by Alec Waugh
‘It would be very good.’
The clock struck twelve, our glasses were almost empty.
‘We’d better put lunch forward,’ Raymond said.
‘But not too far forward.’
‘No? … Yes, I see what you mean. How many more punches do you think we need? Two or three?’
‘It depends on whether we’re having wine.’
‘Of course we’re having wine.’
‘Then I’d say two.’
‘Yes, I think two’s right. How long does it take you to consume a punch?’
‘Twenty-seven minutes.’
‘That’s fair. The third punch at half past twelve and lunch at one o’clock. D’accord?’
‘D’accord.’
‘And how about wishing for John Sutro to share one of them?’
‘Or perhaps John Betjeman?’
‘Why not James Laver?’
‘We’ve quite a few to make our choice among,’ he said.
‘Don’t you feel lonely for them, now and again?’
‘Of course.’
‘It wouldn’t be so difficult to come back and see them.’
‘I’ve been away too long. I might …’ There was a pause. The maid arrived with the second punch. He changed the subject.
‘I miss the club life here. I miss Pratt’s and White’s,’ he said.
‘You’d find them just the same.’
‘How are they in New York?’
I told him about the Coffee House and the Century.
‘We never went to Clubs, did we, when we were over there.’ he said. ‘They used to give me cards of temporary membership, but I never used them.’
‘Wasn’t that because of prohibition? Speakeasies were our clubs.’
‘But you must have been able to get drinks in places like The Century. Members must have had lockers.’
‘Or else they carried flasks.’
I remembered drinking highballs in the Harvard club: before a dinner in a private room.
‘When I was last in New York,’ I said, ‘I was trying to find out how they managed in the Coffee House. The premises there are very small, no private rooms, no space for lockers. I was taken there in 1927 by Charlie Towne. He didn’t offer me a cocktail. And he would have if he could. I asked several of the older members. Nobody could tell me.’
‘It’s a long time ago.’
‘Forty years. And after all, it’s not a club for the very young, except sons of members. That means that anyone who could remember prohibition would be over seventy.’
‘And at that age one’s very near retirement.’
‘Writers don’t retire.’
‘But do they go on living in New York? Don’t they build houses in Connecticut?’
‘There are cemeteries round New York, and there are creches. But no one seems to be born or die there. They come to New York to make their killing and then go home.’
‘Do you ever see Myra nowadays?’
‘She died last year.’
‘Myra. I can’t imagine Myra old.’
‘She never did look old.’
‘I’m glad of that.’
For lunch he served a heavy red wine that put us in a sentimental mood. We talked about the past. The twenties and the thirties; our years in the Middle East during the war became very real to us. He asked me about Susan. ‘I always get a Christmas card from her. It arrives either too early or several weeks too late. Invariably with a foreign stamp on it.’ I told him that she was a very senior reporter now, that she was always on the move, that she was sent wherever the top story was.
‘She hasn’t married?’
‘She’s involved with someone rather high up who’s not free to marry.’
‘Isn’t that bad luck?’
‘Not in her case. It leaves her free to work. I don’t think she wanted children.’
‘Two years ago there was a photo of her on her Christmas card—on horseback against a date palm. Tunisia, I think. It looked as though she’d put on weight.’
‘She has, it suits her.’
‘I wondered looking at that card if I’d recognise her.’
‘You would.’
‘I’m not so sure. My eyes are my weak spot. If you’re seeing someone every month you don’t notice the change, but a five years’ gap, that’s another thing. A year or so ago someone came up to me in the Dominica Club with outstretched arms, “Wonderful to see you. No idea that you were here.” He was a man of fifty or so, rather bald, rather gross, with very prominent false teeth. I could have sworn I’d never seen him. I had an awkward ten minutes, finding out who he was, without actually asking him. He’d ask me things like “Do you see any of the old gang now?” How could I tell? I didn’t know to which gang he was referring. It was all Christian names, old Frank, old George, old Shirley: a most awkward ten minutes. When he’d gone, I asked the barman. “That’s Major John Sinclair.” Of course I knew then. But the Sinclair I knew in Cairo had been slim, hadn’t been bald and had his own teeth. How false teeth can alter the whole look of a face. No resemblance whatsoever. If I went back to London, I’d be terrified of not recognising someone I’d known all my life.’
I could see his point. I was finding it increasingly difficult to recognise old acquaintances; worse still I was forgetting the names of those whom I did recognise.
‘There’s one odd thing,’ I said, ‘if it’s someone that you knew at school, you recognise him right away, however much he’s changed and you don’t forget his name.’
‘Ah yes, those early days; first faces and first places, they cut in deep.’ He looked at the decanter. It was half-full; we had reached our cheese. Usually after two, let alone three punches, he would stopper up the decanter at that point. But it was raining with unchecked violence. ‘We’d better finish that decanter off,’ he said.
I slept till four o’clock. I did not feel livery or hung over; but I felt the need of exercise. I would have enjoyed a swim. But the rain was falling with undiminished force. A walk was not practicable; a drive down to the aquatic club was unattractive.
‘We could go down to the pool, of course.’
He said it without conviction, a slithery slide over wet stones; no, no. Four o’clock. We could not start drinking again till six.
‘I’ve got some notes that need writing up. I’ll get down to that,’ I said.
I did not really want to write up my notes. I set my travelling clock on the desk in front of me. The minute hand moved very slowly. The room grew darker. I switched on the reading lamp. No light appeared. Bulb’s gone, I thought. I did not want to bother the staff; I put a candle on the desk. The matches and the match box were damp. It was not till the fourth attempt that I struck a light. I returned to my manuscript, not because I had anything to say, but to keep myself occupied. At ten minutes to six, I showered and changed and went onto the verandah. I arrived there punctually at six. ‘I need a new bulb for my reading lamp,’ I said.
‘That’s not what you need: all the lights are off. It may be a fuse: or it may be a connection at the works. The man who knows how it all works has taken the day off. In the meantime, what’ll it be ? Whisky, or gin or rum or what ?’
‘I see you’ve got Campari. I’d like that with ice and soda and a slice of lime.’
I needed something with a sour flavour. The maid came in to light an oil lamp. ‘That’ll give a soft light to read by.’ There was nothing I wanted to read particularly. I had been reading through the morning.
‘Is tonight’s dinner off?’ I asked. He nodded.
‘I don’t fancy the drive there in this weather. I tried to get them on the telephone. No luck. I expect their line’s down.’
The rain was falling now, not in a steady downpour but in a series of gust-driven waves.
‘What does the radio say ?’ I asked.
‘Nothing but static on the radio.’
‘Have you any of those long-playing poetry records?’
‘I’ve Eliot and F
rost.’
‘Why not some Eliot ?’
‘Why not.’
It was like distant days to sit there on the verandah hearing poetry read.
When the record came to its end, I said, ‘You had good times, didn’t you, with Eileen ?’
‘Very good times.’
‘She doesn’t look so very different now.’
‘That’s good to hear.’
In the half light I could not see the expression of his face. I felt I was laying the seed for what I meant to suggest on that last night but one.
‘Looking back,’ I said, ‘after all it was the merest chance that you and Eileen ever made a life together. You didn’t mean it to be anything serious when you began, and nor did she. And if that morning at Villefranche, she hadn’t thought you welcomed her, she’d have made another life for herself without any illwill on either side. There was no need for you to have welcomed her.’
‘Me being myself, there wasn’t anything else that I could do.’
‘Do you sometimes wish it could have happened differently?’
‘It’s no good thinking things like that. Things happen to one in character. If it isn’t this, it’s that.’
By a natural association of ideas, I asked if he had read Mosley’s autobiography. ‘Of course. Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you think of it ?’
‘He makes out a good case for himself.’
‘He was right in so many ways, more right than so many of the others were. I’ve sometimes thought . . . Everyone knows now what the trouble with him was, not his actual opinions but the fact that he could never get one solid man to work with him, for more than a few weeks. John Strachey and Harold Nicolson . . . I’ve sometimes wondered … if he’d had someone with him whom people could both like and trust …’ He checked. I knew what he was thinking. He himself was someone whom people could both like and trust. If Mosley had had Raymond and the others that he would have brought with him . . . But no, Raymond shook his head. ‘It couldn’t have worked. The whole thing. Something that “ailed from its prime foundation”. In public life, in England, you’ve got to be able to work with the right people. I don’t mean the aristocarcy or the plutocrats, I mean the solid people who run the country whatever party’s in. You have to have them with you. What about some Robert Frost?’
It was another very cosy evening, the long-playing poetry records alternating with talk about the past. We stayed up till midnight, without drinking very much. ‘Myra,’ he said, ‘I can’t realise that she’s not here any more. Perhaps it’ll be a better day tomorrow.’
It wasn’t. The sky was grey and sodden, the wind had dropped and the rain was falling in a steady, unbroken sheet. Too wet for a morning swim. I was glad that Raymond had installed a hot water system. When I had first come to the West Indies there had been no such thing. You took a cold shower or splashed yourself from a large tub with a dipper; a small jug of hot water for shaving was brought with your morning tea. That was all you needed. I had always maintained that the provision of hot running water to please American tourists was quite unnecessary and had largely contributed to the heightened cost of living. Before the war you could live in the best hotel that the smaller islands had to offer for eight shillings a day all found. But I was glad, however, on this particular morning that I could luxuriate in a deep hot bath. I was out of luck, however; the water from the tap marked H ran cool.
‘No hot water in my bath this morning,’ I told Raymond.
‘I know; the wick’s got damp. I’ll have to put in a new one.’
‘Do you have to keep a stock of them ?’
‘We should do. But I expect we’re out of them. Francis hasn’t shown up yet.’
‘What about the electric light?’
‘That’s out through the whole valley. I’ve been trying to call Roseau, but I can’t get through. As likely as not my line’s out of order.’
‘Does that often happen?’
‘When it rains a lot.’
‘So that’s fairly often.’
‘Exactly.’
We ate our way through a substantial British breakfast; orange juice, papaya, cornflakes, eggs and bacon. I did not feel hungry but there was nothing else to do. It was eight o’clock. The morning stretched ahead of us: a day that would reproduce in every detail the one that had gone before, and as likely as not the ones that were to follow. In weather like this, there was nothing one could do out of doors.
‘Another morning at my desk,’ I said.
‘You’re lucky to have a desk to go to.’
There was no alternative: but my mind moved sluggishly, and the tip of my soft-point pen kept sticking in paper that was becoming porous. Nine o’clock became ten o’clock. Only half a sheet covered. Punch time two hours away. Ten past ten, twenty past, then, without warning, my ears were outraged by the roar of what sounded like a large scale explosion that was succeeded by a rattle of small clashes, as though a basketful of stones was being scattered over a corrugated iroa surface. I jumped to my feet. I hurried onto the verandah. Raymond was standing by the railing. ‘What on earth’s that ?’I asked.
‘A landslide.’ He pointed down the road. A cloud of dust hovered over it.
‘Is that serious?’ I asked.
‘Hard to tell yet. Last time the road was blocked three weeks. That was higher up. This one will be more of a nuisance. No direct route into town. We’ll have to go north to the roundabout. Half an hour longer at least.’
Raymond fetched a pair of field glasses. Slowly the cloud dispersed. The whole road was covered. A boulder crashed down the hillside, and bounded into the valley below. ‘Not safe to go down there yet,’ he said. ‘Give it an hour to settle.’
‘Is this going to be serious for you ?’
‘Not serious, but a nuisance. Add an hour onto every journey in and out of town. You can guess how that impedes the working of an estate. Nothing to be done about it now. Only half-past ten. Still, we can’t sit here doing nothing. Marie,’ he raised his voice, ‘bring two punches.’
The cool, sweet, strong liquid was very welcome. We sat back in our long chairs, sipping at our glasses, looking through the screen of rain at the scar upon the hillside^ ‘You can see how it is here,’ he said. ‘No wonder people go crazy. No wonder people take to drink. For days on end this kind of thing goes on, rain, rain, rain. There’s not a thing that one can do. All work’s held up on the estate. And every day something new goes wrong: no electric light, no telephone, no hot bath; you sit here looking at the rain: and all the time that rain is ruining the crops and roads, the projects you’ve been working on for months. You can’t get your bananas to the coast, and those that are stored in sheds go rotten. Is it any wonder that people take to drink ?’
‘Yet you still want to go on living here?’
‘Where else?’
His smile had the winning quality that had over the years endeared him so to many; the smile that disarmed criticism. Yet even so . . . Why had he got to go on living here, when so full, so satisfactory a life was waiting him in England; why, why, why. . ? I had planned to set out my case on the last evening but one, in the warm glow that follows a good dinner, when mind and body are at peace. You write your script, but then fate forces you to deliver it at what you would have thought in advance was the least auspicious moment, yet when it comes you recognise it as the one, the only time; what novelists used to call ‘the psychological moment’. Now, on a bleak, rainswept morning, was the hour to get said the things that I had come out to say. Even so the opening had to be prepared.
‘Since Dominica means so much to you, I wonder why you didn’t take on that administrator’s job.’
‘So you heard about that?’
‘Williams asked me if it would appeal to you. I said I was very sure it would. He told me that you were enthusiastic, most enthusiastic, you left London earlier than we’d expected. I thought you were going back to make sure that you could manage both
it and the estate. Williams thought the same. Then there came a letter saying you couldn’t manage it.’
‘I know.’
‘What made you change your mind ?’
‘That’s a long story.’
‘I’d be glad to hear it.’
‘It may surprise you, but—here goes. You were quite right in thinking I left in a hurry, and that I left because I had to see how I could reorganise my life here at Overdale in terms of being Her Majesty’s representative in Roseau, but you couldn’t be expected to guess at the exact nature of the life that needed to be reorganised.’ He spoke slowly, carefully, as though he were delivering a speech that he had rehearsed. Perhaps he was. It might well be that he had had something he wanted to say to me in the same way that there had been something I needed to say to him; that he had been waiting, as I had, for the psychological moment. Only he had got in first.
‘I don’t know if you remember,’ he said, ‘but you told me how well I was looking, how young. “You must have fallen in love,” you said. Well, that’s exactly how it was. I had. She was a Dominican: part Carib, I’d have thought, part African, part French. She wasn’t very dark. She had delicate features. She had straight hair. She was about sixteen. I met her at one of the carnival dances; you know how it is at Carnival: how you dance with everyone: how you let yourself go. I went to the dance expecting something. There hadn’t been anything of that kind in my life for several weeks. After all, I was nearing sixty. But I wasn’t quite ready for the Sophoclean calm. “Let’s see what I can find at Carnival,” I thought. As soon as I came into the hall, I noticed her, our eyes met in a look of recognition. As I walked towards her, she moved to meet me. Before I’d danced a dozen steps with her, I knew that this was it. From the way she danced, the way she held herself, you know the way it is. One can’t mistake it. As always at Carnival, I’d taken a room in town. I took her back. To my astonishment she was a virgin. I couldn’t believe it. A Dominican, and at her age; someone who danced like that. “But surely,” I said, “it can’t be.”
‘“Oh yes it is.”
‘“The first time?”
‘“The very first.”
‘“I can’t believe it.”