Caribbean (105 page)

It was during these dreamlike days that McKay first noticed that Delia alternately appeared and vanished, and since he knew no one in the official party whom he could ask about this, he had to fall back on the Ponsfords, who loved the tittle-tattle about their betters that so mesmerized the English middle classes. Mrs. Ponsford, adopting a conspiratorial manner as she shared a cold lunch with McKay, confided: “She’s seeing that handsome young baron at every opportunity, and I do believe she spent the night with him aboard the ship once or twice.”

“Do we know anything about him?” McKay asked, as if he were her worried uncle. “I mean, really?”

“Oh, he’s impeccable,” Mr. Ponsford said, for he was as much a gossip as his wife. “I understand the Gee-Gee checked by cabling the Foreign Office.”

“Speaking about cables, what can I tell my paper about the purpose of this visit of the
Spee
? Seems most unusual.”

“They’re doing what we call ‘showing the flag.’ Herr Hitler wants it known that he has a ship like the Spee.”

“You think the Gee-Gee is sending signals home about this huge thing?”

“I’m sure of it. He’s no fool.”

“If he’s so smart, what’s he doing about his daughter and that phony baron?”

Mrs. Ponsford laughed to see her American friend so upset about the German: “He’s no phony, as you call it. He’s a very real baron from a distinguished Prussian military family. But that’s not what you asked. The Gee-Gee? I think he must be gratified to learn that his very lovely daughter isn’t going to marry an island colored man or an American.”

Mr. Ponsford weighed in with a heavy-handed joke: “And he wouldn’t be able to tell you which would be worse.”

Seeking comfort in his unease, McKay went along to Boncour’s shop, where, in the Frenchman’s absence, he thought seriously for the first time about what Delia had said that day at Cap Galant: “Suppose you invited one of Boncour’s beautiful clerks to a dinner date …” Looking suddenly at the two girls, slim and lithe and graced by the warmest smiles, he realized how easy it would be to fall under their spell, and how difficult it would be to do anything about it. Indeed, where could he take them to dinner, in what social circles would they move? And these two girls were almost white. What if he were to remain in All Saints and fall in love with one of those lovely creatures several shades darker than Black Bart? Now, that would pose a real problem.

When Boncour returned from a meeting aboard the
Spee
with German officers who sought to buy watches at a discount, the goal of sailors of all nations, he was in no mood for gossip or frivolous chatter. Leading McKay to his back office, which was as neat and clean as the rest of his operation, he slumped in a chair, looked up helplessly, and said without being questioned: “McKay, she’s making
a terrible mistake. An Englishwoman in the heart of German Nazism …”

“He’s a country gentleman, no cartoon Nazi. Her father cabled the Foreign Office for his credentials.”

Boncour looked up in surprise: “Don’t you realize what he is on that battleship? He’s the Nazi gauleiter …”

“He’s what?”

“Gauleiter. Block captain to check on the crew … see that they obey Hitler’s orders.”

“You’re crazy.”

“McKay, she’s about to marry him. They were talking about it on the ship. Maybe a big military wedding, Captain Vreimark officiating.”

“Oh.” There was no exclamation point at the end of this word as McKay pronounced it; it was the grunt of a man who had been punched heavily in the stomach by a superior foe. He was involved in matters about which he had little knowledge and over which he had no control. “Hadn’t we better speak to Delia about this? Frankly, all cards on the table?”

“She’s coming here. To say goodbye.” The two young men sat in silence. They were honestly thinking beyond themselves and of the damaging mistake Delia could be making.

And then they heard her swinging into the store and asking brightly: “Where’s Etienne?” and when the girls told her, she made her way into the back office: “Oh, there you both are! How terribly convenient.”

Boncour refused to accept her banter. “Delia, you mustn’t marry that German. He’s a professional Nazi. Your life among his gang would be hell …”

She stiffened, glared at the two men—lover and admirer—and decided to put an end to this nonsense: “Siegfried is exactly what he seems to be. A loyal official of the new German government.”

“Seems to be?” McKay blurted out. “Nobody knows who in hell he is, or what he’s doing aboard that ship.”

But it was sagacious Boncour, educated in England, who saw things most clearly: “Delia, can’t you see what’s bound to happen? Hitler and Great Britain, they’ve got to fall out sooner or later.”

Their argument sounded hollow because all three, Delia, Etienne and Millard, saw the absurdity of this situation—that an ordinary colored man on a small island should be competing for the love of a
titled Englishwoman against a German baron who was obviously in favor with the leader of his nation. The combat was too unfair, and for that matter, McKay’s chances wouldn’t be much better: he would be a provincial American scribbler trying to muscle his way into a fine family above his station.

It was so preposterous that McKay could not avoid laughing, but Boncour was beyond that, for he was fighting for a life: “Delia, for God’s sake, don’t do this reckless thing …”

He had used the wrong word. “Reckless?” Her voice rose: “I’ve been reckless all my life and it’s brought me what I want—excitement and joy. I’m not going to change now.”

“But not with an official in the Nazi party. Someday we will be at war with Germany.”

“Are you out of your mind? That’s twice you’ve said that. Germany and Britain have signed a nonaggression pact, and I want to be part of the union.” She moved nervously about the cramped office, then faced McKay, as if she had no further use for Boncour: “When I first went to Germany, I was thrilled at the vitality, the new world a-borning. Someone has called it ‘The Wave of the Future,’ and I do believe that.”

Boncour started to rebut, for he did most desperately wish to save this wonderful woman, but she cut him off: “I’ve got to go. I wanted you two to hear it from me, direct. Yes, Siegfried and I are getting married. Day after tomorrow, on the
Spee
.”

She kissed McKay on the cheek and tried to do the same with Boncour, but he turned away, so, as if to make him more miserable, she added: “And for our honeymoon we fly to Brazil!”

The wedding took place at five in the evening of the day prior to the Spee’s departure. On the quarterdeck a kind of chapel decorated with hundreds of island flowers had been erected, and within its sanctuary stood Captain Vreimark, more stern and erect than ever in his full-dress uniform. At his side were three junior officers, also solemn and very military, and beyond them sat the island band augmented by musicians from the
Spee
. Under a battery of big guns, Delia in a flowing pastel gown waited with her father in full uniform.

As the band played Mendelssohn and the lovely bride moved forward on her father’s arm to meet Baron Sterner, McKay could not help thinking: What will happen to her? Should be fascinating to watch. But only then did he realize that the man who loved her most was not present. Etienne, humiliated by his dismissal from the Executive
Council and the loss of his Tourist Board position, had been unwilling to parade his lowered status before the leading citizens of the island who knew of his chastisement. Where he was McKay did not know, but he was sure that Etienne was alone drinking bitter tea.

The bride and her handsome father swept past, paused to collect the baron, dressed in a military uniform, and all moved before Captain Vreimark, who greeted them, read a short ritual in German and then in English, and pronounced them man and wife. As guests lined up to sign the document attesting to the marriage, Delia spotted McKay and asked Major Leckey to fetch him: “Please, please, Millard, you sign too and let me know all is forgiven.”

“You have my blessing,” he said, and as the sun set over the glorious bay, with the two rocky pillars protecting its entrance, he had a brief feeling that perhaps Delia was right: Maybe the visit of this ship does signal a union between Germany and Great Britain. He did not know enough recent history to appreciate how unlikely that was, but he still voiced the hope as a blessing for Delia. She was an exceptional person, he had fallen in love with her and would never deny it. He was disgusted that she had chosen the German baron, but he had lost and he would neither grieve nor allow his loss to gnaw at him.

Because no woman could be allowed to sail aboard a German warship, the bridal party and many townspeople drove out to the improvised seaplane ramp at Anse du Soir, where a big, lumbering Pan American flying boat had delayed its schedule so as to carry the bridal couple to Rio. The band played a Hawaiian farewell song, “Aloha Oe,” Captain Vreimark and Lord Basil saluted, Delia kissed everyone, and Baron Sterner looked pleased at having married the granddaughter of an English earl. McKay, still regretting that Etienne Boncour had not come to say farewell, waved at Delia as she boarded the plane and whispered to himself: “Good luck, sea sprite. You splashed your way into my heart,” and suddenly he broke away from the noisy party, for tears were threatening to flood his eyes.

When he returned to the Belgrave for a late dinner, he was on his way to his room on the second floor to wash up, when he heard muffled voices as he passed the Ponsfords’ door. Since he did not recognize them, he suspected that something might be amiss, and impulsively he tried to shove the door open, but it was locked from the inside, so with a rush of his shoulder he banged his way in, only to find himself facing Major Leckey, still in uniform, Mr. Ponsford and Mrs. Ponsford, who was holding a revolver pointed right at
McKay’s head. Along two walls forming a corner were ranged the elements of a compact high-powered radio at which sat a colored man he had never seen before. An authoritative voice in London was issuing directions which McKay could not understand.

“Close the door,” Major Leckey said with crisp authority.

“What is this?”

“Shut up!” Mrs. Ponsford snapped, her lips taut, her gun still pointed unflinchingly at McKay.

Then, slowly, as he caught fragments of what was being sent and received, he deduced that pompous but subservient Major Leckey was heading a secret island apparatus which was reporting directly to similar intelligence agencies in London. For some reason Leckey and his team found it necessary to bypass the Gee-Gee and his official shortwave radio.

Now, from words that were dropped, it became obvious that the Ponsfords, tested agents from years back and with experience in different countries, had been sent from headquarters to reinforce Leckey’s operation, and the fact that they had fooled McKay so completely was proof that they had fooled others as well.

Mouth agape, he stared at the Ponsfords, piecing together the hints they had revealed concerning their mission but which he had failed to detect or evaluate: They did say they’d been friends of the Earl of Gore. Probably that’s why they were sent on his trail. They seemed to have a complete dossier on Delia, and I should have wondered why they’d have taken the trouble. And once they learned I was a newspaperman, they went out of their way to convince me that they were vaudeville silly-ass Englishmen. They kept turning up at all the right spots. I feel damned stupid, with her pointing that gun at me, after the way I dismissed her as a gossip.

“Tell them,” Leckey was saying to the man at the dials, “that we shall be sending them military details as soon as our man gets here. In the meantime, Mrs. Ponsford, since our Delia will probably turn up somewhere as a German agent, will you give headquarters the details of that obscene wedding?” Handing her revolver over to her husband, who kept it pointed at McKay, she delivered an icy, matter-of-fact report: “Delia behaved much as she did in Malta last year, but this time she messed around with a respectable local mulatto shopkeeper, practically ruining him, and perhaps at her father’s suggestion, she took pains to bedazzle a simple-minded American journalist in hopes of coloring his reports in Hitler’s favor. Tonight she married
your well-vetted Baron Sterner, one-time tennis partner of that other German baron, the respectable one, Gottfried von Cramm, who has displayed gestures of friendship toward Great Britain.”

Turning the microphone back, she reached for her gun and resumed guarding McKay, but the transmission was interrupted by the breathless arrival of Leckey’s man, who had been surveying and photographing the
Graf Spee
. It was Bart Wrentham from the Waterloo, and when he saw McKay with the gun pointed at this head, he blurted out: “What in hell is he doing here?”

“He stumbled in,” Leckey said crisply, “and we can’t allow him to stumble out until the
Spee
has sailed.”

Paying no further attention to his friend, Black Bart went to the transmitter and told the operator: “Get me Brazil,” and for about ten minutes he provided an agent of the British admiralty with a professional assessment of the pocket battleship. Then Leckey took over, speaking to London: “Why did the
Graf Spee
make this extraordinary visit? From things Captain Vreimark said accidentally, but so that we would be sure to hear them, they wanted our governor general to report favorably on German-British friendship. And since they had to know that some group like ours would be trying to determine the capacity of their ship, they invited us to roam around it. They wanted to scare us and for us to scare you. Their game succeeded. It is indeed a formidable ship.”

McKay was fascinated by what he was hearing, but he was not yet prepared for what Leckey reported next: “Lord Wrentham is a total prisoner of their propaganda. He extols Hitler, says he’s watched the Nazi rise to power, and now believes he’s unstoppable. He tries to convince any official visitor that Germany is destined to rule Central Europe and more. He despises France and holds America in contempt, but he’s smart enough to coddle naïve American journalists and mask his convictions from them. We know he is an ass, but a dangerous one because people like him so much. All Saints is a good place to keep him isolated from the European capitals, but he must be continuously watched.”