Tearing the item from the long roll of paper coming from the teletype, Gross hurried to a small bookcase in which he kept those reference books which enabled him to command much of the world"s knowledge: a thesaurus, two big atlases, a French dictionary for use with Canadian material, and a most valuable book with a grease-marked, tattered jacket, Ploetz"s A Manual of Universal History. Turning to the index, which he had learned to use with precision, he found that a suspicion awakened by the teletype item was confirmed. In 1763, at the Treaty of Paris, which ended what was known in Europe as the "Seven Years" War" and in North America as the "French and Indian War," an unbelievable set of options was seriously debated among the major powers: Should Great Britain receive all of Canada or the tiny Caribbean island of All Saints? Yes, there was the astonishing fact, but what to do about it?
Gross had on his staff an earnest young reporter named Millard McKay who had done graduate work at Columbia University"s School of Journalism, and who showed solid, if somewhat unimaginative, talent but improved each month he was with the paper. He would in time, thought Gross, become a mainstay of the Chronicle, a man who could be relied upon to cover acceptably whatever topic he was a.s.signed.
After watching him during his first year, Gross learned that McKay shared a weakness common to young men educated at East Coast universities and with a love of books: he wished ardently that he had been born an Englishman, with access to London theaters and a summer home in the Thomas Hardy countryside or perhaps the Lake District made famous by poets. Although he had not yet been able to visit England, he had picked up from his professors a touch of an Oxford accent, and was appalled when anyone suggested he might be Irish. "No," he would say firmly. "Actually, I"m English. Mother"s name was Cottsfield." On starting a new life in Detroit, he had considered changing his name to Malcolm Cottsfield, which he thought more genteel and English, but he found the legal requirements so complicated and expensive that he backed off.
Mr. Gross had once asked him: "How did you generate this great love for things English?" and he told an unlikely story: "I grew up in a village of three hundred in the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, and they can be very barren. Got a scholarship to Rutgers University in northern Jersey and fell under the spell of a professor who"d been a Rhodes scholar. He lived and died for England, and I took three courses with him. He made us write long papers on various aspects of English life, and he threw the topics at us arbitrarily. I got "How the English Parliament Functions" one term, "Six English Novelists from Thomas Hardy to Greene" the next, and believe it or not, for the third course I wrote on "English County Cricket." When you study that way, you learn something."
When the copyboy called "Mr. Gross wants to see you," McKay immediately thought: What have I done wrong? But a rapid inventory of his recent stories produced none that were vulnerable, so he a.s.sumed he was about to receive a new a.s.signment, and with restrained confidence he entered the editor"s office, where the teletype fragment was thrust into his hands.
"You"re an English-history buff," Gross said. "Any idea about the significance of this?"
Millard studied the elements in the story and found nothing that related to his rather wide knowledge of English history and custom. Wrentham was not a name that had played any significant role in English history, and although he knew how cricket was played, he could see no special significance in that brief reference. "I"m afraid it escapes me," he had to say.
"I wouldn"t expect you to understand my next question. But does the date when Wrentham is supposed to arrive in All Saints, February tenth, ring any bell?"
"No."
"How about the Treaty of Paris?"
"Mr. Gross, you"re throwing puzzles at me."
"I sure am," and with a chuckle Gross pa.s.sed across his desk the Ploetz manual. "Look up the Treaty of Paris, 1763."
And when Millard did, he saw that astonishing entry regarding the complex treaty that ended the long wars in Europe and the lesser skirmishes in the Caribbean. France confirmed that it already had plans for ceding the Louisiana Territory to Spain, England gave Guadeloupe and Martinique to France, Spain gave Florida to England, and then came the provision that stirred Gross"s imagination: "France and England both wanted the strategic island of All Saints in the Caribbean, but neither wanted Canada. English admirals argued that their fleets simply must have the vital island, key to the Caribbean and South America, and they saw no loss in throwing a bleak northern wilderness like Canada to the French, but they did not get their way. Britain got Canada, France got All Saints, which Britain would grab back at the first opportunity, so that poor France was cheated of everything."
"I never knew that!" Millard cried. "All of Canada in exchange for one little island!"
"And note the date: ten February 1763. Lord what"s-his-name a.s.sumes command in All Saints on that anniversary."
"You want me to draft an article about this, for our Canadian readers?"
"Much more. I want to do this right. You get yourself down to All Saints, look the place over, and give us a long, thoughtful article or maybe a series, comparing All Saints today with Canada. Give our Canadian friends a good laugh."
From his bookcase he took an almanac. "Yes, here is it. Canada, 3,851,790 square miles; All Saints, 303. Population: Canada, 11,120,000; All Saints, 29,779. Keep those figures in mind and give us a rattling good yarn." He stopped, leaned across his desk, and asked: "You know Canada, don"t you?"
"Yes, sir. I visited Calgary for the Stampede. From Winnipeg to Nova Scotia, I know rather well."
"Good. Bone up. Catch a train for Miami tonight, and you have maybe a week and a half before His Lordship reaches the island. Stay as long as needed, but this is a work trip, not a paid vacation."
As soon as McKay left Mr. Gross"s office he headed for the Chronicle library, where he took down Burke"s Peerage, to learn that the Wrenthams had started their climb to n.o.ble status in the mid-1600s, when a member of their family in Barbados was knighted as Sir Geoffrey because he defended the royal prerogatives of King Charles against the radical partisans of Oliver Cromwell. Some years later he was elevated to the peerage as Lord Wrentham for his daring sail westward from Barbados in a frail ship with sixty-one Englishmen, to land on the bleak eastern sh.o.r.e of All Saints Island, held by the French. In heroic fashion Sir Geoffrey led his men across the mountains and down to the bay, where the French had established a town. Falling upon the settlement by surprise, Wrentham drove the French into western headlands, from which they evacuated the island.
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 t.i.tle which had since pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tles, learned from his swift scanning of Burke"s that whoever was Earl of Gore also held the subsidiary t.i.tle, 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. t.i.tle 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: Because Columbus had a difficult time in his 1492 voyage of discovery, with only three small ships, people today suppose that he had the same limitations on his subsequent voyages. Not so! On his second trip in 1493 he led a veritable flotilla of seventeen ships, some of them quite large, and whereas the first crossing from the Canaries took five long weeks plus two days, they made it this time in an easy uneventful three weeks.
One of the ships bettered even that remarkable speed. A large new caravel, which had been christened Todos Los Santos, had as its navigator a learned Italian priest called Fra Benedetto, who was so skilled at gauging winds and currents that he prevailed upon his captain to follow a more southerly course than that being pursued by the main fleet.
Columbus with his sixteen ships would sail between the small eastern islands and enter the Caribbean on 3 November 1493, but Todos Los Santos would enter somewhat to the south two days earlier, then sail north to rejoin, and as the days of October waned, Fra Benedetto had a happy conceit: Would it not be a mark of G.o.d"s favor if His ship Todos Los Santos were to make landfall at some new island on the very day of All Saints, November 1?
Fra Benedetto"s calculations satisfied him that on All Saints Day, following the traditional eve of lost wanderers, souls and goblins, landfall would have to be close ahead. He posted special lookouts to watch for it, but the whole day and evening pa.s.sed with no islands sighted. Shortly before midnight Fra Benedetto toppled the hourgla.s.s to return more sand to the top section, which gave him additional time for sighting land before All Saints Day had pa.s.sed. Now he stalked the deck himself, anxiously looking for land, and fifteen minutes into his borrowed hour, a lad at the forward lookout spotted what he took to be a flickering light. The crew was alerted, and as the moon came out from behind a cloud, it illuminated the two majestic peaks which were later named by French occupants as Morne Jour and Morne Soir.
"We have found our new island!" Fra Benedetto cried as he danced about the ship. "And Todos Los Santos shall be 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 ash.o.r.e 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 p.a.w.ns 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.senger: "Pointes Nord and Sud," he said, p.r.o.nouncing 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 pa.s.sengers" luggage ash.o.r.e. "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 a.s.surance, 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, a.s.sembled 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 att.i.tudes 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 gla.s.s, 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.signment 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 coupe. "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.
"My ancestors landed on that dangerous beach down there, Baie du Mort. I suppose you know French."
"Since I do a lot of my reporting in Canada, I"d better. Bay of Death."
For the balance of the twelve-mile drive north the two men talked of scenery, but Millard had a strong suspicion that this was not the purpose of the trip. "Our island isn"t fine level land like most of Barbados. Didn"t permit big sugar plantations like Jamaica. But once you treat this soil respectfully, it treats you the same way. We never starved."
When the road started west, toward the Caribbean, Wrentham said: "We should get a picnic," and he drove into the quaint, sleepy town of Tudor, where a shopkeeper, also named Wrentham and much darker than Bart, put together a large bag of groceries for the construction of a rural feast. "Better give us something to drink," Bart said, and his distant cousin responded with two bottles of English beer and a can of American fruit juice.
With this comforting cargo the sightseers headed due west across the top of All Saints, and McKay, in the right-hand seat, enjoyed this calmer view of the Atlantic but still had no clue as to why Wrentham had taken him upon such a long journey. It could not be from mere kindness. When they were well west of Tudor, the man began describing with a mix of bitterness and amus.e.m.e.nt the social structure of his island, and it became obvious that he had much he yearned to say, especially to a writer from America. He began disarmingly: "You must understand, Mr. Detroit, that almost everyone on this island will hate you, just a little."
"I"ve given no offense."
"Ah, but you"re an American. And so was she."
"Who?"
"Wally Simpson. We love royalty on this island-all of us, regardless of color. And we adored King Edward. He was such a glorious young fellow when he visited us as Prince of Wales. If you look in a hundred of our homes like those over there, you"ll find sixty or seventy with a chromo portrait of Edward. We can never forgive your Mrs. Simpson for having knocked him off our throne."
"I always supposed he knocked himself off." The words were scarcely out when Wrentham slowed the car and turned to warn his guest: "You"d be well advised not to voice an opinion like that in All Saints. You"ll find all doors closed against you, because his memory is revered."
"I apologize."
"You should. Your tantalizing witch almost destroyed an empire."
Several moments of silence followed this surprising outburst, but it was soon clear that Bart had other things on his mind that he wanted to talk about, for he grasped the steering wheel with both hands, leaned forward far over it till his head almost touched the windshield, and said in conciliatory tones: "Even though your left-hand drive is a mite inconvenient, an American car is superior."
"Is it difficult?" Millard asked. "I mean, driving from the wrong side, as it were?" and Wrentham said with the pleasing lyrical intonation that was special to the Caribbean: "Indeed, it is most difficult because the driver cannot see all that ought to be seen, but it"s worth it to have a fine car that holds the road and turns so easily."
Having rebroken the ice, he began the lecture to which everything up to now had a prelude: "You may not use my name in your dispatches, but you can refer to me as a well-informed businessman of color. At the last census, All Saints had a population of twenty-nine thousand stacked in hundreds of different social levels, each determined by color. I am one level higher in scale than a man one shade darker than me. And I am certainly one level lower than the man who is a touch lighter in coloring. And remember, it"s only the color of the face that counts, not how it looks down here," and he slapped his belly.
"But for your purposes, there are only a dozen levels that matter. At the exalted top: anyone born pure-white in England with a t.i.tle or close claim to one. That is, the Gee-Gee and his circle of intimates. In a million years no man with my coloring will attain that Valhalla. Second level, anyone who can prove he comes from a good county family in England. No Scots nor Welsh need apply."
"What do you mean by "good county family"?"
"No one knows scientifically, but everyone knows operationally."
"For example?"
"Daughter of a well-respected clergyman, but never a Baptist or a Methodist. Son of an official who conducted himself well. "Good county family"-with us that explains everything."
Millard asked five or six rapid-fire questions which proved that from his college courses he understood the niceties of English rural life, and after fielding them, Wrentham continued: "The women who determine who fits in where socially keep the county group rather small, but then comes the rather large third level to which you might aspire if you immigrated here, behaved yourself, and had voted Republican in America. It includes all the whites of respectable reputation, especially the French farming families who have been here longer than any of us English.
"But then the separation becomes brutal. Remorseless, like the swath of the reaper"s scythe. Level four, the ladies and gentlemen of color, spelled our way c-o-l-o-u-r. Light skin, much lighter than mine. Been to Oxford, maybe. Or the London School of Economics. Or Harvard. Serve in the gommint."
"The what?"
"The gommint. You better learn that word. We all say it that way, even the Gee-Gee. What you colonials call government. On an island like All Saints, the gommint is all-powerful, and the top officials of color are ent.i.tled to membership in this exalted level four, also a few substantial businessmen, some wealthy widows, and now and then someone difficult to justify. But of one thing you can be certain, Mr. Detroit. Their color will be much lighter than mine. That"s the badge of honor."
Wrentham"s disgust with the system he was describing was obvious, though he was able to talk of it with some levity. "Levels five, six and seven are all lighter than me ... and keep that in mind," he said, "because I am an eight," which he then described as "hardworking men and women who save their money, send their children to school and know how to use a knife and fork."
"But if you"re relegated to level eight, how did you acquire such an elegant vocabulary?" asked McKay, and Bart chuckled: "Man, we have schools. Wonderful dedicated teachers who love every inch of England, every word Shakespeare ever wrote. I"ve never read an American book, if there are any, but Walter Scott and Charles d.i.c.kens and Jane Austen ... yes, yes!"
There were, he said, about six levels for those of mixed color darker than his own, and now he was approaching the sharpest line of all: "Below them is nothing. The blacks with heavy lips, fine teeth and no education-slaves, perpetual slaves."
"What if a black man were to immigrate here from, say, Carolina? Or a Hindu from India?"
"If he"s black, he"s black."
"Can he never aspire to entering the higher groups? Where you people of lighter skin come to rest?"
Wrentham drove in silence, ignoring this ugly question, then said: "Mr. Newspaperman, we"re soon going to be at Cap Galant, where you will see the great beauty of our island. And there on the blanket I always carry in my Chevrolet, we shall spread our picnic, your first in the Caribbean, so we must make it unforgettable."
But before spreading the picnic he wanted to share the basic rule of All Saints, the one that all young people understood: "It will also explain things if you decide to visit the other Caribbean islands. A young colored man of promise simply must, if he wants to get ahead, marry a girl with lighter skin. He will fight, lie, steal, and murder to achieve this. And the colored girl of great beauty who wants to make something of herself, she must marry a man with skin even lighter than hers. And it is watching what happens in this whirligig impa.s.se that produces the hilarity of Caribbean life, and the tragedies, and the suicides."
After a short run to the southwest, away from the Atlantic, they came to a small elevated peninsula jutting due westward and commanding an incomparable view. To the north, the distant ocean, to the east the slopes of Morne Jour reaching almost four thousand feet into the cloudless sky, to the south a perfect little bay with an arc of light sand, and best of all, to the west the quiet blue Caribbean spreading all the way to the Maya ruins of Cozumel.
"Which view is your favorite?" Millard asked, and Wrentham replied: "It"s all so grand, I can never decide," and it was obvious that he was proud of this belvedere.