No Mask for Murder Page 4

  Carew himself joined in the laughter that followed, but he added ruefully, “The trouble with most of us expatriate English is that we expect too much. These people are making progress in a lot of ways. I’ve seen enormous changes since I came here, and that’s not so long ago. The general standard of education may seem very poor—it is poor, it can’t be anything else—but we do manage to turn out some quite good scholars, and in time they may leaven the lump. They’re more likely to do it themselves than we are to do it for them.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” cried Mrs. Sylvester in her emphatic way. “There are exceptions, of course, but most of the black people I see have no more intelligence than animals. And they certainly behave like animals. I heard of a man who boasted of having children by twenty-three different women. I think it’s disgusting.”

  Garland again caught Martin’s eye, and his lips twitched. “They’re not usually quite as promiscuous as that,” he said. “A good many of them are content with more or less faithful concubinage, and the parents quite often get married as soon as the eldest daughter is old enough to be a bridesmaid.”

  “I think they must have rather a good time,” said Celeste in her lazy drawl.

  “Darling!” said Mrs. Sylvester reproachfully. Martin felt that if she had had a fan in her hand she would have rapped Celeste’s knuckles with it.

  “If you ask me,” said Forter, “the worst fault of the people here is that they’re bone idle. They’ll never make anything of the place until they’ve learned to do an honest day’s work.” He turned to Martin. “Do you know, West, we actually have to put up notices saying, ‘Any employee found asleep at his work will be instantly dismissed.’ They’re quite shameless about it—they drop off at the first opportunity. You know that, Garland.”

  Garland was no lover of the black population, but his professional sense was aroused. “I admit I’ve found them a pretty useless lot,” he said, “but the trouble isn’t just idleness. They’re riddled with disease, you know. If we could take a small area, as we want to, and treat the entire population there for all its complaints—hookworm, V. D., yaws, malaria, and so on—on the spot, you’d be amazed at the change in them. I know I shall never persuade you, Forter, but honestly it’s a most shortsighted policy to grudge the Health Department additional funds. It would be an investment to let us spend the money.”

  Celeste laughed. “I do hope Dr. West isn’t believing all this. The only thing that happens as a result of medical science here is that fewer people die, the population increases, and there’s less to eat for everybody. I don’t think it’s a kindness to cure them of things. And anyway, who’d trust a Government department? They nearly all fritter their money away in graft.”

  “That’s a gross exaggeration,” said Garland. He looked at his wife almost angrily.

  “Is it?” said Celeste coolly. Her eyes rested on Garland with something like contempt. “Anyhow, Dr. West, you’ll soon find out for yourself. Mind you,” she added cynically, “I don’t blame people for making a bit on the side if they can—it’s a tradition here—but I don’t see any point in pretending they don’t.”

  “To say nearly all Government departments,” said Sylvester, “is going a bit far, in my opinion. In any case, I think you should make it clear to Dr. West that it’s only the coloured population that’s involved. You don’t find the whites doing it—at least, not those from England.”

  “You don’t find them, no,” said Celeste, “but I wonder how many of us would bear investigation.”

  “Oh, I don’t agree with you there at all,” said Carew. “It is a fact that the Colony’s public standards are pretty shocking, but all the same, the white administration’s not corrupt.”

  “It’s everything else,” said Celeste, adroitly changing her ground. “It’s tired, bored, afraid——”

  Martin intervened in what seemed like a family squabble. “From what I’ve heard this evening,” he said, “I would have thought it fairly vigorous.”

  “Oh, this is just an act we’re putting on for your benefit,” said Celeste, her eyes dancing. “We like to sound intelligent when there are strangers about. You don’t imagine we always discuss these portentous subjects, do you? We talk about the shortcomings of our friends, and the best way of mixing drinks, and why we played the four of clubs instead of the three of diamonds last Wednesday week. Nobody cares a hoot about the Colony, and why should they? It’s a hopeless place.”

  There was a chorus of protest, but Celeste ignored it. She was enjoying herself. “The men here,” she went on, “are overworked, underpaid, and disillusioned. They know there’s no future for them here. They know they’ll have to hand over to the blacks pretty soon and that then everything will go to pot, so they’re just waiting patiently for their pensions to fall due. The women are so bored with inactivity that they can hardly bother to yawn. Week after week we do the same things—play bridge and tennis, give cocktail parties, go to cocktail parties, dine and dance at the Country Club, gossip about each other—and always with the same people. It’s so tedious. We’d all like to break out, only we’re too scared.”

  “I’m sure I don’t want to break out,” said plump Mrs. Sylvester, who looked as though she was about to do so.

  Garland’s annoyance seemed to have passed. He was looking at Celeste with the expression of an indulgent parent watching a precocious child. “You must take everything my wife says with a grain of salt,” he told Martin.

  “Well, look at you,” Celeste persisted. “Aren’t you disillusioned? You’ve given your life to this place, and what thanks do you get? Everybody criticises and no one’s any the better off. I know we’re not.” The implication of domestic penury was belied by her appearance, but Celeste seemed unconscious of the fact.

  “Personally,” she continued, “I’d be happy to take a plane to Honolulu to-morrow and never come back.” She nodded to Salacity, who stood beaming at the french windows. “Anyhow, dinner is ready. Shall we ban politics? I’m sure Dr. West is tired of all our grumbling.”

  “On the contrary,” said Martin, “I’m extremely interested. After all, I’m in it too.”

  Chapter Four

  Dinner was over. The party, now appreciably mellower, had gathered again on the terrace.

  “You’ll have to make sure they let you off that island for Fiesta,” Mrs. Sylvester was saying to Martin. “You’ve arrived just in time for it.”

  “Is it fun?” asked Martin. “What happens?”

  “What doesn’t happen?” said Celeste. She was sitting close beside him and he was pleasantly aware of a subtle perfume.

  “Think of a Musical evening at Government House,” said Sylvester with a grin, “and then think of the opposite. That’s Fiesta.” He caught his wife’s reproving glance. “Sorry, my dear.”

  “It’s an orgy,” stated Celeste.

  Martin laughed. “It doesn’t sound quite in my line. Do you want to get me struck off?”

  “I only meant you should watch it, of course,” said Mrs. Sylvester. “I don’t approve of white people taking part.”

  “They used not to,” said Forter. “At least, only in the most decorous way. A few years ago their contribution was simply to drive around in fancy costumes and throw confetti and paper streamers at their friends.”

  “They go a good deal farther than that now,” said Mrs. Sylvester. “It’s shocking how some of the women behave. People who are most respectable all the rest of the year. They seem to lose all control. I suppose they get carried away by the things they see.”

  “It’s being able to wear masks,” said Celeste. “They feel they can discard all their inhibitions quite safely. It must be a wonderful sensation.”

  “I’m still not quite clear what goes on,” said Martin. “I take it Fiesta’s a sort of national holiday?”

  “That’s the idea,” said Carew, who had made rather a study of it. “It’s always held during the first week in May—actually on the anniversary of the ending of slavery
in the Colony. It’s quite indescribable—a free-for-all, with no holds barred. You’ll have to see it for yourself. They start at six o’ clock on Wednesday morning and go on till midnight on the Thursday. Everybody parades in the streets, with costumes and masks according to taste, and they dance and sing and shout and generally make whoopee until they’re exhausted.”

  “Reki, rhythm, and rowdyism,” said Forter. “It’s very colourful, but it’s a darned nuisance all the same. The jails are always full when it’s over. Personally I don’t like it.”

  “I’m with you there,” said Garland. “I always try to get as far away from it as possible. In my view, Fiesta’s the best time for a fishing trip. I think it’s high time a stop was put to it.”

  “At least at Fiesta we’re not watched by servants,” said Mrs. Carew. “Normally one can’t get away from them, but at Fiesta they simply disappear. I can’t see that it does any harm. It’s probably a safety valve.”

  “I don’t like to see white people being undignified before the blacks,” said Mrs. Sylvester grandly. “No wonder they’ve lost every scrap of respect for us.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as that,” said Forter.

  “I would,” said Celeste, “but I don’t see what can be done about it. After all, there’s no clear-cut division. Who is white, and who isn’t, if it comes to that? I think that’s one of the horrible things about this Colony—the way everyone’s mixed up.”

  “A lot of people would say it was one of the good things,” observed Carew. “It does mean there’s practically no colour bar.”

  “There may not be a colour bar,” said Celeste, “but there’s a frightful colour problem, as you’ll have to admit. Almost everyone’s got a complex about colour, and the black people are the worst of all. They all envy a light skin. Isn’t it true that most black men want to marry someone lighter than themselves?”

  “Yes, I think that is so,” admitted Carew. “I had an example of it at one of the schools only the other day. I was watching a young Negress teaching her class. She was very competent, and I thought extremely attractive. I said to the head teacher—a Negro himself—‘You won’t be keeping her long; she’ll be getting married.’ He shook his head and said, ‘She not get married—she too black.’”

  “I don’t understand,” said Martin. “Surely in a country of black people——”

  “What he meant,” explained Carew, “was that the sort of Negro she’d be willing to marry—an educated man with some culture—would be on the look-out for a brown girl, or even a white one. After all, some of these Negroes do quite well as doctors and lawyers—they certainly make a lot of money—and there are plenty of white girls without any prospects who don’t mind marrying them for what they can get out of it.”

  “And the result of it all is,” said Celeste, “that a snobbery of colour has developed. What matters here is not so much social status or wealth, but how much of the tarbrush there is. Anyway, that’s what matters with a lot of people. Why, it’s a popular sport at the Country Club to watch the girls dancing and pick out the white ones with a touch of colour. I think it’s all horrible.”

  “But if they’re white,” said Martin, “how can you tell?”

  “Oh, you can usually tell by the way they ‘traipse’.”

  “‘Traipse’?”

  “That’s what we call the shuffling dance that’s so popular here. The coloured people do it with a sort of sinuous wriggle that the whites find very difficult to imitate. It’s done to the calypso tunes—you know about calypso, surely?”

  “Not very much,” said Martin.

  “Oh, calypso is all tied up with Fiesta. They’re just beginning to practise the new ones now.”

  “Calypsoes are just rather primitive topical songs,” said Forter, “set to an African rhythm. They’re not indigenous to this Colony—actually they were first brought here from the West Indies, weren’t they, Carew? I’ve never seen much in them myself, but it’s devilish difficult to keep still when they’re being played and some people rave about them.”

  “They can be quite amusing,” said Carew. “They began as a pretty low-class sort of entertainment, but they have a certain amount of wit. I like them best when you get two calypso singers improvising as they go along and making cracks about each other. Some of the chaps are very smart—they develop an eye for significant and humorous incidents, preferably a bit scandalous. It can be rather dangerous, of course, if there’s anything you want to hush up. They have a knack of picking up spicy gossip, and when they do it goes through the calypso huts like wildfire.”

  “I’m surprised West hasn’t been approached by any of them,” said Sylvester. “There’s a kind of racket some of them work. When a newcomer arrives one of these chaps writes a calypso about him, very fulsome and flattering, and offers to sing it in public—for a consideration, of course. If he gets a few shillings, that’s the end of the matter, but if he doesn’t he’s quite capable of writing a different sort of calypso and singing it. There’s definitely an element of blackmail. Of course, we don’t know what these people are singing about us half of the time—or saying, for that matter.”

  Garland’s voice came from the shadows. “If you’d like to hear a calypso, West, I’ll get Johnson Johnson along for you. He’s a great enthusiast.”

  “Must we?” said Celeste. “I hate the things.” Seeing Martin’s look of disappointment she added, “Besides, he’s probably gone home.”

  “Not he,” said Garland. “He’s more likely to be asleep somewhere. You know he always hangs around with his banjo when we have people to dinner. Salacity will find him.”

  Celeste called, “Salacity!” with a mischievous look at Martin, and the maid came running down to the terrace.

  “Find Johnson,” said Celeste. “We want him for a calypso.”

  Salacity went off, and they heard her voice calling, “Hey, Johnson, man, where am yo?”

  “Listen,” said Garland to Martin. “You’ll like this.”

  Another voice was heard near the house, oddly coming from somewhere between earth and heaven. “What ’appenin’?” it said.

  “What part yo is, man?”

  “I’se up here, ’omans,” came the suspended voice, now located in the branches of a mango beside the house.

  “Yo one bad foolish mans droppin’ asleep up dar,” Salacity chided him. “Yo fall off an’ break yo neck.”

  Johnson seemed annoyed. “Wha mek yo mout ah run laka ribber so?” he said sleepily. “Leh yo tongue rest.”

  “Yo stop throwin’ words at me,” cried Salacity indignantly, “Cumna man down, massa want yo fo’ play calypso.”

  The word acted on Johnson like magic. In a moment he had scrambled down from the tree and was blinking sheepishly in the circle of light. He was a slim youth in an old garish blazer and a battered felt hat. He stood grinning with his head a little on one side and his long arms hanging loosely. Round his neck was his cherished banjo.

  “Johnson,” said Garland, “you sing calypso for Dr. West?”

  Johnson’s grin broadened. “Yes, sah.” He tentatively plucked the strings of his banjo. “Wha you like, sah?”

  “Can you do a calypso about Dr. West? He’s come to look after the lepers at Tacri.”

  “Yes, sah, ah knows. Ah heard ’bout um.”

  “Smart boy. All right, see what you can do.”

  “And keep it clean,” said Celeste. “They often don’t,” she explained to Martin. “They think we don’t understand, which is usually true. I’ve a vivid recollection of the Governor’s wife enthusiastically applauding the most awful obscenities in a calypso hut. I think she thought it was a sort of native hymn!”

  Martin laughed. “I hope I understand him better than I did when he was in the tree.”

  “Oh, you’ll manage. He makes a special effort for calypsoes. Professional pride, you know.”

  Johnson’s eyes had taken on a trance-like look, and he began to strum. As he played, his whole body
started to jig in time with the rhythm—his feet tapping on the ground, his shoulders jerking, his hips waggling, and his head nodding. The tune was simple. Suddenly he began to sing in a pleasant tenor voice:

  “Doctor Wes’, believe we very ’ appy

  Dat you wid us now so willingly

  To do big tas’ which will certainly

  Make fo’ better livin’ in dis Colony.”

  Martin was so fascinated, he was hardly aware that Celeste was holding his hand. For several verses Johnson continued in a similar vein, making the most of the little information he possessed, leaning heavily on words ending in “y” for his rhymes, and not bothering about scansion. But whatever odd collection of words came tumbling from his lips, the beat of the music never faltered, and somehow the words managed to catch up with the tune before each verse finished. By the fourth verse the young Negro had worked himself up into unrestrained admiration of his subject.

  “In you we put our trus’ mos’ willingly

  We glad dat we bin blessed wid such a personality

  A man of yo greatness of heart an’ strength an’ brain capacity

  An’ we honoured to ’ave yo ’ mong us in our company.”

  “Bravo!” cried Martin, and led the applause.

  “There you are, West,” said Garland, “that’s the calypso at its most generous.”

  Johnson was still twitching and tapping as though he had St. Vitus’s dance in all his limbs.

  “Let’s have just one more,” said Carew. “You don’t mind, Celeste, do you? I like the one about the ‘santapee’.”

  “I’m the country cousin,” said Martin. “What on earth’s a santapee?”

  “A centipede, but it would be all the same if it was a hippopotamus. It’s the idea that counts.”

  “You’d think Carew was a woman-hater,” said Celeste. “Listen!” Johnson was singing again:

  “Man santapee bad too bad

  But woman santapee mo’ dan bad.”