It was the story of the rape of a white girl at the beach by a gang. The girl had bled and shrieked and fainted. One of the men had then run to a brackish creek in the coconut grove and had tried, using his cupped hands alone, to bring water to the girl.
The boy from whom Jimmy had first heard the story that Monday morning — and in the boy’s voice could be detected the accents of the women of the back yard where he lived — the boy had told of this episode of the water as part of the lunacy and terror after the event. But to Jimmy it was the most moving part of the story, and it had stayed with him, in a setting that had grown as stylized as a tourist poster: the soft light and blurred shade below the coconut palms, the white sand, the sunlit breakers, the olive sea and blue sky beyond the crisscross of the curved gray coconut trunks, the bleeding girl on the front fender of the old Ford, the cupped hands offering water, the grateful eyes, remembering terror.
He could write no more. He wakened from his dream to the emptiness about him, to the interior he had so carefully prepared, for an audience that didn’t exist. He was restless; he could have screamed like the girl on the Ford fender. At such a time he needed crowds, adventure, encounters, something in which he could forget himself. There was only the stillness of the bush and the abandoned industrial park.
He went and stood beside Bryant’s chair, Bryant the loveless, the rejected, the lost. Almost like himself. Yet even in Bryant what beauty was concealed. He put his hand on Bryant’s shoulder and his fingers touched Bryant’s neck. Bryant said, “Jimmy,” and let the paper fall. Such beauty, if only it could be known. His hands moved down inside Bryant’s jersey, felt the nipples twitch and harden, felt the well-defined chest and then, moving lower, felt the firm molding of Bryant’s stomach. Bryant began to swallow; his stomach muscles tensed and dipped. Lower, past the navel, to the hard curve, the springy hair, a man after all, the concealed complete beauty.
“Jimmy, Jimmy.”
But then, almost roughly, he withdrew his hands, and went to the bedroom and the telephone.
Jane answered. “Hello.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Hello.” She spoke the number.
“Jane? Jimmy Ahmed.”
“Oh yes.”
She was caught: he could tell.
He said, “What an English way you have of answering the phone. Only people in England answer the phone like that.”
“You mean giving the number?”
“How are you?”
“Harassed. And hot.”
Mock irritation: she was going coy, was beginning to act.
“Jane. I’m coming in to town tomorrow. I am under an obligation to meet some business executives at the Prince Albert. They are giving me lunch. Could you be there at two o’clock in the lobby? You know the Prince Albert?”
“What do you want to see me for?”
“We can talk about England. It will make a change after the business executives.”
“Do you want me to come alone?”
“You can bring massa if you like. But I want to give you your dollar back.”
He began to wait for her response; he wanted to laugh, to break the tension he sensed developing. He wanted to say: Bryant’s a bad boy. But then, sternly, he put the telephone down.
The stern face remained when he went back to the living room. But his restlessness had been appeased. Bryant recognized the new mood; he picked the paper up and began to read again. And Jimmy felt his head grow clear; he had the clearest vision of the world.
5
HE TOOK a hired car to the Prince Albert and arrived some minutes after one. The uniformed doorman opened the car door. Jimmy hadn’t lost his self-consciousness about the Prince Albert and preferred to arrive by car. In the old days, just before and just after the war, before the airplanes and the tourist rush, the Prince Albert had been the big hotel of the island; and to Jimmy, even after London, the very name still suggested luxury.
Once the area around the main park had been residential and fashionable. But the people who had lived there had emigrated or had moved up to the hills; and the big private houses around the park had been turned into government offices or restaurants or business offices, and later, with independence, into embassies and consulates. The Prince Albert was still, in spite of renovations and additions in concrete, and in spite of its internal iron pillars, like a grand old-fashioned estate house, an affair of timber and polished floors, with an open verandalike lobby. Once it had been barred to black people and received tourists from the cruise ships coming down from the north, sightseers only in those days, before the beaches were discovered. Now it had an air of having been passed by; the tourists went to beach hotels; the Prince Albert had become local. The uniforms of doorman and waiters were not as crisp and starched as they would once have been; the building itself had begun to go in parts, with yielding floorboards in the lobby. At lunchtime the renovated air-conditioned bar was busy with people who worked in the offices nearby, so that the atmosphere was casual where once it had been exclusive. But to Jimmy the name, Prince Albert, still had a wonderful sound, still suggested privilege and splendor.
He sat in a wicker chair in the open lobby, just outside the air-conditioned bar, and ordered an orange juice. By half past one the lunchtime drinkers had left the bar to return to their offices; the lobby was almost empty; the travel desk, with BOAC posters of London on the wall at the back, was empty; the elevator was not busy; and elevator man, doorman, and waiters were relaxed in the great heat.
The hotel faced the park. Drought had burned the grass, and scattered midday walkers, moving briskly, kicked up little puffs of dust. The view of the park, in ordinary times one of the attractions of the Prince Albert, was now the view of a dustbowl; dust had settled on the floor of the lobby. The rails of the park had been taken down during the war, part of the island’s war effort; and little metal stumps showed. The rails had not been replaced, and there was no longer a true division between pavement and park. The pavement had buckled here and there from the spreading roots of great trees, and patches of the park had been worn smooth. Beyond the park was the first ridge of hills, scarred with housing settlements, with red gashes that marked the zigzag of roads, with red roofs, silver roofs, and yellow-white walls against a background of brown.
The orange juice was finished. She was late. He was half relieved. She came at about a quarter past two. She was in tight trousers, curving down the groin; she came into the lobby without fuss, the Prince Albert obviously less to her than to him.
He couldn’t read her mood. Seen against the glare of the park, she was less tall than he remembered, and she had a clumsy, slightly dragging walk. Her arms were a little too short for her body, and she held them close to her sides. Her face was the puzzle: he hadn’t been able to remember it, and now he thought he saw why. It seemed characterless, soft, without definition; it could become many faces. He noted the mouth, as though for the first time: it was too big, the top lip slightly puffy, as though from a blow, and the creased vertical lines suggested a healed wound. It was the kind of mouth he associated with certain children and with adults who remained childlike: weak, spoiled, with the cruelty of the weak and the spoiled.
He had been preparing a face and a mood for her. But now, as he studied her face, he found that an attitude had come to him. He stood up, walked toward her, and said, “My car is waiting.”
“Where are we going.”