by Alec Waugh
Barbados was his place, as the Archdeacon had prophesied. Barbados had everything for a person of his tastes; antiquity, tradition, brick-built estate houses, rectangular, with dignified eighteenth century lines, old silver and old china and old furniture. It had reminded him of Charleston; but whereas Charleston was the symbol of a life that no longer existed, in Barbados the feudal tradition was still maintained. There was all that in Barbados, but there was something more: a new, entertaining, enlightening collection of expatriates—English, Canadian and American—had settled since the war on the St. Edmund’s coast. They were witty, affluent, unprejudiced; cultured in the fullest sense. The Archdeacon had given him letters of introduction. He had been amply entertained, he had been made to feel one of them. He had left with many promises to return. From Antigua he had written to Baltimore, outlining his scheme for spending half the year in the Caribbean, with Barbados as his base. An answer to that letter should be awaiting him in Trinidad.
His plane was scheduled to land in Port-of-Spain at nine o’clock. It was a tourist Pan-American flight to South America and every seat was occupied. But it was an hour late and its arrival had coincided with that of a north-bound tourist flight. A Dutch plane bound for Curaçao had docked a quarter of an hour earlier.
The chaos in the small airport was fantastic. There was no system for separating transit passengers from those who were disembarking. The northbound passengers from South America had to present vaccination certificates, whereas those who were southbound did not. The medical office opened off the waiting room and there was no demarcation between those who were trying to line up to reach it and those who were pushing their way to the emigration desk. There were no lines: there was no space for lines. The waiting room was very small; it was raining and no one could stand outside. On the stretch between Puerto Rico and Trinidad, passengers had been issued with cards carrying a standardized autobiographical questionnaire. They were now issued with further forms, for the customs, one stating how much foreign currency they were carrying, another concerning the contents of their baggage.
Bradshaw had filled up a number of these forms during his ten weeks of island hopping. They had to be filled up even by Britons traveling between one British colony and another. They seemed, Bradshaw judged, to be a survival of wartime restrictions, with inquiries about “munitions of war.” Each island had a different form, and in St. Lucia there was an odd survival of censorship in the inquiry “Are you carrying letters to any residents?”
The present questionnaires were made out in English and many of the passengers could not read English. A large proportion of them had no pencils with which to fill them out, so that this had to be done at the customs desk itself: the currency questionnaire had to be filled out in duplicate and a carbon paper was provided. Most of those who filled out these forms with pens failed to realize that the pressure of a pen was not strong enough to produce an impression on the carbon. Many of the questionnaires that had been filled out in the plane had been done so incorrectly, and the emigration officer had to check each card against the passport.
The customs officials were punctilious in their examination of every suitcase. Many packages were tied up with string. A couple of airline representatives who were bilingual hurried back and forth trying to check future reservations. They were sweating and harassed but polite. No airport official was doing anything to organize the traffic. Such officers as were on duty expected to remain there for several hours and saw no cause for hurry. They knew that eventually everything would get sorted out. Were these people really ready for federation and dominion status, Bradshaw asked himself. Yet even as he asked it, he was amazed at the cheerfulness and the good humor everyone displayed. In New York or London a crowd exposed to such inefficiency, and late at night, would have been highly vocal with indignation. Yet here no one had lost his temper. Crowd psychology was very curious. No crowds were more inflammable than the West Indian. Yet they could accept irritations of this kind with equanimity.
It took Bradshaw nearly two hours to get through customs. It was midnight before he checked into his hotel. A large pile of letters awaited him. He flicked through them quickly, searching for the one from Baltimore. He tore it open impatiently.
“Dear Bradshaw,” it said, “Let me first of all congratulate you on your ‘So Many Volcanoes’ piece. It is first class. I look forward to its successor. You have done a wonderful job for us during this last four months and we are all most appreciative. I am considering carefully and sympathetically your suggestion that you should spend half your time in the West Indies. We all of us have to recreate ourselves in middle age, as writers and as human beings, and you seem to me, to us, to have discovered a new self in the Caribbean. Your work has much deeper implications, and very likely on your return to New York, seeing New York with new eyes, your work there will have a fresher appeal. We have all to watch against the danger of getting into a groove and I am sure that we shall be wise in the future to develop your undoubted qualities as a travel writer, qualities that I must frankly admit I did not know you possessed in such full, rich measure.
“For that reason I am not anxious to limit you to the Caribbean. I see a new slant for your column. Let us call it A New Yorker at home and abroad. This will give you a wide range of movement. You can visit London, the South of France, Paris, Rome, all the pleasure grounds in fact that New Yorkers frequent. With your social links you will be able to report on the world of fashion, and you will also be able to throw interesting sidelights on political conditions. I want to enlarge the scope of your work and I suggest that you come back here as soon as is convenient so that we can discuss the details. The weather will soon be getting uncomfortably hot in the West Indies and the hurricane season is imminent. I believe you would be very wise to spend September at the Cap d’Antibes.”
The Cap d’Antibes, Eden Roc: Bradshaw repeated the words like a charm as he undressed. The large pile of letters lay on his desk untouched. He was in no mood to read them. He would not be able to concentrate on them. A new world was opening before him.
He pictured himself, on an expense account, giving smart little London dinner parties, receiving in return invitations to fashionable villas in Cannes and Capri, talking in Florence of the Colony and 21 and back in New York telling them at the Coffee House about Elsa Maxwell. His world had been refashioned and only four months ago he had flown south from New York, desperate and afraid; how quickly fortune’s wheel had turned. He was tired after his flight, but his brain was racing. He lay on his back in the dark, his hands clasped behind his head, brooding on his future.
2
Next morning in the library Bradshaw studied the back files of The Voice of Santa Marta. He had seen occasionally issues in the other islands, but he needed to get a clear consecutive all-in picture before his return. He had arranged to meet his fellow journalists at lunch. Three hours in the library would give him all he needed.
As he skimmed through the back numbers he congratulated himself on his good judgment in having left when he had. Nothing much had happened in his absence: or at least in retrospect it did not seem that very much had happened. The Santa Martans themselves no doubt had considered it a dramatic period. The elections had taken place, and both David Boyeur and Maxwell Fleury had been elected. That he already knew and had incorporated the news in his first “So Many Volcanoes” piece. There had been the opening of the new Leg. Co. with His Excellency appearing in his embroidered coat and cockaded hat with ostrich plumes. There had been only formal business then, the equivalent of the address from the throne; the real tension would not arise till the first general meeting when Boyeur crossed swords with authority. That should be worth seeing and he would be there to see it.
At the St. James Hotel on the night of the first meeting, the Belfontaine Committee had presented Julian Fleury with a silver cigarette box in token of his services to the island. There was a short article about the new Attorney General, listing Grainger’s athletic feat
s in England; at the foot of the article was a paragraph that made Bradshaw raise his eyebrows; it announced the engagement of Grainger’s younger sister Muriel to David Boyeur. David wouldn’t like that, Bradshaw thought, appearing at the foot of a column, as the future brother-in-law of the Attorney General. He’d prefer to have the story, Boyeur’s future brother-in-law is H.E.’s choice as Attorney General.
Bradshaw flicked the pages. Two entries made him smile. One announced the return of H.E.’s son by B.W.I.A. from Trinidad. Two days later Jocelyn Fleury’s return was listed from Barbados. Bradshaw had seen them dancing together in Barbados. He wondered how many Santa Martans were aware that the engaged couple had registered in the same hotel. It was a piece of information that might come in useful one day; like Archer’s relationship with Margot Seaton. Nothing that really mattered had taken place while he was away: within a morning he would have picked up all the threads.
3
As the plane circled over Jamestown, Bradshaw noted with affection the familiar landmarks, the Union Jack flying from the terrace at G.H., the curve of the carenage, the dark stonework of the fort, the great sweep of Grande Anse, the bright yellow of the sand and the palm-grove flanking it, the broad river of sugar cane winding between the foothills. How differently he had felt four months ago when he had first landed here. He quoted the last song of The Beggar’s Opera —“The wretch of today shall be happy tomorrow.” Then he had faced the ruin of everything that he had lived and worked for. Here he was now, with an assured and ample future, the doyen of a group of journalists. Now don’t be officious, he warned himself. Norman and the Tourist Board would be here to welcome them. Wait and listen, and if anything’s been overlooked you can put them wise. Don’t be self-important. Let them learn from the way that others treat you that you are important.
He was right in expecting that the Tourist Board would be there to welcome them. But not only was Norman there, but Denis Archer.
“H.E. wants to see you all as soon as possible,” he told Bradshaw. “He wants to welcome the press boys and find out what he can do for them. Can you bring them up for cocktails tonight? Informally, just yourselves. When we find out how long they’ll be here and what they want, we can make our plans. We’ve booked them into the St. James, but I gather you’d rather stay on at the Continental.”
“I certainly should.”
He had explained his position to his colleagues.
“You’ll all be much more comfortable at the St. James. The Continental is a crummy place. But the people who run it have put themselves out for me. I don’t want to hurt their feelings.”
That was partly true: but he also wanted to be on his own, to show them that he was independent, so that when they got back to America they would say in Bleeck’s “that fellow Bradshaw on the Baltimore Star is quite a person in the islands.”
That night at G.H. he kept himself in the background. He could rely on the Governor to bring him into the center of the conversation. His reliance was not misplaced.
“I’ve one pleasant surprise for you,” the Governor said. “I expect your distinguished colleague whose company here we so much enjoyed earlier this year, will have spoken to you of the excellence of our rum punches. You will find them not only excellent, but cheaper than they are in any other island. I have decided as from today to reduce the duty on rum by thirty-five per cent. Now I shall be very surprised if any one of you except Mr. Bradshaw can guess the reason for my philanthropy.”
They all of them made their guesses. The general presumption was that the duty was so high that it discouraged consumption and that the change had been made to pleasure the sugar planters.
The Governor chuckled. No, that was not the reason. He had done it to discourage smuggling. Comparing the per capita consumption of rum and cigarettes here and in St. Kitts he had found, to judge by the export and import revenues, that twice as much rum and twice as many cigarettes were consumed in St. Kitts as in Santa Marta. “Gentlemen, I could not believe that we, on this island, were twice as temperate as our friends upon St. Kitts. I believe the Santa Martans drink and smoke as much as anyone. Only they do not pay duty on their tobacco and their rum. I came to the conclusion that too large a proportion of the populace was engaged in smuggling, so I reduced the duty to a point where smuggling is uncommercial.”
Where did the cigarettes come from, he was asked.
“From the French islands, St. Martin’s a free port: as for the rum, I fancy they take it out of bond from our own warehouses, transfer on to small boats, and run it back into one of our own bays. As you’ll see, gentlemen, when you drive round the island, we have a bay every second mile. I can’t have our police launch wasting its time patrolling them.”
The story put the meeting onto easy terms with its host. Bradshaw turned to Archer.
“What are young Templeton’s plans?” he asked.
“He goes up to Oxford in October.”
“What about his fiancée?”
“She’ll follow after Christmas and have an April marriage. H.E.’ll have been out a year by then. He’ll be able to take ten days leave.”
Bradshaw nodded. The old boy had played his cards cleverly. He had a tricky problem. Officially committed to a policy of racial equality, he could not have objected to his son’s engagement to a girl who had colored blood, yet at the same time he could not have welcomed the possibility of a dusky grandson waiting to take the Templeton seat in the House of Lords. H.E. had played for time, as the British always did, in their confidence that they would muddle through, that they could lose nine battles and win the tenth. Had H.E. learnt about that meeting in Barbados? He probably had, from one source or another. Possibly he had learnt of it with relief. Absence might be likelier to cure a realized than an unrealized love. At any rate that was what a man of the Governor’s generation might be inclined to think.
“What about that pretty secretary of his, the one who used to work in a pharmacy?” he asked.
“She’s fine. Is she a friend of yours?”
“Unfortunately not. I’ve never spoken to her. But I remember noticing her at the Nurses’ Dance. She’s very pretty.”
“I think she is.”
“Does she still work here?”
“She does.”
His voice could not have been more offhand. Bradshaw switched the subject.
“What about the Carson case? Any developments?”
“You’d better ask Whittingham. He’s more likely to talk to a newspaper man than to an A.D.C.”
How uncommunicative could you get, thought Bradshaw.
That night there was a dinner party at the St. James for the visitors. Boyeur was one of the hosts. Bradshaw shook him warmly by the hand.
“This is most happy news,” he said.
“It is for me.”
“Congratulations on your election too.”
“That was never in any doubt.”
Boyeur was sitting on the opposite side of the table from him and two places down. Bradshaw glanced at him several times when his head was turned. Ten weeks had effected a change in him, or so it seemed. He was more assured, less belligerent. It was hardly being in love in Boyeur’s case, he fancied. For Boyeur, surely, marriage was a stage in a career, a step to self-advancement. He was marrying into a good family. That was what counted with his kind of man. His ambitions were the nearer now to being realized.
After dinner, when the party moved on to the veranda for liqueurs and coffee, Bradshaw placed himself next to Boyeur.
“When I read the announcement of your engagement, I remembered our talk the time you came to tea.”
“Ah?”
“That afternoon you had your plans prepared. You were going to run the island, through your control of the Trades Unions.”
“That’s right.”
“I wondered if you’ve changed those plans.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you’re in a different camp. Your future brother-in-law is th
e Attorney General. He’s the representative of order and tradition. Your father’s a capitalist, in a minor way. Your wife will inherit capital. Your children will be left a share of the estate. You don’t want, do you, to undermine the value of their inheritance?”
He paused; he was watching Boyeur closely.
“Perhaps you haven’t seen it from that point of view,” he added. “Do you want to destroy the power of the class to which you are now allied?”
Boyeur made no answer. Exactly, Bradshaw thought. He never had seen it in that way before. It was surprising how often obvious truths did not occur to people. He had recently read Tom Driberg’s reminiscences. Someone had remarked to Driberg casually, “Why don’t you run for Parliament?” It had been a new idea to Driberg. He had run for Parliament as an Independent, won a seat and been a great success. John Galsworthy had had a similar experience. The woman who later became his wife remarked, “Why don’t you write? You’re just the person.” Of course in both cases the seed had been growing, under the soil—in the subconscious for many years—but it was always a haphazard day of sunlight that brought the flower to the surface. Galsworthy was a born writer. Driberg, though he had been trained as a journalist, had with his social sense a flair for politics. Someone else with some other remark would have given them the key to their own nature. Sooner or later it would have occurred to Boyeur that the axis of his interests had changed.