Caribbean (101 page)

People who had read the abbreviated excerpts that appeared in the
All Saints Journal
, courtesy of the Associated Press, nodded approvingly to McKay as he passed them in the streets, and since Bristol Town had a population of only six thousand, everyone soon knew who McKay was and what he had said. The passage most frequently commented upon was one he had worded carefully, relying upon data provided by Bart Wrentham and Etienne Boncour:

This harsh, but accurate, summary of how one’s skin color determined status was alleviated by McKay’s rhapsodic description of the island’s rich natural beauties, including croton, and an affectionate account of Sir Benny Castain’s old cricketing relationship with the newly appointed governor general. The article ended: “So if you’re contemplating a vacation on some Caribbean island this winter, try All Saints. It could be close to the best.”

Both Etienne Boncour and Bart Wrentham were pleased with McKay’s report and told him so. Bart said gruffly: “Flattering but not excessively groveling,” and Boncour assured him: “Gommint is delighted. When the Gee-Gee read it he said: ‘Well, we’re off to a good start,’ but Major Leckey warned him: ‘He wrote that before you got here. Let’s wait. He’s an American and we’ve been burned by them before.’ ”

There was a cryptic English couple staying at the Belgrave who took a more circumspect view of both McKay and his article. The Ponsfords, a married pair in their late fifties from one of the fashionable suburbs of London, had sailed to All Saints on the same ship that brought Lord Wrentham and his daughter Delia. Being rigorously proper, they did not impose upon His Lordship while aboard ship, but upon landing in All Saints they immediately hired a taxi, rode to Government House, and signed the book. In due course Major Leckey had called to invite them to afternoon tea, where they told Lord Wrentham and his daughter that they had shared the steamer with them but had not wanted to intrude upon their privacy. The courtesy was appreciated, and Major Leckey himself assumed responsibility for delivering their other letters of introduction to the proper authorities, so that within a few days the Ponsfords were moving within what was called “the cream of All Saints,” that restricted circle of Britons from good families who ran the island. After his five weeks on the island, McKay had met none of that group.

The Ponsfords knew who McKay was and what he had written, but they would never approach him during his working day, for they
had not been introduced. McKay could not decipher who they were or what business they were engaged in, for they kept rigidly to themselves, and it was not until Boncour was taking lunch at the Belgrave and saw the Ponsfords at their table and McKay at his that a meeting came about. Boncour made bold to tell the Ponsfords: “I think you might enjoy meeting that chap over there,” and they allowed Boncour to bring McKay to their table. Having made the introduction, Boncour returned to his lunch, and Millard was left with a rather chilly pair who had not liked what they deemed the flippancy of his Detroit articles and said so.

“I could see no justification,” Mr. Ponsford said with august condescension, “why one would feel obligated to stress the dark side of the island.”

McKay was astonished. “I didn’t think I did,” and Mrs. Ponsford, a well-preserved and neatly coiffed woman with an aquiline nose that seemed always on the point of sniffing, explained: “You are harping on the fact that All Saints is mostly black.”

“But it is!” McKay said, with obvious desire to stress the truth. “Just look about you.”

“If it is,” Mr. Ponsford said in his bank-manager manner, “it’s unfortunate and should not be broadcast to the world. Excellent men and women with the best intentions govern this island, and they deserve every support we can give them.”

“There is nothing finer, I told my husband the other day, than to see a distinguished man like Lord Basil riding through the streets in his Rolls-Royce, symbol of all that’s good and right in the British Empire.”

McKay, suppressing a smile, said to himself: I’ve got to remember that one, and thought: People make fun of Americans abroad, and I guess we can be pretty bad, but it takes an English couple like this insufferable pair to be really obnoxious. However, aware that he might have to share the dining room with them for several weeks, he turned to Mrs. Ponsford and asked: “Then what about the colored who fill so many of the spots here in Bristol Town? Dare I speak about them?”

“In time, as they educate themselves and move upward in the social scale,” Mr. Ponsford said magisterially, “they’ll become more and more like white people. They’ve already earned three places on the Executive Council.”

“Will their skins become lighter as this progression upward is
made?” McKay asked with no touch of sarcasm, and Mrs. Ponsford said: “Isn’t that how it’s already happening? I was told just yesterday that of the three mulatto men on the council each was three-quarters white.”

“You’d expect nothing less,” her husband said, but the pair were interrupted before they could explain further their interpretation of All Saints life by a handsome young Englishman in a trim off-white suit which displayed his slim, athletic bearing. He had neatly trimmed blond hair and the professional smile of one accustomed to greeting people.

“This is Major Leckey,” Mrs. Ponsford said approvingly. “The governor general’s invaluable factotum. This is Mr. McKay, who wrote about your island for the newspaper back in the States.”

The next moment would be forever etched on Millard’s mind: Major Leckey, who had known from the moment of McKay’s arrival who and what he was but who felt honor-bound to ignore him until he presented his credentials properly, turned his head slightly away from looking at the Ponsfords, and gave the American interloper a brief, icy smile of semirecognition. Then, without offering to shake hands, he resumed conversation with the English couple, whom he had come to escort to an afternoon affair at Government House. In a flash they were gone, all three of them, and no one bothered to excuse himself to McKay.

He met Leckey again the next day at Boncour’s jewelry store, and since Etienne was occupied with a woman tourist from England, the two men had to stand awkwardly almost side by side, but again the major studiously refused to recognize him. Only when another customer bumped into them, did they have to acknowledge each other. Major Leckey gave McKay a withered smile, to which McKay responded with the slightest possible nod, involving no shoulder movement. McKay felt that warfare between them had been declared.

It did not enflame at that moment, because Leckey had come to the shop on a more important matter. “I was told,” he said to Boncour, in crisp and somewhat superior tones, as if he were slumming, “that the Honorable Delia would be awaiting me here.”

“She’s not been in,” Boncour said, and McKay, whose senses were sharp, thought he detected in Boncour’s manner an unusual level of excitement when speaking about the Gee-Gee’s daughter. Then he saw why, for into the shop came a young woman of twenty-two who absolutely filled it with her radiance. She wore one of those
flimsy lace and tulle dresses in which the starch of the latter held in fine form the soft fabric of the former. The lace was stark-white, the tulle had a touch of yellow, and their colors blended to make a gentle symphony that matched the cool beauty of the young woman who wore them.

She had a head of golden hair that was not completely tamed—obviously she did not want it whipped into set patterns—and it formed a kind of frame for a face that was larger than one might have expected, larger in each dimension and wonderfully composed, so that she seemed always to be smiling in quiet amusement at the follies of the world about her. She had large eyes which sparkled, a generous mouth and a way of tilting her impressive head that made her seem about to speak in a kindly manner to anyone at whom she looked. She was so much the acme of the young English gentlewoman of her period that one could not avoid asking two questions: “Why isn’t she married?” and “Why in the world did her father bring her to a place like All Saints?”

“Yes! Miss Wrentham,” Boncour cried as he hurried forward to attend her. “I have three to show you,” and he was about to bring forth a tray of small bejeweled items when Major Leckey interrupted: “Delia, I’m most sorry, but your father’s waiting, and he sent me to fetch you.” With that, making no apologies to either Boncour or McKay, he whisked her out of the shop and into his waiting chauffeured car.

When she was gone, leaving an echoing void behind, McKay whistled to break the tension: “I never thought that daughters of Gee-Gees looked like that,” and for a few moments the two men discussed her appearance and her manner. Boncour said: “She came in unannounced last week, as nice a customer as we ever meet. No frills, no demands, just sensible questions about some small items for what she called a charm bracelet.”

“And what’s that?”

“Started in France, I think. A silver or gold bracelet in links, and into each you attach …” Turning slightly, he called: “Irene, show him those pictures.” A pretty girl with very light skin brought from the rear a London magazine in which there were photographs of charm bracelets, lovely delicate things if the attached items were kept small enough, rather gauche if they were too big or lacking in style. But after looking briefly at the bracelets, McKay leafed ahead and whistled: “Hey, look at this!” and the girl who had fetched the magazine
said: “Yes indeed! No wonder Lord Basil hurried her out here.”

The story, provocatively illustrated, told of the Honorable Delia Wrentham’s escapade with an older married man and implied former misbehavior with several young Oxford and Cambridge chaps. The young lady who had brought the magazine from the rear of the store seemed to be an expert on the Honorable Delia, and said saucily without being asked: “Her father whisked her out here not a minute too soon. You ask me, he accepted the appointment to this sorry little post so’s he’d have a place to cool her off.”

McKay’s jaw dropped. He had not expected a colored clerk to speak so freely and so boldly, but a moment’s reflection set him straight: Hell, it’s girls like these salesladies who set the patterns. They are the islands. And he asked the girl a chain of questions, learning from her that the Honorable Delia was one of the lights of the London social whirl, “a damned fine lass, if you ask me, and a great help to her widowed father, who overlooks her sporting behavior. He adores her, the stories say. And one look at her tells why.”

In the days that followed, everything on All Saints seemed to focus on Sir Basil and his lively daughter. Talk at the Waterloo centered on little else, and at the Belgrave the American McKay was discovering a topic about which the Ponsfords were eager to talk: the history of the English Wrenthams and especially the doings of the Earl of Gore and his immediate family. Mrs. Ponsford said: “Very distinguished. They go back a long distance in our history. Famous for producing beautiful daughters.”

“The Gee-Gee’s Delia must be one of the best,” McKay said, and both Ponsfords agreed.

Once the ice was broken, McKay found the couple to be rather interesting, solid middle-class Englishmen who adored their betters. They are stuffy, he told himself. I suppose they were trained that way, but once you discount it, they’re not bad. However, he still wondered what they were doing in All Saints, but they surrendered no clues.

He was beginning to like them because they were willing, at meals which he took at their table increasingly, to talk about the Wrenthams: “Actually, we knew Lord Basil’s father, before he inherited the earldom. Fine, outgoing man, very good on a horse.”

“What was he like?”

“Understand, when he became the earl we didn’t see him anymore. We’re not members of those exalted circles.”

McKay, eager to penetrate the cloak of reticence in which the
couple had clothed themselves, asked with the double impertinence of both an American and a newspaperman: “What did you do … in private life … before you retired?”

Mr. Ponsford flinched at such a direct question; one did not ask questions like that in English society, but his increasing respect for McKay’s sincerity and honesty encouraged him to respond: “Marine insurance, in a small company …” to which his wife added with obvious pride: “But by the time he retired … of course, he didn’t need to retire, actually, because by then he owned the company, and a larger one in Liverpool.”