by Alec Waugh
Mavis smiled wryly. The three inseparables again. But you couldn’t put back the clock. They had all been under twenty then, she and Sylvia and Jocelyn: Life had been limitless in opportunity; there was nothing they could not do. But Sylvia was a widow and would be a mother soon, and Doris looked upon them not as equals but as guides and mentors, and she herself, how the possibilities had narrowed for her, the horizon had shortened, with the bright faith tarnished. “The three inseparables” belonged to yesterday.
Her mother at her side was grumbling over young Archer’s marriage.
“It’s the most ridiculous and disgraceful thing I ever heard of. H.E. should have stopped it.”
“How could he, mother?”
“Easily enough if he had wanted. He let enough things happen that he should have stopped.”
Mrs. Norman as well as her husband considered she had a grievance against the Governor. She had been full of happy anticipations when he had arrived here with a young and good-looking A.D.C. and the prospect of being joined by his young good-looking son. What a chance for Mavis. Yet here, ten months later, not only was Mavis still unmarried but Sylvia was back upon her hands. She didn’t imagine that she would be upon them long. Pretty young widows invariably remarried quickly; particularly if they had a dowry. And Belfontaine was entailed upon Maxwell’s child. But that was some while off. There was all this business first of the child’s being born. It was exciting to be a grandmother. But even so … Mrs. Norman was disgruntled. She did not want to examine in too close detail the causes of her irritation. It was easier to focus that irritation upon some other point; Archer’s marriage did as well as anything.
“It’s the most disgraceful thing. What an example to the island. It’ll make every girl in town feel that she’s only got to set her cap at the right angle to capture one of us; and the young men are so feeble they’ll let themselves be captured. They believe it’s all right since an A.D.C. does it. And with the Governor’s approval, in the same airplane as the Governor. It breaks down everything we’ve stood for. Well, they’ve got a bad time ahead of them, that’s all I can say. They’ll pay for it. What will his parents think? A daughter-in-law that’s nearly black, a hole and corner wedding. He won’t be able to take her anywhere. She’ll ruin him professionally. A good thing too, I say. The only pity is that nobody here will know. The young people need a lesson.”
Mavis made no reply. What was the point of arguing? She had heard her mother speak in that way so often. And it was untrue. It must be. Surely times had changed. They were living in the twentieth century. Good luck to them, she thought.
To her right the band broke into “Auld Lang Syne.” The plane was beginning to move. Whittingham’s voice rang out: “Present Arms!” There was the crack of wrists on magazines. A roar went up from the crowd. Someone shouted, “Three cheers for the Governor.” A section of the crowd was singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow.” The playing of the band was drowned. The noise was a vast jungle roar. Templeton encased in his hermetic cabinet could hear none of it. He was waving his hand, but the crowd with the light shining on the windows could not see him. The plane lifted from the ground, soared high above the cane fields, slowly circled the airport and turned northward. The shouting lessened as the drone of the engines became fainter.
There they went, thought Mavis. Jocelyn and Euan, Margot and Denis Archer, and the big man himself. She watched the machine grow smaller: a faint and fainter flicker of silver against the pale blue of the morning sky. It had gone, it gleamed again; then vanished; she could hear it when she could no longer see it.
She turned away. The cheering was now a chattering, the crowd started to disperse.
“When do you think we’ll hear about the next Governor?” Doris was inquiring.
The next Governor. With the last one barely out of sight. The next Governor. It would all have to begin again, and when it was over, the three years reign finished, she would be standing here beside some equivalent for Doris wondering what the next Governor would be like, waving good-by to Doris very likely, Doris whose turn it would be to return to England as a bride. Everyone seemed to be settling their fates, one way or another, everyone except herself.
She looked back to the G.H.’s garden party; it was only seven months ago. How many fates had been decided in those seven months—Sylvia and Jocelyn, Margot and Denis Archer, Boyeur and Muriel Morris: Maxwell and Colonel Carson and the Governor; that newspaper man, Carl Bradshaw, and with what réclame for him. His face on every bookstall. Even Grainger had made, hadn’t he, his big decision during this half year? Everyone except herself.
Grainger was only a few yards away and she moved toward him. He welcomed her with that friendly smile that always made her feel that she was someone special.
“How does this affect you?” she asked.
He shrugged.
“I can’t tell yet. But I shall resign my appointment when the new Governor arrives.”
“Oh, Grainger.”
“It’s the only fair thing to do. A new regime needs new officers.”
“Surely he won’t accept it.”
“He will in the way I put it. I’d only stay on if I was convinced he really needed me. But I’m sure he won’t. I’d be an embarrassment to him. I couldn’t bear being that, to anyone.”
“An embarrassment. Why should you be?”
“Because Lord Templeton was recalled, and in part because he backed me up in my decision not to prosecute David Boyeur. I offered to resign then, but he refused. He’ll speak up for me in London. But the new man will want to run things in his own way. He’s a right to that. If after he’s been here a little while he comes to believe that I’m the man he wants … but he must be allowed to make that decision for himself.”
“That means the ruin of everything you’ve worked for.”
He shook his head.
“It means a delay: that’s all; and perhaps everything’s gone too quickly and too easily for me up to now. Later on this will stand me in good stead.”
He spoke with assurance, in an attempt to convince himself as much as her.
“At the moment,” he went on, “the colored people are on my side, and the Sugar Barons are against me. Everyone thinks that I’ve taken the black man’s side against the white. That isn’t true. I’ve taken the side of justice. Later on there’ll come a day when I take action against a colored man, on the white man’s side. When that day comes it’ll be remembered that I once took a colored man’s side in a key case and resigned my appointment in consequence. They’ll learn that I’m impartial. They’ll trust me to administer justice.”
He spoke in much the same way that he had spoken to the Governor. His voice took on again that deeper tone. He spoke with conviction, not so much of his own eventual reestablishment, as in the victory of the cause he stood for. Her heart glowed in response, warmed and fired by his fervor. What a man he was, how puny he made all the other men about her seem. How tawdry were their ambitions in comparison with his. And to think that he had selected her out of the whole island as his confidante.
“The one person in the island that I can speak to openly.” The accents of that avowal would ring in her memory until she died. Five minutes ago she had been thinking dejectedly that during the last seven months everyone’s fate had been decided, except hers. That wasn’t true. She wasn’t the same person that she had been then. His faith in her had restored her, had shown her that she was something more than an easy date for the visiting fireman. Her friends might see no difference in her, but she knew deep in her heart that there were now certain things that she could never be.
“Mavis, we’re going now.”
It was her mother calling. Mavis looked up questioningly at Grainger.
“Can you drive me back.”
“Certainly.”
They walked to the car park slowly.
“Did you know Margot Seaton?” she asked.
“Barely.”
“What do you think o
f her marrying Denis Archer?”
“It may be the making of him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When young men marry the kind of girl who is as they say suited to him in every way it often turns out wrong. If a man marries a girl whom the world thinks quite unsuitable, it means that he really wants her. That’s the best augury isn’t it?”
“Everyone thinks he’s marrying her because she’s going to have a baby.”
“I’d doubt that. Archer’s not the kind of young man to do anything quixotic. He’s ambitious. He wouldn’t saddle himself with a wife he didn’t want.”
“What’ll his parents say?”
“There’s nothing they can say. He’s presenting them with a fait accompli. He’s been very wise in that. If he’d taken her over as a fiancée, for their approval, they’d have done everything to stop it, but as it is they’ve got to welcome her.”
“But what about his career? You say that he’s ambitious. Won’t it go against him to marry somebody as dark as that?”
Grainger shook his head.
“She isn’t all that dark and they don’t worry about that kind of thing in England. Which is something nobody realizes here. Color prejudice is confined to the countries that have a color problem, South Africa, the Southern States, and here. England hasn’t got a color problem. Besides Archer’s going to lead a Bohemian, ragamuffin life. Artists are expected to be irresponsible. They provide the color and contrast to existence. An artist would look silly with a rolled umbrella. An exotic wife like Margot will be an asset. She’s very picturesque.”
“It’s a relief to hear that.”
They had reached his car but the park was crowded still. Grainger’s car was hemmed in. They would have to wait a moment longer. They stood together, waiting.
“Do you think that works the other way,” she said.
“How do you mean, the other way?”
“In a girl’s case. They say things are different for a woman. They say that even now. The double standard. Should a girl marry somebody unsuitable, if she really needs him, if she feels he’s right for her… Denis Archer marries Margot. Euan marries Jocelyn. But when it’s the other way around… Is there any difference?”
She was talking quickly, hesitatingly, with pauses between the clauses, with a dogged resolution. If she did not say it now, she would never get it said. She had to take the first step, hadn’t she. “The one person I can talk to openly,” but she had had to call him. All his training would assure him that he was outside her range….
Her toes curled inside her sandals. This course was opposed to all her instincts. Men should initiate. But this case was different. She looked up. He was so strong, so straight. He was such a man: he was the one man who had believed in her; could he not do for her what Margot would do for Denis. This was her one chance, she must speak now.
Grainger stood looking down at her, it was utterly unexpected: he had never dared to dream that Mavis felt like this about him. The prospect dazzled him. But even so….
“Why should there be any difference?” she was saying. The car behind his was backing.
“Now’s our chance; jump in quick,” he said.
He was thinking fast, desperately fast. She must be spared the humiliation of a refusal. She must be stopped from uttering the words that in her mind she had already framed. She must put that dream away forever, must be convinced of the utter impossibility of a shared life for them.
He set the car in gear and released the clutch.
“It’s strange,” he said, “that you should be asking me about marriage, a celibate like myself: though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Catholic priests express themselves strongly on matters on which they can never have any practical experience.”
“What are you talking about?”
He was speaking lightly, almost flippantly; giving no indication that a few seconds before she had been talking with such fierce intensity. She was puzzled, upset, almost indignant at his tone.
“What do you mean, a celibate like yourself?” she asked.
“It’s what I am.”
For the first time he had fully realized, was able to formulate in words, what he had long in his subconscious suspected, that he was as much a celibate as any priest, since for certain dedicated persons, there is implicit in their acceptance of a calling, the denial of a right to personal happiness. He had as a colored man taken up a cause, a mission; and he must never accept responsibilities that could claim precedence over his allegiance to that cause: never, never, never. He must try to explain to her what had now become clear to him at last, the nature and obligations of his calling.
“I don’t want to seem presumptuous,” he said. “I don’t want to make out that I’m more important than I am, or indeed that I am important, but there are certain people who can’t carry out the work they’ve set themselves if they accept the privileges and responsibilities of marriage.”
Slowly, carefully he guided the car out of the park, talking as he drove.
“I told you, didn’t I, about that girl in England whom I would like to have married, whom I didn’t feel it would be fair to bring out here. Since I’ve come back here, I’ve realized that it wouldn’t be fair to any girl for me to marry her. I couldn’t be a good husband and father and do my work the way I want.”
He underlined the “and.”
“Why do you say that? Why do you make yourself out to be a special case?”
“Because I am a special case, because I’m a fourth colored.”
“Why should that matter?”
“Because I’d have colored children. They’d be special cases; every colored child is a special case. All my arguments would be affected by that case, and would be weakened. No matter what kind of woman I married, whether she was completely white or completely black, people would say the same thing, ‘He argues like that because his wife is this and his children that.’ They will say something like that anyhow. They’ll say ‘Of course he feels like that, look at the color of his skin’; but they’ll say it much less if I stand alone, and in the end they’ll stop saying it altogether if I continue to stand alone. Gradually they’ll come to realize that I’m a man without an ax to grind, that I am impartial because I can afford to be impartial. That’s how the people must see me, as a man without an ax to grind.”
She made no reply. Her hands clenched. She stared at the road ahead.
What an escape she’d had. Another minute and she would have proposed to him. What a fool she would have felt. She’d never have dared look him in the face again. She’d never have dared look anyone in the face again. The story would have got round; stories always did in a small place like this. He’d have told someone else; one always had to tell someone else: one extracted the most dire vows of secrecy, but they were always broken. What an escape!
“Where would you like to be dropped, your house, the tennis club?” he asked.
“Is my house out of your way?”
“Not at all.”
“That would be fine by me then.”
He swung north along the bay. The tension was broken. The danger point was passed. But something more needed to be said. She must be in a desperate state to have reached such a point. Was there nothing he could do, nothing he could say to make her feel happier about herself. Surely there must be something.
Perhaps this was it.
“I had a letter from a friend in England two days ago that made me think of you,” he said and his voice was gentle. “He said a rather curious thing. He runs an employment agency and he told me that he was finding it very hard to find for certain special and confidential jobs young women with pleasant voices. He said that there was growing up now a uniform, standardized way of speaking that has no charm, no character: he used the simile of filtered water that has no taste. Young women from simple homes listen to the B.B.C., imitate the voices that they hear there, and iron out the small local differences of accent and intonation that once gave th
eir voices charm. There are many jobs now, he said for the young woman with a pleasant voice who’s prepared to work; so many of the girls who have pleasant voices aren’t prepared to work. Their idea of work is a job where you meet interesting people, arrive at half-past ten, have two and a half hours off for lunch and go home at five. I thought of you. Why don’t you take a trip to England and see what it’s like. There’s so little to do here that’s worth the while of someone like yourself.”
He had drawn up outside her house. His smile sent a warm feeling of self-confidence along her veins, that made her feel good about herself.
“You could surely manage a trip,” he said. “Copra’s booming. It’s the time to go. I’ll write to my friend if you like and get some facts. You’d enjoy working if you had a job that you believed in. Why not think over it?”
“I will.”
England. Why not? It was an idea. Copra was booming. She’d got so used to thinking of hard times that she hadn’t realized that the hard times were over: she hadn’t got adjusted to the fact that you could now afford a trip to England. Why not, after all, why not?
3
That night once again Grainger sat alone upon the veranda of his father’s house. He would not be sitting here alone so many more times. That afternoon he had found an apartment near his chambers that suited his requirements. He would sign the lease tomorrow. Very few renovations were required. He would be moving into it within two weeks. Afterward when he came to this house it would be as a guest.