by Alec Waugh
All his life he had been subject to these fits of fury. Were they, he wondered—it was the first time the idea had occurred to him—a legacy from Africa: did that infinitesimal fraction of colored blood in his veins arbitrarily assert its domination; could it be that; was that too fanciful an explanation? What would Whittingham have to say on that point. Did Whittingham’s experience include…
He checked, the corollary to his stream of introspection was suddenly terrifyingly apparent. The picture of himself at the microphone, at his desk, declaiming the record of what he only knew. From what source other than one, could it have sprung? The need to confess, the need to be absolved not of guilt in his case, but of isolation. A time would come when he must break out of prison. Sooner or later, he would be sitting in that chair at the police station, talking, talking…. He foresaw that moment as clearly as a leper sees on his skin the first flake of the sore, painless as yet, that will one day cripple him.
In the hall behind him, the telephone rang once, twice, three times. He hurried in to answer it.
“Yes, who is that?”
“Darling, why such impatience?”
She was going to cocktails with the Normans, and she was staying on to supper. She’d wanted to be sure of talking to him. How was he? Was he being properly fed? Was everything all right?
It was a lover’s conversation. Her voice was fond and light and happy. The voice of a wife in love, confident in her husband’s love, without a trouble in the world. His own heart warmed in response.
“Darlingest, I must rush. Sleep well. Keep missing me.”
There was a click from the other end. He stood beside the machine, in a mood very similar to that in which he had stood there the night before; a mood of pride and gratitude; what had he done to deserve this of fate? But now there was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction. They had had their evening talk. She was not going to the tennis club. She’d have no gossip to report to him. What was happening in Jamestown?
3
Three hours later Maxwell was pacing restlessly the length of the veranda. The tennis club would be empty now. Who had been there? What had been said? How had the gossip run? His eyes were tired, but his mind was racing. Sleep was impossible even though he had taken no siesta. The rum decanter stood untouched upon the sideboard. Not again. He must keep his mind clear. He was not beaten yet. Whittingham did not know everything. Dostoevski did not know everything. If he could keep away from Jamestown, could keep away from that small hot room. Keep away from Whittingham. Make Whittingham come to him. Play the match on his own ground. But he had to know what was happening in Jamestown.
Quarter to nine. The Normans must have finished supper: or at any rate their cocktail guests would have gone. They wouldn’t be sitting down to a meal. There’d be buffet food. He could call Sylvia now. She could report at any rate on the gossip at the Normans’.
He was a long while getting through. The party line was in use; when he did get through he first heard Mavis faintly against a babble of raised voices. It sounded like one of those cocktail parties from which no one went away. He had to shout to make himself heard. When at last Sylvia was brought to the telephone her voice sounded anxious. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. What should be wrong?”
“You ringing up again.”
“Are you surprised at my feeling lonely?”
“Oh, darling.”
But there was in her voice a sense of being somewhere else, of not being attuned yet to the telephone. He ought to ring off, but he had rung up for a specific reason. Was it a large party, he asked. Yes, she told him, twenty to twenty-five: it sounded as though most of them were still there, he said. As a matter of fact most of them were, she answered.
“I don’t suppose Whittingham was there?”
“Well, yes, he was.”
“What had he got on his mind?”
“Would you like me to ask him, he’s two yards away.”
“Good God no, no.”
“Oh darling, what a scream.”
“I’m sorry, but hang it all I rang up to talk to you not Whittingham.”
“I know, but since you mentioned him. Why did you?”
“Heaven knows. Who else is there?”
They gossiped for a minute or two, but talk was difficult against the noise of the party. He’d better ring off, he told her.
“Had you? I suppose you had. Oh, but there is one other thing, about Sunday. Couldn’t you come in for the day, picnic at Grande Anse, then if you want to, go back afterward.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“That’s fine, only three days till then. I’ll be counting hours. Good-night, my precious.”
He leant his head against the woodwork. What a narrow escape. Suppose she had called Whittingham to the telephone. What could he have found to say to him. For that matter, had he escaped at all? At that very moment Sylvia might be turning to Whittingham with a “That was Maxwell. He was asking after you.” And Whittingham would nod and giggle, like the fool he wasn’t.
How could he have been so silly, but that, hadn’t it, had been Whittingham’s point from the very start. The subconscious took charge. That remark of his about the Belfontaine Committee. Why had that sprung out? You could never trust yourself. There was only one remedy. Keep away from danger. Avoid Jamestown and Sunday rum punches at Grande Anse. Cut that out.
He thought fast. Denis Archer. Why not remind him of that invitation, ask him and his girl out for the day? He’d jump at the invitation. No one ever followed up a vague, general invitation. But a second definite invitation: it was worth trying.
He called G.H. Yes, the A.D.C. was in. That was a piece of luck.
“You remember saying yesterday”—was it only yesterday—“that you’d like to come here for dinner. I’ve a better idea. Come out on Sunday. After breakfast and spend the whole day here. You can: now that’s fine. Come out as early as you like. Go back next day.”
That was a piece of luck. He could write a facetious note to Sylvia explaining that he had been cast unexpectedly for the role of gooseberry. There was no chance of her finding out that he had called Archer after he had promised her to come in on Sunday. He could say that Archer had taken up a vague invitation, that he did not want to disappoint him. He was safe for the moment.
But only for the moment. He could not keep this up for long. He could not keep permanently away from Jamestown. On Wednesday week there was the Leg. Co. meeting. He would have to come in for that. The strike would not last forever. This week or next, this month or next, the strike would end. He would resume the familiar pattern of his routine, exposed once again to Whittingham’s incessant scrutiny: at the mercy of his subconscious self, exhausted more and more by the longing to be free, the longing to confess, to get it all off his chest. I don’t stand a chance, he thought. I’m licked.
He found a simile from the cricket field. The third evening of a six day match. A side has followed on four hundred runs behind, four wickets are down in their second innings for under a hundred runs. A stand has started. The fast bowlers are tired and have been taken off; the left-hand spinner has hurt his finger. Only a quarter of an hour before stumps are drawn. The batsmen should play out time. Defeat will not come tonight as ninety minutes ago seemed possible. The batsmen will be applauded when they return to the pavilion. But even so there is no hope; there are three days left. The fast bowlers will be refreshed by sleep; a doctor will have fixed the left-hander’s finger. Three more days to play, a deficit of three hundred runs. Nothing can save the side but rain; torrential, three days rain. I’m licked, he thought.
He returned to his long chair on the veranda and flung himself full length on it. He was tired, mentally and physically, at the end of this one day, the first out of how many days. He was licked and knew it.
4
Only rain could save him.
That night shortly after one he was woken by a heavy downpour. As he lay, sleepless, listening to the
drumbeat of the raindrops on the corrugated iron roof, thinking in terms of cricket, he remembered his father telling him of a Test Match long ago in Sydney when Australia had been set in the fourth innings a meager hundred and fifty runs. That night it had rained, as it only can in Sydney. No one in the city slept except one man, Peel, the Yorkshire slow left-hander who, anticipating a fast wicket the next day, had fallen among friends. He slept through it all. He arrived next morning at the ground, bleareyed with a splitting headache. He eyed the puddled asphalt with surprise.
“Looks as though it had rained,” he said.
He was the one man in Sydney who did not know it had.
His captain eyeing him sternly, diagnosed the situation.
“It certainly has rained. There is a sticky dog out there. You go and bowl them out on it.”
Peel did. England won by ten runs. But when the cheering had subsided, Peel was found sitting in a corner of the dressing room, his head between his hands, not yet fully aware of what had happened.
Only rain could save him. For three-quarters of an hour the rain beat upon the roof, rendering sleep impossible. Cricketers on the eve of a defeat would have gathered hope from it. Nature could always intervene. Fifty years ago, a hundred miles from here, in Martinique, the volcano of Mont Pelée had erupted, and thirty thousand people had perished in forty-five seconds. When the news of that disaster reached Fort-de-France, many secretly must have thought “That lets me out.” Evidence of debt, evidence of guilt, records of loans had been destroyed. Sons had inherited estates unexpectedly, an unloved husband had made way for the young lover. To quite a few in Fort-de-France the disaster of Saint Pierre must have been good news. How would he feel sitting here at Belfontaine if a hurricane hit Jamestown. He would anxiously await news of Sylvia and his parents, but would he not also and in a very different spirit be awaiting news of Whittingham. Suppose a high-flung boulder crashed into the police station, hit a lamp and gutted it. Suppose a falling beam pinioned Whittingham beneath its weight. His own troubles would be over then.
It was not impossible. The hurricane season was approaching. It was many years since hurricane or earthquake had struck Santa Marta. Practically every other island had been hit. The immunity of Santa Marta could not last forever. It might happen. He indulged his pipedream, as the drum beat of the rain became a gentle patter.
He woke to a clear morning. The sea was waveless. The palm fronds were not rustling. There was no wind. Absence of wind was the first sign of a hurricane. He had never been in one. He had listened to those who had described it. The temperature went up or down. He could not remember which. You knew about an hour before it struck. It sent its warnings. Whittingham would know about it. He’d have the right security precautions in the station. He had a hurricane-proof shelter there, most likely: as generals had bomb-proof dugouts. Whittingham would not be in any danger. Whittingham would sit at the center of his spider’s web, receiving reports of damage, sending out help when it was required. Whittingham was safe.
It was not the way he had pictured it in his last night’s pipedream. It would not be Maxwell Fleury sitting safe at Belfontaine who would wait for news of Whittingham in Jamestown, but Whittingham secure in his dugout who would wait news of Maxwell Fleury in his exposed estate house on the windward coast. The roles were reversed. If the news came in that Belfontaine had been destroyed and Maxwell Fleury killed, how cheated Whittingham would feel. His cleverness had been foiled by nature. It would be an end….
Maxwell checked; a new idea had struck him. Rain could save him still. There was another way out of his troubles. A second pipedream began to form.
As he sat on the veranda, he imagined the news of the disaster being brought to Jamestown. He pictured Sylvia receiving it. She would be desolate, heartbroken; but she was young, she was attractive. She would get over it. She would marry again within a year or two. But nothing would efface his memory. He was the man who had taught her love, had revealed her to herself. She would never forget that, never. His child would be brought up to honor him. His grandchildren would honor him.
It would be the same with his parents. His mother would remember that last fond talk. “He was always my favorite,” she would say. “Mothers always do have a favorite. But I was worried about him, I don’t mind confessing it, now. He was difficult. But these last weeks he was a different person. It was Sylvia’s faith in him. Yes, I’m sure it was that. And then the baby coming. He’d have been a fine father, I’m sure of that.”
He could hear his father saying, “Yes, I’ll admit it. I was worried about Maxwell. He was not running that estate the way he should have done. He was not getting the work out of the men. When I planned a trip to England in the autumn, I considered putting Preston in charge of the estate and bringing Maxwell into town where he couldn’t do much damage. But these last months he’s become aware of his responsibilities. Frankly I was against his running for the Leg. Co. I did not think he stood a chance of making it. But I was wrong; completely wrong. I see now that he was at the start of what would have been a very fine career.”
He could hear them talking about him at the club. He knew how they had felt about him four months ago. On the eve of the Governor’s cocktail party he had looked at himself in the glass, wondering what was wrong with him, what put people off, why no one liked him. It was different now. Silence did not fall on a group the moment that he joined it. Men came up to him when he stood alone. They would say friendly things about him in the club. Whittingham would be silenced. Whittingham would have been foiled. If, as some said, one lingered after death, an invisible presence, around the places and among the people one had known, he would chuckle over Whittingham’s discomfiture.
If a hurricane or earthquake struck Santa Marta, he would welcome it. He would not take cover, he would sit here on the veranda waiting for the earth to tremble, for the house to split, for the boulders to tear down the hills, for an overturned lamp to pour its rivulets of flame along the floor; the way he had seen it in the films.
All day long he indulged his pipedream, hearing the voices at the club, picturing the look of disappointment on Whittingham’s fat silly face.
5
Next day the wind was blowing, the sky was gray, the sea was rough. These were not the forewarnings of a hurricane. He must think again. For the sake of exercise, he walked into the village. It looked exactly as it had two days before, lazy, listless, picturesque. He went on to the jetty and sat at the end, swinging his legs over the side. The sea was rougher than he had thought, looking at it from his veranda. He was a strong swimmer, but he doubted if he would be wise in a sea like that to swim beyond his depth.
Suppose he swam out to the horizon, would not that be the equivalent of a hurricane’s splitting the foundations of Belfontaine? It would be reported as an accident: no scandal, no shame would be attached. At first they would be surprised in Belfontaine, because they knew him to be a powerful swimmer. But on second considerations they would agree that it was simply because he was a powerful swimmer that he had outswum his strength, underestimated the power of the current. A weak swimmer would have stayed near the shore. No blame, no criticism would be attached. Whittingham would be silenced.
Another pipedream flowered. He remembered that conversation with Jocelyn and Denis Archer at G.H. on the subject of suicide. They had been discussing the easiest method of suicide that would give the appearance of an accident, since often the whole purpose of suicide was to avoid scandal for the family. Wasn’t that his own position? But for Sylvia, but for his unborn child, he would be ready to accept Whittingham’s offer, to throw himself on Whittingham’s mercy. Five years, that might be reduced to three, was not too much for anyone as young as himself. He would not be twenty-five when he was free. He could go to England or to one of the Dominions, he could start afresh, he could change his name, if he had only himself to consider. But he had not only himself to consider. There was Sylvia and the child who would bear his name. A child of his
must not know the shame of owning to a father who had committed suicide. That was the crux of the whole problem. It must look like an accident.
If he swam out in a sea as rough as this, who would suspect that he had swum out on purpose. He had only to change into bathing trunks and tell Matilda that he was going to the beach, but that he would be back for lunch; he would order a certain type of omelette, he would leave a half finished letter on his desk, a book with a marker in it beside his chair; he would leave the house at half-past ten. Long before Matilda began to worry about his absence, it would all be over. He would be beyond the reach of any search party. He would leave an honored name.
How easy it would be. He could do it now, if there were any need. He held the remedy in his hand. He had no need to worry. The moment that danger threatened, he could take that medicine. When they had discussed suicide that evening at G.H. no one had suggested swimming out to sea—sleeping in the snow, pheno-barbitone in ships that had no doctor, but to no one had the obvious situation occurred, swim out to sea till your strength failed.
He raised the point next day when Archer came out for lunch. They had taken a picnic to the beach, the same beach to which he had taken Sylvia on that last day together. It was a warm, sultry morning, with occasional brief bursts of rain sweeping up the valley. The sea looked calm and friendly and inviting.
“It would be very easy to swim out there till one was too tired to swim any longer. Why didn’t one of us suggest drowning that night at G.H. when we were talking about suicide?”
“I thought of it,” Archer said, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea; it takes too long.”
“Why’s that a drawback?”
“You might change your mind.”
“Is that likely? If a man’s made up his mind.”
“Do we ever do that, without mental reservations? The will to live is very strong. It can suddenly reassert itself: particularly when other impulses weaken. And when you are growing tired, the fear of punishment and of disgrace might lessen. I knew a stockbroker, a man in the late fifties; he was a gambler; he knew that one day he might be unable to meet his bargains. He was resolved not to be hammered on the Stock Exchange. He had evolved, he told me, a foolproof scheme of suicide, so that nobody could guess what had happened. He had two pills. He was going to take one and then a quarter of an hour later he was going to ring up his doctor and say that he was suffering in a certain way, asking him to come round at once, he would then take the second pill, and before the doctor could arrive the two pills working together would make his death consistent with the symptoms that he had rung up about.”