The Golden Hour

“You have your standards, is that what you’re getting at?”

“I have my standards.”

“Oh, then I should take back this little glass here?”

I slapped away his hand. “Don’t you dare. The poor fellow’s perfectly free to buy me all the drinks he wants. So long as he understands he’s not getting his money’s worth.”

“Aw, he’s not so bad. Just look at the poor sucker. Got most of his hair. Nice clean suit. Shoes all shiny. Can’t see his teeth, but I bet he’s got a few left.”

“I’ll take your word for that.”

“You’re a real tough dame, you know that? A lot of pretty girls might take pity on a nice guy like that, money to burn. A one-way ticket to Easy Street.”

“I’m not a lot of girls, am I? Besides,” I said, reaching for the ashtray, “I happen to know firsthand where that kind of arrangement ends up, and it’s not Easy Street, believe me.”

The ashtray, if you’re asking, was a heavy old thing made of silver and embossed in the middle with what seemed to be a tavern scene. A border wound around the edges in a series of scrolls, dipping now and then to make space for a resting cigarette. I knocked a crumb of ash inside and measured the weight of Jack’s curiosity on the top of my head. Not that I blamed him. You said a provocative thing like that, you expected someone to wonder what you meant by it, to clear his throat and ask you for a detail or two.

Jack’s black waistcoat shifted in the background, his crisp white sleeves. He put away the bottle of gin on the shelf behind him and said, over his shoulder, “Just as well, I guess, he ain’t the fellow who bought your martini.”

“But you said—”

“You said.” Jack turned back to me and grinned. “I was just following along, you see?”

“I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have amused you.”

“Now, don’t be sore with me, Mrs. Randolph. I’m sworn to secrecy, that’s all.”

“You’re teasing me, aren’t you? I’ll bet this admirer of yours doesn’t even exist. You just poured me a free drink for your own entertainment.”

“Oh, he exists, all right. Paid me up front and everything. Nice tip.”

“Is he here right now?”

“In this room?” Jack’s gaze slid to the door, traveled along the walls, the panel and polish, the glittering windows, and returned to me. “’Fraid I can’t say. Kind of a shy fella, your beau. But don’t you fret. I got the feeling he’ll make himself known to you, when he’s good and ready.”

Before me, the martini formed a tranquil circle in its glass, a cool pool. Not a single flaw disturbed its surface. I pondered the chemical properties of liquids, the infinitesimal bonds of electricity that secured them together in such perfect order, the beautiful molecules held flat in my glass by gravity. The great mystery eluded me, as ever.

“How long have you tended bar, Jack?” I asked.

“How long have I tended bar? Or tended this bar here?”

“Tended bar at all, I guess.”

“Well, now.” He shut one eye and judged the ceiling. “Landed here in Nassau in twenty-one when I was just a wee lad, helping my dad with the old schooner—Lord, what a sweet ship she was—”

“Rum-running, you mean.”

“Just engaging in a little maritime commerce, Mrs. Randolph, serving the needs of you poor suckers dying of thirst back home. Used to load and unload them crates of liquor all the livelong day. Oh, but we lived like kings in Nassau back then. Those were good years.” He shook his head and wiped some invisible smudge of something-or-other from the counter. “Then they brought back the liquor trade stateside.”

“Hallelujah.”

“For you folks back home, maybe. Come to find out, my dad spent all the money from those years, every damn penny, Mrs. Randolph. Left me here in Nassau, broke as a stick. Lucky I knew a fellow who tended bar in those days. Took me under his wing, taught me the trade. Now here I am.” Jack spread his arms. “Got my domain. Nothing happens here without my say-so, Mrs. Randolph, and don’t you forget that. You got a problem with any fellow here, you come to me.”

He was a large man, Jack, maybe more wide than tall, but still. I found myself wanting to wrap my arms around that comfortable girth and kiss his rib cage. At the thought of this act, the image it evoked in my imagination, I directed a tiny smile at the remnants of my drink and asked, “Why do you like me so much, Jack?”

“Because you’re an honest dame, Mrs. Randolph. Honest and kindhearted.”

“This fellow of yours. Is he good enough for me?”

“Nobody’s good enough for you, Mrs. Randolph, not in my book.” He leaned forward an inch or two. “Between you and me, there’s been a lot of fellows asking. Pretty lady, drinking alone, kind of sad and don’t-touch-me. But this fellow is the first fellow I said could buy you a drink.”

“A fine endorsement.”

“Now it’s up to you, Mrs. Randolph. You’re a real good judge, I’ll bet. You just watch yourself around here, that’s all.”

“I thought you said he met your approval.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about him.” Jack pulled back and set the glass back on its shelf. “Talking about everything else, everything and everyone else on this island, but especially that duchess and her husband, them two sleek blue jays in a nest, looking out for nobody but themselves. You watch yourself.”

“Watch myself? What for? When I can’t seem to buy myself even a peep inside that nest. I spent all morning at their damned headquarters, the Red Cross, stuffing packages and sitting through the dullest committee meeting in the world, going out of my mind, just to wrangle myself an invitation to the party at Government House on Saturday, and then the duchess finally turns up, and do you know what she says?”

Jack makes a slice along his throat. “Off with your head?”

“Worse. Enchanted to meet you, Mrs. Randolph.”

“That’s all? Sounds all right to me.”

“You don’t know how it is with these people. She locks eyes with you, see, like you’re the only person in the room, the only person in the world, pixie dust glitters in the air around you, and she takes your hand and says, Enchanted to meet you, and you think to yourself, She likes me! She’s enchanted, she said it herself! We’re going to be the best of friends! Then she drops your hand and turns to the next woman and locks eyes with her, and you feel like a sucker. No, you are a sucker. Sucked in by the oldest trick in the book.” There was a stir to my right, somebody approaching the bar. I glanced out the side of my eye and recognized, or thought I recognized, a certain man sliding into position a few stools down, tall, polished, Spanish or French or something, air of importance. Jack, on the other hand, made not the slightest sign of having noticed him. I leaned my elbow on the counter and said, “Maybe I ought to just read the stars and give up.”

“Give up?” said Jack. “Now what kind of talk is that?”

“The smart kind, brother. The realist kind.”

He glanced at last to the newcomer. “Excuse me one minute, Mrs. Randolph.”

The drink was finished. I stubbed out the cigarette. Jack had taken the newcomer’s order and turned to the row of bottles behind him. I stood up, a little more unsteady than I ought to have been after a single martini, and fished a shilling from my pocketbook.

“I beg your pardon,” said the gentleman to my right. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

“Of course you couldn’t.”

“You are not leaving, surely?”

“I’m afraid I am.”

“But you haven’t eaten yet.”

“Maybe I’m having dinner elsewhere.”

“Now, Mrs. Randolph,” the man said slowly, “we both know that isn’t true.”

Up until this point, I’d been speaking into air. I wasn’t in the habit of addressing bold men, it was a stubbornness of mine. But you can’t ignore a fellow who calls you by name, can you? I turned my head. As I said, I had taken notice of him before. He was one of the regulars at the Prince George, and besides, you couldn’t help but notice him. He was tall and lustrous and strapping, dressed in a pressed suit and white shirt and green necktie, and even though his nose was large and his jaw a little soft, you had to admit he was handsome, especially when he looked at you dead on from that pair of wicked, intelligent eyes. Also, he had an elastic way of moving, like an athlete.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

He held out a large hand. “Alfred de Marigny.”

“I’ve heard that name before, I believe.”

“I’m afraid I have something of a reputation.” There was a note of apology in his voice.

“I’ll say. If you believe all the stories.”

“Do you believe the stories?”

“Naturally. I’ll bet they’re a hundred times more interesting than the truth. Thanks for the drink, by the by.”

He lifted his eyebrows and signaled to Jack. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t say I wanted another.”

“Didn’t you? But please, Mrs. Randolph, sit down. We cannot have you standing like that. We cannot have you leaving like this.”

“Why not?” I asked. But I sat down.

He sat too, facing me, elbow propped on the bar. “What is this you are saying, about giving up? Give up on what?”

I reached into my pocketbook for the cigarette case. You know, something for my hands to do, something to occupy my attention while the most notorious playboy in Nassau settled himself on a nearby stool and fixed his attention on me. I tried to assemble a few facts in my memory. He was recently divorced from some wealthy Manhattanite who had left her previous husband for him. He was a yachtsman, a good one. A foreigner with a title of some kind, which nobody knew how he acquired, or whether it really belonged to him. In short, he was a—what was the word I had overheard? A mountebank. Fine ten-dollar word, mountebank. I plucked a cigarette and said, “Did I say that?”

“You did. I’m certain of it. Allow me.” He removed a matchbook from his pocket and lit me up in a series of deft movements: selecting the match, striking flame, holding it just to the end of the cigarette, so that the blue core touched the paper in a tiny explosion.

“Thank you.” I opened the case again and offered him the contents. He chose one and thanked me in turn. As we completed these little rituals, Jack returned with a pair of drinks: another martini for me, a whiskey for de Marigny.

When we had both tasted the waters, he said, “I hope I have not offended. I only wish to know if I might be of some assistance.”

“Out of the kindness of your heart?”

He pressed his hand against his chest. “I am a gentleman, Mrs. Randolph. I ask nothing in return.”

“Sure you don’t. Not that I hold it against you, mind you. It’s what makes the world go round.”

“What makes the world go round?”

“Favors.” I reached for the ashtray. “To answer your question, I’m a journalist. I’ve been sent here by an American magazine to give our readers an inside view of Nassau society in these interesting times.”

“By Nassau society, do you perhaps mean the duke and his wife?”

“Well. That is what’s interesting about it, after all.”

“I see.” He turned his face a few inches to the left, as if to regard the tables and chairs, which had begun to populate, mostly men in pale, pressed linen suits, like de Marigny, only shorter and pudgier, your commonplace middle-aged merchant, Bahamicus mercantilis vulgarii. A couple of conspicuous American tourists. “I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do for you in this regard, Mrs. Randolph. I am not a favorite of His Royal Highness.”

“Goodness me. Why ever not? I thought it was part of His Highness’s duty to make himself agreeable to his allies.”

“Allies?”

“I couldn’t help noticing your accent, Monsieur de Marigny.”

“Mrs. Randolph, I am a British subject by birth. I was born in Mauritius, which is a British colony, somewhat to the right of Africa.”

“I see,” I said. “How awfully exotic. Then it’s Mister de Marigny?”

He made a small smile. “My friends call me Freddie.”

“Well then, Freddie. How did a nice chap like you end up on the wrong side of the Duke of Windsor?”

“Do you ask me as a journalist, Mrs. Randolph, or as a friend?”

“Both. I’m a desperate woman, you know. Any little old tidbit might save my career.”

“Then I don’t mind telling you that the duke is a terrible bigot, a vain, weak, effeminate man, entirely ruled by his wife and his own greed.”

He still wore the smile, but his voice was serious, and not at all hushed as you might expect, saying a thing like that in a place like this. I tapped my cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, taking care to keep my fingers steady despite the buzz along my nerves. “Golly. Say what you really think, Freddie.”

“I beg your pardon. Mine is an outspoken nature.”

“Oh, I don’t mind a bit, believe me. Is he a traitor?”

“No,” de Marigny said, “but he is the fool of the Nazis. I knew him a little before the war, you know, when I lived in London. It’s no secret he admired Hitler very much in those days. His wife, I think, is of the same mind. You will remember, I think, their visit to Germany, shortly after they married?”

“I remember, all right. That was some show. Parades and factory tours and what have you. Wearing their best clothes and their best smiles.”

“He is an idiot.” De Marigny sucked on his cigarette. His gaze, which had been trained amicably on me, lost a little focus, lost a little amity, and slipped to some point past my left ear. “I had a friend in those days, a good chap, handsome fellow, clever, a Jew. He traveled back to Berlin to persuade his family to leave. This was in 1936, I believe, after they passed these terrible laws. That was the last I ever saw of him.”

“Do you believe what some of the newspapers are saying? About the camps and so on? Or is it all just propaganda, like spearing the Belgian babies?”

He tossed down a considerable measure of whiskey and stared at the cubes of ice left behind. The air was warm, the way the air is always warm in Nassau, and you could almost hear the melting of the ice under the draft of the ceiling fan. His hand, holding the glass, was quite long, and the fingers looked as if they could crush rocks. I waited for him to speak. Most people will, if you give them enough time. Nobody likes a silence.

“I have a story for you,” he said at last. “I think it illustrates rather nicely the character of the man.”

“That’s what I’m here for, after all.”

“Some few years ago, when I first came to the Bahamas, I found a pleasant little ridge on the island of Eleuthera on which to build a house of my own. I had made some money, you see, in the London commodities markets, and I wanted what every fellow does. A castle of his own.”

“Naturally.”

He waved away a little smoke. “It’s a pretty island, Eleuthera. Long and narrow and undulating, like a ribbon”—he made a gesture with his hand, illustrating this ribbon—“so you are never far from these beaches of beautiful coral sand. It lies to the east, about two days’ sail from here. Eleuthera. This means ‘freedom’ in Greek, did you know that?”

“I did not. They don’t teach much Greek at girls’ schools, I’m afraid.”

“No? I suppose not. In any case, I bought two hundred acres on a ridge, sloping right down to the beach, and assured myself of a source of plentiful fresh water on the property. Then I built a nice bungalow.”

“So what happened? The duke decided he wanted it for himself?”

A large party burst into the room, six or seven of them, voices booming off the ceiling, reeking of sunshine and perspiration. De Marigny glanced across the furniture and observed them for a second or two, no more. Then he returned to me and said, smiling again, “Not quite. You see, in the village below this ridge, the Negroes have no fresh water of their own. The women boil seawater and collect rain in buckets, or else they walk for miles and then pay a penny a dipper. So I thought, since I was building this house in any case, I should also build a system to pipe water down to the village from my well, to these villagers who had nothing but dry rocks and barren soil. And I designed this system, and had the permit approved by the Executive Council, and all that was needed was the signature of the governor himself.”

“Oh, dear,” I said.

While he was speaking, Jack came silently in our direction and replaced the empty whiskey glass with a fresh one. De Marigny nodded his thanks and sipped. Though the sides of the glass were still dry, he held it gingerly. “Then this woman arrives,” he said. “A woman named Rosita Forbes, a writer. An Englishwoman, the sporty sort, do you know what I mean?”

“I have an idea. Thinks she’s Gertrude Bell and Good Queen Bess all rolled into one.”

He laughed. “Yes, like that. So she buys her own land, not far away from mine, and builds herself a big, splendid house, and what do you think? She has no well, no source of her own. The silly woman did not think to ask these practical questions before she purchased her little empire.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I suggested she build gutters and a water tank. We have plenty of tropical downpours in these islands, after all. But no. She has other ideas. And then I wait and wait for the governor’s signature, and there is no signature, so I sail back to Nassau and make an appointment at Government House and explain the situation, how the villagers are waiting for their fresh water, and do you know what he says, this fellow who ruled as king of England and her dominions for almost a year? Emperor of India, et cetera?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“He says he wants the water in those pipes—my water, mind you, from my property—diverted to Mrs. Forbes instead. He says the natives are used to collecting their water in buckets, they have never had running water, it won’t make a difference to them, while Mrs. Forbes, this munificent woman, she and her estate will provide work and money to the population, which is a gift of far greater value to them.”

My fingers rotated the end of the cigarette in the ashtray, round and round. De Marigny had a contradictory mouth, a thin top lip over a full, sensuous bottom lip, from which the smile had disappeared. He drank again, not deeply, and when he put the glass down he stared at me. The voices hammered around us. By some imperceptible means, our two stools had drawn closer together, almost in intimacy.

“And what did you say to that?” I asked.

“I refused, of course. Then I said some rather uncomplimentary things, which I shall not repeat, and which he pretended not to notice. He left the room. His—what’s the word—his aide-de-camp was horrified. I felt a little sorry for him, in the end.”

“The aide-de-camp?”

“No, the duke. He spends the first three and a half decades of his life being told he is like a god on earth. And he believes it! And now it’s a very different story. An attractive woman walks into his office and pays him the great compliment of begging for a boon, so he grants it—like a king, like an emperor—never imagining he cannot do this thing she asks. But what’s this? His subject won’t obey him. His subject crosses his thick colonial boots and tells the little emperor he’s nothing more than the governor of a pimple on the arse of the British Empire.”

“You said that?”

“Something like that, anyway.” He ground out his own cigarette. “Listen to me. When I was living in London, before the war, I met him twice. Once at Ascot. The second time at a hunting party in Scotland. He arrives in his own airplane, you see, flies in late to join us on his own bloody airplane, the Gypsy Moth—what an ass—and proceeds to tell us over dinner what a fine chap this Hitler fellow is, has all the right ideas, Germany and England should be the best of friends, stand firm together against international Jewry—pah. Half of us were disgusted. The other half could not applaud him enough.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Yes, interesting. That is what you wanted, after all, Mrs. Randolph. Anyway, you see what I mean. If you wish to become intimate friends with the royal couple, to learn all their secrets so you may write about them in your magazine, you had better not mention my name.”

“Understood.”

He looked at his wristwatch. “Forgive me. I have a dinner engagement. I am already late.”

“We can’t have that.” I held out my hand. “It’s been a pleasure.”

Instead of grasping my palm, de Marigny pressed the fingers briefly to his lips. As he released me, he raised his eyebrows. “But perhaps you can join us? We are just a few dull sailors from the yacht club.”

“I wouldn’t dream of intruding.”

He smiled. “Yes, you would.”

“Maybe I would. But not this time. You’ve given me a little too much food for thought already.”

De Marigny reached into his pocket to retrieve a fold of bills. He plucked at them almost without looking and laid a five-pound note on the counter, next to his empty whiskey glass, which amounted—if I knew my shillings—to a four hundred percent tip for Jack.

“Of course, you can do with this information what you wish,” de Marigny said, rising from his stool, “but if I were you, I would not print these things I have told you, not yet, or you will never write another word in Nassau.”

“Then what would you recommend?”

“Why, it’s very simple.” He picked up his hat from the counter and settled it on his head. His eyes had regained their luster, his smile its charm, and I believe every head in the room swiveled to take him in, on cue. He didn’t seem to notice. “If you want to know all the best ladies in Nassau society, Mrs. Randolph,” he said, “you must join the Red Cross, of course. The headquarters is just around the corner, on George Street.”

I ORDERED A PORK CHOP for dinner and ate it at the bar, washed down by a glass of red wine. Afterward, I stepped outside and paused to light a cigarette. The sun was setting over the ridge, and the sky had that unearthly wash of color that stops your breath. Above my head, a pair of seagulls shrieked at each other. I stared north, toward the harbor and the slivery green paradise of Hog Island on the other side.

Having spent the last two years of my life in what you might call a prison, in a series of cheap boardinghouses in cheap American towns, I couldn’t quite accustom myself to this landscape of heat and color and clarity, this excess of blue that was the Bahamas. When I’d stepped outside the metal skin of the airplane to the earth of Oakes Field, three weeks ago, I thought I’d traveled into another universe. I thought I’d stepped into another Earth entirely, a paradise lit by an eternal sun, a release from everything old, everything dreary. Then I touched land and discovered that freedom was not so straightforward, that you could move to a different universe but you couldn’t escape the prison of your own skin.

Still, I hadn’t entirely lost that sense of unreality, especially when I found the line of that horizon and searched in vain for any cloud. The British Colonial Hotel sprawled ahead on West Bay Street, white and crisp like a castle made of wedding cake. A breeze came off the ocean, smelling of brine. The sand, oh. How I’d miss the fluid, delicate sand, slithering between my toes. I dragged on my cigarette and stared again at Hog Island, now gilded by the rising moon. The lighthouse twinkled from the western tip. Some Swedish fellow owned the island, an inventor, built the vacuum cleaner and the electric icebox, God bless him. Came here to the Bahamas because of the taxes—the absence of taxes, I should say, and why not? A fellow who invents the vacuum cleaner, he’s done his share for humanity. Let him wallow in profits and buy a goddamn island in paradise and call it Shangri-La. Let him buy the largest private yacht in the world and swan around the seven seas. Wenner-Gren, that was his name. Axel Wenner-Gren. There was a Mrs. Wenner-Gren too. No doubt Mrs. Wenner-Gren was invited to all the duchess’s parties. And she hadn’t even had to invent a solid-state electric icebox! Just to marry the man who had. I tossed my cigarette into the sand and turned to walk back to the Prince George Hotel.