The Sugar Islands Read online

  In frightened silence, the group waited round the moaning figure.

  ‘Will that medicine never come?’ said someone.

  It came, but it was powerless. The moaning did not cease.

  ‘Take me home. I’m ill. I think I’m dying. Get me home. I can’t stay here.’

  There was an exchange of glances.

  ‘How can we? You’re going to France. The steamer’s sailing in an hour.’

  ‘Steamer. France. Good heavens, do you think I can go on a journey when I feel like this? Get me home, I tell you. Get me home.’

  There was another exchange of glances. The doctor nodded his head.

  ‘Yes. Best get him home.’

  All the way out along the curving, mounting road he groaned and shivered.

  They had to carry him up the long steep flight of steps. From a long rattan chair on the veranda an erect, slim figure rose to meet them. They began to explain to her, but she waved aside their explanation.

  ‘Bring him in here,’ she said.

  The bed was already open, the sheets turned back. At its head was a carafe of iced water. She stood quietly by while they laid him down, then seated herself at the bed’s foot. The men who had brought him hovered indeterminately in the doorway. Was there anything to be done? they asked. No, there was nothing for them to do, the doctor said. They could go back to town. Himself, he’d stay there.

  The slim, erect figure at the foot said nothing. She was looking out over the sea. There was on her face a strange, rapt brooding look, as though she were looking at things—dark things that were many miles and centuries away. From Fort de France, five miles off, came the steamer’s siren. She rose out of her chair, walked over to the moaning figure, placed her hand softly on his forehead and with gentle, caressing fingers stroked his hair, murmuring to him words that to the doctor who had lived in Martinique all his life were strange. And as she stroked the pallor went out of the lined cheeks, the moaning ceased, the taut misery vanished from behind the eyes. With a start and a blink of the eyes, he sat up in bed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘I’ve felt like death. What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s over. It’s all right.’

  His knees were weak as he tottered on to the veranda to lean against the balcony, to see, steaming slowly on its way to Guadeloupe, the liner that should have taken him back to France. His knees were weak, but her hand was pressing on his shoulder. He felt her strength flow to him.

  ‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ he said. ‘You needn’t worry.’

  It was with a white and frightened face, however, that five weeks later he broke into the doctor’s consulting-room.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter with me? It’s happened again. You’ve heard?’

  ‘I’ve heard.’

  ‘It’s inexplicable. I don’t know what it is. It was just like that other time. On the morning that the boat was sailing I woke with that same blinding pain. I couldn’t stir. I couldn’t think. I was conscious of nothing except that pain. I just lay there moaning; right through the day; right on till evening. And then suddenly just as that other time, it went. I walked out on to the balcony, and I might never have been ill at all. What’s wrong with me? What’s the matter? Do you know, Doctor, what it is?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Then what is it? What’s to be done about it?’

  ‘If it’s what I think it is, there’s nothing that can be done about it. You will think I am romancing: but I have lived all my life among these people. They have secrets that are dark to us. When they want to commit suicide they do not shoot themselves or cut their throats. They lie upon their beds and die. They can will mischief or death upon their enemies. They have philtres that will win them the love of the stubborn-hearted. It would be no hard task for them to make one who wishes to leave them incapable of movement.’

  ‘My good Doctor, but that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘That is what I knew you would say. But consider this: there is nothing wrong with you. You can take my word for that. You are as fit as any man in Martinique. Yet each time that you have tried to leave the island, you have been so ill that you could not move; and each time, at the moment when the ship’s last siren went, the illness passed.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous! Ridiculous!’

  But though he spoke truculently, even to himself his outburst carried no conviction. What were those warning words that three years back on the moon-drenched balcony those soft lips had uttered? ‘My love will be a chain about you, a chain that will hold you fast—hold you for ever to this little island.’ It was ridiculous, ridiculous, and yet. . .

  Impatiently, he walked over to the window. In the street below, the familiar, commonplace life of every day was pursuing its comfortable course. Motor cars were honking cheerfully, tourists with cameras and sun helmets were boisterously calling each other’s attention to the handcart announcing a cinema performance that was being pushed by a couple of minute black infants. Across the harbour a four-masted schooner was picturesquely drifting. The sheltered tables in front of the café on the savannah were filled with laughing, chattering groups. It was impossible to believe that contiguous with this merry, familiar, sunlit world existed the dark mysteries of Obeah. Impossible to believe, and yet, and yet. . . .

  With a frightened face, he spun round to face the doctor.

  ‘You believe it, Doctor? Really and truly, that’s what you believe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what’s going to happen to me? What’ll be the end of it? Do you mean that it’ll go on like this, that every time I try to leave the island I shall be ill? That I never shall be able to get away from here? Is that what you believe?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘But I can’t. No, I can’t,’ the young man persisted. ‘To stay here for ever, to grow old here, to watch one’s career going; never to see France again. To have one’s juniors coming out here, and three years later going back, as oneself one should have, to promotion. To lose interest in oneself; to lose faith in oneself; to lose one’s self-respect. You can’t really believe that that’s what’s got to happen to me?’

  ‘Till the spell is broken, yes.’

  ‘And how is it to be broken?’

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders. It was an expressive shrug. And, looking him in the eyes, the young man read his meaning. ‘I can’t,’ he thought. 1 can’t.’ Though even as he thought it he knew that, were that calamity to be averted, there was no other course. Sorcery and the sorceress were one. Even sorcery could not outlive the snapping of the thin thread of life that bound it to its origin. It was his life or hers. As long as she lived, he was her slave. As long as that . . . but for no longer. ‘I can’t,’ he thought. ‘I can’t.’ But there was no other course.

  Slowly, with a tread that dragged, he climbed that evening the steep flight of steps to the veranda. And for the second time in their many months together the slim, erect figure did not leap to greet him. From the long rattan chair she lay and looked at him, not angrily, not suspiciously, but thoughtfully, as though it were from vast distances of wisdom that that slow look came.

  She beckoned to him.

  ‘Here, at my side, just gently, for a moment.’

  On the ground beside her chair she dropped a cushion. As he knelt on it she drew his head upon her breast.

  ‘It’s so lovely here. All day long I’ve been lying, looking out, wishing you were here to share it with me. Have you ever seen anything lovelier?’

  It was very lovely. The hour before sundown when the air after the long day’s heat is cool; when the lights grow gentle after the long day’s glare; when the shadows lie level along road and beach; when the blue of the sea grows softer, and the bright greens of the hill grow fresh as though dew were falling on them.

  ‘Have you ever seen anything lovelier?’ she said. ‘Do you think that anywhere in the world there is to be found anything lovelier than this? Do you
not think that the man is foolish who would run away from it?’

  Her voice was low and musical. But there was purpose behind her words. And he felt weak and irresolute; in the presence of something old and dark and very powerful. And he felt tired: grateful in his tiredness for the softness of her breasts, content to lie there, savouring the peace of evening, watching across the bay in front of them the little steamer paddling from St. Pierre to Fort de France.

  ‘Let’s go and bathe,’ she said.

  Side by side, they swam through the sunset-reddened water, and afterwards, as he sat sipping at his rum punch, she crouched beside him, his hand held against her cheek, while she sang softly to him the love songs of her people. For half an hour she sang to him. Then she jumped to her feet. ‘Supper-time,’ she cried. It was his favourite dish that she had prepared for him: lobster spiced with coconut, served upon fried bread. Afterwards they brought the gramophone out upon the veranda. As they danced, they kissed.

  That was the story as the Frenchman told it us.

  ‘And that’s fifteen years ago,’ he said; ‘and the man she did it for’s been dead for five; they keep her on here because they just daren’t not.’

  We listened in silence. Below us in the street motor cars were honking noisily. Out of a clear blue sky a heavy December sun was pouring its amber light across the green savannah onto the white statue. In the harbour were the funnels and the masts of liners. It was hard in such a moment at such a place to believe in the black magic of Africa.

  And yet, and yet. . . .

  ‘I think,’ said Eldred, ‘we’ll have our table changed tonight.’

  Floria’s face showed no pleasure or satisfaction when we told her of our decision. Her scowl was as surly as ever. Her incompetence was as marked. She spilt the soup over the tablecloth, clattered the plates, brought us our fish cold, and butter when we had ceased to need it. We had a thoroughly uncomfortable meal.

  But that night we slept.

  A Beachcomber

  from THE SUNLIT CARIBBEAN

  Written in 1938

  I Was met on the landing-stage by the kind of chauffeur— scrubby, unshaven, swarthy—to whom several months of West Indian travel had accustomed me. He might have been an octoroon, he might have been a quarter-caste, or he might have been simply sunburnt. He wore sandals, blue cotton trousers, and a short-sleeved shirt. A rough-rimmed straw hat was pulled low over his eyes. His step was shuffling and his manner surly.

  ‘You Mr. Wilding’s guest?’

  I nodded.

  ‘His car’s over there, by the Customs shed.’

  Long and low, a glittering stream of colour in the morning sunlight, a six-cylinder Chrysler presented a reassuringly opulent contrast to its driver.

  My host’s rich, I thought.

  I corrected myself a quarter of an hour later as we swung into a long avenue lined with royal palms at whose far extremity was a white, two-storied, many-windowed house. He was more than rich: he was very rich.

  From a rattan chair on a wide, flower-flanked veranda a tall figure rose to greet me. He was a man of about sixty. He had an open, smiling face. I made an addition to my estimate. He was more than very rich. He was nice as well: a final estimate that confirmed me in a mood of contented anticipation.

  I had good reason to be in such a mood. I had long wanted to pay a second visit to Dominica.

  Dominica may not be a tourist’s island. It has no smart hotels, no bathing beaches, no casino. Its climate is damp and sultry. The sky is more often grey than blue. In a sense it is a melancholy island: with its cloud-hung mountains and its long story of ill-luck; one crop and then another—cocoa first, then limes—ruined by disease. It is not an obvious island: not at all. But it has the power to attract eccentrics. It has ‘character’. Square pegs, after long efforts to fit themselves into round holes, have made their homes there and been happy. It is the background of Elmer Napier’s novel, Duet in Discord. The lovely and unusual talent of Jean Rhys has its roots in Portsmouth. Its society is stimulatingly heterogeneous. On my return to England, I had found myself thinking more often of Dominica than of any other of the West Indian islands that I had visited. I found myself wishing that I had stayed there longer, that I had done more and different things, that I had thrown a wider net. I was more than grateful when, through the kind offices of a friend, an exchange of cables brought me, on a later visit to the Caribbean, an invitation to Wilding’s bungalow.

  I settled myself comfortably beside him.

  ‘I’ve so many things to ask you . . .’ I began.

  So many things that the hour of the morning swizzle had arrived before he had had time to say, ‘I wonder, by the way, if you ever came across the man who had this place before me? He was in your line. Weston.’

  ‘Max Weston?’

  ‘You knew him, then?’

  ‘I should say I did!’

  I spoke decisively. Though I had not met him half a dozen times, the impression he had made upon my memory was ineffaceable. I have met no one who was more completely allergic to me.

  I had met him, fifteen years before. Little and dapper, in the early forties, he was slightly bald, with a high forehead and very prominent, staring, pale blue eyes; but his distinctive feature was the texture of his skin. There are some men who at no matter what hour of the day you meet them look as though they had not shaved for thirty hours. You wonder when they actually do shave, since they are never either more nor less unshaven. Weston, on the other hand, always looked as though he had at that moment left the barber’s chair, where not only had he been shaved with exhaustive patience, but where the kind of varnish with which women anoint their finger nails had been smeared over his face from chin to cheekbone. The effect of that glazed and glistening surface was singularly repellent, yet at the same time singularly magnetic. He exuded electricity. I do not suppose that he ever made a friend; but he fascinated a great many people—young women in particular. He was purposeful in conversation. He had confidence. He was a lavish and effective host. He had, moreover, a background of achievement—of very definite achievement. At a time when professional English authorship was dominated by the American market, he was one of the chief New York lecture agents.

  He specialized in English authors. During the nineteen-twenties he came over to London every autumn to interview novelists, agents, publishers. I should imagine that during those years he not only knew but had entertained everybody of any consequence in the literary racket. My most vivid memory of him is a lunch that he gave at the Savoy for a dozen or so of the younger writers. As a lunch it was one of the best that I have ever sat before. But none of us enjoyed it, really. When I hear Englishmen who have never been to America describe Americans as purse-proud, money-conscious, reducing all values to a dollar basis, my answer is, ‘Well, I have known one American like that.’

  At the end of the meal he leant across the table.

  ‘Now listen. You’re promising. Every one of you,’ he said. ‘That’s why you’re here. You’ve got it in you to turn yourselves into the kind of successes I can use. But you’re on the wrong track. You’re all too literary, too clever-clever. I want life, real people, real problems, real backgrounds. That’s what I can put across. The moment you start writing real books, I’m the man to sell you. Till you do, we’re wasting each other’s time. But when you do start . . . well, I reckon I don’t need to introduce myself.’

  The knowledge that, as regards his powers, he spoke the truth was the most infuriating part of the whole performance. He might boast, but he could call his bluffs. I left that table praying that circumstance should never force me to owe him a debt of gratitude.

  That was in 1925. And much had happened since: in the literary racket, as elsewhere; New York was not in 1937 the happy hunting ground that it had been. Publishers on Murray Hill had ceased to advance on the delivery of each new manuscript a sum three times as great as its predecessor had earned in royalties. Editors in Philadelphia no longer commissioned
serials that they ‘might find a use for some day’. Even Hollywood had consulted balance sheets. But it was the lecture market that had taken the biggest toss. Through the nineteen-twenties any English novelist of standing could, by signing an American lecture contract, liquidate at the cost of a few weeks’ casual conversation the accumulated liabilities of as many years. All that was over. Through the English authors’ own fault, mainly. Those casual conversations had been a bit too casual. Long before Wall Street broke, American audiences had grown as weary of listening to ninety minutes of trailing impromptu autobiographical reflections as they were of reading a few weeks later the articles in which on their return to England those same lecturers lampooned the absurdities of the American Women’s clubs that had financed them. By the end of the nineteen-twenties the lecturing English novelist was the most generally disliked commodity throughout the Union. And the climax was reached in the spring of 1931 when. . . . But perhaps that is a story that at this late day it is more charitable to forget. Let it suffice to state that it was a very long time since I had heard a brother novelist remark: ‘My arrears of income tax are ceasing to be a joke. I shall have to run across and pick up a few easy dollars.’

  So completely indeed was the lecture racket finished for the English novelist that I do not suppose that I had heard Weston mentioned five times in as many years.

  That he of all people should have come to Dominica !

  ‘Why on earth did he come?’ I asked.

  ‘To die.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘He had a breakdown: you know the way he drank, last thing at night, first thing in the morning. One day he collapsed across a table. His doctors gave him a year to live.’

  I started; stared and started. A year to live! Is there anyone who has not imagined himself faced with such a fate; who has not wondered how in such a predicament he would himself behave? How had Max Weston faced it?

  Not that I need have wondered. The story of that year, as Wilding told it me, was in every detail consistent with the conduct and previous spirit of his life: a mixture of pettiness, spite, swagger, vanity.