Caribbean: a novel Part 35

He showed her the almost invisible exit from the paved streets of the town to an earthen trail which would have been appropriate for cattle but not for a car accustomed to well-kept highways. But the man wanted to be helpful, so he a.s.sured Delia: 'You drive slow, strong car, you get there fine.' She thanked him with a huge, warm smile and took off down the dusty trail at a speed much greater than he would have advised.

Now McKay insisted that he be taken into her confidence: 'Tell me what we're doing or I'm getting out.'

'Not likely!' she said half scornfully. 'You jump out of this car at this speed and you'll be a dead pigeon.'

'Does it have to do with what Leckey and I came upon the other night?'

'Let's just say you're my alibi.' She flushed, turned her eyes from the path, gave him an almost anguished look of appreciation, and said almost tearfully: 'You know what that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Leckey's done? Because Etienne dared to kiss a white girl, he's been dismissed from the council, lost his job with the Tourist Board, and his jewelry business is already beginning to suffer!'

'I can't believe it. What a rotten deal ...'

She leaned forward over the wheel as if to distance herself from McKay, then said in sincere frustration: 'Have you ever reflected that in London, Etienne would be a sensation with those good looks, those manners, his solid education? The man's a find. In Paris he'd be the king of the Left Bank. But here in All Saints ...'

'Or in Detroit,' McKay added.

When she tried to respond, her voice caught and she had to bite her lower lip, a pouting action which made her even more desirable, so much so that McKay reached over impulsively and kissed her. She had apparently been in such a situation often before, because she said easily: 'You do that again, buster, you'll wreck this car,' then, to restore his confidence, she patted him on the leg again and whispered: 'But I appreciate the vote of confidence.'

'Okay, so now tell me.'

Slowing the car to avoid the deep cuts which made the road perilous, she said: 'I've never been down this way ...' Then bluntly: 'I need a.s.sistance from someone I can trust.'

As she maneuvered the car deftly around the holes, McKay said: 'You seem like the last girl in the world who needs a.s.sistance,' and she laughed in agreement: 'But I do need your secrecy. I trust you, Millard. I have to.'

Now even this fragmentary trail ended, but off to the left continued a mere footpath leading to Cap d'Enfer, Cape of h.e.l.l, the rocky southeast tip of the island where in the old days sailing boats had frequently come to grief. Driving gingerly along the edge of a deep cliff, Delia, with a slow, sure hand, slowed the car to a walk, and at last they reached the tip end of the land, and there Etienne Boncour stood waiting beside his blue Ford pickup.

Delia leaped from the driver's seat and dashed across the somber headland to embrace Etienne and lead him behind the pile of rocks which marked the end of the island. There they remained for more than an hour while McKay tormented himself with imaginings of what they were doing. When they reappeared, Etienne more handsome than ever, she a windblown beauty standing out against the turbulent Atlantic, they formed a magnificent pair, and McKay was proud that he had been allowed to know each of them.

From the back of her MG, Delia produced a surprise hamper, the wicker kind that makes English and French open-air picnics extra delectable, as if demonstrating that the person who a.s.sembled the picnic had done so with proper seriousness. It was a sad feast they shared there at the end of the world, with a cliff for a table and an angry ocean for a tapestry, these three distraught strangers: a headstrong English girl rejecting womanly restraints, a fine young island man striving to find his precise plan in the world of shifting definitions, and a brash but perceptive American intruder, inheritor of English value systems respectful of island traditions. Proof of the confusion in which they found themselves came in the fact that each of them merely toyed with the good food that Delia had brought and stared disconsolately at the dark ocean to the east.

'How did Leckey acquire the power to discipline you, Etienne?' McKay asked as a reporter, but Delia forestalled any answer: 'We didn't come here to give you material for an article, Millard.'

Boncour, however, wanted to explain: 'Leckey acted only as he's done for the past nine years. Anything, even the most trivial, if it threatens the governor general's office in any way, he must stamp out. This island is on the brink of black-white trouble, all the Caribbean islands are, believe me. I see it when I travel to my other shops.'

'Even Barbados?' McKay asked, and Etienne snapped: 'Especially Barbados. But in All Saints, we're going to evade that trouble by bringing blacks and coloreds into full political partnership. Maybe even real self-government ... earlier than you'd think.'

'I believe you're right,' Delia said. 'And from things I've seen my father do, like that Wrentham gala ...' She stopped, placed her arm about Boncour's shoulder, and quietly continued: 'The night you and I were found out ...' She did not complete her thought about her father.

'So,' Boncour resumed, 'if the daughter of our Gee-Gee and an island man of color were to become items of gossip ...' He made a slashing motion with the edge of his hand: 'Chop him off.' He then looked at Delia and kissed her: 'Or chop her off, if necessary. You're in as much trouble as I am, Lady Delia.'

'I learned that during the trouble in Germany. Both sides were willing to throw little Delia overboard.' She rose, walked to the edge of the cap and tried to toss stones into the ocean, but they fell short.

For the next half-hour they talked of many things, and then Millard said: 'I'd love to extend my stay, maybe I could wire the boss, asking him to allow me to take my vacation here in All Saints. I've grown to love this island ... people like you ... scenes like this.'

'Why don't you?' Delia asked. 'You could write a book about us.'

'It would take lots more knowledge than I have ...'

'But Etienne and I would provide all your spadework. He knows All Saints, I know the government of British colonies.'

McKay looked at them, this handsome pair of people who had become so important to him: 'The much bigger question is-what are you going to do?'

Without hesitation Delia said: 'If this were France and we were going to live in France, we could get married, now. But in English territory ...' She turned to McKay, placing her hand in his: 'If we lived in Detroit, would it be any easier?'

'You'd be ostracized. My paper wouldn't even run an article about your wedding. Too inflammatory.'

'What's inflammatory?' she asked with snappish irritation.

'Black and white. n.o.body's ready for that yet.'

'But this man is not black. Look at him. He's d.a.m.ned near as white as you are.'

'Does Major Leckey think so? That's what really matters.'

When the time came to leave this tiny sanctuary, Delia jumped into Boncour's truck, tossed her keys to McKay, and said: 'I'll pick it up at the Belgrave,' but Etienne would have none of that. He knew she needed to be protected from herself, and said: 'Delia, you must ride with him,' and he made her leave his car.

He also insisted that she and McKay start off first: 'I'll follow long after and enter York through a different side road, one not often used. If Major Leckey does have spies watching you, I'll fool them.' Of course, Delia roared back into York with her dust and noise only alerting everyone to her presence, and McKay's cry 'Don't drive like a d.a.m.ned fool' merely encouraged her to drive faster.

When McKay submitted his third long article, a tough a.s.sessment of Britain's future in her smaller islands like All Saints, his editor in Detroit a.s.sumed that he would be sailing home promptly, but McKay had become so emotionally involved with the probable fate of Delia and Etienne, with the success or failure of Lord Wrentham and Major Leckey, with the fortunes of his two dark friends Bart Wrentham and cricketer Sir Benny, and yes, even with what might happen to those formless Ponsfords, that he wired his paper for permission to take his 1938 vacation early, in All Saints, and Gross replied that since his articles had done so much good for circulation in Canada, the publisher wanted him to take a reporting trip to Barbados or Trinidad or both, and on regular salary, not vacation.

He replied SAILING TRINIDAD THEN BARBADOS TONIGHT, and he sought out Etienne at his jewelry store and then Delia at Gommint House to explain his absence and to wish them well. As he was about to leave the Belgrave he encountered Major Leckey coming to escort him to the ship: 'McKay, we've been immensely pleased with your stories. Remarkable that an American could penetrate our mysteries so accurately. Gee-Gee sends his regards.'

As they walked together toward the interisland ship, they were overtaken by Boncour heading the same way to meet an important customer from another island and, repeating his farewell, McKay said, in formal style to mask his close friendship with the man: 'Good luck in your various projects, Mr. Boncour,' and the major said stiffly, without bothering to look at the jeweler: 'Evening, Boncour.' After Etienne had hurried past, Leckey rebuked McKay as if the American were a newcomer who planned to settle in All Saints: 'You must never refer to a man like that as Mister. He's in trade.' When Millard asked what that meant, Leckey explained: 'Among the upper cla.s.ses on any British island there are two kinds of men, sharply divided, gentlemen and those in trade. You can meet the latter politically and in business, but never socially.'

'What does that mean to a man like Boncour who's in trade?'

'If he does very well indeed, there's always the chance his daughter will marry a gentleman. Then, depending upon her father's habits ...' He waved his right hand nebulously. 'He could very well be accepted in the better circles and in his later years even become known as a gentleman ... if his trade earns him a respectable fortune.'

'Then Boncour has a chance?' McKay asked.

'Not that one. I'm afraid he's blotted his copybook.'

At the ship, Leckey said with great sincerity: 'When you're through with Barbados and Trinidad, come back here. We've grown fond of you, really.' And then he cried: 'Goodness, look who's come down!' It was the governor general and his daughter Delia, and they repeated what the major had said: 'We'd like you to come back.'

McKay spent six days in Trinidad, where his ship stopped first, and where he found so much strange and exciting material that he produced not one but two articles for his newspaper. For example, he had not known before that Trinidad contained so many Indians, that it was in some ways more a colonial adjunct of India than of England: 'Hindus and Muslims, who were imported into Trinidad in the last century to work the great sugar plantations, perpetuate the tensions they experienced in their homeland, but in future, if they conciliate their differences, they can be expected to exert a new and vibrant political force in the island.'

His second article dealt with Trinidad's proximity to Venezuela: 'Actually, this island is a geographical extension of Venezuela, and only imperial Spain's indifference allowed it to slip very late into British hands. Since the island has copious oil deposits, we can expect Venezuela at some point in the future to lay claim to it, especially if Trinidad gains its independence from Great Britain and then fumbles its freedom, for trained observers are certain that the moment chaos rules in this island, Venezuela will intervene.' That information stunned many readers, even most Canadians.

But it was McKay's obvious affection for the clean orderliness of Barbados that shone through his opening article on that island: 'At various periods in history the United States has speculated about occupying this or that Caribbean island: Cuba, Santo Domingo, the Virgin Islands, Nicaragua on the mainland or Haiti? We'd have been much smarter not to have conducted negotiations with any of that group. What we should have done in the early days is purchase Barbados from Great Britain. We'd have had a paradise, self-sustaining too. We still ought to think about it.'

He filed that story on Wednesday, and on Thursday night he called Detroit: KILL WEDNESDAY STORY. h.e.l.l BROKE LOOSE BARBADOS. WILL FILE. And early next morning he filed the first of six long accounts of the race riots that had suddenly erupted on seemingly peaceful Barbados and various other British islands in the Caribbean including Jamaica. The condescending type of paternalism he had witnessed on All Saints had finally become so galling to the blacks that they could no longer tolerate it, and in wild anger and resentment, mobs coursed through the towns and villages while smaller bands tried to burn plantations. On Barbados it was a savage uprising, resulting in many deaths, and McKay's previous experiences in All Saints enabled him to write perceptively about the background causes.

As soon as Dan Gross in Detroit read McKay's dispatches he realized they were an international scoop, so he placed them on the a.s.sociated Press wire, which a.s.sured the articles nationwide and even worldwide attention. With those chance articles, McKay became a national figure, and others beside his own editor began to view his work favorably.

When the Barbados riots subsided, he looked at the island dispa.s.sionately, and wrote a beautiful mea culpa: 'Because I had been allowed to see good colonial government in All Saints, and reasonable advances toward some kind of self-government in Trinidad, I thought I understood the islands. And certainly when I first saw the peaceful, almost tranquil beauty of Barbados, I was ready to write a prose poem about its irresistible charm. What I had not seen, nor understood if I did see it, was the deep, grinding hatred many blacks have for the system which had kept them in a kind of spiritual bondage. I am sorry if I misled my readers. I am overjoyed that peace has been restored to these admirable islands. And I hope the governments will begin to correct old wrongs.'

Six days later, when his homeward bound ship put in to Baie de Soleil, All Saints still slumbered in the sun as if no uprisings had occurred throughout the other islands. Here was peace. Here was British colonial government at its best, and as the manifold beauties of the baie revealed themselves once more he realized that his affections were permanently tied to this island. When he reached the Belgrave he actually ran forward to greet the Ponsfords, whom he had once considered to be impossible. As soon as his bags were deposited in his room, he hurried off to the Waterloo, where Black Bart left the bar to embrace him and listen to his adventures during the riots.

Then, in a much more sober att.i.tude, he walked slowly toward Etienne Boncour's jewelry store, where he found the fastidious Frenchman, as he was usually called, eager to talk. They went into a back room, where they could have privacy, and shared confidences. McKay had little news to offer, since Boncour had branch stores in both Barbados and Trinidad, but the Frenchman had much to confide: 'Delia's seriously talking about marrying me and setting up our household on another island. Keep this shop operating, because it's the moneymaker. She thinks we could have a good life.'

'And what do you think?'

Boncour smiled gently and held out his hands palms up: 'Impossible. She once told me she was a child of Europe.'

'She told me the same thing.' McKay stopped. 'You know, Etienne, I was very fond of that young woman. Still am.'

'Who wouldn't be? She seems to have broken hearts around the compa.s.s points.'

'So what's going to happen?'

Boncour stiffened, as if harsh decisions had firmed his backbone: 'One cannot say. One simply cannot say, but one thing's certain. That girl could not exist, not happily, on a small British island.'

It was that statement which preoccupied McKay for the following day: Interesting. To me and the other Americans, they're Caribbean islands. To Delia and Etienne and the other Englishmen, they're the British West Indies, as if the French islands didn't exist. But then his thoughts turned to the greater anomaly: Even the Dutch own islands here. Who's missing? The real owners, the Spaniards. Wouldn't it be richly rewarding if one of the big islands were honestly and totally Spanish, so we could observe what might have been accomplished under that governance? And even though he knew little of Spain or the Spanish heritage, he lamented the loss.

This momentary sentimentalism over vanished Spanish grandeur did not mask his great pleasure at being safe within the security of All Saints: Actually, I like everything about this island except Major Leckey and the heavy food. Upon reflection, one of the things he liked most was the efficient way in which the Gee-Gee governed: Like at the cricket field the other day. He appeared for practice in his old all-England blazer, chased ground b.a.l.l.s that black players. .h.i.t, then took his turn at bat and swiped two or three out toward the boundary. Players and casual spectators alike, they loved it. They felt he was one of them.

McKay also appreciated the clever tricks by which Lord Basil made blacks feel welcome at all his functions, save meals at Gommint House or soirees at The Club. He showed no personal animus toward blacks and preached to his white a.s.sociates that the time was coming when blacks would have to be admitted into governing circles. But he also sternly upheld the dignity of his office, and he never looked better than when he rode in full uniform in the rear seat of his Rolls-Royce, nodding grandly and finally stepping forth in full authority and austerity to open a new school or dedicate the wing of a hospital. McKay had never before seen a British governor in action, and he was impressed: Maintains a more believable image of n.o.ble rule than, say, the governor of South Dakota.

On the first full day after his return a pleasant surprise awaited him, for Delia stopped by the Belgrave in her MG to invite him on a circuit of the north, and when they reached that incomparable picnic ground at Cap Galant and lazed in the April sun, he felt it appropriate to broach the critical question: 'Delia, if marriage to Boncour is impossible on this island ...? '

'Who said so?'

'He did. He's not stupid.'

'He should let me make my own decisions.'

'Why couldn't you two marry and live on Barbados?'

She laughed almost insolently. 'Have you ever been to Barbados?'

'I just came back. You know that.'

'But did you realize when you were there that it's little more than half the size of this island?'

'But before the rioting the life was so ... well, attractive ... rea.s.suring.'

She became angry: 'McKay, you fool! You've had a great time here, a genial reception in Barbados. But on either island, have you ever met a black family? I mean the people who work the fields, who make up four-fifths of the population. As they say in the cinema: "Son, you ain't seen nothin' yet!" So don't ask me to live on Barbados.'

He reflected on this as he watched her throwing the tag ends of her picnic back into the hamper, then said: 'You seem to make everything a matter of race.'

She laughed. 'Don't you realize, Millard, that every human relationship on this island is a matter of race? Suppose you ask one of Etienne's pretty-clerks for a dinner date, it becomes an affair of state-she asks: "Where will we dine? I have to be careful of where I am seen with a white man." Why do you think I took you all the way out to Cap d'Enfer?'

'I've been wondering.'

'For one thing, I'd never driven the road before, didn't know the way. But the main reason was to protect Etienne from being seen with me.'

He could not accept that nonsensical rationalization: 'Don't con me, Delia. On the way back you wanted to ride in his car ... let everyone see you.'

'That was on the way back. Love sets you free sometimes. You don't give a d.a.m.n.' She stared at the sea, then added: 'Like that time with the German colonel. I could have got myself killed.'

'Were you afraid?'

'No!' she cried with great emphasis. 'I don't give a d.a.m.n about myself. Never have. Ask my father, he's nursed me through enough sc.r.a.pes.'

'So back to my question: "What'll happen to Boncour?" ' and she replied: 'Sooner or later we shall hurt each other terribly. He knows that, but we also know that the game's worth the risk. To live totally, that's everything.' Abruptly halting her foreboding, she looked intently at McKay and repeated: 'To live, that's what it's all about, isn't it?' and she jumped into the car.

As they sped south, accompanied by breathtaking vistas of the Caribbean, its wave tips flashing in sunlight, and by hedges of croton that lined the roadway, McKay thought: This must be one of the loveliest roadways of the world and Delia one of the most glamorous women. But both are in jeopardy. The riots in Barbados proved how precarious stability can be. And Delia! What in h.e.l.l will happen to this marvelous sprite? She's mercury, slipping now this way, now that, and always evading your grasp.

Impulsively he cried: 'Delia, what's going to happen to you? Trouble wherever you go, so far as I can learn. Near-tragedy in Germany, in Malta, here in All Saints. One of these days your luck will run out.'

She leaned over and kissed him lightly: 'You're sweet to care. But really, does it matter?' and the extraordinary way in which she looked sideways at him as she spoke made him think: My G.o.d! She's letting me know she wouldn't mind if I wanted to make love to her, too. In great confusion he scrunched over into the far corner of the front seat, interlocked his knuckles in a grasp so tight they turned white, and said softly: 'Delia, you know I've fallen in love with you.'

'That's sweet,' she said, almost flippantly, as if the avowal merited no deeper consideration.

'And I most desperately want you to do the right thing.' Realizing that this must sound juvenile, he lamely added a cliche that made things even worse: 'I want you to find happiness.'

Dismissing him as she would have an attractive child, she teased: 'McKay! You're talking like my maiden aunt! The one who moped her life away by dreaming of the grocer's boy she fell in love with,' and there ended the serious discussion he had attempted to inaugurate.

When they reached Bristol Town she delivered him to the Belgrave, where they found Major Leckey, obviously outraged, awaiting them: 'Really, Delia, you must keep us advised as to where you're going. An important visitor has come to Government House. Your father ...'

'Well, here I am. Let's go.'

'Not in those clothes. It's the German amba.s.sador. Came from Barbados in that Royal Navy vessel you saw in the baie ... if you bothered to look.' And off they went, with Leckey driving very fast in his large car and Delia following a few yards behind in her small one.

When McKay came down for dinner, he found the Ponsfords most eager to have him at their table, for they were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with astonishing news: 'The German government has asked formal permission for one of their great battle cruisers, the Graf Spee, to put into Baie de Soleil. Courtesy visit during a training exercise in the South Atlantic.'

'Permission granted?'

'Of course. Our relations with Germany have never been better. We hear there's to be a pact of mutual friendship with Italy, too, so the people of ill will who've been trying to keep our nations apart have lost out.'

McKay had been vaguely aware that the various nations in Europe were having their differences and that harsh words had been voiced about Adolf Hitler, but in the areas west of Detroit, which contained many Americans of German descent, those rumors were derided. He was also aware, but in only the roughest terms, that since his departure from Detroit, Germany and Austria had united under some kind of agreement, but he had been led to believe, from the sc.r.a.ps of information he had available, that it was generally held to be a move toward peace in that part of the world.

Both Ponsfords were of that opinion: 'We cannot abide the French. Hitler may have his faults, but the Jews did nearly overrun both Germany and Austria.' Mr. Ponsford said: 'I for one would be delighted to see the Graf Spee in the harbor. The Germans may be our allies one of these days, and I'd like to see what they'd bring into the partnership.'

It was about quarter to nine that night when McKay was summoned to the phone. 'Hullo, McKay? Leckey here. The Gee-Gee wants to know if you can join us and a few men?... Yes, right now.... Good! I'll fetch you, but would you be considerate and be waiting outside?'

When he was ushered into Lord Wrentham's study, he found four island men, all white, sitting with Wrentham and a ramrod-stiff European in his mid-forties: 'Amba.s.sador Freundlich, this is the distinguished American correspondent from the very part of the United States you were asking about. I wanted you two to meet. Exchange of ideas and all that.'

The questioning did not touch that subject, because when the amba.s.sador learned that McKay had just returned from Barbados, he wanted to know what the riots on that island had signified, but a swift glance from the Gee-Gee warned McKay not to discuss that embarra.s.sment to British rule, so McKay gave only a casual explanation. The discussion was amiable, far-ranging, and, under the Gee-Gee's diplomatic guidance, never improperly intrusive.

The Gee-Gee seemed eager to introduce his daughter and ordered Leckey: 'See if Delia can instruct the servants to fetch us some coffee.' When she appeared, radiant in a charming pastel frock, leading two black servants who pa.s.sed the cups and the biscuits, she seemed the epitome of the well-bred English la.s.s of twenty-two whose anxious parents were beginning to seek a husband, but as she pa.s.sed McKay with her coffee, she gave him a sly wink.

He used this break as an opportunity to ask, as he always felt honor-bound to do: 'Am I allowed to wire Detroit, before it happens, that the Graf Spee will be paying a visit here?'

Lord Wrentham answered: 'It was the amba.s.sador's suggestion that you be invited, late though it was.'

McKay said: 'I think these courtesy visits are a great idea. Builds friendships.' He stopped, aware that he was being somewhat more effusive than the occasion warranted, but then Major Leckey broke in with his own effusion: 'You know, I'm sure, that in English the amba.s.sador's name means friendship. May that be a good omen!' And a toast was drunk.

It was agreed that all would be at the dock at ten in the morning when the great German cruiser would maneuver slowly and majestically between the guardian rocks protecting the baie. Cheers echoed and salutes were fired as the mighty ship edged up to the dock, but McKay did not partic.i.p.ate in the noisy celebration, because Bart Wrentham, who served in the island's volunteer marine rescue department, was whispering in his ear: 'That's no cruiser. That's a b.l.o.o.d.y pocket battleship.' And indeed the vessel was immense, with its batteries of guns pointing in different directions.