The Sugar Islands by Alec Waugh

Author:Alec Waugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

A Beachcomber

from THE SUNLIT CARIBBEAN

Written in 1938

I Was met on the landing-stage by the kind of chauffeur— scrubby, unshaven, swarthy—to whom several months of West Indian travel had accustomed me. He might have been an octoroon, he might have been a quarter-caste, or he might have been simply sunburnt. He wore sandals, blue cotton trousers, and a short-sleeved shirt. A rough-rimmed straw hat was pulled low over his eyes. His step was shuffling and his manner surly.

‘You Mr. Wilding’s guest?’

I nodded.

‘His car’s over there, by the Customs shed.’

Long and low, a glittering stream of colour in the morning sunlight, a six-cylinder Chrysler presented a reassuringly opulent contrast to its driver.

My host’s rich, I thought.

I corrected myself a quarter of an hour later as we swung into a long avenue lined with royal palms at whose far extremity was a white, two-storied, many-windowed house. He was more than rich: he was very rich.

From a rattan chair on a wide, flower-flanked veranda a tall figure rose to greet me. He was a man of about sixty. He had an open, smiling face. I made an addition to my estimate. He was more than very rich. He was nice as well: a final estimate that confirmed me in a mood of contented anticipation.

I had good reason to be in such a mood. I had long wanted to pay a second visit to Dominica.

Dominica may not be a tourist’s island. It has no smart hotels, no bathing beaches, no casino. Its climate is damp and sultry. The sky is more often grey than blue. In a sense it is a melancholy island: with its cloud-hung mountains and its long story of ill-luck; one crop and then another—cocoa first, then limes—ruined by disease. It is not an obvious island: not at all. But it has the power to attract eccentrics. It has ‘character’. Square pegs, after long efforts to fit themselves into round holes, have made their homes there and been happy. It is the background of Elmer Napier’s novel, Duet in Discord. The lovely and unusual talent of Jean Rhys has its roots in Portsmouth. Its society is stimulatingly heterogeneous. On my return to England, I had found myself thinking more often of Dominica than of any other of the West Indian islands that I had visited. I found myself wishing that I had stayed there longer, that I had done more and different things, that I had thrown a wider net. I was more than grateful when, through the kind offices of a friend, an exchange of cables brought me, on a later visit to the Caribbean, an invitation to Wilding’s bungalow.

I settled myself comfortably beside him.

‘I’ve so many things to ask you . . .’ I began.

So many things that the hour of the morning swizzle had arrived before he had had time to say, ‘I wonder, by the way, if you ever came across the man who had this place before me? He was in your line. Weston.’

‘Max Weston?’

‘You knew him, then?’

‘I should say I did!’

I spoke decisively.

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