Island in the Sun

by Alec Waugh

“Then I prophesy that on the Friday before, there’ll be a strike pay cut, so that something can happen over the weekend. He won’t want to go to the Leg. Co. meeting with empty hands, particularly as he has to eat humble pie and apologize for his behavior at the last meeting.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “In the meantime we can only wait.”

  “Exactly.”

  Preston was happy to be waiting. He was a handy man. He enjoyed fixing things. He was building a chalet where his wife could read and write and get away from the turmoil of a small house with children tumbling over themselves all the time.

  “I’ve been looking forward for weeks to getting down to this,” he said.

  He was impatient to get back to it now. Maxwell could see that clearly.

  “I must be on my way,” he said.

  “I wish I could offer you something. But it’s too early for a punch. And I don’t imagine that you are the kind of man who takes morning coffee.”

  “You’re right. I’m not. And it’s much too early for a punch.”

  It was ten o’clock. Eight hours more to be filled in. He might as well drive into the village, to the police station.

  The constable in charge had the same report to make. No disturbance. Why should there be? The men weren’t working but were earning money; who could ask more? Maxwell parked his car outside the station and strolled down the main village street toward the jetty.

  It looked no different; naked and half-naked children tumbling in the dust before their huts; women cooking over their stove ovens at the back, shouting to their neighbors; now and again through an open doorway he could see a man stretched on a bed asleep; groups of men stood gossiping outside the liquor shop. They were not drinking, it was too early for that, and their idea of drinking was a series of quick shots of white rum. The liquor store was their club. Some of the men wore gaudy American beach shirts; some of them wore army khaki shirts that were torn and patched and tattered with their skin showing through the gaps. They laughed as they chattered, their big even teeth gleaming white and strong against their bright pink tongues. They looked very happy, and the dotted rows of shingle huts looked picturesque under the shade of palms and mangoes, against the light green of the cane fields and the dark green of the foothills. Visitors from Europe and America were appalled by the squalor of these one-room shingle huts, but they were adequate for the needs of simple people; in the tropics they only needed cover at night and when it rained. And at night all they asked for was a small dark fortress whose windows they could nail up against evil spirits. They were well enough, these people, for the moment, till education developed different needs in them. Boyeur moved too fast; his appeal was not to their needs but to their cupidity.

  Maxwell turned out of the main street toward the jetty. A boatload of fish had been beached and the fishermen were selling off their catch. What on earth had that girl meant, saying that it was too rough to fish. She had probably only meant that no fisherman was going to sell to the big houses while the strike was on. They’d be acting differently when the pay cut came.

  He walked across the sand toward the boat. The group divided making way for him. There was a lobster in the catch. Lobster was not a delicacy to the Santa Martans. They used it as bait. He picked up the lobster, holding it by his head: its tail thrashed against his wrist. “How much?”

  There was a silence. The fishermen looked at one another. He had taken them off their guard. They were embarrassed. Lobster was cheap. Fifteen cents a pound. This couldn’t weigh more than two pounds. He took out a half crown and handed it across. It was so much too high a price that the men dared not argue. That was exactly what he had wanted, to take without argument the lobster they had refused to sell. It established his superiority.

  “Thanks very much,” he said.

  He was conscious of their eyes following him resentfully. He relished their humiliation.

  He drove straight home. “Matilda, come,” he called.

  He pointed to the lobster.

  “Why say no fish? Why say sea too rough?”

  She gaped at the lobster, her mouth open like a cod’s.

  “Take it away,” he said. “Lobster curry for lunch. Fried chicken dinner and bring now some boiling water; a cup, a spoon and a tin of Nescafé.

  “Not the kind of man who takes morning coffee.”

  It was the one thing he did need this morning, just as it had been the one thing that he had needed on the morning of the Governor’s cocktail party. If he had not been in that mood, in that condition then, would he have got so worked up about the smell of an Egyptian cigarette. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous in retrospect. It could all so easily not have happened. Nine times in ten Carson would have come to the son and not the sister. If he hadn’t been married, if he had been living at home, if it had happened eighteen months before … but if it had happened eighteen months before, it would not have happened at all. There’d have been no Sylvia to be jealous of then.

  How surprised those men who had formed the Belfontaine Committee would have been could they have foreseen to what their plans for Julian Fleury would lead eventually. The death of Carson and Julian Fleury’s son the prey of justice.

  The Belfontaine Committee. That was one of his first mistakes. How Whittingham had started when the name came out. The only time he had ever seen Whittingham start. The first mistake. The first of how many later ones. So many slips, right down the line. Whittingham knew: there was no doubt of that. Whittingham knew, and Whittingham was waiting: waiting and watching. Well, he could watch too. He must be on his guard, ruthless, relentless. Time was on his side. How many more years had Whittingham before retirement. Seven, ten: time passed quickly: Whittingham had been telling him that himself and only yesterday. He’d play out time.

  Matilda was at his side with the Nescafé and boiling water. He put in three teaspoonsful: he needed it strong and dark. Ah, that was better. He could play out time. He looked at his watch: quarter-past eleven. How soon could he ring up Sylvia. She would siesta late. She would go to the club most likely, since she hadn’t yesterday. She would be leaving around six. She might not be back till after eight. He must ring at half-past five then, or half-past eight. Six hours or nine.

  Never had six hours passed more slowly. He had nothing to do, nowhere to go, nobody to talk to. Forty-eight hours ago that honeymoon day had ended before it had seemed to have begun. But now, with Sylvia away, what was the point of picnicking, of going to the beach. He turned on the radio, but after half an hour the succession of rumbas from Puerto Rico got upon his nerves. Fie tried to pick up the B.B.C. Overseas program, but there was a static interference. He had brought a couple of novels, but neither held his attention. They seemed tame after Crime and Punishment.

  He lay down after lunch, but he could not sleep. When he pulled a sheet over his shoulders he was too hot; when he flung it off the intermittent wind struck coldly against his damp skin, whenever he was on the point of dozing off. He drove down to the beach where he had picnicked two days before. He could still detect the hollows in the sand that they had scooped for their hips and shoulders. He sat on the rock throwing stones at the tree stump. But it was no fun throwing stones by oneself; it was no fun doing anything by oneself.

  The sun sank slowly. What was that he had thought five hours ago, that time was on his side, that time passed quickly. If he found five hours drag, how was he going to wait out ten years.

  A sloop from Belfontaine was pitching and rolling on its way to Jamestown. The wind was behind it, and it was making rapid progress. It would anchor before nightfall. He wished that he was in it. What was happening in Jamestown? What was being discussed and planned there: at the club, at G.H., in the police station? If only he was invisible so that he could walk its streets, gauge the temper of its citizens, sit in on conferences, hearing and seeing without being seen.

  What was happening in Jamestown? If he rang Sylvia before she went to the club, she would be u
nable to tell him anything. She would have heard nothing beyond what she had been told at lunch time by his father. That was not likely to be much. His father rarely went to the Jamestown Club. He sat in his office all the morning. He heard no gossip. Sylvia would not have anything to tell him at half-past five, but later she might have, when she was back from the club. He’d call at half-past eight.

  What was happening in Jamestown? It was shortly after four. Suppose he went home right now and changed. If he drove fast he would be at the club by six, see and hear for himself and be back in Belfontaine before the congo drums had started their rhythmic beating. He could, of course he could. But wasn’t that the very thing he mustn’t do? Wasn’t that what playing for time meant? Keeping away from Jamestown, keeping away from Whittingham, resisting the pull of that magnet. Keep away from Jamestown.

  Matilda had set out on the veranda the decanter of rum, the ice thermos, the limes, the glasses and the angostura. He carried the decanter back into the dining room. Not again. Whittingham had been right about solitary drinking. You drank too fast when you were alone. You brooded and your hand went out to the glass beside you. You didn’t pace your own drinking to another’s. Never again. He couldn’t afford to give away points in this game.

  Out of the corner of his eye as he turned back to the veranda he saw the telephone in the hall. Quarter-past five. He could call Sylvia now. She was certain to be awake. He longed to hear her voice, he longed to hear any human voice. Somebody to talk to, anyone to talk to. But no, he couldn’t call her twice; that would seem suspicious; and he had to hear what was going on in Jamestown.

  He tried once again to get the B.B.C. Overseas program. This time he was more successful. There was no static. The voice came through full and resonant. The Minister of State for the Colonies was describing an average day in the life of a member of the cabinet. Every week someone from a different walk of life gave a picture of his profession. It was a popular program, and Maxwell had listened to it more than once.

  “One of my chief problems,” the minister was saying, “is the putting of myself into the position of the Governor with whom I am in correspondence. He is living in a different climate, and—and this is a most important point—he is surrounded by men of a different race, bred very often to a different religion, speaking a different language; men at whose thought processes he can only guess. Each Governor with whom I am in correspondence is living in an atmosphere very different from my own.

  “I am sitting for instance in my office in Westminster on a sunny September afternoon; there is a breeze, the sun is shining, the trees in my garden at home are starting to turn golden. I am at peace with the world. I am reading a report from, let us say, the Governor of Aden. Do I detect in that report a certain, shall I say, listlessness? I have to remind myself that the man who wrote that report has been living for the last five months on the edge of the desert with the temperature vacillating between one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty-four degrees. He has had no weekend escape into the cool of the hills; he has been surrounded with Arabic speaking Moslems. He has been exposed to sand flies and dust storms. Is it surprising that toward the end of the summer his staff is exhausted and his own nerves are on edge?

  “And then while I am considering this report, the telephone goes and I am informed that a question is to be asked in the house about a group of West Indian islands. I have to remind myself that the Governor of those islands is living under conditions that are every bit as trying but are completely different. The heat there is damp and muggy. It rains a lot. The hurricane season is beginning. In every decade one or other of these islands is the victim of a disaster that cannot be foreseen but that will demand from the Governor and his staff prompt and efficient action. I have to visualize that particular Governor’s problem in terms of heat, damp, mosquitoes, and the constant apprehension that at any moment the telephone may summon him to an appalling loss of life and property. It is my business, therefore…”

  The Minister explained what his business was. If it was hard for the speaker, Maxwell thought, to picture the conditions under which the Governors he had appointed were carrying out his instructions, how much harder was it for the West Indian like himself who had never left the Caribbean, to picture the conditions under which the destinies of his island were being administered by a man three thousand miles away in a city of smoke and fog and snow and open fires, things he himself had never seen.

  What kind of a man was this whose firm and resonant voice was ringing through the West Indian air? How old was he, was he good looking, had he a wife, what kind of a home had he? He wished there were television here, so that he could visualize him. Did he worry about Santa Marta? Was it too small to occupy his interests? Had he ever heard of David Boyeur? Had H.E. reported the scene at the Leg. Co. meeting? Had his own name, Maxwell Fleury, figured in the report? It was strange to think that this man who was talking now from three thousand miles might have been wondering as he read the Governor’s report whether there was a personal enmity between these two young councilors, and if so, what was it about?

  What was it about indeed when it came to that? What had started this bitter quarrel between himself and Boyeur? Why had Boyeur organized that demonstration at his election meeting? That as far as he was concerned was the start of it. But why had Boyeur done it? There had been no feud between them as far as he knew. They had hardly ever met. Why, why, why? And how could this politician whose voice was now taking on the sermonic roll of an approaching peroration, understand the why and wherefore of an island feud when the persons concerned did not know the cause of it?

  “Those, I repeat, are my chief problems,” the voice concluded. “I do not start to claim that I have solved or am solving them, but it is something, nay ‘tis much, as the poet said, to be able to recognize the nature and the dimensions of the task ahead.”

  There was a second’s pause, then the announcer’s voice, “You have just been listening to the Right Honorable Mr. Robert Marsh, His Majesty’s Minister of State for the Colonies, speaking on ‘A Day in the life of a Cabinet Minister.’ Next week at this time you will hear Canon Edward Westlake, the Headmaster of Fernhurst School, address you on ‘A Day in the life of a Headmaster.’ We will now take you over …”

  Maxwell smiled as the first bars of a symphony orchestra drifted from the radio. He turned it down, so that it provided a background to the mingled murmurous noises of early evening.

  “A Day in the life of a Headmaster.” “A Day in the life of a Cabinet Minister”; figures of influence and importance discussing the routine, the surface of their lives, avoiding personal problems. Would not it be more interesting to have obscure anonymous individuals, describing their own private hells, the private prisons that their misfortunes built for them? “A day in the life of a man who knows but cannot prove that his wife is unfaithful,” “A day in the life of an unarrested murderer.”

  That now would be a subject. A day such as his today? No, not like today. A day like Wednesday, when he had driven into town with Sylvia, seen his parents, discussed the estate problems with his father, interviewed the police officer who was hunting him, then driven out alone to his estate to brood on his situation. What a theme that would be for a radio broadcast!

  It would be unique. No murderer had told the truth about himself. Every other kind of criminal had done so. But in the nature of things no murderer could. Up till his last minute he had to protest his innocence, in the hope of a reprieve. Novelists without number had tried to enter imaginatively into the mind of a murderer. Several had succeeded. Dostoevski surely had. But no murderer in the history of the world had told the truth about himself. He had a unique piece of information to give the world.

  It was a new idea to him. If he were to write down exactly what he had done, exactly what he had felt from the moment that he had risen from Carson’s lifeless body, he would leave behind a document that would be read as long as books were printed. He knew something that no one else i
n the world knew, except other murderers, and they were silent.

  What a story he had to tell. All through these weeks he had been carrying on, with his private life unchanged upon the surface. He had stood for election and he had won a seat; he had supervised his estate, and for the first time successfully. He had begotten a child and for the first time he had known what it was to be loved whole-heartedly. He had knocked his childhood’s chip from off his shoulder. He had humbled Boyeur in the Leg. Co. Yet all the time he had nursed a gnawing secret, all the time he had been exposed to Whittingham’s slow insidious campaign. Day by day he had felt his defenses weaken. How well Dostoevski had put that when he had made his detective say, “If I leave one man quite alone, if I don’t touch him and don’t worry him, but let him know or at least suspect every moment that I know all about it and am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he’ll be bound to lose his head. He’ll come of himself or maybe do something which will make it as plain as twice two are four. With an intelligent man it’s a dead certainty.”

  That’s how Whittingham had been treating him, playing with him, reminding him that he lived in a private prison, walled in by fear and guilt. By fear and guilt? Ah, but that’s where Whittingham, that’s where Dostoevski had got it wrong. He had felt no guilt; not for a second. On the contrary he had had a sense of pride, of self-vindication. He had pictured himself making his announcement to the police; he had heard in his imagination the incredulous ejaculations at the Country Club, “What! Maxwell Fleury!”

  He had felt no shame; why should he have felt shame? He had not plotted the thing. He had been inspired by no base motive. He had not killed out of jealousy, out of revenge. He had not killed to steal, to inherit, to supplant. He had killed in open fight; honorably; in a duel, one man’s hand against another. How had it happened? He had seen red suddenly, he had been blinded by one of those spasms of ungovernable rage that had made him in the nursery scratch his nurse and stamp upon his toys, that had made him goad Boyeur at the Leg. Co. meeting.