Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

  On the other side of his father, Maxwell sat glowering and silent. Sylvia was dancing with Grainger Morris. The sight of it made him want to vomit. That dark hand against his wife’s white skin. But what could he do, since that was the way things were.

  “One more dance,” the Governor was saying, “and then I go. I’ve an idea that though they like me to come, they’re relieved when I go away. Like a Corporal’s dance.”

  He rose to his feet and moved round the table. The Fleurys were left alone. Julian turned to Betty.

  “My dear, I’ve been paid a compliment. I’d like you to be the first to hear. I’m going to be one of the nominated members on the Legislative Council.”

  “Darling, that’s wonderful!”

  “Congratulations, Daddy.”

  Maxwell said it with enthusiasm, the ring in his voice was genuine. But there followed a raw aftertaste. His father was offered things like this, himself he had to fight for them. Why—because his father’s position here was backed with achievement. He’d done things. He was someone. Whereas he—what had he done? What was he? No wonder Sylvia thought nothing of him. He’d show her though. This election was the test. When she saw him sway an audience she’d realize there was something to him.

  Mavis and Doris were in the Ladies’ Room, alone: they stood side by side, fixing their faces in the mirror. Doris was highly voluble.

  “I saw him dancing with you. There’s no doubt is there? He’s fallen for you flat. I knew he would. They all do. You’re marvelous. The way you dress, the way you move, the things you say. I wish I was like you. When I was a kid at school I used to look at you. If only I could be like that, I’d think.”

  Their eyes met in the glass. In Doris’ there was a look of adoration that moved the elder girl.

  “I used to have daydreams about you, of how I might save you from trouble, blackmailers, or someone who was jealous of you. Such silly childish dreams about my being injured in defense of you: things that I’m shy to tell you even now. How little I dreamt that one day I should be your friend.”

  Doris looked away. A dreamy note had come into her voice. “You’ll tell me about it won’t you: the things he says, the things he does, so that I can share it with you, so that I can be a part of it, so that I can feel it’s happening to me.”

  There was a hypnotic quality about her voice. Her head was in profile now. Mavis put her hand under her chin, turning her face to hers. She wanted to meet again that look of adoration. It was still there, but deeper now. No one had ever looked at her in quite that way. It was a compelling look. She raised Doris’ chin, then very gently kissed her. It was a soft warm mouth and she let her lips linger there. She drew back and patted the young girl’s cheek.

  “Don’t worry, Kitten. You’ll have all the fun of that kind you can use before you’ve finished. Yes, I’ll tell you everything.”

  Once again Archer had his eye caught by the Governor. So the old man wanted to go home. He was himself dancing with Jocelyn. He looked for Margot. She was across the room, with Carson. He steered toward her. They danced side by side.

  “I’ve got to see H.E. home,” he said, “but I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  She nodded. He had the heady knowledge that she knew exactly what was in his mind.

  That’s that, he thought. He danced Jocelyn back to the table.

  “Yes, sir, shall I get the car?” he said.

  He was back within twenty minutes. Margot Seaton was now dancing with Maxwell Fleury. He caught her eye, raised his eyebrows, interrogatively. She gave a sign of recognition. A moment later she and Maxwell came back to their table.

  “It’s hot. Let’s take a drive,” he said.

  She rose and followed him. Boyeur saw them go. So that was who it was. On the whole he was content. Archer was a bright young fellow: no fool either. It soothed his vanity to have his taste confirmed by an A.D.C. When they came back, if they did come back, he would dance with Margot; so that everyone should recognize that the episode had his approval.

  Denis had returned, not in the small Austin to which he was usually restricted for his errands, but in the Governor’s Cadillac. It was large and heavily upholstered. It was, he presumed, the first time that Margot had driven in a car of such caliber, but if she was impressed she did not show it. He drove in silence along the coast, climbing to the fort that had once guarded the harbor. A waning moon was rising about Trois Frères; it cast a ruffled stretch of silver on the water that mingled with and confused the reflection from the boats anchored against the carenage. He stopped the car, switched off the engine, turned toward her.

  “You know how I feel about you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s sit in the back.”

  She settled herself in the far corner of the seat.

  “No, that won’t do,” he said.

  He bent, put his hands round her ankles, swung up her legs and sat beside her, one arm round her shoulders. With the other hand under her chin, he turned her face to his. Her lips were soft and smooth. There was no passion in her kiss, but the touch of it fired his blood. She was wearing a strapless dress; he pulled it down and was aware of something snapping; he unhooked her brassiere. She raised her arms, crossing her hands behind her head, tightening her pectoral muscles. He bent his head: her breasts were small and firm: their points grew firm; she was wearing a heavy perfume with a scent of musk.

  With an English girl he would have invested his courtship with a wind of words, but instinct counseled him that Margot would have no use for that. She would consider delay a reflection on the power of her charms. She did not hinder him. She did not help him. She did not close her eyes. She made no movement. She kept her hands crossed behind her head. It did not last ninety seconds. He felt both fulfilled and foiled.

  “I think we should go back,” he said.

  “I think so too.”

  “I hope I didn’t tear your dress.”

  “Let’s look and see.”

  It was nothing that five minutes with a needle would not put right. She had a safety pin in her bag; she turned her back to him and he fixed it. He rested his cheek against her skin: it was soft, so soft and firm.

  She turned, looked at him, took his face between her hands, then slowly, very gently, with closed lips set her mouth on his.

  Boyeur noted their return. Thirty-five minutes. Nothing could have happened in that time. He knew Margot too well to have any doubts on that score. If she once let anything start, it would last a lot, lot longer. Archer was no doubt one of these timid Englishmen who called cowardice chivalry. He smiled. It gave him a reassuring feeling of superiority. In a quarter of an hour he’d ask her for a dance.

  Mavis was sitting next to Grainger.

  “Do you mind if we don’t dance,” he said.

  “Not in the least, I’m tired too.”

  “It isn’t that. I’m not tired. I’d rather talk to you.”

  She raised her eyebrows. As far as she could remember it was the first time that any man had said that to her. When a man had said he did not feel like dancing, it was the opening gambit for “a drive somewhere, where it’s cool.”

  “We don’t have so many chances, after all,” he said.

  She knew what he meant. They could never meet in each other’s houses; he could not belong to the Country Club, nor she to the Aquatic. They could never go out alone together. The scandal would be fantastic. They could only meet at an occasional intimate picnic or at semi-formal occasions such as this.

  “You’d be surprised how often I thought of you when I was in England,” he was saying. “You symbolized so many of the things I love best about the islands.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Wholesomeness, openness of heart; a natural, a patrician quality of graciousness that comes to people who’ve been born to rule; most people have chips of some kind on their shoulders. The real patrician hasn’t. That’s such a relief, after the strain of walking in spiked shoes.”

/>   “Why should I have stood for that to you.”

  “Something about you, the way you looked and spoke. You were so friendly to all those other children. I remembered how you looked. I wondered what you had become. Shall I tell you what saddened me, that time when you were twelve? We could have been friends as children, but when I went back, now you were grown up, we couldn’t be.”

  He said it without any bitterness, without a sneer. He hadn’t a chip on his shoulder either. He accepted as an inevitable fact the difference that color made between them.

  “There’s another thing too I used to think,” he was going on. “We could have been friends in England. There’s no feeling about color there. Everyone knew that I was a West Indian. It’s obvious, but it didn’t make any difference. It didn’t worry any of the girls; there was one in particular, who would have been very glad to come out here and marry me.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her back?”

  “Would that have been fair to her? Think of her position here, unable to join the Country Club; never being able to meet the people that she would think of as her own kind.”

  “Were you unhappy over it?”

  He shook his head. “I knew from the start it was impossible.”

  “Did you ever consider marrying her and staying there? You could have built up a practice in England, couldn’t you?”

  “I considered that.”

  “Why didn’t you then? Perhaps you weren’t in love with her.”

  “It may have been that, but I don’t think it was. I felt I had a duty here, to my own people.”

  He said it quietly, undramatically. It impressed her as much as anything that had ever been said to her. This is somebody very fine, she thought. As fine a person as I’ve met. And to that thought there came an afterthought that sent a glow along her veins, that this so fine person should want to talk to her, should have singled her out for his confidence. She must be something more than the obvious girl whom visiting firemen took for car drives in the moonlight.

  In his study at Government House, Lord Templeton reread the report that he was submitting to the Minister of State, announcing his plans to implement the new constitution. It was short and concise, not unlike in form and manner the operation orders that he had issued to his company commanders. The concluding sentence ran: “I do not anticipate that any serious friction will result from the implementation of this policy.”

  He sealed down the envelope, then took a sheet of note paper and began a personal letter to the Minister.

  “Dear Bunny, I am sending by this same mail in a separate envelope my situation report. I think it puts the matter clearly, but what I can never expect to convey in an official document is the essential opera bouffe atmosphere that colours every least event here. They are all of them comics, these West Indians, even or rather especially my legislative councillors; and like all true comedians they behave with the utmost seriousness. One must never let them think that their acting has not convinced one. And it’s not only the coloured West Indians who behave in this way: ‘the Sugar Barons,’ as Olie nicknamed them, have caught their tempo. Let me give you an example of a case in which I was asked to intervene.”

  He described the Preston incident. “Could you imagine anything more ridiculous. A few miserable cane stalks stamped upon by a few mangy cows and a stake of fifteen depreciated West Indian dollars. But of course I must not allow them to think I consider it all ridiculous. Oh, dear me, no. I am telling them that the principles of British Justice are at stake; I am making a high issue of it. And indeed quite seriously I do feel that it would be most improper for me to intervene. The people here must learn that the same treatment must be given to everyone irrespective of the political impact of a decision. If politics run the courts, where is one?

  “Did I tell you, by the way, that one of the chief figures in the island is my old friend Julian Fleury? I say old though I haven’t seen him for over thirty years, but it’s odd how one never in later life makes such firm friends as one does at school, and in one’s first years in the regiment. One knows men as they really are at school. Later on they learn to cover up.

  “Fleury incidentally does not see eye to eye with me in this case of Preston. He thinks it may lead to trouble, but I extracted even from him the admission that something very unusual would have to happen first.”

  He reread the letter: folded it, put it in the envelope, but did not stick down the flap. It was his practice to leave an important letter open overnight. Not that he felt that he would need to alter it. The matter was well in hand.

  From his bedroom window as he stood looking out over the harbor, he could hear the music of the dance. It sounded fiercer, tenser, more barbaric. He smiled. He had thought that they would let their hair down once he’d gone. He hoped Euan was having a good time.

  The dance had not only become wilder, but the separate parties had disintegrated. Groups had split up and had reformed. At the Government House table the supply of champagne had ceased.

  Carson was at the bar. “What a relief to get back to whisky,” he was saying.

  Maxwell was at his side. For Maxwell it had been a reasonably satisfactory evening. Nothing had happened to disturb his vanity. Sylvia had been friendly, almost affectionate. He had watched her carefully. She had shown no signs of exaggerated interest in anybody else. Perhaps he had been fancying things. Perhaps it would be a good idea if they accepted his father’s suggestion and came to live in Jamestown. It must be lonely for her out there.

  The tempo of the dance heightened. Euan Templeton was dancing again with Mavis. He rested his cheek against hers. She did not move away. It would be fun at that, telling it all to Doris.

  Maxwell watching from the bar noted them with a smile. “Those two don’t seem to be wasting time,” he said.

  Carson guffawed.

  “The punters at the Aquatic Club were laying four to one on her this afternoon. The odds will shorten when this gallop is reported.”

  He put his hand into his hip pocket and brought out his cigarette case. It was a large case; he was a heavy smoker. He took out a cigarette, then offered it to Maxwell. Each flap was divided into two sections; one of these sections contained thicker cigarettes. Maxwell hesitated, then took one of them. He read on the thin paper, in gold lettering, Laurens Alexandria.

  “Do you often smoke these?” he asked.

  “Occasionally. On occasions.”

  Maxwell’s hand was trembling as he lit a match. He hardly dared to kindle it. He took a whiff. There was no doubt about it.

  It was like no sensation that he had felt before: rage, impotence, horror, sickening apprehension. Carson was the last person he would have expected: the last person he would have had it be. What chance did he stand against Carson? He looked desperately round the room. Sylvia was with Jocelyn; standing beside that agitator fellow and that pretty half-caste from the pharmacy. He hurried over. He was blind with misery. He had to get Sylvia home. He could not stand another minute here.

  “It’s time we were going. Let’s be on our way.” He ignored Margot, ignored Boyeur; to his sister he said: “Are you coming with us or will you stay on? Mother and Father have gone back.”

  “It’s late. I might as well come too.”

  “Right. Then we’re off.” He put his hand under Sylvia’s elbow.

  Boyeur clenched his teeth. To be ignored in this way; and in front of Margot. To have no notice taken of him: at the very moment when he had been explaining something: and in front of Margot. Never had he felt more humiliated. I’ve a score to settle there, he thought.

  Back in their room at his father’s, Maxwell once again watched through the mosquito-netting Sylvia brush out her hair. She was chatting, brightly, about the evening.

  “You much prefer it here in Jamestown, don’t you,” he said.

  “It is more fun.”

  “You’d like to fall in with my father’s plans, and have me take over the town side of things.”

&nb
sp; “If it would suit you all right.”

  “It would suit me all right.”

  It would indeed suit him very well. He could keep track of Carson’s movements; lay traps; catch them out in lies. Now that he knew whom he was fighting, the road was easy. Yes, it would be much better if they came into Jamestown. He’d bide his time and when he got the evidence … His hands behind his head clasped one another with an angry, exulting promise: as though they were making a pact with one another. When the time came, they would know what to do.

  Chapter Seven

  1

  Lord Templeton’s report reached the Colonial Office on a Friday afternoon. The Minister was going away for the week end early the following morning. He was a youthfully preserved man of middle age who had been too young for the first war and too old for the second. He had kept his figure and his hair. He was photogenic and married to an attractive and titled woman ten years younger than himself; the illustrated weeklies contained more photographs than his actual achievements warranted of Mr. Robert Marsh “forgetting affairs of state” at Lord’s, Newbury, or a film premiere. Brisk, hearty, hail-fellow-well-met, he tended to make snap decisions, a tendency that forced him to rely more heavily than he liked on his parliamentary secretary, Purvis, a precise, scholarly young man, whom Marsh, an old Harrovian himself, described to his friends as “you know the type, old boy, one of those typical bloodless Wykehamists; etiolated; yes, that’s the word, etiolated.”

  Purvis was not going away for the week end. He rarely did. He worked all Saturday. The office was quiet then and he was able to clear up work that had accumulated through the week. Though he slept late on Sunday, he took papers home with him. He lived with his parents in St. John’s Wood.

  Purvis glanced quickly over Templeton’s report, and got its general gist; it looked straightforward; then he read the covering letter and pursed his lips. He wondered about this man Fleury. He would have preferred to make inquiries, and draft a memorandum. But it was after five o’clock. The Minister would not like to be left without a piece of information of this kind over a week end.