Then Bart Wrentham interrupted: ‘There were eighteen or more of us colored Wrenthams in the oval next day, and the rest were like me. Immensely proud that a white Wrentham was captain of the all-England team, but also excited that our crowd had put up such a fine showing against the best.’
‘Did you think,’ McKay asked, ‘that All Saints had a chance of winning?’
‘Wait, wait! This wasn’t an All Saints team. It was players from all our islands. Benny here was the only All Saints man. And having inflamed his home island with his batting, he now took to bowling, and when England’s great batsmen came out, Hammond and Hendren and Jardine, they weren’t so cocky, because they knew they had to put a lot of runs on the board to make their side safe. Had to have maybe 250 more, something like that.’
The sergeant wanted the honor of reporting Sir Benny’s immortal bowling that afternoon: ‘He had a mix of three, a fast ball, a right-arm chinaman, and a googly, and believe it or not, he put down seven of England’s greatest batsmen for a total of only 57 runs. The fourth day of the match ended with the score England 409, West Indies 291, but with a fighting chance to overtake.
‘I cannot tell you how we felt that night, here in All Saints. I had to get up five times to pee, and at dawn I was still awake. That day, at eleven in the morning, I think the entire population of All Saints was at the oval or near it. When play started, England had three more batsmen, but this tremendous fellow’—and he patted Sir Benny’s knee—‘dismissed them for only 21 additional runs. England 430, West Indies 291.’
Now Bart spoke, slowly and reverently, for he was dealing with one of the spiritual climaxes of his island: ‘We opened our last innings against the great English bowlers needing 140 to win, and we gasped in anguish when the two V’s, Voce and Verity, took five of our wickets for only 41 runs. Defeat loomed, but then Benny took over. Defending his wicket as never before, and punishing every loose ball that was bowled to him, he scored two sixes and thirteen fours. Never had we seen a West Indian punish English bowlers as he did that day, and in the late stages of the game, when it was obvious that we had a fighting chance to win the match, that damned Hedley Verity bowled Benny again. Stunned silence.’
The men paused to recall that tremendous moment in their island’s history, then Wrentham said quietly: ‘But our other batsmen picked up the challenge …’ Here his voice rose to a roar, and he banged the table with his fist: ‘And we won! We had beaten England.’ On impulse, both Boncour and the sergeant rose and embraced Sir Benny, the black man who had brought black majesty to their island.
‘The part I remember best,’ Wrentham said, ‘was when the players left the pitch. Lord Basil sought out Benny, threw his long right arm over his shoulder, and walked out of the oval with him.’ He stopped, looked at McKay, and said: ‘I predict he will be a very popular Gee-Gee.’
Much could be learned about life in a British Crown Colony by observing the social laws governing Lord Wrentham’s XI, as the English cricket team was invariably called, since Wrentham had picked his men and assumed responsibility for their pay, which amounted to about $700 American per man for the entire tour, plus steamboat fare and meals.
Of course, only the professional cricketers received pay, for the team was rigidly divided between gentlemen, that is, amateurs of good family, and players, professionals, who played for a living. The distinction between them was rigid: On the passage over, gentlemen sailed first class, players second. At clubhouses there was one entrance for gentlemen, another for players. A gentleman was referred to by his initials and last name, such as W. H. B. Wickham, and addressed deferentially as ‘sir,’ a player would be known and addressed simply by his last name, rarely even with the prefix ‘Mr.’
At evening functions the team also divided, gentlemen often attending parties given by county families, the players dining at their hotel, with the senior professional carving the joint and serving the junior man last. But such distinctions were so ingrained that they were taken for granted and caused little rancor.
There were other minor refinements, like that between capped and uncapped members. Anyone who had been selected for his nation’s test team was awarded a ‘cap,’ and professionals who were uncapped were unlikely to address directly a gentleman who had a cap. But it was a remarkable tribute to the pragmatic nature of Englishmen that these caste differences never impeded play on the field. Cricket was at the same time both the custodian of social principles and the arena in which men met as equals. A professional bowler who took the wicket of the finest gentleman batsman of the opposing team might well be roundly applauded … by both teams.
The day came when blacks thronged the streets, shouting: ‘The Gee-Gee, he ship in the baie!’ and when the vessel from Southampton edged into the dock, McKay was there to watch the arrival of the new governor general, and he observed the present incumbent, a tall, slim, good-looking regimental officer in his sixties, waiting in the island’s only Rolls-Royce, an impressive Silver Ghost. Now the crowd cheered, for at the top of the gangway Lord Basil Wrentham appeared, almost a twin of the man waiting in the Rolls: tall, underweight, austere, with a military bearing and a haughty manner. They must have a factory somewhere in England where they punch out these cookies to impress the colonies, McKay thought.
The new Gee-Gee stood very erect, saluted the ship he was leaving, and came imperially down the gangway, but he did not go to the waiting Rolls; he merely bowed to his predecessor, acknowledged the salutes of the guard, and looked inquisitively about the crowd. Then, having located what he sought, he moved briskly forward, ignoring everyone until he stood face-to-face with Sir Benny Castain. Throwing his arms wide, he embraced the chubby black man as he had done years ago at the end of that resplendent afternoon. ‘I guess there must be something extra about cricket that they don’t tell you in books,’ McKay said aloud as he watched, but he could hardly hear his own words, for the crowd was cheering wildly.
On the third day after Lord Wrentham’s arrival, the text of Millard McKay’s first article reached All Saints from Detroit, creating a favorable stir. The author, after explaining that in 1763 many thoughtful Englishmen had advocated keeping All Saints and giving Canada away, described the island as it existed today, and he painted a loving, faithful portrait. Anyone familiar with All Saints would have to acknowledge that McKay had spotted the foibles, recognized the merits, and understood the role of a man’s skin coloration in determining his social level.
People who had read the abbreviated excerpts that appeared in the All Saints Journal, courtesy of the Associated Press, nodded approvingly to McKay as he passed them in the streets, and since Bristol Town had a population of only six thousand, everyone soon knew who McKay was and what he had said. The passage most frequently commented upon was one he had worded carefully, relying upon data provided by Bart Wrentham and Etienne Boncour:
All Saints has, according to latest count, a population of 29,779, and if a visitor frequents only the top government offices, called gommint here, he gets the impression that they’re all white. If you stay in the shops on the main streets, you think everyone is very lightly colored. And if you move about the back streets and the countryside, you’d swear All Saints was all black, and I mean very black, just out of Africa.
The best estimates this reporter has heard divide the population this way. Whites, including both English and French, about nine hundred. Coloreds about seven thousand. Blacks, the rest, about twenty-two thousand. So this is a black island, but sometimes a whole day passes without a visitor being aware of it.
It’s the second category that provides confusion, because it contains many attractive, well-dressed, well-educated men and women who in the United States or Canada would pass for white … no question about it. But here everyone knows to the nth degree what his neighbors’ antecedents are, and one thirty-second of black blood marks a man or woman as colored.
What happens is that when some especially talented All Saints man wants to enter the white
world or some beautiful young woman wants to marry into a higher social circle, they emigrate to another island where they can start afresh. Of course, later on, rumor follows them and the truth becomes known, but by then a new status has been achieved.
So All Saints contains a score of delightful newcomers from Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad who fill lively spots in the island social life, but of whom people whisper. And at the tenuous dividing line between black and colored, there is the same kind of maneuverability, and the visitor is told that sometimes a girl who is now known as colored will go to extreme lengths to prevent her new friends from meeting her sister, who may be many shades darker than she.
This harsh, but accurate, summary of how one’s skin color determined status was alleviated by McKay’s rhapsodic description of the island’s rich natural beauties, including croton, and an affectionate account of Sir Benny Castain’s old cricketing relationship with the newly appointed governor general. The article ended: ‘So if you’re contemplating a vacation on some Caribbean island this winter, try All Saints. It could be close to the best.’
Both Etienne Boncour and Bart Wrentham were pleased with McKay’s report and told him so. Bart said gruffly: ‘Flattering but not excessively groveling,’ and Boncour assured him: ‘Gommint is delighted. When the Gee-Gee read it he said: “Well, we’re off to a good start,” but Major Leckey warned him: “He wrote that before you got here. Let’s wait. He’s an American and we’ve been burned by them before.” ’
There was a cryptic English couple staying at the Belgrave who took a more circumspect view of both McKay and his article. The Ponsfords, a married pair in their late fifties from one of the fashionable suburbs of London, had sailed to All Saints on the same ship that brought Lord Wrentham and his daughter Delia. Being rigorously proper, they did not impose upon His Lordship while aboard ship, but upon landing in All Saints they immediately hired a taxi, rode to Government House, and signed the book. In due course Major Leckey had called to invite them to afternoon tea, where they told Lord Wrentham and his daughter that they had shared the steamer with them but had not wanted to intrude upon their privacy. The courtesy was appreciated, and Major Leckey himself assumed responsibility for delivering their other letters of introduction to the proper authorities, so that within a few days the Ponsfords were moving within what was called ‘the cream of All Saints,’ that restricted circle of Britons from good families who ran the island. After his five weeks on the island, McKay had met none of that group.
The Ponsfords knew who McKay was and what he had written, but they would never approach him during his working day, for they had not been introduced. McKay could not decipher who they were or what business they were engaged in, for they kept rigidly to themselves, and it was not until Boncour was taking lunch at the Belgrave and saw the Ponsfords at their table and McKay at his that a meeting came about. Boncour made bold to tell the Ponsfords: ‘I think you might enjoy meeting that chap over there,’ and they allowed Boncour to bring McKay to their table. Having made the introduction, Boncour returned to his lunch, and Millard was left with a rather chilly pair who had not liked what they deemed the flippancy of his Detroit articles and said so.
‘I could see no justification,’ Mr. Ponsford said with august condescension, ‘why one would feel obligated to stress the dark side of the island.’
McKay was astonished. ‘I didn’t think I did,’ and Mrs. Ponsford, a well-preserved and neatly coiffed woman with an aquiline nose that seemed always on the point of sniffing, explained: ‘You are harping on the fact that All Saints is mostly black.’
‘But it is!’ McKay said, with obvious desire to stress the truth. ‘Just look about you.’
‘If it is,’ Mr. Ponsford said in his bank-manager manner, ‘it’s unfortunate and should not be broadcast to the world. Excellent men and women with the best intentions govern this island, and they deserve every support we can give them.’
‘There is nothing finer, I told my husband the other day, than to see a distinguished man like Lord Basil riding through the streets in his Rolls-Royce, symbol of all that’s good and right in the British Empire.’
McKay, suppressing a smile, said to himself: I’ve got to remember that one, and thought: People make fun of Americans abroad, and I guess we can be pretty bad, but it takes an English couple like this insufferable pair to be really obnoxious. However, aware that he might have to share the dining room with them for several weeks, he turned to Mrs. Ponsford and asked: ‘Then what about the colored who fill so many of the spots here in Bristol Town? Dare I speak about them?’
‘In time, as they educate themselves and move upward in the social scale,’ Mr. Ponsford said magisterially, ‘they’ll become more and more like white people. They’ve already earned three places on the Executive Council.’
‘Will their skins become lighter as this progression upward is made?’ McKay asked with no touch of sarcasm, and Mrs. Ponsford said: ‘Isn’t that how it’s already happening? I was told just yesterday that of the three mulatto men on the council each was three-quarters white.’
‘You’d expect nothing less,’ her husband said, but the pair were interrupted before they could explain further their interpretation of All Saints life by a handsome young Englishman in a trim off-white suit which displayed his slim, athletic bearing. He had neatly trimmed blond hair and the professional smile of one accustomed to greeting people.
‘This is Major Leckey,’ Mrs. Ponsford said approvingly. ‘The governor general’s invaluable factotum. This is Mr. McKay, who wrote about your island for the newspaper back in the States.’
The next moment would be forever etched on Millard’s mind: Major Leckey, who had known from the moment of McKay’s arrival who and what he was but who felt honor-bound to ignore him until he presented his credentials properly, turned his head slightly away from looking at the Ponsfords, and gave the American interloper a brief, icy smile of semirecognition. Then, without offering to shake hands, he resumed conversation with the English couple, whom he had come to escort to an afternoon affair at Government House. In a flash they were gone, all three of them, and no one bothered to excuse himself to McKay.
He met Leckey again the next day at Boncour’s jewelry store, and since Etienne was occupied with a woman tourist from England, the two men had to stand awkwardly almost side by side, but again the major studiously refused to recognize him. Only when another customer bumped into them, did they have to acknowledge each other. Major Leckey gave McKay a withered smile, to which McKay responded with the slightest possible nod, involving no shoulder movement. McKay felt that warfare between them had been declared.
It did not enflame at that moment, because Leckey had come to the shop on a more important matter. ‘I was told,’ he said to Boncour, in crisp and somewhat superior tones, as if he were slumming, ‘that the Honorable Delia would be awaiting me here.’
‘She’s not been in,’ Boncour said, and McKay, whose senses were sharp, thought he detected in Boncour’s manner an unusual level of excitement when speaking about the Gee-Gee’s daughter. Then he saw why, for into the shop came a young woman of twenty-two who absolutely filled it with her radiance. She wore one of those flimsy lace and tulle dresses in which the starch of the latter held in fine form the soft fabric of the former. The lace was stark-white, the tulle had a touch of yellow, and their colors blended to make a gentle symphony that matched the cool beauty of the young woman who wore them.
She had a head of golden hair that was not completely tamed—obviously she did not want it whipped into set patterns—and it formed a kind of frame for a face that was larger than one might have expected, larger in each dimension and wonderfully composed, so that she seemed always to be smiling in quiet amusement at the follies of the world about her. She had large eyes which sparkled, a generous mouth and a way of tilting her impressive head that made her seem about to speak in a kindly manner to anyone at whom she looked. She was so much the acme of the young English gentlewoman of her
period that one could not avoid asking two questions: ‘Why isn’t she married?’ and ‘Why in the world did her father bring her to a place like All Saints?’
‘Yes! Miss Wrentham,’ Boncour cried as he hurried forward to attend her. ‘I have three to show you,’ and he was about to bring forth a tray of small bejeweled items when Major Leckey interrupted: ‘Delia, I’m most sorry, but your father’s waiting, and he sent me to fetch you.’ With that, making no apologies to either Boncour or McKay, he whisked her out of the shop and into his waiting chauffeured car.
When she was gone, leaving an echoing void behind, McKay whistled to break the tension: ‘I never thought that daughters of Gee-Gees looked like that,’ and for a few moments the two men discussed her appearance and her manner. Boncour said: ‘She came in unannounced last week, as nice a customer as we ever meet. No frills, no demands, just sensible questions about some small items for what she called a charm bracelet.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Started in France, I think. A silver or gold bracelet in links, and into each you attach …’ Turning slightly, he called: ‘Irene, show him those pictures.’ A pretty girl with very light skin brought from the rear a London magazine in which there were photographs of charm bracelets, lovely delicate things if the attached items were kept small enough, rather gauche if they were too big or lacking in style. But after looking briefly at the bracelets, McKay leafed ahead and whistled: ‘Hey, look at this!’ and the girl who had fetched the magazine said: ‘Yes indeed! No wonder Lord Basil hurried her out here.’
The story, provocatively illustrated, told of the Honorable Delia Wrentham’s escapade with an older married man and implied former misbehavior with several young Oxford and Cambridge chaps. The young lady who had brought the magazine from the rear of the store seemed to be an expert on the Honorable Delia, and said saucily without being asked: ‘Her father whisked her out here not a minute too soon. You ask me, he accepted the appointment to this sorry little post so’s he’d have a place to cool her off.’