are his letters cheerful?’

  ‘Perfectly. He gives me the island gossip. He asks me about mutual friends. One or two comments about politics.’

  ‘What’s his position there ?’

  ‘Tory, a little right of centre. Only a little right.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound bitter ? He isn’t harbouring a grudge ?’

  ‘Heavens, no.’

  ‘It isn’t that then, but it must be something. Why on earth shouldn’t he come home ? He can’t surely be harbouring a grievance about my marriage. He was wonderful to Ada. Look at that party at the House. I keep thinking of excuses. Has he got disfigured by some accident or illness and not want to show up in England ? Has he got himself tied up with some ghastly floosie whom he’s ashamed of, but doesn’t like to leave behind ? Has he lost his money ? That is possible, you know. An estate that wasn’t properly insured could get washed away by rain. There must be something, and you’re the one person who can find out. I’m devoted to the old boy, though I can’t say that he’s ever taken a great deal of trouble over me. Perhaps I should be grateful to him for that. Parents who live in and for their children can be a responsibility. But if he’s in any kind of a mess and is shy to tell me, I want to get him out of it. I wish that he’d come home. Why shouldn’t he make his home here ? It is his home, after all. Ada and I aren’t here so much. After all this wandering, we have been such a scattered group, it would be nice if we could finish up as a united family. And there’s an idea I’ve had. You may think it ridiculous, but …’ He paused. He looked at me interrogatively.

  ‘You tell me about this idea of yours.’

  ‘That he and my mother should remarry. They never quarrelled. From what each has told me they slipped into that divorce, with war coming, and everything uncertain. That marriage with Whisder was never a real marriage. When my father and mother are together they seem so much at one. Their marriage was a real one.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve always felt.’

  ‘It’s worth considering.’

  ‘It’s the kind of idea that Ada could very well put up to them.’

  ‘You’re right. I can hear her saying it, opening those big eyes, all those teeth flashing in a grin. “Why don’t you two get married?” I can hear her saying it.’

  We sat in silence, pondering it. Yes, it did seem a very good idea.

  That night I wrote to Raymond, explaining that a professional need for copy would be bringing me back to Dominica. Two weeks later I got his cable. So that here I was on an April afternoon sitting out on that familiar verandah looking towards the sea. I had already found the answer to four of the questions that Raymond’s son had set me. Raymond was in perfect health: he had not suffered a disfiguring complaint. No female was installed in Overdale, and there was no obvious sign of a financial crisis. My plan of campaign was simple. I would stay two weeks. I would act as though I were seeking material for an article. I would see as much as I could; I would interview as many people as I could; and who knew that as a result of my researches I might not find material for an article? At the end of my visit, I would try to persuade Raymond to come back to England: anyhow for a litde. If he did come back for that little, he might very well stay on. In the meantime I should spend a pleasant fortnight.

  I did. The weather was much as I had expected. A first-visit tourist would have been disappointed and depressed at the long hours that he would have had to spend on a verandah, watching the rain sweep like the waves of the sea across the mountains. Everything got damp. But I expected that. I waited for and gloried in the hours of incredible splendour, when rainbows curved over the valleys, when one green mingled with another, when the wide plumes of the bamboo glistened in the sunlight, and the green and violet crested hummingbirds darted from bush to bush.

  I made a couple of trips across the island that would only have been possible on horseback when I went there first. In 1948 it had taken me a full day to get to La Plaine on foot and pony. Then it had been a thrill to reach a midway point from which I could see, through a gap in the hills, the Atlantic skyline. That particular thrill, compounded of exhaustion and achievement, has been removed by progress. I went to Elma Napier’s house at Point Baptiste on the north point of the island facing the Atlantic. I got there by car within two hours. In 1948 I had had to make half the journey by boat and it had taken half a day. At that time the fishing village of St Joseph, a few miles north of Roseau, had had no road. Its inhabitants had grown very independent. Now it is linked by road with Roseau and the air of independence is less acute. Beyond St Joseph there was a beach club, The Castaways, where you bathed off sand, and where you could get an admirable club sandwich. Sixteen hundred feet up, along the Imperial Road, was the Riviera la Croix Estate Hotel, with five honeymoon bungalows and a swimming pool. It had a candlelit dining room and served an admirable red table wine, brought to Guadeloupe in tankers and bottled there. It cost only $2.50 a carafe.

  There were a few changes such as those, but for the most part the island had changed very little since I had seen it first in January 1929.

  In Roseau, of course, the changes were more marked. Old buildings such as Kingsland House had been replaced by supermarkets. The library had been modernised and recatalogued; and no doubt improved to the extent that it was easier to find what you wanted: but the rearrangement of the shelves had necessitated the closing of the verandah looking out over the sea, where I had spent so many happy and profitable hours. A hotel restaurant had been built inside the walls of the old fort, and had become, since the Paz was burnt down, the town’s social centre. Daphne Agar ran a snack bar—the Green Parrot—where I lunched several times.

  There were a number of new government buildings, but the general feel of the town was the same, with its cluster, seven blocks long and eight blocks wide, of small two-storey houses, built on ochre brown stone foundations which have contrived to resist successive hurricanes because when they were built it was the practice to mix syrup with the mortar. Unpainted wooden balconies, now as then, projected over the pavements. There were no gardens, no trees, no flowers.

  Among the new government build
ings a massive concrete police station was under construction. Five other such buildings were being built over the island. ‘This will soon be a Police state,’ I was assured.

  ‘What does it all amount to?’ I asked Raymond.

  He shrugged. ‘Did the customs at the airport ask you if you were bringing in any arms?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s the one thing they’re worried about—armed revolution. I expect that all these small islands will become minor dictatorships. That may sound terrible in England and the USA, but I’m not sure that a dictatorship isn’t the best form of government for an underdeveloped community such as this.’

  I remembered that he had been an embryo follower of Mosley.

  ‘Under a dictatorship, law-abiding people like myself can lead our lives undisturbed. And the trains run on time,’ he added with a smile.

  Among the majority of the white Dominicans I found the same kind of anxiety that I had found recently in Morocco. When I went there first, Tangier was an international zone; now it is part of the kingdom of Morocco, and its residents are alarmed about the government’s plans. Is income tax going to be imposed? What are the currency restrictions? What may be imported and what not ? House agents, dressmakers, lawyers, hoteliers are in a constant twitter of anxiety. I found the Dominicans in exactly the same state of dither; owners of businesses did not know if they would be allowed to take their profits out of the country. If you owned property, you could only sell it to a Dominican, therefore you would not be able to get the full value for it.

  ‘Does this mean,’ I said to Raymond, ‘that the contemporary equivalents of people like yourself won’t come here any more?’

  ‘That’s about what it amounts to.’

  ‘Does that mean that there’ll be no more eccentrics here?’

  He laughed at that.

  ‘Can you imagine Dominica without eccentrics? The island will create its own eccentrics, instead of importing them.’

  Luckily John Archbold was on the island. We went with him on an excursion to Point Mulatre, and dined with him a couple of times. He had enlarged Springfield, building on a whole new wing, so that it could now accommodate a dozen tourists in considerable luxury. ‘Does it pay ?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nothing pays in Dominica. I don’t lose very much.’

  He is a rich man, with many concerns and a large estate in Upperville, Virginia. Springfield’s loss was deductible against other gains. He ran it as a hobby, because he loved the island.

  ‘You still love it as much ?’

  ‘Even more,’ he said. ‘It lays its hold on one.’

  Because he was not a British subject, because his main financial interests lay elsewhere, he stood outside the political arena. He was on good terms with the Prime Minister, a good friend of the Governor. But he was not involved. The island knew that it was lucky to have him there.

  I asked him if there was any racial feeling. ‘There shouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t in the past. Some people think there is; the old residents, that’s to say. The whites are called Huskies; sometimes they are shouted after in the streets. A woman who runs a dress shop was rung up and accused of discriminating against the blacks. “Black power’ll get you if you don’t look out.” But I don’t think it meant a lot. This has always been a happy island. Of course there’s a certain amount of xenophobia. Foreigners can’t get a job here. But that’s how it is in all new countries.’

  I told him how it was in Morocco. ‘New countries are touchy. There’s press censorship. Criticism is resented. And of course, the new officials aren’t as competent as the old eolonialists.’

  During my talks with various people for my projected article, I made such enquiries as I could about Raymond himself. As far as I could gather, I should have no sensational news to carry back. Raymond was in excellent health. Everyone was agreed on that. ‘He leads a regular life,’ they said. ‘He’s a moderate drinker. He takes exercise. I’ve never heard of him being ill.’

  I made tentative enquiries about his amatory existence. ‘He must get lonely,’ I said. ‘Does he have a special girlfriend ?’ Shoulders were shrugged. ‘No one that we’ve heard of. He’s nearer seventy than sixty. He’s probably packed up.’

  ‘What about ex girl-friends ?’ I had thought that someone out of the past would give me a clue as to his reluctance to return to England. Heads were again shaken. There had been someone some while back, whom he had appeared to be taking seriously, but she had gone to Trinidad. There had been, as far as they knew, no one since.

  ‘And before that?’

  No one that appeared to matter. There had been an American tourist who had come down three years in succession, then she had married. There must have been others in earlier days, but nothing that had stood out. Some of them had probably been merely friends. He enjoyed feminine society.

  Once I met his bank manager. I did not try to needle him, but I was on the watch for any clues as to Raymond’s financial status. I had asked him about the difficulties of taking money out. I told him that that was one of the chief problems of living in Morocco. ‘It’s so difficult to find out what the laws really are,’ I said. ‘I doubt if the Moroccans know themselves.’

  ‘The laws here are quite straightforward,’ I was told. ‘The trouble is that nearly everyone is trying to avoid them, with some fiddle or another: a concealed account in Zurich or New York: if only all my clients were like our host, with a comfortable wad of blue chips, whose funds come in regularly, with tax deducted at the source, so much easier for me and what a relief for all of them. What a lot of worry they cause themselves with their fiddles, and in the long run how very little they really save.’

  ‘As most of them are retired, I guess that that’s their equivalent for going to an office.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, but it’s a headache for me: our host’s account takes up no time at all and it pays a large proportion of my salary.’

  That settled the issue of Raymond’s finances. I had found the answer to all the questions that Timothy Alexander had put to me. It remained for me to try to persuade Raymond to give England at least one more chance. I could see a great many reasons why he should. Most Britons who expatriate themselves do it for tax reasons, but I do not think that Raymond saved very much by staying abroad. Taxes in Dominica were high, and as regards climate, I should have thought that the rains of Dominica were as rheumatic and arthritic as the damp and chill of England. It was probably more than anything a reluctance to feel a stranger in the country of his birth that kept him at Overdale. And perhaps he would not feel a stranger at Charminster, now that Whistler had checked out. Charminster looked the same.

  At the end of my visit I would bring the matter up. On the last night, or perhaps the night before, so that he would have a whole day to think it over; on the final night I was giving a party at Springfield to those who had entertained me. Perhaps during my last afternoon Raymond would give me a message to take home. I prepared myself for the last night but one. As it happened, however, our decisive talk came earlier than that.

  Half way through my second week it began to rain, in the true Dominican fashion. As I went out for my morning swim, I was aware of water on my face. The sun was shining, there were no clouds in the sky, but a thin veil of rain was passing across the mountain. By the time I was dressed for breakfast the sun was dimmed, the veil had become a mist, the sky had darkened.

  ‘It’s going to be a wet day,’ said Raymond. ‘We’ll probably have to call that picnic off.’

  By the time we had finished breakfast it was quite certain that we should. The rain was beating on the iron roofs; the crested coconut palms were swaying; the bamboos were rustling in the wind. ‘This is a day to spend with a good book,’ he said.

  There were a number of books on the shelves that I would have been glad to read, there were several of which I would have liked to refresh my memory. After sixty, one is wise to re-read old books that one has liked, if only to appreciate
how often such books lose their magic. It makes one more tolerant of new books that puzzle one. I made a small pile of old books, set them on a table and swung up my feet on the leg rests of one of those long expanding chairs which I had first encountered in the twenties in Penang. I dipped into one and then another. The Green Hat was one of those that I picked up. I had not read it for nearly twenty years. Michael Arlen had said of himself, ‘I was a flash in the pan, but luckily there was a good deal of gold dust in the pan.’ I had half expected it to date, but to my surprise and pleasure, I found myself unable to put it down.

  The morning wore slowly on. The rain beat down, the wind began to get upon my nerves. A window on the second floor was rattling. I went up and wedged it with an envelope. Raymond joined me on the verandah. He, too, swung open the leg rests of his chair and began to read. The grandfather clock chimed twice. ‘Is that half-past eleven or half-past twelve?’ he asked.

  ‘Half-past eleven.’

  ‘Early for a punch but I think we need one.’

  We swung back our leg rests and sat upright. The cool, sweet drink was a strong restorative. ‘I cancelled the picnic half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘If this weather doesn’t change soon, I’ll call off dinner. I can’t drive out to The Castaways in this.’

  ‘There are worse things than drinking punches in the rain,’ I said.

  ‘Many worse things, many worse things.’

  We sipped slowly, with reverent appreciation. ‘If a genie from a bottle were to give us the choice of having one friend from our past beside us here, whom would you choose?’ he asked.

  We went over one list of those whom we had both known. Most of them were from the twenties. Raymond had not been in London much since then. We had more to choose from than we might have expected, since they were all well over sixty. ‘A lot of your contemporaries were too young for the first war and too old for the second,’ I said.

  ‘That’s true, very true. How’s Patrick Kinross?’

  ‘He’s put on weight. But he’s ageing well.’

  ‘It would be good to have him here.’