A Man Over Forty (7 page)

‘The weakness of a family tree,' said Palladis, ‘is that the cuckoos are so seldom recognized.'

‘We established respectability against heavy odds,' said Scroope. ‘There was a shortage of women in the early days – white women, I mean – and the Regicide's only son married a girl who'd been brought from a House of Correction in Bristol. But she was a good wife and a prolific mother.'

‘Tomorrow,' said Palladis, ‘we'll begin a more active life. We'll go to St Ann's Bay and try to imagine what the simple Arawaks thought when they saw Colombus's doom-laden caravels on the horizon.'

‘They were naked, polygamous and free from disease,' said Scroope. ‘They had no defences at all, and within fifty years were extinct.'

‘But the Spaniards, with all their advantages, didn't last much longer,' said Balintore. ‘Your Regicide and the young woman from Bristol had more staying-power. I wonder what her ancestry was?'

They began to explore the north coast from Port Antonio to Falmouth. Balintore would not go as far as Montego Bay for fear of meeting tourists, but consented to visit an hotel near Ocho Rios that protected itself against overcrowding by the simple expedient of charging ten guineas a day.

In return for this sum the Morgan Arms offered easy luxury in a setting of extravagant beauty. Within a reef on which the ocean-sea broke like white chrysanthemums, a placid bay shoaled to leaf-green water and a sandy beach where coconut palms threw wind-tossed shadows, and parti-coloured umbrellas drew more firmly their circles of sophisticated shade. The hotel buildings stood discreetly within deep verandas and a circumference of palms and bright flower-beds; while beyond them the mountains rose in the verdure of dense forest to a sky that was cornflower-blue, cloud-dappled, or deep ocean-blue. The translucent sea was warm and buoyant: pink toes and round stomachs protruded slightly from it where elderly swimmers floated half-asleep, and small boats under large striped sails went to and fro like dragon-flies. Black waiters, barefooted on the sand, brought rum punches to bathers who sat idly under the umbrellas, and luncheon was served on terraces that overhung the sea.

‘I miss one thing only,' said Balintore, when, on their third or fourth visit, a black boy had brought them their first rum punch.

‘Young figures,' said Palladis. ‘But the young can't afford to come here.'

‘This morning I can see four female figures under the age of thirty. Those two children, who are with their grandparents; the young woman who is obviously on her honeymoon; and the contoured blonde who, I imagine, is persuading her employer to forget her faults as a secretary. Except for them—'

‘The company is mature.'

‘Too mature for the scenery.'

‘You ought to be grateful. There's no one here to excite your fancy, fret your mind and hinder your convalescence.'

‘I'm feeling very well.'

‘You're looking very well.'

‘I've made a complete recovery.'

‘But the doctors said you had to have a long rest.'

‘And I intend to! Make no mistake about that. I'm enjoying myself here, and I shall probably stay for a long, long time. And now I'm going to swim again.'

He waded into the warm, clear water, and as if to advertise
his returning strength set off to seaward with flailing arms. But after twenty yards he turned on his back and floated with his face to the sun.

When Palladis joined him he said, ‘I'm worried about prices. I don't want to pay too much.'

‘For what?'

‘A house. A house and an acre or two of land.'

‘Can you really afford to retire?'

‘Can I afford to wait till I'm too old to get any advantage from retiring? I want to retire with an active mind.'

‘Would it remain active in Jamaica?'

‘You've got a streak of Puritanism in you, Guy. You distrust pleasure. You think I couldn't devote myself to serious contemplation—'

‘While floating in a leaf-green sea with a couple of ounces of rum punch washing the walls of your stomach.'

‘And that's where you're wrong. I'm serious now, and tonight I'm going to ask Weatherby about the possibility of buying, quite cheaply, a little house and a patch of land. Let's go and drink to that.'

Half an hour later, dressed like many of their fellow tourists in gaily patterned shirts and linen trousers, they sat on a vineshaded terrace, eating rice and shrimps, and discussing their host, Weatherby Scroope.

‘You'll find him sceptical,' said Palladis. ‘He doesn't think much of rich people who come here to idle their lives away. He was just telling me—'

‘But I'm not rich, and I wouldn't be idle.'

‘You would, in his opinion. There's a broad streak of Puritanism in him.'

‘He seems to work hard.'

‘He has to. His father's an idle, self-indulgent old man, and both his brothers had a remarkable faculty for enjoying themselves. They were killed in the war – one in the Desert, the other in Normandy – but they left wives and families whom the estate has to support.'

‘Did Weatherby never marry?'

‘Yes, a long time ago. But it didn't work. She went off with an American trumpeter. A man who led a jazzband.'

‘And he didn't try again?'

‘He once told me that white women weren't worth the trouble and expense of maintenance.'

‘So, for him, that was the end of it?'

‘You don't keep your eyes open, Ned. And you don't really listen to people, do you?'

‘What have I missed?'

‘That girl, Mary. Don't you think she's attractive?'

‘But she's black.'

‘Oh, don't be so snobbish!'

‘Well, I am surprised!'

‘They've been used to black girls for three hundred years. And as they've kept going, as a family, for three hundred years, it doesn't seem to have done them any harm.'

‘But the family tree! There's no indication there of any mixture of black blood, except the girl he called a mustee. I found the family tree impressive; really impressive. I was fascinated by it.'

‘In the eighteenth century,' said Palladis, ‘the Irish side of my family was seriously threatened – its continuity was threatened – when the succession passed to an only son who, though married, was known to be impotent. The heir presumptive was a cousin whom everyone detested – and to everyone's relief he was disappointed of his expectations.'

‘How was that managed?'

‘Footmen. There were always plenty of burly young footmen in a big house at that time. So the succession was maintained within the house, if not precisely within the family.'

‘Do you think Weatherby owes anything to unsanctified assistance?'

‘Not that I know of, though in three hundred years there's room for accident. But I don't suppose he finds sleeping with a black girl unnatural, or thinks of it as an innovation.'

‘I'm going to ask him to help me. I shall tell him I'm serious – he knows I'm not idly rich—'

‘Well, don't expect too much.'

To Palladis' surprise, however, Scroope took a warm interest in Balintore's proposal, but warned him it might be difficult to find what he wanted.

‘If you're prepared to spend £50,000—'

‘Good God, no!'

‘I thought not. But anyone with £50,000 to spend can pick up a decent property any time. If, at the other extreme, you're looking for a couple of acres in a good situation – enough to build a cottage on, and ensure a little privacy – you may find a place you would like, and then be told it's in a part of the country set aside for development, for small holdings probably; or else it's on an estate whose owner, naturally enough, doesn't want to sell any part of it.'

‘Haven't you a couple of acres you could sell?'

Shaking his head with apparent regret, Scroope said, ‘No, I'm afraid not.'

‘Down by the river, for example—'

‘I'm putting in a new orange-grove there.'

‘But on the other side?'

‘There's no road.'

‘Well, nearer the shore?'

‘That would cut into the cane-fields, and you can't cut two acres out of a good cane-field.'

‘Why not?'

‘It would reduce the yield,' said Scroope, ‘and I need to cut all I can to keep the factory going.'

‘I suppose,' said Balintore, ‘that every proprietor will give me the same sort of answers.'

‘Not necessarily. You may find someone who isn't making use of all his land, and you may come across a speculator who's bought the land in the hope of selling it again to people like you or people from Kingston who want a little holiday place on the north shore. Do help yourself: that's rum, and that's gin. Well, give me a few days, and I'll make some inquiries. And I'll tell you what I'll do as well: I'll take you down to the factory and introduce you to my manager. He's our local politician, which makes him much more important than the salary I pay him; and he knows a great deal more about what's going on than I do. His name's Hector McGregor.'

Two days later they met Mr McGregor, who was a tall and handsome Negro. He was plump and stately, with white hair cut
en brosse
and a remarkable resemblance to the late André
Gide; though his hue was much darker. He wore a flower in his buttonhole, and drove with them to a large but derelict estate near Falmouth which was in the market for £42,000. He was a little hurt, as well as surprised, when Balintore told him that he had no intention of spending as much as that.

The following day he took them to Port Antonio, and showed them round a much smaller but more carefully maintained property that cculd be acquired for £28,000.

Balintore said to him, ‘Now lock here! This isn't at all the sort of place I want. I am not a millionaire. I am a hardworking man, and by living carefully, even frugally, I have saved a little money—'

‘I understand,' said Mr McGregor. ‘Yes, I understand. I myself have made a little money, and if I had my due I would be in a position, at this very moment, to be making a great deal more. Yes, man. Right now, I ought to be a rich man.'

He looked pensively at the sea – they stood on a wooded promontory that pushed a fist of land towards blue water, and from the fist a finger of reef curled about a pale-green bay – and said, ‘When this new government was elected, I should have been made Minister of State for Internal Communications. That I fully expected, and I was looking forward to a prospect of hard work and handsome rewards. This government's going to spend millions of pounds on roads! Yes, man. I could have given Jamaica what Jamaica needs, and become a very rich man. But I was betrayed.'

‘How did that happen?'

Mr McGregor sighed and looked sad, but did not answer until, driving westward again half an hour later, he told a stirring tale of his narrow escape from death on the dangerous hill they were descending, and added: ‘I went down on my knees and thanked God for His great mercy. Yes, sir, I'm a religious man, and always have been. I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and that's why I feel sick at heart when I think how I was betrayed, and my character blackened by unscrupulous enemies.'

‘What did they say?'

‘As a leading elder in the New Methodist chapel in Fort
Appin, I'm a man of some influence in my community, and I use my influence for the general good. But I've got enemies, and my enemies spread a slanderous tale that I was telling members of my congregation that in future no one would be eligible to partake of the Blessed Sacrament who didn't vote for me at the forthcoming election. And that story spoiled my chances and ruined my career. Yes, man.'

‘Though there-was, of course, no truth in it?'

‘What I had said,' replied Mr McGregor with simple dignity, ‘was that if the people of Fort Appin wanted to enjoy all the benefits, grace, and appurtenances of a full life, including better roads and the Blessed Sacrament, they would do well to vote for me and my party. But I was misrepresented, I was scandalized and betrayed. So I'm still a poor man working for a weekly wage.'

He had, by now, lost interest in Balintore's quest; but Balintore persisted in his search, and with Palladis to drive him, ventured on abominable side-roads and up forested hills to sudden views over enormous distances, or down to the warmth of enclosed and unexpected glens, where he would talk for an hour or more to the black and bewildered proprietor of a wooden shack and an acre of yams. He was determined, he now said, to live in Jamaica; and sooner or later, he declared, they were bound to find a place of the sort he wanted.

At night, after dinner, he would tell Weatherby Scroope where they had been, and describe the people with whom he had talked. He was a good mimic, and could reproduce the tune of a conversation as well as its matter. He began to believe, and even to assert, that he understood the peasantry; and the better he understood them, the more he liked them. The old and the gnarled, the lively and young – burly labourers in a cane-field with their dangerous cutlasses, and buxom women with their regal carriage and flaunting colours – the immaculate floral finery of children dressed for church: they all delighted him, and were, beyond a doubt, the people among whom he wanted to spend his remaining years.

‘Yes,' he would say, ‘you have everything here to cure the sickness of our times. A perfect climate, enchanting scenery – nature at the very height of opulence, at the top of benevolence – and
a simple people with musical voices and an imperturbable piety.'

‘They have their faults,' said Scroope.

‘They are human beings,' said Balintore, ‘and their laughter's as deep as Beethoven.'

Three days of cold and drenching rain did nothing to subdue his enthusiasm, nor did another meeting with Mr McGregor, whose mood was as dark as the sky. His eldest son, who worked in Kingston, had been so pestered and plagued by a girl – who said he ought to marry her – that he had sought relief in drink, and being drunk had stolen a motor-bicycle which he had driven into the harbour. Then he had assaulted the policeman who, very bravely, jumped in to rescue him.