“Vallot doesn’t know anything about me — he doesn’t know much about anything outside the island. They had told him I was a general, and he had put on quite good clothes (possibly pawned in the old days by a prisoner, or offered instead of the jail fees) to come and tell me his story, and to ask for my sympathy and help. He talked a lot about the illness of his wife. She has a lovely name: Rose-Banier. He says that she used to serve all the paying prisoners with her own hand and used even to make coffee for them in the mornings. She was up and down the three floors all day, he said. Now she is old and ill and can hardly look after herself and their one-room hut.
“And all the time old Begorrat, in his pantaloons and buckle shoes, in this cool cocoa valley that is his kingdom, smiled with his soft lips at Vallot’s tale of hardship, and his favourite laughed and rolled about the floor of the grotto.
“There have been great revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a war in Europe that will further change the world. Great admirals and generals and new inventions are constantly altering the nature and scale of war. Even Mr. Shrapnel’s recent invention will in time be part of the general change; when it is taken up there will have to be new battlefield tactics. But here we might be on another planet, or in another age. Here they have their own heroes and histories and mythical events and sites: the hot chambers of Vallo t’s jail, the dismissal of Picton, the commandeur’s last address to the atelier, the poisonings at Montalembert’s, the opening of the corpse at Begorrat’s, Thisbe’s running through the cocoa woods to ask for sanctuary, the spiking of her head. Here they attach different events to years as they pass; it is almost as though, like the Indian nations of the continent, they have another kind of calendar.
“I dwindle, Sally. I sit in Bernard’s verandah and look at the cornbirds’ long straw nests hanging from the samaan and immortelle branches, and hear the women talk in the jalousied room, and I write essays about the liberation of South America for future publication, and compose this journal-letter to you.
“I mentioned Shrapnel in this letter yesterday. His name simply came to me as I was writing, one of the hundred London names I carry in my head. You will remember that four years or so ago he wrote to me at Grafton Street about his invention and asked me to a demonstration in some fields somewhere. It is strange to be where I am and to think about reading Shrapnel’s letter in the library at Grafton Street and arranging with others to go to his demonstration. It is as though it hardly happened, or happened to another man. I feel — with Vallot — that there is no room for me here. I have no function. I lose touch with myself, even with my ambitions.
“It was just a week ago that I met Vallot. Today — would you believe? — when Bernard came back from the Council meeting he brought me a letter from a Swedish sailor in the new jail in the town. Not the old jail — that was pulled down four years ago by the Council, to prevent anyone seeing what Vallot’s old arrangements really were like. You have to ask and ask before they even show you where it was. The Swede is in jail for disorderly behaviour — that means drunkenness. They feel here that drunken — or ‘disguised’—sailors are bad for local discipline. ‘Disguised’ is the word they use. The alguazils get a small payment for every disguised sailor they pick up, and they are very eager.
“The Swede says he can’t pay the jail fees, and he is being kept on bread and water. He appeals to me as a friend of liberty to rescue him. That is easy enough to do. But his letter also makes me think of the day thirty-six years ago when I went aboard the Swedish frigate, the Prins Frederik, at La Guaira, and for the first time felt myself a free man. I had to get so many permits and certificates, from the Church and others, before I was allowed to leave Venezuela. There had been months of little worries and setbacks, even with my father’s influence, and I didn’t feel I was leaving until I was actually aboard the Prins Frederik. I can go back easily to that moment now: the hills behind the little town of La Guaira were like the hills I see here, and I can give this ever present wine-vat smell of Bernard’s estate house to the eight fanegas of cocoa beans in the frigate’s hold.
“And now, and now, Sally, after all these months, letters come from you and others that tell me plainly what I have always felt in my bones: that I have been wasting my time here. I used to be told that it was half the battle to be here, on the spot, and that I had to be patient. Now you write, and Rutherfurd writes, and Turnbull writes, and a few other people write as well, that I should get back to London as soon as possible. Things have changed, ideas have grown. An immense military action with a great commander is being planned, to seize the South American continent before the French do. This is the very idea I have been putting to British ministers these past few years. It has been taken up now, and I am so far away. All the letters agree — and they are already two months old — that if I am not in London at this stage of the discussions there may be no room for me in what is finally decided.
“So I stand to lose the fruit of a life’s dedication. Oh, Sally. I have been dwindling here; I have shown myself too often to these people. I have been dwindling in London as well; I haven’t shown myself to people there. You might think that a man carries his personality, his soul, within him. But here — like a man in prison, I suppose — I have grown to feel removed from both the world and myself. I have to discover myself again. It may take me time to be what I was, and I may discover that I have changed.
“Today Bernard, as secretary of the Council, brought back news from Hislop for Mister Miranda. Hislop says he is unwilling to give Mr. Miranda a passport. He thinks that to do so might expose him to criticism and perhaps to legal action because of Mr. Miranda’s dispute with the Leander men, who claim their wages, and the master of the Trimmer, who claims his fee for the hire of his sloop. He says also that there is a directive from Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, that nothing that can be construed as official British support is to be offered Mr. Miranda.
“Bernard said, ‘That’s what he has to say. That’s what will go on the record. But he really wants to talk to you. He has an idea that something is afoot in London and he wants to know what you can do for him. I think you should go and see him. He can’t actually detain you here, but he can delay you for many months. A letter to London for advice — six weeks. Another six weeks for a reply. A further six weeks for a letter seeking certain clarifications, and so on. Time is valuable to you. He can help there, and perhaps you can think of something to offer him.’
“This was Bernard’s last service to me, making it easy for me to deal with Hislop. I began to feel I was leaving, and I began to feel I was escaping, and lucky, as I had felt thirty-six years before when I had got all my permits and certificates and could go aboard the Prins Frederik at La Guaira.
“Bernard, whom I had sent here some years before, when he was the dependant and I the patron, was staying. He would never leave. He had nowhere else to go. I felt for him then all that I had felt when I had seen him in his London silk at Government House. I felt afresh all his pathos and anxiety, and the fragility of the life he had made for himself with his wife.