Caribbean (117 page)

Although Sally was deeply moved by the powerful rhythms, the repeated phrases and the imagery of the natal jungle and the slave ship, she was too analytical a young woman to miss a salient fact
about the Rastafarian’s performance: That rascal has three complete modes of speech. Colorful Jamaican street language, Rastafarian glossolalia, and in these established songs, perfect English. And he switches from one to another almost automatically.

“Slave Driver” finished, the singer turned to one of Marley’s most provocative hits, one composed by another man but preempted by Marley as his theme song, “Four Hundred Years.” It had a haunting beat, an endless repetition of the title which referred to the years of slavery, and a summons to remember that servitude. Now everyone in the room, including Harry Keeler, who had always liked Marley’s music, became a slave assigned to some sugar plantation.

The evening ended with a dozen young people clustered about Grimble, for he had reminded them with music and imagery that some years back he must have been like them, an ordinary black man with an ordinary name. Their questioning pinned him in so tight that Sally had no chance to bid him goodbye, but he was so tall that he was able to catch her eye, and they exchanged glances as she moved toward the exit.

There Harry Keeler waited, and as she neared he asked: “May I accompany you home?” and wanting to be freed of the Rastafarian mystique, she said almost gladly: “I’d like that.”

As they walked through the lovely island night, with stars as brilliant as guide lights on distant ships, she said: “A remarkable performance. What do you think it meant?”

“I doubt that a white man is qualified to summarize.”

“But you know the islands. You know revolutionary movements, Frantz Fanon and his breed.”

“It’s a powerful breed, a necessary one. If I were a young black—without a university education, that is—I do believe that Brother Grimble might exert a strong and perhaps constructive influence on me.” He paused, then brought the evening together in a tight knot: “Blacks really are ‘the dispossessed of the earth,’ as Fanon claimed.”

“So you think that Rastafarians …?”

“Don’t jump the gun. As a white junior official who wants to see his society held together, I also know that Rastafarians really do believe that the police are the Great Babylon.” Turning to look at her lovely face, he warned: “I think I can predict that in the weeks ahead your father, as commissioner of police, is going to have a basketful of trouble.”

Irritated by what she interpreted as a white putdown of a black
idea, even though it was grotesque, she drew apart from him as they strolled. And in those moments these two might have been any couple of mixed color in any of the Caribbean islands: a very dark man wooing a Martinique girl of very light color who dreamed of bettering herself on the color scale, a man in Cuba whose family claimed with great vigor and invention that they stemmed in line directly from soldiers of Ponce de Leon who had brought their Spanish wives with them: “And never was intermarriage with black slaves allowed.” They were also much like the hesitant Hindu lass on Trinidad who finds herself admired by a nearly white Church of England businessman in Port of Spain.

In All Saints that winter night it was Sally, the daughter of the commissioner of police, walking slowly with Harry, the promising young economist from England, who would be returning there one of these days with a universe of experience in Algeria, Ghana and the Caribbean. How valuable to world society he was as he strolled that night, how precious she was as the new Caribbean black who could accomplish almost anything in her island society. Two young people of immense value, restrained by inherited taboos but at the same time set free by recent revolutions, they walked for some moments in silence, and then her prejudice against an ancient enemy softened and she said, changing the subject: “Who do you think’ll get the top appointment in the Tourist Board?” and he said quickly: “It better be somebody damn good. For the next dozen years this island sinks or swims depending on how it handles its tourism.” He walked for several steps, then turned to face Sally: “Insist to your father that we can’t afford to blow up over the Rastafarian. Remind him that some years ago the Rastas nearly destroyed Jamaican tourism. I saw figures which suggested that Jamaica lost millions of American dollars.”

“Must we always sell our soul to the American cruise ships?”

“Correction. Not a single cruise ship that stops here is owned by the Americans. Great Britain, Holland, Swedes, French …”

“But it’s the American tourist they bring, with his American dollars.”

“Correction. With
her
American dollars.”

“You’re a clever lad, Keeler,” she said, and he replied: “I try to be,” and from his front window Police Commissioner Wrentham watched as his daughter kissed the young economist goodnight.

Harry Keeler was one of the only two leading citizens who were white, himself and Canon Essex Tarleton of the Church of England; all others, from the governor general on down, were either black or brown. Because he had enjoyed his earlier experience in Africa, Keeler found it easy to work under black leaders, and he encountered no difficulty in adjusting to their sometimes arbitrary ways. He never allowed them to dissuade him from a right decision, but he was considerate and willing to spend a good deal of time in explaining why this or that move ought to be avoided and a better plan adopted.

For example, his sometimes radical innovations regarding tourism had produced rather better results than he had predicted, and the island now had an airport capable of handling medium-sized jets, a first-class tourist hotel at spectacular Pointe Neuve on the new road in from the airport, and a set of some two dozen bed-and-breakfast places at York, which had never before shared in the tourist dollar because of a frightening mountain road which separated it from Bristol Town. Keeler had said: “Straighten the hairpins on that damned road, or announce publicly that you’re going to let York starve.” This had made him a hero in York, and many tourists reported their stay in the homes of ordinary black families along the shore of Marigot Baie was “the highlight of our trip, not only to All Saints but to the entire Caribbean.” Such reports came, of course, from the hardier travelers; the others preferred the deluxe accommodations at Pointe Neuve.

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.