Caribbean (98 page)

“My ancestors landed on that dangerous beach down there, Baie du Mort. I suppose you know French.”

“Since I do a lot of my reporting in Canada, I’d better. Bay of Death.”

For the balance of the twelve-mile drive north the two men talked of scenery, but Millard had a strong suspicion that this was not the purpose of the trip. “Our island isn’t fine level land like most of Barbados. Didn’t permit big sugar plantations like Jamaica. But once you treat this soil respectfully, it treats you the same way. We never starved.”

When the road started west, toward the Caribbean, Wrentham said: “We should get a picnic,” and he drove into the quaint, sleepy town of Tudor, where a shopkeeper, also named Wrentham and much darker than Bart, put together a large bag of groceries for the construction of a rural feast. “Better give us something to drink,” Bart said, and his distant cousin responded with two bottles of English beer and a can of American fruit juice.

With this comforting cargo the sightseers headed due west across the top of All Saints, and McKay, in the right-hand seat, enjoyed this calmer view of the Atlantic but still had no clue as to why Wrentham had taken him upon such a long journey. It could not be from mere kindness. When they were well west of Tudor, the man began describing with a mix of bitterness and amusement the social structure of his island, and it became obvious that he had much he yearned to say, especially to a writer from America. He began disarmingly: “You must understand, Mr. Detroit, that almost everyone on this island will hate you, just a little.”

“I’ve given no offense.”

“Ah, but you’re an American. And so was she.”

“Who?”

“Wally Simpson. We love royalty on this island—all of us, regardless of color. And we adored King Edward. He was such a glorious young fellow when he visited us as Prince of Wales. If you look in a hundred of our homes like those over there, you’ll find sixty or seventy with a chromo portrait of Edward. We can never forgive your Mrs. Simpson for having knocked him off our throne.”

“I always supposed he knocked himself off.” The words were scarcely out when Wrentham slowed the car and turned to warn his guest: “You’d be well advised not to voice an opinion like that in All Saints. You’ll find all doors closed against you, because his memory is revered.”

“I apologize.”

“You should. Your tantalizing witch almost destroyed an empire.”

Several moments of silence followed this surprising outburst, but it was soon clear that Bart had other things on his mind that he wanted to talk about, for he grasped the steering wheel with both hands, leaned forward far over it till his head almost touched the windshield, and said in conciliatory tones: “Even though your lefthand drive is a mite inconvenient, an American car is superior.”

“Is it difficult?” Millard asked. “I mean, driving from the wrong side, as it were?” and Wrentham said with the pleasing lyrical intonation that was special to the Caribbean: “Indeed, it is most difficult because the driver cannot see all that ought to be seen, but it’s worth it to have a fine car that holds the road and turns so easily.”

Having rebroken the ice, he began the lecture to which everything up to now had been a prelude: “You may not use my name in your dispatches, but you can refer to me as a well-informed businessman of color. At the last census, All Saints had a population of twenty-nine thousand stacked in hundreds of different social levels, each determined by color. I am one level higher in scale than a man one shade darker than me. And I am certainly one level lower than the man who is a touch lighter in coloring. And remember, it’s only the color of the
face
that counts, not how it looks down here,” and he slapped his belly.

“But for your purposes, there are only a dozen levels that matter. At the exalted top: anyone born pure-white in England with a title or
close claim to one. That is, the Gee-Gee and his circle of intimates. In a million years no man with my coloring will attain that Valhalla. Second level, anyone who can prove he comes from a good county family in England. No Scots nor Welsh need apply.”

“What do you mean by ‘good county family’?”

“No one knows scientifically, but everyone knows operationally.”

“For example?”

“Daughter of a well-respected clergyman, but never a Baptist or a Methodist. Son of an official who conducted himself well. ‘Good county family’—with us that explains everything.”

Millard asked five or six rapid-fire questions which proved that from his college courses he understood the niceties of English rural life, and after fielding them, Wrentham continued: “The women who determine who fits in where socially keep the county group rather small, but then comes the rather large third level to which you might aspire if you immigrated here, behaved yourself, and had voted Republican in America. It includes all the whites of respectable reputation, especially the French farming families who have been here longer than any of us English.

“But then the separation becomes brutal. Remorseless, like the swath of the reaper’s scythe. Level four, the ladies and gentlemen of color, spelled our way c-o-l-o-u-r. Light skin, much lighter than mine. Been to Oxford, maybe. Or the London School of Economics. Or Harvard. Serve in the gommint.”

“The what?”

“The
gommint
. You better learn that word. We all say it that way, even the Gee-Gee. What you colonials call government. On an island like All Saints, the gommint is all-powerful, and the top officials of color are entitled to membership in this exalted level four, also a few substantial businessmen, some wealthy widows, and now and then someone difficult to justify. But of one thing you can be certain, Mr. Detroit. Their color will be much lighter than mine. That’s the badge of honor.”

Wrentham’s disgust with the system he was describing was obvious, though he was able to talk of it with some levity. “Levels five, six and seven are all lighter than me … and keep that in mind,” he said, “because I am an eight,” which he then described as “hardworking men and women who save their money, send their children to school and know how to use a knife and fork.”

“But if you’re relegated to level eight, how did you acquire such
an elegant vocabulary?” asked McKay, and Bart chuckled: “Man, we have schools. Wonderful dedicated teachers who love every inch of England, every word Shakespeare ever wrote. I’ve never read an American book, if there are any, but Walter Scott and Charles Dickens and Jane Austen … yes, yes!”

There were, he said, about six levels for those of mixed color darker than his own, and now he was approaching the sharpest line of all: “Below them is nothing. The blacks with heavy lips, fine teeth and no education—slaves, perpetual slaves.”

“What if a black man were to immigrate here from, say, Carolina? Or a Hindu from India?”

“If he’s black, he’s black.”

“Can he never aspire to entering the higher groups? Where you people of lighter skin come to rest?”

Wrentham drove in silence, ignoring this ugly question, then said: “Mr. Newspaperman, we’re soon going to be at Cap Galant, where you will see the great beauty of our island. And there on the blanket I always carry in my Chevrolet, we shall spread our picnic, your first in the Caribbean, so we must make it unforgettable.”

But before spreading the picnic he wanted to share the basic rule of All Saints, the one that all young people understood: “It will also explain things if you decide to visit the other Caribbean islands. A young colored man of promise simply must, if he wants to get ahead, marry a girl with lighter skin. He will fight, lie, steal, and murder to achieve this. And the colored girl of great beauty who wants to make something of herself, she must marry a man with skin even lighter than hers. And it is watching what happens in this whirligig impasse that produces the hilarity of Caribbean life, and the tragedies, and the suicides.”

After a short run to the southwest, away from the Atlantic, they came to a small elevated peninsula jutting due westward and commanding an incomparable view. To the north, the distant ocean, to the east the slopes of Morne Jour reaching almost four thousand feet into the cloudless sky, to the south a perfect little bay with an arc of light sand, and best of all, to the west the quiet blue Caribbean spreading all the way to the Maya ruins of Cozumel.

“Which view is your favorite?” Millard asked, and Wrentham replied: “It’s all so grand, I can never decide,” and it was obvious that he was proud of this belvedere.

While he spread his blanket and laid out the delicacies he had
purchased at Tudor, Millard looked about the area atop the cap and down into the cove that housed the beach. What he saw confirmed Bart’s analysis of his island, for although he saw some eight or nine groups picnicking, each was off to itself and severely restricted in color. Whites ate with whites, light coloreds with their like, and rowdy blacks sang with their own kind. The beautiful cap and its beach were in no way segregated; anyone could eat anywhere, but he had better eat with his own color.

Wrentham had placed the blanket so that his American guest could lean comfortably against a rather large rock, and as the two men drank beer, munched sandwiches and nibbled at fine English biscuits and tartlets, Bart resumed his instruction: “On the hill behind Gommint House, which I’m sure you saw from your ship, there’s a building of no great distinction surrounded by tennis courts, bowling greens and croquet lawns. That’s The Club, and it is severely restricted to an all-white membership. Most of the people in levels one through three, including especially the French … Incidentally, the French speak little French. Their names announce them, not their verb forms. What was I saying?”

“Membership in The Club.”

“Well now. Suppose for a moment that you did emigrate here. Satisfied the paperwork and all that. You behave yourself. Pay your bills. Act with respect toward your superiors. You could still fail to be accepted.”

“Why?”

“You’re not English. And you are American. And that means you’ve got to be an uncultivated boor.”

“So I’ll never see this glorious club?”

“Of course you will! You can be invited there, but to be an actual member, never.”

“Is it pretty posh?”

“Heavens, no! Dues are minimal. Décor is deplorable, I’m told. I’ve never been allowed in, you understand. But I’m told its attraction is that it’s like a cocoon or a womb. Your own kind of people. Your own color.”

“Who runs it?”

“The women, fiercely. The wives of the senior officials, aided, of course, by Major Leckey. He’s in charge of seeing that it remains pure.”

“Who’s he?”

“The Gee-Gee’s aide-de-camp. Been here for years. Had a fine reputation in India, good regiment and all that. Major Devon Leckey. And if he takes a dislike to you, or if his madam, Pamela, does, you might as well pack up and leave, because he and the divine Pam rule the roost.”

“How?”

“They more or less determine what group you fit into. What affairs it would be proper to invite you to. Who would be urged to attend if your daughter gets married on the island.”

“An ugly type?”

“No, no! The Leckeys are the salt of the English earth. He didn’t get three medals and a mention in dispatches because he’s a dolt. He can trounce you at tennis, that I’ll wager.” He hesitated, took a large bite of sausage roll, then summarized his reaction to the ineffable major: “I find it difficult to like men who are a stone and half underweight and who have all their hair the color it was twenty years ago.” Then he added a note of serious caution: “If you want to see All Saints at its best, you must build a bridge to Major Leckey. If you do, all doors will be opened—invitations to Gommint House, dance at The Club, the interviews you seek. If you don’t … Siberia!”

“And how do I build that bridge?”

“I’ll tell you, old chap, it won’t be easy and I’m not teasing. Our tourist ships drop off scores of Americans and Canadians like you … often people of considerable wealth and power back home. Here they’re boors. Refuse to do things the British way, try to muscle their way in. And all they get is rebuffs. Major Leckey and his wife refuse even to see them. They never get to see Gee-Gee. And they go home cursing All Saints as an unfriendly place where the blacks are abused. That’s what’ll happen to you, old chap, if you hang around with the likes of me and don’t get friendly with the Leckeys.”

“And how do I do that?”

“You follow the traditions, long ingrained, of the British colony. You go to Gommint House before nightfall on the day of your arrival and sign the visitors’ book, to let the officials know you’re in town and are paying your proper respects. Then you present your credentials to assure people that you’re who you say you are and that someone in the echelon higher than yourself back home is vouching for you. Then you retire to your hotel room, behave yourself in public at meals, and wait.”

“Would my being seen in your saloon be a help or a hindrance?”

Wrentham laughed. “You’re a bright lad, McKay. It would alert those who matter that you’re no better than a seven or eight despite your white skin.”

“But if I do the things you suggested, would I be accepted in, say, level three?”

“Laddie! The government of this island is not stupid. They seek good reports in American newspapers. To augment tourism, if nothing else. You behave yourself, Major Leckey will be falling all over you. But not if you try to bull yourself in. Try that and you’re cut off, like a dead limb.”

“But if I reported that snobbery in my articles?”

“You’d never do that, laddie. Because you’re part of the system. I can see from our brief conversation that you’re prime club material. You already enjoy this island more than I do.”

A light-skinned couple who had been picnicking not far away recognized Wrentham and walked slowly over: “Hullo, Bart, shall we be seeing you at The Tennis tonight?”

“Of course. Save me a place at your table. This is my friend just in from America, Mr. Detroit Newspaperman.”

The greetings were cordial, with the woman saying: “If we can do anything to help while you’re here, call upon us. Roger has the importing business not far from Bart’s Waterloo.”