Rare? increasingly so. Expensive. accordingly. Protected? somewhat. Alex. somehow. was never caught catching them in legally protected areas, so it followed. didn’t it? that he had caught them in legally unprotected areas. And sold them. when he sold them… at great prices to such places as that stately old guest house the Queen Adelaide, and to the Empire Hotel and the Tropicalia Inn. Felix, perhaps uncomfortable about the turtles, asked if there were any interesting mammals. “. on Gallans or Galliard or whatever its name?”
The caye, whatever its name, probably had no mammals at all except perhaps for bats which perhaps ate the silver-pale hog-plum or the pale yellow governor-plum. But it hospitted the pelican, locally called the stork, which, bill empty, it did resemble. The insect-like hummingbird was there, though not in great numbers, for there were not many nectar-yielding flowering plants on that sombre islet. Plovers and sandpipers sometimes strolled the small stretch of strand and sand, and the shrieking gull and the tern were sometimes there. and the carrion-buzzard (“the corby”) furtively patrolled the place with its ugly croak and its filthy feathers. The dead air weighed them all down.
The newcomers rounded the angle of the boardwalk, the yellow house stood there on stilts before them, one story in all, and, from that first glance, one which led you in through the open door and came to a quick conclusion: one room in all.
Someone was coming toward them, walking very slowly. Said the Honourable Somerset, “And here is our host.” Jack felt something like instant recognition upon seeing Major Deak, and yet he knew he’d never seen him before… he seemed actually a giant tortoise walking upright, — the convex back, the waving fipperlike arms and hands, the head out-thrust from the loose collar at almost a right angle, the face here wrinkled and there divided into platelets, the absence of head or facial hair. The eyes lacked alike the clearness of youth and the milkiness of age; the eyes (Limekiller concluded) the eyes looked sick. He heard, in his inner ear, his own voice saying, You’re wrong. And, a second later, realized that he’d been replying to something not addressed to himself. something murmured back there a moment ago between Edwards and his wife.
De Major looking ageable.
Yes, mon, ahnd aging fahst.
But it was not age. The cayes were commonly considered to be of a healthier air than that of King Town; often Limekiller, comparing the fresh winds out on the islets to the soggy smells of the badly drained capital, had agreed. But clearly the air here was doing Major Deak no good. and, if today’s dead-sullen calm and. the phrase rose up in his mind and silently burst like a bubble of gas. and bad vibes. were typical… he did not finish the thought. He was being introduced, he had to speak.
“How are you, sir?”
And Major Deak, alas, proceded to tell him “. thought I was choking, strangling. doctor finds no evidence of asthma or emphysema. can’t go elsewhere to live,” he said, slowly moving his head from side to side, as though Limekiller had urged him to move on. “. all my savings here. planned to add a few rooms. receive a few people, retired people. paying guests. labor troubles. can’t seem to catch my breath for long. thought that in a place with underemployment there’d be no problem hiring workpeople, but. nothing seems to get done. eating up my capital. pension a trifle. say that from today on for a month nobody will do a job of work. would have retired in the Golconda Colony but the fanatics have gained control there.
There was one word which, Jack thought, described the man’s state. Misery.
Upstairs, surprisingly, the air was by far less dead. It was not only to discourage Critturs that this house, like so many in the country, was built on stilts: the chief purpose was to catch the wind. And it caught it. But the wind did not stay caught. And someone else was upstairs, as though waiting for them. Stickney Forster.
Stickney Forster was a Member of the Bar, and by now the only actively practicing White member. Those who liked him said, “Ah very clever mahn, he went to the Oxford College, you know.” Those who did not like him said that if he had ever been to Oxford it was only to use the toilet. “That Limey bahstard,” they called him. Although on this occasion he was not in his black robe and white tie and wig, Jack recognized him at once, had long been qui- edy amused by his having once said, “I have placed in my will that on my tombstone it should read, Father of the Illegitimate Children’s Sustentation Act, being the shortest Act in the Law Code. Do you know it? It reads in its entirely, The Illegitimate Children’s Sustentation Act shall follow in every detail the provisions of the Legitimate Children’s Sustentation Act. Caused a few grumbles, I can tell you, fat lot I care, but it makes sure that no ‘outside’ child is going to go raggedy-arsed while his half-sibs are fully-clothed just because their parents were ‘married in church.’ “Married in church and An outside child, Jack knew the words well, as they often appeared in casual conversation in British Hidalgo; B.H. being, he had often thought, the one country he knew of in which absolute adherence to the old-time religion went hand in hand with absolute heterosexual freedom. (There was as yet nothing like a “Gay Rights” Movement in British Hidalgo; very very rarely was the matter even mentioned, and then usually in a very tight-lipped line in the official Gazette: Sixteen months in gaol for having committed the crime against nature.)
However.
Outside child.
Married in church. .
These phrases now restored to the top-level of his mind, Jack now began to think about them and about their implications; and, whilst somebody’s record-player shrieked loud good times and loud bad music, think of them he did. He lacked the languorous tropical attitude toward carnal congress and parturition and the sus- tentation of children: and so, he was sure, did Felix. There was no likelihood that she would cut cane in the field till her time arrived and then retire behind a clump of trees, easily to give birth to the offspring of their love. There was no likelihood that Jack would simply give her what he chanced to have in his pockets and inform her that if rations grew scarce his great-aunt in Ladysmith Street would always have an extra plantain or an extra banana. And, although Grandy was always willing and indeed more than willing to take in the tot, Felix did not have a Grandy in the Colony, and neither did Jack, and in the colder climates hearts were at least in this respect less warm. Which left what? The choice. Abortion? And, if not. marriage.
In short, he was perhaps now being obliged to ask himself if he would rather slay the baby in her belly or at long last Settle Down and bend his sunburned neck beneath the yoke. “Shandygaff? Shandygaff?” this was Noddy asking, and, taking some murmur or motion for Yes, he stuck a glass in Jack’s hand and simultaneously and deftly, poured out half a bottle of Coca-Cola and half a bottle of Tennant’s Milk Stout (imported, and well worth the importation). Jack quaffed deeply. “Noddy, thank you,” he said. “Usually I don’t care for fantods in my drink, but this one is just great.” Noddy made a brief mock-bow, murmured something about Native Arts and Crafts, mimed that he would pour another, shook his head briefly at Jack’s No; was off. Mr. J.L.L. asked, “Hey, Felix, do you want,” her eyes turned away the exact second that they met his, and she rose from the rough bench and moved off. A prey once again to the Dismals, Jack said, “a drink,” in a low, helpless voice. Knew as well as he knew anything that if he did not follow after her he would later be furiously accused of neglect; that if he did follow after her, she would turn on him like a cornered wildcat, with a forced-out, “Don’t follow me!” Why, with all the Hazards of the World, did people feel the need to devise new' ones? The heavy air produced no answer. Jack decided he would pay his respects to the nominal host, a matter at which she would perhaps decide she need not resent; and, the second he saw her, call out an invitation to be introduced to the man. It would not be correct to say that he failed to meet Deak’s eye, or that he listened with half an ear; but his attention was not altogether with it.