Eden Burning (39 page)

Nicholas applauded the little speech. “There speaks the power of the press! The
Trumpet
can do most to keep things alive, Kate, as you have done, and are doing so splendidly. The power of the press!” he repeated, “and of women!” And smiling, he nodded easily toward the next raised hand.

“You’ll get nowhere with anything if you don’t tackle unemployment.” This came from a union man. “Since the mechanical loader was introduced in 1961 we’ve lost four hundred jobs in the cane fields alone.”

Nicholas assented. “I’m familiar with that, although not as familiar as I should be and intend to become. My thought has always been that we ought to lessen our dependence on export crops and raise our standards of scientific agriculture. Our educators ought to get a handle on that.” He turned to Patrick. “When I’m elected, and I will be elected, I intend to make you my minister of education. There will have to be a strong tie-in between education and labor problems. It will have to be worked out most carefully, and obviously I’m not prepared to do that this morning, or even tomorrow morning.”

A white man, Elliot Bates, the banker, spoke. “One sees here the interdependence of all elements. To modernize agriculture you will need investment capital. I’d advise you to do nothing to discourage it. Just a reminder,” he finished pleasantly.

Nicholas’s reply was smooth. “We will surely not discourage anyone who can help us build the good life, Mr. Bates. Rest assured.” He stood up. “Now I think we’ve had enough for one morning. Thank you all for coming.”

Patrick and Nicholas went downstairs together.

“That was masterful,” Patrick said with admiration. “You
had all those different elements working as one. I could almost feel the gathering momentum.”

“I love the challenge,” Nicholas said frankly. “But let me tell you, the going won’t stay this smooth unless we get some money. Plenty of money. Not just for the campaign, I mean, but support for the kind of projects everybody wants. As Elliot Bates said, we need investment capital. You need capital to build a damned chicken coop, for God’s sake.” They walked on down Wharf Street. “You may not want to hear this, but I was at Eleuthera over the weekend, talking to Francis.”

“He let you in?”

Nicholas laughed. “I won’t scold you for the sarcasm. Yes, he always lets me in; you know that. We have a very cordial relationship.”

Patrick did not comment.

“I really need him on our side,” Nicholas said.

“The planters all wear blinders.” He could hear the bitterness in his voice and, disliking himself for it, tried to elevate his tone to one more matter-of-fact. “They prefer to believe independence isn’t coming. Ignore it and it will go away.”

“No, they know better. Anyway, Francis is different. There’s a chink in his armor, a softness inside. And he’s a tie with his class, don’t forget. They’re going to vote and I want him to help persuade them to vote for our side.”

What I am feeling, Patrick thought, is jealousy, pure and simple. They never knew each other before I brought them together.

He said, “They’ll vote for us. The other side’s splintered, ineffectual, and they know it.”

“I agree. Still, one should take nothing for granted…. He said he doesn’t want to be involved in politics, although he did give me a nice donation. Maybe it was to get rid of me.” Nicholas laughed again, with the confidence of a man who knows things are going his way. “Seriously, Patrick, it’s a shame about you and him. A failure of communication, all
the way round. I’ve told him so, too. I manage to mention it every now and then.”

“Yes?”

“No soap! He thinks you’re a rabble-rouser. He thinks Kate is, too.”

He wanted Nicholas to drop the subject at the same time that he wanted to hear more. It crossed his mind that this was like wincing at an accident while being drawn to look.

“Pity about him and her, too. Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t know!”

Patrick’s lips closed.

“Loyal in spite of betrayal?” Nicholas touched Patrick’s arm. “Sorry, I wasn’t mocking. Don’t be hurt. You know I respect your standards. I respected them when we were twelve. But the fact is, news gets around this town and an awful lot of people besides you know about Kate and Francis. Or knew. Marjorie Luther seems to be one who didn’t, though.”

“Well, that’s a mercy,” Patrick said dryly.

“It really is. I don’t like the woman much; Snow Maiden types aren’t to my taste, although I must say she’s perfectly friendly to me. And one does have to have a heart, after all. It’s pathetic, the two of them are so wrapped up in the child. Must be hellish to bring something like that into the world and know you’ll have to live with it the rest of your life. Ah, there’s my wife now.”

Waiting at the curb, behind the wheel of a European sports car, sat Doris Mebane. A row of bracelets slid down her arm as she raised it to wave.

“Patrick! Changed your mind, I hope?”

For a moment, after the last few minutes of agitating reminders, he could not bring his thoughts into focus. Then he understood.

“About Europe, you mean?”

“She would love it, Patrick! Oh, she’s dying to go!”

“You would be doing me a great favor,” Nicholas said. “I’ll be busy with the conference in London, as you know,
and I promised Doris two weeks in France while I’m working. I hate to have her go alone. Désirée would be company for her. And it wouldn’t cost you a thing,” he added gently.

“I know, and I appreciate the offer, believe me I do. A man doesn’t have many friends like you two in a lifetime. Oh, it’s hard to explain,” he struggled, not wanting to seem ungrateful. “But every family’s different, and I just don’t see it working out for us right now. Some other time, maybe. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t talk about it to Désirée anymore.”

“Well, it’s up to you, of course,” Doris said coolly. Patrick saw that she was aggrieved. “As you said, some other time. Want a lift anywhere?”

“Thanks, no, I’ll walk. Need the exercise.”

Selfish of him, he thought, going on toward home. But some instinct, and rightly or wrongly he trusted instinct, told him it would be a mistake for his wife to go. She was already drugged on beauty. The beauty of the natural world attracted her, but the charm of expensive objects enchanted her. And Doris would be buying her way through France. It wouldn’t be fair or wise to tempt Désirée with things she couldn’t own and never would own. This was his one reservation about the friendship between the two wives, a friendship for which, otherwise, he would have been totally thankful.

He passed Da Cunha’s, where in the window there stood, as it had for several weeks past, a handsome five-branched silver candelabrum. Several times Désirée had casually pointed it out. He wished he could give it to her. Probably she couldn’t help desiring such things any more than he could help wanting books, or someone else wanting music or women or drink.

Lovely Désirée! Again he marveled, again he wondered, at the peculiar chemistry which draws us one to another. Her blackness? As expiation for a subconscious pull toward whiteness? Ah, you analyze yourself too much, Patrick! He knew he did; he had been told he did. By whom? By Francis?
Or had it been Kate? Funny how sometimes he confused the two of them in his mind and memory, even though the one had been removed from his life.

He went by the library and the courthouse. Just beyond lay Boys’ Secondary. He stopped to catch his breath after the climb uphill. A mango dropped at his feet, just missing him with its thick splash of yellow juice, and his mind went back to the mangoes in the yard of the little house at Sweet Apple. Then he thought of Agnes. He had been in Martinique a few months ago; it would soon be time to go again, at least before Christmas. She had failed noticeably. He wondered whether it was simply old age or whether some sickness might be at work within her. Yet her spirits were high, her glance as shrewd and her tongue as sharp as ever.

“You’re looking thoughtful,” Kate said now, coming up behind him.

“I was thinking that we’re finally on the way,” he fibbed. They passed Government House. “He’s a magnificent speaker, our honorable member from St. Margaret’s parish. I listened to him last week in the Legislative Council. Very impressive, the whole business, from the silver mace and the bobbies’ silver buttons right up to the queen’s portrait, though that’ll be coming down soon.”

“Oh, Nicholas knows how, no doubt of that! He’s a vote getter, if ever there was one. The voters will love it that he dresses like a white man, a rich one, and talks like one, too. He’s all the things they never will be and wish they could be.”

Patrick looked down at the vivid little woman striding beside him.

“That sounds mighty cynical. I don’t know whether you intended it that way.”

“I’m not cynical. At least, I don’t want to be. I think I’m a realist, that’s all.”

“You don’t believe in our party?”

“Of course I do. The others are a lot of self-seeking
country bumpkins who wouldn’t know how to run a government, and luckily, the people have enough horse sense to see it. As for Nicholas, he’s shrewd as they come, but very, very talented. I wouldn’t be working for him if I didn’t think he was.”

“I’m glad. I would hate to think you didn’t believe in him completely.”

“Completely? Who said anything about that? I believe in what I see from one day to the next. I can’t look too far ahead. I’ve been disillusioned too often.”

Francis, Patrick thought, feeling her bitterness as if it were his own. Well, in a different way, it was his own.

After a moment Kate resumed, “I only wish I could be sure he had your heart.”

“Who, Nicholas?”

“Yes. His mind’s brilliant. It’s the heart that worries me.”

“Oh, Kate, you’re wrong! He’s sterling. I’d stake my life on Nicholas Mebane. The man is sterling.”

Kate looked up at him. “You’re sterling yourself, Patrick Courzon.” Then, abruptly, “Tell me, how’s Will these days?”

“The same,” he said soberly.

Against his will, he was perceiving things he didn’t like in the boy who was now so near to manhood. Something ugly lurked there. Will had a quick brain and extraordinary memory. He could trip Patrick up over a fact or a date, even over something that Patrick himself had once said and then forgotten he had said. “I hate to admit I forgot,” Patrick would tell him, laughing at himself as mature people should be able to do; yet the truth was that he always felt like squirming under the boy’s bold stare.

Kate spoke gently. “I think of him as an empty vessel. He was dry so long, starved and dry, until you came to fill him.”

“I try, anyway.”

“That’s all any of us can do. Try. Well, I’ll leave you. I turn off here.”

For a minute or two Patrick watched as she went up the
lane toward her house. He knew her routine pretty well. First she would let the dogs out for a run, then replenish the bird feeders. She’d go inside and make her supper, which she sometimes ate at the table in the yard, with a book propped in front of the plate. In the evenings she’d write for the
Trumpet
or work on party accounts or make calls. Now and then, he knew, she’d go out dining and dancing with men who came over from Barbados or someplace, men she’d known through family, probably, or during her married years. What she did with them when they brought her home he didn’t know; it was none of his business. Whether any of them wanted to marry her or whether she would accept if one should, he didn’t know either; he hoped, at least, she had mostly got over Francis. She never said. But she was being wasted, that was one thing he did know. She was being awfully wasted. This was no life for a woman like her.

Thinking of women, he thought as always of Désirée. Thank God,
her
life was not being wasted! She held him with a thousand strands of habit and affection and sex still marvelously fresh; he chafed sometimes, complaining silently about one thing or another, yet knew how tightly he was held.

He smiled a little at himself and his memories. He remembered how he used to tease her over her devotion to the house. The truth was, he had grown most happily accustomed to the orderly comforts that she provided, the cleanliness of the linens and the pretty, appetizing supper table. More than that, much more than that, he had, quite simply, grown accustomed to her spirit, so that without her listening ear, her trust, her little touch of worldliness, her pleasure in every day, without all these and the balm of her understanding, he would have been parched grass; a withering tree. Yes.

And he went on now past the central square where Nelson stood with pigeons soiling his shoulders, past the careenage and out toward the savanna, where half a dozen glossy horses were being exercised by their grooms. On the veranda at Cade’s Hotel a pair of pink-cheeked old Englishmen in
white suits were enjoying their whiskey and soda. One recognized them as retired civil servants, taking a respite from the English winter. He reflected that someone who hadn’t seen Covetown for fifty years or more would probably find very little changed: the boats, the horses, and the winter visitors would all be familiar.

Yet change was here, not only the proud promise of meetings like this morning’s, but another kind, tangible and visible, a creeping tide.

From where he stood the roof of the Lunabelle Hotel rose squarely over distant trees. A long concrete rectangle, a slab with hard edges, it was a machine-age intrusion upon the natural world of curves, in which hills arched against the sky and coves were scallops in the cliffs. He stayed there, looking at the tasteless thing which, not yet one year old, had already surrounded itself with its own small slum. A prediction of what might come unless it were controlled somehow; he must talk seriously to Nicholas.

In back of the Lunabelle a shantytown had sprung up. Here lived the little army that serviced the hotel, people who had come in from the villages looking for something better than what they’d had, but were now worse off. Here were no garden patches and no shade. In the glaring heat their shacks stood naked among pools of stagnant water, foul and glistening like sores on the skin. The place had acquired an unofficial name: the Trenches. In Jamaica, in Kingston, he had seen such a place, worse only because it was larger and, being older, had had more time in which decay could spread and young men, idle and angry, could collect, followed inevitably by all the vices.