Caribbean

  The light-colored girl at the desk said with a soft island lilt: ‘Mr. McKay, your Hippolyte has taken your bags to room six, which has one of our best views down the baie.’

  Room 6 had not only a superb view of the baie but also a glimpse of the Caribbean beyond; a black maid with an immense smile came to tell him she had unpacked his bags and that he would find his shirts here and his socks there. She said: ‘My duty, mastuh, to see you happy. Ring bell, tell me when you want hot water in your bath.’

  ‘Is the water in the tap good to drink?’

  ‘Good me, maybe not you. I bring bottles.’

  He asked her when dinner was served, and she said: ‘Eight o’clock prompt, sir. Very punctual.’

  After a hot bath and a short nap, McKay sat on his veranda with a tall drink as he watched the tropical sun descend with a crash into the baie: Three weeks of evenings like this, All Saints will look better and better.

  When he went down to the dining room he found it much more animated than before; now a flurry of barefooted black waiters in semimilitary green uniforms moved studiously about the room, handing incoming diners big printed menus. The fare seemed to be the typical heavy English food that a small country inn north of London might provide, day after day throughout the year. Little concession was made to the fact that All Saints was in the tropics and that the waters nearby teemed with fish. Wondering where an island without much agriculture got its supply of beef and pork and lamb, Millard settled upon a roast chicken with stuffing. Looking up from the menu, he became aware that a fine-looking, well-dressed young man of very light coloring—perhaps a level four, McKay thought—was studying him intently, and the concentration continued until McKay grew embarrassed. But then the man got up from his table and went out to the hotel desk, obviously making inquiries as to who the newcomer might be.

  Returning to the dining area, he came directly to McKay’s table, to say in a carefully cultivated English accent: ‘I say! You must excuse my rudeness, but aren’t you McKay, the man I’ve been looking for?’ He coughed modestly, and added: ‘And I should think you might have been looking for me.’

  McKay rose, extended his hand, and said: ‘Millard McKay, Detroit Chronicle.’

  ‘I know. Please be seated. I’m Etienne Boncour. Jeweler and chairman of the Tourist Board. It’s my job to greet writers like you. To facilitate whatever it is you came to do. For we appreciate the value of your visit.’

  ‘Won’t you join me?’

  ‘Oh no, I mustn’t intrude on a guest. But I’d be most gratified, really I would, if you’d join me over there.’ Then, realizing that this must also be intrusive, he laughed appealingly and said: ‘I mean, since we are in the same business, more or less.’ When McKay looked puzzled, as if unable to see how the jewelry business and newspaper work could be related, the young man said: ‘I mean, I’m often engaged in writing publicity for our island, and you write too.’

  The explanation was so gracious and so obviously well intended that McKay could not resist. Picking up his napkin, he moved to the other table, where he said: ‘I’ve pretty well decided on the chicken, but tell me, where does your island get all the meat on this menu? The beef and pork?’

  ‘Refrigerator ships from Miami, but forget the beef and chicken. The chef always keeps a fish or two which he’ll fix for special customers. That’s what I’m having, and if you’d like, I’ll alert him to cook up one of his bigger ones.’

  ‘I would like that,’ and while they waited for the sea bass baked in fennel, Boncour said: ‘Don’t let my accent confuse you. I’m part of the French contingent on All Saints. Been here since 1620 or thereabouts. Family’s never left. But I did go to Durham in England for my education.’

  ‘Jewelry store, Tourist Board …’

  ‘And member of the Gee-Gee’s Executive Council. That’s the most fun.’

  ‘How did all that happen?’

  ‘The business? My grandfather started it when tourists began to arrive. The education? I did well in school and won a rather substantial bursary. The council? In the old days, only white men of impeccable background and usually born in Britain. Recently the authorities have been reaching out to a few men of color, and I’m one of that lucky breed!’ And McKay thought: I was right. He is a four.

  ‘Does your council have any real power? Or is it what we call “window dressing”?’

  ‘Nice question. Let’s say we’re made to think we have power, but actually, Gee-Gee decides things pretty much as he wishes.’ Then, fearing that this might appear in print, he corrected himself: ‘There’s a breath of freedom blowing in from the sea. We’re terribly anxious to see how our new Gee-Gee responds to it.’

  ‘Hope the food comes soon. I’m starved,’ McKay said. Boncour glanced at his watch, and this led to a whole new path of conversation, for McKay asked: ‘Is that a Rolex you’re wearing?’ and when the jeweler nodded, McKay said like an admiring schoolboy: ‘I’ve never seen one. Just the ads in glossy magazines,’ and Boncour slipped the watch from his wrist and handed it over.

  McKay was fascinated by the sharp styling, the reassuring heaviness of the watch: ‘Feels as if it could run for a hundred years.’

  ‘I’ve never heard them claim that.’

  ‘Since I saw my first good Swiss watch at age fourteen … in a Canadian shop … I’ve wanted one. But they’re murderously expensive, aren’t they? Cheapest Rolex I ever saw was ninety-five dollars, American.’

  ‘The one I’m wearing’—it had a solid-gold case—‘sells retail for many times that,’ Boncour said. ‘I don’t own it. Just wear it now and then to be sure it’s working.’

  ‘What does an ordinary Rolex, the kind I might buy if I had the money …’ Millard began, but Boncour hushed him: ‘Mr. McKay, I didn’t visit your table to peddle watches. But if you stop by the shop in the morning, of your own volition, it could be that I might surprise you.’

  When the fish arrived, with a crisped skin and decoration of fennel, Boncour ordered a bottle of wine, and it became a gala dinner, with Boncour describing the island as if it were an entirely different place from the narrowly restricted one that Wrentham had talked of that afternoon: ‘There is great freedom of spirit here. Much human happiness.’

  After the fish had been consumed, McKay summoned the courage to ask: ‘Does a man like you, well educated, familiar with European countries and customs … do you experience any discrimination?’ Immediately he added: ‘I’m a newspaperman, you know. But I’ll not quote you.’

  ‘No censorship here.’

  ‘On the other Caribbean islands?’ McKay asked, and Boncour replied: ‘All the English islands are pretty much the same. I have two other stores, you know. Barbados and Trinidad. Not much difference.’ Then he added: ‘In the islands where I have my shops, everyone knows my views. Of course there’s discrimination, but it’s tempered with decency. And the whites are sensible enough to offer us concessions, tiny perhaps in your view, in ours very significant.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Let’s put it this way. The supreme social accolade open to us non-whites is to be invited to Gommint House. Major Leckey calls you on the phone and you tremble, thinking that maybe lowly you is going to be invited, and he says in his crisp, hesitant voice: “That you, Boncour? Good. Leckey here. Could you possibly break free and come to a little reception Gee-Gee is holding, Thursday at dusk? Good.” ’

  ‘Then what happens?’

  ‘I rustle out and get my hair cut, ask my maid to press my white suit, and up I go to Gommint House, where I see that I am one of only seven men of color, and I am, to put it frankly, elated that I have been allowed entrance to the Holy of Holies. And Gee-Gee, at least the last one we’ve had, is no fool, for lost in the middle of the crowd will be one jet-black man, to prove that Gommint House is available to all.’

  Then the light touch vanished, as Boncour said slowly and softly: ‘But when the gala ends, the taxis arrive to carry the important white people over to The Club
for their dinner. The colored in their family cars ride out to The Tennis for their dinner. I come to the Waterloo, while the lone black man stops off at Tonton’s, where his mates josh him enviously for having played the swell.’

  All Saints, like Trinidad and others, was a Crown Colony, and no one on the island was likely to forget it. It had never had an island legislature such as Barbados or Jamaica had enjoyed, although Jamaica had lost its government after the Governor Eyre disaster, and had reverted to Crown Colony status. All Saints did have two small advisory bodies to which whites and browns aspired, but since the island belonged in theory to the crown, ultimate power rested with the monarch’s representative, the governor general. If he was prudent, he listened to his advisers and tried to avoid acting contrary to their strongly held convictions, but he knew and they knew that when push came to shove, he pushed with sufficient power to nullify their shoving.

  Common sense prevented the system from becoming a tyranny, and cooperation between the Executive Council, comprised of mostly white appointed officials, and the Legislative Council of twelve, including five elected members, served to maintain an illusion that the general populace had some say in the government.

  Etienne Boncour was one of the five elected members; officially he represented Bristol Town’s business community, but emotionally he was known as one of the three members who had strong ties with the French component. In any important vote he and the other two Frenchmen were smothered by what was called ‘the alliance of proper Englishmen,’ a situation that generated no ill will, for as one Englishman growled at The Club: ‘Our French? They’ve jolly well been proper Englishmen for the last hundred years.’

  In the morning, but not too early, lest he betray his eagerness, Millard strolled over to Boncour’s jewelry shop to see, as he told the owner, ‘what the story is on these Rolexes.’ The story was shocking. A solid-gold Rolex could cost upward of $2,500, an honest one in a lesser metal but with all the features, $125, but after Millard had inspected the less-expensive ones, realizing that he could not afford even them, Boncour amused him by producing, from a case in another part of the shop, a rather good-looking copy made in Hong Kong, indistinguishable from a real Rolex but priced at $17.50.

  ‘Amazing,’ Millard said. ‘How do you tell the difference?’

  ‘The copy falls apart in three months. The real one lasts forever.’ And it was then that McKay discovered one of the secrets of doing business in the Caribbean: Boncour’s shop had exquisite jewelry and gifts for sale to the island’s white trade, but also hordes of low-cost imitations for tourists, local blacks and sailors off passing ships.

  At this point Boncour was called away by an entering customer, and Millard was left alone to study the shop. Before he could see beyond the high-priced display cases and the low, he was distracted by the two golden-skinned girls who tended the shop, and they were so refreshing, so graceful with flowers in their hair, that he thought: It’s not fair to young unmarried Englishmen to have girls as beautiful as that around, and of the wrong color.

  When Boncour returned he said seriously: ‘I know what it is to want a really good watch. That’s how I got into the business. I have a Rolex here, not new, but nearly so. Man brought it in to be fixed, and he may have stolen it, because two weeks later he was murdered. The police and I advertised everywhere, even on other islands, but I never found the owner. I want to get rid of it. I want my expenses for the replacement parts I had to send for and the advertising. I’ll let you take it off my hands for thirty-two dollars.’

  Millard stepped back and looked at Boncour. As a newspaperman in Detroit he had investigated every kind of scam: the supposed millionaire who had died intestate in the Nevada gold fields, the bait-and-switch sales, the cruel deception in which widows deposited their savings. He not only knew the old angles, but he had also learned to be on the alert for those new tricks which had not surfaced before.

  ‘That’s a good watch. Worth a lot more than thirty-two dollars.’

  ‘Right on both counts.’

  ‘But I’d want police clearance on it before I could be interested.’

  To McKay’s surprise, Boncour said: ‘You’d certainly get it! I want a record too … of having cleared up the case,’ and, pocketing the watch and some papers relating to it, he led McKay to the police station, which could have been a fake, except that it had a permanent sign outside and two uniformed officers behind the desk.

  ‘The chief in?’ Boncour asked, and one of the desk men indicated with his shoulder that the inner door was open. Inside, McKay faced a colored police sergeant in a natty twill uniform, who asked jovially: ‘Who’s done what?’

  Boncour spoke, placing watch and papers on the desk: ‘It’s that watch the murdered man left. I have about thirty-two dollars in it, new parts and those advertisements. Mr. McKay, newspaperman from Detroit, needs a watch and is willing to pay the thirty-two dollars.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘Police verification that I didn’t steal it. A receipt so that Mr. McKay can take it back with him to the States.’

  ‘Why haven’t you looked for a buyer here?’

  ‘Thirty-two dollars is a lot of money for most of my customers. And it is essentially a used watch.’

  The sergeant shuffled the papers on his desk and was about to sign the prepared receipt, when he looked past Boncour and McKay and cried with huge affection: ‘Sir Benny! Come in!’ and into the office came a most unusual man. He was jet-black, about five feet six, slightly chubby, beautifully relaxed and wreathed in an ingratiating smile.

  Nodding graciously when introduced to McKay, the man greeted Boncour and the sergeant as old friends, then said in a low, soft voice with an impeccable English accent: ‘Sergeant, I’ve got to tell you before you go any further, my sister found the wheelbarrow.’

  The sergeant laughed: ‘I told you she would.’ Then turning to McKay, he said: ‘This criminal type is Sir Benny Castain.’

  McKay, thinking Sir Benny to be one of those calypso singers who favored names like Lord Invader or Emperor Divine, made a tremendous gaffe: ‘Have you recorded any of your songs?’

  ‘No, no!’ the station sergeant laughed. ‘He’s a real knight. Sword of the King himself. Our greatest cricketer, batsman and/or bowler.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know about cricket,’ Sir Benny said apologetically, but Millard corrected him: ‘Indeed I do. Don Bradman. Douglas Jardine.’

  The three island men gaped, and Sir Benny asked: ‘Now, how does an American know those names?’

  ‘At Rutgers University, near New York, there were always West Indians playing cricket in some park. I read about it in a book by Neville Cardus. Part of my course in English.’

  ‘I cannot believe this!’ Sir Benny said, and the men sat down while the sergeant recalled the glory of All Saints’ cricket: ‘Lord Basil Wrentham, him who’s to serve as our new Gee-Gee, brought a first-rate English team to the West Indies, 1932 it may have been. Four matches. They won handily in Jamaica, had a better challenge in Trinidad, and won again by a big margin in Barbados. We’d never had a topnotch international match in All Saints, but for that occasion we’d built a new oval, sodded it well, and could offer a first-class pitch.

  ‘Great excitement when the ship brought the two teams over from Barbados. The English players, so white-skinned, so gentlemanly, won all hearts as they trooped off the ship behind Lord Basil and Douglas Jardine, both men tall and imperial. Then the great batsmen, Patsy Hendren and Walter Hammond. And the bowlers, Leslie Ames and Bill Voce.’ As he uttered each of the revered names, the other two islanders nodded approvingly. ‘That really was a great team,’ Boncour said, but Sir Benny said quietly: ‘You forget the best bowler of them all, got me three times before the game at All Saints, Hedley Verity,’ and the others agreed.

  The sergeant, eager for this interested American to understand the greatness of Sir Benny, began to recite the details of that memorable four-day match. But as he started, McKay had
a happy inspiration: ‘Why don’t we all go over to the Waterloo and discuss this? Drinks are on me.’ The men instantly agreed. Leaving the police station, the sergeant said to McKay: ‘Don’t forget your watch,’ and Boncour nodded: ‘It’s yours now.’

  At the Waterloo, Bart Wrentham greeted them with enthusiasm, bowed to Sir Benny, and asked if he might join them. McKay said: ‘Yes, if you’ll send out for the kind of picnic we had yesterday,’ and he handed Wrentham some pound notes. ‘You buy the food,’ Bart said. ‘I’ll treat for the beer,’ and shortly he was back with another feast.

  ‘England batted first,’ the sergeant resumed. ‘Brutal. Scored 352, with the loss of only six wickets.’ Turning to McKay, he asked: ‘You know what “declaring” means?’

  ‘Yes. If England already has 352 runs, a huge lead, they figure they’ll be able to get your team out quickly and then make you follow on—that is, go right back in and do so poorly that your combined score will be less than 352. So with England batting only once, they swamp you and win the match, 352 to something like maybe 207. Great victory.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Sir Benny said. ‘Never thought to see an American who understands cricket.’

  ‘Lord Basil had made a daring gamble on behalf of England’s team,’ the sergeant said, ‘but he stood to win, because our side didn’t have great batsmen.’ He paused, and everyone looked at Sir Benny, who smiled smugly as he recalled yet again that glorious day. ‘But Lord Basil hadn’t counted on this fellow here. He was plain Benny Castain then, grandson of a former slave, but a lad with a good education obtained in our schools. I shall never forget him coming out to bat. Not big. Not powerful. Two of our wickets down for a total of only 29, and England with that formidable 352. But Benny dug in, knocked the ball all over the oval, never saw such an innings. Finally clean bowled by Verity yet again, but he had put 139 on the board, and England was nervous, I can tell you that, when our innings ended at 291. Any desire to make us follow on was lost, thanks to Benny.’