by Alec Waugh
“Come on now, all of you, let’s get to work,” he shouted.
She was seeing a new side of him: the officer, the practical efficient leader.
Within an hour the fire had been controlled: on the edge of a ploughed field a quarter of a mile down the road, the cane had been cut back and cleared. The fire could not spread. It was still raging up the hill, but it could not cross the stream. It would burn itself out. Immediately in front of the house stretched a smouldering, blackened mass. There was nothing more to be done. The villagers were grouped before the steps.
“I had better give them some money hadn’t I?” he said.
“It would be a good idea.”
“How much, twenty dollars?”
“Ten’s ample.”
The villagers were delighted. For them the whole adventure was a footnote to carnival. They cheered, shouted, waved their cutlasses: dispersed as quickly as they had come, hurrying back to their steel bands. Once again he was standing beside Jocelyn, leaning against the veranda rail. He was exhilarated and exhausted; excited by the evening’s drama; with an air of triumph; the fire conquered. But it had been hard work. He had started to feel very hungry.
“I’m not surprised. It’s after nine,” she said. “You go and shower while I raid the kitchen. If you could only see yourself.”
“Am I very filthy?”
“I can’t think what you would be like if there was a light to see you by.”
He cleaned himself as best he could by the light of a candle, then followed her into the basement. She had set out a pile of plates and tins on the kitchen table.
“You move these up, while I shower,” she said.
He set them out in the dining room. There were candlesticks with hurricane glass covers. Jocelyn had chosen some of the better glass and china.
“What about the wine,” he called.
“I’ve unlocked the cellar door. You choose.”
There was quite a cellar there. There was champagne, he noticed, but that perhaps would be making too much of an occasion of it. Besides it would take a long while to cool and there was a good red Burgundy.
He returned to find her in the dining room. She had changed into Chinese pajamas. The high neck with its severe line suited her.
“It makes you look sixteen,” he said.
“Daddy gave it me for my sixteenth birthday. I always keep a few things of my own out here.”
While he had been in the cellar, she had rearranged the table; it looked quite different.
“This doesn’t feel like a picnic at all,” he said. “It’s like a banquet.”
“It is rather an occasion isn’t it?”
They had brought up the chicken pie, some cheese, some salad and a bowl of fruit. A quarter of an hour earlier he had been ravenous, but now his appetite had left him. He had to force himself to eat, as a counter measure against the full rich Burgundy.
“Will the fire have done much harm?” he asked her.
“Not to us. We’re insured.”
“Does it often happen?”
“Most months there’s a fire on one or other of the estates.”
“Is it always done on purpose?”
“No one can tell. Tonight it was obvious: the engine, the telephone, the carburetor. All that couldn’t happen on the same night y chance—particularly the carburetor.”
“Doesn’t it worry you living in a place where something like this can happen at any moment?”
“One gets used to it. One knows it’s going to happen one day, like a hurricane. You have to accept things here.”
She leant forward across the table to take an orange; the long loose sleeves of her Chinese jacket fell back over her elbows. Her arms looked very white and soft against the stiff black silk. Her cheeks in the candlelight were smooth and rounded with the bloom of fruit on them.
“You were born within twenty miles of me,” he said. “It’s strange that we should have led such different lives, that you should have got acclimatized to a thing like this. But for mere chance, we’d have been brought up together. We’d have been going to the same dances, played tennis together at the vicarage, ridden in the same hunt; had the same friends; yet even so meeting you here now for the first time, I don’t feel I could have known you any better if we’d been going to the same parties all our lives. I’ve got the feeling that I’ve known you all my life.”
“I’m glad you feel that. That’s how I’ve felt too.”
She smiled: no one had smiled at him in quite that way before.
“This cheese is very good,” he said.
It was a dry, hard cheddar. It brought out the bouquet and flavor of the Burgundy. He was glad they had finished with the pie; that he hadn’t to force himself to eat, that he could nibble at the cheese and sip this noble wine.
The grandfather clock began to strike. Nine, ten, eleven. “I suppose we ought to clear away,” he said.
“Don’t bother, this isn’t England. Matilda will be here at daybreak—or at least she should be. Dirty plates will tell her she’s got work to do.”
They rose and faced each other.
“It’s late,” she said.
“It’s very late.”
“Shall we toss for rooms?”
He spun a coin in the air.
“Heads,” she called.
The coin fell on its edge and rolled into a corner. “There it is.” They went down on their knees to pick it up.
“Heads. I win.”
They straightened up. There was a bare yard between them.
“I’ll have the room on the right,” she said. “I always wanted it when I was a child. It’s a funny thing, I always promised myself when I grew up that I’d move into that room. I loved the view from it. And the furniture; the gilt on the wardrobe and the bed. They match. I promised myself that I’d take it over on my seventeenth birthday. But I never have. I’ve never slept in it. Not once. What luck my winning the toss.”
She was talking for the sake of talking. But there was no nervousness in her voice. He was scarcely listening. He was vividly, acutely conscious of her nearness, in this empty house, remembering how they had stood side by side against the veranda railings, with the fire raging a hundred yards away; his fingers remembered the smooth soft firmness of her breast.
He took a step toward her and she moved to meet him. His arms went round her. She was talking still. “There’s a clock on the bookcase of that room I always loved, and there’s a picture between the windows.”
He loosened one arm about her shoulders; he put his hand under her chin; he lifted her face to his.
It all seemed the most natural, the most inevitable thing that had ever happened.
The moonlight lay in a wide broad stream across the room.
“It is a pretty clock. Even from here you can see that it’s a pretty clock,” she said.
She stretched herself, lazily, luxuriously. She raised her arms above her head, closing her hands under her neck.
“When you do that, you make your breasts disappear,” he said.
“I’ll bring them back.”
She lowered her arms against her side.
“Look, there they are.”
“I could play with them for hours.”
“They’d like that.”
She sighed, a long, deep, happy sigh.
“It’s funny that I’ve always had that feeling about this room. I must have known that one day something very lovely was going to happen to me here.”
“I’d never believed anybody could look as beautiful as you look now.”
“Please go on saying things like that.”
“There are so many things I want to say.”
“Say some of them.”
“I’d like to be able to say that you were the first girl I’d made love to ever.”
“I could hardly expect that, could I?”
“Why not?”
“You’re twenty-two and you’re attractive.”
�
�There’s not been very much but if there’d not been anything … in a way I’m rather glad there was.”
“Why’s that?”
“If there hadn’t been, I shouldn’t be able to say, because I know something about other girls, I know how wonderful you are.”
“I’m glad you can say that. … All the same—” she paused. “I’m very glad to be able to say ‘this is the first time ever.’”
“It is?”
“Darling, didn’t you know?”
“I half guessed. I wondered.”
“I thought that was the kind of thing men always knew: that’s the warning they gave to us at school: how would we feel on our wedding night when our husband realized. To think that you didn’t know. How they do fool girls, don’t they?”
She chuckled. Once again she stretched out lazily, clasping her hands under her head.
“I’m so glad now I waited. I used to think sometimes that I was being silly; that I was missing a lot of fun. I used to envy Mavis. Was I being a coward, I’d ask myself. But all the time I knew somewhere deep inside myself that there was a thing worth waiting for. And, darling, so there was.”
He could not speak. A sense of pride mingled with humility stifled him. His arms went round her and she turned to face him.
“Darling,” she whispered. “Oh my dear, my darling.”
She was speaking in a voice that he had never heard before.
“Dear one, it must be late. The moon’s gone down.”
He blinked, sat up, the room was so dark now that he could not see her.
“I must have been asleep.”
“You were.”
“Didn’t you sleep too?”
“No. I’ve been watching you.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly five.”
“I ought to go into the other room.”
“I think you should. Matilda will be turning up at daylight.”
“Not for five minutes though.”
“No, not for five minutes perhaps.”
“Or even ten.”
“Maybe not ten.”
“It’s funny in the dark not seeing you.”
“Is it nicer in the dark?”
“It’s different isn’t it?”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know. Oh, darling, this is the loveliest ten minutes.”
He woke, it seemed only a moment later, but the room was warm with sunlight, and a maid was at his bedside with a cup of tea.
“Half-past seven. Breakfast be ready eight o’clock,” she said. He blinked; for a second he did not know where he was: then he remembered.
“Miss Jocelyn awake?” he asked.
“Sure, yes, Miss Jocelyn dressed.”
He walked out on the veranda. She was seated in a long chair with rockers, her foot against the railing.
“Hullo,” he called.
She turned and a shock of delighted surprise passed along his nerves. She looked radiant. He could not believe that only two hours ago they had been whispering in the dark. She pointed to the smouldering cane field.
“They made a job of that all right.”
They had indeed. It stretched for half a mile along the road and for a hundred yards up the hill, a sodden, blackened ruin.
“I feel rather like that cane field looks,” he said.
“Do you suppose Maxwell has a razor?”
“You can always look. Sylvia should have one if he hasn’t.”
She had. It was very small. But he made a job with it. He had scarcely slept: he was surprised how fresh he looked as he combed his hair after the shower.
“Breakfast’s ready,” Jocelyn called.
There was pawpaw with a slice of lime beside it. The coffee was hot and strong.
“I suppose the telephone’s not working yet.”
She shook her head.
“I’ve sent one of the boys in to the police station. I told them not to hurry out, but I didn’t want to have them worrying at home.”
“Your brother’s going to be furious about the car.”
“He’ll be tearing mad, about that and everything. He can lose his temper very easily.”
“I scarcely know him.”
“I sometimes wonder if I do.”
“I’d have thought you’d have been so close, coming out here together, being a little different from everybody else.”
“You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?”
“And there’s the right difference of age between you too—three years.”
“It’s not turned out that way.”
“I’d have given anything to have had a sister.”
“It would have been nice to have you as a brother.”
“I’m glad that we’re the way we are though.”
“I’m very glad.”
Ten hours ago, she thought, we were sitting here over our picnic supper, talking as we are now about little casual things, intimately but not seriously. Anybody who had seen us then and were to see us now, would not recognize any difference between us, would not guess that anything had happened in those ten hours, that everything is different now, that we’ve been transformed.
“What would be jolly about having a sister,” he was going on, “is that you’d always have girls about the house, pleasant, friendly girls by whom you set no store, whom you could get to know as friends; because if you haven’t a sister the only girls you see are the ones in whom you are interested in what they call ‘that way.’ “
“I’ve never thought of that. Yes, I suppose that must be true. And it’s true with girls: if they have brothers, there’s always a crowd of boys around the house whom they can treat casually, not as ‘dates.’ “
“But it wasn’t that way with you and Maxwell?”
“No, it never was.”
“I wonder why.”
She shrugged. “He’s an awkward person. I don’t quite know how. He’s secretive; he bottles things up; then suddenly he flies into a rage. He was terrifying as a child. I remember once … no, I’ll forget that one, but if you’d once seen him lose his temper you were on your guard with him.”
To anyone listening, it would have sounded exactly the same kind of talk that they had exchanged the night before. Only they knew the difference, knew how close those hours in the dusk and dark had brought them to each other. Marriage must be a very lovely thing, she thought. Two people gossiping across a breakfast table, making no reference to that whispering in the dusk, yet with their whole outlook for the day conditioned by it.
“I certainly shan’t be going back to England till the autumn now,” he said.
“We might be going back in the same ship then.”
“In the same ship?”
“It’s something I didn’t tell you. Daddy’s very keen on going back to England for six months. He wants to see a doctor there. He’s taking me along. He wanted to go back in May. He thought the summer would be better. Then he thought he needed a cold climate. I was delighted. I’d like to know what snow is like. We might have a great deal of fun over there together. You could introduce me to your friends. It’s an idea.”
“It’s a marvelous idea.”
“Or would it be a better idea if we went back in May?”
“It depends on how difficult we find it to find alibis.” He remembered the warning that Archer had given him that first afternoon.
“We’ll find ways,” she said.
3
Maxwell and Sylvia drove out to fetch them, bringing a mechanic with them. On the surface Maxwell was very calm. But beneath the surface Euan could recognize the bubbling of that temper to which Jocelyn had referred.
“You can see what’s happened. It’s plain, isn’t it,” he said. “They had a grudge against me. They thought it was my car. They saw a chance of paying off old scores. That shows the kind of people that they are. And to think that they are going to be allowed equality with us. Ridiculous, ridiculous.”
He spoke with a sneer. Sylvia made no comment.
She stood aside, a look of indifference on her face. Euan and Jocelyn let him talk. It relieved Jocelyn that Maxwell should be so completely concerned with the destruction to his property. He had no interest in the other aspect of the matter, that his sister had spent an entire night alone with a man in an empty house. It gave her a useful clue to the attitude that would be taken generally in Jamestown.
“Nobody’s going to worry about us at all,” she said to Euan, as they drove back to town in the car that Maxwell had brought out.
Her mother was on the doorstep awaiting her. “What’s happened? Was there a great deal of damage?”
That clearly was the angle by which everyone in Jamestown would be affected. A rising on an estate was part of the West Indian tradition. For three hundred years there had been that constant fear in the hearts of the white planters. They were outnumbered fifty to one. Resentment was always smouldering. Gossip would concentrate on the car, the cane field, the cut wire. The fact that she and Euan had been all night alone in that empty house was incidental. We’re lucky, she thought, we’re very lucky.
“Lucky, very lucky.”
She repeated it to herself as she stood in her room before her mirror. Did she look different? She had read in books that you looked different afterwards. She did not think she did. But she felt different, oh, so completely different. The blood beat through her veins at a different pace; how glad she was now that she had waited. She remembered all those hours of self-questioning and self-doubt; remembered how she had envied Mavis; or rather how she had wished that she was more like Mavis. She did not now. If she had been like Mavis this would not have happened. If she had been like Mavis, she would not have been able to appreciate a thing like this. Her palate would have been cloyed.
She sighed, a long deep sigh. She walked over to the window. There it lay, the familiar curve of the carenage, with its anchored schooners, and the red brick warehouses, the line of the hills beyond, the white sand of Petite Anse with the grove of coconut palms flanking it: unchanged yet at the same time different.
It had become the setting now of high adventure. It was against this backcloth that the drama of the next weeks would be played. March to September. Half a year. By the time she sailed for England every aspect of the landscape would hold its own special memory for her. Whenever she looked through this window afterward, whenever she drove out to Belfontaine, she would be able to relive the enchantment of these six months. She was lucky to have this limit set: it would not drag on, die out. And at the end of that six months there was not the necessity of parting. They would return to England, they would meet in England, no doubt once there they would find themselves caught up into their separate lives, they would drift apart, without realizing that they were: there would be no sharp, sudden severance. But she did not want to look that far ahead. She did not need to look that far ahead. She could be indefinite. She was lucky there. She could live in the moment, for the moment, in the belief that it might be prolonged. I’ll be seeing him at the club tonight, she thought. Then they’d discuss when they’d be meeting next. The need for secrecy would add its special relish to the adventure.