Caribbean (97 page)

The third Lord Wrentham left the Caribbean and returned to England, where he performed such valiant services for the crown that he won significant promotion to Earl of Gore, a title which had since passed in orderly fashion to seven Wrentham inheritors.

The various Earls of Gore accomplished little of merit except the cultivation of their huge sugar estates on Barbados and All Saints, from which as absentee landlords, they garnered vast fortunes, to be spent ostentatiously in London. One of their minor grandsons, Alistair Wrentham, did return to the Caribbean as a first lieutenant aboard H.M.S.
Boreas
with the great Horatio Nelson, and served with him again at Trafalgar. For his heroism, he had later been commissioned admiral of the Caribbean fleet, in which capacity he gained several resounding victories over the French.

McKay, who relished the intricate rules governing English titles, learned from his swift scanning of
Burke’s
that whoever was Earl of Gore also held the subsidiary title, Lord Wrentham. Millard mused: But the news clip said Lord Basil Wrentham. Whenever they use the first name, it means he’s not next in line. Means he’s a younger son called Lord as courtesy. Title dies with him. Lord Basil can never become Earl of Gore unless his older brother dies. But … even on those restricted terms, it would be nice to be a lord.

In his research he discovered an attractive story, which he planned to use in his first article, as to how All Saints got its name:

In the early 1500s the Spaniards made four half-hearted attempts to wrest the island from the fierce Caribs, but were ignominiously repulsed by those fighting terrors. Then the English tried three times, with no better results. But in 1671 the English succeeded, to be promptly ousted by the French. In the following hundred and seventy-four years the ownership of this desirable isle changed hands eighteen times: Carib, Spanish, French, English, Dutch. Thirteen of these changes were the result of military action: the English trying to force their way ashore against the French; the Dutch blasting the English; the Caribs revolting against the Dutch; the French gaining
substantial control and making it a French island. Five of the changes resulted not from any action in the Caribbean but rather from treaties arranged in Europe, when Caribbean islands were moved like pawns on a chessboard. All Saints figured in eleven of these treaties, and there were many who felt then or who still feel that the final disposition—British since 1814—placed All Saints in the wrong hands. It should have been French.

And in a small book which Millard grabbed at the last moment, he discovered the most intriguing fact of all: “Through all these varied shifts of ownership, a minor branch of the Wrentham family stubbornly stayed on All Saints, some of the members growing darker generation by generation as their parents mingled with black slaves. But regardless of their color, they were all distantly related to the Earl of Gore.”

Before hurrying home to pack, McKay proved what a prudent young man he was by returning to Dan Gross’s office to explain a problem: “Sir, this is an English colony, and I had it drummed into me by my professors who studied at Oxford: ‘Never barge into any English social group without being fortified with letters of introduction establishing who you are and verifying your character.’ Could you please write me such letters?”

“No! First of all, it’s a British colony, not English. And you know our rules. We kowtow to no one, seek no extra privileges. You arrive in All Saints like an ordinary tourist. See things fresh and unbiased.”

“Of course I know the accurate name has been Great Britain since 1603, but English sounds better, and I do know that in an English colony, letters …”

“No letters. Do it our way.”

McKay entered All Saints by the most beautiful approach in the Caribbean: on an early sun-drenched morning he stood in the bow of his ship and watched two lovely peaks loom out of the sea. “That’s Morne Jour to the north,” a fellow traveler explained, “Morne Soir to the south.”

“I don’t know that word
morne
,” Millard said, and the man replied: “Hill, I guess. All the place names here are French.”

“I’m sure they would be,” McKay said. “Seeing that the island was French longer than it’s been English.”

The traveler, an Englishman, did not like this extension of his
friendly remarks and moved away, leaving McKay alone as the ship passed between two rocky pillars guarding the entrance to Baie de Soleil. But then McKay overheard him pointing out the glories of this entrance to another passenger: “Pointes Nord and Sud,” he said, pronouncing the French with a flair.

Now McKay saw the wonder of this approach to a tropical island, for the two protecting rocks were so placed that any view of the sea behind was cut off. “We’re in Baie de Soleil,” the traveler exulted nearby. “The Bay of the Sun, and look at that sun!”

Dead ahead at the far end of the
baie
, perched on a rise which ensured a commanding view, stood the colonial settlement of Bristol Town, a congregation of two- and three-story white, gray and ocher houses, none dominating the others. “How harmonious!” McKay exclaimed, but the Englishman did not hear, for his eyes were fixed upon a stately structure that occupied the top of a small hill behind the town. Protected by tall trees, the rambling house looked cool, aloof and quietly efficient.

“Government House,” the man said, turning toward McKay, and the reverential way in which he uttered these words evoked the grandeur of the British Empire. “Bristol Town may be one of the smallest capital cities of the empire, but it’s one of the most memorable.” The forcefulness of his speech carried an implied warning: “The names on the land and the heritage of the people who occupy it may be French, but the government is British … and don’t you forget it.”

The dock at Bristol was bustling, with scores of black stevedores moving at a slow, steady pace as they unloaded the ship and brought the passengers’ luggage ashore. “Hey, hey!” McKay shouted at a man who was starting to walk off with two suitcases. “Those are mine!”

“I know, Mr. McKay. We be expectin’ you,” and then Millard saw that the man was wearing a badge indicating he was from the Belgrave Hotel. “Just follow me,” and with delightful, dodging assurance, he darted into the traffic that crowded the dock area. He was headed for a ramshackle three-story building protected by verandas on each floor, and since these were held aloft by numerous slim wooden poles, the hotel displayed a fairy-tale elegance, even if it was a bit seedy. A man could grow fond of a place like this, Millard thought.

But as they were about to enter the dark interior, McKay suddenly turned to the porter: “Can’t I register later? Just stow my luggage somewhere. I’d like to start seeing the town right away.” Almost as if he expected to hear this, the porter said: “I take care everything.
You wait here,” and when he came back, he grasped Millard by the arm and proceeded to lead him along the main street: “You come me, I show you best part Bristol Town.”

Hurrying him along, the porter took McKay to a nondescript one-story building that could have housed a cheap restaurant but which turned out to be the Waterloo, a convivial bar with half a dozen old-style pedestal tables, where patrons lounged over their morning drink. The owner, who stood smiling behind his bar, was clearly a mulatto, but not an especially dark one. Half the patrons were mulatto but lighter than he, half were noticeably darker. The two waiters were very black, with no visible admixture of white blood. McKay was the only white there. It was an amazing congregation, assembled by chance and an instructive introduction to an island where a man’s skin color was all-important.

The owner, an amiable, hefty man in his forties, winked at McKay’s porter, indicating: There’ll be a tip for you, bringing this customer to my bar.

The porter nudged McKay: “Waterloo owned by this nice man. His name Bart Wrentham, but they calls him Black Bart, famous pirate.” He backed away, grinning broadly to make sure that he was remembered as the one who had delivered this customer.

“And your name?” Black Bart Wrentham asked with the easy familiarity of a bartender who wished to keep every customer at ease.

McKay gave his name, and added, so that his intentions should be understood from the start: “Newspaperman. Detroit.”

Upon hearing these words, Wrentham’s manner became even more genial, for he knew the value of having his bar mentioned in American newspapers. McKay became not an ordinary tourist but a most important visitor whose introduction to the island merited careful orchestration. Besides, as a man of color whose forebears had lived on the island for nearly three hundred years, Bart had certain strong attitudes that he wanted an American writer to understand. So, moving closer to where McKay stood, he leaned expansively on his side of the bar and said, in beautiful English with a lilting island accent: “Any new arrival brought to my establishment by Hippolyte gets a Tropical Bouquet.”

McKay was captured by the free drink—a rum swizzle, decorated with three island flowers and a wedge of pineapple—the atmosphere of the place, and the intriguing discovery that the owner’s name was
the same as that of the incoming governor general: “You have a memorable name, same as the new head man.”

“The English side of my ancestors came here …”

“I know,” McKay broke in with one of the most productive interruptions he would make in his career as a newsman. “Your people came over from Barbados in 1662 with Sir Geoffrey Wrentham.” He smiled at the man, who stood mouth open to find that this American had paid All Saints the respect of having studied its history. Slapping the bar resoundingly, the owner shouted to one of the waiters: “Give this learned American another free Tropical Bouquet! But leave out the pineapple, it costs money.” More important, he left the bar and came around one end to lead McKay with his new drink to a table.

“Now, tell me,” he said conspiratorially as he sat beside McKay, “what are you really here for?”

McKay evaded the question by taking a long swig: “You make good drinks.”

“We try,” Wrentham said, moving closer and staring directly into McKay’s eyes. “Now answer my question.” His words conveyed a challenge which Millard met by leaning back, revolving his glass, and saying carefully: “I work for the
Chronicle
, one of the better papers of our Midwest. Large readership in Canada.” He returned to his drink to allow those facts to sink in.

“Quite clear. You’re down here to report on the installation of our new Gee-Gee.”

“Is that what you call your governor?”

When Wrentham heard the question he sucked in his breath, uttered a clicking sound, and said: “It’s not easy to explain, unless you know the islands. As a Crown Colony, we’re entitled to a governor. On other islands they call the governor ‘H.E.,’ His Excellency. Our governor has control over half a dozen other islands, so he is the governor general, and we abbreviate that to ‘G-G’ or ‘Gee-Gee’—that’s how we always write it, even in the paper. You should do the same in the article I’m sure you’ll be writing.”

McKay pointed his right forefinger as if firing a pistol: “You’re a sharp fellow, Wrentham.”

“Call me Bart.” The easy way Wrentham handled his introduction, plus his obvious intelligence, made McKay think he might be a profitable informant, so he told him: “When I left Detroit on this assignment I asked my boss for letters of introduction, but he said
that on our paper, we didn’t do it that way. Told me to go down and dive into the swim. Your bar is my first dive.”

Wrentham leaned back, studied the young newsman, and tapped the table twice, as if to signify that he had made up his mind: “You free?”

“I haven’t checked in yet.”

“Hippolyte took care of that. You ready for a spin?”

“I’d like that,” and the two went out to where the bar owner had parked his 1932 left-hand-drive Chevrolet coupé. “Hop in. We’ll do the north circle. It always refreshes me to see the beauty of my island.” And he drove rather fast to the east, leaving the town by a twisting road that climbed through wooded land to a prominence from which they could look out upon the dark, surly Atlantic Ocean.