Any Human Heart (30 page)
A letter from Roderick, hinting at a law suit, demanding the repayment of my advance on
Summer.
Simultaneously, the arrival of Peter Scabius’s novel in typescript, ominously entitled
Guilt.
The first line reads: ‘Simon Trumpington never thought he would associate shire-horses with a beautiful girl.’ I can’t bear to read on: there will be something truly disgusting and upsetting, I know, in this exploitation of Tess’s short, unhappy life.
I wrote to Peter — lying — saying I had read the novel in one sitting and that I thought it ‘masterly’ (very useful word) and that it was a ‘fine tribute’ to Tess and praising him for the courage it must have taken to write such a harrowing etc., etc. I made one suggestion: that he change the hero’s surname — it sounded too P. G. Wodehouse. I said I would read it again in a calmer mood — I hope I may have bought myself some time.
Fleming and Godfrey came in today looking very pleased with themselves and told me to pack my tropical kit. ‘You’re off to the sunny Caribbean,’ they said, ‘lucky so-and-so.’ Most amusing, I said, save your jokes for the new boys. But they weren’t joking: the Duke of Windsor is about to re-enter my life.
New York City. I have been temporarily promoted to commander and sit here in my downtown hotel waiting to go and take up my new command. I suppose — not to put too fine a point on it — that I have become a spy and I have been set to spy on the Duke and Duchess. Feel a little ill-at-ease.
Fleming and Godfrey explained the background. The Duke has settled reluctantly but diligently into his new role as Governor of the Bahamas. He became friendly with a Swedish multi-millionaire who lived out there called Axel Wenner-Gren (the founder of Electrolux), a man who has made a vast fortune from vacuum cleaners and refrigerators and who, like most of the wealthy denizens of Nassau, does not want to pay any taxes on his fortune. Not only does the tax-free status of the Bahamas suit Wenner-Gren, but its location also places him close to his burgeoning business interests in South America. He and the Duke had become close — they dined together, Wenner-Gren leant him his yacht — but then in July of last year Wenner-Gren was blacklisted by the United States and declared a Nazi sympathizer. The British followed suit and the Duke was obliged to inform his friend that he could not re-enter the Bahamas.
Word had reached NID from an agent in Mexico City that Wenner-Gren was involved in massive currency speculation and was making huge profits. The fear is — the worry is — that the Duke is in some way involved in this speculation also. The Duke’s private income, including his salary as governor, is estimated as being between £25,000 and £30,000 a year. His assets are tied up in England and France, so where, if he is indeed speculating with Wenner-Gren, is the money coming from? This is what I have to try to find out. The unspoken fact behind all this is that if the Duke is guilty, then his actions are treasonous.
These are high stakes and I feel somewhat uneasy about the job. I have nothing against the Duke and Duchess — on the contrary, they have been kind and friendly to me. I think my long memorandum after Lisbon has made me the departmental Duke-expert. So the plan is that I turn up in the Bahamas as the commander of an MTB [Motor Torpedo Boat] posted there on submarine-hunting duties. I must try to reingratiate myself with the ducal couple and find out what I can.
Not an MTB as it turns out but a Harbour Defence Motor Launch — HDML 1122. We are heading south at steady speed, the New Jersey coast on our starboard side. Now doubly worried. I met my ship and crew, who had come over from Bermuda, in Brooklyn harbour. The 1122 is commanded by a taciturn young Scot called Sub-Lieutenant Crawford McStay. I handed him over my orders (signed by the Admiral of the Atlantic Fleet) and he made no attempt to conceal his reactions — incredulity and then disgusted resignation — as he read them. He asked me what my last command had been and I told him something of the ‘honorary’ nature of my rank in the RNVR. The Bahamas?’ he said. ‘And just what the hell’re we meant to do there?’ ‘You’ll follow my orders,’ I said, very coolly. He practically spat on the deck. No love lost there, I’m afraid. The 1122 is a big new wooden boat — armed with depth charges and a couple of Lewis machine guns — with a crew of ten. I share a small cabin with McStay (bunk beds, I’m on top) which is also where we eat. We are to make our way down to Florida and thence to the Bahamas. I think what really disgusted McStay was the amount of luggage I had loaded on board (I know there will be formal receptions and I’ll have to dress accordingly) and the fact that I had my golf clubs with me.
Nassau, New Providence Island, the Bahamas. McStay and the crew are billeted at Fort Montagu, about a mile east of the town, while I have a room in the British Colonial Hotel — which seems full of American engineers and contractors apparently here to build the new airfields. Went for a walk through the town — throngs of American GIs and RAF trainees. If you don’t look too closely Nassau appears pretty rather than shabby. It’s a small colonial town, population 20,000 or thereabouts. Wooden buildings painted pink, plenty of shade trees. The centre of town is a neat little square with a statue of Queen Victoria flanked by the government offices and the law courts. From the harbour front the ground rises to a ridge on whose crest sits Government House (colonnaded front, also pink). The main street is called Bay Street, about five blocks long with a shaded boardwalk and lined with souvenir shops selling fancy goods and tat for tourists. There is a yacht club to the east and, west of the Colonial Hotel, a golf course and country club. Wenner-Gren owns an island, Hog Island, forming the seaward edge of the harbour lagoon.
I hired a taxi and was driven around: here and there are large houses set in tropical gardens and, inland, two big airforce bases where they train pilots. We passed Government House and I saw the Union Jack flying. I tried to imagine the Duke and Duchess in this curious, dead-end, tropical nowhere. ‘Small town’ takes on a new meaning out here. He’s been quartered in Nassau, out of harm’s way, for as long as is possible, that much is obvious. To have been King — and have come to this — is as close to a blatant insult imaginable. Three invitations to dine already. I go up to GH tomorrow to pay my respects.
The reception at Government House was for some visiting American general. The rooms were prettily decorated, chintzy, full of plants and flowers, photographs on polished tables. I was served a gin and tonic and mingled with the other guests — military types in the main with a few local dignitaries sweating in their suits. I felt bizarrely presumptuous in my smart white uniform with my commander’s stripes. The Duke’s aide-de-camp
14
introduced me: ‘You’ll remember Commander Mountstuart, sir.’ The Duke, very tanned, in a fawn suit, wearing a pink and yellow checked tie, looked blankly at me. ‘Lisbon, 1940, sir,’ I said. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said vaguely and then darted off. He went straight to the Duchess: they spoke quietly together and the Duchess looked over at me, she said something to him and he came straight back, smiling now, and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Mountstuart,’ he said. ‘Of course! Brought your golf clubs?’
Later I spoke to the Duchess. Her hair and make-up were as immaculate as they had been in Lisbon. She looked thinner, however, though perhaps it was simply the short sleeves on her dress exposing her bony, meagrely muscled arms. She was very friendly and lowered her voice to say, ‘What brings you to this moron paradise? Watch out or you’ll die of boredom before you know it.’ I smiled. ‘Hunting submarines,’ I said. ‘We must have you to dinner,’ she said, ‘right away. Where are you staying?’ I sense I am back in the swim again.
I’ve been to three dinners at Government House, the last occasion actually sitting beside the Duchess. I’ve golfed with the Duke too, played half a dozen rounds, but always as part of a four-ball. I’ve visited every bar and club and, it seems, most of the private houses and have met enough RAF personnel to last me a lifetime.
This small town, like any small town, is rife with rumour and gossip, intrigue, resentments, vendettas, slights, alliances and misalliances, cliques and sets, both amongst the so-called establishment and the parvenus. As far as I can tell Nassau society is divided roughly along these lines. At the top the governor and his entourage. Second, the politicians — the ‘Bay Street Boys (or Bandits)’ — local merchants, bigwigs and wealthy men who sit in and control the House of Assembly. Then there are, somewhat apart, the military transients and visitors. Then there are the elderly tax-exiles — British and Canadian in the main — stuffy and conservative who look with disdain on a younger, more raffish crowd: dubious entrepreneurs, divorcées, relatively rich talentless young men and their girlfriends. They sail, they have parties, they drink too much, they swap partners easily. In the tourist season, December to March, they are enhanced by their American equivalents looking for winter sunshine and la dolce vita. Another subgroup, which may overlap with any of the above, are the few wealthy and powerful men who wield a publicly unacknowledged influence because of their fiscal clout. Wenner-Gren was in this category and I have to say it’s hard to find anyone with a bad word for him. Rumours do swirl around the mention of his name: that he was a personal friend of Goering; that he was building a Nazi U-boat pen on Hog Island; that he owns a bank in Mexico City. I pass it all on, duly tagged as speculation, to NID. Finally there is another world — one that is the most populous and, in a paradoxical way, the most invisible: the native Bahamians themselves. Most of them are poor labourers or fishermen who live in a sprawling shanty over the ridge from Government House called Grant’s Town. The colour bar is almost absolute in the Bahamas — certainly in social terms (even the Duchess’s ‘canteen for the troops’ is segregated). I’m told the code is as rigid as in the southern states of America. Any softening of attitudes here in the Bahamas, it is argued, would discourage the American tourists. Even in Government House no black is allowed through the front door.
All these worlds interact to a certain degree — most obviously at Government House receptions (though the only blacks are serving canapés). I’m a regular at these functions and I watch the crowd carefully and discreetly glean information — people are very forthcoming. I have to say the Duke and Duchess move through their guests serenely and smilingly, as if there were nowhere else on earth that they would rather be, and in no other company. The acting is flawless.
They are away at the moment in Miami. McStay is begging to be allowed to put out to sea. The 1122 is the smartest, cleanest, most polished boat in Nassau harbour.
We ride at anchor off a small island in the Exuma chain. On deck the men fish and swim. The sun beats down out of a washed-out blue sky. We seem very far from the war. Freya writes to say we have retaken Benghazi and Soviet forces have encircled the German army at Stalingrad. The unhappiest man in the world is Crawford McStay.
Last night I went to a New Year’s party at Cable Beach given by a young widow called Dorothy Bookbinder (American). There was a band and champagne from 8.00 till midnight and beyond. Dorothy — in her forties, blowzy, a drunk, I suppose — is living with the ‘Marquis’ de Saussay — of French extraction, I would say, rather than French. Dorothy has a daughter (Nineteen? Twenty-two?) called Lulu who made a beeline for me as the clock struck twelve and planted a long wet kiss on my lips. I shook her off and went down to the beach and looked at the stars and thought about Freya. Lulu found me and candidly propositioned me: ‘Why won’t you fuck me, Logan?’ ‘Because I don’t fucking want to,’ I said. Then she fell over, dead drunk. So I carried her back and laid her on a cane sofa on the terrace and slipped away.
News from Government House is that the Duchess is unwell — exhausted, tormented by her ulcer. I think I’ll let McStay take the 1122 off to the Out Islands for a few days. Nassau is beginning to get to me as well.
I wrote up my third report for NID and took it out to Oakes Field and gave it to [Squadron Leader] Snow (he flies it to Miami and someone takes it to New York and from there it reaches NID). Snow says the Duke will be offered the governorship of Australia as a sop. I felt my heart lighten at the prospect. I’ve only been here a few weeks and already I feel I’m rotting. I’m putting on weight, drinking heavily, I spend too much time in the bar of the Prince George Hotel talking to nobodies. My intellectual life is nonexistent: I read and write nothing (except letters from and to home). I begin to understand what the Duchess meant by ‘this moron paradise’.
My report was a diligent account of the latest rumours. I have been told, in confidence, by de Saussay that Sir Harry Oakes
15
has advanced the Duke two million dollars and Wenner-Gren is using this to speculate on the currency markets through his bank, the Banco Comercial
16
in Mexico City — all profits to go to the Duke. No doubt NID can see if this can be confirmed or denied: it would certainly explain where the money came from. I can’t really believe the Duke would take such a risk, however: too many people in London, New York, the Bahamas could trace the money if he suddenly starts making payments to Oakes or some subsidiary.