It was at a political meeting that they killed Marius. We were there when it happened. We had gone out to the West Indies, to stay with Anna-belle’s father, and Marius was shot. He had been mixed up in a strike of the sugar-cane workers, and when he died the strike was broken and everything went on as before. He would not have been surprised.
Annabelle had said she wanted to die, but she didn’t. She got well slowly although she cried much of the time. We went to the sun to try to get her laughing. It was very hot, and we lay in bed with a fan whirring continually.
On the way out we saw Peter in Paris. There was a strike there, too, of transport workers, and we had to walk from the station. People were standing about on the corners of the streets and occasionally they ran out into the road to try to stop a car which went past them. There were a lot of soldiers being carried around in American trucks and the traffic had to stop for them. The people watched the trucks go past and then they began running out into the road again.
Peter was sitting in the hall of a big hotel, drinking whiskey. He tried to pretend that he was glad to see us. He had big rings under his eyes and he kept on looking round the hall of the hotel as if he were about to be arrested. A girl came to join him and she carried a big bag like a drum and her earrings clashed like cymbals when she turned her head. I tried to think where I had seen her before, and then I remembered. When Peter was with her he was rather like a dog.
We had dinner, the four of us, and the girl kept talking in a hard hysterical voice using strange slang phrases that required no answer. Peter echoed them for conversation and called her darling and laughed very quickly whenever she stopped. When he looked at her his eyes were watery, but he never looked at Annabelle or me. The waiters treated him with great respect and the girl made eyes at them to impress us. The restaurant was full of old men having dinner with younger men and their faces were artificial as if held together with spirit gum. In front of them were a lot of little bottles and plates like those on a dressing table, and hands fluttered over them as if they were choosing jewels. The young men sat very straight and obedient and sometimes the old men helped them to wine.
Later in a café we came across more of Peter’s friends. It was a small airless place like the crypt of a church and we drank brandy that tasted of syrup. There was a man playing a guitar and the girls chattered so much that he could not be heard. Peter was enjoying himself and repeated everything that was said and a girl came and sat on his knee. At midnight there was a cabaret in which a very old woman appeared in a bathing dress. She sang dirty songs and did a dance holding a carrot. Everyone clapped and cheered and Peter kissed the girl with the earrings. For a while he seemed happy and talked louder than anyone else, and then he became drunk and did not talk anymore. We took him back in a taxi and his face looked dead.
I helped him to bed in his small ornate room and he lay face downwards in his pyjamas. I thought he was asleep and was about to leave him when he put out his hand and said, “Don’t go,” and held me. The room was very hot and was padded with black silk like the inside of a coffin. Peter had covered his face with a pillow and he pulled at it and said, “Oh God, God,” several times out loud. Then he sat up in bed and lit a cigarette and smoked it with the ash crumbling off onto the sheets. “What day is it to-morrow?” he said. “Sunday,” I said.
Peter had got a job with a newspaper and he had been doing it for two months when we saw him. He had not come back to England when Annabelle and I were married. We had heard news of him from time to time and it was always suggested that he was being a great success. The opinion was that he had settled down, had grown up, had got over an awkward stage in his career. As I watched him sitting in the bed he somehow reminded me of Alice. His hand holding the cigarette drooped and burned a hole in the blanket. When I left him he asked me to tell the concierge to wake him early in time for church.
We were with him for one more day and we saw him being successful. He spent the afternoon in the bar of the big hotel with two blonde Italian girls who looked like madonnas. They sat on either side of him and he appeared very small between them. There were a lot of pansy men at the bar who seemed to be keeping clear of him, and Peter was fluttering his hands incessantly at the girls as if he were doing some penance to them. They were very serious with him, and seemed to be trying to protect him when later his pansy friends came up and surrounded him. He grew smaller and smaller between the two big motherly madonnas until he was quite drunk again and then he did not seem to exist at all. We left him then. I wondered who would win. They were all very fond of him.
Later we had a letter from him saying how happy he was and how he loved Paris because it was the only place where one could have fun any more. He had changed his address and was living with one of the Italian girls and was thinking of becoming a Roman Catholic because she was one. His letter was full of words like divine and heavenly, and indeed he spoke of all his friends as if they were gods and goddesses.
We had heard about Marius, too, from time to time, and about his successes. There had been riots on his island in the West Indies, and whenever the news crept into the papers Marius’s name was mentioned. The workers in the sugar-cane fields were striking for higher pay, and all the landowners were holding out against them except Marius who was on their side. He spoke for them at their meetings and had become an unofficial head of the trades-union that was running the strike. Most of the workers on the island had come out in sympathy with the strikers and Marius was much hated by the other landowners. Sometimes his meetings were broken up by the police and sometimes by parties organized by the landowners. Annabelle’s father had been governor of the islands at the time when the strike began and he had tried to settle it and had not been able to, and then he had resigned. Afterwards he lived in this small private house on the island and we heard that he had been ordered home and had refused to come and that his career was finished, but we did not know about this. We went out to stay with him and we arrived at the end of the hot season in the rains.
We went into the town one evening and saw the people standing on the corners of the streets. There was no traffic and nothing to move for, and it seemed that the wooden buildings were material for a bonfire waiting to be set alight. Even the sea was oily, so that it seemed that the water might burn. A group of policemen came down the street with a man handcuffed in the middle of them, and there was no sound except the tread of their marching. Women hung out of the windows of upper storeys as if they were bodies about to arise from graves. It was as if the whole town were waiting for the coming of the devil.
Marius was sitting in the bar of a small hotel, drinking whiskey. There were two young negroes on either side of him who treated him respectfully, like disciples. His voice had a strange accent in it, and when he saw us he came over and was polite. His friends waited for him while he spoke to us, and then he rejoined them and they began talking again. The people at the bar kept clear of him as if the young men were his bodyguard. Marius looked very young, like the captain of a schoolboy’s football team. Presently he stood up and left the bar and the young men followed him out in a line.
On the day of the meeting there was a hot wind blowing from the sea and dust hung in the air like ash from a volcano. It clung to mouths and nostrils, and skin became dirty where it collected on sweat. It was a day on which the body becomes horrible. People wore handkerchiefs round their necks and tried to keep still so that their clothes should not rub them. We heard the crowd moving up to the top of the town and the day became heavy so that perhaps one would not have minded dying.