Death in the Caribbean, page 4
Nevertheless, it helped. I thought of one or two practical things like handkerchiefs, scissors, a packet of needles and a reel of thread. ‘Though I could lend you my sailmaker’s kit,’ I said.
‘Sailmaker’s kit?’
‘Yes, it’s a yachtsman’s kit, in a small canvas wallet. I always travel with it – I find a sailmaker’s palm a great deal easier to use than a thimble. And if you sew on a button with waxed twine, it doesn’t come off again. Mind you, it’s a slightly extended kit now, with some ordinary needles and bits of wool for darning, as well.’
‘No wonder you don’t need a wife! I’m not sure, though, if any normal woman could live with a sailmaker’s kit.’
She was more cheerful now, and by the time we got to the hotel was chatting away almost happily. The manager came out to meet us. ‘We need,’ I said, ‘two of the largest glasses of rum punch that you’ve got. Then we need something to eat – not an elaborate meal, but I wonder if you could produce an omelette? Then Mrs Caval will need a car to go shopping.’
‘It shall all be arranged. Will you go up to your rooms first?’
‘We’ll have the rum first, I think. We need it.’
‘Of course, sir. Mrs Caval’s suite has a private sitting room. Will you have your meal there?’
‘Of course.’
*
We had our drinks on the verandah of the hotel. The manager wanted to move me to a larger suite, saying that Mr Caval had instructed him to offer it to me, but I said that I was quite happy where I was. The next thing was that Brigadier Ezra drove up. ‘I have heard of the disaster,’ he said. ‘Thank God you are all right.’
I introduced him to Mrs Caval. ‘She was staying at Chacarima, and she has lost all her clothes, and everything she had with her,’ I explained. ‘I have promised Mr Caval to look after her. You will understand that it’s going to be a busy afternoon.’
‘Indeed. And you must get some rest too, Colonel. Let me know at once if there is anything I can do to help. I came only to offer my services.’
‘It is extraordinarily good of you.’
*
Then I was called to the telephone. It was the Prime Minister’s office, and in a moment I was put through to the Prime Minister himself. He expressed great concern, and added, ‘There are no reports of any damage outside Chacarima.’
‘It was a mercifully limited earthquake,’ I said.
‘They are not unknown, particularly in that part of Nueva, but they seldom do much damage. I am most distressed that this should have been your introduction to our distinguished citizen.’
‘It was an interesting introduction, anyway. I shall certainly meet Mr Caval again. I liked him very much.’ The Prime Minister, I thought, could make what he liked of that.
*
By the time all this was over our meal was ready in Ruth’s suite. It was certainly palatial – virtually a whole wing of the hotel, on the ground floor, and opening on to a private garden. ‘Have you finished hobnobbing with the Government?’ she asked.
‘I hope so.’
‘Well, you seem to have taken me over. I think I’m grateful, but I’m not quite sure.’
III
NAURATAKA
THAT HORRIBLE AFTERNOON came to an end. When she got around to organising herself, Ruth Caval was efficient, and in three hours she restored wardrobe, toiletries and footwear. Fort James could not provide Bertrand Russell – I was surprised, and rather pleased, at the amount of time she gave to hunting for him – but it did produce a copy of Alice, and also a modern reprint of Waterton’s Wanderings in South America, which, I told her, would make good bedside reading for a mathematician. (Later she asked why I thought so, and I explained that it showed a world that had nothing to do with maths.)
While she was unpacking, Edward Caval telephoned, and after speaking to her he was put through to me. I was having a bath, but with that curious blend of the modern and the medieval that is (sometimes) one of the charms of the Caribbean, there was a telephone in the bathroom. After inquiring how we were, he said that he was installed at Naurataka, and that he would like me to come back with Ruth and stay for a few days. ‘It is, I think, beyond the local earthquake belt,’ he added. I said that I should be delighted to revisit him.
*
In clean clothes, and feeling more than ready for a drink, I called on Ruth. I found her looking forlorn, and reading Alice.
‘Cheer up,’ I said, ‘most women would enjoy all those new clothes.’
‘Well, I’m not most women.’
‘I wondered if you’d let me take you out to dinner.’
‘Haven’t you had enough of me?’
I considered this. ‘What are the alternatives?’ I asked.
‘The hotel serves quite good food. And I’ve got Alice, and that other book you wished on me.’
‘And for me?’
‘A single man can always find plenty of entertainment.’
‘My dear Ruth, you are rather an ass. Do you know many people in Fort James?’
‘I don’t know anybody at all. I come from New York.’
‘I come from South Devon, which is even farther from Nueva than New York. So we’re in the same boat, more or less.’
‘All right. Where shall we go?’
‘There’s a booklet of the delights of Nueva in my room. It says there’s a beach about ten miles out of Fort James, with a waterfront restaurant and hibiscus leaning over the tables. We might find a table where the hibiscus didn’t get into the soup.’
*
Anata Beach turned out to be a charming place. The restaurant really was on the beach, in a clearing where trees came almost to the water’s edge. I can’t vouch for the hibiscus because night comes early in the tropics and it was dark when we got there, but there was a bonus that I hadn’t expected – fireflies. They weren’t round the tables, because the tables had electric light, but the place was well-planned, with low-powered lighting, and the rim of darkness round the trees sparkled with the jewel-glints of fireflies. Ruth was a bit edgy during dinner, making brittle, rather forced, conversation, but as we sat over coffee she seemed suddenly to relax. ‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ she said. ‘I’ve been horrid to you, and you have been very nice to me. Are you the sort of person I can talk to?’
‘I’m a great deal older than you are,’ I replied, a little guardedly. ‘I can’t claim any particular wisdom, but I am, or was, a soldier, and the Army tries to keep its head.’
‘Well, I don’t know what to do. You see, I’m not married to any Caval.’
‘Does Mr Caval think you are?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t see how he can – but I don’t know him at all well. No, it’s not like that. I’m quite properly Mrs Caval, at least I suppose I am if I want to be, but I don’t, much. You see, I was married to Charles Caval, but we were divorced about a year ago. Do you know anything about Caval history?’
‘I know a sort of guide-book version of it, about the quarrels between the two seventeenth-century half-brothers, and all that.’
‘It’s true enough, at least as true as family history ever is, though Charles told me so many lies when I was married to him that I don’t know what to believe about any Cavals. But that’s a bit beside the point. Charles is the son of Nicolas Caval, that’s the other branch of the Cavals, supposed to be the bitter enemies of Edward Caval’s lot. Anyway, I met him just after I’d taken my D.Phil. I’d been working very hard, and I went on vacation to Florida. Charles was on vacation, too – he’s a physicist, and a very able one, or he could be if he stuck at anything. I didn’t know anything about Nueva then. We had a hectic love affair, got married in the States, and went to live at the university where Charles had a research job. Things went wrong from the start. I was all dewy-eyed and romantic then, I suppose, and I began by respecting Charles, and I saw him as a Professor of Physics one day. We’d not been back a week when I found that he was sleeping with one of the lab. assistants, and she was only one of a string. The other campus wives tried to be very sweet and wanted to pity me – you don’t know how vile women can be when they want to pity another woman. I stood it for a bit – you see, I respected Charles as a scientist until I discovered that he was bone-idle and not above pinching the results of one of his own students’ research. The boy came to me about it, in great distress. Then I had to get out. I brushed up my D.Phil and got a job in a mid-west municipal college – there’s rather a shortage of good maths teachers, and I am good. I’ve got a better job now, but that’s by the way.
‘Charles didn’t care two cents about my leaving him. I didn’t ask for any money, and he never offered to send me anything – he never has. I had a bad time, because my parents are dead, and I’ve never had any money apart from what I’ve earned in student jobs. But I managed. Then some lawyer wrote to say that Charles wanted a divorce. That seemed to tidy up the situation, and I was really thankful to get the whole business of my marriage over and done with. I never saw Charles again after I left, and for a long time I’d quite stopped thinking of him. I was still called Caval, because that was the name I’d applied for my first job in, and it just went on. It didn’t seem to matter, anyway.
‘Then I got a letter from Edward Caval. How he got hold of my address in New York I don’t know, but he did somehow. It was rather a touching letter – kind of eighteenth-century good manners. But you’ve met Edward Caval, and you’ll know what I mean. I can’t show you the letter because it went up with the rest of my things at Chacarima, but I can remember it almost word for word. It began “My dear Ruth, (if I may call you so),” and went on, “I am an old man, and, as you may know, my branch of the Caval family will die with me. I have a great wish to meet one of your generation who bears the name Caval, and I am wondering if you would do me the honour of visiting me at Chacarima. I enclose a return air ticket from New York to Nueva. You will see that it is undated – all you have to do is to make a reservation with the airline, and let me know the date on which, as I hope, you can come. I shall then arrange for a car to meet you at Fort James airport.” He didn’t even mention Charles.
‘Well, I wasn’t all that keen on having anything to do with any more Cavals, but Edward seemed about the best of the bunch. I’d heard of him from Charles – of course, he never had a good word to say for Edward, but I’d learned to regard the reciprocal of anything Charles said as probably coming somewhere near the truth, so I was slightly disposed to think well of Edward. And I did need a vacation, and I didn’t have any money – I’d had to go quite a bit into debt in tidying up my life, and although I’ve got quite a good job now I’ve still got to pay for the furniture in my apartment, and a few other things. So I thought, why the hell not? I get a free trip to Nueva, and it’s a place people actually pay a lot of money to go to on vacation. So I wrote back and said I’d go.
‘The day before my flight the phone rang in my apartment. I answered it, and a voice said, “Mrs Caval? I hope you have a good time in Nueva, but watch out for earthquakes.” I said, “Who is it?” but he rang off without saying anything more. I think it was Charles, but I can’t be quite sure, because whoever it was either had or pretended to have a bit of a cold, and spoke in a rather nasal sort of voice.
‘I was more angry than worried – it was just the sort of vicious thing that Charles would do, to get me upset and maybe call off the trip. I’d quite got to looking forward to it by then, and all the call did was to make me more than ever determined to go. I’d almost forgotten about it until this morning.’
She stopped to drink some coffee. She wasn’t looking at me – she was gazing into the night, looking into the distance of her own life, perhaps.
‘It’s hard to see how it can be anything but an extraordinary coincidence,’ I said.
‘I suppose so.’ She seemed to speak without much conviction. ‘I’m not exactly scared, but I don’t know what to do. Edward Caval wants me to go back. I don’t think I want to go. But I’ve spent an awful lot of his money. I didn’t owe him anything before, but I feel I do, now.’
‘I should forget about the money – after all, you lost your things in his house, and naturally he’d want to replace them. And while I don’t know anything about his finances, from the look of things he must be pretty rich. How did you get on with him before?’
‘Would it sound silly if I said I don’t really know? He was wonderfully considerate – treated me like a long-lost granddaughter, who’d come home. Talked a lot about the past, about how one ancestor had done this, and another that. The nicest thing about him is that he is always so gentle. That made me feel good – after living through the past few years I sort of needed to have a gentle vacation. What I don’t know is what, if anything, he got out of me. Once or twice he seemed on the edge of saying something that might explain why he’d invited me, but he never did.’
‘Were you bored?’
‘Not a bit. I’m used to being on my own, and I’d brought some maths books that I’d wanted a chance to study. Living at Chacarima was like being a princess in a children’s story – lovely food, everything I wanted, and no one to bother me if I wanted to be alone.’
‘Why don’t you want to go back? Is your vacation nearly up?’
‘Lord, no, the university term doesn’t start for a couple of months yet. It’s just that I feel as if the whole situation had somehow turned unhealthy.’
‘I don’t see why. There’s not likely to be another earthquake, and anyway, the house he’s gone to is supposed to be away from that particular earthquake belt. Did Mr Caval say that he’d asked me to come back with you?’
‘No, he didn’t. Are you going, Peter?’
‘Would it make any difference?’
She considered this, as if confronted with a problem in maths. ‘I think perhaps it would,’ she said. ‘Unless I started getting frightened of you.’
I laughed. ‘Am I a frightening person?’
‘No, but I think maybe you could be.’
‘I’d better tell you about my own marriage.’
‘Your marriage? You said you hadn’t got a wife.’
‘I haven’t. I had once. It was a long time ago.’
The tension that I had felt between us was defused. She laughed – more like a woman who has enjoyed being taken out to dinner.
‘So I was right! She couldn’t take the sailmaker’s kit!’
‘She never even saw it. No, it wasn’t a bit like that.’ I gave her a brief account of my leaving the Army, of my years as an industrial tycoon, and of how my marriage and my job had gone together when the firm was taken over. ‘She needed someone who could afford to keep her – she married my successor in my job,’ I explained.
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Not really. I miss the things that marriage might have brought, a proper home, a family . . . but marriage with Sybil couldn’t have worked out like that. Fortunately I was able to go back to the Army.’
‘Poor Peter. It seems we’ve both been rather battered.’
*
I took Ruth back to the hotel, and we arranged to meet for the Nuevan breakfast at eleven thirty and to leave for Naurataka in the afternoon, in time to get there before dark. She said that she had still a bit of shopping to do, and wanted particularly to see if Fort James could provide her with a few more books. I felt that I ought to call on the brigadier, and, if possible, on the Prime Minister, to let them know my movements.
I found it hard to get to sleep. What an extraordinary story Ruth had told me. There were many things, I was sure, that she had not told me – but then there was really no reason why she should have told me anything at all. Could her story relate in any way to the problem that had brought me to Nueva? It didn’t seem likely. But why had Edward Caval wanted her to come from New York? She was not even a relation, merely a remote connection by a now no-longer-existing marriage. What on earth could he want to talk to her about – and if he wanted to talk to her about anything, why hadn’t he done so? And why had he never mentioned her ex-husband, who was at least a kinsman? Or was this one of the things on which Ruth had been less than wholly honest?
With these unanswered questions on my mind I could doze only fitfully, and at five thirty a.m. I was glad to get up. This was not an ungodly time for getting up in Nueva, and I reckoned that if I called on the brigadier around six there would be a good chance of finding him at home.
He was at home, drinking coffee and eating a pineapple on the verandah of his house. He invited me to share both. I began by thanking him for rallying round so promptly yesterday. ‘We are both soldiers. It was the least I could do,’ he said.
He asked what were my immediate plans. ‘I’ve a fair bit of leave due to me, and having come to Nueva it seems a pity not to take the chance of staying on,’ I said. ‘Mr Edward Caval has invited me to stay at a house he has at Naurataka – to make up, perhaps, for his house at Chacarima falling on top of me. I thought I’d accept his invitation, for a few days at any rate.’
‘Naurataka – that really is the back of beyond! It is very beautiful, though. You can get up into the mountains from there, and if you go you must take the opportunity of visiting one of the Carib settlements. But you will have to go by mule, I think.’
‘I’ve travelled by mule-back in my time. I’m ashamed of my ignorance of this part of the world. I know that there are some Carib settlements on the mainland, in the interior of Guyana and Venezuela, but I didn’t know that there were any left in the islands.’
‘There are not many. Those in Dominica are, perhaps, the best known, but there are a few still in Nueva.’ He paused. ‘The rest of us, black, white, brown and yellow are all immigrants – the Caribs are our true natives. History has not treated them kindly – or, if death be a preferable alternative to slavery, maybe they were lucky. The Caribs had – indeed, have – a culture of their own, but it could not be adapted to the coming of the Spaniards and other Europeans. They were not prepared to work as slaves on plantations. They fought where they could – bows and arrows against gunpowder, and inevitably they went down. But it was more than that – they simply could not take the life that the Europeans brought, and they just died. You are right in thinking that they almost died out in the islands. There are only a few settlements left.’
