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a party at Government House to celebrate the Royal Wedding; while the white M.P.'s explained that it
had been a private party without any official character and that there was thus no question of an affront.
The two cases were stated over and over again at vast length and in practically the same words for almost
three hours.
We had tea in a huge teashop and bar above Goddard's general stores, which is a general meeting-place
for the inhabitants of Bridgetown. We soon realized that, however absurd the debate might be, the ridicule
was not confined to the coloured population, for the white people at the neighbouring tables were talking,
in voices of blood-curdling gentility, exclusively of invitations to tea or to garden-parties at Government
House, and with an urgency that amply proved the immense importance of these ceremonies and their
charm as a conversational topic. We returned to the House of Assembly in a less critical frame of mind.
Nothing had changed. The same argument was droning on. But at last an elderly man with a white
beard and a tail coat, whose sad eyes and ducal weariness of manner imparted to the room an aura of
enormous dignity, placed the mace on his shoulder and, followed by the Speaker, loped slowly out of
the Chamber. The session was at an end. We had been waiting for the proceedings to break up, as Mrs.
Napier had given us a letter to Mr. Adams. Leaning on one of the window-sills, we sat talking with him
until the light began to fail, and, all of us deciding to continue our talk over a drink, drove in Mr. Adams's
motorcar to Goddard's. It was almost six o'clock and the shop was shutting. As we turned away in search
of another place, Mr. Adams said that there was no other restaurant handy and that perhaps we had better
meet, earlier, another day. We all shook hands rather sadly and Mr. Adams drove away. It was, somehow,
a rather disappointing end to a conversation that had been developing in the most friendly and promising
fashion; and also slightly mysterious.
We had an hour or two to spare and decided to seek somewhere else. After wandering down a few
streets and encountering nothing but some rather dismal rum shops for which we were not in the right
mood, we asked a taxi to take us to 'some pleasant bar.' 'You won't like the bars, boss,' he said: 'I'll
take you to a club.' He named half a dozen, and when we said we were not members of any of them he
laughed and said: 'That's all right, boss, you just walk in. They's all white folk there.' We insisted that
we wanted a bar that anyone could go into, not a club. He took off his cap and scratched his head. He
was plainly bewildered. 'They don't have bars, only places for people like me—for black people. You
wouldn't like them. The white people all go to the clubs.' He cheered up again. 'Don't be afraid, boss.
You just walk in.'
The bar that we finally discovered, though he assured us that it was the best he could think of, was a
lugubrious little den. Three or four Negroes were drinking rum, and the silence that greeted our arrival
plainly showed that we were casting a blight on the place. There was none of the ease or the volubility
(or even indeed any conversation at all) that would normally be found in a similar place in Martinique or
Dominica; no reaction to the presence of strangers, except a rather alarmed and mono-syllabic politeness.
We were plainly breaking some unwritten rule by being there, and it was a thoroughly uncomfortable
business for everyone. A Salvation Army band took up its position in the street outside and the Captain
delivered a violent homily on the pitfalls of rum-drinking. At the end of his peroration, the drum and the
bugles played a lively tune and everybody sang a hymn about booking a passage to Canaan's shore:
'I'm going for a trip
In de Hallelujah ship
And I'm not coming back any more.'
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