The Comedians (10 page)

As my young man became more skilful at his job he would turn me out an assorted half-dozen paintings in a morning and I paid him two pounds ten for each. I was robbing nobody; with fifteen pounds for a morning's work he was well satisfied; I was even helping young promise, and I am sure that many a dinner party in the provinces went better because of some outrageous challenge to good taste upon the walls. I once sold an imitation Pollock to a man who had Walt Disney dwarfs planted in his garden, around the sun-dial and on either side the crazy paving. Did I harm him? He could afford the money. He had an air of complete invulnerability, though God knows for what aberration in his sexual or business life Dopey and the other dwarfs may have compensated.

It was soon after my success with Dopey's owner that I received my mother's appeal – if you could call it an appeal. It came in the shape of a picture-postcard which showed the ruined citadel of the Emperor Christophe at Cap Haïtien. She wrote on the back of it her name, which was new to me, her address and two sentences, ‘Feel a bit of a ruin myself. Nice to see you if you come this way.' In brackets after ‘Maman' – not recognizing her hand I read it first not unsuitably as ‘Manon' – she added ‘Comtesse de Lascot-Villiers.' It had taken many months to find me.

I hadn't seen my mother since one occasion in Paris in 1934, and I had not heard from her during the war. I daresay I would not have answered her invitation but for two things – it was the nearest she had ever approached to a maternal appeal, and it was really time for me to finish with the travelling art-gallery, for a Sunday paper was trying to find out the source of my paintings. I had more than a thousand pounds in the bank. I sold the caravan, the stock and the reproductions to a man who never read the
People
for five hundred pounds, and I flew out to Kingston, where I looked around unsuccessfully for business opportunities before taking another plane to Port-au-Prince.

III

Port-au-Prince was a very different place a few years ago. It was, I suppose, just as corrupt; it was even dirtier; it contained as many beggars, but at least the beggars had some hope, for the tourists were there. Now when a man says to you, ‘I am starving,' you believe him. I wondered what my mother was doing at the Hotel Trianon, whether she was existing there on a pension from the count, if there had ever been a count, or whether perhaps she was working as a housekeeper. She had been employed when I saw her last in 1934 as a
vendeuse
in one of the minor
couturiers
. It was regarded in that pre-war period as a rather smart thing to employ an Englishwoman, so she had called herself Maggie Brown (perhaps her married name really was Brown).

For the sake of prudence I took my bags to the El Rancho, a luxurious Americanized hotel. I wanted to be comfortable so long as my money lasted, and nobody at the airport could tell me anything about the Trianon. As I drove up between the palm trees it looked bedraggled enough: the bougainvillaea needed cutting back and there was more grass than gravel on the drive. A few people were drinking on the balcony, among them Petit Pierre, though I was to learn soon enough that he paid for his drinks only with his pen. A young well-dressed negro met me on the steps and asked me whether I needed a room. I said I had come to see ‘Madame la Comtesse' – I couldn't keep the double-barrelled name in mind and I had left the postcard in my hotel room.

‘I am afraid she is sick. Is she expecting you?'

A very young American couple in bath-robes came up from the pool. The man had his arm around the girl's shoulder. ‘Hi, Marcel,' he said, ‘a couple of your specials.'

‘Joseph,' the negro called. ‘Two rum punches for Mr Nelson.' He turned back to me with his inquiry.

‘Tell her,' I said, ‘that Mr Brown is here.'

‘Mr Brown?'

‘Yes.'

‘I will see if she is awake.' He hesitated. He said, ‘You have come from England?'

‘Yes.'

Joseph came out of the bar carrying the rum punches. He had no limp in those days.

‘Mr Brown from England?' Marcel asked again.

‘Yes, Mr Brown from England.' He went upstairs reluctantly. The strangers on the balcony were watching me with curiosity, except for the young couple – they exchanged cherries intensely with their lips. The sun was about to set behind the great hump of Kenscoff.

Petit Pierre asked, ‘You have come from England?'

‘Yes.'

‘From London?'

‘Yes.'

‘London was very cold?'

It was like an interrogation by the secret police, but in those days there were no secret police.

‘It was raining when I left.'

‘How do you like it here, Mr Brown?'

‘I have only been here two hours.' The next day I had the explanation of his interest: there was a paragraph about me in the social column of the local paper.

‘You're coming on fine with your backstroke,' the young man said to the girl.

‘Oh, Chick, do you really mean it?'

‘I mean it, honey.'

A negro came half-way up the steps and held out two hideous pieces of wood-carving. Nobody paid him any attention and he stood there, holding them out saying nothing. I never even noticed when he went away.

‘Joseph, what's for dinner?' the girl called.

A man walked round the balcony carrying a guitar. He sat down at a table near the couple and began to play. Nobody paid him any attention either. I began to feel a little awkward. I had expected a warmer welcome in my mother's home.

A tall elderly negro with a Roman face blackened by the soot of cities and with hair dusted by stone came down the stairs, followed by Marcel. He said, ‘Mr Brown?'

‘Yes.'

‘I am Doctor Magiot. Will you come into the bar for a moment?'

We went into the bar. Joseph was mixing some more rum punches for Petit Pierre and his party. A cook wearing a high white hat pushed his head through the door and retreated again when he saw Doctor Magiot. A very pretty half-caste maid stopped talking to Joseph and went out on to the balcony carrying linen cloths to cover the tables.

Doctor Magiot said, ‘You are the son of Madame la Comtesse?'

‘Yes.' It seemed to me that I had done nothing but answer questions since I arrived.

‘Of course your mother is anxious to see you, but I wanted first to tell you certain facts. Excitement is dangerous for her. Please when you see her be very gentle. Undemonstrative.'

I smiled. ‘We have never been demonstrative. What's wrong, doctor?'

‘She has had a second
crise cardiaque
. I am surprised that she is alive. She is a very remarkable woman.'

‘Oughtn't we to call in . . . perhaps?'

‘You need not be afraid, Mr Brown. The heart is my speciality. You will not find anyone more competent than I am nearer than New York. I doubt whether you will find one there.' He was not boasting; he was just explaining, for he was used to being doubted by white people. ‘I was trained,' he said, ‘under Chardin in Paris.'

‘No hope?'

‘She can hardly survive another attack. Good-night, Mr Brown. Don't stay with her too long. I am glad you were able to come. I was afraid she might have no one to send for.'

‘She didn't exactly send for me.'

‘Perhaps one night you and I might have dinner together. I have known your mother many years. I have a great respect . . .' He gave me the kind of bow with which a Roman emperor might have brought an audience to an end. He was in no way condescending. He knew his exact value. ‘Good-night, Marcel.' To Marcel he gave no bow at all. I noticed that even Petit Pierre let him go by without greeting or question. I was ashamed at the thought that I had suggested to a man of his quality a second opinion.

Marcel said, ‘Will you come upstairs, Mr Brown?'

I followed him. The walls were hung with pictures by Haitian artists: forms caught in wooden gestures among bright and heavy colours – a cock-fight, a Voodoo ceremony, black clouds over Kenscoff, banana-trees of stormy green, the blue spears of the sugar-cane, golden maize. Marcel opened the door and I went in to the shock of my mother's hair spread over the pillow, a Haitian red which had never existed in nature. It flowed abundantly on either side of her across the great double bed.

‘My dear,' she said, as though I had come to see her from the other side of town, ‘how nice of you to look in.' I kissed her wide brow like a whitewashed wall and a little of the white came off on my lips. I was aware of Marcel watching. ‘And how is England?' she asked as though she were inquiring after a distant daughter-in-law, for whom she did not greatly care.

‘It was raining when I left.'

‘Your father could never stand his own climate,' she remarked.

She might have passed anywhere for a woman in her late forties, and I could see nothing of an invalid about her except a tension of the skin around her mouth which I noticed years later in the case of the pharmaceutical traveller.

‘Marcel, a chair for my son.' He reluctantly drew one from the wall, but, when I sat in it, I was as far from her as ever because of the width of the bed. It was a shameless bed built for one purpose only, with a gilt curlicued footboard more suitable to a courtesan in a historical romance than to an old woman dying.

I asked her, ‘And is there really a count, mother?'

She gave me a knowing smile. ‘He belongs to a distant past,' she said, and I could not be certain whether she intended the phrase to be his epitaph or not. ‘Marcel,' she added, ‘silly boy, you can safely leave us alone. I told you. He is my son.' When the door closed, she said with complacency, ‘He is absurdly jealous.'

‘Who is he?'

‘He helps me to manage the hotel.'

‘He isn't the count by any chance?'

‘
Méchant
,' she replied mechanically. She had really caught from the bed – or was it from the count? – an easy enlightened eighteenth-century air.

‘Why should he be jealous then?'

‘Perhaps he thinks you're not really my son.'

‘You mean he is your lover?' I wondered what my unknown father, whose name – or so I understood – was Brown, would have thought of his negro successor.

‘Why are you smiling, my dear?'

‘You are a wonderful woman, mother.'

‘A little luck has come my way at the end.'

‘You mean Marcel?'

‘Oh, no. He's a good boy – that's all. I meant the hotel. It is the first real property I have ever possessed. I own it completely. There is no mortgage. Even the furniture is paid for.'

‘And the pictures?'

‘They are for sale, of course. I take a commission.'

‘Was it alimony from the count which allowed you . . . ?'

‘Oh, no, nothing like that. I gained nothing from the count except his title, and I have never checked in the Almanac de Gotha to see whether it exists. No, this was a little piece of pure good fortune. A certain Monsieur Dechaux who lived in Port-au-Prince was anxious about his taxes, and as I was working for him at the time in a secretarial capacity I allowed him to put this hotel under my name. Of course I left him the place in my will and as I was over sixty and he was thirty-five the arrangement seemed to him quite a secure one.'

‘He trusted you?'

‘He was quite right to trust me, my dear. But he was wrong in trying to drive a Mercedes sports car on the roads that we have here. It was a lucky chance he killed only himself.'

‘And so you took over?'

‘He would have been very happy to know of it. My dear, you can't imagine how much he detested his wife. A big fat negress without education. She could never have run the place properly. Of course after his death I had to alter my will – your father, if he is still alive, might have been next of kin. By the way, I have left the fathers of the Visitation my rosary and my missal. I was never quite happy about the manner in which I treated them, but I was very pressed for money at the time. Your father was a bit of a swine, God rest his soul.'

‘Then he
is
dead?'

‘I have every reason to believe it, but no proof. People live so long nowadays. Poor man.'

‘I've been talking to your doctor.'

‘Doctor Magiot? I wish I had met him when he was younger. He's quite a man, isn't he?'

‘He says if you keep quiet . . .'

‘Here I am lying flat in bed,' she exclaimed with a knowing and pleading smile. ‘I can do no more to please him, can I? Do you know the dear man asked me if I would like to see a priest? I said to him, “But surely, doctor, a long confession would be a little too exciting for me now – with such memories to recall?” Would you mind going to the door, dear, and opening it a little way?'

I obeyed her. The passage was empty. From below came a chink of cutlery and a voice saying, ‘Oh, Chick, do you really think I
could
?'

‘Thank you, dear. I just wanted to be quite certain . . . While you are up, would you give me my brush? Thank you again. So much. How nice it is for an old woman to have a son around . . .' She paused. I think she expected me courteously, like a gigolo, to contradict the fact of her age. ‘I wanted to speak to you about my will,' she went on in a tone of slight disappointment, as she brushed and brushed her improbable and abundant hair.

‘Oughtn't you to rest now? The doctor told me not to stay long.'

‘They have given you a nice room, I hope? Some of the rooms remain a little bare. For want of ready cash.'

‘I left my bags at El Rancho.'