Where the Clocks Chime Twice

by Alec Waugh

  But I should have been glad, anyhow, that I went to Praslin. Though it rained consistently during my four days’ visit, I would not have missed the Valle de Mai, where the great coco-de-mer trees tower in lofty ranks: I would not have missed the three or four new acquaintances I made there. I would not have missed the chance of drawing comparisons between Mahé and its sister isle.

  In rain and under cloud Praslin is a melancholy island, and even in the sunlight I suspect that it must seem forlorn. Though much less mountainous than Mahé, it has the same appearance— coconuts and granite and a succession of white-sanded beaches. There the resemblance ends. The bathing is not good. There is no club; there is no social life; there are no motor-cars. There is an administrative centre and a hospital, but the plantation houses are sufficiently far apart to render calling difficult. There is something, if not eccentric at least out of the ordinary, about everyone who lives in Mahé: the types in Praslin are even more distinctively individualised.

  There is Francis Jumeau, for example, head of one of the chief grands blonds families, who owned personally the Valle de Mai until the Government took it over to carry out an irrigation scheme. A rich and travelled man, he has made a hobby of agriculture. He has a factory for making ropes out of coconut fibre, and he takes more pleasure in the originality of his self-devised machinery than in the quite considerable profit that accrues from it. He has a paternal love of the plants and trees and animals on his estate. In Victoria, where he spends three-quarters of his time, he dresses modishly. But at Praslin he slops about, shirtless, in shorts, often bare-footed. When he took me round the valley his boy brought out our breakfast on his head, but he prepared the salad himself, slicing ginger root with a cook’s tender care. When it came on to rain, he cut palm fronds to make us an umbrella. In the way he used a knife you could recognise the genuine artificer, someone who is most himself when he is shaping something.

  Then there is Arthur Savy, who left Seychelles at the age of three to live in Europe. He is so completely French that it is difficult to believe that he has a British passport. When the war broke out he was at the age of twenty-eight in Paris, an artist student and a tennis professional—one of Cochet’s sparring-partners. He spoke no English and was therefore assured by the British authorities that it was useless at the moment for him to try to enlist in the British Army—how grateful they would have been for his services a few months later; while the French authorities told him that as he had a British passport he could not enlist in their Army. So he continued to paint and to play tennis until the collapse of June 1940 herded him into a concentration camp. A few months later he was married. It was in its own way as big an act of faith as any that those months saw. His wife, after the ceremony, returned to her own apartment. Nearly four years passed before they were to spend an hour alone together.

  During the last eight months of World War I, I had been myself a prisoner of war in Germany, and as I looked at the sketches Arthur Savy had made during his long detention, I found myself reliving that strange, unnatural life; the bunker-bedded dormitories, the communal kitchens, the queues outside the parcel room, the concert parties, the hockey matches, the educational classes that start with such enthusiasm and dwindle within a fortnight into groups of three or four serious-minded students. Prison life has altered little between the wars. From Savy’s sketches—the best of them in a thickish pencil—I could recreate not only the life of the camp but the characters who had comprised it. Among them I was surprised to see an old friend, Count Anthony de Bosdari,1 so well-known to many of us in the ‘20s, who vanished out of our lives so suddenly and so completely when the ’30s struck. It was strange to come upon his tracks again, and I am glad to be able to assure any friends of his who may chance to turn these pages that Tony has lost little of his old panache, that he is ‘managing very nicely, thank you’.

  At the moment Savy is painting vividly coloured semi-representational canvases. Though I should be delighted to have one on my walls—if I had walls, that is to say, on which to hang one—I am scarcely qualified to assess their merit. But his sketches prove him to be an accurate, an accomplished draughtsman; he can not only ‘catch a likeness’ but convey a temperament. He has earned the right to paint in the way he does.

  He is tall, blond, narrow-waisted, broad-shouldered, handsome. I would say that, remote though Praslin is from the stir of mental stimulus, he lives about as full a life as any human can— with his large house and his estate, his three children and their attractive mother, his painting, his tennis and his sailing, his interest in local politics and his periodic visits to Victoria—usually as the Governor’s guest. Had he stayed in France and had to rely upon his brush and pencil, I am sure that he would have established himself, if not as a painter certainly as a social or political cartoonist. But I fancy that in terms not only of happiness but also of self-fulfilment he is leading a fuller life in Praslin.

  Savy and Francis Jumeau are Seychellois, but here as elsewhere there are representatives of the Beachcomber contingent. There is ‘the Brigadier’, for example. A gunner, who spent most of his service in India, he resigned his commission in 1937 anxious to have two years’ travelling before the war, whose imminence was clear to him. Seychelles struck him as the likeliest place to settle in. As soon as the second war was over he came back.

  He is a large man, stoutish but not fat, in the later fifties. His white stockings fit over his calves without a wrinkle; his shorts are starched and stiff; the last quarter-inch of his short sleeve is punctiliously ironed back. He is the only Englishman in the colony who wears a solar topee. It is spotlessly white.

  There is no hotel in the accepted sense of the word at Praslin. But there are a number of furnished bungalows along the coast that you can rent by the day or week. Maid service is supplied but you take your own cook with you. The best of these bungalows is rented by the Brigadier. It consists of two rooms divided by a passage, with a verandah at either end. He has given it an air of being lived in, but it is definitely not a home. He is, as far as I know, the only man in the colony who does absolutely nothing. He has no civic duties, he has no property, he collects nothing, he has no hobby, he has no vices. The C.I.R.O.’s boy made the most careful investigations and discovered nothing untoward. He is temperate; every evening of our stay he was either our guest or we were his. He drank two whiskies before dinner, and that was all. On the one occasion when we dined together, he drank a single glass of wine and took a brandy with his coffee. He does not sail or fish or shoot. His exercise is walking. There is, as I said, no club in Praslin, but once or twice a week Francis Jumeau bicycled over to play chess with him. He plays with caution, devoting five to ten minutes to every move, whereas Jumeau is a slapdash player, a persistent attacker, an improviser unwilling to plan farther than two moves ahead. Their friendship has survived the strain of their respective styles.

  A great deal of the day the Brigadier devotes to reading: his favourite literature being Time, the Economist, and Illustrated. During his military career, he explains, he did not have enough time to think and read. He is making up for it now. For days on end he will have only his man to talk to and he enjoys the opportunity of a talk. He has a firm military voice. He has an affliction of the left eye, the lids being joined in their centre by two threads of mattery yellowy skin. And when he fixes you with his right eye, the effect is minatory. But he is not by any means a violent man. On the contrary, he will qualify his most dogmatic assertions with a conciliatory ‘in my humble opinion’, or a disarming ‘of course I know I’m not intelligent’. He is a good listener. He will ask you your opinion, and when you have given it he will sit with his eyes half closed, his head lifted, ruminating over what you have said. ‘That is most interesting,” he will say. “I have so few opportunities here of exchanging ideas with anyone.”

  His opinions are, however, definite. We were discussing a young Seychellois of good family who was an unregenerate ne’er-do-well. “Only one thing to do for that kind
of fellow,” the Brigadier asserted. “Hitler was right: exterminate them. No good wasting good money on trash; too many people in the world already. Psychiatrists and all that rubbish. Some colonels used to say, If you’ve got a troublesome fellow in your company, make him a Lance-corporal’. Nonsense. I never did. I waited for the fellow, caught him at it, then I jumped: break ‘em. That’s the only course. Bad blood always outs. You train racehorses, don’t you? It’s the same with men, in my humble opinion; rotten parent, rotten son. It always follows.”

  It was difficult to argue with him because he jumped so quickly from one topic to another. I suggested that some of the greatest men had been unfortunate in their fathers. He nodded. “Were they? Now that’s most interesting. I’m not an intelligent man. I want to learn, want to exchange ideas; what great man would you say had bad blood in his veins?”

  To my chagrin I found that I could think of no one. I suggested Dickens, not feeling that I had chosen a fortunate example, but already he was off on another tack. “If you ever find a shifty streak in a public figure, you can be certain that it’s bad blood coming out.”

  “But in this case it’s a very long way back, and that particular streak is a most distinguished one; a highly respected foreign family.”

  “That doesn’t matter; it was there, waiting; biding its time. At last it’s made its pounce. Look at all those company directors who evade income-tax by taking salaries for posts they never fill.”

  I did not know whether this was an extension of his anti-semitism or whether I was receiving the benefits of his study of economics, but before I could decide he had switched again.

  “I don’t know why people should worry about laying up fortunes for themselves. Why can’t they trust in God.”

  That switch certainly surprised me, though I had noticed during the second war that a high proportion of high-ranking officers were fanatically devout. I asked if he was a Roman Catholic. But he shook his head. No, no particular denomination. He never went to church. You didn’t need to if you were on good terms with God. “Just ask Him for what you want. You’ll always get it. Provided you ask for the right things.”

  I asked him what he meant by the right things. “The things that are right for you to have.” To that there was no answer.

  The most unexpected character in Praslin was not, however, the Brigadier. The C.I.R.O. was making an official visit to hear any complaints his recent assessments had occasioned. The fact that he had received only two visits, and those not in a spirit of complaint but of inquiry, encouraged him to believe that the high feelings roused by his predecessor had subsided. He had, in consequence, more spare time than he had expected. “We might go and see Campbell,” he said. “He’s quite a person. He should interest you.”

  I was glad to go. I had of course heard of him.

  A married man in the early fifties, an ex-official in the South Kensington Museum, he had been seconded during the war to Delhi, to the India section of the Ministry of Information. He had now retired on a pension. In one sense he was a Beachcomber. But he was by no means ‘typical’; he was working a plantation; had rebuilt the plantation bungalow, and furnished it with pictures and books from England. Though he enjoyed a glass of wine, he was not a heavy drinker. Though he came over to Victoria every two months and spent the greater part- of his time in the club, he had no special friends. He was not stand-offish, but he was impersonal. He had the reputation of being highbrow. He was respected rather than liked. I was curious to meet him.

  His house was on the other side of the island, not far from the hospital above Bay St. Anne. Having chosen a remote island, he had certainly chosen the most remote section of it. There was no means of reaching it except on foot. He was wise in that, I supposed. If you are going to retire it is as well not to be reminded of the world from which you are an exile. We had sent over a letter the day before, warning him of our visit. He had been out when our messenger arrived; but he had sent a message the moment he returned inviting us to tea.

  We found him awaiting us on his verandah beside a silver tea-tray. He was wearing cream-coloured linen shorts, sandals, and a white silk shirt. He was sunburnt, dark-haired, and had a very thin moustache. As he rose out of his chair I noticed that he was even shorter than I had expected. He was plump, and his walk was a mixture between a glide and waddle. He looked at me somewhat curiously when we were introduced. “Was it you or your brother who wrote The Loom of Youth?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  “And which of you wrote the book on Campion?”

  “My brother.”

  “That was a first-rate book.” Then he turned to my companion. “I’ve desolating news for you. This is your last chance to prey on me.”

  He spoke in a precise, modulated voice.

  “What am I to take that to mean?” asked the C.I.R.O.

  “I’m leaving, going back to England.”

  “On leave?”

  “For ever. I am disposing of my property. I’m delighted that you should have come out here. You can assist me on several points. But let’s leave that till after tea.”

  He had a silver kettle which he boiled himself. “You can’t trust even a Sinhalese to make you proper tea,” he said.

  While I visited Lipton’s tea gardens, I heard experts discuss the way in which tea should be made. I noticed that Campbell satisfied their demands—cold water in the kettle, the teapot and the teacups heated; one spoonful for each person and the one extra for the brew; the water poured the instant it was brought to boil; the stirring and the five minutes wait. It was certainly an excellent cup of tea. It was accompanied by hot cakes and savoury sandwiches. It reminded me of Sunday afternoons in Cadogan Square a quarter of a century ago, and a grey-haired lady in a high-held whalebone collar; there was the same air of ritual. It was a full half-hour before he was ready to get down to business.

  “Perhaps Waugh would care to look round my books while we talk our shop,” he said.

  I could understand why his fellow-members in the club were a little restrained in their affection for him. He was not patronising, but he had a grand seigneur air.

  I walked over to his shelves. A small library is more revealing than a large one when, as in a case like this, it is the result not of haphazard purchase but selection. One has often played the game ‘if you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what twelve books would you prefer to have washed up beside you?’ but the choice of the five hundred books that a man takes out with him to a lifetime’s exile is much more revealing.

  Not that this particular selection was original. There were the standard classics—Shakespeare in the Temple edition; the Oxford edition of the chief nineteenth-century poets; the Oxford book of verse; a few Russian novels; Georgian Poetry; Poems of To-day. The novels included Antic Hay, The Green Hat, The Prancing Nigger. The kinds of novel that a young man would have bought in the early ’20s. There were no erotica, not even among the paper-backed French novels, though I did notice a copy of Si le grain ne meurt. …

  I walked out on to the verandah; coconut palms and granite boulders and the sea. There was nothing distinctive about the view. There was no reason why Campbell should have picked this site. My own view from Northolme with the perpetual backcloth of Silhouette was worth a hundred of it. From the other side of the verandah a voice called out, “We’re through now, what about a drink.”

  I crossed to where the income-tax expert was gathering his papers. A trim narrow-shouldered girl in an ankle-length white skirt had brought out a tray of drinks: the figure turned and I saw it was a boy; a Sinhalese, wearing a long-sleeved embroidered tunic with a high collar buttoning tightly at the throat. He wore his hair long with a tortoiseshell comb projecting like twin horns above his forehead. “What’ll you have? Something with gin, or whisky?” Campbell asked.

  “Whisky, if you’ve any soda.”

  “Of course I’ve soda.”

  I looked at him with curiosity. Why on earth, once he had made the break
with England, was he going back. “Is it an impertinence to ask you why?” I said.

  “By no means, it’ll soon be common knowledge. My wife was killed in a motor smash. I’m going back to look after our two daughters.”

  It was such an unexpected admission that there was no comment to be made. I waited for his amplification. “We’d drifted apart, before the war,” he said. “Then when the war came, well I was away five years, and once the strings are cut. . .”

  “But why come out here? Why not live on in England?”

  He shrugged. “You know how income-tax works out, how a husband and wife’s income are joined and taxed as one. You can’t lead two separate lives upon one income. You could before the war. You can’t now. My daughters and my wife had become a team; I’d always been more of an uncle to them than a father. A complete break seemed wisest. I saw no reason why I should go through all the squalid business of a divorce.”

  “And having decided on a break, I suppose you thought that the further you could get away the better.”

  He shook his head.