The Shadow and the Peak Page 6

  Chapter Three

  The name of the girl was Judy Waring. She was twenty-seven, although she seemed no more than twenty-three or four. She didn’t look at all a suicidal type, and she was not depressive or neurotic; in fact she seemed to have the sort of innocence that no experience of life could sully. It astonished Douglas that she could have tried to kill herself even under the exactions of love. Her nature was so gay and easy-going. She told him all about the suicide in a casual way; not boastfully, or shamefully, or even as a joke, but as a fairly natural episode in what she considered quite an uneventful life.

  The man who had caused her to try and commit suicide was called Louis. He was a Hungarian, and she had met him in Paris nearly two years before. She was living in Paris with a young French law student at the time. The student had been in the Free French Air Force, and she had fallen in love with him in London during the war. They had often talked of getting married. But Judy had a passion for fair-grounds—for the curiosities of sideshows and the exhilaration of scenic railways. It was a passion which the student didn’t happen to share; and that was why he hadn’t been with her in the tent of the Hairy Man from Indo–China, on the Place Pigalle, when she first met Louis. It was also why he hadn’t been there the next day, when she met Louis again at the Wall of Death.

  She met Louis several times after that; and one day he took her back to his room. It then occurred to her that her love for the law student must be waning, if she could so easily commit an infidelity. A fortnight later—there had been one or two quite unpleasant scenes in the meantime—she had ceased to live in the student’s elegant flat and was installed in Louis’ shabby lodgings. She had discovered that she loved Louis very much indeed.

  Louis had no money; but Judy had done some modelling in London, and she took a job with a couturier. Louis was making arrangements to emigrate to the New World, and not doing any work at all. He was married. His wife, who was Swiss, had a great deal of money and lived in Zurich. He had left her after a quarrel in which she had stated categorically that she never wished to set eyes on him again.

  One day, when Judy had been living with him for nearly six months, his wife turned up in Paris. She had changed her mind about renouncing him. Louis told Judy that his wife’s reappearance left him cold. On the other hand, it would be inexpedient to offend her, now that the only barrier to his emigration was shortage of cash. Shortly afterwards he announced, with a breaking heart, that he was going to Venezuela, and that his wife was accompanying him. They sailed from Cherbourg three days later.

  Judy resisted the law student’s anguished and forgiving pleas to return to him, and went on working at the couturier’s. Another six months passed, during which she received only two picture post-cards of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Then a cable arrived, followed by an airmail letter, in which Louis explained that his wife had left him and gone to New York. She had no intention of returning. Unfortunately she had departed in a tantrum, thoughtlessly leaving him without enough money to provide Judy with a passage across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, he hoped she would find some means of joining him, by which time he would have found a job sufficiently remunerative to keep them both in the style to which Europeans were accustomed in Venezuela. Judy could just afford the passage, and as Louis still occupied her heart, she booked it at once. The day before she was due to sail another cable arrived from him. It stated briefly that he was now in Mexico, a more promising land in which to build their future. She switched her passage and sailed. When she arrived in Mexico City she found Louis living in a sordid room reminiscent of his room in Paris, not yet employed but fertile with ideas. He proposed to start a business exporting stuff to Europe.

  Judy didn’t mind the squalor, she was overjoyed at being with Louis again, and ready to find some employment in order to keep him as she had done in Paris. After a fortnight, with her ability to write letters in French and English, she found a job as a stenographer. She was due to commence this job on the following Monday when Louis’ wife turned up, unannounced, from New York.

  Louis’ wife, who was called Greta and who was six years older than Louis, had decided to forgive him everything. She had also decided to forget all her own indulgences in New York. She had not expected to find Louis with Judy; but when she did so she was prepared to overlook that too, provided Louis promised not to see Judy again in his life, except for the length of time it took to advise her to return to Europe forthwith.

  Louis came back from the hotel where his wife was staying, which was the most expensive in Mexico City, and kept the taxi waiting outside while he went up to the sordid little room to collect his belongings and deliver the ultimatum to Judy. He delivered the ultimatum regretfully, since his love for Judy far exceeded his love for his wife; but he had now perceived that Mexico was not a suitable country for a beautiful and cultivated European girl such as herself. Moreover, he had come to the conclusion that the competition in the export business gave a newcomer little chance of success. He was really angry with himself for so thoughtlessly allowing her to come over. However, his wife had very generously (in view of the circumstances) forked out enough money for Judy’s return fare to England or France. He had the notes in his pocket.

  Judy laughed and told him that he had better keep the money against the day when he quarrelled with his wife again. She didn’t want to leave Mexico—the Latin type quite appealed to her, and she might even marry a Mexican and settle down. Louis thought this quite a good idea, if she didn’t mind him telling his wife that she was actually proposing to leave. This would not only satisfy his wife, who had rather a jealous disposition, but—since he perfectly understood why Judy didn’t want to accept the money—would also enable him to pay off one or two small debts about which he preferred not to trouble Greta.

  After Louis had gone, Judy left the room almost at once and inquired where she might find a doctor. She was quite calm. She told the doctor that she was sleeping badly, and he wrote her out a prescription for ten sleeping tablets. She thought these might not be fatal even if taken at a single dose; and while she was in the dispensary, which adjoined the doctor’s surgery, she managed to grab and conceal a bottle of tablets similar to the one from which the dispenser was making up her prescription. She returned to her room, packed her bags, and went in search of another room where she wasn’t known, so that what became of her wouldn’t reach the ears of Louis. When she had found a room, she told the landlady that she was tired and didn’t wish to be disturbed before the next morning. Then she took a glass of water, sat down on the bed, and swallowed the ten tablets that had been prescribed her and the twenty-five from the bottle.

  Since setting out to find the doctor, she hadn’t had much time to think about Louis; but she had known that life without him would be unbearably empty. She was appalled at the thought of returning to Europe, which she had left with such great expectations. The stenographer’s job, if she wasn’t doing it for Louis, would be meaningless drudgery. Killing herself was the obvious solution, and she had no horror of death. Now that she had taken the tablets her only fear was that they might not work. She could still feel nothing happening to her, so she got up from the bed to find a razor-blade in her bag. She stood with the blade in her hand for a moment before she could gather enough courage to cut her wrist. Then she dragged it across the skin, and as she did so she fainted and fell on the floor with a crash that was loud enough to arouse the curiosity of the landlady.

  She remembered nothing else until she awoke in hospital. But then all the unpleasant business with the stomach-pump was over, and there was a little Mexican nurse sitting by her bedside, embroidering a tablecloth. She remembered quite clearly what she had done and why she had done it, and was neither pleased nor sorry that she hadn’t succeeded. It didn’t occur to her to try again. She set about thinking what she was going to do, but before she had reached a conclusion the doctor informed her, on official instructions, that Mexico’s warmth of hosp
itality didn’t extend to suicides. He advised her, since she hadn’t enough money to return to Europe, to go to the British West Indies. A week later she was in Jamaica.

  Two days after landing in the island a rich Jamaican, whom she had met within a few hours of her arrival, asked her to marry him. He was lonely, and Judy felt sorry for him. He had once been in love with another English girl. The girl’s parents had objected to their marriage because he was a half-caste. The girl was going to marry him all the same; but it was then discovered that he had been keeping a coloured mistress at his estate. This was a shock to the girl’s idealism. She returned the ring to him through the post.

  Judy toyed with the idea of accepting the Jamaican’s proposal. She had suddenly felt, after the suicide, that her life was absolutely pointless. She wanted a purpose. She could never love the Jamaican, but she saw that in many ways she could be a great help to him. She decided with typically impulsive enthusiasm that this was her mission. She was going to tell him the next day, and she spent the whole night thinking what a wonderful thing a mission was. But the next morning she began to doubt her capacity for saintliness. She would be unfaithful to the Jamaican by the end of a week. She would make him unhappy. She decided to look for a job instead.

  She went to one or two shipping companies without success, and then to the offices of the air-line. Usually the air-line only engaged staff in England, but they happened to be short of a stewardess, and so they cabled to London for authority to take her on. They gave her an air test, an allowance for uniform, and sent her off on a trip, under the tuition of another stewardess, to Trinidad. On her return she worked for a week in the Kingston office. It was on her second flight that the crash occurred.

  The aircraft was going to Cuba and Miami, and was supposed to return the next morning. Immediately after take-off from the Kingston airport Judy and her fellow­ stewardess had set about serving tea. The aircraft circled Kingston to gain height and then set course for Camaguey. Soon after they had crossed the foothills of the Blue Mountains the alarm signal was given. Judy and the other stewardess went forward to make the passengers fasten their safety-belts. Half of them didn’t want to do it; they had realized something was wrong with the engines, and although the air-liners didn’t carry parachutes, they wanted to be free to jump out. By this time the aircraft was in the valley, which afforded no possible place to land.

  While Judy was still urging the passengers into their safety-belts, a woman told her that her husband had gone back to the toilet. Judy went to the rear and knocked on the toilet door. At that moment there was a tremendous jolt, which was probably the aircraft hitting the top of a tree, and she remembered clinging on to some shelves, and then there was just the same painless blank that had followed the cutting of her wrist with the razor.

  Judy looked serious as she told this, but it wasn’t in her nature to look serious for long. Presently she gave a little shrug and said:

  “Oh, well. I suppose for the others it was just a painless blank without waking up at all.” She smiled briefly. “I’m getting awfully used to thinking I’m dead. I must have a charmed life or something, musn’t I? As I wasn’t killed, I suppose it wasn’t meant to be. I’m rather a fatalist like that. Are you?”

  They sat in silence for a minute or two. Douglas pulled out a cigarette and gave it to her, and lit one for himself. He watched her as she sat curled up on the bed in Mrs. Morgan’s nightgown, looking wistfully at her chipped nails. After a time he said:

  “Are you still in love with Louis?”

  “I still have tremors every time I think of him, if that’s what you mean.” She looked up at him quite brightly.

  “He must be a pretty fascinating person if he could make you go through all that for him.”

  She tossed the hair away from one eye and laughed.

  “Oh Lord, no,” she said. “I always had a queer taste in men. He’s about half your height, and terribly Jewish-looking, and he’s got T.B.”

  Chapter Four

  As if there hadn’t already been enough excitement for one week, a couple of days after the crash there was the anonymous letter about John.

  That afternoon Douglas had been taking a class under one of the junipers on the grass slope. He had never found outdoor teaching very satisfactory, and always held his most important classes in the Great House in the morning—for the children’s capacity for concentration, like his own, had a steady downward graph from approximately half an hour before the sounding of the lunch bell. In the open air attention wandered easily from the subject of the lesson. It was not surprising. The view from the slope was one of the most spectacular in all Jamaica. The whole of Kingston was spread out below, sometimes indistinct beneath a shimmering haze, sometimes so sharp and clear that you could pick out individual buildings—the Government offices, the Myrtle Bank Hotel, the new telephone exchange, the huge white Carib Cinema. Some of the children could identify their own homes.

  The arrivals and departures of ships always attracted the children’s attention, but even more fascinating were the endless activities at the airport. The main runway was built out into the bay, and the aircraft, coming in to land, often looked as though they had misjudged their distance and were dropping into the water. The take-off was still more exciting. When the sun was shining you could see the machine parting from its shadow as it lifted from the runway; but on dull days there was nothing to show it had lifted, and you waited for a breathless second, half expecting it to plunge off the end of the runway into the sea.

  During outdoor classes it was a test of pedagogic ingenuity to compete for the children’s interest with the ships and the aircraft—and even with the variety of insects that inhabited the grass. Douglas didn’t often try, but gave up his afternoon classes to play-reading, story-telling, or topical discussions. If some visual distraction came along he simply stopped and talked about it.

  This afternoon his class had hardly begun when some­one spotted a fully rigged schooner sailing into the harbour round the end of the Palisadoes. They watched for a time, and then began to make up stories about it and about the people on board. It was a good imaginative exercise, involving geography and history, and nobody was bored or went to sleep.

  John, who was amongst the pupils in the class, knew how to make up stories as well as he knew how to build tree­houses. His schooner story was up to standard. It was about a vain old captain who prided himself on possessing the fastest and most beautiful schooner in the Caribbean. A young man in the crew hated the captain, and one day jumped ship and started building a schooner of his own. When it was ready he sailed it close to the captain’s schooner. The captain knew that no ship was faster than his, and proudly unfurled his sails. The young man in the new schooner raced alongside him neck and neck—and then suddenly unfurled another sail and left the other ship behind. The captain was so enraged that he tried to sink the new schooner at night. In the fight his own schooner was sunk and he was taken on board the rival vessel, where he became one of the young man’s crew.

  Obviously John saw himself as the young renegade of this story, and it was probably not too far-fetched to suppose that subconsciously he identified his own father with the captain of the vessel. By beating the captain and making him a member of his own crew, he had won the victory over his father that he desired. Douglas had always suspected John’s resentment of his father from the reserve with which he spoke of him. Now he felt quite certain of it. The children’s stories often gave you hints about them like that, telling you what they were unable or unwilling to explain in more direct terms.

  Soon everybody grew tired of the schooner, and Douglas took out a book to read to them for the last twenty minutes of class. Just then Pawley’s coloured maid came up the slope and handed him a note. It was written in Pawley’s neat and painstaking hand.

  Mr. Lockwood.

  Would you kindly come and see me at your convenience?

&nb
sp; Leonard Pawley.

  He told the maid that he would go down after the class, and went on reading to the children. Five minutes later Pawley himself turned up. He hovered about in rather an agitated, apologetic way until he had attracted Douglas’s attention. In front of the children he usually adopted a self-effacing manner, designed to show them that although he was headmaster and wore a beard he was really quite approachable and a boy at heart.

  He goggled round at them. “I hope I haven’t chosen a bad moment to interrupt?” There were a few murmurs, and he said, “You don’t mind if I take Mr. Lockwood away from you for a minute? I expect one of you can go on reading for him.” Douglas gave the book to one of the boys. Pawley beamed at them. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

  They walked off along the slope. Pawley was holding a letter in his hand. When they were out of earshot of the class he said:

  “Let me see, Lockwood, how long have you been in Jamaica now?”

  “Two months.”

  “Two months, of course.” He nodded. “Naturally you can’t learn much about a new country in that time. Even with a sharp eye, it’s surprising how long it takes to get to know a small island like this. I’ve been here more than two years myself and I confess there are still large gaps in my knowledge.” He smiled at Douglas to emphasize the frankness of this admission. “I’ve heard my wife say that although she was born here, hardly a day passes without her learning something new about Jamaican life.”

  This time it sounded definitely as if Pawley was leading up to a homily on improper night-life—although he was capable of prefacing practically anything with this sort of preamble. Douglas glanced at the letter in Pawley’s hand again. It had a Jamaican stamp. The postmark was Kingston.

  “If you were to draw a comparison,” Pawley went on, “you might compare Jamaica with a small English provincial town, where everybody is aware of one another’s business. In fact,” he warmed to the analogy, “you might compare the class differences in the English town with the colour differences out here. We can’t ignore the fact that a man’s employment and income usually bear a direct relationship to the colour of his skin. However, that’s beside the point. I’m only trying to stress that owing to Jamaica’s provincial nature, you’re bound to get a great deal of gossip. Backchat is probably one of this country’s worst enemies.”