Keeler was proud of his contributions to All Saints: ‘It’s possibly the best-run black country on earth, and that includes everything in Africa.’ But whenever he indulged in this comparison he drew back for two reasons: ‘Country? Can an island with only a hundred and ten thousand people be called a country even if it is represented in the United Nations? And its present prosperity does hang on the nebulous thread of tourism.’ And success in tourism, as he knew, was mercurial. It required that rich Americans be kept happy.
That was the danger he had perceived that night when he met with the island’s first Rastafarian: ‘Who can forget what happened in Jamaica when that gang with their hideous dreadlocks and their fierce animosity began to molest white women and elderly millionaires? Tourism was wiped out for years. Untold losses and a change in government. That sort of upheaval we cannot afford.’
But even while these apprehensions worried him, he was experiencing a euphoria he had not known for years. Miss Sally Wrentham was proving to be as exciting intellectually as she was provocative physically; she had a sense of humor, a knowledge of her island’s history, a judicious attitude toward race. She did not believe, as some on the island did, that blacks were somehow superior in their understanding of Caribbean problems, but she would never concede that they were inferior. The quiet, effective way in which her grandfather Black Bart and her father Thomas had manipulated their white superiors until total freedom was gained had so convincingly proved that blacks could run a country that she had never wanted to leave All Saints for either London or New York, and Keeler appreciated that firmness of mind.
Indeed, as he pursued his more or less serious courtship of Sally he told himself: I would be quite happy making my life here. Helping the island to self-sufficiency, and yes, stepping aside in later years when blacks I’d trained took over. And if I made that choice, what better than to have a superior woman like Sally for my wife?
Three solid reasons, which he did not need to review, made such conclusions viable. He had no yearning desire to return to the drab village on the edge of Yorkshire from which he had come; life there had been oppressive and hemmed in. His memories of his failed marriage to Elspeth were enough to make him groan at night when he recalled them, and he wished no repetition; on the day their divorce became final he felt as if a village cart had been hauled off his chest.
His third reason for feeling content on All Saints could be appreciated only by another Briton. In previous centuries and in the first half of this one, the various parts of the British Empire had been ruled by well-disciplined young Englishmen who had attended the best boarding schools and either Oxford or Cambridge. They were sent out to India or Africa or the Caribbean as young administrators, deigning to spend a few years bringing civilization to God’s children before returning home to retired glory as Lord This or Sir That, or at least with a civil medal of some distinction. Young men of the middle or lower classes, who had edged their way into lesser English colleges known collectively as ‘the red-brick universities,’ or the Scottish universities, who wanted to serve overseas were eligible only for minor posts. So in those days the British presence was almost invariably represented by an Englishman of good family at the head of government, flanked by young aides of social background much like his, and supported by a corps of men like him who could rarely hope to attain any position of major leadership.
Great Britain suffered by adhering to this restrictive system. In India, of course, it worked, for there a succession of noble viceroys gave stable and sometimes brilliant leadership, but in lesser places like All Saints the posting of well-bred, inadequate men to positions of leadership often resulted in disaster. The last governor general was an example. Just before World War II the Colonial Office had said: ‘It’s time to give good old Basil Wrentham something or other,’ and so they dispatched him to All Saints, where he marched ashore in solemn majesty with only three qualifications: he was so thin and erect that he epitomized the archetypal English governor general, he was a noted cricketer, and he was the second son of the Earl of Gore. He had been a social success and a political catastrophe, striving even as late as June 1939 to engineer a pact of some kind between Great Britain and Nazi Germany. His uncontrollable daughter, Delia, had married a German baron who later became the brutal gauleiter of a large section of Belgium, where the baron’s abused subjects hanged him just before Christmas, 1945.
Keeler was one of the new postwar breed of British colonial officers; the son of lower-middle-class parents, educated in ordinary schools and a red-brick university, he had progressed because of natural ability and hard work, and he found life overseas so congenial that he had no desire to leave. Consequently, marriage with an island girl like Sally was not only acceptable, but almost inevitable; he’d experienced a wife who had little interest in anything but her husband’s income and her own social triumphs.
As his studied courtship progressed, he found himself looking at Sally Wrentham as a possible wife-to-be. So on a Saturday morning he dressed in his best whites, drove to her house, and invited her to accompany him to the one-day cricket match in York at the far end of the mountain road. Her reply: ‘Can I pack a lunch?’ His response: ‘That would be great,’ and off they sped in his Volkswagen.
He always enjoyed driving this scenic highway whose newly revealed beauty was the result of his headstrong effort, and he was delighted when Sally said: ‘You must be pleased that your new road works so well. They were really after your scalp there for a while.’
‘It’s a road that was needed,’ he said as the vistas which his men had chopped through the forest revealed the distant Atlantic.
The cricket match had occasioned much comment, for it was Bristol Town versus The Rest, and although the capital eleven traditionally smothered the team composed of the best players from outlying parts of the island, this year it looked as if The Rest might have a chance. The town of Tudor in the north sent two brothers who had set records as bowlers, York had several strong bats, and there were also two really good cricketers from London on temporary duty installing a new radar at the All Saints airport playing for The Rest; it had been agreed that although they were citizens of England, they had been working during a prolonged stay on the island, and were thus eligible.
A one-day match posed special strategic problems. Team A could bat first starting at ten-thirty and score 300 runs in powerful but dilatory fashion before its tenth and final wicket fell, but then it would probably not have time to get all the batsmen of Team B out before the end of play at five-thirty, in which case the match, with Team A leading 316–57, would be declared a draw. Proper strategy would be for Team A to bat merrily, score about 190, declare their innings ended even though they still had four players eligible to bat, then try to get all ten batsmen of Team B out before five-thirty and before they could score 191. In that case, Team A would win. But if Team B, in its innings, belted the ball over the boundary with abandon and scored a surprising 191 before five-thirty, they won.
In no other game played throughout the world was strategy and taking bold chances so much a part of the contest as in cricket; American tourists, of whom there would be a busload coming over the mountain today, never appreciated the wonderful intricacies of the game and the way a clever captain would first use two fast bowlers to chop up the pitch, then slip in a new bowler with a googly or a left-handed chinaman to take advantage of the roughened turf to take the batsman’s wicket. Nor could they see how adroitly the captain placed his nine fielders—not counting the bowler and the wicket keeper—so that one of his men was positioned right where the careless batsman was likely to pop up an easy catch.
If cricket had been a mania back in the early 1930s when Lord Wrentham’s XI visited the Caribbean, it was now a compelling obsession. Part of the excitement of this day’s struggle on the field at York grew out of the fact that several older men who would serve as selectors for the next West Indian team to play England would be watching carefully to see just how good t
he two brothers from Tudor were as bowlers and whether the well-regarded batsmen from York could defend themselves on a bumpy pitch. They would also be watching Harry Keeler, who had established himself as a superb fielder at silly mid-on and a reliable batsman against all but googlies; he was a white man, but he had turned in his British passport for an island one on the reasonable grounds that ‘if I’m to live here the rest of my life, I may as well do it right.’ This made him eligible to play on the West Indies team conscripted from all the islands. He was most eager to make the team, for although he did not wish to live in England, he would relish a return there as a test-team cricketer.
When Keeler and Sally turned off the mountain road and into town at a quarter to ten they saw that the tourist bus from Bristol Town had arrived as well as six other buses from the north end of the island and three from the airport. ‘I hope,’ he said to Sally as they parked their car, ‘that no airplane from Barbados arrives at one this afternoon in trouble and needing ground support.’
Nothing in the British islands of the Caribbean was more important than cricket. Trinidad, Jamaica and Barbados might disagree on the economy, airfares between the islands, the management of their one university, and what taxes should be imposed on Trinidadian gasoline, but when the time came to build a West Indies team for a tour of England, India, Pakistan or Australia, all differences were submerged and funds were mysteriously found to pay for the trip. Local prejudices drove the islands apart, cricket bound them together.
Today’s game was a brilliant affair, a sky-blue Saturday, with flowering trees in bloom, fruit abundant in the open marketplace, people of all complexions seated in the tiny stands or lying on the grass—and everyone caught up in the excitement of a one-day match. Cricket purists did not appreciate such condensed and often rowdy affairs; they preferred the more stately matches that covered two, three or even five consecutive days, for then captains could engage in intricate strategies, depending on weather forecasts and the likely effect on the condition of the pitch. In a series of five matches it was not uncommon for two or even four to end in draws. One of the beauties of cricket was to watch a resolute captain whose team faced almost certain defeat swing things about to deprive the enemy of a sure win by prolonging the battle until time ran out. In such circumstances, a draw was almost as good as a win and sometimes more exciting as men batted against the clock. A proper five-day match with a little rain to cause uncertainty was cricket at its best, but in the islands a rousing one-day struggle had equal merit but of a more noisy nature.
How stately the scene appeared when the eleven players from The Rest, who had won the toss and elected to bat last, strolled casually onto the field, their white cricket gear standing out against the carefully tended green playing area. The men, who represented eight or nine different gradations of color, were handsome, at ease, smiling at their friends in the crowd; but how the tension grew when the opening batsmen from Bristol Town, protected by heavy leg pads and batting gloves, strode out, bats dragging behind them, to make their stand against The Rest bowlers!
One of the two umpires was always Canon Essex Tarleton—with ruddy face, white hair and a rotund body that looked like a Toby jug. When he marched onto the field, with a dignified waddling pace, there was decorous clapping, for he was a much-loved figure who reminded them of John Bull, and of other aspects of England which they still treasured.
What made him especially memorable was his garb, for cricket umpires traditionally wore their trousers and white shirt under a linen duster that reached halfway down the calf, but the canon (an honorary but inaccurate title awarded him by his shipmates aboard a wartime cruiser) wore instead of the duster a heavy ribbed sweater made of natural wool from the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland. As soon as the day heated, which was early in the West Indies, Tarleton removed his sweater and tied its arms in a tight knot about his ample belly, so that the bulk of the sweater covered his rear. Many photographs were taken of his umpiring, and most showed the heavy sweater drooping from his waist.
In cricket, at the climax of a close play, the umpire was not required to render a decision unless there was a formal appeal, and this took the form of a shouted question: ‘Howzzat?’ There was difference of opinion as to whether the curious word meant ‘How was that?’ or ‘How is that?’ but when six or seven fielders shouted at the same time ‘Howzzat?’ Canon Tarleton came into his glory, for he stood as tall as he could, stared at the supplicants, and delivered his judgment, which was never appealed. His word was law.
Keeler’s side batted first, but neither he nor his fellow batsmen accomplished much. One of the Tudor bowlers tricked Harry with an off-breaking fast ball, which he popped up for an easy catch by silly mid-off for a score of only 13. Bristol Town was in poor shape at the lunch break, when Sally broke out a small feast which players from both teams shared in easy companionship. ‘I think we have you on the hip,’ one of the Tudor men warned Keeler. ‘They tell me those two chaps from the airport are powerful batsmen.’
‘We’ll see,’ Harry replied. ‘And if it looks bad for us, Sally here will pray for rain.’ In that case, no matter how poorly Bristol Town did after the lunch break, the match would be a draw.
Bristol did quite poorly, the Tudor brothers proving that they were bowlers of almost test class, all out for 133, leaving The Rest with ample time to win.
They sent in a cautious batsman first, paired with one of the good players from York, and although the cautious man went down quickly, the more experienced player hit out strongly and scored well. But when the next batsman came in, one of the tragedies of cricket unfolded. To score a run, both batsmen had to run, at the same time, exchanging creases, and it sometimes happened that a poor batsman would be too daring in his decision. He would try to run when the odds were against him; his partner, starting out of his safe area just a little late, would be thrown out through no fault of his own. Cricket being a gentleman’s game, the good batsman did not in this moment of frustration thump his inept partner over the head with his bat, but he would have been justified in doing so.
That is what happened: the poor batsman was safe, the good one out. So The Rest lost two wickets in a hurry, but then one of the radar men from the airport came to bat, and it was obvious after his first few runs that he had played a good deal of high-quality cricket in the English counties. He was good, and it looked as if he might notch a century when Harry Keeler made a remarkable play. The airport man hit a well-placed ground ball which rolled rapidly out toward the boundary. If it escaped the fielders, it would be a four, and even if someone from the Bristol Town side did run it down, two or perhaps three runs would be scored. So the batsman and his partner set out confidently, but Harry, running at startling speed, overtook the ball, reached down without stopping, grabbed it with one hand, and with unbroken motion threw it with great force right into the hands of the distant wicketkeeper, who deftly ticked the bails, the two wooden crosspieces atop the wicket, into the grass. The play was very close. Did the runner reach safety before the bails went flying, or had the ball beaten him? ‘Howzzat?’ shouted the Bristol men, and Canon Tarleton stood impassive. Then, after a dramatic pause, he signaled the runner out. A cheer went up from both sides in tribute to Harry Keeler’s mighty throw which had dismissed The Rest’s leading scorer.
The play did not aid Bristol much, because the other airport man teamed up with a strong batsman from York, and runs were added at a pace that seemed to doom Bristol. Keeler came up with another dazzling defensive play, a falling dive parallel to the ground to make a one-handed catch off the York batsman, but another stubborn man took his place, and with help from the high-scoring airport man, The Rest scored the necessary 134 well before quitting time.
A visitor from Barbados, an elderly black man who had as a youth once toured England with Sir Benny Castain, took the trouble to find Keeler at the end of the match: ‘I’m John Gaveny, selector from Bridgetown, and I must say any team could use a world-class fielder li
ke you,’ but before Harry could feel elation, Gaveny added: ‘That is, if he could be relied upon to put together twenty or thirty runs.’
Harry and Sally were among the last of the Bristol Town contingent to leave York, and after darkness fell at a quarter past six like a curtain in a theater crashing down, they stopped at one of the niches carved in the side of the mountain for the passage of buses and kissed with some ardor. When they reached home, Sally said: ‘Come in and have supper with us,’ and they found that the housekeeper had waiting for them and the commissioner a bubbling stew made of island vegetables, potatoes brought by ship from Ireland and beef flown in from Miami. After asking how the game had gone, Commissioner Wrentham said: ‘Those brothers from Tudor, if they can master a change of pace, they’ll be on the test team for sure,’ and Sally said: ‘If you’d seen Harry’s defensive plays, you’d put him there too.’ After supper Wrentham said: ‘I have work at the station,’ and he left the young lovers alone, satisfied on all counts: he had raised a splendid daughter who was being courted by a man worthy of her.
But the courtship, so appropriate from every outside evaluation, did not go smoothly, because two weeks after the cricket match, Laura Shaughnessy, from the governor general’s office, said to Sally: ‘Let’s take tomorrow off. The Rastafarian wants to see the north end of the island, and I said I’d take him in my car.’
For Sally, what had started as a casual excursion turned out to be a day of tremendous significance, when values were up for review. It would prove to be totally different from the genteel ride with the Englishman Keeler to the cricket game at York. That had been essentially a trip back to England, with a break for tea, and an almost fanatical observation of the little niceties of the game.